Fuzzy Market Math
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #225
Fuzzy Market Math
Your favorite podcast hosts are back with another great episode of Our 2 Cents! On today’s show, the Lewits dive into fuzzy market math, bust common Social Security myths, and share a few fun insights about themselves along the way. Tune in now!
- Do You Know Your Retirement Numbers?:
- Missteps in your retirement math can be costly—here’s how to catch them before they derail your future.
- Social Security Myths:
- Not everything you’ve heard about Social Security is true. Let’s clear up the confusion.
- Getting to Know Steve and Gabriel:
- Are you superstitious about anything?
- If you could go on a shopping spree anywhere, where would it be?
Request Your Free Consultation Today
847.499.3330
Podcast Transcript
Announcer: You are 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: All right, everybody. Welcome back to Our 2 cents. You’ve got Gabriel Lewit here and Mr. Steven Richard Lewit, the man, the myth, the legend.
Steve Lewit: Whoa. Middle name day.
Gabriel Lewit: Middle name. You haven’t gotten that too frequently on the show.
Steve Lewit: David.
Gabriel Lewit: You remember it?
Steve Lewit: I do remember. I gave you that name.
Gabriel Lewit: Can I tell everybody something funny just randomly, just because you brought up my middle name?
Steve Lewit: Yes, sir.
Gabriel Lewit: So, my youngest daughter, Ava, she’s five. Actually, she did not know my middle name to my knowledge the other day. She just comes up to me and she says, “Hey dad, can I call you Dave?” I’m like-
Steve Lewit: Where did that come from?
Gabriel Lewit: I was like, “Do you know my middle name?” She’s like, “No.” And I’m like, “You do know my middle name is David, right?” And she’s like, “Oh.” I don’t think… She doesn’t know David and Dave even are the same thing.
Steve Lewit: Same thing, right.
Gabriel Lewit: Anyway, I was like, what’s happening?
Steve Lewit: Do you have any idea where that came from?
Gabriel Lewit: No. But your son was over at our house with my brother-in-law the other day with Julia, my sister. Yes. And they were playing with the kids and he was playing with Ava, and she goes, “Hey, can I call you Man?” And he was just like, “What?”
Steve Lewit: So, she’s giving names to people now.
Gabriel Lewit: I think she’s just assigning random names to people.
Steve Lewit: That’s very cute.
Gabriel Lewit: But anyway, her random name for me happened to be my middle name, David or Dave.
Steve Lewit: Yes, sir. David.
Gabriel Lewit: So, there you go. There you have it.
Steve Lewit: David.
Gabriel Lewit: What a spin-off synapse connection there.
Steve Lewit: Well, did you bake your bacon and walk your steps?
Gabriel Lewit: You know I didn’t. I forgot about that.
Steve Lewit: You didn’t?
Gabriel Lewit: I meant to do the baking of the bacon this last weekend and I forgot.
Steve Lewit: Did you do your steps?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I’ve walked to and from my car to my son’s soccer practice.
Steve Lewit: Now. How much weight have you lost? Folks, my son had gained a little bit. He got really annoyed because one day I called him Puffy.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, on the show. This was what, three years ago.
Steve Lewit: I did. It was on the show, right?
Gabriel Lewit: You’re looking a little puffy.
Steve Lewit: A little. But now he’s thinner, and svelte.
Gabriel Lewit: Svelte. I probably lost 27 pounds in the last-
Steve Lewit: And none of his clothes fit.
Gabriel Lewit: … in the last four months.
Steve Lewit: Now you got to go shopping.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s a separate problem. But yes, I won’t complain about that. Mostly just not eating giant bowls of cereal at 10:30 at night has really been my secret.
Steve Lewit: And not eating bacon. A lot of bacon.
Gabriel Lewit: Lots of bacon won’t do it.
Steve Lewit: That won’t help. So what do we got today?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yes, we’ve got a lineup, of course, of topics. No doubt. Today we’re going to focus a little bit more on financial topics. We’re actually going to do a little bit of market math or fuzzy math, I’d call it, market slash fuzzy math when it comes to retirement and investments, people’s math ain’t mathing. And we’re going to talk about that a little bit here on the show.
Steve Lewit: Okay. I think mathing is a good thing to do.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s important with numbers.
Steve Lewit: Very important.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. We’ll talk a little bit about social security as well. Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of people saying things like, Gabe, social security’s going to run out of money. What am I supposed to do? We want to dispel some of the truths and myths of what’s going on or projected to happen here with social security because it’s seemingly popping up a bit more in the news.
So we’ll talk a little bit about that and then if we have some time, we’ll talk about some things that are important for your upcoming retirement. If you’re in your early 50s, late 50s, things that generally once you get closer to that retirement target date, you may want to be keeping on your radar.
Steve Lewit: Sounds good to me.
Gabriel Lewit: Last time we talked a little bit about some less financial things, so I thought we’d switch some gears here today or switch gears and talk about a bit more money-related focuses.
Steve Lewit: So, can I joke around in the seriousness of this topic?
Gabriel Lewit: You can joke. You do joke as often as you would like to joke.
Steve Lewit: I don’t know. It comes out of me for some reason.
Gabriel Lewit: So yes, joke.
Steve Lewit: It just happens.
Gabriel Lewit: Joke away if you’d like. Well, anyways, we hope you’re doing great. Then let’s go ahead and jump right on in here. So fuzzy math or also what we call market math, if you’re not careful, it can be jeopardizing to your financial well-being would be something I would say if I’m talking this up a little bit, why it’s important because some people really do make mistakes based on this fuzzy market math.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So you think you’re headed one way and you find out you’re really headed in another because you calculated your direction or how should I put it? Where you’re going, you calculated that incorrectly. So not having enough gas in your gas tank when you calculate the wrong way.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, exactly. So math, of course, isn’t maybe everyone’s favorite topic, so this aren’t going to be too complicated.
Steve Lewit: No.
Gabriel Lewit: As a little segue about math, I had a client just yesterday actually, we were one of our investment strategies uses options behind the scenes and there’s a pricing for options that is something called the Black-Scholes model. And he got really into the…
He’s an engineer. He asked me about how does this strategy calculate its interim value? And we get into, he’s like, “Is it a person pricing this? Is it a market?” I said, “Well, it’s probably the Black-Scholes pricing options model behind the scenes.” And he is like, “What’s that?” And we Google it together and there’s a differential equation, a mathematical thing called a differential equation that’s used to determine this pricing.
And he was like, “Oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense now.” And I’m like, math does that kind of math differential equations is over my head. So don’t worry folks. We’re not getting into that level of here today. More just some simple math but important nevertheless.
Steve Lewit: You’re not going to believe this.
Gabriel Lewit: What’s that?
Steve Lewit: I know you’re not. You’re going to say no, dad, you’re full of baloney. Guess what I was studying over the weekend?
Gabriel Lewit: No, you weren’t.
Steve Lewit: Yes, I was.
Gabriel Lewit: Differential equations?
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: That’s really true.
Gabriel Lewit: Why would you be studying that?
Steve Lewit: For my book.
Gabriel Lewit: Your book has differential equations in it?
Steve Lewit: It might.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s not a math book though.
Steve Lewit: You can describe life mathematically.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh my gosh, folks.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. This is really weird.
Gabriel Lewit: My dad’s been working on this book for a hundred years, I think.
Steve Lewit: It’s done. It’s done. Eight years.
Gabriel Lewit: But somehow, you’re adding in differential equations if it’s done?
Steve Lewit: Well, I think I’m going to add a second addendum or appendix to it. When I second publish it, it describes, you can describe the… The folks.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t want to get off-topic here.
Steve Lewit: Just real quick.
Gabriel Lewit: Did you focus group this for your book before you decided to put differential equations?
Steve Lewit: Differential equations is tracking the change of things over time like how does the market change over time? You can write that in a differential equation. Well, how do people change over time? You can create in a differential equation.
Gabriel Lewit: I really don’t think people want to think about their change over time.
Steve Lewit: What I’m saying to you is that I was studying differential equations.
Gabriel Lewit: I do believe since you brought it up, I don’t think it’s a good idea for your book, but let’s jump into market math. So now that we’ve introduced this concept, okay, let’s talk about the simple one.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Right. One of the simplest ones, I’m always astounded sometimes that people really think this, hey, I lost 20% in the market, I just need 20% to get back.
Steve Lewit: It’s so common and it is so mysterious why people keep thinking that way.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, on the surface it makes sense. I’m down 20, I could go up 20.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Right. Well, let’s break this down. Very simple, and I’ll use, actually minus 25% is an easy one too. They’re all easy when we get into it. You’ll see the formula pretty quick, but let’s just use a hundred thousand dollars, round number.
If you lose 25% with a hundred thousand dollars, let’s just add that out. That’s $25,000. So a hundred thousand minus 25, you would be left at the end of that year, let’s say with $75,000.
Steve Lewit: Exactly. Well done.
Gabriel Lewit: Now, that’s in dollars, right? There’s always going to be a difference between percents and dollars when we get into investments and market math. So keep that in mind. So in dollar terms, we lost 25,000. So to get back to a hundred thousand, how much more do we need to make in dollars?
Steve Lewit: Let me see, 75 plus 20. So I have to get back what I lost in dollars.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, we lost $25,000.
Steve Lewit: I lost 25, so I got to get $25,000 back.
Gabriel Lewit: But now we have $75,000 as our basis. We ended the year at 75 because we lost our 25. We need 25,000 back. That’s where we can do very simple division if hopefully this will come back to everybody. So to earn 25,000 out of 75,000, that is what percentage of a positive return? 33.3%.
Steve Lewit: 33.3%, one third.
Gabriel Lewit: And it makes sense of 75,000, 25 plus 25 plus 25 is 75,000. So you need 33% return to get back to break even if you lose 25%.
Steve Lewit: So, there’s two formulas, one in dollars and one in percent, and they are very, very different.
Gabriel Lewit: So, I oftentimes say, let’s take something that’s a percent and turn it into a dollar, and it helps to elaborate this concept. So keep that in mind. Minus 25 down, plus 33 up. Let’s do an even simpler one. Maybe should have started here, but let’s say you had a hundred thousand and you lost 50% of your portfolio down 50%, which is unusual, which is why I don’t like to bring it up.
Steve Lewit: Well, it might be unusual, but the S&P was down in 2008, 51%.
Gabriel Lewit: Briefly, not over the course of a year. But if at that exact moment, right, you’re down 50%, you’re a hundred thousand dollars is now $50,000. So in dollar terms, how much do you need to get back to a hundred? Another 50?
Steve Lewit: 50 grand.
Gabriel Lewit: Now 50 grand out of a balance of 50 grand is what kind of percentage return?
Steve Lewit: You have to double your money.
Gabriel Lewit: 100%.
Steve Lewit: Which is a hundred percent. So you go down 50%, but you got to get a hundred percent to recoup the 50% that you lost.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct? Yes. Correct. So why is this important? Because sometimes we talk about asset allocation and risk and return, and there is a benefit to losing less money, which is, you need less of a return to get back to break even. So let’s go onto some of the other market mass, but hopefully that one makes sense. So what you go down is not the same amount as what you need to get back up. Okay?
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So now let’s say I say, Gabriel, I’m going to take 4% out of my portfolio. My portfolio is growing at 4%. I’m going to take 4% out, and I’ll never dip into my principle. What’s wrong with that thinking?
Gabriel Lewit: So, you’re referencing something called the… There’s a safe withdrawal rate that’s floating around very prominently out there in the world. That 4% is the magic number. If you take 4% out of your portfolio, it’s safe. Well-
Steve Lewit: Depends on the portfolio.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s called safe. Well, there should be safe withdrawal rate asterisk.
Steve Lewit: Asterisk.
Gabriel Lewit: Meaning some additional disclosures required on that statement. Well, safe, anything in the stock market is not a hundred percent guaranteed. So if you take 4% out, the safe withdrawal, if we were to elaborate it is really, there’s a pretty good chance that you won’t run out of money in retirement if you only take 4%.
Steve Lewit: If you have a 60/40 portfolio.
Gabriel Lewit: If you have a certain designed asset allocation. And so what happens is people just hear the first part, oh, 4% and they have no further thought beyond that to what does that mean? Where I’m starting? What if the market’s starting down in a big way? What if it’s starting up in a big way? What if I’m in an all bond portfolio versus an all stock portfolio?
These things all impact that 4% withdrawal rate, and so it’s not as simple as it seems, even though on the surface market math, 4% out I’m good. So if you have a million dollars, you take 40,000 per year, nothing could go wrong. Not necessarily a hundred percent the case.
Steve Lewit: Yes. So now I take 4% out of my million dollars, what percent gain do I need to get to get that million dollars back?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, this is another element of market math, folks. Element number three here of market math. When it comes to withdrawals and your projections of your withdrawals, a very important distinction to pay attention to, which is called beginning of year or end of year. Okay, let me explain.
So you’re running a nice little spreadsheet. You show yourself taking out, you have a hundred thousand dollars. You show yourself earning 4% that year, right? Mr. Steve?
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. And then you’re going to take out 4% that year?
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So if you inadvertently on your spreadsheet put, okay, I’m going to gain 40,000 this year on my million, let’s use a million and over at the end of the year, I’m going to take out 40,000. Then I’d be even. I’d have a million dollars. I gained 40, I lose 40.
Steve Lewit: Because that million was still a million until you took the 40,000 out.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Well, no. So on a spreadsheet, what happens is people say, I’m going to gain 4%. I’m going to take 4% out this year.
Steve Lewit: Okay. Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: I might’ve misspoke as well. But the problem is then they start taking withdrawals out monthly.
So if you give yourself the credit of the 4% all at once at the start of the year, that’s not what actually happens in real life. Even if you were to use a fixed rate return, you’re starting to pull the money out immediately so that money you’re pulling out is not earning the interest.
Steve Lewit: That’s the point.
Gabriel Lewit: So, what happens is when you do withdrawals and you’re projecting this out, you should generally do what we call a beginning of the year withdrawal. In other words, assume you took out the 40 at the start of the year, so you’re really earning interest on $960,000, not the one million, if you’re following some of this math. And that can have actually year over year over year, this can have a big trajectory change on your outcomes.
Steve Lewit: Think of it, if you are in retirement 30 years, these little changes are very meaningful. It compounds into quite a lot of money, and it could cause your budget, not your budget, but your returns to get tighter, the withdrawals get tighter.
Gabriel Lewit: So said differently. Just to put a final cap on that last piece. If you started with a million dollars and earn 4% and took out the 40,000 at the end of the first year, meaning you’re not actually spending any money, then a million dollars earning 4% after that first year, it would actually work that way.
You’d go up 40,000, you’d take out 40,000, you’d be back at a million. You’d go up 40,000, you’d take out 40,000, you’d be back at a million. Your balance would always stay one million. But take that same exact scenario and take 40,000 out first for the very first year. Then your 960 earns 4%, and then the next year you’re taking out another 40,000, bit by bit, that balance actually goes down over time.
Steve Lewit: Exactly. Or if you take out 4%, you’d be taking out less money.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, correct. If you took 4% every year of that balance, it gets a little lower, little lower every year. So that’s called beginning of period for withdrawals or end of period for withdrawals.
Steve Lewit: Now, what’s the fuzzy math on dividends?
Gabriel Lewit: Right. Well, the fuzzy math on dividends is simple. It says, well, if I get a dividend yield, let’s say 3.5% on my million dollar portfolio, I could never run out of money. It doesn’t matter what the stock market does. I’m always good because I’m always going to get that dividends okay. And what could go wrong?
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Right. Well, I’ve been doing a little talking on the last market math item. You want to take this one?
Steve Lewit: Not really.
Gabriel Lewit: You brought it up.
Steve Lewit: I brought it up. Yeah. Well, the fuzzy math there is, first of all, dividends change.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s key. Very key.
Steve Lewit: And people think dividends are forever. There are some companies that have had dividends for a long time, and all of a sudden they don’t have dividends when their stock prices fall or when the economy goes into recession, those dividends disappear. So they’re not dependable as we would like them to be for income.
Plus, if you’re only getting 3%, you have to use a lot more of your money than if you could get something, for example, where the withdrawal rate is 6% or 7%. So it’s not only what you’re getting, but it’s how much of your money do you have to dedicate or earmark to get that return for your income?
So let’s say you needed 40 grand a year and you are using a 4% dividend, you would have to earmark a million dollars to get 40,000. The question is, is there more efficient ways of getting income where you might have to earmark 700,000 to get the same 40,000? And that’s where the math has it becomes very important because there are.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So yeah, efficiency is a little bit, obviously different than just the question of will my dividends run out or not run out in retirement? If I have a dividend yield, what could go wrong? But I’ll circle back to the other one. But to your point, market math also impacts efficiency of investments, the dollars you need to earmark to generate the same level of income, that is a very important point as well.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, everything to me, Gabe, I think you agree. Well, I know you agree with this. To me, everything is about efficiency. You can invest in the stock market and get a 12% return. My question is there a better way of investing where you can get that same 12% return with less risk? You can get 4% return on dividends for income and be satisfied with that.
But is there a way where you can get a better return with less risk? So everything is about, it’s the same with taxes. How do we get taxes? That’s funny. I hear people say in retirement, I don’t worry about taxes. Yeah. Well, okay, well, the government does and they’re taking it from you.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you’re steering our boat a little bit in the different direction, Mr. Steve.
Steve Lewit: Well, it’s still all part of the mathematical formula.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Well, math can impact a lot of things.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I’m going to put this-
Gabriel Lewit: We can conduct a lot of things to math.
Steve Lewit: Here’s what I’m going to do, I know I’m going to do a differential equation report on this subject.
Gabriel Lewit: I would love just not to read that.
Steve Lewit: You’ve got to grow. You’ve got to grow your mind and expand.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, hopefully, our little market math formulas there were helpful for you folks. Those are some of the ones we see the most often. If you have questions on those and how they impact your portfolio, give us a call, (847) 499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com, click contact us. And if you want a copy of Steve’s differential equations, please email us.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely, folks, it’ll be available. Give me a couple of weeks to just spruce them up.
Gabriel Lewit: And he’ll zap those over to you. No problem.
Steve Lewit: Yes, differentially.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Let’s talk about social security here.
Steve Lewit: Again, I love math.
Gabriel Lewit: Re-intro-ing things about this topic. I’ve been hearing a lot lately from folks I think misunderstanding a little bit that, hey, isn’t social security going to run out of money in the next, I’ve heard it’s going to run out of money in the next X number of years. Are we not going to get anything when it comes to our social security benefits? So I wanted to just-
Steve Lewit: Especially from younger people.
Gabriel Lewit: So, I wanted to just dispel some of the myths on here.
Steve Lewit: That would be dispel.
Gabriel Lewit: Thank you.
Steve Lewit: You’re welcome.
Gabriel Lewit: You can always hold your tongue on some of those Mr. Lewit, if you’d like.
Steve Lewit: I could.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Okay, so myth number one, social security is going bankrupt. Okay, let’s define bankruptcy, right? I think in most people’s terms, if a company went bankrupt, there’d be no money left to pay anything generally to anybody. I think that’s what most people typically think of.
Steve Lewit: The vaults are empty.
Gabriel Lewit: Right. So when you hear stories like social security’s running out of money, social security is going bankrupt, what you’re thinking is that there’s not going to be anything left to pay anybody anything.
Steve Lewit: That’s correct.
Gabriel Lewit: But that is not the actual case here. So the real way to think about this is based on current projections, social security, the trust fund that pays social security benefits, collects the taxes, pays everything out, in the year 2033 will only be receiving enough new money coming in to currently pay 77% of projected benefits.
Steve Lewit: So that’s not bankrupt.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct.
Steve Lewit: That means the payout is reduced by 23%, but that’s not bankrupt.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct. So it’s obviously you would be upset if you lost 23% of your social security, but it’s not that a hundred percent of it’s going to go away. So I think that’s really important. And of course, that’s still itself a scary statistic.
So there are a lot of people, we’ve talked about this on the show, millions and millions of very large percentage of Americans rely solely on social security for their retirement income.
Steve Lewit: My research, if I recall, is 60% of people in our country, that’s their only income is social security.
Gabriel Lewit: Either way, I would say a hundred percent of clients collecting social security are still planning on needing that money.
Steve Lewit: Sure. It’s part of their budget.
Gabriel Lewit: It is. So one of my clients that had asked me about this said, “So, Gabe…” So we calculated a 23% reduction on his social security between him and his wife, and I think between him and his wife, they had a, I think it was $70,000 a year of benefits, which is a nice amount of benefits.
So let’s cut that by 23%, and that would be $16,000 per year, less that they would get from Social Security, and it’s actually worse than that. That would be the net. Basically, social security is a little more tax-efficient.
But to generate that 16,000, if they had to take withdrawals from another source, they would have to withdraw even more than that to replace what they’ve lost from social security. So it would be a big deal for many, many people if that were to happen.
Steve Lewit: Well, you’ve got two components you’re losing on your income through social security. You’re also losing on inflation against that. So it’s kind of a double whammy.
Gabriel Lewit: And if you did have to withdraw that money from your portfolio, it’d be a triple whammy because then you lose the future growth on your portfolio. So this would be a very devastating thing. So rightfully so, people are concerned about it.
And unfortunately, politicians seem a little less concerned about it because nobody wants to address this very… This report has actually been around, I remember us speaking about this at seminars and workshops we’ve done, I think seven years ago, this has been around this forecast.
Steve Lewit: Maybe longer than that.
Gabriel Lewit: I think it used to be 2034, and now I think it’s saying 2033. So it’s accelerating a little bit. So this isn’t new news, but that date is getting closer and closer and people are starting to pay a little bit more attention to it. They can only kick the can so far down the road.
Steve Lewit: Road, which is why planning, Gabriel, becomes so important. Because if you have a good plan, you can adjust or run scenarios in your plan just like you did. What happens if, what happens if social security is cut by 20% or 15%? What if I don’t get my inflation adjustments? What happens if when you run those in plans and people can see they’re going to be okay, even though they may not like what the results are, that they’re going to be okay? That’s how you get peace of mind and not worry about this stuff.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, yeah. I’d say in a perfect world, I mean, not everybody can do this. Many of our clients are able to, but if you had enough money to weather the storm, right, you can run an analysis with 23% less social security benefits and nobody would want to do this. But see, do you still have enough to cover you either way?
If the answer to that is no, because money is very tight, I would make recommendations to our clients. You may want to consider saving more. Either way, it’s important to have a little bit of a buffer room or wiggle room in retirement because of all sorts of unexpected things. This would also fall under the unexpected, although forecasted possible scenarios.
So if you can save more in the five, 10 years leading up to retirement, that would be a good thing to help you weather any possible, although I think very unlikely reductions in your social security benefit in the future.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely agree 100%.
Gabriel Lewit: But otherwise, there’s not much you can do, folks. Not much I can do or Steve can do. Steve, can you change this?
Steve Lewit: I just want to dispel the myth.
Gabriel Lewit: Let me kick you under the table.
Steve Lewit: He’s definitely going to kick me under the table. It’s dispel.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Okay. So myth number two and this is a quick one, people have said, are we going to lose our benefits because there were some budget cuts at the staffing, at the Social Security Agency? The quick answer is no.
Steve Lewit: No, no, and no.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Okay. And then the last one, which we did cover before is still popping up, I just want to repeat it very quickly. No, social security taxes were not eliminated.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Everybody thinks they were eliminated.
Gabriel Lewit: Had at least five more times this has been brought up since the last time we mentioned it.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely. No.
Gabriel Lewit: So just a quick reiteration. The one big beautiful bill Act, OBB, BOBBB, BBBB. Just keep saying the Bs. Yes. Did not eliminate Social security taxes. It just provided an additional senior enhancing your credit that you would get that could help eliminate you paying taxes.
Steve Lewit: Well, there was, well, a lot of talk about eliminating social security taxes. I think everybody’s wishful thinking made it so when it wasn’t so.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So just a couple little things there for us. Okay. So if you have questions on that, of course, give us a call. We don’t have quite enough time to talk a little bit about the other financial topic I was going to talk about.
So we’re going to just do a quick little 180 here, and I’m going to switch gears. But last but not least, if the social security stuff is worrying you, we’ve got to model it out. So if it’s concerning you in a big major way causing you to lose sleep at night, call us. Don’t just sit there and stew in it.
We can help walk you through this, discuss what could be done, the possible solutions for it, and so on and so forth. Didn’t want to leave you with that big potential concern looming without talking about how we could help you.
Steve Lewit: And who do they call.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Okay. So last but not leastly here. Well, they would call us.
Steve Lewit: You’re not giving our little commercial that you always give.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, not yet. I’ll do that at the end here.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: They call Ghostbusters. I don’t know what who you’re going to call.
Steve Lewit: You usually give in the middle folks if you’re SGL Busters. Yeah. Call 499-3330.
Gabriel Lewit: You could do it if you want.
Steve Lewit: No, no, no. I don’t want to do it.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I wanted to get to know you a little bit better, Steve, or more so our listeners.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. With a quick question.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. What’s that?
Gabriel Lewit: Are you superstitious about anything?
Steve Lewit: No.
Gabriel Lewit: Nothing?
Steve Lewit: Nothing. You’re boring. Well, I am also not telling the truth.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, okay.
Steve Lewit: So, I’m not superstitious. But guess what? I don’t step on cracks. If I’m walking down the sidewalk in New York or in Chicago, I skip over the cracks.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t believe that you actually do that.
Steve Lewit: I do.
Gabriel Lewit: Do you, really?
Steve Lewit: It’s really true. I do not step on the cracks in the sidewalk.
Gabriel Lewit: Sometimes I skip over the steps on the cracks in the sidewalk not because I’m superstitious, I’m just bored walking. And it’s like a game, like, ooh, cool. Let’s avoid the cracks.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I don’t like-
Gabriel Lewit: My kids do it too. My five-year-olds do it too. They like to jump over the-
Steve Lewit: No, I also don’t like walking where there’s a subway. You have these gratings, these metal gratings and if you look down there’s a black hole there. I don’t like walking over those either, but that’s more fear than superstition.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Yeah. I’ll count it. I’ll take it. All right. Yeah, we’ll work on it.
Steve Lewit: But I would walk on
Gabriel Lewit: Let me put it this, you know like in the Gettysburg, the old, the Civil War areas and stuff where lots of people died and there’s battlegrounds and ghost houses, would you sleep over in one of those houses?
Steve Lewit: Absolutely.
Gabriel Lewit: No problem?
Steve Lewit: No problem.
Gabriel Lewit: No question asked?
Steve Lewit: No question asked.
Gabriel Lewit: By yourself?
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: In the middle of the night, pitch black?
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: No, nightlight?
Steve Lewit: I love horror movies.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, we’ll put this to the test.
Steve Lewit: I’d be making my own horror movie.
Gabriel Lewit: I wouldn’t. Just in case I’m wrong.
Steve Lewit: No, I think that’d be cool. Think of all the horrors you could have.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. What an interesting man.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. What about you?
Gabriel Lewit: Superstitious? Well, I just said I don’t think I would stay in those haunted houses by myself. No, I’m not really generally afraid. It goes like, I don’t really think they’re real, but one in the off chance I’m wrong.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, it could be. Now what do you do on Friday the 13th? Do you think about that?
Gabriel Lewit: Oh no. That doesn’t bother me.
Steve Lewit: It doesn’t bother me. Would you walk under a ladder?
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, yeah. All the time. How about this, I know this one’s kind of, well, black cats, you see the black cat on Friday the 13th. It’s like, hmm. Is there’s something here? Yeah.
Steve Lewit: I don’t know.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, last one for you here. If you could go on a shopping spree anywhere, where would it be?
Steve Lewit: Oh my gosh, what am I shopping for?
Gabriel Lewit: And let’s say you get a million dollars to spend, but you have to pick one store.
Steve Lewit: One store.
Gabriel Lewit: One store.
Steve Lewit: For a million bucks?
Gabriel Lewit: For a million bucks.
Steve Lewit: One store. Whoa. Come on. Help me out here. One store. Neiman Marcus.
Gabriel Lewit: I thought you’d pick that.
Steve Lewit: No, that’s kind of-
Gabriel Lewit: Needless markup, they say.
Steve Lewit: That’s foolish money. I don’t know. I don’t know. Gosh, I don’t know. Yeah, I guess Neiman Marcus.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Does he like clothes a lot then? I know you used to be. Do people on the show know he used to be a clothes… What were you?
Steve Lewit: I was a buyer for Lord and Taylor.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: You’re his clothes man.
Gabriel Lewit: Fashion industry.
Steve Lewit: A fashionista. Is that the way you say it?
Gabriel Lewit: Fashionista.
Steve Lewit: Yes. Yeah. I was there when Lord and Taylor was the fashion leader of the world. Right now it’s like middle market. But when I was there, it was fun. It was couture.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, it was fun.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes.
Steve Lewit: But that’s really an interesting question. I might go to some home place to decorate your home.
Gabriel Lewit: The Creighton Barrel.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Creighton Barrel.
Gabriel Lewit: It is kind of expensive.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, they are. I was shopping there the other day. It’s like everything’s gone up.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, it certainly has. It’s kind of everywhere.
Steve Lewit: Where would you go?
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t think I would need a million dollars for it, but I would go to Best Buy. If I could, I would just buy everything in Best Buy. I’m just a tech nerd. I’d love to-
Steve Lewit: Oh, ABT. I would go to APT. Apt.
Gabriel Lewit: Apt. Well, that’s close.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: You can’t steal my idea.
Steve Lewit: Oh, but I love that idea.
Gabriel Lewit: No, you can’t steal it.
Steve Lewit: We can go together. I’ll split my million with you.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well-
Steve Lewit: We’ll go together.
Gabriel Lewit: I love going to Best Buy. I’m like, oh, I would love to have just like a wall of 500, 800 inch TV screens just for the fun of it. I don’t need them. I just have 180 inch TV screen. And then you could have all the sound system equipment and you could do all the computers. And they got the eBikes and they got a little arcade games. None of this stuff you need, but it’d be a lot of fun. It’d be a lot of fun.
Steve Lewit: So folks, I wonder what you would do with a million dollars, where you would shop. You can pick one store. Where would you go if someone gave you a million bucks to spend one place?
Gabriel Lewit: Got to pick one store. One store. That’s the challenge. I’m sure Mr. Beast or somebody would do something like this on his show. That’s what he does. He gives hands out money to people. If you don’t know Mr. Beast, my son, who’s nine, is obsessed with his YouTube channel. But anywho.
Steve Lewit: Forgive me for not knowing who Mr. Beast is.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s why I said I think most people don’t. He’s a guy that he’s very wealthy. He’s a YouTube star. He plays games and gives away money and stuff like that. He would do stuff like this.
Steve Lewit: Well, there used to be a show in my time called The Millionaire, I think it was called The Millionaire, where he would give a check to somebody. All of a sudden, he’d receive a million bucks and they didn’t know where it came from. And then he would watch over them and see what they did with it. I think it was called The Millionaire.
Gabriel Lewit: So, the show was they just gave people a million dollars?
Steve Lewit: Yeah. This one guy, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Steve Lewit: And they really did give him. He really did.
Gabriel Lewit: This wasn’t Who wants to be a Millionaire where you have a 1% chance?
Steve Lewit: No, no, no. Well, this guy just picked people out at random if I remember the show correctly, and these people received a million dollars, or did he come up and say, here’s… I forgot how he did it, and then they had a million bucks.
Gabriel Lewit: Sign me up. All right folks, well, we’ve got a wrap for today. We hope you had a wonderful time joining us here. We know we enjoy talking with you. If there’s anything we can do to help you with anything we covered or anything else, big or small, give us a call, (847) 499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com and click contact us or email us info@sglfinancial.com. Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, coming up.
Gabriel Lewit: We are closed on Monday, just in case you’re wondering. And have a wonderful relaxing time with friends, family, barbecue, whatever you may do. And we will talk to you on the next show.
Steve Lewit: Stay well, everybody. Enjoy.
Gabriel Lewit: Bye-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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