Fluctuation Is the Feature

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You're gone to a really great financial future. Tom and Don are talking real money.

Monday Money Reading

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Ladies and gentlemen, it's Monday. Welcome to Money Monday's readings from the good book, Financial Physics, by yours truly. It's our Monday thing for a while. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Talking Real Monday, the Monday talking real money, the Money Monday, Financial Physics, Way too Alliterative and Tongue Twisting edition of the program. I am Don McDonald. I wrote that book, Financial Physics. Along with me is that guy over there who's going to do the uh readings today. Uh he'll step up to the uh the podium and give you a little reading from the good book. And Zay, from a no, it's not is that a different one? Is that the And you get to ask us questions later on Talking Realmone? We got a lot of those. We got a lot of those. Questions sent in at talkingreal money.com. Thanks so much for joining us. We really love the fact that you're out there and you're listening. And and you know what we found? You're telling your friends like we ask. Thank you for doing that. Our our our rate our numbers are going up. Our reviews, we still get like four to one. We get about four or five stars to every one one star. And it's five star or one star. We are either loved or loathed. It's just there's no.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

My daughter is my daughter now gets reviews because she's a pizza delivery person. Oh so she's perfect five stars. She was laughing at me. She goes, You're not perfect. I said, No, we're not perfect.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

And I I would have hoped you'd learned that about your father many, many years prior to that. She's still young. Yeah, it's true. Well, but she's old enough to know.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Oh no. She What does she call me loud and wrong? That's my favorite. Loud and wrong.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Aren't you glad she's aren't you glad? I mean, really, in a way, aren't you kind of glad they get an opportunity to go away to college so they can appreciate you more later? Oh, yeah, I hope so. No, it's true. My daughter, you know, now in her 30s, she really appreciates me more. And I don't know that it's just the financial spigot. I think there may be something else.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

I hope so. I really do. You're a bit bad.

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Reading from the uh the good book, Financial Physics.

Financial Fluctuations Explained

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Now, ladies and gentlemen, Chapter three. Is that what we're up to? Rule three.

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Rule three. Financial fluctuation. Speaking of alliterative. Financial I love alliterative statements, Frank. And he came from the desert. Is this is this the right one?

SPEAKER_02 2:36

You that's the wrong book. You were in a hotel and you took that Gideon book.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Wrong one. Uh okay. What we're talking about here is this is pretty simple, actually, but it it it tends to be overlooked. Because overdone. Yeah, that's true. But most people they when they buy a security and it goes up for a while, most people think that's a permanent that that is just always gonna go up, right? It's like real estate was in the late 90s. Real estate only goes up.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Basically, what goes up will go down, but we hope not as far as it uh down as it went up. Basically, that's the law, the theory, the physics of it.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

But it's uh people are in denial, I think, generally about this. I'll give you a local example. I've talked about this. Uh there's a certain software company that's down the road. It's not Don's favorite, but they are I think the second largest employer in the state of Washington now. They're called Microsoft. Behind Boeing. No, I think it's actually Amazon's Amazon.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

I guess Boeing's probably third. You're right.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, something like that. Anyway, I mean, there people that got in on the stock when it was originally sold in like 1985 or something, they've made a lot of money. Right? Yeah, they have. It's it's done well. But there are periods of time, and there were, if for example, and I think you call them the OTS, the the 2000s. The double O's. Yeah. The double O's. Uh, where the the company lost money. And and recently the stock is down like 40% from its high. But people, if you ask them, they would say, no, no, no, it always goes up. Microsoft always goes up. It always goes up. Well, no, it doesn't always go up.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

But on the opposite side of that coin, though, there are the zero summers. The people who believe investing is more like Vegas, that for every dollar gained there must be a dollar and twenty cents lost or something. Yeah. And and it's neither one of those. It is a much more nuanced rule. Things go up and they will go down. They will at some point somehow go down. Either companies become like Microsoft, they become dominant in their industry, and then they stumble. Another great example in tech is IBM. It was dominant, stumbled. ATT dominant stumbled. This happens all the time with individual securities. However, and with markets. And with markets. Yeah, right. Either with but with markets, it tends to be temporary. With business individual securities, it can be permanent. But in aggregate, the good news is what goes up tends to come down, but in aggregate has tended to go up again even more. That's the wonderful part of the theory.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

