Simply Money

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Tonight, anyone feeling a little bit jittery, We're gonna help
you calmb those election day jitters you're listening to. Simply
when you're presented by all Worth Financial Ammi Wagner along
with Steve Ruby. We are one week away everyone. I mean,
I was trying to watch football over the weekend and
I was like, oh, I'm pulling out my hair right now.

(00:28):
These the commercials are tanged, They're terrible. They get every election.
I think this can't be worse right this time is
this can't be worse. These are worse. It's it's it's terrible.
You feel like you're being like hit over the head
with a baseball bat when you're watching these things. So yes,
for those of you who are just about done right,

(00:49):
ready to be for it to be over, I get it.
It's really not just the commercials. There's so many emotions
involved in this. If you're on social media, people are
posting about it on social media. It's the ads, it's
the yard signs. It's constant. And I think when you
are hounded that much with anything, you get this internal feeling.

(01:11):
I should be doing something about this. I'm scared, I'm angry.
I'm frustrated. Whatever that feeling is, you feel like you
need to do something with it, and my concern is
what you do is make some adjustments to how you're invested,
to your financial plan, to your retirement plan. And today
we just want to remind you that is not the
thing to do right now.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, that is definitely not the thing to do right now.
It's tough. You know, remember that as financial advisors and
as a company, we like to share that money is
not red or blue. It is great. So there's no
political agenda. We as advisors are supposed to remove our
own biases and leave them at the door when we
have these conversations with folks, because obviously this is front

(01:54):
and center. I too watched football and some baseball this
weekend and some basketball. Actually it's just constant this way
to get away farage of the worst political ads I've
ever seen in my life. So it's front and center
that the thought of, like you said, maybe I should
do something, maybe I should act on this, And you know,
the short of it is, please don't you know that
there's a new Harris Poll survey that came out for

(02:17):
twenty five hundred investors six and ten believe that the
results of the election, no matter what side of the
aisle you fall on, the results the election are going
to have more of an impact on your retirement plan
than the markets themselves. Some people are actually acting on it,
two and ten are making changes, making themselves more conservative.
That's another way of saying they probably sold everything to cash.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, you know, I got to say, I am pleasantly surprised.
I started probably I don't know, five six months ago,
people just starting to kind of bring it up in
conversations with me, like what should I do with my
four own k you know, like obviously I should go
to all cash. And I feel like that's kind of
the conversation people, and I would explain to them, now,
that's not really actually what you should do, you know,

(02:58):
even if you're really really passionate about and candidate. I
had someone even reach out and say, we're not even
passionate about either candidate. We just know that we just
feel really strongly that markets are going to tank after
this election. And so what I'm saying I'm pleasantly surprised
about is the closer we've gotten the election, really, the
less I have had people making those comments to me
still some people who have concerns about what's going to

(03:20):
happen on the other side of it, But overall, a
lot of the investors I'm talking to sort of get it.
They'll admit, you know, I'm a little nervous, I'm a
little fearful about what could happen, But most of them
understand rightfully so that their four oh one K and
their retirement is more dependent on the market, on the

(03:40):
economy than whoever's name or plaque is sitting on that
desk in the oval office.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, I mean, whether it's it's red or blue, the
markets are going to continue to go up over the
long run, kind of like walking up the stairs while
playing with the yo yo. There's going to be dips,
but the long enough you look at a chart long
enough mapping out the markets, and it's always going to
be upward, no matter who's in office, because we're not
investing in political candidates. We are investing in capitalism, and

(04:09):
capitalism is driven by corporate greed, and corporate greed's not
going anywhere, and no matter what kind of policy is
front and center, companies can pivot to still make money.
And when companies are making money, that's when the value
of the stock in your portfolio does up.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
One of the best examples of pivoting happened during the pandemic.
I mean, most of us, we were not going out
to bars, and for those who do, there were secret bars.
There were secret bars, but people were not apparently drinking
the vodka and the tequila as much as we were before.
So what do those companies do? Will be pivoted to
making hand sanitizer. You weren't going to bars, you weren't

(04:45):
drinking their liquor. They use their liquor to make something
that you were very much using and needing at that time,
hand sanitizer. If you think these companies cannot pivot again
and figure out a way around whoever is in oval
their policies, you're crazy. Yeah, corporate greed will always drive

(05:06):
your four one K. So they're always going to find
ways to innovate.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
And let's look at the numbers. And so since nineteen
sixty nine, presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, hw Bush, Clinton, Obama
Trump all presided over market gains of at least eleven
point seven percent. That's the SMP five hundred YEP on
average each year they were in office. That's three Democrats
and four Republicans.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yep, And okay, So maybe you're thinking, all right, right, okay,
so maybe the market does okay, but let's talk about
debt because I really think that the future of this
company or this country is dependent on getting out of
this debt situation. Well, here's the deal. Debt has rapidly
increased under both parties. You can go back fifty years.
You talk about the line on the graph, it's going up,

(05:51):
not red or blue, it's simply going up. More debt.
We're taking on more debt, doesn't matter Republicans or Democrats
are in that office. It has not gone down once,
regardless of who is sitting in that chain.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah, the trend of it is certainly up, just like
the markets are. Obviously, something's going to need to happen
with that. At some point, some political party or both
are going to have to come together and make some changes.
But you know, as far as the markets are concerned,
and how it's performed over time, doesn't matter if it's
a Democrat or Republican office. Over the long term, economic growth,
same thing, relatively consistent. You know, a lot of this

(06:26):
data comes from charts that that Chief Investment Officer Andy
Stout of all Worth Financial here has put together and
they paint pictures that are based on data and show trends.
And another one economic growth put together from nineteen forty nine.
There's economic growth during every single administration.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
You're listening to simply money presented by all Worth Financial.
I mean me Wagner along with Steve Ruby. For those
of you who are getting generally nervous, we are weak
out from the next presidential election, and I understand there
is a lot on the line. But what you have
to understand is making decisions about your money based on
your emotions over the selection it can lead you astray.

(07:08):
I've met several people through the course of the years
who took their money out of the markets for whatever reason.
They didn't like this candidate. They knew if they got in,
and then once the money was out, you know, it
was like, well when am I going to put it
back in? And they ended up missing out on significant gains, right,
They got really emotional about politics and they took a
hit with their finances. And let me remind you, it's

(07:31):
not easy to recover from that. Like that is not
an easy thing to recover from if you are knocking
on retirement's door and you whip all your money out
of the markets, and then you lose three years of
potential growth. Right, that is not easy to recover from.
So this today is just kind of a reminder for you, Right,
what should you be worried about? What perspective do you
need to understand when it comes to whoever is sitting

(07:53):
into that oval office?

Speaker 3 (07:54):
Right?

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Economic growth GDP relatively constant, regardless of been who's been
in office, Debt rising regardless of Republican or Democrat in
that office. And markets. You know, when the markets drop,
you can't blame the presidents, you know, because they it
doesn't matter. So you look back under President George W. Bush,

(08:15):
Right was he in office? When was he to blame
for markets being down? Well, let's look at what was
going on he came into office, right, is that dot
com bubble burst? Didn't have anything to do with the
growth of those companies on the on the front side
of that shortly before nine to eleven, Obviously he didn't
control anything there, helped push the economy deeper into a recession,
and then on the back end of that, pregnant the presidency,

(08:37):
I'm all over the place today. On the back end
of that presidency, you had the two thousand and eight
mortgage and banking crisis. None of those things did he
really contribute to in any way, shape or form. Yet
you can look at his presidency and it's sort of
marred by not a great time for the stock market.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
Ye, it's easy to blame the man. Looking at Bill
Clinton for example, Was he the reason the markets did
so well during his presidency? I mean, he was president
during the dot com boom, so that there's definitely an
aspect of timing there. Lucky timing. Communism discredited. After the
fall of USSR, United States merged as the world's global

(09:15):
economics superpower.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Internet is front and center. Technology companies are on the rise.
There's a huge surge and prosperity that kind of reshape
the economy. Did Clinton do that? No, No, he didn't,
the same same way that that Bush didn't cause say
these terrible things during during his presidence.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yeah, several things that play there are much larger than
the actual individual. If what we're talking about today sounds
different from to you, it's because it is. It's because
the parties that are currently running for presidency are running
for office they are either going to take credit for
the things that are going right with the economy and
with the stock market, or they're going to point blame

(09:57):
at their candidate, at their opposition, for whatever can blame
them for. And it's so interesting because it's like the
same candidate. If you look at them over time, you know,
they'll say, they'll point the other party, you did this,
you do that, And then when things go south, maybe
if they are elected, that wasn't me, that was this,
that was that. If you start paying attention to these things,
you will start to see this trend. We're talking about

(10:18):
something that they're not going to talk to you about
in the ads because they want you to be scared.
They want you to feel like this next person that
you're voting for can have this huge impact on your
ability to make ends meet, your ability to retire. Thank goodness,
history shows us that our economy is much bigger than

(10:38):
whoever's in this office.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, that's a great point. And you know, talking about
an article that we discussed last week, it was from
a study from Comerica Bank. From nineteen sixty one to
twenty twenty three, the S and P five hundred posted
average gains of about ten percent in year one of
a presidency, seventeen percent in year three of a presidency,
and eight percent in year four, regardless of who wins. Yeah,

(11:00):
you know that there's a million different ways we can
share the data with you.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
You know, at all points to the same thing.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, it points to not acting an emotion when emotions
are high, because you could potentially shoot yourself on the foot.
We don't want you to lose your shirt by selling
to cash. To wait it out to see what's going
to happen with the election, because no matter what happens,
the United States is resilient. We're investing in in capitalism.
Corporate greed isn't going anywhere, So that's going to drive

(11:28):
the markets forward. If you're investing, then the markets will
continue to grow over the long term.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
And I've also heard people have concerns over what if
this is a divided government or you united government meaning
whoever is president and their party is also not in
control or is in control of Congress. Here's the deal
that also doesn't matter as it relates to divided government. Actually,
the stock market loves that. The stock market hates uncertainty.

(11:54):
It really likes when not it links when there's no progress,
because then it doesn't have to it doesn't have to
digest anything like, well, okay, this is the way it
was yesterday and this is the way it's going to
be in the future because people in Washington are just
going to fight and fight and fight, and nothing's going
to get done. Actually the stock market loves that. But
even in times of a united government, going back to
the nineteen twenties, we've looked at this dimensional fund advisors,

(12:15):
the data that they've put forth, and it's like, gosh,
down to the two decimal points, oh you know, or
two places over from the decimal point, same kinds of returns,
whether it's all Republicans in charge or all Democrats and
Democrats in charge or totally divided. So please understand, politics
are politics, and yes they will have a big impact
on our lives, but don't let it make a huge

(12:37):
impact on your future and your money. Here's the all
Worth advice. Your emotions might be all over the place
right now, right, that's normal, a lot of us are
feeling about like that way, but acknowledge it and then
stick to historical data when it comes to your money.
Coming up next, the latest reason why getting financial advice
from the wrong people and places can end pretty poorly

(12:57):
for you. You're listening to Simply Money presented by all
Worth Financial here in fifty five krs the talk station
Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial. I mean me
and Wigner along with Steve Ruby. If you can't listen
to our show every night, you don't have to miss
a thing. We have a daily podcast where you search
Simply Money on the iheartop or wherever you get your podcasts,

(13:20):
and coming up, we are playing fact or fiction with
a specific focus on retirement. This is something you got
to make sure you get right. All right, one of
the greatest actors of all time is kind of admitting that, well,
he didn't play it so well when it came to
the part of playing the part of maybe being a
smart money manager. We're talking about al Pacino here.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, al Pacino. He has been pretty open about a
story of what happened to him working with the wrong accountant.
So this is, you know, an accountant back in twenty
eleven that had a lot of celebrity clients. There were
folks out there saying he wasn't to be trusted.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Man.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
He those folks were right.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah, they were. You know, he brings up a good point.
He's like, you, you think everyone in Hollywood when we
make it like big as an actor, we're so rich
and you know, we're getting ten million a film. But
by the time you pay, you know, your agent and
this person and that person what trickles back to you,
You know, it was a mere four and a half
million dollars. Before you feel too bad for him, His
point was that a he was he was living far

(14:25):
above his means. He was living like he was bringing
home ten million dollars from each film, you know, extravagant
vacations and parties and all of that. And the person
that he trusted to be as money manager wasn't saying
any think like, hey, you can't afford this. Not only that,
but over time it turns out that person actually was
charged I think and convicted with pons operating upon these

(14:47):
Yeah awful tale as the oldest time.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, I mean, but you know, one of the most
famous actors that's ever lived has has fallen victim of
bad money management that this this account was was doing
everything for He wasn't even signing his checks, but not
being not helping al Pacino being to be responsible with
the money, just almost encouraging him to squander it, and

(15:12):
so that he would go back to work and the
CPA would keep getting kickbacks from sure, you know, from
Al's hard work.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Well, he did better when al Pacina wasn't paying attention, right,
So he was like, you keep spending, I'll keep taking
care of everything. You won't even realize what I'm doing here.
And then it got to the point where Pacina was
what in his seventies, I think, yeah, in his seventies,
and all of a sudden, kind of that house the
cards came tumbling down. He realized he went from having
fifty million dollars to actually nothing to show from it.

(15:41):
And keep in mind to Oppatuna has several children. He's
a one year old. I think he's got a little kid.
He's got to be able to make money. And so
he went started like doing this college speaking circuit, charging
money for that, taking parts in films he would have
turned down years before. I mean I would go so
much as to say he got a little desperate. And listen,

(16:02):
most of us aren't in Hollywood. We're not capable of
maybe making fifty million dollars over the course of our
career or making up millions of dollars on the back end.
But I think there's definitely some lessons here in the
fact that, hey, if something seems to go to be true,
if you're working with someone and they are really not
transparent with you, you don't understand what's going on, someone else,
find someone else. Yes, it's okay to kind of not

(16:25):
be in everything all the time, right, trusting someone to
work with you. But man, when you ask a question,
they should answer it and it should make sense to you.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Yeah. Absolutely, So new research. Let's let's talk about this
study that came out. It was between cal Berkeley, Rice
University and other place and it's it's looking at what
are called fin fluencers or fine fluencers. Financial fluencers, is
that what that is? Short for individuals who provide unsolicited
investment advice on social media platforms. I know we've talked

(16:59):
about this before because you have children that use social
media and they'll actually see some of this stuff.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean my youngest and this was a
couple of years ago, came home and said, I think
I want to start investing in a stock market, and
I'd like to invest in ETFs that track the S
and P. Five hundred and as I as I cried
tears of joy and said, did you listen to my
show today?

Speaker 3 (17:24):
No?

Speaker 1 (17:24):
He said no, I said, of course that, mom, I
saw that on Instagram. Well, I was happy that what
he saw was actually good information. I was ultimately scared
because he listened. He had no idea what that person's
background was, whether they had any kind of degree or
background or credentials behind what they were saying. And he's

(17:48):
not alone. These children, these children, they're young adults now,
many of them right growing up in a world where
those devices are part of their every day. They are
learning from those devices. Kids will joke, but I think
they're kind of serious. They they probably taken more from
social media than from teachers and professors every day. That's
just the way that this is. And so what they

(18:09):
don't understand, many of them, is that people who are
talking to them about money don't have any kind of background.
So you can get great advice on the best kinds
of flip gloss or the best basketball handling drills, but
it's not necessarily going to be great advice when it
comes to money. And so if you have children or
grandchildren that are growing up with social media. Make sure

(18:29):
they understand these air quote influencers are not how they
should be influenced when it comes to making smart decisions
about their money.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Well, you actually pull back the curtain. You look at
the data. Twenty nine thousand different influencers, fine fluencers, I
don't know financial influencers. I think sure you know twenty
five or twenty nine different recommendations of stock made between
twenty thirteen and twenty seventeen. Researchers found that these recommendations,
from the vast majority of them, did not actually beat
the markets. Sixteen percent of these influences were judged to

(19:00):
have absolutely no ability in making these recommendations, while fifty
six percent were judged, based on criteria within the study,
to have anti skill, which means they were terrible at
it and they significantly lagged when it came to market performance.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Terrible at these recommendations, yet no one's ever following up, right,
So what's happening here? I think there's a herd mentality.
This person has two million followers, so they must be good.
I should be doing this herd mentality. There's a fear
of missing out. There's just a lot that can go
really wrong. Make sure your children and grandchildren understand the fundamentals.
And adult friends, yes that's true. Influencers is not where

(19:39):
you should be getting your knowledge about smart financial decisions
and planning for your future and retirement. Here's the all
Worth advice. Well herd behavior can lead to maybe some
short term gains, it often results in significant risks and
the losses over time. Come get next a warning about
what is being called the fifty billion dollar scam. Listening

(20:00):
to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial Here in
fifty five KRC the talk station. You're listening to Simply
Money presented by all Worth Financial. I mean me Wagner
along with Steve Ruby. This show is all about helping
you make smart decisions when it comes to your money,
and a lot of that has to do with protecting
you from scams. And when a scam reaches the level

(20:21):
that the FBI has a warning out there for you
about it, you know you better be listening. So joining
us tonight as our tech expert Dave Hatter from intrust
it with a warning about what has now come to
be known as a fifty billion dollar scam. That's a
lot of losses.

Speaker 4 (20:38):
How does that happen, Dave, Yeah, well, as always, thanks
for having me on. And this business email compromise, often
abbreviated BC, has been around for a long time. The
FBI has warned about it for a long time. And
I think this is important because you know, this is
not someone like me just speculating what's happening out there,

(20:58):
or some company that's trying to sell you something you.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
Know that will theoretically address this concern.

Speaker 4 (21:04):
It's an actual law enforcement agency and they get complaints,
you know, they get people reporting this kind of crime.
And it's an interesting side note before I delve into
the details. I've seen a high level FBI agent at
a conference that I happen to watch online say they
believe that only about ten to twelve percent of all
cybercrime is reported. Wow, in many laws, I'm sorry, In

(21:26):
many states there aren't a law that requires a reporting
or when it does require and it's you know, there's
all kinds of rules around it's something. Let's face it,
a lot of people aren't going to report this stuff
because it's embarrassing and it makes them look bad. So again,
take that for what it's worth. The FBI says this
is a fifty billion dollar scam over the last few years,
and it really boils down to this amy and it's

(21:46):
it's the same stuff we talk about all the time.
Small businesses say, I don't have anything we're stealing. You know,
why would someone attack me? And my answer is because
you make it easy for him. And it's not like
there's some dude in a hoodie and mom's basement eating
mountain dew, are drinking mountain dew and eating pizza thinking
today I'm going to attack Joe's garage. They have automated

(22:07):
processes that just go out and look for companies that
have vulnerabilities. They know that employees will use the same
bad password on multiple accounts. They know that people don't
like multifacture authentication aka two step verification or two step validation,
and that makes it easy for them to exploit folks

(22:27):
and take advantage of these kind of scams here where
they get into someone's mail, perhaps multiple employees mail, they
lurk around in there until they figure out a way
to steal money. Because at the end of the day,
it's almost always about stealing money. Yet maybe you might
have some trade secrets they want, or some sort of
military secrets, but mostly they're just going to try to
steal your money. And when they can do things like

(22:48):
determine that you have a third party TPA third party
administrator for your four oh one K, then given enough time,
they'll figure out how to request distributions from it. I've
seen that actually happen. Employees law five hundred thousand dollars
of their money they plan to retire on because someone
infiltrated their environment and executed a scam like this to

(23:11):
steal their money, or they send out fraudsent invoices. I mean, sadly,
this happens all the time. We see it almost every day.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
So what's your advice to our listeners. What should they
be doing to protect themselves against the scam like this,
especially when the FBI is shining.

Speaker 4 (23:25):
Light on Well, Steve, I think the first thing is
to be aware that it's a thing, right, and again,
this isn't just me trying to sell you something. You've
got the FBI and many other three letter agencies, plus
people like Microsoft and Google warning about this all the time,
So it's awareness and this is less about phishing necessary
Now you might get fish so they can steal your

(23:45):
credentials if you're not doing all the things I just
said before, like you have a strong password and you
are using multi factor authentication.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
But once you're.

Speaker 4 (23:53):
Aware of this, then it's really a combination of making
sure you have the right controls in place, the more
technical stuff like make you require your employees to have
a strong, unique password for every work account. You have
a policy that says, as an employee, you can't use
the same password on multiple accounts. It has to be
a strong password, generally twelve or more random characters. And

(24:15):
you can't use the same password for your personal accounts
because you know, if you're a target customer and your
data happened to be in the target breach, and let's
say that I got your password from that, well I
might be able to get into your work accounts. I mean,
that's how these things work, right, And the bad guys
know this, right, they're smart. So it's controls like that,
it's requiring employees, making it table stakes to be an employee.

(24:37):
If you want to work here, you must do this
to turn on multi factor authentication, right, that's the additional
verification and authentication you need to log in where you
enter your user name of password and then generally via
text or some other mechanism. You get sent a code
that you need to log in. Bad guys, unfortunately, are
figuring out how to get around that. But it raises

(24:57):
the bar. It makes it much much more difficult because
then even if you can guess my password, pack my password,
get my password off the dark web or whatever, you
still got to get that past that code.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
With the speaking of awareness, how are bad guys getting
around that?

Speaker 4 (25:12):
Well, unfortunately, a lot of MFA is not phishing resistant,
and they use things like man in the middle attacks.
This gets kind of technical, but let's say, for example,
I send you an email that has a QR code
in it. It claims to be from your IT department
or your bank or whatever, and it claims there's some
problem and you need to scan this code to log in.
We're seeing this a lot now. It's actually called quishing

(25:33):
with a queue.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
So you get it. It looks legit, right because it's spoofed.

Speaker 4 (25:37):
It looks good. They know what they're doing. They're using
AI to spoof this stuff. Now you scan that code,
it takes you to a log in page that looks
exactly like the Google log in page, or exactly like
the Microsoft log in page and you get my credentials.
Because I log in, they pass that on the Microsoft
the code comes back to you. You enter that code,
they intercept it, and now they're in. I know that

(25:59):
probably sounds convoluted, and in a short amount of time
we have here to dig into it. It could probably
use some further explanation, but sadly, this is a thing.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
You have to be on guard all the time, and
I think you can never ever let your guard down.
Earlier this week, Dave, I was just thinking about you.
I had been off for a few days. I got
back into my email. I had eight gazillion emails that
I just went through and flagged all the ones that
were voicemails that I need to go back and listen to.
The Next day, I got back into my email. One
of those emails about a voicemail right where it just

(26:31):
sends you like the transcript of what it was and
the information to call them back a lot different than
the other ones. And I look at the email address
on it. I realized it's not our company's software for
bringing emails or for being voicemails to our computers, and
so I would have just quickly gone through listened to it,
clicked on the link, and could have easily then opened

(26:53):
up our system to anything. And I thought, I'm pretty
smart about these things. But I'm telling you I flagged
the email to respond to it. If I hadn't just
waited until the next day to go back, I wouldn't
have caught it.

Speaker 4 (27:04):
Yeah, sadly, Amy, I know it's frustrating for people to
hear this, but yeah, you can't trust anything spoofing this
idea that you know, I can make something fraudulent. It
could be an email address, it could be a phone number,
it can be a voicemail, it could be an entire website.
This is all, unfortunately very easy due to advances in
technology in general and now AI things like chatch ept.

(27:26):
I can write text that will sound perfect in any language.
And you know that was one of the red flags
of the old school fishing attacks. You'd get an email
and it was full of weird grammar and you know,
stuff didn't make sense. That's all out the window. I
can clone your voice. People say, how you got a voicemail. Well,
I call your phone number, I get your voicemail, I
record your voice off of it. I feed it into

(27:46):
readily available free voice cloning tools that you can go
to right now in the web, and with limited experience
and at no cost, I can come up with something
that I guarantee to most people will sound just like you,
and I can type in what I want you to
say and you'll say it.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
I've done it. It's a real thing.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
As not having our own voices and our voicemail.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
Well, that's a good question, Steve.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
You know, you know I now in your case, in
Amy's case, you know, people that have a lot of
public exposure like you guys, it's probably too late because
I can just go to the podcast and get your
voice anytime I want. But for people who don't have
that kind of exposure, yeah, you might want to rethink
and go back to some kind of generic voicemail where
the bad guys can't get your voice. But you know,
increasingly social media whatever, it's harder and harder for people

(28:33):
to keep their voice and other information that bad guys
will be able to use to impersonate you out there.
But yeah, it's that would be one defense against it, Steve,
Change your voicemail and use some sort of default thing
or some voice you get online. So that's what they
can't capture your voice that way, especially if you're an executive.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
I think the key is just being aware in the
of every time you come on. It's a different kind
of warning, but the more aware you are, the better
you can protect your and I think bottom line here
is trust nothing right. Make sure that you are doing
your research on any email, on any text and any voicemails,
anything that's coming through your way. Don't do what I
almost did this week right and just clicking on it,

(29:13):
because a world of bad can happen from that. Thank
you so much, of course, to Dave Hatter, our tech
expert from interest It, for this warning. Spread the word.
No wants to be the latest victim of this fifty
billion dollars scam. A warning from the FBI. You're listening
to Simply Money here on fifty five KRC, the talk station.

(29:33):
You're listening to Simply Money because anybody all worth financial?
I mean why and you're along with Steve Rieb you
have a financial question that's keeping you up at night.
We can help you out. There's a red button you
can click on while you're listening to the show. It's
right there on the iHeart app. Record your question. It's
coming straight to us and straight ahead. Have you ever
had that situation where you're stuck somewhere the airline is
just not helping you. Now, there might be new rules

(29:55):
out there with refunds that went into a fact. We'll
tell you how those will you? Okay? Time now to
play everyone's favorite game, retirement fact or fiction. Let's get
straight to it. Fact or fiction, Steve, you can work
part time in retirement without affecting your Social Security benefits.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Oh, this one has nuance.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
To it depending on your age.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah. Fiction, Yeah, depending on when you started collecting. It's
an interesting situation because if you collect your Social Security
benefits before full retirement age and you work part time
and your income is above twenty two three hundred and
twenty dollars or or more, let's because you know there's

(30:39):
nuance here, so you will get a reduced benefit. And
this is something that you need to take into consideration
that some folks are like, Hey, I want to collect
and keep working and everything will be fine and dandy,
but then you get this reduced benefit that then recalculates
your your primary insurance amount when you hit full retirement
age to increase what that would have been So it's
this frustrating calculation that you need to be very aware

(31:01):
of if you plan on working and collecting social Security
prior to full retirement age. If you're after full retirement age,
not a big deal at all.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah, it can be really confusing. So if you are
before retire fuller retirement age and do want to work
and do want to collect, talk to a financial professional
before you make that decision so they can help you
think through how that could impact you.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Factor fiction for amy, you should invest conservatively as soon
as you retire to avoid losing money.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Ah, these are all very nuanced. They can't be black
or white all the time. I'm going to say this
is fiction because it's saying you should invest conservatively. This
depends on your financial situation. What are your goals, what
have you already saved? You know, sometimes it makes sense
to take on more risk because you need a little

(31:44):
more growth, or sometimes you don't need that money and
you're actually growing that money for your heirs, for your
loved ones you're leaven behind, which case they could also
make a little more sense to take on a little
more a little more risk here. So this is also
kind of nuance to me.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah. I mean, and this one I would lean more
just me fiction because it needs to be an individualized plan.
That's the benefit of working with financial plan or understanding
your need to take risk, your ability to take risk,
your comfort level with taking risks tied all together. There
is no one size fits all for this one. So
I would just go as far as to say fiction
because you don't necessarily need to invest conservatively as soon

(32:20):
as you retire.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Speaking of one size, it's all factor fiction. You should
aim to replace seventy to eighty percent of your pre
retirement income in retirement.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
You know, it's funny because where I come from from.
You know, I was born and raised at a big brokerage firm,
and then I worked for an advisor firm under a
big bank, And you know, these rules of thumb are
certainly a little bit more prevalent, yeah, than when you're
at a registered investment advisory firm that does full fledged,
hollistic financial planning. Because this answer is just straight up fiction.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, rules of thumb can become a rule of dumb.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, exactly. You know, it makes your plan look a
little better if you're only going to spend eighty percent
of your pre retirement income in retirement. But the reality
this situation is when you're hitting your go go years
of retirement, you're no longer working, Maybe it's time to
start hitting some of those bucket list items. Maybe you're
going to be traveling. Maybe you want to do some
home updates. Even if you're not traveling, you want to

(33:11):
make your home the place that you're going to stay
in and make you very happy for decades to come.
I do not count on less spending. I literally count
on higher spending out the gate, I.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
Agree, And I had someone recently come in my office
and they said, oh, we were talking about what they're
going to need on a monthly basis when they retire.
And they said, oh, less than we're lesson we're spending now.
And I said why, Well, you know, because i'm you know,
it's not going to be as expensive when I'm not working.
And I'm like, what's the rationale behind that? Well, you know,
like the commute, and you know, some lunches out and
I'm like, but what do you do on your weekends? Well,

(33:43):
weed out and sometimes we play golf, sometimes we meet
our friends. Sometimes we have the grand kids overnight and
we take them to movies. Is that more expensive or
cheaper than when you're working it? So it's like, oh,
I thought it was actually going to be cheaper for
whatever reason when I got to retirement, but now that
I'm talking about it, I realized it will likely be
more expensive. So if you want to use a formula
like this, I think it can really lead you astray.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that one. I would say
certainly fiction. Quickly, we have time for one more for
amy factor. Fiction. It's best to pay pay for large
expenses like travel early in retirement when you're healthier. Oh,
this is a day of nuance.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
I know it is.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
So I think this I'm going to say, this is fiction,
and this is why you might have You might want
to travel more when you're younger. But if you're looking
at just larger expenses, you know later in retirement you
could have also larger expenses. You could have home expenses
that come up, you could have health expenses that you
weren't anticipating.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Long term care.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yes, right, so there can be really expensive stuff that
happens later in retirement. So maybe it's the more fun
stuff that you can anticipate being a little more expensive
early on. But just major expenses across the board. Those
could happen in any point in retirement. You have to
be prepared for.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
I would say having a financial plan enables you to
add nuance yes of this and explore it on an
individualized basis.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Coming up next a breakdown airline fund airline refund rules
that just took effect this week. What do you need
to know? You're listening to simply Money presented by all
Worth Financial here in fifty five KRC the talk station.
You're listening to simply money presented by all Worth Financial.
I mean you Wagner along with Steve Ruby, so frustrating.

(35:23):
You and I were stuck in an airport. When was
that in March? It was a nightmare. We were actually
not only stuck in an airport. We were stuck in
Dallas for a day, but some people were stuck for days.
Many of us have been in this situation and it's
like you have to go to the airline, you have
to call them if the issue is with the airline.
It can be incredibly frustrating. Well, now there are some

(35:45):
new rules that might make things a little easier for you.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
God, I would have loved this because it was funny
it was. It was an all worth event and there
was a whole bunch of us that was all like
this Kumbai, all the advisors where we were trying to
fix it as one big team, and then we realized
it was impossible, ran yeah and found like different hotels
at different locations, and you know, it was It was
definitely a pain to have to deal with this, especially

(36:10):
with working through other refunds for the changes that it
needed to be made. So these new rules, if departure
or arrival times are delayed more than three hours for
domestic flights or six hours for international flights, there's all
there's all kinds of stipulations here, but but we will
be eligible for automatic refunds from the airlines. Yeah, you

(36:32):
won't have to wait in an align for four hours
of wait on hold for six hours.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, any major changes to what your flight was planning.
So if it's pushed back several hours and it has
to be three hours if you're flying here in the US,
six hours internationally, if they're changing which airport you're going
in and out of, if they're increasing the number of connections.
You had one layover and now you've got two or
no layovers and now you've got one anything along those lines.
It used to be you were majorly inconvenienced, and then

(36:59):
you had to be inconvene to gain by calling the
airline and waiting on hold for seventy two hours to
get a refund. Now you don't have to jump through hoops.
That refund should immediately be coming, and the airline must
promptly issue refunds, which means seven business days if you
made that purchase on a credit card, or twenty calendar
days for other payment methods. It should automatically be coming.

(37:22):
You shouldn't have to fight tooth and nails.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
And airlines need to let you know there needs to
be a process, and this is part of this new
ruling too, where there will be prompt notifications to passengers
of their right to a refund when issues a rise.
So it's not something that we're just going to have
to figure out on our own. Apparently, this rule change
means that the airlines are going to be communicating with you, Hey,

(37:45):
there is a change to your flight. There's a change
to where it's arriving, where you need to fly out
of even like handicap accessibility changes, there's all kinds of
reasons that airlines are going to have to notify you
now and set expectations when the monetary compensation will be
heading your way. As far as the refund is concerned.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
Will this be a seamless transition, Absolutely not right. There
will be pitfalls. Different airlines will take a look at
these rules and interpret them differently, but this is moving
in the right direction. Thanks for listening. Tune and tomorrow
we're talking about the life events you need to pick
up the phone and contact your financial advisor. You've been
listening Disimply Money and presented by all Worth Financial here

(38:25):
in fifty five KRC the talk station