← The Clark Howard Podcast
The Clark Howard Podcast
08.19.25 Ask An Advisor With Wes Moss
00:34:45
Why This Retired Couple Is Still 70% in Stocks and Will the Fed Start Lowering Rates?
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- [00:00]
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- [00:23]
Krista Dibiaz
Welcome to Ask An Advisor. We'll be here at Team Clark. Go deeper on all things investing. I'm Krista Dibiaz and I have the pleasure of being here again with West Moss.
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Wes Moss
Thank you, Christa. I'm wearing a jacket today. I don't know if I've done that on the show. I wear a jacket a lot. I know that I was wearing a vest for a long time here.
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Krista Dibiaz
Yes. You're looking very sharp today. If you're watching us on YouTube.com clark subscribe please. And Clark will be back tomorrow with another episode. But today you are an investment adviser. You're a fiduciary, as I've said before. And you met with some clients that inspired you to talk about the first thing you're going to get into today. Right.
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Wes Moss
I never know what to talk about on the show, but I always go back to just what's happening in the world where I'm sitting down with families. And very often it's, wait a minute. That's a really good topic to talk about. So that's what we'll start with today.
- [01:12]
Krista Dibiaz
Awesome. And then interest rates, something that most people are talking about.
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Wes Moss
I know the media loves to hear about the Fed. They have so much power and control over the economy. And we're in a transitional phase right now with the Fed in a lot of different ways. I want to talk about what they're doing with rates and where rates may be heading.
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Listener/Caller
Yeah.
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Krista Dibiaz
There's a constant guessing game is this news might mean that the Fed is going to do this with rates and just constant feedback we're getting about that. So I'm excited to hear about that. And then, of course, I always have lots of questions for you.
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Wes Moss
Good. Let's get started.
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Krista Dibiaz
Okay.
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Wes Moss
This is a real life story, but I think that this question can certainly come up and it's something to think about if you happen to find yourself in a similar situation. And we'll just say it's Marcia and Fred.
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Listener/Caller
Okay.
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Wes Moss
And Marcia and Fred. I was sitting down with them the other day. Fred is 84. Marcia is 80. They have been retired a really long time because they both they have pensions. Fred, by the way, 84, still playing tennis.
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Listener/Caller
Wow.
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Wes Moss
Three times a week he's playing tennis. The other two times he's another activity. In the morning, he's not playing pickleball. He just says that when he gets too tired to play tennis, he, he's going to then switch to pickleball.
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Krista Dibiaz
Pickleball's too loud for me.
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Wes Moss
It is loud and it is dangerous. I think it's a dangerous sport.
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Krista Dibiaz
Really.
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Wes Moss
Yeah, it is. It's quick and you make these jerky motions because it's a smaller court and you're running up and you're stopping and that can blow out an acl.
- [02:44]
Listener/Caller
Oh.
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Wes Moss
Or an Achilles or a hamstring. And I think the other thing is it looks like you're just going to play ping pong, but really you're running all over the place. So it's unassumingly a little dangerous. Anyway, Fred's fine. He's been totally fine playing tennis. He's healthy. And the situation for them is a question about how they should allocate their assets, how much risk should they take? They're in their 80s. So right out of the gate, without knowing anything else about the situation, you would think, well, you may want to be more conservative. There used to be a moniker, it was very widely understood and remembered and it was from John Bogle at Vanguard. It's own your age in bonds. And it was a really easy rule of thumb to remember. And it kind of makes sense as you age, you, whatever your age is, that's your percentage of bonds. So if you're 50, 50 in bonds, when you're 70, 70% in bonds, 80, should we be 80% in bonds? And I think that that rule maybe 10 or 15 years ago a little bit went out the door and people don't refer to as much. But there's still the thought, and it's an appropriate thought, that you may want to be getting more conservative with your investments as you age because your time horizon shrinks. And the shorter the time horizon as investors, the more conservative we want to be. If you're going to be spending money and you know it's in nine months, I need to spend a big chunk of money. You don't want it in the volatility of stocks because it could go could be 20% lower or 30% lower when you need it. So we say, well, if we know our horizon and it's a short horizon, we're going to keep money conservative. But what if you find yourself, and this is a great position to be in, that Fred and Marcia are in, which is two pensions, $3,000 each.
- [04:29]
Listener/Caller
Wow.
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Wes Moss
Two social securities 2,000 each. So do the math on that. That's $10,000 a month, six in pensions, 4,000amonth in Social Security, they bring in $10,000 a month. And I'd put that in the guaranteed category. Is there anything really ever guaranteed in this world? No, but those are considered pretty much guaranteed income sources. And we know even with social it actually rises along with inflation. So it even has inflation protection. But they only spend their mortgage is paid off, they have no debt, their kids are well grown up and out of school and their loans are paid off. So they just don't have any debt and they don't need to pull money out of their accounts. They generate over $50,000 a year just in dividends and interest and they don't use that either.
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Krista Dibiaz
Wow, that's an amazing position to be in.
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Wes Moss
So they said, well, what is our. They're almost 75% in stocks. And they said, well, you know, Wes, is this, I hear that this is too aggressive for somebody our age. And as we talk it through, I said, well, okay, what do you think your time horizon is? What is your investment time horizon for the money? Not just your horizon, but what is these assets that you have? What is your time horizon here? And the answer is it's infinite because they're really not even using it, they're not even touching it. So is there an endpoint for it? Well, really the horizon is their lives and their kids. So they have a couple of kids and the kids will likely be inheriting this money. So the kids, let's say they're in their 50s, that's another 30 or 40 year horizon. So you can make the case that they have a 50 year horizon or they almost have an infinite horizon. When you have guaranteed income streams coming in that I would say far exceed, in this case several thousand dollars every single month, your spending need, then your time horizon is to some extent infinite. Which then goes back to. Okay, well the. How do you make a decision? I think this goes back to your investor purpose preference more than anything. And usually as we're crafting an asset allocation and a diversification strategy, it is your preference, it's your risk tolerance and it's your time horizon here. Their time horizon is to some extent infinite. And they can just choose what their preference is so that they may be 75% or 65% in stocks and another 10% in assets that are considered somewhat volatile. They're really comfortable with that. And as we talked it through, they understand stocks, they've been in stocks for years. And they're very comfortable with that, knowing that even if the assets go down with a market correction, they technically have an infinite amount of time to make it back up because they are not relying on a daily, monthly, weekly or yearly basis on those assets not going down. They can withstand some volatility. And if you find yourself in that situation, I would look at it as you now have this, call it new rule of thumb that if you find yourself having plenty of income, your investment time horizon is either longer than you might think or it technically could be considered somewhat infinite. And then you make the call on how you, you are comfortable personally and your preference on how you're invested.
- [07:52]
Listener/Caller
Wow.
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Wes Moss
The infinite time horizon.
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Krista Dibiaz
That would be a great thing to have for sure. Okay, we'll go to some questions for you. Wes. Renee in New York had sent two questions in for you. One, can you talk about the inverted curve yield and do you think it will lead to a recession? And two, what are some stocks that are recession proof? We would all like to know that for sure.
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Wes Moss
All right, I'm just going to rattle off all my favorites right now. So the, the first topic here, Renee's asking is, and I'm drawing this out as I'm, I'm talking this through is the inverted yield curve. What is that first of all? Well, if you think about I, I go back to if you're, if you're only buying CDs, usually the way it's worked over the last 50 years is that the longer you lock in a CD, usually the higher the rate.
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Listener/Caller
Right?
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Wes Moss
A, a short term CD might pay 3% for a one year. But if you say well I'm going to do a five year CD, well maybe that's 4 or 5% and that's to some extent establishing the yield curve. Short term rates lower. But as we lock ourselves in for longer periods of time, you typically get compensated more, more interest. That is what is considered a normal yield curve. Short term rates are a little lower. And as you go out in maturity, five year bond, a 10 year bond, a 30 year bond, the chart is supposed to look like this. It's supposed to be an arc higher when you're investing for longer. What has happened, it's really, this has been going on now for the last three years is that it's inverted, it's upside. You could call also called an upside down yield curve. So we now we have short term rates that are higher than long term rates and then eventually we get higher rates again as we go out further. The worry about that is that there's been a good track record that shows when the yield curve is inverted, then we go into recession. So it's been a, it's been a leading indicator for recessions and it's been predicted. It's essentially, and this is how an economist would say it, the inverted yield curve is predicted seven out of the last five recessions. What does that mean? Meaning that it'll sit in some false signals.
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Krista Dibiaz
Right.
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Wes Moss
It's not, it has preceded most of the recessions we've been in, but we've also had several different yield curve inversions. And six months a year, two years later we still didn't go into recession. So it can be a warning signal that doesn't trigger the actual event. And, and here's why that may be the case. If it's inverted, the bond market. So the Federal Reserve sets the really short term rate called the federal funds rate. They manually adjust that and we're, the media is always obsessed with the Fed in the next meeting. How are they going to adjust interest rates? But that's only the very front end or the short term part of the curve. But the thinking is if, that if short term rates are higher than long term rates, the bond market, which essentially is a free market that sets where other interest rates are, is telling us that rates need to come down lower. Why would they need to be lower? Because the economy's slowing down. So it makes sense that if there's an inverted yield curve, the bond market's saying, well, the economy's slowing down. The event the Fed's going to have to lower to get the yield curve back to a more normal position. But we've been in an inverted yield curve for a long time. We haven't gone to recession. And I would call it now maybe this is the eighth time that it's signaled recession and we haven't gone to it. It's only happened five of the eight times. All right, defensive stocks. So I can't just throw out a bunch of stocks here obviously, but I will say I think of it more from a sector perspective. So what sectors of the marketplace are, are less cyclical? If we think about what would be a super cyclical area, think industrials. If a company makes bulldozers when the economy's humming and everything's go and we're building and building, then there'd be huge demand for earth movers, if you will. And then when we, when things slow down, the demand can dry up significantly. Hey, we've got all the bulldozers we need. We don't need anything else for the next two years. So all of a sudden you have this huge demand and. And then a huge lack of demand. And it's really cyclical. What would be the opposite of that? Potato chips, diapers. I think of things that no matter what's happening, you're pretty much buying the same paper towels minus the, the pandemic period where there was a huge search for that we're fighting for. Get to get some paper towels. Paper towels. So think of the areas that are consumer staple oriented. That to me is the ultimate defensive type sector. And yes, utilities. Okay, so not energy so much because energy prices are all over the place. But utilities to me are also in that very defensive camp to be looking at as staying steady from a company perspective during a recession.
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Listener/Caller
Okay.
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Krista Dibiaz
And Nate sent this one in. West described the worldwide stock market and said the US portion is around 20% of the global equity market. The numbers he gives are $30 trillion US out of 145 trillion worldwide, which is 20.69% if you do the math. However, everywhere else I look it shows the US at around 2/3 or 60% of world markets. For instance, any world stock index you look at. Perhaps west was conflating the world GDP if the US is around 25% ish. The point he was making was about stock ownership and diversification though. So I am confused.
- [13:23]
Wes Moss
So I'm confused. I was probably just wrong. Krista. It should have been a West stinks okay is really what it should have been. I've read about this recently. It's interesting. It's a little less. It's almost like the, the BLS statistics we've been talking about. It's hard to get. You would think you could just. Well, what's the. What is the aggregate amount of stock value in the, in the world and the aggregate gdp, it's so vast that it's hard to get it really. Exactly. The other thing is that it can change really quickly. If you think about the US markets which are big and I'll give you the percentage in a minute when they're up 20%, how many new trillions is that? If you really think about it, it's so it changes really significantly. And I wonder if I'm probably wrong about this. And I'm glad, I'm really glad we are revisiting it. If you go back just two years and look at the end of 2023 or 2022, the numbers way different today because markets have gone up so much. Here's what I've read most recently and I like the visual capitalist for this. They do a good job at this. Total world market cap right now for stocks. Add up all the aggregate market cap value for equities in the world, it's about 120 trillion and the United States is about 60 trillion. So it's half. So it's roughly half. A couple years ago it may have been in the high 30% range or 40%. Today it's half the bigger question. I think the reason that we're getting this question is how much should you have in international stock? That's the question. Even though the world stock market is only about 50% outside the United States, in my opinion, you still don't need 50% in international companies because our US companies derive such a high percentage of their revenue but by doing business overseas that we get a lot of global interaction just with US companies. So to have 5 or 10 or 15% in international stocks, I think that is fine. But I'm much more comfortable having a much higher percentage than 50% when I'm looking at my stock allocation. I am predominantly United States, not 100%. But I think 50% in international stocks in my opinion is, is too much.
- [15:34]
Listener/Caller
Okay.
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Krista Dibiaz
Alvin in Wisconsin says to Wes, thank you for your segment. I truly enjoy it and learn a great deal. Where can I find your advice on whether to take the employer pension, lump sum or payments over time at retirement? A very common question if you have a pension for sure it is.
- [15:52]
Wes Moss
This goes back to the 6% test and I know it's on our website@your wealth.com I've written about this a couple different times. I've probably written about it in my Forbes column or article on Forbes.com but I would just be looking for pension and 6% rule or 6% test and that'll, that'll bring up those, those articles. But it really gets back to the point. If you do the math and you have a monthly promised amount that is let's call it $20,000 a year or you could take, let's call it $400,000. What's the math on that? So 20 divided by 400, you're getting that's 5%. You're under the 6% level and you don't even want to consider the monthly amount unless it's six plus percent. So in this case you're better off taking the $400,000. If you were offered let's call it $40,000 a year in a monthly pension, $40,000 annually, that would be coming monthly and $400,000, what would you want to take that equals that pension amount? Is 10%. A lot tougher to be able to make sure your money's doing 10% every single year. So in that case, you're, you're probably better to lean towards taking the monthly amount that's 40 grand a year for the rest of your life versus taking the lump sum. And there's a lot more to it than just that. But that's the 6% rule. That's a really good starting guide to be looking for to make that lump sum or pension decision.
- [17:26]
Krista Dibiaz
Okay, all right. Well, we're going to take a quick break and then you're going to talk interest rates.
- [17:31]
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- [18:37]
Wes Moss
Welcome back to Ask an Advisor. Wes Brief Moss, along with Krista Dibias. Christa, where were you headed next?
- [18:45]
Krista Dibiaz
Interest rates? Where are they headed next? That's the question.
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Wes Moss
That is what this is about. It's we're all always watching the Fed. I think that the first item of business here is just to discuss why the Fed is so darn important. And I think of the Fed as the powertrain. It's the engine of the US Economy and it really controls the brakes in the gas pedal of the US Economy. Probably the better analogy is just they control the fuel line. So when rates are really low, the fuel line's wide open and there is lots of stimulus or lots of gasoline getting to the engine and the and the car can move faster. Doesn't mean it's always going to move faster, but it's meant to help the car move faster. The overall economy when rates are high, restrictive. So then the gas, the fuel line tightens and there's less gas getting to the engine. Things slow down. Remember, they've got this dual. The Fed has this dual mandate. We want tame inflation, steady price stability. That's inflation. And maximum full or maximum employment in the United States. Those are their two mandates. And really their primary tool is controlling that fuel line. If we want to stimulate, open it up, lots of gas. Want to slow things down or put on the brakes. You limit the fuel line, limit the amount of gas, link into the engine. Look no further than the US Housing market. If you go back and look when rates are really low. A couple years ago, the Fed had a zero interest rate policy coming out of the pandemic, trying to stimulate the economy. Rates were zero on the Fed funds rate, which meant mortgage rates were ultra low as well. 3% or lower. You know, lots of people you may have locked in a mortgage rate that under 3%.
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Krista Dibiaz
I have one under 2% again.
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Wes Moss
Of course you would. Of course you would. You're the producer for the Clark Howard show and a host. Of course you would. So what did that do? It made people say money was cheap. I can buy another house, I can move, lots of activity. Housing market was booming and a lot of that had to do with the Fed and interest rates. Today, the housing market's totally on ice. There's no movement in the housing market on a relative basis. We see existing home sales at the lowest level we've seen for decades. A, because people locked in low rates and don't want to move, and B, mortgage rates are still really high because the Fed hasn't really lowered rates a whole lot. So it's a really good example of how powerful those Fed decisions on where they put interest rates. They really matter to the economy, some sectors more than others. Housing is a great example. Now, if you go back over the course of history and you can't see this chart here, but I went back to the late 90s or the early 90s, the fed funds rate was right around this 5% range. And it was through the 90s, it was through 2000. And then as we got into then we had a recession and the Fed lowered rates and called 2001. And then the economy got back to more normal and we started to have a housing boom. And then we all know what happened in 2006, really 2007, we had a total housing bust. And what happened The Fed had to lower interest rates to try to stimulate the economy. So the Fed funds rate went from 5% down to zero over the course of a couple months. Huge change in the economy. Then the economy somewhat normalized and eventually we were getting back to normal rates. Call it the year 2017, 2018. The Fed's raising interest rates at every meeting. We're trying to get back to quote, normal. I don't know if there's an actual normal, but it's, it's not. Zero is not normal, ten is not normal. So somewhere in between is more normal, 4 or 5%. And as we were headed back to normalizing interest rates, what happened? The pandemic happened. Economy shut down, everyone freaked out. How could we shut down the economy? Well, we need all the stimulus we can. And almost in a very short period of time, Fed took rates back down to zero again. Then the economy started to recover. And what happened? We had huge inflation, huge inflation. So what is their tool? Let's close up the gas line. Let's slim down. How much gas is getting to the engine. They did it by raising rates. It went from 0 to 5% in a very short period of time. And it slowed everything down, particularly housing slowed inflation down. So it worked. Now the question is, where are we headed from here? Higher rates are actually really good for savers. When we say saver, we are trying to delineate someone who would prefer to buy and own bonds, money markets, CDs and just get an interest rate over owning stock. So savers were really rewarded here. Money market rates are pumping out 5%. You could just leave your money in a Treasury money market and, or some sort of even short term bond fund. And we're getting highly compensated for it now. And I'm not really going into. Yes, there's all these political calls for Jerome Powell too late at lowering rates. What really matters is that inflation, the late latest inflation number we got was that CPI was 2.7%. That's not as low, as quite as low as they want it, but it's pretty close to the 2% level. So the Fed can say, okay, we have inflation in check number two. The latest jobs report revised down how many jobs we've been adding. So really we haven't been adding that many jobs now. We haven't been losing a lot, but we haven't added a lot either. So the labor market's cooling, that all gives the Fed cover to lower rates again. It's very likely that that will start happening at their next several meetings. The next one is middle September. It's widely expected. And there's a Fed fund tracker out there that shows there's over a 90% chance that the Fed is going to cut rates by at least a quarter of a percent, maybe more. And the projections for where rates are going to be in six months from then, very hard to predict. But the indications that they'll continue to lower rates, and that has implications. We're no longer getting to sit in a money market account getting 5%. That rate's already come down to the 4 level and a little below 4 if they keep cutting. What we all need to be really cognizant of, are we just leaving money in money markets forever? And those rates will change almost overnight. They're really quick, you know, like the gas station is really slow to lower gas prices. Even when energy prices go down, money market rates are really quick to lower the rate because they're paying you out. So as soon as the Fed funds rate goes down, your money market rates will start to go down literally within the same week.
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Listener/Caller
Wow.
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Wes Moss
So. So we just have to be careful. If we go into a lower interest rate environment, just be careful about money. Sitting around in money markets thinking, oh, it was getting five and then it was four, that could go down really, really quickly. So know that. Be cognizant of it as an investor and a saver to the new interest rate environment we find ourselves in, wherever that tends to be or lands over the next six months.
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Listener/Caller
Okay.
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Krista Dibiaz
All right, questions for you, Wes. This came in from Marcus in Arizona. I'm 27 and my wife is 24. We have just finished paying off about $12,000 in high interest debt over the past year. And our only debt is her student loans for $20,000. At less than 5%, we feel like now we can start to look toward the future. I feel my wife and I are both behind on retirement. I have about $20,000 for me and $5,000 for her, both in 401ks. I've been the sole income for the house for the past one and a half years, but she plans to start working again this month. Where should we start and what program should we look into to start catching up? Thank you for all you do in the crew do. This is one of my favorite podcasts.
- [26:30]
Wes Moss
That's awesome to say so nice, Marcus. Thank you. So first of all, in your 20s, I think it's just hard to save anything. You know, it's expensive to live in America. It's hard. Rent prices are through the roof. Housing prices are through the Roof. So student loan debt is through the roof and you've paid off a bunch of your debt and you have 20,000 left in student loans, which you're already chipping away at, and you guys have $25,000 saved. I can just tell you I, in my 20s, had trouble saving a lot of money. You start having kids and you're trying to buy a house and there's the down payment for the house. It's really hard to get that initial nest egg started, and that's starting to accumulate. But Marcus, you guys have already done that to some extent. You've already got $25,000. The median. The median net worth in America with somebody in their 20s is $7,600.
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Krista Dibiaz
I'm surprised it's that high, honestly.
- [27:30]
Wes Moss
So unless you've just worked your employee number five at one of these AI startups that are now worth in the hundreds of billions, it's really hard to accumulate money in your 20s just is. So you are doing the right things by using, using the 401k, just being cognizant of being a saver and trying to, and, and having that saver and investor, even more importantly, Mindset, that's what separates people that end up with a lot of money in 20, 30 years versus people who don't. So that's number one, you're already on a good track. Number two, it is not just a marathon. It's the Iditarod. You know the Iditarods, that, that race in Alaska.
- [28:08]
Listener/Caller
Yeah.
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Krista Dibiaz
The dog sleds.
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Wes Moss
You're on a dog sled and it's like in the dark for almost two weeks.
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Krista Dibiaz
Yeah.
