Fiduciary Rules, Coverage Gap & 401(k) Criticism

[0:00] JD: Can. I don't know, we'll leave it. [0:03] Matthew: See, yeah, those. [0:05] JD: We don't want any of those. [0:06] Matthew: You know, I gotta go. I think I told you this. I gotta. When we get done, I'm going to coach basketball practice, so I got to be comfortable. [0:13] JD: Well, be careful. I'm not sure league rules are about intoxicated coaches. So we play a game at the start of the show. It's through the whole show. It's called Acro Sin. [0:26] Matthew: Okay? [0:26] JD: And if you say any acronyms or initialisms, then you have to drink from your penalty drink. What are you drinking, by the way? [0:34] Matthew: Woodford and Coke. [0:36] JD: Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah, I'm a big bourbon guy. Here, I'll show you how I offset my surfer. I usually only drink Whistle Pig, you know, of the older ages, but Woodford's okay for the regular folk. It's not bad. [0:53] Matthew: It goes well with a hoodie. [0:55] JD: What I would go to if I was at some cheesy little bar that just didn't have the good stuff. If I saw Woodford, I would gravitate towards you. [1:02] Matthew: Gravitate toward that? Yeah. If that was like. Like a. The lowest form of bar you'd ever been in. [1:08] JD: Yes. [1:09] Matthew: Yeah. [1:09] JD: Which would have been a mistake on my part anyways. Like, how did I end up there? What the. [1:15] Matthew: I do. See [1:17] JD: here we. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the good old regular format of Retireholics. The first Thursday of the month. But no, not just your typical retire, Alex. Not regular by any stretch of the imagination because this is probably going to be the best episode of Retireholics in the history of retireholics. Why, you ask? Because Chad Johansson, nerdy Chad, and Mark Palmini, Rogue Guy are at the. I'm gonna drink for this. The AT T Pebble Beach Pro Am. Guess I'll drink twice because. Yeah, I don't know. [2:17] Matthew: The Ampersand. Yeah, you went with two acronyms. [2:21] JD: And Justin is in Australia. Mates is in Australia. So it's just me, which I'm claiming. This is perfect. I lose all the dead weight of my co hosts. It's finally my chance to go solo. It's my Beyonce moment. It's my Timberlake moment. So get ready, it's going to be a banger. See, Web's excited. So am I. Let's. Let's intro the guest, shall we? Let's give the. The guest an intro today and not do it in a shitty Justin way. We'll do it in a kickass JD way. Remember my name is not a penalty. No, that's the Only one? Yep. Everybody, a real retireholic knows this. Knows this. Obviously, Matthew's never watched the show before. [3:11] Matthew: What is this? [3:13] JD: Our guest today is the freaking national retirement practice leader for Qualified Plan Advisors. He's a jd And I have to drink for that. But not in the cool way. In the attorney kind of way. He's a shady iO2. He has more than 20 years of private legal practice doing just employee benefit stuff. In 2023, he was inducted. Are you ready for this, everybody? He was inducted as a fellow in the American College of Employee Benefits Council. I don't know what that is. I've heard the term. It sounds super fancy. Super fancy. I think he's out of Omaha. Just not an agreement. Are you out of Omaha? Is that where you live? [3:57] Matthew: Correct. [3:58] JD: Okay. And it looks like he has his finger in a lot of things. Currently looking over the financial wellness platform. At Qualified Plan Advisors. He. He creates, like, their fiduciary education, their training resources, news alerts, and, you know, he can rock a white paper. The boy can rock a white paper. And he supports the firm's institutional clients in a variety of ways. The guy's got skills. And Scott Colangelo, former guest on this show and the head honcho over there, described him as, quote, one of the wittiest, funniest, and intelligent people he has ever worked with. Welcome to the show, Matthew. Maddie. Can I call you Maddie? I don't care. I'm going to Eichmann. [4:48] Matthew: Thanks for having me. That's pretty good, J.D. that, I think of all the episodes that I've watched, that was probably. Probably the best introduction I've ever. I've ever seen. [4:57] JD: I agree with you. [4:58] Matthew: That was really, really. [4:59] JD: We are on the way to the best show ever. Well done. [5:03] Matthew: Y. [5:03] JD: Are you ready? Are you ready to go, Maddie? [5:06] Matthew: Yeah, let's do it. [5:07] JD: All right, Brandon, let's do headlines. Let's go. All right, I lied to you because this is not really a headline, but we're gonna treat it as a headline. Brian Graph Q. Butterbeer video, if we have it. And the American Retirement association calling out Therese Gillardi. Yummy. There he is. Mr. Butterbeer himself calling out trees. Gillard Ducci on a. An article that she had written. And he said this at the end of it, after he bitched about it, he said, enough already, with a really kind of sick face emoji. Brian is pissed. He's tired of this woman claiming that the 401k is a total failure, and then we need to scrap the whole thing and Burn it and start over and come up with some. I'm making up my own words now, but like social, this kind of government backed replacement solution. I'm going to go straight to you, Matthew. Are you familiar with this woman? Are you familiar with this piece? Okay. Are you a communist and on her side or are you against her? Yes or no? [6:38] Matthew: There's compound question. [6:39] JD: No, no. Just give me your thoughts on this. Give your. [6:42] Matthew: No. Yes. I just think it's, it's kind of stunning, right? So a lot of the people complain about 401k and they say that the DB system was so much better so we threw the baby out with the bathwater. Now with DB plans. And so the answer is that we should just scrap 401k plans. [7:02] JD: Right? [7:02] Matthew: And so it's like this idea that the best way to get a headline like this is just to swing that pendulum all the way over to some opposite direction. And you know, I think like Brian's approach is like, you know, why, why be so extreme regarding this experiment and instead why don't we talk about solutions and perhaps, you know, I don't know if incremental change is enough but like policy improvements that will apply to what we have. [7:26] JD: So there's, I think there's a couple moving factors here. I think she also brings up the point that these 401k plans, this, this experiment over the last few decades as she calls it, is slanted towards the wealthy and the high paid. Right? This is, this is a tax advantage