Mastering Market Volatility and Retirement Planning With Greenberg Financial Group

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning everybody. It's that time once again, Sunday morning,
eight o'clock right here, seven ninety k and it's tea.
It's the Moneymatter Show, and this is Dean Greenberg. Oh okay,
the markets keep going higher. Huh, pretty good. You know
it's interesting. You still don't have the reasons the market's

(00:21):
going up yet. They're just going up and anticipation of
two things, tariff negotiations and actually come to agreements, and
the Fed possibly loan interest rates at some time they will. Anyway,
the news, the economic news keeps coming out and says, hey,
you know what, we're slowing a little bit. But then

(00:43):
you have you know, jobs still doing pretty good. It's
a mixture. But you know why it is. It's because
things take time. You're not going to see the tariff
situation that we're in right now start hitting with higher
prices and lower things. It's anticipation. That's why you always

(01:05):
have to look forward, not behind. And it's a good
lesson in life. You can't do anything about the past.
You can only do everything about the future. So when
you live in the past, you ruin the future. Understand
the past so you can be better in the future.
Markets anticipate the future, not the past. Past performance you've

(01:29):
heard is not indicative or what the future is. It
might be, but it's not guaranteed. Things happen in the
past that don't happen in the future. So what do
you need to do is say, Okay, where are we
what's going on? It's moving up, it's going higher than
most people thought. I figure we can get to around
fifty six to fifty eight to fifty or about fifty

(01:51):
seven hundred or so on the S and P on Friday,
and maybe we work a way higher. I don't see
a lot of big selling unless everything falls apart with
going forward with talking about China, the Ukraine War, things
like that. You so, we have the minimal rights deal
getting done in Ukraine, that's positive. You see inflation numbers down,

(02:16):
that's positive. You see nobody coming across the border anymore,
that's positive. There's a lot of positives out there, But
a lot of people like to live in the negative
side of the world. I try. I like to live
in the positive side, with understanding to be cautious when

(02:37):
things get a little bit overheated. Cautious is different than
being negative. Understanding how to mitigate risk but still make
money when the market's going up. Is a whole nother
way of investing. So you don't make, you know, ten percent,
you make seven percent. If the market rally, that's okay.
But if they go down, you don't lose ten percent,

(02:57):
you lose seven percent, six percent. Then you come out
and then it goes the other way. Same thing on
both sides. So right now, really look at what's happening,
happening in our country, happening everywhere. And you know, I
keep telling people, just shut off the noise, shut it off.

(03:17):
You know, they love talking about all the things that
Trump isn't doing in this first one hundred days, but
the other side will never talk about anything that he
has done, the good stuff that has done. They just
want to talk about the chaos. If you listen to
this left shout and yell and curse about what's going on,

(03:39):
you think you're living in a country that's a third
world country going downhill, that there is no control. We're not.
You don't. You would never think you're the number one
powerful country in the world. You would think that there's
no democracy. You think that we take people and don't

(04:00):
give them justice, that we don't let people demonstrate that
we don't want people to come in and live the
American dream. Think about that. That's nothing. What's going on.
What's going on is we're getting trying to rid ourselves

(04:24):
of the debt that is going to crush us if
we don't, and we're starting with the things that have
created that debt and then start looking on how to
stop spending. But before you do anything, you have to
stop the problem. Americans, on the most part, if you

(04:49):
listen to them before the election, was scared and they
were nervous and a lot of them feared for their
lives in many areas, the border crossings they weren't. They
just kept coming. The cartels were making billions of dollars.
Ventanol was flowing in. I'm not saying that drug is

(05:12):
still an't going to come in, but they're not coming
across the border like they were the southern border. The
people aren't coming across the southern border like they were,
So you have to stop the problem first. Where I'm
different on the border side is I want to see
a policy now going forward on how we will allow

(05:34):
people that can benefit America to come into our country
and get and and and and get that implemented on
a on a on a more streamlined basis. You know
what I'm learning from Doge is that most of our
problems is that the world has moved forward with technology,

(05:54):
but a government isn't antiquated paper work, you name it.
They're so far behind. The iOS is so far behind.
When I talk to people that I know that work
for the IRS, in their software, in their technology, how
the heck where does all that money go? We have

(06:15):
a great defense, we spend great money on all new technology.
How are we not doing it to make our government
more efficient? Well, I guess you had to go do
what we're doing, right. So we go back to the border.
We need to get together and this is Congress's problem.
For fifty years, they haven't come up with a immigration policy.

(06:38):
They use it as a political football both sides to
get votes. Well, we finally shut down the border, and
if anybody comes in and changes that, I don't think
that'd be well received. So now what we need to
do is come up with a bipartisan way of allowing
people into a country to help our country become better.

(07:05):
We're gonna need employees, whether the tech, doctors, dentists, agriculture, hospitality.
I don't care what it is. They're going to be
coming and we need them. We need more employees, we
meet more immigrants, and we need smart ones. What we

(07:26):
don't need is immigrants coming here with just the hands out,
no skills, no nothing, just come here. Unless they're willing
to get educated. Well, we're gonna have to do that.
We're gonna have to have some type of training process
for those that are uneducated, unskilled, and be able to

(07:47):
do something. There's no you can't tell me we can't
teach them agriculture work, that we can't teach them hospitality work,
and then allow those those industries to be able to
hire and they by hiring our people, it would be
like an employment service. They can pay for them and
that helps us train them or do a public private

(08:12):
a deal with them do something. Well, we don't want
people in here is starving, no way to make money,
being here illegally and having to resort to crime in
order to make a living. That's what we don't want.

(08:32):
But Congress, you don't even hear from them being able
to do that. So hopefully as we get through what
we do and they will. You've heard about obviously all
the doge and what they're doing. And instead of talking
about all the stuff that they're finding in the fraud,
all you hear is the other side complaining about all
the rights that are being broken, all this that's being broken,

(08:53):
and none of it, well, most of it is legal.
All we're trying to do is find out where and
how people are getting checks. And if they're not getting
checks but their name is on the rollment, why not
get them off. Don't tell me because our technology or
to take us too long to fix it. Get it off.

(09:14):
You should not see people on there that are one
hundred and fifteen, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and
thirty years old. They shouldn't even beyond the role whether
they're getting checks or not. They shouldn't even beyond there
because all it does is complicate things more, clean up
the process, clean it up. All we ever heard for
years is we're getting more iOS people so we can

(09:36):
catch the cheaters. Why don't we take that money and
update the technology. That's what we need to do. We
need to go ahead and update our technology, which will
help us streamline our system. Why don't we redouce our

(10:00):
tax code? Make it simpler, Make it simpler, especially for
people that just have a W two. I know we
keep talking about it, but I just don't ever see it.
I see complications, I see new laws all the time
coming into play, but I don't see any laws that
go ahead and do what they want to do, and

(10:20):
that is to get wealthy of people to pay more
in taxes. Oh but however, what is being proposed now
increasing the highest level back to thirty nine and going
ahead and giving the middle class workers that work on

(10:42):
tips that they don't have to pay on tips, the
hard working blue collar workers that work overtime not to
have to pay taxes on overtime. Oh and social Security.
Social Security don't make people pays taxes on money that

(11:03):
they've already paid taxes on already. So don't tax social Security.
You've already paid money. You've already been taxed on that
money for social Security. It's not like it was earning interest.
It wasn't the way I was invested. It was your
put away and no interest, know nothing, and then you
pay taxes when you get it. Think about this, Think

(11:25):
about it. If that money went into a separate account
what you and your employee puts in, which is twelve
point six percent of what you've made your whole life,
twelve point six percent goes in and earns an average
a four or five percent. Do you know how much
more money that would be there when you're sixty five,
sixty six, sixty seven years old, and remember now it's

(11:47):
sixty seven and you know that's going to go up.
Could you imagine how much more money would be in
there and then earning the interest and you anuitize it
when it's that time, and then you get to check
for the rest of your life. That'd be great. It
would be absolutely great, and you'd be getting a lot

(12:07):
more money than the three thousand or twenty five hundred
or fifteen hundred dollars people have now. But what do
they say when we go ahead and we start talking
about it all that stuff, because now they're looking at
trying to cut real spending, real spending to about one
point five trillion, along with all the money that we're

(12:31):
going to save with DOGI and we don't even got
in the cut and the spending and doing things there.
But on the budget they want to cut back. People
are on the on the other side or in an outrage.
You can't you're gonna cut this All they keep saying
is you're gonna cut the services in Medicaid and Social Security.
But the Social Security is kind of going away a

(12:51):
little bit because it's not there, but Medicaid. And what
they keep saying is what we're first going to do
is get rid of the medicaid fraud. We have to
see how much how many times people are getting checks
then aren't supposed to get checks and Medicaid. Then you
can go ahead and look at what's how it's happening,
because I am telling you right now people are on

(13:15):
full time disability getting government checks, but can still do
another job. If you hurt your back or your foot,
or your leg or your arm or whatever it is
in a job that doesn't let you do that, say firemen, policeman,
any physical job you have to do and you can't

(13:35):
do it anymore your back or whatever. That doesn't mean
you can't still do something administratively. That doesn't mean you
can't still do some computer work in an office or
a logistics or something. We become a technology world learned
how to do that. So maybe you only get half

(13:56):
of the Medicaid and then you go get a job
earning the other part. Some Medicaid becomes a subsidy for
what you can't do and what you were doing and
for the pain you went through, but then you're earning money.
On the other side. No person should want to not
work at all unless they can't, and those that can't

(14:18):
do anything at all need the help. We support them.
But we have to get rid of the fraud and
sometimes too, as we all know, somebody goes on there
in five years or seven years or ten years, they
get better, but just still collecting the checks. We have
to get out of the mentality of allowing people to

(14:38):
just get free stuff, free stuff for those that truly
need it, don't ever take it away. I would never
vote for that, but I absolutely would vote for not
allowing those that can do other jobs to do something
else go to a subsidy program rather than a full

(14:59):
full of program. There's so many other ways you can
do that and bring people back into the fold. But
the Democrats are going to just cap talking about they're
cutting your medicaid, they're cutting your deal. No, they're not.
You need it and you truly need it. Nothing's getting
taken away. If you get it and you don't truly

(15:20):
need it, yeah, you probably should be scared because you
shouldn't be getting it. And what they need to do,
and I believe they're thinking about it, is coming up
with a whistleblower program that if you know someone that's
going through medicaid fraud, report them because they're taking that
only not only your tax dollars, but everybody else is
to pay for that. We get rid of all this stuff,

(15:43):
then we can start looking at how we're reducing our debt.
And we start reducing our debt, there's so many more
things we can do with the money to get back.
Wouldn't you rather have more money in your pocket from
less taxes than having to give it away all these
other people. It's unbelievable that the Dolge is finding that

(16:06):
some of these agencies get ten million, twenty million, fifty
million dollars to do whatever they want. There's no coding,
no nothing, So what are they doing. They're flying around,
going on trips, doing boondoggles on our money. If we

(16:27):
start getting rid of that, we start getting rid of
the people that take advantage and the people that are
working for the government, are they true people that want
to be there doing the right things for the right
reasons To give back to our country and to give
back to themselves, not to just give back to themselves
and take from the country. Somewhere along the line, we're

(16:53):
gonna come up with time limit term limits, because that
to me, will go ahead and get the best people
in there, because they're doing it for the right reasons. Sure,
this could be some benefits. You serve two terms max.
Or three terms max. Whatever it is, you get some
good benefits. It's no different than a pro athlete. You
get your first contract, you do well, you get your

(17:14):
second contract, you do well, you get that third contract
you set for legacy money. It's the way it goes.
I'm okay with that. The longer you win, the more
you get. But do it for the right reasons. People
do so many things just for themselves, but then they

(17:38):
don't even realize that they can be Okay, we do
all these financial planning, we do all these things. I
do a lot of talking public speaking to people, and
I tell them, rich isn't about how much money you have.
Rich is how much money you spend from what you get.

(17:59):
You make sixty grand, seventy grand a year and you
live like one hundred and fifty two hundred thousand you're
gonna be poor. You make sixty seventy grand a year
and you live like you're only getting forty forty five
thousand a year. You're gonna be rich. You're gonna put
money away for your retirement. You're always gonna be living
within your means. You're going to go ahead and be
able to spend money on things you want to do,

(18:21):
and and and and uh and be a lot less stressed.
And then when you get to that magic age of retirement,
you're gonna be a lot happier because you're going to
feel you did the right things. You've already know how
to budget, you already know how to live within it.
And then you start getting social Security, and you get
your investments paying you, and you get your pensions or
whatever else you get, and now you're living a beautiful life.

(18:42):
But those that spend all their time and complain that
they have no money, and complain that they that other
people shouldn't be getting more money, and be complaining that
they should be getting more and they have no opportunities
and are against capitalism and and rich people and successful people,
they're gonna be miserable because we're going to change It's

(19:03):
around to give to those that truly need and the
rest are going to have to work it and find
out ways to do it. And that is why I
believe our economy is in this drastic change around. You
don't change something in ninety or one hundred days. You don't.
And what we're going through is amazing because we are

(19:25):
just disrupting everything. Trump is disrupting everything, and when you
can't see what he's trying to do to the other side,
because it's very few people that can actually have a
plan look where they want to get. Understand there's going
to be hiccups, and you make changes. That's what I
like about what I see when things aren't going perfectly,

(19:46):
when they're not going smoothly, not going in the direction.
We're not waiting months to change the plan. They're waiting
weeks to change the plan, to adjust the plan. That's
no different than when we do a financial plan for people.
Every year, things change, health changes, weddings come up, funerals
come up, your car breaks down, your roof goes wrong,

(20:08):
you need house repairs. There's so many different things or not.
And everything's going great and the markets are doing great.
You're making a lot of money and we say to you,
what do you want to do that you don't need?
Oh I want a kitchen. Oh I want to go
to Italy. I want to go on this cruise to Asia.
You know what we do, We say, take the money out.

(20:29):
Now you just made fifteen to twenty percent. Take some
of that money and enjoy it because you never know
what's going to happen in the next two or three years,
and you don't need that to live on because you've
already proved that. Enjoy it. Take what you need, then
take what you want. Once you start being profitable. That's
why you do it. That's why you invest. You know,

(20:53):
I'm so tired of listening to people. You don't have
money to invest. I don't have this, I don't have that.
That's because you're spending too much money. Our government is
spending too much money. If we're spending too much money
as a government, we don't have money to invest. People
just believe the government can keep printing money, keep printing money,

(21:13):
and all that is inflationary. You know what they're trying
to do to us as a country economically, destroy us
and not going to destroy us militarily. They want to
destroy us economically, they want it. Divide us as a country.
That's why so much money comes in from guys like
Sorrows and everyone else. Dividus is a country. Pay people
to protest. Let the media show that. I cannot believe

(21:35):
ninety two percent of the media on the Trump in
just one hundred days is negative to me. That bs
It's not all negative. But you get on the social media,
you get on these rants, you get on these things.
That's what they talk about. How about talking about the
positives and then you can throw in the negatives. The
negatives become so much more trustworthy if you talk about

(22:01):
the positives also. But they're afraid to talk about the
positives because it's exactly what the people of the United
States want. We want to shut down borders. We want
a better economy, we want to get out of debt.
We want to feel safe. Okay, we want better relationships
in the world. We want to stop the war. I
have no idea how they call him a dictator when

(22:22):
he's trying to stop wars. He's not trying to stop wars.
He wants to stop the Middle East. He wants to
have a deal with Iran. He wants to go ahead
and get Russia and Ukraine together. You get upset because
he's happy with Russia. You get upset because he tells
Russia that he's pissed off at him. Okay, there's nothing

(22:43):
that this man can't do. If you hate him, that
he's going to do. So why don't you do this?
If you hate him so much, why don't you just
say nothing and see where the country goes. I will
be the first one to tell you what I am.
What I am is an outcome person. I know the
journey to that outcome. I know the journey with that
plan changes over time. I will give this two years.

(23:06):
I will see where the outcome is. Did tariffs work
it didn't work? Did we make deals that that we
didn't make deals? Is our economy or better or not?
Is the markets higher or do we feel like we
have some strength? Did the regulations go away? Did energy
prices come down? Did inflation come down? Did interest rates
come down? I will give it time and a year

(23:28):
and a half two years is the timeframe I'm giving it.
Then we'll see what the occurrence is from there. If
we have a good outcome, then I will shout it
from the top of the mountain. If we don't have
a good outcome. I will also tell you that there's
things that need to be done, and we got we're
not going in a great direction, and we got to

(23:48):
be careful. That's what we want to see. That's what
I'm asking everyone to get on board for. Don't judge
somebody thirty days, sixty days, ninety days into such a
plan that at the end of the day, you know,
we need Everyone knows we needed to get with a fraud,
shut the borders, and and and and get out of debt.
Get on board, be positive, let's see what the outcome is.

(24:11):
We know what's going to happen, and we're going to
have volatility, take advantage of it. We'll be right back.
I appreciate from the bottom of my heart all those
of you that listen to us and ask us questions.
Will be right back. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
Hello, and welcome to Money Matters. I'm Sarah Peterson here
with Dean Greenberg and Todd Glick am Greenberg Financial Group.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
Hello, gentlemen, Hi again, Sarah.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Hello, Oh my gosh, I'm always I don't know where
we're going today, but I know it's somewhere. It's probably
going to go somewhere political knowing yous well.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
Not political. Everything's political if you think of it, it
really is.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
But let's just talk about the fact that, you know,
there's a lot of uncertainty and people are wondering. We
don't have a crystal ball. We don't know if our
taxes are going to go up and down.

Speaker 4 (24:56):
We don't know.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
But with all the volatility in the markets and everywhere,
we kind of want to try to figure out where
we're headed in the next couple of years.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
You know, when we see them, a lot of clients,
their biggest thing is about taxes.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
They really do. I don't care who you are.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Nobody wants to pay taxes, they say they do until
they have to pay the taxes, you know, and you
keep hearing it, and it is a political football. Taxes
about paying their fast share, paying not their fast share
and stuff. You know. I don't know what the answer
is to that, but the answer is is that if
we have to raise taxes, okay in my opinion, but

(25:34):
yet we have to give away billions, hundreds of billions
or maybe trillions of dollars away to around the world,
they won't paying too much in taxes. Our middle class
and has to get a tax break. They're the ones
that get hurt the most. We keep hearing that, but
nobody actually dwells into it. You and I both know

(25:55):
what's the main thing they do. Billionaires don't pay taxes. Right.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
How many billionaires are right.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
In my point? I asked this question to a lot
of people.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Most people think this ten twenty thousand billionaires in the
United States. There's eight hundred and thirty as of twenty
twenty five, eight one hundred and thirty billionaires in the
United States. That's nothing. And we keep saying that they're
going to make up the difference.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
They're not.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Who's going to make up the difference is the middle
class needs the tax breaks. Okay, that's who gets to
get the tax breaks. The billionaires don't pay much. We
hear it all the time. We hear Warren Buffett, I
don't pay as much as my secretary. Well, there's a
reason Congress has no guts to change the tax law
on the rich because they're rich all in real estate.

(26:46):
Against what the Congress is. They're in real estate, So
then it's all a shell game. At the end of
the day, we need the lower taxes for the middle class.
You don't need to lower them for the lower class,
lower income people, they don't pay axis.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
So you've got to.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Find that middle class and help them out. And middle
class is gone up. It used to be you know,
fifty sixty seventy grand that middle class. Today, with the
way prices are, it's probably double that. One hundred and
twenty five thousand. Winning your state done, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (27:13):
I would say anything from sixty to one hundred and
fifty yeah, considered middle's middle class.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
So what do we do when we're when we're looking
at this, there are a lot of unknowns, but in
planning for our financial future, how can we utilize those
tools to help mitigate some of.

Speaker 5 (27:28):
The text where we know where taxes are going to
be for the next three and a half years probably right,
So this gives us a little bit of a runway
to possibly do some strategies like some rock conversions. If
the new administration comes in it says we still have
a deficit problem, how are we going to solve it?
It's likely going to be that they're going to try
to hike taxes especially and of course, right it depends
on the administration. But if that administration does come to

(27:48):
increase taxes, then you're going to look at hindsight being
twenty twenty, that we should have been doing a whole
bunch of rock conversions. It's a difficult game to play
because you don't really know for sure if tax rates
are going to be higher in the future. It seems
pretty likely with the historic high deficit that we have,
and it's potential that something is going to have to
happen if we are able to cut the fat out
of the spending, which a lot of parties are trying

(28:08):
to make it harder and harder for people to do that.
So if we can't cut the fat of the spending,
someone's going to have to pay that bill, which likely
means higher taxes. So maybe it is time to do
some rock conversions. That's a decision you have to make
on your own. Maybe you cansole a tax professional, but
ultimately it is kind of a speculation whether or not
you think tax rates are going to be higher in
the future.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
But they've got to be spawned too.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
If we do lower taxes for the menal class and
make it a little bit more money, do something you
didn't do with that money before, invest it for your retirement.
Because as we talk. This is whole plan. You know,
we talk about planning for people. I'm looking at what
the plan is for the United States of America, and
that plan is to get people eventually on Social Security,
so you're putting your own money away for your own

(28:49):
retirement over time. We've already started that when we started
doing the four way K plans and moved them away
from pension plans. This is part of the whole period,
but nobody wants to lay it out in simple terms
for people because politicians are afraid to say it. The
idea is, take that when you get a raise, take
party your raise and put it away and then.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
Spend the other the other part.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
If you're not making enough money, okay, then you got
to come to see us because we got to put
you on a budget because you're spending too much money.
I hate to say that to people who think they're
not they don't have enough to spend. But you are
spending too much money if you cannot go ahead and live.
And I know so many teachers who make forty five

(29:28):
to sixty thousand dollars the whole career, the millionaires because
they live within their means and put money away.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
That's what they do.

Speaker 4 (29:38):
What my daughter's friends are saying.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
You know, they're just saying that the world is just
getting so expensive that everything intimidates them.

Speaker 5 (29:45):
You know, was being it's come back to that be
worth the budget, and we talked about it in other shows.
But imagine if our government had a budget, right, and
that's what they're trying to do right now.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
Don't make it you're getting crazy.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
Don't make it scared. She doesn't know how to spell budget. Okay,
we understand that problem.

Speaker 6 (30:00):
Literally, we're just trying to. I mean, it's the whole dose.

Speaker 5 (30:01):
You're trying to make a budget for the government, right,
so we don't have to pay higher taxes in the future.
It will happen if if we can't cut the bill.
The same thing will happen to your financial plan. If
you don't do a budget to see where you're spending,
and you don't spend for retirement or save for retirement,
that can is going to come down the road one
time and you won't be able to retire it because
you didn't actually do the budget when you're supposed to.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
There's nobody I know that's that that came into this world,
their work world without being given anything or inheritances. Okay,
that had to build up their money, their their finances,
build up their career, build up their business, build up
what they are that will ever say it wasn't a
tough time to Eventually they got to a point they
were making a lot of money and able to put
some money away, which by the way, is probably in

(30:43):
their fifties or sixties if you started from the beginning.
Because you always filter every money back into the business.
You always have to make that payroll, you always have
to do stuff. And you know what, any business person
that says they never had a failure is lying because
everybody has problems. And guess where that money comes from.
Oop's my savings. I got to put it into the
business to keep it going. Now without it, it's not like, oh,

(31:04):
you got laid off and you've been saving and now
you go work for somebody else. So the whole thing
comes together. There's a plan that you have to look at.
What's the big plan is what is our administration? What
are our politicians? What is the tax plan for America?
Then what's the tax plan for you? And how's that
going to help you save? You have to look at
the big picture. In the small picture, in the individual picture.

Speaker 5 (31:24):
And if you look at the socialist countries that have
super high tax rates, can you name a lot of
billionaires out of those countries or great companies coming out
of those countries? You can't because it de incentivizes risks taking.
In order for a company or an entrepreneur to actually
create a new business, a new product, something that society
will benefit from, they have to be able to actually
have some incentive, which is reward. Right, if you're going

(31:45):
to take all that reward away from taxes, those billionaires
and companies will move elsewhere and will be worse off
because of it, and will get less taxes. So you
have to keep increasing the tax rate. It's a fool's
errand well I.

Speaker 4 (31:56):
Can lose that it any better than that.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
We're going to take a quick commercial break and we
come back and talk more about your money matter, so
please stay with us. Hello, and welcome back to Money Matters.
I'm Sarah Peterson here with Dean Greenberg and Toddlick. We
always have fun talking about finance, which is why I
love hanging out with you guys, because most people don't.
You make it so easy to do because you make

(32:19):
it so easy to understand you really do you break
it down. This is something that's really intimidating for a
lot of people. To bury your financial cards to someone.
That is intimidating, and I'm sure that that is why
people don't just pick up the phone. But the reality is,
if you don't do it, how are you going.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
To know if you're on that I learned a long
time ago when I started my financial talk show on
the radio in nineteen ninety I started doing it and
I did a little bit, and then I said that
with someone. She's not my wife, but she told me
what you need to do is make it really simple.
You might think it's the most simple thing, but act

(32:54):
like you're talking to elementary school kids to make them understand.
And if you do and they understand you, they will
trust you. So we've I've always used that in the
back of my mind, you're doing this to educate.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
If you're going to educate, make them learn.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
How many times do you sit in a classroom your
whole life and just hearing blah blah blah blah because
it's over your head, you're not understanding it. But when
you understand it, and it's usually when we got older,
it becomes something Oh wow, that's what he was talking about.
That's what he meant. You know what I mean. I
do the same thing coaching. I got to make it
so simple. When I'm trying to tell people what to do,

(33:28):
then they just don't listen if it's too complicated. So
a long time ago I learn make it really simple
so they understand, and when they understand, then they trust
you to come and ask your questions.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
Well, to me, it's exciting because this is like kind
of an area that is gray for a lot of people.
So it's exciting to make sense of it and realize
that it's not necessarily how much specifically you have or
you have saved, it's how you utilize it and what
you do going forward.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (33:56):
One of the things we do is in the second
meaning the proposal, meaning we try to make it as
simple as possible for you.

Speaker 6 (34:01):
We show you where.

Speaker 5 (34:02):
Your income's going to come from, what our recommendations are,
what type of model we're going to put you in,
and what that model consists of stocks versus bonds, how
we would rebalance it when we would do it, as
well as we'll show you a portfolio projection of all
the moving parts in your financial plan laid out to
you as simply as possible, because we understand at the
end of the day whether you do business with this
or not. We want to give you a proposal that

(34:22):
you can digest yourself, and you might still have questions
at the end of the day, we'll be here to
answer them for you, but we want it to be
so simple that you could take it home and actually
implement it yourself if you so desired to do so.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
I get it.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
There's a lot of products out there, like lyrps, that
are sophisticated products that work for some people, but ninety
nine percent of the people you try to talk to
them about they have no clue what it's what it is.
And then the other people that do come in and
they do ask us about LARPs and different products like that.
When we explain it, they get it, understand it, and

(34:55):
then we explain them to the risk. And most people
never explain the entire of where that tax free loan
comes to them that if the premium isn't there, to
the dividends aren't there to pay the premium, then they
got to start paying premiums again and w their loan
becomes taxible. So there's a lot of things that people

(35:16):
don't understand that we try to make sure they do
and get it. There's a lot of sophisticated, complicated products
and people just don't get it, and if they don't
get it, they probably should stay away from it unless
they're sophisticated enough to learn it.

Speaker 6 (35:30):
We talk about this on the radio show all the time.

Speaker 5 (35:32):
Annuities will offer thirty percent bonuses, thirty five percent bonus
on your money in the first year. That's not actual money.
They're giving you a bonus on it. They're giving you
a bonus on your income value, which is what the
value that they will calculate how much income they'll pay
you out for the rest of your life. Perfectly fine
thing if that's what you ultimately wanting to use the
product for income. But if you think you're going to
get a thirty five percent growth on your money in
a year, that's not the case. It's a different calculation

(35:53):
for income, not accumulation value. So even simple things like
that that people feel like, oh, this is an easy thing,
it's a no brainer. You have to look at the
fine print, actually understand what that product is and understand
surrender schedules. The reason they can give you that type
of bonus is they're locking your money up from sometimes
twelve fourteen years.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Places for annuities, there's no doubt about it, and the
places they I will use them. People want guaranteed income,
they need to fill the gap between their pension and
in their retirement. There's some great places to use it,
but a lot of people just sell them nuities, and
to us that's a problem because there's other alternatives right now.
But mygas, I think magas are great. You know, Todd

(36:32):
does a ton of those. They're considered an annuity product and.

Speaker 5 (36:35):
Those those are the multi year guaranteed annuities for those
who don't know what magas are, and they're pretty much
just like a CD with an insurance company. You can
pick three, five, seven years and they're going to give
you a guaranteed rate for that period of time. Your
mind's going to be locked up, and sometimes you can
take out the interest penalty free during the term, but
you have to think about this, money's going to be
locked up. But I'm going to a guaranteed rate that's
going to be a little higher than what CD rates
are going to be at the time.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
I would even think the insurance industry is pretty valatile
right now with the fires on, all the storms and
things like people, insurance premiums aren't going up, so.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, but don't forget the insurance also has an insurance
pool that you know, they have reserves, just like just
like broken firms got to have reserves, banks have to
have reserves. Everybody has to have reserves for rady day. Now,
if it said a day that blows up, that explodes
and everything falls apart, like two thousand and eight, well.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
There's not enough reserves day, and.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
That's when the government's got to come in and do
the things that they got to do. Right.

Speaker 5 (37:28):
But don't forget AIG blew up in two thousand and
eight and it turned into Voia Financial. So a lot
of these annuity companies, if they do insurance companies, that's
just say, when they blow up, they'll get bought up
by another insurance company. Same way that we saw with
I forgot who the bank that filled a couple of
years ago, and they got bought up by a bigger bank.

Speaker 6 (37:44):
That's kind of how usually it would happen.

Speaker 5 (37:46):
But to keep people's peace of mind, also there's something
called a state Guarantee fund that each state has up
to two hundred and fifty thousand that gives you protection
if that insurance.

Speaker 6 (37:54):
Company in your state goes the bump.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (37:57):
And also people don't know the insurance companies have ratings,
Like you can look at how strong an insurance company
is from going to bunk. There's a plus rated a
rat And that's why we try to shop for only
A rated or higher products from annuity companies that are
a rated higher. We don't want to go into the
b area because even though you might get a little
bet of a product on paper, who knows that product
is actually going to make it through the term if

(38:17):
that company is not around.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
So wrapping this whole thing up.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
When they come to us for a financial plan, right,
and we sit and we talk about ideas, we don't
know what product we want to put them in. We
don't look at what it is and go, oh, we
got to do this, so we got to do that.

Speaker 4 (38:29):
Just going to ask that question, I knew you why.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
That's why I said I really was, Well, no.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
It's it's great to know that you guys aren't selling
me on something.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Right, Well, some.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
People have this product and whatever this is that they're
doing here is to sell that product. Right, we do
all this here, whatever is in this circle that best
fits their plan, that's what we do.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
And it's just great because it does seem like there's
more and more products every year, and more and more
opportunities for you, better and.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Better ways to mitigate risk for clients, to put them
in conservative ways in their positions, keep them liquid, and
all those things that are there out there right now.
And of course it's obviously risk reward. The higher the risk,
well that we ward. But the bigger risk, you want less.
You don't make as much, but you don't lose as much.

Speaker 6 (39:10):
And that's our job as advisors.

Speaker 5 (39:11):
We learn every single day to add another tool to
our tool belt so that when we meet a new
client and we have a new idea or a new
project we have to fix, we have that tool that we'll.

Speaker 6 (39:20):
Need to use.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Well, I hope you've been listening and we have more
after this quick commercial break, so please stay with us.
Five two zero five four four four nine zero nine.
You get a complimentary financial plan that other advisors charge
thousands of dollars or more for, and you get it
for just hang out with us for thirty minutes and
listening to us try to educate you on your money matters.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
So we'll see you in a few.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
Hello, and welcome back to money Matters. I'm Sarah petersonting
here with Dean Greenberg and Todd Click and a lot
of things I really adore about you both is your
incredible relationships that you have with your clients. You get
to know people pretty well when you're dealing with their finances.
It's such a personal thing, and I would love for
you to share some stories with us of some clients

(40:03):
that have recently inspired you, or maybe.

Speaker 4 (40:05):
Mistakes that have been made.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
I just think it's neat for people to understand, like
everybody's situation is different.

Speaker 6 (40:11):
Yeah, I think we'll start with the bad first and
we'll go to the we'll finish off a high night.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
Okay, we'll finish.

Speaker 4 (40:16):
So.

Speaker 5 (40:16):
I think one of the mistakes I've heard recently is
the fact that this client comes in. He says, for
the last two years, I'm very conservative. I stayed, I
sold all the cash, and I've been missing out on
this entire market run. But now it's come back ten percent.
So this is the time to get in, just because
the market came back ten percent, you didn't even come
close to all the gains that you missed out on
in over those two years. So the people that I've

(40:38):
heard a lot of times come in and say the
market's too high, it's too overvalued, it shouldn't be this high,
and then it keeps going higher, and it keeps going higher,
and then eventually.

Speaker 6 (40:44):
It drops a little bit.

Speaker 5 (40:45):
But that's not even enough for them to say, oh,
this is the time to buy now. They never actually
get in the market. It's always too overvalued, it's always
too high. But the fact that the market has always
made a new all time high is kind of telling
them that they're run over a long period of time.
So that's to say that that'd be the biggest mistake
I would to keep invested. Understand that the markets have
always made a new all time high.

Speaker 6 (41:05):
Just got to have time.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Sounds like you're more in a long game too, So
people need to think about that the bigger picture.

Speaker 6 (41:10):
Of do you have any bad examples from.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Clients bad takes over the years of America?

Speaker 6 (41:18):
That client was a very interesting one.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
Yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
All. So this was in two thousand and eight, we
had the client through the nineties and stuff. And the
bottom line is her husband had worked for Bank America,
and so they built it up, built it up, built
it up. There was a million five a day and
they were getting dividends. I can't tell you how. It
was more than seventy percent of the portfolio. So we
separated it out so that way we would never sell it.

(41:44):
She didn't want to sell it. She wanted to keep
it because she wanted indibitus. I tried for so long
for her to sell some offs so she can diversify more.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
Two thousand and eight come. Not only did she lose in.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
Her own account, but that Bank America went all the
way down to like two dollars. She lost all her money.
The worst part is all the dividends. She did not
have any of that money to live on. She had
none of that money to do it. I know it
was stressful, for it was a long time ago. Unfortunately,

(42:16):
I don't know if she's still here, but she lost
everything she had, and I hope that she was able
to recover.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
As an advisor, I mean, what do you learn from
these things? Where do you go from there? I mean,
so much of this stuff is unavoidable.

Speaker 5 (42:28):
Yeah, Unfortunately, you are the CFO at the end of
the day, you're the chief financial officer for the plan.
But ultimately they're the CEO. They make the end decision.
You can't make them not spend at the register. You're
not going to be with them on their everyday lives,
so it is their decision at the end of the day.
We are the ones that try to optimize and advise
you and be your therapist and trying to tell you
why this is not a good idea. But if we

(42:50):
can't break through to you, you know, you can't make
a horse drink water.

Speaker 6 (42:53):
You could just bring it to them.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
But I get it because so husband worked for them
for thirty five forty years. They built it up, he
passed away. This was her attachment to a husband, So
I get that part of it. Take the emotions out
of investing. Okay, they don't care about you, You don't
care about them. Care about yourself, all right. Every time
you get greedy, every time I see in it, something happens.

(43:15):
Something happens all the time, and people are think you
get rich quick.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
You don't. It's all the time. I tell you a
good story.

Speaker 5 (43:21):
My favorite good story is the client is recently because
we went through the whole plan, they had a nine
nine percent. They realized, oh, I can actually spend a
little bit more, Okay, So we went through it and
after they we showed them that they could spend more,
they did one hundred thousand dollars on a home improvem
and they didn't think they could do. They were able to
spend more on vacations, but then they're actually able to
spend more on vacations with family, not just on themselves,
but having experiences with themselves and their family. And they said,

(43:43):
this has actually brought me so much more joy to
my life. The financial plan has helped me uncover how
much assets I actually have and actually makes me feel
comfortable with spending at this rate. I didn't understand where
all my money was. It was all different places, but
now that's all in one picture. I really feel comfortable
to spend at this rate because I know there's a
plan behind it.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
It's the best kind of story, that's the best ways.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
So we have one We have an other client and
she was a retirement home and she was supposed to
come and see it one day and she needed to
go ahead and site some paperwork because she was giving
some money to her son who was buying a house
that would have it like an an extra attachment to
the house. It was for them so she can come

(44:25):
there and spend a lot of time when she wanted to.
When they were in Texas well, she fell at the
retirement home the day before, broke a hip and couldn't walk.
But she needed to get it down because it was closing.
So I set one of our advisors out to see
her get all the.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
Paperwork done for her.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
On the way, he picked up a bunch of flowers,
a whole bouquet of flowers on his own, and brought
it to and gave it to her. It made her
a day, the fact that we went out and did
it for her so she didn't have to do it,
so she was able to not disappoint her sun and
then brought a flowers. She was like the queen of
the ball because everybody who's there, who's that young guy

(45:06):
giving me flyers? You know? And it was very cool
And I didn't know we did that, and he came
back and told me. And that's the type of people
have working for me. That's people that care about others,
especially elder clients.

Speaker 4 (45:18):
At the end of the day is not.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Everybody just kind of wants to get their you know,
handheld a little bit right. And sometimes it's intimidating to
admit that right. You know, I've made as much money
and I do this and that, but it is a
little bit of a vulnerability and once.

Speaker 6 (45:33):
You get past that point, and that's why we have
a team approach.

Speaker 5 (45:36):
Not only are we the money managers, the financial planners,
and the financial counselors and therapists, but we have teammates
alongside of us as state planners at tax strategists CPAs,
as well as medicare specialists, people that will shop for
our clients' home and auto insurance, homeowners insurance, you know,
all kinds of different insurances.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
You can't.

Speaker 5 (45:53):
We have people for that. We have people for every
little part of someone's financial life. And that's what our
clients want at the end of the day. They don't
They want to know that when they come to us,
everything is taken care of them. Like you said, someone's
looking out for their best interests of you.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
For whatever reason, younger people are afraid to talk to
older people on a very close basis, get to know
them intimately. What's about? What are they doing? Their children
and stuff? And I learned this when I owned my
restaurant shlom Ownbridos. I couldn't get my service to go
talk to the older people because they were crotchety. And
I said, the crotchety because they're hungry. They came here

(46:25):
to eat the greatest corn beef up. It's draw me sandwich.
They know, and they're.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Going to take some home.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
Go talk to them, give them pickles, give them something,
tell them the foods on the way. Kid with them.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Fine, but you were talking about customer service, and that's
what it all all.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
It is, Well what business you are if you're in
customer service, be an extrovert, have empathy, talk to them,
get to know them. They'll trust you. You build an
empire from there.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Okay, So what they need to do, all they need
to do is pick up that phone and make a
phone call. They're going to get you. They'll come in.
You said you have coffee. You don't even drink it.
I don't stand up, but have a couple of coffee
and sit down and talk and find out if they're
on the right path.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
It's not easy here for you.

Speaker 4 (47:08):
Well, thank you so much for spending time with us.
I hope you.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Learned as much as I always do sitting here with
these fine gentlemen. And they are offering this to you,
the viewers, a complimentary financial plan which can otherwise be
thousands of dollars or more. All you need to do
is pick up the phone five two zero five four
four four nine zero nine and we'll see you next
time with your Money Matters.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Welcome back everybody to the second now with the Money
Matter Show. We have a special guest on and he's
going to be talking to you about the Calumos Structured Protection. Yes,
I get what it is, Todd, thank you very much, Okay,
as not. His name is Matt Kaufman and he's he's
on the line with us from Chicago and he's obviously

(47:53):
his portfolio manage you all for Kalum Mols. And there's
a lot of questions we have. We've been dealing with
them a long time. But they have a new product
out that they've been having out I don't know for
what six months or so now maybe a little longer longer, okay,
about a year. But it's really cool because you know
it kind of does what all these annuities say they do.

(48:16):
You know, hey, don't worry about the downside. We'll give
you the upside. These you know, these fixed indorex annuities,
and you know you're capped on the upside, but you
don't delse any on the downside. But you gotta lock
in for five years, seven years, nine years, whatever it
is to give the advisors a real big commission. But
the idea is, as we said, great idea, no downside, upside. Yes,

(48:40):
you gotta have some type of cap, but isn't it
better if it's liquid. That's what Calamos came out with.
They came out with them. You can trade them almost
every day if you want it, to buy and sell
them every day. They're on your statement. And the cool
thing is if you hold it one year, not five years,
not three years, not ten years they claim that you would.

