April 18th, 2026 - The Market Loves A Blockade

The Van We Financial Hour dives into a whirlwind week in the financial markets, spotlighting impressive stock gains and strategic political moves affecting global oil trade. Steve and Adam Van Wie unravel the complexities of tax planning, urging listeners to optimize withholding and embrace smart savings strategies. Engaging callers share their experiences, contributing to a lively exploration of personal finance tips and the looming challenge of healthcare costs in retirement.

Transcript

Steven H Van Wie 0:00

It's Saturday morning, it's 10 o'. Clock. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Adam Van Wie 0:05

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven H Van Wie 0:06

And Joey was announced last week to us that he would be out of town family this week. So he will be back next week and we'll find out if he had a good time. So bear with us. See? What a week, huh? Anyway, for all the regulars, welcome back. As I do love to say, you keep listening, we'll keep talking, and if you're new to the show, you found out about it by accident or stumbled on it or got told about it or whatever, try to stick around for the whole hour will virtually guarantee that you'll learn a little something anyway. And there's a lot to learn right now, I would say. It's been one of the more interesting time periods of my rather lengthy life. And a lot of it translates into things that are very germane to the topic of money. So when it deals with money, everybody has a stake in it. So that's why we keep doing this and we try to bring you up to date on what's really happening. You've seen some changes that were so quickly encountered. I guess Sesame street would say that this season in the market is brought to you by the letter V and V as in V shaped recovery. And I'm sure Adam will be discussing this in a moment when he gets into the market rep. Because it, it's not a, it's not a historically common practice what's going on right now. I think I'll leave it at that. While I say take it away.

Adam Van Wie 1:37

Yeah. If you thought last week was a little crazy based on how good it was versus the news that was coming out, I think this week just looked at last week and said, hold my beer. The market just soared this week. I guess the US inched closer to a deal with Iran. The week began with the announcement that Iran would be, would not be blockading the Strait of Hormuz, but rather the US Would be blockading the Strait. And I don't think a lot of people understood what was happening, including myself, right at that moment. When that was announced, it just seemed kind of crazy. Like, why would we blockade the Straight? Well, it actually turned out, I think, to be a pretty effective move. It had the dual effect of blockading Iran from receiving any shipments of goods via the ocean and also opening up the strait to oil tankers that needed to pass through and, and go and get loaded. So it seemed pretty effective. Ship started passing through the strait and Iran also came back to the negotiating table. So call it a win all around. On Friday, Iran announced that the strait was reopen and that really sent the market tearing higher. The, the interesting thing there is, I'm not sure the news came out this morning that they said it was closed again. But how?

Steven H Van Wie 3:08

I mean, it depends who you ask.

Adam Van Wie 3:10

Yeah, that. Well, that was the Wall Street Journal alert this morning is that. But they can say it. But what are they blockading it with their navy that's at the bottom of the ocean.

Steven H Van Wie 3:19

All they have is submarines. They used to be surface ships, but now they're submarines.

Adam Van Wie 3:24

Exactly. So I don't know, it does seem like we've put them in a very difficult spot, which was the goal of all of that. And the market really, really like that. The net effect of all of that is that we had one of the best weeks in the stock market we have seen in quite a while. The dow was up 3.2%, the S&P up 4.5% and the Nasdaq up 6.8%. Both the S and P and the Nasdaq are sitting at new all time highs while the Dow is off just 2.1% from an all time high. Apparently all Iran and AI fears are gone and it's a risk on market again. The downside of a steep run up like we have seen is that the market is sitting in extreme overbought territory. And that usually means some reversion to the mean in the following trading week. What I'm saying is that don't be surprised if the market goes down on Monday. It is really elevated right now. Earnings season got underway this week and the results have been kind of under the radar due to the Iran headlines. So you really didn't hear much about it, but we saw bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase come in with strong revenue and profit numbers. Revenue was up 17% and profit up 12% from a year ago. Across those banks, that is some pretty stellar numbers. A 12% profit increase is nothing short of really, really good results. And if we see that across more industries than just banking and you're going to see this market continue to go higher, a lot of that, a lot of those results were driven by deal making fees, which makes sense because this year is supposed to be the year of the IPO and we are going to see a bunch more IPOs. The one you're hearing the most about is probably Space X and there's going to be more IPOs this year than we've seen in any year in quite some time.

Steven H Van Wie 5:25

So initial public offering for those of you who don't know. Yeah. Companies are going from private to public, publicly traded, which is good because so many companies get bought out, which takes them from publicly traded to. We can't get them because they're private. This is a good trend, people.

Adam Van Wie 5:43

Yeah. In fact that's been a kind of a problem recently. There's an index called the Wilshire 5000. It used to have 5000 stocks in it. Now there isn't even 5000 stocks to put into that index. So. So the Wilshire 5000 has a lot less stocks than it should. And the only way to fix that is buy more IPOs, which we're gonna work on this year, which is good news. So additionally, going into this earnings season, analysts have been cutting earnings forecasts. That sounds like a bad thing, but it is not. What happens when analysts cut more forecasts than they raise going into an earnings season. It lowers the bar for having a good season and tends to produce more beats on earnings and revenue and therefore the market generally reacts more positively. So it sounds like a bad thing, but historically that has not been the case. It's been a good thing for. For the stock market.

Steven H Van Wie 6:40

Under promise and over deliver.

Adam Van Wie 6:42

Exactly. Economic data was quite positive this week with jobless claims, ADP hiring estimates and heavy truck orders all posting solid numbers. And the trend lines are all looking quite strong. The weekly jobless claims came in at 207,000. Once again disappointing the mainstream media who are openly rooting for a recession. In addition to their monthly job report, ADP does a weekly estimated report. And the four week average sits at just under 40,000 jobs per week added to payrolls, which is equivalent to about 160,000

Adam Van Wie 7:20

on a monthly report. So that is encouraging news going into a season where we really weren't sure how jobs were going to trend. But it does seem like there's some momentum there.

Steven H Van Wie 7:32

Yeah, there's a. An ongoing thing where the federal government is actually shrinking. So you have to overcome that just to get into positive territory. But that's really good news. Any dollars we can put into the private sector. Absolutely wonderful.

Adam Van Wie 7:44

It is. The heavy truck order number in February came in around 47,000. That without some context, that doesn't mean much. But just note that it is an increase of over 150% from a year ago. So the truck business is booming. Consumer confidence remains weaker than expected. Expected. But most of that can be traced back to politics and the mainstream media. So that's very clear in all of the soft data around consumers that politics is driving answers.

Steven H Van Wie 8:20

You know that truckload data that the reason people are buying trucks is.

Adam Van Wie 8:26

Well, that, that's actually orders for trucks.

Steven H Van Wie 8:28

Yeah, for trucks. But it's because of, yet see the, the truckloads available list has expanded by 80% this year. 

Adam Van Wie 8:37

Wow.

Steven H Van Wie 8:38

So you can't find the truck or the, the legal driver of one. So they're buying them and training people. And that's a good thing because these people make really solid jobs. 

Adam Van Wie 8:50

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 8:51

Really good. I'm going to take a short break. Be right back. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour.

Steven H Van Wie 8:56

Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Adam Van Wie 8:59

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven H Van Wie 9:00

And we do as usual have a trivia question brought to you by Paul Lloyd at First Coast Alarm. You can call Paul at 904-636-7888. But first you can call them this way our lines are open. 904-222-8255. And the question today is kind of an offbeat one, I think, but it's very interesting for people who are not already of a certain age, like me, they are already, I guess I should say a 55 year old couple today project forward to retirement at 65. Now, from that moment on, what percentage of their lifetime Social Security earnings will they need to cover lifetime medical expenses? It's some whole number percent. That's all you get to know right now. All right. I wanted to wrap up another thing. We sort of cruised through April 15 this year and it's hard to talk about because nobody likes it. But I want to remind everybody that just because April 15th has come and gone and you may have filed, it's not over. For tax planning for the year, you need to look at the return that you filed. You should have at least an electronic copy of it and go through it and try to understand its components and what they really mean. You may be missing some things. And I say that because just on this round of filings, 53 million filers took advantage of at least one of Trump's new tax cuts. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime. And or no tax on Social Security, which is really just the senior extra $6,000 deduction. 53 million people did that and it wasn't even on the forms I think

Adam Van Wie 11:04

I read that was one in four people filed.

Steven H Van Wie 11:07

Yeah. Yeah. So if you, if you look and you have, say if you're 65, that's one thing. If you have anything like reported tips, if you have anything like reported overtime. And the problem with this is some of the paychecks coming out might just have picked those up and you might have missed out on some of them for last year. Fear not, it is not too late. You can file an amended return 1040 x and reclaim the deduction that you didn't take if you were legitimately able to take it. And it'll cost you a little bit of money, of course, but you weigh that against what you might be getting back. And remember, tax refunds in Florida are not taxable income. They're all paid after tax and they all come back after tax. Now if you have a state income tax where you live and that has part to do with it, then you might get a taxable refund, but not in the free state of Florida. So look, look at it and see how it went and see if you did things like maxing out the possibilities for your retirement accounts. Look for could I do or could I have done a Roth? Could I have done more in my 401k? Could I have done a tradition IRA and made it deductible? Then of course you got to take a look and make darn sure that if you're of required minimum distribution age or will be. So a lot of people will cross over into that age group. This year

Steven H Van Wie 12:40

we got about 10,000 people a day still turning 65. So it'll be under that turn every day into, into RMD, ages 73. But if you missed any of that or if you're about to hit any of that, start planning. Now. The biggest single thing you can do is take a look at your refund. If you got a big refund, I'm sure you're deliriously happy. But it tells you that you're doing something wrong. The biggest thing that you're doing wrong is giving Uncle Sam a free loan.

Adam Van Wie 13:13

Well, I have some more data around that. Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 13:15

Good. Well, let's get it.

Adam Van Wie 13:18

I know as of April the average federal tax refund is about $3,500 this year. That marks an 11% increase over last year with about 73% of filers getting a refund. So that sounds like good news, right? Well, yeah, it's good news if you're getting that refund, I guess, and you didn't know that you were going to get it. But what you've really done is give the government a tax or an interest free loan for a year. Wonder what the size of that loan looks like. Well, I did a little back of the envelope math. If about 200 million people file taxes, it's a little higher than that, but let's just call it that for ease of calculations. And 73% of those get $3,500 refunds. That means that the government got an interest free free loan to the tune of $511 trillion this year. That's a lot of money to give someone without collecting any interest on it. The interest payments on that would be pretty substantial. So what you want to do going into this year is make sure that you're claiming the right amount of deductions on your. When you go and you take a job and you fill out your wife, your W4, make sure that you, you up those deductions so that you get more of that money every month in your paycheck rather than getting it withheld to the government if you're not going to owe it. You really don't want to give the government that much of an interest free loan for a year. It just doesn't make sense. You could probably use that money monthly rather than in a big tax refund in April or May for the last

Steven H Van Wie 15:04

year and a half or so. You've heard us talk about the high yield savings accounts. Back about three, four or five years ago, the interest you could earn on your free money was about 0.1%.

Steven H Van Wie 15:17

Nobody was paying anything. Now there are all kinds of these high yield savings accounts where you can put money at three plus. And what happens with those? And we've said this many times on air, we what happens there is you turn it, you move it from the one that pays hardly anything over to the high yield, you will earn more interest every month than you earned for the whole year before you made the change. So if you were going along getting your two $3,000 refund from Uncle Sam and you said, well, why would I bother? I can't earn anything on the money anyway. And there was truth in that. Absolutely there was. But nowadays it's not. So you could take that money every month and stick it into your high yield account and let it start compounding at a very civilized rate. The other thing you can do, if you're looking at that big refund, is you can, you can have that money, the refund money directed to your IRA where you don't have to see it, but it's going to be there. That means you can do it in a Roth or a traditional. If you, if you do the traditional, you will get that tax deduction this year. So don't move along and Say, well, that's my vacation money. I'd rather have my vacation money in a high yield account, compounding monthly, the interest compounds daily, actually. So think smart. Earning more money is easy if all you gotta do is open up an account. So just a few words of caution. The, the bottom line on this thing is it is not a good time to put tax planning on the shelf and dig it out 50 weeks later and look at it and say, I forgot to do anything. That's just dumb. Leaving money on the table is not an option in my book.

Adam Van Wie 17:07

Yeah. And if you want to fully fund an ira, if that is a goal that you have, if you take that $3,500 tax refund and you put it into an IRA, you've basically covered about half of your IRA. The way that you can save for the other half. It's $10 a day. If you put away $10 a day, you will have the other 3,500 to contribute to your IRA. And when you combine those two, you are really close to making your, your maximum contribution. Really simple tricks that you can use just to, to figure out a way to do this. But it's 10 bucks a day. That's it.

