December 29, 2025 • 38 mins
On Retire Right Radio, Host Dale Cooper and John Burdette from www.FourthAvenueFinancial.com discuss financial planning for different eras of your life and general strategies. Hear the encore presentation Monday at 1:00pm on our sister station, Charleston Business Radio 95.3 | 680 WKAZ
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:15):
The views and opinions expressed on this program do not
necessarily reflect the views and opinions of five eight WCCHS,
its employees or WVRC Media. This is retire Right Radio,
a weekly show from John Verdett at Fourth Avenue Financial
that aims to answer your questions about financial planning, investing,
and how to retire right. Fourth Avenue Financial is located
(00:38):
in downtown Charleston at one seventy Court Street. More information
online at Fourth Avenue Financial dot com. Join the conversation
by calling three oh four three four five fifty eight
fifty eight or text three oh four nine three five
fifty oh eight. On retire Right Radio, let's go live
to the studio with host Dale Cooper and John Verdett
(00:59):
from fourth a ffave any financial features.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
And a very place to Good morning to you. You're
listening to retire Right Radio one five iver you see
HS the Voice of Charleston. Happy Monday to you. Congratulations
you made it through the weekend. Presumably you made it
through Christmas also, presumably, and you're back with us here
on a Monday morning from Charleston, West Virginia. That's where
John Burdad is and that's where I am. You're welcome
to us to call this morning if you have any
(01:23):
questions for John, if you need help on how you
can retire right Maybe you got a big gift over
the holiday and you're wondering what you're going to do
with it, or just seeing all your family members and
you have some conversations around the table you're like, man,
it's about time I get started with my retirement as well.
Or maybe a loved one just announced their retirement during
the holidays and you're like, man, I want to get
there someday too. So John can help you out with
any of those questions you might have this morning. If
(01:44):
you need to help getting one foot in front of
the other, you can give us a call. Threes are
A four three four five fifty eight three four five
fifty eight fifty eight. Happy holidays everyone and John, welcome
into the studio again. How you doing this morning.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
I'm doing wonderful. Back in the chair.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh you are back in the chair. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad,
glad things are working out as far as that goes.
You have a good holiday, Yeah, yeah, I was.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Busy as usual, but certainly a lot of fun. And
before the show we were talking about my my son's
Christmas gift. He got that three D n Yeah, and
you know, I'm just fascinated. I don't understand how it works,
but it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I'm really I'm kind of fascinated vicariously, I think through
you because I'm very interested in exactly what that is,
that would mean from a what that would mean from
like just a productivity standpoint, like all the things that
you could possibly get done that that could get you there,
you know. I mean there's a lot of stuff there,
you know, as far as what three D print can.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Do, and the fact that you can, you know, reasonably
have this in your home. I mean it prints boxes
with hinges and things that I'm not sure how it
does it, but you know, you couple that with AI
and all these other things going on, and I mean
we're not far from the Jetsons.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I mean, the truth is is once you get something
like that, and we're not going to break down into
a technological show here, but once you get something like
that and you're familiar with it, you know, you work
with templates or archetypes or something along those lines, you
will eventually be able to start making things modifications. Maybe
you take a template, you make a little modification of
(03:23):
your own to get it to work out, but eventually
you start making your own stuff, you know, and who
knows how productive that could be. I always thought it
would be neat, Like if I was a kid of
a certain age and learn how to do these things
like I always was fascinated with, like making my own
action figures and stuff like that. I think it would
be really cool to do something like that. And you
could do that, And I'm.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Sure that just the the cycle of inventing things and prototypes,
developing prototypes, it's got to be much easier than it
used to be.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, right, it's just you can I mean, honestly, you
can ask AI to do a lot of this stuff
for you. And that's what it's good at. There's a
lot of things that's not good at, but putting together
pas terans and and troubleshooting ideas is actually one of
the things that's very good at. So that's man, It's
hard to tell what your son will come up with.
Who knows, Yeah, maybe something he can sell, right, I'd
be scary, Yeah, right, you never know. Threes are four three, four, five,
(04:13):
fifty eight fifty. If you have any questions for us
this morning, for John this morning, threes are a four
three four five fifty to fifty eight. We'll try to
get you there. As far as you know, there was
talks about the Santa Claus rally, what was going to
happen at the end of the at the end of
the year, which we're still in. This is kind of
a silly week, I guess to some degree these two
weeks here there because of the days of trading, the
(04:34):
holiday falling in the middle week, the Eve, and the
day after all coming within the week. That's a little
bit unusual. We're all three of those days, the Eve,
the day of, and the day after all come during
the trading week. So it's a little bit of a
silly two weeks period.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Which just makes it a very low volume, yeah, kind
of period or stretch. Of course, the market was up
last week. I mean, we're continuing to log records. I
think there were thirty nine s and p five hundred
record highs during the year, so a little more than
one in every ten days. We were at a record
(05:06):
high this year. So it was a pretty good, pretty
good progress this year. The market, the SMP was up
seventeen point eight percent, the Dow up fourteen and a half,
in the NASDAK up twenty two so just all across
the board, strong performance. And you know, looking at certain
things like oil prices down twenty percent last year. So
(05:29):
the market's up and oil is down, that's a good thing.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yeah, that is a good thing, right, and which must
be why the gas prices were a little flat over
the holiday as well.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Yep. So you know things are shaping up. You know,
we're entered in the year at a double digit gain.
Last year, we were at a double digit gain. You
know a lot of folks look at that and say, well,
next year can't be a double digit gain. That wouldn't
be unprecedented. So you know, the jury's out, certainly fully
(06:00):
out on what's going to happen next year. But the
foundations of things, corporate earnings are still looking good.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Obviously, you don't have a crystal ball and you don't
have any influence on things like this. But broadly speaking,
if you had your preferences, I guess would you like
to see like a broadening of the market going into
next year, to see like some of the gains that
we got in the broadening there tech to stay solid,
but those things working together instead of sort of sea
sawing back and forth would really mean something would take off, right, no.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Doubt about it. I mean, certainly the tech stocks rule
the day here lately, the market has been broadening. You know,
when people look at valuations, the tech stocks certainly are
richly valued, but the rest of the market is pretty reasonable,
and for the market to plow higher, I think that
(06:49):
is the most likely path to that.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Is there a potential not for professionals like yourself, but
for folks that are on the outside thinking about the
different industries and opportunities and things along those lines. We're
so hot on AI right now, we talk about that.
I mean that leads every discussion. Whether you hate it
or you love it, or you're somewhere in the middle,
it seems to lead every discussion. There's so much technology
out there, though, and it seems like that, there's all
this opportunity of things that are becoming greater and grander
(07:15):
that there's a lot of opportunity out there that's beyond
the AI sectors, oh.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
No doubt about it. And but the thing is the technology, Yes,
when it's invented and created is exciting, but all those
other companies have to use that technology to make themselves
more efficient and that's how that's why it spills over
into the rest of the of the market. You know,
what good is a technology if it doesn't make a
(07:41):
business or the end user more efficient, more profitable, and
so eventually that translates to earnings broadly across all of
the market.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
You know, I was reading a little bit this weekend
on what's referred to as like the Papal mafia. You know,
the investors that got together that were on the ground
floor there, I think and and musk Teal all these
people were involved with PayPal when it first came together.
But the one thing that was foundational about PayPal that
you know, people forget it was one of the first
(08:11):
major transaction things that did what it did, and it
was able to bring together all of that online commerce,
and that is a I mean That's just an example
of something that when it gets it right and something
falls into something that there is need, and suddenly what
do you have. You have PayPal being used everywhere for
a payment method, right, not just at certain places or
anything along those lines. Are their rivals today. Sure you
can use Google Play and Apple Pay and different things
(08:32):
along those lines, but PayPal was the first, and generally speaking,
everywhere that has a Google Pay, Apple Pay and stuff
like that had PayPal first, you know, and there might
be other options now, but that was one of the
first ones. And in reading about that this weekend, I
was saying, that is a great example of one of
these things. Whatever you think about the guys that were
involved with it, that is one of those things that
became intricate to how we survived, how we were getting
buy as a society. And so of course that's something
(08:53):
that I mean, what do we have from the technological
people today that was born from investments made originally in
directions and doing different things Again, whatever you may think,
certainly huge shifts in the technological space that came from
these people that invested in that space very early on.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Sure, and and and that's how that's how money works.
You know, if you if you do productive things with money,
you generally have the runway. The market gives you the
run way to try other things because you've proven you know,
you have a proven track record. And that's why you
see a lot of the same names over and over
(09:33):
again in these spaces. You know, people want to get
on the on the bandwagon of somebody who who has
a history of putting those ideas together.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
And and to some degree, although not specifically when it
comes to that level of individual, but practices that have
been employed over decades, multiple decades to a lot of degrees,
are the things that that you employ. Of course, these
things are are nudged as time goes along, and you
know what we have the regulations change and different things
(10:03):
along those lines. But the bottom line is is the
methods that you use in order to retire right, what
you what you instruct your clients with, and what you
help them with. These are all strategies that have worked forever.
I mean, it's just they work a period full stop.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Basically, by participating in the market, you're participating in all
of those ideas that are percolating out there, all of
the changes that are happening, all of the improvements in
the way goods and services are produced and delivered. You're
participating that. When you broadly own the market, you know
(10:37):
it's it's when you're out working your job serving people.
You know you're doing doing your part in that whole system.
But when you retire, you know what's out there, Well,
you're not out there anymore, but your money can be
through the ownership of those companies that replaces that the
(10:58):
service that you're no longer doing, your companies are doing.
And that's why that works. That's why it tends to
keep up with inflation over time, because you're still relevant
in the current marketplace. When you own a broad investment
in the market.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
That's is always great advice. And I've seen it come
to fruition so much over the course of years here
as we see the EBB and the flow of the market.
I mean, the strategies work and exactly what you talk
about is exactly what you see each time. As far
as the things you find that are successful, or the
things that create some sort of a of a value,
whatever that value may be. The things that are a
little bit more volatile, like bitcoin, for example. It's not
(11:36):
that bitcoin is value less necessarily it's just man, what
do you what are you betting on?
Speaker 5 (11:41):
You?
Speaker 3 (11:42):
I mean, because that's basically what you're doing. It's sky high,
it crashes up, down, up, down. Somebody thinks they haven't
figured out. It's like, well, it's because of this, and
then the next time it doesn't react in the same way.
You can't predict it. I mean, that's a problem of volatility.
There can be a high risk hover word situation. But
when you're trying to plan for a retirement or along
those lines, getting involved, I guess overweighted in those spaces,
(12:05):
this could be a real issue because those don't rely
on the same mechanisms of decades of proven track records.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Yeah, you know, when you buy a company, you're buying
a stream of earnings. You know, they are earning money
delivering their goods and services. You know, right now, gold
and silver are hot. Yes, the price is up, but
it's really not producing anything. It's not producing a dividend stream.
(12:33):
It doesn't have an earning stream. You know, long term,
when you look at and you'll see charts like right
now with precious metals, you see charts showing that, oh,
it's outperformed the market over you know, the last fifteen
years or thirty years or whatever time period they choose
to use. Those always leave out the dividends and the
(12:57):
compounding of that. It's just looking at the phenomenal price
of the market then versus the price of the market. Now,
there's a whole lot more that goes into your total
return than just that. Once you add that in, there
is just no comparison to owning productive companies that are
actively producing and trying to grow their earning streams. And
(13:20):
that's what history shows.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
It's just great advice and things that we see that
come to fruition each time. And if you're kind of
on if you're somebody who wants to be involved in
your retirement, but also you're into the news and headlines
and different things along those lines. And maybe we've talked
about this before when I mean years ago, when we
were talking about the cannabis industries and stuff like that.
(13:43):
There's ways that you can and that was really highly
volatile until they came out with you know, there were
funds that you could play around with there. So instead
of finding companies or whatever, you can find a mutual
fund that if you wanted to play around in that space.
I think bitcoin did the same thing. There became an
option where there was actually a fund that dealt with bitcoins,
so you didn't have to invest directly into a particular
coin or something along those lines. If you're somebody that's
(14:05):
curious about some of these things, and if you want
to set aside with advice, you know, some portion of
what you do to play around, you can do that,
I guess, but you should do that separately and not
with your main investment strategies and things like that.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Yeah, if you're wanting to comfortably retire, the rules to
do that, the plan to do that is pretty you know,
pretty known. I wouldn't stray from that. With your serious money.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
With this one quick trick, I can get you to
retirement ten years earlier.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Right and right now, we're seeing that at the end
of every year, there are articles that come out talking about,
here's what you need to do for next year. Well,
what you need to do for next year is pretty
much the same thing that you should have been doing
all the years, you know, living below your means, saving
(14:58):
and investing consistently over time, you know, staying the course,
not panicking, making adjustments to your portfolio, not because of
news stories, but because of changes in your life or
or your time horizon. You know, those are the things
that that are are just proven to work over time.
(15:19):
Getting away from the emotional uh, you know, fear and greed, trade,
and sticking to a belief in the process. You know,
and that process is really focusing on the things that
you control. You don't control the news and what goes on.
You don't control what technology is invented or not invented.
(15:43):
You control what you can control. You control how much
you invest and how much you save. You can control,
you know, setting your goals. You know, if you set
a goal that's twenty years away for retirement, why would
you change that if the president changes, if the you
still need to retire no matter who is in charge.
(16:05):
That's still your personal goal. Don't surrender those things to
the news of the day. You know, that's that doesn't
make any sense to me. You know, you need to
focus on what's important to you and then pull the
levers that you control to get there.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
I feel that there's a lot of and we talk
about this a lot, but I think there's a lot
of valuable insight there because you see a lot of
times people that get so dowed into their the political
zeitgeist that they will almost trick themselves into into things.
For example, people that want to pretend there was no
price increases during the Biden administration. Hey, everything's fine. What
(16:47):
are you talking about. It doesn't cost me any more
to do anything, when legitimately, yes, it was. There's no
question it was for everybody there was. And now suddenly
the people that were calling those people liars are now like, oh,
there's no everything's great, and prices aren't going up. Yeah
they really are. Things are way more expensive than they
used to be. It didn't change because the president changed
suddenly overnight. It just didn't happen that way. And people
(17:07):
will trick themselves into saying that a god that suddenly
wanted to jettis in the market in December last year
was all in in January of this year. Doesn't make
any sense. That's not the way things change.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
No, No, And there again, when you buy a company,
when you buy into the market, you buy into the
earnings ability of that company, not just today's earnings, but
their future earnings. And that you know what kind of
policy overnight changes?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Nothing? Nothing and whatever does. And again we've said this
time and time, whatever policy does change, the CFOs and
the people that get paid tons of money that everybody
complains about, right, the people that make tons of money
at those companies, guess what, they change their strategy as well,
so they can still make as much money as they
possibly can with whatever the downward effects are of whatever
the policy change would be. Now, there might be more
(17:57):
policies that are a little greasier than others, you know,
to make the rails a little slippery, but that doesn't
mean that the guy is sitting at the top to
make money for that company or suddenly like, oh that's it.
Now we have whatever this is, We're not gonna make
money anymore. No, they're going to find ways to make
the money. Absolutely, even if it means passing the cost
on to their consumers that gets like rolled in over
time and they don't even notice it anymore, and they
they're still profitable. They're gonna find ways to make that
(18:19):
money just way.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
That's the way the price sure, right, that's the goal.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, And that's how companies and that's the company you
want to invest in because they found a way to
roll with the punches right, right, makes a lot of sense.
All right, Well, let's do this. Let's take a break.
