Ep: 89: Should You Be Buying A House Right Now?

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THE X'S & O'S

The state of the housing market continues to evolve, but one question Americans keep asking themselves remains constant: Should I be selling or buying a home right now?

In this episode, RPA Wealth delves into the state of the housing market in California and how interest rates are affecting it. The episode begins with an overview of the current state of the housing market and a discussion about what is contributing to the high demand for housing.

Matthew, Brent, and Joshua discuss:

  • How to find out if right now is a good time to be buying or selling your house

  • What some Californians have been doing in response to the housing market and interest rates

  • Why they think a “credit crunch” could be foreseeable for the American population

  • Strategies to avoid making the mistake of settling for the wrong house

  • And more

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Transcript

Welcome to The Retirement Plan Playbook with Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk from RPA Wealth Management. In this podcast, we cover current events, retirement planning strategies. And provide you with the tools to help you build a successful retirement playbook in any political or financial landscape.

Join Brent, Matthew and Joshua as they navigate the issues that can make the later stages of your retirement plan challenging and help you create the best Retirement Plan Playbook. Now let's get to the show.

Well, welcome in the Retirement Plan Playbook. I'm your host, Brent Pasqua. I'm the founder of RPA Wealth Management. I'm here with Matthew Theal, who is a certified financial planner and Joshua Winterswyk, certified financial planner. Today we're gonna talk about buying a house, whether your younger, older, retired, looking to retire, you know, what does a housing market look like right now?

Um, obviously with interest rates rising so rapidly, Uh, I think a lot of people's first thought was with interest rates going up, the housing market would fall very quickly. You know, in a lot of people's mind, they thought maybe the mark, the housing market might fall 20 or 30% this year. That hasn't happened.

The rates are, exceptionally higher. So we'll talk about a little bit about is it a good time to buy or not? Why don't you give us your thoughts? Yeah, I'm just gonna come out and say it. It's an awful time to buy a house right now. There probably hasn't been a worse time in the last 25 years to purchase a house than right now.

Uh, I do think there's, you know, groups of people that could make the argument that right now is a, good time to buy a house because their time, their time period perspective is gonna be long enough. But in general, you know, for everyday people, for speculation. Or if you're trying to move or you don't really need to buy a house and you want to do it because you think it's what you're supposed to do as a person, it's never been a worse time to do it.

Uh, I have a lot of reasons why I will just, you know, just throwing that out there. But I guess then when is the right time? Because what would happen next year that makes it a better time to buy? I, so I, I think you gotta take a look at what's going on in the economy right now, and. Number one, we're having bank failures, right?

Because interest rates have gone up so much. And Josh, uh, just to, kind of pull you in. What, what's that stat, what's the average payment gone up to? Because, because I know housing prices have slightly declined on a year over year basis. Uh, I don't think it's been a big decline, but they have gone down.

But what's the, the average payment gone up? The average payment has gone up 93. So the average housing payments increase by 93%, but housing prices are slightly down to flat. Yes. So that means you could probably afford a lot less house than you could afford from most of the 2010s. Mm-hmm. All because interest rates have gone up.

That's correct. And, and prices haven't gone down. I think that's what makes this time so unique. It makes it a bad time. I'm gonna play a little bit of devils advocate here about buying a home, but. Well, that's why it makes it more unique is because you would assume with housing or with housing and prices, interest rates going up, there would be a larger adjustment to actual housing prices, and it's only down about 13%.

We still have a lot of clients that are selling their home in California as they've sort of transitioned to retirement, or they're getting closer, or they've been in retirement for a few years where they've still been able to sell their home. Right. And then they go to another state and buy a new build for full cash.

They just put a cash off and say, sell their home and they pay cash for their home. And they're in a great position to live comfortably and in a brand new home where they've been living in their home for 20 plus years. Yeah. That's awesome. That's an, that's one of the, um, categories of people. I think it makes sense for.

Sell your home in California for a million bucks. You know, maybe you have all that million inequity, maybe you have 800, whatever it is, you go buy a new build. Florida, Nevada, Arizona. You know, wherever it is you wanna live, um, you punt and you don't take a loan. But that situation has to be, I mean, right for you.

You know, if you're in California, you would assume though, maybe you have kids in California, family in California, like that strategy isn't right for every. And maybe if it is, you know, you're more looking to downsize or just move to a different location now that you're, in retirement, you know that option isn't there for you.

It's a great way though, to position yourself it, if it does make sense for you, because if you've been living in your house for that long, chances are, unless you've been doing a lot of upgrades or upkeep to your house, that the house is probably in a position where it needs. Fixing and right now, I mean, that's really expensive to come by.

I mean, cost of construction hasn't gone dime down very much. We're experiencing that as we work on the office in Claremont, so the cost is still really high. But if let's say, you know, you retired at 65 and you can get into a brand new house, that house is gonna be set for you for the rest of your life.

Yeah, it makes a ton of sense for someone who. Trade their California home and get to a lower cost state to absolutely do that and not take a, take a loan out. But if you have to take a loan out right now, um, like Josh said on the payment side, there's never been a worse time to do it. I mean, even taking a 250 or $300,000 loan out is gonna cost you probably three to four grand a month all in.

Right. So let's say you were thinking about selling your home in California and then buying a new build in California. And let's say you owed, 300,000 on your existing home and you were gonna have to get a new loan on, on the new build for 300,000, even if it was an even swap, your payment's gonna go up tremendously.

Yes, depending on where your rate was. I mean, if you got the lowest rate possible, like Josh, it's up 96% and I feel like most people refi in the last three to five years. Yeah. So they have low rates. Yes. Is the no-brainer move to refi? Yeah. I think 90% of like mortgages are, are under the current rate right now.

You're seeing, you know, almost everybody has a rate around three or 4%, not at the new five, six, 7%. So it's not a like to like switch, right? So that new house is gonna cost you a lot more. Yes. Yeah. Interest rates have gone up so much that you can, if you have enough money, if you have, you know, half a million a million bucks in cash, um, you know, not everybody has, that's, that's a lot of money.

I don't wanna come off as tone death, but if, if you have that, you could buy a US treasury bond right now and set up, set up a bond portfolio, they'll just pay your mortgage for you. If you're under, three and a half percent mm-hmm. You could completely arb your mortgage. You could if you did have that cash.

Yeah, it's crazy. So if you want to be in a position to sell your house and buy a new house and you're going to need a a loan, when are you thinking about doing that? Are you thinking year two, three years? I mean, how long are you gonna wait? Well, so that's one of the reasons why I think it's a really bad time right now is, um, you know, I'm not a mortgage professional, but everything going on in the banking industry seems to lead that there's gonna be a massive contraction and credit handed.

And what they call that as a credit crunch. And essentially that means it's gonna be very, very difficult for people to get loans. And as credit leaves the economy, the economy's gonna slow and we're gonna have a recession. And what's gonna happen is if you aren't a top tier, Candidate for a home, right?

Like, uh, what, what do they call it, Josh, on the lending side? I, I won't call it like aaa, but yeah, like a tier one, like a, a tier one candidate. Mm-hmm. Tons of cash, high income, easily can make the house payment. Yeah. You're, you're, you're the highest qualified applicant, right? You're probably not gonna get approved for a loan.

And it's probably gonna take at least a year or two for this kind of credit current situation to sort itself out. So you, you're meaning they will literally not get approved or they're just gonna have to pay a much higher rate to get approved? It's gonna be very hard to get approved. I, I, I kind of disagree here and the only reason why I say that is because like even new build builders right now have some inventory.

And they're making concessions on their own rate when they do their own financing to get people into these homes. Just think some of that will normalize. Uh, I do believe that with a credit crunch, it's gonna be harder, right? You can't have poor credit. You can't have no money down. You know, with all these programs that are out there and everyone's able to buy a home like it was, you know, three years ago, I definitely think that that.

Is changing. So you're gonna have to do a lot of more homework and work on yourself and your financial situation to qualify. But I also don't think that it's gonna be, you know, slim Pickens and they're gonna be only handing out mortgages to certain people. So I bought, uh, my, I bought my house during 2020.

There's a Monique credit crunch going on during 2020 cuz of obviously coronavirus housing prices were going up, which made it easy to buy a home. But there was low inventory and lenders had very high standard. At that time for us to get approved for a loan we needed, you couldn't buy a house unless you're putting down 20%.

No one would, no one would write you a loan. It depends on the price point though. That's true. Cause it was jumbo. Yeah. Everything, everything is jumbo in California. Yeah. But jumbo rates are in, conform rates are also going up. I, I just wanna make sure the listener knows that depending on the price point, that could not be as applicable to them.

True. But we also had to have 12 months of our payment in cash. So you had to have 20% down. Plus 12 months of whatever your monthly payment was gonna be in cash. So if your payment's fi five grand, it's 12 times five. You need to have in a bank account somewhere plus the 20% down. Yeah. They call it reserves.

Yes. Yeah, the reserve, the reserves were high. So really what I'm saying, it's a bad time to buy. Like if you don't need to buy a house right now wait it out. When do you wait it out till. Until you could afford what you want. I think that that's, that's the point I'm looking at is like when I look at buying houses, and I agree right now, it's just such a volatile time with the banking crisis and rates going up, we actually don't know what's gonna happen with rates.

Right? Like the Federal Reserve was pretty dovish. We only had a 25 basis point hike like, what's happened next? So if you are looking right now and jumping into a situation, there's just so many like variables that we can't really solve for or. It. It's difficult, but I also think that like if you've been prepping and you can't afford it, you're gonna stay in that home for 10 years.

You can get approved. Right? You're happy about being in that home. You're stable professionally and financially. Like when's the best time to buy a house? You know when you're ready. Yeah. Yeah. Brenda, I guess talk to the listeners a little bit about why we made the decision to buy this office. Right?

Because on paper it probably didn't look like a great time. Right. You know, we're in the industry, we, we kind of see the trends going on in commercial real estate. But I, I feel like this was the perfect office for us. Right? Yeah. So I guess, you know, when you think about it, a lot of what you're hearing right now is that commercial real estate's probably what the next domino to.

Absolutely. So we could have probably been buying right at the peak. And we knew it probably didn't make a ton of sense from a number standpoint. The way we were able to gauge it was we knew that we needed more space. So that was most important. Price per square foot and leasing office space is very expensive.

And when we started calculating out what our payment would be, our payment versus when leasing would be very similar to if we had purchas. Um, even though we know rates were still pretty high, we obviously knew the calculation and we, you know, there's a tax deduction from owning. So that was a major factor when looking at, but the biggest factor to all of that was, What did the property actually mean to the business?

How much benefit did we get from it just being a property that we're able to operate from by? We have visibility now. We have a spot where we can tra be planted for a long period of time. We're in an area that we wanted to be in for a very long time. We have a lot more things that we can do with clients in this space.

So from a business perspective, it brought a lot of value to us, and I think that's what you're talking about for individuals when you're thinking about them buying a. You know, maybe it is that new area. Maybe it is more expensive, but it's the area closer to their grand. Or it's in an area where they want to actually be in, or maybe it's near the beach where they've always wanted to be or they worked hard in, there's more value to it than just about the money factor.

Absolutely. It's happiness, right? It's almost just instability in, in planting your seeds like you're saying. Um, and I think that, you know, with rates being so volatile and like Matt had mentioned, and this is making this such a difficult time, but you're still always gonna date the rate. Right.

We've had Kelly on that said date, the rate, you know, by the home, and that's still pretty applicable to her, right? Yeah, you can always refi out of it. I, I guess so too. What people need to, to realize is you might not be able to afford what you thought you could afford. Absolutely. And, and that's gonna be tough.

So the, the other way to look at it is to think of these next five years as if you really gotta get into property. If you want to maybe improve your life or you need an extra bedroom because you had a new kid buy something that you could, Just kind of step up to, and you don't have to get the Dream House today, buy the Dream house five years from now, six years from now.

Josh talk, talk to us about how you used your condo, then you moved to Claremont, and, and how that worked out for you. Yeah, and, and just my personal story, you know, that it's that stepping stone approach where, you know, my first home when I bought it wasn't a home, it was actually a condo and it was very affordable.

I ran the, you know, my. Finances made sure I was in line with all of our normal affordability rules of thumb to where I knew, and that I could not only still save, but I could also, you know, enjoy life and not be housebroken. And what that essentially did was El elevate me into our new home and I built some equity in there.

And, you know, this is obviously a common strategy that Americans use, um, but I think what I've learned is it's very, I. To really understanding all of the cost when it comes to these types of mortgage transactions, and even when you're stepping up to a bigger property and still maintaining within. Like your affordability ratios.

I don't think enough people, when you go into this situation or with housing, they just go into the mortgage, um, broker's office and say, how much mortgage can I afford? And you know, they're gonna give you the max amount you can afford without actually understanding like relative to your income and the rest of your financial.

Of really how much is affordable to you. I think that's just my advice through this is like you really have to do your homework if you're gonna go into the biggest financial decision you're ever gonna make, whether if it's in retirement or even if you're just starting out and really understanding that affordability ratio for yourself.

Yeah, for sure. And the, you know, you make a great point cause like the realtor doesn't have your, No, not at all. They're gonna tell you to buy the most expensive property out there, and you'd hope, and, and I, I shouldn't say not at all. You would hope that they have, some sort of thought with, within your like own financial situation to give you good advice about affordability.

But what, like, we've seen a lot of realtors don't. Yeah. Like they, you know, they get paid on commission. The bigger, the bigger you buy, the more they get paid. I think too, uh, one problem that people can lead into is if you're in the market to buy a home you're always then looking for what's coming on the market.

And at that point, like sometimes that perfect property doesn't come on the market and you just end up settling for a property that you're gonna live in for the next 10 years, and you literally just. But if you're prepared right now in this type of market to jump on something, you're like you said, do you want the ultimate happiness at the end of the day?

Like you gotta be looking for a long time to find and know exactly what you want, because the realtors may talk you into a property. You may not find exactly what you're looking for, cuz there's not a lot of inventory. Sure. And then you're settling and you probably, that's the worst thing I think you could probably end up doing.

That's a great point. Yeah. You do not want to settle because we talked about it. You gotta stay in the home for 10 years for it to actually be worth it for you to purchase. So if you're not doing that and you're not completely happy with this next decision, like you're gonna regret it and you're gonna, it's a bad financial decision and a kid sets you.

Yeah. And to add to that point, you know, make sure you are on like a Redfin or a Zillow and you're getting the, you set up those daily emails based on what you're looking for in your dream house. And the one thing I learned a lot when my wife and I were looking for our house is like size matters. And there's a really big difference between like a 1200 square foot home up to like, just adding that extra 500 square feet to get it like to 17 or 1750.

It feels like a completely different home. So that's, that'll just come with experience as you're looking on Redfin or Zillow. And like, you know, some people who are listening to this who are retirees actually might want to go the other way. They might. Two, 3000 square foot home right now where they want to drop it down to somewhere around the 15 to 17 range cuz they don't need all the space now that the kids are all gone.

I guess what I don't understand though, is if housing prices just absolutely skyrocketed during covid and the demand was just through the roof and prices still haven't came down very much. But now rates are that much higher, like you talked about, where payments are 90 plus percent higher than before.

Mm-hmm. Like what something has to give because who can afford all this? Like at what point does housing prices come down or rates come down? Something has to give. Well, housing, nobody can get it. Yeah. Housing prices have bend a little bit but have not broken because it was a. Seller's market and now you're seeing, sellers making concessions, upgrading houses.

It wasn't just like I put my house on the market and it sold the next day. Like that is not the market we're in anymore. But I think that like going forward, that's going to change. We already see it. It's changed a little bit. There has been a 14% drop in the housing, prices. But you're right, Brent, that's my concern is which one of these things is gonna break, not just.

Or just is what Matt says is no, very few people are gonna qualify. Right? And then what happens? I mean, inventory's just so low. I mean, anything that's a rare asset, the price isn't gonna drop that much if there's not a lot of it available for sale. Right? So that's really probably why housing hasn't dropped.

I mean, there's areas you know, let's look at, let's pick on Texas a little bit. Like, the Texas real estate market isn't doing that good. I believe it's down double, double digits from its. Well, they also had more growth in our area. Right, right. But I mean, they're building houses left and right in Texas, so they, they don't have a supply issue there.

Yeah. It depends on the area. Right, exactly. I think that I get a lot, I get a lot of this too, like at, family parties and friends parties of like, when's the, when's the housing working gonna crash? But like in our area, I mean, there's a scenario where it doesn't, it doesn't, and you know, you could be waiting a very long time.

You've already been. Right and, and hasn't crashed. And even with this, if rates come down, we can be in a scenario where, you know, 14% drop in is the largest drop we ever we're gonna see for the next five, 10 years. So let's say you sold your property during Covid, you took your cash, you're sitting on your cash and a savings account with a decent interest rate, and you're waiting to go buy the perfect home.

You're renting right now is, is there a time? What do you do at that point? Keep renting. Keep looking and keep renting, or you're just renting. I would just keep renting. I mean, from an affordability standpoint, like you made your trade, now you gotta, sit through it. I keep looking. Me too. I, I would keep looking, I would keep renting.

And I don't think that there is anything wrong with renting as long as you're still able to live the life you want and you're still able to save. I will say that, but I would say you always should be looking if you're, if you have the goal that you want to eventually buy again. Yeah. Right. I mean, um, you never know.

You know when that perfect home is gonna come on the market. Yeah. I, I'm on your track. I would, I would keep rent. And I would be looking, I would be month to month on my rent. Mm-hmm. And then I would be looking for that perfect home to come on the market. Mm-hmm. And just be ready to jump when it happened.

And you actually could end up liking renting. I know there's like a lot of bad stigma about like renting, but like look, you have no maintenance. It's probably cheaper than your overall cost of like having a mortgage and having a home. And like if you wanted to move tomorrow or next year, you could without like the thought of, I'm gonna lose on this real estate transaction or deal.

Right. It gives you some flexibility. So I don't want to completely. Like renting either, like I, I agree. Renting's great. I do, you know how many lists of projects I have to do at my house that I'm not doing? Cuz they cost multiples thousand like a, like a thousand dollars here, a thousand dollars here, that adds up.

And then it makes me mad. Yes. Like, you know, like right now I need some landscaping down in my backyard. I keep looking at my backyard and I'm like, Pissed off. Like, oh, she was just done. Yeah, you gotta just do it. I know. I gotta do it. I wouldn't do it before a summer. We have a lots of contacts for you. I know.

I gotta do it before the summer. You, Matt, you, one last question on this. You looked at a lot of houses during Covid, so many, and then you settled on one. Did you buy the perfect house or did you just settle with what you could get at that time? so that's a good question. Um, we saw a lot of houses and I actually think we got a really good house for us.

Like we, we definitely didn't settle. There was homes we looked at where if we bought, we would've been settling. But our house, our house is permanent at 1750, but it's really a above 2000 square feet. It has a backyard. My daughter complain. You know, we locked in a low mortgage rate there.

There's ways to improve the property. So it's not like it's the perfect property, but, you know, you could remodel things here and there and make it your own. And it wasn't like a freshly flipped property, which was really big during covid. A lot of people were, were flipping homes, putting 'em on the market, five months later, six months later.

And, you know, those all look pretty generic. Um, and they all have a lot of flaw. Right. And you guys put a lot of offers on our properties and then finally hit on one, right? Yeah, we put multiple offers on a lot of properties and you know, I'm happy we're in a good neighborhood. There's tons of kids. Um, it's gonna be a good spot to raise my daughter.

And you know, if not, we probably bought close enough to LA where we could always trade down and come, more this way along the tuan, closer to Claremont and it'll be a, an easier trade for us. Kind of like how like a retiree could trade down, like we could also trade. For summary for me, I think when I think about the housing market and where it's at right now, at least for, for this time period, I think if you're retiring or retired and you're looking to get a brand new house, you don't have a mortgage on your property, on your current house, or maybe it's a low and you can go in all cash on a new build or something newer.

I think right now is still a very good time. You're just looking out for the best and for the best property. I think if you are a person who's younger who's looking to buy a a property, I think you just have to have your eyes open. Right now, you're looking for the perfect property. It has to make the most sense that you're gonna be happy, like you said, for the next 10 years.

Mm-hmm. And I think if you're renting you're doing the same thing. You're looking for the perfect property, but you're comfortable renting month to month and just waiting this out and see what happens. Yep. And continue to save with your last two, great summary, but the last two, you know, continue to save, take advantage of some higher cash management tools and, great summary.

I think it's wrapped up great. Any, any final thoughts on the housing market, Matt? No. I mean, now's the time where before you even reach out to a realtor, you should be probably just reaching out to a lender and, and getting an honest take on what you can get. Cuz the lender, at the end of the day, they're most likely not gonna tell you something that they can't get approved to, you can't get approved for, and this is gonna be the most important.

That's the, what's most important right now, is actually getting the loan if you need it, and talking to your financial. Yeah, cuz then they'll tell you if what the lender's telling you you could actually afford. Yep. Let's get into some headlines. I feel like the last month has been the best headlines we've had since we've had the podcast.

I mean, there's just so many headlines to pick from. Why don't you give us some of what the headlines are right now? Yeah, so I guess we'll start with the big one. Fed meeting last week, they raised interest rates, uh, 0.25% new, higher range of five. Um, like we said on the last podcast you know, with this banking crisis, the Fed has their back to the wall.

6% inflation is not good. Banking crisis is not good. What do they do? They chose to keep raising rates. Banking crisis is most likely here to stay. One thing they did do is they hinted that it might be their last hike. So we might be done with interest rates raising going higher.

That said there's gonna be a massive contraction of credit and like, I feel like we've been sitting around waiting for this recession to start. We've been talking about it since early last year. I think our first podcast goes back, preparing for the recession and what to do if you're retired during the recession.

Right? Like we've been talking about for a long time. We have. If, if you're a retiree, go listen to those episodes, cuz our session. The crisis is here. Yeah, and I think that, drone Powell's comments were, were very, you know, dovish and he came out and said that banking concerns shouldn't be as great as they're making them out to see.

Like the banking industry is still pretty strong. So we'll see how this turns out over the next few weeks through this crisis in these headlines. So good to go back to your point. Brent, though, too lot of headlines. So much news to decompress right now. It's like making me go. It's fun. It doesn't feel like the banking crisis is over.

It feels like it's just beginning. It, it doesn't feel like silicone Valley Bank was the start and the end. It feels like these dominoes are just gonna keep happening. They're trying to figure out what the contagion really is, right? If some of these banks overlap, and I think that we'll obviously know more in the next few weeks.

We'll also know more, you know, the next time the Federal Reserve meeting happens. Also, my feeling in my opinion is if we're looking at some optimism, is this could be somewhat of like the beginning of the end. We were in this kind of rut, in this type of economy for a long time. I'm waiting for something to change.

Um, and this could be the event that that changes. Oh, see, I completely disagree. These are regulators. They're just gonna kick the can down the road just like they did in 2008. They're just gonna change the rules. Keep kicking the can down the road. And it'll go on. I don't think so. For how long? Um, until it doesn't work anymore.

No, I think we're kind of talking about two different things though. Oh, okay. You know, just economic cycle, right? Like we, we've been trending down. Right. This is the event that maybe like propels us. I mean, market returns all poor last year. Yes. We've had some recovery since October. But like in, as an investor looking forward, like is this finally an event?

Is gonna bring some like recovery and growth. Oh yeah, absolutely. And you've, you've actually already seen it in the market. You know, tech stocks have been leading, I think the NASDAQ's up like 12, 15, 17, 1 of these double digits per cents this year, so, so positive there. But it sounds like you have a bad taste in your mouth right now with, uh, banking and, and regulators.

Yeah. Yeah. The other headline that's in the news right now, it's, and I'm glad it's coming up because it's an issue that we've met. Handful of high income earners that have recently graduated college, and they're all not making payments on their student loans. And to, for us, like, we're, we're used to making payments on our debt.

Mm-hmm. How is this happening? How is this possible? How are they not making payments? Well, I mean, they're in deferral still and they keep extending that deferral for all of these student loans. And this is a slippery slope. I mean, you can get really used to not making a three, 400, $500 payment. On the opposite side.

They could be a little bit more optimistic. And Matt, I'll let you be like the pessimist on this, but. We saw through Covid and even the deferment of all of these student loans, like Americans, financial situations got better, right? So like credit card debt was paid down, savings accounts went up.

Um, so hopefully people with student loans weren't just spending all of this money and not prepared if these payments are, when they do start back up, of course they've been spending that money, but not all of them. I mean, cuz again, financial situations didn't get worse through, through Covid for the majority of Americans.

Now you see all those Teslas on the. That's a student loan payment right there. Yeah. I, I don't know many people who are having to hold back their payment and then sitting it into another savings account. Where it's just sitting there for when their payments have to start. I know we tell our clients to do that cuz I do it.

You're a good planner, Josh. So you tell your clients to do that? Yeah, we may tell them to do that, but they're not recommended. They're not doing it. Yeah. I'd, I'd hope there's more. I'm, I'm just being more optimistic with this situation, but like Matt and I have talked about it in this office of like, you wanna slow down demand, make everyone pay their student loans again.

Yeah. It's the, that's what I don't get. So, all right. Student loans is tricky, right? Because people who have student loans are like really fired up. And so you can't really say anything right or wrong. Like there's no a really a no win situation here, right? But if you have a student loan, there's only 14% of the population that does.

So it's a really small piece of the overall, American population. You know, at, at the end of the day, we probably don't need to forgive them. Um, let's stop it for another day. That, that's what I wanted to know there. Real quick. Are we just gonna get to the point where the, they say, you haven't been making your payment for so long, we're just forgiving the home loan.

Well, that's what they're trying to do. So that's what they're fighting about. Then SoFi Su the Biden administration. But here's what I don't get about the current administration that's in office and, and the party, the Democratic party who's really fighting. Like Josh hinted at, this is a very inflationary policy cuz I guarantee the people who aren't paying the 4, 500, 600, $800 on their student loan are going out and spending that monthly.

Uh, maybe even more. They are or they aren't? They are, yeah. And most likely, because inflation's still stubbornly high, there's an low election next year and he's the Biden and the Democrats are gonna lose the office because inflation's so high and all they have to do to probably kick inflation. Is turn, turn student loan payments back on, like they're 14% of the people are gonna be upset.

Okay? You know there that's 85% of people who are gonna be like, okay, good. Inflation's slowing down. I'm happy. I don't understand how you're gonna be upset if you have to make a payment on something you owe on, because pe this is a very entitled generation. But it's also very, this is a big political topic, right?

We know that it is, but I think indirectly to thinking about this, if the student or just outta college now has to make that payment, they have less discretionary income or they don't have enough income to even make their bills, then who's like, who are they gonna go to for more money? Mom and dad. Okay.

That's less discretionary income than for mom and. Can I get a pause on my mortgage payment? Me too. Yeah, you can actually, you still apply for it. They still got all those covid hardship rules in place. Is that why I get these emails and text messages all day long? Of these, I, I think they must be scam. Is that what they are?

There's like constantly just phishing texts and emails. Oh, yeah. I, I get weird text messages like, do you still own this property on fifth Street that I don't have no clue. Like, text me back, I'll, I'll sell it. All right. Well based on the numbers of student loans, I'm sure we've anchored like 14% of our listeners.

So, um, let's move on. Let's talk about crypto real quick. Tell us about crypto man. Um, so it's Matt's corner, Matt. No thanks. You know, it's looking more and more like the government's coming down on crypto. Coinbase was issued a Wells notice by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Both sides are gearing up for a pretty big legal battle there.

And then I, I just thought it was funny on the same day that the s e C delivered the wells known to Coinbase, they also slapped a bunch of fines for people for I would call them influencing crypto prices or promoting, uh, Lindsey Lohan was one and then a couple rappers. I don't really know who they are cause I don't listen to a lot of rap music.

Lil Yachty. Yeah. I think he was part of that. Right. I don't know who that is. But I just thought it was funny. Seems like everything's unraveling in crypto world though. Bitcoin is going higher because hey, there's a banking crisis and that's what Bitcoin is supposed to, you know, be a store wealth. And then actually though, I mean, we have seen a little increase right?

From Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. Crypto's going up right now. Have you checked in on your NFTs too? No, I haven't. What a great headline though. Coinbase and Lindsay Lohan and just group all of those together. Yeah, I, I, I'm not sure what's gonna happen long term in crypto, but it seems like the US government's on its way to banning it.

And I also think they're like, again, kind of too late, right? Like they're finally coming in and being like, we're gonna regulate after it blew up. Right? But they want deregulation and all these people who want deregulation lost all their money. So now they want regulation again, and then they're gonna be mad when they regulate it.

Then what purpose does it have? Yeah. I I have no idea. I, I don't, maybe I don't understand the world we live in anymore. No. People just want what's best for 'em. Yeah. All right. Let's get into something also fun. Uh, Matt, you have a RPA recommends for us. I have a, not a recommend I, Ooh. So if you ever shopped at Lululemon online, you probably have gotten retargeted by a company called Bird.

Ooh. Ooh. And I, I bought their pants. They're like khaki pants. Maybe you got retargeted because I was sending you their ads just to mess with you. And then you got retargeted for like the next like three months. Yeah, well, Josh sends me the electric Volvo, so now they retarget me too. Yeah, they just wanna send game We have going outta the office.

Yeah, we do. I'm like, stop sending me now. They're gonna retarget me. And I just put, I'm sending this to you for retargeting purposes. Oh man. So these bird dogs, I tried 'em out. I think they're like $98. Like it was an attractive price point. Um, but they're basically just like a pair of dockers, and that's expensive.

Uh, that's not cheap. Dockers, like Mervin stalkers. Yeah, they're basically stock. I know everything's more expensive. Inflation's high, but like still a hundred bucks for a pair of pants isn't cheap. So they were like fitted dockers and I was really disappointed. I, I don't like to leave reviews. I never leave reviews, but I kind of wanted to leave a review on their website just so people know to stay clear.

But the worst part about 'em, um, like the fit was good. Um, the material's okay, but they wrinkle and you can't be like advertising and competing against Lululemon if your closed. Full disclosure though. You're a big Lulu guy. I like Lululemon. Yeah, I think they're good. So not a rec. So mine is a not recommend, stay away from bird dogs, just buy like Lululemon or something.

I see so many ads on them on social media. So that is a good, uh, good knot. Recommend. There's a lot of social media companies now. I mean, that's where they've gotten their fame's just by advertising on social media and you just don't know if it's good or garbage. Yeah, it's hard to. Yeah, it is. You know, a lot of those companies would've disappeared if they let the uninsured depositors at Silicon Valley Bank fail.

What do you have for us? I'm gonna recommend a Twitter account. And it's car dealership guy. That's interesting. Have you guys ever heard of him? I've seen him retweeted before in my timeline. Yeah, he's really good. I'm gonna give a big shout out to him. He basically like tweets every day about the car industry.

So like what's happening with used car sales, um, new car sales dealerships. And if you're in the market to like buy a car and you kind of want to know like the pulse of the. He gives some really, really good information. I think he even has like a newsletter that you can sign up for and he gives you some good data.

So if you're on Twitter, and I think he might be on Instagram too, but car dealership guy, especially if you're just kind of interested in the car market or looking to purchase or sell. Really good, follow really good information. If he does listen, this is your, your plug. Go follow him. I'll, I'll give him a follow.

That sounds good. He's. Uh, my recommend is, I don't know if I've done this yet, but it's probably been a while if I did would be a clothing line called public rec. So following the clothing line that you're following, you had to stay away from I have a go-to one. Public rec is actually a really nice material clothing.

I've actually found it to be very comfortable and it's not like a lot of the Instagram or social media brands where you get it and you're really disappointed. I've got it and I'm like, you know what? This is actually pretty. It's at a very good price point, and it's not the same as just wearing a lulu or something that's mainstream.

It's actually something that's a good golf brand, good outing brand, good hiking brand, whatever. But it's not the same as, you know, everything else that's kind of floating around out there. Yeah, they have really nice stuff. I've used it for great. For golf. Yeah, I like it too. I really like their joggers. I wear those often.

I know you guys like Veri. I'll just say, if I had to stay away, it's vei. It's just not for me. It's, it's, I don't believe that it's that high quality for that price point, but that's just, you know, my opinion. He had to take a shot at vior. Hey, I got a question for you. Let's get a little, little league question.

Let's, uh, so I remember when I was playing Little League, the best bats had were like east in, and I think they started putting BBS in them. Like, I don't know why they did that, but they're like east in BB bats. That's what all the kids were. Like what's the best bat right now? Like what are all the kids using?

There's a lot of brands, but Easton's probably still the top brand. Depends on what your league you're playing in. So Little League has certain requirements for bats. They're called USA certified, and then like if you're doing travel ball or you're doing other types of leagues, there's different levels of requirements for the bat.

So it probably is more geared towards what league you're playing in, is what the best bat is. But Easton is still, one of the, if not the top brand out there, but to go to give everyone up a, a cost of a really good bat. Like if you want a a, a higher end bat, it's the starting point's three 50. Wow.

Whoa. So they're not cheap and Wow. And when they're, your kids are grow. You know, their bats last them one year because they're growing so much, they need the bigger bat. Is there, is there a big resale market on the bats? Could you get like a used bat? I don't know. When we're done with our stuff, we, we tend to donate it, so I don't, I've never tried to resell it.

Well, uh, you should keep some of those bats for, for Matt and I when our kids start. Can you donate 'em to me? Yeah, I have where our donations will go then. Yeah, please. Geez. Three 50. That's ridiculous. All right, listen the show. Sorry guys. Uh, as advisors, we love helping people. Uh, if you have questions on buying a home or if you're thinking about retiring or transitioning please reach out to us@rpawealth.com on the website.

You can actually just go on there and schedule an appointment with any one of. Um, you can also grab our ebook from retirement, plan Playbook. You can download, it talks about retirement, which is also super helpful. Um, but if you'd like to schedule a meeting with us please go to rpa wealth.com.

Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you for listening to the Retirement Plan Playbook. Click the following button to be notified when new episodes become available. To get in touch with our. Call us at (909) 296-7977 or visit our website@www.rpawealth.com to schedule a complimentary consultation. The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of RPA Wealth Management.

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