thing for the big shots and the rank and file don't get to take advantage of it. Now I think we all have self admitted that there's a coverage gap, but it looks to me like through Secure 2.0, not an acronym and, and through everything we've done around automatic enrollment and automatic increases, the new tax credits that are on board through secure 2.0, the mandatory automatic enrollment plans for new plans, even when I want, I'm not going to put those in the mix. But we are making huge efforts towards continuing to improve what I think has already been and a lot of stats back this up, a pretty damn good thing over the last few decades to build wealth. So what do you think to this comment that these are built for the rich business owners and the executives and not for the benefit of the rank and file employees? [8:41] Matthew: Well, first of all, I think you know this idea that because the tax benefit with your, you know, your last dollar and your marginal tax bracket, because it does help somebody in a higher tax bracket by a few more pennies with the last dollar that they put in that therefore it's not good for other people is a little bit extreme to begin with. And then, and then secondly, I feel like the comments from her in particular kind of ignore everything that's happened. Let's go all the way back to the. And not use the acronym Pension Protection act of 2006, or PPA, as some might say. [9:17] JD: Well played. [9:18] Matthew: And, and, and recognize the improvements that have been made. So you know what would have been really nice is if the approach that she took was, hey, we're still not there yet. We've made a lot of good strides, but these are the four or five things that need to happen next, right? Instead of this idea that it's a failure, you know, so what we should do is we should go have the government run the whole thing, because that's working out really, really well for all the states. [9:43] JD: I think that's the problem, Maddie, is. Because I think if you ask her what the right solution is, and I'm sure she's telling the truth from her perspective is she doesn't think we fix this kind of private system. She thinks the government should step in and take this over. And so this always kind of confuses me because I said this to this guy the other day, like, we were talking about this briefly. I'm like, don't we have a government program? Like, don't they take money out of my paycheck all the time and put it away so I can have some source of revenue in my retirement? Like the government's already playing in this game. [10:25] Matthew: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, it almost ignores Social Security entirely. And you know, the other thing that I think about quite a bit is, you know, this idea of retirement is actually still a relatively new concept, isn't it? Like, if you think about the history of the country, I mean, it's, it's old to, like, those of us who are here, but like, I mean, what [10:47] JD: are we like the 20s and the 30s and 30s? Work till you die. [10:50] Matthew: You work till you die, right? And, and then. So what's happened now is people expect to. They're going to live longer, they're going to enter the workforce later, so they're actually going to work for a much smaller percentage of the years that they're alive. And then there's the concern that we don't have a 401k system to take care of them in the right way, so we should move it all over to the government. It just doesn't seem to Add up to me. [11:14] JD: Let me if anyone hasn't seen this and then we'll, we'll wrap up this this whole section. But it's Brian grass post on LinkedIn as I mentioned it's got 327 likes and it's got 70 plus comments and I highly recommend reading the comments. The comments are way more fun than than going to the actual Pensions and Investments article. So please do that. Let me give you a few examples of some of the comments. One of them said quote oh her again throw up emoji. Which I thought was really fun. Another one said everyone gets a trophy. No one wants to work. We're all victims and the government is here to save us. That was another comment. Nevin Adams, God bless him Nev I'll drink for that. Commented a very depressing just kind of in brackets he said sigh. Nevin just doesn't have the energy anymore. He, he's just tired of, of debating this woman George Frazier, big time advisor. [12:22] Matthew: Pennies picked up a penny. Pick up a penny George. [12:25] JD: That's the man called her a disgrace. And then someone else quoted lyrics from Janet Jackson's Control Song and I think they were referring to the government wanting control over this. So yeah, that's kind of the way I look at it is in a simple matter and we'll close it. You can have the final thought here Natty, but it's like do we really want the government doing this thing? You know and that's what it comes down to, right? [12:51] Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. Like two quick things. One, so the last time you needed to mail something, send it, did you, did you think USPS first or did you think do I go to FedEx or UPS first? [13:03] JD: Yeah, of course. [13:04] Matthew: Right. Like privatization is going to win out over time. And then, and then secondly and this is the part this will make you super jealous. We were at a meeting at the US treasury building in May and we were talking about this Provision in Secure 2.0 not an acronym. Talking about the need to make it easier for people to roll money out of a plan into a new plan. If anybody's been through that process, you know that the new plan's really good at taking your money, but the old plan makes it super hard for it to leave. You know what prompted most of that? It was a high ranking Department of Labor officials experience trying to get her money out of the tsp. Oh she's like this is miserable. [13:44] JD: I can't get my money and a brand. I think you got to rack them up for another one. That that chat bar called him out on for the United States Postal Service. So you owe two drinks. Basketball coach. Drink up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I, I totally get that. I just, I also at the same time feel like, and I don't want to get conspiracy theory. We kind of did that on the last show. But Covid kind of taught me that the government and all its organizations have some flaws too. You know, there's some conflicts of interest, there's some power hungry people. There's like. I just think it's not a very smart idea to let the government get involved in a lot of things. And if that offends someone out there in terms of your political belief, don't you. I know we're supposed to move on, [14:31] Matthew: but yeah, come don't we lose like an element of like the benefit of competition as well? This idea that like right now you've got employers out fighting to find a way to differentiate themselves. And like, this is a super small issue, but like 10 years ago, almost everybody had vesting schedules and pre Covid, they had vesting schedules. And now people are like, geez, we can't do that anymore. Well, if you're in the, if you're in some sort of federal government program, they don't have to react to private forces like that. [14:57] JD: I thought you were going to reference the competition between like service providers and instead you reference the competition between actual plan sponsors. That's a great point. You know. That's a great point. Yeah, I mean, you see that a lot in Silicon Valley where it's a tough market for to hire new people and the retirement plan ends up being that extra thing that if they really have a good one, they can lure someone to their company. We want that competition is what you're saying for sure. [15:25] Matthew: Absolutely. Absolutely. [15:27] JD: Great point. [15:27] Matthew: Absolutely. [15:29] JD: Brandon, we are going to. I've got a Smirnoff Ice here in front of me. Maddie, it is, it's 245 calories and 32 grams of sugar. It's, it's diabetes in a bottle. And I'm about to suck it down because. Brandon, you're gonna spin the Wheel of ice diabetes drink for. Oh, all my co hosts. I didn't bring the word in the kitchen. [16:00] Matthew: Hey, while this is happening, quick quiz question. How old do you think Wilford Brimley was? [16:09] JD: How old was he? When? [16:10] Matthew: In cocoon. Oh, can you picture him in cocoon? [16:15] JD: That was, yeah, that was in the 80s. [16:17] Matthew: Yep. [16:18] JD: Steve Gutenberg or whatever was in there. Whatever. Jesus, you know, must know this answer, but I Feel like you've frozen on me. Jesus. Holy. My guess is going to be he was 65. Matthew, where are you? Is he frozen or have I frozen? Everybody is not. You can't ask people if you've frozen because you're frozen. He froze you. [16:45] Matthew: You're moving just great. [16:47] JD: Hagler just got a bump up on the standings for chapter champion. Tonight he goes best show ever. Hang on, let me finish this thing. I'm sure he'll figure out he might [16:59] Matthew: be googling when Wilford Brimley. [17:02] JD: If not, it actually will be the best show ever because imagine me without my co host and no guests. I just could do whatever the I want. All right, well, Jesus, I'm. I still have like a quarter of it left. Hang on everybody. [17:27] Matthew: Take some lessons from your kid. [17:32] JD: There we go. All done. All right, well, until he gets back, let me set up the next topic. We haven't really talked about the Fred and Evan show. Excuse me, that's actually what it should be named. Huh, I got it wrong. But the Fred and Nevin show, I might continue to refer to it as such, but they had their season three, episode 15 on the department of Labor's new fiduciary rule. Hey buddy, you know when you. I'm here. And they've got a more recent episode, but on season three, episode five, which was the final one before season four, they talked about the Department of Labor proposed fiduciary rule that came out on Halloween. They made some old guy boomer jokes about whether it was a trick or a treat, which I loved. I was laughing. Love the boomer jokes from those guys. They're both icons and idols of mine. But I gotta ask you, you're an attorney representing this large national firm of advisors, which to me, when people push back on, on this type of rule, and this is just kind of a revamp of a rule that we've been dealing with for some 50 years. And this would be Biden's version of this? [18:54] Matthew: Yep. [18:55] JD: And let me tell you, just kind of kick you off, Maddie, is that the Financial Services Institute claim that that this proposed rule would result in significant costs, impose undue burdens and adversely affect Main Street American investors. They're also claiming that this rule would cost firms in our industry 2.7 billion in the first year and 2.5 billion in subsequent years. So I'm just going to kick it to you. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? The new proposed rules. There. Let's just leave it at that. I don't need to compound the question for you. [19:39] Matthew: Well, this will be interesting because I'm sure the comments can go, like, in two opposite directions, I would think. But here's my straight answer. The louder somebody complains about this, the more a plan sponsor should want to keep those people away from their employees. [19:54] JD: Oh, okay. I didn't expect you to go that route, but all right. [19:57] Matthew: Yeah. I mean, like, is it perfect? No, but there's. First of all, back when the 2016 rule went into effect for limited time before the, the federal court struck it down down in Texas, there's no evidence of those increased costs that people described. And I think what's important in the argument that you just. [20:17] JD: The 2.7. Absolutely. As a total inflation. Right. Yeah. [20:21] Matthew: And what you, what you read, there's, there's an, there's an implicit footnote in there. And what they're really saying is if we have to give advice in the best interest of our customers, then we're not going to want to chase after people with smaller accounts anymore because what we're selling them isn't in their best interest. [20:38] JD: It's a liability. The, the, the return on investment isn't worth it. The liability. So we'll ignore them. And then I think they also combine that with, like. And we have to create training and paperwork and disclosures and we have to, like, Mon, if you're a large broker dealer, and these are the people that are part. That the, that the FIS talks for. I'll drink. Is big broker dealers, and that there is, like, administrative costs that they're gonna have to bear to deal with new rules like this, because they have to monitor their 700 advisors across the country and make sure they're not slipping up in a foul of these rules. But I like where you went. You're basically saying, and this is kind of like where the dumb surfer goes, like, look, in the retirement plan space, aren't we all acting as fiduciaries? Like, when we're directing committees or sitting down with participants? I feel like we all know that, that we're all acting in that, that space. Even Nevin says on the podcast that most of the advisors he knows would kind of look at this and say his words were, yeah, so what? Like, okay, whatever. However, can I ask you, is the industry as a whole also concerned, though? And I don't know the answer to this. I'm not as well versed on this. This impacts rollovers in some way too, right. Where you have to be a little more cautious. [22:00] Matthew: Yeah. [22:01] JD: So what, what about rollovers? Is that a problem. And does companies like Empower, are they concerned about this new type of rule? [22:09] Matthew: Well, I think on the first point, so, I mean, that's probably the most critical aspect of this is you got somebody who's in a plan, their, you know, their whole career or their whole two years they spend with the company, whatever it is, and they got fiduciary protections all over the place in theory, maybe a committee, maybe there's an outside advisor or whatever. And then the moment that they're going to leave, perhaps the biggest point, the big, the most important advice point for them is what to do with that. Hey, take a rollover, take a distribution, and when you do it, here's what you do with that money. Boy, it seems to me like that's a great place to make sure those people have more protections. I mean, here we've got lawsuits filed over whether somebody was using the 8 basis point Vanguard fund instead of the 6 point basis basis Point Vanguard Fund. But then we're not paying attention when, you know, somebody wants to, you know, roll somebody into some overpriced annuity so they can charge 6 or 7% right up front. Come on. So, and I think also to that, to Nevin's point, you know, a lot of people are, so what? We got enough other restrictions already in place, you know, Regbi, etc. Where I think the, the investment professionals who have been successful for the last few years are the ones who are saying, hey, we don't love all the rules and restrictions, but like the mentality, the idea that, like, hey, you go get a haircut, you think like, they're going to cut your hair, it's going to be in your best interest. You go to a doctor, like, hey, they're going to give you advice that's in your best interest. Boy, when it comes to your retirement money, doesn't that make sense? [23:34] JD: So, I mean, Nevin and Fred brought up another interesting thing. I was about to kind of kick out of this one and keep moving forward, but this caught my attention. I mentioned Secure 2.0 earlier. I mentioned this kind of, this ambition of our industry to solve the coverage gap and through these tax credits and automatic enrollment, really get out and start up a whole bunch of new plants. And I think it was Nevin that brought up, or maybe it was Fred that said, like, ooh, like, I don't think the, I don't think our experts are going to be able to run out there at full speed and sell all these new tiny startup plans. So we're going to be Looking more at a lot of these generalists and or people kind of getting into the biz for the first time. And therefore they were almost making the argument of like do we really want to hold these people accountable to the ethics of a super good professional? And they were kind of of two minds on it. But what do you think about that? Like, we've got to go sell a bunch of startup plans, Maddie. And no, in fact George Frazier can't go sell them all. We got to go find that young, dumb, stupid guy at Edward Jones and send him out there and he might not know enough to properly be a fiduciary. I don't know, I make it well. [24:55] Matthew: Or Edward Jones says we don't want that stupid young out there doing this, so we're not going to allow you to do it. And therefore it's had the chilling effect that we really want, which is we don't want numbskulls out selling these things. We don't want them chasing retirement. [25:11] JD: Don't we maybe need numb skulls to sell a whole bunch of these to kind of change the coverage gap? Well, I think there's a 401k pros everywhere. The money's not there, the revenue's not there. The. You know what I mean? [25:22] Matthew: Yeah. I think that begs a good question about whether the key to coverage is quality or quantity or some mixture of both. Right. Like if we really improve the coverage gap, if we've given somebody an overpriced bad 401k plan, you know, I mean, maybe I'm not a huge, huge, huge, huge pep pusher. Oh, sorry. [25:44] JD: Yeah. [25:44] Matthew: But like maybe a pooled employer plan is like that's where you'll see some of those grow. That's where our firm's putting all startups. They're all going into the pooled employer plan. They're getting a real plan. [25:56] JD: Getting my get rid of that acronym. You're getting my chat bar fired up on me because I'm a, I'm an anti bullet employer plan person. And they're laughing. [26:05] Matthew: We have one. We have one. Because I didn't want to not have one. [26:09] JD: Yeah. And I, I do want to say for the record, I've said this from the very beginning. The one place where I think a pat makes sense and go back and look for what I've said is, is a national advisor shop that had tended to focus more in the upper market, wants to provide a solution for the micro market and then takes does the due diligence to build their own pep and make makes A quality one that lacks conflicts of interest and then tries to sell that to the crowd. I'm totally okay with that. Where I'm against Pepsi or when they're outside of the advisor's control. And so if that prime capital or you guys are building your own, I'm totally cool with that. But we won't get into the PEP argument. [26:58] Matthew: I can. Yeah, that's fine. I don't want to die on that hill. For sure. [27:01] JD: For sure. I just feel like. Yeah. What you're. Here's my quick one. On the. On the. Oh, I think I said it. Yeah. [27:07] Matthew: Yeah. [27:07] JD: I owe a couple training. That's what the graphic was flying on the screen. My biggest problem with it, Maddie, is that what you just said was all those new startup plans and this new tidal wave of new plans to solve the coverage gap, what they could really use is fiduciary services. They need to outsource their fiduciary responsibility. And what I've always said is I live in the micro space, right? So I'm a third party administrator. That's what we've been selling for. Coming up on 50 years. We sell startup plans. That's what we do all the time. And guess how many. What percentage of the startup plans that my sales team sells would like to pay the extra cost for a 316 fiduciary. It's not a thing, bro. They're not trying to keep the cost down. And so what's funny about pooled employer plans is we're selling premium level services