April 4th, 2026 - US Jobs are Back, All Eyes are Still on Oil

Hosts Steve, Adam, and Joey delve into financial insights, from the ups and downs of the stock market to the intricacies of Social Security. They tackle tax tips as the April 15th deadline looms, sprinkling humor and wisdom throughout. Listeners are treated to a spirited discussion that’s part financial advice, part commentary, and fully engaging.

Transcript

Steven H Van Wie 0:00

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

Adam Van Wie 0:05

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 0:06

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 0:07

And we are all together once again on another beautiful Saturday morning. You can string them all together as far as I'm concerned. It's just I saw something this morning. I digress, but I always digress easily. Anybody know the name Tony Evers?

Joey Loss 0:24

No.

Steven H Van Wie 0:25

He is the current governor of Wisconsin and he just signed a bill that said we don't have to be like Donald Trump. You will pay taxes on your overtime. You will pay taxes on your Social Security. You will pay taxes on your tips in Wisconsin. And as if I needed one more reminder why we got the hell out of there. There it was in black and white. But I digress. Welcome back to all the regulars. Thanks. You know, you. You keep listening, we keep talking. The reason we do this and enjoy doing it every single week. And to the new people, if you're driving by and happen to have the radio on or if somebody told you about it or saw us on the Internet or anything like that, stick around for the whole hour. I will virtually guarantee that you'll learn something you didn't know may or may not be useful. I don't know. But you can't learn enough. I got another old expression, you know how many million of them I have says interesting. People know a lot about a little. That's called their specialty. But they also know a little about a lot. They're people who can converse whatever topic comes up. And I like it with young people, too. When we raised our kids, if you get an invitation to play tennis or golf or something like that, if you know how and you know the etiquette and the rules and all that, it doesn't matter how good you are, but if you've never done it, don't accept an invitation. So anyway, just.

Joey Loss 1:53

I lean on that etiquette piece pretty

Steven H Van Wie 1:55

heavily, the etiquette thing, because I don't

Joey Loss 1:57

bring much else to the course.

Steven H Van Wie 1:59

That's all you need if you're willing to go over to the drink cart and buy a beer for everybody. And you know the rules. You're good. Oh, I. I threw in that part about the drink.

Joey Loss 2:10

Oh, yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 2:12

Anyway, here we are. Another personal note. About 45 minutes or so ago, I heard our longtime friend and longtime friend of the show Marshall announce that he had retired. He's closed his last loan. Absolutely.

Joey Loss 2:25

Congratulations, Marshall.

Adam Van Wie 2:27

That was supposed to be between just him and Angela, so I don't know how you found out.

Steven H Van Wie 2:30

Yeah, because it was on air and I was listening and I was thinking about it. Marshall said after he's 75 years old, and after 53 years, he was done as well. You know, we have our similarities. I'm 75 years old and I'm not retiring. And the reason for this, I've only got 25 years in this business. I got a long time left to catch up with Marshall.

Joey Loss 2:58

If you make.

Steven H Van Wie 2:59

It doesn't even seem like that.

Adam Van Wie 3:00

If you make it to 53 years, that'll be impressive.

Steven H Van Wie 3:02

Yeah, yeah. If I make it to 53 alive or not dead, too cold or anything, that would be impressive. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that. That he knew, that we knew, and that we're very happy for him. And Marshall has a lot of other interests. I know he won't be bored. I personally am not that interesting. I don't have a lot of other interests. So work takes. It really takes a big part of my life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Okay, well, that was a long way of getting to what I was excited to get at because the market was pretty good. You know, there's an old expression. Do you guys know the Farmer's Almanac? There are two versions of it, the Farmer's Almanac and the Old Farmer's Almanac, and they're both still alive, contrary to the rumors that one of them was closing. It got salvaged. Well, there's something that they have said for many, many years, and it says if March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb. Well, if you look at the market, when March happened, it started a pretty sharp downturn. And by the time the last day came, we had one of the greatest days in history. So, on that happy note, take it away.

Joey Loss 3:09

Right.

Adam Van Wie 3:44

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 4:16

Yeah, it was a really solid day on Tuesday, but this week just kind of proved what we were talking about last weekend. And because the market rallied on the hopes of wrapping up the war in Iran relatively quickly. And so that was our theory, that the market was really looking for any kind of straw that would. That would prove that thesis. And it, as far as I can tell, that Tuesday was a direct result of that, although I'm not sure anything actually changed this week on the timeline, but the market sure thought so. Or maybe the market has a. The collective wisdom of the market is that maybe Iran won't last forever, so.

Steven H Van Wie 4:57

Well, the speech that was given on Monday night covered a lot of ground. A lot of people aren't news junkies

Adam Van Wie 5:02

didn't know there was no new information.

Steven H Van Wie 5:05

No, no. But if it's new to the, to part of the investors out there who don't get to pay as much attention, I don't know, maybe it was just that, or maybe it was the indication that it's not going to be a forever war.

Adam Van Wie 5:19

Or maybe the fact that Trump spoke about it sort of indicates that he wants to wrap it up quickly and that maybe that alone was enough to get the market thinking that it'll be over with quickly.

Steven H Van Wie 5:32

Well, you better wrap it up quickly.

Adam Van Wie 5:33

Yeah, I think, I think everyone's aware of that need to do so so Tuesday was actually the best day of 2026 so far, closing out what was otherwise a pretty forgettable quarter. Despite the market being closed for Good Friday, we saw a jobs report that blew away expectations and brought the unemployment rate down in an environment where many people were expecting the opposite to happen. In addition, treasury yields fell despite oil remaining quite high. So all in all, a lot of good news this week and I'll get to that in a bit. The Dow ended the week's 3% higher while the S P was up 3.4% and the NASDAQ was up 4.4%. Year to date, all four all three indexes are still down, but all down under 6% from their all time highs. All three indexes are down less than 9%, which isn't too bad considering that two of them were in correction territory just last week. Weekend when we were talking about this, the first quarter was not kind to many asset classes with the exception of the energy sector, commodities and a few foreign countries. The materials sector also did surprisingly well, gaining over 10%. In fact, despite the poor performance of the S&P 500 index in the first quarter, only five of the 12 sectors were actually negative. Financials got hit the hardest, down 9.4% while consumer discretionary and technology were off about 8%. Healthcare and communication services were the only two other sectors to lose ground and that was by about 5%. Dividend stocks, small caps and mid caps and international stocks were all up slightly in the first quarter. The bond markets were basically flat, gaining some ground in the first half of the quarter, but then giving it back after yields spiked due to the Iran conflict. All in all, it was a good quarter to be a diversified investor not and just not only long in US equities. If you were had the Mag7 portfolio, you probably vastly underperformed most everyone. And if you had a diversified portfolio, there's a good chance you were right around flat over the quarter, so not too bad. Although the war in Iran is getting all the press, it was nothing short of an amazing week for economic data. First, the ISM Manufacturing report came in at 52.7, showing solid expansion for the third month in a row. We then saw retail sales come in at plus 0.6% and they're now up 3.7% from a year ago. Some of that was attributed to a bounce back from slow January sales due to severe winter weather, but it was still a pretty strong report. Then we get the ADP jobs report on Wednesday and that showed an increase of 62,000 jobs in March versus the expectation of 40,000. Jobless claims came in at a very low 210,000 and continuing claims fell by 32,000 to 1.8 million. Then on good Friday, we saw the job the government jobs report that was released and almost no one expected the number that that that one came in at. Employers added 178000 jobs in March, which more than reversed the 133000 drop in February. It also blew pack past expectations of about 60, 000 jobs and it lowered the unemployment rate to 4.3%.

Steven H Van Wie 8:45

Not bad.

Joey Loss 8:47

That's a big week.

Adam Van Wie 8:48

I know.

Steven H Van Wie 8:49

We have a lot more to say on that topic and others right after a short break. So just relax and don't go anywhere. We will be right back. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven H Van Wie 8:59

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

Adam Van Wie 9:01

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 9:02

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 9:04

And I remind everyone that the lines are open 904-222-8255 where you can take a shot at this week's trivia questions. Sponsored as usual by Paul Lloyd at First Coast Alarm. You can call Paul at 904-636-7888. Take it easy on the public today a little bit because it's sort of relevant as the calendar turns. It turned into April all of a sudden. April. Since 1990, April has been the second best month for the broad market behind what other month? You only have 11 choices, so let's get on them. All right, back to the market. Adam, we want to get into some other stuff. A little bit about the market and the jobs now.

Adam Van Wie 9:52

I mean, I know you want to talk about the jobs report a little bit because that's your favorite. I just wanted to say that despite all of that good economic news, the key to this market is ending the war and bringing down oil prices. As long as if we see oil prices above 100 and the and bombs are still dropping. The market is going to be flatter down. If we see oil prices drop below 80 and we see basically some kind of peace deal. You could really see this market take off. But I just don't see any scenario where the war continues and oil is $110 where the market goes up.

Steven H Van Wie 10:26

Oh, do you see we had an inversion in the oil market this morning. West Texas Intermediate is 111. But Brent is 107 or 109 somewhere

Joey Loss 10:33

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Joey Loss 10:37

right in that neighborhood.

Adam Van Wie 10:38

Never happens, huh?

Steven H Van Wie 10:39

I honestly can't remember one time, no matter what the politics or economics of the situation, first time I ever remember seeing it. I can't say it didn't ever happen.

Adam Van Wie 10:48

Yeah, I don't remember.

Joey Loss 10:49

That just doesn't make sense to me either.

Steven H Van Wie 10:51

Well, it's. What do they call it? There's a name for it when the market believes that it's artificially high and it's going to get better over time. It's dis or something. I don't know. There's a term, it's not like disintermediation, but it acts like that. So in other words, everybody knows it's going to go down so they're just going to milk a little bit, for what it's worth. That's the way I see it. And you want to talk a little bit more about the jobs.

Adam Van Wie 11:19

Yeah. Well, I'd like you to actually, because that is your thing.

Steven H Van Wie 11:22

All right. Well, the headline number was 178 and they were expecting 60. But there's some other numbers. January was Revised up by 34. February was revised down by 41, net -7.

Steven H Van Wie 11:39

That's just a rounding error for that kind of number. And the household numbers are hard to reconcile because there's a strange thing going on that I'll get into in a minute, but easily missed but very important. The government payrolls dropped another 18,000 and that's included in that number. That's the federal government. They have now reduced by 355,000

Steven H Van Wie 12:07

or 11.8% of the peak payroll. It's a good start. A lot of us would like to see that done one more time. And the CES birth death adjustment was negative 47, so you can't blame it on that either. All in all, it was surprising to a lot of people, though it probably didn't deserve to be surprising. But I got to say I was impressed at least.

Adam Van Wie 12:37

Yeah. I don't know. It's hard to Say because the trend certainly hadn't been in that direction. So it was a big reversal and maybe it was just reversion to the mean, but it's, it's hard to say what, what would have prompted such a big swing from negative 133 to positive 170 plus.

Steven H Van Wie 12:56

Well, I've got a little insight here from the Dallas Fed and they did a, what they call a break even employment study and they just published it. And it's interesting, for the first several years we were doing this show and we reported on jobs every month. The first thing you read when you go in and look for numbers is that the population would grow about 250,000

Steven H Van Wie 13:22

people a month. Well, this month it was closer to 90,000. And everybody's going what's going on? But we all know what's going on. There are two kinds of deportations going on, forced and self. And there are various and sundry magnitude estimates. But at least 700,000 and probably 3 million or more are gone. Well, we know that the domestic birth rate isn't going up to replacement. So in the absence of everything else, our population would be shrinking. And that's sort of what's happening. It used to take 250,000

Steven H Van Wie 14:04

in order to break even to keep us at full employment, we had to create about 250,000 jobs a month. Well, that has fallen a couple times due to the out migration and now you basically don't need new jobs every month and the unemployment rate will stay the same. And that's what this rather lengthy study showed. It was very interesting. It affects your assumption on the bottom line whether you think there were 700,000, 1 million, 2 million, 3 million. It affects the equation for the unemployment rate. If 3 million is close, if we created 3, 4, 5, maybe 10,000 jobs a month, we would probably still be able to fill them, but it would be more and more difficult. So with that perspective that I think that helps to explain a little bit the shakeouts in the year end numbers, which was really what January and February were all about, especially when you consider the government shutdowns. So I'm going to keep an eye on this and see if there's going to be more about it. But I thought it was eye opening that we might not need as many jobs as we think we do to keep things really booming. So that's just a little, I think

Joey Loss 15:17

there's a double edge there. I mean it's a good thing in the short term that we're not, that there's not a ton of Pressure to keep creating jobs to keep people employed. But it also to your point about population decline in terms of the replacement rate of current American citizens, you know that that has its own hazards down the line. And I just hope that as we move forward, there's more and more policy that focuses on making it attractive to have a family and that social norms continue to reinforce for young people that having a family is a good idea.

Steven H Van Wie 15:50

Try saying that on the View.

Joey Loss 15:52

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 15:52

Unfortunately it does seem to be going the opposite way right now. Well, it's. I think there's two, two separate factions. There's one side that's going the other way and then there's one side that's sort of rediscovering the family unit. And definitely who will win out? I don't know.

Steven H Van Wie 16:08

Look at the population of church goers. Especially people under 40 and especially people under 30. Charlie Kirk really set a big old snowball moving down the hill slowly. And now a lot of the young girls. I was just listening to a report on this this morning. A lot of the young girls are really looking forward to having a, quote, traditional life, get married, have kids, that kind of thing, rather than hitting the job market full speed ahead.

Adam Van Wie 16:11

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 16:36

I mean, you can do both also. There's a lot of examples of that. My wife. My wife.

Steven H Van Wie 16:38

Absolutely.

Joey Loss 16:40

Yeah, yeah. Both. Yeah, yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 16:44

The, the bottom line here is that the old fashioned feminists lied. They, you, they said you can do it all, but they didn't really mean by that. You can have it all. So I think people are finding a happy medium nowadays and it could bode well for the future of this country.

Adam Van Wie 17:07

We definitely need to have some more kids, that's for sure.

Joey Loss 17:10

Yeah, well, we must fun too.

Steven H Van Wie 17:12

We represent six young people just in this room and I'm more encouraged now about their future than I was even one year ago.

Steven H Van Wie 17:24

Hopefully I'm right.

Joey Loss 17:25

Yeah, I hope you're right too.

Steven H Van Wie 17:27

Okay, well, I have nothing else on the market. What do you guys want to talk about? Anything in particular?

Joey Loss 17:33

Well, I've got some. It just seems prudent timing. It's April 4th. We're 11 days away from tax filing deadline.

Steven H Van Wie 17:40

I kind of figured that. Subject matter.

Joey Loss 17:41

Yeah. I would be remiss not to throw out some fun. Some fun last minute reminders for everybody. Number one, if you filed an extension, just remember that doesn't mean you don't have to pay by April 15th. Now you did do yourself a big favor. Whatever penalty you might owe for late payment, if you're unable to pay by April 15, is the 10th of what otherwise would have been on a monthly accruing rate. But you're still going to be paying extra for the fact that you didn't pay on time. So make sure you get in any payments. If you need to connect with your accountant and figure out what that is, make sure you do that. You still have time to contribute to traditional and Roth IRAs for the 2025 tax year. So if you haven't done that and you think you're eligible and there's some benefit, go ahead and take a look at that. HSA contributions the same deal, you can contribute up to 4,300 for an individual or 8,550 for a family. If you're over age 55, you can do another thousand dollars on top of each of those numbers.

Joey Loss 18:36

Your Q1 2026 estimated payment is also due April 15th. So if you're behind on taxes and you have an estimated payment, it's not going to be your favorite month. But the sooner you're getting on top of that, the less penalty you'll accrue later. There's a few things that should have been done already and if you haven't done them, definitely talk to your accountant about it. If you have an S Corp or a partnership, that filing return deadline was March 16th. And if you're an owner of one of these organizations and you're late on that filing, the penalties are large. They're up to 220 per person per owner per month. So you want to get on top of that. You should have your K1s by now in hand so that you can complete your personal tax returns if you're an owner in one of these organizations. And just some friendly reminders, some things that we got out of the OBBBA from last year. If you have tip or overtime income that should be non taxable for the first time going into this year. Car loan interest for 2026, you're going to be able to deduct up to $10,000 in interest on loans for new personal use vehicles made in the usa

Steven H Van Wie 19:32

Yep.

Adam Van Wie 19:43

with some income limits though there's some income limits.

Joey Loss 19:46

And then also with some income limits, a senior bonus deduction. This is the no tax on Social Security equivalent up to $6,000 deduction for those 65 and older. That can be $12,000 for a couple subject to some income limits.

Adam Van Wie 20:01

And Also remember that April 15th is when your quarterlies are due for if you make quarterly tax payments for the first quarter. But also remember that the government in their infinite Wisdom set the second quarter payments due on June 16th. And why is that weird? Oh, because the quarter isn't actually over. So if you're one of those companies that doesn't pay your quarterly, so after the quarter you need to save some of your money to pay, make that other payment in June, which is absolutely

Steven H Van Wie 20:29

ridiculous, there's a bill in Congress to change that.

Adam Van Wie 20:32

They need to change it. So annoying.

Steven H Van Wie 20:34

Yeah, yeah, it probably went to the Senate to die.

Joey Loss 20:38

Probably.

Steven H Van Wie 20:40

Well, I don't have time to complain about them until right after the break, so don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven H Van Wie 20:48

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

Adam Van Wie 20:50

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 20:51

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 20:53

And I remind everyone the lines are open 904-222-8255 or 222-talk. And our trivia question, we're just starting out April, which since 1990 has been the second best year in the broad stock market behind what month you have 11 choices. So take one. Let's see. Where were we going to jump in? I guess nowhere in particular. I got a bunch of stuff as usual. The Senate, I don't know, I don't really know how to describe Congress these days. They seem worse than they ever have been. But they were so bad it's hard to imagine even when I was young. But who else would sign a bill in the 2:30 in the morning range of time and then head out of town for a two week vacation? And so they sent it over to the House and the House looks at it and can't stop laughing about it because it's so horrible and said no, so why don't you come back? Oh, we couldn't do that. One senator showed up to come back. Unfortunately, so did one of the other senators and he just stopped the whole thing. 25 seconds. I think that session landed and they were out of there. So now we still have hundreds and hundreds, thousands of people that are not getting paid. Trump's ordering a lot of it paid and a lot of people say by what? But apparently there's some leftover money from OBBBA and things like that. So by the time they really get to challenge him, it might be a done deal already. But it's just so, it's so baffling to me how people could be so callous about such an important topic. We talked about this last week as making payroll. The other thing they have to do is extend the life of this company, their country. And at 39 trillion debt there are. There are a lot of people who are wondering how the heck we can do this. And I'm one of them. But really know what we owe. That's another story. The. We've talked about this for years. Unfunded liabilities, they're about 117

Steven H Van Wie 23:22

billion or so and maybe more now with inflation. But the entire world's GDP is about the same size. So we owe to our various and sundry creditors, we owe the value of everything that happens economically in the world times about 1.6 now. How are we going to pay that exactly? I can't think of many ways. There are some things you can do. You can revalue the gold in Fort Knox and use it to pay off and then we don't have any gold. There goes the dollar. And that's so good on that one. How about selling assets? The federal government owns lots and lots of land and there's a lot of areas where people would like to buy it and I don't really have much problem with that. Selling it off to the private sector. They also have a lot of resources and those resources can be leased to operators that will take them out of the ground and get a percentage royalty on what comes out of the ground. That would help. Let's see. We could reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits that one people don't really seem to like very much. And we could raise retirement age, which we advocate. As long as you do it within reason. But there are a lot of people unhappy with that too. And then there's that part about funding the balance out of general revenues. And at that point the system just breaks. In my book, it is not a general revenue item. It is an insurance plan that we pay into so that we will get future benefits. Now let's see how the left looks at this. It's a fellow named Weinberg who reported to Congress in 2024 that Social Security benefits and Medicare benefits are optional.

Adam Van Wie 25:03

This.

Steven H Van Wie 25:18

Don't have to pay them. So the House budget committee in 2024, he. He said he's the chief. Was the chief actuary under, under Biden. He says that it doesn't mean you're going to get Social Security benefits or Medicare benefits because they're optional. Anybody want to argue with that besides me?

Steven H Van Wie 25:47

What are they going to actually do? I don't know. Probably nothing. The election in November will show a bunch of new senators elected. Their open seats and their retirements and so on. The group of senators that come in will be in for six Years and toward the end of their first period when they're looking to get reelected, another funny thing's going to happen. Medicare and Social Security are going to go broke right before they finish their term. From the looks of things now what are they going to do about that?

Adam Van Wie 26:22

Probably nothing until they absolutely have to. But that's just how politics works.

Steven H Van Wie 26:28

Yep.

Joey Loss 26:28

So I think, I mean we, we hit this topic before and I think we all kind of agree that the only solution that is probably realistic is that they just raised the payroll tax threshold. At least that's where we landed.

Adam Van Wie 26:40

Well, that's one thing. I think they need to push back the retirement date for sure. Young people like people that are years and my years away. Yeah, yeah.

Joey Loss 26:49

I don't care.

Steven H Van Wie 26:49

Yeah. Like they did to me when I was 33 years old. Affect me when I was over 65.

Adam Van Wie 26:53

Right.

Adam Van Wie 26:57

And we're talking about a couple years. We're not talking about like pushing it back 10 years. We're talking about two, maybe three years.

Steven H Van Wie 27:03

Yeah. We went from 65 to 67 gradually and later. And yet actuarially it solved the problem. First have 75 years, which is not permanent. But if we can get a 75 year fix every 70 years, that's okay with me.

Adam Van Wie 27:07

Yeah.

Joey Loss 27:20

Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. I mean, almost everyone who's ever going to collect collects the first paycheck and it gets less and less from there. So push it back a little bit. You save a lot of money. You know, I mean, it's an, as you said, it's an insurance program, not a guaranteed payout program. And that makes it work better.

Steven H Van Wie 27:30

Yes, you do.

Steven H Van Wie 27:37

I question myself even on this. Only as to the filing early age 62. That has never changed and I can understand it. I know it would change a lot of actuarial numbers. But you know that a lot of retirements are involuntary and a lot of people don't have a lot of money. And I think leaving that alone is probably the smartest thing to do from a society standpoint. Get an opinion on that.

Joey Loss 28:10

Ssdi, the disability program.

Steven H Van Wie 28:12

No, the early Social Security.

Adam Van Wie 28:14

I mean, I'd push it back, I push it back to 65. I'd go like 65 to 72 or something.

Joey Loss 28:20

Yep. I think I agree.

Steven H Van Wie 28:21

Yeah, you would be very unpopular, but the system would work better.

Adam Van Wie 28:26

That's, I mean we need to fix the system. It's very unpopular with, with like, I don't think like a 30 year old is, is going to really be thinking, oh man, I can't get Social Security at 63. I have to wait till 65. I'm going to revolt. It just doesn't, it's so far off and it's so, it's, it's a. Maybe, maybe I'll need it at 63, but maybe I won't. I mean.

Joey Loss 28:48

Yeah. And the reality is like, look, if this system goes broke, all those 33 year olds like me, our stock portfolios are going to suffer big time. Big time. You know, if we're thinking

Joey Loss 29:00

long term and, and short term, it, it just makes sense to make a sacrifice to fix it. And it's not even a real sacrifice. I mean, this, we're talking 40 years from now. For me.

Adam Van Wie 29:09

Yeah. Yeah. He might have waited till 65 to take it anyway. He probably would have.

Joey Loss 29:13

So. Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 29:14

Well, there's going to be a lot of young people who are going to be more tuned in as we've been talking about lately for the Trump account babies. Anybody born on this four year period?

Joey Loss 29:24

Yeah, my son John will get one.

Adam Van Wie 29:26

I saw there's like 4 million of them. Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 29:27

4 million so far. When you're filing your tax return, if you have a Trump account eligible person, and remember it doesn't have to be a newborn, you can do, you can make one, you're just not going to get the free thousand dollars. So on your tax form, you should be filing a Form 4547. You don't have to overthink why they came up with that form number, but that will establish the fact that you do want to participate in Trump accounts for your kids. And then there's a box to check that says for those eligible. Yes, I want my thousand dollar deposit, which will start on the Fourth of July, part of the big celebration for 250. So those are things to think about when you're getting your taxes out at the last minute. Also, if you're young, young people are not very good at getting their taxes done in advance. And I can't help you. I know the feeling. But I can't help you.

Joey Loss 30:24

The form itself is pretty easy and you can file it standalone.

Joey Loss 30:29

So if, if you take a look at it, it's really not overwhelming. It's a very easy one. Pager, but they're rolling out a website that'll make it even easier over the summer. So just keep your eyes out for now.

Steven H Van Wie 30:39

It's got to start already. There's some basics on it. I think it's going to wind up being very popular. Yeah, I think, of course, when you're giving Away. Thousand dollars bills. Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 30:50

Not to like, not be popular. I mean, that's a nonpartisan issue. Do you want $1,000 or not?

Steven H Van Wie 30:52

Yeah.

Joey Loss 30:57

Yes. There are a few absolutes, and I can say with 100% confidence that it is a fiduciary mandatory piece of advice for us to give to collect your free thousand dollars.

Adam Van Wie 31:06

Yes. I don't care what name is on the account. Just take, take the money.

Steven H Van Wie 31:07

Go do it.

Joey Loss 31:11

Even if it were taxed at 99%, you should take it. It's a free 10 bucks.

Steven H Van Wie 31:16

All right, here's one for you guys to chew on. Larry Fink says he's got help for Social Security. All we have to do is invest some of that Social Security money in the stock market and everything will get better. I have one primary question and some smaller ones. My primary question is what Social Security?

Adam Van Wie 31:39

There is no Social Security money. That's the problem. Or a big portion of the problem.

Steven H Van Wie 31:44

Yeah. How, how is this going to work, Larry?

Adam Van Wie 31:48

Yeah, we, we had a chance to do something like that and we completely dropped the ball because anytime voters hear Social Security and changing, they will immediately not vote for that candidate. So that's the, that's the other problem.

Steven H Van Wie 32:02

Do you know what year Social Security stop or stop funding the account and started withdrawing from the trust account, so to speak, when, in other words, when benefits finally exceeded the income. That was in 2010. So this is 2016 or 2026. I mean, and Larry is late to the party, so couple more of those things coming up after the break. But people's solutions for Social Security, it's bad, folks. Don't go away. We'll be right back. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 

Steven H Van Wie 32:39

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

Adam Van Wie 32:41

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 32:42

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 32:43

And lines are open. 904-222-8255.

Steven H Van Wie 32:47

Trivia question. April has been since 1990, the second most profitable month in the broad market. And what is the first month even better than April? All right. We're talking a little bit about saving Social Security and that sort of thing. So I'm going to give you a little insight into some of the truly dizzying intellect of some of the people that have been elected to take care of things like that. Let's see, here's one that would add $150 a month to benefits for everybody for a period of time. That's really going to help extend the system, isn't it? By pouring more out than in the problem with the way these People think

Adam Van Wie 33:36

it's always, that's always, it's always what they're doing. It's like they, they never do anything to solve the problem and they always want to give away more. Makes no sense.

Steven H Van Wie 33:46

Well, here's an alternate for you. The, the portion of your Social Security that's taxed. Now, there's a bill in front of Congress that would help seniors, of course, by doubling the taxable limit. So instead of being taxed if you're above 25,000, it would be 50,000 for single, and instead of 32, it would be 64 for married couples. Well, that would mean that there would be a lot less tax on Social Security benefits. And I don't know how many people know this, but any tax paid on Social Security benefits is refunded directly to the, quote, trust fund for Social Security. So that would again, hasten its demise.

Joey Loss 34:29

Yeah, and that's the exact reason that the so called no tax on Social Security and OBBBA is a senior bonus deduction that shows up on the, you know, 1040 totally separate from anything that has to do with Social Security. It effectively eliminated the feeling of that tax or the impact of the tax, but it still preserves the revenue that we get from taxation on Social Security benefits, which to Steve's point, is essential.

Steven H Van Wie 34:53

Yeah, it was just practical, nothing else. And then there's the true giant among men from an intellectual standpoint, Cory Booker.

Steven H Van Wie 35:08

You ready? He wants to make the first $75,000 of your income tax free. Well, guess what? Who's going to pay for it? Oh, he's going to raise taxes on the rich.

Steven H Van Wie 35:23

I can't get rid of stories like this. Every week I open it up, somebody is trying to soak the rich for something new. And when it comes from Cory Booker, for anybody who doesn't follow these things, you probably don't understand what an pompous idiot this guy is. Enough said.

Steven H Van Wie 35:45

All right, well, let's see. Where else can we go? Oh, this one. Do you know when you go to the gas station and you pay with your Visa or MasterCard, maybe you're spending 30, 40, even $50

Steven H Van Wie 36:01

that those companies, the gas companies, can place a temporary block of up to $175

Steven H Van Wie 36:10

on your card?

Adam Van Wie 36:12

Did you know that actually it's higher than that now? It's 200, I believe.

Steven H Van Wie 36:16

Yeah, it went from 125 to 175 on the one.

Adam Van Wie 36:19

I just did this the other day and I saw the temporary charge on my card for $200.

Steven H Van Wie 36:25

Well, if you're going to get gas and then go shopping and you know it's close on your card.

Steven H Van Wie 36:31

Do it in the other order. Wait, what? Buy your groceries and then buy your gas.

Adam Van Wie 36:37

Oh, gotcha.

Steven H Van Wie 36:39

There are ways around it and you don't have to do that. Debit cards are scary to me and they should be scary to everybody. So if you.

Adam Van Wie 36:50

They're really. That's not, that's false. They have the same protections that credit cards. I know that's like you. That's from 10 years ago and it's not valid anymore. You can use a debit card just like a credit card.

Joey Loss 36:52

They're.

Joey Loss 36:56

You're.

Steven H Van Wie 37:02

Yeah, I knew it was getting better. I didn't know how. How much better?

Adam Van Wie 37:06

Yeah, that it's, it is, it is much better. There's really no concern with it anymore.

Steven H Van Wie 37:11

Well, if you, if you never want this to happen to you, you can pay indoors and they don't do it. Isn't that weird? You pay at the bump. You're going to get that charge. Maybe. And if you pay Insight, you don't. Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 37:26

Didn't know that.

Steven H Van Wie 37:27

That's very strange. The things you learn when you're not looking for anything are quite fascinating actually. Let's see another study done on Social Security. Excuse me. It says the, the best way to fix this will not be the. The way that people like the best. It's kind of scary and I can see why. Because the dynamic model that these people ran, they did it statically and dynamically and it came out that the best fix for Social Security.

Adam Van Wie 38:05

Ready.

Steven H Van Wie 38:06

Raise taxes.

Steven H Van Wie 38:09

I wouldn't have thought of coming up with that. Oh wait. Yes I would.

Steven H Van Wie 38:15

What are they going to do? It is absolutely a must that they raise taxes

Adam Van Wie 38:16

You have to.

Joey Loss 38:22

for retirees. Listening that we're talking about payroll tax. Like they're going to have to raise the payroll taxes because that's the money that goes into fund Medicare and Social Security so it won't affect IRA distribution. I mean they better not ever introduce payroll taxes. That'd be a second round. I don't think they could. But this would affect working people's not retirees.

Adam Van Wie 38:42

Yeah, it's just. I don't see any other way around it. It's, it's unfortunate, but it's true. We, if we want to continue to have those social safety net systems, we have to pay for them.

Joey Loss 38:53

I'd like them to string together some of a few themes we've talked about. Like if they're going to have to enter like introduce higher payroll taxes. Okay. But if you get To a point where you start to have positive velocity in the balance. Get some of that invested in a way that makes sense. It doesn't have to make a ton of money. Adam was saying during the commercial break, if you'd earned 5% a year, that's a pretty darn conservative portfolio over the last 15 years. Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 39:16

What is that, like a 2080 portfolio?

Joey Loss 39:17

Right, right. And so 80% of that's ready to get distributed with pretty low volatility. I mean, that's a good situation. That would have conquered this problem. You'd have a 25 year timeline longer than we have.

Adam Van Wie 39:29

I mean, honestly, we should sue the government for mismanagement of the funds. It's just been a total debacle. You look at Canada, you look at Australia, they've have systems in place where they do exactly what we're talking about. And they're both not in danger of running, of going broke.

Steven H Van Wie 39:32

We should.

Joey Loss 39:45

Yeah. So part one, raise the taxes if you have to. Part two, get the money managed better. And part three, come up for air and see if we can take the taxes back down.

Adam Van Wie 39:52

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 39:56

It kind of reminds me of like an endowment for a college. What do they do with all that money? They invest it. They make sub average returns, but they're still loaded because you don't have to make market returns. You just have to make a, like a half of a market return and you'd be in pretty good shape.

Joey Loss 40:12

Yep.

Steven H Van Wie 40:13

Well, how about this one for another piece of legislative brilliance? How about we cap Social Security payments at six figures no matter what? You can't get more than a hundred thousand.

Adam Van Wie 40:27

That's a couple. Yeah, that's ridiculous.

Steven H Van Wie 40:30

50,000 for an individual.

Adam Van Wie 40:32

The system was designed so that you, if you, if you, it's like you pay more in, you get more out. It's basically an annuity. So why would you then cap it? I don't like that. No, that's just, it's an additional tax. It's just after the fact.

Steven H Van Wie 40:47

By the year 2060, it could reduce scheduled benefits by roughly 24% for the top 1% while leaving the bottom 70% untouched. Now, the problem with all these things is you can't discriminate.

Steven H Van Wie 41:04

You're going to raise taxes on 1%, but. Or take benefits away in this case, or, and leave 70% alone. That's called income redistribution.

Adam Van Wie 41:15

But that's exactly what raising the cap on contributions is, too. But at least you're doing it while I'm earning money instead of doing it while I'm done with my career. And now I'm getting capped on. On at a time when I actually need the money that that's less fair than doing it while I'm earning money.

Joey Loss 41:33

I agree.

Steven H Van Wie 41:34

You want to. This is something you're not going to hear me say very often. ARP got it right. The AARP got it right. They said proposals that focus on capping Social Security don't address the problem in front of Congress. Ensuring that every American gets every dollar they earn. Wow. I never agree with them. They absolutely nailed that one. Fix the problem, not the symptoms.

Joey Loss 42:01

Yeah, well, they know their base. What are they going to say? Arp? Yeah. Cap it.

Joey Loss 42:10

We don't need anymore.

Steven H Van Wie 42:10

Yeah. Any of the conservatives out there are listening. Don't do business with aarp. Do a Mac instead. And it. It. I guess it plays in better with your attitude about life. All right. April is generally a very good month, but not as good as this one. Surprised me. Not as good as November.

Joey Loss 42:34

November.

Steven H Van Wie 42:35

Yes.

Adam Van Wie 42:35

Yeah. I mean, that's the start of the Santa Claus rally or into the Santa Claus rally. That doesn't surprise me.

Steven H Van Wie 42:41

No. That's the kind of thing I think you have to know rather than your intuition coming into play is I wouldn't have thought of it that way.

Adam Van Wie 42:48

I. I guess I did know it. So maybe that's why.

Steven H Van Wie 42:51

But. Well, that's the answer, for what it's worth. Let's see. Boston. Don't you wish you lived in Boston? You could have a mayor like Mayor Wu, who says that every single human on earth has a legal right to come to the U.S.

Joey Loss 43:11

how do you figure that?

Steven H Van Wie 43:13

She doesn't figure anything. She just knows she is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. How about this one? The University of Massachusetts buildings have been neglected for years, probably decades. And so the other brilliant Massachusetts person, Governor Moraheeley, says she is going to put a force 4% tax on incomes over a million expressly to fix up the buildings at UMass. How's that one?

Joey Loss 43:47

4%. That's even worse than California. California has like a 1%.

Steven H Van Wie 43:50

Yeah, but they're trying to take it to 9.9 out there. Or is that Washington?

Adam Van Wie 43:54

I don't remember. That's Washington. Yeah.

Joey Loss 43:55

That's Washington.

Steven H Van Wie 43:57

It. I don't know. The voice of reason isn't heard throughout the land. So you should just keep listening to this program and you'll learn all kinds of stuff you really don't want to know and all kinds of stuff you really do. The way I see it. All right, we got to run. Unfortunately, it's been a lot of fun today and we'll be here the same time next week. And I hope you are. Thanks for listening. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour.