Ep 77: Key Updates About the Third Quarter of 2022
The X's & O's
As we’ve said before, everyone is feeling the effects of inflation.
But who is inflation affecting the most?
In this episode, Matthew Theal, Brent Pasqua and Joshua Winterswyk discuss some key updates about recent increases in Social Security and Medicare and some statistics about how the stock market did in the third quarter of 2022.
Matthew, Brent, and Joshua discuss:
How inflation is affecting people similar to their client demographic
Updates about Social Security and Medicare increases
How the stock market has done in the third quarter of 2022
What you have to look forward to and be optimistic about during peak inflation
And more
Resources:
Connect With RPA Wealth Management:
Transcript
Welcome to The Retirement Plan Playbook with Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal, and Joshua Winterswyk from RPA Wealth Management. In this podcast, we cover current events, retirement planning strategies. And provide you with the tools to help you build a successful retirement playbook in any political or financial landscape.
Join Brent, Matthew and Joshua as they navigate the issues that can make the later stages of your retirement plan challenging and help you create the best Retirement Plan Playbook. Now let's get to the show.
Welcome in. Welcome you to The Retirement Plan Playbook. I'm your host, Brent Pasqua, and founder of RPA Wealth Management. I'm here at the team, Matthew Theal, certified financial planner, and Joshua Winterswyk certified financial planner. Guys, it's almost Halloween. Are you guys gonna be dressing up?
Are you going out? What are you doing for Halloween? I'll probably do something with a family. Uh, my daughter wants to be a dog. So we're trying to find her a dog costume. I'm not really sure. And when I say dog, I think it's more of a puppy. So yeah, I'm not sure what I'm gonna be, but, uh, maybe I'll, you know, make, put, make a black eye and go out and say, I'm the economy.
That's a pretty good one actually. I was a dog when I was a little kid. , if I'm remembering pictures. Yeah. So there you go. I don't know what I'm gonna be actually yet. My wife usually takes care of that, but this is the first one with our little first Halloween with our little one. So I am. To take him out and go trick or trading, but usually she takes care of, she's very into like Halloween and the costume stuff.
Um, so I'll just say it's a secret. Maybe on the next podcast I'll do the big Halloween reveal that first holidays with your little one. I mean, that's so exciting. I'm very excited. Yeah. Like the holidays before I was like, ah, but now with him, it's gonna be his first Halloween and just holiday season, and so seeing him in his costume and to do all this stuff, it's, I'm very excited and so is my wife.
You know what, the best thing about having a little one is during the holiday. because you have a built in excuse to leave Thanksgiving. Right. , Like as soon as dinner's done and like dessert's over, you'll be like, All right, we gotta put the baby to bed. We're gonna take off. It's nap time. Yeah. It's just built in, man.
It's great. I'm looking forward to that too. And then I can just go home and take a nap. Yeah, exactly. I actually bought a, uh, Ted lasso sweater last year, and it took like six weeks to, to arrive, so I never got a war at Las h. So now I have the whole like, gear to be Ted lasso for Halloween. So I think I'm not just gonna fire that up this Halloween.
Oh, that's perfect. And it's still like relevant. Yes. So that's good. You got a mustache or are you gonna grow mustache? No, no. I'm gonna I'm gonna get a mustache. I think you should just try to grow one and then just shave it the day of Halloween. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Why didn't you just wear, I mean, I look like Ted Lasso, right?
You do. I was saying the same exact thing. We got your blue sweater and your white shirt. Why didn't you just go to a Macy's and buy one? Yeah, I mean, it was probably good, but it has the fc like logo patch. Yeah. That's cool. So, but you could grow the beard and then just, you know, shave the mustache that day and then shave your whole face out.
Right? That's okay. Yeah, I, I might do that. I've never had a mustache before, so I love to see it. Yeah. We'll, we'll send some pictures out. Uh, all right, let's get into the headlines. Back to inflation data. The consumer price rose 0.4% in September. That is now a total increase of 8.2% for the year, uh, excluding food and energy, the core consumer price index accelerated 0.6% and 6.6% from a year ago.
The yearly gain for a core was the highest since August of 1982. I mean, how does this relate to last time and where are we at? It's not good. It, it's higher than it was last time. Especially the, the core rising, right? That's the important one. Like, you know, at the end of the day, nobody really cares about gas prices.
They're volatile. I mean, like how much gas has gone up and down this year. And food's volatile and food's volatile as well. The biggest issue from my understanding with the. Is the way rents are calculated in inflation is it's pulling in data from 2021 when rents are rising. Um, but according to Zillow and Redfin, rents have been falling in 2022.
So they're looking at 2021 data in this report. But either way you slice it. When you look at the numbers, it's, it's not good. I'm tired than all the expectations too. Yeah. The concerning thing is core going higher though. So from a standpoint, that's kind of what the Fed watches. So we always kind of had like four and a half pegged for where the Fed would raise their Fed funds target to that was.
Been pretty much built into the market. That's why we're seeing so many bonds that are yielding 4% today, especially on the treasury side. This makes me think they might have to go to five or six, which would be super painful, but again, they're looking at Lacky data, so who really knows? Um, the, the one lesson out of all of this has been, that the economic data that we get, that the Fed uses to make policy off of is very backward looking.
And it's kind of like we're living in the 1970s. We pro, they probably need to come up with a new system to do this. Just like you talked about rents, right? They're not looking at any forward information or even present information for the rents. And it accounts for what? 40% of core? Yep. Inflation data. I mean, that's a high percentage.
So what does this actually mean for people though? Cause I know like right now people aren't necessarily feeling some of the pain of inflation yet. I mean, I went and got gas today and it was the lowest I've paid in a long time, and I know that's just more of a California issue rather than more of a national issue.
But how is this going to actually impact people in the next four to six, eight months? You know, I have a very controversial theory and it's actually that it's not, and I think that a lot of people who are, mad about inflation or, serve food's, gone up a little bit. But, 10 extra dollars, 12 extra dollars on your grocery bill probably really isn't gonna impact our type of clients, right?
Like our clients to, high net worth individuals. It's really gonna hurt low lower income people who are living paycheck to paycheck. Which is sad. Um, but for instance, the rent issue Josh was talking about, like how many people are actually, renting who are high net worth clients. They probably own a home and their interest rate's probably two and a half or 3% and they got tofi near the lows.
And their mortgage is probably, you know, couple thousand dollars a month. Not actively looking for, for a new rent or moving or, So their inflation rate is probably like two or three. And inflation hasn't been high for a long time. Right. So this is like the first experience, like we've had in what, 15 years of like this type of inflation?
Even longer. Yeah. Going back to the eighties. So you know, a little bit of inflation like you're saying, especially with good unemployment numbers, still wage growth, still pretty good over the last couple years. People aren't in as bad of a situation and their personal financial situations got really good over the last two years through covid.
Saving rates, Rod, all time highs. Debt was at all time lows. Um, so are you really filling it that much, like you're saying? Yeah. My opinion is no. The other headline that we have can bring a little bit of a bright spot in some good news. Um, especially if you are collecting social security. Uh, social security checks are increasing in 2023 by approximately 8.7%.
Now, has that been fully announced and confirmed, or is because I know it takes effect at the beginning of the year, but do we know if that's actually been confirmed? Yeah, I think on the show three or four shows ago, uh, we kind of made a hint that social security was gonna rise, but we were waiting for the official number.
I believe this 8.7% is the official number, and Medicare Part B premiums are actually declining by $5 and 20 cents a. Which actually is very helpful because historically we've seen, as in, in social security has increased. We've seen Medicare increase similar rates, and it's kind of an offsetting, but this isn't happening.
I think last year, um, Medicare Part B increased by like over 5%. This is a drop of over 3%. So just to put it in percentage terms, which is a good, net gain for the cost of living, increase for social. Boomers are just making out on this economy . Like you buy a 10 year treasury right now for 4%.
Lock that, lock that money away for 10 years, get 4% interest. Social security is rising. Keeping up with inflation. Medicare premiums are decreasing. Most likely their houses are paid off, are almost paid off, or they locked in a mortgage rate at two and a half, three. What a great time to be a boomer retiree.
It's not awful. And it plays right back into what you were saying right before with the inflation data, right? With this cost of living increase. But I always think of my grandma whenever I see the, the increases to social security. Cuz when they come in she says, Oh, I gotta raise . Oh, and one more point.
