Nobody’s Perfect

In this episode, Don and Tom saddle up for a tour through Schwab’s “Good, Bad, and Ugly.” They applaud CEO Rick Wurster’s warning about the growing overlap between gambling and investing, take a hard look at Schwab’s retail-side conflicts and non-fiduciary sales practices, and then recoil at the truly ugly: Schwab’s acquisition of Forge Global and its push to open private-company speculation to everyday investors. From there, they field listener questions about crypto’s pointless search for a purpose, how to implement a disciplined 5 percent retirement withdrawal strategy, the ins and outs of tax-free Vanguard mutual-fund-to-ETF conversions, and whether a younger spouse should convert a large TSP balance to Roth. It’s classic Talking Real Money: skeptical, practical, consumer-first, and mildly exhausted by the Wild West of modern finance. 0:04 Investing as the Wild West and why caveat emptor still defines the industry 0:24 Schwab’s role as custodian vs. broker and how they reshaped trading costs 1:14 Schwab’s discount-broker origins and institutional dominance 2:37 Free trades, market influence, and why Schwab became the industry’s leader 3:52 CEO Rick Wurster’s warning about gambling creeping into investing 4:43 Sports betting numbers, prop bets, and why only 5 percent come out ahead 5:54 The “bad”: Schwab retail selling and the fiduciary confusion 6:40 The “ugly”: Schwab buying Forge Global and pushing private-company speculation 7:23 Why private equity is riskier, pricier, illiquid, and over-hyped 8:17 The myth of private companies outperforming public ones 9:22 Why the Wild West persists: weak oversight, self-dealing, and revolving doors 10:48 Listener question: stablecoins, crypto legitimation, and the greater-fool problem 13:00 Currency concerns and why crypto still solves nothing 13:50 5 percent withdrawal strategy: when and how to draw from your portfolio 15:28 Rebalancing, total return withdrawals, and annual cash-flow discipline 16:47 Why withdrawals should follow rebalancing, not lead it 17:56 Vanguard mutual-fund-to-ETF conversions: how they work and why they’re useful 20:10 Expense-ratio savings vs. capital-gains distributions 20:55 TSP-to-Roth conversion question: tax-rate timing matters 22:44 Only convert if you can pay taxes from outside savings 23:08 Reminder: free adviser meetings, no sales pressure 24:10 TRM’s longevity and approaching episode 2,000 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices