It's Very Volatile!

SPEAKER_01 0:05

You're gonna do a really great financial future. Tom and Don are

Bitcoin and Retirement Risks

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talking real money.

SPEAKER_03 0:11

Okay, folks. This is getting a little silly. A one-star review. I enjoy the show, but our Bitcoin takes are consistently hard to listen to. Well, I gotta tell you, I would imagine that Bitcoin investors are having a really hard time watching Bitcoin lately. I I just don't understand how you can watch it lose 50% of its value. Uh, that sounds like the 2008 stock market, doesn't it? And still be a proponent. I I I'm uh color me confused. And uh let's talk about the color of your money. Is it uh is it shiny and non existent, or is it solid and uh green and potentially lucrative? We're gonna talk about Bitcoin and scams today on the program. I'm Don McDonald. That's Tom Cock. This is well, talking real money. Thanks for joining us. We really appreciate it. Yeah, um the when we recorded this, Tom, a couple weeks ago, Bitcoin had dropped to as low as recently sixty thousand dollars of Bitcoin. Now, that sounds like a lot of money until you look back at what the price of Bitcoin has done over the past, well, year or so. Wasn't it just at $125,000 like last fall? Like less than a year?

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Yeah, it it has had a dramatic decline. And while at the same time, those who still believe, I guess still believe, we'll talk more about that in just a moment. And those who'd like to sell you some want to make it very easy to have it in your retirement account so you can just get access to those cryptocurrencies that really are a great investment for the long haul.

SPEAKER_03 2:07

Yeah, and here's the thing. If you bought it during the uh the the excitement phase back in uh late 2021, the fall of 2021, really, um, and you paid $60,000, $64,000, $65,000 of Bitcoin, well, five years later, you are barely at break-even. Five years later, does is that the kind of investment you want to put your money in where over a five-year period of time you just broke even? Or what if you bought it in 2025 at $124,000 of Bitcoin?

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Yeah. Troubling more, however, is the fact that people are still out promoting this and they want to make it easy for you to not only invest, but invest with your retirement

Self-Directed IRAs Under Fire

SPEAKER_02 2:54

savings, a company called IRA Financial, which is a self-directed uh custodian, which oh self-directed IRAs always make me nervous because they usually wait.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

The term self-directed used to mean that you could buy anything you wanted in it, you but including mutual funds and things like that. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

But also get into private real estate deals.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

Now it's more dangerous stuff that is associated with self-directed. My my uh uh an IRA at Schwab is a self-directed IRA, technically. You just can't buy anything you want. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

But but but typically over the longer haul, that's been used, as I say, to get into real estate deals to do stuff that's a little off the dusty path. Yeah, I mean, and now it's even worse. This company that just mentioned IRA Financial, they're launching a crypto platform that can trade a hundred to different tokens in real time. Now, does that sound like a long-term plan for your retirement? And um, the the proprietor whose name I will not mention because I don't even want to utter it on this show, he says, This is how you get rich. You don't get rich by just sitting back and buying stocks.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

No, no, you don't get rich quickly. Here's the difference. He forgot a word. He forgot a word. You don't get rich quickly buying stocks in aggregate. You don't. It's a slow, slow process. Problem is, very few people, no matter what they do, get rich quickly. That's the old adage that is that has been used to rip you off since the beginning of time. It's your greed they're taking advantage of. And when it comes to getting rich only a f quickly, only a few can do that. Getting rich slowly is something everybody has access to.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Exactly, because you can invest in global markets, you can do it that very tax-efficient manner, and you can do it with extremely low fees. But this all comes, by the way, when some politicians are clearing the way for adding crypto, private equity, real estate into your workplace plan. Here's the favorite quote that uh from that article that you sent me, Don, um, that I think should be paid attention to closely from a guy named Ed Slott, who's uh helped people with their IRAs et al. for decades. We I think we interviewed him back on the old sound investing. Ed Slott says if you take your money to a custodian like IRA Financial, you're on your own. Uh good luck. I mean, because so many bad things could happen in so many of these products. Um whether it is crypto or whether it is private equity or private loans or debt or any of these things are highly risky. They're, of course, Bitcoin's liquid, I guess, because you can sell it the next day. The fees are generally higher. It just everything is sort of weighed against you, and I know we're gonna get our haters are gonna write us and say, no, no, no, no. I got in in 2016, I made a lot

Shiny Objects, Slow Wealth

SPEAKER_02 5:58

of money. God bless you.

SPEAKER_03 6:01

Uh I it was funny. I w logged into my Schwab account just to watch it uh because it recently went down. Everything went down on Friday, the 5th of June. It was a pretty bad day. It was. Uh I I and it it there was a little thing on the screen that says trade crypto for only 0.75%.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

That's it. You can get right in and start trading away. Pretty expensive. Did you do that over the weekend then since you had a bad week with stock? When Mark Cuban's getting out of the way, well, I was gonna oh you stole my thunder because I was gonna say now, how excited are people about Bitcoin? Because the price, as it said, is around sixty thousand. Strategy, the company that uh been so big on Bitcoin, they're selling it, and Mark Cuban's giving up money.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

Mark sold a lot.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Yeah, and if if Mark Cuban's giving up, well, I mean, that's the real smart money, right? I'm out then for sure.

SPEAKER_03 6:52

Here's the thing Bitcoin was uh a shiny object. It was it had a story that appealed to a lot of people, but the main thing, and if you if all you Bitcoin advocates are honest with yourselves, the main reason you bought Bitcoin wasn't because you think, oh, I've got the new currency and I'm gonna be the only one left in the world who can spend money. No, no, no. You bought it to get rich, and you bought it hoping to get rich quickly. And honest to goodness, we know for a fact that people in 2021 bought it for $60,000 of Bitcoin. Lots of them. Hundreds of thousands of them bought it at $60 plus thousand dollars. We know for a fact that hundreds of thousands of traders bought Bitcoin in uh the fall of 2026 for $120,000. We know that because there were trades that happened. So how do you think all those crypto crypto buyers uh who were convinced by your advocacy to buy the darn stuff, how do you think they feel at a 50% loss? And how do you think they feel on your advice?

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Yeah, on on a lengthy uh period of time where you haven't made anything.

Private Equity Pitfalls

SPEAKER_02 8:09

Um, and so that's troubling. But then then the guy at IRA Financial, God, I I again I'm not gonna say his name, but if crypto trading it at real time isn't good enough, he says, how about private equity? Because that's where the real money's made. I went and looked just to see, kind of just and looked around at various websites where returns are kept track of. Nobody really knows, of course, the actual return of private equity because it's private equity. But as an asset class, kind of it appears to be between 12 and 14 percent. Now, every deal could be far different, right? There's people that go out of business, there's people that become the next Microsoft, et cetera. But the thing about that is that is a fair return for the risk you're taking. Remember, you're giving up liquidity, you're there's leverage involved, there's high fees, there's all kinds of disadvantages. So you should be getting a much greater return for all the risk you're taking, right? I mean, at the end of the day, that's the kind of thing you need to pay attention to. But this is troubling. Uh, it's it's not just that you're right, Don, that people are buying cryptocurrencies. It's not that the people are still promoting them, although certain people are not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 9:16

No, that's a problem to me.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

It's not as loud as it once was. I mean, it's pretty quiet now. Um, that's I struggle with all of that, but I it's a hundred thousand times worse to me that people want to make this easy for you to put your retirement money into it. Because just imagine, you mentioned the 50%. Just imagine you retired and then your crypto bet went down by 50% just in time for you to start needing the money to pay the bills. That is not a good idea. That is not anything you really want to have in your portfolio in my mind anyway, but especially a retirement portfolio.

SPEAKER_03 9:52

The good news is that most of those who are are putting crypto in their IRAs or even in their regular accounts are not people on the brink of retirement, thank goodness. They're they're smart enough to know. In fact, we we would be totally and utterly irresponsible if we told people, hey, why don't you put a hundred percent of your money in a few uh hot stocks in the U.S. Because those hot stocks could, could go to nothing. And for anyone to say crypto cannot go, cannot, impossible to go to nothing, is being disingenuous. Of course it can. I'm not saying it will, but it certainly can go

