April 25th, 2026 - The Disappearing Inheritance

The sun shone brightly on a lively Saturday morning as the Van Wie Financial team reunited for their engaging radio show. Amid discussions of market stability, earnings reports, and investing wisdom, the hosts bantered about historical market challenges while reminding listeners about the pitfalls of inheritance spending. Lively calls peppered the show, adding dynamic interactions to a conversation that tied financial strategies to real-life anecdotes.

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 0:06

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 0:08

We're all back together again after some little side trips and fun days. So stay with us. I know it's beautiful out, so go out and do your errands in the car and turn us on that way. Or just wait until we're done and go out. Then we're, you know, this time of year, I talk about it so often, but just another absolutely stunningly beautiful Saturday morning. Just nice to be alive. So enjoy it while it lasts. It'll get hot pretty soon. Everybody knows that. Well, for the regulars, thanks for always being there. You keep listening, we keep talking. That's the rules. And if you're new to the show, whether you found out about it, heard about it or accidentally stumbled upon it, try to stick around for the whole hour because we'll promise you you'll pick up some little tidbit of something that you probably didn't know before. And I remind everybody it is a live call in show and you can do your part by calling in 904-222-8255.

Steven H Van Wie 1:08

Callers get priority. This is the. We're well into year 12 now and those have been the rules since the very first show and we do our very best to live by them. So we will discuss all the things we want to talk about unless you would like to change the subject. And we always love it when people change the subject. And it's a lot of people I know are kind of afraid to go on a live radio. I suppose it wouldn't surprise anybody if I say all three of us started a little trepidatious and now it's just, just like talking to your friends. It's that easy. So if you're thinking about it, try it. We won't bite, I promise. There are also no stupid questions. There are only questions that if you don't know them, a lot of other people don't know them either. And if you ask us anything, that's a stumper. We'll get back to you next week after we get into it. So it's, it's pretty easy to deal with us and I recommend it very highly. All right, this week, kind of an okay week. I was hoping for a little more action in the Dow on Friday, but that didn't happen. But when you consider everything that's going on, I think it's miraculous that things are where they Are. I'll let Adam talk to that.

Adam Van Wie 2:24

Yeah. Relative to the last few weeks, this week felt calm and relatively stable. It was kind of nice, to be honest. It's been pretty crazy. So I was not disappointed to see a week where we saw it go up, we saw it go down, but no major swings and mostly ended the week up. So not too bad. Next week, however, we're going to be in peak earnings reports for Q1, the very beginning of it. That and a lot of the mega caps are reporting next week. So you could see some real volatility around that. Not guaranteed, but definitely could happen. Most of the indexes are sitting at extreme overbought levels and, and that is a big change from three weeks ago and oil is still hovering over $90 a barrel. So I, I just don't know what to expect next week. But I wouldn't be surprised by just about anything up, down, sideways and anything in between. So. Could be interesting though. This week we saw the Dow lose a little ground, but the other two indexes were positive. The NASDAQ led the way higher at plus 1.5% and S&P was up a half a percent and the Dow lost 4/10 of a percent. So nothing, no big damage done, just a slight down week. Despite the big gains in the quarter for the year, the gains are more modest with the Dow up 2.4%, the S&P up 4.7 and the Nasdaq up 6.9.

Steven H Van Wie 3:50

In my notes this morning I made the comment says April's been a very good year.

Adam Van Wie 3:56

Yeah, it's pretty crazy. If you look at the quarter to date numbers, the dow is up 6.2, the S&P up 9.8% and the Nasdaq up 15% in this core in this month. So it really has been a pretty good year.

Speaker 1 4:12

Crazy.

Joey 4:12

Yeah, it's really screwing up the, you know, like how they had their stats for every month historically. We've got two just monster Aprils. Going into this, I'm only looking at the median from now on.

Adam Van Wie 4:18

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 4:20

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 4:25

Yeah, exactly. You can't. Those things are interesting to look at, but they do not prove true on each individual year that you look at. So gotta keep that in mind. You can have a year with no Santa Claus rally, but if you look over a long time, most of them have it right. So it's funny like that.

Steven H Van Wie 4:43

Well, I was looking at the sell in May and go away thing for six months too. And statistically over a long time. Yeah, it's absolutely true. You would have made More money by getting out for those six months and staying in the other ones. If you could figure out when last year in the six months the market was up 20%.

Adam Van Wie 5:02

Yeah, that would have hurt to miss

Steven H Van Wie 5:03

out on that one. You don't want to miss 20%.

Adam Van Wie 5:06

No, no, definitely not. One interesting thing is that some of the other indexes are up much more for the year than the Dow, the S and P and the nasdaq. If you look at first you say mid caps, you're up over 10%, small caps are up over 12% and micro caps are up over 13%. So some pretty good numbers on the other indexes as well. So far the recent rally has seen the Mag 7 stocks participate. That's something that has not been the case recently. Although they're still well off their previous highs, they have been rallying and bringing the market up with them. Interestingly, not one of the Mag 7 stocks is sitting at an all time high right now despite the fairly intense rally we just saw. So that's kind of interesting where we the market hit an all time high, but the Mag 7 has not. One positive sign for the market has been the moves in the semiconductor industry. Recently the Philadelphia Semiconductor index crossed over 10,000 for the first time ever this week. And it's on an 18 day positive streak. That totals a 47% gain. That is the best stretch in index history. Every single stock in the index has outperformed the S and P since March 30 for an average gain of 52%

Marshall 6:24

Wow.

Adam Van Wie 6:32

since March 30.

Steven H Van Wie 6:34

Did you notice intel yesterday?

Adam Van Wie 6:37

I saw an article. I didn't. I wasn't tracking it or anything, but

Steven H Van Wie 6:41

in the chart I was looking at, I presume this is right. It was up 23.8%.

Adam Van Wie 6:47

Gee, yesterday that's a, that's a good year.

Steven H Van Wie 6:49

Also they did their stats before and they just blew everybody away. Yeah, everybody. The big guys are ordering from them and from Ti and they're doing well too. So that, you know, everybody was so down on tech. How many weeks ago? Not that many.

Adam Van Wie 6:55

Interesting.

Adam Van Wie 7:07

Yeah, but, but semiconductors were really not. Didn't really follow that trend through. Actually that was the next point I wanted to talk about. On the other side of the market are software stocks. IGV, the software index is down over 19% this year and down 26% in the last six months. The volume of trading in this ETF has been off the charts as well. With over 15 million shares trading hands on almost a daily basis. That to me says that the speculation about AI's effect on software companies is playing out in real time in the market via this etf. It's. People are just have wildly different opinions on what's going to happen to the software industry due to AI. And I think, I think you can make a valid case on either side of the argument. On any side of the argument really. It's. But it is interesting to watch.

Steven H Van Wie 7:13

It mostly done a software.

Joey 8:00

Yeah, it's. It's crazy because the. All their profits are up. So everybody's trying to argue about the growth. Factor and, and they're trying to find the bottom. I mean, to see where it is.

Adam Van Wie 8:07

Right.

Adam Van Wie 8:10

Yeah. You can make a case that AI is going to make them more profitable or put them out of business. And they're both valid. I don't know what's going to happen.

Joey 8:20

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 8:20

Did you see that Meta is tracking keystrokes for its employees now that are about to start. Employees aren't happy about it. I look at it as Disney had to train their own replacements or they wouldn't get their. Their termination and such. Met is doing the same thing. These people are. Keystrokes are being logged by AI so that AI could do a better job of doing what they do, thereby putting them out of business.

Adam Van Wie 8:45

Jeez, isn't that weird what times we live in?

Steven H Van Wie 8:49

Yeah, that's for darn sure. All right, much more to come. We got to take a quick break. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 8:59

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey 9:00

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 9:02

And we will have a little bit more of the market rep as soon as I remind people that the lines are open. 904-222-8255.

Steven H Van Wie 9:12

And you can use that number to try to answer our trivia question, which is, as usual, sponsored by Paul Lloyd at First Coast Alarm Call Paul at 904-636-7888.

Steven H Van Wie 9:25

This one may or may not surprise anybody. I'm not really quite sure, but as usual, it has a point. What percentage of inheritors ages 50 and older spend their entire inheritance in less than one year? It's just a whole number percentage between 0 and 100. So you don't get any clues yet. So somebody's got to call and set the bracket for it or take a lucky guess and just do it. All right, back to the market wrap. Adam, had a little bit more to touch on here. That's kind of important this time. Of year.

Marshall 10:00

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 10:00

Two things. One, we're at the front of the first quarter earnings reports. Just over 250 companies out of just over 2,000 have reported so far. 77% have beat their earnings forecast and 69% have topped revenue forecasts. 5% of companies have raised their forecast versus 4% that have dropped. Obviously these numbers are subject to change wildly based on the other, you know, 1700 companies that are going to report. But that's a pretty solid start considering the backdrop of the war in Iran. Especially on the guidance. You know, with uncertainty usually become, usually comes lowered guidance or more conservative reports. So far so good. We haven't really seen that. So if, if we ended this quarter with those kind of numbers, I think you're going to see the market respond favorably.

Steven H Van Wie 10:55

I don't see anything that would keep it from happening. You know, anything could happen in Iran, but you don't live your life where anything could happen. For years I've been saying there are possibilities like a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, then you might want to do something. But short of something like that, these are just short term events and they move the market a little bit here and there.

Adam Van Wie 11:16

Typically that's what political events do and that's been proven time and time again.

Steven H Van Wie 11:21

And we sent our guys over today to Pakistan to not talk to the people who wanted a meeting with them.

Adam Van Wie 11:28

That sounds productive, doesn't it though? I mean more productive than lots of other government activity though.

Joey 11:30

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 11:33

That's true. The, the, I don't know what he's called in Pakistan but there's a guy that's kind of in charge of this whole thing and he's, he's playing intermediary on the thing and I just hope he has a clear understanding of what comes next if they don't play ball because it won't be pretty. Yeah. And I've, I've seen a couple articles lately. Rumors of us running short on missiles and such. Don't believe them, just not. So we're banging them out and we'll use them if we have to. But I'd sure rather just come to their senses.

Adam Van Wie 11:50

We'll see.

Adam Van Wie 12:06

Really hope that doesn't happen. Me so economic data this week it was light but positive. Retail sales came in higher than expected even when the price of gas was factored out. So the, that was a big deal. Initial jobless claims remain low and continuing claims dropped by another 20,000 this week. The relatively new ADP weekly jobs estimate came in strong again. It's showing new job creation running above 200,000 monthly, which is really, really solid. That would be a great way to kick off May. Several reports also showed individual investors are getting more bullish, which is not always the best news, but it's usually. No, but it usually happens when the stock market does well and it has done exceptionally well over the last three weeks.

Steven H Van Wie 12:45

No, I didn't like that one either.

Steven H Van Wie 12:51

And by the way, this next show, we would normally be doing the Jobs report, but because Friday is the first of the month, they don't have time to compile it. So the Jobs reports will be on the 8th and we'll report them on the 9th.

Adam Van Wie 13:04

Oh, one of those weird exceptions, huh?

Joey 13:06

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 13:06

I didn't realize that sometimes I kind of sneak them in there if they've got two days, but with one, apparently they just don't care to guess, which is. And maybe ironic.

Adam Van Wie 13:18

Yeah. I appreciate them not rushing out a bad report, though. That doesn't.

Steven H Van Wie 13:23

It will be. What? It will be anyways.

Adam Van Wie 13:25

Yeah.

Joey 13:26

Then it'll get revised anyway. I mean, it's. When is the one, the last one that wasn't revised that I don't know.

Adam Van Wie 13:34

That don't remember? Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 13:36

And the biggest news of the week out in Business world, the man so affectionately known as Tim Apple announced his retirement.

Adam Van Wie 13:46

Yeah, that was a big kind of a shock. I didn't know that was in the works. I don't know if anyone did.

Steven H Van Wie 13:51

September 1st, he had been talking about grooming a replacement for quite a while. Sure. Now the interesting part of that to me is the guy that he handpicked is a hardware guy.

Joey 14:05

Sign of the times.

Adam Van Wie 14:06

Also kind of his opposite. So that was interesting.

Steven H Van Wie 14:09

Yeah.

Joey 14:09

Yeah. Yeah. Tim was a very big consensus guy. Tim Apple, that is. And this guy is. Is not. He's kind of more of a hard driver and he was notably opposed to a lot of things that flopped, like Apple vision. A couple of, you know, a couple of these kind of side projects. The car. Yeah. Then he, he just, like Tim, seems to think this guy has a really good vision of what Apple is in the minds of consumers and has always put his energy there.

Adam Van Wie 14:25

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 14:27

The car.

Steven H Van Wie 14:37

Well, it's good to watch. Despite Tim Cook's been there for 15 years at this job and despite his roaring success, there were 37 companies that outperformed him over that time. Wow. It's weird, isn't it?

Adam Van Wie 14:54

Well, you think of that. There weren't 37 companies that were bigger than Apple that outperformed.

Steven H Van Wie 15:01

No, there were. There are some that are now, but you know, Meta hadn't Even gone public when he started his job.

Speaker 1 15:08

Wow.

Steven H Van Wie 15:10

He's been there a long time. So it seems. Anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting. So let's keep an eye out for what goes there. But the reason that caught my eye is we've been talking about this for years. The development of Apple. They were basically 100% hardware company. And when they started switching over to the musical stuff and then they went into the subscriptions. You and I were talking about this many, many times, how recurring revenue from subscriptions was a great idea and it grew actually to become half of the company. And now there's a. I would imagine a resurgence in the hardware field because the guy's got that focus. We'll see how he actually operates. But I have found out one thing over my many, many years of doing this. It's a very, very bad idea, mostly to bet against Apple.

Adam Van Wie 15:11

No kidding.

Joey 16:05

Yeah, yeah.

Adam Van Wie 16:06

They've got the track record for sure, but can they keep it up forever? Probably not, but who knows? Yeah.

Joey 16:12

I mean, people have destroyed brand images as good as Apple in the past.

Steven H Van Wie 16:16

Budweiser, Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs had that one characteristic. Nobody I've ever seen could do what Steve Jobs would do, which is to tell you that you needed something that didn't exist yet. So he was going to make it for you.

Adam Van Wie 16:31

Yeah, he was. I mean, it's incredible. I just. I still remember. We talk about this a lot, but I still remember the first time I saw an ipod and I. It didn't. I didn't even. Couldn't understand it. The guy who brought it on our trip that we were on was explaining it to me. I was like, I don't get it. And then it started listening to music via, like a tape adapter in the, I'm like, oh, okay. This is pretty freaking cool. Y like, but it just. I never would have thought of that.

Steven H Van Wie 16:38

It.

Steven H Van Wie 16:53

in the rental car.

Joey 17:01

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 17:02

Well. And the whole concept of the iPhone. I remember his introduction on it, and everybody immediately realized, I. I've got to have one. So I remember standing in line to get our first one and it was that bad.

Adam Van Wie 17:11

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 17:19

It's a shame in many respects that Steve Jobs died so young. He had a lot of years left to watch his own concepts for multiply and so on. You know where he came from originally?

Adam Van Wie 17:33

No.

Steven H Van Wie 17:34

His parents were graduate students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. And she got pregnant and they decided they. They would put the baby up for adoption and did. And that baby grew up to be Steve Jobs.

Adam Van Wie 17:40

Didn't know that.

Steven H Van Wie 17:53

I bet they are. Sorry. They gave that away.

Speaker 5 17:57

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 17:57

You don't have to be that bright to go to the University of Wisconsin. Oh, wait, I shouldn't say that. Yeah, I.

Adam Van Wie 18:04

Wait a second. Didn't. Weren't my parents graduate students at the university?

Steven H Van Wie 18:07

I think we met there, actually. If my old memory serves me right. Anyway, just a couple of interesting tidbits.

Steven H Van Wie 18:16

This is one that's interesting. It's about taxes. And I don't want anybody to forget about taxes yet. There's a guy who thought that his identity had been stolen because he went to file his taxes, and he's from Puerto Rico and

Steven H Van Wie 18:32

he has one job and he gets one W2. But then they found out when he found that there was another W2 in his name and his Social Security number, and he was worried that the guy was going to rip him off or something, which I guess technically sort of is. But it's somebody who used his Social Security number to get a job that never caused any fuss. He pays his taxes or pays into the taxes and gets a W2. But it's not this guy.

Joey 19:06

Leave it alone. Leave it alone.

Adam Van Wie 19:08

I would only leave it alone if I was getting the net money.

Joey 19:12

Well, think about this. Yeah, he's paying for his Social Security, whatever his wages are. He's juicing that for the dude. That's huge. Yeah, that's why I'm like. That's the first thought.

Steven H Van Wie 19:23

Leave it alone.

Adam Van Wie 19:24

Another annuity, Another bumping you up a tax bracket. So. So, I don't know.

Steven H Van Wie 19:28

Well, for those of you who are filing early, you have a better chance to catch this stuff in time. This guy's lucky. He's going to get out of it without a problem. Only because the guy didn't cause him a problem. And then I don't know what they're going to do to his earnings record either. But I went back a couple weeks ago just on a whim and checked my earnings record. I do it every year. Two, three. And it's always been perfect. And right there next to the bottom line in 2024 was a zero. Now, I haven't had any zeros for a long, long time.

Adam Van Wie 19:50

Sure.

Adam Van Wie 20:02

I had this happen to me, too. And it corrected. They corrected it later.

Steven H Van Wie 20:07

I wrote them a letter, uploaded it. They got a nice upload site for the Social Security website. Now, I did it, and I got a letter in the mail yesterday that said that they had corrected it. Thank you. And I went in and checked again. There it is. So they're really quite reasonable.

Adam Van Wie 20:23

Yeah. But you do need to stay on top of that stuff because it won't always fix itself.

Steven H Van Wie 20:28

You know, it's a. If it's a significant year and a significant working time in your life, that means it's going on to those years that are counting the most. And it will affect your benefits for your life. So just make sure it's right. Check it once in a while. It's easy. All right, we'll be right back after a short break. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 20:49

I am Adam Van Wie.

Joey 20:50

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 20:51

Remind everyone that the lines are open 904-222-8255. Where you can take a shot at a trivia question, which today is what percentage of inheritors ages 50 or older spend the entire inheritance in less than one year? And now I want to throw out a term for everybody, too. This is. It's related, but it's not applicable. Do you guys know what a grasshopper kit is?

Adam Van Wie 21:19

I do not.

Joey 21:20

I do not.

Steven H Van Wie 21:21

Son or daughter of a grasshopper? No, I made that part up. A grasshopper kid is a kid who inherits some money and immediately spends it. We've met some of those. Way too many of them. That is not the answer to this question, however, but it's just along the lines of the inheritance, so we'll talk about that a little bit, too. Joey's got something on his mind today that he wants to get into, so let's turn it over.

Adam Van Wie 21:32

Yes, we have.

Adam Van Wie 21:48

Hold on. I think we have a phone call.

Joey 21:50

Oh, we do, we do.

Adam Van Wie 21:52

Let's. Let's address that first. Wait.

Steven H Van Wie 21:54

Yeah.

Marshall 21:56

Good morning, gentlemen.

Adam Van Wie 21:57

Good morning.

Steven H Van Wie 21:58

Got Roger doing the chores today, Marshall, so things are good.

Marshall 22:01

I understand, I understand. I'm going to take a shot at your trivia.

Steven H Van Wie 22:06

Sure.

Marshall 22:07

Although I think it would probably equally interesting to know how many of those inheritances are less than 15 to $20,000.

Steven H Van Wie 22:20

But you could make a good argument for doing a study that way. This one was not done that way. In fact, the average inheritance that was in the study was 133,000.

Speaker 5 22:30

Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 22:32

All right.

Marshall 22:33

Well, then I'm going to say 70%.

Steven H Van Wie 22:39

Well, this is one time I'm really happy that you're a pessimist because that's too high.

Marshall 22:45

Okay.

Joey 22:45

Interesting.

Speaker 5 22:46

Good.

Steven H Van Wie 22:47

Yeah. Well, that narrows it down quite a bit. That is what else is happening today.

Marshall 22:54

I wanted to thank Adam for the recommendation of Mint back when that software was available to budget for free. And when they went out of business. I switched over to Quick and Simplify.

Marshall 23:09

I just went through saying, okay, what if I don't have income coming in anymore

Marshall 23:17

from my previous job before retiring from it? Hey, it's still a positive number.

Adam Van Wie 23:23

It should be

Marshall 23:27

with, you know, good confirmation.

Marshall 23:32

But, yes, that product is great. And I

Marshall 23:38

highly recommend if anybody's thinking about doing it, it's not that expensive.

Steven H Van Wie 23:42

Is that recall into a bot mint?

Adam Van Wie 23:46

I believe they. And replaced it. Yeah.

Marshall 23:47

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 23:48

Yeah. Moved it into. I'm sure they wanted their own brand on it.

Marshall 23:52

And Intuit has done an awesome job in linking financial information. Yeah. So that they're drawing in the credit card information. The only thing you have to adjust is when you write checks. And it doesn't automatically show up in the bank item. But, yeah, that was all great. Well, gentlemen, thank you again. Appreciate your help.

Adam Van Wie 24:07

Yep.

Speaker 5 24:19

Always. Thank you. That.

Marshall 24:22

That question actually ends.

Steven H Van Wie 24:24

Okay, you will stay tuned.

Joey 24:28

Interestingly, Intuit's one of the stocks that's getting killed right now.

Adam Van Wie 24:31

Yeah, it is. And a lot of people really don't like the company. I personally, I think they have some good products. I don't know, I think they find it like, invasive and it reminds them of their bills.

Joey 24:38

Yeah. Why don't people.

Steven H Van Wie 24:46

I got about 30 years of Quicken data for Sarah and me. Yeah. I can pull up anything you want to know. It's fabulous. Use QuickBooks for the small business. Well, you've been involved in that. The. What I didn't like and I've heard this from other people. I don't like the QuickBooks online version.

Adam Van Wie 24:58

Yeah, I use that.

Adam Van Wie 25:06

Oh. That's what I use and I really like it. Yeah. I think it's way better than the old school version.

Steven H Van Wie 25:12

Well, maybe it's just an age differential.

Adam Van Wie 25:15

Yeah. I don't, there's no. I will not use a software program that has to be live on your computer anymore. It just, it doesn't make sense.

Steven H Van Wie 25:26

I found that there's some things that always stumbled. Like sometimes I had to get out of it and get back into it to have what I just, just logged in before appear in my numbers. And I, I don't know why that is, but I've heard it before. Anyway, I think it is a magnificent company.

Speaker 5 25:43

Company.

Adam Van Wie 25:45

Yeah. Their products are really, really solid. So.

Steven H Van Wie 25:47

And, and I agree with, you know, they're aggressive and all that, but, you know, if, if you want it to do the work for you, you got to give it some data. Right.

Adam Van Wie 25:54

But I do understand why the AI thing would be targeting them because Their software is definitely something that I think could be replicated and maybe improved upon by an AI driven software.

Steven H Van Wie 26:08

Yeah. And I'm sure that's part of the problem as the world is viewing it right now. Software in general. Software is going to write software. There's no other way to put it. And it's going to get better and And cheaper and cheaper.

Adam Van Wie 26:17

No, it's true.

Adam Van Wie 26:20

better, no doubt about it.

Joey 26:23

Yeah. I think the question is more about like how do they make money? Because that's the part that's going to change. More so than what you just said. Like, I think the big players are going to continue to be big players. I don't think they'll struggle, you know, I'm speaking very generally, but I don't think they'll struggle to find ways to add value with AI. The question is, is their subscription model, that's a headcount based thing, going to survive that transition and will they be as profitable on the other side?

Steven H Van Wie 26:48

For decades we have joked about we just make it up in volume. And that started out from an old Saturday Night Live thing, was called the First National Change Bank.

Adam Van Wie 26:58

Yeah. How do you make money?

Steven H Van Wie 27:01

We can give you 10 dimes or 20 nickels.

Adam Van Wie 27:05

We have Change combinations.

Speaker 1 27:06

You have.

Steven H Van Wie 27:07

You've probably never thought volume

Steven H Van Wie 27:10

back in the 80s and the stamping company had a couple of those where it was getting harder and harder to make money. So we always said before we ship any part, we just tape a quarter onto the top of it and send it.

Adam Van Wie 27:23

But we make it up in volume.

Steven H Van Wie 27:24

Exactly.

Steven H Van Wie 27:26

But I digress.

Joey 27:27

All right, if I were to ask you guys what was the worst year in which to retire over the last 100 years, what would you say?

Adam Van Wie 27:35

I mean, the obvious ones that come to mind are like 2007, because that would come here. You would have been slaughtered.

Adam Van Wie 27:45

Yeah, I don't know.

Steven H Van Wie 27:47

21.

Joey 27:48

2021.

Steven H Van Wie 27:51

Yeah. 19. But nobody did that. Nobody's alive today did that.

Adam Van Wie 27:52

22 is 28.

Joey 27:59

So when I read the question, my guess was 1929, which. Which was obviously a bad year. The answer is 1968.

Adam Van Wie 28:09

Oh. Because you had just nothing happen for 10 years.

Steven H Van Wie 28:12

You had Jimmy Carter coming in a really bad.

Joey 28:16

There's more than just Jimmy Carter. I know you don't like Jimmy Carter.

Joey 28:21

There was really bad inflation for a long time. Really slow economic growth. Prices tripled between 1968 and 1983. And you just did not have market growth to keep up with that. Nowhere near it. Inflation peaked at 13.5% in 1980. Now this you've talked about in the form of mortgage rates.

Steven H Van Wie 28:31

Wow.

Steven H Van Wie 28:42

You know, many times, ask anybody my age what their first mortgage was and you'll shake it double. But remember, prices were much lower too,

Adam Van Wie 28:51

but they were rising at a much higher rate.

Joey 28:53

They were, they were.

Steven H Van Wie 28:54

So it was leading to trouble. Yeah. And it got there.

Joey 28:58

So this, this research was done by the founder of the 4% rule, William Bengen. And he said in summary, it was a combination of severely prolonged bear market of the late 60s, the early 80s. But the biggest impact in addition to that was the inflation piece, which just crushed people. And you know, back then, the way people, the masses thought about investing was not the way they thought about it now. So beyond this theoretical analysis, the way people were actually invested was probably far worse for the situation and they didn't

Adam Van Wie 29:30

have access to the wide range of investments that we have access to today.

Joey 29:34

Right. And there were, you know, eventually you could get 30 year treasuries at 15% interest, but that was at the end of that period and didn't affect you during the period. So to put it into real numbers, if you started with $100,000 in 1968 as a retiree and you withdrew 4.66% of that starting balance, you had less than $41,000 at the end of just six years. That's how bad it was. Yeah. And so they were using a combination of like real price inflation.

Adam Van Wie 30:03

Ouch.

Steven H Van Wie 30:07

Was that annual withdrawals or a single withdrawal?

Joey 30:10

It was annual withdrawals of 4.66. Based on that 100,000. So basically 4666, whatever that bought you, he would inflate it against whatever the market did. But conversely, in 1929, which we think, I mean, the market went down 89%. The Dow went down 89% by 1932.

Adam Van Wie 30:20

And.

Steven H Van Wie 30:28

Brutal.

Joey 30:29

And still that was considerably better. If you had done the same exact spending pattern, by the end of 30 years, you had 105,000 in your account. And the reason for that was while the Great Depression stunk, there was deflation. So you really had a counterforce. Yeah. So people's concerns about inflation matters. I mean, it's a real thing.

Speaker 5 30:38

Wow.

Adam Van Wie 30:38

Okay.

Adam Van Wie 30:44

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 30:46

Huge difference.

Steven H Van Wie 30:50

Yeah. Harry Dent is still expecting a replay.

Adam Van Wie 30:53

We do have a phone call, but we are, we're almost up against a break, so we may want to just hold it over till the next segment.

Steven H Van Wie 30:59

Yeah, Bob, if you can hang on, would appreciate it. And we'll pick you up right afterwards.

Adam Van Wie 31:03

We're about a minute and change away from the break, so.

Steven H Van Wie 31:06

Mm. The.

Steven H Van Wie 31:09

The sort of. The second half, I guess, of that little analysis has to do with life expectancy.

Steven H Van Wie 31:16

Your life expectancy, on paper, in theory A is misunderstood, but it's supposed to be right now, the combined population around 79, which of course doesn't include everybody. So I was putting together a little something this morning on that, and I found something that somebody said that I thought was just brilliant. Of course, I can't find was, don't plan on X number of years for your retirement. Make a plan for no matter what. And out at age whatever, 100, 110, whatever you want to use, you still haven't run out of money. That's the only safe way because people are lasting so much longer today and don't know if you'll be one of them or not.

Adam Van Wie 32:04

Yeah, we had a client kind of chuckle that we were planning for them to 100 this week in the office. And we're like, well, look, statistics say that it probably won't happen, but it could.

Steven H Van Wie 32:14

Yeah. Statistics also say that there are three things people fear worse than death, and the top one is running out of money. And I promise you, everybody I've ever talked to in our office, that is their worst fear, for sure. So Even if you're 95 at the time, you don't want to run out of money. All right, we'll be right back. We'll pick up Bob. Don't go away. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 32:40

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey 32:41

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven H Van Wie 32:42

All but one of our lines are open. 904-222-8255.

Steven H Van Wie 32:47

And on the other one we have Bob.

Steven H Van Wie 32:52

Roger. Good morning, Mr. Bob.

Speaker 1 32:52

Good morning, gentlemen.

Speaker 1 32:55

How you doing? Hey, Joey, you're coming up with some really good stuff.

Joey 32:59

Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 33:00

I was thinking about when we sat for bond money in Jacksonville for our first home. You know, the interest rates were like 11%.

Steven H Van Wie 33:10

Yep.

Speaker 1 33:11

Oh, my God. Talk about, you know, inflationary pressures and, you know, high interest rates. You know, this market, you know, at 6 and 3, 6 and 6.3 or whatever. People ought to look at the time when interest rates were way up there for stuff.

Adam Van Wie 33:31

Every generation thinks their problems are A, new and B, only ever happened to them and. Yeah. And unique and worse than the previous one. Yeah, that's just how life works.

Steven H Van Wie 33:44

Well, the other part of that, all young people are trying to buy a property. They look at it and they find out what the previous owner paid, and they say, oh, I'm too late. And they buy it. Five, six years, it's double.

Adam Van Wie 33:52

Yeah.

Speaker 1 33:55

Oh, my God. You know, and we sat in rainstorms for two days. You know, you had to have a family member sit in line for you. You couldn't. If you got. If you had to go to the bathroom, somebody had to relieve you, so.

Adam Van Wie 33:59

You couldn't.

Adam Van Wie 34:07

That's hilarious.

Speaker 1 34:10

That was bad. Take a quick guess at your trivia question. 57%.

Steven H Van Wie 34:11

The good old days.

Steven H Van Wie 34:17

Well, there's another time when your pessimism is appreciated because it's even lower than that.

Joey 34:24

Wow. I'm shocked.

Speaker 1 34:24

Oh, my goodness.

Adam Van Wie 34:25

I. I'm really floored.

Joey 34:27

I thought it was gonna be north of 6.

Steven H Van Wie 34:28

You know, you hear. You hear stories and you talk to people, and you start to think that everybody's kind of goofy out there, but then sometimes you put a bunch of data together and look at it, and, you know, Americans aren't all that bad.

Adam Van Wie 34:40

Yeah.

Marshall 34:41

Well, I was.

Speaker 1 34:41

I was. My reasoning people that win lottery and they're broke, you know? A year later,

Speaker 5 34:46

Yep.

Speaker 1 34:51

it's got to be at least 50%. Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 34:53

We. We know some lottery people who've done very well, and we've all read the stories. I. I did a Google search or an Amazon search. I mean it. For books about lottery winners who failed pages and pages come up. It's really common.

Joey 35:10

Yeah. Well, you know why? There are a lot of them, for sure. But the ones who win and do it right, you don't know about them. You don't even know their names. One of the things I have to watch out for, My wife and I'll buy scratch off every once in a while. Like, if the kids just have a rough week and we need something to kind of take the edge off for Friday, we'll get a scratch off. But I got to remember that we kind of have a proximity bias because we're around a bunch of winners. Like, we work with people who've won different things, and it makes it seem like it's more likely to win than you are.

Speaker 1 35:11

Wow.

Steven H Van Wie 35:14

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 35:17

Nope.

Adam Van Wie 35:18

Yeah.

Speaker 5 35:18

No.

Steven H Van Wie 35:35

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 35:41

The first rule of buying a lottery ticket out where we all. You buy it at that little publix down on beach. Remember that one? Practically two in a row. Big ones that were sold at the exact same Publix. Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 1 35:58

We're buying a lottery ticket is a pleasure.

Steven H Van Wie 36:00

Yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 36:03

Very good. Can we quote you on that one? Good. My granddaughter works there. I'll tell her.

Speaker 1 36:05

Yes, you can.

Speaker 1 36:09

Okay.

Steven H Van Wie 36:10

All right.

Adam Van Wie 36:11

All right.

Speaker 1 36:11

Enjoy the program. I'll let you Guys, go.

Speaker 5 36:12

Bye.

Steven H Van Wie 36:13

I appreciate it. Thanks.

Steven H Van Wie 36:16

All right, so 57 is too high. Interesting little warning to people.

Joey 36:18

Wow.

Steven H Van Wie 36:24

This actually happened in Dallas, but it's good all over the place. The Secret Service seized 13 card skimmers in Dallas and aborted 13 and a half million dollar in fraud. The way these things are done in many respects is at gas stations.

Adam Van Wie 36:42

Yeah, I've heard that. I've never heard of one around me,

Steven H Van Wie 36:46

but there has been one in Ponte Vedra over the years that I know of. There might have been others, but when you. When you're using a credit card at a gas pump, it's a better idea

Adam Van Wie 36:58

to do the tap version, which is becoming more common. Yeah, yeah.

Steven H Van Wie 37:02

They can't skim that. But if you start to put your card in and anything jiggles or is loose or anything like that, don't do it. Pay inside and tell them they got a problem out of the pump. Yeah, that's the. The first sign, apparently, is that it isn't a perfect fit.

Adam Van Wie 37:18

Yeah, yeah. But with cards, you're really not responsible for fraud and theft. They, the. All the major credit card companies will. Will not hold you accountable for that. So you're pretty well protected, but you still don't want it to happen because it's a major headache.

Steven H Van Wie 37:33

Yeah.

Joey 37:33

And you got to call a phone number and be on a. You don't want to do. Yeah, it's. You got to.

Adam Van Wie 37:35

Wait forever. It's an. And then you got to change. Got to get a new card and then change all your prepaid things that are linked to that card to a new number. It's a real headache.

Steven H Van Wie 37:46

There are other places that use ATMs and any point of sale Terminals are also here. And if you are doing a debit card, see if you can use it as a credit card. All right, we have Bosco.

Speaker 5 38:04

Not a fabulous, fabulous show.

Steven H Van Wie 38:06

Thank you, sir. Yes.

Speaker 5 38:09

I'm pedaling down to New Smyrna and the weather's, you know, just what it should be.

Adam Van Wie 38:16

You know, so nice out.

Speaker 5 38:18

It is, it is. The bugs are low. The sun is hot. You know, breeze is cool. Pay big bucks for this kind of weather. We take it granted sometimes.

Adam Van Wie 38:21

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 38:26

No doubt about it.

Steven H Van Wie 38:29

Yep. They can come into Florida.

Speaker 5 38:31

I want to try.

Steven H Van Wie 38:33

Sure.

Speaker 5 38:35

And I'm thinking 35%.

Steven H Van Wie 38:38

Well, now we have what's known in the business as a bracket, because that's a little low.

Speaker 5 38:44

That's a good bracket, huh? So anybody.

Steven H Van Wie 38:45

It's a real good bracket.

Steven H Van Wie 38:48

Anybody out there who's paying attention, it's getting Easier by the minute here.

Speaker 5 38:53

There you go. And the time's getting upwards.

Marshall 38:56

Y' all have a great day.

Steven H Van Wie 38:57

Well, enjoy your little road trip. It doesn't get any better than this.

Speaker 5 39:03

True dare. Take care until then. I'll see you next weekend.

Speaker 1 39:03

Take it there.

Adam Van Wie 39:07

Take care. Thanks.

Speaker 5 39:09

Ciao.

Steven H Van Wie 39:10

And I'm going to go another couple minutes. There's still time for somebody to call and try to hit it. But there's a point I want to make in this whole thing too. Let's see.

Adam Van Wie 39:19

There are good ways to blow an entire inheritance too, like paying off hide high interest credit card debt or something like that. I would be 100% in favor of doing something like that.

Steven H Van Wie 39:31

That is done quite frequently. There is. There's a term that I had never heard before called mortality salience phenomenon. Okay.

Adam Van Wie 39:42

Never heard of that. I'm not. No, I don't have a clue.

Joey 39:44

I can't even imagine what this means.

Steven H Van Wie 39:47

This is experienced apparently by some people who inherit money and the people want the death reminder to go away, therefore they spend the money. Now, is that rational or is that very emotional?

Adam Van Wie 40:04

But I understand it.

Steven H Van Wie 40:06

Yeah. If they don't want to be reminded of the death money. Now I take a quite different view of that. Okay. Well, we have Leroy. That's what we were hoping. Leroy.

Speaker 5 40:19

Good morning, folks. How are you?

Steven H Van Wie 40:21

Good morning. We're great. How are you?

Speaker 5 40:23

Hey, I heard the low was third. I was 35. What was the high? 50 side.

Adam Van Wie 40:26

57.

Steven H Van Wie 40:27

57.

Speaker 1 40:29

How about 42?

Steven H Van Wie 40:30

How about 42? 42 is a ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Exactly right. I had a bracket 41 to 43. But you didn't need it.

Joey 40:36

Wow.

Joey 40:41

Yeah. Go get a money ball, Pick some numbers.

Speaker 5 40:45

Like they say, a blind hog finds

Steven H Van Wie 40:46

an acorn every once in a while. You got that right. All right, we're gonna. We'll have Roger put you on hold, get your information and you enjoy the rest.

Speaker 5 40:53

They've already. You've already got it.

Steven H Van Wie 40:55

That we do. Yeah, yeah. Don't worry about it. Just. You can. You can take care of the phone itself and. Thanks, Leroy. Tell Pat we said hi. Let's see. Oh, yeah. So this is the funny one. The average was the 133,000 that I mentioned earlier. And

Steven H Van Wie 41:18

I view that more. Unless you've got a situation like Adam was talking about. Deeply in debt with high interest rate stuff. Fine, do it. I would look at it as if you can pad our retirement for later and we got a chance to grow. I would. Instead of missing that person, I'd just be thanking them every day of my life. Because most people start too late and put in too little. And if you can get it bumped up with an inheritance, you should be nothing but grateful that that person took the time and caring to include you in the will. Boy, I see.

Adam Van Wie 41:53

Yeah, that's. I think that's a much more rational and less emotional way, but it. That's just not how it works in the real world. People get very emotional around money, and then especially money that involves the passing of a loved one.

Steven H Van Wie 42:10

Only 15% of heirs spent some and saved some. The rest either saved it all or spent it all. That.

Adam Van Wie 42:18

That's interesting, isn't that. I would have guessed that was the biggest.

Steven H Van Wie 42:22

I guess that'd be 40, 50%. Like go, I retired my mortgage and then put some in the rollover.

Adam Van Wie 42:25

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 42:29

Or even inherited ira, took a big trip and then saved the rest or something like that.

Steven H Van Wie 42:34

Yeah, but that's not apparently how it goes very often. It was done by American College of Financial Services, and it's readily available. You don't have to believe me. It's in Grasshopper. Beneficiaries spent an extra $265

Adam Van Wie 42:38

Interesting.

Steven H Van Wie 42:53

for every thousand. They inherited an extra 1,000.

Adam Van Wie 42:57

So they inherited 1,000. They took 12.

Adam Van Wie 43:03

That's funny.

Steven H Van Wie 43:04

I always try to be a little amusing once in a while. All right, so who's got a grasshopper? Huh? Some people. Let's see. Oh, there's another one. There's a disturbing trend now going in. In 2023, there was kind of a jump in people who, when they were changing jobs, took their 401k balance and spent it instead of rolling it into the new employer plan. That's. That's really, really not a good idea, people.

Joey 43:30

Whoops.

Adam Van Wie 43:31

Ouch.

Adam Van Wie 43:35

It is not the two best years

Joey 43:37

in market history, but other than that, it's probably a lot of fun.

Steven H Van Wie 43:40

Yeah. There's another phenomenon that I won't get into big time till next week. But, you know, if you get divorced and one of you is in a plan, you're allowed to split the. The 401k balance by having the spouse open up a plan account. But there's a big, big button this one. Both spouses then have to start taking RMDs the day the employee has to take it. So if a spouse is five, 10 years younger, that would accelerate it. You get out of it with an ira. All of which I will get deeper into when I've got more than 11 seconds to talk. Thanks for listening, everybody. Go out and enjoy this fabulous day. And we will see you next week right here at this time. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour.