For one preset for instant access to the information that affects you. Always on fifty five KRC the talk station. It's Stato six here petbove Gar CD talk station. It being Monday, it's that time of week what we do the thing we call Monday Monday with all what financials. Brian James financial planner he is, and he's bringing us lately some bad news. Jeez, Brian, can you can you put a smile on my face one of these weeks? Welcome back, my friend. It's always good to have you on the show.
Thanks for let me join you again. I gotta ask, do I do I give you like a negative kind of connotation?
Do I do it do every time we talk it seems like it's bad anymore? Do you just think of me in terms of sadness?
Of course not.
You know, it's kind of like Dave how to do Tech Friday with Dave Hatter at six Thirday every Friday, and he's always warning us about just the absolute land minds that are lurking everywhere when you're online. You know, the scammers, the hackers, folks breaking into our infrastructure, sending you spam text that will end up taking over your phone or stealing your data, and it's it's depressing, but it's really important information. I mean, these are kind of
things we need to know. I mean, you, of course focus towards the financial and try to get us to have the attitude that we need to take care of ourselves and how to do so, and how to properly plan for our retirement and how to manage things. So I think it's all valuable. Although you know what, negative news gets the clicks, and that's kind of what's been
going on of late in the financial markets. I saw that weekly jobless claims jump to two hundred and forty one thousand, the latest sign of economic trouble in CNBC's headlines. So when you file for unemployment this is for first time filings. What does that specifically mean that the person who is filing for unemployment has never filed for unemployment before.
The first time, and kind of this go around there's this is obviously complicated stuff, but yeah, this is a.
That's kind of why I asked the question, because people read that number and I don't think they give any measure of thought to really what it entails or what it means. So I kind of wanted to get a little foundational point before we talk about the broader economic trouble that this might portend.
Yeah, so a first time filer is literally somebody who's submitting a claim for the very first time during this specified period. It distinguishes new claims from continuing claims. That's why we have two. There's two different phrases you'll hear whenever we talk about job as claims, first time filers and continuing claims. So, yeah, and these happen, of course, whenever the economy tends to slow down a little bit. As you mentioned, we're up to two hundred and forty
one thousand first time filers. That's up eighteen thousand from the week before, and the Dow Jones organization was estimating two hundred and twenty five thousand. Remember, everything in the financial markets, in the economic analysis has to do with what did we think was going to happen and then what actually happened. So a little above the estimates. But
I don't think it's a shock to anyone. Most people know somebody who is directly impacted by the decisions that our administration is currently making, which in the very short run, here there's no way to for everyone to withstand all of these tariffs, all these extra challenges without some kind of reaction seeing companies say, you know what, we got to pull in for just a little for a little bit, and hopefully we'll make it through the other side and bring everybody back on.
But there has to be a reaction to this right now.
So there is some connection to the tariffs and people's dealing with the tariffs, preparing or otherwise reacting to them. That's connected with the higher weekly job claim.
Absolutely, because because think about it this way, a tariff is, you know, whether we whether good, bad, or in different a tariff is an extra outlay of cash that a company has to start paying to keep its business going forward any way you want to slice it. That is the thing that's happening. So that means they might have
to be backing off on other things. So maybe there's some some smaller product they sell or something like that that's just not all that viable, and therefore they may have to shut down that division or at least mothballet for a little while. That costs people jobs, and they may be looking for opportunities to save just so we can buy some time and I've got I've got clients, I've got some personal friends who are talking about we need to be able to bring in parts and raw
materials from overseas. Didn't see these tariffs coming, you know, last year, so we didn't exactly plan for it, right, and we can't afford to double overnight or cost of good soul, which is basically what's happening here. Things got twice as expensive as they were last year. Nobody planned for that. The ones who have the you know, who have the deepest pockets and the best ability to weather the storm are the ones who are going to be
here on the other side of it. But if you're not in that situation, then there's a lot of pain out there.
Yeah, And I'm just part of me is kind of surprised at how quickly the implementation of the tariffs have went in and how quickly they've been implemented. It seems to me like there will be a very very complicated process that once you know, you declare whatever given tariff is going to be applied, you can actually connect it to an imported product and have that tax or that tariff ode right away. That's like the peace of God. I don't know, I don't know how they can accomplish
that and how. That's why I'm kind of shocked that it has this immediate effect because the tariffs have only been in place now for what six weeks or two months?
Yeah, So a couple thoughts on that.
I mean, first off, this administration is a more so than any other administration in history, has been tearing band aids off left and right. Let's just do it, make a mass break things and then we'll move on. The other thing, too, is remember what the market is always trying to do, and what business people are always trying
to do is anticipate. So, yes, the tariffs have only been in place for a short while, but we've been talking about them since really since November because Trump talked about them all through his campaign, so there's been a whole lot lot of anticipation about it. Business has started to rejigger and shuffle things. That's why we're seeing we're seeing we saw a decline in the overall GDP of the United States. It wasn't because demand fell or anything
like that. It was because businesses were holding off on US based purchases of supplies and things that they need in favor of buying a bunch of stuff that they all they knew they would need kind of stocking up before the tariffs hit. So we saw a much bigger trade imbalance due to that.
Right, And I saw an article about night Trial night Trial gloves as surgical gloves, and there is a US manufacturer then obviously could not compete with Chinese production because how much cheaper it is. But it's finally getting a whole lot more orders. So there's one business that has benefited from this, among other businesses that were in this article that I read about how the tariffs have helped
US industries in certain areas. But he said he has a lot of customers that wouldn't do business with him because of the price of his gloves now coming to him and saying, hey, we need these gloves, and they're placing orders with his company because now his price is actually competitive with the tariff in place.
Yeah. Now, now think of the downstream effect of that.
So they're not these companies who are purchasing those gloves from him, These organizations, they are not saving money themselves. They're actually paying more than they were less. Exactly, it's still a cost.
Increase for them.
So this is going to be this will do a lot of damage with a lot of ripple effects from this, and it's going to take a lot of wherewithal for somebody to for organization to weather the storm.
Well and real quick before we move on to the next topic, and we take a break before we do that. I've seen many articles and I'm sure you have too, Brian James Mallworth Financial China's economy is not doing real well and a lot of people there's been a lot of workers protesting in the streets that haven't been paid. And I saw most recent article US tariffs may drive
China's economy into depression. Now, whether or not that's true, can you guess what that global ramification might be if China were to actually go into a depression but that have a profound impact or any impact on the United States?
Well, I would.
Everything's connected to everything, So if the United States sneezes, everybody suffers, that's what we're you know, we're beating the daylights out of the rest of the world. Were the decisions that we are proactively making right now. China is the world's second largest economy. So while while we are in direct of somewhat violent competition with them. Economically speaking, if if China ends up going into recession, that means they will spend less money and there will be other
trade imbalances changing. There will definitely be ripple effects from that. Because you're rooting for them or rooting against them, they still factor into the equation. So if they're suffering and they're not spending as much money, then that means there are other other impacts that will happen to other countries. There's just a great reshuffling of the decks. This is again globalization as how we got here. Everybody's connected to everybody else. So if one sneeze is everybody else gets
a cold. That's kind of how it's been for a while now. So I would very much say that any any effect on such a large economy, such a large supplier of purchasing effectively, is going to have an impact.
For sure.
Yeah, they do buy from other countries. I mean they we have an imbalance with China, but that is an imbalance, not a one sided. They only we buy from them, So I can see how that could impact us if they're not selling their stuff because they've gone into depression. Complicated it is, and what's what we got, Brian James. We'll talk about consumer confidence coming up. Young workers, well they have burnout and their concerned living paycheck to paychecks,
plus mind blowing starter home prices. We'll talk about those subjects coming up with all Worth Financials Brian James. I hope you can stick around fifty five KRC the talk station for more information about contests on this station. Channel I says we got falling for the weather, bloudy day to day chances body afternoon showers of storm fifty seven overnight little forty eight, forty six with clouds and isolated showers, isolated showers and cloudy tomorrow the highest sixty five, same
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K eighteen fifty five r C detalk station, Happy Monday, It's money Monday. It's Brian James pivoting over from jobless claims to consumer confidence. Not going in the right direction with consumer confidence, Brian James, what's the story on this one?
Consumer confidence is down? Go figure. That's the shocker of all shockers.
So fell by seven point nine points last month in April, all the way down to eighty six. This is the fifth consecutive month of declining confidence. And honestly, if you think about that, that coincides exactly with the election. So I think that there was a perception out there, and it's not that people don't support there's obviously a good chunk of the population that supports the Trump administration in
the situations that they bring about. But at the same time, logic dictates that the decisions that are happening, their decisions that are coming out are are going to have a short term here, and the President himself has said that many times. So five months of declining confidences, people began to anticipate that these kinds of things are going to have an impact. So lots of pessimism around there, just future business conditions, employment prospects. I'm worried about my income,
so on and so forth. And this is all kind of natural. This is the part of the cycle when we're rejiggering exactly how we present ourselves as a country to the rest of the world. We are making it more expensive to do business with us, that is, you know, the administration's goal here is long term gain for some short term pain, and so right now we're in the middle of the short term.
Well, we live in an immediate gratification kind of mindset world these days. People aren't willing to wait it out to see what happens, and if it does, we do end up reaping the benefits that he has promised as a consequence of these So but if real time your job might be on the line, I can certainly understand your confidence would go down.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
I mean, this is just a situation where people are re examining exactly what their situations are. And as we've talked before, businesses themselves are having to make decisions.
I want to ensure growth through this environment.
That means I need to maybe take a hit here in the short run, and I have to shut down lines, I have to lay off some people.
I would very much prefer.
To keep those kinds of things, but I got to keep my nose just above water. Until we get through this, we can kind of get back to normal. So we are seeing some pretty steep declines in these confidence numbers, and we'll have to see where they go over the next few weeks. Well, and this might very well translate over to the leading industrial indexes S and P five hundred doubts that are I know we're down over the year, but I mean we've had some pretty big jumps of late.
It's as if the market is resisting the concerns expressed by the masses.
Well, I remember what.
We talked about that the market is always trying to anticipate what's coming next. So yeah, there was a very big boying about a month ago. We hit the Well we're still down for the year, but the Nasdaq was down fifteen eighteen percent at its very lowest point. Now as we're sitting here, it's only down about seven percent.
Everything bounced in early April, and as we've talked about before, if you are a diversified portfolio holder, meaning you got a little bit of everything, you got a horse in every race, then you're actually doing okay.
Well.
A lot of diversified portfolios are actually up for the year, believe it or not, because there are other things out there then the S and P five hundred, I'm speaking specifically of international companies, which again are up fourteen percent year to date. If you're somebody who abandoned everything but the US over the past fifteen years because of how the S and P five hundred have performed, then you are now missing out on a more stable.
Portfolio because of all this.
But yes, about a month ago, things bounced back up because the market is simply anticipating that these tariffs are going to come and go. Eventually, cooler heads will prevail and everybody will find their new position in all of this, and the market will go forward. Underneath, things are relatively healthy. There is still demand. We don't have a two thousand and eight type situation. The economy wants to go up and the market does too. We just need the fog to clear a little bit.
Well, and since the experts and amusing my little quote fingers here are in the market, so the ones that run the businesses are the ones that do the the you know, the investment investment decisions.
That's optimism right there.
If they have fact with this bump in the markets, smart people know that things are going to get better at some point in potentially or possibly the near future. If the markets were tanking, all these smart people are saying, no, it's going to be it's going to hit the fan and it's going to be terrible. So that's a little bit of optimism built into this. If you're not even if you're not invested in the market, well they're saying things will probably be better.
Yeah, and again I'll go back to anticipation. Those smart people have decisions they have to make, they have to grow their portfolios. And I'm not just talking about investment people, that's business people in general. They're moving things around to take advantage of what they see coming. I would remind everybody that the back in two thousand and eight, when you know a lot of people were invested then, and we most most of us remember that as kind of
a benchmark of how scary things can be. The bottom of that market was March ninth of two thousand and nine. If you go back and read the headlines, Brian, you will not see positive headlines until around June of that year. So the headlines are always going to trail reality. The market wants to go up, it anticipates the good news coming, but it also makes a lot of false head starts.
Well, and that was the other thing I was going to say in connection with consumer confidence, I mean, try to find a positive headline.
In the world.
It's it's a Sysivian challenge.
You know, unless you look at things like you are sort of objectively looking at the market and recognizing the decisions that are making to keeping that have caused the market to bounce back. That's actually a positive story built into all of this. But everywhere you turn, it's woe's me, and this is terrible, and Trump sucks and you know, tariffs are killing everybody. I mean, it's just it's hard to find a bright spot in terms of what people's perception of how things are out in the world.
But we're not the experts. Really we're just sort of living our.
Lives day to day, and that's you know, I think people a lot of people are quite off and influenced by, of course what they read, and it maybe has no connection with necessary reality. Yeah, and that's that's why we have to step back and look at the forest, not the trees.
So again that's we we focus always on financial planning. We have to deal with this stuff. Something's got to grow and keep up with inflation. That's going to involve the stock market in some way, shape or form for everybody. This is what comes along with it. So let's understand the history and make sure we're not putting ourselves in a bad spot with it.
All.
Right, Well, we'll bring buying back and find out that, well, apparently young workers are ready to quit, burnout, pay concerns and I don't know from what job they're in now to what job they might take, but pay concerns driving exodus according to the study fines analysis, we're gonna hear about that. Plus, thank god you don't live in one of a multitude of California cities. The price of starter homes has just gone through the roof. But that's just
not happening in California. It's happening all over. We'll get a little bit on that from Brian James as well. One more with money Monday, All with Financial Brian James.
Stick around fifty five KRC. The Simply Money Minute is sponsored by Channel IM.
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Eight fifty five car c detalk station Hey, Very Happy Monday too. One more segment with all Worth Financials. Brian James. Brian, young workers are burned out. I just kind of laugh at that. I remember when I first started practicing litigation, you know, twelve hour days, six days a week, and we did it year after year after year, and I honestly, while I might have complained at the time, I wasn't going to quit over it. Anyway. What's the story on this when Brian.
James, seventy three percent of gen Z and seventy percent millennials are actively looking to change jobs. In other words, three out of every four of those young people sitting next to you are sniffing around. And this is coming from just overall frustration with the job, burnout feelings, and just an overall monotony of the work and so forth. Different, Yeah, a little bit of monotony. They're not super excited about the day to day, you know, as much.
As they're older.
Okay, so it's a question of lacking intellectual stimulation or satisfy.
It's not.
I mean, I know, we got a pay element on this before we get to the living paycheck to paycheck component, but they would be satisfied in so far as their salary. But they're just tired of doing what they're doing.
Yeah, And I think there's another element I heard that. I think there's another element to this. It's not even mentioned in the article. And I'm speaking as i'd speak to my clients. I'd always tell them that they their kids are my clients too, So I'll talk to anybody about anything. And the impression that I get from them is that they feel that the hill is so much steeper. We all got to push a rock up a hill
to get to retirement. They feel their hill is a lot steeper because they're not going to have you know, they they're they're bombarded with the fact that social security is going to go away. It's not, but there's still the mental component that they're that socicurity might take a hit, that things are more expensive, inflation and all of this, and they're they're among some of them, there's a feeling of hopelessness. Why does it matter that I have that I want to grind because I'm not going to be
able to afford it anyway. The deck is so stacked against me. That doesn't mean they've done the math to analyze it, but that's the drum beat that's out there again. Because of social media they have, they have a lot more to contend with in terms of the loudness of all of their.
You you know, I back of my mind immediately started thinking of the seventies and stagflation. Things were not pretty in this country at all, and a lot worse than they are right now. But we've had so many decades of without I mean, there's been bumps in the road, as you've pointed out many times, like you know, the tech bubble burst and the housing bubble burst, but you know for the last several decades, and we've had nothing but you know, rainbows and puppy puppies. It's just it's
been really overall a great environment. They haven't seen it, Kane before.
Yeah, and well everything negative gets amplified.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I was talking to my son and he was explaining to me how relationships work nowadays. You can't break up with someone because they never go away. You see them on social media, you see how they're linked, you see what they're talking about, all of this stuff. This is a much different environment than any of these other generations have had to contend with.
And I kind of got what he was saying. And it's scary out there.
And you attach that to trying to raise a family, start your career and all that. You get surrounded by, Oh, so and so is doing so much better than you. So and so just bought this house. Everybody's happy, wonderful. What's wrong with you?
Right? You can't get away from that and focus on your job now.
And I think every generation has struggled with some component of what you just said before. And I think you just try to focus on your own life and quit comparing yourself to the Joneses. We don't all live at a different level, and we all live at different levels, and thus it has ever been But back to the paycheck to paycheck component. I suppose that will be a little disheartening if you can't save any money at all. Yeah, and that's another three quarters of people.
Seventy four percent of employees say they're living paycheck to paycheck, which simply means that I get paid and I pay my bills and the checking account goes back down to zero. I can't make any headway. I can't save money to take the family on a vacation. I can't work on paying my mortgage down faster. I can't bump up my four oh one K percentage contribution. I just feel like I'm stuck in the mud. And then that leads to this, is there another opportunity out there? What should I be doing?
Can I Can I put myself in a better spot? Or it leads to quiet quitting and just kind of hanging it up and doing the bare minimum.
Okay, pivoting over one of the reasons people are a living in paycheck to paycheck. I couldn't believe the numbers on this one, Brian James. Starter homes top one million dollars in two hundred and thirty three cities. That's doubled since since am I sorry it was eighty five cities that had that price in twenty twenty. This is amazing.
Yeah, so five years ago only eighty five cities had a median start These are starter homes, right, So the typical starter home now costs a million dollars or more in two hundred and thirty some areas.
Now, this is not affecting Cincinnati. We're still we've got a booming real estate market.
But starter homes around here about a quarter million dollars so, which is still a relative to our local environment. That still has an impact, of course, But this is this is highlighting the affordability crisis in the housing market. And this is another thing I can't like we just got done talking about I'm unhappy with my job. I don't get paid enough. Why am I bothering to do all this?
I just can't make things go. And part of this can be because of the mortgage payment that stares somebody in the face on the first of every month.
That in when they re assess your property taxes and it jumps sixty three percent, and you're not prepared for that kind of hit like Claremont County and other counties have struggled with. You know, it's a little disheartening, to say the least. Although the bright spot in this is thank god we don't live in California. He already gave props to the City of Cincinnati for hiving much lower than a million dollars one hundred and thirteen of these
two hundred and thirty three cities are in California. That speaks volumes, New New York, New Jersey right behind. To me, none of this is a shock because these are the places we always hear about is being more expensive with regard to real estate. So this is also revealing that the United States is short by about four and a half million homes. In other words, if we had four and a half million more homes available for purchase, the purchase price would be down closer to a normal level.
That's why you're still seeing subdivisions. We live up here in Butler County's new subdivision going up in a cornfield every other week. It seems like we've got some catching up to do. The builders are certainly doing their part to put them out there, but we haven't gotten a point yet where it has truly made an impact on
the price of a starter home. Well, and I imagine those brand new subdivision homes probably a little more pricey than you know, the two hundred and fifty thousand figure you just mentioned, which means someone is going to be moving from maybe a starter home and buying one of the newer homes out in the subdivisions, which will free up some of these more affordable starter homes for the for the people. Yeah, the United States to a profit margin. That's where I live.
So those builders are building the type of homes off of which they can make the most profit, and unfortunately that doesn't tend to be that starter home.
No.
I see the fixed rate mortgage. That rate dipped a little bit to six point eight one percent last week, which was previously seven point one seven So that's going in the right direction. Any before we part company, Brian James, any tea lea freading on the direction that's going to go.
Well, we need to see exactly what's going to be happening here with the rest of the economy, you know, we we it's pretty clear out there that the President would very much like mister Jerome Powell to start cutting rates yesterday, but that is not happen and it does not appear likely. There is a meeting this week, but there is zero chance that we're going to see a rad cut out of this one. So I wouldn't look for movement there anytime soon.
All Right, we'll write it through as we always do. Brian James Alworth Financial Camp. Thank you though for the time he spoke my listeners me every Monday. Look forward to another conversation next week. Have a great week, Happy Monday. Talk to you in seven days. Stick around, folks, got more to talk about. We'll also open the phone lines up with this is the subject you want to bring up?
Happy to talk about? At five one, three, seven, four, nine fifty, five hundred, eight hundred and eighty two to three talk pound five fifty on AT and T phones. It's eight thirty six. I'll be right back.
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