How to Protect Assets From the Government

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How to Protect Assets From the Government"
Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger
Release Date: February 6, 2025
Host/Author: Audacy
Duration: 16 Minutes and 19 Seconds

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Introduction

In the February 6, 2025 episode of Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger, host Jill Schlesinger, CFP®, delves into the pressing concerns of financial security amidst fears of government overreach. The episode titled "How to Protect Assets From the Government" addresses listeners' anxieties about asset protection, investment strategies, and managing financial decisions in uncertain times.

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Listener Questions and Responses

1. Protecting Assets from Authoritarianism (00:35 - 07:50)

Question:
An anonymous listener expressed anxiety over potential government seizure of assets, drawing parallels to dystopian scenarios like The Handmaid's Tale. With substantial savings in U.S. institutions and dual citizenship possibilities, the listener seeks advice on safeguarding their wealth.

Jill's Response:
Jill acknowledges the heightened anxiety surrounding political changes but advises against drastic measures that might complicate financial access. She mentions offshore accounts as an option but highlights their complexity and expense. Instead, she suggests diversifying assets into accessible forms such as gold or cryptocurrency to mitigate risks. Jill emphasizes maintaining calm and not overreacting to fluctuating political climates.

Notable Quote:
"I want you to take a deep breath. I really do." — Jill Schlesinger [02:50]

2. Affording a Second Home (07:51 - 10:00)

Question:
Joe inquires about purchasing a second home, presenting a debt-to-income ratio increase from 20% to 33%. With a stable income and existing cash flow, he seeks affirmation on the affordability.

Jill's Response:
Jill encourages focusing on overall cash flow rather than rigid debt-to-income ratios. She advises that if the second home purchase doesn't strain finances and allows continued contributions to retirement accounts, it's a feasible decision. Her approach promotes practical budgeting over strict formula adherence.

Notable Quote:
"Stop overthinking this gang. You can do it on your cash flow basis." — Jill Schlesinger [08:15]

3. Life Insurance Necessity After Retirement (10:00 - 12:15)

Question:
Donda, a 68-year-old retiree without dependents, questions the need for life insurance given her assets are designated to transfer on death (TOD) accounts.

Jill's Response:
Jill affirms that life insurance is unnecessary for Donda, considering her lack of dependents and substantial assets. She recommends ensuring TOD designations are correctly set up for bank accounts and suggests organizing these details for clarity and efficiency.

Notable Quote:
"You don't need life insurance unless there's something else lurking underneath the surface." — Jill Schlesinger [10:45]

4. Saving for Grandchildren's Education (12:15 - 14:00)

Question:
Steve and his wife, both 62, seek strategies to save for their forthcoming grandchild's education, contemplating 529 plans, Roth IRAs, or direct gifts.

Jill's Response:
Jill strongly recommends 529 plans for their tax advantages and focus on education. She also highlights the gift tax allowance, allowing significant tax-free contributions, thereby maximizing their savings potential for multiple grandchildren.

Notable Quote:
"I love 529 plans. I think it's the best way." — Jill Schlesinger [13:30]

5. Changing Investment Advisors to Focus on Individual Stocks (14:00 - 16:00)

Question:
Jay considers switching investment advisors after new candidates suggest individual stocks over mutual funds for income generation without selling principal during market downturns.

Jill's Response:
Jill expresses skepticism about the advisors' claims, emphasizing the inherent risks of individual stocks compared to the diversified safety of mutual funds. She advises Jay to evaluate the broader financial planning strategies of potential advisors rather than focusing solely on investment vehicles.

Notable Quote:
"I would be very interested to learn from these newer advisors what else they're doing because who cares about the stupid investments?" — Jill Schlesinger [15:10]

6. Hedge Funds Betting Against the Market (16:00 - 17:50)

Question:
Sarah is concerned about hedge funds betting against the market and their potential impact on 401(k) accounts, citing a Daily Mail article that has sparked panic.

Jill's Response:
Jill critiques hedge funds for their high fees and inconsistent performance, noting that over the past two decades, fees have significantly eroded their returns. She advises maintaining a long-term investment strategy and not succumbing to panic driven by sensational media reports. Jill reinforces the importance of sticking to one's financial plan despite market noise.

Notable Quote:
"Over the long term, US Stocks across lots of different kinds of administrations have gone up." — Jill Schlesinger [16:20]

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General Financial Advice and Managing Anxiety (17:50 - 16:19)

Towards the episode's conclusion, Jill addresses the pervasive anxiety among listeners regarding financial stability. She emphasizes focusing on controllable factors such as saving, spending, and retirement planning. Jill advocates for community engagement and altruistic actions, like volunteering, to alleviate personal anxiety. She reassures listeners that while market fluctuations are inevitable, maintaining a disciplined financial approach ensures long-term security.

Notable Quote:
"The surest way to feel better about that anxiety is go do something nice for someone else." — Jill Schlesinger [16:00]

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Conclusion

In this episode, Jill Schlesinger adeptly navigates complex financial concerns, offering practical advice amidst listeners' fears of governmental asset confiscation and market instability. By prioritizing rational financial planning and emotional well-being, Jill provides a roadmap for maintaining financial health in turbulent times.

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Disclaimer: The information provided in this summary is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always consult with a certified financial planner or advisor for personalized guidance.

Transcript

[Jill Schlesinger]

Hey gang. When some of you come on the.

[Mark Schlesinger]

Program, you know that we'll focus on.

[Jill Schlesinger]

Certain building blocks of a financial foundation. One of those is life insurance.

[Mark Schlesinger]

And the reason is it's just so easy to do this to protect your family by looking at life insurance.

[Jill Schlesinger]

And who better than Policy Genius to.

[Mark Schlesinger]

Hold your hand through the process?

[Jill Schlesinger]

Policy Genius makes finding and buying life insurance simple, and it ensures that your.

[Mark Schlesinger]

Loved ones have a financial safety net that they can use to cover debts and routine expenses.

[Jill Schlesinger]

Or even then invest money that could.

[Mark Schlesinger]

Earn interest over time so they can.

[Jill Schlesinger]

Reach their financial goals.

[Mark Schlesinger]

With policygenius, you can find life insurance.

[Jill Schlesinger]

Policies that start at just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage. Some options are 100% online and let you avoid unnecessary medical exams. PolicyGenius allows you to compare quotes from America's top insurers side by side for.

[Mark Schlesinger]

Free with no hidden fees.

[Jill Schlesinger]

And they've got a licensed support team that will help you get what you need fast. Secur families tomorrow so you have peace of mind today. Head to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com for decades, real estate has.

[Mark Schlesinger]

Been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been complex, time consuming and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy. All the benefits of owning real tangible assets without all the complexity and expenses. That's the power of the fundrise flagship real estate fund. Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate starting with as little as $10. 4700 single family rental homes spread across the booming Sun Belt, 3.3 million square feet of highly sought after industrial facilities. Thanks to the E commerce wave, the Flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind, well diversified and managed by a team of professionals. And now it's available to you. Visit fundrise.com jillonmoney to explore the fund's full portfolio. Check out historical returns and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the Fund's [e-mail] Flagship this is a paid advertisement.

[Jill Schlesinger]

Welcome to the Jill on Money Show. It's Thursday, February 6th and we are here trying to help you make better financial decisions if something's going on in your financial life. If you've got a question, get in touch with us. Go to jillonmoney.com click the contact us button. It's in the upper right hand corner. Wherever you're navigating on the site, click that Contact Us button. Give us a holler, tell us what's going on. If you want to join us on the program, check the box. Then Mark will do everything else while you're on the website, don't forget to sign up for the free weekly newsletter and. Wait, hold on. Don't forget, you've got to subscribe to Jill on Money Live. Our next live webinar is with Ed Slott, the master, the man, the CPA and IRA expert, Roth cheerleader extraordinaire, Ed Slott. He will be joining us for a live webinar on Thursday, March 6. And you've got to be a member of Jill on Money Live to actually take part in this. You'll get that webinar.

[Mark Schlesinger]

Three more after that.

[Jill Schlesinger]

The back catalog, video, audio, content, all that 45 bucks for the next 12 months. Do it you know you want to. Jill on Money Live. Okay, let's get to some of your questions. We have the first one. This is a little bit of a, I would say a big picture question which I've never received ever. So let me just read the subject, which says how to protect some assets in case of authoritarianism. See, I've never gotten that question before. And this is from a friend of the pod who wants to remain anonymous. Hi Jill. I'm not a paranoid person. Typically I do reasonable things to prepare for reasonable risks. I have health insurance and life insurance. I buy battery powered lanterns and weather radios for storms. Me too. I do that. I have Red Cross backpacks. I've got about $300 in CA, my essential documents and some basic supplies ready to go. I don't have a generator. I keep my money in banks. I don't have food to survive an apocalypse. I don't have any weapons. But I am feeling vulnerable to what I see as fast moving authoritarianism. How can I protect some of my assets if the government decided to take them away? Don't really rich people put money in the Cayman Islands or something? If I move to another country, my spouse is a dual citizen. Is there a way I could access some of my funds? Basically, how could one prepare for the sudden disappearance of all your money? Like what happens at the beginning of the Handmaid's Tale. By the way, that book is frightening. But the series is even more frightening. All of our money is currently in United States institutions. We have a checking account with under $20,000, a savings account with $100,000 retirement accounts of $1.2 million and $470,000 in non retirement mutual fund accounts with Fidelity. Also, we've got $10,000 in 529 plans for our young children. We owe $15,000 on a car. My spouse is working on getting a European passport. I could probably get citizenship in Israel if necessary. Am I crazy? Are there other ways to protect my accounts? Will definitely be talking about this with my therapist at my next appointment. Thank you. Oh, Anonymous. It's very anxiety provoking to see so many changes so quickly. I understand this and you know, look, can I take this seriously for a second? If you really wanted to protect assets, what often people will do is they do set up these offshore accounts, but it's really expensive to do that and I'm not sure that's going to be the way that you could access your money. So what are other ideas? Well, you know, ostensibly, I guess you could put some money into, into assets where you have a free access to them. So for example, there are people who are like, I'm going to buy gold or I'm going to buy crypto, because that is a way to do the just that which is sort of circumvent systems. All that being said, I want you to take a deep breath. I really do. I think there are a lot of people who are getting extraordinarily uptight about this, this part of the change in administration. I know there's a lot of information coming at us. I would hate to see that you were going to be moving money out of the country, cause a lot of problems getting, you know, getting access to it, costing you money to do that for no particular reason. Now getting a passport to a different country, that's a whole different matter. I mean, I, I'm game for that. I have many of, you know, I have friends who are Irish dual citizens, Irish American, Italian American, Portuguese American. So I think a lot of folks are kind of taking that as a possibility. That part of it seems like a better way to at least counterbalance your anxiety. But I just, I don't think it's gonna get to this. And maybe I'm gonna be one of those people who's like quoted in 30 years saying she was such a dope, she didn't see it all coming. Are you crazy? You're not crazy. It's an unnerving time for a lot of people. But I don't think this is the route that you should be taking. Is that, is that fair enough? Mark, you don't come on the errand because I know you feel sick, but 100%, okay, just like, let's keep calm.

[Mark Schlesinger]

And carry on, right?

[Jill Schlesinger]

We're going to try to keep calm. We're going to try to carry on and go from there. This question is from Joe. Dear Jill and Mark, can we afford a second home? Our debt to income of our gross will be 33% following the purchase of a second home. Currently we're at 20%. We ran the numbers based on a monthly spend of $16,000 in income over $23,000. With second home adding four to $5,000 a month. It leaves us with extra money, cash flow. Okay, can I just say one thing? When people are asking about second home and debt, like, I am not interested in the formula. I'm really not because I feel like all these debt to income or debt to equity or all these measures, it's about what can you afford? If you're telling me you can buy a second home and you still have extra monthly cash flow that you still have money that you can put into your retirement account, you still have cash that's left over, you're not depleting yourself, you're not overburdening yourself. Then go for it. Stop overthinking this gang. You can do it on your cash flow basis. That's the most important thing. Okay. Donda writes, I'm 68 years old and retired and I've got no children or dependents. When I retired, my life insurance went away and I haven't purchased a policy. All of my assets with my financial advisor are transfer on death accounts. That's great. I love that gang. By the way, although I've not done this with my bank savings account and I don't have a power of attorney for my checking account. Do I need life insurance and if so, how much? No, you don't need life insurance. You got a bunch of money. It's all there. Great. Someone can bury you. Someone else is going to get. I don't know who's going to get your money, who you're transferring on death to, but yeah, I don't see that you need any life insurance unless there's something else lurking underneath the surface. You have no children, no dependents, so forget it. Who needs it? Do clean up the bank savings account. If you can do that for the transfer on death for bank savings and checking, that would be very good to do. Just to clean it up a little bit. Okay, I hope that helps. Okay. This is from Steve. Hi, Jill. My wife and I are expecting our first grandchild this month. We are both 62 and I plan on working four more years. We've got no debt. Our house is paid for. We contribute the maximum to our 401k and our Roth IRA. We live in a low cost upper Michigan small town. We've got a million dollars in retirement savings. Our house is worth about five to six hundred thousand dollars. We live a modest lifestyle. Now to my question. We plan on putting money away for a grandchild and other grandchildren as they come, mostly for education. What are your suggestions? A 529 plan, a Roth IRA, or plain old gifts. Okay, Steve, I love 529 plans and I think it's great. And I would use that especially because you're saying you really want it to be focused on education. 529 plans, they're wonderful. And I don't know how much you plan to put into these, but you know, the gift tax allowance this year is $19,000. You can give $19,000 away each. So even if you had a slew of grandkids, both you and your wife together can put $38,000 into an account and not have any tax impact. So that's what I would do. I think it's the best way. I love 529 plans. Okay. Jay writes, I'm considering changing my investment advisor after meeting with two new ones who both say that using individual stocks instead of mutual funds can yield greater income without ever having to sell principal when the market turns down. They say that by never selling off the principal, my portfolio is safe. Even while earning a living income. I'm hesitant to change advisors. What do you think about this claim? I don't get this claim, Jay. Yeah, I mean, individual stocks are fine, but there's obviously risk in doing that. And if you choose mutual funds, you're able to actually get dividends and interest income from those mutual funds. So I'm not exactly sure what's going on in terms of your own investments. Are these also investments in retirement plans, non retirement plans, what other income you have? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether it's individual stocks or mutual funds or exchange traded funds. It's a lot of other decisions that you're going to have to make. And I would be very interested to learn from these newer advisors what else they're doing because who cares about the stupid investments? I care about the actual financial planning. That's what I want to know. Follow up with us. I'd like to know. Okay. Hi, Jill and Mark. I have several friends who are reaching out to me about the latest news stories on hedge funds betting against the market, which could impact 401ks. Can you guys speak to this? I think people are going to panic and sell with the news. It was the Daily Mail article that caused the panic. Thanks, Sarah. Oh, God. First of all, hedge funds, man, it's so crazy. We got an email from our pal, friend of the pod, Dave Stahoviak, coaching for leaders. Great podcast, great human being. And he sent this article about just hedge funds in general, about a new report about hedge funds that found that half of the industry's total gross performance was eaten away by fees over the past two decades. So that's number one. So hedge funds, they cost a lot. Number two, they're not always right, okay? They really aren't. And I think that perhaps that when you think about betting against Trump or betting against the market, I want you to stop that kind of framing of a conversation and say, over the long term, US Stocks across lots of different kinds of administrations have gone up. There is panic along the way, always at different times. It makes people nuts. But if you stick to your long term game plan and you don't buy into these panicky moments, I think you're.

[Mark Schlesinger]

Going to be better off.

[Jill Schlesinger]

Mark, there seems to be quite a bit of anxiety in this podcast episode. So I think that there must be a lot going on out there. People are feeling anxious. If that's you, I love to talk to you in person, you know, please, when you come on, you can change your name, we can walk you through the issues that you're confronting and maybe tamp down the anxiety, the fear, even the panic at times. And let's try to control the things that you can control. You are not going to control whether the market goes up and down in a given moment. You know, frankly, on Sunday night, the futures markets, before the night went, you know, as we were coming into this week, futures markets looked like they were selling off in a huge way. But you know, at the end of the trading sessions and everyone looking at, it's like, you don't have to guess what's going to happen. All you need to do is take care of the things you can control. How much are you spending? How much are you saving? When are you retiring? When are you claiming Social Security? These are the things you can control. The markets are going to do what the markets do.

[Mark Schlesinger]

We've been through this.

[Jill Schlesinger]

We haven't been through this. This, right? We haven't been through this moment, but we've been through many times where you are unnerved by the stream of news and it can be really scary. So if you're feeling scared, reach out. Get in touch with us. Go to jillonmoney.com, click the contact Us button and check that box and join us on the air. Okay, we'll happily, happily take care of you. We'll walk you through what we think are the important issues that you are confronting and that you can control. You can subscribe to us on the Odyssey app or wherever you find your favorite podcasts and okay, please do something nice for someone else today. If you're feeling anxiety, the surest way to feel better about that anxiety is go do something. I just had a young person who was complaining to me about all the bad stuff. I said go volunteer at a soup kitchen.

[Mark Schlesinger]

Just go.

[Jill Schlesinger]

And go do something in your community that you're going to improve the lives of somebody else. You're going to feel better. I promise. It works. Change your work, Change your wealth, Change your life. Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Mark Schlesinger]

For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been complex, time consuming and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy. All the benefits of owning real tangible assets without all the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise Flagship Real estate Fund. Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10 4,700 single family rental homes spread across the booming Sun Belt, 3.3 million square feet of highly sought after industrial facilities. Thanks to the e commerce wave, the Flagship Fund is one of the largest of its kind, well diversified and managed by a team of professionals. And now it's available to you. Visit fundrise.com jillonmoney to explore the fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship Fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the Fund's [e-mail] Flagship this is a paid advertisement.

[C]

College holds a mythic place in American culture. It's often considered the best four years of your life and hailed as a beacon of integrity and excellence. But beyond the polished campus tours, there are stories you won't find in the admissions pamphlets.

[Jill Schlesinger]

The higher ups are concerned about one thing, and that is avoiding scandal.

[C]

It's no wonder that college campuses capture the nation's attention, especially in moments of upheaval I'm Margo Gray. Each week on the Campus Files podcast, we bring you a new story.

[Jill Schlesinger]

It was the biggest academic scandal in the history of college sports and probably in the history of academia.

[C]

On Campus Files, we cover everything from rigged admissions to the drama of Greek life.

[Jill Schlesinger]

A chancellor having a pornographic double life is an extremely rare case.

[C]

Listen to and follow Campus Files an Odyssey original podcast, available now on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.