You got a pull-out quote in the book here from JP Morgan, which I love. When asked what the stock market would do, JP Morgan responded, it will fluctuate. I think that's absolute that's a perfect, you know, and and in your book you talk about standard deviation, which is a very important number of people. It's a measure of volatility. Yeah. Sort of outside of the, you know, the ups and the downs.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Something that never changes in value. Never. I mean, and good luck finding something that never changes in value would have a stand would have a theoretical standard deviation of zero. I don't believe anything has a standard deviation of zero. Nothing.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

No.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Even a dollar bill in your wallet is fluctuating in its purchasing power as it sits there in your wallet. So everything has a bit of a standard deviation. The S P 500, I don't have the number in front of me, but it tends to come around.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yeah, 1415. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It it moves. By the way, um, this came up in a meeting today, so I'm going to steal it from the person who said it. Um, my standard deviation for golf, very high. Uh just so you know.

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I mean, it's it it's very, very, very, very high. What's the highest standard deviation you have? Because mine is actually higher than that. It's higher than that. You can't be a worse golfer than me.

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Here's the question.

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I score by number of balls lost. This is the same thing. If I'm under a dozen, I've done well.

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Everybody wants to know how do I make a lot of money and not have the standard deviation? Can't do that. That's what everybody, that's the end of the day, what everybody wants to know. Check that box, right? Yep. And your book has a nice little chart in here that shows when you own a lot of things, you uh a lot of types of securities, U.S. large cap, U.S. small cap value, international small cap, U.S. large cap value, U.S. real estate, international, all these things that actually over time, the ride, if you will, the volatility has been less. That diversifying is truly the right approach if you don't want to be a have your money like a buck and bronco, right? That's going up and down, and some days it's great and some days it's horrible.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

It can never be truly eliminated. No. Volatility. It can be reduced. And really the reduction depends on how much you're needing and expecting to make from the money, because the more you need or expect to make, the higher the volatility should be. We we really can take that word risk, the scary word, the mean that means losing everything, out of the equation completely if you have great diversification. Then total risk vanishes for all practical intents.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Other than you know, the cash.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

With something else.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. Well-diversified portfolio means everything. But I think you struck on something that most people, again, also overlook. That is, you need to know before you invest any money for you, for your kids, for anybody, what rate of return you're trying for and how much volatility you're willing to accept to get that. That's the two that don't get connected often enough. And it's so simple.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

It's just simple to calculate. And once you calculate it, then you're set. Your portfolio can just be rebalanced back to that.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

And you don't have to worry because it all falls together. By the way, Mark Twain wrote about this. You also have this in the book. Which I love to remember what I have in the book. This is so good. October, he said, this is one of the particularly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. That one. The other are let me make sure I got this right July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June. You get the point. They're all dangerous. You mean it's all of them. It's all of them. But for you, our friends, you should be diversified. I mean, and by the way, I just looked this up. VT, the Vanguard Total World Stock Index, you know how many stocks it now owns? I was surprised. Um, I just looked this up. I don't know. I thought it was about 11,000, 12,000, something like that. That's pretty close. 10,700. So that's real diversification. That's big companies and little companies and growth companies and value companies. And you can get it all in one fund. You don't have to do any work. I think it's six basis points, six one hundredths of a percent. It's a pretty good deal. But you should be diversified. You should know what rate of return you're trying to get, and then you have to be willing to accept the financial fluctuations. They're gonna come. The bad days will be here. I don't know when, maybe sooner rather than later. But you got to be willing to accept them if you want to make that additional money. If you do not, and that's fine, then you do things like, you know, things that have no fluctuation, right? The money market, I guess, basically. I mean, something very short term with your cash that's not going to keep hasn't, pardon me, kept up with inflation, but you haven't had to deal with the ups and the downs, the wild swings, the whatever happening in the geopolitical situation that's going to drive that, or the companies that are looking good one day and bad the next. But that's so key, and it's a lesson that everybody needs to know if you're going to be an investor. I see people that don't, though. They don't face it.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Once again, a reading, a powerful reading from the Book of Financial Physics, which by the way, is uh since we started reading from it, the sales on Amazon have skyrocketed. You told two last week, didn't you? No, we actually so far this month, nine. Oh my gosh. Which is huge for that book. Huge. I mean, I before 60 of the other book, like the line across.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Great book. I I you got to expect volatility, but here's the one that I still love. You said this originally. So I'm gonna give you full credit. Um, when markets are at a peak, and we're basically there today.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

I mean, it the markets it's yeah, okay, but but see, now you opened the can of worms, it's at a peak, but it can go peakier.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Oh, sure. But here's the thing you said this. If you're looking at your numbers and you're saying, I'm rich, et cetera, et cetera, look at your numbers and then subtract 20% because it makes it that could happen so quickly. That could happen this fall. And I think I always thought that was really good advice.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

And that's if you're a 60-40-ish kind of person, somewhere in your 70-30. Anyway. So there that's the book for that's our money Monday.

