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Roger: These are strategies that they\’ve worked in the past, I\’ve helped people retire during the last recession using these strategies. And the more I look around at some of the newer whiz-bang strategies that are out there, the more I realize some of the old stuff still works pretty doggone well.
Clark: You\’re listening to \”Retire Happy\” with Roger Gainer, President of Gainer Financial and Insurance Services, Inc. Thanks for joining us. I\’m your host, Clark Buckner. As the global economy has dramatically shifted in response to COVID-19, many people believe that markets will bounce back quickly and look forward to a day when we can return to normal. But in this episode, Roger explains why that is unlikely to happen. And he offers insight into some of the industries that may be permanently changed by this pandemic. Roger also provides practical advice for investing in asset types that will stay reliable in crisis. And he explains how Gainer Financial can help you understand the why behind your financial strategy so that you can make smart and strategic decisions. For more content like this, head on over to gainerfinancial.com. Enjoy the show. Roger, how are you doing?
Roger: As well as can be expected. Let\’s just put it that way.
Clark: Yes, these have been, man, wild times. And I know you\’ve got a lot of things on your mind. You\’ve been at home now, what, two months because of all this.
Roger: I\’ve been out of my office for two months as of Sunday. So, we\’re now into week nine.
Clark: Yeah, at the moment, we\’re recording this, week nine. And, you know, it\’s not changing back overnight. We know that.
Roger: No, and it\’s interesting to listen to people. You know, I see a lot of cheerleading going on these days. \”Come on, it\’s just gonna snap back. The second half of this year is gonna be unbelievable.\” Even Fed Chairman Powell, on Sunday night, was hinting at that as well. Sunday night on \”60 Minutes,\” he started going on about, \”Oh, we\’ve got lots of tools, we can just print all kinds of money, we can buy everything. And we got a lot more we can do.\” And that\’ll work as long as the perception of the world thinks it\’s okay for us to keep printing money and then borrowing it from ourselves.
Clark: Yikes.
Roger: That\’s kind of a house of cards. We might get away with it for a while, but we just can\’t keep racking up trillions in debt and deficits, and then be cutting taxes, and giving people tax holidays, you know, just saying, \”What the heck, let\’s just give away all the money we can to anybody we can and think it\’s gonna be okay.\” So there\’s some real issues forming. And I know in times that it\’s so stressful like it is now, I mean, it seems so unreal. Everybody I talked to, I went and picked up dinner from a restaurant last night that we know the proprietor fairly well. She was there alone. We\’ve been there a couple of times since all this started. She used to have an employee that was there. And when it was normal time, she had three employees. But when she went to give me change, so she had a basket that I had to put my money in, and then the change was a $10 bill, she used tongs to take the $10 out of the cash register and hand it to me.
Clark: What?
Roger: Yeah, that\’s the world we live in today. I mean, it\’s just so different. It\’s just so, so different. And so that\’s really what\’s kind of been keeping me up at night is, what are these differences gonna be going forward? You know, someday, the pandemic is gonna calm down and someday we\’ll be back to a normal. I don\’t think at any time are we gonna be back to the old normal. You can\’t put the genie back in the bottle. There\’s certain industries that are definitely gonna be losers. There are certain technologies that are definitely going to move to the head of the class and other technologies that are gonna fall by the wayside. A lot of people have been remarking, for example, how clean the air and the water are. It\’s a super opportunity to take that momentum and do what we can to put in those 21st-century technologies that will keep the air, and the water, and stuff like that ground clean while creating fantastic jobs that pay well and have some security. There\’s some old industries that are hanging on by a thread, both in energy, in banking and finance, in mining. In healthcare, we\’re seeing hospitals, where they\’re saying that we\’re about to have a wave of hospital bankruptcies. Well, if we have a wave of hospital bankruptcies, that\’s gonna change how we deliver healthcare in the future. Have you tried to talk to your doctor since all this started?
Clark: I have not but I can imagine that… I understand if a hospital goes bankrupt or if a hospital closes, it\’s probably not gonna open again due to all the requirements, especially in rural settings.
Roger: And that\’s really the biggest issue and has been exposed since all this began, is how few resources there are for people outside of big cities when it comes to healthcare options. By here, one of the coolest places you can go for a quick trip is Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe is a beautiful place in the mountains, lots of ski areas, and boating, and swimming, and hiking, and just a fantastic, fantastic all-year-round place to go. They have been begging people not to come. So because they have one clinic with two beds in the ICU, and if the people who own cabins that live down here go up there, they\’re gonna overwhelm the health system. They\’re gonna spread disease. You\’re seeing this in Michigan, they\’ve been standing in the streets with their semiautomatic weapons because this is the time of the year that people who live in Michigan go up to their cabins in Northern Michigan where it\’s really, really cold. I\’ve been up there when it was 10 and 15 below.
