Bitcoin in 401(k)s: SEC ETF Approval & Fiduciary Pushback

[0:00] JD: Was like, you know, dad, go practice. [0:03] Chad: You can't come inside, you can't come to the pnc. [0:07] Justin: Yeah, I'll be excited to. [0:08] Chad: Is it? [0:09] Justin: Yeah, that's something. Brandon's got to play the intro video. Maybe not. Maybe we're not. [0:14] JD: I didn't do that, Chad. I didn't do that one. [0:17] Chad: Brandon, are you playing an intro? [0:19] Justin: Should we just rock and roll. Oh boy. Is going to be solid what they give. Give me one second here, okay? Take a couple seconds with your deck. [0:40] Chad: This is my last last bottle of the Lord. [0:43] Mark: I think. [0:50] Justin: So I thought that the live tour and the professional golf learn were already kind of in bed together. [1:01] Bob: I'm. [1:02] Justin: I'm interested that. But yet the live tour still wants to cut a big check to John Rom even though we don't know what the. [1:12] JD: Because I think the idea there was that the again the three letter one was going to still exist even with the convergence and all that. Again, I don't know. But when somebody offers somebody nine figures, do you blame them? Like I don't care. By the way, if that means John Rob's not in the writer cup and doesn't beat the crap out of the United States again, I'm okay with that. [1:37] Chad: I hadn't thought about it that far, Mark, but J.D. no that. Remember the money that started the Saudi money that started the three letter tour? I don't even know what that stands. [1:48] JD: I don't know if that stands for anything. [1:50] Chad: Yeah, they are primary investor now. [1:59] Mark: It refers to the Roman numerals 54. The score is every hole on a [2:02] Chad: par W2 course is 30. [2:12] Justin: Welcome everybody to another episode of Retireaholics. [2:18] JD: Starting right on time. [2:21] Justin: Less. You know how all the good episodes start Ruby on time when we spin the wheel of ice. [2:37] JD: Justin, it's not going to you, buddy. [2:39] Chad: It's all me. [2:39] JD: I can feel it. [2:40] Mark: No, it's all of us. [2:43] Justin: Okay, Entertain us. [2:46] Mark: Tell us about. [2:46] Justin: I don't have smearn off so I'll [2:49] Chad: do a JD Chug the whole thing of alert. [2:52] Justin: Yeah, I will. Oh Bob, why don't you tell. [2:57] JD: Hold on, Justin. Hold on. [2:58] Justin: While we drink these. Explain to everyone how Christmy your Christmas house is right now. [3:04] Bob: Oh, so J.D. was telling me he's married to Mrs. Claus and I explained to him that I was married to Grandma Claus, which is a whole another level of Christmas decoration. Interior, exterior, the whole nine yards. It is over the top. Wonderful. [3:21] Justin: Oh God. [3:22] Chad: What does your electric bill go up to for this month? Is it outrageous? [3:28] Bob: We have to tap into our 401k. A little bit more. Yeah. [3:35] Justin: For the first. Oh, headlines, Brandon, headlines please. Let's go. [3:45] Bob: Foreign. [3:52] Justin: A little while. It's been a little while since we've talked about the old crypto, the old digital assets Foreign Key specialist magazine has an article titled 2024 likely to see rise in Bitcoin allocation to retirement accounts. A little study that they did. I want to kind of set the stage for you all and then I want to get your opinion on bitcoin again because things have changed a bit. News alert. Bitcoin has crushed it in 2023. It's up. Its return year to date is north of 160%. Okay. There is also big news in the bitcoin digital assets world because apparently this is. Securities and Exchange Commission is very close to pulling the trigger on approving a, a bitcoin spot exchange traded fund which so to kind of give you clarity or everyone listening in on that would mean people would no longer have to buy Bitcoin from companies like Sam Bankman Fried's, I'll drink for this. FTX or Binance. I don't know if you saw recent finance information or news on this. The chief executive officer and founder of Binance getting busted for letting their platform be used by terrorists for, you know, trading bitcoin and stuff. These are all not good things. Hang on. Oh God. And my son and I use Coinbase to buy digital assets. And to be honest with you, it's a pain in the butt. Like it's really weird to go on a Coinbase and set up an account and make trades. So if you get this exchange traded fund in the future regular folk will be able to go to like Fidelity Schwab Electronic trade. I don't know if that's what it is but. And they can purchase this exchange traded fund and invest in bitcoin. There are many smart people who think that's going to be a massive tailwind for the adoption of bitcoin and we could see this price just continue to skyrocket. But I will ask the. It's not the million dollar question. I will ask the million bitcoin question to the group once again. What in your opinion is the main reason why the industry pushes back against Bitcoin being allowed to be used in a 401k will goes to you first, Bob. Like what's, what's the, what's the problem here? [6:38] Bob: Oh, I think it's the typical one. Most people don't understand what it is, how it works, where's the value, what does it mean, I mean, you know, I'm here, I'm in Omaha. Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have famously, you know, bashed. [6:51] Justin: Rest in peace. Rest in peace. Pour out some beer on the ground. [6:56] Bob: He and I, I think that's part of it. I also think, you know that anytime you see a lot of hype around something people get, some people can get nervous about that and it's not the normal institutional, you know, record kept, you know, tracked. [7:16] Justin: But here you go, Bob. Now, now it will be. And let's not forget that currently we all know, I just for to remind y', all, Fidelity offers it in the 401k plan. Fidelity calls it their digital assets account. And it's record kept and you know, custody by Fidelity. That was my whole point with not having to worry about. I'll drink again. Ftx, Coinbase, Binance. Now this is going to be big, well known Wall street financial services companies allowing you to purchase these types of assets. Chad, let me go to you in terms of, I think another big argument that you've brought up in the past is volatility, right? Like I think a lot of people say, oh, we can't have bitcoin, a foreign plan, because it's too unpredictable, like it's too volatile. Is that something that you think is true? [8:09] Chad: No, I don't think that's a reason why you shouldn't have it as an offering. Do I think that certain people should not be certain investors, certain folks of certain age, certain people who can't take that kind of risk on should steer away from cryptocurrency? Yes. Do I think for others that they could use it as a sliver? Like what's fidelity? 5% you can have in your core fund in there? Why not? I think that that's a good opportunity for folks. [8:37] Justin: It's funny everyone talks about how like how sketchy it seems, but let's remind ourselves, like it had major news issues with Sand, Bankman Freed and other things. The price fell down to like what, 16,000 and something at a certain point from a high of 60k. My point being from a positive standpoint, it has weathered all these things and it's been around for a little while now. To me it's showing that it's, it's pretty impenetrable. Like it manages to keep chugging along and is having a great year in 2023. I also, the whole volatility thing, we're totally okay with plan sponsors allowing their participants to have their money in Facebook or Metta. We're allowed to. We're okay. It's. If I have told you can you have it in Google? You would say sure, you can have a, you can put a portion of your assets into Google or Facebook or JP Morgan Chase. That's probably someone's name. And I challenge you all, go look at those stocks over the last five years and tell me if they're not more volatile than Bitcoin has been because they're going to look very similar. And so I think that's also kind of a bullshit argument. The volatility like we've always allowed for volatile assets. [10:02] Chad: I know that the Foreign Case Specialist magazine article was essentially polling of people who are already interested. Like there's a reason they're on uncharted right like that. Of course those statistics are going to be higher than one would expect. But in the 401k space in general, I think that what you're going to find is if there's, if there is a way for record keepers to monetize it and that might mean like what Fidelity did, which is saying we want to be first to market early adopters. We're going to get people to come to us because we're offering this. But at some point I think there's going to be a way where there some of these record keepers are going to be willing to take some risk in their float income and they're going to start investing in it and they're going to start creating spreads on it. And I think at that point when they can start to monetize offering it, we're going to see more and more record keepers get in the space. Problem is right now it's difficult. They're not prepared for it and they can't monetize it. Once that changes you're going to see them jump in. [11:01] Justin: Good old for us all is still in business. And if you go to their website they make, they make the statement that 46% of younger workers. These are not, this is not like you said Chad, like people that are already in crypto just in general, 46% of younger workers want access to, to cryptocurrency in their retirement plan. Do we ever. I'll go to you on this Bob, like and I want to kind of then tackle like diversity and asset allocation. Do we ever hear participants say or demand hey can, can we get emerging markets in here? Or I'd really like small cap value. Like you never hear that but they're actually saying geez, I'd really like this cryptocurrency as Part of my investment. And lastly, Bob, and then take it away. Don't we believe in diversity in this industry? Don't we think it's smart to put our eggs in different, not all in one basket and spread them out? And would not something like crypto be a nice little something different to add to the portfolio? [12:02] Bob: Yeah, I think from a long term perspective and certainly from a diversification standpoint, there may be a place for it. The thing that is, is makes it challenging in the retirement space is I vividly remember when I was an advisor having planned participants come and say, I want to, I want a gold fund, I want technology fund. I want, you know, I want a sector fund. [12:24] Justin: Specialty, specialty asset classes. Yeah. [12:27] Bob: So I want one of these in the plan because that's where all the money's being made. And this was, you know, people who I tell the story. We had a printing company, they ran three shifts and we noticed a lot of money moving into this really high risk fund. Come to find out, the investment expert at the company worked on the third overnight shift at the printing company, was telling all of his buddies, this is where you should put all your money. And they all work. So that's what you have to protect against, is as part of a portfolio for an educated investor, they should certainly have access to it. But just opening it up to, you know, anybody with, you know what, that's [13:04] Justin: a great, that's a great analogy because we didn't, we didn't limit people in terms of how much they could put into the tech mutual fund or the real estate mutual fund or the diversified emerging markets. And so if some idiot wanted to put 100% of their money in there. Yeah, I did too, for a little bit, bro. I had 100% in tech for a good ride, then they, then they could do that. But clearly with something like crypto or bitcoin, it looks like we're going to put limits on it. So it's almost more prudent. [13:34] JD: Can I throw a. I don't think it's a tin foil hat or anything, but just a, a random thought out into the universe about this. There's a lot of pushback. Obviously it comes from a number of sources, but what is every fun company trying to do, right? Get on a core lineup. [13:55] Justin: Yeah, get on a lineup. Gather assets. No. Did Mark freeze? [14:01] Chad: He did. [14:01] Justin: Oh, no. He's making a great point. Not enough. I, I think I get where he's [14:08] Chad: never gonna get on a core menu. [14:11] Justin: I think, I think I get where he's going with that. Is the industry as a whole. Oh, you're back. There he is. Oh, extra wi fi. [14:26] Chad: Mother of pearl. [14:28] JD: I don't know where I left off [14:29] Justin: at, but start from the beginning. [14:33] Chad: No. [14:34] JD: So, yeah, these fund companies want their. Their funds on in the core menu. And having another asset class or another investment option come in pushes somebody out, pushes less assets into their funds and creates more, you know, consolidation in terms of what's available. So could there be some negative stuff going out, whether that be marketing or materials or white whatever that's being targeted and maybe written by people behind the scenes that have a vested interest in these other fund companies, [15:11] Justin: the industry as a whole. Always put on your. Your. Your glasses so you can see properly here, see clearly. There's a. There's a motivation for them to talk on Bitcoin because they don't have it, they don't sell it. And to Mark's point, it takes up some of the pie. And I mean, 5%'s a big chunk if you. If we use that number from Fidelity. So, yeah, that's good point, Mark. [15:37] JD: Yeah, 5% might not be a lot for a small plan, but 5% is a lot for the trillions that are at stake. [15:44] Justin: Yeah, 5% of the 46% young dummies says the chat bar saw those earlier. Well, anyways, I just say, as. As usual on this show, if you're a retirement plan professional, don't bury your head in the sand on this stuff. It's clearly something that the general public is very aware of, and I hate to say it, but let's say the truth, right, Chad? When this thing goes from a low of 16 and reaches its high of 60 and continue goes north of that, watch out. We're back to the. To the hustle, where everyone's want to get into this thing, whether right or wrong. And I know we have to act in the best interest of our participants, and we have to help people with their fiduciary responsibility, but come on, allocating a small percentage to something that's so big in the news, such a big part of our life. I. I would like to see our industry start to open up their Boomer brains a little bit with this stuff, because I see a lot of negativity. [16:43] Mark: What is. [16:44] Chad: Okay, Boomer, My issue. And. And we can move on from this. But almost every person that. And I know Desenso is different. I was giving him some heat in the chat bar. But almost every person that argues against not having it available really has no understanding of cryptocurrency at Its core and blockchain technology and what, what they're trying to do, especially in financial services. And so when they just say that it's not an appropriate investment, but they don't understand what the investment is built off of, it's frustrating. So I get it, it's not here yet. But just like you would research secure 2.0 when it passed, like you're trying to do what's right for your client, spend a little bit of time, do some research, understand what cryptocurrency actually is and what it's built off of so that you can then make an informed decision whether you want it to be part of your strategy moving forward or not. But just the straight up denial of nope, shouldn't be in a plant's too volatile. That's not the best argument. That's not a good enough argument. [17:46] Justin: Yeah, I agree. And hey, Fidelity is no reckless surfer from San Diego. They're a large, well established financial services firm who has clearly placed a big bet on the future of digital currency. And so I'm not saying if Fidelity jumps off a cliff, we all, we all chase him over the cliff. But you know, it's something, you know, that's, it's something. So I'm with Chad. Keep your eyes open to it. Justin, I don't know if you're ready for this, but let's caution the wind, bro. I'm just gonna throw it at you like this is that time of the show where you're gonna introduce the guest and you all out there are going to rate Justin on a scale of 0 to 10. So take it away. Justin, [18:31] Mark: I want to be honest with you. I was golfing all day and got home a little too late to write a, write an intro. But for those of you who weren't here before, five minutes before the show, got a little nugget for you. Our guest today has