#19 – Warren Buffet, Online vs. Brick-And-Mortar, Chick-fil-A, and Collegial Family Principles

Wes Moss [00:00:52]:
Today’s the actual Mother’s Day. JeFf LLoyd, good morning and welcome to the studio.

Jeff Lloyd [00:00:56]:
By the way, thanks for having me back. And yes, today is actually Mother’s Day. So a happy Mother’s Day to my wife, Kate, and a happy Mother’s Day to my mother as well, and all the other mothers out there.

Wes Moss [00:01:09]:
And the only reason I ask is because Mother’s Day is a really. It’s a larger event for our house. It’s Saturday, Sunday. It bleeds into Monday. So it’s really. This whole weekend is why I even asked. Of course. I know it’s technically today, but it’s really.

Wes Moss [00:01:22]:
We celebrate the whole weekend.

Jeff Lloyd [00:01:24]:
Yeah, you celebrate the whole weekend. And it’s kind of. We celebrate Mother’s Day 365 at the Lloyd household. Every day is Mother’s Day.

Wes Moss [00:01:32]:
So happy Mother’s Day to my mom, who’s up in Pennsylvania, happy Mother’s Day. Of course, to my wife, who’s here in Atlanta, and she’s running around with four kids, so she deserves extra Mother day. Mother’s Day credit. I know that you tried to look up. There was a long time ago. I remember listening to financial radio, hearing someone put a value on mothers on the job that moms do. What’s the value if you had to pay for a mom? All the different. So therapy, transportation, childcare, nursing care, tutor care, cooking care, all the things that, let’s say, a mom does, and they put a number on it.

Wes Moss [00:02:13]:
Something like $150,000. Yeah, I think it’s boulder dash. I’m sorry. Balderdash.

Jeff Lloyd [00:02:19]:
We saw calculations, and it was like 100,000.

Wes Moss [00:02:22]:
No way.

Jeff Lloyd [00:02:22]:
150.

Wes Moss [00:02:23]:
No way.

Jeff Lloyd [00:02:23]:
250. So we ran our own calculation here on money matters.

Wes Moss [00:02:29]:
What did it come up with?

Jeff Lloyd [00:02:30]:
Priceless.

Wes Moss [00:02:31]:
Only Jeff Lloyd knows how to do priceless. That math.

Jeff Lloyd [00:02:35]:
You cannot quantify everything a mother does, and you cannot quantify mother’s love.

Wes Moss [00:02:42]:
Yeah, you can’t. And it would actually be. I think it would be. I don’t like being. Trying to put a number on it. I think it’s ridiculous to even do it. So as we talked about it this week, you know what? You came up with the right number.

Jeff Lloyd [00:02:56]:
Yeah, it sounds like we both came up with the right number. We both came up.

Wes Moss [00:03:01]:
So again, it’s a beautiful Mother’s Day weekend because it’s always a beautiful Mother’s day weekend. No matter where you are in the United States, whether it’s raining or sunny, is Mother’s Day. And it’s a glorious day. One of the things we want to talk about today, too, the buffet annual meeting with a Berkshire annual meeting. Last, last was last weekend. One of our colleagues, Mitch Reiner, was in Omaha. He was there. We really should do a field trip to the Berkshire meeting.

Wes Moss [00:03:29]:
Maybe we do that next year. Maybe we broadcast live from outside.

Jeff Lloyd [00:03:34]:
Maybe we hop on a Netjet, fly out there.

Wes Moss [00:03:37]:
Do you think they would compass that?

Jeff Lloyd [00:03:39]:
I don’t know.

Wes Moss [00:03:41]:
Would they serve Dairy Queen on the Netjet?

Jeff Lloyd [00:03:43]:
They do. We talked to Mitch and you know, it’s a whole weekend event. It’s Friday, it’s Saturday. Sunday. They actually kick off the meeting with a. Like a Brooks. A Brooks shoes five k. Remember that?

Wes Moss [00:03:55]:
Who owns Brooke shoes?

Jeff Lloyd [00:03:56]:
Berkshire Hathaway. And it’s just a whole weekend of festivities culminating with the annual meeting on Saturday. They’re like 40 plus thousand people that attend the meeting. That Saturday afternoon.

Wes Moss [00:04:11]:
Mitch was talking to us about how the seating works at that.

Jeff Lloyd [00:04:14]:
He says it’s basically a first come, first serve for everybody going to that meeting. So it doesn’t matter if you’re Michael Jordan or Tim Cook. Like, you’re standing out in line waiting to get in to the meeting. And. And once you get in, it’s, you know, first seat. You might be Michael Jordan, but there are no seats left in the front. You’re going to be sitting in the upper deck.

Wes Moss [00:04:34]:
Yeah, but Tim Cook was near the. I think he was near the front row, wasn’t he?

Jeff Lloyd [00:04:38]:
He was. He was at the meeting.

Wes Moss [00:04:40]:
I doubt he spent all night in line for.

Jeff Lloyd [00:04:42]:
But Buffett is very egalitarian, so he doesn’t want to treat anybody different. Now, I do think the board of directors has their own special section in the arena, but it’s kind of off to the side. It’s not front and center, so I’m told.

Wes Moss [00:04:56]:
So you’re told we need to go on a field trip there next year. So within this, and this is always so interesting to as many times as I have studied this. I’m always surprised when I go back and look at all the different companies that. That Berkshire holds. Now, we know of the big publicly traded companies, right? So Apple’s the largest. One of the big headlines that last weekend was that they saw. I love how much of a big of a deal they made about this. They sold Apple.

Wes Moss [00:05:24]:
Berkshire reduces stake in Apple. They sold a whopping 13%. So they still own 87% of what they held, and it’s still their largest holding. And he still says it’s the best company in the world. And it’s just amazing that that was such a big headline as if they were. They’re dumping all their Apple stock. As we start talking about stocks, both Apple and Berkshire, again, reminder disclaimer. We’re not here recommending buying and selling any of these particular companies, of course, but just talking through kind of the news cycle that happened last week at Berkshire.

Wes Moss [00:06:00]:
But that was. That was really one of the big stories that came out of it, obviously. Yeah.

Jeff Lloyd [00:06:03]:
And Apple still is like, about, like half their holdings. So they still own a whole lot.

Wes Moss [00:06:08]:
They do. The exhibitors. I love the exhibitors here. And so, again, my point here is that we know some of the big publicly traded companies, Coca Cola, American Express, Apple. But you don’t hear about the private companies that they own. And those, to me, are some of the most interesting. So if you think about. Here are some of the exhibitors.

Wes Moss [00:06:30]:
I still don’t know what jazzwares are. Or is it jazz wares? There’s John Manville company. Now we know this one. International Dairy Queen. The Lubrizol Corporation. Had a. Had a exhibitor box. And then some of the more, let’s call it maybe consumer oriented, that we’ve heard about, NetJets.

Wes Moss [00:06:51]:
We know what they do. They actually have.

Jeff Lloyd [00:06:53]:
I think they had an actual jet at the exhibition hall.

Wes Moss [00:06:57]:
Well, that jet doesn’t run on the following. Duracell.

Jeff Lloyd [00:07:01]:
Not battery powered yet.

Wes Moss [00:07:03]:
Not battery powered.

Jeff Lloyd [00:07:03]:
We’re getting there. Not yet.

Wes Moss [00:07:05]:
The forest river. Fruit of the loom. Fruit of the loom. A long time holding a Berkshire Hathaway. There’s still lots of money in underwear. We know Geico Shaw, the big carpet company, sees candy. And then this one’s near dear to my heart. Benjamin Moore.

Wes Moss [00:07:23]:
What is Benjamin? Does everybody know Benjamin north? Yes. And they are Brooks running company. So it’s just so many of these companies that are underneath the one giant umbrella that is Berkshire Hathaway, one of the, of course, the largest, most well known holding company that owns anywhere from technology companies, financials and banks, lots of insurance. Of course, Geico is a long, long term holding for Berkshire Hathaway, and then some of these consumer brands that they’ve acquired and solely acquired over time, and they continue to hold, hold, hold. So to me, I think we need a field trip there. Last year, 40,000 people went to the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting event. And then at the end, what do they do in Warren Buffett fashion? They have a giant picnic, they have a giant barbecue at the end.

Jeff Lloyd [00:08:15]:
I love the headline that I saw. You mentioned the 40,000 people, they compared it to a Taylor Swift event or a Taylor Swift concert. Like, that’s how passionate these Warren Buffett disciples, they call it. What do they call it? Woodstock for capitalist annual Berkshire meeting. Is that what they call it?

Wes Moss [00:08:34]:
The Taylor Swift heiress concert of capitalism. At least that’d bring it more up to date. So some of the. If I go back over, what, our five, I have a couple of our favorite Buffett quote quotes. Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long, long time ago. And that’s, if you, if you look at the rate of return on the Berkshire Hathaway annual letter, it’s really fascinating. It’s all you’ve. Even though I look at this throughout the year, it almost is hard to conceive how well it’s done over time.

Wes Moss [00:09:08]:
Now, he’ll be the first to say that. Warren Buffett will be the first to say that having the same rate of return over the next, call it five years, ten years, 50, 20 years is going to be very difficult, because when they were small, they had a couple of years where they had 100% returns when they were really small. Who knows how many companies they owned back in the late sixties. And in the seventies, they didn’t have a giant portfolio. So a couple of names that did really well, really moved the meter. If you go back and look at Berkshire Hathaway versus the S and P 500, Berkshire had a couple of doubles. They had several years where they doubled, and then that’s, if you compound that out, Jeff Floyd, the rate of return at the bottom of that shows what, what it’s like.

Jeff Lloyd [00:09:51]:
I don’t even want to say. It just sounds too unbelievable. But if you go back and the cumulative return for Berkshire since 1965, so we’re going about 50, almost 60 years.

Wes Moss [00:10:03]:
Almost 60 years back.

Jeff Lloyd [00:10:04]:
The overall gain from 1964, what’s the average annual?

Wes Moss [00:10:08]:
Let’s start there.

Jeff Lloyd [00:10:10]:
Just short of 20%. So it’s 19.8 annual percent and it’s.

Wes Moss [00:10:15]:
Been 19.8 for a little while, so it’s pretty. It’s a pretty baked in. It’s going to be hard to move that number much. So 19.8. That doesn’t sound too crazy. That’s a. The S and P 500 did more than that last year, so 19.8. Okay.

Wes Moss [00:10:27]:
Sounds pretty good. And then what is the s and P 500 done over that same exact 59, 60 year period?

Jeff Lloyd [00:10:33]:
A little bit over 10%. 10.2%.

Wes Moss [00:10:36]:
Pretty amazing. As we know, the rule of 72, it’s just a mathematical equation that says you take your rate of return, divide it into 72. That’ll give you the number of years it takes at that rate of return to double your money. So, at 10% a year, 72 divided by ten, 7.2 years. If you make 10% a year, your money doubles in 7.2. Wait, let’s do that on the buffet number. 72 divided by 19.8. Well, we’re double.

Wes Moss [00:11:05]:
He’s. He’s. On average, Berkshire Hathaway’s doubled money every 3.6 years. Now you start to think, wait a minute, if I’m doubling and I’m doubling and I’m doubling, what is now the cumulative s and P 500? Not the ten, but the total.

Jeff Lloyd [00:11:22]:
Still a really big number. Over 31,000%. Game over that. 1964 to 23. 31,000.

Wes Moss [00:11:29]:
31,000. You’re talking 10% rate of return. That’s almost 60 years. All right, now we go to 19.8. It’s not that much more. Let’s double. 31,000% versus what? Long term total cumulative rate of return.

Jeff Lloyd [00:11:47]:
For Berkshire Hathaway stock, just short of 4.4 million%. So 4.38 million% over that same timeframe.

Wes Moss [00:11:57]:
You have to read it and see it to even believe that. But it is. It’s just staggering, really. It’s staggering. Now, would that still happen if we looked at the last ten years and 20 years? No, because you’ve got two. You have two things here. You have this almost 20% rate of return over time, but it’s been over an enormous period of time. We’re talking about almost six full decades, and that’s how you get to this ridiculously high compounded number for Berkshire.

Wes Moss [00:12:29]:
So just a fascinating treatment in trying to go out and find good companies owning them for the long term. Buffett will tell you. Charlie, the late, great Charlie Munger, his partner until this year, is the first meeting that Munger was not at. He wants to buy these and he wants to hold them for the long, long, long run. Unless something really, really material happens. It’s not as though he won’t sell companies, but unless something fundamental changes dramatically, he wants to hold it. His favorite holding period is forever. I’ll give credit to our new intern this week, Brady, who was in studio.

Wes Moss [00:13:06]:
He’s pretty confident about these numbers, but it boggles the mind with this statistic we’re about to talk about, and it has some implications here because it helps unboggle your mind when it comes to compounded rate of returns. Earlier, you said, look, from 65 until last year, the total compounded rate of return for Berkshire at 19.8% a year comes up to about 4.4 million. Total percent rate of return over that period of time. Now it’s six decades. So it’s a super long period of time, but that’s hard to even wrap your head around. However, if so, again, 4.4 million% rate of return. If you start the calculation one year later, what’s the number?

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:55]:
If you start the calculation just one.

Wes Moss [00:13:57]:
Year later, so you invested in starting.

Jeff Lloyd [00:13:59]:
1966 versus 60 519 66 instead of 1965. That rate of return is still incredible. It’s mind blowing how big it is, but it drops to only 2.9 million%.

Wes Moss [00:14:13]:
All right, I’m out on 2.9. Only 2.9 million.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:17]:
That’s still a lot, but that is just.

Wes Moss [00:14:20]:
So it’s. Hold on.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:21]:
Just removing that first year drops that cumulative gain by about a million and a half percent.

Wes Moss [00:14:29]:
Think about this. One year out of 60, and it drop. It drops a million and a half percent. So wait, how could that be? Well, guess what? The very first year was a 50% return. The next year was a negative three and a half.

Jeff Lloyd [00:14:44]:
Negative three and a half? Yeah.

Wes Moss [00:14:45]:
So imagine what that does. So the race starts, and all of a sudden you’re 50% ahead of the competition, which in this case was the S and P 500. So the base that you’re building on is tremendously larger than the other base. And that, to me, is one way to start to understand just how you can see such dramatic differences by just one year. Now, if that was one, if you left out a year five years ago, you’d probably see very little difference. But we were leaving out the very first year where there was an entire 50% head start relative to if you had started in the second year. Now, again, these numbers are fantastical to some extent, and very few people ever realize this, except for probably Buffett and Charlie Munger themselves, because they were there in the very, very, very beginning. But it does go to speak the same context around.

Wes Moss [00:15:39]:
We’ve got to. Missing a little bit can go a really long way. We’ve talked about missing a few of the best days in the market. You miss the top one 10th of 1% of the best days over a ten and 20 year period, it shaves your return down dramatically. Not by, we’re talking 25, 30% less returns just by missing a few days. This, to me, is a more extreme example. Nobody’s ever brought that up. So credit to our new intern on his early goings comes up with a brand new statistic we’ve never even looked at for all these years.

Wes Moss [00:16:15]:
Nice work. Jeff Lloyd, you were in. You were in Nashville recently?

Jeff Lloyd [00:16:20]:
Yeah. What’s that place? I was at a baseball tournament for my son last weekend in Nashville. That’s why I couldn’t be in the studio Sunday.

Wes Moss [00:16:29]:
The audience was asking. They liked Conor a lot, but they were like, where’s Jeff? Well, I was at a baseball tournament.

Jeff Lloyd [00:16:35]:
I was at a baseball term. Daughter went along, too. She went to a Morgan Wallen concert that night with 70 other thousand of her friends. They grow up so fast at Nissan. Nissan Stadium where the stadium where the. Where the Titans play. But anyway, I just. I could not get over how much activity there was in the city.

Jeff Lloyd [00:16:58]:
We had trouble finding a hotel for our baseball team. Now, we didn’t realize when we initially scheduled it, you know, it. Multiple concerts going on. You know how packed, like, Broadway is. I think Broadway is now the number one destination for bachelorette parties. More than Broadway’s. Broadway in Tennessee. Yes.

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:19]:
Downtown Nashville, they call it Broadway.

Wes Moss [00:17:21]:
They call. It’s like. They call it Nashville. Huh?

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:24]:
So even more than, like, New Orleans, Las Vegas, it’s changed a lot.

Wes Moss [00:17:28]:
So it’s booming.

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:29]:
It is booming.

Wes Moss [00:17:30]:
Morgan Wal. I love. I love Morgan Wallen’s songs, but isn’t he throwing chairs at people these days? Is he out there?

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:37]:
I think he actually did that in Nashville a couple of months ago.

Wes Moss [00:17:41]:
Yeah. Okay.

Jeff Lloyd [00:17:41]:
And I think he had a court date last week. And, you know, the judge could have been like, hey, we’re locking you up. You can’t play in these concerts tonight. But I don’t think that would have been good for the Nashville economy to throw Morgan Wallen in jail, not allow him to play three straight 70,000 sold out nights at Nissan Stadium.

Wes Moss [00:18:02]:
That’s. That’s bordering on Taylor Swift, is what that is.

Jeff Lloyd [00:18:05]:
I will tell you this, and I did listen last week where y’all talked about Dave and Busters and the. The new kind of wagering betting platform. Lucra.

Wes Moss [00:18:15]:
Lucra.

Jeff Lloyd [00:18:16]:
Lucra.

Wes Moss [00:18:16]:
Yeah.

Jeff Lloyd [00:18:17]:
Is that short for lucrative? Is that what it is? That why they came up with Lucra?

Wes Moss [00:18:21]:
It might be a latin term, but.

Jeff Lloyd [00:18:23]:
Anyway, Saturday night, while my daughter was at the concert, the whole baseball team and a couple other dads went to a Dave and Busters. We were staying right, right by Opryland, and went to a Dave and Busters. Now, they hadn’t rolled out.

Wes Moss [00:18:36]:
They don’t have the technology yet.

Jeff Lloyd [00:18:37]:
They didn’t have the technology yet.

Wes Moss [00:18:38]:
We were breaking that news last Sunday.

Jeff Lloyd [00:18:40]:
But we were trying to go eat there and let the kids play some games. It was so crowded. There was an hour and a half wait. So we’re like, all right, let’s just let. We came this way. We can’t tell the kids, hey, that’s too long. We’re going to leave and go somewhere else. So it’s like, let’s let them play games for about an hour, and then we’ll go get some else to eat.

Jeff Lloyd [00:19:00]:
I’m telling you, when they roll out that little betting thing, that’s going to be.

Wes Moss [00:19:05]:
I think it’s going to be a big deal.

Jeff Lloyd [00:19:07]:
Yes, I really do. And remember, Dave and Buster is a publicly traded company. This is not a buy or sell recommendation. $2 billion company with 200 plus locations. I didn’t.

Wes Moss [00:19:17]:
It’s funny, though, the one we talked about last weekend that I went to was up near Suwanee. There was not a line out the door. It was a massive, empty building with, like, 22 teenagers in it. So it’s good to hear that. So it sounds like Nashville really is booming. And that turns us kind of to this talk around the economy and where we stand in the world. This has been earnings season. We’re about 90% of the way through.

Wes Moss [00:19:42]:
S and P 500 companies have, it’s been a really good reporting quarter. So you’re getting numbers today here. We’re in the second quarter for first quarter numbers, and we’re virtually done. And if you go, why is it so important? And why do we talk about earnings? And why is it such headline news on any given day, when someone reports or a big company reports after the bell, is that it’s not just the earnings number. It’s then the guidance on what they see for their business, the consumer or their business clients, et cetera. So it gives us a flavor of what the titans of industry are doing and what they’re seeing when it comes to economic kind of their economic outlook. And where we stand as far as this earnings season, most of the way, complete earnings have grown almost 6%. So a little over five and a half percent earnings growth.

Wes Moss [00:20:38]:
And then if you go out and look, and this is from FactSet, if you go out and look, over the course of the next year, earnings growth is expected. And these are just forecasts, so we don’t know if this comes to fruition. But in the mid teens, 1314, 15% earnings growth. And that’s a big deal, right? If companies are low, if their sales are less this year than the year prior, obviously not good earnings coming down. Not good. I think as a reminder, companies need to be growing if they’re going to perform in markets for the most part. Now, granted, you can have lower sales and more profit, but the reality here is you want steady growth. We don’t want just profitable.

Wes Moss [00:21:20]:
We want profitable and growing. And we continue to see that. And it wasn’t just tech. There’s been a lot of talk around technology having their earnings go dramatically higher over the last couple of years. But consumer discretionary, up 38%. Communications, up 41%. Utilities, 30% earnings growth as reported this last quarter. So overall, out of the eleven sectors, eight of those sectors showed earnings growth.

Wes Moss [00:21:49]:
So it’s nice to see that we’re getting this broadening out from an earnings perspective. And we’ve seen that play into what’s happened so far in markets this year. We’ve really seen a broadening out. It’s not as 2023, we heard so much about the mag seven. It was the big seven technology companies that powered the day and powered the market. And without their returns, you would have had dramatically lower returns last year for the general S and P 500. But it’s nice to see other sectors participating.

