Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time for Joel Larsguard on a Thursday, host of how
to Money Sundays from twelve to two pm. My social
addresses at how to Money Joel. Good morning, Joel, Joel.
Oh there you are. Hey, Yeah, well let's go no
for you, you know it. That's why he's here. He's
(00:21):
he's cheap, what he's cheap? But good right, what you
pay for you know, right? Joel. You know I've been
talking to people, I've been talking about this and discussing
eiming on the radio. That's something extraordinary is happening and
I don't understand it. And the stock market is at
an all time high. It seems like every day it's
(00:41):
hitting new levels, especially over the last week week and
a half. At the same time, consumer confidence is low
and it's dropping. And unemployment, I mean, look at the
employment sector. First of all, no one is hiring or
very few people are hiring, and they are laying off
people by the tens of thousands, soon to be the
(01:03):
hundreds of thousands. Has this ever happened and put all
the connect the dots on this one for me?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, that's a good que I mean I think there
was probably there was really was a similar reaction kind
of in the in the heart of COVID right when
the stock market it took a massive dive and the
things in the overall economy were looking not so great.
And then the stock market continued to it started to
shoot back up dramatically, and people were like, wait a second,
(01:32):
like we're not out of the woods. On Main Street.
There's a lot of like uncertainty, there's a lot of
difficulty in the labor market, and just like, well, can
I actually my business function the way that it used to?
And yet we saw the stock market cruise to new
heights pretty quickly. It was like such a short recovery time.
(01:52):
And I think we were seeing kind of like obviously
just not the exact same thing, but something similar happening
right now where people on Main Street are feeling more
uncertainty and the job market is it's certainly not what
it was a few years ago, and the stock market
roaring to new heights, up something like forty percent since April,
(02:13):
and it's kind of tough to square everything in your mind.
And that's why I think we're hearing more calls of
this being a potential bubble. Is there a bubble in stocks?
I think it's a worthwhile conversation to have. I just
think it's also a really hard discussion because especially as
individual investors, but really nobody knows.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
It's hard to predict the future.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So could the stock market see a significant decline from
here over the next year, Sure it it certainly could.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Could it continue, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Soaring over the coming year, Yeah it could. It could
be up fifteen percent, it could be down twenty percent.
It's really really hard to predict, which is why the
boring its are so much the time. Even if we
are in a time of overinflated stock prices, like staying
the course still makes sense for most people.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I at the same time, though, I'm having a hard
time understanding, for example, the employment world. And I use
my daughter Pamela as the poster child of employment. She
is a computer nerd and has some extraordinary skills, and
she's because she can't get a job because all the
entry level, lower level jobs, of which where you start
(03:20):
it doesn't matter what your skill set is, they are
all disappearing and they're gone. And she's starting her master's
degree and as I told her, you're now unemployed with
a bachelor's you're gonna be unemployed with the masters in
computer technology, and so it's gotten to the point now
where you're an expert also on cannabis. I mean she
(03:41):
knows an addition of being a pothead, she knows this
stuff cold. And I go, you know, you have to
go door to door to cannabis stores and get a
job at one of those, or you're gonna have to
go to a fast food place. You'll still be employed.
But instead of making a six figure income with your
skill set at a major corporation, you're going to make
thirty thousand dollars and you'll still be employed. I mean,
(04:03):
that's the way it's going. And I mean she's devastated,
and you know what do I say, you are?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
I mean I feel especially for younger people who are
entering the job market now, and I don't know that
it's quite as bad as graduating into the teeth of
the Great Recession back in eight oh nine, where like
the employment sector was incredibly locked up. I do think
we're part of it too, is like, what did we
experience recently.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
What we experienced.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Recently was a job market where employees and workers had
so much of an ability to jump ship get paid
a lot more, there were a lot more job openings
versus job hunters, and we've seen that dissipate, and so
I don't think again it's as bad as we've seen
in slightly more distant history. But it's cold consolation, right
for somebody graduating and saying like, hey, I've got this degree,
(04:53):
I'm well prepared. I would make a great employee, and
AI is stealing some of those entry level jobs. And
just the general economic concerns are causing many employers to,
you know, be more careful about when they're hiring and
who they're hiring. It does make me think of just
some other something I saw recently, which I think is
good advice, is that people should be and I think
(05:16):
you and I talked about this, actually, Bill, people should
be maybe consider more part time work or contract work,
because that might get your foot in the door at
a place where you're interested in working, and that work
that employer is not making quite.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
The same commitment to you.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
But so there's something about, especially in today's environment, getting
your foot in the door, having a job in a
place where you're interested in working and where you think
there's room to grow. And I do think at times
it is this mix of like a difficult employment economy
and also maybe really really high expectations from certain young
young workers. I was talking to an older lady in
(05:54):
my neighborhood the other day and she was like, man,
I just see this unwillingness, like this this desire for
young people they gradually college and they're like, yeah, I
want to work from home five days a week.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, yeah, you know there's some of that. Yeah, we
got the entitlement titlement issue going on too, and that's
something else to talk about that we're going to over
the next month, two months, six months, all right, Joel,
this headline I kind of find interesting. Customers are feeling
discount fatigue, And as I asked just before we went
(06:23):
to break, how can anybody feel fatigue getting discounts? Explain
that one to me.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, it's a good question.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I think I see this from multiple angles, and I
do think that there is a certain amount of just
there's so many sales now, right, there's Prime Day, and
now Prime Day is twice a year, and it's like
Black Friday is no longer a single day. It's now
kind of a seasonal event, and it basically kicks off
here as November starts and it you know, runs through
(06:52):
the beginning of December, and so it used to be
like a few days that you had to pay attention to.
