Welcome, everybody. Welcome back. This is the black CFP series as many of you have done from last season. This is season two. Where we highlight and be loud for others in our profession, not only just for black CFPs, it's not for just only the black community, it is for all minorities and women and all invo involved. We just want to recognize that it's not all middle-aged white guys and there is a lot of us that are involved. And so we wanna spread awareness, be loud and show differe different opportunities that are out there for you as well. And just on no bs wealth, this isn't. My firm, black Mammoth. This is about sharing as much as we can. So today we've got a very special guest who has way more accolades and has been in the media way more than me. Mr. Jason Howell with his firm, and I'm very excited. I'm not gonna do an intro for you, justice at all. But I love your background, love where you came from, and love the different side of the coin being in Washington, and obviously your political background and all that, that we haven't had that type of guest on here before. So I'm excited. I might nerd out. But welcome, welcome. Why don't you tell us more about.

Jason Howell, CFP®:
1:22

Thank you for having me. And there's nothing more exciting than someone who's interested in you telling your stories, So now I'm excited, since you're excited. Very much appreciate it. I think my story begins, I like everyone's story begins with their parents. My parents were immigrants from the Caribbean islands. They met in Canada and then they moved to California when they got. Where I was born just as President Nixon was resigning. So my, my birth began with a political tinge to it. And I think the past 50 years, I'm not 50 yet. But I, when you look at the past 50 years or so, essentially life of Gen Xers, there's been so much that's happened economically. in this country, then meaning the world with what we've done. And so you think of the Nixon presidency and the decoupling of gold from the US currency kind of a big deal. You think of erisa, the Employment Retirement Income Security Act, 1974. And that's when I was born A big deal. The Revenue Act of 1978 allowed for 401ks. Pretty big deal. And so much has just happened. Really just happened and I've grown up with it. I've been learning alongside it unintentionally for a lot of it, and really in the past 10 to 15 years, quite intentionally. It's been a

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
2:42

great journey. I love that. I love how you connected all of that. Obviously you've told your story many and times, but definitely appreciate that. So there's been obviously a lot of changes within what we do and how we operate within our industry speaking as a whole. And I want to hit upon your firm specifically in your guys' philosophy, specifically in the ESI and the sri. Part of it, cuz that's relatively new. New in our industry, a lot of things are new, but it's relatively new in the last, five, 10 years. So I want you to hit upon that as well cuz that's different than most of our listeners have heard before. But also I wanna highlight it more because I believe it's not dying, but it's just not in the media as much and I wanna make sure that we hit.

Jason Howell, CFP®:
3:25

now happy to soy. It is interesting how new E S G S R I, sustainable investing impact. There's so many different letters, so many different words and vocab words. I spent some time really learning it so that I wouldn't be behind because in fact, this kind of investing has been around for a couple centuries. Actually started with the quake. And especially with the idea around this podcast being there for people who are either minorities or people who have not have had all the advantages over time. The Quakers eventually, not at first, but eventually. Made a decision that they didn't want to be involved with organizations that were participating in the slave trade. And so they pulled back from those organizations and, lived their life and created their businesses and did all that. So that's your first sort of tranche at the s the social part of environmental, social and governance and that kind of investing. And so I, I did a deep dive in 2020. right after the George Floyd murder because we're sitting here, in the beginning of the pandemic and helped us to some degree, Fantastic experience knowing. You could be the same person in the Zoom as opposed to in the room. Yeah. Around what's happening with their money. And I got to follow politics, which I love to follow. And so all those cares acts. I was doing multiple either letters and started doing videos just to help simplify what was happening so that our clients would be comfortable with what was going on. But in addition to that, I thought after the George Floyd murder, that was just one more, too many, and it was, what could I do? What could our firm. And I don't know about you, but I've always had in my head that one day when I'm very wealthy, I'll be able to give back and I'll be able to change the world and it'll be fantastic. But I'm not there yet. So what could I do? And then I realized I've been getting all of these emails from, finance world sustainable investing. It had come up randomly like a little bit, and I never really followed through with what was going. I went with what everyone said, which is, ah, it's nascent. It's on its way. It's up and coming. It's not really there if you want to invest for profits. I was like, yeah that's pretty much it. But then I decided to actually respond to some of these emails and jump on a webinar, and I realized that. Millennials are interested in this. Women are interested in this. People of color are interested in this. Gen Xer interested in this. The only people who are not interested by stats and surveys that are not interested in this are the people who are already entrenched, who have already had their successes and and financial advisors. And so 6% was the stat from that webinar, and this is in 2020 of financial advisors actually believed in this. 94% did not. And I realized I was stupidly part of the 94. And so rather than waiting to learn this on the job over years and. I decided to look for education in and around us, and I found what's I recently realized is pronounced as Crich the chartered SRI counselor, c s r I c. and that was put through the American College. Jenny, the person who put it together I'm trying to think of her name, it's not Bloom, but it's begins with that same rhyming. She partnered with American College and wrote this test and created it. At the time, only about 300 people had it. And I decided this was the way that I could skip basically five or six years by actually studying the history, studying how it's applied. Coombs, Jennifer Coombs studying Essent. Who is using it? And you know what? I found story. I found institutional investors are already there. Ultra-high net worth investors are already there. The people that are bickering back and forth around whether or not we should be going that way are people who don't have a lot of money. People who are on the retail. Trying to compete with words and have gotcha moments. But the people who are serious, the CFAs who are managing institutional wealth, meaning the endowment funds the insurance funds, the pensions, they are already there. They're already managing trillions of dollars in that world. And we, on the refill side are trying to decide whether it's a political thing or not. It most obviously is not. I'll say one more thing and let you jump. The G people often forget about, that's governance. That's a screen for governance. When you think of governance, you think of risk. We've all looked at our investment portfolios and tried to manage risk. So we're already doing it. Yeah. And then many of us are concerned about the world and what's happening and how people are. As employees and how their supply chain and whether there's any human trafficking going on, many of us sometimes purchase along those lines. That's the s and the E. Ever since Earth Day, we've been worried about what's happening to our planet, and so to the extent that you screen companies out or screen companies in or make tweaks or adjustments, that's just another layer on top of really solid investment analysis. That's what I've learned and that's what I'm so excited about in that.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
8:56

And I love how you brought up the institutional side. I love tracking where institutional money goes because when we are doing our jobs, really that's where the wealth's built. We have another, we have a series called Alternative investing series, and it's designed around like, how do you build your wealth outside of the traditional markets and. It follows a lot of what institutional are doing. Let's be real, they're very intelligent and make a lot of money doing so. And I mean for their, obviously they make good salaries, but I mean for their actual entity. And if they're doing it and have been doing it, why? Why is retail? It's because a couple things for me. One, the retail loves to get rich quick, like meme stocks and all that. Like we love that part. Two, we deem everything political, right? Environmental right now is political. It's all about politics, right? It's not, we all know that. And then the social side of things, obviously George Floyd thing and that separating a lot of us. Really what it comes down to? Hum. Humanity. That's why it's been around forever. That type of investing is about people who care for others. That's really what it comes down to. Yeah. All we're doing is filtering out the riff raft, if you will, there and to those companies that fit the humanity mold. And it's that simple. That's what retail doesn't get though. They label esg. They ev environmental. Go ahead.