never had a beer and never had coffee, Nor has he had coffee in his beer. He's the king of bitcoin. Chad's Wet Dream SPS Left Hand man, the President of Fiduciary Advocates, Mr. Bob Foster. [19:05] JD: Wow. [19:09] Bob: Intro I've ever had. [19:10] Justin: Yeah, I was actually considering I was off the cuff, I have to give that a 10 myself. [19:15] Bob: That's pretty good. [19:16] Justin: That was very well done, Bob. I want everyone to know that's listening out there. When I met Bob and got to talk to him and I got to learn more about kind of his history and he was a one time successful [19:31] Bob: advisor who basically sold his shop and, [19:33] Justin: and you know I won't say retired because he's got another gig going on now, but he is a true retirement plan advisor that lives, breathes and sleep this stuff for the past few decades. And I was like, oh, after a few conversations with him, I knew he'd be a phenomenal guest. So I think we can really get into it today, so it should be good. Let's go to another headline that's gonna seem a little nerdy to everyone, a little third party administrator, but. But I think it's super relevant right now with Secure 2.0 and this long term part time employee rules and the American Retirement Association. So basically they hit us with this rule. We all started kind of trying to prepare as an industry, but we still needed some clarity on a lot of the rules. Like when the nerds got into it, the Fred Rees and the Thomas Clarks and these people, they found a lot of like missing pieces and kind of broken bridges and things that didn't really work right. And so we needed some clarity on it. And well, they were so nice. The government gave us clarity literally like a few weeks ago. And so once we got that clear, we looked at it as an industry and we're like, okay, wait a second. Like this is intense. Like this is a big deal. And, and we've only got 25 days until it becomes effective. And not just any 25 days, might I add, and this isn't referenced in this article, but the 25 days in fucking December. Like this is like holiday time. Like people kind of slack off here a little bit and don't go to work as much as they usually do. [21:13] JD: And heck yeah, I mean, [21:17] Justin: and so. So it's not the best 25 days ever. Well, the American Retirement association reaches back out and says, hey man, they wrote a letter and said, look, we are acutely aware of the difficult position our members and their clients find themselves in due to this timing of this guidance. This is from Kelsey Mayo, who has been a guest on this show. We hope that this request will bring the matter to the Internal Revenue Services attention and they will take prompt action. Further down in the. In this article it says immediate administrative transition relief from the long term part time employee rules is essential. So it's basically the industry speaking on behalf of the industry and their clients and we can't possibly be ready for this thing on January 1st. Chad, I'm going to go to you from a nerdy standpoint. I know we looked at this internally and has some internal meanings about how are we going to educate our clients on this how are we going to support them in this? And you come to a lot of difficult kind of impasses in this this new guidance on it. I saw some things that really weirded me out. There's vesting rules so that are going to force plan sponsors to basically kind of vest people in two different categories which showed the long term part time employees will vest based on 500 hours and then the regular employees will vest based on a thousand hours. [22:49] Chad: And without getting they kick over to a regular participant, they still vest moving forward at 500 hours. [22:55] Justin: And so the point being like the software systems that we use as administrators don't really kind of track that or allow for that. The record keepers have to rebuild and their systems to deal with that. Plan sponsors are surely going to fuck that up. [23:10] Chad: You know, payroll providers are going to have to create the payroll providers appropriate way of tracking this stuff to help clients. [23:17] Justin: So that was a big issue. I even saw another one that freaked me out where the assessment was that if, if you have dual eligibility in a safe harbor plan and you somehow like you would retain like your ADP ah status but you might become vulnerable to, to a top heavy task which I almost lost my shit when I read that like so go ahead John. [23:45] Chad: Well, you're, you're exempt from top heavy testing coverage, actual deferral percentage, actual, you're exempt from all those essentially. But what I think you're referencing is there's a lot of talk of how to avoid long term part time rules. And so you adjust the eligibility and say deferrals your everybody's eligible immediately but safe harbor, it's one year thousand hours. [24:07] Justin: Yes, this is the situation. [24:09] Chad: And now when you go this route if you end up making a profit sharing contribution, you're back to being subject to top heavy. Right? And now because those people aren't in the plan as long term part time they're in the plan because the eligibility on deferrals was less restrictive. Now you have top heavy issues and you got to give them contributions. [24:26] Justin: Bob, let me have you kind of speak on behalf of financial advisors across the country. I mean I think a lot of you rely on your partners, TPAs record keepers to make sure that all these rules are, are followed properly. Does that concern you and, and all the advisors that you're speaking for that, that we're worried about this, that we don't feel like it's going to be executed properly. [24:54] Bob: Yeah, so, so two things. One, yeah we, I would look at the, the administrator and the record keeper and go okay, you guys got to figure this out because I have no idea what to do with that. And, and it's just one more intricacy that makes an already complicated situation even more complicated. [25:13] Chad: Right. [25:13] Bob: And naturally all of us are looking at this from the perspective of how to, you know, how the hell do we do this as plan sponsors and administrative professionals. But look at it from the participant standpoint. You had a lot of people out there who've never been eligible for anything and suddenly people are coming to them going, hey you, you're, you're eligible for the retirement plan. And this is really complicated and it's kind of a pain in the ass for your employer. What usually happens to people who are in those types of positions when their employer gets pissed off that that position is now more complicated. I can, I can tell you when [25:46] Chad: the health benefits came out, crazy point. [25:48] Bob: There were a lot of who went from 40 hours to you can't work more. And if you do, we're going to, you know, we won't fire you because that's illegal. But you know, you're not going to have a job anymore. So I'm sure there's a lot of participants going, wait a minute, I don't, you know, this to me is, it's, it's great in theory and it's wonderful for that one or two people that it might affect positively, but there's a whole lot of collateral damage here that nobody ever thought about. [26:13] Justin: Let's talk about where it goes wrong a little bit because I saw Webby made a comment on the LinkedIn post. Is Webby here? I don't know. He made a comment that the Internal Revenue Service says good faith compliance is okay, meaning basically like look, and I heard Fred Re say something similar to this where the government's going to understand that people are going to fuck this up, people being plan sponsors and they're going to be less kind of stringent on them or less forceful on them. But then I simultaneously see an article from the American Retirement association and the very same Kelsey Mayo who's been on the show and she's explaining how plan sponsors can legally fix their own mistakes. So if they don't let these long term part time employees in when they should, they've got this little three month window where we're no harm, no foul. But if they go beyond that three month window, just like in the regular 401k side, when you don't put someone in when you're supposed to, there's rules where the employer has to now Put in the money on behalf