Jeff Lloyd [00:22:24]:
Yeah, and that was kind of one of the themes that we started talking about at the beginning of the year that we had see started to play out toward the latter half of last year, probably starting around in that late October timeframe where it wasn’t just one or two industries like tech really driving market returns, it was the broadening out of market returns in other areas of the market.

Wes Moss [00:22:47]:
So in an up year. So again, we’re having a relatively, it’s a pretty good year so far in 2024. So we’ll call it an up year, not a down year. And if you’re tracking, and I pulled up the iShares core dividend growth ETF, which is, these are companies in order to be in this ETF, they screen for dividend growth. So they’re looking for companies that have grown earnings and paid dividends and increased the dividends for at least five years. So it’s five year minimum dividend growth. Again, looking at this as a proxy for the dividend side of the market, which has some uniqueness to it, as opposed to, let’s call it the all growth, all technology side of the market, or not just tech. There’s other sectors that don’t necessarily like to return capital to shareholders when it comes to dividends, but this, as a proxy, does.

Wes Moss [00:23:44]:
I’m looking at this ETF and here we are in a year where bonds have been relatively flat to even down just a little bit, the S and P 500 is up. Not a full, call it nine to 10%. Guess what? So is degrow. Degrow is up six to 7% if you’re including the dividends that have been paid so far this year. So it’s tracking actually really well. So it’s not that there are no dividend companies in a dividend oriented ETF. There’s plenty of companies that are. We’ve even seen brand new dividend initiations.

Wes Moss [00:24:19]:
We just saw, was it last week or two weeks ago? Alphabet is going to start paying a.

Jeff Lloyd [00:24:23]:
Dividend and meta announced that same thing a couple of weeks ago as well.

Wes Moss [00:24:27]:
Now, they wouldn’t be in one of these dividend grower ETF’s because they’re brand new. So there are new kids on the block when it comes to paying out dividends to shareholders. If you’re a dividend investor, you want to see a consistent history, or at least that’s the way I look at this. You want to see a history of a company paying out and then raising each year. One of the unsung heroes of outpacing inflation is dividend growth. And we know that even if you’re looking at the S and P 500, dividend growth has been not quite double what CPI inflation is, but close to double no matter what timeframe you look at. If you look at over the last year, five years, ten years, 20, 5100 years, CPI is average inflation’s average about 3% a year. So your dollars are wilting by about 3% per year.

Wes Moss [00:25:16]:
But dividends for the S and P 500 are, call it five to five and a half percent growth on average per year. Not fully double, but close to double just in their growth. So they’re kind of this unsung hero when it comes to outpacing or keeping up with and outpacing inflation. So we protect our purchasing power. That’s what investing is all about. So going back to this participation markets have started to broaden out. An example is that in a pretty good year. So a pretty good year so far for stocks in general.

Wes Moss [00:25:50]:
Also not quite as good, but still a pretty good year if you’re looking at a variety of different dividend oriented ETF’s. So that’s, number one, markets have broadened out and we’ll take that, and I take that as a healthy sign. Number two, there has been an obsession with what the Fed’s going to do. It’s funny, Stanley drunken Miller, who was on CNBC this week, and he’s been a hedge fund guy. He was, he did so well at his own hedge fund that now he, I think he just manages his own family office. He’s had something like 30% annualized, annualized returns, one of the few that would, has beaten Berkshire Hathaway. He was ranting and raving about how the Fed just needs to stop talking and just stop saying we’re going to do this or we’re going to do that and just be very untransparent and just make a move when they need to make a move, depending on the data, as opposed to having the entire marketplace waiting on every single word. Are they going to cut, are they not going to cut interest rates? But we know investors have been to some extent obsessed with what the Fed might do.

Wes Moss [00:26:58]:
Might they raise, might they lower?

Jeff Lloyd [00:27:01]:
Well, look, the Fed isn’t going to 100% tell us exactly what they’re going to do and signal what they’re going to do with their next move. But in general, the market kind of knows the direction the Fed is kind of gravitating toward. I mean, you know, we’ll see.

Wes Moss [00:27:17]:
We don’t know. The market still thinks there’s going to be some interest rate cuts, but we might not get any.

Jeff Lloyd [00:27:23]:
Do you, do we think the market is bacon in a rate hike? I don’t think, based on what Powell has been telling us over the past.

Wes Moss [00:27:31]:
Couple of months, I don’t think so. He has taken the rate hike off the table. But, so they’ve, they raised eleven times in a row from zero to where we are today, five and a half percent for the Fed funds rate. That was from March of 22 to July of 23. Then they’ve been essentially on pause since last summer. So it’s been about eleven months since they’ve stayed put. This is what’s interesting about, though, as the Fed pauses, the longer these pauses are typically the better the market actually does. So I’m not wishing for a rate cut.

Wes Moss [00:28:04]:
I certainly wouldn’t like a rate hike. I’m okay with this status where we’re just, rates are staying put. On average, if you go back to the, to the early 1970s, when the Fed is pausing, the S and P 500 has averaged about five and a half, a little over five and a half percent. So it’s been positive. In the pause, more money matters straight ahead. We keep hearing that inflation is coming down. For the past three years, the common man inflation gauge is still up over 20%. That’s necessities like food, gas, utilities and shelter.

Wes Moss [00:28:40]:
How can you possibly keep up? Well, one option is income investing. That’s using a combination of growing stock, dividends, bonds for more cash flow, and other areas that can be a hedge against inflation. Look, inflation is tough. Let us help you overcome it. Schedule a time directly with our team@yourwealth.com. Dot that’s your wealth.com dot. Yes, we had a weaker than expected jobs report. The unemployment rate went up all the way up to 3.9%, which is still very near a historic low.

Wes Moss [00:29:14]:
We still have a strong economy in a lot of the categories that really matter. But if you look at, we want earnings to be growing and we want overall economic growth, of course. And where does that stand? Well Fed GDP. Now, our very own Atlanta Federal Reserve is well known for something called their GDP now forecast, or I think it’s GDP now cast where they’re taking real time economic data or recent economic data, and they’re trying to say what they think that the economy is growing in any given quarter. At last click, Jeff Lloyd, they’re looking at a 4.2% growth rate. Now, this for Q two of 2024 for over 4% GDP growth. We’re not an emerging market. This is the United States.

Wes Moss [00:30:02]:
We’re a giant tanker sized battleship that doesn’t grow very fast because we’re already very developed. But if we click in at 4% is really healthy growth.

Jeff Lloyd [00:30:13]:
Yeah, and this is a number, despite.

Wes Moss [00:30:14]:
All the calls for recession, this is.

Jeff Lloyd [00:30:16]:
A number that they update on a weekly basis. But what we’ve seen recently is it tick up upward. And this past week, you got a, you got a good reading at 4.2%. So combine that with some strong earnings in that five and a half, 6%.

Wes Moss [00:30:33]:
Signs are pointing to Jeff, you’re overly rosy here on a Sunday morning. What I’ll get as soon as we do something that’s positive. And, yes, we have a relatively positive outlook, particularly over the long run. Not to mention we could be in the beginning stages. I believe we are in a massive productivity tailwind because of artificial intelligence, just like we were in the late nineties with the Internet. But I will inevitably get emails that say, how can you put on such a rosy economic commentary when we’re in trillions in debt? And that’s fair. There are plenty of economic data points that aren’t so rosy, and we’re certainly aware of them. So I look at this as that there are always economic cross currents.

