Simply Money

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Tonight, how the investment principles of Warren Buffett can guide
us through these uncertain times. You're listening to Simply Money,
presented by all Worth Financial. I'm Bob sponsorer along with
Steve Ruby, who's in for Amy Wagner tonight. However, Amy's
gonna be back to join us for the second half
of the show today, Steve, does that mean they don't

(00:28):
trust you and I to do a complete show together?
Is that what this means? We gotta we gotta bring
we gotta bring the adult in the room back to
the show.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Just makes it up a little bit. I think that's
it all right.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, Hey, the financial markets, as we all know, have
been on a bit of a roller coaster ride. We're
dealing with tariff threats, lots of uncertainty, which markets hate,
and it got us to thinking what would Buffett do?
Of course, we're referring to legendary investor Warren Buffett. Steve,
let's get into this because there's some great quotes and

(01:02):
great segments from the historic guru of investing, Warren Buffett.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
This stuff, it really is fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
It is. It's good stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
We're going to read some of his quotes for batim,
you know, honestly, because it's they're powerful and they're good
lessons to learn from. Buy business nuts stocks is how
it would summarize this. It's you're not buying a piece
of paper, You're buying a part of a business. So
this would mean, don't get distracted by by tickers.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Going up and down.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
You ask yourself, would you want to own the entire company?
If the answer is yes, then great. If the only
reason you're buying a stock is because you hope somebody
will pay more for it next week, then that would
be speculation, not investing. That that's what this quote means.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
I think this is a great point. You're not buying
a piece of paper, You're buying a part of a business.
Quote unquote from Warren Buffett, Steve, there's a bit of
an age difference between you and I. How many people
your age or younger don't even think about buying a business.
They're just trading something they hope goes up in price

(02:11):
over a very short period of time.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
I would say that this is not age specific.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
I think a lot of people think that way, which
is why looking at you know, somebody legendary like Buffett
and the quotes that he has in the experience that
he has is valuable. Sure, maybe more than older folks,
who knows. But at the end of the day, it's I.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Don't have many eighty year old clients sitting in their
basement playing video games all day day, trading game stop.
I don't have that, you know. Neither do I.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Neither do I.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
You know, but maybe they missed out during COVID. Probably
maybe that's what we should have done. We probably did.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
All right, let's get into the next one, because I
love this next one. Look for a margin of safety,
and Warren Buffett says, quote never risk what you have
and need for what you don't have and don't need.
I love that quote. Walk us through what that means. Yeah,
so I'm here to test your knowledge here. Well, this

(03:11):
is easy.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
This is easy. I'm a financial planner. I've been doing
this for a while.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
I know.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Margin of safety means buying a company when it's undervalued,
so even if things go wrong, you have a cushion.
That would be the thought process here. You know, staying
within your circle of competence is another, you know, talking point.
I would say that this quote carries a lot of weight,
just like they all do know your limitations. If you
don't understand it, don't invest it. How simple is that?

(03:38):
It just seems like common sense. If you don't know
how crypto works or a biotech startup makes their money,
probably not the right place for your retirement funds.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Wouldn't you say?

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Absolutely? And I would apply that same quote you know,
if you don't understand it, don't invest it. I would
apply that to your discussions with any quote unquote financial
advice you're talking to. If someone is putting together an
investment strategy for you and they can't even explain how
it works, or they're using vague language and terms that

(04:11):
are way over your head or purposely designed to be
over your head so you don't understand it, walk away.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Sure, Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
I mean a big part of our job is making
sure that people understand what we're recommending. That's why financial plans.
Another reason why financial plans are so valuable is because
we can point to the financial plan and say this
is how option A versus option B versus options. See,
I'm talking about different You know, solutions or ideas or
recommendations might have an effect on the longevity of your
money at the end of the day. That's very valuable

(04:41):
and important again for you to understand what you're investing
in and the why behind it.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Be patient.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
So again, fantastic quotes this one. The stock market is
designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
How about that, Well, I would say patient sometimes comes
is in short supply. Especially with the twenty four hour
news cycle we live in, people forget to be patient.
They think with all the news stories coming out and
the clickbait and the social media, the natural reaction is

(05:17):
to need or want to quote unquote do something in
the very short term, and often that can create severe
damage to the viability of your long term plan. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Remember the news media doesn't have a fiduciary responsibility to
make sure that you're making good decisions with your money.
I've said that a lot on the show, and it
is entirely accurate. It's one of the reasons why I
do the show. You know, when I started in this industry,
I was in a four to one K customer service
role and I would get calls, you know, people would say,
I'm spooked by something I saw online. I want to

