Podcast Episode - Stimulus 2021: What You Need To Know

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Suze switches things up this podcast and gives us an update on the stimulus checks and what you need to do.  Plus, what’s going on with the stock market and BitCoin.

Podcast Transcript:

March 11th, 2021. I know, I know today is supposed to be Ask Suze and KT anything but I'm changing things up today. And so, we're going to be doing ask Suze and KT anything on this coming Sunday. But today I want to do a regular podcast because so many things happened today and the mayor of fact that we weren't here on last Sunday, oh, my god. So many of you got so upset. I can't even believe the emails that came in. Suze, KT, we need to hear about what's happening in the stock market. You have to tell us what to do. You. I don't want to hear this stuff about emotions. What? You just went off the charts everybody, it's all right. I'll tell you about what's happening. But after I tell you something, that's really even more important in my opinion. And that's the fact that yesterday the Senate passed the stimulus bill, and now it's going to go to the President's desk and he absolutely will sign it and because it really has a lot in it. I just want to restate what you're going to get and a few things that I think that you really need to know. Now you probably already know that you are going to be getting checks for $1,400 fully if you make as a single person $75,000 a year of adjusted gross income or $150,000 a year if you are married. Finally, jointly, once you hit $80,000 of adjusted gross income as a single or 160, that's it. You're not going to get any money, but I need you to listen to me closely about these figures, so those are the figures for now. But what has changed is that your children or your family members that you claim as dependents, and that may be adults that you are caring for your mother, your father, whoever it may be. They also will be getting $1,400 from the government, so you might have three kids. You might have two parents that you are caring for, and it's now not stopped at the age of 17. Maybe your kids are in college still, if their dependents you get that $1,400. That was not true the last time when you guys all got the $1,200 when this first happened. Now, remember, you did get $600 in December. So, you add that $600 with this $1,400 that you're going to get, you really have gotten $2,000 extra per person. That qualifies. That is a big deal. Now, I told you about this a few weeks ago, but I'm going to say it again and again. I know a lot of you got so upset that I said it as if I was cheating the system or telling you how to cheat the system. Listen to me, everybody. The law is the law. And if the law tells you that you can do something, then there's nothing wrong with you doing it. Is it ethical, is it not? If it's the law, it's ethical. So, stop judging everybody. Now I want you to listen closely again. You will get these checks based on either your 2020 tax return. If you filed it or if you did not file it, your 2019 tax return. Now, if you have filed a 2019 tax return and you qualify based on that income for the $1,400 for you and your children and everybody, if you just don't file right now, your 2020 tax return. You will get the stimulus, they allow that they tell you that you can do that. So, there's nothing wrong with it. So, you really need to think about it. If, however, in 2019, you disqualified because you made too much money. But you haven't filed yet for 2020 you need to file right away. Do you hear me right away so that you get this $1400 per person that you qualify for. Now, do not freak out about this, everybody. It's the law. They allow you to do it. They have it written down that you can do it. So, you need to do that, which you know you can do to make sure that you get this stimulus package. Now, for those of you who haven't filed any tax return, don't worry. You still will qualify in the same way that this happened back in 2019 and 2020 for non-filers, you just will file on the non-filers portal that they're going to set up and you'll be able to get your money as well. So, you don't have to worry about that now. Here is the question. First of all, you have to remember that you know that these payments are not taxable. So, you just have to understand that to begin with, you also have to understand that there are ways for you to reduce your income legally so that in fact, you absolutely do qualify. What are the few of the things that you can do? You can open up a deductible IRA, a deductible Sep IRA. You can do all kinds of things where you maybe contribute to an HSA. Maybe you up your contribution big time to your 401K plan. These are all things that would reduce your adjusted gross income and possibly allow you to qualify. Now a lot of people will say, Well, Suze, how much can that be? It can't be that much money. Listen, if you opened up a Sep IRA depending on your circumstances, you could put up to $57,000 in there, and that would reduce your income by $57,000. Oh, you want to do something like an HSA a health savings account. If you are an individual, you could contribute up to $3550 and that would be pre-taxed money. If you're over 55 years of age it would be $4550, if you're married filing jointly it would be $7100 if you're under 55 or $8100 if you're 55 and over, that's a lot of money. You could also do a solo 401K, which you could put up to, depending on your circumstance $57,000 in there. So, there are ways that you might want to look into to reduce your taxable income so that you could qualify for the $1,400. There are tax filing dates when you have got to have opened a traditional IRA or a set by IRA or whatever it may be. So please check with your CPA. Your accountant, to know when are those dates for you, depending on the states that you happen to live in as well. So, check that out. Now. A lot of people are going to say, Suze if you have $57,000 to put in an account and everything. You obviously don't need the money. Do not be judgmental people. You have no idea about people's circumstances and what's going on in their lives and what they need to do and what they should do and what they can do. Just take care of yourselves. Because again, remember, we are not going to stand in judgment of others at this point in time. So, these are things that you need to know. There are a few changes, however, and here they are. While it is true that if you get this stimulus check, the IRS cannot grab it for payment of taxes and child support that you owe. But these payments this time are not protected from garnishment like they were before. So, if they end up in the bank and your bank has been garnishing your wages or whatever, they can take these from you. Just that simple. So, those are the things that I want you to know about your stimulus checks. Now, one other thing unemployment. It's true that they're going to extend unemployment if you happen to be on unemployment, and if you need unemployment, you better apply, by $300 a week. What's great about this time, however, is that up to $10,200 of your unemployment this year is not taxable to you. It's possible that you have been getting unemployment and maybe you pay taxes on it or you had. Tax is deducted from your unemployment checks. Now you're going to have to figure out how you either refile or you're going to have to figure out with the government how do you get the money back that unemployment was withholding for you went up to $10,200 is not taxable to you. So those are just a few of the things that I wanted you to know. I love that they passed this stimulus. I think people really, really need it now. Do all the people who are going to get it do they absolutely need it? No. And I've said to you before if you don't need it. Give it to somebody who does need it. But, somehow I have a feeling that the majority of you really are desperate for this money. So, when you get this money, I want you to think about now, what are you going to do with this money? I so want you to save it. I want you to take the stance that this absolutely will be the last time, in my opinion that you get a stimulus check and you have to look back at the mistakes that maybe you made with the other stimulus checks that you received. And what should you do with these stimulus checks? Again, I'm just going to repeat if you don't have a job, if you don't think your job is going to be coming back and you have credit card debt, continue to pay the minimum payment due on your credit cards and put this money in a savings account. Now, as I say, savings account, I just have to also say this. We have approximately 20 days left for the Ultimate Opportunity Savings Account with Alliant. Listen, I'm working on them, everybody to get them to extend it I don't know if I'm going to be successful at that or not, because so many of you are doing it. But right now, it is scheduled to end on March 31st. And you cannot miss this opportunity. Are you kidding me? Just put in $100 a month. That's all you have to do. And maybe that's what you do with some of the stimulus money. Maybe you put it into Alliant, where you can get .55% interest on it. You withhold maybe $1,200 from it and just deposited every single month for 12 months. So, at the end, you get another $100. It's like a 16.7% return on your money. Please don't pass it up. I know you've been hearing me talk about it, but really we have hardly any days left anymore. 20 days and it probably will be gone unless I can work some magic here. So, you need to do it. And by the way, even if I were able to get them to extend it, why would you wait? Why wouldn't you be taking advantage of it right now? So, you can start earning 0.55% interest right now. What are you waiting for? So that's something that you might want to think about doing with it. But I'm asking you to be careful with this money when you get it. Do not just go and pay bills. Do not do certain things that aren't mandatory. Save as much of it as you can, especially if you still don't have any income coming in and do not be tempted to invest it in the stock market. Not here. Not now, on any level. Do you hear me? All right, which brings me to the stock market. What do you want me to tell you everybody, that I haven't already told you? I told you that I thought the month of March would be going up would be going down, that I would not be selling out prior to around April 5th or the second week of April unless you really needed the money and it was in a retirement account. And you just didn't want to risk any of it because you didn't want to see the ups and downs. But this now has become a very rocky market. It goes up big time. It goes down big time. It goes back up again and all of you are absolutely confused. What are you confused about? Are you confused about the future? Are you confused about what you should be doing with your money? It's actually very simple. If you do not need your money for at least 10, 20, 30, 40 years or longer, you should be wishing and praying and hoping that these markets go down. How many times do I have to tell you that? And the reason that you should be hoping that, is that most of you are investing via your 401k every single month. So, it's not like you have this big lump sum of money that you're just putting into the markets every month. The only money you have to invest is the money that they're taking out of your paychecks. So, if you're young and you don't need this money, why do you want this market to go up just so you can look at your 401k statements and go look, look how much richer I'm getting? No, you are being so short sighted. I can't even tell you, what you want is to be invested, to be diversified and to have these markets go down so that every single month, when they go down and you put money into the market via your retirement accounts, your money buys more shares. The more shares you own eventually, when everything goes back up again and it will, that's now when you start to make a great deal of money, think about it, everybody. If you have 100 shares or something, okay? And it goes up $10. All right, so you've increased your value by $1000. If you have 1,000 shares of something and it goes up by $10, now you've increased your net worth by $10,000. But a lot of these stocks just don't go up $10. They go up $100. So, if you had 100 shares of something and it went up $100, right you made $10,000. Great. But if you had 1,000 shares of something and it went up $100 now you just made $100,000. Now you're making serious sums of money when the market is working in your favor, so you do not want these markets to go up. If you are not going to be touching this money for 10, 20, 30, or 40 years, on the other hand, and I've said this before, if this is money, especially, that's in a retirement account and you're one year away from retirement or you need it now or three years away, this is not money that belongs in the stock market. If you need it, you do not have time for it to go down and then come all the way back up again. So, if you don't know what to do and it's in a retirement account, there's nothing wrong with, especially maybe by April if you sell and you just let the money sit there and let's see what happens because you have right now, the markets just broke through their all-time high yesterday, so a lot of the things that you are invested in hopefully are still seriously high. So, stop thinking about how much more money you can make, what you're going to leave on the table. Ask yourself. The question is what I have right now. Am I happy with it? Is it enough? Is it more than enough? Because the goal is for you to be secure. And if what you have in the accounts right now make you feel secure, what do you care? What do you care? And then you might say, but then, Suze, what do I do with the money? You do what I've been doing. And a lot of what I've been doing is I've been buying preferred stocks, preferred issues that are paying me 4.5% to 6.5% in interest. And the reason that I'm doing that is that one day, maybe I want income. And I don't think interest rates are going to be going up and there aren't any good bond offerings. And really, a good preferred stock doesn't move that much one way or the other, and it will come back and their dividends are pretty, you know, secure, in my opinion. So that's what I've been doing, and I'm happy with it. So, there are things that you can do. You just really have to be proactive. Now, as I keep going on here, you can hear my voice, which is partly why KT did not let me do Sunday’s podcast and she took me away. Are you curious where we are right now? But I have this cold, as you can hear. So, excuse me, but there's so much that I want to say to you about all of this. I also want to talk to you again about Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is now up at about $56,000 and I do not want you to have the fear of missing out. Bitcoin has been all over the place. I hinted a little bit ago. You have to listen very closely to the things that I say because I'm not always going to say I bought back in. I did this. I did that. I said to KT, don't you want to know if I bought back in or not? Because Bitcoin was up there. It then went down to about $43,000 and now it's back at $56,000. So, I'm somebody who comes in and out of Bitcoin. But that is not what I want you to do. If you are going to invest in Bitcoin, I want you to do it on a dollar cost averaging basis especially now, where you put $50 or $100 a month then and I've said this to you before. I would like to see you do it through PayPal, and you just keep doing it with money that you will not need on any level, maybe ever. But you want to see what happens five years from now, 10 years from now, where maybe Bitcoins at $300,000 a Bitcoin. Who knows? The only reason that I'm playing it the way that I do is because I have fun with it, that's all. And because I made a serious sum of money investing in that one stock MicroStrategy's that I told you about. I also told you that I sold out of it and it went back down. It sound coming back up, but I personally do not care where it goes. Once I sell out of a stock, I'm done. That's it. Otherwise, I would have kept it, and now I feel better if I'm going to do Bitcoin to just buy the Bitcoin. It's just that simple. So, these are things that I wanted you to know. Again, I'm going to reiterate that I do think these markets are going to go up, down, up, down, possibly even more up than down for the rest of this month. Starting in April around April 5th, the first week, second week and again, I hope I'm wrong. For those of you who really need your money right now, I think we very possibly could start a downtrend that does, what goes down for the next year or two. This time is just reminding me too much of the year 2000, where every time we thought something was going to go down, it went back up again. And then finally it started to go down. So that's the podcast for this week. It's really just that simple. So, tune in Sunday because that will be now the ask Suze and KT anything. And yes, I know KT does not work on Sundays, but, oh, she is going to work this Sunday, since she prevented me from working last Sunday. So, this is kind of like my little payback to her. All right, everybody, I hope this helped all of you. But until Sunday, now there's really only one thing that I want you to remember when it comes to your money. And it is this people first, then money, then things. Now you stay safe. Bye. Bye.

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