Crypto Versus Market Momentum

SPEAKER_03 10:33

to zero. And right now the attention is shifting. Right now the attention has shifted. Gold has more momentum right now than does crypto. Technology stocks way more. The iShare's uh semiconductor ETF, SOX, SOXX, is up about 75 percent this year, just in 2026. Crazy. So you got crypto way down, you got semiconductors up. It tells you where the the the hottest the hot trend chasers are going. Next stop, next stop, of course, is SpaceX and Anthropic and oh and uh OpenAI and all the rest. That's the the short attention spans are hallmarks of younger investors.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Aaron Ross Powell Well, and they're hallmarks of people that think they're buying what's hot and often get burned, right? I mean, the track record of IPOs is poor. The track record of things that have been hot is poor. And again, this is the kind of thing that we advocate against and have for gosh, you know, like 30 years not buying what's everybody's excited about. So that's exactly the reason that we've been trying to help people understand the risky side of things like SpaceX and Anthropic, et cetera. But back to the starting point here. This is troubling that again, they're going to make it easier for you to put in your retirement account. Under no circumstance would I have you or your kids, or I guess in some case your grandkids, outdoing this in the money that you're planning on using to pay the bills in retirement.

SPEAKER_03 12:20

And uh it really shouldn't be, I gotta tell you, unless face the fact, crypto guys and gals. The fact crypto is pure speculation. I'm okay if you want to speculate with your money. I am. Just don't call it a solid store of wealth because it isn't, it can't be. It cannot be a safe store of wealth, and it's proven itself to not be a safe store of wealth. Anything that can go down that far can go to zero. And be honest about it. Sure, say you love it, say it's got great potential. I I am not opposed to you saying all the nice things you want about it, but please at least be honest with those getting involved and tell them there is the potential that they could lose a lot, if not everything.

Ask Your Money Questions

SPEAKER_03 13:16

Now, got questions? We will try to give you answers. You can send your questions in so easily these days. The easy it's so easy. We don't have the phone numbers to deal with the show on Saturday. You just go to talkingrealmoney.com and you click the ask a question button. That's all that's all you need to do. Then you can type it up, we'll uh ask it on the show, or Tom, once in a while, me, but usually Tom, because he likes conversations, will give you a call.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

Hey, thanks, Don. Let's go to the phones. How about Zanesville, Ohio? And Mark joins us on Talking Real Money. How are we doing, Mark?

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Good. Thanks, Tom, for taking this call. And uh I enjoy listening to you and Don every day. I listen to you on the way in from work, so that's very nice.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Ah, that's very nice. I will not tell him you said that, but uh certainly nice to hear it myself. So how can we help

Retirement Withdrawal Strategy

SPEAKER_02 14:08

you?

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Well, I'm uh currently almost 61 years old and planning on retiring at 65 or at least having the option to stop working at that point. Based on every what what everybody suggested, phasing into that retirement, not stopping all at once. Um so I have a couple concerns, I guess. One, I wanted to see get your opinion on if you think my portfolio is poised for I I'm expecting probably a market downturn correction of some sort in the next five years. That's pretty likely, I think. Um, and then two about the withdrawal strategy. So I guess that my questions are two parts.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

Let's take the first part first about the market downturn, because yeah, you should always it's been, I mean, basically since 2022, right? I mean, we had a few little hiccups here and there, but basically of any consequence. And even there, it was kind of down and then turned and went right back up. So yeah, I think any reasonable market historian would say, yes, we're going to have a downturn. The question is going to be how big is it going to be, obviously? How long is it going to last? And what is it going to mean to my portfolio? So um, yeah, I mean, my answer to that particular question, we can talk specifics in your case, but everybody's portfolio should be built with that in mind because it's gonna happen. I don't know when any more than you do, but uh, but you should be ready at all times.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Yeah. So I'm I'm currently just in my situation, I'm currently well, I'm on a glide path. I am with a uh fiduciary advisor company, but I'm I'm on a glide path right now. I'm supposed to be at 76.24 stock to bond ratio, but because of the market has been up, it's actually more like eight eighty one nineteen. Um so they haven't rebalanced that yet.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

They do it quarterly, so um, yeah, that's a that's fairly aggressive, I think. If you're are you gonna is this money you're gonna be starting to take out in four or five years?