(05:48):
stop contributing to my four to one K and move
to cash and I would have to say, oh, great,
you reached the right place. I'm happy to help you
with that today. Anything else I can do for you.
There was no question.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
And that's the difference between an order taker and an
actual advice.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah, and that's how I got my foot in the
door in the industry. Was the order taker somebody just
doing transactions not being able to step back and ask,
why are you sure that maybe this volatility is just
temporary and you know you're not going to shoot yourself
on the foot as far as your financial plan is concerned.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
I wasn't able to say that.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
So, yeah, the news media has no fiduciary responsibility for
you to make good decisions, so you know, be patient.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
All right. The next one is don't try to time
the market. And here's Warren Buffett's quote about that quote,
I never have an opinion about the market because it
wouldn't be any good. Unquote, that's from one of the
best investors to ever walk the planet who says he's
not going to try to time the market or offer
a short term opinion. That's good enough advice for I

(06:50):
think the rest of us mere mortals. Would you not agree?

Speaker 3 (06:53):
See, I would say so it's good insight too, because
at the end of the day, you know, his favorite
holding period is forever. So volatility doesn't mean failure. You
don't sell good companies because of a temporary dip. Fundamentals
are still strong. So don't try to time the market
when it comes to temporary volatility like we're experiencing right now.

(07:14):
You have a plan, you stick to it, he would say.
He's an investor, not an active trader.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yep, all right. Be fearful when others are greedy, and
greedy when others are fearful. The buffet quote is opportunities
come in frequently when it rains gold. Put out the bucket,
not the thimble.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yeah, I mean when markets fall, emotions take over. Fear
creates opportunity. That's what that is. You know, people, it's
kind of a contrary opinion on what you need to
do and when you need to do it based on
how others are behaving. Investing for the long term again,
he would say, our favorite holding period is forever. He

(07:56):
focuses on a voting short term noise focuses on where
a company will be in ten, twenty, sometimes even thirty years.
This is again focusing on not allowing headlines to derail
a thirty year retirement plan. Sure you can reassess if
fundamentals change with the company, but not because the stock
dropped ten percent. Corrections are very, very normal. They're a

(08:19):
part of investing. We see it in the overall market too.
Every year on average, Even when we have markets that
are fantastic, like twenty three and twenty four, it's normal
to see ten percent plus drops during that year of trading.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah. I mean, the average intra year pullback in the
market going back well over fifty years is fourteen percent
a year. That is normal. Even when things are going
supposedly great, you should expect to have pullbacks of as
high as fourteen percent per year on average, and we're
having one of those years this year. I want to
go back to the prior point about being fearful when

(08:55):
others are greedy, and greedy's greedy when others are fearful.
To me, what this talks about is just the regular
rebalancing and reallocation of a responsibly built investment strategy and
the good new Steve for a lot of our clients,
all of our clients and hopefully a lot of clients
of folks out there that are truly working with a good,

(09:19):
responsible fiduciary advisor. That rebalancing, that buying and selling is
going on automatically in the background with our without our
clients even needing to call or react or do anything. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
And it's funny too, because a client I've had this
from time to time, will come in during an annual
review and they'll they'll pull up, you know, a paper,
They'll ask me to pull it up on the on
the big screen and let's say, all right, there's there's
these three investments that have done poorly this year.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Why are they in.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Your portfolio or why are they in my portfolio? And
it's funny because I can also point back to a
rebalance where we sold some of the investments that were
up and we bought those ones that were low, which
will not be low forever. Diversified mix isn't going to
go all go up. At the same time, You're going
to have sometimes certain investments that do worse than others,

(10:07):
and that's a buying opportunity during volatility because those aren't
always going to be the ones that are down.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Well. A good example of that is just bonds, I
mean investment grade bonds and international stocks.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah, the two asset classes that are up so far
this year. And I'm sure those are two asset classes
that maybe your client was asking about back in twenty
twenty three and twenty four, like, hey, why aren't these up?
Like minda Vidio stock is up? Exactly, Well, it's it's
for periods like what we're going through right now.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
I mean, making sure that we are rebalancing period periodically
is a great way to make your money work harder
for you.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Here's the all Worth advice. Warren Buffett will be the
first to tell you that markets will go up and
markets will go down, but your discipline, your discipline, that's
what creates real wealth. Next, the new thing that people
are investing in, something we hope won't take the place
of your four oh one K contributions. You're listening to

