Amy: Before you get ahead of yourself tonight, why interest rates could stay higher for longer? You're listening to "Simply Money" presented by Allworth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner along with Steve Sprovach. It appears that is almost certain, almost certain, that the Fed will only raise interest rates by half a percentage point next week. Okay, so that's less than we've seen the last four times. Seems like really good news, right? Ah, Fed Chair Powell wants you to take it with a grain of salt. Andy Stout, our chief investment officer, is joining us as he does every Monday to explain why that is. Andy, I think for many of us, it's just like, gosh, enough with this inflation, enough with these interest rate hikes. Have we seen the worst of it? Seems like maybe we're not looking at three-quarters of a point hike, and we should be celebrating that. But for those who say, this is all over, it's not.

Andy: No. And this is gonna be what we're talking about for a while, unfortunately. I mean, if you think back a couple years ago, all we were talking about was the trade war. Then all we were talking about is COVID. Now, all we're talking about is inflation. And it's probably not changing anytime soon, because inflation is probably gonna be with us for a little bit longer. And then we have to think about what the Fed is going to do about inflation, because that's one of their two main jobs is to have stable inflation. Well, obviously, we don't have stable inflation, so they got some work to do. And also, they're responsible for the economy being at full employment. You could argue we're close to that, but there certainly are some cracks in the system when you look across the board.

Steve: Andy, people expect us to help them figure out, you know, what's the market doing, what's going on behind the scenes. And here are the Fed comes out Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and says pretty much what everybody was expecting. Okay, December rate increase should be a half a percent. And then he went on to talk about, "But expect the increases to continue for longer and for rates to stay this high for much longer than most people expect." To me, that's not a big positive yet stocks took off when he made this announcement. And we're up 3%. I mean, within hours of him saying this, why does this happen? I mean, we expected, you know, the drop to half a percent. But, you know, the rest of it was not positive.

Andy: Yeah. I mean, to your point, Steve, that was already priced into the markets and markets were pretty much on par with a half point or 50 basis point interest rate increase in December and then dialing it down. And in terms of the higher for longer that Fed Chair talked about last week, he said that before. So, there was nothing new from anything that came out last week. But yeah, stocks popped on it, and it was because he pretty much...I think it was because he verbally confirmed, basically, their downshifting starting on December 14. So, before it was everybody else, but he's the one who's really running the show here. So, that verbal confirmation is really the beat. What the stock market was probably trying to think about it and interpret it this way, was not necessarily the end, but maybe the beginning of the end.

Amy: Andy, though, thinking back even to earlier this year, I remember at least once or twice, where we seem to be on a sure course for a certain rate hike or something to go, and then some economic data came out within a week of that time or a few days of that time that changed the course of what the Federal Reserve ended up doing. Any data coming out before this next rate hike that makes you think we're saying 100% chance of rate hike, but maybe not?

Andy: Well, I mean, the day before the Fed announces their interest rate move, we will get an update to CPI, which is consumer price inflation. So, barring any sort of left field event could have an impact. But the thing is, and Jerome Powell was talking about this also last week, is that the hikes they've already done will have an economic impact. The problem is, it's uncertain as to when it will impact the economy. And it's also uncertain to how much it will impact the economy. So, the Fed is, I don't wanna say quite flying blind, but they certainly are not looking out with a full 2020 vision as to what the effects are going to be from what they've already done in terms of rate hikes, and other monetary policy moves, like their balance sheet shrinking that. So, when you look at this all together, there is certainly some things that could influence rate hikes, but I don't think it influences it when they meet on December 14. I think that's more of a 2023. And that's where the uncertainty really lives.

Steve: You're listening to "Simply Money" on 55KRC, I'm Steve Sprovach along with Amy Wagner. And if it's Monday, we must be talking to Andy Stout, chief investment officer of Allworth Financial. Hey Andy, we did see some numbers come out last week on jobs and jobs were strong which in this environment good news is bad news because when jobs increase as much as they have, that means the Fed is more likely to continue increasing interest rates. And when stuff costs more every single time you go to the store, because of inflation, you expect that you're gonna get some pay increases to keep up. Why are pay increases, why is labor inflation such a problem for the Federal Reserve right now?

Andy: Well, because once wage inflation really takes hold, and, you know, there is some wage inflation, but it's not to the effect of, you know, or similar to what we saw in the early '80s. But when the Fed is worried about wage inflation, we're certainly looking at a few different key metrics, the problem is, it can start to spiral out of control very quickly. So, before we get to wage inflation, there's a few other things that would precede that. So, we would look at inflation expectations. So, if consumers believe that inflation will keep rising, that's when they'll start to demand higher wages, right? And when they start to demand higher wages, it's becomes a lot stickier, and inflation becomes more entrenched in the economy. And that makes the Feds job much, much harder. Fortunately, inflation expectations are still what we call anchored. Meaning from a longer term perspective, we look out beyond a year. People do not think inflation is going to be at these current levels, they think it's going to be dropping down to more normal levels.

Amy: Where do you see the job market going, though? Because month after month, Andy, it seems like we're saying, "Oh, well, this month, we're gonna start to really see the impact of these rising interest rates." Yet month after month, these numbers come out and more jobs are added than we expected and wages keep increasing. So, at what point do you think we're actually gonna start seeing a difference in the job market?

Andy: Well, that gets back to the unknown in terms of like when the Fed rate hikes will actually affect the economy. And it's impossible to know when this will actually happen. But there are some cracks in the job markets foundation. I'll give you a couple examples that suggest there's weakness ahead, we just don't know when, right? So, one is continuing jobless claims. These are the number of people who are still on unemployment benefits. And that's been rising. And we're now at an eight month high, with around 1.6 million people receiving jobless claims on an ongoing basis. So, that's continued to move up. That's been moved up a little bit quicker than what economists had suggested, or forecasted. The other thing, and this came out last Friday on the monthly jobs report, is temporary help. When we look at temporary help, that is, you know, temporary workers that employers will hire or fire. They're usually the first ones hired, and the first one fired during a hiring and firing cycles, right? And so, what we've seen is we saw temporary help lose 17,000 jobs last month. That's the fourth straight month of declines for temporary health workers. And when I look at these longer term charts of this, it's clearly rolling over. And that's important because that's a leading indicator of the overall job market. Because again, that's where things happen first. So, if we're seeing that rollover there, it does suggest some potential weakness in the payroll numbers when we look ahead a few months. When that actually comes to fruition, you know, time will tell, but it is on the horizon.

Steve: Andy, one of the issues that obviously has not helped inflation come down and all it's supply chain disruptions. And you said last week that we were starting to see some pretty large improvements in the supply chain. Just this morning, I read China is considering changing its zero tolerance policy, and pivoting to start allowing more of its population basically to go to work. How important is that, China's apparent change in thinking?

Andy: Well, I mean, it's really important. So, China is on the verge of opening up their economy a lot more. They're relaxing restrictions. And part of the reasons, I mean, there's two overarching reasons, right? There's a lot of social civil unrest right now in China. People are really upset. That's President Xi Jinping has not faced this sort of criticism, in his tenure at all.

Steve: Ever. Yeah.

Andy: Yeah, and economic risks are rising. I mean, for example, Apple is shifting some of its production out of China and toward India and Vietnam because of the supply chain disruptions. So, what we're seeing now because of this is some Chinese leaders, the premier who's in charge of China's COVID response, actually stopped using the word COVID-Zero recently. So, that's their program, where they would essentially shut down vast portions of cities, you know, tens of millions of people at a time, just lock them down if there's a couple of cases. So, they're shifting away from that. Also, they're easing testing requirements in many of the major cities that was announced over the weekend. And finally, I was reading some reports this morning, where China is going to be possibly announcing maybe on Wednesday, up to 10 new measures regarding COVID, including this is kind of the key, downgraded COVID from a category A infectious disease to a category B infectious disease. So, putting this all together would certainly help the supply chain, which has been bruised very, very badly, it's gonna help the healing process. So, that's a good thing.

Another thing on the supply chain, we get some manufacturing data last week that showed deliveries and backlogs are also continuing to improve. So, when we think about this from an inflation perspective, we can certainly break down inflation in a few different areas. But what we're talking about here is I'll call it goods inflation. And we're already seeing some disinflation on the good side of things. And this should make that disinflation continue. So, we should see the goods inflation start to come down a little bit more. Where we have not seen much improvement in terms of inflation is on really the services side excluding housing. We're starting to see it in housing, some for sure. Haven't seen it too much in rents. But other services is where we need to see that start to drop because that is a little bit of a concern as well, because that's where you can see inflation become entrenched in the economy.

Amy: Andy, what's the takeaway for investors?

Andy: Well, the takeaway for investors is in the last couple of months, it's been a nice rally. We might see the Santa Claus rally continue through the end of the year. It is possible. There's no question about that. But there's probably gonna be some volatility ahead next year. I mean, when you think about everything that's going on, you have a Fed, that's still aggressive. You you do have a rising recession risks. You do have an uncertain inflationary environment and a lot of geopolitical concerns. Just think about China, think about Russia, everything going on there. And that suggests volatility. Now, nothing's for certain. But it also certainly supports the need to focus on the long-run in making sure your financial plan sets where your investments should be so you can weather any storm. Because over the long-run, Amy, everybody who has been able to be patient and stay invested and focused on a broad asset allocated portfolio generally came out ahead.

Amy: Yeah. Patience literally pays off here. Here's the Allworth advice, plan on more market volatility. But just remember, your financial plan is designed for the long-term. Coming up next, retailers are practically stalking you this holiday season, we're going to tell you why and whether you should take advantage. You're listening to "Simply Money" here on 55KRC, The Talk Station.

You're listening to "Simply Money" presented by Allworth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner along with Steve Sprovach. You can listen to our show every night, subscribe and get our daily podcast, listen to it on your way to work the next day, when you're at the gym. And we all have those friends who could use a little money help as well, spread the word to them. Just search simply money on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you turn to to get your podcasts. Coming up at 6:43, how to best teach your teens and young adults about crypto, meme stocks, and the new investing world that they are walking into? Well, the Internal Revenue Service rates always switching things up, making it a lot of fun for all of us. Now, it has to...

Steve: Our friends.

Amy: Exactly. Nothing weird here. Switching things up for those who use Venmo, and PayPal, and Zell, who run a business, right, who get paid regularly through those apps, things are a'changin'.

Steve: They are. They used to let you do, you know, pretty much a lot of small transactions, nobody cares. There's not much money. These are, you know, people knitting blankets at home or whatever on Etsy. And well, not anymore. Guess what? If you have sold more than $600 worth of stuff, you got to report it. You got to file a 10-K. And the IRS has 87,000 new agents that are gonna be coming online in the next year to make sure you do. Etsy, eBay, Amy, they're not happy about this. They're pushing back and I get that completely. This is a big issue.

Amy: Well, and here's the change. It used to be that there had to be at least 200 transactions totaling about $20,000. That's when you had to start worrying about these forms. Now, a single transaction over $600 means that you need to fill out a 1099-K. Just a heads up.

Steve: Yeah. And there's a group, and it's a nonpartisan group called the Joint Committee on Taxation, they figure over 90% of the businesses involved are doing less than a half a million dollars. In other words, mom and pops. And there's a lot of money that, you know, Congress I guess sees, okay, these are people avoiding taxes, we got to nail them down. But $600, I mean, that's pretty much anybody who sells anything on the internet is gonna be required to file a 10-K. We'll see how this goes.

Amy: It hit the small businesses, right? You never like to see that.

Steve: No.

Amy: Okay. Have you noticed this this year as we get closer and closer to Christmas, the holiday shopping season, retailers are just swarming you. They're on your social media, they're in your email. Some of them are even sending text messages. I've gotten text messages from stores. It's doing this because they have...

Steve: They're saying, "Amy, you haven't been in in a couple of days, are you feeling okay?"

Amy: "We miss you. And we're just checking on you." If it was an actual person, I would have no issue with that. But they're bombarding us. And I think the reason for many of these retailers is because we seem to be spending like inflation is in a 40 plus year highs and credit card debt is indeed crazy highs. And these retailers are worried that at some point, we're gonna collectively wake up and say, "Oh, I probably spent a little more than I should this year, and I'm gonna cut back." And that's why they're trying to get to you right now.

Steve: I'm waiting for Christmas trees to show up over Fourth of July weekend. I mean, every year it gets earlier and earlier.

Amy: Oh my gosh, yes.

Steve: But no, they're not stupid. I mean, people who run big retailing companies, they're smart people and they know where the economy is headed. There's likely to be, I don't care if you call it a soft landing Amy, there's likely to be some sort of recession early in '23. And they know that, okay, once people realize it's gonna be like this, they're not gonna wanna spend any money. So, they're trying to get you to spend it as soon as possible. And we saw October sales were up way more than anticipated. 1.3% is a big deal in the real world. So I mean, they're trying to get your money as soon as they can, before you realize, hey, maybe I don't wanna spend this much. And my guess is you're gonna see sales kind of decline a little bit through the month of December as we get closer to the holiday season. You know, people do have money, there's an estimated $1.7 trillion that we've squirreled away from not doing anything from the early stages in the pandemic, they want their piece of it.

Amy: I was just reading something that the CEO of Target, someone asked the CEO of Target, like, "Hey, what do you think is going to happen in 2023?" And he said, "Can we just get through the holiday shopping season first?"

Steve: He doesn't wanna talk about it.

Amy: He doesn't want to talk about it, because he's like, it's looking bad for them, but I'm still worrying about right now. And I don't wanna gloss over this holiday shopping season because, yeah, for the past few months, not only have we been spending more because of inflation, we've also just been buying more stuff. And at some point, I think the concern of these retailers is we're not gonna do that. Keep in mind too, our nation's economy, 70% of that is made up of what you and I are buying. And this is a time of the year that typically we buy a lot of stuff. And that's why rather than saying, hey, maybe we're gonna deeply discount things when we get closer to Christmas, you're seeing those deeper discounts now because they're afraid that closer to Christmas, you might not be buying anymore.

Steve: Well, yeah, I mean, even Amazon added an extra Prime Day back in October. The University of Michigan runs a really important survey called a Consumer Sentiment Survey. They just ask consumers, do you think we're going into recession or do you think we're okay? And that number showed a really sharp drop last month, which means okay, the average person's starting to worry about the economy. Retailers pay attention to that. So, yeah, they're doing whatever they can including aggressive credit card offers to try to get your money.

Amy: Yeah. So, those in store, right, those retail credit cards, just keep in mind, the average APR on those, the average percentage rate you have to pay around 30%, right? Regular credit cards are about 18%. So, great discounts that they offer at the cash register. But if you're carrying a balance on that...

Steve: Yeah, which most people do.

Amy: Yes. Like, I think it's...

Steve: 30%.

Amy: Yes. There's a huge percentage of people who carry a credit card balance, so you're not getting anything out there. And I also think about Ed Fink, our founder, and he used to always say, hey, it's not a great deal on something if you're buying it just because it's a great deal and not because you need it. So, do your homework first on these discounts. Do you really need that thing? If you're an Amazon shopper, CamelCamelCamel, it's the weirdest name ever. But it will tell you the history of that product over the past year, over the past six months to give you an idea of whether it truly is a deal. Don't just buy something because there's a discount. Here's the Allworth advice, retailers are worried about a recession, they're trying to lure you in right now. If it makes financial sense to take advantage, of course, go for it. If not though, buyer beware. Coming up next common FICO score facts you might not know about but should. You're listening to "Simply Money" here on 55KRC, The Talk Station.