of the participant. So I'm hearing two things out there. Like oh, it's don't worry, the government's kind of chill. But then our national lobbyist association is saying no, this is how you fix it. I don't know which one to believe. You know, I'm going to, no offense, Webby, I'm going to stick with the American Retirement association and Kelsey Mayo. So plan sponsors are going to fuck this up. We know, we know this to be true. And, and the, the ramifications of that to me are serious. Like they will have problems. It's got a freaking leniency. [27:56] Mark: Why don't they just give us a little bit longer Runway to. To get it all set up and [28:01] Chad: point in keeping 1.0 implemented when 2.0 adjusted it like teaching people to do this for a two year period and then moving it or three or moving it to like it just doesn't make sense. But they could have done. There could have been a lot of things right. Why for just the people between 599 for deferrals. Just make it for everybody. So go ahead and make like a 403B plan. [28:24] Justin: Yeah. [28:25] Chad: Make universal availability for deferrals. Or, or make no actual deferral percentage test for, for the first quarter. Make some changes. [28:33] Mark: You have 500 hours, you get to defer and that's it. There's. You don't go into testing. You're not even considered for 12 hours chat. [28:39] JD: And just how about the government just sets up a national part time retirement program so all of those part timers just get assigned to that. [28:48] Chad: You mean like an individual retirement account that's available to all of them? [28:52] Justin: Chad, Mark, Justin, I got a news flash for you. Those things you just suggested are not reality. That's not what's happening. What's happening is what's in front of us and they're not going to change it. And so. So those are great little ideas, but we have to deal with the reality of what is. [29:09] Chad: You don't think there's any chance they punt 1.0. That's what I want to take effect in 2024. [29:15] Justin: I want. First of all, I will not get started on the 1.0 versus 2.0 as it relates to the long term part time employees. Because that was fucking idiocracy. Like I was idea. [29:29] Chad: They did it until after the fact. And like, well, can't go back on this now. We'd look really stupid if I was so dumb. [29:36] Justin: I can't Even tell you how dumb that was. But beyond that, I want to know from you guys about what's the over under and maybe that's not the right thing. That's like point total. But like, what is the probability that we hear back from the Internal Revenue Service and the letter that we're looking at here in this article and they actually do delay this? Like, what's your guess, by the way? [29:59] JD: Couldn't they have sent an email versus a letter? [30:03] Justin: Probably? [30:03] Bob: Mark. [30:06] Justin: That's classic real guy. [30:07] Chad: Bob. [30:08] Justin: Do you think they're actually going to respond and say, oh, we're going to give you guys another year or something? [30:12] Bob: I. I think they'll respond after the deadline and then I'll give them some kind of a grace period after the deadline. [30:19] Chad: Oh, interesting. [30:21] Bob: Yeah. [30:22] JD: Then you go let them know your next move. [30:24] Justin: Then you go to Tom, who worked 500 hours in the last three years on January 2nd. You're like, Tom, you're in, bro. Like you can go ahead and defer. And then you're going to reach out to him two weeks later and go, oh, Tom, sorry, bro. Taking that back, man. [30:39] Chad: J.D. i laughed. I was given a presentation on long term part time this past week and we were talking about carve outs and exclusions. This is after our conversation. Justin, Mark and, and I made the example of, okay, so you exclude a division of your company from the plan in its entirety and you're passing coverage, so it's okay. But what we're reading is that the long term part time cannot be part of the exclusion in terms of their access to deferrals. So imagine you're in a division and you're excluded. The whole, the whole division's excluded. And you're rolling around working 600 hours while all these other people have been there for years and you're like, yeah, I get to participate. I'm in. They can't keep me out of this thing. While all the other full time people don't get access. But you get access because you're between 500 and 999 hours. [31:26] Justin: Well, okay, I was reading some of the chat bar, but the exclusions still apply. [31:32] Chad: The exclusions apply to your plan access, not to the long term part time laws. [31:37] Justin: No, I challenge you on that. [31:39] Chad: Dude, I, I already have it in an Aspa. Oh, dang it. No presentation. J.D. [31:45] Justin: no, no, no, no. [31:47] Mark: You lose your safe harbor. [31:49] Justin: That was one of the things that came back was if you had an exclusion like the warehouse down on Main street or whatever, you could still exclude them from even the long term, part time. I'm putting my reputation on the line right here. Let's go. Chat bar. Chime in. I think these guys are wrong. [32:08] Chad: That one then. Because I don't think you're right. [32:10] Justin: We'll see. We'll find out. And in two weeks when we have Preston Rutledge on the show for our Christmas special, we'll find out who was right. Yes, I entered the reputation era. Is that a Taylor Swift comment? Very nice. Let's move on to a another headline. Former. [32:30] JD: We're still on headlines. Okay. [32:32] Justin: Yeah, that's what we do now. [32:34] Mark: The entire show's headlines. [32:35] Justin: Yeah, it's all headlines. [32:36] Chad: I want to hear what Bob has [32:37] Justin: to say, so gotta stay with it. Well, let's see what Bob says about John Sullivan of Once 401k specialist magazine fame, now American Retirement association, also known as Brian Grass Little wrote this article. I love Sully. You know, friends can say things, friends can say things. That this article is beware of false prophets. He takes a slam, a juicy slam at the rich dad, poor dad guy and attacks 401k plans. Bob, I'm going to go to you first. One of the things he attacked is the cost. He said, Hey, 401k plans have high fees. Is there some truth in this? And how do you respond when someone says 4k plans are expensive? [33:34] Bob: Samson, I, I, I, I stopped trying to figure out when people like this make comments like that, where they're coming from. I, I can't explain. Stupid. Yeah, I mean, I mean, what's the alternative? That we're going to have no cost? I mean, you know, we've seen no cost investment accounts, nobody's in them other than, you know, the, you know, couple people at Vanguard. I mean, you people have jobs to do, there are expenses to have that done. And, and I love the people that are, you know, I'm just trying to create headlines. But the, you know, the Susie Ormans and the Dave Ramseys of the world who are out there, you know, preaching and they make these wildly bombastic statements to get people riled up when there really isn't anything to get riled up [34:21] Justin: about, it's more like clickbait. [34:22] Bob: Maybe there are, there are, there have been historical challenges in some cases, but there's also, I mean there's challenges with, you know, the stuff that they're selling. It just, it's an uninformed statement at best. [34:33] Justin: Well, let me, let me try to defend it a little bit and we'll see if what you guys think about this and Anyone in the chat bar, have you ever had this experience? I have where you're at an enrollment meeting and someone in the audience, one of the participants stands up and says, hey, how come in my individual retail accounts I can buy a Standard and Poor's 500 index fund for 5 basis points? But I'm looking at this John Hancock menu of investment options here in my million dollar, 401k plan. And the Standard and Poor's 500 index is 80 basis points. What's the rub? This is. And he says it in front of everyone in the, in the room. And how do you answer that question, Chad? Like, how do you defend that? Or how do you answer that person? He's asking a question. [35:24] Chad: Yeah, there's a disco. Sorry, were you asking Bob or me? [35:27] Justin: I'm asking you now, Chad. [35:29] Chad: Okay, there's got to be a discussion around the fact that this is a qualified plan being offered by the employer that has services and legal obligations and filing requirements and, and costs associated with the plan itself. [35:42] Justin: Yeah, but Chad, hey, can't my employer just pay for that, Bob? Like, why? Because my point is he's rich dad. Poor Dad's not totally wrong here like it is. It does have a higher wrong. [35:55] Chad: But you're right, J.D. and that would have been, if you read deeper, like, that is the argument, which is, if you're not actually getting value personally from the investment advisor and you know, and the employer is forcing any compliance or admin costs onto you, like, then why, why is there discrepancy? It's not in their best interest. And so I get the thought there, they're not getting value from those things, so why should they have to pay a cost for it? [36:23] Bob: But I would also say, because I've been asked those exact questions in a meeting and it is uncomfortable if those fees are excessively high. I mean, yes, if you've got a knowledgeable investor who knows, a good S&P 500 index fund should be, you know, less than 15 basis points, certainly. And probably less than. Oh, see, what did he. [36:46] Justin: What did he say? Standards important. So again. [36:51] Bob: But at the same time, can the employer pay it? The employer has to look at it and say, we have the total cost of the plan, it's the match, and whatever you want us to pay from the administrative costs. So if you want us to pay the administrative cost, we'll do that. But then we're going to have to reduce the match. It's all about the budget. And then that's an argument with the employer. Are there benefits in line with everybody else. But I mean you to try and, and defend it or to tell them that they're wrong. You don't want to do that. They're right. It is more expensive than if you went to Vanguard and opened up a, you know, account and put your money in there. But that's an individual account that has no recordkeeping requirements, has no matching funds as nothing else. And you've got to look at it as an investor and decide what's which one's better. [37:40] Justin: Right. And you nailed it with the match. I'm sure if the match is there, you can, you have a solid defense of the slightly higher fee and then. Yeah, I would love for plan sponsors to pick up a bigger part of those, those fees sometimes. Because Chad, you mentioned that it was the advisor cost, but it's not just the advisor costs. It's all the hassles. Yeah. Of the record keeping and, and the ERISA rules they need to follow and things of that nature, you know. Well, yeah. [38:08] Chad: And I think you guys know that from an employee standpoint, the perception of them taking on some cost carries very little value to them. Right. They would much rather see a match than the employer pay the administrative expenses. So like that. When I talk with businesses, I try to always encourage them to take on the expenses because that's a deduction and that's a lot of what we do. But usually they're weighing the benefits here. Do I give a match or do I take on more compliance costs? For sure, you give a match. It's received so much better. [38:42] Justin: Let's put Bob on the spot again and more because if there's like young or, or rookie advisors out there they could learn from, like how Bob might respond to some of these types of questions. The other thing that rich dad, poor dad accuses a 401k of is, is poor investment options like and, and bitcoin. And so like you have a limited, you know, the limited availability of certain funds and these funds are proprietary funds that are force fed to you. Like is that really true of a 401k plan? [39:20] Bob: Well, I, I think it, it's. There's always going to be somebody that thinks it, you know, it could be or should be better in some cases. It could be what, what I would, what. I mean, when I was an advisor, we always built portfolios that had a broad range of investment options. You covered all the major asset categories. Maybe you didn't have a bitcoin or a specific gold fund, but you gave them a broad array of investments to choose from then you can have the discussion of, you know, are these other asset classes worthwhile? And you've got, if you've got somebody who's that sophisticated, well then, you know, maybe you have a one off conversation with them. But the average participant is, is not going to understand that. Put them in a target date fund and leave them alone. They don't want to know about this stuff and that. So it's, it's a little bit disingenuous when, when you say, you know, they don't have a, a good set of options or when a participant said, oh, our fund is terrible, I lost money last year, or our fund is great because I made money last year. Not having any perspective on, you know, everybody else market. [40:25] Justin: That's the market, not the fund. [40:27] Bob: Right, that's exactly, you know, a different example. But my, my, one of my kids recently became eligible for health insurance at work and, and he's like, I want to stay on the plan that I'm on, which is through one of our companies. And I don't, I don't want to use theirs because everybody tells me it's terrible. I'm like, listen, everybody doesn't understand their benefits. They have no idea. So go talk to hr, talk to the benefits person. This is actually really good. So it's just, it's. Yeah, it's. [40:58] Justin: No, no, no, no, no, not. Wrap it up, ring them up. He said human reason. He said the acronym drink. Oh, Mark's frozen. [41:06] Bob: I'm sorry. [41:08] Justin: That's great. Well, no, I don't. [41:11] Bob: I believe that most 401k plans, especially if they have a qualified advisor on them, has a really good portfolio of some of the best funds in the market at the lowest possible cost. [41:21] Justin: Yeah, I agree with you. [41:23] Bob: I don't. [41:23] Chad: Go ahead. I gotta argue for one second in that in terms of the core menu investments, I see such tiny variants nowadays. Back in the day when share class was an issue when most platforms had thousands of funds to choose from, like, yeah, I, I did see, I did see some work. Now I see 85 passive in almost all. [41:47] Justin: Oh. [41:48] Chad: Seen a lot of, almost always. Dimensional and vanguard and then there's maybe a couple of actors. [41:52] Justin: That's the race. [41:54] Chad: Target dates vary obviously, but yeah, Bob, it's, it's, it's being commoditized. Investments are most certainly being commoditized. I would agree, three or four years. [42:03] Justin: That's, that's a good point, Chad, but, but that's an entirely different argument of like active versus passive. Even if you give me a Passive menu. I still have got all these different asset classes to kind of play with. And I. I agree with Bob's point. I think this is where rich dad, poor dad is totally wrong. I think most 401k plans, and even if they're not set up that way, they have the option to be set up that way. Like if the plan sponsor wanted to have a rockstar lineup of mutual funds, like, they could choose from all kinds of stuff and create that. It's always just that nerdy investor who's like, oh, where's my technology fund? Or like you said, where's my natural resources fund? Or this or that. And these specialty asset classes for any advisors out there learning maybe they're not the most appropriate asset class to have in a 401k plan. I mean, that's up for debate, but yes, Bob, and the other thing you [43:01] Bob: got to recognize, I mean, 15, 20 years ago, everybody's coming in like, you know, why do I have all these expensive funds? I want nothing. But I want an s. Oh, s, P500 funds. [43:11] Justin: Not a text thing. You haven't said it twice. [43:14] Bob: I just want one index fund. And I mean, if you look at the requirements, it's one. One stock fund, one bond fund, and one cash fund. That's all you have to have in a plan. So anything else is just fluff. Somewhere in between, you got a bunch of scared fiduciaries trying to figure out what the hell should I offer to my participants? And that ranges wildly. [43:35] Justin: Well, and we do see, we do see some lawsuits that are backed by that. Those types of accusations where these days, which I think is a whole. Another bag of worms there. But okay, we'll move on. Let's have a little fun. [43:49] Bob: So shut up. Sign a form. [43:53] Mark: Brandon. [43:53] Justin: So good. [43:54] Chad: Do you have a pen? [43:57] Justin: That's how we should run 401k plans. Let's. Let's. Let's see if we can pat our wallets a little bit. Let's learn from the genius investment mind that is Robe guy. [44:10] Chad: Oh, my God. [44:26] Justin: You think. You think bitcoin. You think bitcoins had great returns? Take a look. Tap into your little stock app on your phone and look up Robe guys portfolio. That shit's been blowing. Blowing the up. And I mean in a positive way, not a negative way. When he tells you to buy something, you need to listen. Is he gone? [44:49] Bob: Is he really? [44:50] Chad: God. [44:50] Justin: Hey, J.D. [44:51] Chad: when he gets back in here, act like you just completed what stock we're talking about and then make him answer with reasoning without actually Knowing what it is. [44:59] Mark: That's a great. [45:00] Justin: Well, what I, what I want him to look at today is ticker. I'll drink. This doesn't gme. Do I drink for a ticker? No, no, no, no. [45:11] Mark: I don't think you need to. [45:12] Justin: Do you know what stock that is? [45:14] Chad: I just looked it up, so now I know. [45:16] Justin: Yeah, yeah. GameStop and GameStop. Not to be a 52 year old that doesn't know of such things. Does this still exist? You go in and like buy video games and like Xboxes and you know, I just went into the mall, like [45:33] Bob: I haven't been in there for years and that was like the only thing [45:37] Justin: running was a video game store. The only thing that had people in it. Justin, you play video games from time to time. [45:45] Mark: Me and Chad wrote till way late, [45:48] JD: way too late last night. [45:49] Mark: Kids, man. [45:50] Justin: Let's hear from the experts then. Is. Is GameStop a good business? [45:56] Mark: No, not at all. [46:00] Bob: Not a good stock. [46:02] Justin: All right, Robey, the stock is GME name the company's GameStop. It reached. [46:10] JD: Are they still in business? [46:13] Justin: That's a great question. Yes, they are. They reached a high of like just south of 60 for their share price back when they. This was one of the. To the moons, right? This is when. This is the youth of the world got behind it and pushed it all the way up. For various reasons. It has since fallen back to. Today. It closed at $16.36. Okay. [46:37] JD: All right. Okay. [46:39] Justin: It has a fairly new chief executive officer that kind of I think went in and like cut a bunch of people. He pulled an Elon Musk and went there and like fired a bunch of people and kind of got skinny on the overhead and then like, do those kind of. [46:54] JD: Do those kind of stores really need. I mean, I don't. I honestly. [47:00] Mark: There we go. [47:02] Justin: Geezer. [47:05] Chad: Internet too. He's got to be on the wrong wi fi. [47:08] Bob: What an idiot. [47:10] Justin: All right, well, here's the thought. [47:12] Mark: Did you guys hear, did you guys hear what happened? What's happening with Sony right now? [47:17] Chad: No Sony. [47:18] Justin: No. [47:19] Mark: Sony is going through a seven point like six billion dollar lawsuit. [47:23] Justin: Okay. [47:23] Mark: And it's all. It has to do with a lot of their titles and their digital stuff. I can't remember the full details, but they're having to get rid of 1200 titles. So anyone who has digital downloads, you. You only license those things. [47:36] Justin: Are you talking about like video games? [47:38] Mark: Video games, movies, shows. It's predominantly structured around shows right now, TV shows. So if you had digitally down, like we, if we download a Movie from Apple. We don't own that title like we do when we go out and physically buy the copy. [47:50] Chad: Right. [47:51] Mark: So Apple gets rid of it. [47:53] Chad: We're Right. [47:54] Mark: And so all there's this huge uproar right now in the industry right now. All the gamers saying, well, if you're taking away stuff we've bought and you're not gonna reimburse us on it, there's a class action lawsuit where you get like 500 at most. [48:07] Chad: Oh, geez. [48:08] Mark: I, I wonder if that's going to have an impact on going back to actually holding the hard copy, because that's the only way to actually own it. [48:16] Justin: I don't know. I. I would. Do you guys. You guys don't put a physical disc into your Xbox to play a game. [48:25] Mark: You still can. They make it that way up until recently. Up until recently, they've. They've made it. They make both consoles. So where you can still do a hard disk or you can do just digital. [48:36] Justin: All right, well, we'll ask Rogue Guy before we end the show whether it's a buy or sell. Bob, you don't drink coffee. You don't drink beer. I doubt you. I doubt you play like Grand Theft Auto on the weekends. [48:48] Bob: Do you know Papa Warbucks plays a lot of Call of Duty? [48:51] Justin: Oh. Oh, okay. [48:56] Bob: Two kids in college is the only way I could communicate with them on a regular basis is by going out and blowing up. So, yeah, I'm not good. I'm saying I'm good. Hey, Bob, I'm raising my hand because my, my kids laugh at me because I'm technologically challenged, but I had like, all the hard discs, like, stacked up on my, you know, next to my console. And I, I just bought the latest one digitally and it was, it was a cluster. [49:19] Justin: So Brandon's got a hard disc. I don't think communicating with your. With your son, I don't think that counts. When you're on Call of Duty and you're like, get out of the way. Get all the way. I'm gonna shoot this guy. That's not exactly sharing your feelings. [49:38] Bob: I'm well known for shooting my fellow teammates, which is not popular, when they're a lot more serious than I am. [49:44] Justin: Oh, you're playing hard at that stuff. Robey, you're with us. Buy or sell on GameStop. Just let us know because a lot of people got their finger on their trigger right now on their brokerage accounts. [49:56] JD: I mean, I, I had an explanation, but I don't want my WI Fi to cut out. So I know. No, it's a. [50:01] Justin: It's a sell. Yeah, well, Robey doesn't say sell often, but when he does, he gets it, right? So I would lock that in right now. Locking in. Or maybe. Maybe you buy some options and go against that thing, you know, like, really go for it. Remember, on this show, this is investment advice. We do recommend it. We tell you to do. Okay, don't be stupid. [50:27] Mark: It's a fiduciary do what the guy [50:29] Justin: in the road is telling you to do. [50:31] Mark: I am a. [50:33] Justin: The new Genie Fisher. Jeannie Sutton bit. Okay, real quick. Fiduciary advocates. Bobby, I mentioned earlier you're a financial advisor. Retirement plan advisor. Ended up selling your business, and now you got a new gig going with your son. Everybody knows I love me some father son business stuff that's good. It's called fiduciary advocates, but it's. It's a little different. It's not really something that we have in this industry. And I don't know whether that's good or bad, but do it. Do us a favor and let everyone know what it's about and what y' all are trying to do. So. [51:15] Bob: So fiduciary advocates. As. As JD said, I. I sold my practice back in 2019. I stayed with the firm that purchased us for a little over a year. Wasn't a great fit for me, and ended up leaving. [51:27] Justin: How many times EBITDA did you get? [51:30] Chad: Oh, drink it up. [51:31] Bob: Based upon being a partner, I'm not allowed to discuss the. [51:36] Justin: Never get the title of the firm information. [51:38] Bob: Nor am I allowed. Nor am I allowed to discuss the firm. So moving on. We are. I left. I stayed out of the business for a while. I actually. I know how much you love Vince Giovinazzo. I was a huge RPAG guy. Loved the group. They were a great partner for us. [51:57] Justin: Came out, oh, see their retirement plan advisory group. [52:02] Bob: And after a few months, I really business. I mean, this. I shared before. This is like among my people of retirement nerds. Miss the business. Didn't want to be an advisor again. I've been there, done that, and I went to a couple of conferences. And the thing I kept hearing over and over again is hiring the advisor is one of the most important decisions that the committee will make, and keeping that relationship is one of the most important decisions that they will make. But as a former advisor, we will tell our clients, you need to go out and vet us. I don't want you to talk to my competition. I don't want you to look at my fees. But you need to, there's no resources to do that. There's a couple of indexes, you know, there's a couple, you know, online things you can use, but there really wasn't any expertise around that. So I started talking to a couple of other advisors and said, hey, I'm thinking about getting out and helping plan sponsors vet their advisors, mostly through requests for proposals. The thinking, that was the way it's usually done. And so we started looking at this and a number of advisors said, it's an interesting concept but it'll never work and I would never buy into that. Ironically, one of them called me back like two weeks later and said, I hate you for this, but I've got a prospect, they need to make a change and will you talk to him? I called the guy as a cfo, he's new in the position. He said, I know our advisor is not good, I don't know how to go out with them. Will you, will you help me? [53:26] Justin: And a financial officer said, I've got, [53:29] Bob: I've got no business card, I don't have a business, I've got a Gmail email address, but let's do this. And he said, great. That was our first engagement. [53:37] Justin: Those are the best kind of businesses when you know there's a need for it, when you haven't even hung a shingle and you're helping someone figure something out. [53:45] Bob: So we, so we started with the intention of being an independent resource for plan sponsors to vet their advisory relationship. And that ranges everything. We've really developed it into a two step process. The first part of that process is, is your current advisor doing a good job? And we've done a number of projects where they, they wanted to vet their advisor. They were happy with their advisor, but they needed some documentation and due diligence around that. We came in your, your fees are reasonable, your process is good. Here's a couple of enhancements you could make and we move on. They document it. The advisor is happy, the plan sponsor is happy. It works really well. If that's not the case, hey, we're not happy. We want to make a change. Then we go to phase two, which instead of being a request for proposal, which we don't like saying anymore, it we call it a market comparison. So we will find qualified firms and bring them to the plan sponsor and say, here's four or five firms that could do a good job. Do you want to look at pricing for all of them? We will go get pricing, bring them back and Do a fair comparison between those firms. [54:52] Justin: All right, Someone who's in the know. Let me interrupt you for a second. Sure. Chad, do you feel guilty like I do sometimes that we have clients that are mid size, large size? I mean, I can think of a few that are 5, 7, 10 million, kind of that small to medium, you know, but, but slightly bigger client that maybe has an advisor who, by the way, I love this advisor, God bless him or her, because he or she brought me that plan as the third party administrator. So I'm not talking, but they're not really good at being a retirement plan advisor. It's not kind of their jam. They do wealth more or, or health insurance or other things and, and maybe the client's even happy. Maybe that person like, you know, is responsive, answers emails, gets in there and kind of conducts meetings. But they're not a pro like many of the pros that we know and the people that kind of tune into the show from time to time. Does that client deserve better? And they don't even know what they don't know. Right? They, they don't know what they could get from, from someone in terms of services. Does that concern you, Chad Johansen? [56:10] Chad: Yes. Yes. And it's the world we live in. And for years I've said I rest easy at night knowing that we're involved and we're going to help get a good record keeper involved and set up a proper education program through that record keeper. Because that advisor, in all likelihood the analogy earlier in the chat bar, is a golf buddy or a church friend. And they're going to win the plan regardless. So at least we can put some stop gaps in. [56:35] Justin: Okay, if you got a dip, you can dip, Chad, go ahead. [56:38] Chad: I do, I do. Go ahead, Bob. I want to hear that. [56:41] Bob: So here's so, so I, I appreciate that. And here is the challenge for us as an industry. That's the way things get done, especially on the smaller plan side. There's relationships, there's politics, there's all of those things. But at the end of the day, we all know that that plan sponsor has fiduciary exposure in many cases. And they're not addressing it and neither are you. So it is. And this is where it gets dicey. And for us, it gets dicey if everything that we have done so far has come either from an advisor or from a referral from a previous client. And I got. [57:19] Chad: I gotta run, Bob. But before I do, I just need to know on these consultation cases that you're taking on, what's the average plan size. [57:27] Bob: We've done everything from 5,5 million. Our biggest plan so far has been 350 million. We're finalizing a deal on a 1.5 billion dollar plan. [57:35] Justin: Your guess it would be a more upmarket thing. [57:38] Chad: Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. My thought would have been somewhere in the range of 50 million or north. [57:42] Justin: Wait. If I understand Samson's. [57:45] Bob: So here's, so here's, here's the other thing that's been interesting. We originally started this to be an advocate for the plan sponsor because they are in many ways underserved by advisors who are not good or who are marginal. Now we're finding not only we're an advocate for them, we're an advocate for the qualified firms because those firms that are out there who are really good and doing a great job and their fees are reasonable are competing against firms with shiny object marketing programs or financial wellness or whatever the catchphrase the day is. And it's not a fair fight especially if there's politics. And I've had two firms approach us because they their CFOs get in touch with us and say we can't change the advisor because they're a personal friend or acquaintance of the CEO and these are good sized plans. And, and we need to, we, but we need help on this. So here's here to your point earlier JD in that situation where you know there could be more services provided, here's what we recommended. We just finished a project where we had somebody who wanted to be included. [58:59] Justin: We had somebody who wanted to be [59:01] Bob: included who was not qualified ahead of time. Go partner with a firm that is qualified. [59:09] Justin: Fair enough. [59:09] Bob: And he came back in with a qualified plan advisor and that made him much more viable. [59:17] Justin: First of all, let me just kind of logically back you up. Like of course I said this to you kind of in the pre game we review our investments or plan sponsors review their investments. They review who their third party administrator is. Their we, we know damn well they're supposed to benchmark their record keeper their fees, all these types of things. And so yeah, no offense to the advisor community because it shouldn't be an offense is you're also an integral part of that puzzle. Like you're probably the paramount piece to this whole thing. And so yeah, you have to get reviewed too. And I think what you're saying is it doesn't have to be a bad thing, it can be a good thing and it is a very difficult challenge. I've been in this position myself as a third party administrator to try to review and vet yourself in front of your own clients. Like it. That's challenging and it doesn't usually go over well. Much better to have an independent firm come in and say, yeah, yeah, no, JD's doing, company's doing a decent job here. Their fees are prudent, they're, they're a well known, you know, company in the industry. You've made a good choice. That's going to feel a lot better than JD telling them, oh, check out my brochure. We're really good and, and you should continue to work with us. So I think there is value not just for the plan sponsor, but also advisor. Obviously you got headwinds against you. I think that can be a very intimidating thing to a lot of advisor shops to think like, well, I don't, I don't want to like be scrutinized or, or looked at. And so I challenge anyone who's, who's reacting that way to think of it more like those other situations I discussed. And so with that, I think fiduciary advocates could be a, a great tool in our marketplace. So I wish you the best of luck. And if we want to act in the best, if we want our plan sponsors to act in the best interest of their plan participants and we're here to support them in doing that, we need to be professionals and we need to do things well. And therefore if you're somehow sitting out there thinking, geez, I don't want fiduciary advocates looking at how I service my clients and finding like flaws or holes, well then that's just saying to yourself, like, maybe you need to up your game a little bit and kind of figure out where you need to be better. And that's just going to benefit you in the long run. Like you'll make more money and be more successful if you kind of up your game and, and are up to the challenge of doing a good job. So anyways, Fiduciary advocates, it's, it's fiduciary advocates.IO I'll drink for that. And Bob and his son are running the show there. So reach out, inquire, get to know them a little bit. Bob is one of you. This is like the biggest ad I've ever done for one of our people. Right. [1:02:11] JD: Like it actually is usually you forget to do any of this. [1:02:16] Justin: Bob is one of you and he speaks your language and you guys can, can, I'm sure you'll, you'll hit it off. Chap our champion last week was Jim Sampson a legend of the game, an icon of the game? I'm lazy. You know, last week when he won, I made. I made the statement that I was just gonna buy him a bunch of Big Macs. And so that's what I did. I just bought him a ton of Big Macs. [1:02:49] Mark: How many we get? [1:02:51] Justin: I think I said once. I think I said nine or 10 Big Macs and, oh, eight. And an Apple juice. I want to know originally. Hey, did I make. Did I make a bad decision? Originally, it was a cup of co. A medium cup of coffee, and I switched it to juice box. Should I have saved with the coffee or is the juice box better? [1:03:16] Mark: Are you asking us or him? Because I think he did the right job with it. [1:03:19] Justin: I'm asking you. You think juice box is better, Justin? Yeah. Okay, good, good, good. I'm glad I made that switch quickly. [1:03:26] Bob: The juice box is better than coffee. [1:03:28] Justin: Okay. I thought, like, eight Big Macs. And here's a. How would you know to wash it down? Yeah, you don't even know what coffee tastes like, so you can't chime in on this. But, you know, you can do. Bob is. You can let us know. Who is your vote for tonight's chat bar champion? [1:03:43] Bob: Whoever just had the. The comment about mom meatloaf. [1:03:46] Mark: I, you know, Devin, he works for us. Can't be him. [1:03:49] Justin: All right, My advisor, Devin can win. Nice. Vote for one of our own. All right, Silent Jay, who's your vote for? [1:04:07] JD: Oh. Ah. [1:04:08] Justin: Hi. [1:04:08] Mark: Guy to go. Oh, it's between Brasha and Hack. [1:04:13] Justin: Okay, Brasha, [1:04:19] Mark: I gotta go Hack. [1:04:21] Justin: Okay, go and hack. Hack. Hackster. I love it. Brasha queued me into a retirement Plan Advisory Group YouTube video. That's like bitcoin guy or something. Go. Searched out. I went and looked at. It's like 2 years old, but it was pretty good. Bitcoin guy, he's a dude in a bitcoin T shirt, and he walks into a fiduciary review meeting and kind of makes his pitch for why he should be included on the menu. But those. Those nerds at our peg, they turn them down, those dipshits. Roby, your vote. [1:04:58] JD: Davis. [1:04:59] Justin: Who? [1:05:01] JD: Tony. [1:05:02] Justin: Tony. Okay, Tony Davis, back in the action. These are kind of stellars here. We got Hackster, we got Devin, we got Tony Davis. I'm going to make this difficult. I'm going with Samson again because just because he won last time and just because he's won a lot before doesn't mean he should be overlooked. You should look at the quality of his chat bar game, and it was solid. And maybe he wants more Big Macs. [1:05:30] Mark: I'm sure the answer is no, but do we keep a tally of these anywhere listed? [1:05:35] Justin: I. I thought Hackler was going to work on a tally for us. Someone's. Maybe we could ask artificial intelligence to review the 200 episodes and tell us who's. That'd be a good task. You know how this works. Robe guy, you're gonna give them a sentence, and then they have to finish that sentence in the chat bar. Other people. Yeah. [1:05:55] JD: I think this goes along with our theme today for the first half of our show, which took up too much time, as always. But in the. In the realm of bitcoin, [1:06:05] Chad: you're. [1:06:06] Justin: You're good, Mark. We can. [1:06:07] JD: Okay. All right. I might cut out here soon. If for the four of you, if you were designing and rolling out your own cryptocurrency, what would it be called? [1:06:20] Justin: What would your cryptocurrency be called? I like this. Robey, how does your brain work like that? That's impressive, Bob. Well, they try to come up with their answers. I want to say thank you for spending some time with us tonight on Retireholics. Thank you for being a retirement plan and stud. It's. It's great to have you as part of our circle now. And I'll do my best to continue to share the story of fiduciary advocates. We'll. It'll be fun to watch how you guys succeed. And. And I love the father son aspect, so we'll see how that goes. Hackler, who's in this final right now, he's a father son guy. Brasha Erisa coin. It's worth 1974. Oh, that's when it started. I forgot to say that. Happy birthday to Arisa next year for 50 years, I believe. [1:07:18] Mark: Wait, why? Did he say something? Did someone else vote for him? [1:07:22] JD: No, everybody. Everybody can say something, but he's not [1:07:24] Mark: a part of the competition. [1:07:26] Justin: Oh, I thought you. Who voted for Brashad? Oh, nobody did. [1:07:29] Mark: I got a hackler. [1:07:30] Bob: Yeah. [1:07:30] JD: Yeah. [1:07:30] Justin: You. [1:07:30] JD: You. [1:07:31] Justin: You hacked him. Oh, you could have won, Brasha. Too bad. Hackalicious is the name of your coin. I don't know about that. [1:07:39] Mark: Sounds like a dogecoin. [1:07:43] JD: Tony. Tony Davis said chat coin, dude. Okay, this is. [1:07:49] Justin: And he's claiming he wins with chat coin. I don't know, Tony. We got. It's better than. [1:07:55] JD: So it's just chat coin. Got it. Got it. [1:07:58] Justin: Okay. [1:07:59] Mark: Okay. [1:07:59] Justin: Chat coin. Who else are we waiting on? [1:08:02] Bob: I didn't see anything from 401 coin [1:08:05] Justin: with a K. Who did that? [1:08:08] Bob: Me. [1:08:09] Justin: Oh, Genghis Khan. The youth these days. I don't. That's not. [1:08:20] Mark: Is it a. Is that a play on word like a con? Like Bitcoin's a con? [1:08:25] Justin: I don't know, but I don't not vote. [1:08:27] JD: All right, so wait is is Samson's answer. Hack sucks. [1:08:31] Justin: Call it Hack sucks. It's empty. [1:08:36] Chad: That wins. [1:08:38] Justin: Okay, I'm not sure we've done this before. I think maybe we have. But we have a back to back chat bar champion Jim Sampson. Call it Hack sucks. It's empty. Full of. And wins every time. Congratulations, hack. Next week we'll send you. Next time we'll send you eight whoppers. Thank you, Bob. Again to you and. And fiduciary advocates. And thanks to Roby. I love you, buddy. Justin, I'm sorry for opening your mail without asking you. I can look at your mail now. [1:09:16] Mark: We have evidence of it. [1:09:18] Justin: I forgot that other guy who was on the show that left early. I don't remember his name. Brandon, appreciate your efforts in producing. There's Chad. [1:09:29] Bob: There's Chad. [1:09:31] Justin: And thanks to all you out there for tuning in, whether live on Thursday night or you're just strolling through YouTube and you watch this show. I like you, man. I like you, woman. You're a 401k pro. Or you're gonna be someday. We're the retireholics. We're changing the retirement plan industry one beer at a time. Brandon, play some music.