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Uh is the reading.

Answering Listener Questions

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Now we go, now we go to your questions that you sent to Tom at talkingreal money.com by typing your little bony fingers to the bones. And boy, did we get a bunch of them. So today, if we can fit them all in in time, Tom, Tom pontificated a lot, but you know, that's what he does. Uh, he was reading. We we're gonna try and get four in. Try.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Okay. Can we do this? You think? Yeah, I think we can. All right. This comes from Steve in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We're gonna get a lot of questions from Oklahoma, I don't think. Um twice recently I've heard statements on the podcast that sound like you're saying people who are self-employed can't contribute to a retirement plan, such as an IRA or solo 401k, because they don't have W-2 income.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

No, we never said that. Well, he said he's gonna be a good one. You gotta have earned income, which could be 1099 or W 2.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

In a recent episode, he said May 21st, Tom took a call from a listener also named Tom, when Lister said he and his wife didn't have a salary from their LLC. Tom said that would disallow you from doing anything into a retirement type account.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Oh, well, yeah, but you gotta have a you gotta have a uh a 1099 or a W-2, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 13:05

One or the other, I believe. That's I was getting to that. He said he concluded his option was only to open a brokerage account. Because if you have no income, I don't believe you can contribute to an IRA, Roth IRA, or Solar One 401k. Now, that income could just be the 1099, I believe, if you have an LLC. But even then you get into the rules of um they want you to take a salary because they want you to pay in Social Security. At some point you have to pay that tax.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Um so uh he's he goes on to say all right, but yeah, let's clear let's clear it up. Let's just go into the tax code. Okay, it depends on how it's structured. And now we're reading from the tax code. It depends on how it's structured. Because here's the thing even if you don't give yourself a paycheck, if you declare self-employment income from an LLC, correct. Then you will pay self-employment tax on that social security, the 15%. Um and then you can contribute. But if you're see, this is where we uh we we probably needed to get into more detail in the answer.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Semantics, yes.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Yeah, because if you have an LLC and you're only taking, for example, capital gains to try to get out of paying some taxes, you're just like selling off shares or something, uh, then no. Um in a partnership, yes, your earned partnership income, even if you don't 1099 it or W2 it, if it's declared on your tax return is net self-employment income, then you could make the contribution. But if it's an S corporation and you pay yourself no salary, it is not considered compensation for IRA purposes, you need to have W 2. Same thing with a C Corp, okay? So it depends on how the organization is structured, right? A C Corp or an S-corp. Now remember, with an S-corp, it's pass-through income. Yep. That's right. But it's not self-employment income. Therefore, it's not eligible. So it really the devil is always when it comes to stupid tax questions, the devil's always in the details.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

But think it through. The government wants you to pay yourself a salary type situation because they want you to pay into Social Security. Right. And then if you do that, then yes, of course you're eligible to put money in a Roth, an IRA, solo 401k, et cetera. But he's right.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

That I should have been more expansive about my own. Yeah, and that we keep saying that. We we keep saying that over and over again with our answers. Yeah. We are giving very broad, very general answers.

Singapore Investor Gratitude

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All right, next question.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Next question comes from Singapore.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

Wait a minute. That's not in the United States, right? No, it's not. No. No, that's in Asia. Correct?