Steven H Van Wie 17:42

Yeah. And if you're young, by young I mean anything, I guess, younger than Adam especially, you can start that IRA and get it going. The money you put in today is the money you're going to live on when you're 65 and up. And don't forget that compounding. We say this in our day jobs all the time. Compounding is

Steven H Van Wie 18:08

boring for about 20 or 25 years, at which time the curve tilts upward and it starts to get more and more vertical. And after a while, compounding becomes exciting. I wish you all could be treated to some of the people we have been working with over the years in our practice, where they started with little or nothing, many of them deeply in debt. And look at what they have in their account balances now at the age they are, which is nowhere near retirement, it is an absolute pleasure to watch somebody turn from that unknowing, indebted kind of just float along year to year person to someone who's dedicated. And I'll tell you where you can see it, and Adam will back this up. When people get to a certain amount of money in their account, their eyes get big. So somebody comes in with nothing, starts up a savings program or whatever, and then all of a sudden one day they'd look at their accounts and they've got the first magic number is a hundred Thousand. Yeah, you get that six digit in there and then it becomes obsessive and profitable, frankly, because as Adam always likes to use the analysis, if you start with a thousand dollars and make 10%, you make 10 bucks or 100 bucks. I mean, and if you start with 100,000 and make 10%, that's all of a sudden serious money.

Adam Van Wie 19:44

Yeah. And if you get to a million and you make 10%, you just made $100,000.

Steven H Van Wie 19:48

Yep. The big ones, the numbers are meaningless except in people's minds. They're not. The big steps, hit 100, then 250, then 500. The first million is where everybody wants to see it. And the first million, as we have told everyone for years, the first million is the toughest.

Adam Van Wie 20:07

It's by far the hardest.

Steven H Van Wie 20:09

When you start making money on a million dollars in the market, the rest of it is much easier. And it gets a lot easier yet if you do it in the tax free environment like your IRAs and 401ks, because then you get to keep everything. So just some things to think about. I don't want anybody saying tax day is over. Forget about it for a while. Take a deep breather. The only people get to do that for one week are your CPAs. Nobody else. Okay, I'll be right back after a short break and we'll hopefully get some phoning in. This is Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven H Van Wie 20:45

Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 20:47

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven H Van Wie 20:48

 And as I mentioned early in the show, Joey will be back with us next week. All right, we do have a caller on the line, but I did want to remind everybody that the lines are open. 904-222-8255. And the trivia question. A 55 year old couple, when they enter into Social Security claiming and retirement and so on, what percentage of their lifetime Social Security will they need to cover? Just their lifetime medical expenses. And on that.

Steven H Van Wie 21:24

Good morning, Marshall. Hit the button again. They're all better.

Adam Van Wie 21:30

No, you hung up on him. Call us back.

Steven H Van Wie 21:34

Sorry about that. Marshall, please call back. You were coming through on the phone speaker and that doesn't do the audience any good.

Adam Van Wie 21:41

There he is.

Steven H Van Wie 21:42

All right, he's coming. Yeah, but.

Adam Van Wie 21:43

Just give it a minute. Yeah, I don't know why this thing's acting like that. Hey, there he is.

Marshall 21:49

Hello?

Steven H Van Wie 21:51

Hi.

Marshall 21:52

Hey, there he is. Okay, so I'm, I'm listening very intently to your conversation about over withholding.

Marshall 22:01

And so I'm trying to logic my way through this. Social Security and The numbers of how that would affect. And probably some other people are thinking this too. So that's why I decided to pick up the phone and call. If I'm sitting here and thinking, today we have X amount of dollars we are presently withholding from our Social Security.

Adam Van Wie 22:16

Okay, what's.

Marshall 22:26

If I just went after about half of that, my wife's Social Security would equal about about half of our refund that we got back last year. I think that might be an interesting place to start and just say, okay, we just won't withhold on her Social Security.

Adam Van Wie 22:47

A lot of. A lot of people do that.

Steven H Van Wie 22:49

Yeah, we don't. We don't use any. Sarah and I never have used it for our withholding because we have RMDs instead.

Adam Van Wie 22:57

Yeah, we have a lot of clients that manage it that way. But yeah, that 3500 refund, that's almost 300amonth that you could, you could put into your. Your monthly cash flow. So. So, yeah, that's definitely something to take a look at. And granted, this year was tough to estimate because there are a lot of changes to the tax code. And so people that didn't want to get caught owing money. I can understand where you would err on the side of over withholding this year. That with the senior deduction and, and things like that, it would have been easy to do to over withhold. But I was just suggesting maybe this year is a good year to try and correct that and bring that 3,500 down a bit.

Steven H Van Wie 23:40

Adam. Adam.

Marshall 23:41

Oh, yeah. And with. With no longer active working income coming in. I'm sitting there thinking, oh, okay, so we'll just take that and slide that over into our escrow account for the big stuff and let's see how that works out for next year.

Adam Van Wie 23:47

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 23:47

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 23:59

For those people who do not already have an online Social Security account, get one. And you'll need a login id, the new government way of doing things. But then right online in your account, you can actually change the withholding without having to wait on the phone for anybody.

Adam Van Wie 24:16

Yep.

Marshall 24:17

Oh, yeah, that online account. And they. Let me tell you, that's pretty doggone secure. When you've got that. What is it? I.

Steven H Van Wie 24:19

Yep.

Marshall 24:30

ID me. Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 24:31

Or login.gov.

Marshall 24:33

that's pretty tight. Gentlemen.

Steven H Van Wie 24:34

It is.

Adam Van Wie 24:35

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 24:37

Marshall, did you want to take a shot at the trivia?

Marshall 24:39

Oh, yeah, yeah. How about 35%?

Steven H Van Wie 24:42

Too low.

Marshall 24:44

But okay.

Steven H Van Wie 24:44

But to start. And we appreciate it. Thank you. Later.

Marshall 24:47

Thank you.

Adam Van Wie 24:49

Yeah. And that is definitely something that we help our clients out with is tax planning. We are not tax preparers and we don't give tax advice. But tax planning, on the other hand, is something that we're, we're pretty good at and we have some excellent software that backs us up on that. So. And when it comes to planning things like how much should I withhold? That is, that is a service that we, that we offer to our clients. And it is probably one of the biggest areas that we can make a real difference in our clients lives.

Steven H Van Wie 25:23

Yeah, I've got some things here on estate planning too. And again, we're not estate planners, not attorneys, and we can't draft documents. But we, we're the, the centerpiece of your planning team, as we like to say, work with any of your tax preparers or attorneys at any time. And it's part of the service. Nobody pays extra for that. And we have an awful lot of people who've done it very successfully. In fact, Adam, Adam had the opportunity just yesterday, meeting with a client to discuss what happens when young people improve their habits. And he just shot me out some numbers and would you go over them? I think people need to hear this.

Adam Van Wie 26:05

Yeah. So we looked at it a couple different ways. This is a young lady who is about to graduate from college and get her first job. And so her, her dad brought her in and we sat down and just discussed like, we started with, like, here's what good habits look like and here's how you, you know, you don't have to not ever buy Starbucks coffee. That's ridiculous. But the power of living within, well, really below your means is the key to long term investing success. Just because the models say you can buy a $60,000 car does not mean you should buy a $60,000 car. It actually means you should probably buy a $30,000 used car and you use that other 30,000 or whatever that translates into indifference in payment. So that could easily be, I don't know, four or five hundred dollars a month that you can then use to save. So living below your means is really the key. Just because you can afford an $800,000 house doesn't mean you should buy an $800,000 house. Buy a $500,000 house and invest the difference that, that, that's really the key. So we started there and then we got into saving. And what the, what the power of being 22 years old and having your whole life ahead of you really is. It's time. Time is on your side. So if you start with $0 and you max out your 401k and put it in the S&P 500 and it did 10% like it has averaged over a long period of time. If you do that for 30 years, you're going to have $4 million in your, in your account. If you just did the IRA maximum of $7,500, you're still going to have $1.2 million in your account. And this young lady is fortunate enough to have $35,000 already saved. And she, if she just let that grow just on its own in the s and P500, in 30 years, it's worth $610,000.

Adam Van Wie 28:17

So that's just the power of the time value of money and compounding. It's really incredible. If more 22 year olds realize this, then I think it would change a lot of habits. And I think that's the point of the Trump accounts is to teach kids the power of compounding over a long period of time.

Steven H Van Wie 28:39

I tell young kids whenever they come into the office, say the goal for you for the rest of your life should be very simple. When you get there, have more money than anybody you know and here. yeah, you can do it.

Adam Van Wie 28:52

And we give them a roadmap and Yeah, this is how you do it. And you're going to be the richest person of all your friends if you do the things that we've laid out today.

Steven H Van Wie 29:02

Yeah. It doesn't mean you got to starve yourself along the way or something like that. It's a regimen that you have to get in. And it brings me right to the topic right now. I haven't had a final count on how many Trump accounts have been open so far, but it's in. Well, it was 2 million a while back and I think it's gone up substantially. The Trump account starts if you're born, if you're a baby born in this four year period of this administration, you get a bump start, jump start from the government of $1,000. And it has to be invested in the US equity market, which is good because the tendency for young people is to be too conservative. Look for money markets and things like that. You want to be in the broad market. The S&P 500 fund, which is very inexpensive to own and it has performed, as Adam said, you can round it off to about 10% a year over a huge period of time. But the secondary key to the Trump account is that other people can put money into it, which you can't do with a Roth ira because if you don't have any earned income. And you won't when you're an infant or a one year old or a five year old. People can put money into it anyway. So then you start fiddling with these numbers where the account gets bigger, not by growth, but not just by growth, but it gets bigger because you're adding money to it. And by the time you're 18, you're going to be very well off. But if you wait until you're a lot older than that, you're going to be just absolutely wealthy. I still think the best strategy on these things is if you have an infant, and it doesn't have to be an infant now, you can open it for your kid, but you only get the 3,000 if the child is born in these four years. But it doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. Anyway, if you open up an account like that and it turns into a traditional Iraq on your 18th birthday, right now it's an untouchable account, but it becomes a traditional ira, meaning if you let that grow and take money out, that money will all be taxable. But how many 18 year olds have enough income that they couldn't do a Roth conversion because the penalties would be too high on the taxes? I'm virtually zero, is the answer to that, I believe. So if you've got one of these and you get a kid into it, keep in mind that when that kid turns 18, it is an absolutely wonderful time to do a Roth conversion. That thing will grow for years and years and years. And when that money comes out, it will be tax free for your child. It's one of the best things that I could think of to do for an infant. If you're trying to figure out how to contribute to a kid, or if you're just looking at Christmas presents or whatever it is that you're interested in, it is an absolute windfall.

Adam Van Wie 29:06

It really doesn't.

Steven H Van Wie 31:59

Bob, we have about 30 seconds left, so I'm going to ask you to hold over if it's okay with you, and we'll catch you right after the break is done. I wanted to also quickly mention in the next few seconds, this bull market is now over a thousand days. That's the 10th time that that has happened in history. And it has to, if you want it to be the longest one in history. That won't happen until 2035. That's a long time. All right, we'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven H Van Wie 32:34

Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Adam Van Wie 32:36

And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Steven H Van Wie 32:37

And we are going to get right to the line for Bob. But I had an absolutely useless piece of information I wanted to report to you. This is April 18th. Back on this day in 1930, the BBC, the British Broadcasting, reported, quote, there is no news. And they proceeded to play 15 minutes of piano music. Told you it was useless.

Adam Van Wie 33:03

That is really useless. Thanks for that.

Steven H Van Wie 33:05

All right, we'll go to Bob. Good morning, Bob.

Adam Van Wie 33:12

It's. Every time you push the button, it's doing that. It's so weird.

Speaker 3 33:15

That is. That is interesting information.

Adam Van Wie 33:18

The. Bob, we're having technical difficulties, so if you can hear us, just bear with us for a minute. It's probably. You're probably going to get hung up on and just call back.

Steven H Van Wie 33:28

I'm going to try it. It probably will do that. So I got to figure this phone out. But call back and I'll have. I'll have a workaround. He's sitting right in the other room. Roger can put you right through.

Adam Van Wie 33:31

Yeah, it did.

Adam Van Wie 33:42

We'll get it. We'll get it up and running. Eventually. Something is going on with the phone for sure.

Steven H Van Wie 33:47

I might have to go to the electronic version of that, which I've always issued, but we'll do it. Let's see. Well,

Steven H Van Wie 33:58

I haven't seen them call back. It. I have. I have something here that's kind of important to everybody. Everybody uses PDF files in their life. If you got a computer, you see a PDF file over and over and over. This past week, there was an emergency patch put out by Adobe. They're the people who own Acrobat Reader, and they say, fix it right now. Takes two minutes. I did it, and two of my machines were up to date and two others were not, so I had to install them manually. So open Acrobat Reader or Adobe Reader, might be called either one. On your machine, click Help in the top menu, select Check for Updates. When that comes back, it will tell you if you have the update, if you need the update, and if you do, it takes a few minutes because all Adobe things do, but do it and do it.

