You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Five AM six forty bill Handle. Here it is a Thursday morning, October twenty three. A couple of the stories were following PBS SoCal announcing a huge telethon featuring a variety of actors' hosts, musicians. Do you remember when Jerry Lewis was hosting that it would go on for twenty four hours the telethon for was it muscular dystrophy? And he had everybody on and at the end and who's
at the end of twenty four hours? And kids with wheelchairs would be rolled out, you know, to pull your heartstrings. And at the very end of the telethon, he would have one of the kids in wheelchairs remove the wheelchair and crawl across the stage just so he can get some money.
Well maybe not, but it was pretty interesting.
Anyway, There's going to be a telethon with insane number of people to raise money for PBS which has been cut dramatically.
Okay.
Joel Larsguard, host of How to Money Sunday's twelve to two pm. His address is at how to Money Joel.
Good Morning, Joel, Morning Bill. Oh yeah, we got a lot to cover today.
Now credit cards to earn extra awards, which I am a huge fan of, should you actually churn them? Should you take all the extras at the beginning to get you on and then you cancel and go to the next one.
Does that make sense? Yeah?
So that is the practice known as churning, and it's something that should you do it?
And it depends on a number of factors.
And I think we should probably start off with the
reality that most people don't handle credit cards. Well, something like fifty to sixty percent of people have like a recurring balance on their credit card every single month, and I think a lot of people in that position they sometimes think about, or they'll think about the rewards that they're getting from their credit cards, where there's the sign up bonus, the two percent cash back, the travel rewards, from the spending they're doing, and maybe they minimize the
downside of that credit card and the twenty two percent interest rate they're paying on the balance because they're like, it's okay, I'm getting these other benefits, and the truth is it's not even close to okay, Like if you don't if you don't pay your balance off on time and in full. Credit cards just are not for you, at least at this point in time. When we're talking
about churning. This is when people are saying they're trying to game the system, and the credit card companies are you know, their best customers are the ones who do have those recurring balances, and the churners are saying, we're not going to have a balance. In fact, what we're going to do is exploit the system for all it's worth.
We're going to sign up for as many credit cards as we humanly can that's humanly possible, in order to get all of those sign up bonuses, reap a ridiculous number of points and you know, many hundreds of dollars in sign up bonuses, and then we're just going to sit back and use those those sweet perks that you've given us, and we're never going to carry a balance. And those are the customers that the credit card companies really hate.
Let me ask, doesn't that destroy your credit if you all of a sudden sign up for twelve cards.
That's a good question, and that it is possible it can harm your credit, especially in the short term. If you sign up for a bunch of cards in a short period of time and you have all these new
lines of credit that don't have much history to them. Yes, it can hurt your credit, but on the flip side of it, people who are really smart about the churning practice and they're kind of doing it methodically and over time, ultimately many of them have really high credit scores because what they have is a ton of available credit and they're not using much of that credit, which is one of the biggest metrics that the credit score, the credit
burero's factor in. So if you have twelve or fifteen or twenty five credit cards with fifteen, twenty, thirty thousand dollars credit limits and you're using essentially none of that credit limit, it looks like you're handling credit incredibly well to the credit bureaus. So yeah, maybe in the short term it can be a credit ding, but ultimately, for people who do it well, it can be a credit boost.
Huh.
And the credit card companies haven't been able to figure that out. There are no algorithms that put all that together.
God, so that you would think there is. I would say Chase is probably the best at cracking down on this, but ultimately it's really hard for them to figure out who are the churners and who's not and if they cut some people off, well, was that person actually going to eventually use that card?
Well?
And are we cutting off some of our potentially best clients and customers. Chase essentially has a rule that's like the five and twenty four rule. If you open up more than five credit cards in a twenty four month period, they're going to now you for a credit card. And so there, that's kind of how they've been able to crack down on it and say, like, man, whoever, if you're one of those people who's opened up a ton of new credit cards, we just don't want you as a customer.
You know, I use the Chase card and because it has the best best points for travel, and I pay money for it. I have that the one the reserve card that gives you a zillion points that I pay money for the card itself. And for me, it's all about upgrades, that's it. It's all about upgrades. Uh. It's me sitting in business class because I've upgraded, and you know, you sit in business class first, and people in coach go past you, and as they go past me, I turn, I look at the bed and I go, hey, I'm
sleeping to night. How about you? Oh?
They love that absolutely, Yeah, they do. Ah right now.
The way it works is Joel sends me the topics that we talk about, and here's one that I looked at and I went, wow.
That's interesting.
It's almost counterintuitive, and that is the more money you have, the more money you have.
Joel, that's very deep, I must tell you. Is that what I said in the email? I hope that's not what I said. I'm okay what I was.
Getting at, And what is I think true for a lot of people, And this is kind of counterintuitive?
Is it?
When you have more money, handling that money becomes more complicated, and for a lot of people, actually managing money becomes more difficult. It becomes harder because the options increase, the complexity increases. And there is something about having a dedicated goal paying off some credit card debt and building up a little savings that I think most people like. It's
they're like finite, simple goals. And when the goals become more long term in nature and more ambiguous in nature, I'm kind of saving for retirement or I'm trying to build up a stash for my kids to pay for college.
Like when those goals become bigger, harder to define, and longer term, people actually their ability to make progress can sometimes erode because they're not able to stick with I guess some of the tools and the methodology that got them there in the first place, like tracking their spending and sticking to a budget and kind of calculating things. Once their income goes up, oftentimes it becomes a lot harder for them to kind of stay in line.
Yeah, and just by the way, I'm a big fan of this because I have a wealth manager. Now I've done that. For example, my kids five twenty nine plan for college. I funded that the day my kids were born. Is when I started that. And as that money increased, I told, you know, I gave the money to a professional to manage, and I said, I'll make the money, I'll fund it. You figure out how it's going to be invested and how we're going to deal with it,
because this is what you do. I don't, and you know, as and there was a time where I just barely made the point where I could have used the money person and I went and did it, because again, my job was to make the money and I do that, okay, and your job is to make it happen. And I, well, I'm very very conservative with my money, but I just didn't want.
To take the time.
It takes time to actually figure out what a good investment policy is.
You're right, and it's and it takes And I don't think hiring someone excuses your need to have some knowledge
that you can ask good questions. And I think the further along you get in your financial life and the more goals you've been able to achieve, the more likely it is that you should hire someone to come alongside in particular help you with some of those those bigger questions that you have, but also some of that coaching, right, and some of that kind of helping you stay in the game and continue to make the smart moves so that you don't feel like you're going it alone and you're unable.
To do that.
So I do think, yeah, as people, more money sounds like it's going to be a good thing. Right, I've got more options at my disposal. But then sometimes as individuals, especially if we're not well versed in personal finance, we have so many options and we don't really know which direction to go in and I think that is when a professional can be of a lot of help in your life.
Yeah, and a professional can also come up with a budget, can do the analysis and do all of it, which a lot of us are horrible at.
And sometimes, again, like I said, with some of those goals get really amorphous or long term. It's really easy for us to be like, I'm doing great, I'm cruising, and we start to kind of round things off and we're guestimating. And when you're rounding things off and you're guestimating and you're not precise, that means that money's going to flow through the cracks. And hey, guess what, You've got more money and it can flow through the cracks.
But the if that money then does flow through the cracks, you're not going to achieve those greater goals that you have. And so, whether it's financial independence at an earlier age, whether it is max in that five to twenty nine account for your kid's future, like, you're just going to make progress a lot more slowly than you otherwise would. And it makes sense, and that's where having somebody in your corner could be the right move, all.
Right, Joel.
Thanks This Sunday twelve, to two. How to money. You have a good one to earn some money and don't lose it or whatever the hell you do, will do?
Thanks Bill, All right, take care all right now.
La County is moving to limit license plate tracking. Cal Matters did a report and talked about how many police policing agencies in California don't even have a policy and of tracking license plates with technology, cameras, etc.
Well actually specifically cameras.
And where they're going to share them if they're going to share them with federal agencies for example and board of supervisors. And that is the same thing with for example, the La County agencies, right Sheriff's department. There really is no policy out there now we know, Wow, the state has a policy.
No, there was a bill and the governor vetoed it.
And so here is the issue. Does a police department share information with federal authorities?
Readspite ice.
And as of right now it can you know, for example, the s Sheriff's Department after the Board of Supervisors passed the motion saying that they're on their way to limiting the amount of time that this information can be held to sixty days and must then eliminated. Must be must delete it unless it has to do specifically with a crime. And the Sheriff's department said, we'll take a look at it. We'll you know, lick. It's it's all over the place, and you would think there would be a set law,
and it's not. It's simply policy as to which departments share in which departments don't LAPD from what I understand, doesn't share other agencies.
Police agencies do share. Others are up in the air. Now.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm okay with the license plate readers.
I don't care.
I don't have a problem with the police agencies reading my license plates. And as I zip past, if there's a problem with me, then stop me.
And there isn't. I happen to be a law abiding citizen.
God forbid. But let me do a survey. Survey says real quickly, Neil, do you have a problem with the authorities keeping your license plate number and knowing where you are.
And where you've been? No, it's their plate, all right? Amy issue with the authorities? No, they know everything anyway. Yeah, that's true. A will Will really knows.
Do you have a problem with the authorities knowing your license plate or your airplane to see if it was involved in a crime.
No, not at all, because it's not a it's not a right, it's a privilege. Okay, not fair.
Enough and no problem, No problem, interesting, Kono, any problem?
I have a problem with authorities.
Yes, okay, so that's uh. Can you imagine everybody except for Kno.
You had a lot of problem with extra high stairs.
Yeah, and a lot of civil libertarians have a real problem with the authorities knowing this much about you and keeping your license plate where let's say you've blown through a red light or whatever, and the camera you know, follows you, knows where you are, or just reads your license plate, which can be done now. I mean there are cameras that can read license plates all over the city. And we're going to reach a point where there is no place that doesn't have that kind of record. You know,
have you been to London, Central London? It's one square mile in central London. You cannot walk two feet without you being on a screen where police are looking at you. It is one hundred percent coverage. The same thing in China. China has one point three billion people, and the authorities, because they have so many cameras out there know exactly who is what.
They use facial recognition. I mean it's wild, all right.
If you ever go to Alaska, and that is a bucket list trip, a cruise to Alaska, I mean, they
are really neat stuff. And what you tend to do, what you always do, is not only do you go in the inland passage, but you go into one of these glacier bays, one of these fjords that you get to go as close to a glacier as you can, the face of a glacier, and they keep half a mile third of a mile away the ship and you're hoping that it calves and not the cow kind of calves as I said earlier, the calving where parts of the glacier fall into the ocean, which happens all the time.
You also hear this cracking sounds like rifle shots. It's really interesting. And also on either side of a glacier, I mean it doesn't go across the entire face of what you're looking at.
There is also land.
They're mountains because glaciers go between mountains, as you know, they go through the valleys or they create valleys, and there are mountains on either side. So here is something that was not expected.
It was.
August last August, and there's a ship and they're in the Tracy Arm Fjord and as they're looking at the glacier, the entire the entire mountain side goes into the water, creating a a hyper local it was local, but massive tsunami that ran up the opposite slope on the opposite part of the fjord, leveling everything in its path. The water was as high as the Empire State Building. Now the good news is there wasn't a ship in there at that moment. I mean, there was a ship fifteen
miles away. It was a National Geographic Cruise ship caring about one hundred and fifty people, and that started to move backward at a really good clip because the water was shifting and it was pulling the ship.
The ship back twenty miles away.
There were three kayakers who were camping on high ground and they woke up with good news. If they had been any low lower, they would they would have swept away, but they just got very wet. It was experts say as a miracle that no one was hurt or killed. The only reason the National Geographic Cruise ship was saved and this is fifteen miles away. It was positioned behind an S bend S shaped bend, and it blocked the impact of a wall of water that saved theirs lives.
And scientists are looking at these things and they're saying they're going to happen more and more. And why is this climate change? You know, that hoax of climate change and what ends up happening? And I didn't know this is why would a mountain just come down that it's been there forever? Well, the ice of a glacier actually is the support. It's almost like a retaining wall that keeps the mountain there. And as the glaciers behind it start melting and.
The water goes through it.
This is over thousands of years, maybe one hundreds of thousands of years, and all of a sudden you have gleate climate, climate change, climate warming in this case, well all of it. I mean, the c degree up in that area is four percent higher than it was in nineteen fifty four degrees higher.
Go to Alaska. By the way, it's still worth it.
Just want to let you know, well, well worth it, definitely bucket list.
Okay, we're done, guys. That's it.
It's a Thursday, Tomorrow Friday, and it's a foody Friday from eight to eight thirty where we talk, where Neil at I talk food and then ask handle anything at the bottom of the hour, and then of course lots more to cover, and so we're back again tomorrow. It's Amy and Will and wake up Call from five to six o'clock. Neil and I are aboard six to nine and always here and always perky cono and and yes, perky, perky, all right.
Gary and Shannon.
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