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March 2, 2023 - Stew Peters Show
52:12
LIVE @5PM: Scriptures And Wallstreet- Unkown Fees and CD Tricks
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Thank you.
Thank you.
Hey guys, Carlos Cortez here again.
I hope you guys are doing well.
Thanks for tuning in.
We've been blowing it up with the views and we're getting a lot of phone calls at the office.
If you haven't called, give us a call at 813-448-3446.
We'll love to see how we can help you.
We literally can work with most people.
Um, I know, I know I don't have the time to speak to everybody, but we have consultants on board that are God fearing patriots as well.
And they think and act just like you do.
Uh, and they love the cross and they're all about the America first retirement plan and its movement and the brand that's taken off.
We just want to say thank you to all of our listeners for just allowing us to speak life into you and speak life into your transformation.
Anyways, I wanted to talk about some common things that retirees forget or maybe they don't understand and that is unknown fees.
And before I get started on how to read your financial statement, I want to just take a second and say my little disclosure.
I am securities licensed.
I am a financial advisor.
This is not investment advice.
This should be used for educational purposes only.
If you are wanting investment advice, you should seek a licensed financial advisor.
We are licensed and if you are interested in a consultation, give us a call 813-448-3446.
You can visit us at CortezWM.com and as well as AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com if you would like to learn more about our America First process.
You can download our free guide at AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com.
With that being said, I wanted to just talk about unknown fees and just really have a candid conversation in regards to this.
So, you open up your statement, or maybe you're Edward Jones or Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch.
Heck, maybe you have a 401k of Fidelity or Charles Schwab.
How do you know what you're paying in fees?
So, the average advisor charges about 1% industry-wide.
It's not a secret.
This is assets under management fee, a management fee.
This is not brokerage fees.
I no longer am with FINRA. I'm no longer a stock broker.
I'm no longer a broker.
I let my license lapse.
Clients do not want to pay a commission.
They would rather hire a fee-based or a fee-only advisor.
So, what that basically means is because you are acting as an investment advisor, there's a bunch of different laws that you need to know about.
Mainly, the difference between an advisor and a broker.
A broker will do what's just and fair according to their eyes, not maybe according to yours or the eyes of the regulators.
Whereas a fiduciary has to have your best interest at first hand.
The advisor comes second.
I mean, that's really the main difference.
A fiduciary investment advisor works on a fee base, whereas a broker will work on a transactional base.
I started as a stock broker.
I started as transactional business.
They can charge up the 2.5% per trade, buy, sell, market goes up or down.
The whole goal for a broker is to do volume and to buy and sell stocks regardless of what happens.
This was an old model that bled into the early 2000s and after 2005, 2006, it really was a dying dinosaur, so to speak, that business model.
And so as you saw, even A.G. Edwards When they bought out Wachovia, you guys remember Wachovia when they bought out First Union?
Those were back in the day.
These brokers, they actually got away from the transactional business and became more fee-based.
And so Obama came out back in 20...
Actually, it was roughly about 2012, if I think about it.
The fiduciary rule came out 2012 to 2016, and then there was Rule 101A, and then there was another rule when it comes to non-traded REITs, 151A. So there was a lot of...
A lot of rules on commissions and what the charges is going to the client.
So these were all of a sudden unknown fees that became known.
And brokers had to disclose these fees.
They had to disclose it.
And the broker-dealers, such as the big investment banks, they built their whole company based on it.
And so what was interesting is back in...
2016, around 2015, 2016, is that the big banks, they were offering a lot of money to brokers that were modeling under the investment advisor, the fee-based only, and they would literally pay millions and millions of dollars for these brokers who are now somewhat fiduciaries or investment advisors to cross the street It was like a big game of Yankees versus Boston Red Sox.
We all knew that Roger Clemens would never ever pitch for the Yankees, for the pinstripes.
And what happened?
You sold out to the pinstripes.
Same thing happened on Wall Street.
All these brokers, they eventually became investment advisors and their fee-based business grew.
And the big, big banks, either the Luciferians or we can go on and on and on about the immorale banks and how they brought in all these brokers.
But I say all this because what did not change is the unknown fees.
So I just want to spend a few minutes talking about unknown fees and I've been wanting to do this podcast for a while because it is confusing.
You get your statement and all you see is it going down and down and down.
But why is it going down?
So you look at your statement.
One thing that will not be on your statement is how much risk you're taking.
Now, Generally speaking, on a KYC, a know your customer rule, they're supposed to give you your investment objective on page one or the back of page one of your statement.
So if you have your statement, go ahead and look at it.
Also, if you have any questions or anything that resonates with you with this podcast, and you stay with me all the way to the end of this episode, Just go ahead and email me info at CortezWM.com in regards to your statements or if you just want a second opinion on what's going on you can give us a call 813-448-3446 but a financial statement can be really confusing like I've had advisors that have been in the business for over a decade call me up and say,
hey, can you help me read this statement for this client?
And we would unravel things like you wouldn't believe because once you know how these statements work, then the eye kind of opens up.
So the first trick is the registration of a statement.
What does that mean?
The registration, basically, if it's a joint, then you want to make sure there's joint tenants in common.
Some states have joints with rights of survivorship.
Check with your local state to see which one abides to your particular state.
But basically, when you pass away in a joint account...
Whoever is a surviving account owner keeps everything.
And, you know, it just goes on.
Whoever is a surviving, not just surviving spouse, account owner.
So it's a little different than community states.
The other thing is that if you have a variable annuity, A variable annuity is very tricky for many reasons.
And later today or later in this podcast, I will basically kind of break down to unknown fees.
So the topic today is unknown fees.
But inside of unknown fees, you need to understand the registration problem of your broker statements.
So you have a broker statement, and it doesn't matter who is it with.
Edward Jones, we get a lot of business from Edward Jones.
I'm not here to advertise them, but thank you, Edward Jones, because your statements are very, very confusing.
In my opinion, it's been my experience that you guys really don't offer a lot to your clients.
You continue to do the buy and hold.
Also, on a typical Edward Jones statement, They're withdrawals.
So if you look at the withdrawal portion of the Edward Jones statement, you will see the withdrawals are also, the fees are commingled.
So one thing I do want to share with you guys is that not just Edward Jones, but other investment firms do this.
They will take your withdrawals and your fees and commingle it together so that you basically have to do the math on your own.
Go ahead and look at your withdrawals and then look at your bank account and see where the discrepancy is at.
If you had $20,000 in withdrawals and you only had $15,000 in deposits, you may have to go month to month for a whole year, but now you see what the fees are or what truly are charging you.
So that's one way to find out, is if your withdrawals don't match your deposits, then you know there's some funny business going there.
So I want to make sure you understand unknown fees, guys.
So variable annuities.
For those of you that have an annuity and you get a statement every quarter, you have the king of fees.
There's three major fees that you need to know at variable annuities.
If you don't have one, Stay tuned.
You may have a mutual fund.
I'm going to talk about that in a minute.
The variable annuities have three fees.
The first one is a mortality expense fee.
It's a tax that you have to pay the actuaries that come up with, and it's a tax for you for having that account because the insurance company wants to charge you a mortality expense fee.
Basically, they have to Mathematically, statistically determine how long you're going to live.
Hopefully you're not jabbed, but they have these actuaries that have all these numbers, and so they charge you a mortality expense rate.
The average M&E fee is roughly 1.15%.
From my experience.
There is a living benefit.
This is the reason why you buy a variable annuity is because they have this guaranteed income that you're paying for.
A guaranteed income doesn't mean jack crap if you're paying a boatload in fees.
So a living benefit.
So here's a sneaky part.
The living benefit fee typically is about 1%.
Some are lower, some are higher.
But what you've got to be careful is that this insurance account that they're promising, this guaranteed roll-up, or the brokers used to say, hey, we can get the stock market and you can have a guaranteed lifetime income in case the market crashes.
Man, that sounds so good.
To the tone that MetLife will spend billions of dollars in covering these assets and honestly promoting them during a Super Bowl like PacLife, John Hancock, MetLife.
And you know what?
It's funny because all the...
All the big brokers will promote these expensive products.
So I'm coming out with a documentary exposing all this.
So pray for me that God provides me with the money to do it.
And B, the covering over it, because I am going to expose some things there.
So you have the M&E fee, living benefit fee, and also the mutual fund fee.
So if you have a variable annuity, you have the king of fees.
So a mutual fund, if you call your...
I had a client the other day that had Talcott, and one that had a PacLife, and a John Hancock, and Prudential is very, very popular in the variable annuity space.
You do want to call your investment company and say, hey, what is my M&A fee?
What is my living benefit fee?
And what is my mutual fund fee?
I promise you they won't tell you what your mutual fund fee is because they're too lazy to find out.
They'll say, oh, well, you have 20 of them.
Some average 0.65 and some average over 1.5%.
So we're just going to say an average of 1%.
They don't want to go into prospectus.
But the crazy thing is you've paid that company fees for that customer service rep to tell you the breakdown of every single mutual fund inside your variable annuity.
So with all that being said, I'll save you a lot of time.
Roughly, if you have a living benefit income, if you have a variable annuity, you're roughly paying about 3.65.
You know, 12 years ago, I bought my starter home and my realtor at the time.
I said, Carlos, I used to do like Lunch and Learns in local Carrabbas and Bonefishes during lunch.
They were not open for lunch, and so I would go in at 10 a.m., or they would open for lunch, but they weren't open in the morning.
So I would go in there around 10 a.m., give the restaurant a few hundred bucks, and they would cook meals for my clients locally, and I would just talk about just IRAs and 401ks and And it was very educational.
I built my whole business like that throughout many, many years, over a decade.
And one lady came up to me and said, Carlos, I have one of those variable annuities you're talking about.
And I want you to look at it.
But also, I know you need a new home, so give me a call.
And I knew what she was doing.
You realtors, you're so funny.
They could smell a cash sale of a home a mile away.
Anyways, she ended up selling me my home and I helped her with her variable annuity.
Guys, she was paying 4.1%.
She was with actually the Hartford.
They got out of the variable annuity space and they were sold off.
So it was a Hartford leaders variable annuity.
I remember this.
She was paying 4.1%.
She was in it for 10 years.
She had over $300,000 in it and she was paying $19,000 a year.
So, 10 years goes by and she's paid literally over $190,000 in fees.
Her principal was not protected.
She was just simply on it for a lifetime income of $24,000.
So, here's an example.
They're going to guarantee you $24,000 for the rest of your life.
For a fee of $19,000 and your principal is not protected.
Once you hit the income button on these variable annuities, your money is gone literally within seven to eight years and there's no value on it so when you pass away your loved ones get nothing.
And that was a single life payout.
So her daughter would have gotten nothing.
That would have been a terrible experience.
We were able to save her from it and stop the bleeding and it's very difficult.
So the other crazy part is that if you look up in 2014, it was Transamerica.
It was a Forbes article that came out.
Transamerica and Voya had These variable annuity accounts that literally the insurance company bailed out on these promises.
They bailed out on these guaranteed lifetime incomes.
And they couldn't believe it.
All these account owners couldn't believe it.
But in the contract that they signed, they said that the guarantees can be taken away by the insurance company and that their money is completely vested.
So I have stories on top of stories on top of stories.
I've been doing this for a while.
And these variable annuity companies are extremely expensive in fees.
So if you have one, give us a call.
We can possibly give you an update on you want a product that's going to be either free, no cost, Or have the ability to not charge you on an annual basis and keep your principal safe.
So a lot of that is in a fixed index space.
We are professionals when it comes to it.
We want to make sure that we consolidate.
If that's you, give us a call 813-448-3446.
You may not like what we're going to say about your account, but I bet you the farm that you're going to want out of it.
So let us give you a recommendation if that's you.
Now, mutual funds.
So a lot of people call me about mutual funds.
Oh, I have these American funds.
Or I have these Columbia funds.
Or I have funds at Fidelity.
They don't charge me a fee, Carlos.
Yes, they do.
So what you got to do is when you open up your statement, there should be a four to five letter ticker.
Like FKINX is a Franklin Income fund.
It's a very popular fund.
It's been out since 1948 and has never missed a dividend.
It pays every single month.
The Franklin Income Fund is extremely popular.
But whatever your mutual fund is, American funds are extremely popular.
Very cookie cutter.
Edward Jones loves them.
There were some walk-in deals there.
What you need to know is that you need to just do an internet search on those five tickers.
Those five letters on that ticker, I'm sorry.
And so once you pull that up, you're going to see a share.
B share, which they really don't exist anymore, and a C share.
What does that mean?
Well, A share means you typically paid, if you had under $100,000 going into this fund, you typically paid about a 5.75 commission to get in, and your broker made a good 5% of that, and he split it with his broker-dealer.
The.75 goes to the actual investment company itself.
So...
A-shares.
They're very expensive.
If you have A-shares, how do you know?
Because when you look at your statement, it will have a five-letter ticker, and it will say Class A on the actual statement.
So if you do an internet search on those five letters on your mutual fund, and it shows you Class A, Class C or class I or L or R. I'll explain what those are.
Basically, you want to basically find out if it's a class A or a class C. Because B's really don't exist anymore, even though they're still out there.
But Class A, you paid a fee, typically anywhere from 4.5% to 5.5% just to get in.
Now, the cool part is with Class A is that it's free to sell out.
So you take an initiation of sales charge to get in.
Dave Ramsey recommends you buy A shares because it's cheaper in the long run.
He is right, but he's wrong about a lot of other things.
So, you want to make sure that Class A's, if you're buying Class A's, you have to stick with that family.
So, the bad thing about mutual funds is, and this is why people go with bigger mutual funds, is because they have a family of funds.
So, they'll have a large cap fund, an opportunities fund, an international fund, a Euro-Pacific fund, a domestic fund.
An income fund, a high income fund, a floating rate fund, all these funds inside of a family of funds.
And the whole consensus is that once you get into this investment fund, you can switch for free anytime you want with the fund of the families.
The broker doesn't like doing this because he does not get paid.
He does not get paid to switch funds around.
So there are companies out there, just 10 years ago, after, you know, 12, 13 months, they would sell you another mutual fund so they can make another 5%.
12, 13 months from later, from then, they will sell you another A share.
And they will keep on doing this.
They call it churning.
A lot of the investment banks I was associated with, they were promoting that.
I did not want anything to do with it, so I ended up leaving.
I actually got in a disagreement with every single bank I've been associated with, so this is how I started my firm.
Because you want to do what's right for the client at all times.
The broker business is a brutal, brutal business, and honestly, It just wasn't for me.
It just wasn't for me.
And there's no reason to be paying all these commissions for A-shares.
So C-shares are designed for someone that wants to get in and get out within one or two years.
It's more liquid.
A C-share, all you have to do is the same process as the A-share.
Find your tickers and go ahead and put them through internet search.
They're going to have five digits or five letters.
And once you see a C-share, so when you pull it up on...
Yahoo Finance, Google, or whatever Chinese tracking search engine you want to use, whenever you have that, you're going to see your operating expenses, you're going to see the fees, and you're going to see more of the characteristics of this fund as well as the investment objective.
So the average mutual fund is going to charge about 1%.
Your money is not safe.
They will buy stocks that are based on their company's investment mission statements.
So, this is why advisors...
Here's the crazy part.
Remember I told you fee-based advisors, they charge 1%?
Well, a lot of them, what they do is they'll charge you 1% and they will buy what's known as an I-share mutual fund.
Now, an I-share or L-share or a Z-share is an institutional fund.
It's a no-load fund.
Just because it's a no-load fund, that doesn't mean it's free.
What it basically means, it means that they still charge operating expenses.
All mutual funds charge operating expenses.
Even the mutual funds inside your 401k.
Sorry, I'm playing with my silver coins with scriptures on them.
They're pretty cool.
I like to fidget a lot when I'm talking.
But...
The mutual funds.
So the mutual funds, I mean, they're terrible when it comes to fees.
You're a sitting duck.
They buy investments.
If you look up your mutual fund by searching the ticker, you'll see what the top holdings are.
Then you can basically see that you're investing in things that you don't agree with.
Pfizer.
GE, number one abortion medical device supplier.
Just Moderna.
All these tech companies that you don't like and healthcare companies that you don't like.
Things that go against your values.
That's the problem with mutual funds is that you don't really have a control on where your money is being invested.
When you own a mutual fund, you actually own stocks and bonds.
When you own stocks and bonds, you are taking that company's mission statement.
Don't be fooled.
Don't be fooled, guys.
Mutual funds can be extremely expensive.
And it can have the ability to really, really destroy your account.
The market goes down 28% and you have a variable annuity of another 4%.
Or if you have another fee-based account with mutual funds.
Like, there's literally guys, advisors...
That will charge you 1% and smack you with 16 different mutual funds because they want to invest in whatever one that is sticking the best.
So what they do is...
I know this one guy that was in the business with me.
I was just a kid in the industry and he had like 20 years experience.
And he was quote unquote mentoring me at this big corporate America job.
And he said, well, Carlos, I grow my book of business 10% a year.
All I do is I just switch out mutual funds.
I take the worst performing ones and I replace them with better ones in their sector.
And he did this every single year as if it was like a really good asset management play.
And the only one who was winning was him.
It just...
That's what these guys do, man.
That's what these guys do.
I want to talk about ETFs.
So there's a huge rush to ETFs, spider funds, index funds.
Don't be fooled.
They are cheaper than mutual funds.
They trade like a stock.
They are diversified.
But they do have operating expenses.
They're extremely cheap.
I'm talking about 0.005 typically, like even Vanguard, iShares, Direction.
Now if you're doing leveraged ETFs, they are more expensive.
They can charge up to 1% is what I've been seeing.
So if your advisor has, and this is what I like to do with our managed assets, we use ETFs.
I charge 1%.
There's small little operating expenses inside of ETFs, but it's a lot cheaper for a client, more affordable, and they're extremely, extremely diverse so that we're not just buying stocks.
So, stocks typically don't have operating expenses.
It's just the fund of stocks do, the mutual funds, the ETFs, the UITs.
UITs, if that's you, I just saw an ad right now for UITs that have these like buffers.
So, the market goes down 30%.
You take the first 10, then the investment company takes anything after 10%.
But the fee is ridiculous.
It's over 2% of fees.
Be very, very careful.
Remember, operating expenses is what you really need to find out.
What is my operating expense?
If you're a client of mine, we charge 1%.
If you're over a million dollars, we typically break that down.
We lower our fee.
We lower the money manager fees.
So the money manager has a fee typically anywhere from 0.5 to 0.85, 0.9.
So about 1.5% all in.
That includes all your trades.
You never get calls about, you know, oh, we need to buy this one particular fund.
There's no commissions to be made.
It's a flat rate.
We want to make sure that your account is growing.
Or at least protected on a downside.
We're in a bear market, so nothing is really good right now, other than short-term treasuries.
So if you have a stock portfolio, you shouldn't be in stocks right now.
It is pretty nasty out there, right, if you're retired or trying to retire.
You want to be in short-term duration bonds right now.
Treasury yields, tips is what we call them.
And just really be defensive.
But you also want to have the ability to tactically get back into the market should the market do a lot better.
So there's ways, you know, with our covenant process, we believe in precious metals, right?
We believe in precious metals.
I have my silver bars here.
We have a great Christian-based dealer, precious metals dealer, Cornerstone.
You can call them at 888-747-3309.
Call them.
They can get you silver bars.
And they can beat anybody's pricing.
And also my favorite is these tarry ounce silver coins.
They can put literally Bible verses on them.
You probably won't be able to see them.
But they can put Bible verses on them.
And the whole theory is that we're honoring God, right?
But it's also religiously exempt.
So the government can literally take your gold because the tier one currency is controlled and manipulated by the government.
But silver is industrial metal.
And we can honestly just put, we can also put scriptures on our silver.
We're honoring God, right?
So just another layer of protection.
But yeah, great, great guys out there.
I trust them.
I buy my personal precious metals from them.
So if you want an outlet on our covenant, definitely reach out to Cornerstone.
Mention Cortez.
We do get a referral credit for that.
And that helps pay for the show.
And to keep this Scriptures on Wall Street up and running.
The other thing is...
So we want to understand that the financial statement, they're not going to say all this stuff on a financial statement, by the way.
What you really want to know is you just don't want to look at performance.
You want to look at fees.
And like I said, if you have the variable annuities, if you have the mutual funds, those are the king of fees, those two types of investments.
And all of America has them.
So, be very careful.
Also, if you have a variable annuity, one of the nasty things I've been running to, and I've been seeing this for years, is that you actually don't own it.
Your broker-dealer or your bank does.
And so, if you have a variable annuity that's tied to a brokerage statement, call and find out who is annuitant.
You can be very, very shocked on who it is.
I had this one example of a client.
I won't say his name, obviously I can't, but I saw this from a mile away.
He goes, yeah, I got one of these variable annuities with my Wells Fargo guy.
I said, okay, alright.
You should call them and ask who the annuitant is.
And sure and behold, it was Wells Fargo.
Wells Fargo was annuitant.
They had to do it in order to commingle the account on the brokerage statement.
So, you literally had to get a letter You had to get a letter saying, can I own my own money back?
Can I own my own account?
Take Wells Fargo off of my account because I want to be my own annuitant.
So the bank has been doing this for years.
I don't understand how this is legal.
But typically, the broker-dealers own a custodial-held IRA. If it's custodial-held IRA, it's always with qualified assets.
So qualified accounts.
They have the ability to own your account as annuitant.
So pretty scary stuff.
If that's you, give us a call.
We know how to unravel that.
813-448-3446.
Or give us a visit at CortezWM.com.
Also, the other thing I wanted to mention, a lot of people are rushing to CDs as if it's a safe haven.
They're getting teased with the four and a quarter, four and a half percent.
I saw a CD right now for six percent and then I looked into it.
Oh man, smoke and mirrors baby.
Gotta love it.
Gotta love the financial serpents.
Gotta love the financial serpents.
Okay.
So, what this CD rates, guys, is be very careful because there's something called simple interest.
There's another thing called compounding interest.
So what these banks love to do is they like to do like a one or two year CD or a nine month CD. And what they'll do is the first six months they will give you like a 5%.
Simple.
So if you had $100,000 in the CD, they'll give you $5,000 first year.
Great.
Sounds nice.
Then the second year, they'll chop it off to 3%.
Simple.
So it would be the 3% on the initial investment, not compounding.
Not on the $105, right?
Because you made $5,000.
They would not give you 3% on the $105.
They'll give you 3% on the $100.
So you make $3,000.
So total, you made $6,000, $7,000, $8,000 in interest.
Sounds lovely.
In two years.
And then the third year, you made 2% in interest.
So you made $2,000.
So you made $5,000, then $3,000, and then $2,000.
You are better off buying a 4% compounding CD. Actually, I don't even like certificate of disappointments or certificate of depreciations because you are loaning the money to the bank and if there is another 2008, guess what?
They got your money, homie.
There's nothing you can do about it.
A bail-in happens, boom.
Your money is gone.
You are FDIC, baby.
FDIC. So, FDIC is not true insurance.
They do not require their banks to have more than 2-3% of...
I mean, right now, the banks are at 1.3% according to FDIC.org.
If you look it up, their liquidity fund that they call it.
And they have a huge goal from 2020 and 2028.
They want all their banks to go to from 1.3 to 2.0 percent in cash reserves.
If there is another financial crisis, another 2008, your money in the bank is not safe.
There is no more bailouts, guys.
There is no more bailouts.
You are the bailout.
You are the bailout.
And the Dodd-Frank Act, look it up.
Just do an internet search, Dodd-Frank Act.
And bail-ins basically allows banks to take possession of your money and bail them back in using your own funds.
This is real stuff, guys.
I'm not trying to fear-monger.
I'm just trying to talk facts.
But CDs are very, very tricky.
I don't trust them.
To me, it's a financial serpent.
You're better off calling us and getting a low-duration cash alternative fund where we're going to trade the treasury market for you and get you about a four and a quarter on average yield to maturity for the year.
And it's liquid, 100% liquid.
And there's compounding, right?
There's compounding, compounding, compounding.
And you can blow out of it any single time.
As a matter of fact, all of our money managers are in treasuries right now.
The market's just too crazy.
It's too crazy.
We're in a bear market, guys.
A lot of people are trying to hold on to the stock.
Oh, I'm going to make this money back.
I'm going to do this.
I'm going to do that.
We're in a bear market.
We've been in a bear market 16 months.
It's not going to get better this month or next month.
And so what?
If you miss a rally, you're going to miss, what, 5% or 6% possibly?
It's not worth taking the risk.
It's not worth taking the risk.
We have Joe Biden, stupid face, trying to run this economy to the ground.
We know that America is stronger than this ridiculous administration that is a clown scene.
So, I'm pro-America, and don't you give up on America, guys, because we've been through 28 recessions.
We've been out of all of them.
We'll get out of this.
We'll get out of this.
So, you need to have, so the covenant, you need to have, you know, a little bit of precious metals in case the dollar does reset.
What if the dollar does crash?
What if all these theories are right?
We need to have a plan for that.
We need to have a safe money bucket where we have a guarantee using insurance contracts.
We need to have money in the market in case the money does what it does and the markets rise and we do get a conservative back in office and the markets...
Tend to rally back up.
You need to be able to make money in that and preserve and collect interest or collect income.
You need a reliable, consistent income.
And so our covenant process does just that.
So give us a call.
We can talk about where we can place your assets.
But really, the market is too...
The yield curve is so inverted right now.
The two year is paying way over the five year.
What that basically means, guys, is There's so much more confidence in the short-term duration outlook of our economy than the long-term that international as well as domestic investors feel that the long-term aspect, the bond market, tells us that, hey, there's not a lot of confidence long-term in the credit markets.
So 90% of the time that happens, we are even in a recession or going in a recession.
So right now the yield curve is inverted.
The five-year is paying less than the two-year.
The two-year is paying more.
And look, like if you're in stocks and you're retired or you have a few million, I think you're crazy.
I think you're crazy.
Like legit, you need to have a de-risk plan.
You need to have a safe money bucket where your money is not going to be lost.
Because even our money managers are down from last year.
They're not perfect, right?
Because you know why?
The bond market went down.
The bond market went down tremendously with the rising interest rates.
Rising interest rates.
And we're going to be in a rising interest rate environment for probably the rest of this year.
And, you know, they are cooling off.
Inflation is cooling off.
But not the real inflation.
You guys know what the real inflation is.
You've seen the cost of eggs and gas and food and bread and the staples.
I mean, it's over 20-something percent.
It's been that way for several years now.
So, what do we need to learn here, guys?
The CDs are the freaking devil.
Bail-ins are terrible.
That is a real factual thing.
If anyone says, oh, you're such a conspiracy theorist, Then show them the Dodd-Frank Act.
This is no joke, guys.
I'm dead serious.
It's a heart attack.
The Dodd-Frank Act has the ability to take your money from the banks.
The FDIC doesn't have the money to cover you.
They are federally mandated by the federal government.
Do you trust the federal government with your money?
So my next segment, I wanted to talk about IRAs and the financial inoculations inside of the IRAs and how it pertains to your Social Security.
Social Security is a welfare program.
And if you're on Social Security before your full retirement age, you're going to get financially inoculated.
You're going to get feed or penalized 50%.
I'm going to talk about that in my next show.
But be careful of the CD tricks.
Be careful of the teaser rates that they do.
You're better off getting a compounding investment vehicle, a vehicle that's going to compound with liquidity, and that is our short-term duration alternative fund.
You can blow out of it anytime you want, liquidate it anytime you want.
Let's just make our 4, 4.25%, 4.5%, keep up with inflation and figure it out when the market gets more favorable.
But we just don't want to be in the market right now losing assets.
It's not the time to make money.
It's time to preserve what you have.
And it's not time to get cute with all these stocks right now.
Now, if you're younger...
You should be buying up some really good stocks right now or doing some leveraged ETFs on the markets because you can take the volatility.
You have time.
But if you're a retiree or a client of mine, slow and steady wins the race.
We can have consistent, reliable income.
We can have consistent, reliable returns.
The treasury markets are hot right now in a safe place and it's less volatile.
Also, the other thing on a statement that I forgot to mention is that the standard deviations, you want to have a low standard deviation.
So our cash alternative fund is at 2%.
Pretty stinking awesome.
At 2% standard deviation and we're making a high yield of 4% in comparison to a low standard deviation.
So, I mean, there's products out right now that have a 3% standard deviation and they're paying about 5% to 6%.
Not as liquid as a short duration cash alternative fund.
So, I've said a lot today.
Remember the fees, the mortality expense, the living benefit, the mutual fund fees inside of your variable annuities.
ECF has fees, mutual funds.
Find out if you have an A-share or C-share by just simply doing an internet search on your funds.
And be very careful on your statement where you see withdraws.
Make sure that is aligning with your bank deposit.
So look at your bank account to see how many deposits you had.
Then add it all up and then look at your statement.
The discrepancy could be the fees.
So I wanted to share a few verses with you that really resonated with my soul.
Psalm 147 11.
The Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love.
God loves when you fear Him.
And I think...
I think we need more of that in this country.
I think that we do have a problem with just walking around thinking that everything is all perfect and dandy and taking advantage of the people that love you in your life, the love of Christ.
We feel entitled that our next breath is going to be there.
We feel entitled that our legs are going to be there, our health.
Oh, cancer would never hit me.
Or, you know, my son's a big ice hockey player.
This weekend we had the ability to skate as a family.
We do that typically on Sundays.
And I was driving back from this rink that's 45 minutes.
We drive 45 minutes to this rink.
It's beautiful.
It's got cool lights and the kids love it.
The ice is beautiful.
Yes, I'm in Florida.
And then I was just talking to Sally.
I said...
My wife, I said, isn't it a beautiful thing that we have legs to skate?
Not just me and you, but all of our kids.
No one's handicapped.
We're just grateful.
We're just grateful that we can just skate.
I really meant that.
I feel like there's a sense of entitlement in the Christian faith that We don't like to get uncomfortable.
We don't like to talk about things that are real.
One of the things that is real is that we don't fear God because I feel like we're becoming comfortable and entitled that we forget the basic things.
You are breathing.
Like two years ago, I couldn't breathe.
I got Resdemivir.
I was rushed to the hospital.
I almost died.
It was Delta variant.
I was taking Ivermectin.
I ran out of hydrochloroquine.
I ran out of all the drugs, and I still couldn't breathe.
And then when they put oxygen on my face, I literally was in tears because...
All these years I took advantage of just being breathing normally.
There's people with COPD that can't even breathe.
So, I don't know.
My mindset's completely changed on things that we take advantage of.
Which leads me to Jeremiah 17.7.
But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who has confidence in Him.
God, you have controlled the air in my lungs.
You are.
It's your breath inside of my lungs that gives me, literally, confidence.
But be blessed.
And those who trust in the Lord, who has confidence in Him, I honestly feel like that verse is universal, especially when it comes to your finances.
Deuteronomy 31.6 Be strong and courageous.
Do not be afraid or terrified because of them.
For the Lord your God goes with you.
He will never leave you, never forsake you.
Deuteronomy 31, 6.
That verse was deep because when I was dying on my COVID deathbed two years ago, I would recite this verse over and over in my head.
I know you'll never leave me.
I know you'll never forsake me.
And it's true, guys.
It's true.
So we don't need to worry about finances.
We don't need to...
We don't...
I mean, we're not going to gain a day worrying about finances and bickering about how much money I lost or...
Or what are we going to do?
You know, we're down X amount of money.
You don't need to worry.
We're not going to heaven with this money, guys.
Yes, we need to be stewards.
But like we said, Jeremiah 17, 7.
Not me.
This is what he says.
But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord whose confidence is in him.
So have some confidence that it will work out, for He knows the desires of your hearts.
He has plans to what?
Not harm you, but to prosper you.
So I want to just encourage you guys to spend time with God in the morning before you do anything.
Build that spiritual life, because I know for me, It's been amazing.
It's been amazing seeking God's face every single morning.
For the past two years, I've literally been opening up my Bible and just praying, crying out to God to humble me, to teach me a lesson, to learn something new, to be intimate with my wife, to be an awesome father, to not yield in some temptation, to worship Him more, to give more To, again, humble myself.
Just a constant, constant routine.
And you know what?
There's so much joy in my life right now.
I don't know if I've shared this before, but about eight years ago, my nutritionist asked me, What brings you joy, Carlos?
You're so stressed.
You're so this.
You're so that.
And it took me almost ten years to find out what actually brings me joy.
Today, this morning, when I was in my prayer time, I said, God, this whole time I was trying to search for something that would ease my mind, that would de-stress me and relax me.
Even after a massage, I don't know about you, but I would always still be tense.
I would always have this anxiety.
I would always still have this worry.
And I didn't know why.
Or I would be with my wife and kids and I still have this worry.
And what it was is I was looking for a way to unwind.
I was looking for a way to de-stress.
When all I had to do was crack open the book.
To really pray more.
And this morning I cried out to God.
I said, God, you are the Prince of Peace.
You give me peace.
You give me comfort.
And I just wanted to really, really stress that today.
Spend time with the Lord in the mornings before you get your day started.
Put on the full armor of God.
Go to war and fight.
Because He is the Prince of Peace.
I'm just so grateful that we are in this position of being chosen just to love Jesus, being chosen just to love God.
He is our everything.
Well, I've talked and rambled too much, guys, but wanted to share those verses because they're really awesome and they're beautiful.
God's love is, you can never exhaust Him.
You can never exhaust God's love and His resources.
If you're a sinner, just like me, continue to pray, and He will work His Spirit for all good.
And with that being said, guys, I am out of here.
I hope you enjoyed this podcast about the fees, the unknown fees, the tricks, and we will be talking soon.
Give us a call, 813-448-3446, or visit our website at corteswm.com.
Remember, this is not financial advice, so use this content for educational purposes.
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