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Yes, yes. That's what I'm thinking. I might be a little bit. I mean, my when I did the risk quiz a few years ago, I scored in the low 80s. Uh-huh. But that was probably four years ago. And, you know, as it gets getting closer, I'm thinking maybe I need to maybe dial that back a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

It wouldn't even be the amount of risk you can kind of take on an emotional level. To me, it would be about the actual taking money out in four years if the market was down substantially. Because in a portfolio, 80% in stocks, 20% in bonds, you need to face up to the fact that, yeah, your portfolio could be down 30, 35%. You really wouldn't want to be pulling from the portfolio when it's that far. They wouldn't want to be selling stuff that's down like that. You really want to have enough in bonds where you can take it from that. Those won't have moved around as much and give the stocks a time to recover. So, I mean, it's sort of two parts, three parts, I guess. Actually, yeah, the risk quiz, kind of getting to know yourself around the emotions. Number two, about when you need the money. But then the third one would be around the plan. Because if you've run the plan, you've run it a lot of times with a fiduciary advisor, you're gonna have a pretty clear understanding of just how well things are going to work for you, especially what could be a lengthy retirement if you if you sort of wind things down at 65.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Yes. Yes, I uh well, you you talked about the uh bond portion. That that was one of the concerns I had. So right now, you know, I have 20, if I get it dialed back to where it's supposed to be, 20, 24 percent of my fixed income is in bonds. Should it do I need any other that's the only fixed income I have. It's all divided up into short-term US bonds and and also international bonds. It's 50-50, I guess, between US and international bonds. Um, but do I need any type of other cash or CDs or anything besides bonds? So when I start withdrawing that at that time, yeah, that's a great question.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

You know, I mean, here's you get people that have the bucket strategy, right? That say, well, certain amounts are really being cash type of instruments because bonds, as we also learned in 2022, can go down from time to time. You know, the aggregate bond lost like 10%, a little more than 10% in 2022. So it can happen. I would say within a few years of the actual date you're gonna pull in the money, then yeah, you'd probably want to be in some very short-term CDs, money market, something like that that has really no variation. So that you can pull from that sort of bucket, if you will, to pay the bills. You could also, however, still be in the bonds and then at the beginning of each year, when you're gonna draw, take a certain amount, put that in the money market, have that to draw on, you know, for the actual cash during the year. So you could do it that way. I really have no problem with, you know, sort of short and intermediate term bonds to be uh the fixed income part of the portfolio, but I but I'd I'd I'd want I might want to look at sort of my cash holdings as I'm actually starting to pull money out of the uh out of the portfolio at that point.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Um, so say, and my last my other thought was so say I have started to withdraw from the portfolio and the market's down say 25%, I take the money from the bond portion instead. At that point, you know, they once a quarter, the advisor that firm that I'm looking that I'm with now looks at the balance and rebalances every quarter. So if you rebalance when the market's down 20 25%, um, after I've taken the seat the money out of the fixed income, is that going to throw off? Don't you need to wait for that to recover?

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Or yeah, technically the rebalance would be selling bonds and buying stocks. You know, this is something that uh that we've done over the years. It's no fun because it feels very counterintuitive and stocks are going down, they're never coming back, et cetera, et cetera. But it it's worked out because you know, you've taken money from something that's doing well, and then you put it into something that has, you know, gone down, and then that generally comes back. So technically, yes, that would be the case. But in in your circumstance, if you're drawing on the portfolio, generally you just take the draw from the bond because those aren't going to be down, hopefully, like stocks would be, shouldn't be, and then let the stock part recover to the place where after that's gone up, the rebalance would take place between those two assets and pay yourself from that. But generally, yeah, I don't I wouldn't be in favor of drawing money out and rebalancing because that could deplete your fixed income in a rather rapid fashion.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, that that was one thing I was didn't really understand how that was supposed to work.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

So I think you're thinking pretty good on all this stuff. And wow, I really appreciate you being on the program and and a regular listener, and we hope we'll get to chat with you again.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Well, thank you very much for your advice.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Thanks, Mark. Take care.

