July 4th, 2026 - Happy 250th America!

On this Fourth of July edition of the Van Wie Financial Hour, the hosts open with a heartfelt tribute to their late producer Roger Henderson before pivoting to live market analysis, jobs data, and Federal Reserve speculation. They dive into the surprisingly strong quarter for equities, soft but nuanced employment numbers, falling inflation components, and practical investing topics like target-date funds and retirement savings priorities. The show also highlights the first anniversary and mechanics of “Trump accounts” for children, compares them with 529s and UTMAs, and closes with demographic trivia about Germany’s birth and death rates and broader concerns about aging populations.

Transcript

Steven 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 Van Wie 0:09

And it also is the Fourth of July. So we're going to wish a big old happy birthday to this country that has managed 250 out of its allotted 350 years of history as any tell. Hopefully not. Somebody's got to break it. But, um, we are all here live today despite the holiday. But if you were a carryover from Angela Walker's show, you probably already heard that our regular producer Roger Henderson died last week on Sunday after the show. I had a birthday and Roger died. Interesting. But he was a young man And we don't know what happened just yet. He was outside. He apparently got stung by something and it was pretty much immediate, or at least very, very quick. And nobody will probably ever know exactly why, although I guess they are going to do an autopsy. So maybe we'll hear a little bit more, but you can't change it. That's the problem. You can take precautions after the fact.

Adam Van Wie 1:16

It doesn't work.

Steven Van Wie 1:17

So it isn't the way we hoped to be starting off the show, but since it happened, there's an old proverb, an old saying, whatever it is, the show must go on and go on it will. So welcome back to all the regulars or the people that keep listening. We'll keep talking and just keep coming back over and over. And it's a good bargain the way I see it that way. You will not find much live radio going on today, I'm quite sure, which is why I am very happy that we're sort of unique in the industry at a time like this. That said, one for one very, very rare occasion next week, we will not be here live. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be listening to what's going on, but that's the way it's going to be. And then in 2 weeks, we'll be back. Everything will be normal again. At least insofar as normal stays when you've lost an integral part of the show. And we'll make it work. Got the boss in today.

Adam Van Wie 1:35

All right.

Adam Van Wie 2:25

So if you're listening to this on Saturday the 11th, just know that it is a rerun. We never do that. This is for—

Steven Van Wie 2:31

this is a first in the 12th. Oh, well, we're into our 12th year and this is a first.

Adam Van Wie 2:36

Yeah. And the reason is a good one. It is Roger's memorial service. So that is why we will not be here. The radio station will be closed. And I just have to say, it was really, really weird and sad coming in this morning and not chatting with Roger because that's what we always did. Yeah.

Joey Loss 2:54

Yeah. One of the things Roger did is he had this way of— and it can't possibly have been exclusive to us— but making you feel like a rock star before you went on the air. He'd be like, Adam, Vanwy, and you'd walk in and you're just like, pumped up a little bit. Heck yeah, I am. You know, and, uh, something you don't think about too much until you realize suddenly it's not going to happen anymore. Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 3:03

For sure.

Speaker 3 3:18

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 3:18

He had a great family, wife and 4 daughters that I'm sure they're just devastated. If you go to WBOB.com,

Steven Van Wie 3:28

they have established a GoFundMe for the family. You know, I don't care when you're 61 years old, I don't care how much planning you've done. You're not going to have planned enough to handle something like this. So help them if you can. And I'm sure they'll be very grateful.

Adam Van Wie 3:45

Yeah, definitely. We're going to miss him, that's for sure.

Joey Loss 3:48

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 3:48

I'll, you know, from Adam called me actually, he was on the road and I, if it had been May Day, I would have thought, or April 1st, I mean, I would have thought that it was an April Fool's joke. Yeah, we had just left the guy. We had our usual after the show, 30-second to 1-minute chat and see you next week. And you expect to see him next week. That's all. All right. Well, we're not going to dwell on that forever because as usual, there's a lot going on. But I do want to issue this one comment since the bosses are in today running the board. I have an old saying that I should remind them of. It says if the show goes perfectly smoothly through the whole hour, it's 100% credit to the host. On the other hand, if there are glitches in the show, it is 100% blame to the guys in the next room. Yeah, they seem to understand that. Anyway, I'm very grateful, by the way, for you guys to come in and do this one. It wouldn't be Normal. All right. The market this week, we can smile again. Yeah, it's had one hell of a quarter, didn't we?

Adam Van Wie 4:56

Yeah, thank you.

Adam Van Wie 5:06

We sure did. It was a remarkable quarter, just beyond, I think, any expectations that any of us had. And in fact, the year is already better than most of us thought the year would be. So— and we're only halfway through. Now, that doesn't mean it can't go down from here. It certainly can. But it's been a— it's been a heck of a good year considering the first quarter was either flat or negative depending on how you were invested. So, and, and it was a surprisingly good week as well, and it kind of felt worse than it was. It was shortened by the Fourth of July holiday, which was observed on Friday, and the market kind of teetered later in the week, which made it feel not great, but the numbers looked really good. All three major indexes gained ground. The S&P rose the least at a 1.8% increase, The Dow was up 2% and the Nasdaq was up 2.1%. Small and mid-cap stocks didn't fare as well. They faded, faded about 1.6% and 0.6% respectively. Part of the reason the market was up was actually on bad news. So that's a little unusual, I guess. The jobs report that came out on Thursday was weaker than expected. So why would the market go up on a reaction to a bad jobs report? The Fed has been discussing rate hikes for the remainder of the year due to inflation, but this jobs report makes that look much less likely. I always thought that rate hikes were unwarranted anyways, but this news dropped the chance of a September rate hike from 79% to 63%, which I still think is way too high.

Steven Van Wie 6:40

Yeah, I can't believe you asked me.

Adam Van Wie 6:42

Isn't that insane?

Joey Loss 6:43

I would think at this point it's like 10.

Adam Van Wie 6:45

Yeah. I don't know why the market is pricing that in. It doesn't make any sense to me because they love good news.

Joey Loss 6:52

Well, the rest of it, you know, in fairness, I guess the rest of the board aside from Warsh is not as clearheaded about it. Kevin, Kevin Warsh seems to be the one who's most ready to be flat or go down. Versus the rest of the board of governors.

Adam Van Wie 7:03

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 7:05

I think the only mistake they could make for the next few months is to do something.

Adam Van Wie 7:10

Yeah, I agree. Just do something. So it's kind of ironic too, I think, because if you go back to COVID and inflation is transitory, that BS argument that was made, I actually think inflation is transitory this time. So because it is 100% due to the price of oil, which is now dropping. So I really think that any reaction to this would be a mistake.

Steven Van Wie 7:12

Stand there.

Steven Van Wie 7:34

Truflation is still under 2%, 1.91 or something like that this morning, or 1.81. Yeah, that's a measure that's more closely aligned with how we all live and spend money.

Adam Van Wie 7:46

Yep, definitely. And the music's a little quiet, but it is coming up. So we're up on a break here. So I've still got a bunch to talk about, but we'll have to get to it after we pay some bills.

Steven Van Wie 7:55

All right. Well, don't go away. We've got a lot more market wrap and a lot of topics after that, including the happy birthday to the Trump accounts. This is the Ben Wheat Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 8:10

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 8:11

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven Van Wie 8:14

And we, as usual, will have a trivia question sponsored this time by— every time, I should say— by Paul Lloyd of First Coast Alarm. You can call Paul at 904-636-7888.

Steven Van Wie 8:28

One of the unusual things that happened in the market this week As you all probably know, Europe has been kind of a laggard. When all of a sudden Germany fell out of the right side of bed for a change and their market started to tick up fast. So I wanted to bring up something that had to do with Germany. So I found this one. Last year, Germany recorded 655,000

Steven Van Wie 8:56

live births. How many deaths were recorded in the same period? 655 born. How many died? You got to be kind of in the ballpark. You don't have to hit it exactly. And believe me, as always, I do have a point.

Steven Van Wie 9:15

All right. Lines are open.

Steven Van Wie 9:18

904-222-8255. And Adam can dig back into market wrapping and we're going We've got comments on the jobs reports and all kinds of things. But first, I want to say happy birthday to the OBBBA that gave 97% of us a tax cut this year.

Adam Van Wie 9:34

Yeah, incredible. Yeah. But I was actually just going to talk about Europe. European stocks actually soared when the news came out on Friday. So kind of interesting. Why? Why on earth would European stocks soar on American bad news? Well, the— I think the EU was the first, central bank to do a rate hike, and it's already occurred. And so I think this news, they're looking at that and saying, oh, well, maybe we shouldn't have hiked and maybe we won't do any more. And so, yeah, the European stock market really liked that. Markets in Europe were already up slightly for the week, but they jumped up more than 1% on Friday to end the week up 2.5%. The All-World Index and the Emerging Markets Index were both up about 0.5% to end the week. Commodities were flat for the week despite the price of oil continuing to drop. It was down 1.4% this week. Gold and silver both saw gains of about 1.2% on gold and 3.3% on silver. That's a nice bounce back. They really had a pretty rough quarter, gave back a lot of the gains they, uh, saw in the first quarter. Interest rates across the curve went in different directions this week, with short-term rates dropping slightly and longer midterm rates rising. The bond market dropped about 0.4% in reaction to that news. Real estate, which has performed fairly well this year, was down slightly during the week. Despite the less-than-stellar jobs report, weekly jobless claims continue to run at extremely low rate. This week, the print was, uh, about 215,000, making the 4-week moving average 222,000. That is historically very low. Continuing claims actually ticked up to 1.8 million, but that's still a really low number as well. The ADP report, which tracks private sector job growth, showed a pretty strong increase of 98,000 jobs for June. Most of that growth came in the service sector while the manufacturing sector grew by just 2,000 jobs. Wages were up 4.4% for people who stayed in the same job year over year, while people who switched jobs saw an increase of 6.6%. So really strong wage growth. Relative to historic norms. Despite those reports being positive, the government report was estimated to show— the estimate was 113,000. It actually came in at just 57,000. It also revised previous reports down by 74,000. That made what looked like a 100,000 per month job creation trend look much worse than that. Interestingly, the government report showed that most of the job loss was in the leisure and hospitality sector, which directly contradicted the ADP report, report. If that sector had just remained flat, the job growth would have been 118,000. So which report is right? Despite the bad report, the economy is still creating more jobs than the average of 10,000 per month we saw in 2025, which is good news. To me, it appears there's more of a reshuffling of jobs right now as some are replaced by AI and others are created due to AI. Just an educated guess, but I think it's one that may have some merit.

Steven Van Wie 12:41

Yeah, not only that, but the— there's about 800,000 jobs that were being done by illegal aliens who were deported and replaced by jobs that Americans would do.

Adam Van Wie 12:53

I did see the percentage of native-born workers was rising recently. So that's— that is probably a direct reaction to that.

Steven Van Wie 13:02

For the first time in quite a while, there was a measurable increase in the population of just over 100,000 people. The deportation schedule has kept the population growth way down and it's skewing some of the statistics. If in the household survey from Thursday,

Steven Van Wie 13:22

I think it was 508,000 decrease in people working, but people are leaving the workforce again. I, yeah, I don't know if this is sampling or truth, but this is what the numbers say.

Adam Van Wie 13:34

No, it's, that's pretty, uh, consistently shown in the numbers right now that the percentage of, um, working people is like 61.5, down from 60— over 62, I believe, not too long ago.

Steven Van Wie 13:48

Yeah. And if you look at the numbers from a year ago, there's about a million one less people working. Now, Trump keeps saying that there's more people working than ever before. I, I think it might be more accurate to say there's more Americans working than ever before?

Speaker 3 14:05

Perhaps.

Joey Loss 14:05

So he might be playing with whichever of the nominal or percentage, or you know what I mean, how people do that. This is greater than it's ever been, and it's like, okay, well, which of the measures are you using? One of them may be true at any time.

Adam Van Wie 14:15

Yeah, exactly.

Steven Van Wie 14:17

Point is that things are pretty good.

Adam Van Wie 14:19

They're not bad, it's just they're not on fire either, but it's a pretty steady economy right now. Um, the, the The area that concerns me the most right now is housing, though. It's just really slow housing market.

Steven Van Wie 14:32

That is true. And that is one of the great reasons why I hope that the Fed has enough common sense under the new leadership to not interfere by raising rates.

Adam Van Wie 14:43

Yeah, that I just don't— I don't understand the justification for it. It makes no sense to me.

Steven Van Wie 14:49

I don't see it. The construction is focused now on factories. Single-family homes are not doing well at all. But factories, factory construction is booming, which we all know. There's $19.2 trillion coming over to be invested in this country in creating new and also restoring old factories. Construction is booming. That'll turn into manufacturing. It is not like people in Washington, D.C. to make a a long-term plan when the average amount of time somebody spends looking into the future is 2 years in the House, 6 years in the Senate, and a few minutes in the media. So this is all part of the grand plan. It is working. Unfortunately, construction takes a long time, as you know. Somebody going to put $1 billion in a factory, it's not going to be producing by Christmas time. But hang on, people, it's coming.

Steven Van Wie 15:51

I don't know, anything else important out there in the market?

Adam Van Wie 15:55

No, that's all I had for the wrap today. I thought the, I thought the, um, the jobs report was probably the biggest news of the week. And well, it wasn't great. It wasn't as bad as it was made out to be either. It, and plus it's a month. I mean, and if you look at the ADP report, it was actually quite good. So I don't know. I like to look at 4-month trends and the trend is definitely on a downward trend from a big pop in March. But, but again, I think you have to take a longer-term picture. We're still trending way above where we were last year.

Joey Loss 16:28

And we hit, we hit the transitory inflation idea right before the break, so we couldn't really fully dig into that. But 3 key components— food, housing, and clothing— are all falling.

Adam Van Wie 16:37

Right. And those are big. Those are big components.

Joey Loss 16:40

And so the oil issues related to Iran have had a disproportionate impact on recent readings. But if those three are falling, I mean, that's, that's where people live for the most part, aside from gas pumps, which obviously affects people.

Adam Van Wie 16:52

But yeah, if that's also falling and we're nearing a real deal, it definitely is falling. I filled up, uh, yesterday and it was much cheaper than it was a few months ago.

Steven Van Wie 17:00

So if you can put an extra $5 or $10 in your pocket after you fill up, take it. Hakeem Jeffries mentioned this week that the price of gas today was $4.22 on average. No, it's not. It's in the $3.70s. That's $0.50 a gallon, people. That counts. And it's falling. It's not rising. But, you know, politics numbers are playthings, obviously. Anyway, that— it's good. It could be better.. And I believe it will get better. I just don't see a reason why it wouldn't. So good.

Adam Van Wie 17:04

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 17:38

We'll see. I mean, $68 gas or oil is a lot better than $120.

Steven Van Wie 17:43

Certainly is. Oh, the other thing. I hate the idiots on TV. Well, oil fell in half, but gas didn't.

Adam Van Wie 17:50

Not yet, but it will.

Steven Van Wie 17:51

But do you think that 100% of the cost of your gasoline is the raw product? Or did someone have to refine it and move it and deliver it to the gas station for you to pump it into your car? Well, those things aren't free, people. It's— it might move half of what the crude does, but even that'll take a little while. If you're a mom-and-pop gas station and you've just filled up your tanks and you paid $4.20, then your price at the pump is going to be whatever it is. Until that tank is gone. So the next one you buy, you pay $3.60,

Steven Van Wie 18:31

then you're going to lower the price to reflect that.

Adam Van Wie 18:33

Yeah, but Trump wasn't helping this by going out and doing his socialist routine of if you see someone charging too much for gas, report it. Come on. That's so dumb.

Steven Van Wie 18:42

He stubbed his toe on that one.

Steven Van Wie 18:46

We used to do that in Florida all the time. And I remember years ago when Neil Bortz was on air and we'd have a hurricane or something, some kind of a disaster. And all the talking heads in Florida were all over everybody about price gouging.

Adam Van Wie 19:04

It's not a thing.

Steven Van Wie 19:06

Gave one example of a guy who took a pickup truck to North Carolina and put half a dozen generators in the back of his truck. And then drove back to Florida and they wouldn't let him even pay for the gasoline. To make the trip. If he sold them for a penny more than he bought them for, he was going to price gouging jail.

Adam Van Wie 19:14

Right.

Adam Van Wie 19:21

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 19:29

People, do we teach nothing about economics anymore? You want some people to get electricity? Maybe send a couple of guys up and get some generators.

Adam Van Wie 19:40

And compensate them for their time and effort.

Steven Van Wie 19:43

Yeah, exactly. You know, life is a mystery to me in the media, and it always will be. If I ever feel like I understand it, Shoot me. All right, this is the 1-year anniversary of Trump accounts. The OBBBA, the One Big Beautiful Bill, which also has another name, but I can't get over how much fun it is to say OBBBA. So it created Trump accounts for babies that are born during Trump's term, second term. And I'm sitting right across from a guy who has one. Well, effective tomorrow morning, there is going to be money in that account for the $1,000 deposit. And Joe, you said that you got notified about that, right?

Joey Loss 20:27

Yeah, I got a text yesterday, um, anybody who had submitted a form online through trumpaccounts.gov or through the IRS, um, should be expecting— you know what, let's come back to this after the break.

Steven Van Wie 20:40

We'll pick up right where we left off. And just let us pay a few more bills, make those folks happy. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 20:51

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 20:52

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven Van Wie 20:54

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

Steven Van Wie 20:59

where you can take a shot at this trivia. Germany last year recorded 655,000

Steven Van Wie 21:07

births. How many deaths were recorded during that same time period? I've got to think about it. I have a point and I'm going to make it later when somebody gets it or doesn't get it.

Joey Loss 21:22

So on Trump accounts, if you have filled out a Form 4547—

Steven Van Wie 21:26

easy to remember if you think about it.

Adam Van Wie 21:28

Yeah, that's funny.

Joey Loss 21:29

Yeah. And submit it to the IRS. Then at this point, if you haven't done that, The best thing to do is go to trumpaccounts.gov. It's going to be way faster. It took me 5 minutes to do that. Yesterday I got a text that said, hey, your Trump account's almost ready. Today the app launched. So whether you're on an Android App Store or an Apple App Store, uh, go in there, type in Trump Accounts, and there's like a white square with a couple of bars and a gold star. It's obviously Trump branding if you see it. Um, download it. Took me 5 minutes during the last commercial. To set up my son's account, the final steps. And so the money's not there, but it says your, your $3,000 is on its way. There it is.

Speaker 3 22:04

Wow.

Speaker 3 22:08

Good.

Steven Van Wie 22:10

Not everybody gets the $1,000. At birth has to qualify. Actually, that's the wrong way to say it, in my opinion. What it means is you don't have to be born in that 4-year time period to have a Trump account. You can be older than that, or you could come in later because they're going to— hopefully they're going to survive into the future. So the right way to look at it is that they're allowing anybody to get one, but they don't all get the $1,000. That's the qualification.

Joey Loss 22:13

Not everybody gets it.

Joey Loss 22:42

And something else that I think is really cool, I just noticed while clicking around, there's two tabs that you would expect from anything like this. The first one is, you know, what's your balance? The second one is if you want to put more money in. There's a page for that. The third page is a learning page. What is an investment? What is the stock? The power of compounding. What is the S&P 500? What is an ETF? I think this is great.

Adam Van Wie 23:05

Yeah, that's the whole point of these accounts, is really to, to improve financial literacy amongst the next generation. And what better way to do it than by being invested in the S&P 500?

Joey Loss 23:17

Well, especially if you're getting, you know, at this point, obviously it my son is not going to get on here and learn what a stock is, but, right. But, but his parents would. Exactly. Right. And I think if you're giving a free $1,000 as seed money to this effort to parents across the country, uh, the process really could not be easier to get it set up. And now you have a reason to be in this app that's teaching you a little bit. I think that's great.

Steven Van Wie 23:39

All right. And how will that money be invested? Well, it's very limited right at the moment. They're— the mandatory investment is in the broad big market here called the S&P 500 matching or tracking funds. I mean, they're the lowest expense ratio. That's why they're using the SPTM version. It's SPY. I'm sorry. And the other one just being the SPY. Has a slightly higher expense ratio. It's not worth even discussing the differences, I found out. But you're only going to pay 2 basis points annually. That's, that's essentially free. Now, what has the S&P 500 done over time? About 10.9 or 11%

Adam Van Wie 24:05

No, SPY.

Adam Van Wie 24:23

That's fantastic.

Adam Van Wie 24:26

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 24:35

average annual gains over a long period of time. So if your kid is 1, 0, 1, 2, and starts out investing that way, there's a really good chance that it's going to turn into some serious money by the time it can be used. But that's not the only money that can go in there. Relatives can put money in, some companies can put money in. The, the trick there is that it's $2,500 limit per donation or donator, nice person, whatever. Yeah, that'll work. And then the annual limit is $5,000. Now let's take a look at somebody who gets $6,000 instead of $1,000. And that goes on until their 18th birthday. Now you got some money. What do you do with that money? First thing I would do, assuming you're a typical 18-year-old, you will not be earning much money at the time, either having maybe still been in high school, maybe just out of high school, maybe going to military or getting a job or something. So at that point, the logical thing to do, unless you're making a lot of money, is convert those to a Roth IRA, which is allowable. That will give you tax-free growth and tax-free income for the rest of your life. And that is a good thing. We'll go to the phones.

Joey Loss 25:11

Donor.

Steven Van Wie 26:02

Good morning, Ron.

Speaker 3 26:04

Good morning, gentlemen. How are you today?

Steven Van Wie 26:07

Absolutely wonderful. Thank you.

Speaker 3 26:09

That's great. So today is a little bit of a somber day for me. My brother would have been 76 years old. Unfortunately, he passed this past March.

Steven Van Wie 26:21

I turned 76 last Sunday.

Speaker 3 26:25

What's that?

Steven Van Wie 26:26

I turned 76 last Sunday.

Speaker 3 26:28

Oh, okay.

Steven Van Wie 26:29

I did it in honor of the birthday.

Speaker 3 26:32

My brother— my parents used to tell my brother when he was a small child that the fireworks were for his birthday.

Steven Van Wie 26:40

That's very good. Yeah, it's easier than Christmas when you try to tell the kid that half of those are for your birthday and half are for Christmas.

Speaker 3 26:49

Yeah, I always felt sorry for people that were born at least either on Christmas Day or right around Christmas because I got short Shortchanged there.

Steven Van Wie 26:59

Jimmy Buffett was my notable memorable Christmas birthday. Okay. Okay.

Speaker 3 27:04

But, uh, and then on the other hand, I'm also very thrilled about the United States turning 250 years old. It's, it's a wonderful country and best country I think in, uh, in history.

Steven Van Wie 27:17

So you won't get any arguments around here.

Adam Van Wie 27:19

You will not.

Speaker 3 27:20

Yes, sir. So I won't keep you any longer. Um, I'm going to say the death rate, or that rate, but, um, there were over a million people who died in Germany last year. A million seven thousand.

Steven Van Wie 27:35

A million seven is high.

Speaker 3 27:38

Oh, okay. Well, but now somebody had there.

Steven Van Wie 27:42

I'm going to tell everybody one more thing too. It's over a million, but it's under a million seven. See, I'm in a good mood today despite the, obvious. But now the next people in can take a half a shot at it anyway. We appreciate it, Ron. You have a happy Fourth, and we're sorry to hear about your brother.

Adam Van Wie 27:47

Okay.

Speaker 3 28:01

Oh, thank you very, very much. Yeah, you guys have a happy Fourth also.

Joey Loss 28:05

You do the same. On the topic of praising America being the best country ever, have you guys seen all these videos of Europeans who came to America for the World Cup expecting to hate it and just absolutely falling in love with it?

Adam Van Wie 28:06

Thanks, sir.

Adam Van Wie 28:18

It's been absolutely my favorite. I love the World Cup. But this has been my favorite part of the World Cup because they're just amazing videos.

Joey Loss 28:25

I am glued to my phone watching Norwegians eat Buc-ee's brisket. I just can't stop. And I mean, you think if you travel to Europe, like, there are amazing things about Europe, but public bathrooms is not on that list. And can you imagine what it's like to be a European and walk in a Buc-ee's bathroom? For the first time.

Speaker 3 28:36

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 28:40

No.

Steven Van Wie 28:42

I've not gone to a Buc-ee's yet.

Joey Loss 28:44

Talk about the greatest country in the world.

Adam Van Wie 28:46

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 28:47

I like the guy who's standing out in the parking lot saying, This is like the greatest museum I've ever seen. Puts it up there. And it's Walmart. You can go in, I can buy milk and cereal and a BB gun. In the same store.

Adam Van Wie 29:00

Yeah.

Joey Loss 29:02

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 29:03

And some of the things they're so excited about is just so random to us, like ranch dressing. I mean, that's what you're excited about? Okay.

Steven Van Wie 29:10

I was in the grocery store this week and I noticed that they have a gigantic display of ranch dressing. On one of the end caps. That's smart. I love it. Yeah, I, I'm not a soccer fan, never have been, but I sure am a fan of soccer fans.

Adam Van Wie 29:18

That's funny. Yeah, for sure.

Adam Van Wie 29:26

Oh man, this World Cup has been insanely good. Like, the games have just been amazing. Last night, um, Cabo Verde, which is a— no one had ever even heard of as a country, hardly, almost beat the number one team in the world in Argentina with with Messi. It was the best game.

Joey Loss 29:44

It was amazing.

Steven Van Wie 29:46

I heard some ranting and raving going on about that one this morning, so I figured it was—

Adam Van Wie 29:51

yeah, it was. It's been really fun.

Steven Van Wie 29:54

That the US team did get one sort of black mark, but it wasn't because of the player. I, I thought the referee made an awfully bad call on our head scorer.

Adam Van Wie 30:06

These things happen. Um, it's soccer. That's That's part of it. We just have to adjust and figure out a way to beat Belgium, who, who beat us last time we played. So it's going to be a good game Monday.

Steven Van Wie 30:15

Yeah, well, if you want to give somebody an incentive, do something like that to his teammate. You think the other ones are going to step up? You can count on it. When do we play?

Adam Van Wie 30:21

Yeah, exactly.

Adam Van Wie 30:25

Yeah. Monday night at 8, I think.

Steven Van Wie 30:28

And this is Belgium? Belgium. Okay, well, I won't watch the game, but at least I'll be checking in once in a while to see what You should watch the game. I'm, I'm so ignorant about the rules of soccer. I feel like I should know more, but I don't. Anyway, uh, the Trump accounts. Let's do a few other little highlights. You know now how they're going to be invested and you know now what you can do with them. Here's an irrelevant piece of information. They're also called 530A accounts. Because like 401s, things like that, they're always dubbed with the article number of the law that it's in. So if you go read the old BBBA, look at Section 530A and it'll be all about Trump accounts.

Joey Loss 30:31

Belgium.

Adam Van Wie 30:36

It'll be entertaining.

Joey Loss 30:37

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 31:01

Why?

Joey Loss 31:16

It's also so in 10 years, people who don't like them have something that they can call these accounts.

Adam Van Wie 31:21

That's probably true.

Steven Van Wie 31:24

Yeah, right.

Adam Van Wie 31:25

But please don't let your politics stand in the way of getting your kid a Trump account. That would be a big mistake.

Joey Loss 31:31

The $3,000 is a $3,000 for everyone.

Adam Van Wie 31:34

Yeah, exactly. Regardless of affiliation.

Steven Van Wie 31:37

The, uh, other name for old BBBA is the Working Families Tax Cuts Law. I like that. I like Trump Account, but I like Working Families Tax Cuts. And as I mentioned earlier in the show, we've already shown that 97% of tax filers this year got a tax cut. Thank you, O-B-B-B-A. Isn't that wonderful? Over 50 companies, including Bank of America, JPMorgan, Intel, and Uber, have committed to contributions for their employees. Not bad. When we come back, I want to ask the guys here how they would determine whether a Trump account or a 529 plan would be more suitable for people, or both. A lot of people got to both, right? We'll do that right when we get back. Don't go anywhere. We've got to pay one more set of bills. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. 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 Van Wie 32:40

And I remind everybody, the lines are still open.

Steven Van Wie 32:45

904-222-8255. Trivia question: Germany recorded 650 55,000 live births last year. How many deaths were recorded? It is between 1 million and 1.7 million. Thanks to the caller for the bracket. All right, back to the Trump accounts. We've been chit-chatting a little bit during the break, and there are, there are various and sundry ways to have your kids save for I say have your kids save for you to save for your kid since they're not going to be doing these. There's the 529 UTMA and we've been discussing some pros and cons. So I'm going to let the guys weigh in on this thing because they have children and are— Adam's in the perspective right now where the first ones go into college and Joey has tiny little ones. So I think hearing the difference is going to be interesting to people.

Adam Van Wie 33:43

Yeah. So when you're thinking about ways to set your kid up with assistance later on monetarily, you have some options. One of them is now a Trump account that, that wasn't available to me when my kids were young. That's a very new thing. In fact, Joey's the first person I know that has been able to take advantage of that. And then you have a UTMA account, which is like a sort of like a kiddie investment account. It's in their name, but you own it. And it has contribution limits. There are taxes on it, but they're at child rates, which are very favorable. And then you have a 529 plan, which helps you save for college. It grows tax-free as long as you use it for qualified expenses, either along the way or when they go to college. So you have some options and it really depends on what your goal is. What you think that kid is going to want to do. And so it's very difficult to predict what the best way to invest that money is. And if especially for an infant, you have no idea what their personality is, you have no idea what they're going to be into. You don't know if they're headed to college or trade school or, or the military or what they're— you have no idea. So you're essentially guessing. So maybe the idea is just to spread it around and do a little bit of each.

Steven Van Wie 35:03

Well, you know, there's guessing and there's educated guessing. It helps to know the rules.

Joey Loss 35:08

Yeah. And you have different information at different times. Like when your kids are super young, you know, saving to a 529 as if you know they're going to go to Harvard, which is probably the most expensive option you could choose, might lead you to overfund a 529 at the expense of other utility that you could have gotten by spreading the money around. But by the time they're 12, 13, 14, you have a sense of their academic capabilities, their interests. Is this something they would want to do? And you can reallocate those savings at that time all to a 529 if it looks like Harvard's on the table. So I, I agree with, I think you, you do want to spread it around. I would just add that the UTMA and the 529 are probably the best starting places for new money while you're setting up the initial pot that might help with college in particular. And then if you get to a point where you're questioning, maybe I've overfunded college, or we've, we've hit 50% of what we think the total cost would be. In our minds, that's probably about the safe point to stop Superfunding. Um, then you might turn back to a Trump account knowing that that money could go to help with college if you need it. And if you don't, then it goes to Steve's favorite thing where you can now convert it to a Roth and you've helped them in that way, which is powerful, which is great.

Adam Van Wie 35:37

Right.

Steven Van Wie 36:17

And there's one other possibility in there too that is potentially dangerous for people. How many people fund their college savings plans at the expense of their own retirement accounts?

Adam Van Wie 36:29

A lot. Many. And it's such a big mistake.

Steven Van Wie 36:32

It is.

Joey Loss 36:33

One of the first questions I get when we work with a young couple is, I want to focus on setting up my kid. And they have not put their oxygen mask on first. That's a hard conversation a lot of the times. They're in a peak moment, just like filled with oxytocin and love for their kid. And that's all they're thinking about. And I'm like, you got to think about you.

Adam Van Wie 36:38

Always.

Steven Van Wie 36:52

That's also the exact time in your life when you have more people grabbing at your wallet than any other time in your life.

Joey Loss 36:59

Sure is.

Adam Van Wie 36:59

Yeah. A lot of competing priorities.

Steven Van Wie 37:02

You could see the smile on Joey's face. You know how spot on that was.

Joey Loss 37:05

Amen, brother. Drink a beer to that one.

Adam Van Wie 37:08

Joey's like, ask me how I know. Yeah, that's what I hear. It is true. And like Joey, young couples always want to make that mistake and you have to talk them out of it because you only get one chance to save for retirement, and nobody wants to work into their 80s. And if you don't properly save for retirement, that's what happens. And there are lots of ways to pay for college. So many ways.

Steven Van Wie 37:32

If you lose 10 or 20 years, you're not going to make it up.

Joey Loss 37:37

One of the most purpose-agnostic ways to save would be the UTMA. That's a beauty and a curse. If you fill a UTMA with $50,000 or $100,000, and it becomes their money, which is what happens in Florida between ages 21 and 25, depending on how it's set up, uh, that could be a devastating or a huge blessing event in their life depending on their maturity, right? And so you almost don't want to designate it before you really have a sense for who the kid is, right? And you can save to a personal and brokerage account or joint account and then move all that money over to a UTMA later. There's a tiny lost tax advantage, but it's so negligible compared to the— yeah, what you might be avoiding.

Adam Van Wie 38:21

And we have clients that do that actually, that we've recommended for their grandkids and they just had— they set up a separate account, they put a TOD on it to the grandkid and that's the way that they save for them. And I think it's, it's one of the best ways to do it because it doesn't— it's there for them, but it doesn't give them access to it to make a huge mistake with it.

Joey Loss 38:40

Yeah. I mean, you can give $19,000 a year to that UTMA later. So, I mean, unless you're tucking tons and, you know, tens and $20,000 a year into the account, you're really not losing the opportunity to get that money to them.

Steven Van Wie 38:53

But if you're going to do that, I certainly hope you've maxed out your own plans.

Joey Loss 38:58

Definitely.

Steven Van Wie 38:59

I've seen it way too often where people don't have any clue how long it takes to build up a substantial retirement account. It's those today's dollars that create the wealth that you need in 30 years. And if you don't put them in for 20 of those 30, you're going nowhere. The very minimum I would ever recommend to anybody with a 401 is at least contribute up to 100% of the match that your company offers, should they offer a match. And you'd be amazed how many people don't realize that they're short of that and they're just leaving money on the table. And then there's the other half, Adam, and I've seen this a few times, Joey may have, where people who are really doing well want to push their money into the plan all up front. They want to get it in, especially TSP types. They want to get that money in as soon as possible to keep it growing. But what they don't know is that there is an absolute monthly match limit. And in order for them to put money in and get the full match, they have to spread it more equally across the months, which also gives you dollar cost averaging. So in every way, shape, and form, it's a good idea, but you got to know the rules, which means if you don't know the rules for your own 401 or TSP, pull it out and look at it and read it.

Adam Van Wie 40:26

I've actually been seeing a lot more plans that give you the match even if you max out early now. Really? Yeah. That is— a trend that I've been noticing.

Steven Van Wie 40:32

I did not know that.

Steven Van Wie 40:35

Good.

Joey Loss 40:35

They call it a true-up provision. So, and it's really all of these things, the frontier for like new plan rules is the tech companies because there's just more salary than people know what to do with.

Adam Van Wie 40:37

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 40:46

Yeah. And big bonuses, which make it hard to plan your contributions and things like that. So I've been seeing much more of that.

Steven Van Wie 40:53

Well, good. I've been pretty not very nice to Suzy Orman for the last year or two because I think she's been publishing some things and saying some things. That were in my world very suspect. I don't know why, but she nailed one. And I believe that if I'm going to criticize people when they're— when I believe they're wrong, I should at least compliment them when I believe they're right. She says there's a 401k habit that's hurting parents. And I don't know that you just call it a 401k, but what she's saying is a lot of kids today, and by kids I mean people 18 to 29 or so, do not know the first thing about investing. And that can be a problem because of something we call target date funds. And Adam knows, Joey probably knows, we have a problem with most target date funds, and that has to do with the percentage that they allocate to International things. We like— you guys got a target for international now? 5%, 10%, 15%? 15%.

Adam Van Wie 41:59

I don't know what—

Adam Van Wie 42:04

15%.

Joey Loss 42:05

It changes over time, but that's where it's at now.

Adam Van Wie 42:08

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 42:08

I checked two of the better known— now, this is— these are 2060s, so it would be fitting for a kid in his 20s, for instance. And I checked Vanguard has 36.9%

Steven Van Wie 42:24

Wow.

Adam Van Wie 42:25

And that's of the entire fund is 36.9%, not just equities.

Steven Van Wie 42:31

That's international equities and bonds.

Adam Van Wie 42:36

Oh, okay. So that includes— okay, so I was just talking equities.

Steven Van Wie 42:40

Okay, let's see. This one is Vanguard or Fidelity, I believe. 2060 US equities, 56% non-US equities. 40% US equities, 43%.

Adam Van Wie 42:54

Wow. That's—

Steven Van Wie 42:55

Now, in anybody's world who has been investing long enough, you do not put 43% of your money into non-US equities unless you're misled or stupid or oversold.

Adam Van Wie 43:11

I mean, in the last 18 months it's worked out for you, but ask me about the 10 years prior to that.

Steven Van Wie 43:16

Yeah. Yeah. Solid, uh, international component, you should maybe take a look at it and see if it might be time to do some rebalancing to get that percentage down a little bit.

Joey Loss 43:27

There's also a huge fundamental change from— so 30 years ago that would have made a lot more sense than it makes today. Part of the reason for that is when you own a ton of US stocks, you still have a ton of international exposure based on how global companies are. Yeah, you're paying, you're paying millions of salaries overseas using other countries' materials, factories. To do American business. That's a very different thing than—

Steven Van Wie 43:49

If you wanna beef up your pure American account balance in there, you might look at picking up some small company stocks because most of those don't have a big international component, so they're making money here. All right, Germany recorded 655,000 live births and 1.35

Steven Van Wie 44:09

million deaths. That translates into a birth rate of 1.35,

Steven Van Wie 44:18

and the break-even is 2.1. So if Germany's gonna keep booming, it better boom by making some babies, or they're gonna run out of everything.

Adam Van Wie 44:20

Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 44:28

That is not a problem that is isolated to Germany. Many countries have this issue.

Steven Van Wie 44:31

No, it is not. Japan especially, Korea. I've read that Korea won't exist in 30 years unless they start making babies over there.

Joey Loss 44:41

Just look at the International Developed Index. If that country's in there, it's probably got a birth rate problem. Including us.

Adam Van Wie 44:45

Yeah. Yeah, we do too.

Joey Loss 44:48

All right.

Steven Van Wie 44:48

Well, happy 4th to everybody. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour.