Amy: Tonight, we're talking the key moves you should make when markets are bad, what you should do when they're good, and should you make any moves at all. You're listening to "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner, along with Steve Hruby. Here's the quote I want you to remember, "Act greedy when others are fearful, fearful when others are greedy." If you've listened to the show for any amount of time, you know I am a Warren Buffett fangirl to my core. I think he is...

Steve: I thought that was a Steve Sprovak quote.

Amy: You know what? I mean, to your point, a lot of advisors, a lot of people in our industry, especially those who have been around for a long time, feel exactly this way, right? It's like, "Hey, when other people are running for the hills because the market's going down, that's actually a fantastic opportunity to buy." When people are buying in, that means prices are high. And we would say probably not during that time. So, I think with this in mind, let's talk about some practical advice and understanding of how the markets work, volatility, and what we think you should do about it.

Steve: Yeah. So, first of all, let's talk about the differences between a bear market and a bull market. So, a bear market is when a stock index, whether it's the Dow, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, whatever it might be, falls at least 20% from recent highs. This is what we qualify as a bear market. Obviously, it's a time where people get emotional and they may react on those emotions. On the flip side, we have a bull market, which isn't necessarily as easy to define. Some may say a 20% increase from recent highs, but there isn't an exact threshold when it comes to a bull market, but they certainly are more common.

Amy: Yeah. You know, I joke about this. I'm a visual person, which is funny that I do a radio show and a podcast. But at the same time, if you think about a bear market, it's like, you know, the bear going to sleep for the summer, right? Like it is, you know, checking out and, you know, declining at the same time you think of a bull, and I think of the running of the bulls video, right? Just like charging forward. It's when companies are doing really, really well. And so, I don't know if that helps you at all, but that's kind of how I think about them. But it also would...

Steve: It helps me. Thank you.

Amy: You're welcome. You're welcome, Steve. I know. Now, you'll always have that visual in your mind. And a few things I would say to keep in mind about bull markets versus bear markets is there've been 26 of each since 1872, right? Since we've had essentially markets. There is a huge difference, though. While we've had the same number of bull and bear markets, bear markets actually lasted a median of 19 months. So, less than two years with a median drop of 33%. So, ouch, it hurts. It hurts during that time. It hurts for, you know, on average, the less than two years that it lasts, but bull markets, on the flip side, have lasted, on average, a median of 42 months, so three and a half years, and we're talking a median spike of close to 90%. So, yes, bull or bear markets hurt when they're happening, but bull markets usually come back far stronger and also last far longer.

Steve: Yeah, they sure do. And how do bull and bear markets relate to the economy? It's important to note that, and we've said this on the show before, the stock market is not the same as the economy.

Amy: And that's an important point to note.

Steve: Exactly. Yeah. The stock market, it's buyers and sellers. They trade publicly traded companies. That's the stocks that we buy, the stocks that make up the indexes that we might buy. It indicates how those companies are performing now and how they believe these companies will perform in the future, whereas the economy itself represents the output of goods.

Amy: Yeah. And I think, you know, people often use them interchangeably like, "Oh, the economy is bad. My 401(k) is down." Of course, they're directly correlated a lot of the time, right? I mean, when companies aren't doing well, when they're not growing, when they're not, you know, investing in growth often, then the economy isn't doing so well and your 401(k) isn't going to. But they don't necessarily have to move at the same time. So, I think that's really important to understand if you're going to be like a smart, long-term investor. And it's kind of like a chicken and the egg thing, right? Like, is the economy driving your investments, or is your investments driving the economy? Sometimes that's related and sometimes it's not.

Steve: I mean, they can go hand in hand. Obviously, a robust economy when there's low unemployment, when there's increasing wages, when there's healthy consumer spending, it tends to coincide with the bull market. But they don't necessarily have to go hand in hand.

Amy: We talk about this, too, a lot, but three-quarters of the American economy is made up of consumer spending, how you and I are spending on goods and services. So, when we feel like we're in a good spot and can spend, we're not worried about losing our job tomorrow or taking a major pay cut or anything along those lines, we tend to spend more, which is good for the economy, right? But then, the individual things and services that we're buying tend to help the companies that make up the stock market. So, a lot of times it kind of comes down to the consumer, how we feel about things, which, you know, over the past year or so, you know, I think consumer sentiment has been high, despite the fact that there have been all kinds of headlines calling for a recession that we just haven't seen yet.

Steve: Yeah, let's go back to Buffett's quote, "Act greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy." So, obviously, there's going to be a correlation behind how people behave when there's a bull market or when there's a bear market. The reality of the situation is that more people tend to invest during bull market periods because it feels good. We see the green numbers, we see things going up. But it's kind of odd because think about when you're shopping for gifts or holidays, whatever that might be, a new appliance. You wait for things to go on sale to make that purchase. You don't wait for it to get more expensive, but that's exactly what's happening during a bull market. Things are getting more expensive. The investments that you held or are going to purchase have gone up in value. On the flip side, the bear market, when everybody's afraid, when people are fearful and sometimes make emotional mistakes and sell at the bottom, that's what boggles my mind because you think about a sale in the store and you think, "Okay, well, everything's at a discount right now, I should buy it." But that's not oftentimes how people behave.

Amy: Well, the problem is nobody looks at the stock market the way we do any other sort of thing that we're buying, right? And I think to your point...

Steve: Well, maybe we should be.

Amy: We absolutely should. You're listening to "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner, along with Steve Hruby, as we break down bull markets versus bear markets. And more importantly than understanding what they are is understanding your reaction to them. And maybe what we would say you should do instead of some of your instincts, fear and greed. Those are two tough, tough emotions that can really drive a lot of bad money decisions. We've seen this far too many times during the years. So, I think, you know, trying to time a bull or bear market saying, "Okay, you know, market's going up. I'm getting in," or, "I'm putting way more in," and then, "Whoa, market's starting to go down. I'm a little nervous about things. I'm going to pull it out," you know, Andy Stout, our chief investment officer, has done all kinds of research on this and provided us with just some great statistics on it.

But it really does show that over time, staying invested for the long haul because the key is to understand that the best days in the stock market usually come on the heels of the worst days in the stock market. And there's absolutely nothing to say, "Hey, this is going to be a good day." Right? It's not like you wake up that morning and all the headlines on all the financial websites and in the papers are, you know, "This is going to be a great day." No, usually, news is still bad as you would expect after a stock market low. And it just happens that we have a rebound that day. And those are the days that if you miss out on can really make a huge difference when it comes to long-term investing.

Steve: This is why market timing is almost impossible because you have to guess it right more than once. You have to guess before markets go down and then you have to guess before they go back up, or else you are making a mistake. That's the challenge. And remember, when you're investing, ideally, you're finding a sweet spot between how much risk you need to take to meet your financial goals, how much you can afford to take based on your financial situation, and then there's the risk tolerance, how much risk are you comfortable taking so that you don't lose sleep. Remember, when bull markets last longer than bear markets, if we just ride it out and make a few changes, maybe rebalancing, we'll talk about that in a minute, it can help you more than it hurts you as opposed to trying to time the markets because you don't actually realize losses until you've sold. When you see those red numbers during a bear market, you're not realizing those losses unless you've sold.

Amy: It's just on paper until you lock it in, right? Unless you lock it in with selling it. If you're asking yourself, "Okay, markets go up, markets go down. How do I know when and how to put money in? Because it's going to be up and down all the time, that makes me incredibly nervous." We recommend something called dollar-cost averaging. And if you put money regularly into your 401(k), say you're paid twice a month, and every time you're paid, you put X amount of dollars into your 401(k), that's dollar-cost averaging. You're putting the same amount of money into the market at the same time. Sometimes when that money goes in, it's going to buy more shares, and sometimes it's going to buy less shares, depending on how the market is doing on that particular day. But you're not looking at it and saying, "Hmm, I have a feeling that Tuesday is going to be good or something about this Friday is going to be bad," right? You're taking that kind of human behavior out of it. And in just making it automatic, and research shows, that's what really pays off.

Steve: When you're making 401(k) contributions when you're employed, you're essentially dollar-cost averaging...

Amy: Every time.

Steve: ...into those investments. You can set up a Roth IRA or an after-tax brokerage account and put money into it periodically. But the key is that you have to purchase shares during market ups and downs because the average price per share over time for investments typically goes up. It's driving down the average price per share over the long term as long as you're buying when they're down. So, dollar-cost averaging is a huge opportunity for us, and it's easy enough just to put money in from our paychecks.

Diversifying. So, this one can be a challenge for some people because you look at a diversified portfolio, it's going to have stocks, it's going to have bonds, large cap, mid cap, small cap, different sub-asset classes. Sometimes some of those sub-asset classes aren't going to look particularly nice. They're going to go down more than everything else. But that's okay because if you dollar-cost averaging, those same investments, they may be the winner next year.

Amy: And I think that's a great thing to remember, right? It's almost like a version of market timing. "Oh, like, what asset class is doing well right now? That's what I'm going to invest in." So then, you're in and out of different asset classes, right? Like, "Oh, large caps are doing well," or, "Small caps are doing well." And you could drive yourself crazy trying to invest in that way. So, I like the fact that you're saying, "Okay, first of all, put money into the market regularly," but then also figure out what kind of diversification makes sense to you, how much you need in stocks, how much you need in bonds, and then all those sub-asset classes that you're talking about, and then you just let it go.

Steve: What I would recommend is if we have a period of volatility and it's been a year or so since you've rebalanced your portfolio, look at the investments that have done well. Sell them. Buy the ones that have done poorly. This is oftentimes the opposite of what folks I work with think that they need to do. They say, "Oh, some of these have been doing really well. Let's sell these ones that are down and buy the ones that are doing well."

Amy: Buy more. Yeah.

Steve: Essentially, what you're doing is you're selling low and buying high. Rebalancing is the exact opposite of that, and it can bring you back to a neutral asset allocation. If you think you need to be in a 70% stock, 30% bond, bring it back to that periodically, and that's a way to capitalize on market fluctuations.

Amy: You know, understanding what diversification is right for you and when to rebalance, it's like building a boat during a storm, right? That's not the best time to build the boat. So, you know, if there's a time, a period in the markets where there's not volatility, that's a great time to check on those things. Make sure that your boat is built so that when we do get some turbulence, some volatility, you're set, right? You've got your long-term plan, you just go with it. Here's the Allworth advice. Regardless of how the market is doing, acting on emotion is just not the answer. The advice that we're talking about here today, that is what is.

Coming up next, how to bounce back after experiencing a financial shock. You're listening to "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial here on 55KRC, THE Talk Station. You're listening to "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner, along with Steve Hruby. If you can't catch our show every night, you do not have to miss a thing. We've got a daily podcast for you. Just search "Simply Money." It's right there on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts. Straight ahead at 643, you get a lot of financial statements. Probably, we would say there's one that you need to pay the closest attention to. We'll tell you what that is.

All right. So, there's a number of good quotes that we could be talking about right now. Like, "Nothing is guaranteed in this life, except for death and taxes." "We make plans and God laughs," right? We've all experienced over and over again the fact that these are very true. It's like you've got the best plan and then life happens. And that can be, you know, something happens to you emotionally, but also it can have a huge financial impact. So, if this has happened to you, we're talking to you right now. This segment tonight is dedicated to you.

Steve: Yeah. So, life throws us curveballs sometimes. The events that we're referring to, this could be anything from the unexpected death of a loved one to a sudden layoff of a longtime job. Maybe you're a part of a reduction in force, a serious illness, or an accident. These events, these curveballs, they can throw a wrench in our financial plan. So, what do we need to do to not let things get out of control and bounce back? I mean, first of all, and I hate the B word, budget, it's kind of boring, but it's very important. It's so important to get a handle on your cash flow, to understand a clear snapshot of the state of your finances because money that you're not spending is money being saved.

Amy: Yes. I think education is power, especially when it comes to your money. And so, when you feel like things are very out of control, as we often do, we can't control everything, something comes from out of the blue. It's like, "Okay, let's get down to what we can control." And one of those things is what we're spending and what we're spending it on. And so, I think understanding your budget, kind of digging deeper into that gives you a lot of great information. And then, we talk a lot about having an emergency fund. This is why you have that emergency fund. The unexpected loss of a partner, the unexpected loss of a job, anything along those lines, a medical diagnosis that you weren't expecting. Where do you turn? Well, while you're dealing with those things on a very emotional level, the good thing is if you have the emergency fund, it takes at least a little bit of stress out of that. You're not putting money on your credit card. You're not pulling money out of your 401(k). You've got money sitting there on the sidelines that is absolutely earmarked for this.

Steve: Yeah. So, the emergency fund, we've talked about kind of targets for how much you want to have set aside. And that's typically going to be three months for a double-income household, six months of liquid cash for a single-income household. And that's exactly the reason why. So, we can buy time in the event that life throws us a curveball. So, focusing on income, again, reducing spending as much as possible outside of your housing, utilities, groceries, gas, your non-discretionary spending, are you using DoorDash as much as my household is, for example? That's a great opportunity.

Amy: Might be the time to cut back on DoorDash, right?

Steve: Exactly. Yeah, that's an easy one. My wife stays at home and, "What's for dinner?" "I don't know. We're ordering something that adds up quick." And that's one of those non-discretionary spending targets that you might be able to increase the cash flow essentially by not having those dollars go out the door. Widening your job search, I mean, even part-time or temporary employment can help you stay afloat while you look for a full-time job in congruent with your emergency fund that you're spending.

Amy: And, you know, we recently had, you know, Julie Bauke, Julie on the show, and she was talking about exactly this, how to start a job search. And I think if this comes out of the blue, that you were not expecting to lose that job, and all of a sudden, here you are, you can have the knee-jerk reaction of, "I just need to do something immediately. I need to, you know, get my resume out there to 8,000 people within the first two weeks. And I need to blow up LinkedIn with every contact that I ever had." And I think Julie makes a fantastic point. Take a moment. Get your breath together. Maybe this could even be an opportunity. While it wasn't something you expected, maybe actually that job that you had before wasn't the best fit for you. And maybe there's something better out there for you.

But to take a moment and figure out, "Okay, if I were really to look at what I would want to do next, what aligns with my passions and my talents, and, you know, if I could have control over this, what it would look like," giving yourself a moment to figure out what that is and then say, "Okay, that is what I'm going to go after," it will likely end you up in a far better job than maybe coming up with 2.0 of what you had before, you know, that you got let go from or that maybe you didn't love. So, I think that's some great advice there, too.

Steve: So, what about health insurance? We need to leave room in our budget to maintain health coverage while we're searching for a job, for example. COBRA is something that you can leverage. You can stay on your old company's plan for 18 months. The problem there is oftentimes...

Amy: It's expensive.

Steve: ...the premiums spike. You could end up paying five times what you were paying out of your paycheck. So, if that's not an option for you, there's the exchange, Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. We can go onto the exchange and purchase insurance there, which can be very cost-effective if you are unemployed, for example.

Amy: And I would say another thing to do is shockproof your estate plan, right? It's one thing when your estate plan was set, and I was talking to someone recently, and I said something, "Do you have a will?" And she said, "Yeah, we made it 20 years ago." Okay. Well, a lot has probably changed in the past 20 years. So, you can easily say, "Well, yeah, we've got that document," but, hey, update that document every five years. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah, once every five years.

Amy: Yeah. At least check in and say, "Has anything major changed in our lives since then?" I bet in most cases something has. And then, just make sure you're taking care of yourself emotionally. Whatever it is you're dealing with, whatever shock it is that you weren't expecting, making sure that, "Hey, I've got these financial things taken care of so that I can deal with the emotional part of it," just makes things that much easier. Here's the Allworth advice. We can't predict which financial shocks are going to be coming or when, but we can bounce back a little easier if we do understand and have a plan in place for our dollars.

Coming up next, any life events when you can maybe delay financial progress and be okay with it? We'll look closely at that question next. You're listening to "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial here on 55KRC, THE Talk Station. You're listening to "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner, along with Steve Hruby. You know, sometimes if you think about it, major life moments can also come at a cost. Joining us tonight with his perspective on that is, of course, our good friend Al Riddick from Game Time Budgeting. Al, you and your wife are actually celebrating a pretty big milestone this year. Tell us about it.

Al: Yes, we are, Amy. So, this year, my wife and I will celebrate a milestone birthday. I won't tell you the number because my wife might get upset, but it's a pretty big number in the Riddick household.

Amy: So, you're turning 30 is what you're saying. You're turning 30?

Al: We're turning 30 for maybe like the second time almost.

Amy: We'll go with that. Okay, so how are you? I know nothing happens in the Riddick household without major planning. So, how are you planning for the milestone?

Al: So, first of all, Amy, I have to tell you, when...of course, my wife and I, we plan in advance for everything. When we started talking about this milestone birthday, I was asking my wife, "So, how do you want to celebrate?" Now, these were her words. She said, "I don't know yet, but I want to do something big." Now, Amy, when I heard those two words put together in the same sentence, "something big," my heart started pounding because I knew that that equated to a whole lot of money, you know?

Amy: You heard cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.

Al: Exactly, exactly. So, we started having some discussions, and what we want to do for this milestone occasion is take a two-week vacation. Now, when you think about it, Amy, we travel quite a bit. But can you believe we have never actually gone somewhere for 14 days? We've been up to like 10, 11, and 12 days, but never 14. So, this year, we want to do the two-week vacation, and we haven't decided if we're going to do two weeks in one country or one week in one country, then fly to another country for the second week. So, that should be quite intriguing, but the cool part is about the planning process. So, luckily, I started asking my wife tons of questions about how she wanted to celebrate months ago, and I have already begun stashing more money in the vacation account because of this humongous expense that will be waiting for us in the future.

Amy: All right. I've got a couple of questions about that for you, Al. First of all, how far in advance, right? I mean, everyone knows it's like I'm 47. I've kind of joked with my husband for years. "Oh, I want to do this when I turn 50, and I want to do this when I turn 50." So, at what point do you actually get down to the brass tacks of, "Okay, here's what we think we want to do, or here's how much we think it's going to cost. And so, we have to budget for it." And then also, not only how far out are you planning, but if you are taking money, extra money and putting it into the vacation fund, are you sacrificing elsewhere? Where is that money coming from?

Al: So, I'm going to address all of those questions, hopefully, with this one explanation. So, my wife and I, we plan one year in advance regarding the amount of money that we want to use for travel in a specific year. So, usually, by December 31st of every year, we have all the money that we will need to travel for the next 12 months. Makes sense so far? So, when I started asking my wife this question about what she wanted to do, I'm already like nine months out from the actual event. So then, I just figured out how I could start funneling more money towards a vacation account because there's only two ways to solve a money problem, either, A, increase your income or, B, decrease your living expenses. Now, you can probably tell, Amy, my wife and I, we don't live an extravagant lifestyle. But for this expense, we decided to go with option A, which was increase your income. So, in addition to my wife getting a raise on her job, I thought I'd give myself a raise as well just so I wouldn't feel left out.

Amy: Yeah. You know, I love that, Alan. I also think the key here is planning. And, you know, for so many people, you know, a major expense is a vacation. And yet as one is coming up, they'll wait until it gets there and make the plans or whatever, and then try to figure out later how to pay for it. Right? And then, it often ends up being on a credit card and costing way more than it should. So, you never wait until you're months ahead and you already have that money sitting there ready for whatever, which I imagine then makes it feel like when you're on that trip, maybe you splurge on the extra drink or maybe you, you know, go to the nicer restaurant because you have planned for that.

Al: That is so true, Amy. And to break it down even more for your listeners, I'm just going to use some fictitious numbers. Let's assume that maybe you spend about, I don't know, 2,400 bucks on your average vacation. Now, it could be double that, it could be triple. Who knows? But let's just use $2,400 as an example, right? So, if you are managing money correctly, why not go ahead and add a line item to your monthly budget and you could use the title vacation fund? So, as you're making money throughout the year, set up an automatic transfer from your checking account to this vacation fund and just fund that account every month with 200 bucks so that by the time you reach your vacation month, you have the cash to pay for it.

Now, if you're a little bit behind in your planning, you cannot divide by 12. You might just have to divide by six or eight or nine months. But the goal is to plan far enough in advance so that you can break that expense down to a cost per month and just set up an automatic transfer so that when you're on that vacation, you don't have to worry about that big credit card bill that might be coming when you return home because you have the peace of mind of knowing that the cash is already sitting there to take care of whatever expenses you incur.

Amy: You're listening to "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner, along with Steve Hruby, and we are joined by our good friend, Al Riddick, tonight talking about celebrating a major milestone birthday this year. You know, we all have those years where something big is coming, and we want to celebrate it. But the key is to plan for that and to plan in advance. And, you know, Al, you made the comment earlier that you and your wife don't live extravagantly. But what you do spend on and what is a top priority for you is travel. So, talk about how you balance that, right? It's not that you're going out for fancy dinners every night on the weekends when you're home, right? You figured out one thing that matters to both of you and you prioritize that financially.

Al: That is so true, Amy. And to further expound upon what you just said, my wife and I, obviously, we have spent hours and hours and hours talking about personal finance. So, for us, as a couple and as a household, we have discovered that the three things we value most in no particular order is travel, philanthropy, and saving for retirement. So, whenever money comes into the household, we sit down together as a couple and we allocate money to those three things first before we spend it anywhere else because we want to make sure that we keep supporting the things that we value. And because we know that, you know, we might not spend a ton of money eating out, but we do spend a ton of money in other ways, travel, for example. But when you plan for it, even though it's what I would consider a large amount of money, it doesn't feel like it because we planned in advance and we're spending money on the things that we value, which is the experience of travel.

Amy: And I think for marriages, getting both of you on the same page behind whatever those goals are makes money decisions that much easier. We're running out of time, but I want you to really speak to that. You kind of hold everything up to that lens of, "Is it one of our major goals?"

Al: Exactly. So, whatever your goal is as a couple, sit down and make the money align to the goal that you're trying to achieve. You will have to minimize your emotions because keep in mind, money is math and math is money. So, let the numbers guide your decisions before you get too emotional.

Amy: I love that. Great advice, as always, from our good friend, Al Riddick. If you have a big vacation or maybe a family wedding, something that you are saving for coming up, the key is to plan in advance, to budget for it, to direct extra dollars to it so that it doesn't catch you off guard. You're listening to "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial here on 55KRC, THE Talk Station. You're listening to "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner, along with Steve Hruby. If you have a financial question you need a little help with, we'd be happy to help. There's a red button you can click on while you're listening to the show. It's right there on the iHeart app. Record your question and it's coming straight to us.

Straight ahead. You may have some things in your home right now that could be worth a lot more money than you ever had any clue about. We'll tell you what those are, what to be looking for. Well, maybe you get your financial statements in the mail still, maybe they come via email. Regardless of how they come, when you look at them, you probably get about a zillion different ones over the course of the year. It can be difficult to keep them all straight. But we would say there is one that you should pay maybe even more attention to than all the others. And that is your Social Security statement.

Steve: Yeah. So, the Social Security Administration, they send these printed statements out to pre-retirees every year. If you don't recall receiving one, or you misplaced it, then it's pretty easy to go on to ssa.gov to create a login. They'll ask you some questions off public record to verify your identity, and you're in, and you can take a look. The first thing that we encourage people to look at is, obviously, their estimated benefit. So, there is a range that you will receive, and as we've talked about this over the years, between the ages of 62 and 70. Full retirement age for anybody born 1960 or later is 67 years old. If you collect earlier, you're guaranteeing a lower benefit for your entire life. If you defer it until 70, then you can maximize that benefit and find yourself in a situation where there's a break-even point, but you have to live a little bit longer to receive.

Amy: When we talk about Social Security statements, too, I may be dating myself here, but I remember back in the day, you would actually, regardless of how old you were, once a year, get a Social Security statement, right? And then, several years ago, this is the government, they spend a ton of money, and every once in a while, they decide they're going to cut back, which is amazing. And so, they decided, "Hey, probably everyone does not need to get these statements every year. So, we're only going to send them proactively to retirees." So, if you're thinking Social Security statement, actually don't even get one of those. If you aren't getting one in the mail, if you're not, I think it's they start sending them at the age of 60, you know, on a regular basis. If you're not there yet, that's why this account that Steve was just talking about, ssa.gov, is so important.

I don't care if you're 32, 42, 52, 62, I would say you need to have this account set up and be familiar with it. Because as you're talking about...see, first of all, the main number that I think that most people focus on is what that benefit would look like. And that's making the assumption that if you continue to work to the age of full retirement and are getting the same salary that you are now, this is what you are projected to get. But there's also another tab on that page that looks at your earnings history. This is going back 35 years worth of work. And I would say most people might glaze over that, but it's actually a very important piece of the Social Security puzzle.

Steve: Don't breeze past that. This is the other important part to look at because it's your earnings history that will determine the Social Security benefit that you actually receive. And believe it or not, this may come as a surprise. I've seen mistakes on there. How about that?

Amy: The government making a mistake? Well, here's the thing. Steve, can you remember how much money you made when you were 27 years old?

Steve: No.

Amy: Like, exactly how much?

Steve: Not off the top of my head. No.

Amy: And that's what I'm saying. I mean, when you are looking back, say you're 61 and you're looking back on 35 years of earnings, what if there was a mistake 17 years ago that it's much lower than it should be? Would you even know? Of course not, which is why I think regularly checking this to say, "I'm looking back on all the years to see if this makes a lot of sense," if there's a year that doesn't make sense or that you haven't checked well, it's worth going back and looking at because that can affect how much money you're getting in retirement for the rest of your life. So, understanding how this works and double-checking for mistakes is a huge part of it.

Steve: If you think that this is boring or sounds like a waste of your time to log into ssa.gov, the way that I talk about this with folks that I work with is it is your own chance to personally audit the government because I have, again, seen mistakes where the earnings history was just zeroed out for five years at a time. And if that happens, then that means you are getting a lower Social Security benefit. There's actually a phone number there that you can call if there is a mistake to your earnings history and get them to fix it.

Amy: Yeah. And understand, once again, it's the government. They're not going to fix that lightning-fast. It's going to be a process, but you do have control over it, which is why it's so important. I love how you put that, "audit the government," who doesn't want the opportunity to make sure that you're doing that. And at the same time, there's another takeaway, I think, from that earnings history. And that is, I think about my own work history. My daughter is 17 years old now. But when she was first born and I was home on maternity leave, I got a call from my boss at the time. I was working at Channel 5. And he said, "Hey, someone else in the newsroom wants to job share. And they threw out your name as someone who might be interested in going part-time now that you have a baby at home." And he said, "I know you're not going to want to do this."

It wasn't even fully out of his mouth, and I said, "Absolutely," because I was having heart palpitations about the fact of leaving my baby and going back to working full-time. So, I worked part-time for several years there when my kids were younger. Well, of course, that's going to affect my earnings. If you look at my Social Security, ssa.gov on there, my earnings history, it's going to be a lot lower for those years. So, if I choose to work a few years extra, it can knock off those lower earning years and actually have a huge impact on how much I'm making in Social Security. So, again, knowledge is power, but understanding how this all works can make a huge difference.

Here's the Allworth advice. A fiduciary financial advisor is a good person to kind of bring on board here to help you navigate the world of Social Security. But even understanding how this works for yourself can make a huge difference. Coming up next, maybe you're going through your attic, your garage, your drawers, your closet. There may be a treasure trove of stuff in your house that could actually be worth some money. We'll tell you where to look. You're listening to "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial here on 55KRC, THE Talk Station.

You're listening to "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial. I'm Amy Wagner, along with Steve Hruby. Who couldn't use a little bit of extra money, right? Well, you might actually have some lying around your house that you didn't know about. And this is in the form of maybe something you already have that could be collecting dust that could actually maybe be a goldmine for you.

Steve: Do you have any idea that vintage Pyrex could be worth money?

Amy: No. No idea.

Steve: I think we have some of this stuff. I need to look. A vintage Pyrex, pink, 2-quart casserole dish with the cover. That's important. It's got to have the cover. Sold on eBay for almost $2,300.

Amy: Twenty-three hundred dollars. That's crazy.

Steve: Twenty-three hundred dollars, yeah, for a Pyrex dish.

Amy: You know, it also makes me think like, "Gosh, maybe I should stop at some of the yard sales that I see," right? People could be selling for 25 cents one of these Pyrex dishes that could actually be worth some money. You know, I think the key here is this is when you set aside some time on a weekend where you don't have a lot going on to just kind of look through things and say, "What am I not using, and what could kind of be worth some money?" And then, you just kind of browse around on eBay and see what people are looking for. Furbies is one of them. And it's kind of one of those vintage toys. If you've got one of those talking toys, it could go for anywhere from $95 to $200. And some of them have actually sold for more, depending on which one you have. Of course, if you've got original packaging, that usually makes things worth that much more. Just kind of stuff that you might have shoved in the back of your closet or your playroom that you haven't paid attention to for a while. It could actually be worth something.

Steve: Yeah, kids, grandchildren that had Pokémon cards recently, I guess a 1999 Pokémon base set and Charizard? I don't know. Did you play Pokémon?

Amy: I don't know Pokémon. Yeah.

Steve: It sold for $600. That's amazing.

Amy: I know. My son has a Michael Jordan rookie card. And he'll get on eBay from time to time and say, like...in Trey's mind, it's like his ticket to getting rich. It's his lottery ticket. He's like, you know, "I've seen one on eBay for $2,000." I'm like, "Okay, well, is someone actually paying $2,000, or is it just listed for $2,000?" And so, I think some of these things is, okay, people could be asking, doesn't matter how much, but are people actually paying for it? One thing I would have never guessed would be of any value, VHS tapes. Okay? So, if you have some that are, like, original and unopened, and these are like some of the classic movies, like "Star Wars," "Goonies," we're talking people will pay as much as $25,000 for a VHS tape. That's crazy. Vinyl records, vintage newspapers, old-school video games, if you have any of these things lying around, look into it. It could be worth some money.

Thanks for listening. We hope you're going to tune in tomorrow. We are asking the advisor all the questions you're sending to us. This is "Simply Money," presented by Allworth Financial here on 55KRC, THE Talk Station.