Clark: That is cold.
Roger: Skiing outside. So as soon as it starts to thaw in the spring, everybody goes up because they\’ve winterized their cabins and they start getting them ready, and they wanna go fishing, and they wanna do all that, and because of the stay at home, that\’s what moved people in Michigan into the streets. But the folks who live up there year-round said, \”Please don\’t come here. We don\’t even have a hospital in a couple of these areas that are really popular.\” And we see that here in California, you know, a few counties that have reopened are very…being very cautious because, you know, one county, Alpine County only has, I was listening on the radio the other day, they\’ve got one clinic that\’s open two days a week. That\’s it.
Clark: Wow.
Roger: So, yeah, you\’re out and kind of in the boonies, but you still might need these services. Anyways, so things are gonna be different. I mean, I can\’t even imagine when we\’re gonna sit in a football stadium with 70,000 people. I can\’t imagine, you know, when it\’ll be comfortable to get on an airplane and then go stay in somebody else\’s hotel and do the travel thing, at least in the way we used to do that. So, what I\’ve been doing is looking at these industries and how they\’re being affected, and will they be able to just come back? Will retail just be able to unlock the doors and come back? You know, a lot of areas around here have opened retail for curbside. So you can walk up to a table with the door in the shop and point at things, the shopkeeper can bring things to you, and then you can pay right there and take them with you. Or you can order online and come to the store and pick it up. You know, you already have online stores like Wayfair, Amazon, and Overstock, you know, how many of those are gonna survive out of this? And then what\’s gonna happen to the real estate that they occupied? So it\’s stuff like that, really, Clark, that I\’ve been…
Clark: Yeah, so you\’ve been doing a lot of research, been thinking… I know you\’ve been getting a lot of questions from clients. So just as you\’ve been researching these last two months, you know, I definitely wanna be hearing some of the key takeaways and especially how this relates to a really popular blog post that you wrote, actually two years ago, is resurfacing. So maybe we can look at both of these, and see what common themes there are, and then talk about, you know, what is going to work as we\’re thinking about the future and how that\’s changed everything we\’ve known about the past.
Roger: Well, not everything, but most things. And in fact, it\’s interesting, you peel back some of the layers of this onion and you find out that basics are still basics. Value makes a difference. We\’ve hyped up values and a lot of assets because of cheap money for the last 10 years. So the Fed has been incredibly accommodative. We have never lived in a low interest rate environment that was this low for this long. And, you know, you give a drunken sailor a pocket full of change, and they\’ll find a way to spend it, but it might not be spending with the best decision-making around it, if you know what I mean. So, you know, we\’ve been giving American businesses free money for a long time, either with tax cuts or being able to borrow at 2% or 3%, and buy your shares back, and stuff like that. So when I look around… And it\’s interesting that you brought up that blog post. We did some checking as to over the last couple of months traffic to our blog and our website. And this article from August of 2018 called \”How the Market Has Changed in the Last 30 Years\” has been far and away from the most viewed article on my blog post.
And, you know, some people might have been skeptical of some of the things I wrote there two years ago on my 30th anniversary in the business, but I think now that we\’ve stripped away some of the hyperbole and some of the noise, if you will, I think you can see how much the markets have changed over the years. So it\’s almost like there\’s two classes of people. There\’s a class that uses the market and speculates in the market, takes positions in the market, understanding the difference between now and before. And then there\’s the folks that have bought Wall Street\’s siren song of buy and hold. Buy and hold, that\’s all you have to do is make one decision, \”Close your eyes and we\’ll take care of the rest.\” And while that\’s worked, so far, if you have enough time, it hasn\’t worked in… In a future podcast, we\’ll talk about 2008 because, you know, a lot of people don\’t think this will be as severe as 2008. I kind of worry that it\’s gonna be even more severe than 2008.
Clark: That seems to be what\’s being indicated from… There\’s a lot of evidence that shows that.
Roger: Well, yeah, we\’ve rally back… One of the things I said in August of 2018 is that stock prices have very little correspondence to the actual business enterprise and profitability of a company anymore. And even as recently as last September, I wrote a blog post, the likes of which I\’d never written before, and I actually encourage people to get out of risk-based assets and take advantage of market levels at that time, because a future significant drop is coming. And I said at the time, \”I didn\’t know what was gonna push it, but we are very much running out of steam here.\” And now who knew what COVID-19 would do it, and that it would send things down farther and faster. And part of the hype machine on Wall Street right now is saying, \”Oh, it\’s gonna snap right back.\” You\’re hearing people in government, Powell, \”Look, we\’re gonna have a great fourth quarter. Next year is gonna be fabulous.\” I think a lot of that is just crossing my fingers and clicking my heels, and hoping it all goes away. You know, we\’ll wake up one day and nobody will have COVID-19, there won\’t be any more infection and there\’s never gonna be another infection as long as we live. I think the chances of that are pretty slim. So as a result, the effects are going to be way more significant and longer-lasting.
You know, they\’re talking about vaccine and that they\’re making fantastic progress in a vaccine. But if you look at the realities, by the time they can safety check this thing, even at warp speed, and that scares me, frankly, if we\’re gonna be putting millions of doses of this thing, it\’d be good to know if it was safe for human consumption. But we\’re gonna hustle past that. And that is gonna take a year to make enough of this vaccine to get people that herd immunity that they\’re talking about. So how many businesses are we gonna lose in the meantime? How many airlines are gonna go out of business because they\’re flying with no passengers, they\’ve cut flights, they\’ve furloughed workers, but they\’re still paying for benefits? What\’s that industry going to look like? So what I\’m suggesting to people is, if you were a believer in buy and hold, that you could just, you know, buy an index fund and forget it, and come back in 10 years, I think the days for that are gone. Really, that\’s not what the professionals are doing. The professionals are doing asset allocation, they\’re looking for momentum in different asset classes, and they\’re moving things around. So, that\’s the first thing that I\’m seeing that is working are strategies that take in multi-assets, stocks, bonds, commodities, possibly real estate, you know, precious metals, because money moves, it\’s got to sit somewhere.
So, these strategies, the asset allocation models are run by algorithms based on price movements and relative valuation metrics. So we\’re trying to stay away from the things that are ridiculously valued and can\’t be justified price-wise. That\’s one of the reasons things came down so far so fast. But even with how fast things went down and, of course, things have gone back up pretty fast as well, I had… If you look at, kind of some of the market rebound, now that rebound is very typical, we talked about that in our last podcast, that getting that bounce back, like we\’ve been experiencing here the last couple of weeks, it\’s very much human nature because there\’s a lot of people that believe that, \”Oh, it\’s all gonna go away and we\’ll be back to the old normal instead of a new normal.\” But indicators are that new normal is gonna be prevalent for the foreseeable future. So, I mean, would you go out and buy a regional shopping center right now? They were bad news four or five years ago because of Amazon. And we\’ve been seeing those values go down, but now they\’ve locked the doors. And, you know, you can come to a door like we just talked about and get stuff, but you\’re paying for a whole store that people can\’t walk in. So what\’s that gonna do to that asset class going forward? People are working at home. We just had an announcement from Twitter and I forget… It might have been Twitter and Twitch or…
Clark: I saw that too. Yeah, Twitter, \”Everybody can work from home now if they want, permanently.\”
Roger: Everybody can work from home now. Everybody can work from home. Well, Twitter takes up hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space. And if their employees, let\’s say half their employees decided to work from home, they\’re not gonna keep paying for office space. They\’re gonna try to sublet it at any price to take that, you know, financial strain off. Other companies might just plain go out of business, hand the keys back. We\’ve been building a lot of office space in downtown San Francisco, and in New York, and in Minneapolis. Lots of states in downtown urban areas have been building like crazy because, well, the cheap money. Now I want to know who\’s gonna occupy those places.
Clark: You say cheap money that\’s because it was easy to get those loans to build?
Roger: They could get easy loans at low interest rates. So, marginal concepts, things that, you know, under normal circumstances, would be very… If they made money, they\’d make very little money. But because they were able to borrow so cheap, these projects went forward, anyways. Think of a lot of the oil production in the middle of our country, it has some of the highest cost of production in the world. The shale oil that runs big deposits in the Permian Basin and other locations. It runs right down the middle of the country into Texas and Oklahoma. It comes out of Ohio and Pennsylvania, makes a left turn, and heads right down the middle of the country. And that\’s where we\’ve been producing oil. Well, the cost of production, as we\’ve talked about previously, is pretty high. It\’s in the $40 range for many of these producers. Now, under normal circumstances, they wouldn\’t have drilled or developed those oil fields, but because of the cheap money, they were able to, and now, with gas and oil prices being so low, it\’ll be interesting if pricing does stay down here, how are they gonna pay for those bonds? How long are they gonna be able to operate those wells? Look at the food supply. My goodness, have you just been using Instacart or do you actually go into a store now and again, Clark?
Clark: I actually will go to a store, but a lot of times, you know, they can bring the groceries you pre-ordered out to your car. So I\’ll do a little bit of both. Sometimes I\’ll go in, sometimes they\’ll just bring it out, but definitely not going to… We\’ve done at some takeout restaurants to go, but we\’ve been going mainly doing all of our grocery shopping.
Roger: Yeah, we\’ve been trying to pick up from a local restaurant at least once a week because we\’re kind of picking the ones we want to be here when we\’re done with all of this. And those tend to be very, very careful, and I\’m not too worried about getting infected from them. But grocery shopping is a completely different experience now. You go in and there\’s giant gaps on shelves, where there\’s nothing… I bought a hand sanitizer that was imported from Mexico at my local Safeway. Okay. It was a strange-looking label I\’d never seen. Buying toilet paper really came out of industrial, you know, giant cases and they just throw them up on the shelf. We\’re seeing stuff that we\’ve never seen before. And yet, they\’re destroying food. Okay? You probably heard that dairy farmers can\’t sell their milk because restaurants and schools are closed, and that was their huge buyers of milk. So they\’re literally flushing the milk. You can\’t stop milking cows. So you can send some of those cows to the feedlot and turn them into steaks. But steaks aren\’t selling either in the restaurant world.
So now there\’s just cattle and crops being destroyed, crops are being plowed under. And if you go to the supermarket because we have different supply chains, so some of these producers can\’t change to a consumer supply chain from a business to business supply chain like a restaurant. So we\’re gonna see farmers going out of business, that means farmland is gonna get inexpensive. And see, there\’s this chain reaction to all kinds of things. And, you know, some would say it\’s a futile mental exercise that you\’re just going down a rat hole. But, you know, all actions have consequences. And if you don\’t figure out what they are, you could get really caught short and get sucked in, like you were walking into quicksand without knowing it. So that\’s why I\’m looking down the road at how are we gonna reorganize workplaces? How are we gonna reorganize travel and leisure? How are we gonna reorganize restaurants, and hospitality, and those kinds of things? These are huge industries for us.
Clark: Yeah, there\’s a lot of things to be worried about. But I\’m curious. What optimisms do you have or what do you think is going to work as folks are thinking about retirement and retiring happy, and trying to adjust?
Roger: Well, there are a few asset types that are still presenting opportunity right now. And one of my syndicators that I work with has some very, very interesting conservative options in real estate, but in little niche areas that you might not think about. So most people think about multifamily, apartment buildings. And so far, most of those have held up, people are paying their rents, but if this grinds on, and they keep saying, \”Well, you don\’t have to pay rent because you can\’t be evicted,\” eventually, people will stop paying rent because they know they can\’t be evicted. So, you know, we\’re starting to see some of that take hold and yields on those types of properties go down. We\’ve already talked about retail, we\’ve talked about office space. But storage spaces, you know, self-storage places, you\’ve seen them everywhere. The rent is low. Occupancy, frequently, is very, very high. There\’s consolidation going on in the business, it\’s been mostly on mom and pop business. And, you know, because people have their stuff there, they wanna be able to get their stuff back. And so they tend to pay pretty well and pretty reliably. We saw that through the 2008, 2009 sequence, storage spaces did very, very well, self-storage, trailer parks, or manufactured housing, if you will. Actually, love this asset class because the people who are paying rent on their space, first of all, they own their own trailer so you don\’t have liability of that, but they rent a hookup and a concrete pad and, you know, maybe rent is $400, $500 a month.
And your tenants are people on fixed incomes. They\’re able to live there on their social security, on their modest pension from the post office, or the school district, or the local government because they don\’t have that huge overhead. So these are people that don\’t tend to have big stock portfolios, that, you know, don\’t get euphoric over the wealth effect of a market that\’s going up, or get depressed over a market going down, so we stop spending or we skip payments. So these folks tend to pay pretty well. And there\’s a scarcity of these properties. The demand is way higher for this type of affordable housing. If you\’ve ever been in a modern manufactured home, they\’re really nice or they can be really nice, let me put it that way. So there\’s quite a demand there. Believe it or not, we\’re looking at some insurance products. If you look at the 175-year history of life insurance companies in the United States, there have been very, very few insolvencies, nothing compared to banks. I mean, 2018 was the first year in 76 years that we didn\’t have a bank failure. Banks fail all the time, but life insurers do not. And it\’s because of how they\’re capitalized.
