Ep 56: Q3 Review
The X's & O's
Quarter three just wrapped up and the numbers are in. Brent, Matthew, and Joshua discuss reasons for the slight pullback and some newsworthy items to be aware of as we head into the last quarter of the year.
The Hosts:
Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk
Transcript:
Brent Pasqua: Welcome, and welcome to the Retirement Plan Playbook. I’m your host, Brent Pasqua, founder of RPA Wealth Management. I’m here with Matthew Theal, certified financial planner, and Joshua Winterswyk, certified financial planner. Today we’re going to get into the third quarter review. It finished off being actually a very interesting quarter. I want to go through, really, what the market did towards the end. There was a lot of big stories that came up that impacted the market, so we’ll get into those. But as we get started, fall’s here, and the baseball playoffs are now taking place. Are you guys enjoying baseball?
Matthew Theal: I thought the season ended when football started back in September, so it was kind of weird for me to turn on the TV and see everyone talking about baseball playoffs, but yeah, I’ve put it on. It’s as boring as baseball usually is, and I’m not quite sure again why they do day games.
Joshua Winterswyk: I’m surprised because you’re normally a pretty big baseball guy.
Matthew Theal: I have young daughter now. I have to cut things out of my life.
Joshua Winterswyk: Baseball was the first on the chopping block?
Matthew Theal: Yeah, baseball is gone.
Joshua Winterswyk: Well, you know what? Regular season baseball I don’t watch too much of. I like to go to baseball games throughout the year, but I don’t even think I’ve been to a baseball game in two years. But I did watch my first, I think my first, or one of the first baseball games, which was the Dodger play-in game, so the wildcard game.
Matthew Theal: Yeah.
Joshua Winterswyk: So, I did watch that game. I’ve been watching a few of the games. I don’t really understand why they’re on in the middle of the day or in the morning on the West Coast either, though. It’s kind of-
Brent Pasqua: It’s very bizarre. I mean, they play this long season that spans from what, late March all the way until the end of September, and then you have a five-game series in playoffs, and you put the games on at… Some of them are on, I think, as early as noon Pacific Time. How do they expect to get any draw from that? Why are they playing?
Joshua Winterswyk: I think it was at 10:00 yesterday, 10:00 a.m.
Brent Pasqua: I have no idea why they’re playing that early and what kind of draw that brings.
Joshua Winterswyk: What I don’t understand either is that they play so many games, but then we had a one-game wildcard play-in too. How awful for the… Was it the Cardinals that the Dodgers played?
Brent Pasqua: Yeah.
Joshua Winterswyk: That whole long season, had a good season, made the playoffs, and one game, you’re out.
Brent Pasqua: Well, and then the rest of teams are in the playoffs, so you can’t even watch them because they’re on during work hours.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. I don’t know if I’ll be watching the rest of it. We’ll see. I guess it depends on who’s still in it.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. It all comes down to storylines, I guess, but they can’t build storylines if they’re on during the day.
Joshua Winterswyk: But this surprises me. You surprised me, Matt, with your baseball take.
Brent Pasqua: All right. So, let’s get into the hot take headlines. One of the huge stories coming out of the news if Facebook files. I think the biggest story of this quarter has been Facebook. Why is this important, and with everything that really has gone on with them in the news, what is actually happening?
Matthew Theal: So, this is a really wild story, and it’s really nothing new if you’ve been following the Facebook drama since the 2015-2016 timeframe, but an employee at Facebook leaked a bunch of internal documents that basically showed what an awful platform Facebook and its Facebook properties are for people to be spending time on, essentially, in a nice summary version. So, that would be Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram. Just to read off some of the stuff that, I guess, was proven, is that Instagram tries to attract preteens to get them on their platform.
Matthew Theal: Studies have shown that Instagram is toxic for teen girls. I mean, I wonder why. That people who are elite are exempt from some of the rules of Facebook. So, that’s kind of like celebrities and famous people. There’s drug cartels and human traffickers on Facebook. Listen. You probably don’t want to be spending too much of your time on Facebook. There’s a lot of fake information on that, and we all know that, but what’s coming out isn’t good. Essentially, they want to regular the company. The stock’s been dropping a lot. I don’t really have much else to say other than maybe it might be time to stop spending time on Instagram and Facebook.
Joshua Winterswyk: What I didn’t know is how in-depth their research teams are. I guess they have some of the best research teams in the world that work for Facebook, and they have all of this data about the negative things that come from Facebook and Instagram and social media, and they have all of this data, and they can break it up into demographics, and they’ve done nothing to fix it.
Brent Pasqua: Right, and I guess from what they were saying too, it’s like those algorithms that they’re able to create, they could do the morally right thing and go after what’s morally correct, or they can do what’s morally incorrect, but it’s going to trigger more activity, and they’re doing, basically, the morally incorrect thing so it triggers more activity.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah, and basically, what the whistleblower was saying was it was profits over doing what’s right, for the most part.
Brent Pasqua: Yes. Yep.
Matthew Theal: That’s how Corporate America is. It’s always profits over doing the right thing. I mean, it’s what Big Tobacco did. It’s what energy companies did. This is no different than that. Facebook is not a good use of your time. Neither is Instagram. So, stop using it.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah, and it sounds like their big draw too is getting younger users to use it because that also adds parents to it, and then just leads to more activity, and I thought the other thing that was somewhat interesting or more trouble is that there’s more fake accounts on Facebook than there actually, I think, is really accounts, I think was one of the things that was said. That to me is just crazy.
Matthew Theal: You should have to use your real name and identity, and honestly, you should probably have to put a Social Security number in to use a social media website.
Joshua Winterswyk: Some sort of accountability?
Matthew Theal: Yeah.
Brent Pasqua: I guess one thing that I’m still having trouble figuring out is, how is this not already known? Didn’t we already know that they were targeting ads towards people, that they’re using algorithms that aren’t favoring moral usage of their site, and why is this now just coming out to Congress when I think we’ve already all known this for years?
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. No, I agree with that, and it’s almost even worse than what we even probably thought, about how much they know, how much data they actually have generated, and how much negative factors that this can create. So, it’s just kind of disappointing.
Matthew Theal: Well, I think the reasoning is they showed the internal documents, that Facebook knows it’s bad, and they’re not doing anything about it.
Joshua Winterswyk: Right. [crosstalk 00:06:32].
Matthew Theal: That is what’s causing the uproar. Yeah.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah.
Brent Pasqua: Well, it sounds like the platform needs to have provisions and some restrictions on it, and unfortunately, it’s going to need oversight if we’re going to correct a major problem, and I think one thing that has been leading to a lot of the information that most people are getting nowadays can be tied back to social media, and hopefully this can be a step in the right direction.
Matthew Theal: One last Facebook thought. This is the day I stopped using it. It was during the beginning of the pandemic. I haven’t logged on since. But I saw an article that everybody was commenting on in my feed about beaches in Arizona being open while California state beaches were closed, and I said, “I am done with this platform,” and I haven’t been on since. For those that don’t know, there are no beaches in Arizona.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah.
Brent Pasqua: Well, it’s not surprising that that would be on Facebook. All right. So, let’s get to the next headline. Over 60 cargo ships have been forced to queue outside two of America’s biggest ports in the latest sign of supply chain disruption hitting the US. The ships are stuck outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in California, which handle 40% of all cargo containers entering the country. I don’t know if you guys have flown over or flown into LAX recently, and I did it over the summertime. There looked to be a lot more than 60 ships out there. They’re all waiting to get into the ports, and it’s causing a major backup with our supply issue right now.
Matthew Theal: Yeah, and they said it’s 40% worse now than it was then. I mean, there just must be ships for miles going out?
Brent Pasqua: Yeah, and they’re also spread out. They’re completely spread out, waiting, and it sounds like at this point they’re waiting for enough workers in the docks to be able to empty those containers.
Matthew Theal: So, this is a pretty big story. It is creating the supply chain problems, but it’s also showing a different side of where there is a worker shortage right now. The pandemic really messed up supply chains, and the fact that we can’t get cargo off the ships is a massive problem. I was reading some stories related to this story, and it sounds like a lot of toy companies, because most of the toys come from Asia, China specifically, won’t be open for the holidays. They’re just going to run out of product before the holiday season even kicks off at this current rate. So, I don’t know what the fix is. I know the ports have been operating at 24 hours. Right?
Brent Pasqua: No, I believe they have not.
Matthew Theal: Oh, I thought they changed-
Brent Pasqua: From my understanding, what I heard on CNBC, they were not operating at 24 hours. They were operating only within union hours.
Matthew Theal: Oh, interesting.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah, and I think that’s one of the variables that there’s an issue behind, is the union’s also limiting overtime and shifts. Then there’s another issue, is that even the trucks that are pulling all of the inventory off of the docks are short workers. So, there’s just so many multiples to this situation, and they’re just compounding, and it’s making it even worse. I’m actually even surprised that this isn’t a bigger story.
Brent Pasqua: Me, too.
Joshua Winterswyk: When we were researching this and even reading the article, a couple of the articles, there’s not that much actual investigation on what’s going on, and it’s not a bigger story. So, I’m just kind of surprised there, but there’s a lot of different things that are causing this issue, and it’s going to be bad for holiday season.
Brent Pasqua: I mean, it makes sense when COVID began that you would see cargo ships lined up. I mean, understandably, the whole economy was in a flux at that point, but now we’re sitting here, what, 19, 20 months later, and we’re still battling with having cargo ships backed up? I don’t understand why they haven’t figured it out because the whole economy’s waiting for these people to unload these cargo ships and to get things rolling.
Joshua Winterswyk: It’s even creating… Because now they have a shortage of ships because there’s so many that are just sitting there. So, they’re not going back and forth, so you’re having some of these companies actually buying their own ships now, and then having them wait in, I guess, the dock line, which is just insane. Again, surprised that this isn’t a bigger story.
Matthew Theal: Can you imagine being a captain on this ship? You’re like, “Wait, so am I you supposed to dock here in this harbor for two to three weeks or longer while I wait for my ship number to get called to come unload it?” That must be miserable.
Joshua Winterswyk: I wouldn’t want that job.
Brent Pasqua: I mean, I ordered something a couple months ago, and it’s an eight-month waiting period for us to get what we ordered. I think a lot of people are having those problems, that they’re probably sitting on those ships, and I would be willing to go down there and just unload my package by myself.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah.
Matthew Theal: Go through all those containers?
Joshua Winterswyk: Where do I sign up to go move some boxes to get my stuff?
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. All right. Let’s get into Retirement Planning Corner. Today, let’s go through the review of last quarter, and we’re going to preview the next three months. I think, obviously, as we finished out the third and then head into the fourth quarter, there was a lot of market activity. There was a lot of volatility that took place really right at the beginning of September. Let’s start with the market check. Joshua, how did the global markets fare in the second quarter?
Joshua Winterswyk: So, looking at this, a little different. I mean, we had a really good run in the first and second quarter of this year. Third quarter was a little different. US stocks, they’re actually… We had a negative rate of return in US stocks, negative 10 basis points, or 0.10%. International stocks, negative 0.66%. Emerging stock, negative 8.09%. We have global real estate, negative 0.08%. US bonds, 0.05. We have global bonds as a positive 0.09, so bonds for the third quarter, the only asset classes that were positive rates of return.
Brent Pasqua: I mean, when we look at what happened in this third quarter, we could see there’s a distinct difference between what emerging markets were down 8% versus international stock down less than one, and US stocks down .10. Is there a reason why there’s such a distinct difference between what emerging markets did in some of the others?
Matthew Theal: So, the emerging markets one was going to be driven by China because they had the crisis going on there with the China Evergrande or grande story. The property developer is going bad on some debt, and then also, because of the crackdown on Beijing that we talked about five or six podcasts ago where they kind of might be closing off their financial markets, so that spooked Chinese shares a lot.
Brent Pasqua: That makes sense. How are markets doing over the last year?
Matthew Theal: US stocks are up 31%, so still really strong, international up 26.5, emerging stocks up 18.2, global real estate up 31.6, and then on the bond side, which is really interesting to me, we have bonds down .90, so just about 1%, and global bonds down negative .54. What this tells me is that over the last year, stocks have risen, but also, interest rates have risen a little bit.
Brent Pasqua: I mean, these are still very, very good returns over the last 12 months, aren’t they?
Matthew Theal: Yeah, these are great 12-month returns, definitely not a historical norm here. These are oddball scenarios. But I think as we get into today’s show, we’re going to paint a more picture of a market that’s been pulling back, just like the returns Josh went over, not one that’s booming right now.
Brent Pasqua: So, if the last year has showed favorable returns, what has caused this third quarter pullback?
Joshua Winterswyk: I can start here. I think some of the optimism is going away. We’ve priced in so much of the future and so much of what’s to come in kind of exiting this pandemic and moving on from some of this uncertainty, but how much optimism can still be priced in? We’ve had just such a good run of rate of return since the recovery, and I think that that’s one big part of this pullback that we’ve seen so far a little bit in the third quarter, and already to start this fourth quarter.
Matthew Theal: Yeah, and then also seasonality. We’ve been on a big run. This is historically the weakest time for our stock market, the fall period from, call it, Labor Day to Thanksgiving. That’s typically when the market’s weak, and we’re seeing seasonality play out really, really well right now, and then there’s also reasons to be cautious. We have inflation. We have the shipping delays we’ve talked about. We have what’s going on in China. COVID’s not going away. So, there are reasons for the market to probably hit a pause here, and that’s what it’s doing.
Brent Pasqua: What are some of the long-term stories that we probably should be following as we look at what could be happening in this last quarter and heading into next year?
Joshua Winterswyk: I think what even Matt was just already talking about, I think inflation’s going to be one of them. I also just think to wait and see what the Federal Reserve is going to do. We’re already seeing them slow down that spending, and what’s going to happen with interest rates next year as well, taxes. I mean, that’s always going to bring some volatility, in my opinion. That’s going to be a big one to see what this tax bill, if it is approved and what it’s going to officially look like, if that’s passed. So, a lot of big headlines here. I mean, inflation, taxes, supply chain issues, so a lot of different things that can create some questions about going into the fourth quarter and into next year.
Matthew Theal: Yeah, I am really monitoring this tax bill. I think it’s a really unique one. I know we talked about it on the previous show, but just from the standpoint, I don’t see it impacting that many people, but again, it is one of those things where in the short term it could push the market a little bit lower. So, we could be faced with the ultra-rich having taxes being raised on them next year, as well as an inflationary environment. So, again, we might just be looking at stocks returns that are a little bit less than we’ve seen in the last two years coming up.
Joshua Winterswyk: When you say inflation, what are we talking about here, and how is that impacting the everyday person?
Matthew Theal: So, when I say that, it means a slow rise in prices. So, maybe you were paying $4 for a gallon of milk. Now you’re paying $4.50. Maybe it’s costs $5 a square foot for the tile you want to remodel your home. Now it’s $6.50. So, prices are rising, and a lot of that is being actually attributed to the slowdown at the port, so what we were talking about. There’s shipping delays. There’s product delays. Well, what happens? Well, someone’s willing to pay more for the products, so the price goes up.
Joshua Winterswyk: What about if you’re willing to unpack the cargo ship?
Matthew Theal: You just got to go down there with a hardhat and your gloves on and be like, “Hey, I’m ready to go. Which one do you want me to unload?”
Joshua Winterswyk: What cargo ship is it?
Matthew Theal: Until they tell you that they don’t actually unload them. They just take the truck beds off and put them on trucks and drive them off.
Joshua Winterswyk: You know what this also means? Less sales.
Matthew Theal: Yeah, which is bad for stocks.
Joshua Winterswyk: Which is bad for me, because I love a good sale.
Matthew Theal: Oh, I thought you meant sales as in revenue [crosstalk 00:17:15]-
Joshua Winterswyk: No, no, no, no. Also, just companies. Right? I mean there’s more demand, so less supply. Prices are going to go up. They’re not going to offer you that big discount that you were waiting for, and now I got to pay full price. So, this affects me.
Brent Pasqua: I mean, one other topic on here that I still have questions on, and that’s the Federal Reserve, they’ve been talking about raising possible interest rates for a long time now. Is that going to happen? Because we know that can really impact the market, and if that’s going to happen, when would that be happening?
Matthew Theal: Sometime next year, mid to end of 2022. The thing is with raising interest rates is the market’s going to anticipate it before it happens, and it’ll get priced in before it happens. So, if we know for sure that they’re probably going to raise interest rates, call it this time next year, it’s going to get priced in right now and in the first quarter of 2022. It’s not going to be something that happens in the summer or at this time next year. It’s going to happen eight to nine months, 12 months prior.
Joshua Winterswyk: But even if they raise them, how high are they raising them? Are they still low?
Matthew Theal: Yeah. It’ll be a very small raise. Most people won’t even notice a difference.
Joshua Winterswyk: So, how big is that even a concern if they do in October? I just don’t know if it’s as big of a variable as some people make it seem.
Brent Pasqua: I mean, I guess then also, how can these stories really impact the market over the next six months to a year?
Matthew Theal: I think it’s going to paint a picture of the stock market being a little bit more volatile than we’ve seen since, really, the February selloff during when COVID started. It’ll be a little bit more like 2014 or 2018’s stock market where it’s kind of up and down a lot, and that’s the period or the cycle we’re going into on the economy.
Brent Pasqua: Then earning season is in October. When does that start, and why is that an important time?
Joshua Winterswyk: Well, we’re going to actually be able to see how all of these companies are doing. So, earning season’s always pretty important as an investor because they’re going to report their financials, and we get to actually see the past data of the revenue and the underlying profit that these companies are doing. So, this will be an interesting time, especially as we’re going… We’ve seen a little bit of a pullback. We have these big headlines. Earning season, I think, is probably the biggest one of this year in my opinion, just because of the climate of where we’re at right now.
Brent Pasqua: So, if we start to look over the next three months, what are some financial action items for listeners?
Matthew Theal: So, again, I’m watching this tax plan, and it’s important for a lot of people, especially if you’re a high earner. If you’re a high earner, meet with your CPA. If you don’t have a CPA, reach out to your financial planner and see if they’ll refer you to one. Get a tax plan done, because you’re going to want your income next year set to be below those new taxable thresholds, and putting that plan in place today is what’s going to make the difference.
Brent Pasqua: So, basically, what you’re saying is if you go back and listen to the previous podcast, you can find out whether or not you’re going to be impacted by some of these new tax proposals, and you probably want to make sure that you’re trying to keep yourself below the income threshold.
Matthew Theal: Yeah. If you say, “Hey, that’s me. I’m in that group that Matthew, Brent, and Joshua are talking about,” then you need to reach out to your financial professional on the tax and on the financial side.
Joshua Winterswyk: To piggyback that, your estate plan as well. I mean, the estate tax in the Biden proposal could be changed, so if that net worth is growing and that is a concern for you, it’s now a good time to plan for that event potentially, so over the next three months, making sure you have those ducks in a line. Also, take student loans, so making sure you’re reviewing the student loans, because the deferments coming up are ending. The deferment is ending soon, so that’s another thing you’re going to want to take care of or look at and plan for over the next three months.
Matthew Theal: I got a quick planning tip for the student loan people. So, if you’ve built up your savings because you haven’t been paying your student loans, when the student loans turn back on, as long as you’re comfortable with your emergency fund, whatever you need for three to six months, take the money you’ve been saving by not paying student loans and go pay a big chunk of your loans off with that cash. Don’t just pay that minimum that they say on the bill, because you’re never going to pay the loan off.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah, I agree. It’s such an important time right now to even be taking a look at that. I mean, one of the other things as we head, we’re into this last quarter of the year now already, is making sure that you’re putting as much contributions into your 401(k) or 403(b) or retirement plan at work, because as you get towards the end of the year, there’s less time to put more money into those accounts, and if you’re going to make max contributions, you’re probably going to need to allocate a little bit more of your paycheck at this point of the year to make sure you hit those max contributions.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah, and even if you don’t max, just that extra for the rest of the year.
Brent Pasqua: Absolutely.
Joshua Winterswyk: If you have positive cashflow, everything’s good, you had a good year, you increased your savings, but you’re able to put more into that 401(k) for these last couple months of the year, Brent, that’s a great tip, and even if you don’t max, you’re going to save some money in taxes, which is just going to be positive.
Brent Pasqua: Keep more money in your back pocket.
Joshua Winterswyk: Exactly.
Brent Pasqua: Matthew, what are you going to be doing different over your personal financial plan this quarter?
Matthew Theal: So, I know last time I mentioned I increased my 401(k) contributions. I didn’t want to do it together. I wanted to spread it out, so now my wife’s going to increase her 401(k) contributions to the maximum amount, and then we’ll both be maxing out going forward, now that we’ve got used to my paycheck. That’s something I like to do for clients sometimes, is if neither spouse is maxing, max one spouse first and then the next spouse. So, we’re going to be following our own advice.
Joshua Winterswyk: Good stuff, Matt. I like that.
Matthew Theal: Thanks, Josh.
Joshua Winterswyk: I’ll go next here. I think I had mentioned this in the last, that I needed to get some life insurance going. I needed to do this for a while now. Actually, one of my advisors here, Matt Theal, kept pushing me, so I finally got my life insurance implemented. I used Ladder.com. No affiliation to them, just used them online, life insurance company, easy process, easy implementation, and now I got that check marked off for this quarter.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. You were about to get on an airplane, and you were like, “Hey, if something happens to me, take care of my family.” I was like, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. No, no, no. I knew I needed to do it. We’ve been talking about this with expecting a new baby, or my first child. I said, “I can’t be riding on airplanes without life insurance anymore. I need to take my own advice.” So, that’s implemented now.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. Smart move.
Matthew Theal: Probably driving a car, too. That’s actually more dangerous.
Joshua Winterswyk: You’re definitely right. The airplane, though, I think it’s just more of the effect.
Matthew Theal: I get it.
Joshua Winterswyk: It’s a little bit more dramatic.
Matthew Theal: I get it.
Brent Pasqua: The one that I’ll be doing is similar to some of the stuff that Matthew said, but it’s making contributions. I mean, this is a perfect time of year, whether it’s your 401(k) or retirement, or if you’re sitting on an after-tax brokerage account that you have, maybe this is a good time. Markets are down a little bit. They are down from where their all-time highs were in the beginning of September. Maybe be putting a little bit more money to your after-tax brokerage account, having that money invested. If you could rebalance, maybe thinking about rebalancing, and then the last one would be, as we get into this last part of the year, if you have some tax harvesting that you could do where you could sell some individual stocks or some positions that you bought earlier in the year, or before that, that are down, you could take a tax loss that way, so I would consider looking at your basis on those positions and seeing if you could actually sell them.
Joshua Winterswyk: With the little bit of a pullback, you might have losses there now too.
Brent Pasqua: Yep. You don’t have to stay out of market very long. You just invest it somewhere else.
Matthew Theal: Well said.
Brent Pasqua: All right. So, as we round out the way third quarter went, any final parting thoughts on the third quarter?
Matthew Theal: It was a good quarter, actually, I thought. As someone who’s been in this industry for a long time, I never like to see markets get too hot and run away, and it was really nice to see a pause. I know everyone always isn’t going to be happy with that when they look at their statements on a quarterly basis, but it’s healthy for markets to pause, slow down, go down a little bit. That’s how we keep things in check, and we don’t end up in situations like we did in 1999 where everything’s going crazy.
Joshua Winterswyk: I’ll just piggyback on that. Yeah. It made things real again. I mean, we’ve just been in such a great growth phase, third quarter made the markets real. You can assess, start to plan a little bit more as well, so well said, Matt.
Brent Pasqua: Nobody likes to see their accounts down from their previous highs, but like you said, it gives opportunity. Also, things go on sale, make contributions, add more money. Buy some things while they go on sale and take advantage of down markets. All right. Let’s get into the final segment of the show. Let’s get into RPA Recommends. Matthew, why don’t you start us off with your recommend?
Matthew Theal: I have to give two today. They’re both Netflix shows, but they’re going to be for two different types of personalities, so it’s possible you might like both of them. The first one is… I haven’t finished either of these shows either, but they’re both really, really good shows. I’m halfway through both of them, and so I’m just going to recommend them.
Joshua Winterswyk: Whoa. This is way too early for you to be recommending shows you haven’t finished.
Matthew Theal: The first one is the hit global phenomenon, Squid Game.
Joshua Winterswyk: Don’t tell me.
Matthew Theal: I’m sure you all have heard about it. It’s a wild show. My recommends on it is to watch it if you’re into gory, dark shows, and also, to not use the English dubbing, to actually read the subtitles and watch it in Korean.
Joshua Winterswyk: I have a question on that show, though, before I… How long is it?
Matthew Theal: How many seasons?
Joshua Winterswyk: No, how many episodes? Is it like a weekend watch? Is it going to take you a little bit more time?
Matthew Theal: No, it’s not a weekend watch. So, if you do the English dubbing, you could probably get through it pretty fast, but because we’re doing the translation where you have to read the subtitles, I could only watch one show in a night.
Joshua Winterswyk: Got it. Okay.
Matthew Theal: Because I don’t want to sit around and have to read the show the whole time.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:26:51].
Matthew Theal: Really good show. Brent, that one’s probably not for you, though.
Brent Pasqua: No. I already toned out.
Matthew Theal: Yeah, I could tell. So, I have one for you. It might be a little bit better. This is a really good show. It’s going to hit close to home for a lot of people where the Squid Game won’t. It really opened my eyes to a lot of things, but it’s a show called Maid, and it’s about a young woman who’s in an abusive relationship with a little daughter, and she leaves the abusive boyfriend or husband, and she gets a very low-income job working as a maid, and it’s about her being a maid and raising her daughter, really good show. It’s little intense, but it’s also heartwarming and opens your eyes, at least my eyes, so a side of the world I never see.
Joshua Winterswyk: Is that new, too?
Matthew Theal: It’s new, too. That might not even be on the service yet. I might have early access to that, but when it comes out, I highly recommend that one.
Joshua Winterswyk: Nice. Good rec of two shows then I’ll have to watch not on there. I’m actually going to talk about a recommends. In this office, a lot of people have been talking about my cellphone. I needed a new one for a while.
Brent Pasqua: Jeez.
Joshua Winterswyk: I finally got one. I’m really happy. I waited way too long, got my phone. One of the nicest things I got… I got the new iPhone. One of coolest things that I love about it is that they have the magnet wallet on the back. So, if you haven’t seen that, really cool feature, love it, and so I recommend if you need a new phone, the new one’s nice. Go get it.
Brent Pasqua: So, you’re not walking around with a broken phone anymore?
Joshua Winterswyk: No. No, no, no, no. It’s nice. I’m walking around with a fully-functional phone with a new case, new wallet case. I’m feeling pretty good about myself.
Brent Pasqua: Well, that’s good. At least you can see the stock market returns now on your phone.
Joshua Winterswyk: Yeah. I’m supporting my. Full disclosure, I do own Apple.
Brent Pasqua: I mean, at least it’s a fully operational phone this time.
Joshua Winterswyk: It is.
Brent Pasqua: Okay. So, my RPA Recommends, I actually got this for my wife because I figured I’d so something that’s not for me, and it’s a Pura smartphone fragrance diffuser set, and what it is is you plug these diffusers into your walls in your house, but they have holiday scents. So, if it’s, obviously, Halloween time, you can create sort of a harvest smell, and they’re actually safe for kids, and it’s safe for pets. Instead of burning a candle, it’s actually a diffuser set, and you actually can have an app for it on your phone, so you basically control when it’s actually active and it’s going off. It actually gives that holiday vibe for your house without having to actually light a candle.
Matthew Theal: And you can use an app to essentially make it work?
Brent Pasqua: There’s an app for everything.
Matthew Theal: Here’s a good business idea. If there’s a product you’re using in your life and there’s not an app, make the product and have someone build you an app, and now you have the new thing that everyone’s going to recommend.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. I don’t even know how to control all the apps on my phone anymore because they’re just out of control.
Joshua Winterswyk: What was the name of the diffuser again?
Brent Pasqua: Pura.
Joshua Winterswyk: Pura.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah, so very useful.
Joshua Winterswyk: That’s cool.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah. It’s very useful and-
Joshua Winterswyk: Sounds like a good gift idea, for sure.
Brent Pasqua: Yeah, absolutely. All right. So, as advisors, we love helping people. That’s why we do it. If you’d like more information or to schedule an appointment, please go to rpawealth.com. You can schedule your complimentary consultation right on there, or you can also download our eBook at our website. If you’d like the show notes, please go to retirementplanplaybook.com. As always, thanks for listening.
Matthew Theal: Thank you.
Joshua Winterswyk: Thank you.
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