The dollar is at like 40 year highs against every major currency. Like it's at parody with the Euro. It's almost that parody with the pound. Like what a great time to do international travel. Like these boomers, man, they're making out. And one other factor, I mean if you're five or 10 years away from retirement, let's say you're not even collecting Social Security yet.
This, these last two years of increase has substantially helps you. because it's actually giving you a substantial increase for when you go to retire. Absolutely. Oh, and you know whose pocket book this is coming from? This is coming from our pocket book because like we've always told clients, all they're gonna do is raise, raise the wage base on the younger generation.
And that's exactly what they did. So that's how this raise is getting paid for now, the wage base is higher. It's 150,000, I believe. I think it's one 60 $12,000 increase. Wow. Yep, you're welcome. All right, let's get into the retirement planning corner. And today we really want to talk about, uh, a review of last quarter because this year has been, uh, substantial market movements that we've seen throughout the year.
And last quarter we did a market review where we went through what happened during the quarter, and we wanna talk about, you know, where we were, you know, obviously at the previous quarter. But where we are right now. Let's start with the market check and see how did the markets actually far out in the second quarter?
Yeah, it wasn't good data for the quarter. US stocks down over 4%. International stocks down over 9%. Emerging stocks down 11.57%. We even had real estate and the bond markets are down to bonds, down negative 4.75% brand. So just not good across the board. For this last. And how are markets actually doing this year with now with this data of what just happened last quarter now, how's it look for the year?
Not good. And, um, you know, we're pretty much in, in my opinion, locking in negative returns this year across all major assets, but US stocks down over 24% international stocks down over 26. Emerging markets down 27%. Real estate down 29%. And then finally, and this is the big one, this is what hurts. It bonds down almost 15%.
And you know, bonds are that part of the portfolio when, when you're creating a portfolio for a client or you know, you're out there creating your own portfolio where you want the bonds to dampen volatility and the bonds just haven't done that this year. You know, down 15%. That's why rates are higher, but it's just been painful for people who have been in bonds.
I guess the disappointing thing on where we are right now comes back to, I think where we were in August, in June, it felt like it could have been potentially the bottom, although we, you know, none of us really thought that that was the bottom, but we made half of the losses back by the middle of August and then, you know, the Feds did that meeting in Jackson Hole.
Now here we are sitting substantially back down below the lows of the year again. Mm-hmm. . Yeah, absolutely. And the one thing is, is, you know, the Fed is gonna be a big theme of today's podcast. We'll talk about them I'm sure in multiple questions. But, Powell j Powell, the president and, you know, all the Federal Reserve governors or, they, they want rates higher and they're gonna keep pushing rates higher and you know, that's gonna impact financial assets.
But the one thing is it's always short term. It's never long term. And rates will come back down and markets will stabilize. What has caused the markets to pull back. Just start with inflation. It was one of the headlines here. Um, and then that inflation data really hasn't changed all year. Um, so you can see, you know, markets are still lower and inflation is still high.
The Federal Reserve is still raising interest rates and there's a recession fear. And so, you know, the combination of these variables has really just brought so much uncertainty, fear within the markets. Um, and just from a technical standpoint, the negative down. And, you know, just to bring back the Federal Reserve, they are literally saying, Hey, we want asset prices down.
We want home prices down. We want stock prices down. They're even in a way saying, to employers, we want you to fire people. We want people to lose their jobs. We want wages to stop increasing. And you know, so far the only, some of the only assets that have listened has been the stock market. Thankfully we don't have job losses.
Wages are still increas. But that's impacting inflation. It hasn't changed much like the Federal Reserve. One of their only tools is raising interest rates and raising interest rates. Doesn't necessarily affect all of these inflation areas that we had talked about, why it's kind of stabilized, hasn't changed or continued to go, go down.
Um, and it's just their words, right? They're trying to like strike fear with their words into the market. Market reacts. Um, but there's not much that they can do and hasn't changed, and the markets haven't had an ability to. Yeah. I mean, the fear part's worked, right. Yeah. No, absolutely. Markets are down. I mean, everyone has less money than they did at this point last year.
Is there anything to be optimistic for right at this point? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is the time when you should be most optimistic. You know, most people think backwards about it. Like last year, um, you know, we were talking about trading pictures of monkeys and NFTs. The market was booming.
