Hi, everybody. We're about to head out Live on our Aging Insight Radio Show, hope you enjoy the program today.

And the resource for learning about how to manage your health, policy, financial and legal needs. This is a Live-calling program featuring John Ross and Lisa Shoalmire.

Just enjoy the show, feel free to give us a like, a share, hit one of those heart buttons, whatever you feel comfortable with.

Welcome to Aging Insight, everybody, this is your host John Ross, here Live in the studio, with my faithful co-host Lisa Shoalmire.

Except for neither one of us were faithful last week, on our Live radio.

Except for neither one of us were able to make it last week. You know, life just catches up with you occasionally. You know, we've been doing the program for what, about four years now?

Almost five.

Almost… is it really?

Yes.

Wow. You know, I bet we've only missed a handful.

Yeah. Well, you know, maybe a couple dozen over five years which is not bad?

I didn't know it was that many.

I don't know.

I don't know, we've been...

Some of our faithful listeners could probably tell us.

That's probably true. But, nonetheless, we are here Live on a rainy Texarkana day.

Yeah, there's nothing better than being in a cozy radio studio today, if you are in our little nook of our woods, yeah.

And I think that means that we've probably got people that are sitting at home listening to the show.

Or maybe they're sitting at the parking lot, get their shopping done and they're just not ready to get out of the car because, you know, it's rainy and cool.

That's exactly right, and of course, if you...

Just stay in the car listen to the show.

And if you are at home and you're listening on the actual radio radio, you can give us a call, the phone numbers 903-793-1071. You can call in and ask your questions. Of course, if you're at home, you may have Internet access, and if you've got some Internet access you can always go and check out the Ross and Shoalmire Facebook page, where we are broadcasting this live. So you can watch us do radio, you can see Lisa Shoalmire in her Saints jacket, even though football season is over, still supporting her team.

Hey the new football season started the day after the Super Bowl.

Well, and for you, the new football season started after the Saints lost to the Vikings.

Well, that's true.

Because after that it really didn't matter.

Hope springs eternal if you are a Saint's fan.

That's exactly right.

Hopefully, we don't get any thumbs down on the Facebook page over that.

I don't think they do that, yeah, do they?

I hope not. So anyway, if you jump on your Facebook page, if you've got Internet service, you can see us on Ross and Shoalmire Facebook page, we've got a little Live thing going. And I was over in Tyler, Texas, on Thursday John, so I was telling some folks about our Facebook Live, and so if I've got any Tyler, Texas folks watching today on Facebook, welcome.

That's right, welcome.

Well, of course, getting on the radio and getting this airtime is not a free proposition. I mean, John and I, we give of our time to come up here on Saturdays to make this happen. So we're in the studio Live to answer your questions and take your comments, but the air time itself is not free, and so we have some sponsors that help us out with that cost.

So it's top of the hour John, so I need to give a little shout out to our sponsors and those include Edgenet SP Manner, SP The Barnett Agency, Dierksen Memorial Hospice, Cowhorn Creek Estates, Christus St. Michael's Hospital and Health Care Center, Texarkana Funeral Home, Red River Federal Credit Union, Heritage Plaza and Reunion Plaza and their Twin City Rehab.

Yeah, so thanks to all of them and then, of course, thanks, to all our listeners out there. You know, we get to talk to you occasionally as, you know, when we have folks come in the office and mention that they listen to the program even, you know, it was Thursday evening, I emceed the Alzheimer's Alliance Annual Chili Supper.

Oh, yeah, that's right because I missed it because I was in Tyler.

That's right.

So you were here.

Yeah, that's right I was over emceeing the Chili Supper over there and got to... actually saw a couple there that I knew from outside of the Alzheimer's Alliance. A couple that actually are crazy enough to show up at the gym at 5:00 o'clock, every morning along with me and the teenagers.

Yes, so gym friends.

So, gym friends that's right and visited with them at the Wiseman Gym having a listen to the program.

All right, we like it.

Yeah, so it's all good stuff out there. Now speaking of the Alzheimer's Alliance, of course, we had a great chili supper. That's a great institution. Of course, I'm biased. I'm the President of...

Yeah, you're the president.

President of the organization but, you know, that's something that I've volunteered with for many years now, and I'm a super supporter of the Alzheimer's Alliance. We've got the Wine Festival coming up.

First Saturday in May?

First Saturday in May, that's right, so that's gonna be a big event, hope everybody will come out. And we will be announcing a new event where the Alzheimer's Alliance has teamed up with Texarkana College for a big event that I'm not gonna tell you about yet.

Oh, so that's the teaser.

That's the teaser because there's going to be a big reveal at some point, but you have to stick with it. Now, the reason I mentioned all of this, so I show up at, of course, the Chill Supper, we make our own chili, you know we're not dumping cans of Wolf Brand.

Wolf Brand, okay. Well that's good, that's right. It is big homemade. In fact, I've been to the Chili Supper in years past, John, and I see the guys and ladies out there, they spend all day fixing up some big pots of chili.

Right. And, you know, there's a group of gentlemen that, every year, they'd get out there and they'd cook that chili, they cook some fantastic chili.

They do, they really... I don't even like chili and I like the Alzheimer's light chili.

And I will say that I do not believe that these gentlemen are really all that interested in being out there cooking chili as much as they are out there sitting around chill pots for some number of hours telling each other...

Telling tales.

Telling tales, that's right.

Perhaps indulging in a beverage or two.

It's possible, it's possible. And so anyway, I get out there a couple hours before the whole to-do starts, and I'm visiting with a couple of the gentlemen out there, and one in particular, I won't name names, but one in particular he does like to spin a whim, he likes to tell a tale, and he's talking about a friend of his, and he's talking about this friend of his who he had, in his retirement, he was kind of a motorcycle guy. And, you know, as he's interacting with other people in the motorcycle business and things like that, he ends up visiting with this other older gentleman who had basically a truckload of leathers.

Okay, a truckload of leathers.

You know...

Now are you talking about the kinda stuff that you wear when you're riding a motorcycle?

Right, leather jackets, leather chaps, you know, leathers, Harley leathers, you know, the tough stuff.

I gotta catch up. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, so we got leathers, right? And this guy says, "Hey, I'm get out of this, you know. Are you interested in getting…?" He said, "Look this is a business, actually a pretty good little business of selling these leathers to the motorcyclists out there."

The enthusiasts, the motorcyclists.

So this guy says, "Hey, you know, what, it was good deal, this guy wanted to get out of it." So he essentially bought his inventory, and as he's interacting with other motorcycle enthusiasts. he ends up starting to sell these. And in the process of this, he generated quite a bit if cash money.

Okay. Well, I hadn't thought about that but cash from the sale of motorcycle leathers.

Right, and so he's got some cash and since we're... you know, we're not naming names or anything, we can say that not all of this cash made it into a...

Tax return?

Or a tax return.

A financial institution.

Well, I can't say whether or not...

You didn't ask that question?

I did not ask that question. Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to.

That's right. Yeah, when you're a lawyer you don't ask questions you don't want the answers to.

That's exactly right. So, in any case, this guy has got some cash. And so this gentleman at the Chili Supper, he's cooking chili, he's telling that story, and he says, "This guy's got about $25,000 $30,000 in cash, and he was telling this gentleman that he had buried it in the backyard."

Okay, so he had buried his cash money in the backyard.

Right and so... yeah, 25,000 bucks he's buried in the backyard. And, of course, you know, the guy that's telling the story, he said, "Oh, yeah, I was just incredulous. I'm like, yes, it's gonna warp, it's gonna rot out there." He's like, "No, I have got vacuum sealed plastic bags."

He's got Escobar.

Yeah, so he had vacuum-sealed it in plastic bags, then he had stuffed those into PVC pipes which he had then turned and sealed with, you know, like a plumber's...

Plumber's glue or whatever they put on there.

That's right, and then buried the whole mess. And, of course, this guy said, "And he did it with his son that way the both of them would know where it was." And, of course, this guy said, "What happens if, you know, both you and your son die?" And he's like, "Well, if both of us dies who cares? We're not gonna spend it at that home."

Right, "We don't need the cash."

But, you know, I guess it just kind of brings up the idea that, you know, people are... I talk to people every day almost, and inevitably they will ask questions about maybe they've got a little cash aside, or maybe they actually have a lot of stuff in banks, but for whatever reason they're thinking that maybe they should start pulling that out into cash.

Yeah, pull it out in cash. I've had people say, "Well, I'll put it in a safety deposit box at the bank, I'll have them do that."

Yes. In fact, I had a gentleman the other day and he was talking about the fact that, you know, if you buy like the silver coins, you know, the investment, one of the…

Yeah, the one-ounce silver coins.

