Spoiler Alert: That Advice Might Be Bad
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #217
Spoiler Alert: That Advice Might Be Bad
What do you get when you combine two great hosts with financial wisdom? Our 2 Cents, of course! Today, we dive into how to spot and avoid unreliable online financial advice — plus, stick around for the ultimate guide to condiment storage. Listen in now using the link below!
- Quotes of the Month:
- “Money won’t make you happy…but everyone wants to find that out for themselves.” – Zig Ziglar
- “Money isn’t everything but it sure keeps you in touch with your children.” – J. Paul Getty
- Burned by Online Financial Advice:
- Don’t let bad online advice drain your wallet. Always double-check your sources and trust the experts who’ve got your back!
- Ketchup in the Fridge or Pantry?:
- Great meals start with the right condiments and knowing how to keep them fresh makes all the difference.
- Listener Questions:
- I’ve heard I should roll my 401(k) into an IRA for more investment options, but my 401(k) has been doing well lately. Why move it? – Kelly
- I counted up the mutual funds in my IRA, and it appears that I have 33 different funds. Is that adequate diversification? – Richard
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847.499.3330
Podcast Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Our 2 Cents, with the team from SGL Financial, Building Wealth for Life. Steve Lewit is the President of SGL Financial, and Gabriel Lewit is the CEO. They’re here to discuss all the latest and financial news trends, strategies, and more.
Gabriel Lewit: Welcome, everybody to Our 2 Cents for today. You’ve got Mr. Steven Lewit and Mr. Gabriel Lewit. Mr. Steve, say hello.
Steve Lewit: Hello, hello. I said two hellos.
Gabriel Lewit: The two hellos is okay.
Steve Lewit: It’s okay, okay.
Gabriel Lewit: And we hope you’re doing great out there. We hope you’re having a wonderful week, we hope you’re excited about today’s show. I think we’ve got some interesting tidbits to talk about and then a couple of things about target date funds, which is really going to be our main focus here for today, and I’m excited to get to dived… dived? To dive into all of these.
Steve Lewit: I’ve dived before.
Gabriel Lewit: Sometimes when you speak live, you realize you’re not saying things properly and you’ve got to go back and correct yourself.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s called sentence structure. Yeah. Where do you think the word tidbits came from?
Gabriel Lewit: Tidbits, I don’t know, but I use it.
Steve Lewit: Can we look that up, tidbit? Because I use it too, but I have no… it sounds very English.
Gabriel Lewit: Tidbits.
Steve Lewit: Hi, I have my tidbits today.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, I don’t know.
Steve Lewit: Let’s have tidbits for lunch.
Gabriel Lewit: It says origin, English.
Steve Lewit: Aha. You see?
Gabriel Lewit: Mid-17th century tidbit from the dialect of tender. I don’t know, some old English word. Tid meaning fond or tender, and bit meaning morsel.
Steve Lewit: Tender morsel.
Gabriel Lewit: Tender morsel. A little tidbit.
Steve Lewit: Folks, we have for you today, tender morsels.
Gabriel Lewit: Tender morsels of topics.
Steve Lewit: Of topics, yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Indeed.
Steve Lewit: Yes, indeed.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, somewhere along the way it got changed to mean little things like tender morsels.
Steve Lewit: Surely, surely, yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. All right, so yeah, to start off with a couple tidbits, tender morsels for you, we’ve got our Quotes of the Month, which I realize I don’t think we had done yet this month of June.
Steve Lewit: I thought we did, but I love it.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s almost late June.
Steve Lewit: I love quotes.
Gabriel Lewit: Wow.
Steve Lewit: It’s almost July 4th.
Gabriel Lewit: Yep, coming right up. And our first quote is the following from Zig Ziglar, who I always forget who he is.
Steve Lewit: He is one of the greatest sales trainers, ever.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, all right, he’s a sales trainer, okay.
Steve Lewit: Who’s a salesman.
Gabriel Lewit: So, his quote says, “Money won’t make you happy, but everybody wants to find that out for themselves.”
Steve Lewit: Right, so, yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we’ve all heard that phrase, right? We were just talking last week, I thought this was a timely one. If you heard last week’s episode, we were talking about psychology of money, and then I forgot about this quote. I meant to bring it up last week, yeah, but money won’t make you happy. Everybody has heard this before. Everybody even hears this from people that have money, although they always make fun of the people that have money because they say, “Yeah, it’s easy to say that money doesn’t make you happy when you’re already filthy rich.”
