October 17, 2025 • 40 mins
On this episode of Simply Money presented by Allworth Financial, Bob and Brian break down the recent crypto flash crash that wiped out billions in minutes—what caused it, and what it means for your money. Then, they explore the psychology behind checking your portfolio balance too often. Cybersecurity expert Dave Hatter joins to explain how an outdated home router could be the weak link in your financial safety net. Plus, Bob and Brian answer listener questions about partial retirement planning, whether index investors are missing out, and smart uses for home equity. They also tackle whether that $700 premium credit card in your wallet is still worth it.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you I do got to put up these Halloween decorations.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Will It's time to do it, dude?
Speaker 3 (00:04):
The rest I do need to know On fifty five KRC,
the talk station.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Tonight, Crypto crashes, When to check or not check your
investment portfolio, and we tackle your tough money questions. You're
listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial on
Bob Sponseller along with Brian James Well. Crypto investors got
a bit of a wake up call a few days
ago and just a few minutes prices plunged across the
(00:37):
board and what's being called a flash crash. Hundreds of
billions of dollars disappeared almost instantly. Brian, what actually happened here? Well,
so what happened here? The catalyst for this flash cash?
Speaker 5 (00:50):
We see these every now and then, where there's no
big headlines, there's no big crazy it's just the market
moves in an extreme and unexpected way. This time it
was the unexpected announcement of tar Garraffs on China. I
don't know about the word unexpected there. I'm not sure
that we shouldn't be shocked by this stuff anymore. We
don't get a heads up that next week, we're going
to talk about it. Then we talk about it. It just
kind of drops out of the sky anyway as the
whole weekend unfolded. So President Trump and his advisors kind
(01:13):
of backed off on that, and that did help markets
to stabilize, but not without doing some damage. So the
post mortem here, prices fell pretty quick. Bitcoin dropped by
about twelve percent from its prior week's peak, did bounce
back a little bit. Ethereum slid by even more at
that worst point. Those are the two big ones. They
held up the best. It got worse from there though,
those mean coins and allt coins, those just got destroyed.
(01:37):
Dose coin cratered by about fifty percent before stabilizing, and
the tokens outside the biggest ones, but they felt even worse.
There's a crypto public CAAs now they're called coin Desk,
and they cited basically an average thirty three percent drop
across the board for anything not named Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Like I said, those are the big dogs, and they
held up a little better, but a lot of those
little dogs lost eighty percent or more, small handful of
(02:00):
in close to one hundred percent of their value in
the same very short period. That is how fragile the
markets are that are behind these types of assets. There
is no earnings report, there is no new product announcement
that's gonna come out. These are commodities and they trade
as sutch. They are only worth what people think they are.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, a couple points here.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
I think it's important to drive home, Brian, and feel
free to disagree or agree. But I think I think
we use the word crypto now, you know, I think
it's dangerous to just talk about all that in one basket,
because there are huge differences between things like bitcoin and
then as you already pointed out, these dosee coins and
and for to a large extent, this stuff is really
(02:42):
speculative in nature, and depending on how much understanding or
misunderstanding investors out there have about this stuff, they can
get involved in things, you know, that that might result
in volatility, like we just talked about that they really
didn't bargain for and wanted no part of in the
first place. The other on the other end end of
(03:02):
the spectrum, there's a lot of people that basically daytrade
this stuff. You know, a lot of these coins and
other cryptocurrencies, you know, and those people you know, are
aware and used to and profit from volatility. So I
think it's important if you're going to get into this
you know, big space called crypto, you get educated on
what you're buying, what the potential moves are, and go
(03:24):
in with your eyes wide open. And the second point,
there's a lot of institutional money now involved in this space.
I mean, it's become kind of art, it's become an
asset class. That's that a lot of institutional investment money
managers use hedge funds, traders you know, and even regular
old portfolio managers. They use this as an allocation percentage
(03:47):
of a long term buy and hold portfolio. And you know,
when you've got institutional money moving in and out of
this stuff, there are algorithms that trip you know, when
volatility happens and this stuff gets sold whether people want
to own it long term or not, and that can
add to the volatility as well. So again a couple
(04:09):
just points there to keep in mind, be aware of
what you're doing in this you know, broad space called crypto,
and more importantly why, and go in with your eyes
wide open.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
And just be prepared for what can happen. Is this
is obviously a brand new asset. It's not that new,
but at the same time, it's not hundreds of years
old like the stock market that we can look at
through lots of different environments. Just about everything that happens
to crypto is going to happen for the first time.
Now we're seeing how it behaves in a tariff related environment.
So let's talk a little more about that. Why did
this happen? So why was crypto impacted by these tariffs
(04:42):
on China? Well, it's not separate from traditional markets as
much as it used to be. As Bob just shared,
it's an integrated part of our financial structure.
Speaker 6 (04:50):
Nowadays.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
There's a lot of companies out there that are that
are making money off of bitcoin by being directly involved
in it. There are companies such as micro Strategy that
micro Strategy is.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
Is an IT company.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
They focus on business intelligence, software analytics, and so forth.
But what they've done is they have basically tied their
entire future to crypto by.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Simply buying tons of it.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
They go about forty billion dollars worth of mostly bitcoin,
and that's that's just a decision that they've made because
that's how they feel like they can increase the value
of their company, so a lot of institutional money is
in there.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Now.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
When these tariffs hit, investors typically will say, well, that's
that's a tax that's more expensive. So I want to
get out of and take some risk off the table,
and we're going to sell some of these assets that
I feel like a little more volatile, and crypto hits
that category perfectly. So if we're going to take risk
off the table, it's gonna be it's gonna come out
of the most volatile markets.
Speaker 6 (05:40):
And that's kind of what crypto is here.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
So as long as so while traders were pulling back
from stocks, they also sold off crypto at almost faster rate.
Leverage makes it even worse because a lot of times
these companies have borrowed money, you know, using other people's
money to make more money. That's the American way, that's
what leverages. But because so many crypto traders use that
borrowed money, even a small dip triggers these automatic sales
through you know the algorithm that Bob mentioned and that
(06:04):
snowballs quickly and then you get a five crash.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Well, you brought up that micro strategy company, and I've
I have followed that company a little bit and it's
been you know, quite remarkable to see the transformation of
that company. I mean, I think their growth as a
company was slowing. Their revenues and earnings were dropping. So
the way that they tried to you know, build shareholder
value is they came out publicly and said we're going
(06:28):
to put one hundred percent of our you know, liquid
holdings into bitcoin. I mean, so so people that bought
this company originally thinking as you said, it was a
software company, it's it's now a proxy for bitcoin. So
it's a completely different business model than original investors had
signed up for. And you just got to be aware
(06:49):
if you're going to be involved in this stuff on
what these companies are doing. I mean that's an extreme example,
but uh, there are others like it that we don't
have time to go into today.
Speaker 6 (06:58):
Yeah, I do, I think on that topic real quick
for it.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
I have I have a client that worked for micro Strategy,
and this is about he's not there anymore, but I
remember five six years ago he was trying to do
his job, which had everything to do with supporting the
software products that that company purports to sell, and he
kept getting more and more confused about why can't I
get the resources and the attention that I need to
do my job and serve these customers. And the answer,
now we know, was because the company had decided, you
(07:23):
know what, we're just gonna use our resources and we're
just gonna buy bitcoin and sit on it while still
doing this software kind of stuff on the side. So
so far that is paid off because bitcoin has moved
in the right direction. But there's gonna be some some
some funny moves made by that company. If Bitcoin ever
takes a really really solid hit, they're gonna have to
take measures, just like any other company that's trying to
maintain its profit margins.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, it's an asset like at anything else.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
It's willing, it's it's worth what somebody is willing to
pay for it today, good or bad. I think another
point just to you know, to drive home here is
again long term. You know, there are reasons that people
own bitcoin. They see it as a digital gold and
it's and we don't have time to get into all
that kind of stuff, but it, you know, it's seen
(08:07):
as a there's a limited number of shares that are
gonna be issued or units that are gonna be issued,
and you know, away from government interference and all that
kind of stuff. These doge coins are completely different game.
It's just pure speculation. I don't think a lot of
our clients are a lot of people that even listen
to this show are out there, you know, day trading
(08:28):
doge coins. But I think it's just important to point
out here that you know, when you think of bitcoin
or anything like that as digital gold, most people think
of that as a non correlated asset to the stock market,
meaning that when the stock market drops, when the economy
slows down, these are assets that are gonna be non
(08:48):
correlated to the broad stock market and help cushion volatility
in your portfolio. And what we saw over the last
week is the exact opposite. Not only did it not move, yeah,
not only did it not move, you know, contrary to
the movement of the stock market, it moved down more
than the stock market moved.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Down, so it actually to the same stimulus those tariffs.
Tariffs are negative news. The stock market took that and
it threw a fit on Friday. The crypto markets made
it even worse. So you're not protected by from volatility
by owning those things. It doesn't mean they're bad investments,
but don't take it for anything more than what it is.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Here's the all Worth advice.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
If crypto's in your portfolio, it should play a small,
very defined role, not the setting role. Coming up next,
how often are you checking your portfolio will reveal what
we think the sweet spot might be. Next, you're listening
to Simply Money, presented by all With Financial on fifty
five krc the talk station.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
In order, we're going in Russia and tariffs, and you
got a lot of stuff to do. I can't sports
stock stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
So we'll stuff it all into news update check and
often this stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Fifty five KRZ the talk station.
