C (3:03)

Well, I think I already know.

A (3:05)

It is my anniversary with CBS News. My first day at CBS News was April 6, 2009. 18 years. Are you kidding me? Remember, seems like yesterday Mark was also at CBS News at the time. Right?

C (3:23)

I was. I started right around this time. Like the same month. Ish. Spring, I think it was like May or June of 2005.

A (3:32)

Oh, well, you had. You had years on me. You were an old. You were already a veteran of the CBS News radio division. What were you doing there? Were you like a writer? What were you producing? What were you actually. What was your title there?

C (3:46)

Writer, producer, editor. But I've been gone far longer than I actually work there now.

A (3:51)

I know. Isn't it amazing that I'm still there? Tangentially, I am there. But who knows? It's been a rough time. Been a rough few weeks here for those of us who love CBS News, because we did get the announcement that the radio division, the network part of the division, would be shutting down as of May. And that's so freaky because Mark and I know so many people who are there. We grew up in that institution called CBS News, the radio division. And so, yeah, it's a little bit. I'm wistful. I know it wasn't unexpected. It's just always. It's always surprising when something like that does happen. Somewhat jarring. I don't think that we've really talked about that yet. But I'll have more news on that as time moves on. Anyway, Mark, you know, what can I say? It was the best thing I can say about CBS Radio is that I met you. That's right.

C (4:46)

That was the best thing that came out of it for me as well.

A (4:48)

Well, I mean, I also got a whole career in the television side, so I shouldn't. I will say that. Thank you very much to Harvey and to Constance and to Craig and to Jennifer, to all the people who ran this division and actually gave me an opportunity. So thanks to all those People. And to Mark and all of his colleagues at the time, except for a couple who shall remain nameless, who I will despise till my. No, I will not. I don't think about them except when I think about, like those times. So anyway, Mark, let's get to the caller. Let's bring on Ms. Renee, who joins us from hot California. Hello, Renee. What's going on? How can we help you?

D (5:29)

I am 78 years old and my husband is 74. We are retired with $52,000 in high yield savings. $40,000 approximately in stocks that are very volatile. Our house is up for sale, and we expect to net between 375,000 to 400,000.

A (5:51)

Okay.

D (5:51)

We receive 2009. 50amonth from an annuity and a total of 4365. $4365 from Social Security.

A (6:04)

Wait, can I have a quick question? Hold on. The annuity, is that for your joint lives or is it on one or the other of you?

D (6:11)

Yeah, great question. It's just on me.

A (6:14)

Okay, so just on me. Got it. Okay.

D (6:17)

So I have it for life.

A (6:18)

Okay.

D (6:19)

He's the beneficiary.

A (6:20)

Okay, understood.

D (6:21)

Okay. So we received 2950amonth from annuity and a total of 4365 from Social Security. Total of $7315. Our concern is making sure we don't run out of our money. Cause it's not a heck of a lot, especially.

A (6:40)

Well, wait a second. So you have 52 grand in a high yield savings. 40 grand that's in stocks. Is the annuity. Was that a retirement plan that you converted into an annuity and annuitize?

D (6:51)

Yes. And collect monthly? Yes. Started collecting about a year and a half ago.

A (6:56)

Okay. And so how are you doing with that right now as income?

D (7:01)

It's a struggle because we're living in California. We're planning on moving to Arizona.

A (7:06)

Oh, wow. Yeah.

D (7:09)

Everything will be cut. Expenses, overhead, housing, everything. So.

A (7:15)

Wow.

D (7:16)

Unfortunately, we've had our house on the market for eight months. It's. It's a beautiful home, but it's a buyer's market.

A (7:22)

Sure.

D (7:23)

Over 55 community. So that's been a bit of a struggle. But we're hopeful in the next month to sell it. Then we're going to take it off the market for the summer because it's brutal here, and then put it back up in September.

A (7:37)

Okay. Now, when you sell that house and you have $375 or $400,000, let's say 375 net, is your intention to rent when you move to Arizona or to buy something?

