Podcast Episode - Stay The Course and Make Money

Suze explains why it’s important to stay grounded in what’s happening right now with ourselves, our families and our money.  She reviews current stock market trends, real estate, interest rates and so much more.

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Podcast Transcript:

November 10th, 2024. Welcome everybody to the Women and Money podcast as well as everybody smart enough to listen, Suze O here and today is, I don't know what today is. I don't know if it's gonna be a Suze school. Is it gonna be a Suze Story? Is it gonna be your story? I don't have a clue what's about to come out of my mouth right now.

But let me just start by saying that in my entire life of the TV, everything... I have never gotten as many emails and text and post on the Women and Money podcast app with people so distraught, so upset, so afraid and so angry as I have this week and you have to trust me that I get it because obviously you all know that I wanted Kamala to win and of course I wanted Kamala to win.

Look at my lifestyle, look at who I am. Of course I would want that. However, it is really, really important that all of us look at that even more than all of us who wanted Kamala to win. Even more of all of us truthfully wanted President Trump to win as well. And it is essential that we really take this time to stop and to think about why, why is there such a divide in this country? Why is there really such a divide now throughout the entire world? Because many countries now have gone exactly this way.

And we all... both sides need to be really, really understanding of what's going on here and not be angry at one another.

And in fact, we should be happy for those who wanted President Trump to win because they got what they wanted.

And I only wish that they were happy that we at least were able to express our ability to vote and just be happy for themselves, but not be angry at us as well.

But as you know, that's not quite what has happened out here. We're still totally going at one another and really everyone that has got to stop.

How many times have I said to all of you and especially those of you who are so afraid you're gay out there. You're afraid that we're gonna lose our rights of being married and that's gonna be overturned. You're so afraid of everything, everybody that you've gone into a shell, you think you need to take all your money out of FDIC insured deposits, you should come out of the stock market. You need to change everything in your life. What country should you go and live at? Stop it, stop it.

The future will unveil itself to us.

But what you have to do is live in the present. Live in what is happening at this very moment in time and again, back to what I was about to say, how many times have I said to you that fear, shame and anger are the three internal obstacles to wealth.

And you know, when I say wealth, that the definition of wealth is that which can never diminish, that can never be taken from you. So, true inner wealth, because have you seen over the years that money can come and money can go? Look back at 2007 and many of you felt so wealthy because of the balance in your 401k plans and the value of your real estate and all of a sudden that all went, but it only went for a period of time because then real estate popped back. Look at the stock market today, all of that came back.

Look at people whose entire lives were invested in one home, maybe in North Carolina or wherever it may be or even currently in California. And whether it's a tornado, whether it's a hurricane, whether it is a flood, whether it is a fire that is all gone now and they will rebuild. Somehow.

I watched it in the Oakland Hills when 3000 homes were destroyed. And I would drive through my neighborhood and it was all just a bunch of ashes and burnt out cars and there wasn't anything to be seen but chimney still standing. And today, if you drive through all of that, they're all homes again, rebuilt lives going on and things continuing.

So money can always come and always go. But true wealth, true wealth is that which can never diminish.

How do you create true wealth and true wealth really is created by knowing your own thoughts, having the courage to stand in your truth, no matter what anybody else thinks about you, to know that your intentions are good for everybody that you have integrity, that you really are somebody who when you look in the mirror, you like, I'm not talking about your physical being but you like what you see looking back at you, you like your internal being, you like your heart, you like your mind, you like everything about yourself.

And when you like everything about yourself, truly like everything because you've looked inside and you're willing to look at what's good, what's bad, what needs to change and you've taken the time to do so now really, you are a wealthy person and it is from that foundation, that foundation of wealth, which is the foundation of strength. It is a foundation of courage, it is foundation of integrity. It's a foundation of caring for everybody, regardless of what they think or who they voted for.

It's an open heart. It's wishing everybody well, even if they believe different than you then from that foundation, from that strength, anything and everything is possible over the years, administrations have come, they have gone, but life has continued to go on and your responsibility in all of this really is.

How do you not prepare yourself for what's gonna happen in the administration and what Trump is going to do? Because who knows what President Trump is going to do and not going to do? But that's now in the future, you have to do what it takes today to still deal with the same problems, which is what are you doing on your path to financial independence? What are you doing to get to know where you should be investing what you should be doing and how you actually financially empower yourself to take actions and be able to do anything you wanna do. If you feel like you need to do it, that is still what is seriously important, everybody.

So don't go freezing and thinking, oh, you've got to change everything. You need to stay grounded in what's happening right now with yourself, your family and your money, the future will unveil itself to all of us and then we'll deal with that little by little as it happens. But you cannot live in fear of what is going to happen.

You have to look at what you have not at what you had. Major law of money - I've told you this over and over again. And right now, financially speaking, when you look at things, or at least when I look at things, the stock market has never been as high, in my opinion, there has never been so many serious opportunities to create financial wealth for you and your family.

There has never been a time really that if you just got involved with your money, knew what to do with, it wasn't afraid of it. Understood dollar cost averaging understood why being invested is so much better than just standing on the sidelines right now. Understanding what's happening with interest rates. If you could just focus on all that, then at least you can empower your own life and have the resources to make changes if you need to do so.

And those changes aren't about just being political. Those changes can also come if an accident happens, if you happen to get ill, something happens with your homes, who knows?

But those are the things that I want you to be grounded in to be grounded in the truth of what's probable versus the fear of what most likely is improbable. But time will tell. So therefore, here's what I want you to truthfully understand as well. Last week, the Feds lowered the Fed Funds Rate and now more than ever as you're looking at inflation, at least according to them, even though it may not seem that way in your own pockets, which is why there is so much discourse in the United States. But at least according to the feds, inflation is starting to come down and the Fed funds rate is getting to be more in line with what the two year Treasury note is yielding.

And if you start to look at the yields of treasuries from the twos to the tens and all the way up, we are no longer in a situation where the yields on treasuries are inverted. What do I mean by that for a long time, shorter term maturities were paying you higher than longer term maturities. And in a normal yield environment, the longer out a maturity of a treasury for instance, or any bomb, the more money they are willing to pay you in terms of an interest rate because you're locking up your money for a longer period of time. So usually a one year treasury pays you more than a six month, a two year pays you more than a one year, a five year pays you more than a two year, 10 year pays you more than a five year 20 more than a.

Do you understand what I'm saying? That's a normal yield rate curve where it goes up, the longer you're out on the curve in terms of maturities. But for so many years, it was totally inverted. You got more of an interest rate going short term than you did long term. And it has been the myth because it seems like it's a myth now that when there is an inverted rate curve, which it has been for like a year or two, now that a recession is imminent, it is going to happen. And that's what was scaring everybody. Well, guess what, everybody, we now have really a flat yield curve. It's essentially flat across the board. It's no longer inverted. It also looks like Jerome Powell, the Fed chair really somehow has managed a soft landing for everybody in the United States.

No recession, at least at this point. And if you look at the result of what the stock market did last week, especially after the election, the stock market, which is made up of people investing in the stock market. They loved it. The market went higher and faster and with more energy than really, I've seen it in. I can't even remember when and true fortunes I have to tell you were made last week. Now with that said, you may look at certain things and you may think, oh, I missed out on it and everything when something goes as fast as it just went up this last week. Chances are, it may pull back a little bit next week or so, but on no level, have you missed what's happening in the equity arena? And equity means stocks. You heard me say just a little bit ago that there are more opportunities out there than ever before.

And we really do have with artificial intelligence and a lot of the things governing artificial intelligence and how it works. We have serious opportunities financially speaking when it comes to investing. And I can say I haven't seen opportunities like this in a long, long time.

So rather than being depressed that everything's gonna crash, everything's gonna go down, you need to be in it to win it. You do. So this is not the time to be selling out of the stock market. This is not the time to be turning your back on equities. This is the time to be dollar cost averaging, understanding when to go into certain areas of this market. And if you don't have a clue what to do. All right, you can do index funds, no problem.

But it's important that you don't turn your back on that back to interest rates. Now, what is fascinating about interest rates is that as the Fed funds lowered their interest rate that whole week, not only was the stock market really going up, but interest rates on treasuries were going up as well. They jumped so high. I can't even believe it. So it is important to then realize.

All right, if we are in a flat yield rate, curve, interest rates seem like they might be going back up again, then what do we do. Does Suze have a change in terms of where to invest and what to invest in when it comes to interest rates? And I have to tell you, I do, but I did a little bit ago if you remember this a little bit ago, I was saying to all of you, I really think that we should probably be going towards shorter term maturities, three years, five years, maybe seven years. But right in their short term rather than out long term.

And the reason is, and I said you could bite a little bit on long term if you want because you never know what's going to happen in this world. So you have a little bit of diversification there when it comes to maturities. But what is interesting is that this is what you have to remember, Treasuries are instruments where you buy from the United States government bonds or notes or bills that they're offering and they use that money truthfully to cover our deficits and other things to pay for our lack of money when we don't have enough money for budgets and things like that. But they are paying all of you in interest on those bonds, bills and notes. But here's what I want you to really understand about the interest on treasuries and why interest rates may be going up in the future.

Three years ago. Everybody who bought treasuries, right? The government paid all of us because that includes me $300 billion... 300 billion dollars in interest.

Today, the government is paying us $1.3 trillion in interest. That is a whole lot of money. If you think about it, put that in the picture of that, we have a $2 trillion deficit along with the fact that eventually many of these treasuries will come due and many of these treasuries were purchased a few years ago when the interest on treasuries was relatively nil. Those treasuries, some of them are coming due. And when they come due, chances are the people who own them are going to just re-up for another maturity. But the interest rate then the government will owe is going to go up as well.

So we're getting ourselves into a situation where the government is having to pay more and more interest on the treasuries. So it is possible that people will be demanding more of a yield if they're going to go into treasuries in the future. So that is why it is very possible that a few years from now, we may see, believe it or not interest rates on treasuries going back up again. That's 0.1 when it comes to interest rates.

Second point I wanna make now is about real estate and mortgages.

You would think that with the feds lowering interest rates on the fed funds rate and in fact, they'll probably lower it by another quarter of a percent come the December 18th meeting and possibly next year as well that interest rates on mortgages would be going down.

And as again, as I have taught you many, many times, that's not how it works. When the feds lower interest rates, the people that benefit are those with credit card debt because interest rates on credit card debts and things like that tend to go down. The people that get hurt usually are people who are saving money and they're in savings accounts and things like that and interest rates stay down what it doesn't affect at all.

Our interest rates on mortgages, mortgage interest rate is usually determined by the 10 year Treasury note kind of stays in sync with that. And if you look at the 10 year Treasury Note right now, it went up considerably last week, which is why over the last week or so, you have seen 30 year mortgages go back up into the 7% area.

So here we are now again, with interest rates going up, stock market going up real estate still appreciating in value, but the mortgage interest rate going up as well, which then makes it even more difficult for people to buy homes.

And it also makes it possible depending on what happens here that inflation could possibly come back as well. Since home prices rent and all of that plays into the picture.

So those are things that you just need to understand how they work. Let's talk briefly about Bitcoin because, you know, in the past, I have said to all of you that if you have money to lose and you have the ability to invest in IBIT Ibit, which is the ETF for Bitcoin, the one that I like, the one that I own, by the way, I own a lot of it.

If you wanna try it out, you can, this week, Bitcoin has absolutely skyrocketed. It's at about $76,000 a Bitcoin. And I bet the actual ETF that we talked about is at about $43.69. It's up a lot just so, you know, now, for those of you, what do I think about the future of Bitcoin? I think it could pull back in everything, but I also think it could very easily depending what happens in the next week or two. If it breaks certain levels, it could go up to 80 some odd 1000 without any hesitation whatsoever. But only time will tell. Do I still think that IBIT is something you could very slowly dollar cost average into?

I do. But you might want to wait just to see if it pulls back just a little. Oil, oil wt I crude is hanging out at around $70 a barrel, which is ok. Will it go up? Depends, chances are, if it just holds right here, inflation will also kind of hold right here as well. If not go down but it's not really helping a few of the stocks, especially Devon, symbol DVM, that I have been in favor of for all this time, as I've said in the past, if you have a loss and you want to take it, I don't have a problem with that.

But here we are at the end of the year, almost, believe it or not, there's a smart strategy of money that's invested in stocks that you have a loss in outside of a retirement account that you could very easily sell that right now. Take the loss off your taxes and put it into something else. Just that simple. However, where do you put it? One of the suggestions that I have and I still like it a lot is Pfizer. Pfizer is at about $28 a share right now paying a dividend in the 6% area.

And I think that's an interesting alternative, especially to Devon. As many of you also. Probably remember a little bit ago, I also told you all that I really liked a dividend paying stock by the name of Whirlpool. Whirlpool is about $110 a share right now right around there. Not bad, but it does pay a dividend yield of about 6.33 per cent.

So that's just something that you might want to think about. I know a lot of you who are looking for income, you're looking for interest that's safe and sound and a lot of you are being told that maybe you should be doing corporate bonds, things like that or agency bonds. I still will believe that there's more money to be made if you want by going into high yielding dividend, paying stocks that have enough cash to pay dividends and are solid and possibly in good quality stocks give you growth as well.

One of the stocks that we recommended a long time ago. And maybe you all remember this. In fact, two of the stocks that we did, one was by the name of Care Trust CRTE. And right now it's about $30 a share. Now, it only pays a 3.75% dividend. But when we really did start to recommend it was all the way back over a year ago or so or even more when it was about $20 a share paying you a good dividend. And now you've gotten growth on it besides the dividend. Another one symbol was, O, do you remember this? Currently pays a 5.5% dividend, but at $57.51 a share, which is what it's at. But when we first started talking about it, you know, really almost two years ago and all it was down at about 40 some odd dollars a share right in there. So the dividend yield was actually higher at that price. So you got growth as well as good income so just don't go throwing out the ability to make money and have income by just going into corporate bonds or agency bonds or things like that.

Gold, I have told you that I liked and I still do like it. It's been doing quite well. The stock that I liked the most was a stock with the symbol of GOLD. It was called Barrick. We bought it at about $18 a share. It's right now at 1840 it pays a 2.17% dividend. It was as high as 2135. But to have a little growth, a little gold and be paid two percent in the meantime. Not bad.

So those are just some of the things now as I look at all of those things except for mortgage rates. Obviously, I don't see one negative thing out there in terms of money. Gold is doing pretty good.

Bitcoin is doing great. The stock market is really doing great. Interest rates are high enough that if you wanted to in treasuries and things do that. You could also, if you don't like treasuries and you just want good certificates of deposit, you just want to be easy. Alliant Credit Union at my alliant.com, their rates are also pretty good.

So there are possibilities for all of you out there when it comes to making your money grow, all of those things are positive right now. And I have to tell you, I think they are going to stay positive for a little bit here. I don't know when, but for a while anyway. And even if they don't, and they start to go down with dollar cost averaging, you should still be in it to win it.

So that's the podcast for today. I just want to end with something that I found a little bit interesting is that recently a survey was done and people went out and they were asked questions, what are the five regrets? Most people often say they have when it comes to life. So here they are. I didn't spend enough time with the people I love. I worked too much and missed out on life. I let fear control my decisions and didn't take risks. I wish I'd been braver in the face of uncertainty or opportunity. And I focused too much on the future and lost touch with the present.

Might wanna write all of those down.

You wanna live your life where you don't have regrets, you wanna live a life truly that you have true wealth.

So until Thursday, well, Miss Travis will join me again with an Ask KT and Suze Anything, please know there's only one thing that I want you to remember when it comes to your money and it's people first, then money than things. And if you do that and you stay safe and healthy, oh, you will be unstoppable.