Wes Moss [00:31:18]:
We have a lot of things going well, and then we have some things that are obviously hurdles for this us economy. Yes, the debt is one of them. The one thing I’ve noticed about 2024, it’s not just a small faction of people talking about that. It’s a lot of people. And I think the awareness and being able to actually get it out the open and not sweep it under the rug like a lot like Congress likes to do, that’s at least the first step to solving that problem. So we’ve got economic cross currents. The economy and the overall market in general have remained on really pretty solid ground. I’m encouraged to see an overall healthier stock market, particularly relative to last year, that hasn’t relied solely on technology to plow new ground as far as stocks are concerned.

Wes Moss [00:32:01]:
And if you’re a balanced income investor, guess what? As much as we don’t love these higher interest rates, it’s good for income investors, too, particularly for that balanced portfolio, which I think continues to make sense for a lot of folks and families looking to get to retirement maybe a little sooner, having their money last. It’s a good long term combination with that TikTok. What is that doing to the money brain of an entire generation? Red lobster? What happened with their all you can eat shrimp buffet? Which then we go right into, speaking of buffet, Warren Buffett quotes. And then, of course, college costs. I think we start with college costs because the numbers are just, again, we did some, we did some Berkshire Hathaway rated returns. Those are mind blowing, but these are mind blowing, particularly if you’ve got someone headed to college or you’re in the middle of paying for college as a parent or you’re paying because you’re a college student. Some of these numbers are just incredible here on, on graduation weekend. The average, these are, these are in state.

Wes Moss [00:33:10]:
This is Georgia versus Georgia Tech. The, so tuition and fees. University of Georgia. Again, this is just straight out of. Where was this, Jeff Lloyd, was this collegecost.com dot?

Jeff Lloyd [00:33:24]:
No, this was a Georgia, Georgia state website where you could go in and put public universities in Georgia and compare two universities. So, you know, for this exercise we do, University of Georgia versus Georgia Tech. You could have gone in there and compared Georgia Southern to Georgia State or Kennesaw State.

Wes Moss [00:33:43]:
No, the numbers are pretty close here. So the tuition and mandatory fees for UGA, just a little over 11,000. Georgia Tech, a little under 12,000. Similar cost of. So, tuition, room, board, books and supplies. So kind of an all in number if you’re in state, about 28,000 for UGA, about $29,500 for Georgia Tech. And I suspect this next column shows the average scholarship in grants. I wonder if that is that hope.

Jeff Lloyd [00:34:15]:
Yeah.

Wes Moss [00:34:16]:
So that’s another maybe part of hope.

Jeff Lloyd [00:34:18]:
Like what? They’re getting to go there.

Wes Moss [00:34:20]:
Yes, on average. So on average, it looks like it’s about 10,000, $11,000 for GGA and twelve in aid scholarships, et cetera, grants for Georgia Tech. So they both come out to almost exactly $17,000, just, just both north of $17,000 a year. So that’s in state. And that seems to, now, that looks like an amazing deal if you think about, you’ve got two amazing universities and for, on average, $17,000 in today’s economy, when it feels like it costs $17,000 to go to the grocery store, you get an entire year of education. That seems like college is still an amazing value. Now you take it out of state. So if you’re from, not from here in the state of Georgia, then the numbers jump to about $34,000 for UGA and 37 for Georgia Tech.

Wes Moss [00:35:15]:
Still expensive, but still feels like you’re going to get that money back over time.

Jeff Lloyd [00:35:21]:
They effectively double for out of state students is what this data is showing us.

Wes Moss [00:35:27]:
Right. So this is us News and World Report. Average public in state tuition is about $10,600. Is that per semester, the whole year?

Jeff Lloyd [00:35:38]:
That doesn’t include room and board. That’s just tuition and fees. So doesn’t include room and board, which is obviously a growing cost and a growing component of the overall cost of college.

Wes Moss [00:35:48]:
Public universities. Out of state tuition, 23,600, $130 and then private university, their tuitions on average, 42,000, a little over $42,000 a year. Now, we wanted to see some of the more expensive colleges, and these are among the top ten most expensive colleges or universities in the United States. And it turns out that it looks like this list to me is almost all private, which should obviously make sense because we’ve got these, these high ticket prices. Wellesley college, it’s a women’s women’s college in Massachusetts. All in at about $82,000 a year. $82,000 per year. Shocking.

Wes Moss [00:36:36]:
Wake forest, not too far away from my alma mater, about almost $82,000 a year as well. I don’t know. This college is this. We need. Let’s fact check this in real time. Jeff Lloyd, the Harvey Mudd College I.

Jeff Lloyd [00:36:53]:
Have heard of, Harvey Mudd is number.

Wes Moss [00:36:55]:
Eight on the list, known for its STEM programs, science, technology, et cetera, in Claremont, California. That. That probably explains it. In Claremont, California, total cost of about $77,500. You’ve heard of Harvey Mudd?

Jeff Lloyd [00:37:10]:
Yeah. And I was trying to fact check in, and I just typed in Harvey Mudd enrollment, and it says 906 undergrad.

Wes Moss [00:37:17]:
That sounds very exclusive.

Jeff Lloyd [00:37:20]:
Very exclusive.

Wes Moss [00:37:21]:
Columbia, 81, 82,000. Amherst on the list. Tufts, University of Southern California, USC. This one surprised me. I just. I had forgotten. I always think of the California universities as state schools, but I get. But USC is a.

Wes Moss [00:37:38]:
Is a private, it’s a private institution. Institution in California. Total cost of 77,000. Almost $77,500 for USC, which, again, I guess it’s a private university. And so it’s the same cost for in state and out of state. Brown University, Scripps college. You know them. Another Claremont, Cal.

Jeff Lloyd [00:38:06]:
I know, Scripps spelling bee. Is that. Same thing. Different.

Wes Moss [00:38:10]:
I need. Let’s fact check this, too. Claremont, California, Scripps College. Is that another college? That is almost $80,000 a year. 77,500, yeah. So when you think, think of this. If you’re in state, you go to UGA or you go to Georgia Tech, and you’re, on average, spending 17 grand a year, and then you go to, and then you compare that to one of these other universities, that’s, on average, 880 thousand dollars a year. It’s pretty dramatic.

Wes Moss [00:38:44]:
It’s five x the cost, pretty much five times the cost between those two. I think in the world that we live in, we’ve seen massive college inflation. If you ever look at an inflation chart, you see tvs going one way because they’ve gotten 90% cheaper. You look at university tuition, cost of higher education, it’s gone the exact opposite of technology. It’s gone through the roof. There are still, if you’re smart about where you’re looking for college and you’re willing to stay in state, particularly if you go to a public university, it doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t have to be buying the cost of a home. In fact, a lot more than a home.

Jeff Lloyd [00:39:24]:
Well, if I’m looking at this list. Right. There’s one thing that those top ten most expensive colleges have in common. They’re either all up in the northeast or they’re in California.

Wes Moss [00:39:36]:
California or the northeast, two places that it’s nearly impossible for anyone to be able to afford. All right. With that. So there’s a couple of thoughts around graduation. I think last year I think we did the Matthew McConaughey speech. It’s my favorite graduation speech, I’d say. I think maybe Morgan Freeman has done one, Denzel, an amazing one. And McConaughey, author of Green Lights.

Wes Moss [00:40:00]:
Who’s Matthew McConaughey? He’s the author of Green Lights and he’s been in a couple of movies.

Jeff Lloyd [00:40:05]:
I think that graduation speech kind of went viral. I think it touched a lot of people. Very passionate, as you would expect from Matthew McConaughey.

Wes Moss [00:40:12]:
So good. And we’ve written about this, though. What do happy retirees do when it comes to thinking about the cost of education for their kids? So here on this graduation weekend, couple of thoughts that we’ve chronicled in what the happiest retirees know around adult kids. And there’s a sliding scale here because really, does 18 really an adult anymore? Yes, you’re an adult, but I don’t think people think of an eight. When I think of an 18 year old, I still think of a kid. And you’re headed up to college. You’re 18, 1920, but technically you’re in most studies that are looking at our kids being supported by their parents. And the reason that number has gone up so much.

Wes Moss [00:40:55]:
And the percentage of parents that supplement their kids is that kids are going to school for at later ages. We’ve seen, it feels like most college football players, by the time they get out, are like 25 or 26 years old. So they’re getting some help. But the first principle for happy retirees when it comes to their kids is to keep them off the payroll and keep their spending for their adult kids as low as humanly possible. We’ve done studies around this. The average unhappy retiree supports their adult kids to the tune of about $700 per month. Now this goes beyond college. This goes, and I think where it starts to get into these more difficult waters is when somebody is 30 or 35 and you’re still supporting a lifestyle as a parent.

Wes Moss [00:41:48]:
It’s not a place you want to be. It’s an inverse correlation between happiness levels. The more you’re spending past a certain point, our research shows the lower the happiness levels. Again, supporting your adult children, the happy retiree group spends less than $500, on average, supporting their adult kids. So, yes, it’s extra financial assistance. It is. And we want to do that as parents, but we also want independent kids. It’s a mark of a happy retiree.

Wes Moss [00:42:19]:
Which leads us to number two. The next most important principle is getting your kids married and getting them out of the house. Our studies show that if your kids are out of the house and they’re independent, happiness levels go up. If they’re actually living with you, it’s a terrible sign. We don’t want that. Most importantly, we do, though, want to be near our kids. We want to be near our adult children. And our statistics show that happiness levels go up anywhere from two to five x if we live near 50% of our adult kids or more.

Wes Moss [00:42:53]:
Meaning if you have four kids, you want to be in the same town or vicinity with at least two of them. And the good news here is that if they’re moving, it’s your choice. If you got two of your kids, four kids, moved to boise, Idaho. What should you do?

Jeff Lloyd [00:43:07]:
According to the research, you need to move out there with them.

Wes Moss [00:43:10]:
Yep. And you can pick your favorite kids. More money matters. Straight ahead. Jeff Lloyd, what’s the most interesting story you heard of the week? I know I’m putting you on the spot. That’s not what we said we would talk about.

Jeff Lloyd [00:43:24]:
No, it’s not. But we did read an interesting article about TikTok and money generation through TikTokers.

Wes Moss [00:43:32]:
Mallory loves the story. Producer Mallory. She lives on TikTok. How TikTok is wiring the money brain. I spent about a few minutes on TikTok the other day. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s just, it’s all, every single thing I saw there was just drivel. Now, maybe it’s because I don’t go on in a bunch and I don’t curate, but it just feels like it’s just car crashes and people falling off trying to jump onto railings or people doing different dances.

Wes Moss [00:44:04]:
Dances.

Jeff Lloyd [00:44:05]:
It’s a lot of people just trying to draw attention to themselves.

Wes Moss [00:44:09]:
Anyway. Evidently it’s ruining your money brain, too, because there is, and I think it comes back to what I would call Insta flation. And Insta flation to me is we spend more because we’re on Instagram and social media. Instagram is an example. TikTok is a great example. It’s just one big, living, breathing commercial. That’s all it is. It’s one giant attention grabbing look.

Wes Moss [00:44:37]:
At this. Look at this. And then look at this ad. And it’s living, breathing, and it’s getting to know you and it’s trying to figure you out. And that’s why it’s so good. And that’s why some of the e commerce statistics you brought up this week is something. What are e commerce sales on social media?

Jeff Lloyd [00:44:51]:
Yeah. So in 2022, that’s the latest data that we had. It was almost a trillion dollars spent on e commerce via social media.

Wes Moss [00:44:59]:
So. Meaning you see an ad on Instagram and you go to that, that shopper, you go to that company, you buy.

Jeff Lloyd [00:45:04]:
The blanket with your cat’s picture on it. Right? People still do that in six and six. I think a lot of people, maybe even some people in the studio do that.

Wes Moss [00:45:14]:
Yeah, I think Mallory has one of those. I confess, I buy almost every shirt I have. Every shirt is from an Instagram ad, typically.

Jeff Lloyd [00:45:26]:
Well, have you noticed, like, I used to go on Instagram and I kind of wanted to see what my friends were doing. Now I get a couple of those, but it’s like every other one is a friend, but most of it. Most of my feed is filled with ads. Yeah, it’s what I’m noticing.

Wes Moss [00:45:40]:
Well, so the problem, though, with, and this is a. I think this is a Wall Street Journal article, essentially, you have, I guess this is Gen Z. They’re seeing this. They’re getting whipsawed because they’re seeing what you should buy. Because if you. If you’re here’s a wonderful destination vacation overlooking an infinity pool. I’m here, you’re not. Oh, it’s okay to spend on experiences.

Wes Moss [00:46:06]:
Go spend a $5,000 trip. Then they’re seeing a Louis Vuitton bag that’s $2,000. And at the same time, they’re seeing guys like Dave Ramsey or Clark Howard saying you should spend less, spend less, spend less. So they’re calling this financial dysmorphia, and it’s whip sawing this generation around, wait, I want to buy that and I should spend this, but no, you don’t spend anything. I. I don’t know why. Just kind of a ridiculous article. It’s just a souped up version of what we all live through, which was great advertising for Madison Avenue.

Wes Moss [00:46:39]:
Now it’s on tick tock. It’s just that much more in the face. Still pretty simple. The rules of accumulating wealth over time, still the same. They were, and they’ve always been save, spend less, save more, and invest that money over time, no matter what. Tick Tock says. Now, speaking of online shopping, which at one point spelled the doom of brick and mortar, is absolutely saving brick and mortar stores.

Jeff Lloyd [00:47:06]:
Whenever I hear brick and mortar, I think of like a college finance textbook. It’s like the most boring financial term I can think of.

Wes Moss [00:47:16]:
It’s almost like if you were to.

Jeff Lloyd [00:47:17]:
Ask me what is the most boring financial term you can think of, immediately I would say brick and mortar topped. It feels like an old term topped only by widget. Widgets. Widgets sold at brick and mortar stores.

Wes Moss [00:47:34]:
Someone sitting in the shade today. Now here’s an actual Warren buffet quote. Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. I don’t think anyone’s going to argue about that. Fear is the most contagious disease that you can imagine. It makes the virus look like a piker. That’s a new one. Thank you for pulling that.

Wes Moss [00:47:57]:
He said that back in 2020. Oh, during COVID so. Oh, I do remember this. Yes. He said that fear is fear around investing in general and the contagiousness.

Jeff Lloyd [00:48:10]:
Contagious, yes.

Wes Moss [00:48:12]:
Is even, it makes the virus look like a piker. Wow. What a quote. So by using the term contagious, he’s suggesting that following the herd is in no way to fund a value discount or, I guess, no way to fund a retirement or find value oriented companies that build part of great investment portfolios. Let’s see this one. We’ve all heard the simple, greedy, greedy, fearful one. I like this one. It’s never paid to bet against America.

Jeff Lloyd [00:48:44]:
I thought you would like that one. The army of american productivity. How often do we talk about that here on the show? We could talk about it every week.

Wes Moss [00:48:53]:
Somewhere between a lot and not enough. It’s never paid to bet against America. We come through things, but it’s not always a smooth ride. And just when Warren Buffett says it to something about, I think he’s, what, 94 at this, 93. But just when he says it, it sounds so good, it resonates and you remember it. That’s probably Jeff Lloyd’s favorite, isn’t it?

Jeff Lloyd [00:49:16]:
I think it is. Out of these five that we pulled, this is definitely my favorite.

Wes Moss [00:49:21]:
What’s going on with Red lobster?

Jeff Lloyd [00:49:24]:
It’s like, will they or won’t they file for bankruptcy? But there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of stuff going on under the surface at Red lobster.

Wes Moss [00:49:31]:
I don’t see this as a bad harbinger for the United States economy at all. This is a, you’ve got a lot of restaurants that are doing well.

Jeff Lloyd [00:49:39]:
We just, it sounds like a poorly run business. That’s what it is.

Wes Moss [00:49:43]:
It seems like a leadership issue to me. I mean, last week when you were doing your economic research at the Morgan Wallen concert in Nashville, Connor and I were talking about the use cases of artificial intelligence. And one of them was a, some about it was a chicken and waffles place in California, Nancy’s chicken.

Jeff Lloyd [00:50:00]:
Whoa, I can’t remember. Was it Nancy’s chicken like that?

Wes Moss [00:50:03]:
Nancy’s chicken and waffles. And it was interesting. It reminds me of how brick and mortar is saving online shopping. You immediately think, well, if I can just go to a kiosk and AI is going to just talk to me and it knows what I like and it does my order for me. And we’ve already seen this. We’ve seen this start to some extent. And over the past year or so, it does seem like that would eliminate jobs. Like, you don’t need somebody there taking your order if you can just do it on a screen.

Wes Moss [00:50:35]:
And the screen is evidently smarter. It remembers every single person. Imagine, let’s say you’re taking orders, you’re a hostess and you’re doing takeout orders. As an example, imagine how many people are going to remember maybe like 2030 of the same people that come in. But if you had an artificial intelligence kiosk, they would remember perfectly every single person that’s ever been there, what they ordered and what they might like to try. So in the case of Nancy’s chicken and waffles, or, I don’t know if that’s the exact story, but this was documented in the Wall Street Journal in the last week or two, is that they switched to an AI automated ordering system. And what did it do? It doubled their business. It doubled their business.

Wes Moss [00:51:22]:
Again, I don’t think you were here for this. So instead of eliminating jobs, it doubled the business. And they’ve had to hire more people. They’ve changed the way that the job focus has been a little bit different, or in a few cases a lot different. But now the business is at full capacity. They’ve needed more people, and they’ve had to hire multiple people in order to meet the demand. Which brought up the, one of the things I haven’t heard a whole lot about in this new AI tailwind revolution is capacity utilization. You think about a business and you think if it’s doing well, it’s doing a million dollars in sales.

Wes Moss [00:52:02]:
But what if it was more efficient and it was doing $2 billion in sales? Is that maybe part of what AI will solve for it’ll make businesses more efficient and more utilization of the resources they already have. It could actually create jobs.

Jeff Lloyd [00:52:18]:
Have you seen these new chick fil a’s that have been popping up around town? And it’s almost like they’re reducing the dine in footprint and expand because they’re so good, and they’re expanding the drive through capabilities so they’re able to serve more people, sell more chicken sandwiches and waffle fries with almost either the same real estate footprint or even less just kind of reconfiguring that nobody did it.

Wes Moss [00:52:43]:
Better than chick fil a during the pandemic on serving people. So there’s two things. One, we had some shake shack this week, and I heard, I don’t know this to be true, that they give out their free chicken shack burgers on Sundays just as a little plug to.

Jeff Lloyd [00:53:01]:
Oh, I get it. Cause chick fil A’s cl. Okay.

Wes Moss [00:53:04]:
Isn’t that funny?

Jeff Lloyd [00:53:05]:
Yeah.

Wes Moss [00:53:05]:
I don’t know if that may be true. I don’t know genius marketing if it is, but there’s. But after eating one, somebody asked me, is this as good as chick fil a? It’s not even close.

Jeff Lloyd [00:53:16]:
It’s not close.

Wes Moss [00:53:16]:
Not even close. Nobody close to chick fil a. Number one. Number two, I remember being on. I think we were driving to Michigan in that first summer of COVID and I remember we stopped at y’all had.

Jeff Lloyd [00:53:29]:
Everyone in the car. You had the dogs in the car, too.

Wes Moss [00:53:31]:
Big american suv. The dogs in the back. It’s me. It’s Lynn. It’s all kids. We got one of those roof rack things. I can’t remember where it is from. Toole.

Wes Moss [00:53:42]:
Toole tule. And the same rack that we left on at Whole Foods. Yeah, the same rack that Lynn got stuck one. I’m not gonna say the place, but, Lynn, I left the roof rack. This is like five years, six years ago, I left the roof rack. I was too lazy to take it off. I emptied it out, but left the rack up there. And she, after a week or two, forgot it was on there, went through a concrete parking lot and just ripped the thing off.

Wes Moss [00:54:09]:
It, like, broke into a million pieces. And then four or five years later, so we vowed never to do that again. Four or five years later, she actually got wedge stuck in a Whole Foods parking lot.

Jeff Lloyd [00:54:24]:
And happy mother’s day, Lynn.

Wes Moss [00:54:26]:
Happy Mother’s Day. So how did we get out? I just lowered the air in the tires, and we only needed, like, just.

Jeff Lloyd [00:54:36]:
A little bit to get up, get below.

Wes Moss [00:54:39]:
That psi of ten helped out Wes.

Jeff Lloyd [00:54:45]:
You just have the people rolling in the.

Wes Moss [00:54:48]:
What were you talking about?

Jeff Lloyd [00:54:49]:
We’re talking about AI and more efficiency and chick fil a and.

Wes Moss [00:54:54]:
Oh, so who. I remember we’re driving back from Michigan, and the drive back is always so much worse because when you’re going, you’re anticipating the fun of, in this case, northern Michigan. I get giddy when I’m going up there. And the kids are, you know, they’re kind of. They’re excited. On the way home. It’s like the opposite, right? It’s like we’ve had the long trip. Everyone’s tired, irritable, hungry.

Wes Moss [00:55:21]:
I never want to stop for food. But Lynn is like the ultimate mom when it comes to feed. She has this just. She wants the boys to eat every ten minutes. She wants to meet anyway. So it’s like, well, let’s stop at chick fil a. I. Look, we’re in Kentucky.

Wes Moss [00:55:35]:
We go to a chick fil a. God bless. It’s open. It must have been a Saturday. The line, it looked like the parking lot at a Taylor Swift concert. I immediately was like, there’s no way I’m doing this. So because it’s the best place to eat by far, we get to the line again. The summer of.

Wes Moss [00:55:55]:
So I think COVID was the worst period was what? March, April, May. This was July. So we’d work through things a little bit. We got through in ten minutes. It was like the speediest thing we’ve ever. Evidently, I immediately thought Elon Musk must have designed the new chick fil a drive thru because it was so efficient, so amazing. Evidently. And again, I’ve heard this from good sources.

Wes Moss [00:56:22]:
Guess who. Who designed that chick fil a? Just masterpiece of logistics.

Jeff Lloyd [00:56:32]:
I’m drawing a blank. I’m trying to think back, you know, four years ago during that COVID summer. Who could it be?

Wes Moss [00:56:40]:
Elon Musk comes to mind. The students at SCAD.

Jeff Lloyd [00:56:44]:
No way.

Wes Moss [00:56:45]:
Savannah College of Art. I believe in design. And how could that possibly be? They think about what they did. They completely, from a completely creative way, said, wait a minute. Why don’t you just come outside and we’ll figure this thing out? And it was a totally inverse way you’ve ever done that. Drive thrus had been done.

Jeff Lloyd [00:57:08]:
So you’re actually ordering with a real person with the tablet taking your order right there.

Wes Moss [00:57:13]:
If, in fact, there is an Elon musk out there that did that design, and maybe it was all within chick fil a. If there’s somebody out there, then I’d love to know. But so I have been told by good sources, I cannot confirm this, but it supposedly was the creativity of some kids at scat.

Jeff Lloyd [00:57:33]:
I have not been through a better or a more efficient drive through process than chick fil a. Yeah.

Wes Moss [00:57:39]:
And it’s still not like that in other places. They still do think about it. I mean, thinking, wait a minute. That was outside. Of course, they had to be outside of COVID But today, still to this day, that’s how they do it. In a lot of cases, you have people outside, but that’s not the case at the other fast food chains, and.

Jeff Lloyd [00:57:53]:
That’S rain or shine. They’re out there.

Wes Moss [00:57:55]:
That’s true. God bless them. We didn’t really get to online brick and mortar, but. Well, give me one statistic of how brick and mortar has been saved by online shopping. There was a time when we thought all stores were under closed down, that everything was.

Jeff Lloyd [00:58:10]:
We thought that, like e commerce or online shopping, you order it online, shipped to your house, and that’s it. You have no need for brick and mortar. Well, these studies are showing that people are ordering online, but then going to pick up at the brick and mortar, the retail store, trying them on, ordering three dresses, trying them on, and then returning the other two that don’t fit.

Wes Moss [00:58:30]:
There’s a story from me.

Jeff Lloyd [00:58:31]:
So there is still a need for the brick and mortar stores.

Wes Moss [00:58:34]:
Amazon accounts for 37.6% of all e commerce sales, the highest market share of all e commerce companies. Amazon, eBay, and Aliexpress. The most visited companies. Aliexpress. That must be. That’s Alibaba.

Jeff Lloyd [00:58:50]:
That’s international alibaba.

Wes Moss [00:58:53]:
52% of online shoppers report shopping internationally. The most common reason online shoppers abandon their cart is because of additional costs. That’s 47%. 25% of online shoppers abandon their cart because the site wants them to create an account. And I’ve done that before.

Jeff Lloyd [00:59:11]:
Try to buy something, and they’re like, no. The only way you can buy this is by creating a new account. I’m like, I’ll go somewhere else.

Wes Moss [00:59:17]:
The online shopping carver abandon rate is 70%. You know who’s really good about this? Cricut shirts. I was on there the other day. I was getting a couple shirts for getting some summer short sleeve shirts. I guess you call them polo shirts. And I just never went. I just. I don’t know.

Wes Moss [00:59:33]:
I got distracted and never entered the order text five minutes later. Hey, knock, knock, knock. I think you forgot to press buy.

Jeff Lloyd [00:59:43]:
I think you left something in your shopping cart with that’s so good.

Wes Moss [00:59:46]:
And I think they even gave me a discount that it was really, it’s amazing how good they’re getting at all these issues of why people abandon the cart. It’s a whole industry to gate instead of 70% of people abandoning 60, 50, etcetera, as it gets more and more efficient and effective. And we’re trying to do the same thing when it comes to our new website, yourwealth.com, there is so much content. We’ve done hundreds and hundreds of shows. We’ve done 200. Some retire sooner podcasts. We have money matters. So we spent over the last several months revamping yourwealth.com so people can find what they want to find.

Wes Moss [01:00:26]:
So let’s say you want to find. I can’t remember when it was. And by the way, Google doesn’t do this, and most websites don’t do this. If you ever go to a website and try to go to the search function, you’re never going to find anything. It takes a lot of work to be able to make a site searchable. So we’ve done that. At least we’ve tried to do that. So if anything you’ve heard us talk about, you go to the resources tab on the new yourwealth.com and just type it in.

Wes Moss [01:00:51]:
You can type in the number four and you’ll get a bunch of articles that talk about the 4% rule, dividends. A bunch of articles that we’ve talked about on dividends. Maybe if you even looked up Jeff Lloyd, he’d come up and where Jeff Lloyd comes up. But we spent a lot of time trying to categorize so you can find the content that matters to you, that helps you on your financial journey, and find it quickly. Whether it’s an article or a podcast, it should be easily accessible and found on the brand new yourwealth.com. That’s y o u rwealth.com. Just hit the resources tab and search and we wish you the best. Jeff Lloyd, tell Kate happy Mother’s day for me.

Wes Moss [01:01:35]:
Thanks for being here, man.

Jeff Lloyd [01:01:36]:
Happy Mother’s Day, mom. Happy Mother’s Day, kate.

Wes Moss [01:01:40]:
And Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms and grandmas out there as well. Listening. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

Mallory Boggs [01:01:52]:
This is provided as a resource for informational purposes and is not to be viewed as investment advice or recommendations. This information is being presented without consideration of the investment objectives, risk tolerance, or financial circumstances of any specific investor and might not be suitable for all investors. The mention of any company is provided to you for informational purposes and as an example only, and is not to be considered investment advice or recommendation or an endorsement of any particular company. Past performance is not indicative. Future results investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. There is no guarantee offered that investment return, yield, or performance will be achieved. The information provided is strictly an opinion and for informational purposes only, and it is not known whether the strategies will be successful. There are many aspects and criteria that must be examined and considered before investing.

Mallory Boggs [01:02:39]:
This information is not intended to and should not form a primary basis for any investment decision that you may make. Always consult your own legal, tax or investment advisor before making any investment tax, estate or financial planning consideration decisions. Investment decisions should not be made solely based on information contained herein.