So life insurers have this thing called a surplus account. That surplus account helped to get the country through the Great Depression as they lent money to the government for us to get back on our feet. They helped rebuild San Francisco after the great earthquake and fire of 1906. They\’ve been sources of capital and capital stability, really, for decades, if not over a century. There was a long period of time, starting with the Depression, that people didn\’t put their money in banks and they didn\’t put their money in the stock market, they saved money in life insurance contracts. And some of our biggest financial institutions today own large blocks of life insurance, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, City Court, Chase, they keep their, what\’s called tier one capital, large percentage of it in life insurance policies. Heck, Walmart, you know Walmart, right?
Clark: Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Roger: Okay. The Walmart, million of employees, Walmart, for decades, have been buying life insurance policies and anybody that goes to work there. And it is a corporate asset because they understand the economics of it. They can rely on it. It has tax advantages. It generates a tremendous amount of cash value. And if you\’ve got a couple of million policies on the books, somebody pretty much is gonna be dying every day, which creates a nice little cash flow for it. So, you know, we can go around to some of the titans of investment, and they\’re putting their really important money into life insurance contracts. Annuities are another tool. If we\’re talking about retirement, we\’re talking about income. We\’re not talking about wealth. We\’ve had several podcasts where we talked about the most important thing in retirement is making sure you don\’t run out of money, right, before you run out of life. And one of the places that you can do that is to create a personal pension using certain types of annuities. Listen, just like not all stocks are great, not all insurance products are great, and certainly not all insurance companies are investment grade, shall we say. But if you\’re cautious and if you understand what you\’re really trying to do, you can do very, very well making money, for example. There\’s products where you can, if the market has an up year, you get to participate in that up year. And if the market has a down year, you avoid that. You just don\’t earn anything but you don\’t lose anything.
Clark: You don\’t lose it. Wow. So it\’s optimistic. It\’s really nice to hear, though, that there\’s, of course, gonna be some big changes in our lives. And we\’re seeing it in so many ways, just right in here in front of us. But there are some things that we can do. And I\’ve heard you say in one of our previous podcasts that some people, they\’ve made their most money in times of crisis. It\’s just being reminded from previous podcasts as well, you don\’t wanna get emotional, right? You want to be smart and be strategic, and I know you help your clients through that each step of the way.
Roger: Well, you know, one of the things, and a number of my clients can confirm this, but for the last really three, four years, we\’ve been raising cash to a large extent. Yeah, we\’re making investments and we\’re securing income streams, and we\’ve been participating with these strategies that allow us to participate in the market increases. You know, we\’re still able, when markets are good, to get a double-digit rate of return during a one to two-year period of time and lock those gains in. But, again, it\’s the downside protection that\’s really important. And if you have access to cash, and there\’s very few places you can hide cash or place cash or store cash, besides your mattress, if you have access to cash, when, and you notice I\’m not saying if, but when this correction comes, whether it\’s in the third or fourth quarter this year, we haven\’t reopened the way everybody was hoping we would or, you know, some disappointment comes along, and then it starts to go through the normal functions of a bear market, then people will be able to buy stuff really, really cheap. I mean, it\’s really that simple. You buy them when it\’s on sale and you sell them when it\’s expensive, right? You don\’t go buy a house at the top of the market when everybody\’s bidding up the prices unless you absolutely have to buy.
Now there are people who will buy anyways because they get emotional and they\’re not making rational decisions, and they\’ll dramatically overpay. I\’ve seen that happen too many times. But if you understand why you\’re saving money, if you understand what that money is for, and then you figure out when am I gonna need it? So if I\’m 30 years old, and I\’m not gonna need it for another 30 to 40 years, I can invest differently than if I\’m 60 years old, and I\’m gonna be spending that money in four or five years when I retire. So understanding the why and what is it that makes that why work. So, for example, you wanna go and retire. Well, would you put all your money into stocks if I have to take income off of a stock portfolio? The answer is probably not. In fact, if anybody that\’s interested, give me a holler, go to our website, contact me, I\’ll show you the math of how that works. We call it reverse dollar-cost averaging, and it dramatically accelerates how fast you consume your assets. Yet that\’s a very popular strategy in retirement, is reverse dollar-cost average. And, you know, after all, I put the money in by dollar-cost averaging. So why wouldn\’t I take the money out by dollar-cost averaging? The math says just your money\’s not gonna last nearly as long if you use that strategy.
