Let's Talk Money

we'll have some white stuff on the ground. And you know, you know what happens over the next six, seven, eight months. A lot of stuff's gonna happen. But today is the first day of fall. So happy fall, everybody. The days are getting shorter, we know that. All the way till what December twenty second. I think that's one of my happier days, when the days start to get longer. I like that day. I like long days. I like it when when the sun's out, and the sun's out more

than it's not. Even in the northeast, the sun is out more than it's not. Just like stocks are up more than they're down. Stock the stock market. Believe me, you're gonna have days, weeks, months where the stock market's down. But over time, long term, the stock market is up more than it's down. And that's what you have to remember. And I'm not here to push stocks, Believe me, I'm not to me our clients. We advise them on what's right for them. As FODU sharies, that's first and foremost.

The first job that we have is what's right for our clients. But we also take time to educate our clients. We go over all the asset classes over time, what to expect from a return. And if you work hard for your money, it's okay to let your money work a little hard for you. You can't stick it under a mattress, for God's sakes, make no money on it. After inflation, your real return is next to nothing. I mean, what good is that? Why do you want to why do you even want to do that? But people do that

because they get scared. But listen, you've heard me say this, probably a million times, the stock market will go down. I guarantee that, guarantee it. The stock market's going to go down. It's going to go down over and over and over again. The stock market always comes back up. Stock market always comes back up, and I believe it or not, it always goes on to make new all

time highs. So having some risk in your portfolio and those stays when the stock market goes down, for God's sakes, get off your computer, get off your app on your phone, Get off whatever it is that you're looking at your investments on. Go outside, take a walk, do something, Just get away from it. Make believe you don't even own stocks. Think about the first couple weeks of September. Holy moly, you thought the world was coming to an end again.

It's funny how people investors feel that the world is coming to an end. Whenever stocks go crazy sideways down word spiral. They just think the world is coming to an end. They always think this time is different, This time is not different. The stock market goes through some ups and downs, I can guarantee you, especially over the next six seven weeks during this for god's sakes, political cycle, I can't wait till it's over. I'm so sick and tired of It's so sick and tired of it. I

just want to get my life back. I can't wait until election day comes and goes. But it you know, you're going to see some volatility in the stock market. And remember the volatility is going to be short lived. So the sun is out today, enjoy it. The stock market is up. First couple of weeks of September, it was down. The next couple weeks it was up. And that's what you have to remember. Over time, stocks go up and down. And as I said a few moments ago,

I'm not here pushing the stocks. But I do know. My job is to make money for my clients, and it behooves them for me to educate them on the pros and cons of investing, and clients engage our services. One. We're trustees. We don't sell investments. We have absolutely no conflict of interest, so we get paid to really put our clients' best interests first and foremost. And over time,

when clients are saving, most clients save for retirement. There's other goals, sure, second home, college, charitable bequests, there's other goals that clients save for, but first and foremost clients are saving for retirement, and that's for most people long term. Now, the key is to save for retirement, be able to retire, have the quality of life that you always dreamt about in retirement. That is the key, that's what you want,

you want to achieve. That we help our clients get to that goal of having a life in retirement that they feel they deserve for working all those decades, which is why you hear me also say often, if you're not saving ten percent of your salary, folks, and I

know I shock some people when I say this. If you're not saving ten percent of your salary, more than likely you're not saving enough, which means that more than life likely when you reach retirement age, if you reach the retirement age that you wanted, some people want to retire. I had somebody yesterday tell me they wanted to retire

at fifty five. I'm saying to myself, well, you better hope you're saving enough, because to retire at fifty five, you're gonna have thirty five plus years that were planning on you being retired, which means that sure you're going to get a Social Security check. And once again this year, I think the average Social Security is somewhere around fifteen

thousand dollars. But whether you're getting fifteen thousand, twenty thousand, twenty five thousand, and thirty thousand, if you're on the high end earner and getting some of the top dollars some Social Security whatever that amount is, it's a fixed amount, goes up a little bit each year based on inflation, but just a little bit, and sure you'll get that till the day you die. But if you need more than that to live on, that means you have to

start drawing down on your retirement savings. That means you have to have a pretty good nest egg somewhere else that you can draw on. Because now instead of you working, earning a pay check, putting money into savings or a four oh one K or four h three B, now all those decades that hopefully you were putting money into a retirement program and saving for retirement, now that retirement program is going to start to pay you. And on average,

if you have a million dollars saving and retirement. We always tell our clients safely, you can take forty fifty sixty thousand dollars out four to six percent, and I'm okay on the six percent side, the high side, you know, mostly because all of our we don't have one client that has no stocks in their portfolio. That means every client that we have has a well diversified portfolio with a good blend of stocks, bonds, a tournatives, cash, and

they really their returns are pretty decent. And you've heard me go over the historical returns many times, so you know that over time, you make no money in cash, very little because after inflation, you're losing money. Same with bonds. The only asset class that you can really make money on is stocks. But with stocks comes risk. With stocks, comes those rainy days. With stocks, comes with times when

you think the world's coming to an end. Folks. The world is not coming to an end unless you're up in the middle of the night listening to talk radio one of those conspiracy shows where they have you believe in the world's coming to an end. The world's not coming to an end just because the stock market goes up and down, up and down, up and down. That comes with the territory of investing. Well, a long, long,

long hello to you this morning. I'm gonna take a quick fifteen second break so I can wet my whistle. The phone line are open. I would love to talk to you about anything, anything at all that you want to talk about. One eight hundred Talk WGY one eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine one eight hundred eighty two five fifty nine forty nine Zach.

you enough for that. And I'm awful also thankful to have really a team of colleagues that I'm surrounded by that can fill in for me when I'm not able to do the show, and they really do a good job. They give some good information. Yesterday was John and Pollo, John Malay Access my Coeo. He's been with me for fifteen years. We just celebrate as his anniversary running some companies of mine and now he works exclusively for bou Shaping Andrew for the last few years. He's a CPA,

really smart guy. And Paulo La Pietra Pollo CFP, he's on my investment committee. Really bright, bright, bright asset. I'm blessed to have the talent that I have and my team, you know, twenty professionals, and they are all special. Whether it's my service team, whether it's my advisors, they're all special somehow, some way. They make my clients feel very at home, make them feel like they're working hard on my client's behalf. And that's exactly what I wanted. You know,

Angela has been with me twenty six years. That's a long time. I believe me. She's she's she's she's just priceless in so many ways. She sets the tone for the for the company and the firm. She really lets everybody know our advisors, our service team, our operations team, our investment team. She lets them know exactly what's expected to work at Bouchet Financial Group. And it's not easy working at my firm. I expect I expect ethics, I

expect values. I expect that that that that type person that really just want to put our clients first and foremost. So I'm blessed to have them, and I'm blessed that when I'm not able to do the show, to have people that are able to step into the show so that you don't skip the beat. Every every Saturday at ten, every Sunday morning at eight, when you tune in, you know you're going to get a good show, good information, and hopefully get pointed in the right direction. Because you

get one chance to retire, only one. You can't go back and make up for it. Listen, if at sixty five you wake up and you say, hey, it's sixty five, I think I want to retire. If you just got ten dollars in a bank and you need more than a fifteen thousand dollars that Social Security is going to pay you, guess what. You can't retire. You got to keep working. Now. We have to hope you're healthy not to work in too. We have to hope that there's

somebody out there willing to hire you. It's crazy, isn't it. Vicious cycle, which is why we pay so much attention to educating and guiding and coaching the listening audience on the importance of saving, the importance of being invested right, the importance of not being sold a book of nothing.

You know, basically, you know, if you've got somebody, if you got hard earned money, you're putting money in, especially into a retirement account, and you got somebody selling you an annuity, just say no, just like the drug commercial, right, just say no. Don't even let them in the front door, folks, just say no. If they're selling you an annuity, they're selling it because they're making a big, big, big commission

and they really benefit. They're basically a registered representative that's licensed to sell you an annuity, so they can get a big fat six percent commission. That's right. You put one hundred thousand dollars in, they get a six percent commission, six thousand dollars commission if they sell you an a share mutual funding front loads mutual funds are as high as five point seventy five, so they're getting almost six

thousand dollars there. If if they're stupid enough and I hate that word stupid, but if they're really that dumb to sell you a B share, making it sound like a no load mutual fund piece. There's no front end commissions, folks, nothing, There is nothing, absolutely nothing, free for lunch, nothing, There is no free lunch. And if they're selling you a B share, it's because there's no upfront commissions. But there's

a back end commission. Just like an annuity the first seven years that you're in an annuity, if you leave, you're gonna get a big, big, big chunk of money taken out of that annuity. You know, it's a back end commission. That's you know that that's their their that's how they keep you into that product for so long. Same with B share mutual funds. If you leave, you're going to be paying something on your way out. And the internal fees internal fees, folks, you got to pay

attention to the internal fees. I can't hopefully through the years, through the decades. Thirty years is a long time of me helping teach you what questions you need to ask when you're sitting down with an advisor. And if you're not talking about internal fees, if you're not talking about the portfolio that they're recommending you, you need to you know, our our core position is point point zero three percent

three BIPs. There's one hundred BIPs and one percentage point point zero three percent the average fee, and the mutual fund is one I think it's one point one percent according to the Morning Star. And annuities, who the heck knows between the mortality and expense charges between the if you're buying your variable annuity, between the expenses of the mutual for the underlying funds within it. And then they

have all those guarantees, right, we guarantee you this. You know when you annudiese it keeps up with inflation, whatever, whatever, whatever. You're paying a fee for all of that. And you know for fernuities, I don't know, it could be three percent. So here you have my portfolio point zero three percent starting out our overall all in charges point one eight percent eighteen BIPs point one eight percent. That's a whole less than one point one percent in a mutual fund.

And let's say three percent whatever it is, two and a half, three three, whatever the node is. This is why you have to pay attention to fees. You have to ask about fees. This is why you should ask your advisor look them straight in the eye deadpand hey, where is your money invested? Show me your portfolio. Every one of my advisors is instructed to show any client, any proposed If we have a new client coming in to interview us, they are informed to show them my

personal portfolio. My money's invested just like my clients. It's something I'm very proud of. Very few people in the country can say that. Very few advisors can say that they manage their money differently than they manage their clients. Because their clients so many people are selling them so many products that you know they Why wouldn't an advisor pay those kind of commissions? Right, I'm proud to show our clients and prospective clients my portfolio, my personal portfolio,

and listen. I take on more risk than I expect clients to. I'm one hundred percent invested in the stock market. I'm very comfortable with that. It doesn't bother me. Believe it or not, Folks, you would be surprised. I never look at my portfolio ever. Ever, Ever, do I look at my portfolio very seldom. I have a couple play accounts, a couple sandbox accounts at Wilhelm. He was in on the radio last week, who's the on with He was on with Nicole. I think last week they did a

great job. Nichole's dynamite, Dynamite advisor of mine. I was lucky to have her relocate her family from New Jersey, put her trust in US and my firm to relocate her family and move up to the Great Capital Region area. So I think she and Edward on last week, and ed ed is one of our portfolio strategists along with Casey Bird. I don't think we've had Casey on the radio yet. We'll have Casey soon. Casey is we We hired Casey, oh god, just before I left you in April.

So we hired Casey over the winter, probably the beginning of the year. And Casey Casey came from a real, real, you know, hot end firm in New York City and joined US. So he and had our portfolio traders. They do a lot of research. So I have a few sandbox accounts that I instructed to make decisions on once a month. You know, it's you know. One of them is a sector rotated ETF account. The other is I basically went in and bought the Magnificent seven. I believe

in the Magnificent seven. I know that, especially in the video sky High Apple is sky high. I know that. But these are great companies and I just want to compare it to some other Sandbox accounts I had, So I compare it to the sector rotated ETF sandbox account I have. And then I have an account there's somebody that I followed that buys and sells stocks. They said, you know, for the heck, I'm going to see how that portfolio matches up to my other two sandbox accounts.

But for the most part, my core money is invested just just like my clients. And ed in Casey do a good job rebalancing, and right now Ryan gave them marching orders. You know, we're rebalancing our retirement accounts, so our clients are going to start seeing some trade confirmations. You know how we keep one to two years worth of cash set aside for clients, and we're proud to do that. That's our safety net, that's their insurance policy.

Our clients when the market goes down, they never ever call us panicking because they know that we had them protected. If they're taking I don't care one thousand dollars a month, five thousand dollars a month out whatever they're taking out a month, we have one to two years worth set aside. And this way, when, not if, when, when the market goes through the next correction, barrel market, recession, whatever it may be, our clients do not panic. They don't panic

one iota. They know that we had them protected. And I've done that forever. So I've been in business thirty four years, almost thirty five, and I've been I've been I've been protecting my clients from dat one. And I've taught everybody who works for me, everybody from Marty, John and Ryan all the way down to our service team, what I do, and they do what I do because I'm the leader. I set the tone. I have taught them well, I mentored them, and they know what I

expected them. They know what I want for my clients, and they do a good job, a darn good job. So we we we we protect our clients in so many ways. One eight hundred eight two, five, five nine four nine, one eight hundred eighty two five fifty nine forty nine. If you have any questions, any questions whatsoever, give me a call. Folks, You're lucky and I'm with you. This morning. I had a good night's sleep. I went to bed early last night and the alarm went off

at seven. I said, oh, why, why, why? Why did the alarm go off? I don't want to get up. I was like in a really good dream. You know how you get in those dreams sometimes and you just you just don't want to get out of it. Well, that was this morning. I said, Oh, I got a million people on the other side of the microphone that's looking to talk to me. I got to get up. But I could have stayed in bed. It would have been a great morning to stay in bed. It was

just a beautiful day. I'm looking outside now. I'm doing the show for my home and I'm looking outside, and I'm telling you it's one of those days where you really want to get out there. Folks. If you're not getting out there, you're missing out because it's a beautiful day. Get out there and enjoy this beautiful day. A little cloud cover, but still a beautiful day. We may get rain, I think later, But so what if it rains. It rains, you know, nice walking rain. Nothing wrong with that, right.

So we're coming up to the news break. I just want to thank you again. For tuning in this morning. Let me give out the phone numbers, because I would love to have you call in during a news break. I'd love to talk to you on the other side of the news break. It would be a pleasure to talk with you. One eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine. One eight hundred eight two five fifty nine forty nine. Any questions you have, folks, any questions whatsoever?

One eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine. When I wake up in the mall, I do have a lot of capable colleagues, but today you have me, folks. Stephen Bouchet, I am live and I am with you, and it's a Sunday morning, a beautiful Sunday morning, a dry Sunday morning. I thank you for waking up with me. I can't thank you enough. I can't thank the listening audience enough for tuning in. And I have nine certified financial planners now, Scott and Katie in my office have

over the summer had become certified financial planners. So I should update that little segment and get it right. And we also have Harmony, who's a certified private wealth advisor, which there are very few of in the country. When I tell you I got a lot of expertise, I have a lot of expertise. You know, my aunt passed away recently and yesterday we had her funeral. On one of her and she was ninety five. She was you know,

she had a great, great long life. And one of her friends came up to me and said, I saw you on the radio. And I kind of blushed. And this is why I get my hair anaunced on to do the show every week. Folks, when I tell you I love doing the show, I love doing the show. But you never know who's watching you on the show. I said. I looked at her, this little sweet lady. I said, you really saw me on the radio. She said yeah, she says, I listened to you every week.

I said, oh, that makes me so happy. So it's nice to to have that, and you know, to have you know, that kind of you know, just loyalty from the listening audience. I have some people that have listened to the show for the thirty four years, almost thirty five years that I've been doing the show, and that means so much to me. And when you come up to me and you tap me on the shoulder, like yesterday at my aunt's funeral. When I have somebody look at me and say, yeah, I listened to on the radio,

I just kind of blush. You know. It makes me feel so good, especially especially those people that come up to me and say, hey, I just want to thank you because you said something on the radio and I did it and it really helped me out. That's when I take the most pride of doing the show. So this show is it's a pleasure for me to come on and talk with you every week, and it's also some opportunity for you to talk with me every week.

So if you have any questions, any questions whatsoever. One eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine one eight hundred eighty two five fifty nine forty nine, I would love to talk to you. Listen. I used to be a bartender, so I've been talking to people about their problems for a long time. And believe me, as a bartender, I talked about a lot of problems, but you know, mostly I talk to people about their financial questions. And as I said, I'll give you my professional guidance.

It may not be what you want to hear, but I promise you to come from my heart. It'll be professionally speaking what I feel is right for you. One eight hundred eighty two five five nine four nine. Let's go to the phone lines this morning where we have Jim and Delmar. Hello Jim, good morning, student, Good morning to you.

and president. I'm guessing for the past two to three years, after the ten year anniversary, she has been drawing monthly. And this is one thing that really baffles me, because you don't know a few months, I'll say twenty five percent of the year three or four, well, three or four months a year you get one one hundred and SI dollars and the rest of the rest of the time you're getting eighteen hundred and fifty dollars, we'll call it, and we happen to be having a meeting with him

this coming this coming week. And because of the age of it, are we locked into it? Is there something that possible now?

many years ago. Listen, we have a better annuity now, and they make another commission on it. So sit back and be patient. Fish fish them in, see if they look to sell you annoy annuity. If they do, I want you and Glory to call my office and set up an appointment, free pro bono. You know, no money, come in and we will we will analyze your situation to tell you what you think you need to do. But I'm just not a fan of annuities. I'm really

just not a fan of annuities. Although it sounds like your wife she might have minuitized the annuity would be she's getting an income from it. I'm just not a fan of annuities. The fees are so high. Listen. We have Angela Sesni can tell me to the number. She runs our service team. We have hundreds of clients that take distributions, just like putting money into an annuity and taking Really, what you're doing is getting a distribution. The only problem is you never get your money back. And

an annuity. We have hundreds of clients that take distributions and we have a well diversified portfolio that's earning decent returns, stellar returns, to be honest, and we send them a check some some clients get it once a month, some once a quarter, some once a year. But they get a check for whatever money they need and we grow the portfolio they led us do our job. I have one client, you know, thank God, thank god, this woman put her trust in me and my team, and she

can't believe that. You know, she has more money now than when she started probably six years ago, and she's taken a lot of money out and she just can't believe her balance has stayed the same. It's because we do a fantastic job of managing that portfolio. We're able to give her a distribution, and we protect our clients if we see clients taking more money than they should, because the whole key is to be disciplined with an annuity. Once you annutize, you can't all of a sudden take

more money out. You're annuitized. They're giving you what they're going to give you. Well, with our portfolios, we tell clients listen, you can take on to be saved four or five six percent out. If you start taking ten twelve percent out, you may run out of money. And we let our clients know that. We don't mince words

because we protect our clients. But see what that advisor says, just kind of fish them in and then then whether he or she tries to sell you a new annuity or not, I want you to look them in the eye and ask them what the fees are and I'd be curious. I'd love to have you call me back in the next week or so and let me know. But if you and your wife feel uncomfortable after that meeting, and it might have been a long term relationship that her dad had. That doesn't mean that they're really looking

out for your best interest. Every adviser is right, and I'm not going to sit here and say that advisors that sell annudies are all bad. They're not. Sometimes it makes sense to buy an annuity. Sometimes you just get nervous and nellies and they just want that guarantee. So I'm not going to sit here and say that nobody should ever buy an annuity. I'm just saying I'm not

a fan of annudies. But listen to the advisor. Ask some questions, see what the annuities invested in, and is that advisor managing the rest of the portfolio, yes, sir, yeah, so get a breakdown on that as well. Listen, they're making money on you. Even if they tell you they're not making money on you, I swear to God, they're making money on you. You know there's twelve by more fees. They're making money on you, So make them do their

job for you. If I were you and Glory, I would send them a note ahead of time and say, listen, we want a full review of our portfolio. We want to go over fees. We want to go over performance. We want to compare our performance to some kind of a benchmark, the stock market, or a mix of the

stock and bond market. If you have a well diversified portfolio, have them be prepared, have them do their work, have them sweat a little, because there's a lot of advisors out there that just don't want to talk about fees and what's in the portfolio. Jim, good luck with that meeting. I hope you and Gloria come away from it feeling comfortable. If you're not comfortable, or if you want a second opinion, call my office. Please call my office and come in

and let us. Let us give you a pro bono initial consultation, and let us analyze what you have, and we'll tell you and we may tell you to stay right where you're at. We may tell you that boy there, you know, there's better places to go, But at least you and Gloria will know. I guess Jim has gone. Jim, thank you for calling in. Stay well and enjoy this Sunday one eighty two, five five nine four nine. Let's go back to the phone lines. We have Paul in Connecticut.

Howard Mark's, Cliff as Nes, David Einhorn, Barry Ridholtz. And one other individual who just hit the radar screen is Michael Green. And I'm giving you those.

mutual entity called Blueprint Income. And they were pretty transparent they put out there. I caught it at the right time they needed to hit a sales goal, and they discounted the nominal small amount that they make on those annuities multi years because they make, as you say, huge fees on these other let's call it products. And I locked in for three years six point oh five percent.

Now I have no complaints with that, because I'm going to either do a ten thirty five or I'm going to cash it in because I'm managing taxes in detail. I'm a CPA, like I said, so there are justifiable reasons, like you say, for me and for a good friend of mine who's pretty wealthy, he bought one and he sleeps that night and I get the insurance carrier risk. But a side of two thousand and nine and eight with aig Man build out and other stuff. Basically, you're

relied on the state insurance fund. So I think there is a place, but generally speaking, it's only my gas. So I'll turn it over to you. That's about it, all right.

people that means that means a lot to them. So I'm not going to sit here and say every investment professional who sells annuity is a bad person. And I'm not going to say that there's not a place for annudies. I told the story long ago in the nineties. I had a client and he had cancer and he was supposed to die within five years, and I knew his wife didn't have enough money to survive. I said, listen, you're going to let me manage this portfolio more aggressive

than I should. But we're going to use an annuity because if something happens, we know that principle is guaranteed. That's one of the big guarantees of an annuity. So I use the variable ANUDI, and I use some good stock funds within the annuity. And I knew that if the client passed away, that his wife was going to get at least what he put in. So you know, in some cases, I can say the downside was protected.

They weren't going to lose any money. As it turned out, you know, it was a great time to be invested in stocks. And the client lived long after five years, and they had more money than they ever thought they would ever see. So that's just, you know, like an exception to the rule. As they said, sometimes people buy annuities because they just they want that income stream, is Paul's pointing out. Paul's not wrong pointing that out, as

Buddy just wants that income stream, and that's important to us. Buddy, first and foremost, listen, as a fiduciary, as a certified financial planner, as somebody who cares for their clients. First and foremost, my client cis need to be comfortable. They need to sleep that night, and sometimes that means they may not always do you know what professionally we feel they should do, and that's okay. We'll take the time to educate them. But at the end of the day,

it's their money and they need to be comfortable. And not all clients are comfortable taking on risks. So for some people having that annuity make sense, but there's a lot of fees and annuities, and in the case of non qualified annuities, basically, if you put one hundred thousand and it grows to one hundred and fifty thousand, you cash it out, you're going to pay ordinary income tax

on that fifty thousand dollars of gain. In the old days, they changed the law in the late nineties, and the old days it was it was capital gains tax, and capital gains taxes a whole lot less than income tax. So in the case that I just gave you that fifty dollars of profit has added onto your income, you may be in a much higher tax bracket than you once were, paying more taxes than you thought you were going to pay because you cashed down to that annuity.

You cashed it in, So you know, I'm just not a fan of annuities. But that doesn't mean that that there may not be a place, So all preface it at that, you know, listen in light of full disclosure. It's my job to be completely honest, and I'm being completely honest now with regards to who do I follow and who does Paul follow? And I said, thank god he doesn't follow Jim Kramer because I am not a Jim Kramer fan. He's nothing other than an entertainer in my eyes. He may be well educated. C NBC thinks

he's a god when he comes on. I actually turned CNBC off. I go to Bloomberg. I just can't stand listening to the guy. He's just so full of himself. He thinks he's just God's get to the world, and I have no use for that. He sells fear, He he mumbles, jumbles, and most of what he says does not become, you know, does not play out the way I want it. There's you know, I wish there was. I wish you could track because if you bought everything that he said to buy would you make money or

lose money? I'm guessing it probably at the end of the year lose money. But I'm just not a Jim Kramer fan. I call a financial porn. There you have it. But you know, Paul did mention some some some good researchers there. You know, if you look at the broad end of the spectrum, I'm going to think of two,

two too highly qualified, highly thought of people. Mike Wilson, who works for Morgan Stanley, who has been a pessimist, a bear, who has lost his clients a lot of money because he felt that the world was coming to an end. And I know a high end broker at Morgan Stanley and he and I talk often and he tells me all the time, this guy has cost my clients more money than not. I said, Dave, then come out lead Morgan Stanley. Come with my firm. Listen, we're independent.

We don't have to listen to what Mike Wilson says. We're not instructed to follow the you know, drink the kool aid of the firm that we work for. That's the beauty about being a fiduciary. That's the beauty about being independent. That's the beauty about you know, being able to listen to several gurus and several people out there. But you know, Mike Wilson is he's a brilliant guy and he's been right before, but he's been wrong during the past few years. He's been dead wrong, I mean

completely wrong. And then you got to like Tom Lee, who's been completely right and more optimistic than somebody like a Mike Wilson. And then you have everybody in between. You have the Jeff Gunlocks in the Bond world. He's kind of the new Bill Gross. Bill Grosse used to be the Bond gurgu. Now it's mostly Jeff gun Lock Gunlock. And you know, so we listen to a lot of experts and we you know, Ryan heads up our investment team,

and really they they their job is. You know, it's funny and you may not know those folks, but if all of a sudden, you're broker calls you up and they're pushing this product or that product, you can't believe how many times they get what we call wholesalers that come in, they buy lunch for the whole office or take them out to dinner, and they're pushing a product and all of a sudden, all all the investment professionals are pushing this product because they just got a free lunch,

or a free dinner, or a free round of golf or whatever. We don't allow that to happen. We don't let any wholesalers in our office. We do not want to be persuaded. We always say, send us the information, we'll do our due diligence, we'll do our research and analysis, and we'll decide what we feel is right for our clients. And believe me, just like Mike Wilson, I'm not right all the time. I'm right a lot of time, but I'm not right all the time. I've made some decisions

that I wish I could go back and change. I made some investment decisions that Sometimes we get into something and shortly thereafter we get out of it. I tell Ryan all the time, do not feel bad, Ryan if you buy something and realize you shouldn't have bought it and we get out of it. This is why we disclose to our clients. Listen, you know our intention is we want to be in this for some quite some time,

but sometimes we're not. Sometimes, you know, we don't see the handwriting on the wall clearly, and we'll make those decisions. You know, we're we're not afraid to cut our losses short and do what's right for our client. At the end of the day, we want to make a lot of money for our clients. So we spend a lot of time doing our research. We digest all the information and independently, we have a good methodology and we're pretty prudent. Independently,

we structure a portfolio that's pretty good. You know. Right now we're shedding one of the positions that we have in our portfolio. We don't like it. You know. For the most part is you know, we we use predominantly ETFs and we're managing. Listen, we're managing about one point four billion dollars. I mean, that's not small potatoes. We're managing a lot of money, and most of it's in ETFs. We only have two individual stocks, Apple and Amazon, and

they were my picks. You know, not everybody agree with me putting them into portfolios, but I thought they were good companies. I still think Apple is probably the best company in the world. I just went out and I bought my new iPhone, my new I Watch, Apple Watch, whatever you want to call it. You know I'm an Apple fan. Hey, I can't believe we're coming up to the end of the show, folks. I thank you very

much for tuning in. You're listening to Let's Talk Money, brought to you by Bouchet and Andrew, where we help our clients prioritize their health wealth while we manage their wealth for life. Talking next week, have a great week. Bye bye.