SPEAKER_03 20:44

So

Market-Linked CD Gimmicks

SPEAKER_03 20:45

please inundate us with questions at talkingrealmoney.com. You can also speak them, and I'll answer those on the Friday QA podcast. But right now, Tom is in a tree killing kind of mood.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Yeah, a big time. Let's hack them down. Uh, from Draper, Utah, Doug writes, I purchased CDs from my bank at Wells Fargo when I didn't know what to do with a chunk of money. I hate the phantom tax and did not know there was an option to buy a CD that pays out quarterly. I always thought I had to wait until the CD matured. Then my bank broker suggested market linked CDs. So I put a million dollars into two ML CDs. Now, market linked CD is one that has tied to an index, stock index of some kind. The idea here is you're making part of the market return and it never goes below the principal, right? Uh he says $500,000 based on SPX and $500,000 based on SPW. They were four year CDs. First two years are good. One MLCD based on SPX has grown at 13% rate per year, but the other grew at 5.9. The Phantom Income Tax has pushed me into the nasty N I I T. I think that's the capital gain surcharge. Mm-hmm. Which adds three point eight percent to your capital gains. Made him ineligible to do the Roth IRA. Says I have traditionals, so I've done the backdoor conversion on new investments. It's not very clean. For the MLCD in SPW, there's not enough acronyms here. Uh the 5.9 APY is only a little better than a five or seven year Treasury note, which would have given me 4.5% in 2004, and the Treasury note income is state tax-free. And the 5.9 on the MLCD is only because the stock market had two great years so far. He says my wife loves the idea of these because they're guaranteed. Never lose money, and they're backed by the FDIC. A five or seven-year Treasury note locked in at 4.5% seems better than an MLCD because it pays every six months with no phantom tax and not tied to the stock market having two big years. The money I would receive would probably be less than an annuity payout, but I keep all the money and it's state tax-free. Then he says at 4.2%, I would have an annual income of $42,000 guaranteed on a $1 million in a five-year treasury note in retirement, no state income tax, and it satisfies my wife's need for safety. Says he has $3 million in other investments, with a majority of that in ETFs and target date funds in 2050. So this seems diversified by going with the Treasury notes. Thoughts? He says, sorry to make Tom kill trees with my questions.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

Well.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

It's a lot there. So MLCD versus regular CDs or no part of the virtual.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

Market link CDs are just another gimmick.

unknown 23:38

Thanks.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

Just another means by which to try to sell you something that makes somebody at the bank some money for something. If you think you're going to make more money long term in a market link CD, think again. They are not in the business of paying you more. They're in the business of trying to pay you less. Because if they pay you less, they make more. Market length CDs do not give you the dividends of the stock market, which by the way can be 2-3% of the total annual return. And that's the safer part of the return.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

Well, no, more than 2-3% of the total return, 2-3% of the investment.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

Yeah, of the investment of the annual return of the investment, 2-3% return total of the total. Total return. 2-3 percent, yeah. Or 20 to 30 percent of the average annual return we've experienced.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 24:28

Bigger than that. Um and the other the the remember, they're market-linked. So they they follow what the index does, but they don't give you what the index gets even in terms of appreciation. They only give you a percentage of that. There's a cap rate of some kind. There's a cap of some sort. And then what remember, stocks don't always go up. We say this over and over and over again. What if, and this has happened, we have a five-year period. We actually had a 10-year period with the S P 500. That's one of the indexes LinkedIn here. It is. Yeah. We had a 10-year period where investors made negative returns in the stock market for 10 years. So if you had those CDs for 10 years in the 2000s, your annual your annual return on those would have been right at 0% per year. So you would have made nothing. So there's the that's your downside, making nothing while inflation is eating up your principal or the spending power of your principal. Uh and and I you you nailed it. Buy the treasuries.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Well, okay, going back, here's the thing. I wouldn't buy a product like this. You use the right word, it's gimmicky. Whatever your risk is, you that's the part you have in stocks. That's invested properly globally, low cost, et cetera. Then the part that you want to have the cushion is invested, as you said, could be treasuries, could be a total bond, something that doesn't have the volatility and has more stability than stocks, but you don't combine them. It's no different than any other investment. Combining these things, I guess, other than a target date fund, which clearly points out they're gonna have this much in stocks, this much in bonds, is okay. But in this case, it's a gimmick. It's limited to how much the percentage they're gonna give you. And I forgot about the dividend part. You get you eliminate that entirely, which has been a pretty decent part of returns for a long period of time. So no, this is I I I I think I agree with your wife here. I think that was her. Set aside the money that you want for safe, sure. Treasury, fine. Uh, you could you could have a treasury fund if you didn't want to own individual treasuries, et cetera. And then the other part that you want to have growth in, that goes in stocks. But stocks, not in a combined. That's what I hate about market link CDs. They're they try to be they try to give you the best of both worlds. This is nothing new. Everybody says this, right? Going to make the return to the market with no risk of loss. That's a gimmick.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