Steve Lewit: Well, and people say, “Money doesn’t make you happy, but I’d rather have it than not have it.”
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, exactly right. So this is such a complex topic, right? I mean, I just read something, I forget who it was. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was Simon Cowell talking about how-
Steve Lewit: From America’s-
Gabriel Lewit: He’s not as wealthy as people thought he was.
Steve Lewit: America’s Got Talent.
Gabriel Lewit: And that he’s realized he doesn’t need as much money to be happy, coming from someone that’s worth, apparently people thought he was a billionaire and he’s only worth like, I don’t know, I’m just making this up, but it was something like $500 million.
Steve Lewit: Yes, he’s quite wealthy, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: And he was saying, “Well, I’ve realized I don’t need all this much. I don’t need more money to be happy.”
Steve Lewit: Yeah, but it’s such a cliche. You have $500 million, so…
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, you don’t need money to be happy.
Steve Lewit: You don’t need more to be happy.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, you figured out the goalpost is okay to end that $500 million.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, most people would be happy with a million dollars. It’s like it’s such a cliche.
Gabriel Lewit: So, it’s interesting, yeah, going back to the quote, “Money won’t make you happy,” and I actually do to some levels believe that too much money doesn’t make you any happier. I mean, I have clients with a million dollars that seem just as happy as the one with $10 million or more happy or happier than the clients with more money.
Steve Lewit: Well, when you really get down to it, I mean, if you really get down to it, happiness has nothing to do with money.
Gabriel Lewit: To some extent,
Steve Lewit: It’s a headset.
Gabriel Lewit: Money impacts-
Steve Lewit: Well, maybe, maybe not.
Gabriel Lewit: … various things that could make you unhappy.
Steve Lewit: There are people that live in small villages in foreign countries and they’re really happy.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, yeah. So interesting, but yes, Zig Ziglar says, “Everybody wants to find that out for themselves.”
Steve Lewit: Yeah, well-
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, most people would rather get to the 500 million and then realize, okay, yeah, Simon was right. It didn’t really make me that much happier, but I’m still happy I have the 500 million.
Steve Lewit: You bet, you bet. Yeah. So I think what he’s saying is we’re always looking to tomorrow. Tomorrow’s going to be better than today. I’ll have more money in five years, I’ll be happier. And that’s not necessarily so.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah, there’s lots of quotes out there like this. The second one that I think is that I’ve got here is related to money also. Of course, they typically are because of our show, but this one’s from, I don’t know who he is either. I just find the quotes and then they don’t always tell you who the person is, so hopefully they’re normal people. J. Paul Getty?
Steve Lewit: J. Paul Getty is the guy who, very oil rich man that started Getty Oil.
Gabriel Lewit: You actually knew this?
Steve Lewit: Gabriel-
Gabriel Lewit: Without even looking it up, guys. He was saying this before we were even Googling it on the screen.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: American Petroleum industrialists. Look at you.
Steve Lewit: Yes. Now I-
Gabriel Lewit: That was very impressive, how fast you did that.
Steve Lewit: Listen, I know who Mickey Mantle is. I know who Fran Tarkenton is.
Gabriel Lewit: J. Paul Getty just came right out of the woodwork up there.
Steve Lewit: Well, in my years of acquisition of useless knowledge.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: That, he came into my awareness.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, J. Paul says, “Money isn’t everything, but it sure keeps you in touch with your children.”
Steve Lewit: Yeah, it does.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we had a couple topics a few weeks ago about how kids are living off the mom and dad income. Right?
Steve Lewit: Yes, yes.
Gabriel Lewit: And mom and dad are supporting the kids. So yes, money isn’t everything but it sure keeps you in touch with your children.
Steve Lewit: Well, imagine you have 500 or a billion. Well, he was a billionaire. Imagine you have all this money and your kids are loving you and loving you. Is there a little voice inside of you that says, “I wonder if they’re really loving me for me or they’re loving me because?”
Gabriel Lewit: Who knows?
Steve Lewit: I don’t know.
Gabriel Lewit: Who knows?
Steve Lewit: I don’t know.
Gabriel Lewit: But it sure keeps you in touch with them.
Steve Lewit: It sure does.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: Is that why you keep calling me?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, those are our tidbits, our morsels for you today.
Steve Lewit: I guess I’m not that wealthy.
Gabriel Lewit: And we are going to move on here. Right?
Steve Lewit: You hardly ever call me.
Gabriel Lewit: Hopefully you found those interesting. Now, we’re going to start off the rest of our show.
Steve Lewit: You should call me more often, make me feel like I’m wealthy.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, okay. I see you every day.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: All right, so the next part here is more of a simple light topic, but I think it was a few months ago we talked about how people were finding out their advice, finding their money, advice online on TikTok and things of that nature. And today, we’re not going to talk about the actual advice that they’re receiving, okay? But what we are going to say here is there was a study done by the CFP board. Now CFP is Certified Financial Planner board, of which I am a Certified Financial Planner. So I like to look at some of their research from time to time. And historically on that show, we were talking about how it’s a bad idea to get advice from TikTok, Reddit, online sources. Basically, just going online to find online advice can be very risky.
Steve Lewit: I’m paying attention. I’m listening to you and reading about this to get a-
Gabriel Lewit: I saw you dozing off over there.
Steve Lewit: No, no, I wasn’t dozing. I was looking for tender morsels.
Gabriel Lewit: When I’m talking for five minutes and you haven’t said anything, I realize there’s a problem.
Steve Lewit: I need tender morsel research time.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. So, do you remember that show when we were talking about that?
Steve Lewit: Yes, I do. Yes, yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, all right.
Steve Lewit: That was a great show.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m looking at you for some commentary here. Mr. Lewit.
Steve Lewit: Well, there was some interesting data here that my attention got caught on that tender morsel, about 48%.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s 57%.
Steve Lewit: Oh, 57%.
Gabriel Lewit: 57% of people that were surveyed by the CFP board said they made decisions based on bad online financial advice and regret it.
Steve Lewit: Well, look, you have to understand, why are people giving online advice? What is their end goal?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we talked about this. It’s clicks and views and followers.
Steve Lewit: It is, it is.
Gabriel Lewit: Traffic, as they say.
Steve Lewit: So, it’s not necessarily to give you the straight-shooting cold facts. There’s always going to be an angle. I don’t like this, I don’t like that, or sort of untruth, and sometimes just a total misunderstanding.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I’m going to get a tiny bit philosophical here for a second.
Steve Lewit: Really?
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: Jumping in here.
Gabriel Lewit: There are people that think the internet is great, which I think it brought a lot of change to the world obviously. And then others that have over time kind of sourdough, same with social media because it started off for one purpose, right? You look at Facebook back in the day. Does anybody remember when Facebook first came out? I do, I was in college.
Steve Lewit: I do.
Gabriel Lewit: And I remember you had to be a part of a university to even get access to it. And it was so cool, there was no ads, right? You went online and you saw what your friends were doing and they posted some pictures and you made some comments and it was really cool, right?
Steve Lewit: It was very social.
Gabriel Lewit: It was like, well, you can connect with your friends.
Steve Lewit: It was very social. Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Now you fast-forward, so what is Facebook today? I mean, one out of every 10 posts on the scroll that you go down is actually a picture or something from your friend. It’s ad, it’s a clip-it from someone positioning something they’re trying to sell you. It’s something, right? The whole thing is tweaked. We started off as a way of staying connected has turned into a giant, pretty much an ad reel. And unfortunately, the algorithms and the people that run these companies have realized humans unfortunately have short little attention spans and more people will click on all this stuff than the people will just go on there to say hi to their friends. And so they morphed it because it made them more money into what it is today.
Steve Lewit: Well, look, if you own Facebook in the beginning, okay, you sit down and say, “This is great, this is great.” Then someone in the meeting says, “Hey, how do we monetize this?”
Gabriel Lewit: How do we get more people in here, right? Make more money?
Steve Lewit: Monetize means not getting more people, it’s getting more people to spend more money. So, how do we monetize this? Well, we could advertise, we could get advertisers, we could get influencers. And this thing grows into another life.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so it’s no longer what it was. And now the whole thing turns into, okay, I’m a creator, a content creator, right? I can get clicks and watches and videos and I can make some money off of this. And producer Gabby and Katie are, they’re younger, young millennials or Gen… What are you, Gabby? I don’t even know. You’re Gen Z? You’re elder Gen Z? Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, anyways, this is what they’ve grown up with. They don’t even know the old Facebook and stuff like this. But it used to be about connection, now it’s about clicks and likes and followers. Very, very different.
Now, one point way back in the day, I’m like, you know what? I should start a blog. And I really was, I mean, we do some light blogging now on our website, but at one point I’m like, it’d be great to have a lot of people following me that really want financial advice. I even considered starting a YouTube channel. But here’s the problem. There are two types of people on YouTube posting videos. The ones that try to do actual educational content. There’s one problem. They post this great educational video in-depth, detailed, nuanced, pros and cons, put a lot of work and effort to it. Nobody watches it.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Somebody else goes on there and they post a one minute clip with little shiny graphics and bells and whistles and big, bold. The whole thing is tweaked to get people to just watch it in little, and you can’t actually teach anything on the internet because most humans won’t follow that, they’re going to follow the tiny little attention span things. I’m kind of going off on a little philosophical rant here.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, you are.
Gabriel Lewit: But what does this relate to the topic at hand? My point is, is the advice that people are getting.
Steve Lewit: Where are you going with this?
Gabriel Lewit: The advice that people are getting-
Steve Lewit: I’m going to go back to sleep.
Gabriel Lewit: … isn’t actually quality advice, it’s advice from people just trying to make quick bucks and get followers. And it could start off by, you could start off by trying to honestly give people good financial information online, but a bit by bit you realize you have to follow this rule set or else nobody’s going to even follow you.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, so that’s a pretty broad-
Gabriel Lewit: It’s kind of sad,
Steve Lewit: That’s pretty broad brush stroke.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m just saying.
Steve Lewit: I mean, that there are things on the internet I think are very valuable, but I think what you’re saying is, when you read anything on the internet, you have to have a modicum of mistrust of what you’re reading. You have to dig behind the scenes.
Gabriel Lewit: Especially an influencer on a social media site like TikTok or Facebook or Instagram, because they know if they’re successful, they know the formula, right? It’s not long, detailed, educational content. It’s quick little things that you know, how to double your money, right? That’s going to pop. Someone’s going to post that and it’s going to pop out more than the guy that says, “How to work hard and compound your money over time with index fund investing.” Right? One of those is going to pop out a lot more. Which do you think it is?
Steve Lewit: Well-
Gabriel Lewit: Double your money overnight without working. Right? Someone’s going to post some little clip on that.
Steve Lewit: Well, it ties into your next topic, which is target date funds. Why are target date funds so popular?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I don’t think it ties in at all to that, but.
Steve Lewit: Well, I thought it tied in exactly.
Gabriel Lewit: What? How so?
Steve Lewit: Well, because the internet is full of that, you should own a target date fund because they’re great for you. But here’s the point I’m trying to make. We’ll get there and I’ll prove you right, myself right. Let me restructure that sentence. I will with you, we will investigate together and come to a conclusion that I’m right.
Gabriel Lewit: Sure.
Steve Lewit: But besides that, you have to question… Here’s the deal, we don’t question what we hear. We hear something and we just, it’s on the newscasts, it’s in the magazines. Look, you listen to Fox News, everything they say is right, nobody questions. You listen to MSNBC, oh, they’re right, nobody questions. Nobody digs deep. That’s why you have organizations like Fact Check because they question and then you have to fact check the fact-checkers. So this is what goes on and I think we become lazy just like in target date funds, which we’re going to get to and I’m going to prove myself that this transitions perfectly, but just we get lazy. We want someone to tell us what to do, we’re not going to question. And that’s the way it is.
Gabriel Lewit: All right.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: You feel good?
Steve Lewit: I feel better.
Gabriel Lewit: Boom.
Steve Lewit: I feel-
Gabriel Lewit: All right, so let’s get to some of the data here, right? 39% of respondents reported they’ve lost at least $250 from bad financial advice. I mean, at least it’s not more than that. 18% said they’ve lost 1,000 or more.
Steve Lewit: Wow.
Gabriel Lewit: 33% said misinformation delayed major financial decisions. 29% acted without consulting a professional. 28% said they paid fees they could have avoided. 28% said they’ve spread bad advice to others. And 21% said their financial stress has worsened as a result of online advice. And last but not least, 62% say they now spend even more time verifying financial information than they did five years ago, which is exactly what you were just saying. People have realized you can’t just trust what you quickly Google or what AI feeds you, you’ve got to actually research this.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, and it’s an effort. It takes time to dig through the confusion that’s being thrown. How many times Gabriel, do we suggest a product? Well, I had a call last night. So we have these buffered strategies, right? So I suggested a buffered strategy and I was telling a client how we can throw this ETF into a portfolio, it makes it more efficient. Well, can you send me information on that? Okay, sure can, and I’m going to go on the internet and research that. And it’s like, that’s great, I’m glad you’re going on, but where do you go? Where do you get accurate information? There’s so much out there. So I think at some point you have to hang your hat with somebody you trust that’s going to give you accurate information because you can’t figure it out yourself.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, and I think that’s really the takeaway from this. There’s so much on there, be cautious what you read, right? There’s now data that’s really supporting that, which is really the main takeaway here I thought was interesting. Keeping in mind to summarize, a lot of the social media “gurus”, the financial people you see on the Instagrams and Facebook and TikToks, they’re there for quick hits and likes with salacious sounding topics. Not boring, tried and true, maybe methodical ones that core financial planners may use. And you got to be really cautious with that kind of advice because it’s most likely not going to be in your best interest as you read through that.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, and I do think, because I’ve been playing around a lot with Ai, which I’m just amazed by, I’m amazed by it. I think in 10 years it will change our entire world, will be totally different. But some of AIs are really great. When you put questions in, they give you all the different dimensions of it. And I think that, if you stop searching yourself and use an AI to search the internet, you might do better.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it’s funny you mentioned that because I was just about to caution the opposite.
Steve Lewit: Well, there is caution there, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Because-
Steve Lewit: There is caution.
Gabriel Lewit: … all AI is doing, at the end of the day, folks, it’s a large language model. It’s pulling from, I mean, hundreds of thousands of websites and the data that’s contained in those sites to regurgitate things that are showing up most commonly, right? If you really look into large language models and some of the data, sort of the technology behind AI, AI is going to feed you back what it was fed in.
Steve Lewit: Well-
Gabriel Lewit: So, if it’s crawling and getting really bad information, it is just as prone. And in fact, there was a study done by Google that’s for the first time their traffic’s decreasing because people are now, instead of Googling stuff to research it-
Steve Lewit: Go to AI.
Gabriel Lewit: … and clicking 100 different sites to compile data, they’re just doing a Google, sorry, an AI search and getting the snippet that comes up at the top and assuming that that snippet is 100% accurate, which is actually just as equally dangerous to do as just taking a quick snippet from somebody on TikTok.
Steve Lewit: Well, I beg to differ, son. I beg to differ because there is more than just regurgitating happening in AI. There’s actually a learning capacity, but that’s a topic for another day. I think the point that you made is that you got to question this stuff.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes.
Steve Lewit: You got to look twice. Just don’t accept because somebody says, “This is bad, this is good.” It may or may not, just dig deeper.
Gabriel Lewit: Yep, I think that’s the takeaway here. So if you’ve got questions right on your planning, if you’re thinking, who do I trust, right? Call SGL Financial. I mean, we have been doing this for 21 years with thousands of clients.
Steve Lewit: 32. I’ve been doing it 32 years.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. 32 years for Steve.
Steve Lewit: 21 for Gabriel.
Gabriel Lewit: We weren’t SGL Financial at that time, but that’s okay.
Steve Lewit: That’s sure, that’s true.
Gabriel Lewit: So put in a little clarification there. We can help guide you through this because we’ve done this thousands of times before. Right? We have that ability to have that life experience and seeing so many of these options with real people that I think we can help you filter through the stuff far easier than AI could do. And if we can help you with anything, give us a call to set up a complimentary appointment here, (847) 499-3330, or go to SGLfinancial.com and click contact us.
Steve Lewit: Agreed. You got to give credit where credit is due.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well, that ended up being I think a more passionate exposition there that we thought.
Steve Lewit: It was very passionate.
Gabriel Lewit: And took more time than we thought. So I’m going to maybe pivot here a little bit for the rest of the show. We were going to talk about whether or not you should refrigerate ketchup, but I don’t know if we want to do that now.
Steve Lewit: I think we need to get to target date funds a little bit.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, so-
Steve Lewit: We can do part and then continue.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, that’s the other option, folks. Target date funds I really wanted to talk about, but I don’t know. I think we maybe need more than 10 minutes to do that, so maybe we will save that for the next show. I guess today we ended up talking more about just again, the risks of AI, the risks of advice from online, from TikTok, the data around that, why you shouldn’t trust it. Maybe we will talk a little bit about refrigerating ketchup if you’re interested in this, okay? And then we’ve got some listener questions to round things out. So I always got a backup plan here just in case something goes longer.
Steve Lewit: Now folks, here’s how this happens. We get these articles, Gabriel researches all kinds of stuff, and Katie and Gabby are directors here, research, to find interesting things to talk about. And we’re sitting here and this article is here in front of us called, Should You Refrigerate Your Ketchup? And all of us, I don’t know why, all of us thought wow, that’s really interesting.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we try to keep you entertained, number one, in the midst-
Steve Lewit: But why is that so interesting?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, because it’s one of those things. Some people do it, some people don’t, and I think everybody wants to know, what’s the right answer?
Steve Lewit: Yeah, now here’s how narrow-minded I am. I put everything in the refrigerator and I think everybody does that.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, not everybody.
Steve Lewit: I guess not.
Gabriel Lewit: When you go to the restaurant at 7:00 at night for your french fries and hamburger and they’ve got the ketchup thing on the table.
Steve Lewit: It’s been out there for-
Gabriel Lewit: How long is that… Right? Do you think twice then? Do you say, “Has this been recently refrigerated?”
Steve Lewit: No.
Gabriel Lewit: Do you use that ketchup?
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, and it’s good.
Gabriel Lewit: And it tastes fine, right?
Steve Lewit: It tastes fine.
Gabriel Lewit: Now, even though that’s the case, and I do the same, guess what I do at home with my ketchup?
Steve Lewit: I take a fork-
Gabriel Lewit: I refrigerate it.
Steve Lewit: I take a fork and take the little green things and push them to the side.
Gabriel Lewit: The green things?
Steve Lewit: In the ketchup. That was a joke.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, oh, okay. Got you.
Steve Lewit: Very serious, okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So it didn’t make sense because in the bottle, so I don’t know what you meant by pushing it aside, so.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, I refrigerate my ketchup.
Gabriel Lewit: You’re talking about mold.
Steve Lewit: Mold, yes.
Gabriel Lewit: You’re joking there’d be mold. Okay, I’m with you now.
Steve Lewit: I was trying.
Gabriel Lewit: With you now.
Steve Lewit: I was trying.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So the question, this is going to be a tidbit, morsel for you, and then we’re going to move on to our listener questions here. But email us, Info@SGLfinancial.com, just take two seconds. I’d love to hear from our… Do you refrigerate your ketchup? Yes or no? And I’ll share the results on our next call.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, but this is saying you don’t have to.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, well, yeah, you don’t. Basically, you don’t have to because the bacteria don’t like salt, acid, sugar and active probiotic cultures. Although, I feel like they do like sugar. I feel like I’ve read that before, but anywhos.
Steve Lewit: Now, butter. Look, butter, you can keep out for two days. Now in my head, it’s like as soon as I use the butter, I put it back in the refrigerator real quick.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I was going to transition this. Yeah, so there are other questions on other condiments.
Steve Lewit: Oh, okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Right? Not just ketchup. And so this article that producer Gabby found here has a whole list. And we thought we would just go through these with you.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Butter says you should put in the fridge, but okay on counter for two days. And by the way, if you don’t quote us on all of this from a health perspective, we’re not liable if you keep something out and you get sick.
Steve Lewit: You’re right.
Gabriel Lewit: I refrigerate everything, that’s generally what I recommend.
Steve Lewit: I’m very excited about-
Gabriel Lewit: But you can always do what you prefer to do.
Steve Lewit: About leaving butter out overnight, because I toast bread and then I go in the fridge and get my butter out and it’s nearly frozen and you can’t spread the butter.
Gabriel Lewit: Now, whipped butter and vegan butter says fridge only. Okay?
Steve Lewit: Do you use whipped butter?
Gabriel Lewit: I do not.
Steve Lewit: No.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: But people do, I guess.
Gabriel Lewit: Capers in the fridge. Ghee? Ghee?
Steve Lewit: It’s cheese. It’s-
Gabriel Lewit: How do you say it?
Steve Lewit: Ghee.
Gabriel Lewit: Ghee?
Steve Lewit: Ghee.
Gabriel Lewit: Gee, ghee?
Steve Lewit: Ghee.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, ghee.
Steve Lewit: Did I bring you up?
Gabriel Lewit: It says pantry. It says pantry is okay for that. Chili crisp-
Steve Lewit: Did I miss something in bringing him up?
Gabriel Lewit: Chili crisp and fish sauce says pantry is okay.
Steve Lewit: J. Paul Getty, doesn’t know. Zig Ziglar, he doesn’t know.
Gabriel Lewit: I would not leave fish sauce. I don’t have fish sauce either way, but I wouldn’t leave it on the counter.
Steve Lewit: There’s no way I would leave that out.
Gabriel Lewit: No way I would do that. Honey I do leave out in the pantry, that’s pretty much the main thing here on the list I don’t put in the fridge. Hot sauce, it says you can leave out, which I’ve heard that before. Yeah, like those little bottles of Tabasco and stuff, right? The hot sauce. Jams and jellies, naturally in the fridge, okay in the pantry if unopened, of course. Ketchup, pantry says it’s okay, but stays fresher in fridge. So why would you do pantry if it stays fresher and fridge? Got to go fridge.
Steve Lewit: Okay, yep.
Gabriel Lewit: Kimchi.
Steve Lewit: Good. You got it.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, fridge. Maple syrup, fridge.
Steve Lewit: I’ll teach you what that is later.
Gabriel Lewit: Mayonnaise, is this even a question? Do people leave mayonnaise not in the fridge?
Steve Lewit: You see, I can’t imagine.
Gabriel Lewit: See, it says here, pantry okay, three to six months. No way. It’s got eggs in it, it’s got-
Steve Lewit: Yeah, but it’s got other stuff.
Gabriel Lewit: No, no.
Steve Lewit: But I would never do that.
Gabriel Lewit: Never.
Steve Lewit: Never.
Gabriel Lewit: Absolutely not. Mustard says pantry, but fridge will keep it spicier longer. I do fridge for mustard. Oil that says pantry’s okay but for long-term storage, fridge. Peanut butter pantry. Yeah, the peanut butter I leave out, for sure.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. It’s hard to spread.
Gabriel Lewit: Pickles it says fridge. Who opens pickles and doesn’t put them in the fridge? This is news to me, I’m not following here. Soy sauce, it says pantry, tahini, vinegar, and whoosh. Whoosh? I can’t say that one. Worcestershire.
Steve Lewit: Worcestershire sauce.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Worcestershire sauce.
Gabriel Lewit: It says pantry. All right. Well now you know, now you know. And yeah, let us know what you do with your ketchup, I’d love to hear.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: We found it very interesting. I think going around the room here, we were all fans of refrigeration.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Was anybody disagreeing? No, okay.
Steve Lewit: No.
Gabriel Lewit: If you keep it not in the fridge, let us know.
All right, listener questions. We’ve got a couple here that have come in. We’ve got one from Kelly said that you should roll money from the 401k to an IRA where I’ll have more investment options, that’s something you’ve heard, but your 401k has been doing well. So, why move it? And this question actually does come up a lot. Kelly, you’re not the only one to ask this. Now, it was going to tie into our target date fund, but we’ll piggyback on that for next time on the next show. Well, inside your 401k, Kelly, you are correct, you have a very limited lineup of options. You’ve got-
Steve Lewit: Usually, usually, yes.
Gabriel Lewit: … typically 10 to 12, maybe 15 target date funds. You’ve got a range of different, what we call asset class options. Usually one for each, one US large cap, one international large cap, maybe a US small, maybe a US value.
Steve Lewit: Bond fund.
Gabriel Lewit: Bond fund, maybe a high growth option. And potentially in some plans, an active version of one of those funds and a passive version, what we call an index fund version of those. That’s a topic for a different day, what are the differences of those? But maybe you’ve got 20, 25 funds in your 401k. You do roll that into an IRA, you’re going to have how many funds available for you, Steve?
Steve Lewit: For, I don’t know.
Gabriel Lewit: Thousands?
Steve Lewit: Thousands, yes, thousands.
Gabriel Lewit: Thousands, right? Because you have the entire universe of funds available to you.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, and you can build what we call a lightly diversified portfolio in a 401k, but it’s slightly diversified and you might do well with that. The reason to move to an IRA is that you want more attention paid to the management of your funds and you want something more substantially philosophically substantial, like diversification.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. What’s interesting to me is when people say that to me it, why would I move it from my 401k? I like to ask the opposite question. Why would you keep it in there?
Steve Lewit: Yes, exactly.
Gabriel Lewit: Right? Explain to me the core advantage of leaving in the 401k versus moving it out. And the answer, it’s done well in there, isn’t a good enough one in my opinion, because that’s great, but you could do so much better outside of it. Right? And why wouldn’t you want to do better if you could? And I think it comes down to maybe people are worried they’re going to be sold something bad if they move outside of their 401k, right? There’s this sort of implicit, it’s in my 401k, it must be okay, kind of feeling, right? But guys, a 401k plan, I mean, sometimes the people that create those plans, they just chuck a couple funds in there and they just let you go to it. And you get a call center rep that’ll help guide you through some of the options, but they’re not going to give you advice. And usually it’s, again, so very, very limited.
Kelly, I think if you’re going to be in a US large cap fund, just at the minimum, if you took every fund in your portfolio and just Google that fund and type in best-in-class international fund, you’ll probably find a fund outside of your 401k with a lower expense ratio and better return than the same one in the 401k. You literally could do it yourself, I’m not suggesting that you should. I think we could help you do it even better, but that’s the idea, right? You can do better than the 401ks and if you could do better, even if you’re doing okay now, why wouldn’t you? That’s my thoughts on that part.
Steve Lewit: I think that’s that simple, is why leave it there, Kelly? And why not have more options?
Gabriel Lewit: Or even if you kept everything exactly the same.
Steve Lewit: And usually a lower expense ratio.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. All right, well if you have questions on that, of course, give us a call.
And now Richard emailed us saying something similar but a little different. I wanted to group these two together. Richard said, “I counted up the funds in my IRA and it appears I have 33 different funds. Is that good from a diversification perspective?”
Steve Lewit: Well, we don’t know. I mean, 31 funds could have a lot of duplication inside of them. It sounds like it is well diversified, but until we knew the funds and what you’re trying to accomplish in your portfolio. Don’t forget this. It is not, like Kelly said, “I’ve done well.” This person is saying, “Okay, I got 31 funds.” The question is, what is your goal for that portfolio? How much are you looking to make? And most people answer that and they say, “Well, I want to make as much as possible.” Well, that’s not a goal. Would you be happy with six, seven, eight? And then your portfolio, how much risk are you willing to take? What are you willing to lose in a really bad year? You have to answer all those questions, then you pick the funds that reflect how much you want to make.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, and I think the quick takeaway here, Richard, is more funds doesn’t necessarily mean more diversification, especially if those funds have substantially the same underlying stocks. That’s called overlap. And now, if every one of those funds was kind of like a niche, different asset class, kind of like a building block or a Lego to put together, maybe, but then it does seem like a lot of funds. There are typically not 33 different independent asset classes or sub-factors to consider when building a portfolio. So something seems, yeah, if that was 33 individual stocks, different story, but 33 funds seems basically a little bit overkill.
Steve Lewit: But I will give you credit for trying to diversify your portfolio. Your understanding of very basic strategy for winning in the stock market is that build a diversified portfolio and give it time to percolate. And that’s something that comes from modern portfolio theory, which you remember Gabriel, started in 1965, Nobel Prize winning research.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, I was definitely, I was minus 19 years old at that point-
Steve Lewit: Exactly.
Gabriel Lewit: … or whatever it was.
Steve Lewit: I was teaching you then.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So folks, if you’ve got a portfolio, you don’t know what’s in it, we can always do a fund X-ray or a fund analysis, a portfolio analysis to see what your overlap is, what your max drawdown is, the historical return versus benchmarks-
Steve Lewit: Would you-
Gabriel Lewit: … and lots of other really cool things.
Steve Lewit: … take one second and explain overlap?
Gabriel Lewit: Well overlap is if you had two S&P funds and each one was the exact same fund, you just have duplicates of every position.
Steve Lewit: Or you had two growth or five growth funds, but they all own Apple stock.
Gabriel Lewit: Exactly.
Steve Lewit: Or they all own NVIDIA.
Gabriel Lewit: Exactly.
Steve Lewit: So now you’re heavy in that because-
Gabriel Lewit: Those funds aren’t giving you more diversification if they own the same thing.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So folks, give us a call if we can help you with a portfolio analysis, if we can help you with financial questions instead of going on social media or AI generation, that’s really what we’re here to do. You can reach us at (847) 499-3330, or go to SGLfinancial.com, click contact us. And most importantly, don’t forget, email us if you don’t refrigerate your ketchup, so we can share this on the next show.
Steve Lewit: Definitely. We’re going to start a condiment-
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t think-
Steve Lewit: … preservation department.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t think so.
Steve Lewit: I don’t think so.
Gabriel Lewit: Just for fun.
Steve Lewit: Just a passing idea.
Gabriel Lewit: All right, well have a wonderful rest of your day and we will talk to you soon on the next show.
Steve Lewit: Stay well, everybody.
Announcer: Bye, guys.
Steve Lewit: Bye.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to Our 2 Cents, with Steve and Gabriel Lewit. For any questions about your finances, give SGL a call at (847) 499-3330, or visit us on the web at SGLfinancial.com and be sure to subscribe to join us on next week’s episode.
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