We were cryptocurrency, , I, I was having fun, but currency down, super percent matter ever. Really, Everybody was overly optimistic. You know, we kept going back to the punch bowl. We were like, Oh, just one more drink. One more drink. Um, and now like we're dealing with the hangover. . But that's the time when you know you should get up sun rises and get to work and find good investment buys.
Uh, but I have some really good data here and this data is following peak inflation. Now. Earlier in the show we mentioned that inflation was a little bit higher right than expected, especially on the core side. Thatsaid the 12 month inflation rate looks like it peaked in June. Um, that's still standing true.
9.1%. So far, that's been the highest reading we've had, and what we could do is we have data going back to 1926 to look at stock returns and bond returns following peaks of inflation 12 months later. And on average stocks increased by 21% and bonds increased by 9%. And this is going back all the way to 1926.
There was only one year where stocks following peak inflation had negative returns, and it was in 2000. So in summary, markets do very well on average after peak inflation. Correct. How long would you predict that takes to really start to change? I mean, you know, that's the thing. 12 months is a long time.
So the way to think about is, is inflation peaked in June, so we have until June of 23. For things to, to turn over. I mean, then it's possible the market falls another 20% into next year, but then rallies 45% and it hits these data points and it looks right. and the data's also good after we have like bad starts to the ear.
Correct. Matt, like you, we are in one of the worst starts for the first nine months of the year for stocks. It's the worst year ever for the start of the year for bonds. And the data is also positive on average for the next 12 months after these types of periods historically. Yeah, absolutely. So here's another crazy stat.
93% of all asset classes have lost money. This. The only times it's happened in previous history was in 2018, it was 79%. In 2008 it was 94%. And in 1994 it was 80% it. It didn't repeat again, right? So like it always got better. Those asset classes started improving, things started going up again. So we're, we're in the thick of it right now.
And what else that tells me is like, where else are you gonna go? Nowhere. There's not an asset out there that you should, you know, I should have bought, or I should have been here. I should have been there. Everything's down. I think that's such an important point, because if you're trying to find out what you, If you're looking back and you're trying to say, Okay, what could I have done or what could we have done, there's nowhere to go.
This year has been, everything has just gotten pretty much decimated throughout the market. There's nowhere to flip too, but as we had talked about in previous podcast, The market was overvalued last year. Mm-hmm. , you can see that now, but this is a great opportunity for younger people as well. Yeah, absolutely.
I think we've only had drops this big or larger 15 times since 1926, so like there's only been 15. I look at it as it only been 15 types of these sales throughout history take advantage of the sale, especially if you're younger, you're just still buying assets or have the capacity to still buy assets for anyone in that spectrum.
So what are some long term stories that we should be following or looking at to maybe help us determine what could also affect the markets over the next several months? Yeah, so there's a few, um, that we're, we're monitoring. I'll, I'll start with just the midterms. That's a big unknown. I mean, we could look at the polling and see what's going on, once the midterm elections are over, the market will have clarity.
You know, it's looking like for the majority of the Republicans are gonna do pretty well, but that data could change. Um, and we have some cool data on what happens after midterm elections. And the average fourth quarter return since 1926 during a midterm election year, is hired by 6.5%. Um, so again, here's a data point that's suggesting stocks are probably gonna move higher.
Typically the worst co the worst month of a US election cycle is s. And that's the month we just exited. And then October, November, and December have rates through return of over 2% on average. Yeah. And I think it's important that September was awful. September was bad. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was really bad.
I think that though, that that data too, just in my mind is. As we go into the midterm elections and with these years, it seems like through a lot of the political research we've done is once we have a better idea of what's to come and what's gonna happen and the elections over, like you said, that Uncertainty's gone and the market reacts positively.
Like we're no longer guessing what's gonna happen and now we can plan for the future. The market does not like uncertainty. I always point to the election with Donald Trump, right? Donald Trump won the election. Immediately the market was pointing lower by about 5%, I believe. Yep. And then it, the market opened, you know, 9:30 AM like it does every, every business day in New York City immediately reversed and started going higher.
And it never looked back. And once that fear, that unknown had been taken away. Okay. We know it's, you know, it's Clinton verse Trump and Trump. Boom market was off to the races with, Trump's pro business policies. How much do we, I know that there's now a, you know, there's fear going around globally with this war in Ukraine and what could potentially happen and, you know, none of us really know for certain how this thing's gonna end.
