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Hi everybody. Suzio here. Now, what is the goal of money? The goal of money is for you to be secure. And there is no better way for you to be secure than having an emergency savings account. It is essential for your financial foundation. So all of you should be participating in the Ultimate Opportunity savings account at Alliant Credit Union. Go to myalliant.com to find out more. And be secure. March 22, 2026. Welcome everybody to the Women and Money podcast as well as everybody smart enough to listen. Today is Susie School. So get out your Suzy notebooks and this Susie School is dedicated and really geared towards those of you who own a home. So many times we talk about Gold, Bitcoin, Roth IRAs, the must have documents, the emotional side of money, all those things. But the biggest asset that all of us have, truthfully, is the home that we live in. It's also the most precious asset because it is our home. Today's podcast is about timing liquidity, not timing the stock market, which so many of you think you can do and you'll never be able to do it, but timing when you set up access to cash, especially against your home. But we'll get to that in just one second. Have I peaked your curiosity? I should have, because I am telling you the time is now. But first, let me just briefly address the stock market, the economy and everything that's going on. We are at a time of total uncertainty. We know that now. We've been talking about this for a while. There is no way that this market is going to turn around and go straight back up again or even inch its way up until uncertainty becomes certainty. And that is not going to happen when we are still at war. Nobody really understands why. Nobody really understands how we're going to get out of it. Nobody really understands what to do when you don't know what to do. And we're seeing it show up every single day. And two things are affecting you big, big time. Obviously, oil has been affected, which affects the price per gallon that you pay at the gas pump up tremendously, number one. Number two, it's affecting us. Not the war, but the indecisions in Washington. Shame on them, all of them. They all make me so mad I can't even tell you. However, good luck now, because the price of oil, the price of, of airline tickets have skyrocketed and they're going to continue to do so. That's number one. Number two, good luck if you even bought an airline ticket to go somewhere, being able to get to your airplane on time, given that the line for TSA is about three hours long right now, if the airports even remain open, because if those people continue to go without a paycheck, some airports are going to have to close down. And then what? Like, do you think that they could at least pass a bill that paid the people that are working their paychecks? Don't you think that could happen? But obviously not. Once again, I state, this government cannot even save itself, so it cannot save you. So you are not to enter, be dependent on what happens with them. Do you understand that? Are you getting that now? Why? I have said that for year after year after year. So you have to make moves that protect yourself no matter what. I can tell you that when it comes to the markets, these markets will absolutely go back up. I just don't know when. So you have to be a financial warrior here. You have to not be afraid. You have to know what you have, understand what you own, all of that and just be patient. If you don't have money to continue to dollar cost average or you're afraid to dollar cost average, then just don't. But don't sell here. As long as you have good quality stocks, ETFs, hopefully things that pay you a dividend, like Chevron, that happens to be at $202 right now. Oh, what was it when we did that podcast a little while ago? Oh, 190 right around there, when so many arm chair pundits said, don't buy it here, it's at its high. All right, just saying, dividends, safety, knowing what you have. And if you're afraid, fine. Just don't invest any more if you don't want, but do not sell. And if you're in a retirement account and hopefully smart enough to have a Roth retirement account, you are dollar cost averaging every single month in there, no matter what. Let's go back to real estate now. All right, listen to me. It was 2006, I was on the Susie Orman show. The stock market was doing great. Everything was as it should be. Real estate had been skyrocketing. Everybody felt so positive. And I started to see cracks in the real estate market, as, by the way, I'm starting to see cracks again, believe it or not. But that's besides the point. So here we are, 2006, and I'm telling everybody at that moment in time, be very careful. I wouldn't be buying something right now if I were you. I would also start to be very careful about the stock market because both of those sometimes go hand in hand. And what happened in 2006 and 2007 and 2008 is not only did real estate plummet, all right, that's one thing, but credit absolutely tightened. I saw people, and listen closely right now, who lost their jobs because of the Depression. Everybody calls it a recession, but it was a true depression, in my opinion. They lost their jobs. They then didn't have the money to do what, pay their mortgage payments. Then what happened at that point is they couldn't even borrow against the value in their homes because they didn't have a job. If they had credit cards. Do you remember this? Everybody if they had credit cards and they had available limits. So many people got letters saying, your credit limit has been frozen. Now if you had a credit card or it will pay you actually to pay off your credit card, everything kind of came to a stop and people didn't know where to turn. And here's what was so fascinating about that, is as real estate started to go down and down and down and people were losing their jobs as the stock market went down about 50 to 57%. Do you know the Standard and Poor's 500 index went down during that period of time? Almost 57.7percent from about October, I think it was a 2007 to March, a 2009. Think about that. So there was really no place to get money. And that wasn't the time to be selling stocks and things like that. What happened, which really was a big financial home wake up call, is that you think your homes are worth X. They may be worth X right now, but if your neighbor happens to be laid off, happens to lose their job, oh, AI has displaced them. Oh, they don't have an emergency savings account. They've already maxed out their credit cards. Everything is so expensive for them. And they don't have the money to pay their mortgage payment. And it goes on for one month or two months or whatever. And now they can't get a home equity line of credit. Why? Because they don't have a job anymore. They don't have income, even though they had a lot of equity in their home. But now what happens is if they don't have the money to pay that mortgage. Please listen to me closely. This happened over and over again. And I'm not saying it's going to happen to you, but just know the possibilities out there. Because do you really know the finances of your neighbors, of the homes on your block? Do you? Because if any of those homes near you have to go into foreclosure and there is a fire sale on that house, the value of the house that went into foreclosure, that is the comp that's going to take over the value of your home. Did you understand what I just said? So while everybody may think everything is great, everything is exactly how it should be. If somebody around you happens to go into foreclosure, it will affect the value of your home, whether you know it or not. You know, one of the favorite topics that I've always talked about is to invest in the known versus the unknown. So I want you to start to write things down right now. What is known in your life right now. Hopefully, you know you have a job, you have income coming in, so you have income to pay your mortgage. You know the approximate value of your home. Maybe you know right now that you are healthy or at least able to work. You know many things about your financial situation. You also know if you don't have an emergency account, you know if your credit cards are maxed, you know that the only asset that you have really is your home. You know that the only money that you have is the cash, the equity in your home. You know that many of you may be house rich, cash poor, you know all these things at this point in time. But let's talk about the unknown. The unknown really is. And artificial intelligence plays into this, the economy plays into this. Look at what's happening with the tsa. Look what happened with the federal government when all of a sudden, doggy, I called it doggie. T O G E doggy came in and hundreds of thousands of people lost a job that they thought they were going to have forever. Good paying jobs, really, everybody. So the question becomes that you have to ask an answer. Will you always know that you have that job? Do you always know that your income is going to be there? Because even if it is not there, do you know that you have enough money in an emergency account to pay your mortgage, pay your expenses for at least 12 months? Do you know that? Do you know that your health will always allow you to work? All of you know that I had a very serious health hazard that happened on July 23, in 2020. And God forbid, if I didn't have the money that I had, I don't know, we would have lost everything. And why? Because there's no way I could have worked. Thank God, I'm finally okay. But it was a struggle. Anything can happen at any time, which is why I'm probably so passionate about this, because I saw it happen to me. And the real question becomes what can you do today while everything is okay, to make the unknown manageable later, if it should happen now? I want you to listen to me closely here. Do you remember all the way back in December of 2019, you might want to go back to some of those podcasts. And I kept saying, you know, I just have this feeling. I don't know why, but I really think something horrible is going to happen in February or March of 2020. I didn't know what, but I just had this feeling. All right everybody, you can go back and verify it and podcast after podcast. I would say that. And came January, February and all of 2020. And what also happened at that time, it was the pandemic. And think about what happened to many of your jobs, whether you were a small business owner or whatever during that time and how did that affect when you no longer had income, your ability to pay your mortgage and even access the equity in your home when you didn't have have income. So a little while ago, I want to say maybe four or five months ago, I started to work with Alliant Credit Union, who sponsors this podcast. Now you have to know before I go on, I do not make one penny if any of you do this. I do not ever make one penny. If ever you invest any money with a lion, get a certificate with them or, or do what I'm about to talk about. I do not. They simply just sponsor the podcast. That's it. I did however, start to work with them a few months ago and we created together what I think is the ultimate opportunity home equity line of credit. I want you to listen to me now for, for a second. This equity line of credit really is very different than almost 100% of the home equity lines of credit out there. First of all, it has a six month introductory rate if you have a great credit score of 3.99% and that it's locked for six months. All right. After the six months it goes to 6.75% depending on what prime is. But what's so fascinating and I love about this HELOC is that most HELOCs, number one, your rate is prime plus a half a percent or 1% or 2%, assuming a good credit score. And you can get your credit score really anywhere. Right now your vantage score is all you need to know of 780 or above. It will be prime plus zero points plus zero. So you will be paying at all times as that prime changes 0% above prime. And that can change once a month. Just so you know, now Listen again. Interest rates very probably will stay right where they are right now or possibly go down. The Fed's rate, which prime is based on, will probably go down because President Trump wants to put in a new Fed chief who wants to lower interest rates. But I doubt highly that you're going to see them go up. So that's number one. Number two, there are no fees on any level to get this home equity line of credit. Number three, what I love about this home equity line of credit is you do not have to use it. You can apply for. This isn't going to cost you anything. And it can just sit there as an emergency in case one of the unknowns happen to strike you and you need to access the equity in your house. It will be there for you. Many home equity lines of credit when you take it out. Oh, you have to use it right away because they want to start making interest on you as fast as they can. Not here. You do not have to use it. All right, everybody, you have a 10 year period of time for that. I think that will cover you. Now for most emergencies, there is no penalty. If you want to pay it back above just interest only or whatever you can, you can do whatever you want in that regard. Now listen closely because there are certain things you need to know about it. All right, Number one, there is no fee on any level. Listen, they pay for appraisals unless you're doing a really big home equity line of credit. But in most cases, Alliant will pay for the appraisals everything, no charge the first year from then on. After the first year, there is a $50 a year fee. Not a big deal. Just to be able to have access to emergency money that's locked up in your home. Got that? If you close it within the first three years, there will be a $200 closure fee. So you are not to take this out if you think all of a sudden you're going to close it right, right away or whatever. You have to know that this is your emergency line of equity that has now been locked in for you in your home. You don't have to use it. And I really think that if you own a home right now and your home is valued at a lot and you have good equity in it, so you have to have a good equity loan to value ratio there of at least 70, 80% you have to do that. By the way, you can't take all your equity out. But why not set up a home equity line of credit just in case? Now those people back in 2006 and 2007, if they had taken that advice at that point in time, they may have been able to save their home, keep their home, because eventually everything did come back. So this is something that I want you all to do. Seriously, if you own a home, unless you own that home outright, you know you have more money than you'll ever need, that it's not a big deal. Okay, I don't have a problem with that. But if you're like most people in America today that have a mortgage that really you couldn't carry yourself for more than one or two years without accessing your stock portfolio, which is something I do not want you to look at as an emergency account, especially when the markets are down and could go down even more considerably from here. That is not where I want you to go. Where I would want you to go to help yourselves. Not on your credit cards, because interest rates will be too high. Whatever it may be, would be this particular home equity line of credit. We worked hard on it to give you every possible advantage over other home equity lines of credit. Now maybe there will be another one, whatever. But I have to tell you, I don't think it will give you all the advantages that I just gave you. Many of you already have home equity lines of credit out there, and I have a feeling that if you compare this one to the one that you already have, chances are you're going to want to transfer from yours to this one. Seriously. Because it really is one of the best ones out there. Now, you are not to just get this for you to have a checkbook to spend it on anything you want. If you have credit card debt, you are not to transfer your credit card debt to the equity in your home. You never do an unsecured loan like credit card debt and transfer it to a secured loan like a home equity line of credit. This is not for you. We created this for people who want backup just in case. While everything is still known and everything is good and the value of your house is still as it should be. So it doesn't cost you anything. You don't have to use it great rates. Or for those of you who already have a home equity line of credit at a higher rate, you're paying more transfer it just that simple. So I want all of you seriously now, and I'm not joking around here, everybody, I want you to go to myalliant.com m y a l l I a n t dot com it will be right there on the front page when you Go there and at least check it out. It's not going to cost you anything. There's nothing to lose by getting it. And why do I feel so strongly about this? Because I saw what happened in 2006 and 2007 to way, way too many people. Could that happen again? Not to that degree, I don't think. But I never thought that would have happened either. It is seriously important to invest in the known right now, not the unknown. You know where we are. You know what's happening in your life right now. I'm asking you all to take advantage of it. Just that simple. All right, everybody. So until Thursday when Ms. Travis joins us again on Ask KT and Susie Anything now, I love you all so very, very much. My hearts go out seriously to all the armed forces that may be deployed, who knows, over to Iran. My heart goes out to all the TSA workers. I get your emails. I know how you're struggling. You know, I get it. I so get it. But we are where we are. And you have to prepare to today for the unknowns of tomorrow. So until then, there's only one thing that matters when it comes to money, and it is this. People first, then money, then things. Go to myalliant.com M-Y-A l l I A-N-T.com and just check it out. Now you stay safe. Bye.