Our first of a 3 part series...

This is in honor of September being, amongst other things, Life Insurance Awareness Month!

Let's look at the types.

Term Life Insurance - This is temporary coverage that is low cost with high death benefit for a certain period of time... or a term... but only about 2% of these ever pay out, so they are mostly a sunk cost. Term is good to cover short term high liabilities, but is just a cost for most people.

Permanent Life Insurance is way more exciting and there is a lot of different types and things to consider.

Universal Life - "UL" (in various forms) - Normal UL gives you a guaranteed interest of part of your premium with a rising cost of insurance. Mainly for the older-than-50 people.

IUL - Yuck! The "I" stands for Indexed, and it is Ron's least favorite, even though it's all over social media. It sounds great, but is a lot of smoke and mirrors.

VUL - The "V" stands for Variable UL - This means it's in the stock market via mutual funds. It has direct market participation and can go up and down with the market. It also requires a securities license to offer this versus other Life Insurance - This means more training, passing federal exams and more.

Whole Life (in various forms) - This is one of the main Permanent Life Insurance policies. These are fun to build and can do a lot of things despite Voldemort being against it.

Not all are created equal and not all agents and carriers provide the same.

These are our favorites! More to come in the next episode.

What's Up With Money?! Book of The Month:

Money. Wealth. Life Insurance by Jake Thompson

On the heels of reading Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer, Ron and Ryan discuss the role of mindfulness in finance. A fascinating and fun topic we hope you enjoy!

Guess who's back. Back again. Pension's back. Tell a friend.

We brought this idea back because of how surprised Ryan was.

Just like Doogie Howser came back in The Matrix: Resurrections, the idea of pensions are coming back, but not in the way you think.

A pension is the idea that you get money for the rest of your life from your employer. Pretty good deal!

A lot of us think everyone used to have them and that they were complete income replacement when you retired... But that's not quite right.

Pension myths are rampant and is one of the things that's easy to be mindless about rather than being mindful, as Ellen Langer tells us.

"Pension" does not equal income replacement in retirement.

So... What is the self-made pension?

Pensions tend to be a financial product known as an "income annuity" and those are available to everyone.

This is the idea that you can convert part of your savings into a guaranteed paycheck for life - AKA - a self-made pension.

A large life insurance company can give you options for lifetime guaranteed income for the rest of your life better than a lot of other places.

Tah dah! The self-made pension!

What's Up With Money?! Book Club:

Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer

Young people always have a way of questioning the status quo, asking difficult questions, and being ready to throw out conventional wisdom that may not be working.

The people that founded the U.S. were a bunch of young people with the aid of some older folks.

A couple signers of the Declaration of Independence were 26.

At the time of the revolution Alexander Hamilton was 21 - which is probably why he was so skilled at writing musical numbers.

John Hancock, that large signature on the doc was not yet 40.

All in all, these were rebels and enemies of the king.

They worked for their independence because things were not working for them socially and economically. So, they started a revolution.

It seems like it is time for another one as younger people are seeing the Financial Matrix they are in and saying, "Nope. this doesn't work."

To be honest, Ronald is pretty excited about the possibility of this and thinks it is about time we stood up and started to change things around here.

Part of that is the end of mindless finance - a tie in to our book rec.

Another part is the people speaking out and working to create a different system that works for more and more people, not just a few.

Every 20 years or so, we get a new wave of young people standing up and working more for the benefit of us all.

Revolution is coming.

What's Up With Money?! Book Club:

Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer

Should we let Chat pick our stocks?

Are robots better at market timing?

Will AI replace everyone?

Here's the thing about AI, it already effects our daily life everywhere!

Is it time for AI and our use of it to take a breath? Ryan thinks so.

Behavioral pattern recognition is one thing, predicting with accuracy what people are going to do is something else. While we do have consistency in many of our patterns, we often throw variables into the mix. We have this incredible capacity to go completely out of the norm.

Human complexity and the interconnectivity of human variability in relationships, broader society and the global human network is far more complicated with far more socio-environmental details.

The more AI comes into play, especially in the world of finance, ethical questions are sure to follow and we are already seeing it. How can a programmed tool maintain several key responsibilities that those like Ronald have?

The first includes "best interest" - only making recommendations that are in the best interest of their clients.

Second, holding to a "fiduciary" duty that the advisor is to only hold the clients interests in the financial advising conversation and that you disregard any benefit you may get from a financial plan.

This was already violated by one major player in the money management world, Chuck's Robo-Advisors Algorithm was weighted in the favor of the financial firm in ways that were not advantageous for their clients.

What's Up With Money?! Book Club:

Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer

We are talking about 1980's advice, and we are Morpheus sitting down with you - The One - and presenting you a choice.

In one hand we have blue pill and the other we have a red pill...

The choice is yours.

We can only show you the door, you must walk through it.

We can all kinda admit that there are some things about the financial world that seems like The Matrix where we are moving around, but we have a sense that things aren't right or that reality is something different.

Are you ready to see how deep the rabbit hole goes?

1980's advice became the industry standard and evolved into the financial matrix from a good place and the reality that existed back then.

Yet, we all ended up plugged in...

This is going to get us in trouble, but let's look at 25 don'ts.

Things not to do that you've been told are necessary to do.

Time for the blue pill or do you want to continue?

Don't have a savings account. Don't save for retirement.

What?!

Also, can we all admit The Magic Kingdom to The Tragic Kingdom was brilliant?

You need to listen to get it - plus the reference to "The Jackal."

Special thanks to Jack Black, Tenacious D, and Ryan's Mom.

Don't Take A Look At Our 25 Don'ts

When one of them hits a nerve or makes you question, reach out to us to discuss!

What's Up With Money?! Book Club:

The Richest Man In Babylon by George S. Clason

This week we are continuing our conversation with our first guest!

We have a 9-year-old joining us with his perspective and questions about money.

Following some of the great traditions of shows like "Kid's Say The Darndest Things," chatting with kids is some of the best entertainment.

Kids also see the world through a different lens than adults.

And sometimes - they understand the world better!

Some of the questions we tackle include...

What happens to banks when we completely go away from physical currency?

How do stores that only take cash survive when we don't have physical money?

What is inflation?

What is shrink-flation?

We hope you enjoy this conversation with our special guest.

Make sure to listen all the way to the end for a special treat from our guest!

What's Up With Money?! Book Club:

The Richest Man In Babylon by George S. Clason

Even though the "short-squeeze" on hedge funds with GameStop occurred several years ago, there are some lessons from that time that are still important for all of us to understand.

For a quick recap of what happened, hedge funds shorted GameStop's stock at an alarming rate. They were betting on GameStop collapsing and profiting off their demise.

A group of Reddit users banded together to buy and drive the price of the stock to go "to the moon!!!"

These hedge funds then had to go buy the stock for $400 and sell it to people for $20. Even if you are a novice - this is not good for the hedge funds.

Some people made money. Others lost money. Everyone learned new things about the stock market beyond what they experience while trading on their Robinhood app.

The first lesson was that selling your shares requires a buyer. It seems simple, but since we never see the buyer on the other side - this is lost on us.

These all trade in the literal sense of a market with buying and selling.

Second, a lot of people realized that they did our least favorite thing - trigger a taxable event.

Last - broker/dealers require a level of reserve and liquidity in order to facilitate trades. If they don't have it, they can't fulfill the trades for their customers.

Robinhood got into a pickle when they facilitated trades, as well as for the payment for order flow arrangements they had with those heavily invested in the shorting of GameStop.

What's Up With Money?! Activity - A Checklist For Selling Anything (Stocks, Real-Estate, Baseball Cards)

What's Up With Money?! Book Club:

The Richest Man In Babylon by George S. Clason

Got a fun one coming your way with two of everyone's favorite things to talk about... Death & Taxes! Well, mainly taxes.

Taxes are designed to get us more benefits by pooling our resources than if we were to try to privatize every social need, like roads, law enforcement, military, public school and so on.

Sounds good so far...

Yet, most of us feel like we are not getting value for our taxes, despite living in one of the best tax rate situations in our history.

So, what's going on?!

What's up with taxes?!

Everything is based on income and deductions and most of the middle class have income but not the deductions. The wealthy have the opposite, low income and high deductions.

So how do we get taxed and what the heck is a marginal tax system?!

No idea! Just kidding - It just means that each of your dollars are taxed at different rates depending on how many of them you make.

Clear as mud!

What's Up With Money?! Book Club:

The Richest Man In Babylon by George S. Clason

Is owning vs. renting a sacred cow that we need to reconsider?

If you rent, are you just throwing money away?

Today we live in a world where people are thinking critically about home ownership as part of their financial picture.

And many are deciding that renting may not be the financially saavy choice and deciding to be a "renter by choice."

There is a stigma out there regarding renters that we hope to debunk in our current financial context.

It is clear that home ownership is not the same as it used to be. In many ways it can be the most expensive investment and possibly doesn't generate the same level of wealth building as other things.

On the other hand, owning is seldom a bad idea, yet people are now doing the math.

Ron's first home cost him less than $600 a month. Where as, the home he currently lives in would require 2x or 3x more money each month to live in it.

Now, we know what you're thinking, "But Ron, you would be building equity."

Maybe.

If we are looking at numbers and shed the psychology of owning, there may be ways that owning makes you no money.

Today's economy has many more ways and tools for growing money and people are getting wise to the money game, and it's liberating many from the negative stigma that renting is bad and you are behind if you do not own your home.

What's Up With Money?! Book Club:

Killing Sacred Cows by Garrett Gunderson