Jason Howell, CFP®:
10:21

Thankfully like every issue that we have now in politics, and you mentioned them in the DC area, and I'm so close to. And I really do enjoy parsing some of the false logic and false equivalencies that we get from that space. But we hear this from some folks. I'll say that retail is open-minded and retail is everyone from the unbanked. To the people who have a few million dollars. So retail is a huge swath of Americana and there are many people thankfully it's some of that are coming to our firm that are interested in this and believe in this and can't be dissuaded by the recent. conversations that have politicized it. Just because something is, an issue, an important issue. Just because something does stretch along political lines doesn't mean it needs to be politicized. And that's the difference. Currently, this kind of investing is being politicized because there is an opportunity to further divide us again. And that's what we as people who. Just here. Yeah. We have every opportunity to look up and say let's not just listen to some of the folks who have incentives to essentially divide us. Let's look at the reality of what it is and make a decision on our own as That makes sense. And you brought up the greatest point. If you're investing and you want to invest in a professional way or an academically sound way the place that you look. Are the institutional investors. This is where people with the highest educations around investing go. The charter financial analysts, one of our hardest tests in our industry, that's where they go grow up to go when they're very successful and very smart. And the way they're investing is not because it's nice, not because it's politically expedient or progressive. They're investing because it's sane. There's a reason that after the BP oil spill there was a recognition by the KLD index, which is the sort of e sg index. B p was already kicked out. Now was it because of what they're doing to the environment or was it because they hadn't had the spill yet? No, it was because of their oversight, their governance site with what they're doing with their machinery, and then sure enough, Something happened, something really bad happened. Similarly, we had Equifax was kicked outta the KLD index as well. Was it because they were dumping things in the river? Was it because of smoke stacks? They had Equifax. Equifax, was it because they were doing bad things to people? Did they have human trafficking in their supply chain? No, none of that. They had a zero on their rating for their cyber. And so that was another governance issue. So he said, you know what, you're out of our index. And then what happened? One of the biggest breaches of data ever with Equifax. And so if we're being sensible, logical, and realistic, and it's stepping away from the folks who have incentives and by the way, don't have very good financial understanding, by the way. Then you'll evaluate this for the merit. And the merit is just like any other investment pH. It's another way. It's not passive. It's another layer. So you're going in, you're being a little bit active, but those who believe that they can enhance what they're doing with efficient market theory or adaptive hip efficient market theory are welcome to do that with more data. And that's why there's advocacy for the s e c to make more data available. Not to restrict anything, but to make more. That streamlined.

14:06

Yeah,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
14:07

absolutely. Absolutely. I love that part. So that's a lot of information, right? That's a lot of data, if you will, for the everyday person. And I know because of the pandemic that everyone was at home, they were doing a lot of research. We obviously saw the influx of retail coming in. Stimulus helped all of. Where do you feel we've gone from 2022 to 2023 in regards to that space? Of so much data. So many people sit in the home doing their own thing. Where do you believe those people are at now and what do we need to do in our industry to make sure that we can capture them from our point of view?

Jason Howell, CFP®:
14:48

Some of those people are not for us to. And I say that because there's a distinction that I believe in this profession, and I want the people who are in community with me who didn't come from a family that had financial advisors who are jumping into this sort of feet first for their own interests and passions. To recognize this, there is a difference between a wealth advisor and a financial coach. And so some of the people you mentioned could benefit greatly from a financial coach. To show them the things that they would read about in Dave Ramsey's book or Susie Orman's book and really be there as an accountability partner once a month or once every couple weeks when they get a paycheck. A fantastic need for that. But then there's this other world called wealth management. and there are people who actually have succeeded within the community that we're speaking to. There are women that are millionaires. There are women that make six figures. There are people of many different kinds of colors and races and ethnicities and from different places that actually are successful. And the narrative of either they're unbanked or they are, Michael Jordan is a false narrative cuz there's. In the middle there. And my interest these days is ensuring that those people end up having a voice, but more importantly, a resource. Where can they go to? And I'm like, I'm not core. I'm not a multi multimillionaire or billionaire. Can I just be given some of the information That is actually quite helpful and the space we're in today. And one of the things, as I mentioned I'm interested in is what you mentioned, alternative assets. There is an entire world of investing that we learned from the experience of 2022 if we didn't grow up before. That goes beyond just these public markets, and it's the world where people do become. millionaires. Just putting it as it is. That is that world where you don't look for returns of five to six to 7%. You're looking for returns of 10 to 20 to 30% on average. Where in your venture capital or private equity fund, where some companies are down to zero and some companies have five x or 20 x that's the kind of returns you're looking for. So one of the opportunities I think that the public has today, and they're taking advantage, Is exploring this world. Back in 1982, the Securities and Exchange Commission created the rules around accredited investors. And back then, if you made$200,000 a year or 300 K with your spouse or actually a significant other, didn't have to be a spouse. Or if you had a million dollars outside of your home, you were rich in 1982 where I live. You're an average household and you're doing okay, and you got to that point in large part because E either yeah you succeeded and had a family that kind of put you on that path and that was it. Or you actually just succeeded because you studied and you got your grad degree and now you are a lawyer and maybe you're a doctor, maybe you're a lobbyist maybe you're a consultant, you're a government contractor. You're making finally six figures. You're doing very. But you don't know what to do with it. And you saw last year what happens when you do it yourself. Sometimes things happen that you don't know how to deal with stocks and bonds can go down. Oh, I thought that was diversification. Not all away.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
18:16

It's right a little bit.

Jason Howell, CFP®:
18:17

Not always a little bit. But now when you talk about that world of diversification broadening to private investments in addition to public investments, it's a new opportunity. They. Is you need to know what, how to invest in private investments, what kind of private investments, the categories within the categories, and then have access to the ones that are actually good versus the ones that are actually trash. That's the challenge, and that's where I think advisors like you and I, who have already started exploring that area. We can be a great help meet to those folks, great guide to those folks. And they're not necessarily looking for us cause they don't know that they think we're there. Because a lot of times what they hear, even from us within the community is we are trying to be the financial coaches, but I'm standing out for the people who are willing to be broad and say there's a difference and I'm in this particular part of the profession with all its. All of its competition and all its challenge to say that I'm gonna compete with the largest private banking arms in the world with what I do. And that's what I hope you do, Stoy and all of our peers do.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
19:20

Yeah. I wholeheartedly agree. We're being I'm deeming a modern family office, right? That's what black Mammoth is. We're a modern family office. Awesome. Building that and trying to be loud with that because not everyone knows what a family office is, but. Let's just make it simple. It's when some entity, either your own family or not, takes care of basically everything for you. Usually you have to have 25 mil or more. We're modernizing that meaning it can come down. A lot. I think it's around three to 600,000 of cashflow a year where it could work or it does work. That's so fantastic. And that mindset's different, right? It's what you're talking about with wealth management, the, there is coaching there, but we're coaching a family. We're talking about, a bigger picture. We're not talking about, hey, Don't go spend that or a month to month budget deal, right? We're talking about greater concepts, and that's where we're at too, right? That's where this podcast is designed to help those others that need that spot, right? They can listen to us and do all of that, but really we're designed for essentially what you're talking about and it's a lot of business owners. I don't think people realize that. There's a lot of business owners that, they're small business owners and they're the ones that are in this realm a lot, and they don't have that person to speak to. They don't understand the alternative world. Whether it's access education or the concept of the fact that owning your own building for your own business is a good. Not leasing it out. Those little things. And that's what I'm excited the most about hearing what you're talking about cuz there's not too many of us like-minded in that way. And that's why you're saying I'm gonna stand up and be that way. Hell yeah. I'm gonna stand up and be that way. Do we understand that it's important to have that, that coaching one-on-one, that type of stuff. Absolutely. Do I do it for clients? Yeah, I do specifically my business owners on a monthly, but it's derived around their financials. It's derived around that bigger picture, not me trying to balance their checkbook every month. Those people need it. I get it. But that is a lot of work, and not where I wanna spend my time. And I don't think that's where my bang for my buck is either. So definitely appreciate your outlook. which brings me into okay, there's this big group, right? There's not a ton of us out there. How do we get to those people and how do they find us in that little space that we're talking about in little, big, but how do they get to us and how do we get to them? Which group are you speaking to still? I'm speaking to the ones that we're going after. Those ones that, that. I just don't have access to being able to do the all alternative side and really want to build that wealth. But, where do they go? How does it start?