Yeah, and here's the other thing. It's very interesting. When you walk into a bank, this is the most dangerous thing you can do with your money these days, I think, is to trust that your bank is looking after your best interests. Yeah. Because what they did, I'm willing to bet. I I and I'm not a betting person, but I in this case I would be I would bet money that you went into the bank to talk to a teller about a CD and they said, Oh, why don't you talk to Jim over here? Uh Jim will tell you about some alternatives that might make you more money. Jim is the broker in the bank.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:24

Jim is the commission salesperson for the bank. Because these whereas if you put it in a CD, the bank is just going to make the difference between what they pay you and what somebody else pays them when they lend out the money. It's a lot skinnier. And that sales commission can be right around 5%. So there's an incentive for that person to sell you this because if they sell you a CD, they don't make a penny, the guy sitting in the bank. They don't make a penny personally. They get they and the bank split a 5% commission, though, if they can sell you one of these. And they don't have to disclose that. They don't tell you a darn thing. It's it may be buried in some paperwork somewhere, but they're not going to say it out loud. You do not ever, ever want to let your bank teller direct you to somebody in the bank who's going to show you better investments because 99 times out of a hundred, and by the way, this number is backed up by research by Market Watch. 99 plus times out of a hundred, you're going to get sold something.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

Yeah, and we've discussed this as well. I'm also down on credit unions when it comes to investing because they haven't cleaned it up either, even though they're owned by the members. There's no incentive. Yeah, it just drives me crazy. But what the people owned them, they should vote out a broker in the lobby and make somebody else a fiduciary advisor in there instead.

SPEAKER_03 28:50

I mean, come on. You are naive if you think that member-owned organizations are nonprofits. Think about all the nonprofit hospitals in America that overcharge people, that done them to bankruptcy, that that rip them off. I mean, come on. Being a nonprofit doesn't mean non-greedy.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

That's true. I wouldn't go either one, let's put it that way,

Bank Scams and Fraud Alerts

SPEAKER_02 29:13

for my investments.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

And here's the great thing if you have an account at Fidelity or Schwab, you can buy those treasuries. You could build a laddered portfolio of treasuries, you could build a laddered portfolio of what I would be willing to bet are higher yielding CDs than Wells Fargo is going to give you. It's funny, I just bought with some money. I just bought uh added some money to my CD ladder, and I just bought a Wells Fargo CD yielding 4.1%. But I went to Wells Fargo's website, cannot find a CD anywhere near that.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

So this was through the brokerage.

SPEAKER_03 29:49

This was through the brokerage. Yeah. And how long is the term? Uh I think it was a five-year-old I laddered out.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Nothing wrong with getting four percent a year for five years. Yeah. I I have a ladder out to five years. So um congratulations.

SPEAKER_03 30:05

Yeah, and you know, the treasuries are they are ad advantageous from a state tax standpoint, but I don't have a state tax. I'm in Florida. You're in Washington. You don't have a state tax either. So that's the story. Although wait, I want to give banks some kudos. Oh, please. Some kudos. Um lately, and I have been uh the subject of these attacks myself, where somebody from your bank calls you to tell you somebody has used your account, they've broken into your account, they've stolen money, there have been some charges that you didn't uh uh that you you weren't aware of, something like that. And the whole goal is to get you to go to your bank. It's a sting. You're gonna go to the bank and you're gonna help them trap somebody at the bank who uh has been stealing money. So you're gonna go and you're gonna take $9,000 and you're gonna transfer it to another account that the bank has set up for you. Okay, it's that simple. You don't even have to take the money out anymore. You just have to transfer it from this account number to that account number. And that account number is, of course, a special account number at the bank, and they're gonna return the money to you as soon as they catch this person. But please don't tell the teller that we're on the phone talking to you about it. Don't tell them. Because if you tell them, you'll tip them off. Well, it turns out that uh banks actually feel badly when this happens. They don't have any liability if you do this, but they feel badly. And Chase is actually training its tellers to recognize these scams. Uh to recognize that you may be being taken advantage of, particularly those who are like us elderly. Sorry, Tommy. Ouch. I'm sorry, I know. I said it. Uh in a matter of fact, there was one case that was mentioned in this article, um, I believe it was in the Wall Street Journal. No, New York Times. New York Times, um Tara Siegel. And the teller, the woman came in and said, I need to move $9,000 from this account to this account. And the teller said, Hmm. She looked up the account to which the money was going to be moved. And it wasn't the same as the woman, and she said, Well, whose account is that? She goes, I it's just an account that another account that's been set up. And and uh the woman goes, This sounds like it might be a scam. Uh we have these a lot, and uh, I don't think you should do this. And she goes, No, I'm talking to Mark at your bank right now. She goes, You've got him on the phone right now? Uh-huh. She goes, Yeah. This is a scam? And she said, Yeah, and Mark's telling her it's not. And she goes, Should I hang up on him? And the teller goes, Yes, hang up on him right now. So kudos to Chase for doing this. They've they've actually started training programs with uh psychologists involved who are trying to t teach tellers what to recognize when someone comes to the window and wants to make a large transaction that's out of character for that customer. So I hope we see more of this because this fraud is becoming endemic. It's just it's become a per per a permanent part of our society, and it's huge, and it's sad because they're targeting people who generally can't afford to lose that kind of money.

