Richard Rosso - Financial Planner Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, we're all paying our bills, right, and those pills
have been going up, and your salary may not have
been going up in order to match what's been going
on with inflation. That's where you get the affordability factor.
And you see just about every talking head in the
country right now talking about affordability, whether something is affordable
or not. Even saw a guy Fox Business yesterday who

(00:21):
said that he thinks the real poverty line for a
family of four is one hundred and forty thousand dollars
a year. Now, he's in New York, Okay, so maybe
that would be true in New York. But if we
really got to the point where the poverty line is
one hundred and forty thousand dollars a year for a
family of four Richard rosso joins US Financial Planner, Let's

(00:41):
start with the poverty line. Where do you think the
poverty line is for your average American family of four?

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Richard, Oh my god, Well, the average earnings for a
family is roughly around sixty thousand dollars, and frankly, there's
enough social support and there was a study done years
ago that shows you if you took advantage of all
the social safety nets out there you probably didn't even
need to work. So listen, we're a country that poverty

(01:08):
has pretty much been eliminated. And when you look at affordability,
which is the latest bugaboo, it's different for every household,
which makes it a challenge. What you what you find
irritating in your inflationary budget, Jamie, could be very different
than mine. Mine may be gased and I see gas
going down, but yours may be staked and your troubled,

(01:30):
or I have children going to college. So this this
is a moving target. When it comes to affordability, everybody's
going to have an opinion, and to some degree everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Is sort of right.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
But coming up with one formula to fix it all
is absolutely impossible.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
I agree that it's let's let's expand on this a
little bit further though, And you brought up a great
point here, because what is affordable and what isn't It
depends on what your priorities are. If your priority is
to take a vacation, you may have spent eight thousand
dollars on the vacation a couple of years ago that
now will cost you eleven or twelve thousand dollars. But

(02:08):
if taking that vacation is a priority to you, then
you'll find a way to make it affordable.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, you'll find a way to make it work. And again,
as you look at the soup of this, and you
have to realize that President Trump, the perception is reality,
and the perception as he hasn't done much to lower prices.
When you look at the CPI, prices have steadied, I
mean inflation. The rate of change is between two and

(02:35):
a half and three percent, which is sort of reasonable,
but people don't care about that. They care about when
they go to the store. Prices are still high as
they were. There's only one way to bring those prices down,
and that's some sort of buyer strike. And if you've
got that going on, you've got an economic contraction and deflation,
which is worse. So there it. So that's the problem

(02:56):
with saying I'm going to fix it. But politicians are
running on this, and some of the politicians are who
are running on this are the ones who are okay
with inflation at nine percent, which is the real irony.
That's how desperate people are to get prices lower, and
no one can figure it out. So you've got this issue.
The American thinker had an article about it's regulatory. Yeah,

(03:19):
it is regulatory. It's also personal responsibility. I am living
in the most exciting age of America with AI and
if I want to increase my personal capital and learn,
I have multiple avenues to make more money. Because it
really comes down to this. It comes down to real income.
It comes down to inflation adjusted income, and real personal

(03:40):
income was up two point three percent this year through August.
But you look at and it's about a nineteen year average.
But there are some things that in that formula the
BLS has that doesn't count, like taxes, property taxes, and
homeowners insurance which is killing people. So real wages. If listen,
if I was making for five six percent in real wages,

(04:02):
then inflation probably wouldn't bother me as much. They have
to find a way for the masses who live on income,
not stock gains and house gains. They live primarily on
cash flow and income to raise those real incomes, and
then this would put the affordability issue to bed. Right.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
I agree, I think you're dead on right. Thank you, sir,
appreciate that. That is Richard Rosso, financial Planner,