Yeah, the one-ounce silver coins. He was saying that those fit exactly into like a one and a quarter inch PVC pipe, and so you can get you a foot of PVC pipe, and you can put, you know, a pound in each foot of PVC pipe and that's one of the things he has done.

Well, and I guess that just goes to show you, John, that assets are... you know, we always talk about things like land and houses, real estate, IRAs, but assets we can dial it back to a bit more simple straightforward form talking about things like precious metals, cash money, that kind of thing.

Yeah, and I think a lot of this, in large part, it comes from, you know, people have a fear or multiple fears out there of external threats to their assets.

Okay. So, yeah, external threats to assets, I think distrust of the banking system.

Yeah, I think...

The financial system.

Especially depending on the...

The age.

Depending on the age. I know, you know, Lisa when you and I first got into this business, our older clients were ones typically that had actual memory of the Depression.

Right, these folks had actual memory about how their parents, they had a little money in the bank one day and the next day the bank was closed and the money was gone forever.

Yeah. And so, you know, with that and so they historically were very distrustful.

Yes, absolutely.

… of financial institutions. And, you know, I had one situation where as a family was cleaning out the household of their mother-grandmother who was of the Depression era. They were putting books into boxes, and they dropped one, and when they dropped it, a $100 bill fell out.

Okay, now we gotta unload all those boxes.

And so, yeah, that was exactly… so, now we gotta unload all the boxes. And by the time it was done, they had pulled almost $70,000 in cash from various stashed spots throughout the house.

Well, John, I'll throw a couple stories on the table and then I know it'll be time for a break. But that does remind me of my great grandmother who was, of course, she grew up in Center, Texas in the Depression, and not a well-off family, a farm family. And I remember growing up with her and she always seemed to have a roll of 20s, and oftentimes she would peel one off and frankly stick it in her bra and take it with her wherever she went. You know, a $20 bill and a tube of red lipstick, very important.

Prior to his death.

Prior to his death and, of course, when... he had two kids, two kids only. And when the kids, you know, got access to the gun safe, gosh, there wasn't a darn thing in there, and the...

Shown up.

And the wife, the bereaved widows said, "Cash?"

"What cash?"

"What cash?"

"What cash?" that's exactly right. So we're gonna take a quick break, you know, for our Live Radio folks, we've gotta take breaks, so our commercial sponsors can say their little piece. And in the meantime, of course, we will still be Live on Facebook, so during the break, feel free to get on your Internet service and check us out Live on Facebook, on the Ross and Shoalmire page. So, otherwise, stick around and we will be right.

Unbanked, and I've got another case going on in another county where there was almost 100,000 in cash, and now it's gone. So that is… one thing to think about keeping cash closed at hand, if the wrong people or the people you don't want to, you know, get a hold of it you know, that truly is the old... was the old nursery rhyme, or finders keepers.

Right, yeah. And, you know, and particularly when you're talking about... you know, we're going to be talking about this on the radio part, but being unbanked, that seems very odd to the average U.S. citizen. You know, I'll have folks... I'll mention that there are folks that do not have bank accounts, they never have in any way, shape, or form, and many people are like, "Well, how do you...?"

How do you live?

How do you live you know...?

Gas, groceries you know.

And they just deal entirely in cash, and that seems odd in the United States, but in countries like India where there's actually a majority of the population is unbanked. And you'll see that in a lot of third-world countries and it's actually a problem for those governments.

Well, that's because they don't trust the governments because, you know...

For whatever reason.

For whatever reason, yes.

Or again, because of the social structures in the third world, they can't afford taxes or things like that, that are associated with reporting money.

Right. But, yeah, I remember back in the day, I would go visit my great grandmother in Freeport in summertime, and if the car needed new tires or something was going on, I mean, she would go to her room and come back literally with a roll of 20s with a rubber band around it. And I guarantee... you know, my great grandfather was working at the glass factory, I mean, they weren't selling drugs or anything like that, but they just cashed the check and they kept their cash.

Well, welcome back, everyone, to Aging Insights. I'm Lisa Shoalmire here with John Ross. And today, we're talking about asset protection but probably not as in the more typical way you make think about it. Today we're talking about if you have what I call hard assets, you know, we're talking precious metals, cash money, you know, things that have intrinsic value. Although I guess we can argue whether cash money really has intrinsic value.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a whole another discussion.

That's a theoretical discussion. But the bottom line is we deal with a lot clients that do in fact have physical possession of a substantial amount of cash, substantial amount precious metal, silver, gold, you know, things like that, and they are just as interested in asset protection for those type assets as they are for their house or their retirement account.

Yeah, and again, I think a lot of this goes back to fears from external threats, and so in my detailed research in leading up to today's program, and by that, I mean my Google search while I was sitting here in the studio before we went Live. But just out of curiosity I just did a Google search for biggest threats to personal wealth. Well, I was trying to wonder. My question in my mind was, "What are the real threats? "

Okay, is this like Family Feud? Can I guess?

Yeah, go for it.

Divorce.

There, actually, yes, one of them was your spouse.

Okay. A health crisis?

No, that actually, in the first two or three pages of Google results, nothing came up with health crisis.

Okay. Job loss?

No, job loss wasn't on either.

All right. Wait, I'll see if I've got one more, I think, before I go for three strikes. So, threat to personal wealth?

Yeah, and that's was how…

Overspending?

Well...

Debt, that kind of thing.

Well, I guess sort of. One of them was essentially negligence.

Negligence, yeah, not paying attention.

And not paying attention. And they were talking about, you know, you're busy so you don't refinance your home mortgage for a lower rate because it just takes too much time.

Or, you know, every day you're at expensive coffee shop that shall remain nameless where you drop 10 bucks on a coffee.

Right.

That's negligence, it might be.

And, of course, a couple of the others were... one of them in fact, one of the first two or three hits was, one of the biggest risks to your personal wealth is your financial adviser. And that's actually an interesting one. Some of you all may know that I do a podcast, and so that's just Internet radio essentially. I do a podcast called Big Picture Retirement, and if you've got iTunes or any of that sort of thing, you can go onto iTunes or whatever your favorite podcast app is. And if you don't have one, get on your phone and go to the Google store or the Apple store, and get you a podcast app, and then search for Big Picture Retirement.

The fee structure of the investments.

The fee structures between most... and it's not just financial advisors but the financial services industry and the way they siphon off dollars from investments, that often your rate of return is much, much smaller than what it could be in any given scenario. But that's... so those were there. Now one of them that I did think... and this was making me think in terms of the 1920s era when, you know, all the banks collapsed right?

Right.

And everybody lost their money, and they created this huge distrust of banks, but one of them, and this was the second hit on my Google search.

Okay, for threats to personal wealth.

For threats to personal wealth, was cyberattack to the financial industry.

Well, you know, that's one thing, John, if your account balance is nothing but numbers on an account statement piece of paper, and the cyberattack comes in and zeroes out your account and your money is gone.

And they weren't talking about just the account, but they were talking about say a cyberattack against a Bank of America or a Wells Fargo, where they essentially deleted all of the accounts, and the kind of catastrophe... I mean, again, you've just got a bunch of ones and zeroes at that bank.

Right. Yes.

There's not actual paper money there.

Yeah, so kind of print out your account statements.

That's what everybody found out with the rush on the banks during the Depression, was when they showed up to pull the money out, they didn't have actual money, they just had ledgers. So that may be actually a legitimate concern, where maybe some of this...

Some hard assets would be a good thing.

Home hoarding would be better. So, anyways, stick around, we'll be right back. Yeah, So the top ones on my cell phone, the first from The Motley Fool website was the one about essentially negligence, just not doing anything.

Not paying attention, yeah.

But the second one was from some website called Casey Research, and it said, by far the biggest threat to wealth, in 2016, was cyberattack. Number three in our Family Feud edition...

Is your spouse.

Is the spouse.

Now I had a client just this week tell me their dad had been divorced four times, and that he used to have a lot more money, and I said, "Yeah, divided by half four times, didn't it?"

Yeah, I get that.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Now some of the others which we may actually end up kind of visiting on some of these topics, but you know, some of the others you start getting into things like inflation.

But, you know, even if you have inflation, and I'm sure there's an economist who can figure all this out. I remember this from Econ 101, but you know, if you have inflation and you're a hoarder of precious metals, it doesn't automatically follow that the value of those precious metals also inflate, because I know at one time the silver was, you know, in the basement even though inflation was rising. So, you know, a lot of people think that precious metals and things are sort of a hedge, and I have to go back and look at the data, historical data, but not necessarily the case.

And so some of those sort of things are out there.

No, not necessarily the case, I don't know...

Of course, you know, what is wealth I guess? I've always thought, you know, "If the world truly ends tomorrow as we know it, civilization as we know it, well then so what else? Gold bars?" I mean, what is that really gonna do for me? I might want bricks of ammunition that I could trade or, you know, I mean, what is wealth? I mean, the Romans thought it was a bag of salt, right?

Yeah. No, that's exactly right. In fact, let's see, I think here on…if I can…

If you can get it all working.

If I can figure out how to do it. Let's see, a Chrome tab, there we go, silver prices, share. Let me go back over here. And I can put that up on the screen, there's your historical silver prices over a 100-year period. So, yeah, I mean, it's skyrocketed at one point, there that was...

Well, and in 1980 that was a time of big inflation, as I recall.

Yeah, that's right.

I know you were barely born then but.

But, yeah...

But we haven't really had any inflation in a long time here, and then we've got, you know...

We've got some...

…2012, you know, we got some peaks.

Yeah, I got some drops in there so, you know, it's... I don't know if it's really inflation, hedging or not.

But, yeah, it brings some comfort to people to know that they have assets that they can put their hands on, it's not just at an account statement with numbers.

Yeah, but you know, of course, as you and I we're talking about earlier today, that's an emotional response, right?

Right.

And people make decisions based on emotional responses and not necessarily rational logical decisions. And so, I'm not sure... we'll see if there's any rationale to it.

Well, and I know were headed back to the show pretty quickly but, you know, another big thing we've had the last two years is people who've invested in other currencies besides American dollars.

Oh, yes, the...

Such as the Iraqi dinar.

Yes, which is a scam, by the way. You can do currency investments. It's very, very dangerous, but Iraqi dinar is just a scam.

It's not a good.

All right, we're going back in three, two, one.

Welcome back to Aging Insights, everybody. This is your host John Ross here Live in the studio with my co-host Lisa Shoalmire. You're listening to us Live on the radio where we are, today, talking about you know, a little bit of asset protection but kind of in the guise of, you know, "Is maybe hoarding some cash, or hoarding some silver, is that really asset protection?"

Right. And, of course, I hear the commercials, when I'm listening to other radio programs or watching TV and, you know, frankly, if someone is... I'm just one of the those jaded people, John, that if I hear a radio commercial, if someone is really trying to sell me some silver or some gold, I kind of figure that I'm always the one late to the party. I'm never the one that's on time or ahead. So I figure, if they're trying to sell it to me, that I'm the rube they are trying to sell it to.

Pick some stocks.

Pick some stocks and read some articles out of The Wall Street Journal or whatever. Of course, as a college professor they had subscriptions to Wall Street Journal.

Of course, they did.

So I was pointing out, "Well, look at this article. This article says that, you know, XYZ stock is gonna the next biggest thing, and so it seems to me like, you know, wouldn't it be a good idea to go and buy a bunch of this XYZ stock? I mean, they're saying right here on the Wall Street Journal that it's a good buy." And, you know, my dad immediately responded back with, "If they're already saying it, it's too late."

And I will say, you know, being the child of a couple of college business professors as I was, you know, when I got into maybe the high school range and, you know, maybe you have a class and this is the first time you're really being exposed to the idea of stocks and things like that. And I kinda got into it for a little while there, and you know, I can remember going home and saying, "Yeah, dad, we were required to..."

Yeah, it's not a good buy anymore.

It was a good buy before this article ever came out, but once it's been out there... and so that's the same thing you're saying there. If somebody is paying for commercial advertisement to tell you this is the best thing, then it's probably just not the best thing.

Okay. So ,yes, but we have people that have made those investments or are hoarding that cash and so, John, I think we kind of touched a little bit on the very first problem, which is kind of the physical security of those assets. You know, you had your client that buried things in PVC pipes, I had clients that put substantial cash into a home safes and...

Yeah, "and I need to get them out of the safe."

"And I need to get them out of the safe." And I don't care how secure your safe is, a safe cracker can bust it.

Well, and what stunned me about that particular case, because we were brought in after the lady did recover, was that this other person who knew her, you know, what locksmith walks into somebody's house and cracks a safe? I mean, if I could just call him up on a speed dial and just...

And you may be thinking, "You know what, I've got a great home safe, it's a secure, it's not a big deal." We had a situation a while back where a lady had been hospitalized and pretty severely hospitalized.

But, you know, when...

Anyway...

…in our office…

But it happened.

Yes, didn't know she was gonna make it out of the hospital.

…we have a safe in our office, right?