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Shirley, surely writes. I'm I'm writing you from Singapore to express my deepest gratitude to Tom and Don. I understand you're canceling the show at the end of this year, and I want to say thank you. No, that I added that part. Um, please, now you're gonna start it again.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Okay, he's joking. That was a joke.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

We need an applause sign, but it's audio. I know. I discovered your podcast on Spotify back in 2020, and it has been a staple of my daily routine ever since. Wow, thank you, Shirley. Before finding your channel channel, I was in a rough spot financially. I was 40 years old, unemployed, desperate to learn how to build wealth, but the financial landscape in Singapore was dominated by high-fee insurance-linked products. I tried I tried managing my own money on IBKR, which I think is interactive brokers, but my frequent trading resulted in a decade of losses. I felt incredibly lost, genuinely feared that retirement was out of reach. Your show taught me the power of long-term investing. I added that emphasis. I pivoted away from day trading and high-fee local products. Putting my retirement funds into SPY, 45%. Okay. SP 500. Yep. My cash into QQQM, 40%. I don't know what the QQQM is. I know what the QQQ is. And 15% cash in various stocks. That's the bond portion, I guess, but we'll have to look into what that is. 15% in various stocks. The mere QQQM is the NASDAQ 100. That's not good for cash.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

No.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

So wait, so 45% in the SP 500, 40% in the in the it is the QQQ.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Yeah, it's the QQQ.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yeah, we don't recommend that. No. Shirley, but thank you for your kind comments. Um he says the investment account has surged from 20,000 to. You're right, pardon me. You're 20,000 to 123,000, putting in additional uh money, et cetera, et cetera. Just it really surely's just saying thank you. But surely, surely, wait, surely you can't be serious. But surely, oh, you're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

You're gonna do surely you just yeah, yeah, because here's the thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Um I don't need to read your your very kind comments, which we appreciate. But this is not a good portfolio.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

No, it's not.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

This is all U.S.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

It's better than the insurance stuff, and it's certainly better than the day trading.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

But okay, but if you're in Singapore, wouldn't you think you'd want to be in Taiwan, which has been one of the best markets the last year? No, no, no, no, no. None of all the generals, international stocks, owning Taiwan as part of portfolio. I don't think that's a good idea. Okay, I thought you were doing that. No. No, no, no, no, no. But you want to be in that, and you want to be in developed markets, and you want all those places. You're in exposed to none of that. And having this portfolio, you're mainly exposed to large U.S. tech companies because they make up a hunk of not just the SP, but certainly the other.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

I don't really have an issue with the SP. What I really have an issue with is the specificity, the the uh and and there's a lot of duplication between the SP and the QQT. Absolutely. Yeah. Um if I remember correctly, I remember reading an article somewhere that um uh of D Dimensional just started trading a few of their ETFs in Singapore. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Oh I think the Global Core Equity uh is available. Is that just US? No, global core equity.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Oh, pardon me.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

And and I also am pretty confident, I'm gonna say really confident, that that Avantis is too A V G C is their global equity fund there. And that's gonna give you broad diversification.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Yeah, way, way, way.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Great place for your equity money, now your fixed income money doesn't have any. But she said she had cash.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

You need to have some. I don't know. That was the way she wrote it. She said uh putting my retirement funds into SPY, 45 percent, and my cash into QQQM. I think what she meant to say was there my brokerage account. Right, because one's retirement's brokerage.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

But you need to have a fixed income portion to the portfolio. And so I would look at Avantis or Dimensional, and by the way, BND is available to Singapore uh to Singapore citizens. If you buy through your broker and they they trade U.S. listed ETFs. So Interactive Brokers Singapore, uh, they do allow you to buy BND and these other ones. So um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

If you're listening overseas, by the way, interactive's all over the place and you can buy a lot of the stuff that we recommend.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

It's so cool that we're getting a global marketplace for securities instead of these marketplaces that have been dominated by local banks and insurance companies charging ridiculous amounts. I I applaud every country that has opened up their markets to these global portfolios that are at low, low, low prices. It's making a level playing field, not just in the United States, but around the world and really benefiting investors in a gigantic

Bonds or BND?

SPEAKER_02 21:22

way.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Now we go across the Pacific from Singapore all the way to Cedro Woolley, Washington.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

What was that again? Cedra Woolley?

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Cedro Woolly.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

I see Drew Woolly. Do you see Drew Woolley?

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Not not on this show, you don't. Uh Scott writes us, hey, Ron and Don, I'm turning 55 soon and avoided bonds so you're Ron this time. Oh, good. Okay. I'm okay for you to be here. Okay, so he's how old again? 55. Just don't call me late for dinner, you call me anything else. Uh he said, but with my time horizon shrinking, they may be inevitable. He's speaking of the bonds there. Since my 401k has access to actual treasure. Treasuries and bonds, it's less volatile to buy the bonds direct, or is B and D a better choice? Thank you for your thoughts in your podcast. Should you buy virtually from Treasury Direct or just buy B and Dream?

