Ep. 2019: The Easy Money Trap

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Real money.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

Easy money. It's deadly as it gets. I'm telling you, if it seems too good to be true, well, most of the time

Easy Money, Dangerous Loans

SPEAKER_03 1:24

it is. That should just be a rule in life that easy money is uh best avoided at all costs. What kind of easy money are we talking about? Well, we're talking about a kind of loan to small businesses that can be very tempting. Welcome to Talking Real Money, the podcast. I'm Don McDonald, along with Tom Cock, and the uh the financial guidance you need for all aspects of life is just a podcast away on this program almost every day. And uh this came up another Wall Street Journal article that we recently read uh about what are called well they're they're they're Merchant Cash Advances. Merchant MCAs, merchant cash advances. They they're they're advertised online as an easy way to raise money for shortfalls or for quick uh influx of money into your small business. That sounds good. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:25

But well, the but is how much it's going to cost you. The but is how these things are run, and the but is the fact that uh again, as you said, easy money, it's not easy on the back end, uh, because a lot of people end up in a lot of trouble that take this route. We'll talk about how they end up there in just a moment. Um and and and in the article they they they go through the story of one merchant who decided this was the only way to borrow money. He had to have money, he was expanding, and the banks would not loan him anything. Um, and he simply said, Well, I went and got the money, and he thinks his cash advances have an estimated annual percentage rate of two thousand one hundred and ninety percent.

SPEAKER_03 3:09

Wait, say that number again? Not twenty, wait, no, Tom, you mean twenty-one point nine. Like credit card rates.

SPEAKER_04 3:14

Two thousand one hundred and ninety percent.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

Two hundred and nineteen percent? No, two hundred and nineteen.

SPEAKER_04 3:20

Two hundred and ninety.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

Two thousand one hundred and ninety percent interest. And they don't rely on you to pay. They just simply take the money out of your bank account.

SPEAKER_05 3:29

Dollar borrowed, yep. You have to pay back twenty-one dollars and ninety cents? That sounds about right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:35

Um, again, and this is once they give you the money, then they just every week start pulling out what is due uh from your bank account. So there's a cash flow issue to all this, too. Um, and and the thing that's that's scary when I read this is that a couple of numbers. One out of ten businesses are using merchant cash advances. That's not that's a lot, that's a high percentage. Number two, the uh the bankruptcy filings have are have increased by 36% year over year, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute of Small Businesses. So it's gone up. This is a $20 billion market, and the reason people end up here is legion, right? I mean, there's all kinds of if there are cash flow issues.

SPEAKER_03 4:24

I mean, we've all had small businesses. You and I have both of us have had small businesses. Good ones and bad ones. And even the good ones are in in some economies in some very short periods of time, there were cash flow issues where the accounts receivable weren't being received as fast as the accounts payable were being paid. Yep. And therefore,

Safer Ways to Fund a Small Business

SPEAKER_03 4:46

what do you do? What do you do? It's and what are the options? Let's talk a little bit about the options because these MCAs are very expensive, very expensive. And you know, some people will say, Well, why don't you just get an SBA loan, a small business administration loan?

SPEAKER_04 5:02

Which is harder than you think. That's not simple. Um, and by the way, the reason that MCAs are possible prevalent is they are easy to get, right? If you have a previous bankruptcy, they don't care. If you have had cash flow problems in the past, they don't care. Uh so all those things that were, if you went to an established lender, uh, you know, this is MCA, by the way, unregulated business. This is not, there's no regulations here. This is just whatever they want to do, whatever they want to get out of here.

SPEAKER_03 5:34

Wait for a minute. If you're collecting interest of $22 on every dollar you lend out, you can pretty much afford to lose about 20 of those dollars.