to startup auto body shops and flower shops on the corner that don't want to pay that premium. And the government was sold on this economies of scale that these things are going to be cheaper because we're going to pull together all these small employers and the dust has already settled on that and they're not. We'll move on. We'll move on. Okay. I'm already getting hot and flustered. [28:24] Matthew: This is awesome. I think they're the best thing ever created. No. [28:30] JD: God damn it. I'm swigging right off the tequila right now. Just one little. Oh boy. Okay. Whoo. Oh, I got one more. One. Because I. One more thing. Because I don't know. So I'm just a retirement plan guy. I never really focused on this. The five part test. This. So this is. This is at the core of all this. Right. So the five part test will be replaced by something else. Maybe if you can give us a kind of 15 second kind of synopsis of what the. That means [29:04] Matthew: well, first of all, the five part test is from 1975 and think about how different the retirement plan world and the IRA world is in 2024 versus 75. Right. I mean, you can't even really, somebody just said you needed to compare apples to apples. You certainly can't even do it there. Right. So it's a completely different world. But the general essence of that was that there had to be like this regular basis. That's the key term, like one of those five parts is this idea that advice was being paid or was being given on a regular basis. And so think about how easy that would be for somebody who didn't want to be a fiduciary and wanted to give advice. It was really easy to get out of that. Like nobody wanted to be called that F word. Right. And so they're like, I will, I will run from this and I'll just get out of that regular basis test. Well, what we can see now is if we get rid of that, the question becomes a little bit less about whether that advisor can fall out under one of those five parts and instead is there the type of relationship where the recipient of the advice feels like, hey, this is advice given to me by a financial professional. I should be able to rely upon that so that without going through the whole five part test. JD I mean, I think that's the key part is that regular basis, that idea that, you know, they find these financial recommendations are given on a regular basis. And that's really the biggest argument is to get rid of that. And what's interesting about that, by the [30:27] JD: way, get rid of one, get rid of the kind of one transaction, safety net type of thing. [30:33] Matthew: Yeah, exactly. Their point would be, hey, I've only given you one rollover recommendation. I only told you to buy this expensive annuity one time. That's not regular. And what's interesting about, I've seen some comments in here too about like how there will be lawsuits filed. Right. And the, the, the, the Republicans will find a jurisdiction that will strike this down. If, you know, if, if Biden wins reelection, then the, the Republicans will find a place and they'll strike it down. So it probably won't be around very long, but one of the arguments there is going to be that this is outside of, you know, the statutory language. Well, the 1975 one is kind of outside of the statutory language too. I mean, they're just, they're both interpretive guidance. Right. And so, yeah, you know, I mean, I think, I think one of the key points on this fiduciary reg is. And I'll be interested in the comments here. This is not a political stance, but [31:23] JD: so if Trump become one a little bit, it. [31:26] Matthew: Well, if Trump wins, this thing struck down right away. [31:29] JD: No, that's. That's America in 2024, unfortunately. If we can turn every. We can. We can turn every subject into a political one. [31:38] Matthew: We could. You're right. And. But if Biden wins, it hangs around a little bit longer until a court strikes it down. So you really left at the end, like, just wondering how many firms are going to adopt that shift in ideology so that the next time this comes up again, they'll do like kind of what Nevin said when they're like, yeah, [31:58] JD: hey, Hackler, another great one there. I know I'm all up Hackler's ass right now, but he just said Biden can't run and he's mean. [32:04] Matthew: You can't even walk. You said, [32:08] JD: good one. So that reminds me, don't forget, everyone, Chop, our champion has changed in 2024. We have a leaderboard. We have standings throughout the year. And a thousand points are up for grab tonight. So swing for the fences, people. Swing for the fences. Very highly educated. I know words. [32:27] Matthew: I have the best words. [32:29] JD: I have the. Less you. I'm gonna leave it up to you, Maddie. You wanna, you wanna play a game or do you want to talk about in plan retirement income solutions? You tell me while I fill up my tequila. [32:48] Matthew: Let's play a game first. [32:49] JD: All right, let's play a game. Well, the game we're gonna play, Maddie, is a totally original game that was invented by me. Many people try to copy it, but they're never successful. They try to use different names for it and try to do it different ways. But I want you to know I created this game. It's goddamn genius. It's a totally original, no dope game. The way this game works, Maddie, is I'm going to ask you. I'm going to actually just bring up a thing. It could be pop culture, whatever. And I'm going to ask you if you think it is. Nope. Or you think it is dope. And then what we would love, what the chat bar would love, is for you to explain to us why you think it's dope or dope. Okay. The first one is I, I, I didn't think it was controversial until I wrote it down. Now that I look at it, I feel like I might offend some people. So I apologize. But this happens to me personally in life. So the husband I Know, this is very kind of, you know, male against female. Again, I apologize. The husband sitting shotgun while the wife drives the car. My wife will not let me drive her anywhere. Like, she always has to drive. I have to sit shotgun. This could even be if we're taking my truck somewhere. Crystal says I prefer to drive. I feel we talked about vocabulary earlier. Emasculated. That's not a word. Something like that. I. I just feel like I'm a little boy getting in the passenger seat while my wife drives. How do you feel about this, Maddie? No. For dope on the husband sitting shotgun. [34:50] Matthew: Oh, it's dope. You. Well, you need to get over those insecurities to begin with. [34:56] JD: I do. [34:57] Matthew: And. And get over your sense of the patriarchy a little bit, too. And then I think. I mean, here's the deal. I like to watch streaming shows while I drive, but I think it's a lot more dangerous when I have that mounted, like, by my steering wheel than if I could sit in the passenger seat and hold my phone instead of look at it while I'm driving on the freeway. [35:19] JD: Yes. Okay, the second. The second overdub question. Maddie is watching videos while you drive a car. Jesus Christ. Fantastic. [35:30] Matthew: Fantastic. Dope. [35:33] JD: That is not okay. I have never. I have never watched Kelly Slater in a surf competition with my phone propped right in front of my speedometer. It's never happened. [35:41] Matthew: Never. Never happened. Never in my life, especially as specific as that was. I'm sure it's never happened. [35:48] JD: Okay, fine, fine. You're right. I will take your. Your advice and to improve myself as a human being. I also saw someone in the chat bar, say, hey, it's a great time for a roadie. Like, you can drink while someone else is driving. I. I definitely agree. That's a good point. I should bring a beverage in the car every time my wife drives. Okay, next. No Burdock question. I'm sure you're. You have a bit of a conflict of interest with this one, but that's okay. Being named a fellow. Are you nober dope on being named a fellow? And when you're named a fellow, do you wear a bow tie and, like, a little hat or something? Or do they. I don't know. I'm also imagining, like, a Harry Potter type of scene. Does someone hit you with a wand? Like, what the. Is being named a fellow? No, per. Dope. [36:44] Matthew: Dope. [36:45] JD: Of course you would say that. [36:48] Matthew: I have to say that because the only way it happens is you get people to go, like, fight for you, and you get like, really like people who've been important in your life and people have been important in your career to like go through a bunch of time. So I think I gotta honor that and say thank you. Now, I don't know about the other. [37:07] JD: Hang on, hang on. These people that are fighting for you are these like people you admire? [37:13] Matthew: Yeah, definitely. [37:14] JD: Wow. [37:14] Matthew: Okay, so it's a cool thing, but I don't know about the rest because we were, we were. I was in a like a burlap bag the entire ceremony. So we don't get to like see what happens. So I don't know if that was a wand or a cane or a bat. I don't know what they were hitting us with. But it was after seven or eight of those taps upon the temple, it gets better. [37:34] JD: Wow. [37:35] Matthew: That's all I can tell you. [37:36] JD: Well, it's. And it's scary when you're in the burlap bag and you're inside the penta pentagram of candles that, you know, you feel like the bag could go on fire. [37:45] Matthew: Well, and it's weird because that you can't see the candles through there most of the time, but you can feel it because it gets hot. So that was that, you know? Yeah. [37:53] JD: God damn. Okay. Yeah. What I love. I'm gonna dream right now in front of everyone watching, just expose my inner self. What I love for Frederician Nevin Adams and Preston Murray to like nominate me to be a fellow of. Of 401k. Are you kidding me? I would. I would be so excited. That would be awesome. Okay, good for you. I'm. You've changed my mind. You've changed my mind on. [38:21] Matthew: Okay. [38:21] JD: Bellow. Okay. I. I drink my coffee in the morning, black, just, you know, as dark roasted as possible. My daughter, my vegan daughter, she drinks tea all the time. She's always offering me up a tea. And I tried. I put the little bag in the hot water and let it seep or whatever it's got to do and I don't know. Drinking tea. Maddie, are you nobody on drinking tea? [38:56] Matthew: Nope. Trying too hard. [38:58] JD: Trying too hard. What are you trying too hard? [39:00] Matthew: Trying to be like. I think trying to be outside of the norm. Just. Just drink a coffee. [39:06] JD: I mean, I think you just killed my daughter. Like straight young kids. That's her. [39:11] Matthew: Young kids should do what they want. But so maybe the rule is if you're 21 and older. Nope. Just drink coffee. Coffee's everywhere. All. Just drink it. [39:21] JD: Drink tea. All fellows drink tea. Yeah. After that rough night with the candles and the burlap bags, you know, they have tea in the morning, for sure. [39:29] Matthew: Absolutely. [39:30] JD: Like an oblong. An oblong. Or maybe a green tea. Maybe a green. [39:35] Matthew: Yeah. Well. And I think it's a shame that I guess we can let it go that you have that objection to the teabagging you referenced earlier. So we can move on from that. [39:47] JD: All right, I got one for you. [39:48] Matthew: Everybody was thinking it. [39:49] JD: I got one for you. This one really frustrates me not to. Not to, like, influence your decision here, which I know is not true, yet. You don't care what I say. You're going to answer your honest truth. That's very plain to me. So let me go ahead and set it up. Tails on shrimp. I order a pasta. I order a, you know, whatever. And I want shrimp in it. I. I pass on the chicken or the poor. But I want. I want shrimp. And yeah, I want those little curly guys and their pink little bodies to kind of chew into. But I paid for my meal. I don't want to have to pull off and discard the hard, little gross, dirty, dirty tail that's there. And worse, what if I miss one? I'm just going into the pasta. Like, leaving the tails on the shrimp. Nope. Or dope. [40:41] Matthew: Nope. And it would only be dope if it were also okay to eat your chicken with the feathers on it. [40:49] JD: Excellent analogy. [40:51] Matthew: Or the. Whatever we call the outer shell on a cow, which escapes me right now, but we'll just go with the outer shell, the hide. There you go. You go with the hide of a cow. Can you imagine if you go in and order like a 21 ounce, you know, rib eye, and they bring it out and there's, you know, some sort of, like, through the fight on top of it. [41:11] JD: Yeah. [41:12] Matthew: And the other thing that's weird is, you know how it's. It's awkward to cut those things off because you. You don't want to use a knife with pot [41:21] JD: in there. And I pull them off. [41:22] Matthew: You pull them off. Or you're, like, trying to side cut with the fork and. Yeah, I'm with you. It's. It's a no. [41:27] JD: You know what sucks about when you cut it is I feel like you're losing some shrimp meat. So you go to cut and you, you know, it's. It's kind of like trimming your dog's nails. You know, you don't want to get them down at the. Whatever the that's called. So you got to give a little room for error there. So when I'm cutting The shrimp tail. I'm. I'm losing out on all kinds of shrimp meat. [41:49] Matthew: Absolutely. [41:49] JD: I paid for in my pasta. [41:52] Matthew: I'm with you. [41:53] JD: I would. I would love for a restaurateur or. Or a Michelin star chef to let me know what's the pro of leaving it on? Like, why is it presentation? [42:08] Matthew: Have you watched the Bear? [42:09] JD: Of course. I love it. Love it. [42:11] Matthew: How about. [42:11] JD: Okay, so if anybody. Go ahead. [42:15] Matthew: If anybody hasn't watched the Bear, first of all, they should stop listening right now and go watch it. And then they should get to the. They should get to episode seven and watch. [42:24] JD: You're so right. You got to stick with it. You're gonna. You're gonna be in the beginning and feel like you want to bail out. Don't stay. [42:30] Matthew: And when you get to Forks, that episode seven of season two, and you see all the care that they take to do everything and why that matters, and then you wonder why they would possibly leave. [42:41] JD: Guarantee you, in the fourth episode, they take the tails off at that restaurant. [42:46] Matthew: Absolutely, they do. Absolutely. [42:48] JD: We agree on that. [42:49] Matthew: We're good. [42:50] JD: Okay. Good, good, good. All right. We'll move away from the. The game. Well done, Maddie. Well done. Great explanation, sound advice. I. I feel like anytime I come to a fork in the path of life, I should call you. You have. You have phenomenal advice. You are of sound mind and. Yeah, we'll move on. Okay. I'm drinking a lot of tequila right now. I don't have to coach basketball a little bit. Let's go to the next article. 4K. Specialist magazine has an article titled 401K Kids Bill Seeks to create savings accounts for every American child. I should have pulled this up. I didn't pull it up. I'm not going to go search for it now. But I read it from start to finish. Okay. We were bashing on the government earlier saying, I don't want the government involved in my retirement plan stuff. We have had guests on this show before that have talked about the potential advantage of creating an individual retirement account for your child at a young age. Stocks. See, it was totally easy. More stocks. Boom. Asset backed securities. Boom. Credit default swaps. Boom, boom, boom. God just dropped 400 points. This is not happening. Dear Lord. I made a horrible, horrible mistake. State it's dropping more. I want to take it back. How do Iing take it back? Sell, sell, sell, sell. That's phenomenal. And obviously everyone in this chat bar are watching out there, recorded, understands that, you know, through the. Through the power of compounding. If you can get someone started early. We could do a lot of really cool shit for kids as they reach age 18 or 25 or whatever. So part of me really likes that concept when I read this. The real how of it was that I think I saw a $2,500 max per year that you could put into this thing. And again, this is a proposed bill. I think it's got like five different Democrats that are behind it. Chuck Schumer, some others. But, but when. Why, why the Democratic kind of government side? Well, if you're not a rich person and you're lower income, then they don't go into details here, but maybe the government would start kicking in some kind of money into it to kind of start it off for lower paid people. So you're the guest on the show. I'll ask you like, so what's your. How do you feel about this? [45:39] Matthew: Well, I think if you were wondering whether it's an election year, proposals like this help to answer that question. Right? [45:47] JD: Like it's, whoa, I can't p point. You know, earlier I thought you were a strong Biden supporter. Now I think you're maga, bro. Let's don't answer, but keep going. [45:58] Matthew: Yeah, it's, you know, well, you don't want to be one or the other [46:00] JD: necessarily, but no, you don't. [46:03] Matthew: It's posturing. [46:04] JD: You can't, you can't be RFK Jr buddy, that's not going to work. You got to pick. [46:08] Matthew: Yeah, you know, it's, it's posturing to a pretty great degree. I think it, I mean, I understand it. If you read the comments around it though, they're saying, like, you know, if, if you get to age 21 or 22 and you had, you know, 50 grand in there, that that was what you would need to be able to become independently wealthy. And like, I know that's how Josh Itzo got started was on that account. It was a, it was a savings bond. It just like redoubled multiple times and he, it was 50 grand and he turned it into this. [46:42] JD: Yeah. So, by the way, just so you know, we both owe three drinks right now. Believe it or not, this is the truth. Josh's last name is an acro sin on this game. So it ring us up, Brandon. Yeah. Josh would be nowhere without the money that his parents provided for him and that little savings. You're totally right. [47:00] Matthew: Yeah. I'm guessing that Schumer and others don't want to use that ad that you, that you showed too, because I don't think they're proposing to have the kids manage the money within that. But that, that probably be a non starter. [47:15] JD: Yeah, I mean it's a self directed account. You gotta let the baby choose what they want, man. [47:20] Matthew: I mean, yeah, you do absolutely. Right. [47:23] JD: To me, it was you. So your only issue then, which I totally get, it'd probably be my only issue with this is if the government's putting in money, then we gotta have this conversation because we all know the government's money doesn't come out of a magical tree of dollar bills. Like it comes from everyone's pockets. [47:44] Matthew: Right. [47:44] JD: And so then we're kind of, you know, giving money these people. Now with that said, and I think people that watch the shows figured out that I'm pretty much Republican. But I, I like the idea of trying to seed young children and babies accounts and connect like I said earlier, use this power of compounding to. Yes, I'll, I'll make fun of your 50k, but for a lot of those kids that are now young adults to, to have $50,000. And I think the article talks about, okay, you can use it for school, you know, and they even talk about building this on the chassis of 529 plans. [48:24] Matthew: 529, yeah, yeah. [48:27] JD: But anyways, yeah, the mechanics are there, the operations. I got it all figured. Yeah. But they talk about you could use it to start a new business. You could use it for, you could save it and use it for actual retirement. So I don't know, I think it's kind of cool for us to figure out like, let's put some money in for kids. I guess my draw line is how much money are we going to give to, you know, other people? And then, and then I guess you could get really. And maybe this is where you're going with it. Maddie is on the, the whole Ito thing, which I'll drink for is just because you throw 50k at someone doesn't mean they're not going to it up and spend it on Natty Lights and, and a new truck and then be done with it. Right? [49:11] Matthew: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's a neat idea. [49:15] JD: Okay, well, we'll see, see where it goes. But I mean, it's got me thinking, I maybe should vote for Biden. That's pretty good. I don't know. Okay, we have come to the point of the show that we are going to name a chat bar champion. The way this works, Maddie, is you've been paying attention to that chat bar. You are going to vote for your favorite person in that chat bar that I think had been the most intelligent, the most witty. Maybe they're the, the, I don't know, maybe you hung out with them a week ago and you just want to tell them you love them by nominating them. But this year we're going to hold a standings and every year I'm, I'm babbling. Now, who do you want to vote for? Maddie, who's your vote for chapter champion? You all know how this works. Anyone in that list? [50:25] Matthew: Crystal. [50:26] JD: Okay, Crystal. I feel like Crystal's been away for a while. [50:31] Matthew: Why? [50:31] JD: Chris? [50:32] Matthew: Yeah, yeah, Crystal, because I saw her name earlier when I still had access to my full screen before I got kicked off and been working off my phone. And you simply remember the last name Benson. And, and I thought of the old sitcom and then, and then it's so just recommended her and I wanted to take a drink. So I think she has two strikes in her favor. [50:57] JD: She's good, she's good. Check. She's been retired and then we've kind of lost her for a little while. She says, yeah, I've been busy. You've all heard this before. Let's remind Crystal, shall we? Chat bar? Crystal, get your priorities straight. What the. Like, it's, it's the first and third Thursday. You know, if you can't schedule your life around that and like, have a commitment to your industry and your career, you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. Okay. She's usually napping. Okay, well, yeah, nap. You didn't say that. I, I understand that. And that's a nap is a valuable thing. I, I, I'm, I'm gonna piss everyone off, but I think it's well deserved. I know I mentioned it early on, but, and I don't necessarily like the short wearing guy. This guy wears shorts like 365 days a year. But I'm going with Hackler. I'm going with Hackler for my. Okay, so now here's how we're going to do it. Maddie, you are a witty person. You're a fellow, so you should be able to pull this off. You're going to have to create a sentence for each of these two candidates to finish with their in the chat bar. So you'll say something to the effect of, you know, if I drove JD's truck, I would drive it here, or whatever you want. You know, you pick whatever. It doesn't have to involve jd. I'll just give you an example. So you come up with a sentence that they have to finish and then we pick the winner based on how creative their answer is. You ready? You can do this. Blurt it out. Sentence. Go, Crystal. And you're head to head. [52:48] Matthew: If JD were thrown in a burlap sack and exposed to candles all around him and hit upside the head with a pogo stick eight times, he would [52:57] JD: cry in and he would cry and he would cry and. Okay, Crystal. Okay, Hackler, this is your chance to get a thousand points. Who do we have? Brandon, what's going on? Oh, who we lost. So nice coming back. [53:17] Matthew: I'm back. [53:18] JD: Crystal says put on his tin hat. Okay. And by tin hat, I believe you mean tinfoil. How we get it? All right, all right, all right. Let's referencing the show a little bit. Okay. Hackler says ask for a beer. Maddie. [53:36] Matthew: Yeah. [53:37] JD: And the Chad bar champion for the very first show in February and winning 1000 points to join first place on the leaderboard with Brian Williams and Nate Moody. We now have a three way tie at the top of the chapter champion retire. Alex. Leaderboard. All right, Matthew, Maddie, jd, thank you for joining us tonight. We very much appreciate your wit, your intelligence. Wait, that's the same thing. Your. Your funniness. That's a word, right? It's got to be funniness. I think so. Yeah. Let me look it up. And. And spending some time with us. So hopefully we'll have you back sometime. I mean, maybe not. Who knows? I don't know. [54:36] Matthew: Yeah, we'll wait and see, right? [54:38] JD: We never know what the future will hold for us unless we ask Therese Guladucci. She knows. But thanks for being here. We very much appreciate it. [54:49] Matthew: Do you think she might say that this experiment has failed and that we should just give up? [54:54] JD: No, I don't think so. I think even if Teresa was here, she would say even that's awesome. Like this. I kind of like this JD Maddie thing. I think it could go somewhere. I think we should continue on. She might even, dare I say, put some of Yalls money into it. Let's put some government money behind this thing. You know, like let's take from the taxes and promote a future JD and Maddie show. [55:18] Matthew: Everything about this whole thing feels like a governmental production. I mean, just so thank you, JD. [55:26] JD: And thank you to you out there, you dedicated 401k ricazoids. I appreciate you. I love you. You're my family. Really, if we're. If we're going to be honest about this, you're my little Thursday night family. And that means like after the show and after a few more tequilas and a little bit of golf central. I would like to cuddle up with you under the covers and spoon you. We'd wear our pajamas. We wouldn't be naked. It would be a friend thing. Just like a friend community. Spooning in the bed. That's what I'd like to do to you. That's how much I love you. Yes, Ed. Yikes. That's the proper response. We will see you in two weeks. Experimental version of Retireholics. No, I have not fired Rug Guy. I've not fired Nerdy Chad, nor have I let go Silent J. They will all be back for that show and we look forward to seeing you there. Game show format maybe. I like that idea. Love you too, Ponkaj. Love you too. Brandon, play us some music. Let's get the fuck out of here. See you later, everybody. We are the Retire Alex Justin Timberlake Show.