And good evening.

You've got more than money.

You've got Gene Dickison looking directly into the camera as I should be on every show.

If you're a loyal viewer of more than money, you know, sometimes there's a little quirk.

Sometimes we even peek behind the scenes of how all this is done.

And it's a great deal of fun and a great deal of professionalism on the part of our team.

Not so much me, perhaps, but in general, my job is very simple to serve you.

My job is to spend the next half an hour or so answering questions for you, giving you perspective, taking, something that maybe is a real challenge for you and your family.

Perhaps it's, predominantly financial.

Perhaps it's a little more personal and and adding in my 780 years of experience, a lot of training along the way to bring as much value to you as I possibly can.

The reality is that there's a lot of value to be given.

That is true.

But you are the person.

You are the one who sets the agenda, sets the tone.

It's because of you, all of our viewers.

Our entire audience.

Coast to coast, border to border.

That allows us to be boldly stated.

The most relevant financial show on television today.

It doesn't matter what station, doesn't matter how big, how small, where they're located.

We are the most relevant because of you.

You are asking the questions that are most important to you, and that's relevancy by very definition.

So I hope you will agree with me that that's the reason we are indeed the most relevant show on television today.

If you are a loyal viewers and you know exactly how this works, we answer questions.

We answer questions.

You have email to us.

So if you have a question as we go through the show, you go, hey, I, I wish I had more information about that or something completely different.

Send those emails to me.

Gene at ask mtm dot com.

Gene at ask mtm dot com.

And we answer every single question back.

Some of those not nearly all some of those appear on future shows.

Maybe one of your questions will appear on a future show.

Indeed, we try to pick questions that a lot of folks would find interesting, and I think our very first question this evening fits that bill.

Shall we go to our first question?

Indeed.

Yeah.

There's your headline tariffs, inflation and the economy.

Yeah.

Nobody talking about any of those things Now of course as a matter of fact that's how this email starts.

Everyone is talking about tariffs and how Trump is using them.

No one seems to have a good handle on how they will affect prices, inflation, etc..

Number one, do you think the impact, what will the impact be on prices and inflation?

And number two, is there an end game that we're not yet seeing?

Well, I, I appreciate the question very much because it's on the minds of tons and tons of folks.

Perhaps the vast majority of Americans certainly the vast majority of politicians, whether they be, strong supporters of tariffs and their long term impact or absolutely, abject, and abject opposition, to those tariffs.

It's on everyone's mind.

So let's start with the basics.

Tariffs.

What are our tariffs.

Tariffs are in essence a levy attacks that a government places on goods as they arrive to be imported into that specific country.

We'll use America obviously as our example.

So, India sends us a boatload of cargo.

It arrives at a port in, on the West Coast, and the assessment of the value of those goods is done at that point.

And this, tariff tax, if you will, is, collected by the federal government at the port of entry.

And then those goods are dispersed.

Lots of folks are saying, okay, wait a second.

If it's a tax, is does that mean that everybody's, every American's taxes are going up?

And the answer is it depends.

It depends.

If your income tax is $5,380, you better pay it.

It is it is not voluntary.

It is a mandatory tax.

And you better write the check or make sure that that's taking care of in some way, shape or form, because the IRS is very interested in folks who decide they're not going to pay those taxes.

A tariff, on the other hand, is very much voluntary, very much voluntary.

So voluntary is not a word that we typically use for income taxes, but with a tariff.

The answer that that that word voluntary is very appropriate.

Here's why.

Let's assume, just for the moment, that you really like wine and your preference or your requirement for French wines because everyone knows they're the best.

I'm silly.

That's ridiculous.

Great wines in America.

We all know that.

But yours?

I must have French wines.

Excellent.

You're going to pay about 200% more than you will pay for a wonderful wine made here in America.

That's the tariff you have chosen to do that.

You can be at the wine store and go.

This bottle seemingly is about the same in terms of quality is $30 a bottle.

This bottle is 12.

This bottle was made, 40 miles from here.

This bottle was made overseas.

Use that, analogy or that example is a better word, and apply that throughout all of your purchases.

So are there, 100% of your purchases that will be imported?

The answer is unlikely.

Some estimates, the academics who have looked at the tariff scenario, as outlined currently by President Trump and his administration, have estimated that if you were subject to 100% of the tariff exposure, as it's expected, worst case scenario, every single thing you buy is in is, imported.

It would raise your personal inflation about 3%.

So if inflation in general is two and a half, add three to that.

Your inflation is 5.5%.

But if you are typical, and you are not importing absolutely everything, perhaps you're importing half and, and lots of items that we buy.

We're not actually perhaps aware that that, that they're imported.

I bought a set of trainers, just, a week or so ago, a couple weeks ago, and, well known American brand made in Vietnam.

So imported can affect basically everyone.

But are you importing 100%?

The answer is no.

You're not going to see that full 3%.

Are you importing half of what you are spending money on?

Let's use that as an example.

Now we're down to one and a half.

And for folks who are determined to, defeat the negative impact of tariffs, it becomes a pretty interesting some would say game or opportunity perhaps.

Food is a great example.

There's lots of folks who are, adverse to tariffs who are laying claim that everything's imported, all foodstuffs, everything that we if you're getting pineapples, they're being imported.

Hawaii.

Yeah.

That doesn't make sense.

Avocados.

Every avocado comes from Mexico.

California.

That doesn't make sense.

But let's.

They're using that as a as a topic that everybody can relate to.

We all have to buy food.

But do we all have to buy imported food?

Wherever you are, wherever you are across this country, you are very close to a farmers market.

In our particular area, we have probably two dozen farmers markets.

And these are fabulous opportunities to buy amazing fresh locally grown, not transported, not frozen, not processed, just tremendous advantage and support American farmers.

So there are a lot of, what controversies that are, largely based on misinformation and, and in many cases intention misinformation.

So once we understand what tariffs do, the question becomes, are is it going to raise inflation.

The answer is potentially.

But the question here also says is it really the end game?

And the answer is no.

The answer is no.

Again, if the full impact of tariffs were felt, we don't believe they will be.

But if they were, the federal government would gain in revenue about $600 billion a year.

That's $600 billion that we as taxpayers don't have to pay through income taxes.

That's not a terrible thing.

Do we expect that that will be the end result?

Personally, no.

The folks that we trust, the folks that we counsel with, don't believe that either.

President Trump having many years ago, many, many years ago written, his famous book, the Art of the deal.

We believe that this, tariff announcement, this tariff tariff, the imposing of these tariffs, negotiated the opportunity for the United States to say we've been taken advantage of for too long.

Let's make sure that we get a level playing field.

So we don't believe that the end game is the federal government making a lot of money.

We also don't believe the end game is the 3% inflation because of tariffs.

We believe that the end game is certainly the target of the end game in the negotiations is to level the playing field.

So, interestingly enough, two countries immediately announced, when President Trump several weeks ago announced his tariffs that they wish to go to zero, they wish to go to zero tariffs, Vietnam and Israel both and instantly, as of the moment that we're recording this show for you, 34 countries have entered negotiations with the United States.

And the objective on the part of the Trump administration appears to be to level the playing field, get as close to zero tariffs on both sides as possible.

Korea, Japan, India, Vietnam, on the on the eastern, on, on the Asian rim have all indicated they want to make some, very fair, very accommodating, trade agreement with America.

We think, gosh, over 100 countries have already reached out and indicated interest.

So in our opinion, the end game will not be raising, costs for American consumers or raising a tremendous amount of money for the American, federal government.

We think the end game will be level playing field.

Everyone around the world paying less for goods coming in and out of their country.

And of course, that's that's a prayer that we can all get behind no matter what your political leanings might be or what your initial feelings might have been.

As we started our discussion about tariffs and inflation in the economy.

But I think we all, everyone can agree, that level playing field, making things less expensive, easily accessible, around the world benefits everyone.

I hope that helped a bit.

I know that was rather long winded, and, maybe it still leaves questions, of course.

And if you have those questions, send them to me, Gene at ask MTM dot com.

We're very, very happy to answer those.

Sir, do we go to number two?

Indeed we do.

Choosing the best option for kids.

We'd like to set up accounts for our children.

They are ages 50 and 45.

Kids.

Our hope is these accounts would pay our children monthly incomes when they turn retirement age ten, 15, 20 years from now.

What idea is should we be looking at?

It's a fascinating question.

First of all, the ages makes it very interesting.

And second of all, the objective, the long term objective, very, very interesting.

So couple things that we would make note of.

Number 1, 45 and 50, these are mature people.

You've got to make sure that you are, aware that you are cognizant of what their current, financial actions, entail.

For example, are they currently, filling up all the retirement funds that they are legally entitled to put away?

Are they filling in if they're doing an IRA or are they doing the maximum 7 or $8000?

They're doing A41K?

Are they doing the maximum?

20, 25, $30,000?

Are they doing the maximum that they personally can that will affect, significantly affect your choices?

I'll give you a simple example.

50 year old, currently can put in excess of $30,000 a year into a 401K.

It can be tax deductible.

It can be a Roth option so that it's not deductible, but it's tax free at retirement.

Perhaps the 50 year old is doing as best as as he or she can.

Hey, I'm putting 15,000 away.

My company is matching five of that.

I'm doing pretty well.

But if mom and dad want to help prepare better.

Prepare, this 50 year old for retirement, they might suggest here's an additional $10,000 a year gift.

You can place that in your 401k.

There's a little bit of work involved.

There are some mechanics that we need to go through logistical issues, but it can absolutely be done.

And now instead of him putting in 15 company, putting in 520, now he has $30,000 a year working for him or her for retirement.

So that's something that you need to look at carefully.

But you need your your children's cooperation in order to attend to that.

Let's assume for a moment, that they are, doing very well.

They're putting away the max and that that's really not an option to to assist them.

The second opportunity you might look at, from, a, just a pure investment standpoint, is to create a, a, basket, so to speak, of stocks that you believe that over the next ten, 15, 20 years will do.

Well, the reason I emphasize basket of stocks is because if you are picking the correct, companies, they have a long term opportunity to do well.

No guarantee, but opportunity.

If you're picking the correct companies, the, the vast majority of their profit will come in the form of capital gains, meaning they're the reason you want that company.

It's because you expect the stock price to grow.

Not that they're paying a large dividend.

You really don't want large dividends from this basket of of gift money that you're providing, to these children because you don't want it to be taxed year by year by year to any significant extent at all.

So, for example, if you can buy a company that currently is very, well-regarded, fits your needs at $50 a share over the next ten, 15, 20 years, credit grow to 100 or 150 or more than the answer.

Sure, credit go to zero.

The answer is sure.

But if we've done our research correctly and we're using high quality blue chip companies, well-regarded companies, could it go from 50 to 150?

The answer sure.

We've made a tremendous profit and we've paid virtually no tax, virtually no tax.

And when we do spend, the money will be paying it at capital gains rates.

Capital gains rates are typically a bit smaller than your normal income tax rate.

And in some cases zero.

So that's an interesting option.

First option helps supplement their retirement.

They already have a second option.

Put it into a basket of of stocks that will grow, with little or no income and then convert into capital gains.

Another option that's relatively new very, very interesting option is the use of it's called growth income annuities, not growth in the value of the annuity, but growth of the income.

The the annuity will will produce.

And in many cases these are very, very attractive for this purpose.

Where you're putting money in.

But you you don't want to draw any, you don't want them to draw on it for a number of years.

A pretty typical growth income annuity would say, if you take the money right now, neither of them would.

But if they did, it would give them a guaranteed 3.5% per year.

But if they wait, it grows.

The percentage that they can take out guaranteed grows year by year.

So using 15 years, no use 16 years as an example.

If it grows by a a quarter of a point per year over 16 years, it'll go from 3.5% that it's guaranteed to 7.5%.

And that's the value of the annuity has grown nicely.

Let's say you put 100 in and over 15 years it grows to 200.

You've gone from an initial guaranteed 3.5% of 130 500 a year to 7.5% of 215,000 a year.

Pretty impressive.

Limited number of companies that offer those, of course, because you're looking very long term, you want the highest quality company, the strongest financial companies that you can find that offer these opportunities.

But they are tax deferred.

So over that time frame, waiting until, this, these, these children, these kids, turn on the income that can grow year by year without being taxed.

And also the income guarantee grows year by year, a lot of options.

And depending on the amount of money that you're thinking about, if it's a relatively small amount of money, you're going to want to choose one of those three or other options.

If it's a very substantial sum of money, you might consider breaking it into pieces and doing more than one option.

Fascinating question.

Excellent for the kids.

For the kids, sure.

Where do we go next?

Patty cake, Patty cake, baker's man.

One of my granddaughter's favorites games, of course.

Loves that.

What?

Children don't, would it be beneficial if I were to combine my 401ks with my other accounts?

Would it be beneficial to combine my 401ks with my other account?

A specific important point, 401k is plural here in this question.

401ks, multiple 401ks.

And for a lot of you who are gone, wait a second.

You can have multiple 401ks over a person's career, their professional life.

It is quite common.

As we meet folks, as they're entering retirement, that they have been employed by 2 or 3 companies, each of which had a 401K.

It's unusual, but not rare to find that they've kept all those for one case exactly where they were just kept that investment going.

However, it was doing well or not so well.

So, multiple 401ks absolutely possible.

It's an interesting observation to make that if, you were in my generation applying for a job and your resume showed that you had been in four different jobs over the last five years, that would be a red flag that every H.R.

Department head would say, you're a job hopper.

We want stability.

You really need to kind of move along.

Not today, not today.

Very, very common for us to be counseling with very bright, very accomplished, very professional, young folks in their late 20s, early 30s and since college, they've had four or 5 or 6 different jobs.

So for lots of you who are watching, this show this evening, the 401K, you were able to accumulate a very serious sum of money because you were in a company.

You stayed for a very long time.

You made regular contributions, in essence, dollar cost averaging into the stock market.

Maybe your company matched and it grew over time.

For the young people today, that might be a challenge that might end up being, and, non-sequitur.

Lots of different companies, very little in the way of 401ks.

So, if you had multiple 401ks, can you combine them?

The answer is almost always yes.

If you had multiple 401ks and IRAs, can you combine them?

In almost every case, the answer's yes.

And is there an advantage to doing that?

The answer is, of course, there's an advantage in simplifying your life.

That's a huge advantage, making things, easier to to both track and to, manage, adjust, monitor.

Absolutely.

If you had multiple 401ks, IRAs and then you have Roth IRAs, annuities and investment accounts, can you combine all of those and answers?

Absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

We have, on regular occasion, folks who visit our home office and the more than money home office and say, here's all my accounts.

I want them all brought into one.

And it is extremely rare that that's possible, not because we couldn't do it, but because the tax impact would be dreadful.

So as a result, the very same people who are right, anxious, I think is, is the right word, anxious to make their life simpler, would make their life dreadful and complicated from a tax standpoint and painful from the tax standpoint.

So can you combine alike accounts?

Certainly.

Are there certain accounts that overlap IRAs?

And 401ks, yes.

Can you combine those?

Almost certainly.

Can you combine typical IRAs with Roth IRAs?

Answers no.

Can a husband and wife combine their IRAs together?

No.

No.

IRA stands for Individual Retirement account, not multiple.

So there are lots of guidelines you've got to follow, and certainly work with a financial advisor that can give you guidance.

Sir, do we have time for one more?

We're not sure.

Yes.

We're.

This one's fun.

I in the NFL, are they one in the same?

Does anybody know NFL came up with I know, absolutely not.

This is kind of fun.

This was a question that came from our live shows from a few weeks back.

The question is, do you think Gronk could replace you?

When I saw this question originally, I thought it said Gronk.

Do I think Gronk could replace I'm not sure.

Gronk well you actually I like Gronk I think he's fantastic I think he has a tremendous personality and adds a great deal to the NFL.

Shows all that kind of good stuff.

I needed to be educated about Gronk.

Gronk is an eye and eye app similar in concept to chat.

GPT, Gemini, etc.

etc.

so could AI replace Gene?

Not yet.

Not yeah, certainly not from a personality standpoint.

Let's be brutally honest.

Or lack thereof.

AI every, acknowledged expert in AI has the same caveat, the same warning to folks using AI, whatever product it produces.

I want an investment report.

I want to, to send out an email blast to a thousand clients.

I want, I want to, to do some deep research on tariffs.

Every, expert cautions double check the work, double check the product that comes out of whatever AI app that you're currently using.

Because in many, many, many cases, it's wrong.

And in many, many cases it's off point or it doesn't address the question.

And there are lots of training, opportunities out there to learn how to best frame your request to an AI, app, to get the best results.

But none of them are perfect yet.

And let's be honest, this is more of the money we got to be perfect.

But can Gronk do it?

No.

Absolutely not.

Thanks so much.

Gosh, we covered a lot of ground.

I hope you picked up a couple ideas that are useful.

That's the whole idea.

I hope we serve the folks who asked the questions.

We serve the folks who are listening to us answer the questions we'd like to serve you.

Send us your questions.

Send those to me directly.

Gene at ask MTM dot com.

Gene at ask MTM dot com.

I have an entire team of financial advisors answering questions back.

There's no cost, there's no obligation, there's no pressure.

It's our opportunity to serve you.

And perhaps, just perhaps, on my future show, you'll see your question asked and answered.

And if not, you'll still have the pleasure of hearing what your friends and neighbors are worried about.

And maybe it's enough that you're going to want to return week after week as we come back to you for another edition of More Than Money.

Good night.