SPEAKER_04 5:45

They point they point out that I think the expectation is a third of the people won't pay them back, and they're okay with that. They that's the cost of doing business. So the rest of them are going to pay those exorbitant rates. And and what that means in the long haul is it's really hard to run a business when you're paying out that kind of interest. Really hard to run a household when you're paying that kind of interesting. Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:07

And that's why I was looking around, trying to find some of the alternatives. And and well, SBA would be one. Sure. Sure, but they're hard to get, particularly through major banking institutions that are doing the the the actual lending with the SBA guarantee. But I found something really interesting in my research. This was a Federal Reserve study from 2025 uh of small businesses, and this was really interesting, and I think we may have with our business found the same thing. They found that local banks, small local banks, are much more likely to lend to a small local business. They found that fifty-seven percent of applicants who who sought out loans at small banks didn't just get the loan, they got the full amount they were requesting. So almost 60 percent got everything they needed from their small local banks. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 7:08

Totally agree. Uh that's and that's a relationship, right? That you've built, you've established, they know you, you bank there, et cetera. The reason this is popular is I woke up today and realized that if I don't have $20,000 by Friday, I'm gonna be in trouble, right?

SPEAKER_03 7:22

They're gonna break my they're gonna break my legs.

SPEAKER_04 7:25

I won't be No, I'm speaking more of the borrowing before the leg breakers. Oh, that you borrowed before the leg breakers. You know, I can't pay the employees, I can't pay the rent, um, I can't pay the taxes. By the way, uh when I far started farted, when I farted the first time, uh I started my first business. It's over for us, Tom. Just admit it.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

It's over.

SPEAKER_04 7:44

As a real business, um my brother, the attorney, told me one thing. He said, always pay your taxes, which I thought was good advice. If you can't, you know, don't pay the rent, don't pay all the rest of the stuff that you're gonna be tempted to pay first, pay the taxes. I always thought that was good advice. Because every bankruptcy you read about put you in jail. Yeah, I know. Every bankruptcy you read about um is oh, they didn't pay their you know, state income tax. The guy just went to prison, by the way, here in the Seattle area, because he didn't pay the money withheld from employees to pay the IRS, didn't send it to them. A 1.4 million. Yeah, and they were unhappy and they I think he got a four-year term or

Should You Risk Home Equity or Retirement?

SPEAKER_04 8:23

something, something. So um, but yeah, no, I the SBA starting place, I like the local bank uh starting place around all this. But I guess my question to you always is going to be because this comes up, if I can't get it from friends and family, I can't get it from my home equity, which I guess we could debate whether it makes sense to do it this merchant cash advance or home equity, the it comes down to the. Oh, wait, let's just stop there.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

Let's not even go to that next step. You just raised something that I think deserves a little debate. Um, if I have borrowable home equity that I can that trumps an MCA like that.

SPEAKER_04 9:02

Interest rate's gonna be completely different because you can get seven and a half or eight percent for sure.

SPEAKER_03 9:08

Yeah, the only thing at risk is you know that I I can't pay my mortgage and I can get extensions on that a lot easier than I can stop these guys from taking it out of my bank account every day. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 9:18

Or on your legs, as you said. No, I that's that's an that does seem you're strict. You're strict. You that that seems an easy one. I'm doing well today. Uh but back to the the other question that comes up regularly. Well, I have money set aside in an IRA, I have a 401k, I have a Roth. Should I take it from that to pay the bills in my small business, or should I use a merchant cash advance to pay the bills?

SPEAKER_03 9:43

There we are looking at and and here's what the the process ought to be. When you're to the point in your business that you think you might need a merchant credit loan, these are the Merchant Cash Advance, MC.

SPEAKER_04 9:58

Yeah, cash advance, whatever the heck. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:01

You i if you got if you've gotten to the point where you really desperately need one of these to make payroll to pay your accounts receivables, to I mean your accounts payable, it deserves some really thoughtful consideration as to whether or not the business is worth continuing at that point. How much of your life do you want to put at risk now? How much of your future do you want to put at risk for a business that is not doing well? If you can't make payroll, it's not doing well. Is this a temporary blip seriously, and you can overcome it in a couple of months because you know something know for a fact something is coming down the pike? Then maybe you borrow against your house. Maybe you take an advance from your retirement. I would be tempted if I had an IRA, I would be tempted if I knew I could pay it off in two months. Yes, I'd probably use the cash from the IRA because I have 60 days to put it back without a penalty and taxes.

SPEAKER_04 11:03

You know, and this gets back to then what you're really saying is should you be putting bad money after good money? I mean, at the business, good money after bad or good money bad, bad money

When to Cut Your Business Losses

SPEAKER_04 11:13

after good. That's a legitimate question. I mean, and the other thing is there's all kinds of great services out there that will counsel you. I'm not talking about paying somebody for that. I'm talking about there's executives, small business executives, there's organizations who sit down and say, Here's my situation. What do you think? I mean, these are people that have been through similar situations, and they may look at your business and go, you know what, it seemed like a great idea, but it really isn't. And don't go after your retirement account, shut that down. Um, this is a bad place, by the way, for you to be uh financially on a personal level, too. And and you know this, Don. I I had a run-in with a payday loan guy, which is the same thing, it's just a personal aspect instead of business.

SPEAKER_03 11:52

Oh, when you were doing your TV show? When I had the TV show, not personally, you didn't get a payday loan. Get your knees, kneecaps broken or anything.

SPEAKER_04 12:00

So he came on the program. He still is. I looked it up. Um, he's still the head of the Washington State Payday Loan Association or something. He's still there after 20 plus years, so he survived the interview. But he came on and he was like, hey, look, we're providing a service here. We're legitimately helping people. And I had a quote ready from a consumer organization that said when these people say, you know, their customers rarely complain about them, uh, you can remind them that crack users rarely complain about their dealers either. So I said that to him on the show, on Twitter. You compared him to a crack dealer? I did. And he was quite upset by that. By the way, my own mother called me that night and said that was a cheap shot. So she didn't think you apologize. I did not apologize. I still haven't, by the way. And as I said, he's still in his position of power in the great state. This is just a bad place to be, by the way, because I went and read the impact of debt, not just on you financially, but emotionally. It is a huge I mean, I went back and read a couple of studies last night. What it means really hard. It says about eight out of ten people really do sit around and worry about their money every day. And people who are in debt, it's even higher. Yeah. That it pays. It just takes over. Been there, done that, of course.

SPEAKER_03 13:17

We have. Yep. Small business took money out of retirement to help keep it afloat. That's right. We've done these things. So you do what it what it takes if you think the business has a future. Yep. However, it really does require some thought. You need to think about it. And then if you are to the point where you can't make this Friday's payroll, for example, well, you need to get on the phone with anybody who owes you money anywhere and get tough. And that may be hard for you to do, but you need to do that because the the people you're going to borrow from are not going to be easy on you. So you can't be easy on those who owe you. You've got to get the money. And then I really like the score idea. I had forgotten about score. Score is a uh nonprofit resource of the small business.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

These are retired executives. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 14:06

It's a volunteer organization where they give you free advice. They will help you. You take in your bills and your uh you know, your situation, and these are people who run businesses and are going to mentor you as to whether you you can pull out of this thing, or maybe they're gonna say, dude, it was a great idea. Fun while it lasted, cut your losses. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 14:30

Yeah, and it's hard. These things become again, our own personal experience can prove.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

Well, your ego gets tied up, it does.

SPEAKER_04 14:38

And this is all I know. I've done this, this is my deal. There's nothing I I know I'm doing it right. And by the way, score might tell you get rid of this, change this, and still the idea works, but we need to make these changes. So I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

If I could get a score guy to help me get rid of all my antique maps from that failed business, I wasn't even going to go.

SPEAKER_04 14:57

They're still in the garage.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

You know anybody who wants like 5,000 antique maps?

SPEAKER_04 15:02

I would love them, and I'd, you know, but I don't have enough wall space.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Uh so I other thanks to the I'll sell you the whole kitten completely. How much?

SPEAKER_04 15:09

How much?

SPEAKER_03 15:10

I don't know. Let's see. I'll give them to you for $5 a map. They're like 5,000 maps.

SPEAKER_05 15:15

That sounds like a bad deal for me.

SPEAKER_03 15:17

But $25,000.

SPEAKER_04 15:19

And I have some of the maps, as you know. I think I've got one in the main house.

SPEAKER_03 15:23

They're not just nice maps, there's nice prints, too. And I have thousands of these. And I've tried to sell them. My wife keeps going, you've got to get rid of them. And I go, Well, there are two ways to get rid of them. Fire. Sell them.

unknown 15:35

No, not fire.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

Oh, that was my house out. Or I dumped them in the trash.