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Wes Moss
And you're. You're mushing through the snow. That's what saving and investing is about. It's not just a marathon. It's longer than that. It's harder than that. It's the Iditarod. So just know that and that'll give you patience and comfort. That it does take a long time. What can you do about it? Stay in that mindset. I would read one of the books that. It really helped me, I think in my 20s and 30s, I still think about it is the Automatic Millionaire. It was the most effective book, in my opinion, that just said, look, saving is hard. You almost have to trick yourself into saving and just do it automatically, which is 401k contributions, automatic contributions to any other account. It's automatically buying stock in a fund etf, maybe it's a broad market index and automatically reinvesting the dividends. So just put it on automatic and if you do that, you're going to look up and you're in mile 37 of the Iditarod. You're going to say, wait a minute, we've got a hundred thousand dollars. This is pretty cool. And then you're going to look up again. I think this is over 100 mile race. You look up at mile 87 and say, wait a minute. Now the gains we're having on our nest egg are starting to really be material and it starts to compound. And eventually the compounding is your friend, or it's always your friend. But you don't really see it until the numbers get big. The next thing you know, you have a million or $2 million saved. When you're in your 50s, 60s, 70s, you want to get to that level, but you're doing the right things to get there. So keep doing what you're doing.
- [29:46]
Krista Dibiaz
Marcus I'd also say I found that life changes, like if you get a raise. And in this case they've been living solely on Marcus's income and they paid off this high interest debt, $12,000 with his wife not working. So she's starting this job like now's the time to go all in on the 401k. Like just, you know, go to 15% immediately or whatever the recommendation would be. And just when you get a raise, don't let yourself see the money. Put that money away. And that way you don't have that lifestyle creep that like the majority of us have.
- [30:20]
Wes Moss
Super really good point. It's save the raise, save the. You now have new money that you don't have to be paying down on that original debt. That can be all savings now.
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Krista Dibiaz
And her new income, if they're saving 15% of it, that's huge. Okay. Jerry in Ohio sent this in. I've never heard either Clark or Wes discuss the subject of placing your house into an irrevocable trust in order to protect it from being taken by the state in order to pay nursing home costs. When, if ever, is this a good idea? I'd love to hear the pros and cons of this arrangement. And if not an irrevocable trust, are there other ways of protecting your home?
- [30:58]
Wes Moss
Jerry in Ohio So, first of all, this is complicated and it's customized to every single person's financial situation. And it is a specialty within not just estate planning. And an estate planning attorney would be the type of person that would draft these documents for you and see what kind of trust. Maybe it's a Medicare map T, which would be a Medicare Asset protection trust. Even more specialized than that would be an elder care attorney that really helps plan for how to structure your assets if Medicaid is potentially in your future. So it's a, it's a really specialized legal arrangement that you have to consider. An irrevocable trust is a big deal because you are essentially, irrevocably, forever putting a big asset into a trust and it's no longer in your name. So how can that work? Finding and having the right trustee is paramount here. It's paramount. You've got to have a relative or someone that you really trust, you've known forever that you trust to make the decisions. I mean, once it's in an irrevocable trust, you can't just say, oh, I want to refinance the house. It's not your call, it's the trustee's call. And even though it can be effective for Medicare planning, it takes a lot of life steps to a draw up all these documents, do the financial paperwork and legal work that it takes to get an asset like that in the trust. And you've got to worry about the five year look back. If you're just about going into Medicare or worried about it, you can't just put your house in a trust. They have a five year look back roll. Jerry. So what I would say is that when you, if you're considering doing some of this planning, you do want to do it when things are totally fine, then when the sky is blue, that's when you do your asset protection type planning. And I think that's maybe important takeaway for everyone listening and for you here and your question. But you lose control of the house to some extent. Irrevocable is permanent. You got to plan for this really early. And then there's some maintenance costs too. There's trust setup costs, there's maintenance costs for this. But I don't necessarily think it's a bad idea. There's other ideas that, that can maybe or potentially help with this too. A life estate deed. There's something called a ladybird deed that they use in Florida and Michigan and Texas that can do something, give you a similar outcome. So it's complicated. And I would be talking to an estate planning attorney or an elder care attorney that does this full time for a living to dial in exactly what would be right for you.
- [33:37]
Krista Dibiaz
All right, well, that's going to do it for us for this week's episode. That's it. Oh, park will be back tomorrow. Wes will be back one week from today with a brand new episode. Hope the rest of your day and week is great.