The Back To School Choice That Could Be Costing You 155% MORE

The 'Glow Up': Why Back-to-School Shopping Feels Like Christmas

[0:00] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: I was talking to my daughter actually yesterday and we were talking about Back To School and clothes and all that stuff and she's like Dad going Back To School is all about the glow up the g l o dash u p the glow up i'm like what.

[0:16] DANO WEIR: What is that welcome to it's all money host all right here in front of you we're checking out it's all money Couple of dads with a couple of kids. And guess what? Open up your wallet.

[0:36] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: It's just like Christmas time. Same deal. But it's Back To School.

[0:41] DANO WEIR: And it's and you're paying nonetheless. That's right. Welcome to It's All Money, and as we're recording this, Back To School is around the corner. And the idea with this show is looking at how money intersects with your life. And sometimes that is the big stuff, it's the macroeconomic stuff, it's the accounts, it's the investments. And other times it's the budgetary items and the seasonal things that eventually end up hitting your checking account. And that is the case with Back To School, which is, as of 2024, hitting... Record highs, just like all other prices. Yeah. So this episode, we wanted to look at what are some of the current prices? What are people paying? What are some strategies for people who want to pay less? And this is unexpected, but why? Why Back To School is so expensive? And I have a theory that has nothing to do with the economy. So marketwatch.com pulled some great stats from them. Families, here we go, Darren. This is the number right now. Families, so this is including multiple kids. This is the 2.5 kids, right? This isn't just one child, but this is families. Families of high school-aged children expect to spend an average of $875 on clothing, shoes, electronics, and school supplies for back-to-school. That number is actually slightly down. From 890 last year which i don't believe because it actually feels more expensive this year than last year but i'm not gonna nitpick but if you're gonna take a victory lap on 15 you just go right ahead and do that this is according to the national retail foundation okay so how does that break out what are people paying so the majority of that is going to clothes so 423 on average for apparel 253 for the clothes here's the mind-blowing part 170 for shoes.

The Real Numbers: What Families Are Actually Spending in 2024

[2:43] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Well, so let me interrupt for a SEC because, Dan, that makes perfect sense. I was talking to my daughter actually yesterday, and we were talking about Back To School and clothes and all that stuff, and she's like, Dad, going Back To School is all about the glow up, the G-L-O-U-P, the glow up. I'm like, what is that? And she's like, well, Dad, when you go Back To School, you have to show that you've glowed up, that you're mature and that you're more hip and you're more cool. And I was like? I mean, I guess that's true. I can remember feeling that way as a kid. Yeah. And that's not new. It's not new. We didn't have a term, though. Have you heard the term?

[3:22] DANO WEIR: Okay. So he mentioned this in pre-production. Yeah. And I was like, you know, I know a few more Gen Z terms than Darren. And Darren's just hearing glow up.

[3:33] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: I'm the kid that was raised by a hippie with no TV. So you have to, mind you, I was definitely not in the cool vein.

[3:39] DANO WEIR: I had heard glow up before.

[3:41] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Yeah, I had.

[3:42] DANO WEIR: And I think that is a driver behind all this stuff. Back To School is all about, wow.

[3:50] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Right. Boom. Look at that person. Here I am. That's right. That's right.

[3:54] DANO WEIR: So, and apparently that means you need $170 shoes.

[3:59] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: What? I mean, just the Jordans. My son, he loves Jordans. He is obsessed with Jordans. A pair of Jordans is like $170, man. That's crazy.

[4:08] DANO WEIR: That's right on. So we're just going to cross out shoes and say it's actually $170 for Jordans.

[4:15] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Yeah, definitely not the Payless shoe store.

[4:17] DANO WEIR: No.

[4:18] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Shoe price.

[4:19] DANO WEIR: Is Payless still a thing?

[4:21] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Maybe it did get bought out.

[4:22] DANO WEIR: I think it went under. You know? Let's see. Again. There you go. You and I are throwbacks now. $309 for electronics, 140, which actually seems low. What would you get for $309 for electronics? That's not a phone. That's not a computer. That number stunned me.

Graphing Calculators, Jordans, and the Price of Keeping Up

[4:42] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Well, just to agree, I was looking up graphing calculators. By the way, graphing calculators, remember graphing calculators?

[4:48] DANO WEIR: I literally was handling one this weekend. I found my wife's old TI-89.

[4:52] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Right? And I was like, oh, I'm just going to give my daughter my TI-89 because why buy a new one? Let's see how they've advanced first, though, because there's probably a lot of functions that mine doesn't have that they now want for the kids. I'm like, these are way cooler. We're buying you a new one, Brooklyn. But they're $100. And on sale, otherwise $125.

[5:10] DANO WEIR: So what's different about the new ones?

[5:11] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: The screen's just better. I always hated the screen. It was just like this very faint black Mark, and you have to increase it. But they're new white screens, and it's just easier, the functionality of it. Still does the same math, but I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to make you use my T-89, whatever it was. We'll get you to it.

[5:31] DANO WEIR: When I was in school... Those it's i'm actually shocked that the new one is only a hundred dollars because that's how much it was when i was in school right when i took mr Pillsbury's calculus class at casa grande Pillsbury the greatest calculus teacher in the world i went to college the next year and had the same calculus class and it was way more confusing i was like mr Pillsbury explains a lot better but anyways but when i when i took his when i took his class i suddenly it was like everyone was talking about this graphing calculator i had to get and it was a hundred dollars but then you could get it used for a hundred dollars people i mean graphing calculators were a full-on industry unto itself like yeah black market pre-EBay you still have yours right i still have because i was like i'm gonna hold on to this this is gonna hold value when i found my wife's i was actually excited because i was like either a these things are brick and are gonna work forever i'm gonna give it to my son who probably need it in 10 years not even probably less or b i'll just go on EBay and sell it i was like Like, great, I'll just sell this on EBay for $100. $20. $19.99 on EBay for a TI-89.

[6:37] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's appreciation. That is a thinking asset.

[6:40] DANO WEIR: Correct.

[6:41] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: But Dan, I just want you to know how excited I am. I'm going to actually relearn how to use a graphing calculator this year because I'm sure my daughter is going to come home with homework that she has no clue what to do, and poor me is going to sit there with a YouTube. So talk to me in six months, and I'll show you how to use the graphing calculator.

[6:59] DANO WEIR: Is she doing geometry? What's the class?

[7:02] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: I mean, I was shocked. She's going into eighth grade and they want a graphing calculator. So I don't know. The common core curriculum they do now is it's crazy, man. Like trying to figure out what they're actually doing. I consider myself a reasonably smart guy.

[7:16] DANO WEIR: You literally work with numbers in the stock market.

[7:19] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And I'm like looking at this stuff. What are they doing?

[7:22] DANO WEIR: My son showed me fourth grade math and I'm like, yeah, yeah. I got a five on my AP calculus. Mr. Pillsbury. What? Is this stuff? Yeah. I'm lost there too.

[7:33] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Oh, long division? Let me do that again.

[7:34] DANO WEIR: All right. So the numbers, the final numbers are averaging about $141 then for actual school supplies, the basic stuff, paper and pencils. Interesting, depending on where you are, a new category that has popped up on the Back To School cost are cleaning products, either COVID related, sanitation stuff, or in some cases, cleanette. And basics that you would kind of expect in the classroom. Some states, some counties across America have had funding challenges, and they've thrown it back on students to fill in some of those gaps. So some of the back-to-school list and some of the back-to-school costs have actually are costs that used to be picked up by the school that are now falling on parents.

[8:19] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Are you saying, Dan, that not all our tax money actually makes it to the classroom?

[8:24] DANO WEIR: It's possible.

[8:24] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's exactly what I'm saying.

[8:25] DANO WEIR: It's possible. Yeah, it's possible. No comment.

[8:29] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: But it is interesting. We literally just bought wipes for the classroom. We bought paper towels.

[8:34] DANO WEIR: You're doing it, then.

[8:35] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: We're doing it. Yeah, this is on the list. It's like you buy the wipes, you buy the paper towels, you buy the pens. We're buying stuff for the classroom, and that's on the expected list. You show up for a stay, and you've got a bag full of goodies.

College Costs and a Professor's Wild Grading Story

[8:48] DANO WEIR: College students, we didn't go too heavy on that, but college students can expect to pay even more. They're planning to spend $1,364, so a dramatic increase, to go Back To School. I didn't get details on that, but I'm wondering if some of that is books, too. So books in college, I just remember being through the roof, although maybe some of them are digital now. All of this to say, so the average, again, back to the average, the average that American families are expecting to spend on Back To School is $875. But I'd like to remind you that 49% of households in America cannot afford a thousand dollar emergency. So, I mean, it's pretty well near what someone might have for an emergency fund. The source on that was CNBC, by the way.