Speaker 7 (10:04):
All Worth Financial a registered investment advisory firm. Any ideas
presented during this program are not intended to provide specific
financial advice. You should consult your own financial advisor, tax consultant,
or a state planning attorney to conduct your own due diligence.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
You're listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial
on Bob Sponsoring along with Brian James. If you can't
listen to Simply Money live every night, subscribe and get
our daily podcast. You can listen the following morning during
your commute or during your workout at the gym or
in your during your evening walk around the neighborhood. Think
about how fun that might be. And if you think
(10:45):
your friends and family could use some financial advice, tell
them about us as well. Just search simply Money on
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Speaker 2 (10:55):
If you've built a.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Couple million dollar portfolio balance in return hirement accounts, and
if you have a paid off home and are sitting
on cash wondering what to do next, you're not alone.
We're gonna answer questions about all of that and more
straight ahead of six forty three. Be honest, how often
do you check your portfolio balance? A new study done
(11:18):
by a research firm called Di Netta found that almost
half of all investors are checking their investments performance once
a day or more.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
Brian Bob, I'll admit it. I do this way more
often than I should. I'm human too. It's fun, right.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
I know it's gonna panic when it's negative, I just
quit looking at it. But it's when things are going
up and then net worth is reaching heights it hasn't before.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
I know full well, I'm going to give a jump back.
That's how life works.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
And Brian, I checked the I checked the balance of
my doge coins about every fifteen to seventeen minutes.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
It's a it's a wonderful dopamine rush.
Speaker 6 (11:53):
You own no doge coins, don't, don't. I know you
better than that. You wouldn't know where to buy doge coins.
I'm teusing, but yeah, no, I do it.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
Too, you know, And this survey tells us, you know what,
why are people doing this? Well, I can tell you
exactly why I do it well. When markets are volatile,
people look more often because we're thinking about it, right
that it's in the headlines.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
It's in my face.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
In between my meetings, I catch a headline on my phone,
and you know, maybe something good is happening, maybe something
bad's happening. Why I can't resist. I gotta go see
what's happening to my own portfolio. Gives us the illusion
of control, right, we believe that, you know. Sometimes we
think if we're always looking at it, we're going to
be able to react quickly or prevent losses, or maybe
jump into something before it makes the big run.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
This is why there's a whole.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
Part of the academic world called behavioral economics, and they
the The economists there call this the control fallacy. Staring
at it doesn't improve outcomes, It just amplifies stress. Right,
if we watch that pot of water boil, it is
not going to make it boil any faster. Matter of fact,
our brains are gonna think that it's not boiling fast enough.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Well, but we can, again, we can feel like we're
at least controlling it watching it. We all know that's
not the case, but it's how our brains get wired,
and I think that leads to this next point. We
let's face it, we all live in a what we'd
like to call a refresh economy right now.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
What does that mean.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Well, people check their likes on social media, they check emails,
they check news in real time, and let's face it,
investor behavior has followed suit.
Speaker 6 (13:21):
We're all used.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
To staring at these apps and just constantly looking at screens,
and it tends to move over to the investment world too.
It's just natural behavior. We just like to see things
moving around. We like to see colors change, we like
to see likes, we like to see news updates. And
people know that's the case. We've talked about that umpty
(13:43):
in different times. That's how the whole media and social
media business platform has been built to glue us to
that screen and keep us looking at everything all the time.
We just got to be mindful of that because sometimes
if you look at your investment, you know, balance, too often,
(14:03):
you're gonna be driven to make a decision right because
you know, it goes back to that control thing.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I see it moving around.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I must do something, and usually nine times out of ten,
that's something that we do ends up not being a
good decision.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
Yeah, and I've been fascinated by this, you know, I've
been doing this for thirty years and the things that
get people's attention, including myself. I'm human too, and I
have the same goal as my clients do. I want
to retire someday and get the kids through college and
all that other stuff. But that's been fascinating to me
to understand why that occurs. And at the end of
the day, Bob, we are all between our ears. We
(14:37):
have lunch meat and chemicals. One of our favorite chemicals
in there is dopamine, and we get dopamine no matter what,
it gives us that little emotional hit, even positive or
negative news, just something some kind of new stimulus gives
us a little shout of dopamine, and it turns out
that's what we're after. That's why we pick up our
phones a thousand times a day just to see whatever
balogney headlines or whatever meaningless notifications are there for me
(14:58):
to react to. And then there's I can't really remember
the last time I picked up my phone, looked at
it and realized, yes, there, I should do something about
this news headline.
Speaker 6 (15:06):
This should cause me to act in some way. No,
it's just me getting my little.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
Dopamine hit and then going back to work or whatever
I was doing before until I get the urge to
do it again. So I've been really trying to be
more mindful of that. How rarely it actually means anything
so anyway, So that's the dopamine side of the thing.
There's also fear of missing out or what I like
to call fomo. When news breaks about, hey, the market's
hitting a record high, AI stocks are soaring well, well,
(15:30):
that causes us to feel like we're going to miss
something I better be watching, or I'm going to miss
out on an opportunity to be to be a bazillionaire tomorrow. Really, really,
this is super common among younger investors and people who
started investing really just in the past three years, which
have been really really positive ever since twenty twenty two,
and so looking every day has been a rewarding experience.
If you just started looking or just started investing in
(15:53):
the last three years, you start studying your market history,
because it's not always going to be this way. You
will there will be a time where there's twelve eighteen months.
You just don't only want to look at your four
one k it's just too darn depressing. However, that's part
of the game. You have got to get used to that.
If you have young people in your lives who have
just started their foura one case, just started investing, teach
them market history, show them what twenty twenty two looked
(16:14):
like two thousand and eight oh two. These are things
that will happen, are virtually guaranteed to occur again. We
have to be able to anticipate them and make sure
we can ride them out. Otherwise we start making bad
decisions like trying to time the market, which usually means
getting out at the bottom, or trying to make it
up with super speculative assets, which can exacerbate things and
all of that robs you of years of building wealth.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
For sure. And I think another I think another reason.
People just get addicted to checking all this stuff. You know,
you talked about fear of missing out. There's another thing
out there, and it's just straight you know, fear in general,
past market trauma. People who live through the dot com bust,
the Great Financial Crisis or COVID, remember how fast things
(16:57):
can change. And let's face it, in today's political divide
where I mean, depending on where you get your news sources.
And I'm talking to people on both sides of the
aisle here, you know, for you know, an app like
X for example, Brian, I'd say sixty to seventy percent
of the stuff that flies around on there, it's unverified.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
You don't know whether that's.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Real news, fake news, or anything in between, or just
straight out lies and propaganda. But if we get that
fear thing, we're just waiting for the next shoe to drop,
the next thing to implode our portfolios. And a lot
of people are walking around with that all day, every day,
and that causes people to check their portfolios more than
(17:40):
they should and again make decisions that they probably shouldn't make.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
That's right, and then life changes too, right, So big
life events retirement, job change, marriage, divorce, inheritance, new baby
in the house, new grand baby around, that's a great
time to kind of look at things as a trigger.
So the investments might still be fine, but something change
in the outside of your big picture shifted a little bit,
so maybe your mix needs adjusting. But if those big
(18:04):
things aren't happening, lets your portfolio alone. If it was
fine before, it's still fine, just look at it when
there's new information to react to. Also, of course, in
this I think goes without saying, but when you're near
a milestone, if you're sneaking up on retirement, or you've
got a big purchase to make, maybe paying off college
something like that, that's a time to review where's the
risk in my portfolio. So I've got this big expense
(18:26):
coming up. Am I using dollars that could go over
the cliff tomorrow just before I have to pay the bill?
If that's the case, then I might be making mistakes.
So maybe I need to take some risk off the
table rather than waiting until it's literally time to write
the check to whomever is going to take that money
from you. So the closer I am to using that money.
The more important it is to shift from growth to preservation.
Take the gains while they're there. And we've talked about
(18:47):
this ad nauseum all year long. I think, Bob, this
has been a great run, great couple of years. If
you've got an upcoming bill the next couple months, maybe
even the next year, you might take those dollars off
the table. So it's not hard to write that check.
Should the market take a dip, yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
I mean you've been getting into reasons why you should
check your portfolio and responsibly review your strategy. And I'll
say this gets into whether you're a self directed investor
or whether you work with a good fiduciary advisor. If
you are a self directed investor and you're making all
the decisions the buyers, the sells, the reallocation, yeah, you
(19:21):
need to be looking at things more often. But if
you work with an advisor, a good advisor usually Brian,
a semiannual, yearly or yearly review with your advisor is
a pretty good cadence because if there's communication going on
and you're letting your advisor know about some of these
major life milestones that you just talked about, well, then
(19:42):
your advisor can help you shift and get out in
front of some of this stuff and keep money out
of harm's way that needs to be out of the market.
So you know, it's a good time to just think
about where are you as an investor. Are you calling
all the shots yourself or do you trust and have
a good relationship with a FIDU sharey advisor And depending
on what situation you're in, that really changes the calculus
(20:06):
here on how often you should be staring at this
stuff and potentially making moves in your portfolio.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Here's the all Worth advice.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
If you've got a good financial plan the portfolio, remember
that it's just the engine. You don't need to look
under the hood every day to know that the engine
is running.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Coming up next, how old is your Internet router?