You're listening to "Simply Money". I Amy Wagner along with Steve Sprovach. I've got teenagers in my house. And it's funny because every day they come home with something that they think is a fact. And once we start talking about it, I'm like, ah, I think that actually might be fiction. Understanding the difference between fact and fiction as adults when it comes to our money is also incredibly important, especially when it comes to our credit score. That's why Britt Scearce, our credit expert from Wesbanco is joining us tonight. Seven commonly missed FICO score facts. Let's start with what FICO is, Britt.

Britt: Well, first off, FICO is not the credit bureau. A lot of people have the misconception that FICO is the actual credit reporting agency. And understand that the credit bureaus, Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian, those are the credit bureaus that report data as to how you, you know, manage payments and so forth on your accounts. FICO is a totally separate analytic company that uses the data that is reported on your credit report to derive a FICO score for you.

Amy: Let's talk about why too that FICO score is even important. Why do we care about that?

Britt: Well nowadays...

Amy: It's a big deal.

Britt: It is because here's the thing, you know, your credit score and your credit report is kind of become your adult report card these days. And it's important that you're making sure that the information on your credit report is accurate, because that information will affect that three-digit score called your FICO score, which affects every part of your financial life. It affects, you know, your auto insurance rates and your homeowners insurance rates. It affects the cost of every type of loan that you would apply for, your payments would be much higher with lower credit scores than if you have higher credit scores. So, one of the things that this is important for you to understand is that normally, if you have a lower credit score, understand that you need to do something with your actual credit reports in order to impact your FICO score.

Amy: And let's talk about what that FICO score is made up of. What exact information is part of it? I know some people are surprised about what is and what isn't considered here.

Britt: Yes. You know, the FICO score is neutral and objective. I mean, nothing about your, you know, race or gender, national origin, the zip code that you live in, your income, your employment history, none of that goes in your FICO score.

Amy: Doesn't care.

Britt: Right. It doesn't affect it whatsoever. You can become CEO tomorrow of your company, and it doesn't affect your FICO score whatsoever. What is being reported on your credit report, you know, the actual tradelines, when those were opened, how long they've been opened, how much of your credit lines you're utilizing, your pay history, that is the information that they get from the credit bureau that they derive your FICO score from.

Amy: So, you rent a place, you're late on your rent, or you're late on your Duke Energy bill, you're late on your cell phone bill, are those things considered?

Britt: Well, they can be. In general, they're usually not necessarily automatically reported to your credit bureaus. But this is really important for people that maybe have a limited credit file. You can ask your landlord, and you can ask your utility companies to report your pay history on those to the credit bureaus and that will help you with deriving a FICO score. We see this a lot when we have folks that are, you know, they're younger, and maybe they've been renting for a couple of years, but they just don't have a lot of open credit. And, you know, having your rent reported and having your, say, cell phone or your utilities be reported to your credit bureau could actually give you a real good boost to your FICO score.

Amy: You're listening to "Simply Money" tonight here on 55KRC. We're joined by our credit expert Britt Scearce as we talk about what you need to know about your FICO score. Separating fact from fiction here. There are FICO scoring models, you just touched on this, that use alternative data, why do we care about those and what do they consider?

Britt: Yeah. FICO has come up with something called the ultra FICO score, which includes alternative credit, like your bank account information. So, let's say you're trying to qualify for a mortgage or a loan of some sort, and your credit score is just a little bit lower below, you know, below the threshold of what's required. Well, you can ask them if they could utilize the ultra FICO score model where they'll take your bank statement information and include that along with the other information on your credit report and derive an ultra FICO score for you which could help a lot of folks, you know, be able to just get that extra 10 or 20 or 30 points that they need to be able to qualify for the transaction that they're trying to obtain.

Amy: You're buying a new car, you're thinking about taking out a mortgage and buying a home, how many of these people who you're trying to get loans from are actually looking at this FICO score? I mean, how popular is it really?

Britt: Well, FICO scores are used about 90% of the time. Now, I will tell you that the VantageScore that was created to compete with FICO, it was created by the three credit bureaus is starting to gain some traction and you're starting to see those moving forward. They're gonna use the VantageScore, in addition to FICO scores for mortgages. But 90% of the time, you're gonna be dealing with FICO scores with most creditors. And understand too, there are multiple versions of the FICO score and multiple versions of the VantageScore. So, just because you get off of your credit card that might give you a credit score, you got to look at which version that that is before you go to say apply for a car loan and say, "Why is my score different?" Well, the auto industry has their own auto score from FICO and different versions of that even exist. The credit card industry has their own card score, and even multiple versions of that exist. So, there's not just one score. So, make sure that you don't fall into that trap of going out to Credit Karma and saying, well, you know, this says my score is this and then you go and apply somewhere and say, well, my score is 20 or 30 points different. Understand they're different versions of FICO scores, and VantageScores.

Amy: Correct me if I'm wrong, though, Britt, I mean, shouldn't they pretty much line up? I know that they'll take certain different factors and tweak them differently, but it wouldn't be the norm for someone to have one score that's 100 points different from another score, is that right?

Britt: Yeah. Normally, they will be similar. If you have a good VantageScore, if you have a good FICO 8 score, if you have a good FICO 4 score, okay? Most likely, you're gonna have a pretty decent all the other versions of scores, okay? But they will not be exact. So, it's not like it's gonna be the exact same number. If you're carrying a 720 score on your FICO 8, you know, you might have a 732 score on another version, or you might have a 715 score on another version. But, yeah, it's not an exact science. And sometimes, even though they give us the basics of what the FICO score is derived from, you know, 35% on your pay history, 30% based on debt utilization, 15% on how long you've had accounts open, 10% on new credit, and 10% on credit mix, understand, it all depends on how long you've had particular accounts opened, and, you know, what your particular, you know, debt limits are, and how much you're utilizing? All of that is gonna be always different. It's gonna be very difficult for you to just kind of put that together on your own. They don't make it quite that transparent. They just give us the general rules of thumb of what makes up the score.

Amy: And Britt, I know we can do entire segments on how to bring that score up and we have. But if you were able to just say, hey, if you could focus on this one thing, first and foremost, you might be on the way to bringing that credit score up, what would that thing be?

Britt: Well, in general, if you just make sure that number one, you don't miss payments, you pay at least your minimum payments. If you don't use more than 30% of what is available to you on say, credit cards in particular, and don't open a lot of new accounts on a regular basis, you'll probably see that your scores are pretty good.

Amy: Speaking of this, the timing of this, the holidays, people are shopping. Every time I go to checkout, someone's shoving a store credit card down my throat, not a good idea, right? I mean, that will affect your credit score.

Britt: It will. Because what happens is as you open up that new account, that's gonna be an inquiry on your credit report that's opening up a new account until that is 12 months old, it's going to have a minor impact on your credit scores. And if you open multiple, you know, accounts in a short period of time, that could have more impact. One of the measures that they do on the length of time accounts have been established is they look at the average age of all of your accounts that you currently have opened that are reporting on your credit report. And so, if you go and open a bunch of brand new ones and, you know, in a month's time, well that's gonna reduce the average age of your overall credit history which will have a big impact on your credit score. So, only open new credit as needed. And those store cards they're either giving them to you for 20% off for a reason. They know you're probably not gonna pay it off and they're gonna make a lot more than 20% back on yah.

Amy: Yeah. Understanding how these things work can go a long way toward getting your credits back and strong. You're listening to "Simply Money" here on 55KRC, The Talk Station.