And, you know, we can\’t just buy a bunch of CDs. I have a client called two days ago, said, \”Man, I\’m looking at CDs and I was promised seven-tenths of 1%. And I was gonna take it, and then they dropped it to four-tenths of 1%.\” And she was upset. Both of those numbers are kind of bleak and not enough for her. She\’s getting ready to retire and we have a fairly significant cash position for her. But that kind of interest is not gonna be okay for her to actually retire on. That\’s just not gonna work to get $7,000 a year in income on a million-dollar portfolio. So once you\’re clear on the why, and I know you\’re gonna say this because you do every time, if you\’re trying to figure out what that why really is, go to our website, go to the bottom of the first page, and request a copy of the thought organizer. It\’ll help you, as part of the process, to understand what your why is. Why am I saving money? I mean, because if you don\’t know, what the heck? It\’s more fun to spend than it is to save, right?
Clark: Right. Yeah, thinking about your why is so critical. You\’ve covered that in so may different examples, and it makes sense.
Roger: Well, it\’s important in every phase of life, you know. When I wanna go to college, when I wanna start a business, what\’s the why? Why am I doing this? What\’s it for? And that way you can, you know, resonate and have confidence. So if what you\’re planning is retirement and you\’re not one of these, you know, gazillionaires that doesn\’t really matter because I got so much money even if the market falls in half, I still got a lot of money that I\’m gonna be able to pull on, if you\’re that person that, you know, maybe has a few hundred thousand or a couple of million, and it sounds like a lot of money until you sit down and figure out how much income you can get from it, figuring out the most efficient ways to create that income, first and foremost, and then plan for the other things like long-term care expenses that can truly destroy that enjoyable, happy retirement. So these are strategies that they\’ve worked in the past, I\’ve helped people retire during the last recession using these strategies. And the more I look around at some of the newer whiz-bang strategies that are out there, the more I realize some of the old stuff still works pretty doggone well. So if anybody wants more information, I\’ve got a beautiful white paper from a Nobel Prize-winning economist on this topic of income. You know, the academics are catching up to the realities of people living longer, the realities of volatile markets, the realities of low interest rates. We have to deal with these realities. And another reality that you\’re gonna have to look at coming out of this is higher taxes. You can\’t borrow all this money and not have, at some point, taxes going up. It\’s just not gonna happen. The voodoo won\’t allow it.
Clark: Right. That makes sense. And that\’s part of the strategies that you\’re describing. I love that you\’ve seen these strategies work in the previous recession, and that\’s gonna be something that we can use as a guiding light for this.
Roger: Well, don\’t get suckered by this little bounce back. Earnings don\’t look like they\’re gonna recover anytime soon and businesses aren\’t buying back shares like they were. There have been a lot of announced cancellations of share buybacks because companies need, frankly, for the first time in years, you gotta hoard cash. And all our listeners should have some cash available, a decent amount, able to cover at least six months worth of bills that they can get their hands on very easily. So there are a number of parking places that will pay you more than the seven-tenths of a percent from the bank, but you need to be able to know that you can get cash in a hurry. You need to have some cash at home because there\’s so many power outages, you won\’t be able to go to the bank if that happens, and just be paying attention. I don\’t see any reason that people should take a 50% hit to their assets. There\’s just no point in that.
Clark: Roger, as always, I so appreciate you laying it on us with not only a reality of what\’s happening, but also ways to think through this calmly and strategically. And even though there are some overwhelming times, it feels really good to know that there are ways to navigate these times.
Roger: Well, you know, that\’s my job…
Clark: Yeah.
Roger: …is to try to figure out what\’s gonna work.
Clark: That\’s why you\’re here.
Roger: And we can talk about what used to work, but it\’s really about what\’s going to work in the future because we can\’t change the past.
Clark: Yeah. Thank you, and I am looking forward to our next session.
Roger: Absolutely. Take care.
Clark: Roger L. Gainer, RICP, ChFC, California insurance license number 0754849, is licensed to sell insurance and annuity products in California, Illinois, Arizona, and Nevada. Roger L. Gainer is an investment advisor representative, providing advisory services through HFIS, Inc., a registered investment advisor. Gainer Financial and Insurance Services, Inc. is not owned by or affiliated with HFS, Inc. and operates independently.
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