What's up! It's episode 91 of Payne Points of Wealth and we're getting mixed emotions from the economy in the stock market as we're in the midst of earning season. Surprise, surprise earnings are not looking as bad as Wall Street is wanting you to believe. We're going to break it down and give you our view on what's going on with earnings right now. What we see right now with the economy, the labor market, inflationary pressure, everything everyone's talking about, we're going to give you the Payne view. 

On the Tipping Point, we have guest Aaron Dessen, a Certified Financial Planner™ at Payne Capital Management, and we're going to give you a financial independence pop quiz! Can you answer these questions? Are you on your path to financial independence or do you need some help?

• Could the lows be behind us already? [2:32]

Jeremy Siegel is a great economist and a professor of finance at Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. He's a big fan of Jerome Powell and the federal reserve and has been rooting them on to raise interest rates. He believes that they will hike 75 bits next week. Jeremy also thinks that they're going to start paying attention to the slowdown in the economy and the lows could absolutely be behind us already. Now he doesn't KNOW, but again, he's a smart man and he knows that J Powell is looking at all the indicators. Who knows, we might have seen peak inflation. 

It was indicative last week when we had really good earnings on a Tuesday and markets went up over 700 points in one day! It's just a reminder the market action can change on a dime. Your bigger risk here is that we get good news and suddenly you get a huge melt-up in the market. This is why you don't market time because when that happens if you're not already invested, you miss the boat.

The first question we usually ask people who walk into our firm is “Do you know how much it costs to fund your lifestyle?” In our experience, most people really have no idea. It's not that hard to figure out. You’ll need to know what your take-home income is and then we can figure out what your rate of savings is and kind of back into it from there. When we get to that number most people are pretty surprised. 

This leads to the question “What does your net worth need to be before you can live off of your portfolio?” What is it that takes people from feeling completely blind about what they’re doing to feeling comfortable and confident that they have a plan in place so they can sleep at night? The only way to figure that out is by doing a comprehensive financial plan. This brings us right back to the need to have an answer for question number one.

• When it comes to food inflation margin experienced the largest percentage price increase. The spread is 34.5% more expensive than it was last June and its price leaped up 7% from May to June alone. 

Aaron Dessen works closely with clients providing personalized service and advice, focusing on goals-based investing and comprehensive financial planning for individuals, families, and businesses.

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