hey everybody welcome back to the Financial Freedom show it has been a long time it's good to be back I'm kind of hoping things work I may have kind of forgotten how to do this I was having some technical difficulties but um hopefully you'll give me a thumbs up in the chat which of course is not working over here but oh Paul gave me the thumbs up good well it is so good to be back um so I'll tell you a bit about my my back it's not all that exciting so I'll keep it short um and uh and then we'll just Dive Right In There is one big change the way in which you ask a question has changed so it's you'll see a link uh to a Google doc below the video I also put it in the chat uh and it's just a simple form you put your first name and you could make that up if you wanted to uh your question and then as an optional thing anything else you want to tell me uh when you do that it goes to a spreadsheet all I and that's all I get I don't get your email address I'm looking at it now uh there's already a lot of questions um so that my thinking behind that is I don't have to sit and Hunt through the chat to try to find questions it'll be much faster and uh I'm no matter what I do I'm not going to get to all the questions that's just not possible but but I'll have them and maybe I'll you know answer the next live show or I'll if you know if if they seem like they're a good question for a video I'll do a video on them so we'll see how that goes you'll let me know um so with that so you know I've had this back issue for 30 years and it but it got bad in a way that it hasn't in the past um where it just it just it didn't get better and it actually got worse to the point where there was like three weeks where I was just in bed all day and I ended up I've mentioned Stuart McGill he is considered you know one of the foremost experts in back issues I think particularly lower back but maybe maybe the entire back I don't know and you'll hear the mill 3 The Mill curl up these are three exercises that he recommends for stability of the spine it's a bird dog you can Google this if you're not familiar but it's a bird dog a mill curl up like a crunch uh and uh there's a third one oh yeah side planks and U he's written the back mechanic which I don't know where my copy is it may be upstairs anyway what I ended up doing was he's he's trained a number of physical therapists in the US I think there are seven now that are Master Certified one of them happens to be right down the road this guy has his PhD from Boston University so you know he's got to be smart right and um trained under it still trains under Stuart Mcgill and um he's not cheap but I went to him I only actually only had two appointments the first one I've never been with a doctor this long three hours was the first appointment and he basically just tons of questions examined all this stuff you know then he wanted MRIs which I did I haven't had an MRI since 2008 on my back and at the end of the day the MRIs were kind of like yeah looks like you've got a the back of a of a guy that's getting close to 60 that's basically you know there wasn't some like major issue I don't need surgery um and we just started rebuilding things bit by bit and I've gotten a lot better I'm back in the gym um back to the old gym that I used to go to sort of a semi-private where they customize your workout you schedule a class you're usually in class with five to 10 people there's one to two sometimes three trainers you have your own workout you know and um and so that's what I'm doing and you know it's a lot better um I'm not near 100% I think I can make it through tonight we'll see I I have you know High Hopes and uh I'm trying to think what else it's really about it I mean I will tell you that if you have back issues and you've not spent much time thinking about training strength training you know I can't tell you how many hours I've spent reading books watching videos um when they put together a workout program I meant to bring my phone down I left it upstairs anyway like my workout program I do things that at least I wouldn't think of if I hadn't been doing this for a long time you know there are exercises that uh I just wouldn't think of um particularly for your core and uh so it helps to spend some time learning this and working with people that that know this stuff one of the sort of principles by the way in terms of core strength in terms in terms of the exercises you do is that uh you keep your core uh from moving while while different things exert pressure against it that you know that want want to try to make it move right I know that sounds mysterious but think about a plank all a plank is is keeping your core solid while gravity tries to push you to the floor right uh or a a kettle bell you know a suitcase carry where you're holding one kettle bell you're not resting it against your leg and you're walking and of course the weight of the kettle bell wants to pull you whichever side you're holding it of course you've got to you engage your core to keep your core from moving you can do that with cable machines with resistant resistance bands there's all kinds of things you can do in fact all the migil 3 is is keeping your core from moving while gravity is exert for the most part is exerting forces on your back in different directions right side plank from the side bird dog top down right um and it helps build stability in the spine and around the spine I guess anyway yeah that's been my life I'm feeling much better not 100% so anyway hopefully you found the spreadsheet because I'm not going to be looking at the chat for questions or topics tonight we'll see how this goes if it doesn't work out we'll go back to the old way I guess I guess while I go to the spreadsheet let me um I'll ask a question poll do you like the spread sheet approach yes no I don't care I'll give that third option there we go um I was going to show you my Robin Hood account that has my credit card rewards balance I've put it all into Berkshire Hathaway I just added to it uh today because I sort of um uh cashed in all of our rewards that we had I hadn't done that in a while but we're it's over 40 Grand just over $40,000 I I don't know I like that number from credit card rewards seems kind of crazy I mean you know it's also from compounding my goal is to get to one share of burk Shear Hathaway A shares yeah that could take a that could take a while I think they're trading are they trading over 600 Grand right now all right now one one I guess downside to um the spreadsheet is I can't show the question on the screen at least I haven't figured that out yet there might be a way to do it we'll figure that out um but uh that's I think that's the only downside plus I like having them all I don't know all right let me see I'm going to skip around a bit but I want to start with people I have some from yesterday because I put the link in the newsletter but I'm going to actually start with folks that that are here live I will go back to the newsletter um so here's one it's about this this fund and I'll show it to you in a second C cpsm looks like they this is from uh this question by the way is from uh see I'm already having a technical issue from Eric looks like they'll do one of these ETFs every month um here we go here's another one from Paul I'm looking to replace some of my bond portfolio with some buffer ETFs we'll talk about that in a minute I had to Google it I don't know what a buffer ETF is I guess it gives you a little extra room on the sides I don't know they seem to act like fixed annuities without all the fees h and long-term commitments one is brand new cpsm all right so let's look at cpsm oops I'll pull this up on the screen if I can type so here it is it's from calamos I don't know how to pronounce that Investments I've never heard of them before I'm sure they're great and they call it a S&P 500 I don't know how well you can read that structured alt protection ET TF and the idea behind it as I understand it is that uh there's no downside risk if if if the S&P 500 loses money in a year you won't lose any money now that you will pay the fees so in you your your your fund would be down the amount of the fees but you know if if the S&P 500 is down 10% you you would be flat for that year minus fees now you say well that that's sounds great yeah it does doesn't it except that there's always a cost right now the fund itself I think has got a an expense ratio of 69 basis points I think and um I don't actually see it here but I'm pretty sure that's right yeah 69 basis points now that does not include transaction fees always remember that expense ratios do not include transaction fees if you're talking about an index fund doesn't really much matter they don't have transaction fees uh sign ific amount that's going to make a huge difference to your returns a fund like this they're probably using some sort of derivatives to do this I don't you know there could be I don't know if there's a lot of turnover that could be higher but here's the Here's the the real cost of this fund is that yeah you're not going to go below 0% in a given year but if you have a big year you're capped around right now it's around eight between eight and nine per. uh and this is the real problem with this kind of approach in in the sense it's not not unlike an indexed annuity uh but here's here's the the thing that bothers me about these kind of products including indexed annuity so so they say okay you don't have to worry you're not going to go below zero percent so you're safe there good but we're gonna have a cap what I would respect more maybe there's a technical reason why they don't do this but I can't think of what it would be but what do I know about running the ETF they would say you know what we're not going to cap it if if the S&P 500 earns 30% you get it all and of course you'd say well Rob that that's not possible they would go broke because they're they're guaranteeing that you won't go below zero percent