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Finding a skilled hire takes more than just reviewing a resume as AI raises the bar on how experience is presented. Hiring managers need better ways to evaluate skills and fit. That's where Robert Half can help their recruiters combine their expertise with award winning AI to review what's behind every application. Quickly learn how they can find you specialized talent in finance, accounting, technology and more at Robert Half they know talent. Visit robert.comtalenttoday oh, could this vintage store be any cuter? Right? And the best part? They accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so. Jennifer oh yeah, huh? Discover is accepted where I like to shop. Come on baby, get with the times. Right? So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback I think. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen. Welcome to the Jill on Money Show. It's Wednesday, March 18th and we are here answering your financial questions. If you've got one, all you need to do is go to our website, that is jillonmoney.com and in the upper right hand corner, click the Contact Us button. Write us a note and if you'd like to join us live, just check the box. Mark will do everything else. While you're on the website, don't forget you can sign up for the free weekly newsletter and also our subscription service. It's called Jill on Money Live. Jill on Money Live. Did you miss our Ed slot webinar at Jill on Money Live? You may have. It was at the end of February, but if you would still like to purchase that webinar, It'll cost you 15 bucks. That's it. 15 bucks to get Ed. It's amazing. Also, if you are a little bit more sure of wanting to spend the next four webinars with us, you can subscribe to the service for 12 months. Jill on Money Live for 12 months costs $45 and our next webinar will be on Wednesday, June 17th with Heather Schreiber. It is a deep dive into the Social Security system. Anybody who is thinking about claiming Social Security anytime soon or if you've had a change in status or anything going on, you have to join us. Heather is a complete maniac about Social Security. She knows every nook and cranny of the entire system. I really encourage you to join us. Of course, if you can't make it again, you can wait for it to air on June 17th and then you can buy that webinar for 15 bucks each I just think that the 45 bucks is a much better deal. So that's why I'm encouraging you to do that. Hey, Mark, get on the microphone. You know, I usually complain when there's a bad customer service situation. I want to give you a good one. You ready? Ready. Okay, so I'm booking some flights for later in the year, and. And I'm just going to name the company. I don't like to name the company what's bad, but when it's good, I will. So I don't fly United a lot, and I was just, like, trying to book something. I was going direct. I call up early this morning because, you know, when you wake up at 5 o' clock in the morning, there's a huge advantage. You were, like, way first in line. Anyway, long story short is that I kind of went through a bunch of ideas and they were very helpful. And I said, oh, you know what? I don't see where my miles are. I had a trip that I thought would have been on this, on my mileage sit. All right, so get to the bottom of it. There's, like, this one person who's so smart who's like, I see the problem. You have two mileage plus accounts. We can combine them right now. Can I do that for you? And basically within 15 minutes, completely cleared everything up, got everything updated, and I went from feeling like, where are my miles? To like, you're so smart and I'm an idiot. Thank you so much. And I asked to take the survey after so I could give them props. So there's your positive customer service experience. I was just about to say, make sure you take that survey when it comes. I really did. And not for nothing, but I actually also wrote a note to. I got the name of the supervisor, and I wrote an email to the supervisor. Anyway, that's a good, positive experience. May we share that with everybody. I hope your juju is as good as mine for today. All right, Mark, let's do some emails. And we're going to start with Margaret, who is 71 years old, has no mortgage, also does not have any credit card or car loans. Semiretired, she makes about ten grand a year. She says I have a small pension, about $7,000 a year, a pension from a former spouse, 19,000, and then Social Security of 17,005. Some CDs that fund occasional money for my grown children and to provide $10,000 for each of her grandchildren when they graduate high school. Okay. I have a traditional IRA, 450 grand. It's at Vanguard and I think it sounds like they manage it as well. So she says, I reached out to my advisor and let them know I no longer want to grow my ira, but would rather work to protect the money that I have saved by putting it into fixed income, knowing full well it will not grow much. Okay. But by doing so, my thought is I will not lose what I have built up. The advisor told me that I would no longer have them to advise me. Holy smokes. And that I'd have to do it on my own. How interesting, Mark. Currently the money is in the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index and the International Bond Index, the International Stock Index and the Total Stock Market Index. Okay, I understand that I'm going to have to start taking RMDs by April 1st. I don't know how to or when to transfer the money from my current selections to a fixed income account because I just don't have a lot of confidence in my knowledge of investing. Is this market timing? Can you give me some advice, Margaret? Well, Margaret, I really feel like maybe you actually do want a financial advisor and I'm surprised that Vanguard gave you that answer. I mean, I guess if you're going to just go to cash, you can go to cash, but why would you do that? Maybe what you should do is instead of just taking all of the money and taking it out of risky stuff, maybe what you could do is kind of in chunks, maybe quarterly, move some money into the total bond market index, a little bit in the international bond index and start slowly moving the stock portion into that. But if you're saying you want to put it all in money market, you could do that anytime. But I'm guessing also that maybe the part time income, the pension and the Social Security sounds like that, that covers everything. If that's the case, I still would want some money in stocks, at least 20% in the total Stock Market index. So I don't know if I would bail. Why don't you go back to the advisor and say, hey, can you create a portfolio where you would still manage it, but I really only want 20% in stocks. So let's say 15% in US stocks and 5% in international and the rest in short to intermediate term bonds. Could they do that? What about that as an idea? And then the only other thing you would say to the advisor would be, hey, every year I want to take my required minimum distribution. You know, at some point you, you know, you, yes, you have to take RMDs, but they have to leave the money that you need. For RMDs in cash. So that's not exactly market timing but it's a strange situation. Mark. I don't think I've heard anything like that. That's news to me. How do you know the types of assets matters in terms of getting access to an advisor or not? I thought it was just the asset level. Yeah, I mean it's bizarre. It's totally bizarre. Anyway, it's not like a huge. It's not like a huge issue. I think it sounds like you would like some, you would like some advice. So I'd like to try to keep that advice available to you. So let's get a little more information. Lois says that I was talking about the economy and I said the money you need in the next year should be in cash. My children's college funds are in a 529. We can't withdraw $529 without penalty unless for education. Are you saying with the 529A portion should be invested in cash? What I'm saying is in your 529 plan, if you need money that is actually necessary to write a check for your tuition check within 12 months, that part of the 529 account should be not at risk. A lot of 529 plans do that automatically. But if you're managing it yourself, your tuition that you need within 12 months should be in the money market account inside the 529 plan. That's very important. Do more has that. I'm presuming that's how most of them work, right Mark that like when they do the age based plans that they leave you a slug of money available for to pay tuition? I don't think so because you know, it's just inside a target date fund. So the fund itself will get more and more conservative but they don't lop off a chunk and put it in cash. But wouldn't you do that like if you knew you had to. Oh yeah, 100%. Absolutely. So put that part in the money market. Inside the 529. Melissa lost her husband last year and she's been working through their finances. And. And she said my portfolio is heavily weighted in the company stock that he purchased through payroll deduction and that he received as options as part of his benefit package. I've been talking to an advisor but I am hesitant to commit to a dedicated advisor relationship. What are your thoughts on dedicated advisors versus investment teams or even self directed investing? Look, I like an advisor for someone who is doing financial planning. If you're Talking about just trying to work through this one time issue of what to do with reallocating your portfolio. You know, maybe one thing to do is to hire the advisor for a year. While you do that and see how you can do, maybe you can do it on your own. If you're hesitant to commit because you don't want to pay the money, then you'll do it on your own and get back in touch with us and we can probably help you out. Okay. Vanessa writes. How off or on the mark are we? Hello. I love the podcast. Okay, I'd love your feedback. On one hand I think we save a lot, but we also make a lot. So maybe we spend a lot. Probably true. Sometimes it seems like we're on track. Other times it feels like we're behind considering how much money we make. I know. Understanding how much you need annually in retirement is the key to knowing how much to save. And that is the part we have a hard time accurately or realistically calculating. Okay, here's the fact. Vanessa's got a great paying corporate job. She goes, I want to retire at age 55 or 56 and then would work part time for five to seven years. I'd really like the option not to. I mean this is the seems like a pretty common refrain Mark. But she says, I think I'll probably need to do something so I don't dip into savings. So she's 49. Her husband is 50. They've got two kids. One's in college, the other starts next year. They're tuition amounts are covered from 529s. They've got $1.4 million in her 401k, 100 grand in an old 401k, half a million in a brokerage, 150 grand combo of rollover Roth and Ira. We also have 175. That's an emergency reserve fund. We own a home, it's worth 800,000. They owe 190 with a mortgage rate of 3%. She says, Right now I'm maxing out my 401k and we are putting $100,000 in an investment account annually. I think we could probably bump that up by about 25 grand. My base salary is 315 with a bonus that is usually equal to that. So she's making 600, let's say 600 grand. Husband is self employed. He makes 75 to 100. He inherited some land. It will never be sold. Okay, so we're not going to care about that. A conservative estimate of what he has inherited is that it would be generating $40,000 a year annually. Could be more. Okay, can I retire at 55? Would I still need to work part time? I know you're going to ask how much we need each month. I think we spend, wait for it, 20 grand a month right now. 20 grand a month, Mark. And they're not going to make it. I can tell you that right now. I can just like zip through this very quickly. You spend more money than you can generate from your savings. So unless this farmland really, really generates some. I mean, if she says that the farmland conservatively would generate 40 grand, 75 even. 75. So let's say 75 is realistic. So what, you're spending 20 grand a month, A quarter of a million dollars a year after tax is what they're spending. There's no way that it works. Sorry to be blunt about it, Vanessa, I think we could make it work with you saving a little bit more and then really looking at trying to tighten up what you're spending. Because maybe at $150,000 a year that that income comes in, maybe they can make it. But based on what the facts are, I don't think they make it. So you've done a good job of saving and you spend a lot of money and let's see where you are in a few years. Let's try to time test this. Like why don't you get back in touch with us for, you know, every couple of years and we'll see what you've accumulated and we'll see what that farmland really generates and then we see what the spend is, you know, once the kids are done with college. Maybe it'll work later, but not right now. I don't think so. Cynthia writes that she has a brokerage account with a well known company. She's paying 1%, wants to know if she's paying too much in fees. I don't know. What are these people doing? I mean, for a brokerage account who you're paying for money management and they're not doing any financial planning, then I think it's too much. But if they're giving you financial planning, maybe, maybe, maybe I have to know more about you and what they're giving you. Mike wants to know are people who own oil futures who bought them a couple weeks ago, profiting by selling them when markets go higher? I presume they are. I mean, they're speculators. It's like oil profiteering. It's more like if you bought oil because you said, I believe that there's Going to be a run up in the price of oil because there's a lot of action in the Middle east and you decide you want to do that and then the price of oil goes up and you sell it, then, yeah, you're profiting. There's nothing wrong with that. I think that sometimes speculation gets a bad rap in some respects. It's kind of like how things work. You can buy something, if it goes up, you make money. If you sell it, if it goes down, you lose money. You might sell it and say, oops, I made a mistake. So I don't want it to be too negative. You know, shout out to the speculators out there, you know, I'm not one of them, but it's not the worst thing in the world. All right, Mark, is that it? Those are all my questions. I did it very efficiently, don't you think? We did good? You can find us@jillonmoney.com that is our website. And if you'd like to ask us a question, just click the contact us button. Write us a note. If you want to come on the air live, Mark will be happy to coordinate that with you. All you need to do is check the little box and while you're on the website, check out all the great content that lives there. You know, we've got a blog and we've got a radio show. Videos, resources, another show on the weekends called Money Watch. You can subscribe to that show and this program on the Odyssey app or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Please listen, leave us a rating and review wherever you listen. And of course, put your hands metaphorically, maybe physically, if you get someone's permission. Not everybody likes to be hugged, but put your hands metaphorically on someone's back, reach out to somebody, do something nice. It's going to make them feel better. It's going to make you feel better. Change your work, change your wealth, change your life. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you tomorrow. Hey, gang. I just made a first time ever purchase on behalf of the pod. I was so psyched because Mark and I don't do a lot of promotional materials, but I was able to create a branded sweatshirt. Yep, a Jill on Money branded sweatshirt with vistaprint. Now, I'm not usually good at these things, but vistaprint made it simple to bring this idea. Like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if Mark and I could create some sweatshirts that we'll try out and maybe the listeners would want to get them as well. They've got these great design tools. They have fast shipping human support if you need a little guidance along the way. Because the sweatshirts were so easy to execute. Now I'm thinking about doing some other stuff. Maybe there's some baseball caps or, I don't know, other fun stuff that you guys would want. You'll let us know. There's a reason that over a million people trust Vistaprint for their small business print needs Vistaprint print your possible right now. New customers get 20% off with code new20@vistaprint.com hey there poodle and Maddie here from Reality Gays. Do you love reality shows about a bunch of women with matching hair extensions trying to fight against the patriarchy of the Mormon Church? Who doesn't? The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is back on Hulu and Taylor Frankie Paul has returned with her Mormon Me opinions and we are recapping all the drama on Reality Gays. This show has us fully overstimulated. It's messy, it's Mormon, it's everything. Follow and listen to Reality Gays wherever you get your podcast.