We still have stuff we want to talk about. I'd
love for you to participate in our conversation some this
morning and give us a call three zero four three
four five fifty eight fifty eight three four five fifty
eight fifteen. You can send over a text question if
you'd like as well. Three zero four non three five
five zero zero eight and get the text machine fired
(18:43):
up this morning, if you'd like, three zero four non
three five five zero zero eight. Let's go ahead and
do this. Let's take a break. When we come back,
still have plenty of interactions from you, your phone calls,
your texts, and more from job bre debt from Fourth
Avenue Financial. You can find out more information online. It's
fourth Avenue Financial dot com. You spell it the whole thing,
Fourth Avenue Financial dot com. Do that same like or
to do that same search on Facebook and like the
page and get kept up to date with all the
(19:04):
information there. We'll be back right for this. You're listening
to retire Rte Radio. I'm Del Cooper. That's John Burdett.
This is five ADWCHS, the Voice of Charleston.
Speaker 6 (19:10):
Retire Right Radio is sponsored by Fourth Avenue Financial, which
is solely responsible for its content. Security is offered through
jw CL Financial Member fen Recipic investment advice offered through
jw COL Advisors. Fourth Avenue Financial, jw CL Financial and
jw COL Advisors are unaffiliated entities. The opinions expressed by
John Burdett should not be construed as specific investment, legal
or tax advice. All economic and performance information is historical
(19:33):
and not indicative of future results. Investing may involve risk
of loss of principle. Any tax advice on this show
is not intended to be used by any person for
the purpose of avoiding US federal or state tax penalties
that may be imposed on such a person, and each
listener should seek advice from their tax advisor or legal
console on topics that arise from the show. John Burdett
(19:53):
is not providing legal or tax advice. Nothing should be
construed as solicitation of an offer to buy securities. This
program is sponsored before The Avenue Financial, which is solely
responsible for its content.
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Speaker 5 (21:03):
This is Retire Right Radio with John Burdett from Fourth
Avenue Financial taking your calls at three oh four three
four five fifty eight fifty eight or text on three
oh four nine three five fifty oh eight.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
VON you're listening to the voice of Charleston VT w
c HS. I'm gonna kick for Thanks for tuning in,
jaqueen flagging. I need to fix that one because that
is just way too uh just goes just straight off.
I don't I think I noticed. I need to. I
need to update all of these I think is what
(21:46):
that comes down to. Thanks for tuning in this morning.
I'm del Cooper. That's John Burdett with Fourth Avenue Financial
and gives a call this morning. Three zero four three
four five fifty fifty eight three zerre a four three
four five fifty to fifty eight. You can text over
your questions if you have any questions along those lines.
Text line is threes are four non three five five
zero zero eight three zero four non three five five
zero zero eight. If someone was gifted some money over
(22:07):
the holidays from a loved one or or a grandparent,
or however those things might be, of course, our first
opportunity is, and maybe it would be a good opportunity
to get your snowball started. So if you gifted some
money and you maybe have some debts out there that
you could eliminate right away and just cut them off.
I think we talked about this as briefly last week.
You can't save until you pay things off. So you
(22:28):
might get that. You might get that money and be like, hey,
I'm just gonna put this straight into the my savings
account and save some money. Now that's great, but if
you still have those debts out there, it's not helping you.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Yeah, if you're paying, you know, twenty five thirty percent
or more on a credit card, there's no way you
out are in that in the market. And that also
tells you that there's something wrong with your budget if
you have credit card debt, if you have consumer debt.
So those are the things that need to be fixed
before you move on to investing. You know, you need
(22:58):
to have all those consumer debts paid off. You need
to have an emergency fund of three to six months
so that you can deal with the unexpected things without
taking on credit card debt in the future. And then
at that point you can start making those investments for
the long term. Because you have the foundation built. You
(23:19):
really can't skip those steps. Because if you have the
foundation built, you really can't skip those steps because if
you skip the steps, it's inevitable that you'll be liquidating
your investments to take care of something that wasn't fixed
to begin with. A lot of times you're taking penalties
(23:40):
when you do that, particularly in retirement accounts because they're
tax deferred, so if you're under fifty nine and a half,
you have a ten percent penalty. You just want to
avoid all those things, and the way you do that
is starting out with a firm foundation. So if you
are fortunate enough to have a little bit of a
windfall Christmas, you know, those are the steps that you
(24:02):
need to take get your foundation built, and then you
know you can start building for the future with investment.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
That makes great sense. And there's so much that goes
into that because and we actually had somebody commented on
our last show last Monday when we were talking about
financial literacy and school and stuff like that, and our
Texter made the point that there are classes now that
kids can take which with different levels of financial literacy
when you get into when you get into school, which
(24:30):
and that's great, I mean understanding some of this stuff
and teaching some of these things before you get to
adulthood would be very important because a lot of what
we talk about here are practices that how are you
going to know the best practices if you've never had
a job before, if you've never had money to be
responsibleore and things like that. There's only one way to
do thats to teach it, right. I mean, you can
do things where you where as parents, you can try
(24:51):
to set something up and help, but as far as
like relying on the education system to help you out
some you've got to teach those things a little bit.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Yes, Otherwise you know, the school of hard knocks comes
to play right, and and you know that tuition is
awfully steep.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
They're just basic things. I mean, the path to being
financially successful, it is not complicated. It's not something that
you need to be, you know, particularly intelligent to be
able to do it. Really is just a handful of
steps and a little bit of discipline, is what it
(25:32):
really takes. A kindergartener can almost understand the steps. You know, hey,
live below your means, create savings and investment. You know
that that basically is is the whole thing. You know,
Then you throw in you know, I need the emergency
find I need that foundation built. But then after that
it it almost is on cruise control if you allow
(25:55):
it to be, if you don't meddle with the process,
which which a lot of folks have a tendency to
do because of predominantly things you can't control, news cycles,
things of that nature. So you know, definitely, you know,
figure those steps out and stick to that plan, and
(26:17):
it's almost inevitable that you will be successful. I mean,
think about it. If you own businesses that are profitable
and you're patient, how do you not succeed? It's almost
that that easy. And yes, sometimes the market goes down,
(26:38):
but look at your companies. Are they still profitable? Largely
even in a market downturn. Most of the companies are
still still profitable. It's just the market happens.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
To be down.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
Is that a reason to panic? Why does that matter
to you? If your retirement's twenty years away, it's not
something to fear. It's to be viewed as an opportunity
at that.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah. I know some folks that have some investments and
that's separate from a four to one K, so it's
like directly into stock funds or whatever, and they observe
that stock way too closely, like on a day to
day basis, and their mood will reflect where that stock resides.
And to me, that's just the most unhealthy thing that
(27:23):
I could play. And it's a very relatively volatile stock
as well, So it's like, what are you doing with this?
And why why are you living in this manner? Because
it's that just seems like I don't know, And I
think that a lot of the time that that just
plays into, I mean, frankly, ignorance. I mean, I think
it plays into not really knowing options what it means,
the detriments that you're setting up yourself, the opportunities that
(27:43):
you're leaving at the table, different things along those lines,
and probably a little bit of laziness because you think, oh,
it's going to be so hard to move these funds
from here and to do that, and none of those
things are true. It's not hard to do. You don't
have to do it. There's other opportunities. Just shake your
cage a little bit and maybe step outside of what
you're comfortable with, right And.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Maybe sometimes there are particularly individual stocks. Sometimes you see
folks attached to an individual stock and they own too
much of it. And you know, as far as it's
not a diversified portfolio, and now that can create anxiety
because everything is now penned on the hopes of one company.
You know, you see that in because one company can fail,
(28:22):
but the whole process, the whole economy, you know, all
going down. You know, that would require us to change
our lifestyle in such a way that it's it's unfathomable.
You know, when you look at the broad scope of
companies on the market and the products and the goods
and the services that they produce and deliver, you know,
(28:45):
what are the odds that the whole thing just stops working?
Doesn't make sense? Right, because we are the consumers, you know,
we are the consumers. Are we going to change our lifestyle?
Probably not? And if we will do it kicking and screaming.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Probably yeah. And I think we've seen as oftentimes as
sometimes consumers are sort of held as the example of well,
there they made the choice that you know, we made
our own bed. We need to allow on her or whatever.
There are times, and of relatively recent note that we've
seen where because of consumer activity, it has changed the
way that companies pivot, that that handle things from different directions.
(29:23):
And that's obvious, right. I mean we think that that
that you have no say in these things. And I
don't mean this from an activist standpoint. I just mean
from the consumer dollars stamp. I keep on going back
to the to the car thing yet again, another article.
Now it's becoming mainstream, all these articles being written about
how cars are going back to buttons and knobs and
going away from the touch screens. That's consumers, man, those
(29:43):
are consumers, man, like, we hate these touch screens. What
are you guys doing? You're going to get us in
accidents and everything else and complaining about it, and so
they're changing their their actions, you know. I mean that
that's the power of the of the dollar right there.
From the consumer.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Yeah, I mean they're there to serve the people, and
largely the people get what they want.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
I mean broadly speaking.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Sure, maybe not as the flip of the switch, but
over time, if you think about it, you know, think
about things that you thought of, Oh, it'd be easier
to have this, well guess what. At some point, usually
a company comes in and provides that. You know, if
there's a problem you're having, there's a company out there
trying to think of ways to solve that with innovation
(30:24):
because they know if they do it will be profitable.
That's how the process works, and to be successful long term,
you have to believe in that process more so than
the believing in the daily news cycle.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I think I had a little bit of an epiphany.
One of the things I've done over the holiday, my
vacations and during this whole holiday is I've kind of
bucked completely out of the news cycles. I haven't been
following the news all that much. Not because I want
to be ignorant, but it's the holidays, man, and just
sometimes you want to take a step back. That also
means sports. I mean, honestly, don't tell Dave weekly, but
I haven't consider a ton of sports over the last
(31:01):
few weeks. I just kind of took a step back
from all of that. But one of the things that
in spending time with my daughter over the holiday and
what I really kind of miss her experiencing is her
Christmases are great.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
You know.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
She I don't think she appreciates, like when she gets
something of great impact on Christmas or whatever it might
be the way that she and this is my fault,
maybe the way she should. But I think that that's
just like a societal thing now that we're so used
to everything being right in front of us ready to go,
that we really lose some of the appreciation. And I
was thinking about this the other night, and I was
thinking about two movies, Forrest Gump and The Jerk with
(31:39):
Steve Martin, and two things that those movies have in
common is is things that are that when they run
into the everyday immensity of the country of the United States,
and then much of the times it's in a in
a grand statement, a great thing. They are impressed by it,
like it's somethings like I mean, even with Steve Martin,
(32:00):
something stupid like the phone book, I'm in the phone
book now or whatever it might be, right, I mean,
that's just all a mechanism of how society works. Right,
And Forrest Gump was even more so, like he would
just run into these situations that were these monumental moments
and the way that he would take care of them.
But I feel like we need more of that wonder
still in our lives again, where we look back when
this whole thing that we're doing, like wow, this really works,
(32:20):
and that's actually pretty incredible when you think about it,
I think we've lost all of that because there is
no wonder left because we overanalyze and over internet everything
to this point where suddenly everything seems like it's commonplace,
when man, it's not really that common. It's pretty cool
that some of this stuff works the way it does. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
I saw a comedian and I'm not going to tell
the jokes, but the whole set that he was doing
was about how people get on an airplane and if
the Wi Fi isn't working, they're complain and it's like,
you're thirty thousand feet in the air going six hundred
miles an hour, and you know, if you can't get
(32:59):
you know, your your Wi Fi for a few minutes
on the flight. Have you have you forgot about what
you're actually doing and how incredible that is.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
It really is something else to think about that that
some of the wonder and the spectacle of those things
we just and I guess it's kind of normal. But man,
it's like nobody's impressed with anything anymore. You know, It's
like there's nothing. It's like, I guess it's uh, it's
not cool to be impressed by something or to think
that something's neat or or has use or whatever. It's
just like everything that that that somebody likes, a ton
(33:34):
of other people will find reasons not to like. And
usually it's for stupid reasons. It's like you're not allowed
to be impressed and to have wonder anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Yeah, And to be honest with you, I think that
is a really nice ingredient to have in the journey
to financial success. And that's staying curious. Oh yeah, right, yeah,
stay curious. And because when you when you read about things,
when you hear about these innovations, it helps tie you
into that process that is going on behind the scenes
(34:02):
every day and all those companies that you own, you know,
the the If you're curious, you're also probably somewhat optimistic,
right yeah, because you you know, you you see all
of the challenges and and then you also see the
creativity and the innovation that that humans have and and
(34:27):
and can bring that to bear to solve problems, to
create a better life for everyone.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
It's a little unfortunate. I guess it depends on your perspective.
But over a year ago, I was I was reading
and it was sort of talking about it was an
interview with a gentleman. I can't even remember what his
name was, but he was an investor. He was like
kind of aspective investor and in different things. And he
was one of these super optimistic. He wasn't one of
these huge guys you talked about, but he was like
just like an angel investor in a different a lot
of different things. And that was exactly his thing is.
(34:55):
He was super optimistic about everything. He loved the country,
he loved technology, he loved the thing he loves the innovation.
And the one thing that he was really into and
we've probably seen some pullback from this, unfortunately, but he
was really into the the the crisper and the in
the m r n A space. He's like, where for
the first time and in our known existence, when the
(35:15):
cusp of curing many forms of cancer through these m
r n R Now, unfortunately those have been defunded in
things by the government, but that still could be and
an opportunities if if the first person that comes or
the first company that comes out with a treatment at
the cellular level that that cures cancer or many cancers.
I mean, I mean, yes, that's a great thing for society,
(35:37):
but also print the paper, right you know, print the
money because that that's a that's a money making expedition, right.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
And I and I can tell you that, you know,
those things are still going on. It's just our attention
now has moved on to other things like AI. I mean,
the the breath of the creativity and innovation out there
is is just unprecedented, and it's and there's more of
it every single day.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
I prefer to be excited about it, you know, instead
of being the constant mopic, you know, skeptic over absolutely everything.
I mean, I think there's a place for skeptic, especially
when it comes to you know, the Internet of Things
and stuff like that. You got to be careful. But
also there's so many people doing innovations out there, Yeah,
no doubt.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
I mean, you know, the idea of the kid with
a bright idea and a garage, I mean that still
goes on. I mean you think about it. The computers
on everybody's desk started in somebody's garage, the idea.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
That's amazing, crazy to think about it, right.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
Really amazing, And and that process is not broken. If anything,
it's becoming more efficient and more able to deliver the
end product to the user than ever before.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
And I think that it also goes to show and
if we wanted to do a show on examples, I'm
sure that we could. But all of these people that
have gotten momentary notoriety with their get rich quick ideas,
these influencers online. I mean, there's so many of these
people that a couple of years ago that were supposedly
the Southsayers. When it comes to this is how you
(37:05):
get ahead in this industry, this is how you make it.
These people were gone now, they just disappeared. You know,
their stuff didn't work, they cashed out. They're living, you know,
somewhere well probably now because they fleeced a bunch of
people into believe in what they said. But these people,
you don't see anybody around, Like we talked about Warren
Buffet kind of taking a step back a couple a
couple shows ago. You don't see any of these influencers
that started five years ago that are still around now
(37:25):
talking about how much money they made because of their
because of their investments. You know, they cashed out at
some point because of all the people they fleeced, and
that was you were the product. You know, when you
go to these seminars, a lot of times you're the
product well.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
And the Internet of course has made that worse. But
I have a book in my office that I keep,
but it's on a bookshelf. It's a bankruptcy nineteen ninety nine.
How America was going to collapse by nineteen ninety nine, basically.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
And it's funny the way we do that.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
Right, that didn't that didn't turn out?
Speaker 3 (37:53):
There was so when I owned the bookstore, there were
so many of those books, and you got to see
him cataloged over the years, like the end of everything,
like nineteen ninety nine, nineteen seventy nine, the year the
America started to disintegrate.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Right, or oil will be out by you know, nineteen
ninety I mean, all this stuff. There's always fear, but
that fear is what creates the opportunities for the innovators.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
And innovation is king. Now that's John Bredad. John Bredad
is king. He's the king of managing your finances. If
you need
Unlock your dream property with Meeks Realty Group, where Rich
the realtor makes real estate dreams a reality, whether it's
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Contact us at Meeks dot us.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
The views and opinions expressed on this program do not
necessarily reflect the views and opinions of five eight WCCHS,
its employees or WVRC Media. This is retire Right Radio,
a weekly show from John Verdett at Fourth Avenue Financial
that aims to answer your questions about financial planning, investing,
and how to retire right. Fourth Avenue Financial is located
(00:38):
in downtown Charleston at one seventy Court Street. More information
online at Fourth Avenue Financial dot com. Join the conversation
by calling three oh four three four five fifty eight
fifty eight or text three oh four nine three five
fifty oh eight. On retire Right Radio, let's go live
to the studio with host Dale Cooper and John Verdett
(00:59):
from fourth a ffave any financial features.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
And a very place to Good morning to you. You're
listening to retire Right Radio one five iver you see
HS the Voice of Charleston. Happy Monday to you. Congratulations
you made it through the weekend. Presumably you made it
through Christmas also, presumably, and you're back with us here
on a Monday morning from Charleston, West Virginia. That's where
John Burdad is and that's where I am. You're welcome
to us to call this morning if you have any
(01:23):
questions for John, if you need help on how you
can retire right Maybe you got a big gift over
the holiday and you're wondering what you're going to do
with it, or just seeing all your family members and
you have some conversations around the table you're like, man,
it's about time I get started with my retirement as well.
Or maybe a loved one just announced their retirement during
the holidays and you're like, man, I want to get
there someday too. So John can help you out with
any of those questions you might have this morning. If
(01:44):
you need to help getting one foot in front of
the other, you can give us a call. Threes are
A four three four five fifty eight three four five
fifty eight fifty eight. Happy holidays everyone and John, welcome
into the studio again. How you doing this morning.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
I'm doing wonderful. Back in the chair.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh you are back in the chair. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad,
glad things are working out as far as that goes.
You have a good holiday, Yeah, yeah, I was.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Busy as usual, but certainly a lot of fun. And
before the show we were talking about my my son's
Christmas gift. He got that three D n Yeah, and
you know, I'm just fascinated. I don't understand how it works,
but it's amazing.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I'm really I'm kind of fascinated vicariously, I think through
you because I'm very interested in exactly what that is,
that would mean from a what that would mean from
like just a productivity standpoint, like all the things that
you could possibly get done that that could get you there,
you know. I mean there's a lot of stuff there,
you know, as far as what three D print can.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Do, and the fact that you can, you know, reasonably
have this in your home. I mean it prints boxes
with hinges and things that I'm not sure how it
does it, but you know, you couple that with AI
and all these other things going on, and I mean
we're not far from the Jetsons.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I mean, the truth is is once you get something
like that, and we're not going to break down into
a technological show here, but once you get something like
that and you're familiar with it, you know, you work
with templates or archetypes or something along those lines, you
will eventually be able to start making things modifications. Maybe
you take a template, you make a little modification of
(03:23):
your own to get it to work out, but eventually
you start making your own stuff, you know, and who
knows how productive that could be. I always thought it
would be neat, Like if I was a kid of
a certain age and learn how to do these things
like I always was fascinated with, like making my own
action figures and stuff like that. I think it would
be really cool to do something like that. And you
could do that, And I'm.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Sure that just the the cycle of inventing things and prototypes,
developing prototypes, it's got to be much easier than it
used to be.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, right, it's just you can I mean, honestly, you
can ask AI to do a lot of this stuff
for you. And that's what it's good at. There's a
lot of things that's not good at, but putting together
pas terans and and troubleshooting ideas is actually one of
the things that's very good at. So that's man, It's
hard to tell what your son will come up with.
Who knows, Yeah, maybe something he can sell, right, I'd
be scary, Yeah, right, you never know. Threes are four three, four, five,
(04:13):
fifty eight fifty. If you have any questions for us
this morning, for John this morning, threes are a four
three four five fifty to fifty eight. We'll try to
get you there. As far as you know, there was
talks about the Santa Claus rally, what was going to
happen at the end of the at the end of
the year, which we're still in. This is kind of
a silly week, I guess to some degree these two
weeks here there because of the days of trading, the
(04:34):
holiday falling in the middle week, the Eve, and the
day after all coming within the week. That's a little
bit unusual. We're all three of those days, the Eve,
the day of, and the day after all come during
the trading week. So it's a little bit of a
silly two weeks period.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Which just makes it a very low volume, yeah, kind
of period or stretch. Of course, the market was up
last week. I mean, we're continuing to log records. I
think there were thirty nine s and p five hundred
record highs during the year, so a little more than
one in every ten days. We were at a record
(05:06):
high this year. So it was a pretty good, pretty
good progress this year. The market, the SMP was up
seventeen point eight percent, the Dow up fourteen and a half,
in the NASDAK up twenty two so just all across
the board, strong performance. And you know, looking at certain
things like oil prices down twenty percent last year. So
(05:29):
the market's up and oil is down, that's a good thing.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yeah, that is a good thing, right, and which must
be why the gas prices were a little flat over
the holiday as well.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Yep. So you know things are shaping up. You know,
we're entered in the year at a double digit gain.
Last year, we were at a double digit gain. You
know a lot of folks look at that and say, well,
next year can't be a double digit gain. That wouldn't
be unprecedented. So you know, the jury's out, certainly fully
(06:00):
out on what's going to happen next year. But the
foundations of things, corporate earnings are still looking good.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Obviously, you don't have a crystal ball and you don't
have any influence on things like this. But broadly speaking,
if you had your preferences, I guess would you like
to see like a broadening of the market going into
next year, to see like some of the gains that
we got in the broadening there tech to stay solid,
but those things working together instead of sort of sea
sawing back and forth would really mean something would take off, right, no.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Doubt about it. I mean, certainly the tech stocks rule
the day here lately, the market has been broadening. You know,
when people look at valuations, the tech stocks certainly are
richly valued, but the rest of the market is pretty reasonable,
and for the market to plow higher, I think that
(06:49):
is the most likely path to that.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Is there a potential not for professionals like yourself, but
for folks that are on the outside thinking about the
different industries and opportunities and things along those lines. We're
so hot on AI right now, we talk about that.
I mean that leads every discussion. Whether you hate it
or you love it, or you're somewhere in the middle,
it seems to lead every discussion. There's so much technology
out there, though, and it seems like that, there's all
this opportunity of things that are becoming greater and grander
(07:15):
that there's a lot of opportunity out there that's beyond
the AI sectors, oh.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
No doubt about it. And but the thing is the technology, Yes,
when it's invented and created is exciting, but all those
other companies have to use that technology to make themselves
more efficient and that's how that's why it spills over
into the rest of the of the market. You know,
what good is a technology if it doesn't make a
(07:41):
business or the end user more efficient, more profitable, and
so eventually that translates to earnings broadly across all of
the market.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
You know, I was reading a little bit this weekend
on what's referred to as like the Papal mafia. You know,
the investors that got together that were on the ground
floor there, I think and and musk Teal all these
people were involved with PayPal when it first came together.
But the one thing that was foundational about PayPal that
you know, people forget it was one of the first
(08:11):
major transaction things that did what it did, and it
was able to bring together all of that online commerce,
and that is a I mean That's just an example
of something that when it gets it right and something
falls into something that there is need, and suddenly what
do you have. You have PayPal being used everywhere for
a payment method, right, not just at certain places or
anything along those lines. Are their rivals today. Sure you
can use Google Play and Apple Pay and different things
(08:32):
along those lines, but PayPal was the first, and generally speaking,
everywhere that has a Google Pay, Apple Pay and stuff
like that had PayPal first, you know, and there might
be other options now, but that was one of the
first ones. And in reading about that this weekend, I
was saying, that is a great example of one of
these things. Whatever you think about the guys that were
involved with it, that is one of those things that
became intricate to how we survived, how we were getting
buy as a society. And so of course that's something
(08:53):
that I mean, what do we have from the technological
people today that was born from investments made originally in
directions and doing different things Again, whatever you may think,
certainly huge shifts in the technological space that came from
these people that invested in that space very early on.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Sure, and and and that's how that's how money works.
You know, if you if you do productive things with money,
you generally have the runway. The market gives you the
run way to try other things because you've proven you know,
you have a proven track record. And that's why you
see a lot of the same names over and over
(09:33):
again in these spaces. You know, people want to get
on the on the bandwagon of somebody who who has
a history of putting those ideas together.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
And and to some degree, although not specifically when it
comes to that level of individual, but practices that have
been employed over decades, multiple decades to a lot of degrees,
are the things that that you employ. Of course, these
things are are nudged as time goes along, and you
know what we have the regulations change and different things
(10:03):
along those lines. But the bottom line is is the
methods that you use in order to retire right, what
you what you instruct your clients with, and what you
help them with. These are all strategies that have worked forever.
I mean, it's just they work a period full stop.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
Basically, by participating in the market, you're participating in all
of those ideas that are percolating out there, all of
the changes that are happening, all of the improvements in
the way goods and services are produced and delivered. You're
participating that. When you broadly own the market, you know
(10:37):
it's it's when you're out working your job serving people.
You know you're doing doing your part in that whole system.
But when you retire, you know what's out there, Well,
you're not out there anymore, but your money can be
through the ownership of those companies that replaces that the
(10:58):
service that you're no longer doing, your companies are doing.
And that's why that works. That's why it tends to
keep up with inflation over time, because you're still relevant
in the current marketplace. When you own a broad investment
in the market.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
That's is always great advice. And I've seen it come
to fruition so much over the course of years here
as we see the EBB and the flow of the market.
I mean, the strategies work and exactly what you talk
about is exactly what you see each time. As far
as the things you find that are successful, or the
things that create some sort of a of a value,
whatever that value may be. The things that are a
little bit more volatile, like bitcoin, for example. It's not
(11:36):
that bitcoin is value less necessarily it's just man, what
do you what are you betting on?
Speaker 5 (11:41):
You?
Speaker 3 (11:42):
I mean, because that's basically what you're doing. It's sky high,
it crashes up, down, up, down. Somebody thinks they haven't
figured out. It's like, well, it's because of this, and
then the next time it doesn't react in the same way.
You can't predict it. I mean, that's a problem of volatility.
There can be a high risk hover word situation. But
when you're trying to plan for a retirement or along
those lines, getting involved, I guess overweighted in those spaces,
(12:05):
this could be a real issue because those don't rely
on the same mechanisms of decades of proven track records.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Yeah, you know, when you buy a company, you're buying
a stream of earnings. You know, they are earning money
delivering their goods and services. You know, right now, gold
and silver are hot. Yes, the price is up, but
it's really not producing anything. It's not producing a dividend stream.
(12:33):
It doesn't have an earning stream. You know, long term,
when you look at and you'll see charts like right
now with precious metals, you see charts showing that, oh,
it's outperformed the market over you know, the last fifteen
years or thirty years or whatever time period they choose
to use. Those always leave out the dividends and the
(12:57):
compounding of that. It's just looking at the phenomenal price
of the market then versus the price of the market. Now,
there's a whole lot more that goes into your total
return than just that. Once you add that in, there
is just no comparison to owning productive companies that are
actively producing and trying to grow their earning streams. And
(13:20):
that's what history shows.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
It's just great advice and things that we see that
come to fruition each time. And if you're kind of
on if you're somebody who wants to be involved in
your retirement, but also you're into the news and headlines
and different things along those lines. And maybe we've talked
about this before when I mean years ago, when we
were talking about the cannabis industries and stuff like that.
(13:43):
There's ways that you can and that was really highly
volatile until they came out with you know, there were
funds that you could play around with there. So instead
of finding companies or whatever, you can find a mutual
fund that if you wanted to play around in that space.
I think bitcoin did the same thing. There became an
option where there was actually a fund that dealt with bitcoins,
so you didn't have to invest directly into a particular
coin or something along those lines. If you're somebody that's
(14:05):
curious about some of these things, and if you want
to set aside with advice, you know, some portion of
what you do to play around, you can do that,
I guess, but you should do that separately and not
with your main investment strategies and things like that.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
Yeah, if you're wanting to comfortably retire, the rules to
do that, the plan to do that is pretty you know,
pretty known. I wouldn't stray from that. With your serious money.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
With this one quick trick, I can get you to
retirement ten years earlier.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Right and right now, we're seeing that at the end
of every year, there are articles that come out talking about,
here's what you need to do for next year. Well,
what you need to do for next year is pretty
much the same thing that you should have been doing
all the years, you know, living below your means, saving
(14:58):
and investing consistently over time, you know, staying the course,
not panicking, making adjustments to your portfolio, not because of
news stories, but because of changes in your life or
or your time horizon. You know, those are the things
that that are are just proven to work over time.
(15:19):
Getting away from the emotional uh, you know, fear and greed, trade,
and sticking to a belief in the process. You know,
and that process is really focusing on the things that
you control. You don't control the news and what goes on.
You don't control what technology is invented or not invented.
(15:43):
You control what you can control. You control how much
you invest and how much you save. You can control,
you know, setting your goals. You know, if you set
a goal that's twenty years away for retirement, why would
you change that if the president changes, if the you
still need to retire no matter who is in charge.
(16:05):
That's still your personal goal. Don't surrender those things to
the news of the day. You know, that's that doesn't
make any sense to me. You know, you need to
focus on what's important to you and then pull the
levers that you control to get there.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
I feel that there's a lot of and we talk
about this a lot, but I think there's a lot
of valuable insight there because you see a lot of
times people that get so dowed into their the political
zeitgeist that they will almost trick themselves into into things.
For example, people that want to pretend there was no
price increases during the Biden administration. Hey, everything's fine. What
(16:47):
are you talking about. It doesn't cost me any more
to do anything, when legitimately, yes, it was. There's no
question it was for everybody there was. And now suddenly
the people that were calling those people liars are now like, oh,
there's no everything's great, and prices aren't going up. Yeah
they really are. Things are way more expensive than they
used to be. It didn't change because the president changed
suddenly overnight. It just didn't happen that way. And people
(17:07):
will trick themselves into saying that a god that suddenly
wanted to jettis in the market in December last year
was all in in January of this year. Doesn't make
any sense. That's not the way things change.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
No, No, And there again, when you buy a company,
when you buy into the market, you buy into the
earnings ability of that company, not just today's earnings, but
their future earnings. And that you know what kind of
policy overnight changes?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Nothing? Nothing and whatever does. And again we've said this
time and time, whatever policy does change, the CFOs and
the people that get paid tons of money that everybody
complains about, right, the people that make tons of money
at those companies, guess what, they change their strategy as well,
so they can still make as much money as they
possibly can with whatever the downward effects are of whatever
the policy change would be. Now, there might be more
(17:57):
policies that are a little greasier than others, you know,
to make the rails a little slippery, but that doesn't
mean that the guy is sitting at the top to
make money for that company or suddenly like, oh that's it.
Now we have whatever this is, We're not gonna make
money anymore. No, they're going to find ways to make
the money. Absolutely, even if it means passing the cost
on to their consumers that gets like rolled in over
time and they don't even notice it anymore, and they
they're still profitable. They're gonna find ways to make that
(18:19):
money just way.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
That's the way the price sure, right, that's the goal.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, And that's how companies and that's the company you
want to invest in because they found a way to
roll with the punches right, right, makes a lot of sense.
All right, Well, let's do this. Let's take a break.
We still have stuff we want to talk about. I'd
love for you to participate in our conversation some this
morning and give us a call three zero four three
four five fifty eight fifty eight three four five fifty
eight fifteen. You can send over a text question if
you'd like as well. Three zero four non three five
five zero zero eight and get the text machine fired
(18:43):
up this morning, if you'd like, three zero four non
three five five zero zero eight. Let's go ahead and
do this. Let's take a break. When we come back,
still have plenty of interactions from you, your phone calls,
your texts, and more from job bre debt from Fourth
Avenue Financial. You can find out more information online. It's
fourth Avenue Financial dot com. You spell it the whole thing,
Fourth Avenue Financial dot com. Do that same like or
to do that same search on Facebook and like the
page and get kept up to date with all the
(19:04):
information there. We'll be back right for this. You're listening
to retire Rte Radio. I'm Del Cooper. That's John Burdett.
This is five ADWCHS, the Voice of Charleston.
Speaker 6 (19:10):
Retire Right Radio is sponsored by Fourth Avenue Financial, which
is solely responsible for its content. Security is offered through
jw CL Financial Member fen Recipic investment advice offered through
jw COL Advisors. Fourth Avenue Financial, jw CL Financial and
jw COL Advisors are unaffiliated entities. The opinions expressed by
John Burdett should not be construed as specific investment, legal
or tax advice. All economic and performance information is historical
(19:33):
and not indicative of future results. Investing may involve risk
of loss of principle. Any tax advice on this show
is not intended to be used by any person for
the purpose of avoiding US federal or state tax penalties
that may be imposed on such a person, and each
listener should seek advice from their tax advisor or legal
console on topics that arise from the show. John Burdett
(19:53):
is not providing legal or tax advice. Nothing should be
construed as solicitation of an offer to buy securities. This
program is sponsored before The Avenue Financial, which is solely
responsible for its content.
Speaker 7 (20:03):
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Speaker 5 (21:03):
This is Retire Right Radio with John Burdett from Fourth
Avenue Financial taking your calls at three oh four three
four five fifty eight fifty eight or text on three
oh four nine three five fifty oh eight.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
VON you're listening to the voice of Charleston VT w
c HS. I'm gonna kick for Thanks for tuning in,
jaqueen flagging. I need to fix that one because that
is just way too uh just goes just straight off.
I don't I think I noticed. I need to. I
need to update all of these I think is what
(21:46):
that comes down to. Thanks for tuning in this morning.
I'm del Cooper. That's John Burdett with Fourth Avenue Financial
and gives a call this morning. Three zero four three
four five fifty fifty eight three zerre a four three
four five fifty to fifty eight. You can text over
your questions if you have any questions along those lines.
Text line is threes are four non three five five
zero zero eight three zero four non three five five
zero zero eight. If someone was gifted some money over
(22:07):
the holidays from a loved one or or a grandparent,
or however those things might be, of course, our first
opportunity is, and maybe it would be a good opportunity
to get your snowball started. So if you gifted some
money and you maybe have some debts out there that
you could eliminate right away and just cut them off.
I think we talked about this as briefly last week.
You can't save until you pay things off. So you
(22:28):
might get that. You might get that money and be like, hey,
I'm just gonna put this straight into the my savings
account and save some money. Now that's great, but if
you still have those debts out there, it's not helping you.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
Yeah, if you're paying, you know, twenty five thirty percent
or more on a credit card, there's no way you
out are in that in the market. And that also
tells you that there's something wrong with your budget if
you have credit card debt, if you have consumer debt.
So those are the things that need to be fixed
before you move on to investing. You know, you need
(22:58):
to have all those consumer debts paid off. You need
to have an emergency fund of three to six months
so that you can deal with the unexpected things without
taking on credit card debt in the future. And then
at that point you can start making those investments for
the long term. Because you have the foundation built. You
(23:19):
really can't skip those steps. Because if you have the
foundation built, you really can't skip those steps because if
you skip the steps, it's inevitable that you'll be liquidating
your investments to take care of something that wasn't fixed
to begin with. A lot of times you're taking penalties
(23:40):
when you do that, particularly in retirement accounts because they're
tax deferred, so if you're under fifty nine and a half,
you have a ten percent penalty. You just want to
avoid all those things, and the way you do that
is starting out with a firm foundation. So if you
are fortunate enough to have a little bit of a
windfall Christmas, you know, those are the steps that you
(24:02):
need to take get your foundation built, and then you
know you can start building for the future with investment.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
That makes great sense. And there's so much that goes
into that because and we actually had somebody commented on
our last show last Monday when we were talking about
financial literacy and school and stuff like that, and our
Texter made the point that there are classes now that
kids can take which with different levels of financial literacy
when you get into when you get into school, which
(24:30):
and that's great, I mean understanding some of this stuff
and teaching some of these things before you get to
adulthood would be very important because a lot of what
we talk about here are practices that how are you
going to know the best practices if you've never had
a job before, if you've never had money to be
responsibleore and things like that. There's only one way to
do thats to teach it, right. I mean, you can
do things where you where as parents, you can try
(24:51):
to set something up and help, but as far as
like relying on the education system to help you out
some you've got to teach those things a little bit.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Yes, Otherwise you know, the school of hard knocks comes
to play right, and and you know that tuition is
awfully steep.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
They're just basic things. I mean, the path to being
financially successful, it is not complicated. It's not something that
you need to be, you know, particularly intelligent to be
able to do it. Really is just a handful of
steps and a little bit of discipline, is what it
(25:32):
really takes. A kindergartener can almost understand the steps. You know, hey,
live below your means, create savings and investment. You know
that that basically is is the whole thing. You know,
Then you throw in you know, I need the emergency
find I need that foundation built. But then after that
it it almost is on cruise control if you allow
(25:55):
it to be, if you don't meddle with the process,
which which a lot of folks have a tendency to
do because of predominantly things you can't control, news cycles,
things of that nature. So you know, definitely, you know,
figure those steps out and stick to that plan, and
(26:17):
it's almost inevitable that you will be successful. I mean,
think about it. If you own businesses that are profitable
and you're patient, how do you not succeed? It's almost
that that easy. And yes, sometimes the market goes down,
(26:38):
but look at your companies. Are they still profitable? Largely
even in a market downturn. Most of the companies are
still still profitable. It's just the market happens.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
To be down.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
Is that a reason to panic? Why does that matter
to you? If your retirement's twenty years away, it's not
something to fear. It's to be viewed as an opportunity
at that.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah. I know some folks that have some investments and
that's separate from a four to one K, so it's
like directly into stock funds or whatever, and they observe
that stock way too closely, like on a day to
day basis, and their mood will reflect where that stock resides.
And to me, that's just the most unhealthy thing that
(27:23):
I could play. And it's a very relatively volatile stock
as well, So it's like, what are you doing with this?
And why why are you living in this manner? Because
it's that just seems like I don't know, And I
think that a lot of the time that that just
plays into, I mean, frankly, ignorance. I mean, I think
it plays into not really knowing options what it means,
the detriments that you're setting up yourself, the opportunities that
(27:43):
you're leaving at the table, different things along those lines,
and probably a little bit of laziness because you think, oh,
it's going to be so hard to move these funds
from here and to do that, and none of those
things are true. It's not hard to do. You don't
have to do it. There's other opportunities. Just shake your
cage a little bit and maybe step outside of what
you're comfortable with, right And.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Maybe sometimes there are particularly individual stocks. Sometimes you see
folks attached to an individual stock and they own too
much of it. And you know, as far as it's
not a diversified portfolio, and now that can create anxiety
because everything is now penned on the hopes of one company.
You know, you see that in because one company can fail,
(28:22):
but the whole process, the whole economy, you know, all
going down. You know, that would require us to change
our lifestyle in such a way that it's it's unfathomable.
You know, when you look at the broad scope of
companies on the market and the products and the goods
and the services that they produce and deliver, you know,
(28:45):
what are the odds that the whole thing just stops working?
Doesn't make sense? Right, because we are the consumers, you know,
we are the consumers. Are we going to change our lifestyle?
Probably not? And if we will do it kicking and screaming.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Probably yeah. And I think we've seen as oftentimes as
sometimes consumers are sort of held as the example of well,
there they made the choice that you know, we made
our own bed. We need to allow on her or whatever.
There are times, and of relatively recent note that we've
seen where because of consumer activity, it has changed the
way that companies pivot, that that handle things from different directions.