SPEAKER_02 33:26

Well, it's that's a significant amount of money.

Phishing, AI, and Skepticism

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Here's the thing I'm an unlikely target because I don't know where my bank is anymore. So I wouldn't even know how to get there if they called and said you'd get to your IP.

SPEAKER_03 33:37

Actually, they give you directions to the nearest one. No, they're very helpful, Tom.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

Yeah, I'm sure they are.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

And they're the they're the nicest people. They're so nice, they're so thoughtful, they're so caring, they're so kind. They're trying to save me from being ripped off. Oh, and there's another one. Oh, I I'm gonna mention this. Yeah, what the heck. Um, I got this one in the mail or email yesterday. You know, I have a book, right? Yes. Popular book. I have gotten a ton of these recently from people saying they recently discovered my book and were deeply moved by what feels like the emotional heart of Levi Anderson's story. And then they say, while the novel is set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, what resonated most with me was its exploration of endurance and the lasting impact of suffering, etc., etc. They're doing all this, all the giving me all these platitudes like buttering me up. And then they go, at Boston Reading Room, we are always looking for books that inspire meaningful discussion. We would love the opportunity to feature it in an upcoming discussion and introduce it to our engaged readers. It's from Rebecca Campbell at Boston Reading Room, and um I looked it up. No such thing. You'd think if you had a Boston Reading Room that was reading books and promoting books, you would have a website, you'd be on Facebook, you'd be on Instagram, you'd be somewhere. It does not exist anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

So what are they trying to get? Just the book? Me, money from me to feature the book, to help promote the book. So if you send us $2,000, we'll take your credit card right here. We're gonna promote it to all of our readers. I see. Uh this publ the publishers guild has sent out a warning to all of its members. These are happening like crazy. Anybody who has a new book, they go to Amazon, AI reads the book description, then it creates AI creates the letter, sends the thing out, and then uh somebody in a call center somewhere rips you off.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

That's that's elaborate but believable. I'll put it that way.

SPEAKER_03 35:44

That's the world we live in. It's so messy. You gotta be so skeptical and so careful. And you know, I it's good. You got us. If you really want a s a truly cynical second opinion, get in touch with me. I'm all over it. I'm all over cynicism. Go to Talking Real Money. Yeah, I am the no, I am the national uh uh administrator, leader, king of the cynics of America. Uh go to talking real money.com, send those questions in.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

Chancellor. Chancellor of Cynicism. Chancellor! It just has a nice ring to it.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

Got a bad no, it doesn't. It has a terrible ring. No one will ever be Chancellor again after 1932. Here was it, 8, 2, 32, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Yeah, 32, 33.

SPEAKER_03 36:32

Yeah, damn.

SPEAKER_02 36:33

Okay. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough.

SPEAKER_03 36:35

Oh, I guess Germany still has a chancellor, don't they?

SPEAKER_02 36:38

I don't know, but you just wrecked their future.

SPEAKER_03 36:40

Just ruined their job. Yeah, I think they do. Anyway, thanks for being here. Please tell a friend or 10 and uh send in your questions. And remember that we are here for you almost every single day, except weekends and holidays, talking real money.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

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