Adam Van Wie 34:52

Hold on, hold on. Oh, yeah, let's let. Roger, can you just patch them through? That'd be great.

Steven H Van Wie 34:57

Okay, Bob.

Bob 35:00

Hello.

Adam Van Wie 35:01

There he is. All right.

Steven H Van Wie 35:02

Yeah, we're gonna figure out what the technicality is here. But meanwhile, can you hear me? Yeah, we can. Can you hear us? Okay, if you can't hear me, raise your hand.

Adam Van Wie 35:06

Yeah, we can.

Bob 35:12

I'm raising my hand.

Steven H Van Wie 35:15

What's on your mind?

Bob 35:17

Hey, I wanted to take a stab at the trivia and make a comment. I'm gonna say 42% too low. Oh my gosh.

Steven H Van Wie 35:27

It's scary.

Bob 35:29

Yeah, well, that's scary. That's, that's really scary. That's scarier than them playing piano stuff on the BBC.

Steven H Van Wie 35:36

It is. And it's not useless information in this case.

Bob 35:40

Hey, and you guys, you know, I appreciate what you're saying because I've had my couple of my children in there to meet with you and you're very good at that. And you know, when we were shopping years ago for financial advisors, we were, we were told by one firm that we would never make it. And when I'm challenged, it's on, you know, so as you know our situation, you know, we were one of these people that made the changes in order to make things happen. So. And that council is, every 21 or 22 year old should hear that. It's very great on your part that you do that and have people in that really don't have a lot of money and teach them how to, how to get to the point where they should be in their lives. So anyhow, I just want to make

Steven H Van Wie 36:27

kids, your kids are very well grounded, obviously extremely intelligent and the most important thing, they're interested in this stuff.

Adam Van Wie 36:35

Yeah.

Bob 36:36

Yes.

Adam Van Wie 36:37

That's important.

Bob 36:37

Yeah, this is true.

Steven H Van Wie 36:38

Yeah.

Bob 36:39

I'll let you guys go. You guys have a great day.

Steven H Van Wie 36:41

All right, thanks. I have to believe that having this financial education put back in our high schools is going to help.

Adam Van Wie 36:47

We have another call.

Steven H Van Wie 36:51

Marshall. Marshall, Roger will get you. Good morning.

Larry 36:54

Hey, good morning. My question really is the 40 trillion in debt, the move towards stable coins and maybe cryptos or Fed. Now, what effect is all that going to have? And is that going to happen within the next couple years or five years? The way Jamie Dimon talked, it seems like it's going to happen next week, but I don't know. What do you know?

Adam Van Wie 37:17

That's a good, good question. Yeah, the 40 trillion in debt, that's definitely going to have an effect. When will it have an effect? It already does have an effect. We're spending a very large portion of our annual budget just servicing that debt. And it's an increasing amount every year. And it got worse under the higher interest rates. So we had to refinance some of that debt at 4 and 5, an even higher percentage. That's going to hurt for a while, but as interest rates come down, kind of gives us a little bit more breathing room. I don't think it's an immediate problem, but it's a problem that we should address immediately, if that makes sense.

Larry 37:56

They've been down the road for years.

Adam Van Wie 37:58

Yeah. And it keeps getting worse every year. So I don't know how we address that without addressing spending.

Larry 38:05

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 38:06

And I just don't get the feeling that any politicians on either side of the aisle have a real vested interest in doing that. So I don't know how that one's going to play out. That's a tough one.

Larry 38:18

I don't think any of us do. That's why I'm just so curious and I mean, I'm a little, I'm not so worried, but I'm a little worried that, yeah, same, you know, the effect on retirement and spending, you know, because I sometimes think they don't realize that it's an afforded. We're going through an affordability crisis right now. And you know, it's not just gas prices. I mean, just go to the grocery store, you see it.

Adam Van Wie 38:40

Yeah, for sure.

Larry 38:42

So that's all. I'm just worried about that.

Steven H Van Wie 38:45

I remember, I remember way back in the 80s when Ronald Reagan had just gotten into office and he was running on and got elected on for, among other things, decreasing our taxes. And as he got going with this, the Congress that he had, which was not on his side. Exactly. And he was at a press conference one day and I remember somebody asking him, why aren't more people interested in cutting taxes? And his response was something like, well, it's everyone's second priority. For instance, this guy has highest priority is defense, second is taxes. This one the highest priority is whatever it was. And the second one was. So he had to write, he had to round up all these second place people and put them all together into a coalition that would pass this. And he did. Much to his credit, he did. But what they did to him was they made him not have it effective for two years. So if you look at the big inflation curve that he inherited from the prior administration, it didn't really start to take effect for a couple years because the tax rates had not been cut during that time. Everybody knew that it was passed, but nobody could see them because it didn't take place. But once they got it going, things rectified themselves very, very quickly. And I don't know exactly how to tackle that same kind of problem today. But it's got to be done. There's just no question about it. It's got to be done.

Larry 40:24

So thank you for trying to answer that. Appreciate it.

Steven H Van Wie 40:28

All right, Brent, thanks for the call. Did you want to take a shot at the trivia, by the way?

Larry 40:35

Yes, sir. That's okay.

Steven H Van Wie 40:39

Did you remember the question?

Larry 40:42

I do not.

Steven H Van Wie 40:44

What? What percentage for a 55 year old couple when they turn retirement age and beyond, what percentage of their whole Social Security benefits at that time will they need just to pay their entire medical expenses during that time? And medical.

Larry 40:59

Oh, it's got to be at least 70%.

Steven H Van Wie 41:01

Oh, now you're closing in. You're too low though. Amazing, isn't it?

Larry 41:07

Well, because most of, most of the money that, you know, people save up for their whole lives ends up going to medical expenses at the end.

Steven H Van Wie 41:15

Yeah, you understand the problem exactly correctly.

Larry 41:21

I'm just always amazed that the hospital and the medical centers keep building more and more facilities. How do they pay for that?

Steven H Van Wie 41:28

Well, I have a feeling that if you look at your bills, you'll find out that you're paying for yourself and at least two other people. That's what happens. By the way, you can run your medical bills, hospital bills through AI now and almost everybody who does it finds some over billing and duplicates and that kind of thing. So if you have a big one, do it.

Steven H Van Wie 41:51

You had one.

Steven H Van Wie 41:56

I think we lost him.

Adam Van Wie 41:57

Yeah, I think so.

Steven H Van Wie 41:59

Anyway, thanks for the call. It looks like he's maybe coming back in.

Steven H Van Wie 42:05

I'll give you the answer. If this is not somebody who wants an independent guest, we have just enough time that we could have one more caller. And don't forget, please don't forget that Adobe Reader thing. It's a really serious one. Okay, Mark is on the line. Roger will put him on. Okay.  

Mark 42:24

Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, love the show.

Mark 42:27

Great stuff. Yeah, I'll just take a wild guess. I'll just say a hundred percent.

Steven H Van Wie 42:33

Thanks so much. You're too low. But you know what? You know what? I'm gonna give it to you because you got the point. And the point is very simple to me. If you're thinking of retiring on Social Security and you're 55 or up, of course you can't. But no matter what age you are, you got to start saving some money on your own or you are going to wind up in the pauper's field because of your medical bills, that's the truth. All right, I'm going to have Roger put you on hold and then he'll get your address and we'll send you a little something from Paul Lloyd and First Coast Alarm. We appreciate the call. It's 104, by the way. That's. That's within 5%. So you're good.

Adam Van Wie 42:37

Excellent guess.

Mark43:19

Thank you very much, guys.

Speaker 3 43:21

Have a great week.

Steven H Van Wie 43:21

Well, thank you so much. Appreciate it. How about that, people? 104% of what your Social Security payments will be.

Adam Van Wie 43:30

I will say that a lot of that is going to come in the last two years of your life. Those tend to be the most expensive, expensive years in terms of medical care. So it's not like you're going to be paying 100 of your Social Security every year into medical, but over, over your lifetime, it is a possibility.

Steven H Van Wie 43:49

The net effect is just like that and will tell you, I hope it will tell you that we really have to become proactive in amassing wealth. Aside from Social Security or anything else, that topic could go on forever. We cannot because we've only got a few seconds left. So I want to thank everybody for calling in and being there and listening and remind you that we'll be right here next week and Joy will be back with us and we'll see what happens. Thanks for listening. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour.