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App KFIM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. This is the Bill Handle Show. Wayne resumes sitting in Bill's on vacation. He's back after the new year, and every Thursday at this time we love to talk to Joel Larsgard. He hosts the show How to Money right here on KFI Sundays from noon to two. You can always get podcasts of that show on our website at KFIM six forty dot com or on the iHeart Radio app, and he's on social media at how to Money. Joel.
Welcome back to the show. Joel Larsgard, glad to be here.
Wayne.
Hey, let's get right into this first bottom line, there's all the talk of tariffs are coming. The new administration will impose all kinds of terifts all over the place, and that will cause inflation and just I don't think there's enough time in the world to try to unpack all of that. But bottom line, should people be stocking up on anything or making major purchases right now because tariffs are coming? If so, what things should we be doing that.
With Yeah, that's a good question.
And there's been more inks billed kind of about the potential incursion of tariffs onto our lives. And the truth is, the way tariffs work, they get passed on right to companies. Let's say the price of a washing machine goes up or parts that you're the washing machine that a company might be importing from overseas well, the company's not just going to eat the extra expense, they're going to pass
out on to us. And so the washing machine example is a real example from the first Trump administration and Washington, a washing machine prices really did go up in price, and so yeah, people were paying an extra fifty or sixty bucks for a washer or a dryer, and the same thing could be true of other things that we buy.
Potentially a lot of things that we buy.
It's just hard to know, right, It's hard to know how much of the tariff talk is like political rhetoric, how much of it is going to happen. And so I think, you know, we've seen people like stocking up let's say at the grocery store or something like that.
I don't necessarily think that's a great idea.
They're assuming, Hey, higher prices are coming down the pike, why don't I frontload some of my grocery shopping. Now, I think if there's like a great sale on something you're totally going to use, that's when I'm okay with frontloading a purchase. But just because of the promise of certain tariffs, I think maybe some folks at least are overreacting.
And it's it's just really hard to kind of make a buying decision based on vapor policy, right, like kind of like vapor where it's not it's not quite real. It's been talked about, but we just don't know the extent of the impact that it's going to have.
Okay, So that was that was the wise answer. It sounds like that was a correct answer. It doesn't. Unfortunately, now I don't know if I should buy.
Some or not.
Well, okay, I'll say this.
So there's one there's one place where I think some of the Trump promises should have an impact on buying decisions and so, and that specific thing is electric vehicles. So some folks have said, oh, I'm thinking about buying a car next year, should I frontload that purchase? And I think, well, one I want people to buy used cars anyway for the most part, because they're so much cheaper. But if you said, hey, listen entering, I don't know. I was thinking about getting it in February or March.
I think front loading that purchase to the next few days before the end of the year, when you are guaranteed to get the seventy five hundred dollars tax credit for many vehicles for many makes and models, makes sense. If it was something you were going to do anyway, you were just going You're just moving that purchase forward a little bit. I think because of the threat of
removing the ev tax credit. It just a seventy five hundred dollars price difference is significant, so ensuring that you're able to get while the getting is good, I think it least on something like that, you might let the rhetoric influence the timing of your purchase, not the fact that you're actually making the purchase.
Though, Okay, I got it. If it's something you're going to buy anyway at some point, yeah you may, and you can go ahead and buy it now, buy it now, But that doesn't mean I have no need for a new refrigerator whatsoever. But I'm going to buy a new one just because I want to win. I want to win some kind of game exactly.
Some people who could find themselves in in kind of that position where they're justifying purchases that they otherwise wouldn't have made because you're like, well, the tariffs are coming, so this is a smart money move, right, And it's like, well, were you going to buy the item anyway? Or or are you stocking up needlessly on something that isn't even you know, in this tariff discussion. That's what I want people to to not fall victim to.
All right, good, So the mother of all purchases, and we're talking about should you buy a thing? And the mother of all purchases is a home And and I understand you have some interesting information about some differences between homeowners and people who are not homeowners.
Yeah.
So there were two really interesting studies that came out recently. One finds that people live longer if they buy a home by about six months, so homeowners versus renters, homeowners are going to live roughly six months longer.
You're adding six months to your life span.
The other interesting statistic was that the media networth of homeowners versus renters in the US, and it's a significant discrepancy. So the average net worth of a renter in the US is ten thousand dollars. The average net worth of a homeowner is four hundred thousand dollars. And so you might be tempted to hear those stats and say, well, gosh, I want the fountain of youth, I want to live longer, and I would like to have you have more money, have higher net worth. Maybe I actould just go out
and buy a house tomorrow. I don't think it's quite that simple, and we can talk about the nuances of that, but it is kind of fascinating to see that, especially like the longer life thing. I've never heard anything like that before. The network discrepancy has kind of been around, it's just grown, especially as the as the real estate market has been flourishing. But it's it's fascinating to see that that homeowners tend to come out on top.
You know, I'm either going to now reveal myself to be incredibly smart or super dumb, and I don't know which one. I don't know which it is. But isn't that I'm talking about the net worth differences between non homeowners and homeowners and I assume most non homeowners were thinking of renters or maybe people that live with their parents or something. Isn't the difference there simply the market
value of the house that they have. Yes, I'm you're I mean, of course, of course, everything else being equal, wouldn't a homeowner have more net worth because they have a home that gets counted. Your apartment doesn't get counted.
That's right.
I mean, you have an asset depending on when you bought your home. Let's say you bought your home five, six, eight, ten years ago. We're talking about substantial growth in equity in that home over those years.
So if you bought a home in twenty twelve, you, you.
Know, almost thirteen years later, you're talking about that at home having at least doubled in value, probably more.
And so it is.
It has been this forced method of savings for you, and it's accumulated to your bottom line, so it's made your network look pretty fantastic. The problem with just saying, oh, then I should buy a home that's the best way to get rich is that it's just not true when you look at the average increase in home values over time versus the average annual increase of.
The stock market.
The stock market is a better investment than a primary home, and a primary home comes with other expenses as well. Anybody who owns a home knows this, like, hey, my insurance bill just skyrocketed, or oh my goodness, the gutters need to be replaced, or I sprang a leak in the basement, and you know, my neighbor the other day, like literally had a pipe burst, and you don't want to know what's flowing into his basement. It's terrible, right,
and the repairs are incredibly expensive. So it's not that I'm against home ownership. I'm certainly not. But you don't want to assume that owning a home is the best
way to grow your net worth. If you rent, and you're paying a whole lot less for rent, and you invest the difference between what you would have paid for the mortgage and the repairs on a home that you would buy, you'd come out in a much better position over time growing that route and investing the difference than you would putting that money into a primary home.
Typically.
All right, awesome, Joel, thank you so much. We love talking to you. Your show is on Sunday's noon to two. Right here on KFI how to Money and Social Media at how to Money, Joel, We'll talk to you again soon.
Sounds good. Thanks for having me Wayne.
Hey, remember the it started in the nineties, really, when Walmart was a big police topic and multiple people wrote books, the titles of which were things like Walmart The High Cost of Low Price or I don't know if you read how Walmart is Destroying America and the world. They were getting such bad publicity that they actually set up a special department. They did this in two thousand and five, I think, and a special department just to try to.
Improve their image. Now, eventually people came to Walmart's rescue, and those people were a lot of economics professors and other hoity toity and elite economics people, and they start So you had the narrative first, which is Walmart moves in and they shut down all my mom and pops and they destroy the communities. Then the economics people came
and they said, no, no, no, no, you dummy. Yes, it's true Walmart doesn't pay as much as some other retailers, but it's not that big a deal because when Walmart shows up, also you save money on your groceries. You see it all works out, It evens out. Maybe there's a tiny little bit of an effect, but it's not that big of a deal. And you have to listen to me because I have a patch on my jacket and I'm smoking a briar pipe, so obviously I know
more about it than you. And that went on for a while, and then some economists and social scientists decided to use to try to use science to figure out whether there's an effect or not from Walmart. So they're two different papers that have come out, and they don't have an agenda. They just they wanted to try to get the best information and data they could and the best methodology and try to figure out what is there a Walmart effect, and if there is, what is it.
So the first one, which was published ole Bok three months ago or so, got data going back to nineteen sixty eight, a bunch of data about eighteen thousand specific people all across the country. They sorted it for demographic similarity, so they wanted to compare apples to apples, and they created these two groups that were comparable demographic and then they tracked various outcomes for those people, economic outcomes, health outcomes,
morbidity and all of it. And it's the first time that you've been able to do the same thing as a clinical trial for a medicine, but for an economic question like this, because you know what happens with a clinical trial. Two groups, one gets the actual drug, one gets a placebo, and then you follow them for a long time and you see what happens. This is kind
of what they were doing, but with people. And they compared one group people that got a Walmart that's kind of like getting the drug, and the other people didn't get a Walmart, they got a placebo. And after they crunched all of that, they found that ten years after a Walmart opened in a community, the average household had
a six percent decline in income. Now you still have the guy in the jacket with the patch and smoking the pipe saying, well, maybe so, but they saved that because there was a Walmart that they could shop at. So now you have to figure out, oh gosh, how do we find out how much people save by shopping at a Walmart. Well, Walmart put out a study themselves and in twenty twenty four equivalent dollars, Walmart itself found that households who shop their save an average of thirty
one hundred dollars a year. So Walmart is certainly not going to understate how much you save by shopping there. I'm not saying they exaggerated it. I'm saying there's no way they understated it. So that would mean it's still a net loss if you If you the average income declined because a Walmart opened up is at five thousand dollars a year, and you save, according to Walmart, thirty one hundred dollars a year. These are both twenty twenty four dollars, then it is a net loss to the
average household. So there is a Walmart effect according to that paper. Here's the problem, though, how do you know Walmarts open up equally distributed across the country. Probably Walmart chooses where to try to open a Walmart based on whatever factors they look at. Maybe they look at this area doesn't have a lot of union activity going on,
or maybe they look at something else. So how do you now you got to go, Well, how do we know there are all all kinds of parts of the country that are getting Walmarts and other parts of the country that never get a Walmart. And this has something to do not with Walmart. But whatever the reasons Walmart chooses to go into a community, it's those reasons. The same reasons are why the happens. It doesn't really have
to do with Walmart. Well, there's another paper that came out that did an analysis where they were because how would you compare. Here's what they did pretty smart. Let's compare places that got a Walmart with places where Walmart wanted to go but wasn't able to go. Now we're talking about areas that Walmart chose, and sometimes they were able to open the store, and sometimes they were not able to open the store. But they chose all of
these areas and they found the same thing. And it's not hard to understand because in a nutshell, it's not just that Walmart comes in and has low prices and undercuts the competitors, and the mom and pop and the regional change have to go out of business and then all you have is Walmart and that's the only place you have to work in some communities becomes Walmart. But it's also this Walmart makes their supple sell to them at a reduced cost. That's how their prices are lower.
If you're a supplier in the community. You have to cut your price, you go out of business. The people who worked for you, they didn't have anything to do with Walmart directly. It's just you made a product that you sold to Walmart. Now you're out of business. Jobs are lost from your business, and you switch in your community from not having local employers who produce things because it's all coming in from China now because it's all going to Walmart. So, according to these two papers, there
is a Walmart effect. I don't know that that makes Walmart evil. I mean it may make capitalism a little bit evil. I don't think Walmart is singular in this as to these issues, but I don't know that they're the savior of any particular community at all. This topic of discussion does involve Mexico in a big way. During the campaign, now President elect Donald Trump talked about many many things, and a lot of them had to do
with Mexico. For example, he said he would put twenty five percent tariffs on a lot of Mexico's exports here, like tomatoes and avocados and tequila and car parts. Only one of those is not recommended as an ingredient in a drink. And also said that maybe we would send
troops into Mexico to fight the drug cartels. The idea being Mexico is not able to get a handle on these cartels, so we might use and he said, this is a quote, He said, we'll use special forces, iber warfare, and other covert and overt actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations. Okay, cyber warfare fine with me, should be fine with most people. Do you care if we act into the cartel's computers? Covert overt
actions could be anything. So I don't know what to make of that special Forces. Here's where it gets dicey. Do you send troops into Mexico to fight cartels without Mexico giving you permission to do it? As a general proposition, the answer is no. You don't send your troops into another country to fight somebody without the permission of that country. Is this a special case because of who we're talking about?
These cartels that are so violent and so really disturbingly violent and and can't be stopped by the Mexican government. So he said all these things, and it was seen as more bluster than an actual plan by many. But now he has said who he would appoint to be the ambassador to Mexico. And because of who it is, people who formerly said, oh, he's just, you know, saying some stuff are now saying, oh, he may be dead serious about sending US troops into Mexico. The guy is
Ronald D. Johnson. I believe there is a congress person named Ronald Johnson. This is not him. This is a different guy. This is a former military guy, a former Green Beret and also a former official with the CIA, also a former ambassador to El Salvador, a country not
immune from a violence problem with the gangs there. And when he was the ambassador to El Salvador, this guy Johnson, he supported the president of El Salvador big time all the policies, and you may recall a lot of controversy as the government of El Salvador went to crack down on the gangs. They were accused of a lot of
human rights abuses. But also, which is one thing where you kind of go, I mean, I'd like to be the most the most progressive guy on the block, maybe, but I kind of go, well, human rights abuses, but it's gangs that you're like the rights you're abusing are those of gangs. I don't know. I don't know how upset I am about that. I don't know where it's
prioritized on my list of things to worry about. But also, the president El Salvador was known for, you know, cracking down on any dissent, which seems decidedly Unamerican, but then again, it's not the United States anyway. He was into all that stuff. Ronald Johnson now he's going to be the ambassad to Mexico. So the idea is he's a guy who would be totally into something like having troops sent into Mexico, and he's a guy who might really press
the President of Mexico hard to allow it. Now, the thing is this, Okay, if the concern is, what if we send an ambassador over there and he successfully pressures the President of Mexico Hardye Scheinbaum to allow US troops to go in and fight the cartel, Well, then he was able to convince somebody to allow something. Would we send troops without their permission? Though, that's a completely different kettle of fish. To send in troops and Mexico has
said no, and we send them anyway? That really could create a massive problem worldwide. The world could very rapidly turn against the United States. And we have a history already with Mexico where we tried to do something where we did not go into Mexico at all, and it pissed them off. Don't know if you remember this. There
was a former Defense secretary of Mexico. His name was Salvador Sanfuegos, and he was arrested at lax Here in the United States on suspicion of drug trafficking, and the government of Mexico at the time it was Lopez Obrador, went crazy, what are you doing? You rested this guy, He's a Mexican citizen. You don't have enough evidence. We don't know what's going on. We hate this and they forced they forced the Trump administration to send him back to Mexico. And when he got back to Mexico, what
did they do. Did they put him in jail and said, yeah, we should get to the bottom of whether or not you're a big drug dealer. No, they gave him a major military award. And it really hurt US Mexico relations and it made it much more difficult for our DEA to work with the authorities in Mexico, So there's already some history when we did not send any troops into
the country. If we were to do that, it would probably be game over for any kind of friendly relationship with Mexico, which I'm well o. I already hear some of you going, yeah, who needs it? Joining me now as he does every Thursday on this show, the host of Later with Mo Kelly from seven to ten pm Monday through Friday on KFI. This is earlier with Moe Kelly. Obviously, Mo.
How are you good morning, Wayne, Happy holidays, post merry Christmas, a second day of Hanaka, second day of Honika.
If I'm not mistaken, how are you, sir?
Good? All of that is correct what you said. I gotta give it to you.
It's always good to talk to you, just because we need to talk just more often.
Oh oh, I agree, I agree. Maybe sometime later today we can have a talk off the air.
As well, Yes, definitely, but also on the air. Now.
People may not know that we used to be adjacent to each other on the weekends. You had a show on the weekends. I had a show on the weekends, and you were better than me. So your show was first, and then I came on after you or or I guess you opened for me, would be any other way to say it.
Now, I owe all my first tests to you. No.
No, If you remember you were the first person to bring me on the air at KFI when you informally interviewed me, oh yeah, I.
Mean I didn't know it was the first time or anything.
I do remember that was first time. Yeah, the thirteen years ago.
But yes, well kudos to me.
Yes, you get all the code, all of it.
H thank you, You're a very sweet man. We'll talk. So squid Game. This was a huge phenomenon, and now it's back for season two. There are already some reviews coming out about it. What are we looking for with squid Game season two? And also, if I'm a person who isn't though I don't remember anything about squid Game one, do I need to go watch squid Game one or can I jump right into squid Game two.
That's a great question, and here's a semi great answer. I would say no, because the beauty of the first season a squid Game was you went in completely dark line hopefully you did, and you didn't know, and you let the whole series unfurl itself in real time, and so you got to find out as you went along.
From what I understand, this season is much the same, except that you kind of know and the lead character, protagonist kind of knows what's going on, and I don't know if it's going to have the same type of magic or surprise. We do know that season two is only seven episodes long, and there is going to be a third and final season, but in such a truncated season, it's not going to have all the magic and wonder that the first season did, all right, So just in.
Case people don't know, generally, squid Game is about a group of super rich evil people who recruit regular people to compete for a tremendous amount of money, life changing amount of money by subjecting them to different weird games that are actually deadly, which is to say, if you lose, you die, and somebody wins. At the end of season one, there's a guy who wins, and if I understand it right,
he comes back now to play again. But number one, he's got huge amounts of money because he won the first time, and his intent is to intrait and try to shut it all down from the inside. Is that somewhat accurate.
Yes, that is exactly accurate.
I was trying to hold back some of the details because I think a lot of people, or if you're some of the people who have not seen season one, part of the magic is not revealing everything which is going on. But you kind of know season two, episode one what is going on, and he's going through the game again, So it's not going to have the type of reveal or surprise with the exception of different games and different players.
So here's what I'm assuming. You can't use the surprise of revealing over the course of a season what's going on right now. So instead are they going to amp up the violence or the gore or the intensity of the thing instead?
Yes, Yes, from what I understand, the episodes just dropped hours ago and all of the all of them are available. You can watch all of season two today if you want, which I plan to do. But it's supposed to be darker, it's supposed to be more violent, more tense, if you could believe that after season one. But yes, they have to balance out the fact that no one is completely unaware of what's going on anymore.
I would also say, if you know a ton about spoilers, and this isn't a spoiler because I haven't seen it and I don't know, but you did say it's commonly known there will be a third season.
Yes, they have an next year.
Okay, So by announcing there will be a third season, I believe we can assume this guy doesn't manage to shut it all down.
Absolutely correct.
Yeah, so then knowing there's a season three, does that not take some of the tension out, at least of his quest to shut it down if we know he can't possibly completely shut it down because they need season three?
For me, it does for me, it absolutely does, because the stakes cannot be the same. Now, can we be introduced to characters that we may feel emotionally more attached to and hope that he or she or they will survive to the end of the season. Of course, but we know that the story is not going to end or be resolved this season.
All right, Hey, do you want to say anything about what you'll be talking about tonight on your show Later with mo Kelly starting at seven pm.
Sure, we're gonna go a little bit deeper into Squid Game season two. I will have beinge watched all of it by then, and also we'll talk about some of the best and worst movies of twenty twenty four.
Quickly. Just a huge thumbs up or a huge thumbs down or something in between. On the movie The Substance.
I don't do horror, but Mark Ronner.
But Mark Ronner, who is our anchor, did a review for it, and he thought it was fantastic.
I'm being serious.
I try to stay away from horror because it impacts my sleep.
And I'm just not the guy for it. I see.
All right, you're a gentive soul.
Yes, all right, buddy, good to.
Talk to you. Hey, are you here next week for your segment as well?
I am here. What is next Thursday? Is that the second? Yes, yes, I'll be back.
Oh fantastic. All right, we'll talk to you then. Thank you very much, sir.
Bye, Wayne, There.
Goes Moe, Here goes me. It's KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the Iheartradiot.
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.