← The Clark Howard Podcast
The Clark Howard Podcast
03.24.26 Clark + Wes: Investing During Global Conflict & Sneaky Risks of Private Credit
00:37:54
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- [00:00]
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- [00:35]
Clark Howard
Welcome to Ask an Advisor on the Clark Howard show with the ultimate advisor here on Ask An Advisor, Clark Howard.
- [00:43]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
It's so cool to be here with you to talk about something that I deal with the perspective of everyday people. You deal with wealthy people who are all concerned about what is going on in Iran, what it's going to mean to their investments, their wallet, what's going to happen with gasoline and all that. So it seemed like a great mind meld opportunity for you and I to address this. You for your wealthy people, me for everyday people.
- [01:13]
Clark Howard
Well, I think it does. This impacts everyone. And we're so we're still in the middle of this conflict that has really big implications. Of course we're in the middle of a military conflict. That in itself is nerve wracking and scary for markets. And that geopolitical event always hits markets just because of the fear and the uncertainty and it's a scary period of time. Then the economic implications of that are very far reaching because of the price of oil. And the price of oil as that goes up, we know that we immediately see it at the pump but it also filters through in almost everything else that we don't see. I think of this as we live in a doordash economy.
- [01:55]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Can you imagine being a trucker right now? I mean you look at the prices of diesel and if you think gasoline prices are bad, you try to fill a tractor for a driver driving with those 53 foot trailers behind them. Diesel. They're not even sure there's going to be enough. The price of that going up, up, up and away. Think about how many show up in our lives that at some point pass
- [02:22]
Clark Howard
through the petrochemical system.
- [02:24]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Exactly.
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Clark Howard
Well, I think of it as kind of a doordash economy. And because we.
- [02:28]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
And you said doordash. What do you mean by that?
- [02:30]
Clark Howard
I mean. Well first of all think of you get a doordash one, you've got someone now driving so they've got extra, they're paying more to transport to go get the food and then every doordash order or Ubereats or whatever service people use. It's a full stack of packaging and the packaging is very, very dependent on petrochemicals. So you think about all the things that get boxed up, shipped, wrapped, sprayed, all of those things are dependent on oil prices. We don't think of that right out of the gate. But they're all impacted by those higher costs as well.
- [03:07]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
But you know, one of the weirdest things that is different than the three prior times we had the huge energy supply issues and the prices went crazy. This time it's a mixed bag for the US Economy because you got a lot of states that this is going to be great for their state gdp. I mean, they're, they're going to see enormous dollars coming into Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, where they live on the energy business and both with natural gas and with oil. This is going to be boom time for those economies. But not everybody in those states.
- [03:52]
Clark Howard
Well, there's a double edged sword though too when it comes to producing oil. And there's this thought of what I always think of is when, when do we get demand destruction, meaning that when we get prices that are too high, then people legitimately start using less, traveling less. It was interesting just this past week, the CEO of Delta, and I'm waiting for this to be eventually wrong, but what the airlines are saying is that there's still this great demand for travel right now and people are paying these higher prices because tickets go up not just at the pump, but the price of the pump for airlines. Their jet fuel goes up way up. Tickets go way up. And the airlines right now are saying, well, we still have this wonderful demand and people are willing to pay even though the TSA lines are longer than ever. As a traveler, and I know you love to travel more than probably anybody, but at some point, I look at traveling now and I think it's more expensive now than almost ever. The lines are longer, it's harder to get through than ever. I'm going to opt not to be traveling if I can in this environment. So I just don't see the demand for travel continuing to be as strong.
- [05:08]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
You're, you're completely right.
- [05:10]
Clark Howard
Because Forever oil lasts.
- [05:12]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
We've seen this movie before and the airlines think, oh, everything's great. Or look at our, our booking numbers compared to historical numbers. We're going to be in great shape. And then all of a sudden there is it Wiley Coyote and the old Roadrunner things and he's running out, out on the cliff and he goes past the cliff and he looks down. That's gonna happen if this goes on for a while. And the question is, what's a while? And my guess, I got my guess.
