WYSL
Wall Street To Main Street 3-14-25
Tom Hamilton offers investment advice through private advisor group, which is a federally registered investment advisor. The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only, and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. Wall Street to Main Street with Tom Hamilton. Good afternoon. Welcome to Wall Street to Main Street. Tom Hamilton here, President of Hamilton Wealth Management in Pittsburgh, New York. Of course, host of Wall Street to Main Street. Every Friday afternoon here on The Voice of Liberty, I guess Bob D'Angelo at WYSL Mission Control, doing the product, producing the show today. So thanks to BobbieD, doing the show. Again, this week overlooking the Gulf of America. Nancy, my wife Nancy and I are down in the Dustin, Florida area for a couple of weeks here in March. And it's nice to be in a little bit warmer weather. I've heard from my kids that it's been pretty nice back in the Rochester area, but so that's good. I don't begrudge you guys a little nice weather when we're off for our March. It's a workcation, by the way. It's a workcation. We don't. We take a few days off. I think we're taking a week off, maybe. I don't know, while we're down here. But anyhow, the rest of the time, Nancy and I both work. We're both blessed to be able to work remote. And I've been talking to, you know, had a lot of client phone and Zoom reviews. I've been working with Lisa, our admin person at Hamilton Wealth Management, Ryan, the other advisor in the office, talking just like, it really is close to a regular work environment for us when we're working remote like this. Now, again, it's not exactly the same as being in person with everybody. And we'll be back to doing that pretty soon with the clients. But, you know, a lot of our clients, first of all, a lot of our clients, Lisa, set appointments for me during the remote time. They don't live in New York anymore anyhow. You know, as we all know, people have scattered like rats off a sinking ship or something off a sinking ship. I just call my clients that moved out of state rats. That's not exactly what I meant. But I do begrudge them a little bit, right? They're not left to help us carry the tax burden in New York state. And I will say, Nancy and I, when we're down here, we sit here and scratch our heads and say, "Now what? What are all those taxes in New York? What do we get for that exactly?" For income tax and huge high property taxes and, you know, this fee and that fee and whatever. And we do wonder a little bit about whether it's kind of stupid to live there when you're in your 50s and 60s and your peak earning years. It is a lot of taxes you pay. So, anyhow, we still pay them? Who knows in the future? But anyhow, so so much going on, right? With the tariffs, the market takes, you know, real, real rough week and a half, two weeks for the markets. So I've been doing this 29 years. I've lived through some real market collapses as a financial advisor and investment manager, you know, after the 90s run up the 2000, 2001, the 2008, '09, and '10 market collapses. The COVID collapse, you know, that was short-lived, but we didn't know it at the time. It felt like the world was ending and certainly the investment world along with it. 9/11, it was a big kick to the market. I mean, was that the most important thing for 9/11? No, but I was in the business watching clients' fortunes go kiplunk and nobody knew where that was going either. So this, I think the S&P 500, I think I heard somebody say it's either at correction level or near correction level. They count a 10% decline is considered a quote-unquote correction. Again, I don't, you know, 9 versus 10, versus 11, is it that different? I don't need to put a terminology on it. If it's down 9.8%, it's down 9.8%. If it's down 10.2, I don't care if you call it a correction or a bear market, call it whatever you want. It's taken a pullback from the highs is what's important. And again, just the fact that the market is taken a breather and come back towards Earth a little bit doesn't concern me at all, okay? It doesn't concern me at all. That's what markets do. However, that being said, I always am looking at the underlying situation going on with the markets, the economy, what have you, and we're going to talk a lot about that. I just want to start off with it. It wasn't noticed much, but the inflation numbers for February were actually less aggressive than people thought, like less inflation in February of this year than was projected. I think the year-over-year number wound up at 2.8 for February to February, I guess, January 24 to 25, 2.8% inflation, getting closer to the 2.8, or the 2% goal that the Fed has. That's always seemed like such an arbitrary number to me. I don't know where they come up with that. You know, is that anything to a Trump? Not really. I mean, it's February. The tariffs aren't really factored in yet. We don't know what's going to happen with them. They're the big unknown. Overnight, so today's Friday, last night or yesterday's sometime, I saw the Chuck Schumer has come to an agreement to avert the government shutdown to increase the debt ceiling, which is funny, because wasn't it just the last five years or four years? This is the Republican saying. It's criminal to keep increasing the debt ceiling. And then the Democrats were saying it now that it's a Republican president. Here's the reality. And here's one of the few things I agreed with the Biden administration on in some of the Democrat senators and Congress people. The debt ceiling is a joke, okay? The money is spent in the budget, right? The money is spent in the budget and the continuing resolutions. That's where they dictate the spending. The fact that there's a budget cap that they constantly, or a deficit cap that they constantly increase, it's just a joke. The money's been spent. It's like going on a, you know, cruise around the world and buying three Lamborghinis on credit cards and then saying to your spouse, hey, you know what, are we going to increase our spending limit? When the credit card comes due, no, you already spent it, okay? You already spent it. So it is a joke and both sides should stop playing the game. This might be in my 12 or 14 years, however long I've been doing the show. The first and last time you hear this from me, I guess I give tax humor credit for stopping playing the game. Now again, I know it was a political calculated move because everything he does is, as is true for most of them there, but it was a politically calculated move that the Democrats would have looked terrible being the ones blamed for shutting the government down when, for all these years, they've talked about it. Oh my gosh, if the government shuts down, remember when it did shut down, by the way? They had to make a point. The Democrats had to make a point. I forget it was, I think it was Obama in office of shutting down like some of the, like the Vietnam Memorial and other things that don't even barely have to be manned at all to keep them open. Some of the tourist attractions in Washington, just so some people would feel the pain of it, national parks, stuff like that, because in general, when the federal government shut down, social security checks went out, Medicare, Medicaid, most of you are like, yeah, it didn't affect me at all. This isn't so bad, I didn't even notice. So anyhow, it looks like the shutdown is not going to happen. That'll probably have some short-term positive effect on the markets, I guess. I don't know. Again, it's not material because it was going to happen because the money's already spent. Then there's the tariffs and the Trump tariff implementation. Again, I know there's a lot of Trump fans who listen to the show, okay? I call balls and strikes like I see them. And I thought the enthusiasm of the business world when Trump got elected and as he was coming in was you could feel it. It was people were feeling good about investing money in the United States and growing their businesses. And really, what do they call it? The animal spirits of the markets and not just the market going up, by the way, just money and investing and confidence that there's going to be lower regulations, less obstruction to doing business here in the United States, lower taxes on corporations, that excited people. This tariff chaos does the opposite, okay? It does the opposite. I'm not speaking as to whether we should or shouldn't have tariffs on Canadian or, I mean, French champagne or Canadian steel. Again, each line item is specific and there's going to be 50 lobbyists for each thing telling the President and the administration why they need an exemption on the tariffs. But I don't think UI or even Trump understands exactly the causal effects of all possible tariffs. What I think is a horrible way to do it, horrible, is to have this chaos that we will, we won't, we will, it's a negotiation, we won't. We'll put it off, we'll do this. Let me just say, I'm not sure that Trump is a much of an expert on manufacturing, okay? He understands building, he understands real estate, clearly a lot better than I do. I'm not sure how much time he spent in industrial plants, in manufacturing plants, which I have, by the way, I have a previous life before my 29, 30 years as an investment advisor, I worked in industry and I went all around New York State and I, you know, if a place had smoke stacks and made stuff, I called on them and talked to them and under, you know, tried to understand how they, how they work and helped them with whatever process we were working with at the time. And as a lot of listeners, I have a lot of listeners to the show that work in manufacturing or machining or skilled trades and there's nobody bringing manufacturing back to the United States on maybe tariffs, okay? Nobody, this is an uninvestable in growth situation right now. Nobody knows what their raw material costs are going to be because a lot of that comes from overseas. Nobody knows about the labor situation. Nobody knows about whether the competitive products around the world, they're going to have 20% tariffs, 10, you know, 200% whether it's going to start in April, whether they're going to negotiate a deal, right? Whether they're going to say we like Trump, so he's going to get rid of the tariffs. So again, I'm giving them, I'm giving them three, three or four months to get through this as a quote unquote negotiation if that's what it is. Three or four months, this has to be ironed out. You can't have a constant sand shift on how tariffs are going to be implemented and whether they're a negotiation or something that stays permanently. If you're doing it to get people to invest in spring manufacturing and business back to the United States, okay? Again, we talked last week about the fact that we don't have the skilled trades people to do those jobs right now. So it really would be a 10-year minimum commitment. So it's a 10-year commitment that changes from Monday to Friday, right? That just doesn't work. So I think that's the one thing that I would say in my mind definitively they're doing a poor job on and it is confusing the markets. Again, who cares about the stock market other than us investors, right? That isn't America. The stock market is not the economy, I've said that many, many times. But it's confusing companies that invest in making things, right? They invest in plants and training and teaching people the trades, right? Are you going to need that machinist or is that tariff going to go away and that goods or services are going to be made again in Asia or China or somewhere else in the country? These are the things that you need to know when you're putting money and investing into business. So anyhow, so that's a political news of the day. I'm going to talk about the markets when we come back here on Wall Street to Main Street. Wall Street to Main Street with Tom Hamilton. All right, we're back here on Wall Street to Main Street. I hope you're weakened off to a great start. Happy belated birthday to my wife Nancy. Her birthday was yesterday, the 13th at some time on her birthday. All right, so yeah, the market. This stuff happened. Okay, again, don't judge a presidency by two weeks in the markets or an administration. And to my credit, I say the same thing, whether it's a Democrat or president in office. These are long-term policies and programs that they put in place in the results of Martin own. I mean, at the beginning of the Reagan administration, things look terrible. In '81, in '82, I think we went into recession and everything. Eight years later, he was considered one of the great economic presidents ever. So not talking to that part of it, but it's been a rocky couple of weeks for the US stock market, the S&P 500, the Dow, the NASDAQ, taking it on the channel even harder, more technology and growth type companies. But those indexes have had great run-ups also. So the last couple years have been really good for those indexes. So this is what happens in the market. The indexes just don't go straight to the infinity. Trees don't grow all the way to the sky. This is reality. This is gravity. This is how markets work. However, I think it's a another kick in the rear end to remind people about diversification because less talked about so far this year is foreign equity markets, European markets, many foreign markets, not all, but many as a index. Foreign markets, developed markets, some Europe specifically Asia, I believe, even Canada, Japan. Their markets have done much better than our markets. After many years of underperforming, really, the US stock market has been looking great for the last decade or whatever with a few blips and bumps, especially compared to European markets. These things go in cycles. Just when you think it's time to give up on an underperforming market, they seem to have a way of surprising you after you've given up on them. The other thing is gold. Gold reached an all-time high, I believe, maybe an all-time high close anyhow, just yesterday. I don't know if you haven't seen how it's doing today on Friday, but it looked like it was going to open up. But anyhow, short-term doesn't make a big difference, but there's an investment area, classic commodity, gold, silver, things like that that people don't even talk about them. So not everything's doing poorly. I believe bonds have done a little better in general this year. Rates have come down a little bit. So diversification and real diversification. One of the things I see with portfolios often, and to be honest, just a lot of them are people who have other investment advisors. A quote-unquote professional is managing the portfolio, and I look at it and the diversification is just a few different types of funds that are ETFs or whatever that are very similar, very similar in many cases. You see this a lot in 401(k) because somebody will loan three different funds, but when you'll really look at the funds there, different versions, different flavors of the same cake type of thing. And, you know, okay, I'm not saying for you, I don't give investment advice on the show for particular people. I'm just saying what we do at our firm, we believe in is what we consider true diversification, where you have different things working that have different opportunities depending on what happens in the various markets. And I'm not saying whether somebody should own foreign stocks or gold type investments, gold ETFs, whatever, I'm not saying they should or shouldn't, right? We only deal with that on an individual basis in creating our portfolios. I'm just telling you that those are all things that are considered for our portfolios at all times. That doesn't mean they make the cut at all times. Follow me. But we're not shutting these things out just because people don't talk about them is often same with emerging market equities or even emerging market debt. You know, emerging market equities have had a rough run for quite a while. A lot of advisors, a lot of portfolios I see, and advisors I talk to, I talk to a lot of advisors. I'm in some online discussion groups. I like to cross pollinate and share ideas and learn, right? I'm 60 years old. I'm always learning. When you stop learning, your brain dies. So, you know, we're all I'm hearing what other people are doing, seeing what they're doing, talking to them. I got quite a few friends in the industry. I'll be honest, sometimes we're talking about this stuff and I'm talking about areas that we're looking at for investment, different diversifications, different opportunities. And they look at me like I got three heads. Like, they don't even, you know, if it's not a U.S. stock fonder ETF, that they never heard of it or they don't care about it or they're not interested in it. So, you know, you they do for them and their clients, how they do, you do for you. I'm just look telling you that just because the U.S. stock market has had a rough two weeks, doesn't mean you couldn't have had diversification that that got you through periods like this. I think I get you through two week periods don't really make a big difference anyhow. But these things can last for years or even decades, right? The Japanese market went through decades from never getting back to a previous high. The U.S. stock market has had periods like in the 70s and the 2000s where, you know, you go six, eight years in the S&P 500, the Dow is about the same as it was. So, and it's had years where it goes up 20% a year on average for four or five years, right? So, what's my point on this? My point is there are other true diversification in my belief, the way we look at it, is owning things that perform differently in different markets. Again, we still like everything we own, okay? We're not buying stuff just because just to put it into the portfolio because it's different than something else. I call that diversification, not diversification. But we also know we're not going to be right short term all the time. So, anyhow, the market, there's some markets that are doing well this year, quite well. The S&P 500 right now isn't one of them. The NASDAQ hasn't been one of them. That doesn't tell you what the future holds, but it does tell you that there's some value, especially when you want to smooth out the ride a little bit. There's some value in true and proper portfolio creation that includes diversification. And again, that's what we do at our firm. I'm not telling you to do it. People sometimes disagree with that. That's fine. Different strokes for different folks that that isn't our concern or problem. What our concern or problem is, you know, we got clients that are relying on us to help retire successfully, to grow their money for retirement, to spend their money safely in retirement. And that's how we look at the world and the investment world is, proper diversification, considering many of these different asset classes. Not always having to own them all, right? Not always having to own them all, but having them under consideration and watching them and keeping track of it. So, anyhow, I think that's what I wanted to see on investing. And again, you know, just because the U.S. markets having a rough go of it here short term doesn't mean everything has been having as rough a go of it. Things tend to move in these cycles. And they're also very hard to predict when it's going to turn. Hard. I mean, I think it's impossible to predict exactly when these markets are going to turn, but I don't think anybody with a reasonable investment brain would disagree that it's at very best it's extremely hard. And very few have done it successfully short term. So, anyhow, I think we're going to take a break. You're listening to Wall Street Command Street with Tom Hamilton. We'll be right back for the last two segments of the show. Got a lot more important stuff to talk about. You're listening to Wall Street to Main Street. All right, we're back here on Wall Street to Main Street. So, yeah, so I want to talk about retirement stuff for you here for a little while. We've been working with a lot of clients lately that are in that transition period. They're either a few years out from retirement or just really getting into retirement or considering making the move to retirement. Some of them are moving out of New York State. Just talk to another one the other the other day another longtime client of ours that they're sort of in the retirement time frame and moving to where their kids are located out of New York State. There's tons of decisions that go in to the whole retirement thing. Has anybody's retired nose or who has seriously thought about the decisions they have to make? One of the big ones, again, just yesterday, talking to a client about when to take Social Security, right? What is the optimal time to start your Social Security? Just as a recap. Social Security has a lot of other parts to it other than just the regular retirement income, but that's what we're going to talk about. We're not going to talk about like a spousal benefit or children's benefits or some of the other benefits that some people have options to take, which we do help people make those decisions who have those situations. But I'm talking about just like the husband and wife or the individual person who turns 62. Social Security, again, regular Social Security income, retirement income, you can start when you're 62. You can put it off and wait in the amount you get each month grows if you wait all the way up to age 70 to start. So it's a big range, right? That's eight years that you have to decide where in those eight years is the right time to take it. Now, I'm always reminding people that if you're 62 and you don't take it, when you're first eligible to take it, that doesn't mean you got to decide like at 62. I'm going to take it at 65 and a half or at 67, full retirement age, whatever that is for you. Now, you don't have to do that. You can decide at any time to start it up, right? So if you're 62 in your mind or with your advisor, you've decided, you know, maybe 67 is when we'll start. But at 65, something happens that makes it, you feel like it's a better time to take it then. You can start it then. So anytime from 62 to 70, basically. And there's something called full retirement age, which you'll see if you get your Social Security statement, right? If your earnings benefit and your estimate of benefits, which everybody should get, by the way, we always tell new clients and people that we're working with on this issue, go online and get us an updated Social Security projection for from Social Security. It'll show 62, it'll show full retirement age, which is around 67 for most people now used to be 65, right? It's gone up. And then it'll show, hey, here's how much you'd get if you don't retire and you wait till 70. That's fine. All good numbers to have. But the decision isn't cut and dry, okay? A lot of people want, I have an engineering degree, okay? Math is my thing. I like everything to be worked out, worked out with math. I like to have an answer, a correct answer, right? That's just how my brain works. There is no quote-unquote correct answer unless you can tell me for you and your spouse what day you're going to die, right? Are you going to live five years, 10 years, 40 years in retirement? You know, for most of us, we don't know, right? Maybe all of us, we don't know. There are things that tilt the scale. And I tell people this. It's actually sometimes kind of a uncomfortable conversation to have with somebody, but that's our job, right? They're clients of ours, they rely on us for advice on these things. And I will tell them, if you, at 62, you or your spouse decides, you know, at least for one of us, we should wait and let that benefit grow. That's great. But what if you were planning on starting at 70 and at 65, you could diagnose with terminal cancer or some disease that maybe isn't cancer. But you know, the doctors tell you, you have a 50/50 shot of living another 10 years, right? These things can happen or somebody just is in general poor health, right? So those types of things can tilt the scales significantly or or somebody who is in phenomenal health and their parents and grandparents and relatives all live to 150. There are these people that Trump talked about that are on the Social Security rolls at 150 and they're still alive. I'm joking about that, but I'm saying they lived, you know, old for their generation, longevity genes, right? That can tilt the scale is to when to start Social Security. One of the, there used to be a lot of tactics you could use, like the spousal, you know, you take the spousal only benefit, the file and rescind your application. A lot of that, they took out of the rules so you can't manipulate it like that, which by the way, I always told people if we can quote unquote manipulate, call it a loophole, call it whatever you want, if it is a better deal for you as a client of ours, we're going to inform you of how to do that. That's our job as planners and as advisors. We have lots of clients that took advantage of those. I mean, loophole isn't the right word. It was in my opinion a poorly written part of the statute, or we don't write the laws, we follow the laws. So anyhow, some of that's been changed, a lot of it's been changed, not as easy to do, but one option people have that sometimes a lot of our clients choose is one of the spouses, usually the spouse that had the lower earnings career that has the lower benefit maybe starts a little sooner and let the larger social security benefit grow and start later. 67, you know, we have quite a few clients that are waiting till closer to 70 to start that larger benefit. Why? Why let the larger one grow? And again, I'm not telling you to do this. This is a very specific analysis per situation, okay? I couldn't even guess what's the best for you without looking at your situation, because remember, you have to have income from somewhere, right? Does this mean you're drawing down your accounts while you wait, or do you have a big pension so you don't need them? Everybody's situation is very different. But why you might want to consider, and we often consider, the larger of the two, again, all else being equal, letting that grow is with a married couple, as long as you've been married 10 years, you don't even have to be married anymore. You can take the benefit off of your deceased spouse, or I mean, your ex-spouse. That's a whole different matter, but again, it's a rule a lot of people don't know. But anyhow, for a regular married couple, if one of them, the larger income one, waits to take their larger benefit at 67 or 70, and it's grown from 2200 to 3200 or whatever, before you start. When one spouse dies, that larger social security becomes the surviving amount. So if the lower earning spouse, with the lower social security dies, the higher earning spouse keeps their current social security. But if it goes the other way, and the higher earning spouse passes away, first, let's say at age 80, the other spouse then gets that higher social security payment as the realm. Theirs goes away. They don't keep both. They get the higher of the two. And I'm in the case of my mother. My dad died 10 years ago, like 83. My mom's now 93. And she's getting the higher of those two benefits for those 10 years, which was my dad's benefit. Because he had a longer work history. My parents had seven kids, and my mother was at home for a lot of that time. They were both school teachers, by the way. They're both high school teachers. But she was at home for those years, so his social security benefit was higher. And she now gets his amount that he used to get. And she's gotten it for many, many years. So the higher that amount, the more you might win on it, because it's two lives that are going to benefit from that higher amount. So anyhow, social security, I think the moral of the story is, there is no "correct answer." But there are strategies that we work with with clients. And again, in these strategies, we're incorporating the reality that some people, some planners even forget, is if you're waiting to take your benefit, you got to live. You don't want to be a 63-year-old, 64-year-old retiree, and have no money to enjoy your life. That kind of defeats the purpose of retiring. So if you're not taking it, where's that money coming from? You have to fill in that gap that, again, I see a lot of individuals, and quite frankly, a lot of other advisors, especially younger advisors, they've looked at it on paper. And some programs showed them that waiting till 70, for both of you, is a better decision. And they never thought about the fact that, "Oh, well, what are you going to do from 63 to 70?" You're going to eat beans and rice in living a tent. A lot of people don't have pensions anymore. So that money's got to come from somewhere. Are you going to spend down all your investment accounts? Maybe. But maybe you do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. That's also security planning in a confusing nutshell. And I'd like to bring it home and say, "Now, here's all you got to know to make an easy decision." But it doesn't work like that. It is a complicated, a lot of thought-required trade-offs decision that, again, there is no final right answer to, which is why it's so uncomfortable for a lot of people to think about it and consider it. But it's very important in funding your retirement successfully to make smart decisions for your situation with regards to social security. And that's one of the things, by the way, you know, that I think my many years doing this, the experience has helped me a lot because not only have I planned for it for people for 30 years, we've lived through it with them, right? Live through how those decisions work out vis-a-vis their investments, pensions that more people used to have in that type of thing. So, you know, I think we take a much more nuanced approach to it than I used to because, again, I have an engineering degree, love me some math. I used to try to make it a, you know, here's the correct math answer for when to take your social security. Show the clients all these projections, and here's the optimal number, the breakeven number. We still do some of the analysis. The reality is, in practice, I'm not sure that's as important as understanding the trade-offs and making a decision that works for you and being comfortable with it. So, anyhow, that's one of the things that if you come in for a review, what we'll talk about, if you become a client of ours, we will work with you until you're comfortable with the decisions that you or you and your spouse are making vis-a-vis this social security, you know, when to take social security decision, which, again, is a big decision that people have to make as they enter to retirement. Then there's the part, and again, I got to end the segment. I could do social security for the full hour probably, but then there's the part about it, if you're still going to be working full-time or part-time, you know, up until full retirement age, that there's a maximum limit of income before you got to start giving back social security dollars. We talk with people about that, too, because I believe what we're already seeing this, but more and more of the future of retirement is going to be maybe dropping the high-stress job at 62 or 63, but maybe still doing something where you're drawing some income, maybe, you know, work that you don't have to take home with you and have always in your mind, you know, a little bit more relaxed work, whatever it is, something you enjoy doing, whatever, as people transition, but maybe not a cold hate. Yesterday, I had a full-time job making $150,000 a year. Tomorrow, I make zero dollars a year. Not so sure that's going to continue as long as, you know, that used to be the commonplace. I think it's less and less. So, so there's other rules having to do with social security. So, all right, that's way too long for this segment. You're listening to Wall Street to Main Street with Tom Hamilton from Hamilton, uh, Wall's Management. We will be right back with the last segment. Wall Street to Main Street with Tom Hamilton. Welcome back to Wall Street to Main Street. So, boy, last segment, all right. Yep, doing the show from, uh, from Destin, Florida overlooking the Gulf of America, the beautiful Gulf of America. That's so sure it looks that different than when it was the Gulf of Mexico. I've seen it before. I actually never saw it from the panhandle. So, I guess it looks different now that it's the Gulf of America. I don't know. I don't know. Anyhow, it looks nice. I can tell you that. All right, so last thing I want to talk about here, and I blabbed so much the previous segments, I don't much time, is what I call quick and easy, simple estate planning discussion. Estate planning intimidates the heck out of people, right? They got to go to an attorney, you got to pay them all sorts of money. I mean, you don't have to go to an attorney. There's ways you can do it online, but most people go to an attorney to make sure that it gets done correctly. Uh, and by the way, we have folks we can refer you to if you do have questions, uh, and want to talk to an attorney. And we don't get anything back. You know, there's no quid pro quo, just people we trust to do a good job, by the way. So, but, but the simple estate planning, right? Estate planning is many, many things. For some people, it's a will. Some people, it's a trust. Some people, power of attorney, health care proxies, all that stuff. Okay. Uh, I have no idea what's appropriate for you in your situation. The last year, a client of ours, then we talk about it with you, but also with a professional attorney who creates these documents every day for a living. However, things like beneficiary designations are so, uh, looked past by people. It seems too simple to be important. Well, if you've got an IRA account, a life insurance policy, a 401k, a 403b, any investment account that has a beneficiary on it, and you can have a transfer on death on a regular brokerage account. I think most banks, you can do a payable on death, which is like a beneficiary designation. Um, those, you know, if you name your kids or your spouse first, which a lot of people do, and then their kids is contingent, that all passes outside of your will. Okay. You know, we use Charles Schwab as our custodian. Somebody has an IRA at Charles Schwab that their spouse is the beneficiary, or their kids are the beneficiary, whoever. Uh, that person, if they got forbid, they pass away, which eventually it happens to all of us. Uh, we don't need anything to do with the will, probate nothing. We see the beneficiaries, the beneficiary set up accounts. In the case of an IRA, they set up beneficiary IRAs. And the, you know, if it's 50, 50 to the two kids, each one sets one up, the money goes in there. As soon as you know, all we need is the death certificate, but it has to have already had the appropriate beneficiary designation. You can change those. For most places, you know, insurance companies, uh, custodians, there's no cost to change it. So, if you, you know, had your spouse of the beneficiary and you're later in life and you decide, you know what, we have plenty of money. We'd rather have the two kids as primary benefit. You don't have to redo your will. If it's a beneficiary, you just change the beneficiary. So, beneficiary designations are extremely important. And again, I, I, in my head, I sit there and say it supersedes the will. I don't know if that's a proper terminology. Probably isn't. It doesn't look to the will, I think is the more the better way to look at it. Beneficiary designations are what they are. That's who, now you can name your estate is the beneficiary. I'm not telling you to do that. There's some cases where an attorney will recommend that. Great. And then, then maybe it does look through your will. But in general, the way people do beneficiary designations, it doesn't look at the will at all. And it's, it's easily changed, whatever. The other thing that I think is important is regular investment accounts or capital gains and your home, whatever you have capital gains on, that those capital gains under the current tax laws, and this has been the case for a long time, those are forgiven at death. That sometimes people gift stuff out of their, you know, as they get older, gift stuff to their kids. But, but if they just let the kids inherit it, there would have been no capital gains payment on that. So, that's another thing that they can be a big value that people forget about and don't think about. And then the other part of beneficiary designations that quite frankly, for the first like 10 or 12 years that I was in this industry, I didn't realize how important this could be, I guess, is per capita or per sturpees. How those beneficiaries are designated. Let's say you have three children that are your beneficiaries of your IRA account. And they're adult children that are married and have kids of their own. Okay. If you were to pass away, but one of those children predeceased you, right? So you had three kids, one died, and then you passed away before you got a chance to change your beneficiaries. What do you want to have happened to that child's third of the, you know, it was a third, a third, a third, child they passed away, God forbid. What do you want to have happened to their third of your, you know, let's say you have a million dollar account? What happens to their third of the IRA account? Does it go to the other two kids in that third child's family is left out? Some people, that's what they'd want. Maybe they don't like the spouse. Maybe they don't want the spouse to be treated the same as their other kids. But maybe they say, you know, there's grandchildren, I'd rather that that side of the family's grandkids got their, their third. Or maybe they'd say, well, I'd want their spouse to get the money. Well, per capita, in general, divides it amongst the remaining shares, the remaining living beneficiaries, persterpies. I think the definition is per your lineage, but persterpies would generally mean that the kids, the grandkids on that side, that third person, the deceased child, their children would be the inheritors of that money. Again, very different. I'm not telling you how to do it because everybody has different thoughts on this or you can write it out and designate that the spouse, right? The daughter or son-in-law would get their third. That's neither per capita nor persterpies as far as the general designation. And most people don't know where their money is, their custodian, their IRA, their life insurance policy that has the beneficiary. They don't know what the default is. Does it default to per capita or does it default to per you wouldn't want it to happen? So anyhow, beneficiary designations are generally no cost, but they require thinking through and getting correct because for a lot of people, for a lot of middle-class retirees, a good chunk of their money doesn't pass through their will. It goes by beneficiary designation. In many cases, most of their money, right? Many cases, most of their actual investment assets pass by beneficiary, not through their will. Yet, they spend years ruminating on what to do with their will and like, "Oh, my God, I got to go to a state attorney." Yes, you should do that. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's not important to do that. So anyhow, just want to say some of the simpler, not simpler, the easier and less expensive things to do is to get your beneficiaries set up exactly how you want them. And you should work with an institution or an advisor that understands this stuff, right? That understands how to explain this to you so you can make the right decision for yourself. All right, that's it. I've gone on too long. A quick show. We'll see how the tariffs go over the next couple of weeks. But, you know, quite frankly, I'd like to see some of the tariff chaos slow down. Maybe get some more certainty. There's never certainty in the markets, by the way. A little more certainty in the economy would be nice. All right, if you want to get a hold of us, you want to have a review of your investment situation, talk about retirement planning, our initial consultations, our complimentary, because we like to see if there's a good fit, and whether we can actually help with what it is somebody's trying to do. And, you know, we'll explain what we can do as an investment in planning firm. And if it fits for you great, if it doesn't fit for you, that's fine too. Right? That's fine too. So anyhow, get all of it at Hamiltonwellsmanagement.com. You have questions for the show or whatever. Hamiltonwellsmanagement.com. There's a contact desk button, phone numbers there, my email's there. It's easy to get all of us, Hamiltonwellsmanagement.com. Have a great weekend, and we'll talk you next Friday. Tom Hamilton offers investment advice through private advisor group, which is a federally registered investment advisor. The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only, and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. [Music]