D (7:50)

That's the big question. Jill. I would love to be able. Not at this age, not to be. Have to move twice. But we would rather buy. But the place we'd like to live, the homes are around 400,000. And I was thinking, well, maybe with 20% down, it would actually the mortgage would come out to about the same as what we'd have to pay for rent.

A (8:15)

Oh, really?

D (8:16)

Yeah, the rents there about 2,500 for a two bedroom, two bath condo or. Yeah. So, you know, do we rent just to get our, you know, feel for the area? I've lived in Arizona before for 19 years and the 70s.

A (8:30)

Oh. So, I mean, it's changed a lot, I'm sure. But.

D (8:34)

But you know that.

A (8:35)

Do you guys have kids that are grown?

D (8:37)

I have one grown. I have one grown son. Yes.

A (8:41)

Where's he?

D (8:42)

Well, he's in San Jose, but in the next five years he's moving to Japan with his wife.

A (8:47)

Oh, boy. So nothing really keeping you in the. I mean, except your friends, which is, I know, important. I don't want.

D (8:54)

Right. And I have family in Arizona as well.

A (8:56)

Oh, okay.

D (8:57)

So that's good.

A (8:58)

All right. I'm feeling better. When you say it's going to be cheaper, whether it's rent or whether you buy something, I just want to understand if right now it's a struggle. At 7,300amonth, what do you think your expenses are right now in California?

D (9:14)

Carrying this house basic, without food, medical and all that, it's about 4800amonth.

A (9:24)

But with food and medical, it's probably the same. It's probably whatever, 6,500.

D (9:29)

More like 7,500. There's always unknown something to, you know, you have to fix a house or whatever. And before our income was over 9, 500 because we had a note coming in from a business we sold, but it ended this last month. Yeah. That was for 3,100amonth for seven years.

A (9:53)

And that was the difference. That was obviously the big difference.

D (9:57)

Exactly.

A (9:59)

So you think that if you go to Arizona, instead of 7508 grand a month, what do you think the total will be? Will it be more like 5,500 or 6,000?

D (10:11)

No, I think our mortgage and HOA and insurances and taxes will all be under a fraction of what paying now, which will probably come to our mortgage will be maybe 2500. It may be $3000 because all that.

A (10:31)

No way. Come on, come on. Wait a minute.

D (10:34)

No, I'm telling you it's no, because

A (10:36)

I still have to pay for your food and your services and all that. I mean, no way. There's no way.

D (10:44)

No, I'm talking about just the overhead of the.

A (10:48)

No, I don't want to do the overhead. I want to know everything all in. So I want you to say to me right now, we're paying $7,500 a month. It's too much. And if you. Let's pretend you rent. Let's just pretend you rent for 2,500amonth, okay? And then you don't have to pay the HOA and you don't have to pay insurance. You have to do any of that. Okay? That's the big difference. All right, now.

D (11:11)

Yeah.

A (11:11)

And also, I have your 375 grand in the bank, which is also very nice for me. Now, in addition to that, if we say food and utilities and this and that, how much more do we think? Another 35 or four grand a month,

D (11:28)

I'd say. Yeah, that's about right. Maybe 3,000. 3, 500.

A (11:33)

Yeah, let's say 3,500. Call me a liar. I think that's about right.

D (11:37)

No, I think you're right.

A (11:38)

Right. Okay. So now If I'm at six grand a month and you got 7,315 coming in, which, by the way, there's tax on that now, you're basically breaking even. But are you saying to me, just so I understand this, the only assets you own are the high yield savings account, your emergency Reserve, and a $40,000 stock account?

D (11:58)

That's correct.

A (11:59)

Okay? But it's not sad. It's just the way it is. I'm not making a judgment. No judgment here. Okay? Now here's what I think.

D (12:07)

I'm getting myself judgment for not.