- [05:43]
Clark Howard
What is your guess? I want to hear your guess on. This is the number one question I'm getting. How long is this going to last?
- [05:50]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
And so you end up with this capitulation you're talking about, I think eight weeks.
- [05:56]
Clark Howard
You think it's that quick?
- [05:58]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
I think it's that quick because, you know, it's, you take a thermometer, you take your temperature, right? And normal for most people, 98, 6 people end up in their head with a normal. When they drive down the road and they see a fuel price sign and they're used to it being wherever they live, whatever it is, and all of a sudden now it's higher. And if it happens just for a little bit, people just kind of shrugged. But if it goes on for a couple of months, then you start to see the change in behavior. And then let's go to airline ticket prices.
- [06:32]
Clark Howard
That takes a little while, a little longer for people to notice because you're not, you're not booking tickets every day.
- [06:38]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
But that's why I think we're in the spring buying season for summer, and people are going to start shopping around. They're going to see, wait a minute, it only cost me 314 last year. And this year they want 510. I'm not going.
- [06:56]
Clark Howard
Yeah.
- [06:57]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
And so I think that the airline CEOs have been eating too much of their own cooking. They really think that, oh, we can defy economics. You can only defy economics for so long.
- [07:12]
Clark Howard
And it is usually, I think of the year in quarters. So it's first quarter, second quarter, which is really kind of goes back to your time frame. And is that anything that is a couple of weeks or a month or two. I think consumers drive through that. You go a full quarter of the year, which is three months, that's when people start to change their behavior. So we're, let's call it, we're roughly a little less than a month in to higher oil prices and this conflict that we still don't have an off ramp for just yet. And I only think that consumers will continue to be fine with their continued spending for to your point, probably another two months, which would make it a full quarter of the year before you start to see some real economic impact at the same time, which means that I think that's when the off ramp comes or it gets offed. So I would agree with your Timeframe, Clark? I think we've got another probably month to two months now. We could wake up tomorrow and you could see real progress and it could happen quickly. But I don't see it happening literally tomorrow. I think it's over the course of the next couple of months.
- [08:25]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
So question for you. We're a worldwide market, and for energy, we produce enough to serve ourselves, but the rest of the world, Asia, Europe, I mean, they're hurting for certain. You know, natural gas and gasoline.
- [08:43]
Clark Howard
Natural gas prices are up almost 100, over 100%.
- [08:47]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Isn't that amazing?
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Clark Howard
For some countries, sure. Incredible.
- [08:49]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
So they're going to go into recession. I mean, what's happened already is going to bake in a recession. How much is the recession likely in Asia and Europe to affect our economy in the US Are we really an economic island to ourselves?
- [09:07]
Clark Howard
No, we're absolutely not an economic island. If we start seeing problems in Europe and Asia, which, again, it's just a matter of time, how long will it take for these economies to truly slow down due to higher oil prices? And once that starts, it always comes back to the United States. You can't have a global, you can't have a recession in Europe and a big slowdown in Asia and have us just sail through. That can't happen. We will eventually have a similar impact. Now, here's the other big thing, and I know that a lot of our listeners, one of the questions we get a lot about is interest rates, mortgage rates, credit card rates, et cetera. This puts the Federal Reserve in a pretty tough spot because at the beginning of this year, it was forecasted, or the market thought that the Fed would be lowering rates two times, maybe even three times. Right now, that's off the table. And the reason is that they have two things to watch, jobs and, and inflation. And if you have oil going higher, it creeps into all the things that we just talked about. It's not just at the pump, but it's travel, it's transportation, it's homebuilding, it's farming, it's packaging, it's home goods, it's clothing, it's rugs. It filters through the economy and shows up as higher cpi. And if the Fed goes from thinking they tamed inflation to now all of a sudden inflation's running at three and a half, maybe 4%. They can't lower interest rates.
- [10:39]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
And did you see, so that's not
- [10:41]
Clark Howard
a, that's that in itself. If rates stay where they are and go higher, in fact, interest rates have moved higher since we've Been in this conflict.
- [10:49]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Sure.
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Clark Howard
That's something that'll slow down borrowing and costs, which makes costs higher for everyone.
- [10:55]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Did you see the wholesale inflation report that came out before impact of anything in Iran? That wholesale inflation has really spiked and people ask me, what's wholesale inflation? It's what happens business to business before it hits us, but filters, a lot of it filters through to us. So let's go to the core that I think your audience really wants to know. What do you do with your existing portfolio? When we're talking price and recession, we've already talked higher inflation, we've already talked energy supply uncertainty. So a lot of people are like, well, what about me? What do I do? I've worked hard to save this money, to invest it. What are you advising on?
- [11:43]
Clark Howard
Well, I think that there's a couple of things we never win long term. If we are, every time there's a world issue or there's a geopolitical issue or there's the worry or whiff of recession, if we just throw up our hands and say, I just need to leave everything in cash, it doesn't work. So we have to have the patience and the horizon, the long term horizon, to say, look, things may get pretty bumpy and we may have a larger market pullback. So far the market hasn't pulled back that dramatically despite all the fear and the worry about the war and oil prices. So the market's been relative, it's certainly gone down, but we're not necessarily in full blown correction mode. We're not near a bear market yet. But it's when investors see headlines, get nervous, sell go to cash in their 401k, they almost never figure out a good time to get back in 100%.
- [12:43]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
I mean, we've seen that.
- [12:44]
Clark Howard
So we've got to, we've got to stay the course.
- [12:46]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Yeah, every time. Okay, so this is something that my listeners and viewers have heard from me like a broken record my entire career. And because do you know what year I started doing this?
- [12:59]
Clark Howard
1976.
- [13:01]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
87. 1987.
- [13:03]
Clark Howard
I get it back. 87.
- [13:05]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
87, which was the stock market crash. It was 40% down in three days, I guess.
- [13:11]
Clark Howard
Incredible. Yeah.
- [13:12]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
And, and my advice, like, nobody knows where record is anymore, but my advice is the same as it's been all through the years. Know your time horizon, know you're well diversified. If you're a long way from needing the money, take a chill pill and don't mess up a good thing, even if right now it seems like a bad thing.
- [13:35]
Clark Howard
Couldn't agree more. And another thing that comes up a lot in the listener questions that we do here on the the Ask an Advisor segment on your show, we talk a lot about this concept of dry powder. And dry powder is simply having investments that are not tied to the stock market that have a really high degree of safety and stability. And we did a study like the latest crypto.
- [14:02]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Just kidding.
- [14:03]
Clark Howard
Just like, just like a meme. The opposite of a meme coin, whatever the opposite of a meme coin is. And to me, if you really go back over history and there's some methodology behind the amount of dry powder we want in our investments, because if you go back over the course of history and you look at bear markets, not 5% pullbacks and 10% pullbacks, that happen very regularly, the 20 percenters, the bear markets, they happen, let's call it every three to five years. So it's not infrequent. But it doesn't happen every day. On average, it takes about three years for that full cycle to recover. When we do end up going to a bear market, we never know exactly when. So if we have if someone needs, let's say $50,000 a year and they get 30,000 a year from their Social Security or other income sources, that retiree has a gap of, let's call it $20,000 that they're going to need to pull from their investments. The dry powder principle says that have three years worth of that withdrawal that you need in the overall portfolio. So that would be for that particular example, $60,000 worth of safety stability. That can be higher yielding money markets. It can be high safety or high credit quality bonds like treasuries or treasury ETFs or treasury funds. And anything in that safety doesn't need to be just in money market. But higher quality bonds, the opposite of private credit, I don't know if you want to talk about that. That doesn't count as dry private credit.
- [15:39]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
I think it'd be cool to talk about that after.
- [15:42]
Clark Howard
Let's talk about the private credit too. But these are safety stability areas that are designed on a time horizon to get you through when we go through bear markets so that we don't have to sell our equities that are down at the time.
- [15:57]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
And the other thing that's always been true when you look at when people bail, when they hit that capitulation point and they bail, it's not when things were at the peak, it's when we're already fairly far in the decline and they give up so they Sell at the wrong time, go to the sidelines till it feels and say, I'm going
- [16:20]
Clark Howard
to wait and wait till things are better.
- [16:22]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
And then they miss after the turn. Some of the biggest gains are very early in the turn back north for values. And so that's why I always want you to think about this as someone listening to us right now. And your pulse is racing to remember you're playing a long game, not a short game. And so often when people get all spazzed out about a decline in the market, decades later, they don't even remember what it was that they got upset about. So what we're saying is take a chill pill, right? Go. The weather's getting better in a lot of the country. Go take. When you're feeling panicked, go out for a walk, hear the birds chirping. It's the beauty of the leaves changing and the. Or you don't call it changing. What do you call it this time of year when. When these new, beautiful, gorgeous green leaves are appearing on trees and all that? I mean, and you see flowers blooming, just go out and do that, and that'll help you slow down your heart rate and just relax.
- [17:34]
Clark Howard
For our folks in the north, let's say you're still high up in your latitude versus where we are in the Southeast. It is really hard to feel bad about the world when you walk outside and it's 73 degrees and the flowers are blooming, and all of a sudden the grasses went from kind of brown green to all green. It's really hard to feel bad about
- [17:57]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
the world or just watch a golf tournament on the weekend. If you live tundra, big one coming up, and you see those beautiful lawns and you see what we're talking about. And so when things feel bleak, remember they don't stabili. You know, just like seasons change, so does the atmosphere for investing. So just take a deep breath, calm serenity. And if you love yoga, go do yoga, whatever it is, and just do that deep breathing, take it easy, and don't do something rash and emotional like
- [18:36]
Clark Howard
run out and buy a pickleball paddle and start playing pickleball right now.
- [18:40]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Are you playing pickleball?
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Clark Howard
I'm playing a lot of pickleball.
- [18:43]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
And that noise, some people, that noise, really, I guess when you're not playing, it may bother you, but not.
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Clark Howard
I think that's what it is if you are not playing. A good friend of mine lives near a pickleball park. And every time I bring a pickleball or a family I work with because it's 20. I mean, 24 million people playing football. 24 million, up 25% over the past year. It's an incredible number of people. It's the fastest growing sport in America. The average age, by the way, has dropped. So the average age right now in America of a pickleball player is 38. You got a ton of people.
- [19:22]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Isn't that exactly the midpoint of demographics in the United States?
- [19:25]
Clark Howard
It might be it because it's such a big sample set. Maybe that's, maybe that's why, because it's, it's so common now of people playing. And these are people that play more than once a year so that they don't count. That's like, if you go just played pickleball once last year, I think the number is like 39 million. But core players have played at least five times.
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Financial Commentator/Co-host
And are you vicious on the court?
- [19:46]
Clark Howard
No, I, I'm, I'm nervous to get hurt at my age because it's such a. Almost oxymoron as you think. This is such a dinky little sport. You go and you see people play and it's kind of dink, dink, dink. But the injuries are so pervasive because how small the cord is and how quick and often you're stopping.
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Financial Commentator/Co-host
And I remember the knee injuries, it's
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Clark Howard
Achilles all the time.
- [20:15]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Those are bad.
- [20:17]
Clark Howard
So UBS did a report and I made fun of it and they're actually, I retract my statements on this. A couple years ago that pickleball was gonna cost us $400 billion because of Medicare costs. Because of. Now most of them are outpatient. But the number of injuries and incidents because of this growing sport, this is.
- [20:38]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
You're not selling it. No. You're not doing a good job.
- [20:41]
Clark Howard
Well, that's why you have to just be careful. If you are 50 and you're going to start playing pickleball for the first time, just remember you're not 18 anymore. Even though maybe guys may feel that way, like, oh, I'm still 21, I'm still holding out for the MLB. You got to be careful because it's a sneaky sport that can get you hurt if you're not careful. So just don't go. Just have fun. Nobody's winning an nil contract at age 50 to play pickleball, but I still think people should do it.
- [21:16]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Speaking of which, something sneaky that I don't like, I don't think you like either. Can we talk about all the private credit stuff straight ahead?
- [21:25]
Clark Howard
Let's do that. It gets more and more headlines. It's very different than private equity, which you and I have talked about and but confusing because they both have the word private in it. But let's talk about that.
- [21:35]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
But there's also things about both of them that are things I don't like that make them common as well.
- [21:42]
Clark Howard
So let's talk about it.
- [21:44]
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- [22:17]
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- [23:16]
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- [24:43]
Clark Howard
Pricematch for details private credit. You and I did a show. In fact, somebody just the other day asked me to send them the YouTube link of the the Clark West Private Equity Debate.
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Financial Commentator/Co-host
And were we on opposite sides?
- [25:00]
Clark Howard
Yeah, a little bit. Okay, your point was that you're worried about the implementation and all the fees and how if private investments make it into 401ks, it could just be this multi 7 layer dip of fees just like we're all worried about. And that is a very real risk and that worries me about it. And I also think that people don't understand private equity. And that was one of your other points. People may not know what they're getting into. So is it really a good addition to 401ks?
- [25:35]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
So that what you just said is like the perfect intro to us getting into private credit?
- [25:41]
Clark Howard
Yeah. What's interesting about private credit, and you may have started hearing about this in the headlines, I'd say the last couple of months it's starting to get more and more top billing. You see CEOs come out and say that the issues we're starting to see in private credit, you shine more light on it, there's going to be lots of cockroaches running all over the floor. But let's just start about what it is and how it is different than private equity. What has happened? I think of it very simply this way. Private equity is an investment strategy where you're going in buying non public businesses so private companies and you're owning them and you're trying to make these businesses more profitable, more valuable over pretty long periods of time. And so think of that as private stock investing if you will. Private credit is the opposite of that and it really is all about lending money to companies. And what has happened is that regular bank institutions over the past call it 10 years have gotten more and more hesitant to lend big money to private companies. So what's happened, there's essentially this giant industry has grown into the trillions now a couple trillion dollars that is effectively a whole nother banking system in the United States that are not banks and these are private companies that are raising money for loans. So the worry here is that now that this is a two to two and a half trillion dollar industry, if the loans start going bad, is there a bigger worry than that goes beyond just investors and investors losing money. But could this be another 2008 where a financial system goes and has real problems that creates a systemic issue that again causes a recession.
- [27:42]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
So that's what's in all the financial press is the worry about this. What's your gut? Is it a systemic risk?
- [27:49]
Clark Howard
First of all, the amount of retail folks participating is still very low on a relative basis. And that's my always my worry because you get something. And we've had questions here on your show about these business development companies that yield 10, 11 now because the prices are down so far they're yielding 12, 13, 14%. Hey, that sounds pretty good. I can just, you've got high quality bonds, let's call it government municipal corporate bonds. I'm going down the credit ladder, if you will. Then you have high yield bonds or junk bonds, then you've got private credit. So I want people to understand that. Sure, it's pretty easy to access. You can go out and buy one of these business development companies like a stock. It's a pool of private loans. And it says on the screen again, lots of questions about this over the last couple months. Hey, looks like 10, 11, 12% looks pretty good. Easy to put money in it. Right now there's only again the numbers are, I don't know if these are perfectly accurate. It's around 100 billion in retail people buying into these ETFs, BDCs, these business development companies that trade like stocks out of an industry. That's call it two to two and a half trillion. Most of the money are in big pension plans and big, let's call it endowments, these multibillion dollar pension funds that have a really long time horizon.
- [29:22]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
But what my thing always, you know, I always go back to what's happening to that individual who I call them story investments. You know, their pitch to them is this is going to be so much better for you than having your idle cash sitting in a savings account or a CD or in bonds. You're going to make double digit Returns. And this is so very safe. And there's fee after fee after fee, but we're not going to tell you about those. And when you want to sell, you may not be able to sell. You know, the runs on some of these things where, where they've said, yeah, well, you can't pull your money out right now. So where I go into full freak out mode is I find these are things that are sold, not bought. You know, there are people with an agenda that want to sell these things to investors and people suspend belief. They want to believe that, hey, I'm going to make more than I'm making in the stock market and I'm not going to have the risk with the stock market. Look at this, isn't this a great country? Till all of a sudden they can't get their money.
- [30:32]
Clark Howard
Clark here's how I see it end up really being a problem. It ends up being a FOMO thing. And investors start reading that, oh, I can just buy this pool of capital that trades just like a stock or an ETF that yields me 10, 11, 12%. And that starts to spread that kind of sentiment. It goes from headline to investor and then it goes from investor to friend and then it just spreads. Oh, I can get 10, 12%, that sounds pretty good. And then people start buying. So it's kind of a FOMO like fear of missing out. Why am I not getting 12%, nice steady coupon of my money? So I think that my gut tells me, because the industry is still very heavily concentrated towards the giant pension funds and the investment endowments. I think those investors may get hurt, but I don't see it as a systematic bank issue like we had in 2007 and 2008.
- [31:35]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
What about the everyday investor, though? This is why, that's who I'm worried about.
- [31:41]
Clark Howard
This is why I think it's good that we're doing on the, on the show for now. The individual investor hasn't gotten nearly as caught up in this. If you look at the numbers as other trends that I've seen, because it's still relatively nuanced, it's still only been the last couple of months. And a lot of the headlines in the last couple of months are about the dangers of private credit. Ultra. Think of them as ultra, ultra high yield bonds. They're ultra junky in a lot of cases. So I think that our message here today is just be very careful. You see a yield of 12%, a steady yield of 12%. That means there's a ton of risk in the underlying Companies these institutions lent money to. And there's more and more reports of these companies not able to pay the interest. So they're doing something called piks. Piks. Payments in kind. Which means the payment is this, that they stack on on the interest they owe the iou. Iou. Iou.
- [32:42]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Would you like me to write out an IOU to you, take some money from you?
- [32:45]
Clark Howard
Aren't they as IOU is just as good as money on a post it note?
- [32:50]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Actually not to me.
- [32:52]
Clark Howard
You're going to want to hold on to this. You're going to want to hold on to this iou. So I would say buyer beware. Understand that anything that is a business development company and there's a lot of them out there, anything with a yield in the world we live in today, anything with a yield of over about 5%, you're starting to increase credit risk. You go over 10%. You're talking about really junky junk bonds.
- [33:17]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
You're talking about the chances you're going to get back 100 cents on the dollar, not good at all. And some of these are going to turn out to just go bust depending because of all the capital calls. People who've been trying to get their
- [33:33]
Clark Howard
money, particularly if we go into recession, which I still think, my gut tells me, go back to earlier in the show, that the issues in the Middle east, oil prices, it's going to go on longer than we want and oil will stay higher longer than we'd like. But I don't think it lasts multiple quarters of the year. I think it is to your point, I would agree a couple of months and then we get some resolution. And the investors that bailed out and thought this would go on forever and things just continue to get worse, which you can easily extrapolate that right now. I think those investors will be disappointed that they bailed out when the world all of a sudden starts to get better again.
- [34:17]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Well, I want to circle back for one second to private credit before we put it to bed here. And it's something you and I have seen all through the years and that is that there's always going to be a pitch that you're going to hear as an investor for the shortcut that's going to get you richer quicker, easier, and we're all susceptible to wanting that shortcut. And that's when we get burned. And so right now we're talking about private credit. Next year there'll be something else. Last year, two years ago, it was the, what they called the, the memes, the made up the joke kind of.
- [34:59]
Clark Howard
Oh, NFTs.
- [35:00]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Oh, and the NFTs before that. That was like four years. Yeah, there's always going to be something like that because people are like, you know, I'm having to go to work every day. I got these bills coming in every month.
- [35:14]
Clark Howard
Easier. Just.
- [35:14]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Isn't there a way I can just get around this and. And jump. What's the expression? Is it jump? Is it that called jump the shark? Which jumps the shark?
- [35:24]
Clark Howard
Yeah. Jumping me. Yeah, jumping the shark. Maybe it means, I don't know, you think you can leap over, but the shark just grabs you?
- [35:30]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
I don't know. I have never. I have never gotten an allergy Right.
- [35:35]
Clark Howard
Shaky.
- [35:35]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Never gotten an analogy right. In my life. But you get the idea that when we get ourselves in trouble is when we're looking for that gimmick, that thing that allows us, like private credit to somehow magically, without risk, we're going to get three times the return on our money. Yeah, right.
- [35:58]
Clark Howard
No, it always works for a little while. Until. Going back to your earlier analogy, that was a good one. All of a sudden, the coyote is running and running. Ran off the cliff and there's nothing below. So. So let's wrap it up there. But I think we covered a lot of the major issues in the world. The war, our wallets, our investments. Beware of returns that are too high, too good to be true, often are too good to be true. And this is a really good. This is a very important ask an advisor segment because we had the ultimate advisor here on the show. His name's Clark Howard.
- [36:33]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
No, no. You are the ultimate advisor.
- [36:35]
Clark Howard
All right, thank you.
- [36:36]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Anyway, one thing I got to make sure Wes people know I am not a financial advisor. I'm just.
- [36:43]
Clark Howard
You were consumer advocate.
- [36:45]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
I am just a regular dude. That's what we should call me, the regular dude.
- [36:50]
Clark Howard
I still like the Clark Howard show.
- [36:52]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
But you like Clark Howard show. Okay, so I'm just the advocate for everyday people who, in their lives, they're not the people who can afford to hire, you know, fiduciary fee only financial planner. They're on their own. And a lot of times they'll hear like you were talking about. They'll hear somebody say something. And it's my job to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's think about this. What's the hidden agenda here? Who's really benefiting from this? Like I always talk about with, is it okay to cuss on your podcast and say the word annuity? I always talk about with, I really
- [37:33]
Clark Howard
thought you were gonna.
- [37:35]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
That is a customer. So let's talk about Clark. Cuss words. Full price, retail, annuity. What else?
- [37:43]
Clark Howard
Any other.
- [37:44]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
That's pretty much it.
- [37:45]
Clark Howard
Any other four letter words.
- [37:47]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
But. But the point is I am not what you are. I am not a professional at investing.
- [37:54]
Clark Howard
The one thing too I would note to our listeners and viewers is that there was a time and not that long ago that it was kind of impossible to find financial help unless you were quote, super wealthy. Every year that door opens up further and further to more and more people. And even if you're a teacher and you've got you just started your 403B contributions, you do have access to advice and you should have people coming in and educating you on your retirement plan. And more and more companies and advisory firms have folks dedicated to helping people that don't have multi multi millions of dollars. So there are fee only fiduciaries that are able to do that. That is the good news. So you may be a regular guy watching out. I'm a regular investment advisor who's a fiduciary trying to do the same thing as well.
- [38:49]
Financial Commentator/Co-host
Great.
- [38:54]
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