right but just add it to the expense ratio charges eight% expense ratio or whatever it would be I don't know what do you think it would be 5% 7% that way you would know the true cost of this kind of fund right now you you really don't I mean we can look at that and say okay well the S&P 500 you know if it average is let's say 10% okay you got to pick your time period so it's costing me something every year but of course some years it's going to go up 20 or 25% it's going to cost me something but I'm not really sure how to figure that out I suppose the mathematicians Among Us particularly if they want to go back into history could maybe calculate the cost but you you get the problem here it's not obvious what the real cost is of this fund and and that's my problem with it if they just said we're going to just charge a 7% expense ratio again or whatever that number has happens to be uh 4% okay you put 100 Grand in you're paying four or five grand a year because here's the deal you're basically buying Insurance that's what you're doing insurance against the market going down you're buying insurance and you you don't really know what the premium is I mean yes you can see what the cap is and you can think about what the S&P 500 can do what it has done you know but we don't really know at the end of the day the cost at least I don't and I've got coffee with me but it is late I have had a bad back you're gonna have to go easy on me we don't know the cost and that just it just I think I would be asking if someone if I were on coffee with someone I'd be saying okay I get it you're scared of the stock market or you know you just want some protection are there other ways to achieve the same thing your stock Bond allocation maybe even what your bond portfolio looks like maybe it's got more tea bills than than I might otherwise have but maybe it gives you some more Comfort that's how I would be thinking about that I'm not a fan of these kinds of products yeah there you go that's my two cents and that's why you're here keep in mind I'm not an investment adviser I'm not a certified financial planner you say Rob what are you I'm just a guy with a YouTube channel a camera and a mic that's it and a guy who lost his his speed chess game right before the show started so I'm kind of in a bad mood all right um Steve asks did you watch Warren Buffett's annual meeting any significant takeaway so I watched parts of it uh um I wanted to go didn't go because my back maybe next year um there was one so there was you know there there are a lot of things and you can read different articles I actually included an article in um in the newsletter that sort of gave a nice summary uh but there was one thing he said about Apple stock that that that I found interesting well it was kind of related to Apple stock so they trimmed their exposure I think they sold 133% maybe it's still by far their largest uh U stockholding and he seems to be very bullish on Apple uh but he he trimmed it seemed to be partly a tax maneuver uh but but he made the comment I think it was in relation to to all of this but it may have been uh maybe not but he said we've got what 188 billion in cash by the end of this quarter it's probably going to go to 200 but what he said was kind of given the market and the economy and everything I'm okay holding that much cash uh and I I I don't think it was uh a prediction that the Market's going to crash anytime soon but I suspect what you know far be it from me to tell you what Warren Buffett's thinking but this is you know this would be my best guess companies are expensive right now particularly the kind of companies that Warren Buffett can invest in right he can't invest in a small cap it doesn't move the needle when you got 200 billion to invest you know you got to swing for the you gota got you got to go for big companies and in that market he just doesn't see a lot of Bargains and so I I imagine he's thinking a couple of things one is be patient the time will come when there are good Bargains it always does uh and two when that time comes there's usually a lot of bad things happening what the bad things are change from one financial crisis to the next could be a pandemic could be a you know some sort of problem with the mortgage industry like you know 08 uh could be a tech bubble or something totally different but when that happens now remember he's managing a lot of operating companies including insurance companies you know he needs cash and so but I found that all very interesting and one of the questions I I I I I've routinely asked myself over the last few years particularly as I sort of am moving into the stage of retirement is should I be doing should I be investing my money other than just stocks and bonds you know or you know I don't I don't even mean like Commodities necessarily although I guess I could you know maybe have additional exposure to reats or Commodities or something but is there something I should be doing differently to sort of protect for the next blowup and I just I've not come to an answer to that question that makes me comfortable enough to actually change anything I'm doing so that's but that was I found that an interesting comment by Mr Buffett okay next question from Roger uh bear with me okay can you provide or let us know where we can find some fee based contacts that could verify my data analys analysis I need and I'm willing to pay some money to have someone look over my portfolio make some tweaks if needed so yes I'm actually by the way uh so I'll show you a list um here it is so at the moment so you can see here there's different people I got to turn my ad blocker back on what kind of crazy site is that anyway I'll deal with it later um and I don't have any Financial relationship with any of these um some I know well like Rick Ferry and Mark Zoro some I don't really know at all I've met Jack at the bogleheads two years ago I know John from the bogleheads um don't consider any of these a recommendation but uh and I'll drop the link to that in the Stream oh wait yeah someone's probably already Hadad of me but I'll drop it in there I will say that I had a conversation with another firm about becoming an Advertiser sponsor and um I like them a lot and I actually think they could be the firm that I tell my wife to use should I get hit by a truck but I I I'm not ready to recommend them as a sponsor or otherwise yet um they're going to actually um I'm going to actually go through the onboarding process they're not I'm not going to become a client but I said look can you put me through the onboarding process because I'm very particular about what I show you guys and I've had plenty of services that will match you with an advisor want to advertise on this show many requests but they tend to put you with uh firms that charge a high percentage of assets under management The Firm I'm talking to doesn't actually charge anything for assets under management uh they have it's a fixed fee a flat fee and I think it's reasonable but I'm not ready to talk about them yet and they're not on that page but that page should answer should give you some folks to reach out to and see yeah hopefully one of those works good question so Lee wants to know what recommendations do you have for overcoming all the retrospective investing regrets not starting a Roth IRA sooner not investing more when the stock market was down paying high fees for too long Etc yeah that's a tough one um and every situation I guess is a little different uh uh but but you know one thing to think about and of course I don't know anything about you I don't know how old you are you know but one of the things I I think about is um believe it or not I think okay well what can I be doing now so that 10 or 20 years from now I'll look back without the regret rets right uh with my fin you know that could be with anything um I suppose uh right your health relationships um how how can you live a in a way that minim a regret minimization approach to life and um and I think about that with finances and uh so you know it's more of a prospective approach to the issue than constantly uh getting on yourself about what you you did in the past um I you know I don't sit around thinking about this anymore but for a time I was really mad at myself that I wasn't more focused on investing in high school and college and law school I didn't have you know my parents weren't really into investing we never talked about any of this sort of thing uh when I was growing up and I just spent all the money I made uh that changed when I got out of law school um I kind of changed significantly but yeah I think back on those times and I think man think about that I could be driving a Tesla or something anyway that last part made up I don't really think that but yeah I get it all right this one comes from Keith he's a subscriber to the newsletter and submitted this yesterday do you think a dividend ETF such as Schwabs SCD is worth it for somebody who won't be touching their Investments investment accounts for 30 plus years or instead focus on total Market or S&P 500 00 or some other large cap and then he asked me a second question that's more important I'll come right back to that in a second so with something like if well first of all if if I had to make an investment today and I couldn't change it for 30 years and might you know for my US Stocks the choice was say the Schwab dividend uh ETF uh or total Market let's say I would just pick the total Market I just I would just feel more comfortable with that do I think think at the end of the day there'll be a significant difference in returns there very well might not be and for all I know depending on how you know um value High dividend stocks do versus growth stocks over the next 30 Years Schwab could outperform but I think I would probably uh lean towards or I know I would lean towards total Market but if someone said no no you gotta you got to go with the Schwab fund I'd be fine with that I I wouldn't I don't think I'd lose too much sleep over that now the second question he asked was which Star Wars movie is the best and by the way that's an easy question to answer and he gets it wrong he says uh the yes there is a right answer The Empire Strikes Back no I'm sorry uh Keith that is incorrect um uh but there's a special reason it's incorrect so first of all I'm old enough that I saw the first Star Wars in the theaters 1977 I think the reason that's the best well there's two reasons one is when I saw that movie Raiders of Lost Art kind of fit into that I know they're very different movies but of course Raiders came out later but um that was like wow this is something special this is something new I have you know we haven't seen this kind of thing at least in my view uh but the other reason was it's the only movie I ever remember going to with my father to he he passed away died in a car accident two years later and I have a vivid memory to this day of that movie and you know what I remember is it in the middle of like the one of the big scenes you know you're on the edge of your seat I look over he's asleep and I laughed about that because fast forward my son and I are watching a Transformers movie Guess Who falls asleep now to be honest it is Transformers so I think you can cut me a little slack like if you said which transform forer movie is the best I would say you mean there there was more than one are they different so I got that going for me but yeah I fell asleep in at Transformers yeah he fell asleep at Star Wars but yeah that's my favorite for all those reasons okay what else do we have man okay these are good questions from Mariam ways to handle cash at Fidelity spaxx which is a a mutual fund we'll look at it in a second versus fdrxx the yield is 496 and 499 so what's the difference so there is there is some difference um let's see here I'll pull it up on the screen let me pull that one up and then I'll show it to you in terms of the yield yeah there's practically no difference it's um and maybe and maybe there's no significant difference at all um so here's spaxx it's a it's a government money fund so money market funds can invest in different kinds of short-term paper they like to call it it's debt it's a bond it's short term it's whatever uh and this is government right so uh you can see the breakdown they've got t- bills uh oh some strips in there no they don't that's zero uh floating rate secur agency floating rate Securities I'm guessing mortgage back but that's a guess could look into the perspectus some repurchase agreements so I I mean I know generally what a repurchase agreement is I don't know what this is in that context but these are all government um somehow government-backed uh bonds right short very very very short term um and uh I don't know one thing I don't know is how much of this would be free of state and local income tax obviously treasury bills are but I don't know about the rest of this I you know someone in the the chat would be smarter than I am can tell you that I mean we could look it up but I won't bother and so this one um it's very similar right slightly different percentages this one's got 33% in in treasury bills this one's got 38 um yeah I don't I don't know if their minimums are different I'm looking for minimums uh zero I can cover that this one I know is zero because I I have I think I have money in this one yeah not much difference actually I was thinking this was a different fund when I put in the ticker yeah I don't know that there's much difference if there is I'm not smart enough to figure it out so there you go I mean I have I've been out of practice so you know you got to bear with me I don't see a big difference um okay so here's a good question well they're all good questions this one comes from James hi Rob I'm looking to build my bond allocation for retirement he's going to put 20% in in bonds and wondered how to figure out what type of fixed income is best for a taxable account I was thinking of either taxable bonds B and D municipal bonds like a vteb and they would be free of federal tax a vteb they can be free of state income tax that particular one probably not or very little depends on where you live too or CDs I'm 70 live in a state with relatively low taxes okay and in the lower income tax bracket so uh yeah so one way to think about all of this so a municipal Bond one of the ways they compare a municipal Bond that's free of of some taxes like right the federal taxes could be some state income tax is to say well what's the after sort of try to calculate the after tax yield so you've got a taxable uh uh investment like a b and d so you make whatever 5% taxes take x amount of it you're left with we'll just make up numbers 3% and then uh but but what I just did there uh will vary from person to person right because if you're at the highest tax bracket and you live in California you know your 5% might come down to two well not 2% I wouldn't think but two and a half% I guess I'm just kind of making up numbers but the point is your tax rates you know High income low income are going to determine how much of that B and D you're going to lose how much of the interest you're going to lose to taxes the more you're going to lose the more attractive municipal bonds become if you're not going to lose much let's say you're in the 10% tax bracket and you're as as as um hang on as James says low low income state tax then municipal bonds may turn out not to be because you're you're you're losing too much yield and you're not getting enough tax break because of your tax situation now obviously I'm not saying that's the case with James you'd have to figure that out you know based on your specific circumstances um if you went beyond that though in a taxable account you know you might consider again you're in a low it may not matter you're you said you're you're you're a low income low relatively low taxes at your state level but you could go with just a treasury fund where um you don't pay state income tax again it it may not matter much um but the other thing I would add beyond all of that is what what the money's for if it's just your stock Bond allocation it's not for money you're going to spend soon then one question I would have is whatever you decide couldn't is it possible to put them in a tax deferred account now you may not you might not have an IRA or a 401k so maybe that's not an option but that's where I gener like to keep the the fixed income portion of my asset allocation the only thing only thing I keep in terms of cash in a taxable account is money I'm going to spend in the next say year or Andor an emergency fund I think that covers it at least my views of that question all right let's see tsp for military this is from Rick tsp for military since many military get a taxfree housing allowance and that allowance is not benefit bearing these Americans may be under saving over their career how can they adapt or save more to make up for housing not being included in the tsp I'm not exactly sure what that means not being included in the tsp you know there maybe in terms of like the matching to the tsp obviously there's a a limit to what you can put in the tsp is effectively just a 401k so there's a limit to what you can put into it suppose if people are calculating maybe the question is people are calculating how much they put in it as a percentage of their their income but their income is lower than it would otherwise be because they get a housing allowance that I don't know if that's exactly what he meant but I think you can simply calculate what you should put in the tsp and if it's going to be enough based on the expenses you expect to incur in retirement obviously if you're 25 that's going to be at best a guesstimate but you can use some simple calculators you can use something more sophisticated like new retirement and and and pretty easily figure out what you should be saved maybe I'll do a video on that let me highlight this one in a different color because maybe what I should do is a video not so much on the tsp but on how to figure out how much you should be saving for retirement that seems that seems like a that's seems like a decent topic I'm going to put the how much should you be saving for retirement that'll be a video I Like That by the way how did the poll turn out it's interesting so uh 54 I guess 53% say they like the spreadsheet 33% don't care 14% said no okay all right that's fair there is another question here from Michael inherited an IRA owner owner inherited IRA colon owner dies spouse spouse is designated beneficiary but what step selections does surviving spouse need to take well let me first say that I the short answer is I don't know I could Google it but you guys could Google it um I I I do have an inherited IRA from my step mother and as inherited IAS go you've got IAS you inherit from your from your spouse and everyone else and they're just different because with the and the rules of change the secure act sure secure act 2.0 so I always get a little worried that you know if I do I have the rules wrong but here's what I would I would do if I were in that situation would be call up whoever the IRA is located say it's it Fidelity whatever I'd call it Fidelity I I know they're going to need a death certificate that I know uh and in fact I administered my my Stepmother's estate and I got like 20 or 30 uh death certificates because every financial institution needs one and insurance companies need one and and um so that's going to be the starting point but they'll walk you through it I don't know exactly what the steps are yeah it's important to say you don't know I say it a lot hey here's one from Cactus Jack I wonder if that's actually his given name in retirement at what percentage decrease in your portfolio would cause you to withdraw from your cash reserves it's almost a bucket strategy question um I I don't think I think the answer is so first of all well first question is what are my cash reserves I guess my emergency fund right I mean uh I like one year's worth of expenses uh I don't think I I would draw from that unless it was an emergency um and even then I might replenish it because if the market is down I'm just going to rebalance now in 2022 that was tough because it seemed like everything was down but um yeah I'm just gonna you know let's assume a more normal keep in mind 2022 was like a once in a century kind of market now when I say that what I don't mean is we're guaranteed it for it not to happen for another 98 years it's like a 100-year flood right flood zone you can get it flooded twice two two years in a row that happens um not likely uh but but it really was you know a once in a century kind of event where you had stocks and bonds down like that uh and one of the reasons it happened was because we were starting with interest rates that basically 0% anyway normally let's say stocks are down and bonds are either up or not down as much and or flat I'm just going to rebalance that's going to cause me to actually buy stocks right and that's what I want to do when the stocks are down so that's how I think about it Cactus Jack um now if you have a bucket strategy if you have a three bucket strategy remember Herold Linsky the father of the bucket strategy who was on the show you can look up his interview he created the bucket strategy and it was one bucket for cash and then everything else and the one bucket for cash started at two years and the whole idea was just to give his clients some comfort and but but the drag on the portfolio returns it was like too much cash so he he later concluded let's limit it to one year that gives my clients enough comfort and it did according to him he would fill it up every quarter they would just spend from that bucket he'd fill it up every quarter rebalance the portfolio just based on percentages what what some have done is said okay now let's do if two buckets are good three buckets are better and we're going to have a cash bucket a fixed income bucket and a equity stock bucket even that in and of itself isn't a problem the question becomes how do you allocate between the fixed income bucket and the stock bucket if the answer is 30% fixed income and 70% stocks and you're going to just rebalance once a year that's fine if you want to think about that in terms of buckets and I often do that all I'll you know think to myself if things go really bad how long can we live on fixed income that's kind of the bucket strategy I mean it doesn't if you looked at our accounts you wouldn't see a bucket strategy you just see accounts right the problem comes in when people say no that's not how I want to do it I want to have seven years worth of expenses in my fixed income bucket that's what I want I don't want forget percentages seven years or whatever some other number and the rest inequities and the theory behind that is kind of what this question gets to well you can spend down your cash bucket then you got seven years of fixed income you spend that down well when how do you decide what are all the sort of the rules you have to come up with if the stock market's down I'll start spending from fixed income well what if it's down two or three years I'll just keep spending from fixed income that's that's why I have seven well when do you start pulling from equities when the first year the Market's up or does it have to go back up to where it was before it started going down it just you get all these questions you got to answer and during this time when you're only spending from the fixed income you're not buying stocks which is what you should be doing if you rebalance you'd be buying more equities I will tell you this if you follow that bucket strategy that I just described and I I know a lot of people do it's popular just keep in mind that none of the withdrawal strategy papers that I'm aware of use that they use an asset allocation percentages rebalancing so none of the results of the 4% rule or the gazillion other strategies you I I don't how significantly different the results would be it's hard to tell but they'd be different I mean a big part of investing success at least in that context is buying stocks when they're down okay what's next let's ask another poll question first what do I want to ask ask I want to do a market will the SNP 500 be higher or lower at the end of the year now we now let's I'm only going to give higher and lower we all know that we don't know but what's your best guess you had a guess you're going to put a 50-50 bet higher or lower all right well here's a good question from uh Michael how can someone invest in a three fund portfolio when in the taxable account there are say 30 funds with capital gains formally bought from an adviser yeah that's a tough one that's a tough one because you know you're going to have tax consequences and it may be that the tax consequences aren't worth simplifying the portfolio or you have to do it over time you know I'd be looking at these funds are you know are a lot of these index funds so they're still low cost are they just bad funds know covered call ETFs and you know ridiculous funds with you know a one and a half% allocation to the fund I mean just silly things that advisers do that screw up folks in a taxable account uh you know are there some that you can get rid of that don't have a lot of capital gain to simplify things you know I would you know it's it's a difficult question to ask to answer in the abstract but I'd be looking at ways to sort of chip away at it slowly um I personally would not want to encounter significant capital gains unless I really just thought the fund was a bad fund you know if they had me in an arc fund I'd get out of it immediately probably although if that were the case you probably don't have a lot of capital gains just being honest um that but that's a tough one you know you could always get advice you know an hourly fee and you know it' be more I guess it would be an an investment advisor yeah because the the tax issues aren't complicated most of the time but you know also what's your capital gains rate going to be um yeah it's unfortunate that this happens this is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of direct indexing Fidelity offers ITW offers that but you put your money in there and before you know it you've got over 100 positions it's just ridiculous all right what do we got what's next H what do you wants to know is there a recommended floor as an overall percentage for a mix of ibonds and and the Fund ticker TLT for the bond portion of a stable portfolio I know of no recommended floor and that to me Woody if I'm being honest is an interesting combination so let's first look at TLT we'll go to Morning Star and by the way I got another question someone wanted to uh for me to explain this style box here so we'll do that too we'll cover two questions we'll get a twofer so TLT is a longterm treasury bond fund 20 plus years if we go to it's low cost right 15 basis points if we go to uh the portfolio we see this um style box and you can see the effective duration is 167 I bonds are also long-term bonds right they're all I bonds are 30-year bonds uh now you don't have to hold them for 30 years right but of course you don't have to hold TLT for 16.7 right you can sell it anytime you want ibonds you got to hold for at least a year and then there's a penalty if you sell it before five years are up but the the thing that's odd about the combination or could it could be problematic is you can put as much money as you want in TLT right it's a fund with ibonds there's a limit to what you can purchase you got to buy it through treasury direct I mean I've bought them I've sold them they're kind of a hassle uh and so I would I've become more used to using tips funds for the inflation protection part of my portfolio having said all of that you mentioned a stable portfolio I don't really view investing in long-term bonds is is a way to create a stable portfolio because the fluctuation in interest rates can really swing the value of the funds and and and um that's not as much as true with ibonds because you can always redeem them at face value they don't trade on the open market but with the TLT you know it got hammered in fact let's look at it in 2022 it lost uh look at this now again 2022 was an extreme year lost 31% the thing is is it lost that kind of money when you really didn't want it to lose that kind of you know it was a bad year of course all bond funds did but this one lost a lot more uh because it's a long-term bond fund um yeah it's down 8% this year so far so that's something to keep in mind I mean there are certainly portfolios that that use long bonds like the all weather ralio kind of portfolio and there's an argument in favor of it in that kind of port P folio but but it's it's not really been a strategy I've ever embraced if I'm being honest so let's talk about the uh real quick we'll talk about the style box so the style box is different for bond funds than it is stock funds we'll look at both uh let's look at historical okay so when when you're talking about a fixed income a bond you've the um you've got two different there are two different risks there's more than two but two primary risks with Bond the one is that you know because if you think about a bond it's you're lending money to someone in this case the government so how how good is the is that risk you know they call it credit risk in other words what are the chances that uh the borrower will default right won't pay interest on time won't pay the principal back when the bond matures is this a a high quality Bond where the risk is really low or is it a lowquality bond where the risk is is really high and you can and that's what's across the rows so low mid high and so any any of these top boxes if they were highlighted we can see the top right box is highlighted but it' be true if the middle or farle box was highlighted you would say hey this these are high quality bonds the the risk of a default is is low so that's going to be the case for US government bonds and and even investment grade corporate bonds uh if we wanted a junk bond fund you'd see one of these lower boxes lit up and then the other risk is interest rate risk what happens if interest rates go up because you know bond funds go down the value and bonds when rates go up but by how much and so basically the longer the longer term or duration of a fund or a bond the greater sensitivity to interest interest rate changes and this is a definitely a long-term fund so it's it it's sensitivity to interest rate changes is I think that stands for extensive but or extended a lot moderate and LTD limited so like if we looked at a b& d which is a investment grade um intermediate term bond fund let's take a look yeah so it's still high quality now it's not all government bonds right it's got some um corporate bonds and stuff we can see it down here 2 6% in corporates and whatnot but it's still a high quality bond fund so it's lit up here but it's it's it's got moderate interest rate risk because the duration is a lot lower so there you go now on stocks and I just stood up because of my back just to move around a bit so if that changes how I'm sounding I'm sorry so let's look at stocks so we go to the same box it looks a little different but it's the same box right but it's measuring different things so the rows here simply stand for the the the size of the company or the average in this case you know it's got about 3,500 stocks in it so the sort of the average the weighted average size of a company based on its it's the value of their outstanding shares called market capitalization this invests in very large companies so it's it's this blue dot is in the top row a midsize companies or midcap would be in the middle row small companies would be in the bottom and then for the columns we have uh value blend and growth and you can see this is sort of a blend SLG growth right on the line a growth company is one that's growing its earnings and revenue very quickly so there you think a lot of tech companies they often don't pay dividends some do but a lot of times they don't uh value would be sort of old school companies they're they're cheaper on a sort of price to earnings basis you could think of burk share some oil company or a bank um and then a blend is somewhere in between and these are all decided based on math and what do they look at they well they look at all the things down here price to earnings Price to Book there's different ways to calculate what constitutes a growth stock versus a value stock um but basically the further to the right if it's in this column you're going to see higher pees for example let's just look we'll just I'll give you an example so this one's 2133 right let's go to QQQ which is should be even more growth yeah it's even further over Y and see the PE is higher 25 and then uh we can go the other way since we talked about Schwab a fund that I own um it's more value oriented it's all the way over here much lower priced earnings now at this point you might be saying okay Rob which one's better I mean it did varies they're both good sometimes growth out performance value which has been the case I don't know last 10 or 15 years for the most part and a lot of times value outperforms it kind of goes in Cycles yeah all right is anyone still watching yeah a few people what time is it 749 okay Sue wants to know V well look at these funds vgstx versus vsmgx I am retired and no longer able to do my own rebalancing so I'm considering VSS mgx but to my surprise vgstx an active fund is outperformed according to portfolio visualizer all right so let's take a look at these um I know I know both These funds but vgstx vgstx is the oh I don't know these funds the Vanguard Star Fund I mean I've heard of it I don't have we looked at this fund hm I'll show it to you in just a second but I want to look the other one up vsmgx oh that's just a life strategy fund okay so the so the life strategy fund is the index fund this one right here 13 basis points the expense ratio often gives it away in the Star Fund uh a lot of Vanguard actively managed funds are still relatively inexpensive this one's only 31 basis points but still more right so um we can we can actually we can go to portfolio visualizer but we can also compare them right here in a morning start just go to chart this is for vgstx and then we'll compare it to vmg GX the thing we have to do like if you Max it out it's going to get weird because uh vsmgx didn't start until we'll call it 95 so we're going to change the date we'll go to 95 let's go to January why is this not working what have I done try it again let's go five years out that's fine so yeah we'll look at this so vgstx which is Star Fund just over the last 5 years has outperformed we can see that here so when I'm comparing two funds um I want to make sure I'm comparing Apples to Apples and the way I think about that first and foremost is the stock Bond allocation now the difficulty with an actively managed fund is that the asset allocation can change over time like with with a life strategy fund which is this one uh port folio is what a it's uh basically 6040 that's not going to change much right that's that's that's that's how the fund is designed um but an actively managed fund can change but let's look at it now so this is about 6040 right now it's a little a little bit more it's got 38 Plus in in fixed income and this has got right on right about 40 a little bit more actually so it's it's slightly tilted it's not a huge difference um the other thing we can look at though is uh the the specific Investments and what I that would be my first thing stock Bond these are pretty close there's a little difference but at least based on today according to Morning Star they're pretty close so the other thing I might start to think about is well what is performed you know what has performed well and not so well recently the last five years International versus US is there difference so we go here and we can come down to uh region so this has got North this is the Star Fund and it's got North America 68 and of course that includes I I don't know how much is in Canada or Mexico but 68 and a half% North America this one 63% so there's some difference 5% that could account for some of the difference overall they're similar but those two things could make a difference let's go to portfolio visualizer now this probably is the easier tool to compare the two funds this is I'm curious about this let's see one nice thing about portfolio visualizer is it will it automatically has data going back so far and it will set the the beginning date based on the the data they have for these two funds so it stops at 95 and it tells you here why that's the data they have for the life strategy fund right and so if we look at the differences star has pretty consistently 8 and a half versus 730 standard deviation it's slightly more volatile but not a huge difference and then I like to look at the sort of the trajectory because sometimes what you'll see is they were both neck and neck until recently and then one just sort of took off for the last year or one outperformed over a long period of time but it was all because of like a two or three year period back in here but more recently it it's been neck and neck right but this you know looks like the outperformance at least you know in the last 15 years the the the the Star Fund has outperformed now you can also look at here and look year by year um looks like a great fund yeah I mean obviously what you what I just walked you through is my full knowledge of the Star Fund looks pretty good I mean if if if if my mom called me up this is how I always think about it my mom called me up and she said Robert I've just invested in the uh Vanguard Star Fund this ticker vich STX the first thing I would say is Mom or whoever you are what have you done with my real mother she's probably watching by the way hi mom um I would be comfortable with that from just what I've seen I would probably do more due diligence maybe some of you have more experience or knowledge about the Star Fund it's done seems like it's done pretty well I wonder uh ah so it it's holding other funds it's a fund of funds which is fine um yeah I just from this little analysis looks like a decent fund to me that's my story and I'm sticking to it for now okay let's see this is an important question that and I I'll tell you right now I don't really have the answer to it but we can talk about it from Brian self-insuring for for long-term care is there a percentage of assets to to make that you should sort of take for this risk or factors um the short answer is not that I know of now I can tell you that with a tool like new retirement it makes an assumption you can change this but it makes an assumption that you'll spend a certain amount of money in the last three years of your your life um maybe I can show this to you very quickly just so you can see it it's based on just data that says hey this is the average the problem is none of us are average or or or we don't know ahead of time if we're going to be average right um but I'll show you what this looks like again you can change this but so this is a demo account of new retirement and if we go to insights I think this is how it's set up where you actually set this is expenses long-term care plan to use up savings you can change this but this is out set here you can you can you can do everything from buy insurance you know I'll show you you can you got all these different options right um my favorites plan to rely on a family member uh which a lot of people do um Mom I hope you've got long-term caring no I'm just kidding your mom we'll take care of you I I wish I could go back and erase that okay uh where am I see I've lost my train of thought income and expenses so here's estimated expenses for this hypothetical retiree who's going to live 30 years and you'll notice uh these dark I don't know purple maroon expenses at the end that that's the long-term care right here now it's an inflated number which is why the numbers get so ginormous uh but they sort of bake it in and you notice you'll see these for four years it's because this is a couple and they die not the same year but that's that's for two people um now is that sufficient I mean it's it's a guesstimate right uh you know you can look at all of the data about what Assisted Living costs or whatever kind of home care whatever you might need but you're not really going to know ahead of time how long you're going to need it well one or both of you need it if you're a couple is it going to be for six months or six years so I think it's a very difficult thing to plan for and frankly long-term care insurance is not great in my view um so I don't have a simple answer for you I think allocating something towards it like new retirement does is is is smart and you know I you know and that's I don't know of a better way to do it some people and this is actually an option in the program to say hey I I I own my home or eventually I'll have it paid off and I I'll I'll plan to use that if I have to that's that's an approach I kind of think that probably be our approach yeah I've looked for like answers to this question and uh just like I've looked for answers to how much of an annuity should you buy if you want a fixed income annuity one answer I heard to that question by the way was enough so that your necessary you cover 50% of your necessary expenses from guaranteed income so Social Security pensions and annuity that's not the question that Brian asked but these are tough questions they just don't have easy answers in my view all right so trap jaw wants to know should a new retiree invest in private Equity Credit if yes how so I've never invested yeah I've never invested in in private Equity I guess in credit I mean I I did I I I made some loans for a while to a real estate investor but I don't do that it's just a headache and a hassle and they all worked out fine you know they paid and short-term loans um uh private Equity can be fun but it's a heck of a lot of work they can be very ill liquid Investments that you don't and often you don't have control over when you're going to get a payout um I mean obviously a lot of money can be made in private equity and there's different ways to do it but I I just don't see a need for now you may have other reasons you want to get involved in that I certainly wouldn't risk my core retirement savings that I need to live on in private Equity I wouldn't yeah all right let's go back to this question interesting you guys surprise me 78% of you say um and I need a drink of water that the S&P will be higher so I would have guessed lower which probably means you guys are right let's be honest I'm not a good guesser of those things all right back to the questions so Dan wants to know what's the best way to balance an allocation towards em merging markets in my IRAs well so here is my Approach has changed but back for a long time from 2003 till probably I don't know three or four years ago I allocated 10% to Vmax which is a Vanguard uh emerging market mutual fund now I also had a total International fund so there was some overlap there so my actual Emerging Market allocation might have been I don't know 12 133% in an effort to simplify my portfolio uh I just got rid of the emerging market fund I'm just going to do a basic like vxus total International fund it's GNA have some Emerging Market exposure and I'm fine with that that's what I've done uh more recently yeah I think both approaches are reasonable I personally can't imagine ever putting more than 10% in an emerging market fund but yeah H Dave wants to know any thoughts about updating retire before Mom and Dad um that's a good question I probably should I don't know I don't know how I I'd have to I'd have to read it again so I could remember it um I actually someone wants to buy the rights to publish it in Japan and U they've been nagging me I bet it's been a year now I need to just sign the paperwork and do it um because it would be cool to see the book in Japanese uh I should update it but I don't know I have to read it again to see if I think I have any new stuff to update it with all right Kelly wants to know on tax loss harvesting I know you can deduct 3,000 but if you have more losses than that can you carry them over to Future years I'm not a tax person you should assume I'm wrong I believe the answer is yes I kind of know the answer is yes but I'm not a tax person yeah you can have carryovers cuz I I have them not a lot but some I won't have them after this year I I I'm going to use them this year ah John wants to know about the boglehead conference and it's in September this year in Minneapolis he says he's never been do you recommend the conference I see that Rob berer was on a speaker panel and maybe a presenter at one of the previous conferences would you say it's worthwhile for newbies or intermed intermediate intermediates definitely think it's worthwhile I enjoy the com I've only been twice the year I spoke and then last year was here in DC I'm not going this year in Minneapolis um and they have both they have tracks for like new investors and and folks that have maybe been at it longer I think it's worth going to um I enjoyed it I don't know for me I don't know that it's worth going to every single year yeah but I like it I know a lot of people there um yeah Russ wants to know is it time to leave Vanguard it's time to leave Vanguard if look if you've got like an IRA and it's sitting in a fund at Vanguard and it's fine and you contribute once a quarter or whatever there's no reason to leave in my view particularly if you either have a more complicated situation you have business accounts trust accounts you're getting near retirement you're thinking cash management I I would not stay at Vanguard they just they don't they don't have the customer support they don't have the features that a Schwab or Fidelity has I would not I would so that's that's my take sad to say that and it keeps getting worse I hope it gets better it's like every other week I'm doing another Vanguard video you're not GNA believe what Vanguard did this time I don't get it how about some good news they should mix in some like hey we got a new feature for you I don't know so Jim has questions about he moved to Florida from Michigan so first of all congratulations I mean talk about a step up I don't even like Florida that much Florida's fine don't email me if you live in Florida you can email me if you if you live in Michigan but all I'm going to respond with is oh um but you asking me about a homestead exam I have no worthly idea my friend I wish I could help you I don't know can you and a spouse be residents of different states I mean I assume you can I mean to be honest I've never thought about that question but I don't know why you couldn't but I don't know all right what is next still people 76% think the S&P 500 is going to be higher wow here we go um cash investment options I never see money market accounts as a choice why vmfxx has a 5.27% 7-Day yield um and has a has for a long time why would someone go to a two-month treasury when we you can keep your money in vmfxx so so first of all just to you got to get the terminology right a vmfxx is a money market fund not a money market account and if you think well Rob you're being picky they are different vmfxx let's look it up BM FXX the Vanguard Federal money market fund it's a great fund here it is cheap 11 basis points 3,000 minimum 527 so just first a money market account is like a savings account at a bank FDIC insured a money market fund is like at a broker like Vanguard it's not FDIC insured although it's you know invests in short-term you know government paper so it's very secure in my view but for different reasons right um I think this is a great option I think T bills are good option too I don't think there's a right or wrong necessarily um I like this is a great I mean Vanguard has one of the better Federal money market funds no question about it do they have this in the form of an ETF that I don't know you know what's interesting though it's 7-Day SEC yield is 527 and it's your oh no I guess that makes sense that's right start to say year to date is 185 but that's because we're only in May no it's a great fund oh I'm sorry I don't have it on screen there it's a great fund I like it and the nice thing about it is you know you can throw all the money in there you don't have to worry about buying and selling you don't have to worry about t- bills maturing and reinvesting it it's a good fund all right let's see all right let's go down let's see any thought on about new Fidelity fees versus vanguard's new fees this is from Dave um I didn't actually see the Fidelity new fees let's look them up let's go to news well uh one Fidelity oh oh oh oh this I have seen so Fidelity to charge $100 servicing fee on some ETFs yeah they're wanting the ETF provider to cough up some extra money and they're not doing it so they're going to charge us I don't know that this is going to affect a lot of us because of the funds that that that are at stake here you can see here the fund companies you know that are going to you know be an issue here I haven't even heard of most of these uh so I don't I don't know that it's you know for most people is it going to be a big deal and maybe there are other fees that I'm I'm I don't know of that's the one I I did did know of but um I don't think it's that big of a deal I guess I would if if I own those funds all right here's a question from Brian I reached out to Fidelity to get a contact person for my wife to get familiar with in case something happened to me and I couldn't manage the Investments the cfp suggested I look into Anu annuities I don't get it because I have investments in municipal bonds and stocks are they not fiduciaries I asked him was not given a straight answer um well first of all a fiduciary so there are two kinds of AD advisors right there's one that that's you know they call them fee only that that doesn't mean they're cheap right they can be assets under management and charge an arm and a leg but they're fee only fee only means they're not going to get paid uh from uh the investment companies that they recommend for you so if they recommend an investment at Vanguard vanguard's not secretly giving them some money under the table for that recommendation by the way doesn't mean they're they're good at their jobs it doesn't mean that they're cheap they could cost an arm and a leg but they're supposed to work in your best interest but here's the thing that doesn't mean they can't recommend an annuity right many of them would and sometimes annuity is a good option not you got to get into the right kind right circumstances but it just means that they're not they wouldn't be allowed to make money off of that recommendation if they're you know sort of FY fiduciary in the case of whoever you talk to at Fidelity I just don't you I don't know I'd keep I keep digging until you got an answer to that Leslie this is a great question do you have any resources or experience you can share about inheritance taxes any ways to reduce minimize the tax that heirs might need to pay um it's a great question so again not a tax expert you should assume everything I'm about to say is wrong really you should just assume that about anything I say except Ohio State football okay or chess no yeah you should probably assume that's wrong anyway so you think about taxes here's how I think about it I think about the taxes on the actual money they're going to inherit right in other words they you've got a taxable accounts maybe they inherit an IRA or ra um uh and so basically you're going to get Step Up bases this is how I understand it you're going to get Step Up basis on a taxable account so if you own $100,000 of a stock and your cost basis is uh 50,000 if you sold all of it you'd have a gain of 50,000 that' be taxable if your children inherit it they get a step up in basis so their basis is now automatically 100,000 so if they sell it right away no taxes same thing with a house of course if they hold on to the investment at a $100,000 tax basis and sell it down the road for 200 they they still have to pay the tax on that difference in a um a Roth account there's not going to be taxes but I these are the rules are changing so you guys are going to know them better than I am I don't even know if they're part of now you got to take the money out uh um over 10 years or not on a Roth I I just haven't looked up the rule but obviously if they inherit a traditional IRA uh when the money comes out they're going to have to pay it's going to be ordinary income now there's estate tax that's a whole another complicated mess and for most people I I think it's fair to say it won't apply so today let's just assume you're you're a single person you're not married and you're going to get an exemption estate tax exemption so the estate tax is like 40% I think um Bo Google is just terrible 13.61% they're gonna have an exemption of 13.61% that's getting more the 13.61% that's a different matter that number is coming down to five something I believe in 2026 unless the tax laws change now there are all kinds of ways to get around this I shouldn't say all kinds but there are ways so for example um let's say you're a married couple you at the moment you would each have this 13.61% could set up revocable living revocable trusts where if one of you dies the money you have in your trust and you could also include money in your retirement accounts can go into a special I'll call it a new trust uh I've refer to it as a residuary trust but I don't know if that's term is generally used everywhere um that allows you to capture that exemption and you can then leave that money there say for your children or whoever you want to leave it to that can grow estate taxfree all kinds of rules to follow tax implications on the income from that trust limitations on how it can be used limitations on uh changes in beneficiaries um it gets complicated so if you're if you got that kind of money you want to talk to a an a trust in estate's lawyer I should look at the chat now because there's probably a trust in the state's lawyer just saying rob that is so wrong no I don't see that yet but I'm sure if that comment isn't in the chat it will be soon so there you go um the real big takeaway is for the first kind of tax just tax on the Investments and the house and how that works any tax any good tax preparer can walk you through all that like or you're an investment advisor it's not that complicated on the estate side if you have the kind of money where you need to worry about that and by the way life insurance I mean there's other different things that can come into play um you really need a good trust in the state's lawyer it's complicated stuff and the consequences of getting it wrong are pretty significant I hope that helps Leslie uh I'm not at all confident that it does yeah okay from Paul thank you for talking about credit card rewards what do you think of Fidelity's credit card with 2% cash back I think it's a great card I mean there so there are a number of cards that play pay 2% Fidelity uh there's a PayPal card 2% 3% on PayPal transactions there's City double Cash There's Wells Fargo active cash and there are some slight differences some like City double cash might have a 0% offer that's pretty good some have a sign up bonus others don't the thing about fidelities is you know you can deposit the the the reward WS right into your Fidelity account um so I think it's a good card there are cards that pay more so you have some cards that sort of pay a base rate uh on everything flat rate on everything all right that's Fidelity card and then as you I'm sure know you have some cards that that pay higher rewards for certain categories you might get three or 4% on dining let's say whenever you see a higher rate on certain categories the base rate's always lower it's not going to be 2% generally so you take MX Blue Cash prefer pays 6% with a spending cap on groceries and streaming I think 3% on gas maybe anyway I may I may be wrong about the gas but its base rate's just 1% right uh or the Chase Freedom unlimited it pays you know elevated rewards at drug stores I think and travel and maybe one other or two others but its base rates 1 and a half per. why do I mention all of this if you only want to use one credit card you're better off with just a flat card that pays at least 2% there are some there's a Bank of America card if you have a lot of money at Bank of America that will pay a minimum of 2.625% I've applied I haven't applied yet but I'm on the waiting list for the um Robin Hood card which is supposed to pay 3% on everything uh which is the highest I've seen um and there are a few others and I'm working on content that will just list all these out for you kind of like this I'll show you this some of you have seen it from the newsletter but I'm moving all the banking stuff back to all cards do roller I'm going to shut down soon it's just there's no reason to maintain two sites so like on on CDs we're we're tracking 957 CDs and here they are and you could just filter by the term so if you want a six month CD here we go four to six and you do that and there it is let's see if how my team's doing let's see if the this is 555 yeah there it is 555 if you see a rate that's wrong let me know um I want to do the same thing with credit cards uh where you know I'll have like flat rate cards and just from the highest to lowest or I'll have um a page for cards with a uh cash back for dining or groceries or gas and it'll just list the cards from the highest payout to lowest that's not what you get now by the way if you if you Google best uh credit cards for cashback at a grocery store you're going to get all of the big sites the nerd wallets the Forbes the bank rates and so on and they're going to basically show you good cards from their advertisers uh but they're not going to be ordered in a way that says here's the card that pays the highest for groceries all the way down and I think that I don't know that's how I would want to see it and then it'll allow me to do some I think fun things where I'll say okay uh let's assume you spend $500 a month on groceries how will all this translate out to annual cashback and then you could do you get more complicated and say okay what cards pay the best if we're looking at dining gas and groceries combination let's do the math anyway that's what I'm working on okay what time is it 8:21 Tracy wants to know uh uh I'm interested in using new retirement well I get a lot more by using the subscription uh instead of the free version you do get more um here again is new retirement um actually let me see uh let me show you a different page if I can yeah so here's the free version and I think with the planner plus you can see what you get and I think if certainly if you're getting to a point where you're you're near or in retirement and you need to look at sort of your plan in as much detail as you can p planner plus makes a lot lot of sense I can't imagine doing it really with the free version um I think if you're you know 10 or more years out or 20 you know you're sort of guesstimating with a lot of things just want to get a basic idea the free version might be fine and there could be other calculators frankly that might be fine as well um but yeah I think you get a lot more and and and it's important stuff uh when it comes to actually out your actual retirement so part of it might just depend on sort of where you are in the whole in the whole process and having that up on screen allowed me to stand up and stretch for just a minute okay I'm surprised I've made it this long 823 I'm doing okay Jonathan just curious what your connection to Ohio is I see your footballs on the bookshelf I grew up in Columbus OH yes saw Archie Griffin play Cornelius green my um my father both my parents went to OSU and so my father knew a lot of people there so we' just show up at the game I don't know how he got tickets he got in without tickets I don't know how he did it it's probably illegal and we would sit in empty seats until we all got until eventually we got kicked out I can remember sitting on the steps watching the game I don't know he probably had enough money for tickets I don't know what that was about Allan wants to know the pros and cons of a donor advisor fund well so a Donor advised fund think about it as a way you can you can contribute appreciated stock or ETFs to the donor advis fund Schwab has one I think assum Fidelity does Vanguard does and you get an immediate tax deduction and then uh you can you can invest the money in that account you know in in a ETF or whatever and then you can contribute to Charities of your choice whenever you want to um and so I don't I don't really know of any downsides to it assuming you want to that's you know you have a need to contribute and uh you want to contribute to charity and you want to contribute appreciated uh Securities you know there's some some of them have minimum a minimum requirement to open an account um I find them easy to use you know you can you can get the tax I sort of tagger stagger it so particularly with the current limitations on salt and other the state and local tax uh write-offs I tend we tend to fund our donor advice fund every other year so this year we'll do it in fact I kind of want to do it now um but I don't I don't really think of any downside to it I think they're great we tend to give to our charities in August oddly enough because they've told us that that's the hardest time to raise money no one's giving in August because everyone's on vacation people give at the end of the year that's a big time um and so they're that's when they're cash flow we give to we like to promote support Charities that help children is our primary focus um and they tell us yeah cash can get kind of tight in August or summertime so we tend to actually make the contributions out to them in August uh W wants to know will rob be reviewing gold when it offers the web-based version absolutely I've been waiting for it they pushed it back until this month I think I haven't had an update lately I've I've emailed the the founder whose name I now escapes me um I think they were going to release in March I'm sure it's not an easy thing to to to I mean what I I I've bought it so I've played with the spreadsheet enough to know it's pretty complicated now the the website version may be a little easier to use I don't know but I imagine um it's not an easy thing to move it to uh an online version but I will be reviewing it I also want to review wealth Trace I think that's the name of it Atma says I hear the S&P 500 is made up of 11 sectors are those equally weighted or by market cap or some other metric so they're just all they're doing is tracking the market so sometimes one industry is he more heavily weighted than another just whatever the Market's doing and an easy way to look at it is just go to Morning Star we'll just put in spy we normally look at Vu but we'll go with spy today and if we go to the portfolio and you'll see the sectors here they are and here's the sectors and the percentages Tech is going to be the highest but that's not always the case um yeah it's just wherever the money's flowing wherever you know sometimes you know when if tech if we hit a a bubble bursting like ,000 uh the money went to other kinds of Investments this number would come down it's just tracking the market yeah good question okay Patrick asked me about the birkshire hathway meeting I did talk about that I've you know I really wanted to go I've been twice loved both times this just a lot of fun um obviously with Charlie Munger passing it was sort of an emotional year this year um but I'm sorry I missed it I know a lot of people emailed me who went hopefully I can go next year hopefully a lot of you can too all right we'll get together when we went so Patrick Wolf I think was a Grandmaster was playing blindfold chess against five people and they had a a female uh uh table tennis is that what they call it is that the official name ping pong it's probably not what they call it um she she would play like one or two points against people and I know our uh our son one year I took my our son the other year I took my wife and daughter just worked out that way but my son got in line and played her like for two points and like he won he won the first one and then didn't didn't come close to second I think she played in the Olympics amazing so Kim wants to know did you end up transferring any assets to Robin for the 3% Ira bonus I did actually so I in the video I said hey I tried to cancel it which I did but it went through so fast I didn't have time I well I'll just let it go because I can always just send it back if I want but I got my 3% bonus and I'm like you know I'm just gonna leave it I actually like Robin Hood uh the app it's easy to use um if I were starting out today I'd probably use Robin Hood for my my IRA why not get you know you got to sign up for gold which is 50 bucks a month but why not get the the match for contributions I certainly will not use Robin Hood like I mean I I won't put anything else in it when eventually things you get you get you need the services of a Fidelity or Schwab eventually but to hold like a single Ira or two and I've got and I've got the credit card rewards there I like it it's fine plus I get to buy a shares of birkar I don't know why I care it's kind of silly it's 8:30 um so let's see here I don't know I got through a lot of questions but there's a lot of didn't get to so I have to figure out how to deal with that I think one thing I will tell you is so let's talk about when the next show is going to be let me pull up my calendar I'm gonna actually do a show next week and the reason is is because I can't do a show the following week the 20th and the week after that 27th is Memorial Day which I may or may not be able to do a show so I'm going to do a show next week the 13th I'm definitely not doing one the 20th and I don't know about the 27th if you subscribe to the newsletter that will tell you goes out on Sundays but one of the things I'm going to do when we start the show next week I'll put up the link and I'll start answering those questions for th those of you that are kind enough to join the live show for the questions that are I've got now that I haven't gotten to I will I will read through them and either do some videos on some of the questions perhaps um some of the questions I've probably covered that they're similar to other questions and I but I'll also highlight some to to answer next week or in the future um yeah that's I think that's the best I can do I don't know I'm trying a lot of questions but they're good questions and I like that I have them captured um this is what it looks like by the way I think I could I I'll move the names off so you can't see the name I mean they're just the first name but this is it right these are all the questions the last one how many bow versus Woody games did you see I think I only saw two I don't know how many uh I don't know that I've ever actually ever right I don't know I can't remember I can cross this one off I'm gonna answer it now I don't know if my dad and I we probably never went to a Michigan game but remember I was 12 when he passed away so you know my memory starts to fade uh I think we went to two games I have memories of them but I don't remember who they played I mean I'm pretty confident they won I mean come on so how St Buckey all right they they probably didn't they probably lost all right well I've made it you guys made it thanks for like like not forgetting about me and actually showing up tonight I appreciate that uh I will look through these questions that I didn't get to try to address some of them as best I can I'll start fresh a week from now with any questions that you add when the show starts because I don't want to feel like you know you guys have come to the show and get cheated out anyway that's my thinking and I will have some more videos one video I'm working on is you know you do like new retirement or some other tool and it gives you a chance of success your your chance of success you put all your data 78% chance of success what does that mean and and what we should what should we be aiming for let's say it was 78% is that good is that bad I mean normally you'd think Rob that's a C+ that can't be that good um I love that question it turns out to be not a simple question to address so uh we'll see when I I was going to do that video for Wednesday but I may have to wait a little bit the other video I want to do is I started creating a list of I'll call them mistakes that people make when using retirement planning software I don't know how many I'll come up with I could come up with 30 probably many of which I've made in the past but I don't know I'll limit to a dozen but I'm going to do a video on sort of the common mistakes that people can make when using well it could be new retirement it could be any of them anyway so I got more videos and uh yeah I guess that's it I'm not going to do any chess problems tonight uh I was planning on it but I I better take it easy and uh I guess that's it I kind of don't want to go but I think I have to so have a great week thanks for joining see you in a week hopefully maybe some videos between now and then and until next time remember oh and thank you Norine for being here always got to thank the person who keeps the show running smoothly all right with that said until next time remember the best thing money can buy is Financial Freedom and maybe a new back can you buy a new back maybe someday