(49:00):
The worst case scenario is you break even. And that's
why we got mat on today to talk to us
how to heck you can do that. We have an idea, Matt, Well,
we want to hear it from you.

Speaker 7 (49:11):
I appreciate it. Yeah it is acclaimed, but it's also true,
and so we can spend the next several minutes walking
through how we can deliver equity upside to a cap.
Like you said, there's no free lunch and downside risk
management to the tune of one hundred percent before our
sixty nine basis point management fee that is the cost
of each of these etss.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Okay, so let me ask you this. Who are you
and what are your credentials? And what's your position at Kalamos.
Let everybody know.

Speaker 7 (49:40):
I appreciate that opportunity. So my name is Matt Kaufman.
I'm the head of ETF at Calamos. I've been at
Calamos for two years. Prior to that, I've been in
the ETF space for about I grew up in the
Chicagoland area. I started at a shop called Power Shares
if you're familiar the ETF lands. We got our exemptive relief,

(50:04):
which is a fancy word for the permission slip that
the SEC the Securities Exchange Commission gives you to build ETFs.
We got that permission slip from another Chicago based firm
in the early two thousands who basically said all of
the good ETFs are taken. They you know, the SMD
was taken in spy the QQQ was taken. They said,

(50:25):
we don't think there's much room for growth in the
ETF landscape, which is a funny story to tell. You know,
some twenty five years later now that there's ten trillion
dollars or of growth in the ETF space. So we
built out this smart beta type ETF world ultimately sold
to Invesco. I took a bit of a right turn

(50:46):
and went over to an institutional insurance consultant called Milleman,
and we were building funds based off of hedging strategies
that we were running for large life insurance companies. The
head of the group called, He said, I want to
build funds. I have all the actuaries I need. I
need people who understand the fund business. And I had

(51:07):
just come off of building about one hundred ETFs. So
we took all of the intellectual property and the risk
management that was making the insurance world work and we
moved it. Build funds, built funds out of it, and
it worked very well. If you're a student of the
interest rate environment, and I'm going to tell you a
quick story and it'll lead us into our ETF discussion.

(51:30):
So interest rates were remarkably low back then. This was
about two thousand and nine twenty ten, right after the
financial crisis, and it was a real struggle for insurance
companies and banks to provide anything of value. You know,
at the beginning you talked about giving somebody the upside
of the SMP to a cap rate. Well, if you're
an insurance company and you want to provide one hundred

(51:51):
percent protection, the cap rate would have been remarkably low.
The guarantees on your variable annuities would have been remarkably low.
It was all tied to rates, and so it really
moved that space the insurance world. The banks were having
the same issues. It moved them into a risk sharing
model where rather than principal protection, they would give you

(52:13):
something less, give you a ten percent protection level, twenty
percent protection. Well, what I saw as the head of
product development at Noleman at the time is that you
could deliver that type of protection very efficiently with options.
We did not need a bank or an insurance company
in order to deliver that model. So we built that
intellectual property out. That space grew to about sixty billion dollars.

(52:36):
It's a very large space and ETF world today. When
I came over to Klamos. To conclude the story, interest
rates are much higher. You know, people are buying CDs again,
they're buying money market funds, they're looking at fixed indextinuities,
those that come out of the grade. So we took
everything that made those types of products work listed the hood,
took everything we liked about it, left the chassis on

(52:58):
the curb, and built an ETF line that now delivers
capital protection over a one year outcome period and you
get the upside to the S and P to about
eight percent, maybe seven and a half eight percent, and
you'll know exactly what that cap rate is before you
buy in. And then we have Nasdaq one hundred exposure,
we have Russell two thousand exposure, which is a little

(53:19):
higher cap because it's a little higher volatility. And then
we have Bitcoin. We have a product line that delivers
protection on Bitcoin as well, and you get pretty good
cap rate because of the volatility of that asset. All right,
so that's what we've done.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
All right, let's go let's talk a couple of things.
So the differences people are used to on the hearing
annuities and obviously cap weights, Okay, how much you can
make on the upside. What people don't realize on the
annuity pot is that cap weight can change over the three, five, seven,
nine year period and then not locked in with it. Well,

(53:56):
magistrates move. The cap weight was moving, and I thought
that was a very very tough part to pill the
swallow in this industry when you try to predict what's
gonna happen, and you're right, and and and the rates
come down and the markets come down, but yet now
you can't make as much when it turns and goes
the other way. And I had a real problem with that.

(54:18):
And that's why you know, there's a space for annuities,
but it's a small space in my opinion, do it
managing money for over forty years because and I know
they make billions of dollars, Okay, don't get me wrong,
and I know that insurance injuriousy doesn't. But the reason
they're able to sell it, as we both know, MATT

(54:38):
is real simple downside protection. And you can make a
little bit to the upside. And they try to tell
me to make about four or six percent, which half
the time they don't even make that. All right. We
have people in some of those fixed index annuities on
these wonderful index is what people don't even realize and
really not attached to the index, you know, and then

(55:01):
and there's so much more involved. That's what I loved
about you guys coming and I've talked to people about
coming out or the product that you've come out with.
I didn't talk to you. I took talked to the
insurance company and said, why can't you come out with
something like this that actually works for people and we
don't have all these other expenses involved, which you know
everybody else does. So with that said, does the cap

(55:23):
change the capwright change on these.

Speaker 7 (55:27):
I'll answer with one word, no, the cap rate does
not change. Once you're locked in for that year, the
cap rate will change your tier, but you'll know what
that cap rate is before you buy in.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
I understand.

Speaker 4 (55:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
The other and so people understand what he's saying is
he's a one year one point in a year to
one point in the next year and nothing changes. Okay,
but if you do another one in new role, it
obviously there's a new cap right we know and what
they are each time. And the other thing you said
that's important, the more volatility like Nasaka's more volatility, say
instead of the the S and P those copboys could

(56:01):
be higher.

Speaker 7 (56:03):
That's right, And you know there's a reason that the
insurers would never do this. That was part of this
group called the Alliance for Lifetime Income. It was a
what I would call the got Milk campaign for annuities.
It was about, you know, twelve of the largest life
insurance companies in America and they would throw throw money
into a pool to enhance and improve the perception of

(56:24):
annuities around America. Well, they did a bunch of survey work,
and what they found is that, like you said, investors
loved the idea of protected growth. They like protected income,
protected growth, but they did not like the features that
you just described as the annuities. They didn't want to
be locked in for seven years, they didn't want early
exit fees. Well, the insurance companies is never going to

(56:46):
not build an annuity. And so you know, they spent
a bunch of money to try to improve the perception
of annuities around America, when in reality, what people were
asking for was a better mouse trap. They were looking
for protected growth in an ETF wrapper. And so you know,
that's what I took away from from that process and
being part of that group, and so it was able
to come to calends and deliver exactly on what people

(57:07):
were looking for. So that's largely why we built these.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
So let me ask you this man, how long you've
been in the business.

Speaker 7 (57:12):
Yeah, I've been in the in the ETF business about
twenty five years.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
Okay, good. So why do you think advisors broke is
whatever sell a notities to clients over the over a
product like this.

Speaker 7 (57:28):
Well, I think before these ETFs existed, there really was
no other choice. There was no opportunity to deliver protected
growth outside of the insurance wrapper, and so that it
really was the method of choice for the last thirty
or forty years. If you wanted protected growth, you largely
needed to go through a bank or an insurance channel.
You don't have to do that anymore, and so through

(57:50):
the ETF rapper you can get protected growth. You can
get one hundred percent protection with the upside to the market,
and you don't have those lock up periods, you don't
have the high fee, the illiquidity. You can access it
through the tax efficient ETF wrapper now and the benefits
are remarkable when you put them inside the ETF wrapper.
So I think it's more of an access game.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
It's two reasons that commissions. People look that take up
front commissions on annuities are driven by the commissions. Okay,
that's number one.

Speaker 7 (58:24):
Yeah, there's that too. I don't disagree with you that.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Okay, I just tell it the way it is. I've
been doing this way too long. I just tell people
the way it is. Okay. Number two, simplicity. The story
is so much easier to tell that, all right. That's
why we personally we manage money here. Okay, we've had
protection plans using options for a very long period of time.

(58:50):
What you're doing here makes all life simpler. Okay, I'll
put it that way. We were able to protect the
downside about ten or twelve percent, all right, so with
more of a buff with unlimited upside, which was nice
in the in the right market. Yeah, but you still
lose because of the insurance, which we know. The nice
thing about this is we don't have to worry about it.

(59:11):
And there's one of the reasons that I like you
doing it. So let's talk about how you know, maybe
some people understand obviously we understand in simple terms, how
do these actually work?

Speaker 7 (59:25):
Yeah, one of the easiest ways we can explain this
when we're in meetings is we just say, if I
pretend like I give you one hundred dollars, we can
use one hundred percent of the portfolio value and recreate
the structure. So to recreate one hundred percent protection on
the S and P five hundred over a one year
outcome period, it's three options layers. So the first layer

(59:49):
is a participation layer, and that's going to take up
most of your one hundred dollars. It's going to cost
about ninety eight dollars. This might be as deep as
we get here on the call today, but this is
a zero strike call or it's an option that replicates
the price movement of the S and P five hundred
at the end of the one year out come period.
So that costs about ninety eight dollars. The next layer

(01:00:12):
is we're going to buy protection. So we're going to
buy an at the money, put at at the money
to give you one hundred percent protection. That's going to
cost about four dollars, or about four percent of the portfolio.
So if you're following along, we've spent ninety eight on
your participation layer. We've spent four on your protection layer,
So we've overspent. We spent one oh two. I only

(01:00:34):
gave you one hundred. So the next layer is to
sell off some upside. We have to sell off enough
upside to collect two dollars worth of income so that
that whole package equals one hundred dollars. So I'm going
to sell an out of the money call to collect
two dollars worth of income from selling that call, and
whatever the strike price is of that sold call is

(01:00:57):
at the time I enter those options, that's to determine
your cap rate, and so I have a fully financed,
fully protected portfolio. I have three options positions that I'll
expire at the same date, same time, one year from now.
That options layers all works to be the NAV the
net asset value of the ETF, and then that sets

(01:01:21):
over the course of time we trade in the market,
and it ultimately determines the value of the ETF every day.
So if you buy in at the beginning, you can
get that outcome. You buy in on day one, you
get one hundred percent protection, you get the upside to
the cap rate. But then because it's an ETF, any
day the market's open, you can know what your upside

(01:01:41):
is what your downside protection level is and how many
days are left in the outcome period, so you can
go to our website. Yeah, I'll stop there. You're good.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
I was gonna okay, So say it comes out of
twenty five dollars, right, and the markets go down and
it goes from twenty five to say twenty four to
twenty Oh, let's just say twenty four, simple terms, Okay.
If I buy it at twenty four, am I am
I buying in for a guaranteed profit to twenty five

(01:02:10):
or it's twenty four starting all over in a different date.

Speaker 7 (01:02:13):
If you were if you were able to get in
at twenty four dollars intra period, that would be a
great trade for you because you would appreciate to twenty
five over the rest of the outcome period and you
probably won't fall that much.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
No, no, but but I put twenty four. I've seen it.
I mean, obviously he goes up, but the put options
are going to go up, and you're gonna lose on
the call options faster, so it's not going to go
down as much. And it depends when it happens too
during the period of time. But yeah, if it went
down to twenty four seventy or something like that, and
I bought a twenty five, I would add to it
because now I'm guaranteed to even an actual return on

(01:02:48):
my money.

Speaker 5 (01:02:49):
Yeah, for those of the follow it, if you're buying
in a blow the knob, you're actually increasing the protection
level because then it goes from one hundred to higher protection.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
Well and simple in simple terms, when I'm trying to
get across to our listeners. All right, Calamos has come
out and they've been around a long time, okay, with
a product to compete with annuities. All right. It gives
you the guaranteed downside with the upside to a wherever

(01:03:22):
it's going to be. We know it going in if
you stay one year into it. The beauty of it,
which you cannot do it an annuity. If it goes
down in between, you can buy more. If it goes
up and you want to get out, you can get out.
That's the beauty of having an ETF versus a locked
in ill liquid annuity. Okay. And here's the wonderful part.

(01:03:47):
There's not all those upfront seven percent eight percent commissions
that you have to pay to somebody to get an annuity.
Now we try to do ours all the time, just
like we do management on a on a fee of
a fee based business as an r A. But we
know there's a lot of people they just sell those.
We understand the business guys. We're part of managing money.

(01:04:09):
The reason I have met on the phone is I
wanted to explain what's going on now. I wanted to
explain very simply, what do we saw.

Speaker 7 (01:04:22):
Yeah, that's a good question. So this is an ETF.
Just like any ETF, there are risks associated with the investments.
We've solved a lot of the risk that you might
be concerned about. You know, you think of credit risk
that might be tied to an annuity product or structured
product from a bank, whereas here there is no counterparty

(01:04:44):
credit risk. These options are all the underlying investments, and
those options are all centrally cleared by the Options Clearing Corporation.
It's a financial market utility deemed too big to fail,
so the federal government is backing the option is clearing corporation.
The other consideration would be getting called away on your options.

(01:05:06):
We've solved for that risk as well. These are all
European style options, so your package cannot get called away.
You own that option package as long as you own
the etf uh, there's tax efficiency there. If you were
to buy capital protection and any other wrapper, you look
at the annuity, you look at capital protected notes or bonds.

(01:05:28):
Those all expire and then you pay ordinary income rates
and expiration. Here we use equity options that can all
grow tax deferred, and so if you sell after holding
for one year, you'll pay long term capital gains rates.
So there's a tremendous amount of tax efficiency there. If
there's a risk, it would be you know that if
the market runs up and the NAV, you know it's

(01:05:50):
these are twenty five dollars. Example, if the NAV goes
to twenty six dollars and you buy at twenty six, well,
now you have some downside risk. You have some downside
risk of going down to twenty five.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
So they if you buy this at twenty six, when
you guys come out with new ones almost every month,
that advisor should be shot periods Okay, because he's an idiot.

Speaker 7 (01:06:14):
Well, I give you an example. So let's say let's
say you're you're one hundred days left in the outcome
period and the market's up, you know, twenty percent and
you still have three percent left to go in your
cap rate. That might be a time to buy in
because the market could fall ten percent and you'd still
make three So you know, we have some some buying

(01:06:34):
opportunities like that. Cp NS is an example of one
right now. That's a NASDAC series that we launched in September,
and you know, right now it's the market's flat. CPNS
is going to return about four percent. So just a
trade idea that we're seeing happen. But yeah, so I
wouldn't I wouldn't be too quick to shoot someone in
that scenario.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
Well, not that yet, but they're still looking at the
situation that becomes more complicated as they buy in its
twenty six and watch it to twenty five, depending on
how much money they can put.

Speaker 5 (01:07:03):
It actually leads us to one of our listener questions,
and Dylan, Well, I ask it because you have also
a product with the CPSL, which is a ladder product
of all the structured protection ETFs.

Speaker 6 (01:07:13):
And that's kind of long what the question was.

Speaker 8 (01:07:15):
Yeah, we had a listener come in and ask us
if he buys into CPSM. On May first, twenty twenty four,
at twenty five dollars a share, and the cap rate
was nine point eight one percent gross. So the max
gross price that he can receive is twenty seven point
forty five. So if during the year before April thirty
to twenty five, it hits twenty seven to forty five,

(01:07:36):
should he just sell? Can it go higher than that
or should he hold it to two the year long
at April thirty.

Speaker 7 (01:07:44):
Yeah, that's a great question. That performance and that cap
is going to be delivered over the outcome period. So,
as you said, cpsm's cap was nine point eight one percent,
and right now you would have captured about eight percent
of that. You still have about one point eight percent
left to go, and you've got about sixty four days

(01:08:05):
left to do it. So the S and P five
hundred is up eighteen percent since May first of twenty
twenty four. CPSM is up eight percent, and so, uh,
some people buy, some people hold that and they just
collect that, you know, remaining hundred and eighty basis points,
and the other some folks are actually buying in to
CPSM right now because they think, Hey, I don't think

(01:08:27):
the SMP is going to fall more than eight percent
over the next sixty days and I'm going to scrape
that eight hundred and eighty basis points and that's a
pretty good annualized return for me. There's no such thing
as a free lunch, but this is a lunch that's
kind of already been paid for.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Going back to what we're talking about, you know, if you,
if you, if you say if you, if you get
into that, you tell people no downside risk and you
try to get that extra one to two percent because oh,
it's not going to fall ten and it does. Then
you're trying to out explain yourself. You know, you're one
of the things that I wanted you to bring up
to the people. As you know, everyone hears options and

(01:09:03):
they all think it's risky. Right. I've been doing options,
Matt since nineteen eighty five. I started believing it or not.
I went to the Chicago options floor when the S
and P one hundred first came out, and that's how
that's how I learned how in the pits on how
to learn it with people I knew, I said, I
want to learn this, and I put programs together on
selling options to retail people in the eighties from the

(01:09:26):
cell side, just like they did on the uh, and
I've been doing it ever since. Now we use the
S and P five hundred to do it. And yeah,
I'm not saying it's not a little bit aggressive the
program I'm doing. But options protect people and we talk
about it all the time on how to mitigate risk
in portfolios that you don't want to have to sell
off things you've got high, high appreciated stocks. Use options.

(01:09:48):
But most people don't know options. One, A lot of
firms don't let them use it to Noah wants to
spend the time to learn them. And number three, even
if they do, they're complicated enough that if you're not
using them, you're not going to understand all the benefits.
So to me, I look at it, Hey, we do it,
we understand it. This works nicely. Now I use guys
like you that I've taken it to the next level.

(01:10:12):
Make my life a little bit easier with the products
that I don't have to design individually for everyone. They're
already designed for us. Well, I'm giving them the upside,
but they're giving it the protection and they are only
one year and the liquid that people like.

Speaker 7 (01:10:26):
I agree, and you know I was I was taught
options probably from some of the guys that you work
with in the pits in the eighties, So we probably
have a lot to catch up on there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
If you think I remember them, you're out of your mind.
I don't even know if most of them are still alive.
I was like probably twenty five years old at that time.

Speaker 7 (01:10:45):
Yeah, I get it. Well, Yeah, there's two ways to
think of options. There's leverage. There's you know, the risky
part of options, which is what most people think of
the speculators, and then there's guys like us. There's the hedgers,
the risk managers, and we're building things that are a
lot of times safer than your s and P five
hundred exposures.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
Hang on, we got hang on. We're gonna take a
short break that we're gonna come back. Hey, I hope
everyone's listening and understanding. You're gonna have questions. We don't
expect you to understand the whole thing, but we do
appreciate you. Listen. We'll be back with Matt. Just hold on,
take a short break. Thanks for listening. Welcome back, everybody.

(01:11:24):
We still have Matt Kaufman on the phone, and we're
gonna I've been told we got we uh, we didn't
finish question number two. So we're gonna do that, and
then we want to talk about a couple of the
products klum mosas also.

Speaker 8 (01:11:34):
Yeah, the other part of that question was is there
any benefit to owning the lattered etf as opposed to
owning a blend of the various monthly offerings.

Speaker 7 (01:11:43):
Yes, CPSL is going to be a laddered approach, so
we just own all of the underlying SMP five hundred
protection ETFs. A lot of advisors like that because it
gives them a single ticker solution. It gives you a
highly edged experience. It's about ninety eight ninety nine percent
protection over time, and what you end up with is

(01:12:06):
diversified exposure. You get diversification of the cap rates. So
we see people who just you know, say, I don't
really care about the precision of the defined outcome. Just
give me something that's going to protect me over time.
CPSL is the solution there. But for those who want
to know, okay, what's what is my cap rate nine
point eight one percent over the next three hundred and

(01:12:27):
sixty five days, then you'd want to dive into those
individual series and buy one.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
Of those for you and I think also, Dylan, it's
depending on how much money is in there. You know,
we do with some accounts that don't have as much
money to diversify, so it's better to use one instead
of going, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, so we'll go
for the whole thing in one part. All right, So
coming back to let's talk about chy Okay Kalamo's High

(01:12:53):
Yield and Income Fund, which is convertible bonds and high
yield funds. If anyone looks at that fun it's been
around since two thousand and two. The dividends of that
is paid off is probably average somewhere around ten percent
the entire time. And the question is is how does
it do it?

Speaker 7 (01:13:11):
That's a great question. So just for clarity, hy is
a closed end fund, So for for listeners and ETF
exchange trade fund can create and redeem shares of the fund.
They can create new shares. A closed end fund, you know,
different from an open end fund where you issue a
set number of shares and then those trade in the market.

(01:13:33):
There's some advantages to closed end funds over exchange traded funds.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:13:37):
If one of those advantages is that a closed end
fund can strategically use leverage you know, typically around thirty
percent or so, and that allows the fund to enhance
the yield potential in a way that a lot of
individual investors might not be able to replicate on their own.
So again another use of leverage facilities or options there.

(01:13:59):
But I really like hy. You know, the fund has
a focus on convertible securities, provides what I would call
kind of a best of both worlds approach. You get
bond like income with equity upside potential when those convertibles
perform well. If you're familiar with a convertible price track,
it ties a bond, a corporate bond to a call option.

(01:14:22):
So when the company is doing well, you look a
lot more like the stock value, and when that stock
value is retreating, you fall into the bond territory and
you look a lot more like the bond of that company.
And so you know, as it closed end funds, CHY
can maintain a really stable asset base without having forced
selling during market downturns, and so it allows managers to

(01:14:45):
take a long term approach. It's a great tool for
financial advisors for generating meaningful income. Spent around since two
thousand and three and cal almost is the largest convertible
bond manager in the US, we'd be number one globally.
Allan has that leg on us by just a little bit,
so we're trying to take back that spot from them.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
But I've been one way the other been part of
hy since it's come out in the early two thousands.
I've seen it drop from a ten cents a month
dividend to eight and a half percent dividend, and that
was twice pretty much over the time. That was after
two thousand and eight, and I think it was twenty

(01:15:26):
and eighteen or something. I went, I went, I looked
at every single month. It pays monthly, and I think
out of that time, we missed four dividends in two
after two thousand and eight, like the beginning of two
thousand and nine. I think it was one or two
other times. Other than that they have paid dividends every
single month. Now, I've seen the price because of the

(01:15:48):
closed then fun go from premium to discount, and I've
seen a drop from ten to eleven twelve bucks all
the way down in two thousand and eight to six
and a half or so five and a half, and
then the next year rallied all the way back to
thirteen fourteen dollars and then then in the pandemic it
fell down to eight and a half and then reinstated

(01:16:10):
the dividends again. So let me ask you this, what
is the cause of that? My feeling when I look
at it is when people are selling everything and interest
rates are going higher, liquidity issue becomes a problem. In
the clothes that fun because everybody wants to come out
and there's not enough of them, so they just let
the price drop and it brings it to a discount.
That is that relatively right, eve or not?

Speaker 7 (01:16:33):
You know, Unlike an ETF which has an arbitrage mechanism
that keeps the nav really tight.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
You know, a.

Speaker 7 (01:16:42):
Closing fund has can trade at a premium or a
discount to its net asset value because it again it's
that closed block of shares. But you know, over I
think historical average, we've been at about a three, three
or six percent discount. But over you know, longer periods
of time, what you'll see the fluctuation. Like you said,

(01:17:03):
it's going to be based off of interest rate environments.
So you talk about, oh wait, when interest rates are
falling significantly, distribution sustainability perceptions, you know it can It
doesn't even have to be an issue. It can just
be a perception of an issue that might cause a
tendency to trade at a discount. But largely closed end

(01:17:23):
funds tend to trade at a little bit of a
discount to their net asset value, and so that's been
a historical attribute of closed end funds. We have actually
an ETF that tries to capitalize on that anomaly. A
CCEEF is an ETF that holds other closed end funds
that are trading at discounts that we think have appreciation potential,

(01:17:47):
So that pays about an eight percent monthly distribution but
then also has capital appreciation potential. That's been in the
market for about a year, and I think it's the
top performing ETF of closed in funds right now.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
Well, Matt, it's always easy to do it when you're
in it for a year because you don't have as
much money in there. You know that.

Speaker 5 (01:18:05):
Well, to be fair, you know that, Matt, Matt, you
have this as a separately managed account for five years
before that.

Speaker 7 (01:18:12):
Right, I'll let you do my bidding for me. You're
you were absolutely right.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
Hey, Obviously we always were pretty straightforward with everybody. We
always wanted to be transparent with people. Guys, there's always
risk in everything you do. We tell you that from
the beginning of the show. We tell you all the things,
but there's understanding the risk and where it's at. I mean,
the thing is is when you're dealing like with the

(01:18:40):
first product we're talking about, where there's options, where you
got put options and you're selling the stuff, you have
a cap what would cause that to blow up? You know,
like no one thought anyone would go out of business? Okay, well,
well and will come but they did. What would cause
that to blow up?

Speaker 7 (01:19:00):
The things that could cause you know, a closed in
funds to blow up, I would say, are large systemic issues.
You know, maybe there's a corporate default way that hits
investment grade corporate bonds. So it's it's the things that
you would think about that would impact corporate you know,
corporations in general. And so if if their corporate bonds

(01:19:22):
went bad, or if their convertibles went bad, that would
be a disruption event. Credit market freeze, really sharp interest
rates spikes.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
You know, we saw that, but that's temporary. That's temporary.
I've seen that temporary, right right, You guys do a
great job. I don't even know how you have all
of a hundred something type of bonds companies that are
in there convertibles and the others which reduced risk, you know,
the good I.

Speaker 7 (01:19:50):
Think that's yeah. I think that's what I was saying.
Those are. It has to be a broad systemic, uh
you know problem that that we have a lot of
other problems other than you know, c h Y at
that point.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
It has to be like an eight Well even in
eight it dropped the five six bucks and the next
year was back to twelve bucks.

Speaker 5 (01:20:06):
Or so because they fixed the stiff and everyone out, well,
that's what we're in.

Speaker 7 (01:20:09):
It, right, And if you're tied to convertibles, then that's
a scenario where you're going to start looking like the
performance of the bond. So all of your equity exposure
is gone. Do you move down the curve and now
you're tied to the bond right exactly?

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
And I remember buying the low price and was fifteen
sixteen percent, and they said, you know what, the only
if these things go to zero, it's because they haven't
fixed our country and nothing's going to matter anyway, you know,
because that's.

Speaker 7 (01:20:38):
Why we yeah. I mean that's why you have financial
advisors to help you take a long term perspective and
take advantages of fire sales like that. There's a phenomenal
opportunity and.

Speaker 1 (01:20:48):
It's happened so much. I mean there was a lot
of them. I remember Ford convertible too, they got Dot
door a dollar fis.

Speaker 5 (01:20:55):
So, Matt, where do you see the future of these
structured investments heading and where we see more innovation with Calamos,
anything different or what do you see on the horizons.

Speaker 7 (01:21:04):
Yeah, absolutely, you're going to see a lot more from us.
One of the we talked about convertibles and structures. One
of my favorite ETFs that we've been seasoning a track
record in is can QCA and Q that has a
ninety percent bond floor and then we spend ten percent
and buy options on the NASTAC one hundred index and

(01:21:25):
so that has performed very well over the last year
as well. So there's going to be a lot more innovation.
If you look around the world, a lot of families
invest their money in a structured way, largely because they
go through the banks to do it, and the banks
in turn sell them structured products and insurance products kind
of like we talked about at the beginning, in the
United States, people use financial advisors, and those advisors largely

(01:21:48):
didn't have these types of tools available to them over
the last several years, especially in the RAA segment, and
so for RaaS that want to do you know, right
by their customers charge a fee for their services. They
don't want to use expensive products to the lock up
periods and high fees. And so we're seeing a massive
turn to structured ETFs for those types of investments. And

(01:22:10):
we're just getting started there. We've just scratched the surface.
I think it's going to be I don't say this lightly,
but I think it's going to be a trillion dollar
industry over the next ten to fifteen years.

Speaker 1 (01:22:20):
And you know what's going to cause it then starting
to look more and more into the annuities, and it's
going to be harder and harder for people to sell
those and and especially with the costs, and people are
going to look elsewhere. And if more people become rias
registered investment advisors on feed based business, they're gonna look
at this and know, why am I even screwing with
that other stuff? You know? And then and it's gonna

(01:22:42):
be good. I mean, I like innovation, I do, and
I and I and I've always liked your company. Uh,
and I think that you've done a great job in
coming out with products that are good for for clients.
And uh, you know, I appreciate you coming on and
uh being part of this and you know, and letting
everybody know a little bit how this all works. I

(01:23:03):
got one last question. Okay, options. If anyone's familiar with options,
you obviously are just using the listed options that you
find on the on the screen when you pull it up,
and that's you you going, and you're getting these created
for you rights.

Speaker 7 (01:23:22):
Yeah. So we use what are called flex options, and
it's just a fancy term for customized exchange listed options.
So we can customize the strike prices, the underlying reference
assets that we've talked about, S and P, Russell, NASAC, Bitcoin,
we can we can identify all of that and it's

(01:23:42):
a little bit in the weeds, but the this is
a big point. We make sure that these options are
European style so that you cannot get called away. The
other style is American style. It has nothing to do
with their country of origin. It's just the term that
they use American style options can get called away. And
if you were to try to do this yourself, you
can only use American style options if you use spy

(01:24:04):
or cues. So we can use spy and ques options
that are European style through the flex markets. Those all
get shopped out to market makers. They give us their
best pricing on those options. Whoever wins the auction gets
that cap rate that sets the course for those options
over the next year, and then they do trade on
CBO and they're centrally cleared by the Options Clearing Corporation.

(01:24:27):
There's no backing of a bank or an insurance company,
there's no counterparty credit risk, and so there's a tremendous
amount of liquidity and safety here in the products that
we've built, right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
And that's important because you know, I mean, not a
lot of people understand the difference between America and European.
I love the European ones because you don't have to
worry about coming in one day and they called you
or put you the stock before exploration. Obviously I need
to and you know, and again I just want to
emphasize to people that it is absolutely imperative to understand

(01:25:02):
that options can be very speculative if that's what you're
using for. But options can do so much to mitigate risk,
to to to put portfolios together by going ahead and
giving you growth and opportunities without having a sea go
to zero. It's the only way to do it. And

(01:25:22):
I and I get it. A lot of people don't
understand it. I don't expect my my my clients to
understand it as much, but advisors should understand this. And
most don't understand that this or this product, and I
think they're missing out because it's not at all just
pure vanilla out there. There's ways to mitigate risk. And
everyone that's listened to us for the last five ten

(01:25:43):
years understands we're always about mitigating risk. Markets go up,
but don't forget sometimes they come down, and when they
come down, you want to be in a position that
your portfolio, the whole thing, isn't participating on the downside. So, Matt,
I want to thank you very much for being part
of this. I hope we can UH talking to maybe

(01:26:04):
coming out with one of our big workshops that we do.
Then we have over one hundred and somewhat people show
up and UH and we'll put you up and play
some golf with you.

Speaker 7 (01:26:13):
Oh, it'd be my pleasure. Anything to get out of
Chicago winter or I'm in.

Speaker 1 (01:26:17):
All right, last question, thanks? Did you have a bob mitzvah?
Did you have a bar Mitzvah?

Speaker 7 (01:26:24):
I know I did not.

Speaker 1 (01:26:27):
Everybody I know in Chicago that worked out in exchange
with Jewish and had bar mitzvash.

Speaker 7 (01:26:33):
We're from We're from a little little Bible pocket up Wheat,
and so we were.

Speaker 4 (01:26:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:26:38):
I appreciate the Old Testament, but we didn't do apartments.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
But there you go, buddy, you have it. You have
a great day. Thank you for being part of our show,
and uh we'll speak to you soon.

Speaker 7 (01:26:47):
All right, figure, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
Hello and welcome to Money Matters. I'm Sarah Peterson here
with Dean Greenberg, president of Greenberg Financial Group.

Speaker 4 (01:26:56):
Dean, who are you?

Speaker 3 (01:26:57):
I'm good. How are you doing today?

Speaker 4 (01:26:58):
Great? I'm here with you. You always have so much
again and again begun.

Speaker 3 (01:27:02):
You know. I just want everyone to know I specifically
always want you as my host. I do.

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
We have this nice, cool New York type of chemistry together.
We were both intelligent. We could talk on a level
that's great, and I think you help make this show
really really what good?

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):
So thank you that mean my day. Thank you so much. Well,
I learned so much from you, and I'm sure all
the viewers do. This is an unprecedented time. We are
being fed so much information, so much of it is misinformation.

Speaker 4 (01:27:30):
It is Google era.

Speaker 2 (01:27:31):
I mean, everybody's got the social media, the Google, this,
the news, the news outlets are all saying different things.
How do we make sense of it all?

Speaker 1 (01:27:39):
It's so difficult, okay, because there's no truth, you know
what I mean. I can't believe the last well, let's
just go the last fifteen almost twenty years. Every time
somebody gets in, whether it's Republican that the other side
completely just becomes like an on a bomb to them.

Speaker 3 (01:27:58):
They just want to blow them up. There is no
more cohesive. This. I don't know it's goods of social media.
I don't know what it is.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
But I remember in the sixties and the seventies and
the eighties, good, better and different people were still trying
to be together and wanted the country to do well.
And somehow after Clinton, you know, and then after Bush
did what he did, you know, after the went in,
everything's falling apart. It's like no one wants to sign.
It's just like they it's like they the brainless, okay,

(01:28:26):
the brainless, and they don't see what is good at bad.
I would have so much more respect for politicians if
they actually stood up and had common sense of why
they vote one way or the other. But it's so
hard because we just went through four years of just
obvious lives to us that he's okay, the computer, the laptop,

(01:28:47):
all that stuff. I don't want to go into details.
So now we get into this and it's the same
stuff against Trump again, making up stuff. Now. Don't get
me wrong, I don't think they tell the truth either
all the time either. Okay, but they're trying to be transparent.
The problem is if you're always transparent, they're going to
find something that they're going to try to nail you on.
But I rather than try to do that than us

(01:29:08):
never knowing what's going on, who's running the country.

Speaker 3 (01:29:10):
What's happening.

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):
And I've always keep talking about we need change, we
need it, we need to get a debt down. That's
how I vote. Everyone says, how did you vote for Trump?
I said, it's because I'm looking for the economy, all right,
I'm not saying the Democrats don't make the stock market
do better, but they don't want to attack the problem,
which is social security, Medicare, and our debt. They didn't
want to try and do the border. Those are the

(01:29:33):
things for safety that made me look the other way
because I wasn't for him. I wasn't again, like when
he was starting out, I did not go for Trump.
But as I watch what happened and how I watched
what he wanted to do, and now he's doing it,
I'm okay with that. And that's going to help our country.
We have to get our debt down. We have to

(01:29:53):
and and what goes up and down, you got the terrorists,
You got this. Nobody knows. So when they tell you
what's going to happen, it's to scare you. When they
tell you you're going to lose such security. You're not
losing social security. But give me the plan to get
all social security in twenty five to thirty years. Tell
me how we're going to do it. I have a plan.

Speaker 3 (01:30:09):
I think I can get it done with the right people.

Speaker 1 (01:30:12):
Of course I can't just put it out there, but
with the actuaries and the Congress and stuff behind it,
you put a plan together, it's twenty five thirty year plan,
and then you never have to worry about giving away
money again. People whore investing in themselves and doing great.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
You know, it is crazy because as we get older,
you know, the people who are in the most tenuous
time right now right are sort of in that retirement
space where they're wondering, Okay, you know what, I need
some more stability. I don't want to take big risks
right now.

Speaker 4 (01:30:36):
And this does seem like a risky time.

Speaker 3 (01:30:38):
It just does, because it's always a risky time. You
heard the old adage, stocks climb a wall of worry.

Speaker 1 (01:30:47):
Okay, they do. They always do at the end of
the day, after the forty years of investing and managing
money now combine out with the financial plans we do.

Speaker 3 (01:30:57):
What we're really doing is taking stress away from clients.

Speaker 1 (01:31:00):
We're putting a plan together, finding out what they need
and what they want don't need, and then we actually
manage the money ourselves, pushing the buttons according to what
they want. I do not respect people in our business
that just go ahead and tell you what to do.
I respect the people that every day they got a
measuring stick on how they did by what.

Speaker 3 (01:31:20):
You buy, on what you sell, how you allocate, and
how you don't.

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):
So how do you as your financial risk tolerance you know,
wanes as you get older, how do you mitigate the risk?

Speaker 4 (01:31:34):
How do you plan for it?

Speaker 2 (01:31:35):
What if you're a person who doesn't even know how
much risk you're taking or doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:31:38):
Want to figure it out. We have a system.

Speaker 1 (01:31:41):
We have a numbering system that kind of goes through
all the stocks and say from the like a one
to one hundred, right, and then your portfolio comes out
if it comes out as a sixty, if you imagine
like a speed limit fifty being in the middle, if
you go in sixty ad just above above that little
growth mostly conservative safety. If you're an eighty or ninety,
you're driving that Ferrari. You know, if you if you're

(01:32:02):
down in that ten range, you better be in CDs.
We'd like to get people, you know, even if they're
at thirty that's okay, thirty percent, seventy percent kind of
more safe, but we like it around forty to seventy
percent depending. Now, just because you're old doesn't mean you
can't take risk. What if you don't use the money,
What if your whole life. You've been able to make
the moneys in the Apples and the Microsoft, and you're

(01:32:24):
okay with the volatility. And this money is going to
your family or going to a charity, and you want
to see it. Make it as much as possible, and
it doesn't matter up and down. Use one quality so
you don't wake up one day it is gone. Right,
that's a whole different person. They could be sixty five,
seventy years old. That's fine, eighty years old. But if
someone needs every penny they have to live off of,
then you have to design that portfolio that meets their needs.

Speaker 2 (01:32:47):
That is really what is about, though, is that the
plan is so customized for the individual and their needs.
Because mine is going to be very different than than
somebody else's. Even say it's just different needs, different stages.

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
The designed the percentage is the risk tolerance will be different.
What's not different is you have ten percent and growth
say somebody has twenty, We go in and we buy
I don't un let's just say navidia. Right. So you
might get ten chaffs, somebody else might get one hundred
chaff somebody else might get five hundred chairs. But you
all go to have na Vidia. If it's a buy

(01:33:18):
and you have money in your growth bucket, that's the same.
What's not the same is the percentages. Now, if you
fill up your growth bucket faster than someone else, then
you can't buy anything new unless we sold something at
some time.

Speaker 2 (01:33:30):
If this is something that somebody has never been visited.
So if there're sixty five years old and they're thinking
about retirement soon, you know they're kind of really close
to that agent and nobody has discussed this with them.
It's not too late to create that plan. If they
call you, they can still figure out if they're on
the right track or not.

Speaker 3 (01:33:44):
It's never too late, never too late.

Speaker 1 (01:33:46):
They better get to the phone right now, and they
better take down the phone number, and they better call us,
and they better set something up and not be scared.
It is a great experience, the one thing I have found.
Because you know, you own your own company, you wanted
to keep growing, but you still want to have a life,
travel and do stuff. You need to bring in people
that are good people. And I always will talk to

(01:34:06):
clients afterwards, what did you think? Because I was concerned
that about five years ago I changed my whole way
of doing stuff. We went to a whole team approach,
and the team approach was I need good players. I've
been a coach for twenty five years. The one thing
I've been successful at is bringing teams along, putting the
players in the right place, and winning conferences in championships.

(01:34:28):
I know how to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:34:29):
So he decided, instead of.

Speaker 1 (01:34:31):
Selling my company, that's what I was going to do
to my company, bringing young players that will be able
to take this company to a whole double level with
my mentoring, my ownership, and then they bring it along
and then down the road they can have it hopefully
a long time from that.

Speaker 3 (01:34:46):
But here's the deal.

Speaker 1 (01:34:47):
I ask people all the time because I'm concerned, could
they relate to them? They come into my room confidentially
and they say, Dan, I walked in. See they were young.

Speaker 3 (01:34:56):
I was shocked. I was shocked on how smart they are.

Speaker 1 (01:35:00):
I was shocked how they would talk to us that
was sixty seventy years old. I was shocked that they
answered every one of our questions. People that are two
three times their age don't ever answer any of our questions.
They knew answers, they knew stuff. How did they get
so spot so quick? I say, because I throw them
into the fire. They go on the radio show, they
go on the TV show with me, they learn. If

(01:35:21):
they can't make it, they go work for somebody else.
But when they make it, our company becomes strong.

Speaker 4 (01:35:27):
I want to hold that thought.

Speaker 2 (01:35:28):
I want to come back and talk more about your
team approach because I think it's what makes you so unique.
But we'll take a quick commercial break and be right
back with you.

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