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Yeah, and I think our opinions are going to differ on this one. Go ahead. If you are able to ladder maturities of treasuries, if you can one to five years. If you will. If you want true non-volatility, that's the way to work.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

That's true. But it's okay to own BND.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Okay. That was easy. Then we have time for the last one. Yeah. I mean, but here's the thing, by the way, because this is No, because it came up in a call today with a very nice young lady in your neighborhood, by the way. Um she sees you outside from time to time and wants to hit you with a slingshot, but I asked her not to. So uh Yeah. She was asking me. She's gonna move she and her husband are gonna move from a 90 10 portfolio to a 70-30. And I said, why? She said, Well, because we're getting closer to retirement. I said, Right. Well, what rate of return do you need on the money to retire? No idea. Gotta know that first. So this guy's gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

First, know what you need. Second, know how much risk you can stand taking.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Exactly. I think you have a word for that. Risk profile. Profile.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

It's your risk profile.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

All right.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Tolerance and need equal profile.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

From Waldo,

Retirement Planning Checkup

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Wisconsin. Where is Waldo, Wisconsin? Do you know?

SPEAKER_02 23:28

It's in Wisconsin. That was too easy.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Uh Joel writes. Yeah. Uh recently we're all used to it. So bad I'm lassing myself. Um I've recently noticed on my Roth IRA that I have at work that I can use a self-directed account.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Hey.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Is it a good idea to move some of my funds and put the money in A V G E and similar funds that I have in my 401k? Or is this classic overthinking that we all like to do? By the way, sometimes there's a charge using the outside account. You want to check on that first.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

But usually it's it's a tiny little amount.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Um But here's here's what he has in his 401k, low-cost Vanguard funds, 20% large U.S. cap, 30% small and mid-cap, 20% U.S. bond. Oh, he has and he has some in the Vanguard International Equity. That's fine. That's fine. That's fine.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

And the costs are low and it's Yeah, the costs are low. Yeah, no. Oh, yeah. Okay, I go with overthinking. Yeah, you're good.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Yeah, no, I I think you're right. Um he's 56 with nine years left before retirement. That means you're gonna retire in his mid-sixties, then what? What are these people gonna do?

SPEAKER_02 24:31

I couldn't agree more. I I remember thinking in my 50s, oh boy, I can't wait till my sixties so I can retire and do and then I went doing I forgot to fill in the blank.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Yes, exactly. I'll retire and do that. My sister's in in town, and she was giving me a bad time about it. She's like, why are you still working? I said, What are you gonna do? I know. And then she said You remind me a lot of dad. And I thought, I'm okay. You were the one who called my father what an exemplary member of the greatest generation. I'm okay being compared to my dad any day. Yeah, he was any day.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

So I thought I'm okay with that. Here's a dude who uh navigated bombers, right? Navigated in World War II. That's right. Went on to get his MD on the G.I. Bill, right? That's right, yeah. Uh then went back into the Air Force again. Then went back to practicing medicine again. I know it's kind of kind of I think that's an impressive story.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

The last guy, the last World War II veteran to retire from the Air Force. I I just think that's impressive. I think it is, yeah. Anyway, so anyway, the point is have a plan before you retire in your mid-sixties. All right, Colonel. I'm working on a list too, by the way, because the day that you say I'm not doing it anymore, I'm not doing it anymore. So really? Oh yeah. I've been very specific on the list. I used to just have these general ideas and now I'm really hoin right now.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Where has soccer moved on the list?

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Well, soccer's still there, but the question is what I can do.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Because my refing days, as you know, are coming to an end.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

You could be the uh you could be the video review guy.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

And then the video review I I hate that. You know that. I hate that whole aspect. I hate that whole aspect of the sports that everything has to be perfect all the time. I get it, there's a lot of money riding on it, but the athletes aren't perfect. They make mistakes.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

So yeah, but then they get penalized when they make mistakes. The refs don't.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Yeah, they just go well, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I've been penalized.

