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January 30, 2025 38 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Tonight, does the FED have your back? Why some Americans
say they haven't felt any impact yet from interest rate cuts,
Plus how one investment giant says you can save an
additional three hundred thousand dollars for retirement. You're listening to
simply money presented by all Worth Financial. I mean you Wagner,
along with Bob Spawnseller. No news was I don't know,

(00:28):
initially good news. We thought yesterday this was the Federal Reserve,
our nation central bank choosing not to lower interest rates.
It came as no surprise. I mean, when you look
at expectations of all these economists and muckety MUCKs that
are paid the big bucks to make predictions about these things,
they were one hundred percent in agreement that nothing was

(00:49):
going to happen, Which means that the actual announcement is
never very interesting, but the commentary afterwards that follows is
always a lot more worth at least paying closer attention to.
And then when you put on top of that a
new administration that has a bit of a history with
the FED and social media, it ends up being a

(01:11):
recipe for a pretty interesting day. How's that for down
playing stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
That's great?

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, so I mean, when we talked about this yesterday,
this was probably the least surprising FED announcement that.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
We absolutely yawn.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just going to quote Chairman Powell,
which is kind of what we all expected he would say,
and he said it, and I think he was very
responsible in saying the following. The Committee is very much
in the mode of waiting to see what policies are enacted,
and I think that's pretty much spot on. I mean,
I think we all need to remember here that we've

(01:49):
had a new president for ten days, yeah, ten days,
and it takes a while to enact any policies. And
this is a big global me you know that it's
not going to turn on a dime. And so I
think everybody needs to just take a deep breath here,
and I including the President a little bit, you know.

(02:13):
So he likes to, you know, go on social media,
and he said something like the FED has failed us
again in not lowering interest rates and not lowering the
inflation that they caused. And you know, I we talk
about this amy the FED is an independent body that

(02:34):
is non political, and it's usually not a good idea
when politicians of either party, uh, go on the media
or social media or whatever and try to influence the
FED in public because that just scares people. It doesn't
do anything. And uh, you know, that's a little bit

(02:55):
of what went on yesterday, a whole lot of whole
lot of talk and whatever.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Have you ever seen the show Dirty Jobs with Mike Yeah? Whatever?
You know, the concept is like yes, micro he finds.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
Like, yes, gee whiz, did you know this was a
job and behind the scenes makes your life so much easier,
But like to actually do it, this is what's entailed.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
I would put on the very top of the dirty
jobs list being the chair of the Federal Reserve. Like,
there is not enough money on the face of the
planet for Amy Wagner to take this job on. This
is a toughie. So understanding how our nation central bank
is set up, they have two rules, two rules. Two

(03:42):
major things are supposed to focus on. Right, let's keep
inflation and check and let's keep people working. And and
sometimes those things move hand in hand, and sometimes they
have to take focus off of one to look at
the other at the same time. Also, the way that
the FED was set up was to be an independent
body outside of the rest of our political system, which

(04:03):
is laughable. It's laughable. Nothing, nothing that goes on is
really outside of our political system. And listen, it's not
just President Trump here. I mean this is going back historically,
president after president after president. While they're not supposed to
have any influence over the FED, they also know when
the economy is going well right, things are churning, gears

(04:27):
or clicking, the president gets the credit. When the economy
is in the tank, the president takes that one in
the chin, regardless of how much responsibility they actually have
for it. So they do want to on his.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Watch or on her watch. I think it's one of
the most idiotic terms and most misleading things we've ever seen.
And in terms of dealing with the FED, you know,
going back historically, some presidents pass notes to the Federal
Reserve chairman, like we used to do to the girl
we wanted to kiss on the playground in fourth grade.
You know, you pass a note, nobody sees it. Yeah,

(05:01):
other people put tweets out on truth social you know,
they all try to influence. So let's get back to
what is really going on here. To your point, Amy,
and that's the point we need to stick with. It's
a balancing act between they're managing unemployment and inflation. So
let's talk about a couple numbers here. GDP fourth quarter

(05:23):
GDP numbers came out this morning and they were pretty
much in line with expectations, but just slightly lower two
point three percent growth for the fourth quarter. Most economists
had been expecting two point five percent growth for the
fourth quarter. Not a big deal. Initial unemployments claims were

(05:44):
slightly below forecast, meaning fewer people went on unemployment claims.
So back to the Fed. You're sitting there, Chairman Palell
and crew or sitting there saying, all right, economic growth
was slightly lower than expected. Employment is slightly better than expected.
And you talked about on yesterday's show, Amy, the employment

(06:07):
numbers were adjusted significantly upward in December, So I completely
understand why they draw the conclusion, we don't know what
tariffs are coming, we don't know what regulation policies are coming.
We're going to do nothing and just let this thing
settle out for a while. And that's exactly what we did,
or what they did, and I think that's where we

(06:28):
need to just everybody calm down a little bit.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
You're listening to simply money presented by all Worth financial
I mean, you Wagner, along with Bob spons the Federal
Reserve made a decision yesterday not to lower interest rates.
Nobody was surprised by that, but in the comments they
came out afterwards from both the FED chair and our president,
things got pretty interesting, you know, And I think you
know you throughout the term on our watch, right, And

(06:54):
that's a toughie because the Oval Office either kids too
much blame or too much credit for what goes on
in the economy. I mean the economy when you look
at it, it's the backs of the American people. How
confident do we feel about spending? That's three quarters of
the American economy? And you know, fundamentally it's sound right now.
I always go back to this point, but I would

(07:15):
not want this job because while the Fed, yes is
supposed to be looking at data and kind of keeping
their head down and not looking at what's going on
in the political atmosphere, they cannot turn a blind eye
to it because they're supposed to keep inflation in check.
And you know, President Trump, some of the promises he

(07:37):
made on the campaign trail would potentially be inflationary. So
you know, they have taken criticism in the past for
being too late to move, but they cannot. You know,
if you go back historically, they've also been taking criticism
from moving to it's it's your darn if you do,
you darned if you don't in this position, and it's
a really tough tough place to be in. I do

(08:00):
think it makes sense to take a wait and see approach.
We know that President Trump is a brilliant negotiator, and
we don't know how much of what he's saying on
the campaign trail is actually a negotiation track tactic to
get people to come to the table a little bit differently,
and how much of it he actually means and is
going to put into policy. And I think you've got

(08:22):
a wait to see how those kinds of things play
out before you're making major decisions that could impact the
everyday lives of Americans.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
Yeah, we talk about it all the time. Control what
you could control. And I'll just say this and then
we can get off the politics for today. But you know,
President Trump wants to get in there running and make
stuff happen. And I think we all need to be
reminded that you cannot move this behemoth called the global

(08:54):
economy in ten days.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
It's like turning around the Titanic going to die. Can't
do it?

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah, And I think the people that voted hit him
into office. It's like, hey, I want the price of
eggs down yesterday. I want two dollars gasoline. I want
four percent mortgage rates. I want criminal you know, migrants
to port it. I want it all to happen yesterday.
And if you don't do it, I'm going to be upset.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
And you know, having the ego that he has, he's
going to get on there and make you feel like
he can make all this happen in a month. And
it's not. You know, some of this stuff's going to
get done. I think some of it's going to be
really good. But you know, we got to tamp down
the rhetoric a little bit on both sides of the
aisle here and just take a deep breath.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
The interesting thing is, as the FED has kind of
been on this odyssey, this path, this journey to bring
inflation down over the past couple of years, right, we
were up to close to night well nine percent when
their goal is two percent. Many Americans are saying, listen,
like I get that they've been trying to do this,
But there's research out there that I was at six

(10:00):
and ten people said interest rates are still too high
in you know, I think President Trump has always tried
to be the voice of the American people. So when
that's kind of what the popular opinion is, he's certainly
going to share that, you know. I think what we
have to remember, though, is that the FED and making
decisions based on data. Once they decide to raise interest rates,

(10:25):
to cut interest rates to stay where they are, the
impact of that is very slow hitting the economy. And
then from how it impacts the economy to trickling down
to you and me and everyone else on Wall Street
also takes so much time. The lag time in this

(10:45):
is excruciatingly long. I am an impatient person, so I
get this right, we all are. Yeah, And we came
out of this weird period of time where during the pandemic,
price is shot up so fast that it was like whiplash.
What we have to remember about inflation is we're never
going to see pre pandemic prices before. We're just trying
to slow down, slow it down now for how much

(11:07):
it's going to go up between this year and next year.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Yeah, and the Fed is not the body that injected
trillions of dollars of printed money into this economy during COVID.
That was Congress and that was the president that did that.
They're the ones that authorize spending in the printing of money,
not the Federal Reserve. So I just find it all
kind of comical at a certain point, and.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
I think that's the way that you have to look
at it. You've got to control what you can control.
That's the best you can do. Here's the all Worth advice.
Focus on that. Right you're spending, you're saving your investment strategy.
You cannot possibly influence how the Federal Reserve is going
to move in the future when it comes to interest rates.
Coming up next, if you want to save an additional
you know, three hundred thousand dollars, it might be able

(11:53):
to happen in your floural one k we'll tell you
about that next. You're listening to Simply Money presented by
all Worth Financial here on fifth five KRC, the talk station.
You're listening to Simply Money present of my all Worth
Financial I Meani Wagner along with Samon Seller. If you
can't listen to our show every night, you don't have
to miss the thing we talk about because we make
it really easy for you. We've got a daily podcast,

(12:16):
just search Simply Money. It's on the iHeart app or
wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up at six forty three,
a deep dive into a fantastic tax efficiency strategy for
you will tell you what that is. Well, how does
this sound? You know, just saving an extra three hundred
thousand dollars in your four oh one k I think
most of us would raise our hands and say, yep,

(12:36):
sign me up for that. How are we missing the boat?
How are we missing the opportunity to do this? Well,
there's some interesting new research out from Vanguard pointing to
how a lot of us could be missing this boat.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, and I find these studies very interesting, and I
think very highly of Vanguard. They do a great job.
They came out with some research recently that said every
time a worker changes jobs, their contribution rate a lot
of times gets set lower automatically by their new plan sponsor,
causing them to lose ground in their retirement savings. The

(13:11):
Vanguard study also found that US workers average nine job
changes in a career.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Nine I had heard twelve before. I think nine to
twelve makes a lot of sense when you think about
how often people jump around these days.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
They say each time somebody changes jobs, they usually get
about a ten percent increase in pay. Wouldn't that be nice? Yeah,
but a zero point seven percent decline in their average
retirement savings rate. And the reason that that's happening is
a lot of four to one K plans now have
these auto enrollment features, and the default is they just

(13:49):
auto enroll everybody at three percent, and if somebody's not
paying attention and they change jobs and they were saving
at six, seven, eight percent or just worth saving six
at six percent to get the fifty percent company match
that's usually out there. If you get automatically set to
three and then it gets set and forgotten about, that's

(14:13):
where you don't know what's happening until after the fact
and can fall behind in your retirement savings.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
This research makes me want to pull out my hair.
If you are switching a job and you are getting
another ten percent, right, a ten percent salary increase, that
is a game changer. That is a life changer, right,
I mean, there is so much you can do with
that money. So to then turn a blind eye to oh, well,
I was contributing three percent in my last job, and

(14:41):
now I'm gonna just auto enroll at the lowest amounts
and not pay attention to my four win K. If
you're listening to the show right now, I'm not worried
about you. You're probably very in tune with what percentage
of your income is going into your four wing K.
Are your loved ones as aware of it as you do?
Your children have any idea? Does your spouse, do the

(15:03):
people that you care have this conversation with them. It
is a shame that people are able to make decisions
where their pay is going to go up like this,
yet it's going to set them back for retirement. I
know I sound like I am on a shopbox right now.
It is because I am.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
I love it. And you know what you just did
is in a very diplomatic way, say to people, Hey,
this is your responsibility. Yeah, get your you know what
together and figure out what's going on with your four
to one K. So just you know a couple of
things that Vanguard is talking about, and this is what
makes this. I don't have any hair left, so I

(15:42):
don't have any to pull out. But they're talking about
things like putting the onus on the new company HR
department to ask you, hey, what were you saving in
your old plan. Let's make sure we match it with
the new plan. They're even talking about going to Congress
to mandates of these things. So, getting on my soapbox

(16:03):
for a minute, I am not a big brother have
somebody come in and make things because going back again
to my days where I would stand in front of
actual actual retirement plan participants, if somebody came along quote
unquote trying to help and automatically enrolled somebody at six

(16:25):
seven eight percent of their pay and this is a
single mother or a divorced father with custody of their
kids and their living paycheck to paycheck, and unbeknownst to them,
their paycheck just goes down by three hundred dollars a
month and they can't afford to buy groceries that month.
That that's a gut punch that people are upset about.

(16:47):
So I am not in favor of this congressional big
brother HR running your life kind of thing. I'm in
your camp, Amy, It's this is all just a big
reminder to pay attention to what's going on in for
what most people is the largest retirement asset, they have

(17:08):
their company retirement plan. You've got to pay attention to it,
especially if all these entities are now talking about monkeying
around with it behind your back.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, I mean, I like this research because I do
think it's eye opening. Please, if you're switching jobs, pay
attention to how much you're putting in. But listen, we're
talking about three four percent in this research. If you
want to retire and retire well, it has to be
ten percent, fifteen percent, depending on what your spending looks like,

(17:40):
how much you've already saved during the pandemic when six
of us were struck under the same roof. We've played
a lot of card games, and there's this card game
that we played all the time called Kings in the Corner.
And one of our kids, Eden was inevitably right after me.
So I would play my cards and then Eden would
be up and she would sit there and she would say,
don't be stupid, stupid, and she would play all these

(18:02):
things that I missed, like all these moves that I
missed on the table, and I would always be like, oh,
I can't believe I missed that. This is your retirement.
Are you missing things. I didn't blame anybody else at
the table. If I missed it, it was on me.
And we don't have pensions anymore, guys like it is
on us. I think this research is great research to

(18:23):
talk about, but pointing the fingers at what Congress should
be doing, what your plan administrator should be doing. Should
they ask you how much you were putting into the
four oh and K and your job before and then
make sure that you're put No. I really think it
should be on you.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
So this is Amy's message to the masses today. Don't
don't be stupid.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Don't be stupid.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
I know it's It's Eden's message to me when we
play cards, and my message to everyone else. Know your
four one K plan. Know how much you're putting it in.
If you are getting the bonus of making five, six, seven,
ten percent more by switching jobs, take advantage of it
not only for your current self, meaning by the nicer car,
the nicer house, the nicer vacation, but for your future self,

(19:10):
so that so that retirement is everything you always hoped
and dreamed it would be right. That makes a lot
of sense to me. Here's the all Worth advice for now. Listen.
It is on you be diligent when it comes to
your four oh one K. Know what's going into that,
because for most of us, this is the largest vehicle
for your retirement dollars. What's a come down to? Don't
be stupid, don't be stupid. Don't be stupid. Coming up

(19:33):
next house, scammers are using AI to take advantage of investors.
You're listening to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial
here on fifty five KRC the talk station. You're listening
to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial. Immi Wagner
along with Steve Ruby. I don't know about you. You
can mess with a lot of things. Don't you mess

(19:53):
with my four oh one k. Turns out though, scammers
are targeting exactly that, right, your investments, and they're using
now artificial intelligence to do that. So tonight joining us
with the warning what you need to know is, of course,
our tech expert Dave Hatter from Interest I T I
mean seriously, Dave, nothing nothing is ever sacred these days.

(20:15):
Scammers are coming after everything, and the problem I think
with artificial intelligence is scammers are out ahead of everyone else.

Speaker 5 (20:23):
Well, Amy, as always, thanks for having me on and
in your honor, I am wearing my make or Well
fiction again shirt for today. Sure to bed you can't
see it, but yeah, you're right. They are out ahead,
and I think to a large extent, it's because they
understand that the general public is not as familiar with
all this technology, and you know, they're able to leverage

(20:44):
this stuff to very rapidly scam people. You know, my
biggest concern about artificial intelligence, and I keep saying this
everywhere I talk about it in the short run is
not it's going to take everyone's jobs or the terminators
are going to be running down the streets wiping this
all out. It's the ability to use these tools to
spoof folks, create extremely realistic content, including things like deep

(21:08):
fake voice cloning, deep fake videos you know, aka synthetic media,
and use it to fool people into thinking things are
real that aren't. And you know, we just it just
keeps happening over and over and over again.

Speaker 6 (21:20):
Whenever you're on I get nervous. These these topics are
too they really are. And you know, I always gott
to ask you, what can we do to protect ourselves?

Speaker 3 (21:30):
What should we be looking out for?

Speaker 5 (21:32):
Well, they are scary Steve, because again a lot of
the hyperbole that's out there, we're not going to be
wiped out by this stuff anytime soon. I mean, just
go try chat ept and I mean it'll tell you
that it.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
Makes stuff up.

Speaker 5 (21:42):
I mean, there's a lot of these tools have an
amazing amount of potential, and I do think they will
have a, you know, a major impact on society over time.
But this scam thing is immediate. It's an immediate threat
in front of us all right now. And whether it's
you know, deep fake attacks on an election or more
specifically in this case, using these technologies to steal people's money,

(22:04):
it's happening every day. I mean, you don't have to
go very far to find examples right now where people
are getting phone calls where the voices have been cloned.
You know, the grandparents scam. Hey it's your granddaughter, I'm
in jail, send me money. This you know, it's been
reported by law enforcement. This is a real thing that's
happening right now, and the best way to protect yourself, Steve,
at the moment is to understand this is a real thing.

(22:27):
This is not something out of science fiction. This is
not something that might happen five years from now. It
is entirely possible, as we speak, with no previous experience
and at no expense, to go online and find tools
that will allow you to clone someone's voice. And the
usual question I get is, well, how I would to
get my voice? I'm not a celebrity. Do you have voicemail?
This is a question for your listeners. Do you have

(22:48):
voicemail with your voice on it?

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Why?

Speaker 5 (22:50):
I can call your phone number and I am now you.
Once I record your voice and I uploaded to one
of these tools and train a model, I can type
in anything I want to say and it will sound
either exactly like you or so much like you. That,
especially in a scenario where you're already caught off guard
and something is you know, stressful, urgent quote unquote, people

(23:12):
are going to be highly likely to believe it's you.
I'm telling you this is a real thing right now.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
You know, I think with artificial intelligence, there's so many
people that are trying to figure out, you know, how
do I use this to my advantage? Right that's artificial intelligence,
And there's people that are, you know, asking it which
stocks to invest in, and also just thinking from the
standpoint of you look at companies like Navidia right, and
their stock has been through the roof lately, largely in
part to what they do, you know, how they contribute
to artificial intelligence. So I think the concern here is

(23:40):
that for those that kind of go out there and
how do I capitalize on artificial intelligence and make money
off of it? Scammers know you're going to be looking
for those ways, and they're also creating false things that
aren't even true, and I think there's a lot of
people that can easily stumble into those traps.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yeah, I think you're exactly right.

Speaker 5 (23:58):
Aman, going back to Steve's point to awareness or question
awareness is key, and then maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism,
which is so important for any cybersecurity related topic.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
You know, it's it's.

Speaker 5 (24:10):
Unbelievably easy and requires almost zero technical skill to spoof
a phone number, to spoof a text, to spoof an email,
to spoof an entire website. Now you couple that with
these AI technologies that can, you know, make it much
much easier to spoof things, make them much more realistic
in less time and less cost for the bad guys
to do, and frankly, improve the quality drastically you know,

(24:34):
whether it's a here's a video of a CEO who
claims to have some sort of great investment tactic. I
mean that video could be created with an AI tool.
It might not even be a real person, or it
might be a real person who has been spoofed using
these tools in order to leverage someone's supposed credibility. I
mean there have been, you know, all the spoofs of
Putin or deep fakes rather of Putin, of Zelensky, of

(24:57):
Elon Musk, and these things just keep getting better and better.
So it's it's awareness that this is the thing. It's skepticism.
And then you know, as always, if it seems too
good to be true, if they claim to double triple
whatever your investment with some sort of AI something or other,
I would be highly dubious and highly skeptical. And remember
if you say, well I want to see these returns,

(25:17):
anything they produce could be completely completely spoofed. So yeah,
again going back to what Steve said, this stuff is scary,
and you have to do your homework, You have to
do your due diligence, and you just have to be
unbelievably skeptical and move carefully if you want to try
to leverage this because there are ways right now to
make money off AI, and you touched on some abe
you invest in companies that are building this stuff, invest

(25:40):
in companies that are making the hardware that power this stuff.
But if you're going to try to do some get
rich quick scheme from something you found on Amazon or
YouTube or Rumble or something, because they're using AI, I
would say you have a better than ninety percent chance
of losing your money.

Speaker 6 (25:55):
So a former four oh one K custodian where I
had a four one came from a previous role in
my career. They had a voice technology where we could
record our voice so that when we called in, we
automatically came in as a verified and you know, the
people on the other end just started talking to us.

(26:16):
What are companies able to do to stay ahead of
scammers utilizing AI for something like that.

Speaker 5 (26:21):
Well, I'm glad you brought that up, Steve, because I
wouldn't have thought of it otherwise. But I read an
article recently. I think it wasn't wired, but I don't
have it in front of me, so it might not
be wired where the writer basically said, hey, I use
a bank that has a voice verification system and I
want to see if I can spoof it using voice
cleaning technology, and he did, so I think this is

(26:43):
a major problem for banks right now or any sort
of organization that has using any sort of voice technology
to verify your identity. I think you can just throw
that away because you know, if you don't know what
you're doing and use some free tool, are you going
to be able to clean my voice perfectly?

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Maybe not. But if you know now what you're doing.

Speaker 5 (27:00):
And you have access to the right tools that are
willing to take the time to training, can you get
to a place And again, this is an actual article
in a well known magazine where the guy said here's
how I did it. Yes, you can easily fool those
kind of systems, and trust me, as you guys already.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Know, this technology is only going to get better.

Speaker 5 (27:17):
Maybe you can't spoof my voice perfectly today, but I
guarantee you five years from now, you'll have no problem
having access to technology that will sound exactly like me
or you.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
So yeah, that's a major problem.

Speaker 6 (27:29):
So the takeaway there is if you're utilizing voice print
technology at any other financial institution, maybe don't.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
If I think you're making an important point, Steve.

Speaker 5 (27:40):
If it were me, I would ask my bank or
whatever four one K third party Minister River, I would
ask them to disable that capability on my account and
not make that a way to verify my identity, because
I don't believe at this point there's any common access
to the general public to tools that would be able

(28:00):
to spoof your voice real time. In other words, like
you know you are really talking to me right now,
two three years from now, I'm not sure you'll know
if you're really s.

Speaker 6 (28:09):
All right, David, this is actually chat GPT with your.

Speaker 5 (28:11):
Yeah, it's Dave GPDA. But to your point, you know,
I think any kind of technology that relies on your
voice or even possibly video to verify you, it's going
to go out the window.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Because when we hit the place where the technology.

Speaker 5 (28:27):
Both the hardware and software is good enough to have
a real time conversation with someone, and I'm not telling
you that doesn't exist, but I'm not aware that it's
generally accessible to the public, Well then all bets are off,
because you know, I could call you as a criminal
and I've spoofed you know, spoofed Amy's voice, and you
think you're taught you're asking questions and I'm answering is

(28:48):
amy real time that's coming? It's coming, if it's not
already out there.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
I think this is once again, as always, an important
warning to all of us as investors of how artificial
intelligence is change the landscape and what you need to
be aware of in order to protect yourself. Thanks as always,
today've Hatter our tech expert from Interest. I t you're
listening to Simply Money here on fifty five cars the
talk station. You're listening to simply Money percent of by

(29:18):
all Worth Financial. I mean you Wagner along with Bob Sponds.
I don't you have a financial question keeping you up
at night? You and your spouse not on the same page.
There's a red button you can click them while you're
listening to the show. You'll find it right there on
the iHeart app. Record your question. It's coming straight to
us and straight ahead. Here are some great questions. I
would say, Hey, before you spend those dollars on a

(29:38):
major purchase, ask yourself these They are going to save
you a lot of headaches, heartaches, and potentially some good
money down the road. But first, you know, I love
Cincinnati for so many reasons. But one of the biggest
reasons is people around here have such big, beautiful hearts
and are so charitably inclined. When there is a need,

(30:01):
people step up in a major way to fill it.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
Yeah, and what we're going to talk about today is
a great vehicle to uh put dollars align dollars with
your heart. About that? Yeah, So and Amy, you know,
I'm about as passionate about these donor advice funds as
you are about health savings accounts. How about that? So
let's get into that. A donor advised fund And again

(30:26):
a caveat up front. You can only use these for
non IRA non qualified assets, So these are after tax
dollars or for highly appreciated you know stocks you can basically,
we think of it as a warehouse for charitable giving.
This is what I mean. A donor advised fund is

(30:48):
a five oh one c three organizational charity. And you
know we we refer a lot of people to Fidelity
for this. They do a great job with this vehicle.
You basically give appreciated stock or cash into this fund
and you can name it anything that you want, and
you get an immediate tax deduction for the value of

(31:08):
your gift. Today, and then it's sitting in a fund.
You can dole it out to charities, you can invest
it and continue to have it grow tax free. It's
a fund for either doing current or future giving. So
a lot of people use this to give away appreciated
stocks and they say, hey, I know from a tax

(31:30):
planning standpoint, it makes sense to do this. I don't
know yet today what I want to do with the money.
I just know I want to get the tax benefits
of eliminating the capital gains, getting the tax deduction, and
then I'll figure out later who I want to dole
this money out to. And it's a beautiful vehicle to
do that. And again this is not a commercial for Fidelity,

(31:52):
but their website is so easy to use. I have
one of these funds myself, my wife and I do.
So there'll be money sitting in there, and we'll sit
down together and say, all right, it's time to give
you know, so much money to this charity. And this
charity that you can literally hit a couple of mouse
clicks and send the money and it's all done through

(32:12):
one vehicle. It's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
Now.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
The other thing that I want to throw out on
this is you know, the standard deduction now is over
thirty thousand dollars a year for a married couple. So
a lot of people don't itemize anymore and they're not
getting the benefit, the tax benefit that they used to
get from charitable giving. So a lot of times, in
consultation with our clients CPAs, we will lump together or

(32:38):
group three to four years worth of normal giving into
one year, particularly if they have a high income year,
or they have a big chunk of appreciated stock that
we need to diversify out of, and you get that
giving amount to the level where you can take advantage
of the itemized deduction but not have to give it
all away, you know today.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yeah, and another thing to think about, you know, your
point was you don't have to give it away to
it's a waiting room. It's essentially, hey, we've got these assets.
From a tax standpoint, this could be like a terrible
year for us, right, or or a year where it
makes a lot of sense to have some more strategies
in place. Right, So we're going to use this strategy

(33:23):
in order to make the tax implications of these highly
appreciated assets. Or this big year where we got this
big bonus, or maybe a lot of rich restricted stock
units were vested. Like there's lots of times when there's
just a windfall in one year, or you can bunch
giving and that's another great strategy too. And then it's like, hey,

(33:45):
we can hurry up and wait on this. You know,
we can get the tax benefits of this now, and
we can decide five ten years from now if you want,
and it can be invested during that time and continue
to grow. I know a few and they're a great
example of this. There was a windfall when the kids
were a little bit younger and they knew they wanted

(34:06):
to make an impact. They went ahead and gave to
a donor advice fund, and then they waited till the
kids got older and had really strong opinions about where
they wanted that impact to be felt. They did a
family meeting, sat down together, and it was really cool
how they voted how they wanted some of the dollars
to be spent, and they really they really figured out

(34:27):
what was important to their family and made a huge
impact in those areas.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
It's a wonderful, beautiful way to leave a legacy and
pass down your family values generationally down through your kids
and even grandkids. And just to piggyback on your client's story.
I did this last week with a client. They said, hey, Bob,
when my wife and I pass away, we don't want

(34:53):
this fund to just end. We want our kids to
be able to take whatever's left in that fund and
have them be in control of it. With one piece
of paper, we were able to add successor donors to
their donor Advice fund. And upon the death of our clients,
each family there's two children, they will each get half

(35:16):
of this donor advised fund to use for their family.
And just like you did, they had the family meeting explain.
Everybody's pretty fired up about it, and that was a
very fun meeting to have.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Here's the all Worth advice. Whether you're looking to simplify
your charitable contributions, create a flexible philanthropic legacy, donate privately,
a donor advice fund could be right for you. Definitely
ask the questions coming up. Speaking of questions, we've got
key questions you need to ask yourself before sell you
out big bucks. You're listening to Simply Money presented by
all Worth Financial here on fifty five KRC the talk

(35:48):
station you're listening to simply money presented by all Worth Financial.
I mean, you Wagner, along with Bob's bondseller. We've all
been there, right, agor purchase something that sounds really exciting
or maybe it's really necessary. Does it make sense?

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Like when I bought a condo in Florida and just
texted my wife and asked permission. The fact that kind
of emotional.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Pre married is ah man. I hope you've sent her
flowers and chocolates and all the stuff after you pulled that.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
She's a beautiful, very forgiving woman.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Clearly, clearly she is. So I would say, maybe there
are some questions, Bob that we could have applied to
that situation, or you know, I think of another one,
which is, you know, years ago, bought a boat and
the kids were little, we were spending lots of time
on the lake. And then as the kids got older,
my husband was still very much tied to the memories

(36:46):
of that boat. And I finally said, Okay, babe, listen,
here's the deal. We're making it down to use this
boat twice a year. So because the kids are so busy,
we've got soccer and we've got dance and we've got
all the things. So every time we go to the lake,
here is the exact dollar amount that we are spending.
When I put it in the dollars and cents, you
want to make a bet on how long it took

(37:07):
for us to put that boat back on the market.
It was days. It was days my husband had that boat.
And so I think what you have to look at
is what does the real cost of this in dollars
and cents? A lot of these major purchases, the condo
in Florida, the boat, the whatever it is. We can
get emotional right about those decisions, the memories, the impact.

(37:30):
I think looking at the dollars and cents of it,
ask yourself, at what cost? What are the trade offs
that are going to come with making this decision? And
then is this a need or a want? I mean
sometimes it's a new HVAC unit, a new roof, Like
we don't have choices about those kinds of things. A
lot of times these impulse purchasers are these major big

(37:52):
ticket items are kind of once.

Speaker 3 (37:55):
Yeah, and then another question to ask is does this
proposed purchase a lot with our and I mean our
both husband and wife. Yes, long term aspirational plan or
is this just scratching one spouse's itch for that particular day.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
And I think the best conversation to have before we
even get to anything along these lines is, Hey, what
are your long term financial goals? If you're both working
toward a retirement where you can jet across the country
several times a year to spend time with the grandkids,
and you're sitting in my office and you're talking about
something else, it's going to completely derail that plan. I'm

(38:32):
going to remind you, Hey, listen, you told me this
was your goal. Does this still make sense to you?
So lots of good questions to think about here. Thanks
for listening. You've been listening to Simply Wheney, presented by
all Worth Financial here in fifty five KRC, the talk
station

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