You're listening to "Simply Money" presented by Allworth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner along with Steve Sprovach. Do you have a financial question you'd like for us to talk about here on the show? Easy way to get it to us, there's a red button you click on while you're listening to the show on the iHeart app, record your question, and it's coming straight to us. We'd love to talk about it here. Straight ahead, has there been a shift away from working from home? What the numbers suggest what you need to know about, especially if you're someone who really likes working from home. So, when you're older, you know, when you've been around the block, you've learned from maybe some of those mistakes by now. But what about your kids, right? Especially when it comes to investing. I mean, Steve, you and I, when we started hearing about meme stocks, when we started hearing about crypto, it's like, oh, I don't know, take it with a grain of salt. For our children, though, this is all brand new to them. And it's new and exciting. And the interesting thing is there's some new research out about cryptocurrency that says that for kids ages 8 to 14, their number one thing that they know about, as far as investing is investing in crypto.

Steve: Yeah. And there are good reasons to be wary. But, you know, here's what's going on, I think Amy. I mean, my kids long ago decided, "Okay, dad, this is for information purposes only. I'm not asking your advice." Probably a good call on their part. But, you know, with crypto, this is something serious. And I think a lot of that younger generation when they hear us say "be careful", they're kind of like tuning us out and saying, yeah, okay. And the interweb is not your cup of tea either dad, right? Because you don't understand it. They're serious concerns about cryptocurrencies, Amy. And I don't think there's anything more serious than, hey, if your digital wallet gets exposed, if you have tokens, or even partial tokens, taken out of your account, you have no recourse. I mean, this is the new version of Stranger Danger. I mean, it's legitimate. If somebody gets into your account, and your money is gone, you're toast. You have no recourse, your money's gone. If you can deal with that, fine, knock yourself out. But this is a problem. And this is why we keep on this show asking for regulation, even though I'm not big on rules and regulation, this is an area that really need some regulation.

Amy: We're talking about 8 to 14 year olds, right? And if you're wondering, wait, how the heck are they even hearing about crypto, it is a whole new world, right? And they're on social media platforms at younger and younger ages. And there's influencers. They don't go to school with you, but the people that they look up to for whatever reason, and we we've seen the Kardashians kind of jumping on this, right?

Steve: Yeah, yeah.

Amy: And, okay, you like the Kardashians, because you like their show, or their lipstick or whatever it is. And all of a sudden, they're trying to give you information or advice on what to invest in. And we've seen that kind of blow up in their faces. But you have to understand this is why kids are exposed to this at such a young age. And part of this research that really worries me, 57% of the kids sampled said they were familiar with crypto, only 47% of their parents knew.

Steve: Yeah.

Amy: And I think about, okay, every time there's kind of a new platform that one of my kids wants to get on, I'm like, "What is this thing?" Right? What is be real mean? And then I have to go and I have to research it. There are all these new ways to invest out there, right? Non fungible tokens and meme stocks and things like that. If you don't understand that, because it's not necessarily what you would be investing in, I think you still do your children a service by understanding it and explaining it to them. And also maybe why the risk involved, because that's not part of these conversations, according to this research. Parents are talking about...maybe they're talking about crypto, but they're not talking about the risk involved because it's not regulated yet.

Steve: And the problem is parents are not talking about this to their kids. A study was done by T. Rowe Price, very large, well respected mutual fund company. And their survey said about half the parents in their survey don't talk to their kids about cryptocurrencies. To me, this is part of parenting. It's just as important as teaching them how to save, allowance, all the financial lessons that parents should be sharing with their kids. I don't care if you didn't grow up with a last name o[00:34:28.596]r Rockefeller or something like that. The basics, the things you need to do to get through in life. And this study really bothered me that parents...and I think it's because parents, a lot of them don't understand cryptocurrencies. That's okay, you don't have to understand what a blockchain means to be able to talk to your kid about, hey, here's a problem. There's no regulation and if your money gets stolen, it's gone. At least with the bank, they replace it if your money was stolen.

Amy: If you're not talking to your kids about investments and smart decisions with money, I guarantee they're bombarded by lots of ideas about how...

Steve: Everybody else is. Yeah.

Amy: Yes. Everyone else is. And when I was growing up, it used to be, my friends we're talking about things, right? And that's how I would learn things different from what my parents thought. But now, there are people who you have no idea have access to your kids brains and thoughts because of social media because of, you know, they just have access to so much more now. So, not having these conversations doesn't mean that they're not exposed to these things, it means that they think that this is normal, right? If a Kardashian or an NFL player that they love, NBA player, whoever it is that they really look up to is talking about these things, that becomes the norm for them whether you think it's a good idea or not. So, I would just open up the conversation with your kids or grandkids of, "Have you have you heard of cryptocurrency? What do you know about it? What do you think about it?" And go from there, filling in the blanks for them about what they don't know, and most importantly too, what they need to understand. Here's the Allworth advice, with the newer generation comes a new group of, of course, fad investments. Talk to your kids about the risks and consequences of those kinds of investments.

How's that back to the office mandate going for you, are people heating it? There are some pros and cons of going back to the office. We've got some interesting new data for you next. You're listening to "Simply Money" here on 55KRC, The Talk Station.

You're listening to "Simply Money" presented by Allworth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner along with Steve Sprovach. The pandemic changed so many things about how we live and one of the huge things is about work. I couldn't have imagined a few years ago not going to the office every single day. Yet for many of us, that became the norm. Working from home, remote work, and then hybrid work, right? But we're hearing more and more companies saying, "Hey, it's time to get your booty back in the office." Let's walk through the numbers of this. And Steve, it's interesting, because you and I both fall in very different ends of the spectrum. I like working from home, you like being in the office.

Steve: Right. Well, my wife likes me working in the office.

Amy: And likes you being in the office.

Steve: No, that's not true. That's not true. I make stuff up a lot. It's kind of interesting that at the beginning of the pandemic, I know, in our case, we were just given an email, "Okay, you're not coming in tomorrow, this COVID stuff is serious." Everybody's working from home, you're gonna have some new apps on your laptop to allow you to do so. So, everybody scrambled. And, you know, the work from home rate was pretty much 29, 30% at the beginning of the pandemic. Well, now, more and more companies are, you know, saying, okay, we need people back in. There's some socialization and off the cuff meetings that have a big value...

Amy: Collaboration.

Steve: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know what the numbers are now? They're still 30%.

Amy: About the same.

Steve: They're still 30%. Yeah, exactly. They haven't budged. And this really shocked me, Amy, that we've got a pretty much exactly the same number of people working from home today as were working from home two years ago.

Amy: In fact, if you look at the age group of 25 to 39, there's actually more people, not a lot more, but they went from 38 to 40% of people working in their kitchen, their dining room, their bedroom as an office, which says that we're maybe not going in the direction that a lot of these bosses are saying. Now, there's many of them who are saying 2023 is the year when everyone's got to get back in the office. But I think that remains to be seen, right?

Steve: Yeah.

Amy: It seems like the deadline keeps getting pushed back.

Steve: Well, and the job market is so tight that if you've got, you know, I'm gonna call a 25-year-old a kid, I'm sorry, I'm old. But, you know, if you've got a 25-year-old doing some really good work for you, and you can't find anybody else to replace them, you'll let them work from home. But as soon as that changes, as soon as you've got instead of two jobs for every one person unemployed, you've got 18 people looking for the same job, that's when people are gonna go back to work. We're just not there yet.

Amy: Yeah. I think it will be interesting to your point.

Steve: Work back in the office, I should say.

Amy: When the job market swings back and you're feeling lucky to have a job, is that when your boss has enough leverage to say and you're coming back into the office? Thanks for listening tonight. We hope you'll tune in tomorrow. We're talking about the ABCs of Roth IRAs. You've been listening to "Simply Money" presented by Allworth Financial here on 55KRC, The Talk Station.