A (12:09)

Stop it. Come on. Stop. Stop. Come on. We're gonna. We're gonna get beyond this, I promise. All right? Now, I like the idea of moving and. And living in a place that's cheaper. I think I would not buy. I'll tell you why. First of all, I'd like to have that money in poc in my pocket. Like, it would be so nice if you had. So it's $2,500 a month. Big deal. But you don't have the ongoing liability of being a homeowner. You. You don't have to worry about. Oh, my God, the homeowners, the association, they jacked the fee or some moron on the board did something stupid and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now I have 300 and even I'm going to make it less. Let's say you end up with 350 grand just safe in investments and not invested aggressively, by the way, added to your $40,000 in stocks. Doesn't that make you feel more comfortable to have that nice cushion there?

D (13:06)

It does, Jill, but here's the problem with it. When you're renting, you never know when the renter's going to say, well, you know what?

A (13:13)

Yeah, I know, but if I figure out where you. You'll look around. You do the best you can, but it is a much, much better financial decision because I. If. Okay, here's the downside. Yeah, you got to move. Let me tell you the downside of the other one. You, you take all the money that you get from the sale of the house, you spend it on something, you have only $90,000 left, and all of a sudden expenses go up at more than the inflation rate that you're getting on the increase of your Social Security payment, and you now have no, you don't have anything to dip into. You don't have a safety net.

D (13:55)

Okay, what about just putting 20? My thought was 20% down, like 80,000 down.

A (14:01)

But even that, but even that, you're still on the hook for the extra expenses, right? Like, so if you, if you have a 400. Let's say you put 80 down. Okay, you buy a $400,000 place, right. Mark, let's look at this for a second. Let's look at a $400,000 place, a $320,000 30 year fixed rate mortgage at six and a half percent.

D (14:26)

Run that from credit. Six percent. Five.

A (14:29)

Say six and a half. Mark, what's the 6.5% principal and interest on a $320,000 note?

C (14:36)

It's just about 2,000.

A (14:38)

Okay, so that's 2,000 homeowners association and taxes. And insurance.

D (14:43)

Homeowners. 300 for insurance.

A (14:47)

What did you say about homeowners? I'm sorry, where did you get 150amonth?

D (14:51)

150 and about 300 for insurance.

A (14:56)

Okay, for insurance. And what about taxes?

D (14:58)

Yeah, they have special taxes too, or they don't have. I don't know if it's state income tax or what.

A (15:06)

Well, you have to pay property tax even if you had to pay. So we're 25. Let's say we're more like at 2800 for this. Okay, that's what I think, like 25

D (15:16)

actually, but go ahead.

A (15:18)

Well, I got to pay for the homeowners association, the property taxes, and then we have to Pay unless your homeowners. That homeowners association is not inclusive of property tax, is it?

D (15:29)

No.

A (15:30)

Okay.

D (15:31)

No.

A (15:31)

So if property taxes, let's say even if it were, I mean, there's no way it's, you know, hundreds of dollars on a 300 something thousand dollars. So let's just say, let's split the difference. You say 25, I say 28. Let's say 26, 50. Okay.

D (15:50)

Okay.

A (15:51)

All right. And then only thing you know is static is the principal and interest. Right. Homeowners can go up, taxes can go up, and insurance can go up. Right. So you have risk there. Now you're going to say to me, but Jill, I have risk with a rental. Of course you do. But you then have a little bit more flexibility on having your money available to you. So if you are in, if you really truly want to own and you think you can do that, you must wait until the sale of your house. No, don't make a bid on anything. No contingency. You're gonna have to wait. Right. And do that. I would still, in my heart of hearts, I would choose to stay liquid. Mark, would you take the plunge and buy in Arizona or would you rent?

C (16:46)

I'm not going to say never buy, but I think my first step would be to get there and rent and just see how it goes. See how the cash flow is. See if the expenses are really what you think they're going to be and just give it, you know, six months to a year and then you'll, you're really going to have a good feeling for what, what the need is on a monthly basis.

D (17:04)

So we'll be making some interest on that money. If we put it in like a 4% or 5% interest.