And now retailers are like around every major holiday in
their own concocted holidays, they're coming up with different ways
to try to entice you to buy stuff at a discount,
and I it's I think it's harder than ever. You
would have thought that the advent of the Internet, we
(07:12):
would have it'd be so much easier to price shop
and say is this actually is this deal actually a deal?
They're you know, the one I'm getting in my email
inbox or the one that my favorite website is trying
to get me to click on. And it's actually harder
in so many ways to know whether or not a
good price that you're being pitched is actually a good price,
(07:33):
or it's if it's actually more expensive than it was
let's say three weeks six weeks ago, and they're making
it seem like it's a deal, and so much of
that comes down to MSRP, whether or not it's it's
legitimate or not. And so it's oh, it's sixty percent off,
but what you know, what are they actually charge for
it most of the time. Maybe it's actually more only
more like ten percent off. So I do think it's
(07:53):
getting harder and harder for individual shoppers to know whether
deal is a deal, and it feels like they're getting
inundated with quote unquote deals.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
All the time. Yeah, and the other side of that coin,
and I am guilty of this. I am looking at
a product and there are different brands basically does the
same thing, and I assume that the more expensive one
is the better one, and that's automatic, and I will
go for that. And I've been told over and over
(08:22):
again I'm a moron for doing that.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Well, I do think one of the things that this
recent survey that kind of talks about deal fatigue points
out is that people are making decisions based.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
On value and quality a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
And I think that points to something else where those
the Chinese sites like Timu and she and We've been
in a data with stuff and you buy it and it
looks so good on the app or on the site
where you're shopping, and then it comes to the mail
and you're like, oh my gosh, the sizings way off.
The material is terrible, and it was really cheap, but
this belongs to straight in the trash. It wasn't expensive,
(08:56):
but it wasn't worth anything. And I do think that's
a really important thing for people to consider, especially as
they're making purchases going into the holiday season, is not
just the price, but how much actual use am I
going to get out of this product? Like, for instance,
I bought one of those kind of pop up tent
saunas because I was like I.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Would want to get and do.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I like the idea of like getting in the sauna
before I get into bed, kind of nice and relaxing,
and it's fine, but it's kind of cheap. And so
really what I need to do, if I'm into it
is to get a full fledged sawn and put my
money where my mouth is and spend a couple thousand
dollars really to get something that I'm going to use
regularly and enjoy. And so I think maybe thinking about
(09:37):
the longevity of items that you're buying and not just
how to get the absolute lowest price is Also it's
really worth considering personal story.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Just as everybody knows around here, I have just remodeled
my house and it's really nice. You'll never be invited
to get to go to it.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
By the way, Joel good to know.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
And I bought outdoor for an And so I'm looking
at outdoor furniture and I go to Costco and there's
a full outdoor set for twenty eighteen hundred dollars by
contractor who had nothing to do with it. Said would
you like this to still be here next year? And
I said yeah. He goes, you're going to have to
(10:19):
spend some real money for outdoor furniture that's still going
to look good five years, eight years from now. And
I sucked it up, per what you were talking about,
and frankly, I didn't know you could spend that much
money for outdoor furniture. And that's good. Outdoor furniture costs
insane amounts of money, more so than indoor furniture because
(10:42):
of course what it has to deal with with the weather,
with the sun. And he talked me into it, and
I spent some real real money. I was about to
go to Costco and I didn't.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And that's that's the buy once, cry once sort of
way of thinking about things. And I think we should
probably all be more prone to thinking that way, even
about something as simple as our wardrobe. It's like I
used to buy the like fifteen to twenty dollars pairs
of jeans and I was like, man, these things.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Like they're misshapen. They don't last very long.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
And then I like stepped up my game and I
bought jeans were like, you know, sixty seventy eighty bucks.
I'm like, I wear I wear jeans every day and.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Can stop right there, Joel, you can stop too much hair. Yeah,
Costco fifteen dollars shirts are fabulous. The Kirkland jeans are wonderful. Really, yeah,
they're they're frozen. To try it out, they're frozen. Burritos
are incredible. It's let me tell you, try it out.
(11:39):
Fifteen bucks for a shirt and you'll be surprised. Okay,
all right, yeah, give it a shot.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
I'm all saving money. I yeah, well it.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Is, I mean, this is I mean, it's actually good
quality stuff. It is not garbage.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Especially the breadles signature box or briefs are excellent too.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah. Yeah, they just did that. Although again now I'm
in talk about my underwear, all right, Okay, underwear story.
I just I used to buy Duluth underwear. Actually was
given to me by a friend. Of mine, and those
are twenty bucks a pair, and I bought a couple
(12:16):
of them as they wore out after months and months
of the elasticity going and I ended up going to
Costco and buying the Haines six pack for less money
than a single pair of underwear costs with the louth.
I'll tell you there's a difference. Now, is it worth
that much more? No? And then that's part of the formula,
(12:36):
is how long is it going to be worth? How
good is it versus expensive inexpensive? But I'll let you
figure that out. Just remember Costco clothes, Costco burritos. We'll
catch you next week, Joel and Sunday morning, twelve to
two pm right here on KFI. All right,