Free Portfolio Reviews

SPEAKER_02 26:34

All right, send in your questions at talkingrealmoney.com. You can type them in, just click on the button that says ask a question. If you want to speak them for the Friday QA podcast that's become quite the event, I know Friday's eight questions in the last two episodes. We've never had that many in a Friday QA until the last two weeks. And they keep coming in. Just go to talkingrealmoney.com, click on the microphone in the lower right-hand corner, or click the button that says ask a question. And for those questions that exceed the limited amount of time we have on our lovely little podcast to answer questions with our limited knowledge and information, this is just something you need for you. You're you're saying to yourself, gosh, I wish somebody would just explain this to me. And not try to sell me anything. Well, we've been doing just that since like 2010. Well, I want to be more specific about that because I had a conversation today when somebody was surprised.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Well, somebody was surprised. Uh because I think people what they think is we're gonna call them and we're gonna give them a pitch on why they need to hire us. No. And I say, no. And and here's the part that you do get absolutely 110% free. Two parts. Number one, we take your own.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Okay, wait, can I just I have to correct you again? It can't if you if it's 110% free, you've got to give them some money.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Oh, I see. Okay, I'll give you a dollar. No, kidding, because I'll get 100 requests. Um you will too. I know, because I made another offer recently, got way more requests than I thought. Not even going to mention what that offer was. But we actually take your your holdings, we we give you a report that shows you, and most people are surprised by this, how much you own of this type of security, how much of this one, how well diversified you are, how much you're paying for all that, how much risk you're taking. And we give you a list of s of suggestions. Hey, you really should try this, etc., etc. And that's part one. Part two, you actually get to talk to a real life advisor, sometimes me, if I'm not on one of my extended vacations. Right.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

So another one is coming up very, very soon.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Well, it's the sun is out. I gotta get out of here. So um, take advantage of that. It's I I think most people here and think, no, it sounds like a pitch. It's not. It does. It sounds like a pitch. Don't do it or don't.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

It's kind of like when we say Appello or Dimensional. Are these guys being paid by Appella or Dimensional? Oh God, don't say it, please. Yeah. I mean, I used to get it about Vanguard all the time. I know. And and finally I was able to say, really, at one point, I said, yeah, I am being paid by Vanguard. They're sponsoring the show. Yep. And because I said, Well, you guys, you're making a lot of money. Sponsor my darn show so that I can make a living. But Avantis does not do that. No, no, no. Nor does it dimensional.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

So take full advantage of all the things we offer. That's the bottom line.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

And look at that. We we got out of this one in under 30 minutes with four questions. That is dedication to the clock. I'm impressed. Well, thank you all for being here. Please let your friends know, continue to do so. I was just at a uh friend's wedding, uh, friend's kids' wedding, and uh a woman was there who was very confused about her money, didn't think she had enough to live on. I was talking to her about it, I told her all about it. She's gonna be listening to the podcast from now on.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

Nice. And she had up our numbers in Greece and Italy while I was. She had more than enough money to live comfortably, and she didn't think she did. I hate that people have anxiety about that. It drives me nuts. So, anyway, thank you all for being here.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Thanks for telling others. Please keep listening, as Tom and yours truly are always talking real money.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

The opinions that we'd express on this podcast were current on the date recorded. Opinions, estimates, forecasts, and statements of financial market trends that are based on current market conditions constitute our judgment and are subject to change without notice, including any forward-looking estimates or statements which are based on certain expectations and assumptions. Although information and opinions given have been obtained from or based on sources believed to be reliable, no warranty or representation is made as to their correctness, completeness, or accuracy. Information presented on the podcast is not personalized investment advice from a fellow wealth. The views and strategies described may not be suitable for everyone. This podcast does not identify all the risks, direct or indirect, or other considerations which might be material to you when entering any financial transaction. Past performance does not guarantee feature results, and profitable results cannot be guaranteed. We hope you realize that the information provided on Talking Real Money is for informational, educational, and hopefully enjoyable purposes only. The podcast is not trying to get you to buy or sell any financial products or securities. Instead, the program is provided as a public service by Appello Wealth, a fee-only registered investment advisor. See Appello Wealth ADB Part 2A on our website for information regarding Appello's fees and services. Apello Capital, LLC DBA Appello Wealth, is an investment advisory firm registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm only transacts business in the states where it's properly registered or excluded or exempt from registration requirements. Registration with the SEC or any state securities authority does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Apello does not provide tax or legal advice, and nothing either stated or implied here should be inferred as providing such advice. Thanks for listening, and please visit talkingrealmoney.com for more information and important disclosure related to performance of any specific index or fund quoted in this podcast. And the lawyers get richer.