SPEAKER_04 15:41

Oh.

unknown 15:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:42

It's hard to do that. All these years. So this is, by the way, business Don had basically 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 15:49

Yeah, 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_04 15:50

It was rage and it was going great until guess what? 2008 came along. Not buying these anymore. Yeah. So anyway. Anyway. All right. Let's see.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

Um I think that people sent in a question, and I think you found one of them to talk to on the phone.

Asset Location Across Retirement Accounts

SPEAKER_04 16:09

Let's go to Rhode Island where we chat with Dan. Welcome to Talking Real Money. Dan, how can we help you?

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Hi, I appreciate you taking the question. I I've heard a number of podcasters talk about asset location where for funds that you do not expect to use for a long time, like in your Roth, you want them invested more aggressively. Um, not necessarily 100% in stocks, but more aggressive than your overall portfolio allocation. So if I have a 70-30 portfolio, my Roth might be 90-10 and my conventional IRA might be 6040, for example. When I brought this up to my advisor, initially he said, uh, yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. And then he came back and he said, well, two things. One, it's going to get out of balance, and pretty soon, you know, you'll you'll if it's growing faster, you'll end up with an overall portfolio of the original target, maybe 75, 25, 70, 30. And he also said the software that they use balance the portfolios and everything. So I was wondering if he's he's correct. It's going to get out of what this is a bad approach, right?

SPEAKER_04 17:35

Yeah, it's a great question. By the way, going back to where you started, if it was mine, and my Roth, for example, is 100% in stocks. I have a somewhat more balanced portfolio because I'm getting older and my advisor tells me I should have some bonds. So, but if I was building, you know, as you said, a 70-30, for example, the first thing I would do is fill that Roth with the riskiest, not just stocks, the riskiest stocks, emerging markets, emerging market value companies, small US small cap value, et cetera. Then I would build the uh probably your taxable account if you had that, right? Again, all in stocks because you prefer to have the Roth grow the fastest, right? Because that's tax-free growth. Prefer to have no fixed income or bonds in the taxable because you're going to pay tax on the interest there. We're on the same page. And then in the IRA, that's where you have your fixed income. So just to correct you a little bit there, I wouldn't have any bonds in my Roth if I could avoid it. But you raise the great point. Then as things change, and if if the future looks like the past, stocks are going to go up faster than bonds, what do you do? Because now you're in this weird situation where instead of being in a 70-30, you're in an 80-20, correct? That makes sense. So the first place to correct that obviously would be in the IRA, right? Because if you have bonds and stocks here, then you could be selling one and buying another one. But you're right. Other than that, because you don't want to do a whole lot of buying and selling in the taxable account, because that could create a tax event. There's not a whole lot you can do. So some of this comes down to how much you have in each one. But I will go back to what your advisor said. Really, any advisor in today's world should be building a portfolio that looks at it in total. In other words, if you if you want a 6040, as I said, the first bucket to fill would be the Roth, then it would be the taxable, then the IRA or the 401k, the whatever, the pre-tax account. But any advisor should be able to do that in today's world because of the all the wonderful tools that are available. I'm not going to argue with your advisor about that, but frankly, that's a little short-sighted in a way. So, but yeah, here's the thing. You're going to probably, at some point, you're going to be a little bit out of balance, right? Because as I said, stocks grow faster than bonds if the the future looks like the past, stocks grow at 10% a year, roughly, bonds, you know, four to five percent, so they're going to outgrow it. So then you would have to accumulate. Yep. First. Yep. And what's the balance of just overall how much money in in you don't have to give me the dollars, but on a percentage basis, how much of your money is in the pre-tax kind of accounts and how much is in the either taxable uh like a brokerage or a Roth, if I can ask.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Fifteen to twenty percent. Actually, no, twenty percent in uh my brokerage. Sixty percent, no, fifty percent in my IRA and the rest of my Roth.

SPEAKER_04 20:41

So you should be able to make it work then, because if half of your money is in an IRA, you start with the right amount of fixed income there to balance it all out. And then along the way, you're selling stocks probably because they've gone up and buying more bonds or replenishing the account you need to pay yourself. It would probably work for a period of time. Again, though, you're right, there is no long-term solution to that issue. You end up with that Roth money continue to grow. And maybe at some point, then in that Roth, you do end up buying some bonds if you want to hold to that original asset allocation. Um, so there's no there's no absolutes on this. There is a little bit of art to it all, but a good advisor should be able to do it. The rebalancing will need to be done, as I say, prime primarily in that IRA, and you may end up a little out of sync, but it sounds like with the percentages you have, it should be able to work.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Okay, well, um, we'll see what they say. I mean, it's funny because when he first said, Well, you know, it it would be difficult to do, um, I was thinking, Well, you just picked the wrong software package to manage the account.

SPEAKER_04 21:50

In today's world, it should be pretty simple. There's some really sophisticated stuff compared to what I started in this business in the nineties that That really makes it pretty easy to have asset location and rebalance properly. So that I would gently ask them again about that because again, this is these are this whole world just changes quickly, right? Things that we didn't even have, I think three or four years ago we now have that allows us to do this better. But that would be a gentle conversation I have with my advisor. Your thinking is right, though. At some point you may end up having to sort of infiltrate that Roth with bonds if you want to keep the right balance. It's a good problem. Indeed it is. I mean, it's this is all a good problem. You've been a great saver, obviously. I it sounds like your retirement's going pretty doggone well. And um, you know, you may end up having to, you know, you you may want to change your overall asset allocation. As I said, my guy came to me a few months ago and said, wow, you're really stock heavy for a guy who's as old as you are, and you know, you're not retiring. But if something bad happened, you'd want to have more in bonds, especially if the market takes a hit. So I ended up, you know, selling a few stocks and buying a few bonds. So but it sounds like you're making a lot of good decisions the same way, Dan. Well, I'll tell you in 30 years. Don't call me because I won't be available, but we'll see if we can get somebody else on the line. So great. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time today. Thanks for being part of the program. You're welcome. Take care.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

However, his true love is printing off your questions. This is his true love. This is his passion.

SPEAKER_04 23:28

There's too many damn trees in the Northwest.

SPEAKER_05 23:33

Reading out your questions. No one's written about the war on trees in a while, so we need to bring that up again.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

They have. They have. I'm just not sharing those with you.

SPEAKER_05 23:40

Okay, I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 23:41

I don't want to encourage you. Uh, because it's like the dad jokes. I don't mention those. And then hoping they'll go away.

Choosing a Small-Cap Fund

SPEAKER_03 23:49

All right. Now we're on to the printed questions, and I assume you have some because you have paper in your hands.

SPEAKER_04 23:55

I do. One from Ring Gold, Georgia. Not from Ring. Ringo? Is he not Ringo?

SPEAKER_03 24:02

Oh, not Ringo. Ringold.

SPEAKER_04 24:04

Joey's feelings. Joey, thank you for listening. And I'm sure Ring Gold's a lovely place in Georgia. Yeah. Uh he writes.

SPEAKER_03 24:10

Have you been to Georgia lately?

SPEAKER_04 24:13

No, I have not. And I'm not going to let you defame Georgia either.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

So parts of it are nice.

SPEAKER_04 24:18

Yeah. I have a self-managed portfolio of the city.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

You go to Savannah a lot.

SPEAKER_04 24:22

That is 70% in stocks, 30% in bonds. The stock portion is almost evenly divided between SCHF and SWPPX. So it's SCH.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Those are Schwab funds.

SPEAKER_04 24:36

Yeah, those are Schwab index-like products. The uh one is international and one is the S P 500.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

Got it.

unknown 24:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:44

Good to know. Uh Joey says in a very wise moment, I'm interested in adding small cap to this mix. Do you suggest I go with a low-cost passive ETF like SCHA or the higher cost actively managed AVUV? Appreciate your comments. Oh.

SPEAKER_05 25:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 25:05

Higher cost. I love that that's not a lot.

SPEAKER_05 25:08

It's what's AVUV? 30 basis points now? I think it's a little less than that. It's in the 20s somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 25:15

It's not as low as SCHA. No, no, no, no, no, no, it's not. But here's the deal. Here's what you get with AVUV. And it doesn't it's not going to matter all that much. It's really not. I mean, it's going to it could make a fractional difference, you know, point maybe two in a in the in a in the right circumstance. Oh, it's 25 basis points. It's a quarter of one percent. And as we're going to do it, we're down into dirt cheap for 25 basis points.

SPEAKER_04 25:42

People think it's higher, it's yeah, okay, a few more pennies.

SPEAKER_03 25:46

Yeah, and what you get is you get a tilt to value. You get a tilt to value. And probably smaller, small. Small, oh, much smaller, small. Um AV UV actually kind of tilts down into they're getting they're getting right in the uh realm of micros. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:07

To two very different funds. So if you just want to hold an index, then SCHA is fine. SCHA is fine. If you want to hire a Vontist to, again, apply academic work that they believe makes you more money over time, do it that way. And by the way. Yeah, which I think has made a difference. Uh by the way, if it's 70% stock, I would take S C H S S C H F S W P P X and A V U V and divide each uh the 70% by a third each. Make it simple.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

I knew I knew Ring Gold. Okay, I've been through Ring Gold several times. Ring gold ring gold is right outside, it's a suburb of Chattanooga. It's really close to Chickamauga, which is right there. It's right next to the Chickamauga battlefield, which is where my uh great grandfather was captured.

SPEAKER_04 27:01

The book captures it well very nicely. So um which by the way, the holidays are coming up, so if you have a historian in the family, time to get him the book.

SPEAKER_03 27:10

The Line Uncrossed. Great book. Available at Better Booksellers Ever.

SPEAKER_04 27:14

Double up his $1.69 for next month. No, no, that was my music.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

That wasn't from my music. I'm actually the book. I I was shocked.

unknown 27:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 27:24

No, here, let me let me look at the latest Amazon ranking. I was really shocked. Uh let me pull up uh Well, while you're doing that, I'm gonna ask the next question. Okay, go for now.

SPEAKER_04 27:34

Because it comes from Irvine, California, cities.

What a PCRA Account Really Means

SPEAKER_04 27:36

I know where that is, too. I'm very familiar with. Candace writes us, hi Don and Tom. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on a PCRA account. I a Schwab 401k with my previous employer want to move the funds to an IRA after I left the firm. Instead, I've moved the funds to a Schwab PCRA account because Schwab said a PCRA is still a retirement account, so there's no penalty. By the way, there's no penalty in moving it to an IRA either. I just never heard about the specific account. Did I make a mistake? Should I move the money to a traditional IRA instead? I'm invested in VT, VTI, and V O O to small amount left in my Schwab 401k. Thank you for all you do for this community. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 28:14

You're going to answer the other question first.

SPEAKER_03 28:16

A PCRA first. No, let's do the PCA. PCRA is really not a thing.

SPEAKER_04 28:22

Well, we we have some people that hire us using a PCRA.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

Yeah, it's a it's a brokerage.

SPEAKER_04 28:27

It's just another way to get more funds than you have available in the 401k.

SPEAKER_03 28:30

It's a brokerage account inside a 401k. So it's not like an IRA. It's just a way to get more choices inside an IRA.

SPEAKER_04 28:39

That's right. No, inside a 401k.

SPEAKER_03 28:40

I mean 401k. That's what I mean. I am just misspeaking all over the place. Here's the thing. It offers. As you are farting. No, I mean not really farting.

SPEAKER_04 28:48

My first fart. Here's the thing that it does offer. It it it you still have the protections of a 401k like an ERISA, like ERISA protections that you do not have in an IRA. So that's one difference right there. And if you're trying to do backdoor. If you're trying to do backdoor uh Roth, if you have money in an IRA, it's kind of messes things up because you have to move a certain amount of that IRA to the Roth and pay tax on it. And if your money's still left behind in the PCRA, you don't have to do that. So it does have a couple of advantages, but the biggest advantage, again, is if you're in a 401k where the options are limited and you want additional ones, if they have the PCRA available with your 401k, and there's a lot of words, you can use other funds that uh that allow you to do that that are not in that plan. So those are the advantages and disadvantages. But it's it either way, you're gonna be fine.

SPEAKER_03 29:39

Okay, there you go. Now I I did look at I'm shocked at actually how high it ranks. Um Amazon ranks you in the Kindle store. Yes. And um there are like three million books in the Kindle store, something like that. And just to put it in perspective, Jeff Sharra's um Gods and Generals. Which is a great one to compare yours to. It ranks six uh sixty-six.

SPEAKER_04 30:04

Of course, it did come out 35, 40 years ago.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

Yeah, many years ago. So it ranks 66,000 in the Kindle store. Mine, the line on crossed, is 122. Wow. And I like I looked up Harry Dent, you know, who's a I think we talked about that recently. I looked up Harry Dent's book, and he was like uh one point, let's see, the latest one. Uh I I don't want to I don't want to Don't give the title because people will buy it. No, no, no, no, no. He ranks number one million.

SPEAKER_04 30:35

Which is about where he should be, actually.

SPEAKER_05 30:37

About where he should be. I have another potato chip there, Harry.

SPEAKER_04 30:40

So yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:41

I don't like it.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

You know where I want to compare myself to? Oh, please let me beat him. Let me beat him. Jim Kramer? No, not Jim Kramer. I want to check. I want to check.

SPEAKER_05 30:50

I'm not gonna tell you until I if I beat him, I'll mention Then you're gonna do it, otherwise we're just going off the air and that's it. Oh, yeah, no. Never mind. Okay. It was Robert Kiyosaki.

SPEAKER_03 30:59

He's still selling like hot games.

SPEAKER_04 31:01

He's crazy. I mean, people are still and when you ask young people like which of the five books to read, it's always on the list. And I go, why? Why? Why do you want to read his book? It's junk. Anyway.

SPEAKER_03 31:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:11

Apparently

Questions, Reviews, and Advisor Help

SPEAKER_04 31:12

it's entertaining junk.

SPEAKER_03 31:13

So All right. If you have questions, please send them to us at talkingrealmoney.com. It is really easy. You just hit the ask a question button if you want to type it and send it to Tom that way. If you would like to speak it and then get it on the Friday QA podcast, which is all spoken questions, then click on that mic in the lower right-hand corner. Also, please follow us on your favorite podcast service. If you love us, review us. If you don't, don't. Um and if you would like to have a little bit of time with a real live advisor, a fiduciary advisor, we provide that through our firm Apello Wealth. You just go to talkingrealmoney.com and you click the button meet an advisor, and you'll meet with somebody like Tom.

SPEAKER_04 31:54

It's more than that, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 31:55

Who will what yes, of course?

SPEAKER_04 31:57

I mean, the thing that you really get that most people find of great value. In addition, by the way, we spent an hour with uh a delightful person yesterday who's not going to be a client. And at the end, he said, It wasn't a sales pitch. I said, wait till I go off. There's two hours of flashing lights, your computer will take it over. Um, no, he had a good laugh. But the thing is, what it is bigger than that, which I know he had some specific questions which we answered, which I think helped. We review your portfolio. We it's a very sophisticated piece of software that tells you really where you are in terms of risk, diversification, cost. It it's a wonderful program. And you get that report for nothing. It's a pretty good deal. So Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 32:37

I just looked up Shelby Foote's Shiloh.

SPEAKER_04 32:39

Oh, which is a nice book.

SPEAKER_05 32:41

That's a great book.

unknown 32:42

Great book.

SPEAKER_03 32:42

He's 117,000. I'm right there neck and neck with Shelby Foot. He's been dead for a decade. I don't care. Famous book.

SPEAKER_04 32:52

Well, he's a great writer, was a great writer. I believe he's passed away.

SPEAKER_03 32:55

I think he has. I loved his work. And I loved him on the PBS special.

SPEAKER_04 32:58

He had that wonderful manner to him that really I thought fit very well.

SPEAKER_03 33:03

I love Shelby Foote. I love the way he talks.

SPEAKER_04 33:05

Yeah, he's really good. So anyway. All right, there you go.

SPEAKER_03 33:07

Thanks for being a part of the program. I know we get off on tangents. It's what we do. But the other thing we do is, well, we join you like five days a week. Talking real money.

Important Financial Disclosures

SPEAKER_00 33:22

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