February 28th, 2026 - The Return of Inflation?

In this lively financial talk show, hosts Steve, Adam, and Joey delve into market trends, explore Trump’s new retirement proposals, and discuss the potential economic impact of recent geopolitical conflicts. They emphasize the importance of maintaining a disciplined investment strategy amidst market fluctuations and offer listeners valuable insights into saving for retirement. Throughout the hour, they engage with callers, tackle trivia, and share the latest updates on stocks and global events, all while guiding listeners on securing their financial future.

Transcript

Steven H Van Wie 0:00

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

Adam Van Wie 0:06

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 0:07

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 0:08

And we are all back together and back to one hour. For those of you who were around last week know that we graciously filled in, or I should say graciously accepted a gracious offer from Angela to take her hour and apparently everything's fine. She comes back, came back today and was looking and sounded pretty good. So welcome back. Ah gee. Today, today, today. Well, first off, all the regulars. We always like to welcome you and remind you, you keep listening, we'll keep talking. If you're new to this show, stick around for the hour if you can and you'll learn something, guaranteed. And if you can't, don't forget you can always get past shows on our website. Drive us Wealth Partners. Not, not the website stryvis. Wealth.com is the shortened version for the website. But we will have the program on sometime Monday every week and we'll have the commercials taken out of it. Never an excuse to miss the show completely. Although it's much more fun at the time. That's why we do a live show, because it's more fun at the time. Which means if you call 904-222-8255

Steven H Van Wie 1:19

anytime during the show, we'll interrupt what we're saying in order talk about what you want to talk about. And today I have a feeling that could be most anything.

Adam Van Wie 1:29

There is a lot to talk about.

Steven H Van Wie 1:31

There is indeed. First off, my market response here has some minus signs on it, but the numbers are so small it hardly matters. It wasn't a great week, but it wasn't a bad week.

Adam Van Wie 1:44

No, it really wasn't. And in fact, I was going to mention this later, but I'll just bring it up now. On Wednesday of this week, many of our client accounts were at all time highs. So they're under the surface the headline numbers look bad, but under the surface there's a lot going on that isn't bad and I'll get some more about that later. But even with the, even with the, the down week, most of that damage was done on Friday. If you, if you took Friday out, it was actually pretty flat week. So. And what happened on Friday was the PPI report came out and it was hotter than expected. It came in at 0.5% increase versus a 0.3% that was expected. That's a month over month number for the year. The number now sits at 2.9 year over year, what is 2.9 lower than? Oh3. The number that I've been saying for, I don't know, months now should be the, the target inflation rate. And for whatever reason we're fixated on this 2% number. That is not realistic. And this is just another example of that. I don't think that 2.9% year over year inflation number is a disaster for what it's worth.

Steven H Van Wie 3:05

And again, I look up truflation every morning. 1.49.

Adam Van Wie 3:09

Okay, so it ticked up but it still still really low. Yeah, there's three reasons I'm not really worried about this that particular number one, energy prices fell 2.7% in January and food prices fell 1.5%. Those are just one off readings, but they're both going in the right direction.

Joey Loss 3:29

So those are two things that everybody feels.

Adam Van Wie 3:32

Yeah, exactly. That's. Those are real daily things that affect your life.

Steven H Van Wie 3:37

I've got some more information on that for later in the show too. Something that'll open a few eyes.

Adam Van Wie 3:42

The prices of intermediate unprocessed Goods also fell 0.5% in January and are now down 6.1% from a year ago. So that seems counterintuitive to a 3% inflation rate, but that is what it is.

Steven H Van Wie 3:57

What happened to the mortgage rate? Hold on. I figured you might be.

Adam Van Wie 3:59

I'm getting there.

Adam Van Wie 4:01

So my second point is the Supreme Court just shot down tariffs. That news has not had any time to show up in the data yet. Doesn't mean that tariffs are going away entirely. But the current situation with tariffs is going to change dramatically. The third thing is inflation is a monetary phenomenon and the monetary supply is up just 4.3% in the last year. The long term average increase in the monetary supply is closer to 6% and so it's trending well under. That leads me to believe that a one month jump in PPI is not really foreshadowing the return of 9% inflation.

Steven H Van Wie 4:38

Yeah, that in January. We talked about this last week briefly. That's when people put their big companies increase their prices for the year done in January. That makes it look artificially high.

Adam Van Wie 4:51

That is possible. Yeah, there can be some.

Steven H Van Wie 4:53

It doesn't explain the whole thing, but there's some of that in there.

Adam Van Wie 4:56

Well also with all data, government data, you need to look at the trend and not a one month sort of reading. It doesn't really tell you anything. Look at the annual at 2.9%. I'm very comfortable with that number.

Steven H Van Wie 5:12

Me too.

Adam Van Wie 5:14

One reason for the Strong performance of diversified portfolios this year has been international equities. While the US is sitting on pretty modest gains or even losses, International equities have been booming year to date. Korea has been the biggest winner gaining over 4,48% while Taiwan is up over 22%. Brazil, Japan and Mexico all have double digit gains as well. So we have been increasing our international equity exposure for the last two years roughly and that's really paying off right now. So we've increased it and then it's also been increasing just because it's performed so well.

Adam Van Wie 5:56

Some potential good news for the housing market as, as we alluded to earlier, mortgage rates fell below 6% for the first time since 2022. So that's really good news if you're a buyer or if you're sitting on a 7% mortgage. I honestly don't think we're going to see a significant push downward on those 5.9% mortgage rates.

Steven H Van Wie 6:19

I think if you can pick up the whole point, it's really worth looking at.

Adam Van Wie 6:22

Well, I just don't, I also don't think you're going to see like a 5% mortgage rate anytime soon. So I don't think you're, if you're continue to wait, there's risk in that. And, and I just don't, I just don't see a lot of market dynamics that would believe, lead me to believe that we're going to see the return of the 3% mortgage.

Steven H Van Wie 6:43

And some lenders will, if you ask them nicely, they will just change your rate without charging you a bunch of money to do it.

Adam Van Wie 6:50

Yeah, you can always ask. The worst thing they can say is no.

Steven H Van Wie 6:53

Well, you just tell them up front, hey, I'm shopping around for a new mortgage. And if you want to compete, here's how to do it. Worked for me last time. Now I'm sitting at three.

Adam Van Wie 6:58

Exactly.

Joey Loss 7:05

Yeah, I think like buying a car, you just make it not urgent. Like, hey, I'm thinking about it. I don't have to refinance, you know.

Adam Van Wie 7:10

Yeah. Or if I do, I might go to another company and you're going to lose the business. So what do you want to do for me?

Steven H Van Wie 7:16

Yeah, you, you have to come in with the, the power play. They're not going to aggressively call you. Although I remember a few years ago

Adam Van Wie 7:24

there was a time. Yeah. Those days are gone though. I don't, I don't think the world

Steven H Van Wie 7:28

was a completely different place when they were aggressively calling people. And the business, there wasn't enough business to go around so they wanted to retain what they had and they acted

Adam Van Wie 7:32

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 7:39

on it for sure. But yeah, I think that it is a good time to look at refinancing out of a 7% mortgage, if you have one. So take a look at it. You might be surprised how much it changes your payment.

Joey Loss 7:52

Yeah. And points, you know, if you're, if we're confident we're not going to see the fours, you know, maybe paying points makes sense. If you're in the early part of a mortgage, you got a long way to go. that you don't have to refinance again in two years, if we're wrong here, you know, that's an option.

Adam Van Wie 8:01

Maybe if you want to be sure

Adam Van Wie 8:07

It really, it really depends on your specific situation. And so I, I would, I would do some analysis on that. And also how long you plan to stay in the house is definitely the biggest.

Steven H Van Wie 8:19

I think too few people think of shopping around for an ARM mortgage when they know they're not going to be in the house forever. And you can get an arm a lot cheaper than get a 30 year or 15 year fix.

Adam Van Wie 8:31

Yeah, if you're, if you're, if you know you have to move in a year to five years, that's not a bad strategy.

Steven H Van Wie 8:36

Get a seven for Patty and call it good.

Joey Loss 8:39

Arms are on the rise.

Adam Van Wie 8:40

I'm not surprised. That makes sense.

Steven H Van Wie 8:43

Any way to get into a house. All right, we have to take a quick break. We'll have trivia right afterwards, so don't go anywhere. There's lots to talk about. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven H Van Wie 8:53

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

Adam Van Wie 8:55

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 8:55

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 8:56

And I remind everyone, lines are open 904-222-8255

Steven H Van Wie 9:02

where you can try to answer my trivia question of the day, which is as usual brought to you by Paul Lloyd at First Coast Alarm. Call Paul at 904-636-7888.

Steven H Van Wie 9:16

Technology's been on a tear lately. Everybody knows between the AI and everything else that's going on. I got a technology question. How many of you had those old fashioned pagers that would go beep, beep, beep and there'd be a number on it. Then you had to find a telephone and call it back. How many of those are still active today across the country?

Adam Van Wie 9:40

What are they used for besides drug dealing?

Steven H Van Wie 9:44

I think there's enough drug dealers to keep the business going. Okay, that's probably the case anyway. I know what's on everybody's mind this morning. But I did want to have Adam just wrap up a couple more things on the market and then Joey's got some insight on the news of the day and we'll go back to that right after Adam wraps up.

Adam Van Wie 10:06

Yeah, I wanted to mention Nvidia. They released their earnings this week and once again they improved on their previous quarter, which was one of the best quarters any company has ever had. And they topped it again and they

Steven H Van Wie 10:18

were very, very optimistic. They're going to keep doing it.

Adam Van Wie 10:21

Yeah. This quarter revenue reached 68.1 billion for the quarter. And that's an increase of 73% year over year. Earnings per share beat estimates as well at A$62 and gross margin was a pretty incredible 75%.

Steven H Van Wie 10:27

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 10:40

Revenue forecast for Q1 is 76 to 79 billion. That's, that's incredible.

Joey Loss 10:49

That's bigger than us. That's crazy.

Adam Van Wie 10:50

That's.

Steven H Van Wie 10:51

Yeah. And he had to save that company not too many years ago.

Adam Van Wie 10:54

That's so incredible. So of course when they announced that the stock fell. Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 10:58

Of course. It's been some weeks, all news is bad news.

Adam Van Wie 11:02

Yeah, for sure. Other times not so much for the rest of the market. Both earnings and beat rates declined over last quarter, but they remain very high relative to history. Revenue rates were at 72.8%. That's really high. It's almost, I mean outside of last quarter it was, it's one of the highest I've ever seen. Earnings were at 68.7, which isn't quite as incredible, but still a good number. And 10.1% of companies raised guidance while 8.6 lowered, which is a positive spread. So. So the market is saying that things are pretty good right now.

Steven H Van Wie 11:39

And our client portfolios are saying the same thing.

Adam Van Wie 11:41

Yeah. Despite the turmoil, it's, it's not been a bad quarter.

Steven H Van Wie 11:45

Yep. It's just a different mix that's being successful right now.

Adam Van Wie 11:50

Yeah. Yeah. The value stocks are doing quite well. So some of those indexes are, are strong. International is doing great. Small cap, despite the weakness on Friday has been pretty solid. So yeah, there's, there's definitely some good areas and, and bonds have been doing well also.

Steven H Van Wie 12:09

And certain sectors like aerospace and defense are really booming.

Adam Van Wie 12:14

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 12:15

 And speaking of such things.

Adam Van Wie 12:17

Yeah, I don't think that's going to change anytime soon.

Steven H Van Wie 12:19

What happened this morning when you woke up, found out that, well, for the second time this week, the world is at war. The first time Pakistan declared all out war on Afghanistan and this time it's US in Israel versus the Ayatollahs of Iran. And I asked Joey on the way into the building if he had some kind of a whatever synopsis of it or expectations or whatever. And he said he did. So I want to hear it.

Joey Loss 12:51

So I was just curious. I figured as we came on here that people would be curious. Okay, well what does this mean for the market? What can we expect? And war. The onset of a war is always a weird period for the market and everybody kind of rushes to value and seeks some sort of shelter from the unknowns. Because of course any onset of a war is a massive spike in unknowns. And so I think history suggests if we look at the Gulf War, the 2003 Iraq War and even the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, markets often initially price in the worst case scenario at the onset. Once the initial shock passes and the actual scope of the conflict becomes bounded, we kind of have an idea of what this is going to look like or at least the delusion of a perception that we understand what it's going to look like. Markets frequently bottom out and then begin recovering during that conflict. One thing I think we could be pretty sure of is that oil prices are going to rise in the near term. But I think knowing which industries or how various industries are going to be impacted really depends on an understanding of the scope of the conflict. Last year, the year before, we had a 12 days war that quickly wrapped up that had almost no impact in a meaningful way on the market. If we end up in a situation that's much more like Iraq or the Gulf War, then we have a very different situation on our hands. And really it becomes a game of watching what does oil's increased price, who really suffers the most from that. But beyond that, I think it just takes time for people to figure out

Steven H Van Wie 14:27

what does this mean and how many people will wake up Monday morning and decide I gotta sell. And they'll be selling right into the the only part that has a probability of turning into a free fall. Wonder how many people do that. If you're hearing our voices for wherever you are, I'm just tell you right now that's not a very good idea because you'll be selling low only to buy high later and it doesn't work.

Joey Loss 14:54

Yeah, I mean typically any. Whether it's war or anything else, disruptive technology history suggests the best thing to do. I should have worn my buy the dip shirt today to have a bespoke buy the dip. It's never going to hurt you long term. I mean Historically, it's never hurt you to buy as things go down because at some point the world comes to its senses or things clean up and the market starts to go back up. Because everybody wants to grow.

Adam Van Wie 15:19

Yeah, Especially over geopolitical events. They tend to drive the market in the short term, but there's really almost no influence on the long term performance.

Joey Loss 15:27

I remember something happened in April of last year where everybody thought we were going to have a whole lot of trouble for a long time.

Steven H Van Wie 15:33

Was that the month of the Chinese AI. Oh, that was a cheap one.

Joey Loss 15:38

That was prior to that. I was.

Adam Van Wie 15:40

No, this was the tariff, the tariffs.

Joey Loss 15:42

Yeah. Everybody just kind of lost their minds in the short term. But then, you know, anybody who bought during that dip enjoyed a two hour period on April 9th. I'll never forget it. Where the market rose 10% as the three of us are standing in. Our jaws on the floor looking at the.

Steven H Van Wie 15:56

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 15:59

What?

Steven H Van Wie 16:01

Well, you know, the computers of the world that actually do the trading on Wall street for the big boys a lot quicker than we are. Sometimes it's just fun to watch. Were you in the business during the flash crash?

Joey Loss 16:17

No, I don't think so.

Steven H Van Wie 16:18

And I don't remember. That was probably before Adam.

Adam Van Wie 16:22

I was around for one of them.

Steven H Van Wie 16:24

The one that was about 6,000 points in a few minutes.

Adam Van Wie 16:27

Yeah. And it was. Yeah, and then a bunch of trades were canceled and yeah, I was around for that.

Steven H Van Wie 16:35

Yeah, I was at home. I can't remember why. I think it was a Thursday, but I was at home and Sarah and I were having lunch and I had the TV on in the background. I started watching. The numbers were really moving and, you know, dropped. A thousand and two, then another one, another one. And I told her, watch, there's a number that's programmed into every computer in this country and when that number gets hit, it's going to jump back up. After not very long. It hesitated for quite a while and it started to tick up and then it shot right back. It had to be a mistake. There was no other reason. Which is one of the reasons that Adam and I have said ever since he's been around. If you can't explain what's happening, then it's probably not going to last long. There had to be a reason. And there was no reason for this except somebody pushed the wrong button, hit the wrong number of zeros or something and the whole thing just fell apart. People were tearing their hair out trying to sell. Just wait, watch. Everything was fine. If you're thinking that on Monday morning, should the market actually start tanking. If you're thinking I should get out, don't do it. We have to talk people off the ledge so often, but then they always thank us later because it's never, ever, ever going to pay off if you try to sell into a problem like this. I'm not even saying it'll happen.

Adam Van Wie 18:06

So the actual flash crash, the one they call that happened on May 6, 2010. So I was not involved. But there was one since I got in the business where I had a couple of clients call me and say, why is my ETF down 35%? And there was no reason.

Steven H Van Wie 18:24

Sometimes there is a reason and it has to do with a stock split or something like that.

Adam Van Wie 18:28

No, this was, this was an error.

Joey Loss 18:30

Was this 2018?

Adam Van Wie 18:32

Maybe. I don't, I honestly don't remember what year it was, but. But yeah, I had a, had a couple of calls and I started looking into it and it was like, yeah, it's down that much. And I was like, what? How can we buy more? And, and then it just automatically corrected. And then I heard later that day that all trades that were placed during that time were canceled out. And you didn't, you weren't able to take advantage of it.

Joey Loss 18:45

Yeah, right.

Joey Loss 18:56

This is dislocation from any type of event like this, even a flash crash, right, where you have algorithms just going crazy making these decisions. Every one of these dislocations is one of the best buying opportunities for the disciplined investor that ever come around. Because over time there's a reversion to the mean. That's your best friend as an investor. And if you have a strategic asset allocation that makes sense for everything that matters to you in your life, how you're going to spend your money, all that, and you stick to it like a religion, it. And things get out of whack, you rebalance. Guess what? Things that have underperformed tend to overperform in the periods thereafter. Things that have overperformed tend to underperform. And I can't think of a better three month period, actually six months now

Adam Van Wie 19:36

to illustrate that, than this one that we're in. I mean, international being an excellent example, small caps being another one.

Joey Loss 19:43

And it's hard to do that because after 10 years of the Mag 7 carrying everything, I know you guys are

Steven H Van Wie 19:50

taking advantage of people who have to take their required minimum distributions to do some selling to get the money from the things that are successful. So it's kind of a backdoor rebalancing of an account when you choose what to get rid of and what to keep in the account when it has to deliver some money.

Adam Van Wie 20:09

Yeah. Or people that are drawing on their portfolio. We get to do that monthly. And it really helps.

Steven H Van Wie 20:15

Yeah. And if you, if you go into your trading with an eye toward taxes rather than world events, you can do yourself a lot of good. Most people I know aren't paying a lot of capital gains yet because at strategic moments we've taken some losses and they accrue for it's only three grand a year, but it helps. All right. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with lots more stuff. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven H Van Wie 20:45

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

Adam Van Wie 20:47

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 20:48

And I'm Joey Law.

Steven H Van Wie 20:49

And, and I remind everyone, lines are open 904-222-8255.

Steven H Van Wie 20:54

Where you can take a shot at the trivia, how many good old fashioned pagers are still in use in the US Right now. And I also suspect that there's a lot of things on everyone's mind. So if you just want to call and talk about geopolitical problems and related to the impact on the market, that kind of thing, that's fine, too. Otherwise,

Steven H Van Wie 21:18

I'm saying that we probably don't have a lot more to say about the current war status because it's just not going to be something that consumes us, in my opinion.

Joey Loss 21:31

Yeah, yeah. I don't think the markets will care, like not to be heartless. I just, markets tend to not care that much over the long term about a conflict of this nature.

Adam Van Wie 21:42

They might care Monday morning.

Steven H Van Wie 21:43

Yeah, they might over the long.

Joey Loss 21:45

Yeah, I just, ultimately, I don't think it'll materially impact the markets.

Steven H Van Wie 21:49

Well, you all know about Trump accounts by now. If you've been listening to the show regularly, where all the newborns that divorce that take place and in 2025, 6, 7 and 8 will get spotted a grand by the government for opening up a Trump account. And that money can't be used until they're at least 18, at least not without some grave exceptions. And families can add and some employers can add and some of them are doing that. You don't have to be born between 25 and 28 to have a Trump account. You can open a Trump account for any kid you want to. You just won't get the thousand dollars. I think there are, personally, I think there are better ways to invest for your kid. But for the 3,000 bucks, I'd probably open one?

Adam Van Wie 22:41

Heck, yeah. I. I think we're just talking about this before the show, but I think it's a really interesting social experiment to see.

Joey Loss 22:41

Definitely.

Steven H Van Wie 22:48

And it's not the last one that we're going to talk about today either.

Adam Van Wie 22:51

Is it. Is it going to change the lives of people who would otherwise not have had access to. To a gift like that of a thousand dollars and that time in the market? So we'll see. I. I don't know.

Steven H Van Wie 23:04

All right, I'm going to go back, and before I go forward with this story, I'm going to go backwards. Everybody around here is familiar with a subset of people around, especially true in the beaches, but I'm sure it's everywhere. And these are people that are very skilled in certain things, whether it's carpentry or tile or wood floors or anything. And a lot of these people have been off the grid since they got out of high school. They come in, they work for cash, they do a great job, they're nice. You call them, they show up, we got a bunch of them. But there's a lot of people who have been doing that now for decades, and they're wearing themselves out. If you've been doing this and you're turning 60 and you've been working with your hands and your back and you have been off the grid, one day you're going to walk into the Social Security office and you're going to say, I want to sign up. They're going to look at you and say, and who are you? Because they've never paid in. Now, there's so many of those people that it's a bona fide problem in the country already. If this stems a little of that, I say, good, let's do it. So, you know, people don't know enough to start these things by themselves. That's the problem. So one way to do it is with newborns. You get their interest right away. But now Trump's come up with a second one. It's called the Federal Retirement Match for workers left out of 401ks, and that just came up in the State of the Union address. What he's proposing is that people who are not covered by a plan at work will get a similar to a TSP or 401k account, and the government will match $0.50 on the dollar up to $1,000 per person per year. And it's controversial,

Steven H Van Wie 24:59

and I'm not exactly sure yet where I stand. And the reason I say that is I feel it's going to Hit a lot of people who would otherwise just put money in an IRA and if their concern is that the IRA contribution limits are so low I have a better idea. Raise the contribution limits. Takes an act of Congress. We can talk them into that. I don't know about general revenues funding, trump accounts and the non 401k 401k account. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just kind of on the fence. What do you guys think?

Joey Loss 25:37

I need time with that. I'm with you. I can see good and bad.

Adam Van Wie 25:39

Yeah. I don't know. I don't see it being taken advantage of. That's one thing. Um, I also. We've long argued that the, the IRA limit should mirror the 401k limits. Why on earth you should be allowed to save more for retirement if your employer offers a certain type of plan versus making money on your own. Makes no sense to me. So that part I agree with but I don't know. I mean I'm not opposed to it off the bat but I just don't see it being a big this. I don't think it solves any problems.

Joey Loss 26:18

I guess the main thing I'm stuck. I have no, no reservations whatsoever about the government plan that allows larger contributions and covers the gap by small companies that may not have 401k plans. I think that's great. It just levels the playing field for your own opt in. You can now play the game if you choose to the way everybody else does. I think the match I'm a little stuck on. I just don't know. What do you guys think about the match piece?

Adam Van Wie 26:42

I mean I understand it.

Steven H Van Wie 26:45

It's incentive for sure.

Joey Loss 26:47

I just. I don't want to disincentivize small business owners from starting 401k plans. If you know that the general treasury is going to do a math why would you do it? That's my only concern.

Steven H Van Wie 26:58

There's another proposal in front of Congress that would mandate a 50 cent per hour contribution to a retirement plan for every employer in the country. No, that's a non starter.

Joey Loss 27:06

I don't like that.

Adam Van Wie 27:09

I'm not happy about that.

Joey Loss 27:10

You got a small look, starting a small business is hard and it's probably a lot of list. You can't just determine their revenue any further than the tax code already does.

Steven H Van Wie 27:18

Who remembers out there the Myra?

Adam Van Wie 27:22

Yeah, I bet vaguely but big M,

Steven H Van Wie 27:25

little Y, big R, big A. Yeah. That was Obama's contribution to trying to solve this problem and it was so ineffective that it was canceled virtually immediately it had 30,000 people express an interest in doing it. I don't even know how many of them ever put a penny in it.

Adam Van Wie 27:45

30,000 of anything in the US is basically zero.

Steven H Van Wie 27:49

Yeah, exactly. So Congress, well, actually the Treasury Department wisely canceled it. Now, I don't know.

Steven H Van Wie 27:59

I listened to the State of the Union as I tell everybody I did it so you don't have to, but it was actually pretty entertaining, I thought. But people who might need this are not watching the State of the Union. So what are we going to do to sell these people on the concept of getting started saving when they don't have $400 in the bank to meet a personal unexpected expense?

Adam Van Wie 28:26

That's another thought that I had. If you're, if you're living on a cash paycheck week to week, you're probably not thinking of what does my retirement look like?

Steven H Van Wie 28:39

I'm guessing that's about 40% of the country. Wow. Yeah. So I very much appreciate Trump's efforts and some of the people in Congress with their efforts to start solving this problem ongoing into the future, they, they tend to not think very far ahead. Those people in Congress, and this is, these are viable proposals.

Steven H Van Wie 29:05

I'm just not sure how you're going to sell it. I'm not sure how I feel about matching, but if you want to try a two year trial, I'll sign that and support it.

Adam Van Wie 29:15

I mean, a lot of people who operate like that could just incorporate and pay their taxes, including their Social Security, but they're not going to do it. Why would you. It's, that's a lot of money out of your pocket every month.

Joey Loss 29:28

For listeners, you need 40 quarters of paying payroll tax in some fashion.

Steven H Van Wie 29:34

Yeah, There's a certain minimum that you have to make in that quarter. But it's so low. Yeah, very low for discussion.

Joey Loss 29:40

Right. And then that grants you access to a Social Security benefit of some kind. How big that is depends on how much you paid in and at least as well in the game.

Adam Van Wie 29:50

Yeah, that's true. I mean, it would be a better solution to get your 40/4 one way or another, whether that's through self employment or, or working for someone else. But that's not, that's, I mean, if you, if you are established as a, I don't know, a painter who works, you know, hourly and you don't want to go work for someone else because you would have to pay payroll taxes, that's probably not going to happen.

Steven H Van Wie 30:15

And that you're, you're doing it for the reason that you know, live, live for Friday. Type reason. But you're shooting yourself in the foot.

Adam Van Wie 30:22

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 30:25

Yeah, to a degree.

Steven H Van Wie 30:27

If you don't have, when you're 65, if you don't have the ability to sign up for Medicare and get part

Adam Van Wie 30:33

A free, I mean that's devastating you.

Steven H Van Wie 30:36

You're, you know, you're done. There's nothing you can do to come back from that at that stage in your life.

Adam Van Wie 30:44

No.

Joey Loss 30:45

Yeah. I mean maybe you can get an indemnity. I'm not even sure how indemnity planes work at that point. They're not the same as like a catastrophe plan, what everybody has, but yeah, everybody wants to have.

Steven H Van Wie 30:56

I mean, you know, I'm sitting here with a big old analog type clock in front of me. I watch the second hand go round so I know when the brakes are coming, that kind of thing. I'm watching the tick tocks go by thinking Social Security in 2032 or 3 is going to have a big old problem. And the clock is ticking by just like it is in front of me and I don't see anybody doing anything about it except trying to give away more money. More and more.

Adam Van Wie 31:30

Yeah, no one's going to touch that until they have to.

Steven H Van Wie 31:33

No. You know, this country's got massive problems and shortsighted politicians.

Steven H Van Wie 31:40

That's nothing new. It's been like this for.

Adam Van Wie 31:43

Well, the politicians are only short sighted because voters are shortsighted and if you bring that topic up, you will immediately get unelected on your next election. So. So why would they touch.

Steven H Van Wie 31:55

Yeah.

Joey Loss 31:55

To your point though, they'll come a point where the opposite becomes true overnight. Yeah, absolutely. Come 2030 if we're still saying the same thing, that election is going to be all Social Security.

Adam Van Wie 31:59

That's very.

Steven H Van Wie 32:03

And you're going to, you're going to see one thing happen. Absolutely. And Adam and I have talked about this for sure. That day, whatever day they decide to do it, there will be no more cap on the income that you make that that pays into Social Security. That cap will go away. 

Adam Van Wie 32:21

Yeah, that's coming.

Steven H Van Wie 32:22

That's the quickest thing they can do to help salvage the thing. There are many more, but we have to take another quick break. Can't believe how this is going by. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven H Van Wie 32:36

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

Adam Van Wie 32:38

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 32:39

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 32:41

And lines are open 904-222-8825. 5. The question for the day, how many good old fashioned pagers are still being used in this country despite all of the wonders of communication that we have created since then? You might be surprised. All right.

Steven H Van Wie 33:00

It's hard to even know where to start with. We're trying to solve Social Security in here in a three minute break. I don't think we quite got there, but we certainly did identify a lot of the problems.

Adam Van Wie 33:09

Yeah. Well, could be the start with that every proposal is going the other way and. And funding it less or paying out

Steven H Van Wie 33:16

more because he who proposes the other way gets unelected real quickly. I mean, you could even get recalled or impeached by some people anyway. But it's got to be fixed. And I pointed out that there's an election this year. If you're running for the Senate this year and you win, you just inherited a problem because it's six years till D day. So you have to do something. But you're entering the government where everybody knows if you do something, you're out. Talk about your rock and hard part, huh?

Joey Loss 33:22

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 33:54

Yeah, it's. I think there's.

Steven H Van Wie 33:56

What do you do about it? It's got to involve revenue. Well, how are they going to increase revenue?

Joey Loss 34:01

Maybe, but also like the easiest popular thing to do would just be let like bleed more of the general fund into Social Security somehow. But which is also possible.

Steven H Van Wie 34:12

It. Well, we. Yeah, We've spiked it several times from general funds over the years, but it's because they added a benefit that was not funded. So they also had to fund the benefit.

Adam Van Wie 34:14

More popular.

Adam Van Wie 34:23

But they make the law. They can change the law. Like they can totally do that. And it probably will have to be done. But I also think they need to address the revenue side and I think they need to bump the ages up again. When it was designed, the life expectancy of people was the. Basically, the day you were eligible for Social Security was the day you were supposed to die.

Steven H Van Wie 34:45

My grandmother was born in 1908. Her life expectancy was 47.

Adam Van Wie 34:50

Wow.

Steven H Van Wie 34:51

She died after a hundred years and three days. And she collected every month. Everybody talks about Ida May Fuller, but Norma Stout was pretty good at that, too. I always got a kick out of that. Not that it was very big, but it sure lasted a long time. Her payback was extraordinary, to say the least. And anyway, we. We have to do something about it. We have to do something about it with the Congress that we're going to be seating a year from now. And I'M going to be curious how

Adam Van Wie 34:56

She won that one.

Adam Van Wie 35:02

That's true.

Adam Van Wie 35:19

Yeah. they do it, but I guarantee you my 17 year old does not care if his full retirement age is 67 or 70.

Steven H Van Wie 35:28

I pretty much promise you that. Good morning, Lane.

Adam Van Wie 35:29

Yeah.

Speaker 4 35:33

Hey, how are you all doing?

Steven H Van Wie 35:34

We are great. And how are you? What's happening?

Joey Loss 35:37

Pretty good.

Speaker 4 35:38

So, setting aside for a second the political suicide nature of doing anything to Social Security,

Speaker 4 35:47

how problematic is the fact that my Social Security account and everybody who's listening gets impacted by the idiots in Congress taking part of our money and using it for other things, you know, Social Security, disability, all these other programs. What would. And the other thing is the Ponzi scheme. So if we could transition to where you. Your account meant. Your account,

Speaker 4 36:20

you know, it wasn't having to take out of a trust fund, what would that solve?

Steven H Van Wie 36:27

Well, you saw what they did to George W. Bush when he thought that might be a good idea.

Adam Van Wie 36:33

It was a good idea. It's still a good idea. I agree with it 100%. But he got absolutely roasted for that, didn't he?

Speaker 4 36:41

Oh, my gosh.

Steven H Van Wie 36:42

If you want to know. If you want to know that it can work the right way, look no further than Canada. They don't spend the money, they invest the money. And everybody gets paid. And the fund just keeps growing and growing and growing. It's largely invested in American stocks, man.

Adam Van Wie 36:51

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 37:00

Can you imagine if we had.

Speaker 4 37:02

Well, you just described one of the Trump's initiatives making the government tsp, the Thrift Savings Plan, available on a wider scope. And you know, you got hundreds of great civil servants there in the Jacksonville area. And so many of us were on the TSP and loved it.

Adam Van Wie 37:24

Yeah. It's a good.

Speaker 4 37:26

Yeah. You know, maybe you can wean some people all over to something like that for a while and kind of get it started gradually. But yeah, you're right. You just. The poor politician who tries to solve the problem is just into their career.

Steven H Van Wie 37:41

Yeah. And where do you go when the only people who can change it are the people who can't change it because they're worried about their jobs. Are they going to grow into the prospect of retirement individually? Because that's what's going to happen to them. And yet the worst wrath I can imagine anyone facing will be the wrath when somebody gets a 77% of their Social Security check. And the people who are getting those checks are at least 62 years old and up. And there is no wrath like the wrath of old people when it comes to politics. We vote.

Adam Van Wie 38:08

Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 4 38:19

Yeah. Yeah.

Joey Loss 38:20

Well, here's the, the only upside of the population issues that we have. Is that will be a substantial voting group relative to the rest of the voters. If you had a ton of young people, I think there's a chance politicians just wouldn't care as much. But they're going to have to listen to them.

Steven H Van Wie 38:23

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 38:32

Yeah. I think. The probably. Well, we understand the problem. We sure don't have the answers. Gentlemen, you want to take a shot at the trivialin.

Speaker 4 38:35

Right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 38:37

All right.

Speaker 4 38:42

Oh my gosh. So refresh me please one more time. I was thinking about it before.

Steven H Van Wie 38:48

How many. How many pagers? Good old fashioned pages are still working

Speaker 4 38:52

well after the exploding pager cap in

Steven H Van Wie 38:55

the Middle east, we're only counting this country.

Speaker 4 38:59

I'm thinking, let's see, docs used to be big into it.

Speaker 4 39:05

I'm gonna say, I don't know, 5%.

Steven H Van Wie 39:09

Can you put a number on that?

Speaker 4 39:13

Let's see,

Speaker 4 39:15

less than 500,000.

Steven H Van Wie 39:17

All right. You're too low.

Speaker 5 39:19

Wow. Wow.

Steven H Van Wie 39:20

Yeah. That seems. I love it when I find questions like this because everybody gets surprised. And the reason I know the good surprise is because I was so surprised when I found it. So not quite but good idea. Thanks for the call.

Speaker 4 39:35

I'll be taking some of my 1970 proof coins to the coin show today to see what the price of gold is doing for us these days.

Steven H Van Wie 39:44

So I think your timing is impeccable and it'll probably go up this week too because of the.

Speaker 4 39:49

Wouldn't you think.

Adam Van Wie 39:50

Yeah, gold was all right.

Steven H Van Wie 39:53

Thanks, Lynn. We appreciate it.

Joey Loss 39:54

Silver too.

Adam Van Wie 39:55

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 39:57

Bob.

Speaker 5 39:58

Hey, Good morning, gentlemen. Good morning. There's two things that'll solve the. Well, there's one thing that will solve both the constipation in the House and Senate on getting things done and that would be term limits.

Adam Van Wie 40:13

That would help.

Steven H Van Wie 40:14

Sure would.

Speaker 4 40:15

That would.

Speaker 5 40:15

That would cause more flow of stuff. I think I do too.

Steven H Van Wie 40:22

Well, if you're not afraid of losing your job because you're not going to have it anyway. I would think they'd probably be a little more amenable.

Speaker 5 40:25

Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 5 40:29

You may get some stuff done. Make it stuff done.

Adam Van Wie 40:32

That's always a good thing though.

Steven H Van Wie 40:35

That's true too. Yeah.

Joey Loss 40:36

I mean think of any second term president you love or hate, right?

Speaker 5 40:40

Yeah.

Joey Loss 40:41

A lot of difference there.

Steven H Van Wie 40:42

Yeah, Absolutely.

Speaker 5 40:44

I'm going to take a guess, I'm going to say on your trivia.

Speaker 5 40:52

1,250,000

Speaker 5 40:54

pagers.

Steven H Van Wie 40:56

That is too high.

Speaker 5 40:58

Are the major users of pagers still.

Steven H Van Wie 41:00

Yep. That is too high. We have a bracket. Not Much time but a bracket. So anybody wants to give it a shot? You got about a minute until I reveal the answer.

Speaker 5 41:11

Okay, I'll hang up and listen to the answer. I'm really curious about this one. That's a good question, Steve.

Steven H Van Wie 41:16

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Good weekend.

Speaker 4 41:19

Me, too.

Adam Van Wie 41:20

It didn't hang up. I don't know.

Steven H Van Wie 41:24

Sorry about that. There it goes. All right. Like I said, I always love being surprised. I go looking for things sometime and when I find them, if I'm surprised, to become trivia questions, other things I stumble on not looking and say, oh, my work is well done.

Adam Van Wie 41:25

Oh, there we.

Adam Van Wie 41:40

I said earlier, if you can't get more than 30, 000 in America, that's basically zero. This is way more than 30,000. Way zero. Who knew?

Steven H Van Wie 41:50

And it is. It is. There's versions of pagers, too. You can talk through some of them now without a telephone and things like that, but since nothing's ringing, it's 800,000 of them. And when you think about that, there are about working people, 180 million or something like that. So it's a very small subset of people working, but that's not the only thing they're used for. But you would still think that a technology like that that's been around so long and there's so many options,

Adam Van Wie 42:03

Wow.

Steven H Van Wie 42:27

things you're going to be able to put on your lapel or put your glasses on. I kind of think that that number will be dwindling now, but for the right situation, it's obviously.

Joey Loss 42:38

How many of those are like doctors?

Steven H Van Wie 42:41

I. I don't know for sure.

Adam Van Wie 42:42

But also, it's. It's not the, the pager. Finding a pager isn't that hard. It's finding the pay phone to return the call. Yeah, really hard. Because that's what we used to do back in the day when you got. When you got paid.

Steven H Van Wie 42:54

Well, that's why then the more modern ones that worked like a walkie talkie

Joey Loss 42:58

with a pager device on, when Paul Castellano would. Would shoot you a page and you had to call the boss, get the job done. Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 43:05

That's right. Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 43:07

Well, you know, that, like I said, that one just kind of hit me in the face this morning. All right. Before we got about a minute left. I don't know what's going to happen with the Iran thing. Nobody in this room does. Nobody listening does, but it's going to be severe, and it might take a little while, but what's left of them I can picture in my mind. And I'll never forget the picture of the 1970s schoolroom, teenage girls in their bobby socks and white blouses and black skirts and they were all gorgeous and lively. And then there's the post ayatollah version of the same picture, and it's a bunch of black robes with little slits for the eyes. I think the victim in that is not only the girls but also the high school boys who don't get to look at them because they're so pretty. They're that young.

Adam Van Wie 43:54

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 44:03

I just hope that it works out for the people of Iran. Don't deserve the current administration.

Steven H Van Wie 44:08

It's an historic chance for them to take control. Every other time they've tried it, we had a president who was not gutsy enough to do it. We'll see you next week, same time. Thanks for listening today and good luck this week to all of us. This is the band we finesse.

Adam Van Wie 44:19

All right.