Speaker 4 (20:28):
That's a question you should probably answer very soon, and
we'll explain why you're listening to Simply Money, presented by
all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC the talk station.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
His day, what's the event of the day, what's going on?
Will be busy?
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Frankie news, The President just said, good morning, what.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Will yours look like?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Hey, new days coming check in.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Brian Thomas tomorrow morning at five on fifty five KRC.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
The talk station you're seeing an iHeartRadio station.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
You're listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial.
I'm Bob sponsorer along with Brian James, joined tonight by
our tech and cyber security guru, mister Dave Hatter, and
I know this topic is something everyone out there.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
This applies to everyone.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Dave, what are we going to cover tonight to help
keep our data and our money secure?
Speaker 8 (21:26):
Guys is always thanks for having me on, and this
is an important topic. It's a recent warning from the
FBI about small businesses and people's homes. You know, generally
large corporations have nerds like me running around. They have
enterprise grade security solutions, they have firewalls from folks like
Palo Alto and Cisco and Fortinet. But at home, many
(21:46):
people just have whatever came from the internet service provider.
Same with small businesses, or maybe they've gone out the
best buyer Walmart or somewhere and bought an off the
shelf Wi Fi router because they need more capabilities than
what you can get out of the thing that we
delivered by your internet service provider. And the FBI is
warning that in many cases, like so much of the
tech that's out there, so much of our so called
(22:09):
Internet of things aka smart devices. You know, these things
have to be updated regularly, they have to be configured correctly,
and as they get older and go into life where
they're not getting software upgrades and more importantly, security patches
from the vendor, that creates a gigantic security hole. This
is the kind of thing TENFOI hat nuts like me
warn't about all the time. But I'm happy to see
(22:29):
that the FBI is now trying to get in front
of this and warning folks that if you have these
older end of life devices, you know, anything that's more
than five or six years old, you should question. If
it's ten years old or older, that's going to be
a significant concern you. You need to seriously take a
hard look at replacing these things. And the good news
is they're relatively inexpensive.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
All Right, Dave is somebody who grew up here in Cincinnati,
you know, using that old Green Hills mindset where I'm
going to pinch every penny I can. You know a
lot of times I think to myself, and I know
other people will think the same way. I do not
want to rent that router from Spectrum or you know,
Ulti Fiber or whatever. I'm just going to go buy
my own because it's going to save me a few bucks.
(23:09):
Are those the people you're really talking to right now,
those people that went out and bought that router twenty
years ago and said, yep, I got my own router.
I feel great about not having to pay rental payments
to a cable company. Are those the people most at risk,
you know, in situations like the one you're talking about
right now.
Speaker 8 (23:28):
Most likely because if you're essentially renting it from your
internet service provider again, think you know, Spectrum, Ultifiber, whomever.
And I'd also point out, you know, there are so
many different ways to get online now. You know, in
the old days you typically have to work with some
sort of landline based internet service provider. Now you have
solutions like Starlink out there and so forth. But at
the end of the day, the Wi Fi router. And
(23:50):
this often gets confusing for people because a lot of
folks have two different devices. You have the cable modem,
if you have something like Spectrum, which is a physical
device that connects you to their network, and then sometimes
that will serve also as a Wi Fi router. Sometimes
you might have a separate device that is then throwing
up the Wi Fi signal in your facility, your home,
(24:12):
your small office, or whatever. This is a constant battle
with my family, Like the Wi Fi's down, I'm like no,
the WiFi is not down. The internet connection is down.
These are two different things right now. Again, sometimes one
device can provide both. Most people have too. If you're
working with the internet service provider, you know they will
occasionally replace these things. Usually you're not going to have
(24:33):
a device that's little. But if you went out and
bought your own because you don't want to have that
rental fee or you wanted extra capabilities, yes, again, if
it's more than five or six years old, and the
FBI specifically says in their PSA anything produced in twenty
ten or earlier, so you're talking to fifteen year old device.
These things have notorious security flaws. They're not getting updates
from the vendors. They're also missing a lot of more
(24:56):
modern security features, and that's one of the key things here.
You can go out and buy a high, relatively high end,
powerful Wi Fi router for three hundred bucks or less.
That will add an enormous amount of additional functionality and
security capabilities versus something that's even a couple of years old.
You know, new there are new encryption standards for your
(25:17):
Wi Fi network. There are new Wi Fi standards that
provide better performance and better speed. So you know, by upgrading,
despite the fact that people don't want to spend money
and I get it. You also have to remember every
single thing you do online through that device is you know,
whether it's your banking, accessing your work networks, whatever you're doing,
it's going through that device, So ensuring its security is
(25:39):
very important for you, your business, your money, et cetera. And
you know, one quick piece of advice before amount of time. Again,
there's lots of new standards. You can get much better performance,
much better security, get software updates, things like WPA three
that's the highest level of encryption most home Wi Fi
routers would support. You know, you need to be turning
(26:02):
on the highest level of protection you can, and I
would encourage folks. You know, if you don't have an
irdy friend like me, you can talk to check out
magazines online like c net, Charlie Net, or zd net,
Ziff Davis Net, Tom's Guide, PC Magazine, Consumer Reports. They
have editors and experts that vet these things right, so
you can go out and say, well, what's the best
(26:24):
home Wi Fi router for twenty twenty five on one
of these sites, and they'll give you recommendations. You know,
do I want the cheapest one? Do I want the
most powerful one? Do I want the most secure one?
Do I care about gaming? There's all kinds of great advice,
And I also encourage people sign up and go to
IC three dot gov Internet Crimecomplaints Center dot gov. It's
hosted by the FBI. They put out these public service announcements.
(26:47):
There's all kinds of useful information there. So there's ample
resources to help you figure this out. But if you
have a really old device, take the FBI's advice and
replace this, because you're setting yourself up for disaster if
you don't.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Hey, Dave, is there besides it being old? Are there
things that the thing that my router could do?
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Well?
Speaker 5 (27:04):
I know that if it's behaving a certain way that
I maybe I should be paying more attention. You know,
obviously you know that there are there are model numbers
and things we can look at too, But just in
general should are there things I should watch for just
in terms of his normal performance.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, that's a good question. You know.
Speaker 8 (27:18):
One of the reasons why they've put out this PSA is,
you know, for these really old routers, it's not that
hard for hackers to find these. There's a search engine
called Showdance specifically designed to find Internet connected devices, so
bad guys can go look up routers that have known defects.
They can infiltrate your router and then they'll use it
(27:39):
essentially as a proxy or for other nefarious purposes, so
they're they're routing they're bad activities through your router, which
also means you could get a visit from the FBI someday.
If you look into that, you'll find that has happened before.
But yeah, if if you're if it used to work
fine and now it suddenly starts to lose its connectivity,
your speed goes to near zero, it seems to overheat,
(28:01):
or just suddenly starts acting weird. I mean, that could
just be a sign that that's getting old and tired,
or could be a sign of some sort of infestation
from some hackers somewhere. And again, with these newer devices,
they're much harder to hack. They're getting the security patches
from their vendors, they're much easier to secure. All the
reasons why you should really think about replacing anything that Again,
(28:23):
I would say if it's five or six years old,
you should take a hard look at replacing it.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
Yeah, and I want to be clear to this is
something I learned years ago about that We've hinted at
a couple of times here, but just to say it
a third time, you do not have to rent devices
from your internet provider anymore than you have to rent
a lawn sprinkler from the water company. They can't control
what you're connecting to that connection, So you can be
in full control of this and save yourself a little
money at the same time. Dave, I'm going to ask
(28:48):
you a little bit of a loaded question. Have we
heard from the ulti fibers and the spectrums of the
world as from there? Are they raising a flag on
any of this? And do you have any idea if
they would bear any liability. That's all lawyer question and
none of us is one, but I'm asking anyway.
Speaker 8 (29:03):
Yeah, I have not seen, like you know, I use
Spectrum at home. I have not seen any communication from
Spectrum in this regard. Now again, you know, they will
occasionally replace their equipment and so forth, and you know,
I would encourage people to your point to not rent
their equipment and go for some of the higher end
and relatively inexpensive. You know, if you spend three hundred
dollars on a fairly high end Wi Fi router and
(29:25):
you advertise that over five or six years, that's not
very much money to get a lot more security and
a lot better capability and probably a lot better performance
to boot.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
You know. All of that said, so, I.
Speaker 8 (29:36):
Haven't seen anything from the Internet service providers in this
region comment on this particular FBI warning. I think it
probably is really geared more towards the people like you
mentioned that have gone out and bought their own equipment,
perhaps a long time ago. And you know, as far
as the internet service provider bearing any responsibility, yeah, I'm
not an attorney, and I'm sure if you read through
(29:56):
their terms of service there's indignification in there for anything
that goes wrong using their service. So I kind of
doubt it.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
But you know, I'm not an attorney, and.
Speaker 8 (30:06):
You know, could you get a class action lawsuit together
for people that have somehow been hacked because they had
old equipment and they weren't warned and it wasn't replaced.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Maybe yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
So bottom line is spending that investing that three hundred dollars,
like you said, advertised over six, seven, eight, ten years,
is way less expensive than going through a dramatic, you know,
identity theft or fraud situation that could cost you hundreds,
if not thousands of dollars. Great stuff, as always from
our tech expert Dave Hatter. You're listening to Simply Money
(30:38):
presented by all Worth Financial on fifty five KARC the
Talk station.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
It's all in they everywhere. I want to thank you guys.
You're like my radio neighbors.
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You guys are making me think twice about things.
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Like a sound that lingas in you and I love it.
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Thanks for giving us Democrats boys.
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Listening to the station, I feel like I'm here. We
all matter is. I've been tuning in since the election.
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It's gone up.
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Talk about it here. I get heard on fifty five
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I do think he is too old to run. In
twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Four, fifty five KRC the Talk station. You're listening to
Simply Money because that I buy all Worth Financial. I'm
Bob sponseller along the Flinger Churn. Give a financial question
you'd like for us to answer. There is a red
button you can click while you're listening to the show
right on the iHeart app. Simply record your question and
(31:39):
it will come straight to us. Dave and Mary live
in Mainville and Brian.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
They're wondering.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
They say, Hey, we're in our early sixties and considering
partial retirement. How do you plan cash flow when income
becomes unpredictable? Great question, This is a great question. This
is kind of the key of financial planning. We become
so custom Bob to living off of o PM other
people's money. Somebody has to give me some kind of
(32:06):
check or something so that I can pay my bills.
That's in the first for the first forty fifty years
of our lives, that's a job, and then for the
remainder it becomes social Security or whatever pensions we've built up.
What we tend to do, though, is ignore the fact
that if we've done the right things, then there's also
a significant nest egg out there that can support those bills,
and that itself becomes you know, that becomes your own money,
(32:27):
of course, and so so how to plan around this, Well,
a lot of people want to focus on the I
need it to spit out a predictable stream of income.
So maybe I'm gonna do CDs or bonds or just
something where I know what's coming and when. And that's fine,
except the what happens there is we often rob the
ability for growth from that portfolio. So look, I would say,
you know you're gonna you're gonna definitely want to keep
(32:48):
something related to growth, which growth can be unpredictable. Something
needs to be growing, even for the littlest old widow
out there, we still need some growth to keep up
with inflation. So just understand market history and understand model
out what it would look like if you invested in
a certain portfolio and pulled a couple thousand dollars out
of it every month to bridge the gap between your
your your social scurity pension checks and what your actual
bills are, and then understand what it does when the
(33:09):
market goes up and most importantly, when the market goes down.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
So it doesn't have to be predictable. It's not as
predictable as a you know, as like a pension or
a job. But at the same time, that doesn't mean
that that is a bad thing. You just have to
be used to you know what what that could look like.
So stress tests and understand it. Moving to Brian and Levanon,
Brian's got about two million dollars in retirement accounts and
he says their portfolio is mostly index based, but he's
curious if they're missing out on some more tactical active
(33:35):
management opportunities. Bob's gonna have a field day with this.
Is there a case, Bob for active management at this level?
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Well, Brian, there can be, and I'll say there can be.
So you know, when when you talk about index portfolio
and this is why we like a term we use
around here is core satellite portfolios, meaning the vast majority
of the assets and any would ill say, moderate to
growth based portfolio are mimicking the large you know s
(34:03):
and P five hundred Nasdaq type of indices. And we've
talked on this show multiple times that active money management,
you know netta fees, typically underperforms a good index based
you know fund like what you own. So you're not
doing anything wrong. For sure, there are opportunities however, for
active management in other asset classes, and you got to
(34:26):
look around and look at some of those, you know,
typical or certain parts of the bond portfolio. You can
make a case for active management there. Things like small
cap stocks, emerging market stocks there are, and then some
having some non correlated asset classes in your portfolio that
can increase return and lower risk. That's a reason to
(34:47):
have some active Apart from active you know management and returns,
there's a bit there can be a big case for
using some active management from a tech standpoint. I know
you talked about all your money is in retirement accounts.
We're now talking about non retirement accounts for where having
a good tax uh managed strategy running in the background,
(35:08):
harvesting short term losses, using those to offset gains.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
UH.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Those are often at a ton of value to a portfolio.
So uh, there's reasons to have some of this stuff
in there. It's on a case by case basis, but
it's a great question. Brian, all right, Ron and Mason,
We've got a says, we've got a paid off house,
but a lot of equity sitting idle. What's the smartest
way to use that equity, invest, downsize, or just leave
(35:36):
it alone.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
Yeah, this is that we'll get this question quite as
often anymore. I got it a lot when when mortgage
rates were in the you know, the three percent range,
sometimes even two percent, because people are simply looking at
this is the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of
dollars that I've got sitting here in an asset that's
not spitting out any income.
Speaker 6 (35:52):
How can I take advantage of that?
Speaker 5 (35:53):
Well, really, the only way to take advantage of it
is to is to somehow, you know, borrow against it
to the money out. Unless you're going to airbnb one
of your rooms in your house and have awkward meetings
in the hallway with strangers, there's not really a good
efficient way to get money out right now. If you're
going to borrow against your home, you're going to be
paying about six percent in a home equity line. I
don't think that that that's the worst thing. If you
(36:14):
actually have a need, that can be a pretty good
way to finance a significant, uh, you know, an expense
you have. Maybe it's a better deal than you can
get from the car dealer or buy a car, or
maybe you need you know, you're gonna use it for
college expenses something like that.
Speaker 6 (36:27):
But simply to pull money out.
Speaker 5 (36:29):
And use it to make an investment that you hope
is going to earn more than six percent. I don't
think that's worth it right now, So I would focus
on am I happy in my home? Is this the
place that I want to be? If not, then let's
think about some kind of different arrangement. But otherwise, don't
treat it as a piggybank.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
All right.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
If you're paying seven hundred dollars or more for a
premium credit card, rising fees might force you to choose
which one of those cards is actually worth keeping, will
help you evaluate your options. Next, you're listening to Simply
Money presented by all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC
the Talk station.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
And of course not just one sided view us.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
That affects you at the top end to bottom of
the hour fifty five KRC the talk Station, you're.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Listening to Simple Money presented by all Worth Financial on
Bob's Sponseller along with Brian James. Many people have these
high end credit cards, riding the perks and weaving between
the value among the different cards. But now with these
issuers starting to you know, increase annual fees. The question
is shifting from should I get a premium card to
(37:40):
which premium card I should keep Brian, in all honesty.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
For questions like this one.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
You know I come to you for this stuff because
I know you study this stuff and know a lot
about it. I'm I'm very eager to hear what you
have to say on this topic, and I mean that
in all honesty.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
Yeah, my family has gotten a lot out of the
credit card reward. We had a credit card over twenty
years that was paying money into a five twenty nine
plan and I'm now very happily on the back end
of that pulling dollars out for tuition. It was free
money and it was one of the smartest things I've
ever done. So why are their higher fees in these cards? Well,
the credit card issuers, Remember these aren't the banks. There
are two entities behind a credit card. It's the credit
(38:17):
card issuer, that's Visa master Cards. They are the ones
who want the spending because they're taking a haircut off
of every little transaction. Every time you wipe that you
swipe that card, they get two or three percent, sometimes
even four and they know that typical premium card user.
If you've already got a fee on your card, then
that's got it. Then that's a premium card out there.
They know these people are high spenders, pay off the
balance every month and is a low credit risk. Those
(38:37):
are the customers the issuers want, the banks behind it,
wants somebody who's going to let it go and ignore
it so they can charge them the ridiculous interest rates
twenty five twenty eight percent. So what they're hoping is
that fewer card holders overall, but those stickier relationships and
more interchange spend focused on that one card that they
think is the best one to use. That's what I did,
like I said, for for a long time. So how
(38:59):
do you think about this? Run a break even analysis.
If you've got two or more of these premium cards,
make a spreadsheet, figure out your real usage. You know,
are you really using those lounge visits and the hotel
airline credits? Are the lounges open. I have one of
these cards, and about half the time there just isn't
room they'll let you in in the time that you've
got to lay over. Make sure you're actually getting the
value out of these different perks. Are you using the
(39:19):
free thing that they give you. You know, so sometimes
both cards will cover lounge access or global entry tsa
pre check. Well, now you've got that twice, you really
only need it once. So one of them is redundant
and that has no value for you. But at the
same time, if you decide you're gonna cancel one of them,
first off, be super careful. Don't cancel your low your
oldest credit card. Hang onto that one unless it's an
(39:39):
enormous fee. You're gonna want that twenty twenty five years
where because that's what's giving you a lot of your
credit score. But if you are going to cancel one,
ask for retention. They might throw you a you know,
a better deal, some kind of hidden perk or something
that they only hold back when somebody wants to or
offer out when somebody wants to cancel.
Speaker 6 (39:56):
But again, the.
Speaker 5 (39:56):
Whole point of this is just be aware, what are
you using a lot of card? Just never redeem these
credits or they just don't use all the benefits. Some
of the perks are just too hard to use, so
they look great in the brochure, but you never actually
use them. So just understand what it offers you and
whether you value.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
That great stuff, Brian.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
And this is why I'm so blessed to have you
around to give me advice on stuff like this, because
I honestly I never look at it at all but
good stuff. All right, thanks for listening. You've been listening
to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial on fifty
five KRC, the Talk Station.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
You got a lot to do, do you? I do
got to put up these Halloween decorations, do some work,
do the laundry. We do have to go shopping.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Will this is what we do.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Do the rest, it's time to do it.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
We do traffic and weather, doing the news at the
top and bottom of the hours.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
This is the most important thing we can do.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Dude, check in.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Let's do it the way you want.
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I do need to know. It's important that we do
it today while doing your day.
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There's always more to do.
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I ain't doing nothing today. I do have something to say,
so let's do it. On fifty five KR, the Talk Station.
Do you I do got to put up these Halloween decorations.
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Will It's time to do it, dude?
Speaker 3 (00:04):
The rest I do need to know On fifty five KRC,
the talk station.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Tonight, Crypto crashes, When to check or not check your
investment portfolio, and we tackle your tough money questions. You're
listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial on
Bob Sponseller along with Brian James Well. Crypto investors got
a bit of a wake up call a few days
ago and just a few minutes prices plunged across the
(00:37):
board and what's being called a flash crash. Hundreds of
billions of dollars disappeared almost instantly. Brian, what actually happened here? Well,
so what happened here? The catalyst for this flash cash?
Speaker 5 (00:50):
We see these every now and then, where there's no
big headlines, there's no big crazy it's just the market
moves in an extreme and unexpected way. This time it
was the unexpected announcement of tar Garraffs on China. I
don't know about the word unexpected there. I'm not sure
that we shouldn't be shocked by this stuff anymore. We
don't get a heads up that next week, we're going
to talk about it. Then we talk about it. It just
kind of drops out of the sky anyway as the
whole weekend unfolded. So President Trump and his advisors kind
(01:13):
of backed off on that, and that did help markets
to stabilize, but not without doing some damage. So the
post mortem here, prices fell pretty quick. Bitcoin dropped by
about twelve percent from its prior week's peak, did bounce
back a little bit. Ethereum slid by even more at
that worst point. Those are the two big ones. They
held up the best. It got worse from there though,
those mean coins and allt coins, those just got destroyed.
(01:37):
Dose coin cratered by about fifty percent before stabilizing, and
the tokens outside the biggest ones, but they felt even worse.
There's a crypto public CAAs now they're called coin Desk,
and they cited basically an average thirty three percent drop
across the board for anything not named Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Like I said, those are the big dogs, and they
held up a little better, but a lot of those
little dogs lost eighty percent or more, small handful of
(02:00):
in close to one hundred percent of their value in
the same very short period. That is how fragile the
markets are that are behind these types of assets. There
is no earnings report, there is no new product announcement
that's gonna come out. These are commodities and they trade
as sutch. They are only worth what people think they are.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, a couple points here.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
I think it's important to drive home, Brian, and feel
free to disagree or agree. But I think I think
we use the word crypto now, you know, I think
it's dangerous to just talk about all that in one basket,
because there are huge differences between things like bitcoin and
then as you already pointed out, these dosee coins and
and for to a large extent, this stuff is really
(02:42):
speculative in nature, and depending on how much understanding or
misunderstanding investors out there have about this stuff, they can
get involved in things, you know, that that might result
in volatility, like we just talked about that they really
didn't bargain for and wanted no part of in the
first place. The other on the other end end of
(03:02):
the spectrum, there's a lot of people that basically daytrade
this stuff. You know, a lot of these coins and
other cryptocurrencies, you know, and those people you know, are
aware and used to and profit from volatility. So I
think it's important if you're going to get into this
you know, big space called crypto, you get educated on
what you're buying, what the potential moves are, and go
(03:24):
in with your eyes wide open. And the second point,
there's a lot of institutional money now involved in this space.
I mean, it's become kind of art, it's become an
asset class. That's that a lot of institutional investment money
managers use hedge funds, traders you know, and even regular
old portfolio managers. They use this as an allocation percentage
(03:47):
of a long term buy and hold portfolio. And you know,
when you've got institutional money moving in and out of
this stuff, there are algorithms that trip you know, when
volatility happens and this stuff gets sold whether people want
to own it long term or not, and that can
add to the volatility as well. So again a couple
(04:09):
just points there to keep in mind, be aware of
what you're doing in this you know, broad space called crypto,
and more importantly why, and go in with your eyes
wide open.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
And just be prepared for what can happen. Is this
is obviously a brand new asset. It's not that new,
but at the same time, it's not hundreds of years
old like the stock market that we can look at
through lots of different environments. Just about everything that happens
to crypto is going to happen for the first time.
Now we're seeing how it behaves in a tariff related environment.
So let's talk a little more about that. Why did
this happen? So why was crypto impacted by these tariffs
(04:42):
on China? Well, it's not separate from traditional markets as
much as it used to be. As Bob just shared,
it's an integrated part of our financial structure.
Speaker 6 (04:50):
Nowadays.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
There's a lot of companies out there that are that
are making money off of bitcoin by being directly involved
in it. There are companies such as micro Strategy that
micro Strategy is.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
Is an IT company.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
They focus on business intelligence, software analytics, and so forth.
But what they've done is they have basically tied their
entire future to crypto by.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Simply buying tons of it.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
They go about forty billion dollars worth of mostly bitcoin,
and that's that's just a decision that they've made because
that's how they feel like they can increase the value
of their company, so a lot of institutional money is
in there.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Now.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
When these tariffs hit, investors typically will say, well, that's
that's a tax that's more expensive. So I want to
get out of and take some risk off the table,
and we're going to sell some of these assets that
I feel like a little more volatile, and crypto hits
that category perfectly. So if we're going to take risk
off the table, it's gonna be it's gonna come out
of the most volatile markets.
Speaker 6 (05:40):
And that's kind of what crypto is here.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
So as long as so while traders were pulling back
from stocks, they also sold off crypto at almost faster rate.
Leverage makes it even worse because a lot of times
these companies have borrowed money, you know, using other people's
money to make more money. That's the American way, that's
what leverages. But because so many crypto traders use that
borrowed money, even a small dip triggers these automatic sales
through you know the algorithm that Bob mentioned and that
(06:04):
snowballs quickly and then you get a five crash.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Well, you brought up that micro strategy company, and I've
I have followed that company a little bit and it's
been you know, quite remarkable to see the transformation of
that company. I mean, I think their growth as a
company was slowing. Their revenues and earnings were dropping. So
the way that they tried to you know, build shareholder
value is they came out publicly and said we're going
(06:28):
to put one hundred percent of our you know, liquid
holdings into bitcoin. I mean, so so people that bought
this company originally thinking as you said, it was a
software company, it's it's now a proxy for bitcoin. So
it's a completely different business model than original investors had
signed up for. And you just got to be aware
(06:49):
if you're going to be involved in this stuff on
what these companies are doing. I mean that's an extreme example,
but uh, there are others like it that we don't
have time to go into today.
Speaker 6 (06:58):
Yeah, I do, I think on that topic real quick
for it.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
I have I have a client that worked for micro Strategy,
and this is about he's not there anymore, but I
remember five six years ago he was trying to do
his job, which had everything to do with supporting the
software products that that company purports to sell, and he
kept getting more and more confused about why can't I
get the resources and the attention that I need to
do my job and serve these customers. And the answer,
now we know, was because the company had decided, you
(07:23):
know what, we're just gonna use our resources and we're
just gonna buy bitcoin and sit on it while still
doing this software kind of stuff on the side. So
so far that is paid off because bitcoin has moved
in the right direction. But there's gonna be some some
some funny moves made by that company. If Bitcoin ever
takes a really really solid hit, they're gonna have to
take measures, just like any other company that's trying to
maintain its profit margins.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, it's an asset like at anything else.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
It's willing, it's it's worth what somebody is willing to
pay for it today, good or bad. I think another
point just to you know, to drive home here is
again long term. You know, there are reasons that people
own bitcoin. They see it as a digital gold and
it's and we don't have time to get into all
that kind of stuff, but it, you know, it's seen
(08:07):
as a there's a limited number of shares that are
gonna be issued or units that are gonna be issued,
and you know, away from government interference and all that
kind of stuff. These doge coins are completely different game.
It's just pure speculation. I don't think a lot of
our clients are a lot of people that even listen
to this show are out there, you know, day trading
(08:28):
doge coins. But I think it's just important to point
out here that you know, when you think of bitcoin
or anything like that as digital gold, most people think
of that as a non correlated asset to the stock market,
meaning that when the stock market drops, when the economy
slows down, these are assets that are gonna be non
(08:48):
correlated to the broad stock market and help cushion volatility
in your portfolio. And what we saw over the last
week is the exact opposite. Not only did it not move, yeah,
not only did it not move, you know, contrary to
the movement of the stock market, it moved down more
than the stock market moved.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Down, so it actually to the same stimulus those tariffs.
Tariffs are negative news. The stock market took that and
it threw a fit on Friday. The crypto markets made
it even worse. So you're not protected by from volatility
by owning those things. It doesn't mean they're bad investments,
but don't take it for anything more than what it is.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Here's the all Worth advice.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
If crypto's in your portfolio, it should play a small,
very defined role, not the setting role. Coming up next,
how often are you checking your portfolio will reveal what
we think the sweet spot might be. Next, you're listening
to Simply Money, presented by all With Financial on fifty
five krc the talk station.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
In order, we're going in Russia and tariffs, and you
got a lot of stuff to do. I can't sports
stock stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
So we'll stuff it all into news update check and
often this stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Fifty five KRZ the talk station.
Speaker 7 (10:04):
All Worth Financial a registered investment advisory firm. Any ideas
presented during this program are not intended to provide specific
financial advice. You should consult your own financial advisor, tax consultant,
or a state planning attorney to conduct your own due diligence.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
You're listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial
on Bob Sponsoring along with Brian James. If you can't
listen to Simply Money live every night, subscribe and get
our daily podcast. You can listen the following morning during
your commute or during your workout at the gym or
in your during your evening walk around the neighborhood. Think
about how fun that might be. And if you think
(10:45):
your friends and family could use some financial advice, tell
them about us as well. Just search simply Money on
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Speaker 2 (10:55):
If you've built a.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Couple million dollar portfolio balance in return hirement accounts, and
if you have a paid off home and are sitting
on cash wondering what to do next, you're not alone.
We're gonna answer questions about all of that and more
straight ahead of six forty three. Be honest, how often
do you check your portfolio balance? A new study done
(11:18):
by a research firm called Di Netta found that almost
half of all investors are checking their investments performance once
a day or more.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
Brian Bob, I'll admit it. I do this way more
often than I should. I'm human too. It's fun, right.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
I know it's gonna panic when it's negative, I just
quit looking at it. But it's when things are going
up and then net worth is reaching heights it hasn't before.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
I know full well, I'm going to give a jump back.
That's how life works.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
And Brian, I checked the I checked the balance of
my doge coins about every fifteen to seventeen minutes.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
It's a it's a wonderful dopamine rush.
Speaker 6 (11:53):
You own no doge coins, don't, don't. I know you
better than that. You wouldn't know where to buy doge coins.
I'm teusing, but yeah, no, I do it.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
Too, you know, And this survey tells us, you know what,
why are people doing this? Well, I can tell you
exactly why I do it well. When markets are volatile,
people look more often because we're thinking about it, right
that it's in the headlines.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
It's in my face.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
In between my meetings, I catch a headline on my phone,
and you know, maybe something good is happening, maybe something
bad's happening. Why I can't resist. I gotta go see
what's happening to my own portfolio. Gives us the illusion
of control, right, we believe that, you know. Sometimes we
think if we're always looking at it, we're going to
be able to react quickly or prevent losses, or maybe
jump into something before it makes the big run.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
This is why there's a whole.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
Part of the academic world called behavioral economics, and they
the The economists there call this the control fallacy. Staring
at it doesn't improve outcomes, It just amplifies stress. Right,
if we watch that pot of water boil, it is
not going to make it boil any faster. Matter of fact,
our brains are gonna think that it's not boiling fast enough.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Well, but we can, again, we can feel like we're
at least controlling it watching it. We all know that's
not the case, but it's how our brains get wired,
and I think that leads to this next point. We
let's face it, we all live in a what we'd
like to call a refresh economy right now.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
What does that mean.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Well, people check their likes on social media, they check emails,
they check news in real time, and let's face it,
investor behavior has followed suit.
Speaker 6 (13:21):
We're all used.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
To staring at these apps and just constantly looking at screens,
and it tends to move over to the investment world too.
It's just natural behavior. We just like to see things
moving around. We like to see colors change, we like
to see likes, we like to see news updates. And
people know that's the case. We've talked about that umpty
(13:43):
in different times. That's how the whole media and social
media business platform has been built to glue us to
that screen and keep us looking at everything all the time.
We just got to be mindful of that because sometimes
if you look at your investment, you know, balance, too often,
(14:03):
you're gonna be driven to make a decision right because
you know, it goes back to that control thing.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I see it moving around.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I must do something, and usually nine times out of ten,
that's something that we do ends up not being a
good decision.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
Yeah, and I've been fascinated by this, you know, I've
been doing this for thirty years and the things that
get people's attention, including myself. I'm human too, and I
have the same goal as my clients do. I want
to retire someday and get the kids through college and
all that other stuff. But that's been fascinating to me
to understand why that occurs. And at the end of
the day, Bob, we are all between our ears. We
(14:37):
have lunch meat and chemicals. One of our favorite chemicals
in there is dopamine, and we get dopamine no matter what,
it gives us that little emotional hit, even positive or
negative news, just something some kind of new stimulus gives
us a little shout of dopamine, and it turns out
that's what we're after. That's why we pick up our
phones a thousand times a day just to see whatever
balogney headlines or whatever meaningless notifications are there for me
(14:58):
to react to. And then there's I can't really remember
the last time I picked up my phone, looked at
it and realized, yes, there, I should do something about
this news headline.
Speaker 6 (15:06):
This should cause me to act in some way. No,
it's just me getting my little.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
Dopamine hit and then going back to work or whatever
I was doing before until I get the urge to
do it again. So I've been really trying to be
more mindful of that. How rarely it actually means anything
so anyway, So that's the dopamine side of the thing.
There's also fear of missing out or what I like
to call fomo. When news breaks about, hey, the market's
hitting a record high, AI stocks are soaring well, well,
(15:30):
that causes us to feel like we're going to miss
something I better be watching, or I'm going to miss
out on an opportunity to be to be a bazillionaire tomorrow. Really, really,
this is super common among younger investors and people who
started investing really just in the past three years, which
have been really really positive ever since twenty twenty two,
and so looking every day has been a rewarding experience.
If you just started looking or just started investing in
(15:53):
the last three years, you start studying your market history,
because it's not always going to be this way. You
will there will be a time where there's twelve eighteen months.
You just don't only want to look at your four
one k it's just too darn depressing. However, that's part
of the game. You have got to get used to that.
If you have young people in your lives who have
just started their foura one case, just started investing, teach
them market history, show them what twenty twenty two looked
(16:14):
like two thousand and eight oh two. These are things
that will happen, are virtually guaranteed to occur again. We
have to be able to anticipate them and make sure
we can ride them out. Otherwise we start making bad
decisions like trying to time the market, which usually means
getting out at the bottom, or trying to make it
up with super speculative assets, which can exacerbate things and
all of that robs you of years of building wealth.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
For sure. And I think another I think another reason.
People just get addicted to checking all this stuff. You know,
you talked about fear of missing out. There's another thing
out there, and it's just straight you know, fear in general,
past market trauma. People who live through the dot com bust,
the Great Financial Crisis or COVID, remember how fast things
(16:57):
can change. And let's face it, in today's political divide
where I mean, depending on where you get your news sources.
And I'm talking to people on both sides of the
aisle here, you know, for you know, an app like
X for example, Brian, I'd say sixty to seventy percent
of the stuff that flies around on there, it's unverified.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
You don't know whether that's.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Real news, fake news, or anything in between, or just
straight out lies and propaganda. But if we get that
fear thing, we're just waiting for the next shoe to drop,
the next thing to implode our portfolios. And a lot
of people are walking around with that all day, every day,
and that causes people to check their portfolios more than
(17:40):
they should and again make decisions that they probably shouldn't make.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
That's right, and then life changes too, right, So big
life events retirement, job change, marriage, divorce, inheritance, new baby
in the house, new grand baby around, that's a great
time to kind of look at things as a trigger.
So the investments might still be fine, but something change
in the outside of your big picture shifted a little bit,
so maybe your mix needs adjusting. But if those big
(18:04):
things aren't happening, lets your portfolio alone. If it was
fine before, it's still fine, just look at it when
there's new information to react to. Also, of course, in
this I think goes without saying, but when you're near
a milestone, if you're sneaking up on retirement, or you've
got a big purchase to make, maybe paying off college
something like that, that's a time to review where's the
risk in my portfolio. So I've got this big expense
(18:26):
coming up. Am I using dollars that could go over
the cliff tomorrow just before I have to pay the bill?
If that's the case, then I might be making mistakes.
So maybe I need to take some risk off the
table rather than waiting until it's literally time to write
the check to whomever is going to take that money
from you. So the closer I am to using that money.
The more important it is to shift from growth to preservation.
Take the gains while they're there. And we've talked about
(18:47):
this ad nauseum all year long. I think, Bob, this
has been a great run, great couple of years. If
you've got an upcoming bill the next couple months, maybe
even the next year, you might take those dollars off
the table. So it's not hard to write that check.
Should the market take a dip, yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
I mean you've been getting into reasons why you should
check your portfolio and responsibly review your strategy. And I'll
say this gets into whether you're a self directed investor
or whether you work with a good fiduciary advisor. If
you are a self directed investor and you're making all
the decisions the buyers, the sells, the reallocation, yeah, you
(19:21):
need to be looking at things more often. But if
you work with an advisor, a good advisor usually Brian,
a semiannual, yearly or yearly review with your advisor is
a pretty good cadence because if there's communication going on
and you're letting your advisor know about some of these
major life milestones that you just talked about, well, then
(19:42):
your advisor can help you shift and get out in
front of some of this stuff and keep money out
of harm's way that needs to be out of the market.
So you know, it's a good time to just think
about where are you as an investor. Are you calling
all the shots yourself or do you trust and have
a good relationship with a FIDU sharey advisor And depending
on what situation you're in, that really changes the calculus
(20:06):
here on how often you should be staring at this
stuff and potentially making moves in your portfolio.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Here's the all Worth advice.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
If you've got a good financial plan the portfolio, remember
that it's just the engine. You don't need to look
under the hood every day to know that the engine
is running.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Coming up next, how old is your Internet router?
Speaker 4 (20:28):
That's a question you should probably answer very soon, and
we'll explain why you're listening to Simply Money, presented by
all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC the talk station.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
His day, what's the event of the day, what's going on?
Will be busy?
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Frankie news, The President just said, good morning, what.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Will yours look like?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Hey, new days coming check in.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Brian Thomas tomorrow morning at five on fifty five KRC.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
The talk station you're seeing an iHeartRadio station.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
You're listening to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial.
I'm Bob sponsorer along with Brian James, joined tonight by
our tech and cyber security guru, mister Dave Hatter, and
I know this topic is something everyone out there.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
This applies to everyone.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Dave, what are we going to cover tonight to help
keep our data and our money secure?
Speaker 8 (21:26):
Guys is always thanks for having me on, and this
is an important topic. It's a recent warning from the
FBI about small businesses and people's homes. You know, generally
large corporations have nerds like me running around. They have
enterprise grade security solutions, they have firewalls from folks like
Palo Alto and Cisco and Fortinet. But at home, many
(21:46):
people just have whatever came from the internet service provider.
Same with small businesses, or maybe they've gone out the
best buyer Walmart or somewhere and bought an off the
shelf Wi Fi router because they need more capabilities than
what you can get out of the thing that we
delivered by your internet service provider. And the FBI is
warning that in many cases, like so much of the
tech that's out there, so much of our so called
(22:09):
Internet of things aka smart devices. You know, these things
have to be updated regularly, they have to be configured correctly,
and as they get older and go into life where
they're not getting software upgrades and more importantly, security patches
from the vendor, that creates a gigantic security hole. This
is the kind of thing TENFOI hat nuts like me
warn't about all the time. But I'm happy to see
(22:29):
that the FBI is now trying to get in front
of this and warning folks that if you have these
older end of life devices, you know, anything that's more
than five or six years old, you should question. If
it's ten years old or older, that's going to be
a significant concern you. You need to seriously take a
hard look at replacing these things. And the good news
is they're relatively inexpensive.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
All Right, Dave is somebody who grew up here in Cincinnati,
you know, using that old Green Hills mindset where I'm
going to pinch every penny I can. You know a
lot of times I think to myself, and I know
other people will think the same way. I do not
want to rent that router from Spectrum or you know,
Ulti Fiber or whatever. I'm just going to go buy
my own because it's going to save me a few bucks.
(23:09):
Are those the people you're really talking to right now,
those people that went out and bought that router twenty
years ago and said, yep, I got my own router.
I feel great about not having to pay rental payments
to a cable company. Are those the people most at risk,
you know, in situations like the one you're talking about
right now.
Speaker 8 (23:28):
Most likely because if you're essentially renting it from your
internet service provider again, think you know, Spectrum, Ultifiber, whomever.
And I'd also point out, you know, there are so
many different ways to get online now. You know, in
the old days you typically have to work with some
sort of landline based internet service provider. Now you have
solutions like Starlink out there and so forth. But at
the end of the day, the Wi Fi router. And
(23:50):
this often gets confusing for people because a lot of
folks have two different devices. You have the cable modem,
if you have something like Spectrum, which is a physical
device that connects you to their network, and then sometimes
that will serve also as a Wi Fi router. Sometimes
you might have a separate device that is then throwing
up the Wi Fi signal in your facility, your home,
(24:12):
your small office, or whatever. This is a constant battle
with my family, Like the Wi Fi's down, I'm like no,
the WiFi is not down. The internet connection is down.
These are two different things right now. Again, sometimes one
device can provide both. Most people have too. If you're
working with the internet service provider, you know they will
occasionally replace these things. Usually you're not going to have
(24:33):
a device that's little. But if you went out and
bought your own because you don't want to have that
rental fee or you wanted extra capabilities, yes, again, if
it's more than five or six years old, and the
FBI specifically says in their PSA anything produced in twenty
ten or earlier, so you're talking to fifteen year old device.
These things have notorious security flaws. They're not getting updates
from the vendors. They're also missing a lot of more
(24:56):
modern security features, and that's one of the key things here.
You can go out and buy a high, relatively high end,
powerful Wi Fi router for three hundred bucks or less.
That will add an enormous amount of additional functionality and
security capabilities versus something that's even a couple of years old.
You know, new there are new encryption standards for your
(25:17):
Wi Fi network. There are new Wi Fi standards that
provide better performance and better speed. So you know, by upgrading,
despite the fact that people don't want to spend money
and I get it. You also have to remember every
single thing you do online through that device is you know,
whether it's your banking, accessing your work networks, whatever you're doing,
it's going through that device, So ensuring its security is
(25:39):
very important for you, your business, your money, et cetera. And
you know, one quick piece of advice before amount of time. Again,
there's lots of new standards. You can get much better performance,
much better security, get software updates, things like WPA three
that's the highest level of encryption most home Wi Fi
routers would support. You know, you need to be turning
(26:02):
on the highest level of protection you can, and I
would encourage folks. You know, if you don't have an
irdy friend like me, you can talk to check out
magazines online like c net, Charlie Net, or zd net,
Ziff Davis Net, Tom's Guide, PC Magazine, Consumer Reports. They
have editors and experts that vet these things right, so
you can go out and say, well, what's the best
(26:24):
home Wi Fi router for twenty twenty five on one
of these sites, and they'll give you recommendations. You know,
do I want the cheapest one? Do I want the
most powerful one? Do I want the most secure one?
Do I care about gaming? There's all kinds of great advice,
And I also encourage people sign up and go to
IC three dot gov Internet Crimecomplaints Center dot gov. It's
hosted by the FBI. They put out these public service announcements.
(26:47):
There's all kinds of useful information there. So there's ample
resources to help you figure this out. But if you
have a really old device, take the FBI's advice and
replace this, because you're setting yourself up for disaster if
you don't.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Hey, Dave, is there besides it being old? Are there
things that the thing that my router could do?
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Well?
Speaker 5 (27:04):
I know that if it's behaving a certain way that
I maybe I should be paying more attention. You know,
obviously you know that there are there are model numbers
and things we can look at too, But just in
general should are there things I should watch for just
in terms of his normal performance.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, that's a good question. You know.
Speaker 8 (27:18):
One of the reasons why they've put out this PSA is,
you know, for these really old routers, it's not that
hard for hackers to find these. There's a search engine
called Showdance specifically designed to find Internet connected devices, so
bad guys can go look up routers that have known defects.
They can infiltrate your router and then they'll use it
(27:39):
essentially as a proxy or for other nefarious purposes, so
they're they're routing they're bad activities through your router, which
also means you could get a visit from the FBI someday.
If you look into that, you'll find that has happened before.
But yeah, if if you're if it used to work
fine and now it suddenly starts to lose its connectivity,
your speed goes to near zero, it seems to overheat,
(28:01):
or just suddenly starts acting weird. I mean, that could
just be a sign that that's getting old and tired,
or could be a sign of some sort of infestation
from some hackers somewhere. And again, with these newer devices,
they're much harder to hack. They're getting the security patches
from their vendors, they're much easier to secure. All the
reasons why you should really think about replacing anything that Again,
(28:23):
I would say if it's five or six years old,
you should take a hard look at replacing it.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
Yeah, and I want to be clear to this is
something I learned years ago about that We've hinted at
a couple of times here, but just to say it
a third time, you do not have to rent devices
from your internet provider anymore than you have to rent
a lawn sprinkler from the water company. They can't control
what you're connecting to that connection, So you can be
in full control of this and save yourself a little
money at the same time. Dave, I'm going to ask
(28:48):
you a little bit of a loaded question. Have we
heard from the ulti fibers and the spectrums of the
world as from there? Are they raising a flag on
any of this? And do you have any idea if
they would bear any liability. That's all lawyer question and
none of us is one, but I'm asking anyway.
Speaker 8 (29:03):
Yeah, I have not seen, like you know, I use
Spectrum at home. I have not seen any communication from
Spectrum in this regard. Now again, you know, they will
occasionally replace their equipment and so forth, and you know,
I would encourage people to your point to not rent
their equipment and go for some of the higher end
and relatively inexpensive. You know, if you spend three hundred
dollars on a fairly high end Wi Fi router and
(29:25):
you advertise that over five or six years, that's not
very much money to get a lot more security and
a lot better capability and probably a lot better performance
to boot.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
You know. All of that said, so, I.
Speaker 8 (29:36):
Haven't seen anything from the Internet service providers in this
region comment on this particular FBI warning. I think it
probably is really geared more towards the people like you
mentioned that have gone out and bought their own equipment,
perhaps a long time ago. And you know, as far
as the internet service provider bearing any responsibility, yeah, I'm
not an attorney, and I'm sure if you read through
(29:56):
their terms of service there's indignification in there for anything
that goes wrong using their service. So I kind of
doubt it.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
But you know, I'm not an attorney, and.
Speaker 8 (30:06):
You know, could you get a class action lawsuit together
for people that have somehow been hacked because they had
old equipment and they weren't warned and it wasn't replaced.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Maybe yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
So bottom line is spending that investing that three hundred dollars,
like you said, advertised over six, seven, eight, ten years,
is way less expensive than going through a dramatic, you know,
identity theft or fraud situation that could cost you hundreds,
if not thousands of dollars. Great stuff, as always from
our tech expert Dave Hatter. You're listening to Simply Money
(30:38):
presented by all Worth Financial on fifty five KARC the
Talk station.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
It's all in they everywhere. I want to thank you guys.
You're like my radio neighbors.
Speaker 7 (30:48):
You guys are making me think twice about things.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Like a sound that lingas in you and I love it.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Thanks for giving us Democrats boys.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Listening to the station, I feel like I'm here. We
all matter is. I've been tuning in since the election.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
It's gone up.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Talk about it here. I get heard on fifty five
KRC the Talk station. Here, get a pack, are welcome
to here.
Speaker 6 (31:15):
I do think he is too old to run. In
twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Four, fifty five KRC the Talk station. You're listening to
Simply Money because that I buy all Worth Financial. I'm
Bob sponseller along the Flinger Churn. Give a financial question
you'd like for us to answer. There is a red
button you can click while you're listening to the show
right on the iHeart app. Simply record your question and
(31:39):
it will come straight to us. Dave and Mary live
in Mainville and Brian.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
They're wondering.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
They say, Hey, we're in our early sixties and considering
partial retirement. How do you plan cash flow when income
becomes unpredictable? Great question, This is a great question. This
is kind of the key of financial planning. We become
so custom Bob to living off of o PM other
people's money. Somebody has to give me some kind of
(32:06):
check or something so that I can pay my bills.
That's in the first for the first forty fifty years
of our lives, that's a job, and then for the
remainder it becomes social Security or whatever pensions we've built up.
What we tend to do, though, is ignore the fact
that if we've done the right things, then there's also
a significant nest egg out there that can support those bills,
and that itself becomes you know, that becomes your own money,
(32:27):
of course, and so so how to plan around this, Well,
a lot of people want to focus on the I
need it to spit out a predictable stream of income.
So maybe I'm gonna do CDs or bonds or just
something where I know what's coming and when. And that's fine,
except the what happens there is we often rob the
ability for growth from that portfolio. So look, I would say,
you know you're gonna you're gonna definitely want to keep
(32:48):
something related to growth, which growth can be unpredictable. Something
needs to be growing, even for the littlest old widow
out there, we still need some growth to keep up
with inflation. So just understand market history and understand model
out what it would look like if you invested in
a certain portfolio and pulled a couple thousand dollars out
of it every month to bridge the gap between your
your your social scurity pension checks and what your actual
bills are, and then understand what it does when the
(33:09):
market goes up and most importantly, when the market goes down.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
So it doesn't have to be predictable. It's not as
predictable as a you know, as like a pension or
a job. But at the same time, that doesn't mean
that that is a bad thing. You just have to
be used to you know what what that could look like.
So stress tests and understand it. Moving to Brian and Levanon,
Brian's got about two million dollars in retirement accounts and
he says their portfolio is mostly index based, but he's
curious if they're missing out on some more tactical active
(33:35):
management opportunities. Bob's gonna have a field day with this.
Is there a case, Bob for active management at this level?
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Well, Brian, there can be, and I'll say there can be.
So you know, when when you talk about index portfolio
and this is why we like a term we use
around here is core satellite portfolios, meaning the vast majority
of the assets and any would ill say, moderate to
growth based portfolio are mimicking the large you know s
(34:03):
and P five hundred Nasdaq type of indices. And we've
talked on this show multiple times that active money management,
you know netta fees, typically underperforms a good index based
you know fund like what you own. So you're not
doing anything wrong. For sure, there are opportunities however, for
active management in other asset classes, and you got to
(34:26):
look around and look at some of those, you know,
typical or certain parts of the bond portfolio. You can
make a case for active management there. Things like small
cap stocks, emerging market stocks there are, and then some
having some non correlated asset classes in your portfolio that
can increase return and lower risk. That's a reason to
(34:47):
have some active Apart from active you know management and returns,
there's a bit there can be a big case for
using some active management from a tech standpoint. I know
you talked about all your money is in retirement accounts.
We're now talking about non retirement accounts for where having
a good tax uh managed strategy running in the background,
(35:08):
harvesting short term losses, using those to offset gains.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
UH.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Those are often at a ton of value to a portfolio.
So uh, there's reasons to have some of this stuff
in there. It's on a case by case basis, but
it's a great question. Brian, all right, Ron and Mason,
We've got a says, we've got a paid off house,
but a lot of equity sitting idle. What's the smartest
way to use that equity, invest, downsize, or just leave
(35:36):
it alone.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
Yeah, this is that we'll get this question quite as
often anymore. I got it a lot when when mortgage
rates were in the you know, the three percent range,
sometimes even two percent, because people are simply looking at
this is the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of
dollars that I've got sitting here in an asset that's
not spitting out any income.
Speaker 6 (35:52):
How can I take advantage of that?
Speaker 5 (35:53):
Well, really, the only way to take advantage of it
is to is to somehow, you know, borrow against it
to the money out. Unless you're going to airbnb one
of your rooms in your house and have awkward meetings
in the hallway with strangers, there's not really a good
efficient way to get money out right now. If you're
going to borrow against your home, you're going to be
paying about six percent in a home equity line. I
don't think that that that's the worst thing. If you
(36:14):
actually have a need, that can be a pretty good
way to finance a significant, uh, you know, an expense
you have. Maybe it's a better deal than you can
get from the car dealer or buy a car, or
maybe you need you know, you're gonna use it for
college expenses something like that.
Speaker 6 (36:27):
But simply to pull money out.
Speaker 5 (36:29):
And use it to make an investment that you hope
is going to earn more than six percent. I don't
think that's worth it right now, So I would focus
on am I happy in my home? Is this the
place that I want to be? If not, then let's
think about some kind of different arrangement. But otherwise, don't
treat it as a piggybank.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
All right.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
If you're paying seven hundred dollars or more for a
premium credit card, rising fees might force you to choose
which one of those cards is actually worth keeping, will
help you evaluate your options. Next, you're listening to Simply
Money presented by all Worth Financial on fifty five KRC
the Talk station.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
And of course not just one sided view us.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
That affects you at the top end to bottom of
the hour fifty five KRC the talk Station, you're.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Listening to Simple Money presented by all Worth Financial on
Bob's Sponseller along with Brian James. Many people have these
high end credit cards, riding the perks and weaving between
the value among the different cards. But now with these
issuers starting to you know, increase annual fees. The question
is shifting from should I get a premium card to
(37:40):
which premium card I should keep Brian, in all honesty.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
For questions like this one.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
You know I come to you for this stuff because
I know you study this stuff and know a lot
about it. I'm I'm very eager to hear what you
have to say on this topic, and I mean that
in all honesty.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
Yeah, my family has gotten a lot out of the
credit card reward. We had a credit card over twenty
years that was paying money into a five twenty nine
plan and I'm now very happily on the back end
of that pulling dollars out for tuition. It was free
money and it was one of the smartest things I've
ever done. So why are their higher fees in these cards? Well,
the credit card issuers, Remember these aren't the banks. There
are two entities behind a credit card. It's the credit
(38:17):
card issuer, that's Visa master Cards. They are the ones
who want the spending because they're taking a haircut off
of every little transaction. Every time you wipe that you
swipe that card, they get two or three percent, sometimes
even four and they know that typical premium card user.
If you've already got a fee on your card, then
that's got it. Then that's a premium card out there.
They know these people are high spenders, pay off the
balance every month and is a low credit risk. Those
(38:37):
are the customers the issuers want, the banks behind it,
wants somebody who's going to let it go and ignore
it so they can charge them the ridiculous interest rates
twenty five twenty eight percent. So what they're hoping is
that fewer card holders overall, but those stickier relationships and
more interchange spend focused on that one card that they
think is the best one to use. That's what I did,
like I said, for for a long time. So how
(38:59):
do you think about this? Run a break even analysis.
If you've got two or more of these premium cards,
make a spreadsheet, figure out your real usage. You know,
are you really using those lounge visits and the hotel
airline credits? Are the lounges open. I have one of
these cards, and about half the time there just isn't
room they'll let you in in the time that you've
got to lay over. Make sure you're actually getting the
value out of these different perks. Are you using the
(39:19):
free thing that they give you. You know, so sometimes
both cards will cover lounge access or global entry tsa
pre check. Well, now you've got that twice, you really
only need it once. So one of them is redundant
and that has no value for you. But at the
same time, if you decide you're gonna cancel one of them,
first off, be super careful. Don't cancel your low your
oldest credit card. Hang onto that one unless it's an
(39:39):
enormous fee. You're gonna want that twenty twenty five years
where because that's what's giving you a lot of your
credit score. But if you are going to cancel one,
ask for retention. They might throw you a you know,
a better deal, some kind of hidden perk or something
that they only hold back when somebody wants to or
offer out when somebody wants to cancel.
Speaker 6 (39:56):
But again, the.
Speaker 5 (39:56):
Whole point of this is just be aware, what are
you using a lot of card? Just never redeem these
credits or they just don't use all the benefits. Some
of the perks are just too hard to use, so
they look great in the brochure, but you never actually
use them. So just understand what it offers you and
whether you value.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
That great stuff, Brian.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
And this is why I'm so blessed to have you
around to give me advice on stuff like this, because
I honestly I never look at it at all but
good stuff. All right, thanks for listening. You've been listening
to Simply Money, presented by all Worth Financial on fifty
five KRC, the Talk Station.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
You got a lot to do, do you? I do
got to put up these Halloween decorations, do some work,
do the laundry. We do have to go shopping.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Will this is what we do.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Do the rest, it's time to do it.
Speaker 4 (40:39):
We do traffic and weather, doing the news at the
top and bottom of the hours.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
This is the most important thing we can do.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Dude, check in.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Let's do it the way you want.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
I do need to know. It's important that we do
it today while doing your day.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
There's always more to do.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
I ain't doing nothing today. I do have something to say,
so let's do it. On fifty five KR, the Talk Station.
Simply Money News
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