(29:23):
And that's obvious, right. I mean we think that that
that you have no say in these things. And I
don't mean this from an activist standpoint. I just mean
from the consumer dollars stamp. I keep on going back
to the to the car thing yet again, another article.
Now it's becoming mainstream, all these articles being written about
how cars are going back to buttons and knobs and
going away from the touch screens. That's consumers, man, those
(29:43):
are consumers, man, like, we hate these touch screens. What
are you guys doing? You're going to get us in
accidents and everything else and complaining about it, and so
they're changing their their actions, you know. I mean that
that's the power of the of the dollar right there.
From the consumer.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Yeah, I mean they're there to serve the people, and
largely the people get what they want.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
I mean broadly speaking.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Sure, maybe not as the flip of the switch, but
over time, if you think about it, you know, think
about things that you thought of, Oh, it'd be easier
to have this, well guess what. At some point, usually
a company comes in and provides that. You know, if
there's a problem you're having, there's a company out there
trying to think of ways to solve that with innovation
(30:24):
because they know if they do it will be profitable.
That's how the process works, and to be successful long term,
you have to believe in that process more so than
the believing in the daily news cycle.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I think I had a little bit of an epiphany.
One of the things I've done over the holiday, my
vacations and during this whole holiday is I've kind of
bucked completely out of the news cycles. I haven't been
following the news all that much. Not because I want
to be ignorant, but it's the holidays, man, and just
sometimes you want to take a step back. That also
means sports. I mean, honestly, don't tell Dave weekly, but
I haven't consider a ton of sports over the last
(31:01):
few weeks. I just kind of took a step back
from all of that. But one of the things that
in spending time with my daughter over the holiday and
what I really kind of miss her experiencing is her
Christmases are great.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
You know.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
She I don't think she appreciates, like when she gets
something of great impact on Christmas or whatever it might
be the way that she and this is my fault,
maybe the way she should. But I think that that's
just like a societal thing now that we're so used
to everything being right in front of us ready to go,
that we really lose some of the appreciation. And I
was thinking about this the other night, and I was
thinking about two movies, Forrest Gump and The Jerk with
(31:39):
Steve Martin, and two things that those movies have in
common is is things that are that when they run
into the everyday immensity of the country of the United States,
and then much of the times it's in a in
a grand statement, a great thing. They are impressed by it,
like it's somethings like I mean, even with Steve Martin,
(32:00):
something stupid like the phone book, I'm in the phone
book now or whatever it might be, right, I mean,
that's just all a mechanism of how society works. Right,
And Forrest Gump was even more so, like he would
just run into these situations that were these monumental moments
and the way that he would take care of them.
But I feel like we need more of that wonder
still in our lives again, where we look back when
this whole thing that we're doing, like wow, this really works,
(32:20):
and that's actually pretty incredible when you think about it,
I think we've lost all of that because there is
no wonder left because we overanalyze and over internet everything
to this point where suddenly everything seems like it's commonplace,
when man, it's not really that common. It's pretty cool
that some of this stuff works the way it does. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
I saw a comedian and I'm not going to tell
the jokes, but the whole set that he was doing
was about how people get on an airplane and if
the Wi Fi isn't working, they're complain and it's like,
you're thirty thousand feet in the air going six hundred
miles an hour, and you know, if you can't get
(32:59):
you know, your your Wi Fi for a few minutes
on the flight. Have you have you forgot about what
you're actually doing and how incredible that is.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
It really is something else to think about that that
some of the wonder and the spectacle of those things
we just and I guess it's kind of normal. But man,
it's like nobody's impressed with anything anymore. You know, It's
like there's nothing. It's like, I guess it's uh, it's
not cool to be impressed by something or to think
that something's neat or or has use or whatever. It's
just like everything that that that somebody likes, a ton
(33:34):
of other people will find reasons not to like. And
usually it's for stupid reasons. It's like you're not allowed
to be impressed and to have wonder anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Yeah, And to be honest with you, I think that
is a really nice ingredient to have in the journey
to financial success. And that's staying curious. Oh yeah, right, yeah,
stay curious. And because when you when you read about things,
when you hear about these innovations, it helps tie you
into that process that is going on behind the scenes
(34:02):
every day and all those companies that you own, you know,
the the If you're curious, you're also probably somewhat optimistic,
right yeah, because you you know, you you see all
of the challenges and and then you also see the
creativity and the innovation that that humans have and and
(34:27):
and can bring that to bear to solve problems, to
create a better life for everyone.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
It's a little unfortunate. I guess it depends on your perspective.
But over a year ago, I was I was reading
and it was sort of talking about it was an
interview with a gentleman. I can't even remember what his
name was, but he was an investor. He was like
kind of aspective investor and in different things. And he
was one of these super optimistic. He wasn't one of
these huge guys you talked about, but he was like
just like an angel investor in a different a lot
of different things. And that was exactly his thing is.
(34:55):
He was super optimistic about everything. He loved the country,
he loved technology, he loved the thing he loves the innovation.
And the one thing that he was really into and
we've probably seen some pullback from this, unfortunately, but he
was really into the the the crisper and the in
the m r n A space. He's like, where for
the first time and in our known existence, when the
(35:15):
cusp of curing many forms of cancer through these m
r n R Now, unfortunately those have been defunded in
things by the government, but that still could be and
an opportunities if if the first person that comes or
the first company that comes out with a treatment at
the cellular level that that cures cancer or many cancers.
I mean, I mean, yes, that's a great thing for society,
(35:37):
but also print the paper, right you know, print the
money because that that's a that's a money making expedition, right.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
And I and I can tell you that, you know,
those things are still going on. It's just our attention
now has moved on to other things like AI. I mean,
the the breath of the creativity and innovation out there
is is just unprecedented, and it's and there's more of
it every single day.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
I prefer to be excited about it, you know, instead
of being the constant mopic, you know, skeptic over absolutely everything.
I mean, I think there's a place for skeptic, especially
when it comes to you know, the Internet of Things
and stuff like that. You got to be careful. But
also there's so many people doing innovations out there, Yeah,
no doubt.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
I mean, you know, the idea of the kid with
a bright idea and a garage, I mean that still
goes on. I mean you think about it. The computers
on everybody's desk started in somebody's garage, the idea.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
That's amazing, crazy to think about it, right.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
Really amazing, And and that process is not broken. If anything,
it's becoming more efficient and more able to deliver the
end product to the user than ever before.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
And I think that it also goes to show and
if we wanted to do a show on examples, I'm
sure that we could. But all of these people that
have gotten momentary notoriety with their get rich quick ideas,
these influencers online. I mean, there's so many of these
people that a couple of years ago that were supposedly
the Southsayers. When it comes to this is how you
(37:05):
get ahead in this industry, this is how you make it.
These people were gone now, they just disappeared. You know,
their stuff didn't work, they cashed out. They're living, you know,
somewhere well probably now because they fleeced a bunch of
people into believe in what they said. But these people,
you don't see anybody around, Like we talked about Warren
Buffet kind of taking a step back a couple a
couple shows ago. You don't see any of these influencers
that started five years ago that are still around now
(37:25):
talking about how much money they made because of their
because of their investments. You know, they cashed out at
some point because of all the people they fleeced, and
that was you were the product. You know, when you
go to these seminars, a lot of times you're the
product well.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
And the Internet of course has made that worse. But
I have a book in my office that I keep,
but it's on a bookshelf. It's a bankruptcy nineteen ninety nine.
How America was going to collapse by nineteen ninety nine, basically.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
And it's funny the way we do that.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
Right, that didn't that didn't turn out?
Speaker 3 (37:53):
There was so when I owned the bookstore, there were
so many of those books, and you got to see
him cataloged over the years, like the end of everything,
like nineteen ninety nine, nineteen seventy nine, the year the
America started to disintegrate.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Right, or oil will be out by you know, nineteen
ninety I mean, all this stuff. There's always fear, but
that fear is what creates the opportunities for the innovators.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
And innovation is king. Now that's John Bredad. John Bredad
is king. He's the king of managing your finances. If
you need
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