It’s Giving...Bear Market | Millennial Money Matters

Description

Market volatility got you spiraling? We get it. In this follow-up to our recession episode, we’re unpacking exactly what to do when the markets start doing the most. Should you move your money? Freeze your spending? Hide under a weighted blanket? (Maybe a little of all three.)

In this episode of Millennial Money Matters, we talk about how to stay financially steady when everything feels shaky. From investment strategies to mindset shifts, we're giving you the tools to protect your finances and your mental health when the economy starts acting up.

It’s real talk, real advice, and zero fear-mongering—because financial empowerment > panic mode.

Reach out to Kelly Turner at kturner@totalmortgage.com and Derek Mazzarella at dmazzarella@mygfpartner.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
All right. Welcome to another episode of Millennial Money Matters with Kelly Turner.
Speaker #1
And Derek Mazzarella.
Speaker #0
Hi, Derek. How are you doing this morning? Oh,
Speaker #1
you know, peachy. I've had no problems whatsoever. My phone's been whisper quiet.
Speaker #0
Whisper quiet. Why? Why would people be calling you right now? I mean,
Speaker #1
I don't know if you noticed that the market is going bananas.
Speaker #0
Bananas.
Speaker #1
Yeah. In a bad way,
Speaker #0
though. In a bad way.
Speaker #1
Not like, we're like green bananas or they're going brown and rotting. And he's like, I just bought these bananas. I have to throw them out.
Speaker #0
Right. Well, and it was funny. I was just talking to somebody about the roaring 20s. We were sort of sold at the beginning of 2025. This was the roaring 20s. We're out of the pandemic. Everybody's out doing stuff. And then the economy is currently imploding. And we're actually headed towards the Great Depression.
Speaker #1
I hope it's not the case. But that was what happened last time we had this amount of tariffs. I don't know if you know that. But last time we had this volume of tariffs was 100 years ago.
Speaker #0
Oh, no, I didn't know that.
Speaker #1
115, yeah. It's actually... right before the depression we had eight pairs.
Speaker #0
Okay so this sounds a little depressing speaking of depressions I'm feeling a little depressed here.
Speaker #1
You should. No no let's be a little I mean so the main question I've been getting asked like all the time is like what's going on we had a recession what should I do with my portfolio like I need to go all the cash like do I need to hire a gun get a gun and put it in my basement and like have my bunker going and that's I think what we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about like what do we actually do.
Speaker #0
What do we do? What's the smart moves to make in a recession? Well, and it's funny, we talk a lot on this about like how to manage your money. You know, the different challenges millennials have, things like childcare, summer camp. And it's hard because this stuff doesn't stop, right? Like, you know, in prior recessions and depressions, a lot of times there was one working parent, one parent staying at home. You could sort of like adjust schedules. We're now like in a two working parent household here where like. You still got to pay for summer camp. You still got to pay for daycare. You still got to do these things, but you're worried about your money. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Well, I mean, this is, I mean, we should be vets by now. We've been through, you know, we had COVID. We had the great recession in 2008. We had that with 2022, which kind of sucked, but no one really talked about, right?
Speaker #0
That was like the pretend one. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And so, but like we should be experts, but the problem is like, we've never been in this spot in our lives where to your point, like now we have kids, we have all these other responsibilities. We're kind of really in. are just starting to get into a higher earning income years. So there's a lot of different challenges that we had way back when we were 21 years old or just graduating college and thinking, like, oh, do I just go to grad school for another year?
Speaker #0
Yeah, right. Well, that was exactly it. A lot. That's what a lot of people did. And the other piece to that is like you weren't most of us in 2008, most millennials, your retirement, your investment portfolio, your retirement accounts, first off, had so little money in them. It didn't matter if it went down. Yeah,
Speaker #1
I was like, I had $1,000, now it's... 800, 400, whatever.
Speaker #0
Retirement was so far away that like, who cares? Now, all of a sudden, here we are. Again, the elder millennials are like early 40s. My Gen Xers, you're mid 40s to 50s. Retirement's not that far away anymore. So now you are looking at your investment accounts, your retirement accounts from a very different place.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Yeah. And you're actually seeing real dollar losses. The percentages are something a lot of advisors talk about. hey, it's down 10%. It's down 5%. It's down 20%. But what did you lose? Did you lose 50,000? Are you down 120,000? Are you down 500,000? So these are real numbers. And it's like, oh my god, it took me a long time to get there. I'm sure a lot of people are freaking out. It's very normal to be emotional about this. I think the thing that we got to do is take a step back and breathe.
Speaker #0
Okay. What am I breathing about? Okay.
Speaker #1
Well, why don't we just get into a little bit of market history anyway? Because I think it's important to give context to what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker #0
All right. I love it.
Speaker #1
I'm ready for that. So I'm sure people have heard of bulls and bears. Are you kind of familiar with how the animals structure? No,
Speaker #0
you just asked me that the other day too. And I was like, I don't know, like bulls are good. Are we talking about elephants and donkeys? Like, I don't even know. Why do we use animals?
Speaker #1
I should have looked this up, but I have no idea why he's calling bulls and bears. But just so we know, a bear market is bad, right? So you get a bear down, maybe that's why. And a bull market is everything's going up.
Speaker #0
Okay. So we are not in a bull market right now.
Speaker #1
We are certainly not in a bull market at the moment. But they also have different things. Like a correction is a 10% drop.
Speaker #0
Okay. So we don't call that an animal. That's not like the sloth market or the bunny rabbit. Yeah.
Speaker #1
It's kind of like a cute little monkey or something like that. Yeah. The spider monkey market. And then a bear market is when you're down 20% or more.
Speaker #0
Okay. Where are we right now today? Well,
Speaker #1
we are just about a bear market with S&P. So we're about 19%. down from the peak. So just so everyone knows, we're recording this on April 9th. So we had a little bit of bounce back so far today, but that can change in 20 minutes. Who knows? So we're almost touching a bear market. The NASDAQ, which is all tech companies, is past a bear market. So they've gone past the 20% marker. Yep. So they are bearing down. And basically the recovery times are interesting, right? So a 10% correction, which is only half of the bear market, right? It takes four months on average to recover from that.
Speaker #0
So that's not a big deal. I'm making air quotes here. Yeah. That's a fluctuation.
Speaker #1
And most people aren't aware of this, but you may have seen advisors throw this chart up all the time, but the average like intra-year decline, so like in the middle of a year is about 14%. So Like this happens like almost every year, basically. but we just don't notice it because, you know.
Speaker #0
It's subtle.
Speaker #1
It's subtle. Yeah, it's subtle. And at the end of the year, usually we're up anyway. So it's like, whatever. You know, we had some dips. It happens. A 20% drop takes two years and two months on average to recover from.
Speaker #0
So that's a little more painful.
Speaker #1
Yeah, definitely some more time for sure. And just for reference, since we've already talked about the Great Recession, that was a 57% drop from the peak to the bottom. And that took six years to recover.
Speaker #0
Six years. So I think that, let's pause there for a moment. That's a good perspective for a millennial. who is panicking right now, that you still have more than six years to retirement.
Speaker #1
Yeah, which is great. And I'll even throw you some numbers. I'll use SPI, which is the proxy for the S&P 500. That was at $155 a share at the peak before the market dropped. Then it dropped down to 74. Then today, it's at 497. If you just told me, hey, what is it, 17 years ago, I could buy something $155 and now it's almost 500.
Speaker #0
That sounds amazing.
Speaker #1
I will take that.
Speaker #0
I will take that all day long.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So, you know, let's have a little bit of perspective. That's buying it right at the peak of the worst crash in a hundred years almost.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So that honestly, like, whew, super, you said to breathe. That was, that's like a super relieving set of numbers for me that, right. In 17 years, which is still within my like retirement zone. Yeah. Um, I'm way up, but in six years I'm back where I am right now. So like, That's not so bad.
Speaker #1
Yeah, that's if you haven't added any money, right? Yeah,
Speaker #0
we're all still working.
Speaker #1
If you're constantly throwing money in the 401k and saving your investment accounts and doing all the things you should be doing now anyway, you're buying those drops in the market consistently. And I'll get into that more later. But that just shows like, hey, if I just literally did nothing and just put my head in the sand, you're still going to be out ahead in the future.
Speaker #0
Perfect. Love it. Here for that.
Speaker #1
All right. So that goes to I know there's kind of a weird stat I want to throw out about putting your head in the sand a little bit. because um One of the interesting things I learned was JPMorgan had to study over the last 20 years about the 10 worst days in the market. Do you know what happened? Seven out of the 10 days, roughly, the best days kind of followed those 10 worst days. So when people say, hey, I need to go to cash, blah, blah, blah, you're probably missing out on one of those 10 best days because they follow so closely to the worst days.
Speaker #0
Interesting. Do you have more context to watch?
Speaker #1
I do. So I'll give you an example first. COVID. March 12th, second worst day on record in 20 years. March 13th, second best day. So literally the day after we had the second worst day. And then the day after we have the second best day.
Speaker #0
So anybody who panicked on the 12th.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I went to cash and then they lost a huge run up.
Speaker #0
Wow. Okay.
Speaker #1
So it's really hard to time. like the next best day and they typically follow the clusters i think the reason is i mean there's it's probably convoluted but there's a lot of different reasons for that and there's a lot of algorithms now especially they'll just like buy triggers on certain you know parts of the market but people tend to rush in the smart people tend to rush in when the markets are dropping yeah right so so that's why we typically see those sponsors and sometimes it's just things to get oversold right they're like well this is way too cheap i should buy some yeah i should get some of that now Now,
Speaker #0
and again, I think super comforting, right? That like. Staying the course. This is sort of back to the like staying the course concept of like, yeah Things feel like today on April 9th. Things feel really icky Yeah, cuz today's a the tariffs like actually went into effect today feels really icky but like maybe in the coming days It will feel better.
Speaker #1
Yes. We may have a day in the next two weeks where it's up three or four percent It's totally possible totally possible, right? So that's something to keep in mind So now let's talk about maybe all right What can we do in the short term because most people say I gotta go to cash
Speaker #0
And what is, can you just tell everybody, I don't know, it sounds like you should know what it means, but what does go to cash?
Speaker #1
It means I'm going to sell my investments, realize the losses, and then I'm going to put it either in like literally a bank account. I'm going to put it maybe a high yield savings or, you know, people like I'm going to put in a CD, but I'm going to get 3% for the next 13 months. Like that's what to me cash means.
Speaker #0
Cash means. Okay. So just full blown.
Speaker #1
Full blown. Like I will not lose any principal. I'm just going to put it in cash.
Speaker #0
But you're losing like. taxes and other things when you're doing that. Well,
Speaker #1
it kind of depends on what type of account you have, because you can keep it in cash, like in your IRA or in 4K. They have like stable value funds. So there's definitely options within your investment structure where you can just keep it in cash. Like even the investment accounts have typically a cash sweep feature, which will get you maybe a couple percentage point. Those those tend to pay less, though, than a CD or something. So that's that's like a natural reaction where people like I got to get out and like, I'll just when things get better, I'm going to start putting it back. Yeah, that's what I hear all the time. But like, what does that mean for you? Do you have a metric on that? Like. Is that, I mean
Speaker #0
down 25 now we're down to just 20 and let's come back five percent like is that no one no one can tell you that answer that's the hardest part about this whole timing thing is because you have to be right twice yeah yeah and that's you know it's funny because i you know obviously mortgage lady here interest rates work the exact same way that everybody wants to hit the bottom like i want i want to lock on the best day and we're like everybody wants to do that yeah we don't know that would be amazing that is yeah yeah we don't know what day that is so you can't yeah to time it as impossible. You have to use market indicators and and work with professionals who know what they're doing and stuff like that to help guide you as close as we can, but no one is going to time it right a hundred percent of the time. No, I mean, look at it. You can't do it.
Speaker #1
Yeah. There's, there's no way you can possibly do that. And if you, you did, you'd, you'd have a statue outside of like Warren Buffett's office.
Speaker #0
So I, people, that is my line. People will be like, what do you think interest rates are going to do? I'm like, in my crystal ball that Warren Buffett gave me, I would be a billionaire if I knew the answer to that question.
Speaker #1
I'll be here answering your question. Correct. Correct. See you. Bye. I'm on my private island. All right. Well, I think there's some things that people are like, well, the market's still going down. I think it's still going to go down because remember, like the market is a leading indicator. So it's going to tell you what it thinks is going to happen in the future. Right. So it's telling us we're probably headed to some bad times. Right. So if you want to be safer but still stay invested, there's a couple of things you could do. So there's something called a minimum volatility fund.
Speaker #0
That sounds delightful. I like minimum volatility. Yeah.
Speaker #1
And volatility just means, you know, things are going up and down pretty crazily. And these are designed to not go up and down as much. And I just want to preface this as well for the compliance folks. Like this is a podcast. Please don't take investment advice just strictly off this. Talk to your people. Do your own research. Okay. But this is just some ideas to throw at you. So minimum volatility is basically to say like, look, there's like, we have a thing called like downside and upside. So like you may get 70% of the downside. So if it goes down 10, you're going down seven. right so it's capturing less of the downside right so you're losing less but usually the trade-off there with these funds is on the upside you're not going to get like nipsey 70 or 75 of the upside right but for a lot of people especially like our gen xers that are closer to retirement but not in retirement these can be good tools because they're saying okay well like i'm going to still capture some of the market not all the downside i'm going to lose less and for a lot of people that's more important than getting you know more gains so that's an option um two is bond funds hey
Speaker #0
As mortgage people would love for you to get into bonds right now.
Speaker #1
Yeah. The challenge we had in 2022 was like bonds and stocks went down at the same time. Yeah. So far, they've seemed to hold. That could always change. I've seen little chinks in the arm with that one too. But one of the ways around that too, instead of just doing bond funds, you can do what's called laddering. So bonds have what's called maturity dates. So bonds may mature as quickly as 30 days or as long as 30 years.
Speaker #0
Oh, so you're... again, timing things, but depending on how long it takes, you're looking at something different.
Speaker #1
Yeah. But what a ladder does is says, okay, we're going to buy bonds at different intervals. So some are going to come due in 30 days. Some are going to turn in 90. Some are going to come due in a year, a year and a half. So you build this portfolio that's constantly coming due, and you just tack that new one that recovers on the back of the line.
Speaker #0
So you're kind of hitting the market. gains and dips. Yeah.
Speaker #1
So it'll it'll help reduce a little bit of volatility for you, first of all. So the ups and downs of the market, but also like there's reinvestment risk and interest rate risk. So if the interest rates are constantly changing too much, then you're kind of buying different ladders and different, you know, areas of the spectrum.
Speaker #0
That's kind of cool. I didn't even know that was a thing.
Speaker #1
Typically much better for retirees, but that's that's an option, too. And the other part is there's there's defensive sectors of the market. So there's things that like you're always going to go and buy food. Yeah, right. You're still like. I'm not going to give that up, but you may give up traveling. You may give up getting your haircut done as often. Like things like that, like that's called discretionary.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So the Carnival Cruise may not be the greatest investment right now, but like Nestle might be.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So generally, yeah, in down markets, like utilities do well. The staples do well. Things like that. Healthcare. You know, usually you have like, you're having a heart attack. You're like, well, I'm going to wait this recession out. Yeah,
Speaker #0
all right. I'm good. I'm good for the moment.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah. No, we can pause on this. So those are the three areas where typically if you want to stay invested, maybe just shift some of your portfolio away from tech, away from those like Carnival Cruises. Sorry, Carnival. We love you. To those types of things.
Speaker #0
I'm a real Caribbean girl.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Oh, all right. Fancy. Yeah, I guess so. So those are kind of like the three core things you could do, like where you're making tweaks to your portfolio without just like saying, oh my God, I'm going to blow this up. like The analogy I use, because, you know, big analogies, like if you're redoing, you know, like you're looking at your kitchen, you say, all right, do I just maybe change some stall stuff, like change the curtains? Or do I revamp the whole kitchen?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Am I demoing my cabinets or I'm just giving everything a little facelift? Yeah,
Speaker #1
maybe just a little painting, right?
Speaker #0
A little facelift.
Speaker #1
Let's facelift it.
Speaker #0
Let's talk about cash again really quick. Is there anyone who should be going to cash?
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I think you're typically going to find yourself in two spots in this market, right? You're either about to retire or you are retired. And that's where cash is incredibly useful. Because I kind of mentioned that, you know, the bear market 20% drop two-year thing. Generally for clients, I recommend keeping two years in cash that are retired or about to retire. Because it gives you the timeframe to weather this market. Because the challenge is in retirement, you're going to have other challenges. You're going to have inflation to worry about. You're going to have medical costs going up and things like that. So you need the market. You need to be investing in stock to have that, outpace that part of it. So this kind of creates a balance. So I usually do what's called a bucket strategy where you have two years in cash. You have three to six years or so in growth and really quality companies. And then you have the last remaining bucket. That's going to be your growth bucket. So this is where cash can be a really useful tool to those retirees or people about to retire. Because if you're retiring into the down market, that's also a real challenge too.
Speaker #0
Yeah. And when we're talking about cash, guys, again, we've said this in other episodes, we're not talking about stacks of cash under your mattress. No. Please do not do that.
Speaker #1
So high yield savings accounts are good. You want to get some interest on it. If you can, CDs are fine. Just make sure you're timing up correctly with when you need the money. Yeah. Like you need to like give your money a job to do. So should be there to do the job.
Speaker #0
Love it.
Speaker #1
Okay. So if you're retired, like that's what you really want to do. The other thing you can look at is, you know, there's some annuities that pay, you know, income and, you know, the retirees, I, you know, that have them have told me that, you know, especially in 2022 and stocks and bonds are working like they're getting the same check every single month. Right. So when the market drops, same check, the market goes up, same check. Right. So that's something where you want to say, okay, between social security, if I have a pension, good luck if you have that. If not, this is where an annuity can come in and fill that gap because you want to have your fixed expenses covered.
Speaker #0
Always covered, yeah.
Speaker #1
So you can do that with a combination of social security, pension, or an annuity, or some combination of the three. Because then you know, hey, no matter what, I'm good. I can go to the grocery store. I got this. I got my stuff covered.
Speaker #0
Your prescription meds can be paid for your Dunkin' Donuts, whatever it is that you need. Yeah,
Speaker #1
because a lot of this is honestly behavioral because if all you have is the market, and the market's going down and stocks and bonds are going down, you're going to freak out. Freak out. Right. And then you're going to go to cash. And then you're like, oh, now I missed the seven best days in the market because I was in cash and I was too late to come back. And now I'm already in a hole behind. It's like trying to catch up in a race by going slower. Like it's not going to happen.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
So you having these things in place is about keeping the plan together. And that's one of the common themes I've had because I've been taking a ton of calls the last two weeks. The first thing I've said is like, look, we're still on track for your plan. That's the most important thing.
Speaker #0
Do people just go, when you say that? Yeah. They're like,
Speaker #1
oh, oh, good. Okay.
Speaker #0
All right.
Speaker #1
Like I had a meeting yesterday. I was like, look, let's say it drops 20% from here. What happens? Still good. Oh, okay.
Speaker #0
Great. Yeah. You're like, just don't. Yeah. I'm currently, my strategy is I'm just not opening any of the websites. I'm just not, I'm just not going to look at them right now because I'm young and I have time.
Speaker #1
You have time. Don't, don't worry about it. So let's say you are younger and I know you are obviously very youthful at your youth.
Speaker #0
We're going to be 42 at the end of the month. Very youthful.
Speaker #1
Okay. So you're in the accumulation phase, we call it. There's a few things you can do. Because right now, stocks are on sale. We have the only profession where people are like, oh my God, these jeans are on sale. I'm going to wait till they're double the price. Like no one goes into a Target and says, wait, 20% off? Nothing.
Speaker #0
I'm good.
Speaker #1
I'm good. I'll wait till they're more expensive because they must be more valuable and better, right? Right. Like, for whatever reason, we do this with stocks. Like, if they're going down, we just assume they're naturally going to keep going down forever. And if they're going up, they're only going to go up forever.
Speaker #0
Going up.
Speaker #1
Right? So for us and anyone younger, this is a huge sale opportunity. Now, that doesn't mean throw all your money in right this second. What you could do is you can count a dollar cost average of it because, you know, this may go on for a little bit of time. And if that's the case, then you would want to chunk money in over time. But if you're already contributing, let's say 5%, can you squeeze in 7? Can you do 8% in your 401k? So those are the kind of things you want to look at in terms of adding money in over time. Next is tax-loss harvesting. Have you ever heard of that fancy concept?
Speaker #0
Yes. Yes, I have from you. Tell me more.
Speaker #1
All right. So let's say I bought Apple stock. Apple's getting rocked, right? I'm just going to use round numbers for easy math here. Let's say you bought it at $100, and now it's down to $50. So you lost half of your money there, right? You can say, okay, I'm going to sell it now at $50. I'm going to get $50 in losses that I can then carry off into use against future gains, or I can offset up to $3,000 a year of income. every year. And you can roll that over. So if I have $10,000 of losses, I can offset $3,000 a year of income. And if you're making really a lot of money, you're on a 30 plus percent tax bracket, you're offsetting 30 plus percent of your taxes. Wow. So it's a useful tool. Plus, you know, for the interim, it could keep your money out of the market for 30 days, which, you know, if it is timed correctly, could work because you can't sell it and then buy it back the next day. You do have to wait 30 days.
Speaker #0
Okay. That was going to be my question. Can you just, Can like, if it's 50 bucks, can I sell it? And then just.
Speaker #1
But you can do that with crypto. I'm going to say that here, but you can do that with crypto. We don't talk about that. Yeah. So that's definitely a tool. You don't have to necessarily... You can't buy Apple again, but you could buy a different company.
Speaker #0
That's also low. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So if you want to sell your Apple, but then buy Coca-Cola. It can't be like-like. basically. So that's just something to watch out for. So that's a way to take advantage of the losses now, especially if you have some time and you're in a higher income bracket, that can be really useful. The third thing is Roth conversions.
Speaker #0
There's so many weird words in investing. Tell me more about a Roth conversion.
Speaker #1
All right. Yeah, very sexy. Well, this is all about tax planning. So a lot of this stuff is taking advantage of loss. But basically, to recap, if you guys haven't missed one episode, we did an episode a while back about what the tax treatments of things were. But basically, you have money in an account that's called a traditional IRA. It basically has not been taxed yet. You got your tax deduction when you first put the money in there, but you're going to pay taxes later.
Speaker #0
Yep.
Speaker #1
What a Roth conversion will do is you can actually take that money, convert whatever amount you want to, pay the tax on that amount you convert, and then now you can make it a Roth, which means all the future gains will be tax-free. Ooh. Right? So there's a couple of ways this is beneficial, right? So one, any advisor is going to say, wait to market out. So you're going to like, okay. So you're going to let it go down and then come back up in value. Now, if you convert into Roth, all that come back in value is now tax-free. Right? So that's a nice feature.
Speaker #0
That's very nice.
Speaker #1
But also, okay, now let's say my account was $20,000 and now it's down to $15,000. All right, now I convert to $15,000. I'm paying taxes only on the $15,000,
Speaker #0
not the full $20,000.
Speaker #1
Oh. Right? So now you have an opportunity to say, okay, I've got a dip. I'm going to take advantage of this lower tax or lowest amount from a tax standpoint. Now I'm converting it. Now all the future growth is tax-free. So this is an area where... you know, you want to pay attention to your income bracket and where you'll be in later. But if you're in a lower bracket now, especially for the younger folks, this is going to be a really good opportunity to say, hey, look, I'm going to pay some taxes now. I've got some room under my bracket and I've got 30 years to go. I'm going to have 30 years of tax-free growth on this account.
Speaker #0
Now, when we hear taxes, I think the average person thinks like, oh, I talked to my accountant about taxes. I talked to my CPA about taxes.
Speaker #1
But this is a financial advisor conversation it should be both honestly um but the the challenge I see with a lot of accountants is they're typically just looking one year back, right? So they could tell you exactly where you are today. The challenge is, and no one can do this in an exact sign because I don't know where tax rates are going to be. But you can say, hey, look, I know in retirement, like I'm going to make way more money, blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever. I could be in a higher tax bracket then. So that's where having that math and kind of figuring out, okay, does it make some sense to do that? And like, a lot of times I see this makes sense for people that really just don't have a lot of Roth dollars or maybe making too much money. don't have the ability to add to Roth directly because they make too much. So that's where that tool can really be helpful and say, okay, look, this could be an opportunity for us to drop down, take advantage of this dip, convert it, and then pay no taxes.
Speaker #0
No taxes.
Speaker #1
See you later, Uncle Sam.
Speaker #0
Amazing.
Speaker #1
Yeah, because if you're 30, now you've got 30 years to retirement plus another 20 years of retirement, actually retirement, right? So now you've got 50 plus years of tax.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's just, this thing is just chugging along.
Speaker #1
Yeah, and it's actually, Ross, a much better thing to pass on to your kids and stuff like that because you don't have to pay taxes on your device. So there's a lot of reasons to do it, but you just want to make sure you're kind of talking with your accountant and your professional about, hey, where do you think I'm going to be? Am I going to be doing because it doesn't make always sense to make a convert to like a 37% tax bracket either. Yeah. So that's the math you want to figure into. But yeah, those are like the three main things I would say, low-hanging fruit. Like here are some opportunities you have within a down market.
Speaker #0
All right. All right. I like it. Some good advice.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I would just say, hey, look. If we're ahead of our session, take a breath. It's going to happen. You've got time for the most part. If you don't, you should be invested correctly anyway. And one thing to note is, like I said, stocks are a leading indicator. They are going to recover before the economy does. So your stocks will go up. So when you still feel like it's bad in the economy, guess what? Your stock portfolio is going to go up. So don't wait.
Speaker #0
I never really thought about that.
Speaker #1
Yeah. They'll go down before the recession typically happens. The recession happens, right? You feel like crap the whole time, like, this sucks. And then the market's going to rebound and you're like, oh, but it still sucks. Like people still don't have jobs, right? So that'll happen before the economy recovers. So don't wait for the economy to recover to make these changes and tweaks.
Speaker #0
I like it. I like it. That was some great advice. Oh,
Speaker #1
that's what I'm here for, right?
Speaker #0
All right.
Speaker #1
Any other questions, Kel?
Speaker #0
I'm trying to think. No, I don't think so. I think this was, I feel... calmed by this conversation. I hope that our listeners do too. But just from the, you know, again, I think to recap, we're young, we've got time. Don't panic. Don't make short-sighted decisions like pulling your money out. And if you feel like you need to make decisions, meet with your trusty professionals to come up with a plan that makes the most sense for you. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Because this all comes down to you anyway. So like some advice I said today totally wouldn't apply to you. Yep. Right. Some stuff may. I have no I don't know you.
Speaker #0
Somebody's got to look at your full situation and make those choices.
Speaker #1
Right, exactly.
Speaker #0
It's awesome.
Speaker #1
Hopefully this was helpful.
Speaker #0
Not the roaring 20s that we were hoping for, but here we are. So let's make the best of it.
Speaker #1
Well, hopefully we won't have any bread lines in our future.
Speaker #0
I know, right? I would love that too. I would love that too. I am making a moonshine in my basement though.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Well, maybe this is a rebirth of the sourdough thing like we had in COVID where I was just like, you know, I'm going to start my own garden and sourdoughing it.
Speaker #0
I never sourdoughed. I will tell you. I never. That did not happen for me. And it's funny because I love to bake, but it just wasn't. That was not my flavor of COVID.
Speaker #1
Same here. We had a friend doing it. I'm like, you have to do what? You have to feed this thing?
Speaker #0
Every day. It's a lot of work. Yeah. I was busy closing mortgages during the pandemic because it was the busiest the mortgage industry had ever been. So I had no time for COVID hobbies. Now actually is when I maybe I will start sourdough. Does anybody have a sourdough starter that they want to give me a piece of? Let's see if we can make sourdough happen.
Speaker #1
All right. There we go. All right. Sourdough is in stocks. Let's do it.
Speaker #0
All right. Have a good one. Bye. The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. Economic forecasts set forth may not develop as predicted and there can be no guarantee that strategies promoted will be successful. All performance reference is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.

About Millennial Money Matters

Welcome to "Millennial Money Matters," your essential guide to navigating the world of finance as a millennial. Hosted by Kelly Turner, a mortgage loan officer, and Derek Mazzarella, a financial advisor, this podcast offers straightforward, practical advice on managing your money.

Kelly and Derek tackle topics like budgeting, student loans, real estate, and investing, breaking down complex financial concepts into easy-to-understand tips. Each episode delivers actionable insights and real-life stories to help you make smart financial decisions and secure your future.

Join Kelly and Derek each week for honest and fun discussions about the financial issues that matter to you. Subscribe to "Millennial Money Matters" and take control of your financial journey today.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About Millennial Money Matters

Join Kelly and Derek each week for honest and fun discussions about the financial issues that matter to you. Subscribe to "Millennial Money Matters" and take control of your financial journey today.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

It’s real talk, real advice, and zero fear-mongering—because financial empowerment > panic mode.

Reach out to Kelly Turner at kturner@totalmortgage.com and Derek Mazzarella at dmazzarella@mygfpartner.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
All right. Welcome to another episode of Millennial Money Matters with Kelly Turner.
Speaker #1
And Derek Mazzarella.
Speaker #0
Hi, Derek. How are you doing this morning? Oh,
Speaker #1
you know, peachy. I've had no problems whatsoever. My phone's been whisper quiet.
Speaker #0
Whisper quiet. Why? Why would people be calling you right now? I mean,
Speaker #1
I don't know if you noticed that the market is going bananas.
Speaker #0
Bananas.
Speaker #1
Yeah. In a bad way,
Speaker #0
though. In a bad way.
Speaker #1
Not like, we're like green bananas or they're going brown and rotting. And he's like, I just bought these bananas. I have to throw them out.
Speaker #0
Right. Well, and it was funny. I was just talking to somebody about the roaring 20s. We were sort of sold at the beginning of 2025. This was the roaring 20s. We're out of the pandemic. Everybody's out doing stuff. And then the economy is currently imploding. And we're actually headed towards the Great Depression.
Speaker #1
I hope it's not the case. But that was what happened last time we had this amount of tariffs. I don't know if you know that. But last time we had this volume of tariffs was 100 years ago.
Speaker #0
Oh, no, I didn't know that.
Speaker #1
115, yeah. It's actually... right before the depression we had eight pairs.
Speaker #0
Okay so this sounds a little depressing speaking of depressions I'm feeling a little depressed here.
Speaker #1
You should. No no let's be a little I mean so the main question I've been getting asked like all the time is like what's going on we had a recession what should I do with my portfolio like I need to go all the cash like do I need to hire a gun get a gun and put it in my basement and like have my bunker going and that's I think what we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about like what do we actually do.
Speaker #0
What do we do? What's the smart moves to make in a recession? Well, and it's funny, we talk a lot on this about like how to manage your money. You know, the different challenges millennials have, things like childcare, summer camp. And it's hard because this stuff doesn't stop, right? Like, you know, in prior recessions and depressions, a lot of times there was one working parent, one parent staying at home. You could sort of like adjust schedules. We're now like in a two working parent household here where like. You still got to pay for summer camp. You still got to pay for daycare. You still got to do these things, but you're worried about your money. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Well, I mean, this is, I mean, we should be vets by now. We've been through, you know, we had COVID. We had the great recession in 2008. We had that with 2022, which kind of sucked, but no one really talked about, right?
Speaker #0
That was like the pretend one. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And so, but like we should be experts, but the problem is like, we've never been in this spot in our lives where to your point, like now we have kids, we have all these other responsibilities. We're kind of really in. are just starting to get into a higher earning income years. So there's a lot of different challenges that we had way back when we were 21 years old or just graduating college and thinking, like, oh, do I just go to grad school for another year?
Speaker #0
Yeah, right. Well, that was exactly it. A lot. That's what a lot of people did. And the other piece to that is like you weren't most of us in 2008, most millennials, your retirement, your investment portfolio, your retirement accounts, first off, had so little money in them. It didn't matter if it went down. Yeah,
Speaker #1
I was like, I had $1,000, now it's... 800, 400, whatever.
Speaker #0
Retirement was so far away that like, who cares? Now, all of a sudden, here we are. Again, the elder millennials are like early 40s. My Gen Xers, you're mid 40s to 50s. Retirement's not that far away anymore. So now you are looking at your investment accounts, your retirement accounts from a very different place.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Yeah. And you're actually seeing real dollar losses. The percentages are something a lot of advisors talk about. hey, it's down 10%. It's down 5%. It's down 20%. But what did you lose? Did you lose 50,000? Are you down 120,000? Are you down 500,000? So these are real numbers. And it's like, oh my god, it took me a long time to get there. I'm sure a lot of people are freaking out. It's very normal to be emotional about this. I think the thing that we got to do is take a step back and breathe.
Speaker #0
Okay. What am I breathing about? Okay.
Speaker #1
Well, why don't we just get into a little bit of market history anyway? Because I think it's important to give context to what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker #0
All right. I love it.
Speaker #1
I'm ready for that. So I'm sure people have heard of bulls and bears. Are you kind of familiar with how the animals structure? No,
Speaker #0
you just asked me that the other day too. And I was like, I don't know, like bulls are good. Are we talking about elephants and donkeys? Like, I don't even know. Why do we use animals?
Speaker #1
I should have looked this up, but I have no idea why he's calling bulls and bears. But just so we know, a bear market is bad, right? So you get a bear down, maybe that's why. And a bull market is everything's going up.
Speaker #0
Okay. So we are not in a bull market right now.
Speaker #1
We are certainly not in a bull market at the moment. But they also have different things. Like a correction is a 10% drop.
Speaker #0
Okay. So we don't call that an animal. That's not like the sloth market or the bunny rabbit. Yeah.
Speaker #1
It's kind of like a cute little monkey or something like that. Yeah. The spider monkey market. And then a bear market is when you're down 20% or more.
Speaker #0
Okay. Where are we right now today? Well,
Speaker #1
we are just about a bear market with S&P. So we're about 19%. down from the peak. So just so everyone knows, we're recording this on April 9th. So we had a little bit of bounce back so far today, but that can change in 20 minutes. Who knows? So we're almost touching a bear market. The NASDAQ, which is all tech companies, is past a bear market. So they've gone past the 20% marker. Yep. So they are bearing down. And basically the recovery times are interesting, right? So a 10% correction, which is only half of the bear market, right? It takes four months on average to recover from that.
Speaker #0
So that's not a big deal. I'm making air quotes here. Yeah. That's a fluctuation.
Speaker #1
And most people aren't aware of this, but you may have seen advisors throw this chart up all the time, but the average like intra-year decline, so like in the middle of a year is about 14%. So Like this happens like almost every year, basically. but we just don't notice it because, you know.
Speaker #0
It's subtle.
Speaker #1
It's subtle. Yeah, it's subtle. And at the end of the year, usually we're up anyway. So it's like, whatever. You know, we had some dips. It happens. A 20% drop takes two years and two months on average to recover from.
Speaker #0
So that's a little more painful.
Speaker #1
Yeah, definitely some more time for sure. And just for reference, since we've already talked about the Great Recession, that was a 57% drop from the peak to the bottom. And that took six years to recover.
Speaker #0
Six years. So I think that, let's pause there for a moment. That's a good perspective for a millennial. who is panicking right now, that you still have more than six years to retirement.
Speaker #1
Yeah, which is great. And I'll even throw you some numbers. I'll use SPI, which is the proxy for the S&P 500. That was at $155 a share at the peak before the market dropped. Then it dropped down to 74. Then today, it's at 497. If you just told me, hey, what is it, 17 years ago, I could buy something $155 and now it's almost 500.
Speaker #0
That sounds amazing.
Speaker #1
I will take that.
Speaker #0
I will take that all day long.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So, you know, let's have a little bit of perspective. That's buying it right at the peak of the worst crash in a hundred years almost.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So that honestly, like, whew, super, you said to breathe. That was, that's like a super relieving set of numbers for me that, right. In 17 years, which is still within my like retirement zone. Yeah. Um, I'm way up, but in six years I'm back where I am right now. So like, That's not so bad.
Speaker #1
Yeah, that's if you haven't added any money, right? Yeah,
Speaker #0
we're all still working.
Speaker #1
If you're constantly throwing money in the 401k and saving your investment accounts and doing all the things you should be doing now anyway, you're buying those drops in the market consistently. And I'll get into that more later. But that just shows like, hey, if I just literally did nothing and just put my head in the sand, you're still going to be out ahead in the future.
Speaker #0
Perfect. Love it. Here for that.
Speaker #1
All right. So that goes to I know there's kind of a weird stat I want to throw out about putting your head in the sand a little bit. because um One of the interesting things I learned was JPMorgan had to study over the last 20 years about the 10 worst days in the market. Do you know what happened? Seven out of the 10 days, roughly, the best days kind of followed those 10 worst days. So when people say, hey, I need to go to cash, blah, blah, blah, you're probably missing out on one of those 10 best days because they follow so closely to the worst days.
Speaker #0
Interesting. Do you have more context to watch?
Speaker #1
I do. So I'll give you an example first. COVID. March 12th, second worst day on record in 20 years. March 13th, second best day. So literally the day after we had the second worst day. And then the day after we have the second best day.
Speaker #0
So anybody who panicked on the 12th.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I went to cash and then they lost a huge run up.
Speaker #0
Wow. Okay.
Speaker #1
So it's really hard to time. like the next best day and they typically follow the clusters i think the reason is i mean there's it's probably convoluted but there's a lot of different reasons for that and there's a lot of algorithms now especially they'll just like buy triggers on certain you know parts of the market but people tend to rush in the smart people tend to rush in when the markets are dropping yeah right so so that's why we typically see those sponsors and sometimes it's just things to get oversold right they're like well this is way too cheap i should buy some yeah i should get some of that now Now,
Speaker #0
and again, I think super comforting, right? That like. Staying the course. This is sort of back to the like staying the course concept of like, yeah Things feel like today on April 9th. Things feel really icky Yeah, cuz today's a the tariffs like actually went into effect today feels really icky but like maybe in the coming days It will feel better.
Speaker #1
Yes. We may have a day in the next two weeks where it's up three or four percent It's totally possible totally possible, right? So that's something to keep in mind So now let's talk about maybe all right What can we do in the short term because most people say I gotta go to cash
Speaker #0
And what is, can you just tell everybody, I don't know, it sounds like you should know what it means, but what does go to cash?
Speaker #1
It means I'm going to sell my investments, realize the losses, and then I'm going to put it either in like literally a bank account. I'm going to put it maybe a high yield savings or, you know, people like I'm going to put in a CD, but I'm going to get 3% for the next 13 months. Like that's what to me cash means.
Speaker #0
Cash means. Okay. So just full blown.
Speaker #1
Full blown. Like I will not lose any principal. I'm just going to put it in cash.
Speaker #0
But you're losing like. taxes and other things when you're doing that. Well,
Speaker #1
it kind of depends on what type of account you have, because you can keep it in cash, like in your IRA or in 4K. They have like stable value funds. So there's definitely options within your investment structure where you can just keep it in cash. Like even the investment accounts have typically a cash sweep feature, which will get you maybe a couple percentage point. Those those tend to pay less, though, than a CD or something. So that's that's like a natural reaction where people like I got to get out and like, I'll just when things get better, I'm going to start putting it back. Yeah, that's what I hear all the time. But like, what does that mean for you? Do you have a metric on that? Like. Is that, I mean
Speaker #0
down 25 now we're down to just 20 and let's come back five percent like is that no one no one can tell you that answer that's the hardest part about this whole timing thing is because you have to be right twice yeah yeah and that's you know it's funny because i you know obviously mortgage lady here interest rates work the exact same way that everybody wants to hit the bottom like i want i want to lock on the best day and we're like everybody wants to do that yeah we don't know that would be amazing that is yeah yeah we don't know what day that is so you can't yeah to time it as impossible. You have to use market indicators and and work with professionals who know what they're doing and stuff like that to help guide you as close as we can, but no one is going to time it right a hundred percent of the time. No, I mean, look at it. You can't do it.
Speaker #1
Yeah. There's, there's no way you can possibly do that. And if you, you did, you'd, you'd have a statue outside of like Warren Buffett's office.
Speaker #0
So I, people, that is my line. People will be like, what do you think interest rates are going to do? I'm like, in my crystal ball that Warren Buffett gave me, I would be a billionaire if I knew the answer to that question.
Speaker #1
I'll be here answering your question. Correct. Correct. See you. Bye. I'm on my private island. All right. Well, I think there's some things that people are like, well, the market's still going down. I think it's still going to go down because remember, like the market is a leading indicator. So it's going to tell you what it thinks is going to happen in the future. Right. So it's telling us we're probably headed to some bad times. Right. So if you want to be safer but still stay invested, there's a couple of things you could do. So there's something called a minimum volatility fund.
Speaker #0
That sounds delightful. I like minimum volatility. Yeah.
Speaker #1
And volatility just means, you know, things are going up and down pretty crazily. And these are designed to not go up and down as much. And I just want to preface this as well for the compliance folks. Like this is a podcast. Please don't take investment advice just strictly off this. Talk to your people. Do your own research. Okay. But this is just some ideas to throw at you. So minimum volatility is basically to say like, look, there's like, we have a thing called like downside and upside. So like you may get 70% of the downside. So if it goes down 10, you're going down seven. right so it's capturing less of the downside right so you're losing less but usually the trade-off there with these funds is on the upside you're not going to get like nipsey 70 or 75 of the upside right but for a lot of people especially like our gen xers that are closer to retirement but not in retirement these can be good tools because they're saying okay well like i'm going to still capture some of the market not all the downside i'm going to lose less and for a lot of people that's more important than getting you know more gains so that's an option um two is bond funds hey
Speaker #0
As mortgage people would love for you to get into bonds right now.
Speaker #1
Yeah. The challenge we had in 2022 was like bonds and stocks went down at the same time. Yeah. So far, they've seemed to hold. That could always change. I've seen little chinks in the arm with that one too. But one of the ways around that too, instead of just doing bond funds, you can do what's called laddering. So bonds have what's called maturity dates. So bonds may mature as quickly as 30 days or as long as 30 years.
Speaker #0
Oh, so you're... again, timing things, but depending on how long it takes, you're looking at something different.
Speaker #1
Yeah. But what a ladder does is says, okay, we're going to buy bonds at different intervals. So some are going to come due in 30 days. Some are going to turn in 90. Some are going to come due in a year, a year and a half. So you build this portfolio that's constantly coming due, and you just tack that new one that recovers on the back of the line.
Speaker #0
So you're kind of hitting the market. gains and dips. Yeah.
Speaker #1
So it'll it'll help reduce a little bit of volatility for you, first of all. So the ups and downs of the market, but also like there's reinvestment risk and interest rate risk. So if the interest rates are constantly changing too much, then you're kind of buying different ladders and different, you know, areas of the spectrum.
Speaker #0
That's kind of cool. I didn't even know that was a thing.
Speaker #1
Typically much better for retirees, but that's that's an option, too. And the other part is there's there's defensive sectors of the market. So there's things that like you're always going to go and buy food. Yeah, right. You're still like. I'm not going to give that up, but you may give up traveling. You may give up getting your haircut done as often. Like things like that, like that's called discretionary.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So the Carnival Cruise may not be the greatest investment right now, but like Nestle might be.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So generally, yeah, in down markets, like utilities do well. The staples do well. Things like that. Healthcare. You know, usually you have like, you're having a heart attack. You're like, well, I'm going to wait this recession out. Yeah,
Speaker #0
all right. I'm good. I'm good for the moment.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah. No, we can pause on this. So those are the three areas where typically if you want to stay invested, maybe just shift some of your portfolio away from tech, away from those like Carnival Cruises. Sorry, Carnival. We love you. To those types of things.
Speaker #0
I'm a real Caribbean girl.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Oh, all right. Fancy. Yeah, I guess so. So those are kind of like the three core things you could do, like where you're making tweaks to your portfolio without just like saying, oh my God, I'm going to blow this up. like The analogy I use, because, you know, big analogies, like if you're redoing, you know, like you're looking at your kitchen, you say, all right, do I just maybe change some stall stuff, like change the curtains? Or do I revamp the whole kitchen?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Am I demoing my cabinets or I'm just giving everything a little facelift? Yeah,
Speaker #1
maybe just a little painting, right?
Speaker #0
A little facelift.
Speaker #1
Let's facelift it.
Speaker #0
Let's talk about cash again really quick. Is there anyone who should be going to cash?
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I think you're typically going to find yourself in two spots in this market, right? You're either about to retire or you are retired. And that's where cash is incredibly useful. Because I kind of mentioned that, you know, the bear market 20% drop two-year thing. Generally for clients, I recommend keeping two years in cash that are retired or about to retire. Because it gives you the timeframe to weather this market. Because the challenge is in retirement, you're going to have other challenges. You're going to have inflation to worry about. You're going to have medical costs going up and things like that. So you need the market. You need to be investing in stock to have that, outpace that part of it. So this kind of creates a balance. So I usually do what's called a bucket strategy where you have two years in cash. You have three to six years or so in growth and really quality companies. And then you have the last remaining bucket. That's going to be your growth bucket. So this is where cash can be a really useful tool to those retirees or people about to retire. Because if you're retiring into the down market, that's also a real challenge too.
Speaker #0
Yeah. And when we're talking about cash, guys, again, we've said this in other episodes, we're not talking about stacks of cash under your mattress. No. Please do not do that.
Speaker #1
So high yield savings accounts are good. You want to get some interest on it. If you can, CDs are fine. Just make sure you're timing up correctly with when you need the money. Yeah. Like you need to like give your money a job to do. So should be there to do the job.
Speaker #0
Love it.
Speaker #1
Okay. So if you're retired, like that's what you really want to do. The other thing you can look at is, you know, there's some annuities that pay, you know, income and, you know, the retirees, I, you know, that have them have told me that, you know, especially in 2022 and stocks and bonds are working like they're getting the same check every single month. Right. So when the market drops, same check, the market goes up, same check. Right. So that's something where you want to say, okay, between social security, if I have a pension, good luck if you have that. If not, this is where an annuity can come in and fill that gap because you want to have your fixed expenses covered.
Speaker #0
Always covered, yeah.
Speaker #1
So you can do that with a combination of social security, pension, or an annuity, or some combination of the three. Because then you know, hey, no matter what, I'm good. I can go to the grocery store. I got this. I got my stuff covered.
Speaker #0
Your prescription meds can be paid for your Dunkin' Donuts, whatever it is that you need. Yeah,
Speaker #1
because a lot of this is honestly behavioral because if all you have is the market, and the market's going down and stocks and bonds are going down, you're going to freak out. Freak out. Right. And then you're going to go to cash. And then you're like, oh, now I missed the seven best days in the market because I was in cash and I was too late to come back. And now I'm already in a hole behind. It's like trying to catch up in a race by going slower. Like it's not going to happen.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
So you having these things in place is about keeping the plan together. And that's one of the common themes I've had because I've been taking a ton of calls the last two weeks. The first thing I've said is like, look, we're still on track for your plan. That's the most important thing.
Speaker #0
Do people just go, when you say that? Yeah. They're like,
Speaker #1
oh, oh, good. Okay.
Speaker #0
All right.
Speaker #1
Like I had a meeting yesterday. I was like, look, let's say it drops 20% from here. What happens? Still good. Oh, okay.
Speaker #0
Great. Yeah. You're like, just don't. Yeah. I'm currently, my strategy is I'm just not opening any of the websites. I'm just not, I'm just not going to look at them right now because I'm young and I have time.
Speaker #1
You have time. Don't, don't worry about it. So let's say you are younger and I know you are obviously very youthful at your youth.
Speaker #0
We're going to be 42 at the end of the month. Very youthful.
Speaker #1
Okay. So you're in the accumulation phase, we call it. There's a few things you can do. Because right now, stocks are on sale. We have the only profession where people are like, oh my God, these jeans are on sale. I'm going to wait till they're double the price. Like no one goes into a Target and says, wait, 20% off? Nothing.
Speaker #0
I'm good.
Speaker #1
I'm good. I'll wait till they're more expensive because they must be more valuable and better, right? Right. Like, for whatever reason, we do this with stocks. Like, if they're going down, we just assume they're naturally going to keep going down forever. And if they're going up, they're only going to go up forever.
Speaker #0
Going up.
Speaker #1
Right? So for us and anyone younger, this is a huge sale opportunity. Now, that doesn't mean throw all your money in right this second. What you could do is you can count a dollar cost average of it because, you know, this may go on for a little bit of time. And if that's the case, then you would want to chunk money in over time. But if you're already contributing, let's say 5%, can you squeeze in 7? Can you do 8% in your 401k? So those are the kind of things you want to look at in terms of adding money in over time. Next is tax-loss harvesting. Have you ever heard of that fancy concept?
Speaker #0
Yes. Yes, I have from you. Tell me more.
Speaker #1
All right. So let's say I bought Apple stock. Apple's getting rocked, right? I'm just going to use round numbers for easy math here. Let's say you bought it at $100, and now it's down to $50. So you lost half of your money there, right? You can say, okay, I'm going to sell it now at $50. I'm going to get $50 in losses that I can then carry off into use against future gains, or I can offset up to $3,000 a year of income. every year. And you can roll that over. So if I have $10,000 of losses, I can offset $3,000 a year of income. And if you're making really a lot of money, you're on a 30 plus percent tax bracket, you're offsetting 30 plus percent of your taxes. Wow. So it's a useful tool. Plus, you know, for the interim, it could keep your money out of the market for 30 days, which, you know, if it is timed correctly, could work because you can't sell it and then buy it back the next day. You do have to wait 30 days.
Speaker #0
Okay. That was going to be my question. Can you just, Can like, if it's 50 bucks, can I sell it? And then just.
Speaker #1
But you can do that with crypto. I'm going to say that here, but you can do that with crypto. We don't talk about that. Yeah. So that's definitely a tool. You don't have to necessarily... You can't buy Apple again, but you could buy a different company.
Speaker #0
That's also low. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So if you want to sell your Apple, but then buy Coca-Cola. It can't be like-like. basically. So that's just something to watch out for. So that's a way to take advantage of the losses now, especially if you have some time and you're in a higher income bracket, that can be really useful. The third thing is Roth conversions.
Speaker #0
There's so many weird words in investing. Tell me more about a Roth conversion.
Speaker #1
All right. Yeah, very sexy. Well, this is all about tax planning. So a lot of this stuff is taking advantage of loss. But basically, to recap, if you guys haven't missed one episode, we did an episode a while back about what the tax treatments of things were. But basically, you have money in an account that's called a traditional IRA. It basically has not been taxed yet. You got your tax deduction when you first put the money in there, but you're going to pay taxes later.
Speaker #0
Yep.
Speaker #1
What a Roth conversion will do is you can actually take that money, convert whatever amount you want to, pay the tax on that amount you convert, and then now you can make it a Roth, which means all the future gains will be tax-free. Ooh. Right? So there's a couple of ways this is beneficial, right? So one, any advisor is going to say, wait to market out. So you're going to like, okay. So you're going to let it go down and then come back up in value. Now, if you convert into Roth, all that come back in value is now tax-free. Right? So that's a nice feature.
Speaker #0
That's very nice.
Speaker #1
But also, okay, now let's say my account was $20,000 and now it's down to $15,000. All right, now I convert to $15,000. I'm paying taxes only on the $15,000,
Speaker #0
not the full $20,000.
Speaker #1
Oh. Right? So now you have an opportunity to say, okay, I've got a dip. I'm going to take advantage of this lower tax or lowest amount from a tax standpoint. Now I'm converting it. Now all the future growth is tax-free. So this is an area where... you know, you want to pay attention to your income bracket and where you'll be in later. But if you're in a lower bracket now, especially for the younger folks, this is going to be a really good opportunity to say, hey, look, I'm going to pay some taxes now. I've got some room under my bracket and I've got 30 years to go. I'm going to have 30 years of tax-free growth on this account.
Speaker #0
Now, when we hear taxes, I think the average person thinks like, oh, I talked to my accountant about taxes. I talked to my CPA about taxes.
Speaker #1
But this is a financial advisor conversation it should be both honestly um but the the challenge I see with a lot of accountants is they're typically just looking one year back, right? So they could tell you exactly where you are today. The challenge is, and no one can do this in an exact sign because I don't know where tax rates are going to be. But you can say, hey, look, I know in retirement, like I'm going to make way more money, blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever. I could be in a higher tax bracket then. So that's where having that math and kind of figuring out, okay, does it make some sense to do that? And like, a lot of times I see this makes sense for people that really just don't have a lot of Roth dollars or maybe making too much money. don't have the ability to add to Roth directly because they make too much. So that's where that tool can really be helpful and say, okay, look, this could be an opportunity for us to drop down, take advantage of this dip, convert it, and then pay no taxes.
Speaker #0
No taxes.
Speaker #1
See you later, Uncle Sam.
Speaker #0
Amazing.
Speaker #1
Yeah, because if you're 30, now you've got 30 years to retirement plus another 20 years of retirement, actually retirement, right? So now you've got 50 plus years of tax.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's just, this thing is just chugging along.
Speaker #1
Yeah, and it's actually, Ross, a much better thing to pass on to your kids and stuff like that because you don't have to pay taxes on your device. So there's a lot of reasons to do it, but you just want to make sure you're kind of talking with your accountant and your professional about, hey, where do you think I'm going to be? Am I going to be doing because it doesn't make always sense to make a convert to like a 37% tax bracket either. Yeah. So that's the math you want to figure into. But yeah, those are like the three main things I would say, low-hanging fruit. Like here are some opportunities you have within a down market.
Speaker #0
All right. All right. I like it. Some good advice.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I would just say, hey, look. If we're ahead of our session, take a breath. It's going to happen. You've got time for the most part. If you don't, you should be invested correctly anyway. And one thing to note is, like I said, stocks are a leading indicator. They are going to recover before the economy does. So your stocks will go up. So when you still feel like it's bad in the economy, guess what? Your stock portfolio is going to go up. So don't wait.
Speaker #0
I never really thought about that.
Speaker #1
Yeah. They'll go down before the recession typically happens. The recession happens, right? You feel like crap the whole time, like, this sucks. And then the market's going to rebound and you're like, oh, but it still sucks. Like people still don't have jobs, right? So that'll happen before the economy recovers. So don't wait for the economy to recover to make these changes and tweaks.
Speaker #0
I like it. I like it. That was some great advice. Oh,
Speaker #1
that's what I'm here for, right?
Speaker #0
All right.
Speaker #1
Any other questions, Kel?
Speaker #0
I'm trying to think. No, I don't think so. I think this was, I feel... calmed by this conversation. I hope that our listeners do too. But just from the, you know, again, I think to recap, we're young, we've got time. Don't panic. Don't make short-sighted decisions like pulling your money out. And if you feel like you need to make decisions, meet with your trusty professionals to come up with a plan that makes the most sense for you. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Because this all comes down to you anyway. So like some advice I said today totally wouldn't apply to you. Yep. Right. Some stuff may. I have no I don't know you.
Speaker #0
Somebody's got to look at your full situation and make those choices.
Speaker #1
Right, exactly.
Speaker #0
It's awesome.
Speaker #1
Hopefully this was helpful.
Speaker #0
Not the roaring 20s that we were hoping for, but here we are. So let's make the best of it.
Speaker #1
Well, hopefully we won't have any bread lines in our future.
Speaker #0
I know, right? I would love that too. I would love that too. I am making a moonshine in my basement though.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Well, maybe this is a rebirth of the sourdough thing like we had in COVID where I was just like, you know, I'm going to start my own garden and sourdoughing it.
Speaker #0
I never sourdoughed. I will tell you. I never. That did not happen for me. And it's funny because I love to bake, but it just wasn't. That was not my flavor of COVID.
Speaker #1
Same here. We had a friend doing it. I'm like, you have to do what? You have to feed this thing?
Speaker #0
Every day. It's a lot of work. Yeah. I was busy closing mortgages during the pandemic because it was the busiest the mortgage industry had ever been. So I had no time for COVID hobbies. Now actually is when I maybe I will start sourdough. Does anybody have a sourdough starter that they want to give me a piece of? Let's see if we can make sourdough happen.
Speaker #1
All right. There we go. All right. Sourdough is in stocks. Let's do it.
Speaker #0
All right. Have a good one. Bye. The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. Economic forecasts set forth may not develop as predicted and there can be no guarantee that strategies promoted will be successful. All performance reference is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.

About Millennial Money Matters

Join Kelly and Derek each week for honest and fun discussions about the financial issues that matter to you. Subscribe to "Millennial Money Matters" and take control of your financial journey today.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About Millennial Money Matters

Join Kelly and Derek each week for honest and fun discussions about the financial issues that matter to you. Subscribe to "Millennial Money Matters" and take control of your financial journey today.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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It’s real talk, real advice, and zero fear-mongering—because financial empowerment > panic mode.

Reach out to Kelly Turner at kturner@totalmortgage.com and Derek Mazzarella at dmazzarella@mygfpartner.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
All right. Welcome to another episode of Millennial Money Matters with Kelly Turner.
Speaker #1
And Derek Mazzarella.
Speaker #0
Hi, Derek. How are you doing this morning? Oh,
Speaker #1
you know, peachy. I've had no problems whatsoever. My phone's been whisper quiet.
Speaker #0
Whisper quiet. Why? Why would people be calling you right now? I mean,
Speaker #1
I don't know if you noticed that the market is going bananas.
Speaker #0
Bananas.
Speaker #1
Yeah. In a bad way,
Speaker #0
though. In a bad way.
Speaker #1
Not like, we're like green bananas or they're going brown and rotting. And he's like, I just bought these bananas. I have to throw them out.
Speaker #0
Right. Well, and it was funny. I was just talking to somebody about the roaring 20s. We were sort of sold at the beginning of 2025. This was the roaring 20s. We're out of the pandemic. Everybody's out doing stuff. And then the economy is currently imploding. And we're actually headed towards the Great Depression.
Speaker #1
I hope it's not the case. But that was what happened last time we had this amount of tariffs. I don't know if you know that. But last time we had this volume of tariffs was 100 years ago.
Speaker #0
Oh, no, I didn't know that.
Speaker #1
115, yeah. It's actually... right before the depression we had eight pairs.
Speaker #0
Okay so this sounds a little depressing speaking of depressions I'm feeling a little depressed here.
Speaker #1
You should. No no let's be a little I mean so the main question I've been getting asked like all the time is like what's going on we had a recession what should I do with my portfolio like I need to go all the cash like do I need to hire a gun get a gun and put it in my basement and like have my bunker going and that's I think what we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about like what do we actually do.
Speaker #0
What do we do? What's the smart moves to make in a recession? Well, and it's funny, we talk a lot on this about like how to manage your money. You know, the different challenges millennials have, things like childcare, summer camp. And it's hard because this stuff doesn't stop, right? Like, you know, in prior recessions and depressions, a lot of times there was one working parent, one parent staying at home. You could sort of like adjust schedules. We're now like in a two working parent household here where like. You still got to pay for summer camp. You still got to pay for daycare. You still got to do these things, but you're worried about your money. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Well, I mean, this is, I mean, we should be vets by now. We've been through, you know, we had COVID. We had the great recession in 2008. We had that with 2022, which kind of sucked, but no one really talked about, right?
Speaker #0
That was like the pretend one. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And so, but like we should be experts, but the problem is like, we've never been in this spot in our lives where to your point, like now we have kids, we have all these other responsibilities. We're kind of really in. are just starting to get into a higher earning income years. So there's a lot of different challenges that we had way back when we were 21 years old or just graduating college and thinking, like, oh, do I just go to grad school for another year?
Speaker #0
Yeah, right. Well, that was exactly it. A lot. That's what a lot of people did. And the other piece to that is like you weren't most of us in 2008, most millennials, your retirement, your investment portfolio, your retirement accounts, first off, had so little money in them. It didn't matter if it went down. Yeah,
Speaker #1
I was like, I had $1,000, now it's... 800, 400, whatever.
Speaker #0
Retirement was so far away that like, who cares? Now, all of a sudden, here we are. Again, the elder millennials are like early 40s. My Gen Xers, you're mid 40s to 50s. Retirement's not that far away anymore. So now you are looking at your investment accounts, your retirement accounts from a very different place.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Yeah. And you're actually seeing real dollar losses. The percentages are something a lot of advisors talk about. hey, it's down 10%. It's down 5%. It's down 20%. But what did you lose? Did you lose 50,000? Are you down 120,000? Are you down 500,000? So these are real numbers. And it's like, oh my god, it took me a long time to get there. I'm sure a lot of people are freaking out. It's very normal to be emotional about this. I think the thing that we got to do is take a step back and breathe.
Speaker #0
Okay. What am I breathing about? Okay.
Speaker #1
Well, why don't we just get into a little bit of market history anyway? Because I think it's important to give context to what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker #0
All right. I love it.
Speaker #1
I'm ready for that. So I'm sure people have heard of bulls and bears. Are you kind of familiar with how the animals structure? No,
Speaker #0
you just asked me that the other day too. And I was like, I don't know, like bulls are good. Are we talking about elephants and donkeys? Like, I don't even know. Why do we use animals?
Speaker #1
I should have looked this up, but I have no idea why he's calling bulls and bears. But just so we know, a bear market is bad, right? So you get a bear down, maybe that's why. And a bull market is everything's going up.
Speaker #0
Okay. So we are not in a bull market right now.
Speaker #1
We are certainly not in a bull market at the moment. But they also have different things. Like a correction is a 10% drop.
Speaker #0
Okay. So we don't call that an animal. That's not like the sloth market or the bunny rabbit. Yeah.
Speaker #1
It's kind of like a cute little monkey or something like that. Yeah. The spider monkey market. And then a bear market is when you're down 20% or more.
Speaker #0
Okay. Where are we right now today? Well,
Speaker #1
we are just about a bear market with S&P. So we're about 19%. down from the peak. So just so everyone knows, we're recording this on April 9th. So we had a little bit of bounce back so far today, but that can change in 20 minutes. Who knows? So we're almost touching a bear market. The NASDAQ, which is all tech companies, is past a bear market. So they've gone past the 20% marker. Yep. So they are bearing down. And basically the recovery times are interesting, right? So a 10% correction, which is only half of the bear market, right? It takes four months on average to recover from that.
Speaker #0
So that's not a big deal. I'm making air quotes here. Yeah. That's a fluctuation.
Speaker #1
And most people aren't aware of this, but you may have seen advisors throw this chart up all the time, but the average like intra-year decline, so like in the middle of a year is about 14%. So Like this happens like almost every year, basically. but we just don't notice it because, you know.
Speaker #0
It's subtle.
Speaker #1
It's subtle. Yeah, it's subtle. And at the end of the year, usually we're up anyway. So it's like, whatever. You know, we had some dips. It happens. A 20% drop takes two years and two months on average to recover from.
Speaker #0
So that's a little more painful.
Speaker #1
Yeah, definitely some more time for sure. And just for reference, since we've already talked about the Great Recession, that was a 57% drop from the peak to the bottom. And that took six years to recover.
Speaker #0
Six years. So I think that, let's pause there for a moment. That's a good perspective for a millennial. who is panicking right now, that you still have more than six years to retirement.
Speaker #1
Yeah, which is great. And I'll even throw you some numbers. I'll use SPI, which is the proxy for the S&P 500. That was at $155 a share at the peak before the market dropped. Then it dropped down to 74. Then today, it's at 497. If you just told me, hey, what is it, 17 years ago, I could buy something $155 and now it's almost 500.
Speaker #0
That sounds amazing.
Speaker #1
I will take that.
Speaker #0
I will take that all day long.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So, you know, let's have a little bit of perspective. That's buying it right at the peak of the worst crash in a hundred years almost.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So that honestly, like, whew, super, you said to breathe. That was, that's like a super relieving set of numbers for me that, right. In 17 years, which is still within my like retirement zone. Yeah. Um, I'm way up, but in six years I'm back where I am right now. So like, That's not so bad.
Speaker #1
Yeah, that's if you haven't added any money, right? Yeah,
Speaker #0
we're all still working.
Speaker #1
If you're constantly throwing money in the 401k and saving your investment accounts and doing all the things you should be doing now anyway, you're buying those drops in the market consistently. And I'll get into that more later. But that just shows like, hey, if I just literally did nothing and just put my head in the sand, you're still going to be out ahead in the future.
Speaker #0
Perfect. Love it. Here for that.
Speaker #1
All right. So that goes to I know there's kind of a weird stat I want to throw out about putting your head in the sand a little bit. because um One of the interesting things I learned was JPMorgan had to study over the last 20 years about the 10 worst days in the market. Do you know what happened? Seven out of the 10 days, roughly, the best days kind of followed those 10 worst days. So when people say, hey, I need to go to cash, blah, blah, blah, you're probably missing out on one of those 10 best days because they follow so closely to the worst days.
Speaker #0
Interesting. Do you have more context to watch?
Speaker #1
I do. So I'll give you an example first. COVID. March 12th, second worst day on record in 20 years. March 13th, second best day. So literally the day after we had the second worst day. And then the day after we have the second best day.
Speaker #0
So anybody who panicked on the 12th.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I went to cash and then they lost a huge run up.
Speaker #0
Wow. Okay.
Speaker #1
So it's really hard to time. like the next best day and they typically follow the clusters i think the reason is i mean there's it's probably convoluted but there's a lot of different reasons for that and there's a lot of algorithms now especially they'll just like buy triggers on certain you know parts of the market but people tend to rush in the smart people tend to rush in when the markets are dropping yeah right so so that's why we typically see those sponsors and sometimes it's just things to get oversold right they're like well this is way too cheap i should buy some yeah i should get some of that now Now,
Speaker #0
and again, I think super comforting, right? That like. Staying the course. This is sort of back to the like staying the course concept of like, yeah Things feel like today on April 9th. Things feel really icky Yeah, cuz today's a the tariffs like actually went into effect today feels really icky but like maybe in the coming days It will feel better.
Speaker #1
Yes. We may have a day in the next two weeks where it's up three or four percent It's totally possible totally possible, right? So that's something to keep in mind So now let's talk about maybe all right What can we do in the short term because most people say I gotta go to cash
Speaker #0
And what is, can you just tell everybody, I don't know, it sounds like you should know what it means, but what does go to cash?
Speaker #1
It means I'm going to sell my investments, realize the losses, and then I'm going to put it either in like literally a bank account. I'm going to put it maybe a high yield savings or, you know, people like I'm going to put in a CD, but I'm going to get 3% for the next 13 months. Like that's what to me cash means.
Speaker #0
Cash means. Okay. So just full blown.
Speaker #1
Full blown. Like I will not lose any principal. I'm just going to put it in cash.
Speaker #0
But you're losing like. taxes and other things when you're doing that. Well,
Speaker #1
it kind of depends on what type of account you have, because you can keep it in cash, like in your IRA or in 4K. They have like stable value funds. So there's definitely options within your investment structure where you can just keep it in cash. Like even the investment accounts have typically a cash sweep feature, which will get you maybe a couple percentage point. Those those tend to pay less, though, than a CD or something. So that's that's like a natural reaction where people like I got to get out and like, I'll just when things get better, I'm going to start putting it back. Yeah, that's what I hear all the time. But like, what does that mean for you? Do you have a metric on that? Like. Is that, I mean
Speaker #0
down 25 now we're down to just 20 and let's come back five percent like is that no one no one can tell you that answer that's the hardest part about this whole timing thing is because you have to be right twice yeah yeah and that's you know it's funny because i you know obviously mortgage lady here interest rates work the exact same way that everybody wants to hit the bottom like i want i want to lock on the best day and we're like everybody wants to do that yeah we don't know that would be amazing that is yeah yeah we don't know what day that is so you can't yeah to time it as impossible. You have to use market indicators and and work with professionals who know what they're doing and stuff like that to help guide you as close as we can, but no one is going to time it right a hundred percent of the time. No, I mean, look at it. You can't do it.
Speaker #1
Yeah. There's, there's no way you can possibly do that. And if you, you did, you'd, you'd have a statue outside of like Warren Buffett's office.
Speaker #0
So I, people, that is my line. People will be like, what do you think interest rates are going to do? I'm like, in my crystal ball that Warren Buffett gave me, I would be a billionaire if I knew the answer to that question.
Speaker #1
I'll be here answering your question. Correct. Correct. See you. Bye. I'm on my private island. All right. Well, I think there's some things that people are like, well, the market's still going down. I think it's still going to go down because remember, like the market is a leading indicator. So it's going to tell you what it thinks is going to happen in the future. Right. So it's telling us we're probably headed to some bad times. Right. So if you want to be safer but still stay invested, there's a couple of things you could do. So there's something called a minimum volatility fund.
Speaker #0
That sounds delightful. I like minimum volatility. Yeah.
Speaker #1
And volatility just means, you know, things are going up and down pretty crazily. And these are designed to not go up and down as much. And I just want to preface this as well for the compliance folks. Like this is a podcast. Please don't take investment advice just strictly off this. Talk to your people. Do your own research. Okay. But this is just some ideas to throw at you. So minimum volatility is basically to say like, look, there's like, we have a thing called like downside and upside. So like you may get 70% of the downside. So if it goes down 10, you're going down seven. right so it's capturing less of the downside right so you're losing less but usually the trade-off there with these funds is on the upside you're not going to get like nipsey 70 or 75 of the upside right but for a lot of people especially like our gen xers that are closer to retirement but not in retirement these can be good tools because they're saying okay well like i'm going to still capture some of the market not all the downside i'm going to lose less and for a lot of people that's more important than getting you know more gains so that's an option um two is bond funds hey
Speaker #0
As mortgage people would love for you to get into bonds right now.
Speaker #1
Yeah. The challenge we had in 2022 was like bonds and stocks went down at the same time. Yeah. So far, they've seemed to hold. That could always change. I've seen little chinks in the arm with that one too. But one of the ways around that too, instead of just doing bond funds, you can do what's called laddering. So bonds have what's called maturity dates. So bonds may mature as quickly as 30 days or as long as 30 years.
Speaker #0
Oh, so you're... again, timing things, but depending on how long it takes, you're looking at something different.
Speaker #1
Yeah. But what a ladder does is says, okay, we're going to buy bonds at different intervals. So some are going to come due in 30 days. Some are going to turn in 90. Some are going to come due in a year, a year and a half. So you build this portfolio that's constantly coming due, and you just tack that new one that recovers on the back of the line.
Speaker #0
So you're kind of hitting the market. gains and dips. Yeah.
Speaker #1
So it'll it'll help reduce a little bit of volatility for you, first of all. So the ups and downs of the market, but also like there's reinvestment risk and interest rate risk. So if the interest rates are constantly changing too much, then you're kind of buying different ladders and different, you know, areas of the spectrum.
Speaker #0
That's kind of cool. I didn't even know that was a thing.
Speaker #1
Typically much better for retirees, but that's that's an option, too. And the other part is there's there's defensive sectors of the market. So there's things that like you're always going to go and buy food. Yeah, right. You're still like. I'm not going to give that up, but you may give up traveling. You may give up getting your haircut done as often. Like things like that, like that's called discretionary.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So the Carnival Cruise may not be the greatest investment right now, but like Nestle might be.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So generally, yeah, in down markets, like utilities do well. The staples do well. Things like that. Healthcare. You know, usually you have like, you're having a heart attack. You're like, well, I'm going to wait this recession out. Yeah,
Speaker #0
all right. I'm good. I'm good for the moment.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah. No, we can pause on this. So those are the three areas where typically if you want to stay invested, maybe just shift some of your portfolio away from tech, away from those like Carnival Cruises. Sorry, Carnival. We love you. To those types of things.
Speaker #0
I'm a real Caribbean girl.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Oh, all right. Fancy. Yeah, I guess so. So those are kind of like the three core things you could do, like where you're making tweaks to your portfolio without just like saying, oh my God, I'm going to blow this up. like The analogy I use, because, you know, big analogies, like if you're redoing, you know, like you're looking at your kitchen, you say, all right, do I just maybe change some stall stuff, like change the curtains? Or do I revamp the whole kitchen?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Am I demoing my cabinets or I'm just giving everything a little facelift? Yeah,
Speaker #1
maybe just a little painting, right?
Speaker #0
A little facelift.
Speaker #1
Let's facelift it.
Speaker #0
Let's talk about cash again really quick. Is there anyone who should be going to cash?
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I think you're typically going to find yourself in two spots in this market, right? You're either about to retire or you are retired. And that's where cash is incredibly useful. Because I kind of mentioned that, you know, the bear market 20% drop two-year thing. Generally for clients, I recommend keeping two years in cash that are retired or about to retire. Because it gives you the timeframe to weather this market. Because the challenge is in retirement, you're going to have other challenges. You're going to have inflation to worry about. You're going to have medical costs going up and things like that. So you need the market. You need to be investing in stock to have that, outpace that part of it. So this kind of creates a balance. So I usually do what's called a bucket strategy where you have two years in cash. You have three to six years or so in growth and really quality companies. And then you have the last remaining bucket. That's going to be your growth bucket. So this is where cash can be a really useful tool to those retirees or people about to retire. Because if you're retiring into the down market, that's also a real challenge too.
Speaker #0
Yeah. And when we're talking about cash, guys, again, we've said this in other episodes, we're not talking about stacks of cash under your mattress. No. Please do not do that.
Speaker #1
So high yield savings accounts are good. You want to get some interest on it. If you can, CDs are fine. Just make sure you're timing up correctly with when you need the money. Yeah. Like you need to like give your money a job to do. So should be there to do the job.
Speaker #0
Love it.
Speaker #1
Okay. So if you're retired, like that's what you really want to do. The other thing you can look at is, you know, there's some annuities that pay, you know, income and, you know, the retirees, I, you know, that have them have told me that, you know, especially in 2022 and stocks and bonds are working like they're getting the same check every single month. Right. So when the market drops, same check, the market goes up, same check. Right. So that's something where you want to say, okay, between social security, if I have a pension, good luck if you have that. If not, this is where an annuity can come in and fill that gap because you want to have your fixed expenses covered.
Speaker #0
Always covered, yeah.
Speaker #1
So you can do that with a combination of social security, pension, or an annuity, or some combination of the three. Because then you know, hey, no matter what, I'm good. I can go to the grocery store. I got this. I got my stuff covered.
Speaker #0
Your prescription meds can be paid for your Dunkin' Donuts, whatever it is that you need. Yeah,
Speaker #1
because a lot of this is honestly behavioral because if all you have is the market, and the market's going down and stocks and bonds are going down, you're going to freak out. Freak out. Right. And then you're going to go to cash. And then you're like, oh, now I missed the seven best days in the market because I was in cash and I was too late to come back. And now I'm already in a hole behind. It's like trying to catch up in a race by going slower. Like it's not going to happen.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
So you having these things in place is about keeping the plan together. And that's one of the common themes I've had because I've been taking a ton of calls the last two weeks. The first thing I've said is like, look, we're still on track for your plan. That's the most important thing.
Speaker #0
Do people just go, when you say that? Yeah. They're like,
Speaker #1
oh, oh, good. Okay.
Speaker #0
All right.
Speaker #1
Like I had a meeting yesterday. I was like, look, let's say it drops 20% from here. What happens? Still good. Oh, okay.
Speaker #0
Great. Yeah. You're like, just don't. Yeah. I'm currently, my strategy is I'm just not opening any of the websites. I'm just not, I'm just not going to look at them right now because I'm young and I have time.
Speaker #1
You have time. Don't, don't worry about it. So let's say you are younger and I know you are obviously very youthful at your youth.
Speaker #0
We're going to be 42 at the end of the month. Very youthful.
Speaker #1
Okay. So you're in the accumulation phase, we call it. There's a few things you can do. Because right now, stocks are on sale. We have the only profession where people are like, oh my God, these jeans are on sale. I'm going to wait till they're double the price. Like no one goes into a Target and says, wait, 20% off? Nothing.
Speaker #0
I'm good.
Speaker #1
I'm good. I'll wait till they're more expensive because they must be more valuable and better, right? Right. Like, for whatever reason, we do this with stocks. Like, if they're going down, we just assume they're naturally going to keep going down forever. And if they're going up, they're only going to go up forever.
Speaker #0
Going up.
Speaker #1
Right? So for us and anyone younger, this is a huge sale opportunity. Now, that doesn't mean throw all your money in right this second. What you could do is you can count a dollar cost average of it because, you know, this may go on for a little bit of time. And if that's the case, then you would want to chunk money in over time. But if you're already contributing, let's say 5%, can you squeeze in 7? Can you do 8% in your 401k? So those are the kind of things you want to look at in terms of adding money in over time. Next is tax-loss harvesting. Have you ever heard of that fancy concept?
Speaker #0
Yes. Yes, I have from you. Tell me more.
Speaker #1
All right. So let's say I bought Apple stock. Apple's getting rocked, right? I'm just going to use round numbers for easy math here. Let's say you bought it at $100, and now it's down to $50. So you lost half of your money there, right? You can say, okay, I'm going to sell it now at $50. I'm going to get $50 in losses that I can then carry off into use against future gains, or I can offset up to $3,000 a year of income. every year. And you can roll that over. So if I have $10,000 of losses, I can offset $3,000 a year of income. And if you're making really a lot of money, you're on a 30 plus percent tax bracket, you're offsetting 30 plus percent of your taxes. Wow. So it's a useful tool. Plus, you know, for the interim, it could keep your money out of the market for 30 days, which, you know, if it is timed correctly, could work because you can't sell it and then buy it back the next day. You do have to wait 30 days.
Speaker #0
Okay. That was going to be my question. Can you just, Can like, if it's 50 bucks, can I sell it? And then just.
Speaker #1
But you can do that with crypto. I'm going to say that here, but you can do that with crypto. We don't talk about that. Yeah. So that's definitely a tool. You don't have to necessarily... You can't buy Apple again, but you could buy a different company.
Speaker #0
That's also low. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So if you want to sell your Apple, but then buy Coca-Cola. It can't be like-like. basically. So that's just something to watch out for. So that's a way to take advantage of the losses now, especially if you have some time and you're in a higher income bracket, that can be really useful. The third thing is Roth conversions.
Speaker #0
There's so many weird words in investing. Tell me more about a Roth conversion.
Speaker #1
All right. Yeah, very sexy. Well, this is all about tax planning. So a lot of this stuff is taking advantage of loss. But basically, to recap, if you guys haven't missed one episode, we did an episode a while back about what the tax treatments of things were. But basically, you have money in an account that's called a traditional IRA. It basically has not been taxed yet. You got your tax deduction when you first put the money in there, but you're going to pay taxes later.
Speaker #0
Yep.
Speaker #1
What a Roth conversion will do is you can actually take that money, convert whatever amount you want to, pay the tax on that amount you convert, and then now you can make it a Roth, which means all the future gains will be tax-free. Ooh. Right? So there's a couple of ways this is beneficial, right? So one, any advisor is going to say, wait to market out. So you're going to like, okay. So you're going to let it go down and then come back up in value. Now, if you convert into Roth, all that come back in value is now tax-free. Right? So that's a nice feature.
Speaker #0
That's very nice.
Speaker #1
But also, okay, now let's say my account was $20,000 and now it's down to $15,000. All right, now I convert to $15,000. I'm paying taxes only on the $15,000,
Speaker #0
not the full $20,000.
Speaker #1
Oh. Right? So now you have an opportunity to say, okay, I've got a dip. I'm going to take advantage of this lower tax or lowest amount from a tax standpoint. Now I'm converting it. Now all the future growth is tax-free. So this is an area where... you know, you want to pay attention to your income bracket and where you'll be in later. But if you're in a lower bracket now, especially for the younger folks, this is going to be a really good opportunity to say, hey, look, I'm going to pay some taxes now. I've got some room under my bracket and I've got 30 years to go. I'm going to have 30 years of tax-free growth on this account.
Speaker #0
Now, when we hear taxes, I think the average person thinks like, oh, I talked to my accountant about taxes. I talked to my CPA about taxes.
Speaker #1
But this is a financial advisor conversation it should be both honestly um but the the challenge I see with a lot of accountants is they're typically just looking one year back, right? So they could tell you exactly where you are today. The challenge is, and no one can do this in an exact sign because I don't know where tax rates are going to be. But you can say, hey, look, I know in retirement, like I'm going to make way more money, blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever. I could be in a higher tax bracket then. So that's where having that math and kind of figuring out, okay, does it make some sense to do that? And like, a lot of times I see this makes sense for people that really just don't have a lot of Roth dollars or maybe making too much money. don't have the ability to add to Roth directly because they make too much. So that's where that tool can really be helpful and say, okay, look, this could be an opportunity for us to drop down, take advantage of this dip, convert it, and then pay no taxes.
Speaker #0
No taxes.
Speaker #1
See you later, Uncle Sam.
Speaker #0
Amazing.
Speaker #1
Yeah, because if you're 30, now you've got 30 years to retirement plus another 20 years of retirement, actually retirement, right? So now you've got 50 plus years of tax.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's just, this thing is just chugging along.
Speaker #1
Yeah, and it's actually, Ross, a much better thing to pass on to your kids and stuff like that because you don't have to pay taxes on your device. So there's a lot of reasons to do it, but you just want to make sure you're kind of talking with your accountant and your professional about, hey, where do you think I'm going to be? Am I going to be doing because it doesn't make always sense to make a convert to like a 37% tax bracket either. Yeah. So that's the math you want to figure into. But yeah, those are like the three main things I would say, low-hanging fruit. Like here are some opportunities you have within a down market.
Speaker #0
All right. All right. I like it. Some good advice.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I would just say, hey, look. If we're ahead of our session, take a breath. It's going to happen. You've got time for the most part. If you don't, you should be invested correctly anyway. And one thing to note is, like I said, stocks are a leading indicator. They are going to recover before the economy does. So your stocks will go up. So when you still feel like it's bad in the economy, guess what? Your stock portfolio is going to go up. So don't wait.
Speaker #0
I never really thought about that.
Speaker #1
Yeah. They'll go down before the recession typically happens. The recession happens, right? You feel like crap the whole time, like, this sucks. And then the market's going to rebound and you're like, oh, but it still sucks. Like people still don't have jobs, right? So that'll happen before the economy recovers. So don't wait for the economy to recover to make these changes and tweaks.
Speaker #0
I like it. I like it. That was some great advice. Oh,
Speaker #1
that's what I'm here for, right?
Speaker #0
All right.
Speaker #1
Any other questions, Kel?
Speaker #0
I'm trying to think. No, I don't think so. I think this was, I feel... calmed by this conversation. I hope that our listeners do too. But just from the, you know, again, I think to recap, we're young, we've got time. Don't panic. Don't make short-sighted decisions like pulling your money out. And if you feel like you need to make decisions, meet with your trusty professionals to come up with a plan that makes the most sense for you. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Because this all comes down to you anyway. So like some advice I said today totally wouldn't apply to you. Yep. Right. Some stuff may. I have no I don't know you.
Speaker #0
Somebody's got to look at your full situation and make those choices.
Speaker #1
Right, exactly.
Speaker #0
It's awesome.
Speaker #1
Hopefully this was helpful.
Speaker #0
Not the roaring 20s that we were hoping for, but here we are. So let's make the best of it.
Speaker #1
Well, hopefully we won't have any bread lines in our future.
Speaker #0
I know, right? I would love that too. I would love that too. I am making a moonshine in my basement though.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Well, maybe this is a rebirth of the sourdough thing like we had in COVID where I was just like, you know, I'm going to start my own garden and sourdoughing it.
Speaker #0
I never sourdoughed. I will tell you. I never. That did not happen for me. And it's funny because I love to bake, but it just wasn't. That was not my flavor of COVID.
Speaker #1
Same here. We had a friend doing it. I'm like, you have to do what? You have to feed this thing?
Speaker #0
Every day. It's a lot of work. Yeah. I was busy closing mortgages during the pandemic because it was the busiest the mortgage industry had ever been. So I had no time for COVID hobbies. Now actually is when I maybe I will start sourdough. Does anybody have a sourdough starter that they want to give me a piece of? Let's see if we can make sourdough happen.
Speaker #1
All right. There we go. All right. Sourdough is in stocks. Let's do it.
Speaker #0
All right. Have a good one. Bye. The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. Economic forecasts set forth may not develop as predicted and there can be no guarantee that strategies promoted will be successful. All performance reference is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.

About Millennial Money Matters

Join Kelly and Derek each week for honest and fun discussions about the financial issues that matter to you. Subscribe to "Millennial Money Matters" and take control of your financial journey today.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About Millennial Money Matters

Join Kelly and Derek each week for honest and fun discussions about the financial issues that matter to you. Subscribe to "Millennial Money Matters" and take control of your financial journey today.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

It’s real talk, real advice, and zero fear-mongering—because financial empowerment > panic mode.

Reach out to Kelly Turner at kturner@totalmortgage.com and Derek Mazzarella at dmazzarella@mygfpartner.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
All right. Welcome to another episode of Millennial Money Matters with Kelly Turner.
Speaker #1
And Derek Mazzarella.
Speaker #0
Hi, Derek. How are you doing this morning? Oh,
Speaker #1
you know, peachy. I've had no problems whatsoever. My phone's been whisper quiet.
Speaker #0
Whisper quiet. Why? Why would people be calling you right now? I mean,
Speaker #1
I don't know if you noticed that the market is going bananas.
Speaker #0
Bananas.
Speaker #1
Yeah. In a bad way,
Speaker #0
though. In a bad way.
Speaker #1
Not like, we're like green bananas or they're going brown and rotting. And he's like, I just bought these bananas. I have to throw them out.
Speaker #0
Right. Well, and it was funny. I was just talking to somebody about the roaring 20s. We were sort of sold at the beginning of 2025. This was the roaring 20s. We're out of the pandemic. Everybody's out doing stuff. And then the economy is currently imploding. And we're actually headed towards the Great Depression.
Speaker #1
I hope it's not the case. But that was what happened last time we had this amount of tariffs. I don't know if you know that. But last time we had this volume of tariffs was 100 years ago.
Speaker #0
Oh, no, I didn't know that.
Speaker #1
115, yeah. It's actually... right before the depression we had eight pairs.
Speaker #0
Okay so this sounds a little depressing speaking of depressions I'm feeling a little depressed here.
Speaker #1
You should. No no let's be a little I mean so the main question I've been getting asked like all the time is like what's going on we had a recession what should I do with my portfolio like I need to go all the cash like do I need to hire a gun get a gun and put it in my basement and like have my bunker going and that's I think what we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about like what do we actually do.
Speaker #0
What do we do? What's the smart moves to make in a recession? Well, and it's funny, we talk a lot on this about like how to manage your money. You know, the different challenges millennials have, things like childcare, summer camp. And it's hard because this stuff doesn't stop, right? Like, you know, in prior recessions and depressions, a lot of times there was one working parent, one parent staying at home. You could sort of like adjust schedules. We're now like in a two working parent household here where like. You still got to pay for summer camp. You still got to pay for daycare. You still got to do these things, but you're worried about your money. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Well, I mean, this is, I mean, we should be vets by now. We've been through, you know, we had COVID. We had the great recession in 2008. We had that with 2022, which kind of sucked, but no one really talked about, right?
Speaker #0
That was like the pretend one. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And so, but like we should be experts, but the problem is like, we've never been in this spot in our lives where to your point, like now we have kids, we have all these other responsibilities. We're kind of really in. are just starting to get into a higher earning income years. So there's a lot of different challenges that we had way back when we were 21 years old or just graduating college and thinking, like, oh, do I just go to grad school for another year?
Speaker #0
Yeah, right. Well, that was exactly it. A lot. That's what a lot of people did. And the other piece to that is like you weren't most of us in 2008, most millennials, your retirement, your investment portfolio, your retirement accounts, first off, had so little money in them. It didn't matter if it went down. Yeah,
Speaker #1
I was like, I had $1,000, now it's... 800, 400, whatever.
Speaker #0
Retirement was so far away that like, who cares? Now, all of a sudden, here we are. Again, the elder millennials are like early 40s. My Gen Xers, you're mid 40s to 50s. Retirement's not that far away anymore. So now you are looking at your investment accounts, your retirement accounts from a very different place.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Yeah. And you're actually seeing real dollar losses. The percentages are something a lot of advisors talk about. hey, it's down 10%. It's down 5%. It's down 20%. But what did you lose? Did you lose 50,000? Are you down 120,000? Are you down 500,000? So these are real numbers. And it's like, oh my god, it took me a long time to get there. I'm sure a lot of people are freaking out. It's very normal to be emotional about this. I think the thing that we got to do is take a step back and breathe.
Speaker #0
Okay. What am I breathing about? Okay.
Speaker #1
Well, why don't we just get into a little bit of market history anyway? Because I think it's important to give context to what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker #0
All right. I love it.
Speaker #1
I'm ready for that. So I'm sure people have heard of bulls and bears. Are you kind of familiar with how the animals structure? No,
Speaker #0
you just asked me that the other day too. And I was like, I don't know, like bulls are good. Are we talking about elephants and donkeys? Like, I don't even know. Why do we use animals?
Speaker #1
I should have looked this up, but I have no idea why he's calling bulls and bears. But just so we know, a bear market is bad, right? So you get a bear down, maybe that's why. And a bull market is everything's going up.
Speaker #0
Okay. So we are not in a bull market right now.
Speaker #1
We are certainly not in a bull market at the moment. But they also have different things. Like a correction is a 10% drop.
Speaker #0
Okay. So we don't call that an animal. That's not like the sloth market or the bunny rabbit. Yeah.
Speaker #1
It's kind of like a cute little monkey or something like that. Yeah. The spider monkey market. And then a bear market is when you're down 20% or more.
Speaker #0
Okay. Where are we right now today? Well,
Speaker #1
we are just about a bear market with S&P. So we're about 19%. down from the peak. So just so everyone knows, we're recording this on April 9th. So we had a little bit of bounce back so far today, but that can change in 20 minutes. Who knows? So we're almost touching a bear market. The NASDAQ, which is all tech companies, is past a bear market. So they've gone past the 20% marker. Yep. So they are bearing down. And basically the recovery times are interesting, right? So a 10% correction, which is only half of the bear market, right? It takes four months on average to recover from that.
Speaker #0
So that's not a big deal. I'm making air quotes here. Yeah. That's a fluctuation.
Speaker #1
And most people aren't aware of this, but you may have seen advisors throw this chart up all the time, but the average like intra-year decline, so like in the middle of a year is about 14%. So Like this happens like almost every year, basically. but we just don't notice it because, you know.
Speaker #0
It's subtle.
Speaker #1
It's subtle. Yeah, it's subtle. And at the end of the year, usually we're up anyway. So it's like, whatever. You know, we had some dips. It happens. A 20% drop takes two years and two months on average to recover from.
Speaker #0
So that's a little more painful.
Speaker #1
Yeah, definitely some more time for sure. And just for reference, since we've already talked about the Great Recession, that was a 57% drop from the peak to the bottom. And that took six years to recover.
Speaker #0
Six years. So I think that, let's pause there for a moment. That's a good perspective for a millennial. who is panicking right now, that you still have more than six years to retirement.
Speaker #1
Yeah, which is great. And I'll even throw you some numbers. I'll use SPI, which is the proxy for the S&P 500. That was at $155 a share at the peak before the market dropped. Then it dropped down to 74. Then today, it's at 497. If you just told me, hey, what is it, 17 years ago, I could buy something $155 and now it's almost 500.
Speaker #0
That sounds amazing.
Speaker #1
I will take that.
Speaker #0
I will take that all day long.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So, you know, let's have a little bit of perspective. That's buying it right at the peak of the worst crash in a hundred years almost.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So that honestly, like, whew, super, you said to breathe. That was, that's like a super relieving set of numbers for me that, right. In 17 years, which is still within my like retirement zone. Yeah. Um, I'm way up, but in six years I'm back where I am right now. So like, That's not so bad.
Speaker #1
Yeah, that's if you haven't added any money, right? Yeah,
Speaker #0
we're all still working.
Speaker #1
If you're constantly throwing money in the 401k and saving your investment accounts and doing all the things you should be doing now anyway, you're buying those drops in the market consistently. And I'll get into that more later. But that just shows like, hey, if I just literally did nothing and just put my head in the sand, you're still going to be out ahead in the future.
Speaker #0
Perfect. Love it. Here for that.
Speaker #1
All right. So that goes to I know there's kind of a weird stat I want to throw out about putting your head in the sand a little bit. because um One of the interesting things I learned was JPMorgan had to study over the last 20 years about the 10 worst days in the market. Do you know what happened? Seven out of the 10 days, roughly, the best days kind of followed those 10 worst days. So when people say, hey, I need to go to cash, blah, blah, blah, you're probably missing out on one of those 10 best days because they follow so closely to the worst days.
Speaker #0
Interesting. Do you have more context to watch?
Speaker #1
I do. So I'll give you an example first. COVID. March 12th, second worst day on record in 20 years. March 13th, second best day. So literally the day after we had the second worst day. And then the day after we have the second best day.
Speaker #0
So anybody who panicked on the 12th.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I went to cash and then they lost a huge run up.
Speaker #0
Wow. Okay.
Speaker #1
So it's really hard to time. like the next best day and they typically follow the clusters i think the reason is i mean there's it's probably convoluted but there's a lot of different reasons for that and there's a lot of algorithms now especially they'll just like buy triggers on certain you know parts of the market but people tend to rush in the smart people tend to rush in when the markets are dropping yeah right so so that's why we typically see those sponsors and sometimes it's just things to get oversold right they're like well this is way too cheap i should buy some yeah i should get some of that now Now,
Speaker #0
and again, I think super comforting, right? That like. Staying the course. This is sort of back to the like staying the course concept of like, yeah Things feel like today on April 9th. Things feel really icky Yeah, cuz today's a the tariffs like actually went into effect today feels really icky but like maybe in the coming days It will feel better.
Speaker #1
Yes. We may have a day in the next two weeks where it's up three or four percent It's totally possible totally possible, right? So that's something to keep in mind So now let's talk about maybe all right What can we do in the short term because most people say I gotta go to cash
Speaker #0
And what is, can you just tell everybody, I don't know, it sounds like you should know what it means, but what does go to cash?
Speaker #1
It means I'm going to sell my investments, realize the losses, and then I'm going to put it either in like literally a bank account. I'm going to put it maybe a high yield savings or, you know, people like I'm going to put in a CD, but I'm going to get 3% for the next 13 months. Like that's what to me cash means.
Speaker #0
Cash means. Okay. So just full blown.
Speaker #1
Full blown. Like I will not lose any principal. I'm just going to put it in cash.
Speaker #0
But you're losing like. taxes and other things when you're doing that. Well,
Speaker #1
it kind of depends on what type of account you have, because you can keep it in cash, like in your IRA or in 4K. They have like stable value funds. So there's definitely options within your investment structure where you can just keep it in cash. Like even the investment accounts have typically a cash sweep feature, which will get you maybe a couple percentage point. Those those tend to pay less, though, than a CD or something. So that's that's like a natural reaction where people like I got to get out and like, I'll just when things get better, I'm going to start putting it back. Yeah, that's what I hear all the time. But like, what does that mean for you? Do you have a metric on that? Like. Is that, I mean
Speaker #0
down 25 now we're down to just 20 and let's come back five percent like is that no one no one can tell you that answer that's the hardest part about this whole timing thing is because you have to be right twice yeah yeah and that's you know it's funny because i you know obviously mortgage lady here interest rates work the exact same way that everybody wants to hit the bottom like i want i want to lock on the best day and we're like everybody wants to do that yeah we don't know that would be amazing that is yeah yeah we don't know what day that is so you can't yeah to time it as impossible. You have to use market indicators and and work with professionals who know what they're doing and stuff like that to help guide you as close as we can, but no one is going to time it right a hundred percent of the time. No, I mean, look at it. You can't do it.
Speaker #1
Yeah. There's, there's no way you can possibly do that. And if you, you did, you'd, you'd have a statue outside of like Warren Buffett's office.
Speaker #0
So I, people, that is my line. People will be like, what do you think interest rates are going to do? I'm like, in my crystal ball that Warren Buffett gave me, I would be a billionaire if I knew the answer to that question.
Speaker #1
I'll be here answering your question. Correct. Correct. See you. Bye. I'm on my private island. All right. Well, I think there's some things that people are like, well, the market's still going down. I think it's still going to go down because remember, like the market is a leading indicator. So it's going to tell you what it thinks is going to happen in the future. Right. So it's telling us we're probably headed to some bad times. Right. So if you want to be safer but still stay invested, there's a couple of things you could do. So there's something called a minimum volatility fund.
Speaker #0
That sounds delightful. I like minimum volatility. Yeah.
Speaker #1
And volatility just means, you know, things are going up and down pretty crazily. And these are designed to not go up and down as much. And I just want to preface this as well for the compliance folks. Like this is a podcast. Please don't take investment advice just strictly off this. Talk to your people. Do your own research. Okay. But this is just some ideas to throw at you. So minimum volatility is basically to say like, look, there's like, we have a thing called like downside and upside. So like you may get 70% of the downside. So if it goes down 10, you're going down seven. right so it's capturing less of the downside right so you're losing less but usually the trade-off there with these funds is on the upside you're not going to get like nipsey 70 or 75 of the upside right but for a lot of people especially like our gen xers that are closer to retirement but not in retirement these can be good tools because they're saying okay well like i'm going to still capture some of the market not all the downside i'm going to lose less and for a lot of people that's more important than getting you know more gains so that's an option um two is bond funds hey
Speaker #0
As mortgage people would love for you to get into bonds right now.
Speaker #1
Yeah. The challenge we had in 2022 was like bonds and stocks went down at the same time. Yeah. So far, they've seemed to hold. That could always change. I've seen little chinks in the arm with that one too. But one of the ways around that too, instead of just doing bond funds, you can do what's called laddering. So bonds have what's called maturity dates. So bonds may mature as quickly as 30 days or as long as 30 years.
Speaker #0
Oh, so you're... again, timing things, but depending on how long it takes, you're looking at something different.
Speaker #1
Yeah. But what a ladder does is says, okay, we're going to buy bonds at different intervals. So some are going to come due in 30 days. Some are going to turn in 90. Some are going to come due in a year, a year and a half. So you build this portfolio that's constantly coming due, and you just tack that new one that recovers on the back of the line.
Speaker #0
So you're kind of hitting the market. gains and dips. Yeah.
Speaker #1
So it'll it'll help reduce a little bit of volatility for you, first of all. So the ups and downs of the market, but also like there's reinvestment risk and interest rate risk. So if the interest rates are constantly changing too much, then you're kind of buying different ladders and different, you know, areas of the spectrum.
Speaker #0
That's kind of cool. I didn't even know that was a thing.
Speaker #1
Typically much better for retirees, but that's that's an option, too. And the other part is there's there's defensive sectors of the market. So there's things that like you're always going to go and buy food. Yeah, right. You're still like. I'm not going to give that up, but you may give up traveling. You may give up getting your haircut done as often. Like things like that, like that's called discretionary.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So the Carnival Cruise may not be the greatest investment right now, but like Nestle might be.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So generally, yeah, in down markets, like utilities do well. The staples do well. Things like that. Healthcare. You know, usually you have like, you're having a heart attack. You're like, well, I'm going to wait this recession out. Yeah,
Speaker #0
all right. I'm good. I'm good for the moment.
Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah. No, we can pause on this. So those are the three areas where typically if you want to stay invested, maybe just shift some of your portfolio away from tech, away from those like Carnival Cruises. Sorry, Carnival. We love you. To those types of things.
Speaker #0
I'm a real Caribbean girl.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Oh, all right. Fancy. Yeah, I guess so. So those are kind of like the three core things you could do, like where you're making tweaks to your portfolio without just like saying, oh my God, I'm going to blow this up. like The analogy I use, because, you know, big analogies, like if you're redoing, you know, like you're looking at your kitchen, you say, all right, do I just maybe change some stall stuff, like change the curtains? Or do I revamp the whole kitchen?
Speaker #0
Yeah. Am I demoing my cabinets or I'm just giving everything a little facelift? Yeah,
Speaker #1
maybe just a little painting, right?
Speaker #0
A little facelift.
Speaker #1
Let's facelift it.
Speaker #0
Let's talk about cash again really quick. Is there anyone who should be going to cash?
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I think you're typically going to find yourself in two spots in this market, right? You're either about to retire or you are retired. And that's where cash is incredibly useful. Because I kind of mentioned that, you know, the bear market 20% drop two-year thing. Generally for clients, I recommend keeping two years in cash that are retired or about to retire. Because it gives you the timeframe to weather this market. Because the challenge is in retirement, you're going to have other challenges. You're going to have inflation to worry about. You're going to have medical costs going up and things like that. So you need the market. You need to be investing in stock to have that, outpace that part of it. So this kind of creates a balance. So I usually do what's called a bucket strategy where you have two years in cash. You have three to six years or so in growth and really quality companies. And then you have the last remaining bucket. That's going to be your growth bucket. So this is where cash can be a really useful tool to those retirees or people about to retire. Because if you're retiring into the down market, that's also a real challenge too.
Speaker #0
Yeah. And when we're talking about cash, guys, again, we've said this in other episodes, we're not talking about stacks of cash under your mattress. No. Please do not do that.
Speaker #1
So high yield savings accounts are good. You want to get some interest on it. If you can, CDs are fine. Just make sure you're timing up correctly with when you need the money. Yeah. Like you need to like give your money a job to do. So should be there to do the job.
Speaker #0
Love it.
Speaker #1
Okay. So if you're retired, like that's what you really want to do. The other thing you can look at is, you know, there's some annuities that pay, you know, income and, you know, the retirees, I, you know, that have them have told me that, you know, especially in 2022 and stocks and bonds are working like they're getting the same check every single month. Right. So when the market drops, same check, the market goes up, same check. Right. So that's something where you want to say, okay, between social security, if I have a pension, good luck if you have that. If not, this is where an annuity can come in and fill that gap because you want to have your fixed expenses covered.
Speaker #0
Always covered, yeah.
Speaker #1
So you can do that with a combination of social security, pension, or an annuity, or some combination of the three. Because then you know, hey, no matter what, I'm good. I can go to the grocery store. I got this. I got my stuff covered.
Speaker #0
Your prescription meds can be paid for your Dunkin' Donuts, whatever it is that you need. Yeah,
Speaker #1
because a lot of this is honestly behavioral because if all you have is the market, and the market's going down and stocks and bonds are going down, you're going to freak out. Freak out. Right. And then you're going to go to cash. And then you're like, oh, now I missed the seven best days in the market because I was in cash and I was too late to come back. And now I'm already in a hole behind. It's like trying to catch up in a race by going slower. Like it's not going to happen.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
So you having these things in place is about keeping the plan together. And that's one of the common themes I've had because I've been taking a ton of calls the last two weeks. The first thing I've said is like, look, we're still on track for your plan. That's the most important thing.
Speaker #0
Do people just go, when you say that? Yeah. They're like,
Speaker #1
oh, oh, good. Okay.
Speaker #0
All right.
Speaker #1
Like I had a meeting yesterday. I was like, look, let's say it drops 20% from here. What happens? Still good. Oh, okay.
Speaker #0
Great. Yeah. You're like, just don't. Yeah. I'm currently, my strategy is I'm just not opening any of the websites. I'm just not, I'm just not going to look at them right now because I'm young and I have time.
Speaker #1
You have time. Don't, don't worry about it. So let's say you are younger and I know you are obviously very youthful at your youth.
Speaker #0
We're going to be 42 at the end of the month. Very youthful.
Speaker #1
Okay. So you're in the accumulation phase, we call it. There's a few things you can do. Because right now, stocks are on sale. We have the only profession where people are like, oh my God, these jeans are on sale. I'm going to wait till they're double the price. Like no one goes into a Target and says, wait, 20% off? Nothing.
Speaker #0
I'm good.
Speaker #1
I'm good. I'll wait till they're more expensive because they must be more valuable and better, right? Right. Like, for whatever reason, we do this with stocks. Like, if they're going down, we just assume they're naturally going to keep going down forever. And if they're going up, they're only going to go up forever.
Speaker #0
Going up.
Speaker #1
Right? So for us and anyone younger, this is a huge sale opportunity. Now, that doesn't mean throw all your money in right this second. What you could do is you can count a dollar cost average of it because, you know, this may go on for a little bit of time. And if that's the case, then you would want to chunk money in over time. But if you're already contributing, let's say 5%, can you squeeze in 7? Can you do 8% in your 401k? So those are the kind of things you want to look at in terms of adding money in over time. Next is tax-loss harvesting. Have you ever heard of that fancy concept?
Speaker #0
Yes. Yes, I have from you. Tell me more.
Speaker #1
All right. So let's say I bought Apple stock. Apple's getting rocked, right? I'm just going to use round numbers for easy math here. Let's say you bought it at $100, and now it's down to $50. So you lost half of your money there, right? You can say, okay, I'm going to sell it now at $50. I'm going to get $50 in losses that I can then carry off into use against future gains, or I can offset up to $3,000 a year of income. every year. And you can roll that over. So if I have $10,000 of losses, I can offset $3,000 a year of income. And if you're making really a lot of money, you're on a 30 plus percent tax bracket, you're offsetting 30 plus percent of your taxes. Wow. So it's a useful tool. Plus, you know, for the interim, it could keep your money out of the market for 30 days, which, you know, if it is timed correctly, could work because you can't sell it and then buy it back the next day. You do have to wait 30 days.
Speaker #0
Okay. That was going to be my question. Can you just, Can like, if it's 50 bucks, can I sell it? And then just.
Speaker #1
But you can do that with crypto. I'm going to say that here, but you can do that with crypto. We don't talk about that. Yeah. So that's definitely a tool. You don't have to necessarily... You can't buy Apple again, but you could buy a different company.
Speaker #0
That's also low. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So if you want to sell your Apple, but then buy Coca-Cola. It can't be like-like. basically. So that's just something to watch out for. So that's a way to take advantage of the losses now, especially if you have some time and you're in a higher income bracket, that can be really useful. The third thing is Roth conversions.
Speaker #0
There's so many weird words in investing. Tell me more about a Roth conversion.
Speaker #1
All right. Yeah, very sexy. Well, this is all about tax planning. So a lot of this stuff is taking advantage of loss. But basically, to recap, if you guys haven't missed one episode, we did an episode a while back about what the tax treatments of things were. But basically, you have money in an account that's called a traditional IRA. It basically has not been taxed yet. You got your tax deduction when you first put the money in there, but you're going to pay taxes later.
Speaker #0
Yep.
Speaker #1
What a Roth conversion will do is you can actually take that money, convert whatever amount you want to, pay the tax on that amount you convert, and then now you can make it a Roth, which means all the future gains will be tax-free. Ooh. Right? So there's a couple of ways this is beneficial, right? So one, any advisor is going to say, wait to market out. So you're going to like, okay. So you're going to let it go down and then come back up in value. Now, if you convert into Roth, all that come back in value is now tax-free. Right? So that's a nice feature.
Speaker #0
That's very nice.
Speaker #1
But also, okay, now let's say my account was $20,000 and now it's down to $15,000. All right, now I convert to $15,000. I'm paying taxes only on the $15,000,
Speaker #0
not the full $20,000.
Speaker #1
Oh. Right? So now you have an opportunity to say, okay, I've got a dip. I'm going to take advantage of this lower tax or lowest amount from a tax standpoint. Now I'm converting it. Now all the future growth is tax-free. So this is an area where... you know, you want to pay attention to your income bracket and where you'll be in later. But if you're in a lower bracket now, especially for the younger folks, this is going to be a really good opportunity to say, hey, look, I'm going to pay some taxes now. I've got some room under my bracket and I've got 30 years to go. I'm going to have 30 years of tax-free growth on this account.
Speaker #0
Now, when we hear taxes, I think the average person thinks like, oh, I talked to my accountant about taxes. I talked to my CPA about taxes.
Speaker #1
But this is a financial advisor conversation it should be both honestly um but the the challenge I see with a lot of accountants is they're typically just looking one year back, right? So they could tell you exactly where you are today. The challenge is, and no one can do this in an exact sign because I don't know where tax rates are going to be. But you can say, hey, look, I know in retirement, like I'm going to make way more money, blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever. I could be in a higher tax bracket then. So that's where having that math and kind of figuring out, okay, does it make some sense to do that? And like, a lot of times I see this makes sense for people that really just don't have a lot of Roth dollars or maybe making too much money. don't have the ability to add to Roth directly because they make too much. So that's where that tool can really be helpful and say, okay, look, this could be an opportunity for us to drop down, take advantage of this dip, convert it, and then pay no taxes.
Speaker #0
No taxes.
Speaker #1
See you later, Uncle Sam.
Speaker #0
Amazing.
Speaker #1
Yeah, because if you're 30, now you've got 30 years to retirement plus another 20 years of retirement, actually retirement, right? So now you've got 50 plus years of tax.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's just, this thing is just chugging along.
Speaker #1
Yeah, and it's actually, Ross, a much better thing to pass on to your kids and stuff like that because you don't have to pay taxes on your device. So there's a lot of reasons to do it, but you just want to make sure you're kind of talking with your accountant and your professional about, hey, where do you think I'm going to be? Am I going to be doing because it doesn't make always sense to make a convert to like a 37% tax bracket either. Yeah. So that's the math you want to figure into. But yeah, those are like the three main things I would say, low-hanging fruit. Like here are some opportunities you have within a down market.
Speaker #0
All right. All right. I like it. Some good advice.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So I would just say, hey, look. If we're ahead of our session, take a breath. It's going to happen. You've got time for the most part. If you don't, you should be invested correctly anyway. And one thing to note is, like I said, stocks are a leading indicator. They are going to recover before the economy does. So your stocks will go up. So when you still feel like it's bad in the economy, guess what? Your stock portfolio is going to go up. So don't wait.
Speaker #0
I never really thought about that.
Speaker #1
Yeah. They'll go down before the recession typically happens. The recession happens, right? You feel like crap the whole time, like, this sucks. And then the market's going to rebound and you're like, oh, but it still sucks. Like people still don't have jobs, right? So that'll happen before the economy recovers. So don't wait for the economy to recover to make these changes and tweaks.
Speaker #0
I like it. I like it. That was some great advice. Oh,
Speaker #1
that's what I'm here for, right?
Speaker #0
All right.
Speaker #1
Any other questions, Kel?
Speaker #0
I'm trying to think. No, I don't think so. I think this was, I feel... calmed by this conversation. I hope that our listeners do too. But just from the, you know, again, I think to recap, we're young, we've got time. Don't panic. Don't make short-sighted decisions like pulling your money out. And if you feel like you need to make decisions, meet with your trusty professionals to come up with a plan that makes the most sense for you. Yeah.
Speaker #1
Because this all comes down to you anyway. So like some advice I said today totally wouldn't apply to you. Yep. Right. Some stuff may. I have no I don't know you.
Speaker #0
Somebody's got to look at your full situation and make those choices.
Speaker #1
Right, exactly.
Speaker #0
It's awesome.
Speaker #1
Hopefully this was helpful.
Speaker #0
Not the roaring 20s that we were hoping for, but here we are. So let's make the best of it.
Speaker #1
Well, hopefully we won't have any bread lines in our future.
Speaker #0
I know, right? I would love that too. I would love that too. I am making a moonshine in my basement though.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Well, maybe this is a rebirth of the sourdough thing like we had in COVID where I was just like, you know, I'm going to start my own garden and sourdoughing it.
Speaker #0
I never sourdoughed. I will tell you. I never. That did not happen for me. And it's funny because I love to bake, but it just wasn't. That was not my flavor of COVID.
Speaker #1
Same here. We had a friend doing it. I'm like, you have to do what? You have to feed this thing?
Speaker #0
Every day. It's a lot of work. Yeah. I was busy closing mortgages during the pandemic because it was the busiest the mortgage industry had ever been. So I had no time for COVID hobbies. Now actually is when I maybe I will start sourdough. Does anybody have a sourdough starter that they want to give me a piece of? Let's see if we can make sourdough happen.
Speaker #1
All right. There we go. All right. Sourdough is in stocks. Let's do it.
Speaker #0
All right. Have a good one. Bye. The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. Economic forecasts set forth may not develop as predicted and there can be no guarantee that strategies promoted will be successful. All performance reference is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.

About Millennial Money Matters

Join Kelly and Derek each week for honest and fun discussions about the financial issues that matter to you. Subscribe to "Millennial Money Matters" and take control of your financial journey today.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About Millennial Money Matters

Join Kelly and Derek each week for honest and fun discussions about the financial issues that matter to you. Subscribe to "Millennial Money Matters" and take control of your financial journey today.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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