But how much could some of these variables that could happen in this war really impact the. Outside of a shock event, I think it's pretty much priced end. You know, that was one of the events that really made the market turn down earlier this year, right? That was the February sell off. And what most people don't realize is how fast the stock market prices in events.
For instance, on Thursday, we had that inflation date we talked about at the beginning of the show. It was bad, it was negative. The market actually rallied on that. It opened lower and rallied on that negative. Why? Because the data point's done. We already know it. We can move on. And I think that then that also foreshadows in another point to kind of this question is the Federal Reserve now we probably know, and the probability that they're gonna raise interest rates again at their meeting in November has already happened because of that inflation data that just came out.
So those are two like headlines or stories that I've already been solved for for the rest of the year. Yeah. Inflation data for this last month and the Federal Reserve raising interest rates in November. Markets said, Hey, we know what's going on now. Let's, let's move forward. Right. And then you have the midterm elections and then, maybe there's a little bit more to know in the market at that point.
Yep. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, how can these stories though, impact the stock market over the next six months to a. I think, you always gotta think of these as, these are the kind of the negative worries. The, you know, the wall of worries as you say. And, you know, short, short term, you know, you're looking at downside.
Um, these are all stories that could cause downside, but they also could cause upside. For instance, let's, let's talk about something that could make the market rally a lot. If after the next Federal Reserve meeting they, mentioned something. We are gonna pause interest rate raises, and, let the data come in over the next two months.
Market would probably rally 10% straight up. You can make, you can make that argument with a lot of these stories, right? Absolutely. Just a little bit positive news in each one of these headlines is, and the market's waiting. It's looking for like this positive news and as soon as it changes, , you can see a big rally, which is why you don't want to be on the sidelines.
Why you don't want to go to cash? Because the news headline's gonna come and before you even know it, you're gonna turn it on the TV and the market's gonna be priced into the market. Yeah. And you're gonna have missed it. And perfect example with the inflation announcement. Mm-hmm. , I mean, the market shot up over 2% in one day and you missed out on that.
Yeah. And, and I think, you know, you go back to March 20, 20 in, in that March 23rd period, we reached the bottom and the next three following days in the market, it had then rallied back and made back over a third of it what it had lost in just three days. You'll never recover from that if you miss those three days.
No. And it's just gonna take you a long time. You'll never make all your money back up. Yeah. And you know, some of the things that we've done is, there's obviously these concerns and now we know what the market had did this quarter. But over the next three months, I mean, I like to focus on solutions.
I mean, what can we do as some financial action, you know, within either in someone's plan or their portfolio. Really benefit. Yeah. I'll start here. Um, tax planning, right? We're coming up to the end of the year. There's a lot of tax strategies that can be implemented with just, you know, as we come up to December 31st, whether if it's retirement contributions or expense, um, bunching between one year or the other, splitting up distributions between one year or the other.
So just a lot of tax planning that can go into, End of the year, as well as tax loss harvesting. So looking at your after tax brokerage account positions that are at a loss. So yes, we don't like that our, um, securities are down, but one thing that they can't provide is a loss against any other gains or income.
So looking at that portfolio and seeing what we can sell to realize some loss through this time can definitely provide some, some value and it's something that we can control. You know what's really cool you could do on that and ac actually, you know, I should have even thought about this myself, but Brent, this is kind of your idea in a way, but you could reset basises, so, So you have a really large stock and you don't really need to carry it all over a loss on a stock to your tax return.
Well, if you have a really big gainer, like say you, you've owned Apple for a long time and you plan to still. Well, you could sell it and immediately buy it back and wash the gain and now you reset your basis. Mm-hmm. . So it's kind of a way to take, a capital gain, a large capital gain off the table, which is a really genius idea.
Yeah. And I think what, you know, when we go back over the last five years, there's a lot of people that made a lot of money on either individual stocks or certain positions in their post-tax investment accounts. And the problem that you end up running into is in the future when you need that money, because you've never paid taxes on that gain, you then sell it.
You trigger a capital gain tax and you know you may be paying anywhere from 18 to 23, let's call it percent in taxes. And that just takes away from your profitability and nobody, you know, let's just say make numbers simple. You know, you made a hundred thousand on a stock, now you're paying 23,000 to the irs.
I mean, nobody's gonna enjoy writing that. But right now, if there's, you have other stocks in your portfolio that are down, so trim those losses, wash it out with the gains, and you know, you'll find yourself in a little bit better position in the future just managing the tax situation better for your future.
Yeah, great strategy. Um, I got a few more though. If we have time. I wanna hit on, um, wait, hold on. Let me guess. You're gonna talk about fixed income. I am . you know, it's just changed and the fixed income landscape changed a lot in September. and it, it's continued. And you know, if you have a lot of cash sitting around, or even if you're more conservative, you could set up a really nice bond ladder today.
Um, as of recording, you could get average rates on US treasuries at about four and a half percent, a hundred percent liquid investment. And you're not locking up your money for that long. Um, we're talking under a year here. So it beats any bank, CD, beats any savings account. You're essentially creating your.
Cash management portfolio, and it's something we've talked about in this office for, you know, what two, three weeks now consistently is that you actually have cash management options out there. So now is a good time to reassess, you know, if you do have any cash or money sitting on the sidelines, cuz there's some really good, safe options out there too for money that you might need short term.
And I think for listeners to give the listeners an idea. How beneficial this is from a planning perspective. It's really like having a new tool in your toolbox. It is something that we haven't had access to for a long time, and now we're able to actually unleash this new tool and it's gonna be extremely helpful in creating safe cash flow.
Guaranteed interest and another just way for a client to have, uh, accessibility to make money. And it, like you said, Matt earlier. Boomers are now in the perfect position for retirement. I, I thought that same thing. That's what I was thinking while you were talking real conspiracy theory here, but do you guys think it's funny that the Federal Reserve is all boomers and right about the time they're all getting ready to retire, rates go jack up rates and, you know, they're all switching to fixed income.
Now they know exactly what they're doing. Yep. Um, okay, so let's get into the last question I have and, and that's what are you doing differently in your financial plan this quarter? I'll take the, I'll go first. I'm around a cash management bond ladder strategy with my, you know, emergency fund and the, the funds I essentially don't need right now.
Practice what you're preaching. Yeah, absolutely. And then look, this is the time where you want a dollar cost average. You wanna throw a lump sum index fund, spider index, vanguard index fund, pick your poison, then you want a dollar cost average, few hundred dollars a month, thousand a month.
Whatever you can afford. And you're gonna get rewarded over a 10 to 20 year period. So that's what I'm doing. I really like that you're practicing what you're preaching here, Matt. Good job. Um, I am just expense awareness. I think that this, this time going into the end of the year, I don't like to use the words budgeting, but just making sure Right.
We're going into a. The end of 2022 holidays are coming up. That's an expensive time for a lot of households. Um, and it's just been a really tough year. So, you know, bring some expense awareness to the household, make sure you're looking at your categories and really adjusting any boulders that have gotten too expensive within that transaction log.
So, uh, that's what I'll be doing from now until the end of the year, especially as, uh, summer's wrapping up and the holidays are here. Yeah. And just don't overspend. Yeah. You know, this is just a time where we spend money on things that most you don't really even need. Right? Yeah. No, totally. Cut, cut something out.
Be, be a little bit more prepared. You know, especially in the tough year, what I'm gonna be doing is what we had already talked about, and, uh, I've already done some this year and I'm gonna do more. And that's, you know, I bought some stocks, uh, over the last several years. And some of those are down, the, the, the big risers, the Zoom and Pelotons and some of those that I bought.
Which were substantially growing over a two year period are now negative. But I also have stocks I bought five, seven years ago that I can trim. And so I'll start trimming and, and pairing back some of those and washing out some of those gains. And I think that will be extremely helpful over a long period of time.
Cause I can, I can reset the basis, I can pull some of that to my tax return. And we've done that a ton with clients so far this year. Generally, we've waited to the, towards the last two months of the year to really do tax, what we call tax harvesting, where we sell loss. To carry through the tax return, but this year you don't need to wait for the whole, the end of the year.
We don't know what's gonna happen. If the midterm election's gonna cause a rise, then it's probably better to get it done now than trying to wait till the end of the year because those losses are gonna change in that. Those gains are gonna be different then. Yeah. You know what? You know now and you can control it now, so why not?
Pruning that portfolio. Love it. Yeah. And the other, the other thing that I think is important for listeners though is just make sure everything within your plan has a purpose. You know, whether it's your savings account, your emergency fund, your investment account, your 401k contributions, just know it's every detail, you know, everything that you're doing within your plan because it's so critical at this time that you're squeezing extra interest when it's out there.
It's out there right now. Mm-hmm. . Good. All right. Let's get into RPA recommends, Josh, what do you have? Have you guys ever had a mezcal Paloma? I have actually. I probably have, yeah. Okay. Mezcal with like, some sort of grapefru juice soda. Well, I went to, I went on vacation, just got back last week. It was very nice.
Had a great time with the family. But that was my drink of choice in the pool and, just really enjoyed it. Little mescal's, a little bit more smokey than like, te. So it, it balances kind of the flavors really well. Uh, but that was my drink of choice. So if you have never had one, I'm sure if you go to, you know, your, your local watering hole or your favorite bar, uh, Mecal Paloma, that's my recommend.
Nice. Refreshing drinking on hot. Yeah. Yeah, I know Summer's wrapping up and my, my vacation was at the pool. But it is still good now, especially in Southern California. It's not cold. What do you have first? Uh, I don't have any products to recommend. Um, I don't have, you know, anything fun like Palomas or what you're gonna recommend Brent.
But, you know, one of my pet peeves is when I talk to people about investing and they tell me, I wish I would've bought X, Y, and Z in 2008 or X, y, Z in 2020. I would've made so much money. Well, here you are. We are now down, you know, 25%, like we said at the top of the show. You're in the thick of the storm.
We're, we're coming out of it. And this is your opportunity to buy X, y, and Z down X percent. If you don't know how to do it yourself, go to Robin Hood, download the app. Go to Betterment. They're great as well at creating diversified portfolios, you know, or hire an advisor to help you. But now now's the time to be buying buying.
Good point. I think also, you know, it's that don't be fearful, right? It's the Warren Buffet saying, be greedy when people are fearful. There's a lot of fear out there right now. Yeah. Here's the opportunity. All right. I have a recommend, um, I'm embarrassed to say this, but for many years I've drank in, I've drank coffee out of a Keurig and I've used pods, which is for all the coffee snobs out there, for anybody that likes real coffee, like that's just like, I think bottom of the barrel.
Would you. It's just the most convenient. I don't think with coffee snobs, though, that's their first choice. I drink coffee and I would consider myself a coffee snob. And, I would have to be very desperate to even sip a cured coffee. Yeah. So we have, there's a lot of people like Matt out there, and at some point I had to get away from little, you know, little plastic cups that probably put plastic in my coffee.
Wait, you don't use a French press every morning? No. Oh yeah. So this has been a bad situation that I've just not gotten away from. I decided to finally step up my game did some research and found, a coffee maker that I thought was probably the best for us, made the most sense. And I didn't have to spend two or $3,000 on, cuz it, I didn't know this but you, I mean, you can get to some really fancy machines.
Mm. And we got a mocha master and it's called a glass car Coffee. But fantastic. We now have, uh, the beans. We can grind the beans and now we make our coffee with actually really well done. Ground beans. I have a question on that. So does it, can it make just one cup? They have machines that can make just one cup.
You can brew a small cup, a small pot, but not a single. So it's like you're making a pot of coffee but it grounds the beans for you and makes the pot of coffee for you. Correct. And what I was thinking, cuz they have a single cup one, I was thinking for the office that might be a really good idea so that if I'm following my own now new philosophy of not drinking, I have a plastic little cur cake cup.
Uh, that it might be nice for an actual fresh brew cup of coffee when people. Hmm. I'll have to look this up. I've never heard of them, but my wife did a excellent job going out and getting it, and she's been super excited because she didn't wanna drink these pods anymore. And, um, well I don't blame her. It taste gross.
And so, uh, we're excited to have a new coffee pod, so check it out though. They're not overly expensive. They're great machines and they're supposed to be the top of the line. So, And you don't have to spend two or $3,000. Especially not now. Maybe I do. I'm looking it up now. Single cut brewers. Yep. Uh, that's cool.
All right, so don't panic markets will turn around. Just gonna take some time. But as advisors, we love helping people. That's why we do it. If you'd like to schedule a complimentary consultation with any of us, please go to rpa wealth.com. You can also download our ebook from our website. And if you'd like to show notes, please go to Retirement Plan Playbook.com.
But as always, thanks for listening. Thank you. Thank you.
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