Money Monday with Brian James

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Happy Monday. Oh he's made extra special, extra happy and
good morning to the uh covert group of ladies who
wait patiently for this moment in time every Monday for
Brian James, small or financial to join the program and
talk about well, money Monday, Money Monday matters, and we've
got some cool topic to talk about. Welcome back, Brian James.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Thank you. You love our ladies' support group out there.
I haven't heard from them since.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
I'm gonna go ahead and assume that we nailed their
questions there a few weeks.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Well, I like to think, I like, you can just
stop it, you know, you like ladies period, doesn't matter
whether they're a sport group listening to you, Brian James.
But uh, yeah, I'm pretty much full on record with
the concept. Anyway, Brian jamescott to ask you about that
gang yesterday.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
I was there. I was there, you were there. Yeah, Yeah,
I thought, let's give him a chance.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
We'll see how this goes. The offense is amazing. It's
like they haven't missed a beat without Burrow, which just
sounds like sacrilege to say. But oh my gosh, the
defend on defense on the other end of the spectrum completely.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Absolutely. Yeah, that's funny you mentioned Burrow. My wife brought
that up a couple of times. I wonder if Burrow's
sweat and bullets about his job. So I don't think
they're gonna get rid of Joe anytime soon, but Glassjaw
he is, And if he gets injured one more time,
I think the writing's on the wall. Of course, we've
been well taken care of on an offense perspective, and wow,
that defense was just a total letdown. Maybe we'll get
some personnel changes coming out of that one.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
You know, we look at this that we spend Monday
and Tuesday every week just looking for those headlines and
they just never come. So apparently it is acceptable down
there on the river for this kind of performance.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Nice segue, because the headlines we're going to talk about
starting out of the gate here on Money Matters is
our money Monday issues, the latest on the shutdown and
it's varying impacts on stock markets and benefits and so security.
And I observe something this morning. One of the you know,
the ringing of hands and the gnashing of teeth brought
about by the end of snap benefits, and there were
two court rulings on Friday, which said the trumpet or

(01:49):
the Trump administration must use emergency reserve funds during the shutdown.
So there's five billion dollars in funds that are sitting
behind the scenes. The USDA had originally plan to use
those in the event of a shutdown. The Trump administration
said no, it's not allowed to use them. But now
they have illegal too legal opinions saying you have to
do it. And they haven't said they're going to appeal yet,

(02:11):
and they just said something along the lines of when
we need more clarity first, if we're given an appropriate
legal direction by the court, it will be my honor
to provide the funding. Now, I think politically speaking, and
I know we normally don't dwell dwell on politics, but
snap shut down bad and people are going to start
looking for folks to blame. And while I do not
believe the Republicans are to be blamed for this shutdown,

(02:32):
given that they want to keep funding at the original
last year Biden level funding, which includes all the programs
that Democrats love. Democrats wanted to use this to increase
the government spending and include a lot of folks in
regard to these supplements that they've been getting to make
Obamacare appear palatable. But these two rulings would allow the

(02:53):
Trump administration to go ahead and continue to pay at
least for the never next several weeks without the snap
folks feeling the pinch of the shutdown that buys the time.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
I would think, well you would think, but I think
the fact that the federal judges came out we've now
had two legal rulings saying that yes, you must use
these dollars for this purpose, Well, that has nothing to
do with what's gonna what The reality is going to
be that the Trump administration generally ignores those kinds of
rules anyway, and those kinds of ultimatums.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
So no, but it's suggested it would follow them.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
I mean, I'm I trust me, I understand where you're
coming from from generally speaking, that's what we might expect
an appeal A no, no, boss, I'm not going to
do it. But I mean, he did say I'm happy
to follow the court order. Just show me the guidance.
I'll be I'll do it. But like I said, I
think that will be politically advantageous for Trump because the
government remains shut down. But they are using the funds

(03:42):
that are parked in the back somewhere to pay the
snap folks.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
And there are forty two million people out there, about
one in eight people a golden snap, and they're looking
at that's who is of course looking at disruptions to
their families. And when are we going to see you
know that we've already seen the headlines of the lines
outside the food pantries and all that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Right, when are those place is going to run out
of food?

Speaker 3 (04:01):
If they're not already so there will literally be no
option where How close are we to that? And you
got to think that some good chunk of these forty
two million people did actually vote for Trump a year ago,
so I would I think it would be politically expedient
for him to do so. He just seems to be
waiting for more and more information or more. I'm not
sure what the different outcome is going to be other
than making it a much much louder when it actually

(04:23):
does happen.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, we'll wait and see. But again, I think they're
trying to just just wait it out. See how many
if there is pain out there, we're all going to
experience who ultimately gets blamed for this, We go back
to that ridiculous blame game when I think the answer
to that question is pretty obvious anyway. What about its
impact on the stock market, what about its impact on
social security? I mean, because the market still seems to

(04:46):
be plowing along doing quite nicely, hasn't really reacted to
this shutdown much? Is that going to happen soon? Brian James, Well,
I mean, I.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Don't see it happening anytime soon, because the end of
the day here, all we really care about in the
stock market is profit margin period, end of story.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
That's all we cared about that. I think that's all
we will care about.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
So these kinds of things, and I don't mean to
be little for the people who are stuck in it,
but as far as the stock market goes, this is
a side show. And at the end of the day,
there's still an awful lot of catalysts and things out
there that are moving the market in a positive direction.
We are seeing a lot of earnings reports. We're in
earning season now, so we're seeing earnings come out very positively,
and there just doesn't seem to be much signed, as

(05:22):
you said, of any real pullback. So we've talked before
about the impact of a shutdown on the overall stock market,
and it generally doesn't seem to be all that impactful.
We are at the point of, depending on who you
talk to, this may be the longest shutdown or it
will be shortly, depending on whose list of days that
you're looking at. There's a bit of a question as

(05:44):
to how long the last one was. But the thirty
four days is the number I'm sticking to. We're about
at that now, and there doesn't appear to be any
on the horizon, any end to it. So we'll see
if we can make one long enough that it actually
has an impact on the stock market. But I'm not
holding my breath too much. Should be too impactful for
people as far as their investments go. Obviously, that's one tiny.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Part of all of this stuff, right, is that to
say that the folks that would be most impacted by
a protracted government shutdown, let's say SNAP is impacted, or
some other social welfare program might get impacted, or some
other peripheral form of the twenty five percent, you know,
discretionary expenditures of government. Is it that they don't impact

(06:24):
the economy much by way of their buying decisions, or
is there something that I'm missing.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Well, yeah, I mean this is this is a group
of people who are benefiting from the the ability to
get food and sustenance from the federal government. And that's
not going to surface very much in our companies making
money or not quite frankly, because there's not a lot
of money left over in those households to do the
kind of things that drive the economy. So that's not

(06:50):
pulling a significant amount of dollars out of the economy.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
That's why it's not really having an impact.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
If it was, the market always likes to anticipate these things,
market would have come down weeks ago in anticipation of
some kind of massive change in consumer spending.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, and that's exactly what I would have expected. Doesn't
take a real rocket science to come to that conclusion.
But I guess prior shutdowns have had a comparable lack
of market impacts. So you saw that kind of as
a prior guide, right.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
And frankly, I think that's what this administration is relying on,
that these things that we have that have been kind
of laid into bedrock by the Democrats are not as
impactful to the overall health of the country versus obviously
they're extremely impactful to the groups of people that they benefit.
But in terms of the overall health and success of
the company of the country, I think the Republican side

(07:33):
just says, look, this isn't going to hurt the country
in the long run. Let's go ahead and fight it
and see if we can't change things around kind of
more fundamentally than we have in the past.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
All right now, insofar as so security is concerned, without
diving into the loophole, we're going to talk about to
next talk about next. I know it's been an odd
revelation for a lot of folks that the government shutdowns
means that there are certain areas of government that aren't
there to do the work they do. For example, numbers crunchers.
You know, we can't do this without out the CBO
doing their job, or we can't do this because such

(08:04):
and so bureau behind the scenes is not doing its
number crunching job. Anything. In so far as social security
is concerned, I have many listeners out there who are
receiving Social Security or anticipating receiving it soon. Is that
is the government showed shutdown impacting them. I know, we
just recently got the cost of living adjustment that everybody's
waiting for.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, no, I am not hearing anything. Obviously.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
I've got a lot of clients that are utting from
Social Security and we're not hearing.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
A single word about that now.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
I do think that the Republicans that are pushing this,
that are wanting to hold onto the shutdown, well, frankly
the Democrats too.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Nobody's really talking about Social Security. I think everybody knows
that is the third rail because that is the largest.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Group of people we have in this country. They all
vote and they have time to pay attention to the headlines.
So if you affect those checks, that the backlash from
that is going to be swift and fierce. So I
have not heard anything about changes coming to Social Security
program impacted by the shutdown itself, other than it's always
a little bit tougher to get any information out of

(09:03):
the government that wasn't quick and efficient anyway. So I
don't know that that's going to have all that much
of an impact on the general day to day operations.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
So scary, and I know a lot of the shutdown
is based in premise upon the Democrats wanting to continue
these extension of the Obamacare supplements that are scheduled to
end at the end of the year. So the new
Obamacare premium numbers are rolling out, which if none of
this shutdown happened and there was no legislative change, this
would have happened as a matter of logic and reason,

(09:31):
because they were set to shut down at the end
of the year. So what we're seeing now is the
reality of the cutoff date. People are angry, I suppose
about not getting the supplements anymore, but I don't see
that as being this like Snap benefits being cut off,
having the same sort of outcome in terms of rage.
Where are we on that one, Brian Well, I.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
Think it's going to take longer for it to sink
in what that actually means to people versus, you know,
the Snap benefits that means I can't get food this
week from right right now, that's going to get my
attention right away, Versus these premiums that I never really
understood to begin with.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
It's going to be a while down.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
The road that they actually filter through and help people
and people realize exactly what that impact is of those
costs going up out of pocket. But it's going to
be the same reaction at the end of the day
if the ends don't meet. The ends don't meet. We
started it with food and we're going to move into healthcare,
and eventually there's going to be a pretty loud hue
and cry over that from somewhere hasn't happened yet.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Though hasn't happened yet.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Don't put your heart, in your faith, in your future
in the hands of a politician. It will never work out,
regardless of who you're relying on. Eight sixty more with
Brian James going to it's eight nineteen here in fifty
five Karaciti talk station, Brian Thomas with money, mondays Brian
James or with financial loans them out for a few
segments every week at this time, and diving onto Sosa's Security.
I've never heard that children could get Sosa's security benefits.

(10:48):
And I suppose there's a couple of hoops you have
to jump through on this, but some big ones if
you're sixty two years or older, I'm thinking there's not
a lot of them that have minor age children or
children that will be eligible for some slice of the pie. Again,
break this down for my listeners and me.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Brian, So, yeah, so you called this a loophole a
couple times this morning.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
I'm not sure i'd go there.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Somebody heard that and said, oh cool, here's something I
can with go do.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Okay, okay, okay, free money.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
Since you brought that up, you know, as a lawyer,
and my first dog, I named him loophole because there's
a joke that behind that. But these loopholes don't exist.
If it's in there, they intended it to be there.
I'm thoroughly convinced that the people who write the tax
code are writing in what you and I might proceed
to be loopholes for the intended benefit of some person

(11:35):
that's well connected with the tax law writers. Just me
being jaded and cinical, Brian James.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Fair enough, fair, thank you.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
So yeah, I just didn't want somebody to think, oh, hey,
here's a new thing, a trick I can play and
get myself some free money. That a pretty big hoop
you got to jump through for this. So really, this
information is for people who may already be in this
situation and weren't aware of this benefit. What we're talking
about is social security benefits for dependent children of people
who are social security age and are actually drawing on

(12:02):
social Security. Now you might think, do the quick math
on that that might be you know, that's somebody who
had kids in their mid to late forties, if not fifties.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yes, that's true. But we're also the.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Other benefit here, or the other group people we're talking
about it is people who you know, maybe grandparents who
adopted a child from their own adult children because the men.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Well, okay, fair enough, fair enough on that one.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
I know there.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
I personally know some quote unquote grandparents who are now
raising their children's children because of well drug issues and
some of them passed away. So there's always that possibility.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Absolutely, and that's why this is out there.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
So I wouldn't call it a loophole, just kind of
a safety net for these situations particularly challenging. So right now,
only about one percent of socialecurity beneficiaries or children, so
that's not this is not a huge amount of people
that we're seeing here. However, now, with with economic situations
kind of dictating, current generations are having kids later and
later and later.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
So we'll see how this.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Pans out over the next fifteen twenty years. There may
be that percentage may go up, so the checks can
be good size Brian, about eight hundred bucks to one
thousand dollars per child per month, and which oftentimes that
that the income gets used to, you know, boost college
savings or offset childcare costs. That's kind of the whole
point of making sure that these older families can get

(13:13):
benefits for or can get the lifestyles they need.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
For their children.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
This can start as early as age sixty two, same
as Social Security. But that also because remember the whole
trigger of this is that you have to file yourself right,
so that means you're filing earlier to tap into these
benefits that are available for you and your dependent children.
That means you're not waiting till seventy anymore. You're gonna
go ahead and you know, and get that going. And
then if you file it's so sixty two, that's gonna

(13:39):
knock down your benefit brob probably twenty five to thirty
percent less for life. Right, it's just the math behind it,
that's not you know, sometimes it can make sense to
do that, sometimes it doesn't. It's the whole purpose of
financial planning, right.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
You break the numbers down and you do the math
and you figure out whether it's better to take it
at sixty two or to wait off because you can't.
I suppose it's unlikely the older you get, moving towards
seventy two. I suppose that you're going to have a
minor age child. I'm living in your home, right.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Yes, yeah, that's the something is. Then you've got challenges
anyway if that's happening, So don't rush out and have
a kid.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
I don't know. Whatever.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
There's a bunch of multi multi millionaire geriatrics, you know,
octogenarians that are marrying twenty something, so don't say it
can't happen.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
They good very well. And that's why this benefit exists.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
So if you're having trouble making ends meet, you are
in this situation. And this is not new by the way,
this has been around since like the thirties, But just
be aware that that benefit is out there for you
to help you out well.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
And I understand this money is tax free for the
children because you know they probably aren't making enough to
pay federal taxes in any way, right.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
Correct, Yeah, And and you can still claim them as
dependents as you would have anyway, and then you can
turn around if if you don't need the money to
kind of fill the gaps. Then you can invest it
in a five twenty nine or some kind of custodial
account and use it for college benefits down the road.
But you have to just make sure that that money
stays in the child's name to avoid Social Security repayment
issues that we're custodial is very important with that topic.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
A little opportunity to maybe put the money away for
the kid for the future if you don't need to
spend real time.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, it could be.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
And remember there's there are new rules over the last
couple of years with five twenty nine plans where they
can actually you can actually turn it into wroth Ira contributions.
Way down the road, there's moving parts to that. But yeah,
if you put money in a five twenty nine, now
this came out in twenty four, if you've got money
left over, then for that same beneficiary, it can become
up to currently about five years worth of roth Ira convolutions. Yeah,

(15:32):
that five twenty nine has to be in place for
fifteen years though, so if it's invested. I actually I
just had a conversation at the Bengals game yesterday with
a friend of mine about this. Who's gonna he's in
a situation where he's got money left over in his
five twenty nine.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, and I said just leave it alone.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
But make sure it's not in the graduate fund, because
that's an extremely conservative fund, because the plan is assuming
you need it right now for college. If it's gonna
sit and grow for that roth ira game later. Get
it reinvested in something that's gonna grow and has a
little bit of risk attached to it.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Always say I learned something every day. Sadly it's a
little too late for me to take advantage of that.
I love the concept of being able to convert that
leftover money because we did have some money left over
in the five twenty nine for my daughter's account. Brian
James will continue Price of oil. Peace of God passes
all human understanding. How does one calculate the price of oil?
How does one understand what OPEC does and does not do.

(16:21):
We'll continue on that topic one more with all Worth Financials.
Brian James. It's say twenty five right now, if you nine,
if you bot KERCD talks Nation Brian James. Money Monday,
doing that money land Day thing from all Worth Financial
and over to something that's always puzzled me, and I
guess obviously OPEK mean different countries coordinating together to determine
how much oil is going to cost. So if that

(16:42):
happened among a coordinated group of domestic companies, they would
be suited under the Sherman Anti Trust Act. So they're
constantly and have always been manipulating the price of oil.
We can go back to the sevenies, remember how bad
things were back then when we didn't produce our own
But fast forward to today, we are the largest exporter
of oil on the planet. I think we're out producing
everybody because of modern tech defracking, drilling, and permitting. So

(17:03):
I don't know whether we're impacted by Opek's decision to
the extent we used to be. But they decided they're
going to quit this. I guess they boosted production one
hundred and some odd thousand barrels per day up until
the end of the year, but they said first quarter
next year, we're gonna pair that back. What's behind all this,
Brian James.

Speaker 3 (17:22):
Well, same thing they're always looking at, which just supply
and demand. Just like every other country, every other company
out there that's trying to make a profit. They're always
going to try to predict supply and demand so they
know what to have on the shelves so that it
can be demanded. So the news headline here is that
eight member countries of OPEC plus are going to raise
oil production by about one hundred and thirty seven thousand
barrels per day. So that sounds like the opposite, right,

(17:43):
we're gonna push supply, right, But afterwards, and here's the
really big part of the headline, the media part, they're
going to pause any further output hikes for Q one
twenty twenty six, so they're going to back off on
all of it between January and March and next year.
So this, of course, any hint that we're going to
reduce supply will of course push prices up. Brent crude
moved up to about sixty five bucks a barrel, and

(18:05):
then the West Texas flavor sixty one nineteen or thereabouts.
So now that concern is that the new market may
face a supply surplus here and by weaker demand expectations
for twenty twenty six. So that's why are they doing
this again, trying to match up supply and demand, and
so just just something to pay attention to in the
background of otherwise a relatively healthy economy.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
But that's certainly going to have an impact somewhere along
the way.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Well, I know we've been messing around with sanctions on Russia.
They are still a big supplier of global oil notwithstanding
our sanctions. Obviously there are other countries out there that
are willing to gobble up rushes like it may perhaps
cheaper oil, but are they wrestling at all with our
sanctions on Russia or Russia's supply on the open market?
Is that something that's been factored into this decision making, Brian.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Everything, especially with oil.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
Oil is the same no matter where you dig it
out of the ground, so wherever you get it from,
and that's why everything's so connected. You mentioned earlier oil
US market. We pump about thirteen million barrels a day
and that's historically high.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
But those just.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Because we pump it at home does not mean that
our oil prices are not impacted by what is being
paid elsewhere, because again, it's all the same product that
comes out of the ground. So if other large entities
change the prices, that's of course going to ripple through
and the Brint prices that's basically out of the UK
West Texas of course is here. All that stuff moves
in tandem. So whenever OPEC signals it's going to tighten

(19:27):
or loosen supply, those traders react instantly and they move
the price accordingly.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Doesn't matter where it came out of the ground.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
All right, real quick, I don't know how much could
possibly exist at sea, but I've seen quite a few
articles about these tankers that are just floating around out
there in the world that are just filled with oil
and there's just idly sitting by. Are they waiting for
the price to go up before they bring that in
or what's the story? And is that really have a
global impact given the finite amount of tankers that could

(19:54):
possibly be filled.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Oh yeah, And that's why, you know, think about it.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Oil is priced every single minute of every sing day,
just like the stock market, you know, So therefore there
are there's a reason to make it bring to bring
it into port today versus tomorrow, And so absolutely they'll
they'll kind of change their routes or slow things down
a little bit if they think that if they bring
it on Tuesday versus Monday, it'll squeeze out a little
more income. So absolutely that has an impact.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
One more question I got for you, Brian James, because
you know, I've been waiting patiently and hopefully for the
future when we finally wake up that given our energy
demand needs, that we finally will start building what they
call small modular reactors, which are safe and only you
need five percent of rich uranium, which don't have any ways.
Military has been running on these things for a long time. Anyway,
more and more people talking about it. Once you get

(20:38):
the AI facilities and the multi billionaires who own them
to step up and start demanding that we want our
own miniature nuclear plants, it sounds to me like OPEC's
future maybe on the rocks a little bit. And I'm
sure they think about this. But if you can get
nuclear power as opposed to see gas power or goil
power or any other form of power, it's efficient and
it's abundant. This is going to impact the oil market

(21:00):
down the road. Absolutely it will.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
And so that's why you know, you commonly hear you
know the oil companies. I go back to the who
killed the original electric car? This thirty years ago when
this story came out, and it actually happened earlier than that.
But yeah, of course they're going to defend their needs there,
and I don't think we're going to see a lot
of public outrage or public demand for it until, as

(21:24):
you mentioned, all these data centers and things are going
to start sucking energy that is going to filter through.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
So they're building.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Somebody's building a big data center up in Trenton, and
that's going to have a pretty significant impact on the
local power grid up there, and it's probably going to
have an impact on the prices people are paying in
that area. And that's happening all over the country as
these data centers are becoming more and more important, with
AI becoming more prevalent. So I think when that starts
hitting electric bills, you're going to start to see more
and more demand for you know, maybe let's worry less

(21:49):
about what nuclear stuff has meant in the past and
worry about the future because in the benefits that it
can provide for us. Right now, I don't think we're
there yet, and it's too easy politically to just say
let's keep pulling oil out the ground.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, people will wake up to the reality we're not
building three mile island type plants anymore. The concerns and
challenges faced by those are no longer existent with modern
technology anyway, Brian James, always great having you and I
appreciate your willingness to talk about these great topics with
my listeners me and how they might impact the retirement
in future. And always recommend, right Brian, get a financial
planner sitting on your side of the table so you

(22:22):
get sound advice with a fiduciary obligation.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
Yep, absolutely, that's what we say every day. And keep
an eye on those Bengals headlines and we'll check in next.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Week, Yes we will. Thanks Brian, take care of a
great week. Eight thirty five fifty five care se detalk
station phone lines well they will be open if you
wan