Simply Money

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Tonight, we've got the latest report card on the economy.
What's the grade and the timing of roth conversions. We're
also taking a deep dive into long term care insurance.
You're listening to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial.
I Memi Wigner along with Steve Ruby. A lot to
get to tonight. Let's jump right in. As a mom
of four children, report cards are very, very important to me.

(00:28):
As my children know, I am always checking on those
grades and our economy, the American economy gets the report
card too. It's called gross Domestic Product and it's essentially
a measure of the health of our economy. Are we
moving in the right direction or are we not? And
the latest grade is in.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah it is so. Third quarter GDP came out and
basically right now, by the way, it's made up of
seventy percent of our spending and it's doing fine. Yeah,
it might not feel like it because in has rocked
us over the past several years, but the economy is growing.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
When you dig a little deeper into these numbers, right,
what's going on here? Well, it grew at an analyzed rate
of two point eight percent over the last three months,
primarily driven by what we're spending. And when you look
at what we're spending, one of the biggest increase in
purchases is both goods and services. We're looking at vehicles,
auto parts, prescription drugs, services. Spending were more concentrated in healthcare.

(01:30):
It's interesting too, you and I have these conversations with
clients all the time when we're building financial plans about
the fact that prescription drugs and healthcare we pay a
lot for them. And I think when we're healthy and
in our twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, it's hard to imagine
how much we could possibly spend for those in retirement.
But you look at the fact that a lot of
the growth in our economy came from this healthcare sector.

(01:53):
You know how much we're paying for prescriptions, how much
we're paying for healthcare, and you can see why it's
so important to plan for healthcare and retire.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
It really is remarkable when we're building financial plans and
we separate different goals for different reasons, for you know,
your housing, utilities, groceries, gas as oftentimes separate that's your
day to day living expenses from your healthcare goal. Because
healthcare inflates at such a higher rate. So when we
actually map out future spending goals and we you know,
you can pull up a charter a graph that shows

(02:22):
how expensive that particular goal actually becomes in twenty or
thirty years. I've seen people's jaws just drop. And healthcare
is obviously a big part of that because it inflates
at a higher rate than everything else. But yes, this
time around, you know, this quarter, healthcare is one of
those things that's driving the economy forward because people are
spending you set it yourself, vehicles out of parts, healthcare,

(02:45):
prescription drugs specifically a little frustrating my wife, for example,
she's on a medication that's like two hundred dollars a month.
I know, So is it a good thing that I
have to spend that much more on it for the economy? Sure?
For our own personal household, not so much.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Look at you taking one for the team.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, exactly, the greater good. You're welcome, economy.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
You know.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
It's interesting though, too. One of the services that we're
also paying more for is staying at hotels and eating out,
and I think that is truly a measure of how
we're feeling about our paychecks and the fact that we're
not necessarily worried about the future of our paychecks or
our financial situation, because one of the things I think
that we pull back on first when we're worried about,

(03:26):
you know, those next dollars that are coming in, or
we're think things are going to be tied in the future,
we're not eating out as much, we're not traveling as much.
And so the fact that we're doing both of those
things right now, I think probably bodes well, you know,
for the foreseeable future.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, consumer spending, it grew three point seven percent in
the previous three months ending in the end of September,
So obviously people are still spending. You go to a
restaurant a Friday night, it's it's going to have a
lot of people in, yes, and that is indicative.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Tuesday night, it has a lot of people in it,
I know.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Right, So, you know, it's interesting because certainly we felt inflation.
People are still spending. They're still getting out there, they're
still you know, developing those experiences. They're still going out
to dinner, they're still paying for extras, which is reflected
in the fact that annualize rate of GDP is currently
two point eight percent.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, it'd be interesting we're heading into the holiday season
to see what that looks like. But I would say
there's no kind of signs at this point that anyone
is going into the holiday season thinking that they're going
to be pulling back this year. And a lot of
times people will say that they're going to and then
with the numbers actually bear out, we're still spending. I've
got a question for you, what the heck is going
on with mortgage rates right now? These are not heading

(04:36):
in the direction that one might have anticipated when the
Federal Reserve of our nation Central Bank started to lower interest.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Rate highest levels since July thirty year. Fixed mortgage is
up twenty one basis points to six point seven three
percent for the week ending in October twenty fifth. This
is data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, which was released
just this Wednesday. You know, in the last month, rates
have risen sixty basis points, which is the most since

(05:03):
March of twenty twenty three. Not exactly the trends that
we were hoping to see as the FED has reduced
interest rates.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
You know, Andy Still, our chief investment officer, has said
many times that in this post COVID world, the way
that things used to work isn't necessarily the way that
things are working now. I don't know if what's happening
with the bond market is somehow related to long term
ripple effects of what's going on there. But normally, right

(05:33):
when interest rates go down, bond prices go up. But
there's the kind of teeter tool and inverse aspect to
the way that that works. Well, I mean, we're not
seeing that right now. What's going on, Well, this volatility
in the bond market is likely over concerns over the
outcome of the presidential election. Right what we're seeing sometimes
in the stock market uncertainty over what the Fed is

(05:54):
going to do next. So it's like in normal times,
this is how the bond market works. It's not normal
right now.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
I think until the Fed provides more clarity and how
it's going to proceed with interest rates cuts interest rate cuts,
we're going to continue to see a little bit of
volatility and mortgage rates because the you know that they
don't like uncertainty. Nobody likes uncertainty, and that's what's happening
right now.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
You're listening to simply money presented by all Worth Financial
I Memi Wagner along with Steve Ruby. We've got the
report card back from the American economy and grades are good,
so you know, moving in the right direction there.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
You know.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
We're also talking about mortgage rates and the fact that
we think they should be going down but they're not.
Here's why there's someone on our team right currently shopping
around for a new plays. She's watching these closely, as
I'm sure anyone who you know had kind of been waiting,
like ready to jump back in, waiting for these rates
to go down a little more. Oh, the Fed's likely
going to lower interest rates. We think mortgage rates are

(06:50):
going to go down. You know, this is not a
great surprise for many. You know, eventually, I do think
I think this will even out. It just take a
little bit longer. But I also think for those of
you who are waiting for two and three percent, you
may be waiting for the rest of your life. We
may never see this exactly.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Even out just means decrease from where it is right now,
but not to the same levels.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Then after normal. I mean, we've looked at what the
average mortgage rate has been over the course of what
the last three four decades and it's about five six percent.
That's kind of where we are now. We're a little
north of that right now. You know, we're at the
highest level we've been since July. But we had been
trending in that direction before that. So for those who
had been waiting, I don't know, put your seatbot on,

(07:34):
wait a little bit longer.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
That it's a tough pill to swallow because six point
seventy three percent, and if you know six percent is
where things smooth out. Yeah, we're not exactly going to
know that until some time goes by, right, you know,
maybe mortgage interest rates settle at five percent, back to
what normal is over the long term. But if we're waiting,
and I think our teammate that's shopping for a home
right now knows that we're not going to be We're

(07:58):
going to be waiting for a long time. If we're
counting on mortgage interest rates to get down to two
and a half or three percent, it is.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Not going to happen, right, reality check that we're never
going to go back there. Speaking of what we're never
going to go back to, it maybe the days of
normal trading hours on Wall Street. When you think about this.
Our children are growing up with devices and apps and
twenty four to seven access to everything, and then we

(08:25):
have the stock market that closed this you know, it's
open during certain hours, and yeah, exactly, we knew this
was coming. We've talked about this, We've warned you. And
when I say warning you, it's not that I think
it's terrible that we'll have access to trading in hours
beyond just the daytime the hours Wall Street is set.

(08:46):
But I also think there is maybe this feeling that
comes with being able to trade whenever you want, that
day trading, that jumping in and out of the market,
that individual stocks might become us a bigger thing. So
I think that would be my concern here.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
We're bringing this up specifically because Schwab, big brokerage firm,
is planning to add some stocks from the S and
P five hundred the NASDAQ one hundred and hundreds of
different ETFs exchange traded funds, so you know, to securities
on a list that are going to be available to
trade twenty four hours a day, five days a week,
so closed on the weekends. Right now, it does offer

(09:22):
a few dozen ETFs around the clock for trading. This
is going to roll out gradually. And obviously there's demand
you brought it up from younger investors that are used
to having things right at the tip of their fingers
via their phone. But it's also and this is interesting
you think about it from the perspective of an international client.
How beneficial that is to be able to trade during

(09:44):
your waking hours rather than in the middle of the
night when the markets are open, you know, with current hours.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, I mean that's what they said. Really, by having
these investment options open to twenty four or five, it
is in rec response to their newer kind of customer base,
which are all under the age of forty. They're used
to access to whatever they want in real time, right,
not having to wait. And I guess I would say

(10:12):
my only concern here is these are the same people
who are, you know, more influenced by finfluencers. We've talked
about that this week. You know, they're they're getting financial
information from social media and they might want to just
dive into it immediately because now if you're seeing this
at eleven o'clock when you're scrolling on TikTok, well you
can now just jump on a platform and buy whatever

(10:33):
they're saying, My concern with that is you're not vetting
first of all, that person that's giving you that information.
And second whatever that next step that you're taking is,
are you talking to other people in your family? Are
you talking to trusted financial sources? Are you talking to
an advisor to make sure that this is a smart
long term plan? Oh, they're saying, I should make a
yolo investment into you know this, you know of me

(10:56):
in stock. Let me go all in on you know
AMC stock right now at eleven o'clock at night. This
is my concern with this one.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, I mean the other concern is that you know,
companies might make their earnings reports public after hours, or
geopolitical events aren't happening when the markets are open in
the US, They're happening at all hours, and people might
see that as an opportunity to hurry up and make
some changes and make trades and do this and do that,
and pull the trigger on this stock, buying that one,

(11:24):
selling that one. And it's obviously we're not advocates of
day trading. If you can't tell, you know, we're more
of a buy and hold. Make some strategic changes here
and there, rebalance your portfolio, not make immediate trades based
on a piece of news that came out and having
access to being able to trade at three in the
morning will open that door to some people. Yeah, and

(11:45):
I think it could lead to some mistakes.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Urgency never in my experience, has led to great decisions right.
Usually it's calm, measured, well thought out decisions, especially when
it comes to your money. Those are usually where you
bear the most. Coming up, we need to do an
end of the year Roth conversion. Why you might want
to get it done sooner rather than later. We'll get
to that in just a few minutes. You're listening to

(12:08):
Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial here on fifty
five KRC, the talk station. You're listening to Simply Money
presented by all Worth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner along with
Steve Ruby. If you don't listen to Simply Money every night,
if you miss something, no reason to be scared by it.

(12:29):
On this Halloween, we have a daily podcast where you
just search Simply Money on the iHeart app or wherever
you get your podcasts. Coming up at six forty three,
a deep dive into long term care insurance. Do you
need it? Have you thought about it. We'll walk you
through that. Okay. So a lot of you are at
least at well. I can speak for myself here. I
sometimes daydream about moving somewhere else in retirement because well,

(12:53):
you know, Florida sounds really great around here in January.
But also no income text.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Sure, sure there are trade offs because the state still
has to make money somehow, So where does that come from?
Valid points exactly. So three in the top five major
housing markets with the largest jumps in property tax bills
since twenty nineteen are in the Sunshine State.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we're talking about Tampa, Jacksonville, and
Miami with increases fifty to sixty percent in property taxes.
You make the fantastic point. Listen, It's not that it's
cheaper to build roads in Florida than it is in Ohio.
It's simply that they are getting their tax revenue from

(13:37):
somewhere else. I don't know about you, but every time
I drive through Florida, I'm stuck in a toll booth
forever paying x you know number of dollars that I
don't pay when I'm driving here in Ohio coming back
and forth to work or whatever. It looks they're going
to get their money in some way, shape or form.
So I'm not against making a decision to move somewhere

(13:57):
else in retirement or any Wait, but if you're basing
it on the tax structure in that state, you've got
to understand they will get their money from you somewhere
in some way, shape or form. Maybe it's not coming
in the form of your paycheck, but then when you
go to Kroger, you're going to be paying more for groceries,
sales tax will be higher. They have to make it

(14:19):
up somewhere.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, I mean, there are interesting strategies. I've worked with
some high earners before that are still working pilots Specifically,
what will have an address in Florida that's their main address,
so they're not paying or they're not paying their income
taxes on state income taxes, but they'll actually just live
in Florida long enough, in a place that's not very expensive,
and have their home base really somewhere else. So there's

(14:42):
legitimate strategies you can use to pay less in taxes
in certain situations. But I'm talking about when you think
about moving there in retirement to get away from taxes,
you need to take into consideration that all of a sudden,
your housing expense is actually going up, especially in some
of these areas that we're talking about, because of property taxes. Again,
Uncle Sam's going to get the money some way, one

(15:02):
way or another, and in this situation, you could find
yourself surprised if you're planning on making that move to
Florida to save money.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, that perception that you can move to a low
tax state and avoid the taxman is an incorrect one.
Something we have been talking about a lot on this
show recently and probably anywhere you turn in financial news
roth conversions, and we would say, especially as we get
closer to the end of the year, it can be

(15:29):
especially beneficial to consider these.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
I'm glad that this is a trend yees because.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
Right now you love a Roth conversion.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
I've been talking about these for a decade. I mean,
this is something that I've been helping people with for years.
It's always made sense and it will continue to make sense.
Right now. It's front and center because of changes and
tax laws with the Trump tax tax cuts sunsetting in
the end of twenty twenty five. Tax right, you're going
to go up in twenty twenty six at this point,
so jumping on board with these roth conversions sooner rather

(15:57):
than later. It is more beneficial now than it will
be in a couple of years. But there's some recent
numbers out from a report from Fidelity that there's been
a forty six percent year of a year increase during
the second quarter of twenty twenty four in WROTH conversions.
It makes me happy. You get really excited about health
savings accounts. I do too. I really like these WROTH

(16:17):
conversions because it is another way to poke Uncle Sam
and the eye with a stick, and you love.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
That do And you know, I think now is a
great time to have these conversations because your end you
have kind of a better idea of where you are financially.
You know, maybe you don't know how much you're going
to get in a bonus throughout the year, or what
kind of distributions, or if you've got a partnership, what
the earnings are going to look like there, But kind
of by this time of the year you've pretty much

(16:43):
gotten that figured out. So it's like, okay, wait, where
where are we with taxable income? And where are we
how far away are we from the top of our
current tax bracket doesn't make sense to do these conversions.
I've had this conversation at least three or four times
already this week with clients.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Well, I mean, you do have to be careful. These
aren't something that you can typically process on your own.
Which is interesting because you know, at Fidelity, for example,
if you have an account there and you try to
process rough conversion, I'm pretty sure they're making you call
in for that because there is there are major mistakes
that you.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Can make without thinking about it.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, or realizing it. Because when when when you are
doing this conversion, you are adding to your income for
the year that is taxable income. That's the whole point.
You're being taxed on today's rates rather than future rates,
and then you're you're allowing those dollars to grow tax
free for the rest of your life, and you're removing
them from consideration for required minimum distributions. But if you

(17:43):
don't plan accordingly, you can find yourself in a higher
tax bracket today. You can even if you are over
the age of sixty five or approaching sixty five getting
ready to enroll for medicare, you can find yourself in
a situation where you have significantly inflated premium costs for
medicare Part B and D.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
Yeah, it's called and when we are looking at this,
there is a line that we are looking at right
keeping you below And yeah, to your point, it's a
lot to understand, and not everyone has all of these
numbers at their fingertips. So if you're thinking, hey, you know,
for whatever reason this year, our income is a little
bit lower, I just retired or whatever it is, this

(18:19):
might make sense for those of you who've done it
yourself for years. I applaud you, you know, for being
able to grow your wealth in that way. But this
is one time where I say, hey, just at least
reach out to your CPA, someone get a second set
of eyes on this if you're thinking about it, because
this is not one of those like it seems like
a great decision. And now that I'm looking at by

(18:40):
tax bill or these medicare premiums that I have to pay,
all of a sudden, I'm realizing it wasn't a good idea.
That there's no kind of going back once you've done
this conversion.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, I mean these can get beautifully complicated. Yeah, you know,
reason why you're waiting towards the end of the year. Two,
Let's say that you are over the age of seventy
and a half and you're eligible to do qualified charitable
distributions from qualified iras. You know, you can implement strategies.
This is with help oftentimes of a CPA too, not

(19:09):
just a certified financial planner, yeah, but somebody that actually
knows the ins and outs of every tax code and
law and nuances and changes. Because you can explore doing
qualified charitable distributions, maybe you have some highly appreciated stock.
You could donate that into a donor advice fund in
your name and then bunch your tax filing to itemize
for you know, this year or next year to capitalize

(19:31):
on some of those donation strategies while doing WROTH conversions.
I mean, this is why you need to sit down
and talk with an advisor to map out the optimal
timing and strategy itself to not accidentally poke yourself in
the eye with the stick.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
I was at a meeting earlier this week with clients
and their CPA, all of us together at the same table,
making the decision on the best way for them to
do Roth conversions. Here's the all Worth advice. If you're
thinking of doing a roth conversion. Just get in touch
with your qualified financial planner and a CPA now right.
We will all thank you later. The more time the
better to process these things coming up next, how scammers

(20:08):
are using AI to take advantage of you. 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'm 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

(20:31):
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 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

(20:52):
with artificial intelligence is scammers are out ahead of everyone else.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
Well, Amy, as always, thanks for having me on your honor.
I am wearing my make or Well Fiction Again shirt
for today's shirt. 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 this stuff to very rapidly scam people.

(21:21):
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 fake voice cloning, deep fake videos you know,

(21:45):
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 (21:54):
Whenever you're on I get nervous. These these topics are
need too, they really are. And you know, I always
got to ask you, what can we do to protect ourselves?
What should we be looking out for?

Speaker 4 (22:06):
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

(22:26):
is 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.

(22:48):
Hey it's your granddaughter, I'm in jail, send me money.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
This you know, it's been reported by law enforcement.

Speaker 4 (22:54):
This is a real thing that's happening right now, and
the best way to protect yourself, Steve, at the moment
is to understand and 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, to go online and find tools that
will allow you to clone someone's voice. And the usual

(23:15):
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 3 (23:24):
Why?

Speaker 4 (23:24):
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

(23:46):
are going to be highly likely to believe it's you.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
I'm telling you this is a real thing right now.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
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?

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Right?

Speaker 1 (23:56):
That's artificial intelligence. And there's people that are, you know,
asking you 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 that for those that kind of go out there
and how do I capitalize on artificial intelligence and make

(24:20):
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 3 (24:31):
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. Aman.

Speaker 4 (24:32):
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 unbelievably easy and requires almost zero technical skill
to spoof a phone number, to spoof a text, to
spoof an email, to spoof an entire website. Now you

(24:54):
couple that with these AI technologies that can, you know,
make it much much easier to spoof things make and
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 mean that video could be created with an AI tool.

(25:16):
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 it's it's awareness that this is a thing. It's skepticism.

(25:38):
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 going back to what Steve said, this stuff is scary,

(25:59):
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.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
To try to leverage this.

Speaker 4 (26:07):
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. 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 2 (26:29):
So a former four oh one K custodian where I
had a four to oh 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 a verified and you know,
the people on the other end just started talking to us.

(26:50):
What are companies able to do to stay ahead of
scammers utilizing AI for something like that.

Speaker 4 (26:55):
Well, I'm glad you brought that up, Steve, because I
wouldn't have thought of it otherwise.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
But I read an article recently.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
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 a major
problem for banks right now or any sort of organization
that is using any sort of voice technology to verify

(27:24):
your identity. I think you can just throw that away
because if you don't know what you're doing and use
some free tool, are you're going to be able to
clean my voice perfectly?

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Maybe not.

Speaker 4 (27:33):
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.
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,

(27:54):
but I guarantee you five years from now, you'll have
no problem having access to technology that will sound exactly
like me or you. So yeah, that's a major problem.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
So the takeaway there is if you're utilizing voice print
technology at any other financial institution, maybe don't.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
And if I think you're making an important point, Steve,
if it were me, I would ask my bank or
whatever for one k third party Minister River, I would
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

(28:31):
access 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 all.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Right, Dave, this is actually chat GPT with.

Speaker 4 (28:45):
Your Yeah, it's Dave GPDA. 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
where the technology, both the hardware and software is good
enough to have a real time conversation with someone, and

(29:06):
I'm not telling you that doesn't exist, but I'm not
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 that's coming?

Speaker 3 (29:25):
It's coming. If it's not already out there.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
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. Thanks. 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 presented by

(29:52):
all Worth Financial. I mean you Wagner along with Steve Ruby.
You have a financial question you just need a little
help with. We can help you out. There's a red
button you can click while you're listening to the show.
It's right there on the iHeart opp record your question.
It's coming straight to us. And speaking of questions, this
is one that I think a lot of people need
to wrestle with as you get older. If you have
not already, does it make sense for you to purchase

(30:16):
a long term care insurance policy? It may not make
sense to buy the policy, but I would say you
at least have to think through how are we going
to handle this if myself or my spouse ends up
in a situation where we need skilled care, either in
the home or at a facility that's.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
A great point. Everybody needs to have some kind of
a plan here, Oftentimes because of the prohibitively high cost
of long term care, the solution is self ensuring, which
is a fancy way of saying do nothing right, not
buying long term care, and counting on the assets towards
the end of your plan. Unfortunately, the reality for many

(30:55):
folks is the need to spend down assets to transition
to decayed because remember, one of the reasons why long
term care exists is because Medicare does not cover long
term care expenses. Long term care covers your services like
care in a nursing home, assisted living facility, a lot

(31:16):
of home health care services, adult daycare, hospice, a lot
of different costs that aren't going to be picked up
by Medicare. Medicaid does cover some of that stuff, but
Medicaid is for somebody that's practically indigent. So you know,
you buy long term care, you don't, or you count
on spending down and actually using medicaid.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
The market for long term care insurance has changed drastically
really over even just the past twenty years. I've spoken
many times on the show about my grandpa Hubert Wagner,
love him, so much, so great, such a great man.
And you know, he and my grandma had saved. He
had a pension through since Sunny Milicron, but they also

(31:56):
lived very frugal lives, and they had saved, and they had,
you know, several hundred thousan dollars that they had, you know,
kind of scrolled away through the years. Well, at the
age of eighty six, my grandpa was diagnosed with Parkinson's
and unfortunately he went downhill pretty quickly, and he ended
up in a situation where my grandma could no longer
take care of him in their home. So then he
went into a skilled care facility. She didn't want to

(32:17):
be across town anymore, so then she sells the house
and goes into you know, a kind of step down
unit in the same building, insanely expensive. Within just a
couple of years, my grandpa was unfortunately gone, and so
was most of the money that they had put aside.
I mean, it was just like it was like throwing
money out the window every month. I mean it was

(32:39):
like ten thousand dollars. I can't overestimate what these costs
look like. At that point, my dad, who was an
only child, was like, you know, I watched this happen.
He went out and bought a long term care policy. Well,
this was a while ago. There were options, there were
measurers offering this. What the problem is in this long
term care insurance industry is they were losing money. It

(33:02):
became so expensive that people were not paying enough in
the premiums, and then once people started to actually they
started to pay out on these claims, it was astronomical
and so now there's just a few competitors in this space.
Even if you get a premium that's affordable at the time,
that premium can go up and up and up to
the point where it no longer makes sense, and so

(33:23):
it leaves people in a situation where that can be
cost prohibitive.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah. I mean, how it works when you actually have
long term care coverage is there's a daily benefit amount
the maximum maximum number of days or years that the
plan will pay out. The eligibility to be able to
actually capitalize on the policy depends on the individual's ability
to perform certain daily acts of living. You know, there's

(33:49):
criteria for what that qualifies as.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Addressing yourself, feeding yourself.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Using the bathroom, getting in and out of bed, stuff
like that. So that that's what's going to determine when
when you're at eligible to capitalize on the benefit. You know,
the coverage can be available for people with pre existing conditions,
but oftentimes there's some kind of a waiting period imposed
on the person that's ensured. They can be standalone policies
or linked to insurance or even annuity solutions. But you

(34:17):
said it yourself, they used to be a little bit
more cost effective, honestly, because some actual areal scientists pretty
much calculated the numbers wrong and shouldn't assume that people
were going to be living longer to the point where
these policies they weren't making money. Right, So when we
have conversations about long term care now, you know, honestly,
the numbers have come out recently, and it showed from

(34:38):
data from Limeer, which is an industry trade association. Insurers
actually issued just thirty five thousand standalone policies for long
term care in twenty twenty three, all of last year. Yeah,
down more than a half million in twenty in two thousand.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yeah, so twenty years ago there was like six hundred
thousand people every year buying these long term care policies.
Last year thirty five thousand.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Yeah, I mean the premium revenue plummeted from a billion
dollars in two thousand and two to one hundred and
forty three million and twenty twenty three, premiums arising to
a point where it can become very difficult to make
the decision to actually purchase long term care. This is
why it's extra beneficial to sit down with a financial
planner and map out what your future needs are because

(35:25):
oftentimes you're buying long term care to protect your ability
to leave money behind to loved ones when you're gone.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Yes, and this could and the premiums then could eat
up that money that you have in order to do that,
So definitely something worth looking at. Here's the all Worth advice.
Just run the numbers with the qualified financial advisor to
see whether an actual long term care insurance policy does
make sense for you. Coming up, we are talking about
Taylor Swift and the scam we almost fell for. We'll explain.

(35:54):
You're listening to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial
here on fifty five krs the talk station. You're listening
to Simply Money presented by all Worth Financial. I'm Amy
Wagner along with Steve Ruby. On the show, we warn
you a lot about scams, right ways to protect your money,

(36:15):
and I'm also a very transparent person and when I
make a mistake or almost make a mistake, you will
be the first to know. And we were on the
verge of that. This week. I'm going to explain how
this happened. Steve's daughter and his wife are Swifties to
the core. They have been dying to go to a
show You've looked at, sending them to Paris and to

(36:38):
London to see Taylor Swift and concert. So earlier this week,
I get a text message, or I get actually, I
get a Facebook message, I want to be clear, Facebook
message from a friend of mine's brother who I know
pretty well, and he said, Hey, I have tickets available
to the Taylor Swift show in Indianapolis. I cannot take
these tickets. I cannot use them. Do you know anyone

(37:00):
who wants them? Well, I just saw this guy last week.
I also had seen a post with his name on
it about these tickets on Facebook. So like everything computed
for me. You were in a dentist chair getting your
teeth drilled on, and I texted you and said, I
think I might have tickets. I follow up message to
the guy. I said, how much are the tickets and
where are they? Two hundred dollars for tickets on the floor.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah. Alarm bells went off at that point. This was
tough because, as you said, I was in a dentist's office.
I got two crowns done in a filling and one appointment,
which is a marathon. And it was this little break
and I checked my phone in my moment of misery,
and I see this message from Amy interested in these tickets? Yes,
right now? Please, This is huge if it actually happens.

(37:46):
This is literally what I tested her. I'm getting my
face drilled on right now and just got a burst
of energy. Are these tickets still available? Please help? I
want them?

Speaker 1 (37:54):
And it was urgency right. We were like, we need
to jump on these, and it really it was the price.
So I reached to not the brother but the friend
of mine and said, hey, your brother messaged me about
these tickets. The price seems a little bit too good
to be true. Do you know anything about this? And
she said this is a scam. His account has been hacked.
The post that you saw originally was a scammer, and

(38:16):
this message was a scammer.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
We hear it ripped out.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
I know it was like you had such high hopes
that you were like the Knight in Shining Armor coming
through with floor tickets for two hundred.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Bucks, and moments later I had a drill in my face.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
Again.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
No, I appreciate you keeping me in mind, but I
also appreciate the fact that you are diligent and your
alarm bells went off, and once you saw the price,
you're like, wait, something doesn't quite add up here. Let
me do some research. Let me dig into this and
find out if it is indeed too good to be true.
And it was, so It's way better than her putting
me in touch with this guy and me sending money
and being like, thanks, Amy, I trust you implicitly, and

(38:53):
then I'm out money and tickets that I thought I had.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
So yeah, just be aware, yes, be aware. We almost
fell for it. Anybody could. Thanks for listening. Tune and
tomorrow we're talking about how to make sure you are
getting your money's worth out of your financial advisor. You've
been listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial
here on fifty five krs the talk station