(11:07):
Simply Money, presented by Allworth Financial on fifty five KRC,
the talk station. You're listening to Simply Money presented by
Allworth Financial. I'm Bob Sponseller along with Steve Ruby and
remember our good friend Amy Wagner joins us for the
second hour of the show. Today straight ahead at six

(11:31):
forty three. We take a deep dive into a fantastic
tax efficient strategy for you. It's coming up soon, all right.
Think the stock market's a roller coaster right now, Steve,
try the Lego ale on various social media platforms, the

(11:51):
or the toy store.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
Yeah, kind of amazing. Actually, my daughter does Ninja Warrior,
so American Ninja Warrior if you've seen it on TV.
Just turned ten, and she had a competition up somewhere
outside of Dayton, Ohio. And we went up that way
for that meeting for that competition, and next door was
a Lego store and I go inside and they have
like three thousand dollars Lego sets. I had no idea

(12:17):
that there was so much money in these. It's almost
a little bit like beanie babies right now, plastic bricks.
Three thousand dollars. Kind of amazing for me. It was
actually the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. I remember that now,
and it's appreciating the price of Legos are currently appreciating
faster than gold Well.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
I find it fascinating that this article brings up the
Star Wars Millennium Falcon Lego addition, because Steve, my middle son,
who's now twenty seven years old. This was his must
have Christmas presence.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
Oh yeah, when he was about ten Star Wars last Christmas.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, that's expensive taste.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
I would still enjoy that toy today.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
That's the kind of guy he is, which is why
I love him. But do you have one of these
in your Well, that's why point.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
I'm going to have my wife go up in the
attic immediately in search for this darn things because if
I can find it and sell it on eBay, I
might be able to retire tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, you don't even tell your son. Just take the money,
put it in your pocket.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
It's what I always do.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
It's kind of amazing, though, that we come across stuff
like this. You know, legos right now or Beanie Babies
with a better track record and I guess more satisfying
click sounds if you're building something, you know, but this
is not something that you want to throw a bunch
of money and don't don't get swept up and ideas
like this to get rich quick.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
All right, switching gears here. You know, obviously on this show,
our job is to educate, and it's sometimes unsettling to
know that so many young people are have not been
required to take some type of personal finance class. I
know I didn't have one when I was going through school,
and you're saying you didn't either. We talked about recently

(14:06):
the state of Ohio in twenty twenty six, that'll be
the first high school graduating class that has been required
to take some kind of personal finance class. And for
the state of Kentucky it's twenty thirty. We're getting some
good news about the impact this financial literacy or financial education,

(14:27):
the positive impact it's having on young folks.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Oh, it's wonderful. I mean, there was a report in
twenty twenty four. It was a consulting firm, Titan Partners
and Next Gen came together to crunch the numbers and
calculated that there's roughly a one hundred thousand dollars per
student economic benefit for completing one semester of personal finance coursework.

(14:50):
One Semester's think about all the things we didn't learn
about when we were in school that these students may
have an opportunity to learn about. And I think it's
common sense that there's going to be, you know, a
cascading effect for those economic benefits when when you have
educated high school students entering the workforce or whatever next
step they're taking, whether it's college or something else.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, great point. And you know other data coming in
this suggestion. And to me, Steve, this just falls under
the category of common sense. Yeah, I mean, you should
be able to at least balance a checkbook and know
what some basic financial terminology is by the time you
graduate from high school. But we're seeing more and more
evidence that says students who are required to take a

(15:36):
personal finance course they are more likely to tap lower
cost loan options and grants when it comes to paying
for college, and less likely to rely on that high
interest credit card running up the debt. These are all
good things.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Yeah, I mean it also found a different study Brookings
Institution found that financial literacy during the teenage years positively
correlated with accumulating assets by age twenty five. I mean,
it's eye opening when you teach a kid that if
you get started now, that you can be a millionaire
a lot easily or a lot more easy easier than

(16:14):
if you start later. That can be a huge motivator
to make good decisions with your money.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Well, we've seen that both Steve, just in our practice
as financial advisors. I mean, habits are hard to break,
especially bad ones once somebody gets to be twenty five
thirty years old. So the fact that we could get
in there and educate folks on how to get a good, solid,
fundamental start on their financial life, it truly is life change.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
Problem is is that there's a little barrier here, and
that's teaching nine million public high school students in Ohio
and Kentucky personal finance would require quite a few educators
be hired, and some figures are showing twenty thousand plus
would need to be hired in order to actually have
these impacts come to for wition.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Well, that's a problem we can't solve today. They maybe
they teach one fewer class in some meaningless subject and
that teacher teach.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
I don't want to be the one to decide that
now that we don't want to open up that can worms.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
All right, every Sunday you'll find our all Worth Advice
in the Cincinnati Inquire our very own Steve Ruby, who's
sitting right next to me right now, Amy and Claremont
County ass. I'm fifty six years old and I'm about
to go through a divorce. Any advice.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yes, so you know this is this is obviously a
big change, so sorry to hear about, you know, changes
that you're going through here.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Amy.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Divorce later in life can be particularly.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
Challenging for women. I mean, the research points to this
being a factor. It shows that wives who divorce after
the age of fifty experience an average drop of about
forty five percent in the standard of living. So this
is really serious issue that a lot of people that
we've worked with professionally over the years obviously have experienced

(18:07):
husbands it's about a twenty one percent drop, so that
there is definitely more of an effect on women getting
separated than on men. These last you know, these losses
can be long lasting. But you know, what do we
need to do right at the gate once this is happening.
Take stock of everything your bank accounts, your retirement savings,
your debts, your insurance policies, anything else that's part of

(18:30):
your financial picture. You need to know exactly where you
stand to have a plan going forwards. Think about how
assets and liabilities are divided. Rules are different between Ohio
and other states, so it's oftentimes beneficial to partner with
an attorney obviously, who can work through a quadro that's

(18:51):
a qualified domestic relations order and how to split up
some of these assets. But once we create that new foundation,
that new path forward, you need to make sure that
you're not forgetting about your retirement. You know, honestly, it's
important to make sure that you're still finding ways to
continue to save for your retirement so that you can
live that rich and meaningful life moving forward.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Great advice as always Steve all Right. Amy is in next,
and so is tech expert Dave Hatter to explain how
scammers are using AI to take advantage of investors. You're
listening to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial on
fifty five KARC, the talk station.

Speaker 4 (19:34):
You're listening to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial.
I Amy Wagner along with Steve Ruby. I don't know
about you. You can mess with a lot of things,
don't you mess 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

(19:56):
know is, of course our tech expert Dave Hatter from
Interest I T I mean seriously, Dave, Nothing nothing is
ever sacred these days. Scammers are coming after everything. And
the problem I think with artificial intelligence is scammers are
out ahead of everyone else.

Speaker 5 (20:12):
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. Shirt. Too bad 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

(20:33):
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

(20:57):
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 2 (21:10):
Whenever you're on. I get nervous.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
These these topics are need you, they really are. And
you know, I always gott to ask you, what can
we do to protect ourselves?

Speaker 2 (21:19):
What should we be looking out for?

Speaker 5 (21:21):
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 chatch EPT and I mean it'll tell you
that it makes stuff up. 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

(21:42):
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, 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.

(22:03):
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. 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,

(22:27):
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 they get my voice? I'm not a celebrity.
Do you have voicemail? This is a question for your listeners.
Do you have voicemail with your voice on it?

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Why?

Speaker 5 (22:39):
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

(23:01):
are going to be highly likely to believe it's you.
I'm telling you this is a real thing right now.

Speaker 4 (23:06):
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

(23:29):
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 5 (23:46):
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. Amen. Going back to
Steve's point, so awareness or question awareness is key, and
then maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism, which is so
important for any cybersecurity related topic. You know, it's it's
believably easy and requires almost zero technical skill to spoof
a phone number, to spoof a text, to spoof an email,

(24:07):
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,
whether it's a here's a video of a CEO who
claims to have some sort of great investment tactic. I

(24:29):
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 Elon Musk,
and these things just keep getting better and better. So

(24:50):
it's it's awareness that this is a 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,
anything they produce could be completely completely spoofed. So yeah, again,

(25:12):
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. Maybe
you invest in companies that are building this stuff. Invest
in companies that are making the hardware the power this stuff.

(25:32):
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 3 (25:45):
So a former four oh one K custodian where I
had a four to one K from 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 verified and you know, the people
on the other end just started talking to us. What

(26:05):
are companies able to do to stay ahead of scammers
utilizing AI for something like that?

Speaker 5 (26:11):
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

(26:32):
a major problem for banks right now, or any sort
of organization that is 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? Maybe not.
But if you know what you're doing and you have
access to the right tools that are willing to take
the time to training, can you get to a place

(26:54):
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 know, this technology is only going
to get better. 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

(27:15):
like me or you. So yeah, that's a major problem.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
So the takeaway there is, if you're utilizing voice print
technology at any other financial institution, maybe don't.

Speaker 5 (27:26):
And if I think you're making an important point, Steve,
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

(27:47):
to the general public to tools that would be able
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 sing.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
All right, Dave, this is actually chat GP you with you.

Speaker 5 (28:02):
It's Dave GPD. 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. Because when we hit the place
where the technology, 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

(28:24):
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 Amy real time?

Speaker 1 (28:39):
That's coming?

Speaker 5 (28:40):
It's coming, if it's not already out there.

Speaker 4 (28:42):
I think this is once again, as always, an important
warning to all of us as investors of how artificial
intelligence is changing the landscape and what you need to
be aware of in order to protect yourself.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Thanks.

Speaker 4 (28:53):
As always, today I've had our tech expert from Interest.
I t you're listening to Simply Money here on fifty
five krs the talk station. You're listening to Simply Money
percented by all Worth Financial, I mean the wagn're along
with Bob Sponds. I don't you have a financial question
keeping you up at night? You and your spouse not

(29:14):
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 major purchase. Ask yourself these They
are going to save you a lot of headaches, heartaches,

(29:35):
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, people step up in a major
way to fill it.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, and what we're going to talk about today is
a great vehicle to dollars align dollars with your heart,
how 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 a

(30:17):
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

(30:38):
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 your gift today.

(31:00):
And then it's sitting in a fund. You can dole
it out to charities, you can invest it and continue,
you know, 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 planning standpoint,

(31:22):
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, but

(31:43):
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 and
you can literally hit a couple of mouse clicks and
send the money and it's all done through one vehicle.

(32:03):
It's a beautiful thing. Now. 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

(32:24):
a lot of times, in consultation with our clients CPAs,
we will lump together or 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

(32:44):
you can take advantage of the itemized deduction but not
have to give it all away you know today.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
Yeah, And another thing to think about, you know, your
point was you don't have to give it away today.
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

(33:13):
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 invested. 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,

(33:35):
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 and it can be invested during that time and
continue to grow. I know a family and they're a
great example of this. There was a windfall when the
kids were a little bit younger and they knew they

(33:56):
wanted to make an impact. They went ahead and gave
to a donor advice fun 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 figured out what

(34:18):
was important to their family and made a huge impact
in those areas.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
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 story,
I did this last week with a client. They said, hey, Bob,
when my wife and I pass away, we don't want

(34:43):
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 upon the death of our clients.
Each family there's two children. They will each get half

(35:06):
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 4 (35:16):
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.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Krs the talk station.

Speaker 4 (35:43):
You're listening to simply Money presented by all Worth Financial.
I mean Wagnerre along with Bob's bond seller. We've all
been there, right, major purchase something that sounds really exciting
or maybe it's really necessary. Does it make sense?

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Like when I bought a condo and flo and just
texted my wife and asked permission.

Speaker 4 (36:03):
The fact that you're kind of emotional married is ah man.
I hope you've sent her flowers and chocolates and all
the stuff after you pulled that.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
She's a beautiful, very forgiving woman. Clearly, clearly she is.

Speaker 4 (36:17):
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 of that boat, and I finally said, Okay, babe, listen,

(36:39):
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.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
All the things.

Speaker 4 (36:49):
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 for us
to put that boat back on the market. It was days.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
It was days.

Speaker 4 (37:02):
My husband had that. But 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. I think, looking at the dollars
and cents of it, ask yourself.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
At what cost?

Speaker 4 (37:25):
What are the trade offs that are going to come
with making this decision? And then is this a need
or 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 ticket items are kind of once?

Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, And then another question to ask is does this
proposed purchase align with our and I mean our both
husband and wife, yes, long term aspirational plan or is
just is this just scratching one spouse's it for that
particular day.

Speaker 4 (38:01):
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

(38:23):
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 when you're presented
by all Worth Financial here in fifty five KRC, the
talk station