A (17:13)

What's, where's your 5%? Where's your 5%? Hold on a second. I know you're going to make money from. We have no problem. We know that. Like the more money you have invested or in either whether it's CDs or whether it's a balanced portfolio. Yes, of course we know that that will make money. But of the whatever money you have left over. Okay, so let's say you, you know, you have $300,000 that's left after you have that. The best that you could do is to say, okay, I got 300 grand, some portion of that I can use. Not just not saying the interest, some portion of that I can use. So that gives you about, let me see, about 750 bucks a month is what you can count on from 300 grand. And that does not assume any sort of problem with a medical issue that's not covered by Medicare. That does not assume that there's some problem in your unit where you have to fix it and come up with the money. That does not assume that, like you have a car repair that needs a big chunk of money. That's just like the basics. So, I mean, I get sounds to me like this is. Now I started this whole show saying, like, we want to try to figure out like where you are. If you really want to buy. I would encourage you to be very careful on how much you spend. You can put down your 20%. I'm not 100% sure that you're going to qualify for a six and a half percent note. Have you gone through a mortgage process with anyone yet?

D (18:48)

No, but we have excellent credit.

A (18:51)

Okay. Yeah. I mean, you have income. It's just that you don't have a lot of income. And some mortgage lenders might not like the way these ratios line up. But you might. You might find that you have to put more money down to get a better rate. Perhaps. I think that you're wise to make this move. I think that I would absolutely rent for a year. I know it means two transactions, but I would get myself settled. As Mark said, we're assuming that the prices in Arizona are cheaper just for your daily living. But let's make sure of that. Let's make sure that wherever you buy that you don't feel. I think the problem is when you're rushing to buy that then all of a sudden you might make a decision that's a little bit more of a snap decision than a more considered one. And the last but not least is the $40,000. What are those stocks? What's that in

D (19:48)

A lot of it is in Nvidia.

A (19:51)

Oh, so yeah.

D (19:53)

And he's got it in some other.

A (19:56)

Okay, yeah. So I would sell those and try to take advantage of the fact that you're not in such a high tax bracket. Do it when you get to Arizona because it'll be a lower capital gains rate. I would really wring the risk out of your whole life. I would make it very boring and I would have as much money available as I possibly could. And I think again, I know that we are presuming that everything is hunky dory and like, you know, you guys will be fine. You probably will be if you pre decease him for some reason and he loses that almost $3,000 a month in an annuity. But he is saddled Within a. With a piece of real estate that he can't manage. And by the way, if he predeceases you, you have your annuity and you have your Social Security or half of his, whichever is more. But income's going down. When someone dies, the income's going down and the pressure will be even more intense.

D (20:58)

Right, so where would you put that 400? Approximately 400,000?

A (21:03)

Well, I mean what I would do is where. Where's the stock account held at what company do you know?

D (21:09)

I think it's Charles Schwab, isn't it, Mark?

A (21:13)

Okay, so if you're at Charles Schwab, one thing to consider might be you use the Charles Schwab service, which is a robo advisor, meaning there is like an automatic investing platform and it is avail. It's called Schwab Intelligent Portfolio and it's a very small fee. And you work with somebody who will help guide you and give you some options for portfolios. It would be index funds, but it would also, it would not be all stocks. You cannot afford to take a big swing on this. You just can't. And so I think it's important that you guys are a little more conservative in your investment approach. I know like Nvidia went up a bazillion percent now, now it's down some. Any stock and any investment has ups, it has downs. You cannot afford to sustain a long term downward period. So that's what I think it would be helpful if you had a more balanced approach to investing.

D (22:21)

Okay, Yeah, I agree. That makes perfect sense. So as far as getting interest income off of that money, if we rent and we don't buy, wouldn't that, that would be, that could be another twelve hundred dollars a month in income.

A (22:36)

Maybe it might be, it might be, but it may not be. If you have a balanced portfolio, here's what you can think about the chunk of money that you have invested, right? Let's say it's $400,000. You can safely withdraw about 3 to 4% of that on an annualized basis. So if you have, you know, $400,000. Okay. And we can't invest it, all, right. Because some of it has to stay in a non risky investment. And even if I said there is, you know, you can get your $1,200. That's true. Or $1,000, but it's important that you realize that some months it's not going to look so great to do that. So you might go a little bit more conservative. You can't count on it in that it's not going to stay at 400,000. It's not like, oh, I always take 4% out and it always stays at 400,000. Some years it will and some years it won't. So you have to be comfortable with that because you're not going to just put it all in CDs or in income interest bearing, income producing assets because you need to be able to keep pace with inflation and that may not do that. So we have to have some stock exposure. And in doing that, that means you have to accept that there'll be some down period. So it's not like a straight line. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

D (24:07)

And I guess the 4% that's being offered a 4.50, if we counted on that sometime that does goes away.

A (24:17)

Sure.

D (24:18)

So, yeah.

A (24:18)

And you wouldn't put it, and you absolutely would not put it in an annuity because you must have access to this money. So you cannot put this money into an, any sort of product that ties up your money because then that works against you. Right. You have to have access to the money. So if the whole point is to stay as liquid as possible, whether it's 20% down or renting for a while and see how it goes, maybe you'll find out. You like renting, you know, no fuss, no muss. Call the landlord. That's the, that's your big issue. I get it. There's risk, but there's risk each way, right?

D (24:53)

Yeah.

A (24:54)

You have to figure out which risk feels less onerous to you. And maybe buying is the way to go for you.

D (24:59)

Yeah. It just depends on what we wind up with.

A (25:02)

Right? Exactly. Now let me ask you a question. You have one kid only, right?

D (25:06)

Right.

A (25:07)

Okay. And you have your estate documents done, Renee.

D (25:11)

Yeah. An advance directive and all that stuff.

A (25:14)

Yeah. And a will and all that.

D (25:16)

Yeah. The will is probably, well, will need to be redone because we're moving out of state.

A (25:21)

Right. You can, you can just have someone in Arizona update it for the state law of Arizona. And you're probably not going to move, I mean, unless it sells like right now, like in the next few weeks, you're probably going to hang on through the summer. Is that right?

D (25:36)

Hang on is about it. Yeah.

A (25:38)

Yeah. All right. So maybe what you ought to be thinking about is that, you know, if you can sell a little bit of that high yield of the stock account so that you don't plunder through all of your savings. But like at some point, essentially I would want you guys to have a little bit more safe money socked away. So if it's going to be six months from now that you sell, you might have to dip into these accounts a little bit, right?

D (26:04)

Yeah, I'm hopefully not. But the reality.

A (26:08)

Well, tell your. Tell your husband if he doesn't make more money on the portfolio, he has to go back to work. How does he feel about that?

D (26:13)

Well, he's trying, but it's hard to get a job at 74.

A (26:17)

I'll say. I was totally kidding. I wasn't gonna. I wasn't. I really wasn't expecting that, but okay. That was nice that he even tried. All right, Renee, let us know what happens. This is very interesting. I didn't mean to, like, crush your dream. I'm just. I. I want you guys to be careful here. This is a very interesting moment where you're about to make a big decision, and I just would feel more comfortable if we slowed it down a little bit in terms of before you buy that maybe you would rent and, you know, if you hate that idea, then don't put all the money down. Don't soak up all of that liquidity by buying it outright. Make sure you shop around all the things you know because you're an adult and you've done this before. So we wish you the very best. Give us a holler back if something else is going on. I'm interested. Are you thinking about buying, selling? Are you thinking of downsizing, Upsizing? Do you have a big real estate transaction on the horizon? Get in touch with us. Go to jillonmoney.com, click the contact us button, write us a note. And if you'd like to come on the air live, check the box. Mark will do everything else. And don't forget, while you're on the website, you can check out all the content that lives there. And it's right there. Subscribe to us on the Odyssey app or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Do me a favor and do something nice for someone else today. Change your work, change your wealth, change your life. Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

E (27:43)

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B (28:15)

Understanding power requires more than headlines. I'm Peter Hamby, host of the Powers that Be, a podcast from Puck examining politics, economics and media. To provide context, analysis and clarity without sensationalism, we ask how power operates, who benefits, and what's at stake. If you want to move beyond breaking news to deeper understanding, join us on the Powers that Be new episodes every weekday. Follow the Powers that Be wherever you get your podcasts.