[9:32] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: So funny story real quick, college professor, my Dad's in college. His college professor says, here, you need to buy these three books. They all go out and buy these books. They buy this one book. This one book has a college professor's name on it. He says, oh, that's my book. Go ahead and rip out page 50 in there. That's the only page you'll need. Throw away the book. You don't use the rest of the time. I'm like, what? My Dad was like, all the guy was doing is making money off it, right? So these college professors sometimes will just say, buy these books because they're making money off it.

[9:57] DANO WEIR: Wow.

[9:57] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Isn't that crazy? When he told me that story, I'm like, and this guy was still allowed to teach. And this is way back when. And I was just.

[10:05] DANO WEIR: Blown away so i've always ever since that story been a little bit distrusting of the college professor yeah for sure yeah sure you want to take some of these stats it doesn't have to be all oh you you have the nerve wall ones so so i want to compare so the the number so again the number is an average of today 860 wait what the number i lost it 875 dollars average cost of going Back To School the average cost in 2007 Darren was $563, buddy. How about that?

[10:41] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's inflation.

Why $1,000 Doesn't Buy What It Used To: The Inflation Angle

[10:44] DANO WEIR: Just since 2019, it was $697. So we're up 24% from that. And so you're just seeing dramatic increases in cost. And this is when we have several times just in the young history of this show, we've talked about inflation. We've talked about outpacing inflation. What a great isolated example that if you had kept money in a checking account, for example, in 2019, because I'm going to pay for all my expenses out of this, right? You're not making any money in your checking account. That's right. Well, why do you need to be making money for your checking account? Because literally in 2019, you were paying $697, and now in 2024, you're paying $875. And that's the facts. Like, that's the way that it hits checking.

[11:28] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Well, in the reality, if you had $1,000, it is not in real terms $1,000 anymore. And that's one of the...

[11:34] DANO WEIR: Mind blowers people put a thousand bucks in i got a thousand bucks feels good but really you're only getting eight hundred dollars worth of goods now it's really really really hard for me to conceptualize when i hear that because i'm like not no but not i mean maybe in the past but not now right like just something about me just doesn't believe that prices will go up here it is right here it goes it's going up in a meaningful way right because.

Back-to-School 'Layaway' and the Scale of the Spending Problem

[11:58] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: 10 this is crazy 10 of parents expect and this is i can't even believe This is reality, but 10% of parents expect to go into debt just to buy school supplies. That's crazy to me, right? And 20% of parents buying school supplies, they're actually doing that thing where you click the buck, buy now, pay later. That button that shows up on Amazon or whatever you buy now.

[12:20] DANO WEIR: The nouveau layaway.

[12:22] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Which is a total crap, right? And should be a consumer crime, but whatever.

[12:28] DANO WEIR: Is that from the nerd wallet?

[12:29] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's the nerd wallet stuff, right? So-, so Back To School is a big business, right? So guess there's 135 and a half billion dollars going Back To School, right? So what do you think is going to be coming at you in the media? What do you think is going to be coming at you in advertisement? Right. It's going to be in our face. What do you think is going to happen? If you have kids on social media, you're going to see Back To School shopping. You know, those cookie things that follow you all around the internet. If it knows you've got kids, guess what's popping up on your feed, right? Back To School, buddy. We're going to get a thousand dollars out of you because you're on social media more.

[13:01] DANO WEIR: Right?

[13:01] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's how it works, right? Let's see. If you combine college spending, it's 189 billion. I mean, that's big business. Spending between 2019 and 2023 per child is up 15%. Adjusting for inflation, spending per child actually decreased. So now there's a mind blower. So while it's costing you more when you adjust for inflation, it's actually up 3%. Play that math back.

[13:30] DANO WEIR: For me right right and that's the tricky thing like a thousand bucks is not a thousand bucks and it changes right so here's this is this is a stat i wanted to hit too which is that so you mentioned 10 this is a according to a survey from nerd wallet 10 of parents surveyed said they expect to go into debt for school shopping they expect it it's just going to happen what is that number brennan sorry six you 15. I'm dumb. So 10% of parents surveyed expect to go into debt. But in the same survey, 42% of parents say that they would go into debt to help their children fit in at school. Meaning these costs, according to the survey, And in my belief, have very little to do with the functional need to actually be at school and write on a piece of paper so you can turn it in for an assignment so you can get a grade and get out of there with a diploma. It has more to do with fitting in. These are social costs, a huge portion and a huge piece, just like you talked about with the glow up. Is about the social aspect, making an impression, making friends, meeting a girl, you know, all of these things. That's, that is what I believe is, is fueling, is fueling some of these rising prices.

Social Pressure, FOMO, and Spending Like Everyone Else

[15:08] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Well, but is it really that surprising if you think about it? Like, look at the general American population. You have this better than the Jones next door, right? Think about all the people that are, that are families in massive and massive amounts of debt. It's, it's just what's happening in the American dream at a lower scale. It's, we're training our kids from a very early age. Hey, 40% of us, we're going into debt just to impress the neighbor. And that's normal, right? I was talking to a couple of the other day and they're just like, I don't get it. Like we're working so hard. We're doing this stuff. We're saving this money. We're buying these apartment buildings. We're buying these houses and we're renting our house. And I talked to all my friends and are living in this big house, rich, whatnot. And. It just feels awful. And like, yeah, but the thing is like, you just don't know what kind of debt that person has. You don't know what they're really living in. And because I can tell you as a financial planner, a lot of people our age, especially, they're living in debt. Like they're up to debt and they're gills and there's no way they're getting ahead. They got their college debt, their house debt, their car debt, and they're still trying to make their kids fit in and get some more debt. And that's why I think the generations that are not the baby boomers are so disenfranchised. With the current regimes. Because all that's really happening is everyone's getting retired, staying retired, and stacking the next generation with debt. They're literally breaking America. It is not sustainable, the course we're on. So the way, the antidote to that, right, the antidote to that thinking is to tell yourself and to play a different game. And that's what like Dave Ramsey, who, who, you know really well what Dave Ramsey teaches, whether you like his politics, religion, or whatever, I don't really care. But what he's teaching people is to play a different game and you've got to play a different game. So when you see the person who's driving that BMW that really has no business affording a BMW, you have to look at that and say, you don't know the game they're playing. I know the game I'm playing and I'm not playing that game because that, that game right there, that ends up with bankruptcy.

[17:13] DANO WEIR: I'm so glad that you said that because I'm experiencing this right now with vacation FOMO. Yeah so if you're going Back To School right now if your kid going Back To School and maybe you're feeling like you're not going to have your glow up i'm not having a vacation glow up Darren i just i'm just seeing nothing but like multiple families taking multiple trips and tropical locations and i'm just like you know my family and i went to do some great trips and i feel great about it but we didn't go to bora bora or wherever it is and so part of me is like oh how are they doing that and then i go oh yeah They're doing that with their MasterCard, you know, and they're going to be paying for that trip and all the other trips for.

[17:53] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Right. Add the interest on that. And that's one expensive trip.

[17:55] DANO WEIR: Correct. Correct. So to to your point, if you're if you're finding yourself feeling a little crushed by Back To School costs and any costs in general, I would just encourage you to consider exactly what Darren's saying, which is play a different game. If you've got the money and you go Back To School shopping and you want to get X, Y, and Z and you can afford it, go for it. That's another thing that's different about this show. It's not a judgment space per se if you can afford it, right? If you've got the money to do back-to-school shopping and it's no big deal, great. Congratulations. You probably worked for that, right? But maybe if you're not and you're finding yourself in a place where you're feeling crushed by expenses, consider... Different options and I'll give you an example. So I went to two stores to get what I would consider to be a very basic basket of goods for one of my sons, just school supplies. Now this isn't clothes, but just school supplies for one of my sons, my son, Nolan, he's nine years old, going to be 10. This is what I would consider to be basic stuff for him to go quote Back To School. Okay. I've got 17 items here. I've got it. Two different types of poster board, including like a foam board, because that ends up coming up for like some kind of project. I've got a planner. I've got binder paper. I've got colored pencils. I've got markers. I've got scissors. I've got a pencil pouch. I've got glue. I've got scotch tape, heavy scotch tape. I've got a package of pens. I've got index cards. I've got crayons. And I've got pencils. I went to the dollar store. This photo that we're showing here on the screen, this is... All items from the dollar store.

The Experiment: Same School Supplies, Dollar Store vs. Big-Box Store

[19:46] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Which are $1.50 now, but anyway.

[19:50] DANO WEIR: They're averaging between $1 and $1.25, right? So that is increasing, right? Okay. Take it out. We got 17 items. I have my calculator here on my phone. 17 times 125. 21.25. That's how much if you emotionally, because some people, they would never consider going to the dollar store because it's like, oh my God, the dollar store.

[20:19] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That social pressure you're talking about.

[20:20] DANO WEIR: That's exactly it. But if you can get over that, you can get this stuff for 21.25. Now, much more socially acceptable, I went to a major retail store who shall remain nameless, but it's a big one in Petaluma, you can probably guess.

[20:37] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Red balls everywhere.

[20:38] DANO WEIR: No comment, no names mentioned. And I got, at said retail store, nearly the exact same set of goods. Now, there's some variation here I couldn't get exactly the same.

[20:49] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Planning calendar is way more upgraded, though.

[20:52] DANO WEIR: Well, I'll point that out, actually. That's actually one of the things that was the most expensive. So I got nearly the same set of stuff.

[21:00] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: The same functional stuff.

[21:02] DANO WEIR: Correct. I got two pieces of poster board. I got the paper. I got the notebook. I got the pencils. It's near identical what I was able to get. Let's get out the calculator again. Because the total for nearly the same basket of goods from the major retail store was $54.20. For an increase of 155%. Wow. And what was really interesting is the base, base, base stuff, the paper, the pencils, weren't really that much more. It was maybe 20 cents more. But some of the more goods that I'd say where they felt like they probably could get away with it, like the planner. Which probably has, frankly, more binding and stuff like that. The planner at the...

[21:48] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And I did notice the Crayola, you've got five more markers.

[21:50] DANO WEIR: Correct. That's what I said. Some of the price, some of the sizing was a little bit different. That planner was nine bucks, you know, and the other one was $1.25. So then you could ask yourself when you're buying that stuff, well, how bad do I need it to be bound? You know, how bad do I need some of this stuff? Or do I just literally need a piece of paper with a printed calendar on it? So... I thought that was really interesting. I thought it was a good example of if you ask, if you're finding yourself in a challenging situation where you're feeling crushed by prices, just just say, what am what can I get over? What can I change or what can I accept that might allow me to do this? Maybe not in the way that I wanted to. Right. But in a way that it will allow me, what do I really need to do? I need to be in the seat. I need to have the paper. I need to have the pen. Do I need to impress everybody in the room? Probably not. But it feels cool to impress everybody in the room. So it's kind of hard, right? And it's hard to tell that to an 11 year old kid.

The Bigger Lesson: Not Being a Victim to the Spending Cycle

[22:44] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: And so is that really any different than we do as adults? Right? When you think about it, it's like, well, I need to drive from a to B. How many of us need that new car to drive from a to B? Most of us don't. The old car would work just fine to get from a to B, but we get new cars and we get new things because that's how our consumer based system is designed. Is to create that social pressure so we consume.

[23:10] DANO WEIR: And so it's a microcosm for what's happening right now, right? It's Back To School time, so we're talking about it. But it also taps into a larger issue, something that you and I both believe in, which is just taking time to get to know and understand who you are, what's important to you, what you value, and then aligning the money that you have or the financial situation you have with that and saying, okay, well, am I okay with getting stuff at the dollar store? Maybe you're not. Well, okay, then you need to change what you're doing to get more money. You know, or maybe you are. You say, oh, I can save that right there. I'll get that done. And then I can use this excess money to do whatever it is that you want to do. But it's a case of you happening to your money and not necessarily the other way around.

[23:53] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's right. And not being the victim to it, right? And figuring out there are ways to save. There are ways to make it in this economy, no doubt.

Quick Hitters: Small-Cap Stocks, Mortgage Refinances, and the AT&T Data Breach

[24:03] DANO WEIR: I got a couple quick hitters for you out the door.

[24:05] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: All right, let's hit them.

[24:08] DANO WEIR: I want to know about the small cap run of summer 2024 and what that means. Can you give me that in 60 seconds? Because that's all I'm hearing right now. I'm hearing NVIDIA is over. It double topped and there's a neck line and they broke the support. What are these phrases? What are we talking about?

[24:26] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: I'll have to refer you to our other show on the markets to learn a lot more about that double top that I'm talking about. But so NVIDIA is a perfect example. For many years, we've now had concentration in the markets. What that means is just a few big companies are sucking all the oxygen out of the room and driving the markets higher. We have a cap weighted market. Now, if you want to learn about that, go back on the markets, check that out in our other show. You can learn all about that. We talk about it in depth. Bottom line is these big companies getting bigger and these smaller companies not growing. So if you had a diversified portfolio in the past couple of years, you're frustrated with your portfolio because it's not going up like it would be if you just concentrated in those big tech stocks.

[25:03] DANO WEIR: And big, big companies include Microsoft, NVIDIA, Tesla, Amazon, Apple, or Alphabet, right? Can you give me an example of a couple of small cap companies off the top of your head?

[25:16] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Well, ones that were small caps. Small caps are just newer companies. So let me think of one that's coming on the top of my head. I don't know. There's so many of them. There's literally thousands of them. Okay. So the bottom line is these smaller companies haven't done well. Well, when interest rates go up, small companies don't do as well. Why don't they do as well? Because small companies have to survive on debt. They have to go get debt. Well, what happened, if you look at our last episode, to debt is the interest rates have gone up, so it's made it much more expensive to take out debt. So these smaller companies had a more difficult time. So what we've started to see in the economy is a slowing of the economy and the Fed projecting, perhaps suggesting that they're going to start lowering rates. Well, that's very stimulative to small cap stocks in the short run. If they do it slowly, if they do too fast, that means we got a big recession on our hands. We got a lot of problems, but that's driving those small cap stocks because like, Hey, this company's going to live to fight another day. Same as with like real estate. You saw, you've seen real estate start to improve and it's not done so well. Why? Cause there's this. Thought that interest rates, and I'll say thought because we don't know, the interest rates just start lowering and that's driving it. But that tends to wear out over time. And one thing we do know about small caps, and you say, well, why should I own small caps in my portfolio? Because a lot of clients have been asking that question over the past couple of years. And the reason why is because when they do well, they do very well. And you can't time it and you can't get in quick enough when it happens. In fact, in like three days last week, I think small caps were up something like five, 6%. Don't quote me on that number, but it was significant in just three days. So moving your portfolio around that quick, you know, most people don't even return calls that fast.

[26:59] DANO WEIR: And that is, and that is actually why you, you and your business partner, Chris Sipes, have said to me, you almost always want something in your portfolio that sucks.

[27:08] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's right.

[27:08] DANO WEIR: Because that's your rainy day protection for when things flip. You've got that in your pocket. Yeah. And by the time it flips, it's way too late. By the time you hear the news, it's too late, right? That's right.

[27:18] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's right.

[27:20] DANO WEIR: Speaking of which, refinance, mortgage refinances as a result of interest rates dipping just ever so slightly in early July from 7%.

[27:29] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: They haven't even, like, the real, the markets dipped them, but the Fed actually hasn't even lowered rates. This is just the market guessing, like, oh, we think it's going to happen.

[27:38] DANO WEIR: That already, refinances jumped 15% the week of July 17th, which is a two-year high, 37% higher than the same week a year ago. So I think you can just see that there's a lot of anticipation around interest rates. I mean, that almost dictates so many things.

[27:59] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: That's right. This AT&T leak.

[28:05] DANO WEIR: I think is big, right? There was a massive data breach at AT&T back in April that I wanted to talk about that may have exposed up to 110 million people's call histories. But not their text messages. Hackers were able to access and steal the data.

[28:25] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: It's okay, the NSA has those.

[28:28] DANO WEIR: Were able to steal the data. You get to see all my NFL texts. That's all it is. Me and my buddies are like, no, no, they should have signed them. No, they should have traded them. The hackers were able to access and steal the data through an illegally downloaded app within the company. But I thought it was interesting because there are so many people who are thinking that they're off the grid or tech phobic, or they're trying to, you know, not get their information out there. But I mean, this is a case of if you had a cell phone with AT&T, they got your stuff.

[29:04] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Yeah. And I got bad news for you, Dan. If you exist in the 21st century, your data has already been stolen. All of our data has been stolen many times over. The question is, has anyone done anything with it? Right? So the good news is neither of you or I are super celebrities, so no one cares.

[29:23] DANO WEIR: Yet.

[29:24] DAREN BLONSKI, CFP®: Oh, yet. Right? Yet. I won't speak for you. But the bottom line is you just have to accept that's the way things are these days and that you need to set up precautionary measures to protect yourself because someone could choose to pick on Dan Weir someday. That's just the way it is.

[29:41] DANO WEIR: What a great way to end the episode. Thank you so much for checking out It's All Money. It's brought to you by Sonoma Wealth Advisors. You can learn more about Sonoma Wealth Advisors, Darren included, at SonomaWealth. Com.

Disclosures

[29:56] ANNOUNCER: This content was produced by Fermata Advisors, LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. DBA, Sonoma Wealth Advisors. The opinions expressed by Fermata Advisors, LLC on this show are their own. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable, although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Viewers and listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment advisor to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.