Jason Howell, CFP®:
22:04

I wish I had a really good answer for it. If I did, I might be so busy I couldn't be on the podcast because you, here in the DC area, we have three of the richest counties in the country, and the model of those folks who. Essentially worked hard and now we're sitting in those six figure jobs in part cuz they have to have it, cuz they have almost seven figure homes. And it's not because they live in castles, it's just expensive. Out here. Very similar to a San Diego for example, or not quite a San Francisco, but a San Diego suburb of New York. So you just, you have to be offered that income for your expertise in this area. The biggest challenge I think since I started my firm is this understanding of I know this stuff, but I wanna stand on the top of a building and just say, come here. But probably the answer lies in being more clear about it yourself and knowing that there isn't a template for how to say this. Developing your own template for saying, there, there's an easy template to say I'm looking for pre-retirees, to manage their money and that would be so easy. You and I could just stop all this and just say, we're working with pre-retirees, 55, 60 years old. We'll manage your money see if we're better than Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley. And that would be the whole story. And there's people who've done that and it's a fine business. It doesn't necessarily, get me. On. I didn't get into this business to, to do just that, but to be able to hone your story story and be able to say, this is who I serve. Because, this is why I think that's a big part of it, that idea of purpose and when you start articulating the language, Then in the back of your head, I don't know if you had any experience working for a firm that did focus on sales, but I worked for a large insurance company and in the back of my head, as I, I stepped away from that and, was so analytical and they thought you need to sell more. You're so analytical, you're wasting time. But as I finally got to this space of saying how do I approach this market that I finally discovered I care about, I realized a lot of the things they were saying that are still in the back of my. That's the kind of stuff I need to be saying in the language to attract the people I care about. And so you end up going back to that and being very forthright about who you serve and how you serve them. And if you can do that relationship by relationship. My hope, cuz it's, I'm hoping this for me too, is that will be a snowball effect and we'll be well on our way.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
24:38

Hell yeah, I do. I hope there's a snowball effect cuz then when we're over bared, we have a group. And be like, Hey, go to Jason. I cannot onboard for six, four months. Yeah. I'm done. I'm not, like we I would love that. And to get to you, my background is, I started insurance as well. Okay. For six years was a managing partner and it's same thing, right? But you. You are a hundred percent true. And I'm very much aligned with you. I was analytic. The plan is what's important. There's other pieces that are bigger than life insurance. Oh. And there's, how you doing? You're wasting time. where's your 10 31? All those things. And that's what I get in two ways. Yeah. I got started in this and I'm like, I had never connected. And that's why this year we're really focused on growth. And it's because I have to revert to back to some of that, like you just said, obviously not some of those tactics, but like reiterating that and getting it in front of the right people. And I know our mission and my mission personally this year is just to be loud, right loud. I, and I don't mean like just, those loud black people that are out there right? I be loud with great information, with the strong support of others, so that way we can be blasted in front of them. Because there's a lot of noise out there and I bet part of our issue is that there's a lot to sift through. who to trust, where to go, what to do. Do you know all of those things for this group specifically? That it can get overwhelming. And it is, what we do is very complex. There's a lot of complexities to what we do. Our job is to simplify it and educate over time. But if all of that's being thrown at'em from, from the political side to the news side, to everyday side, then does that overload them and they just. I don't know, but I do know that they're not getting a lot of us speaking like this in a very, no, just a relaxed, like straight real talk that's not happening. And that's what I want to focus on, is being loud with all of us and pushing each other forward. Because there's one thing in this industry that people don't understand is there is no competition. The competition is not allowing us to get in front of people to educate'em. It is not me and you against each other. There is way too many people out there for us to ever say, you know what? I need. I can't talk to him because he's gonna steal my clients. Nope. There's millions and I can't take that many on. I don't want to. I know you don't want to. But it's providing a place for us all to come together and really as a community, our community saying we're here and we need to help these people, and they want help. We just need to give them the ability to get to us.

Jason Howell, CFP®:
27:11

Love it. When you think of the largest RIA in our space our RIAs and, it's 300 billion and then you think, Edward Jones alone is 2 trillion. You've got Morgan Stanley is about 3 trillion. Bank of America. Merrill Lynch is, I don't know what it is anymore. It's four or five there. There's plenty of. Of assets of clients within those firms before anyone ever has to worry about competing with each other within the R I A space. And there, many of those folks are likely underserved. In large part not because the people in those firms are bad people, though there's bad in RIAs, there's bad everywhere. But the biggest reason is I believe the. I think the model challenges folks as they challenged us in the insurance based brokerage space. I think it's challenging for folks who are in that regular place and some people can navigate that and make sense of it and make it work for their clients, but there's enough there that are underserved where you talk about a modern family office that's someone who has. 1.8 million. So just under the private banking level, they're not gonna get up to that level at Merrill Lynch would love to work with someone like Stoy who says, I'm gonna treat this like a modern family office. All I needed was 600 K. You're one of my top clients, and let me build around you, this team of advisors and ensure that all of these things are taken care of. Not just with you, you're not my client. Your household is my client. They would love that kind of language and talk. I've gotten, and you've probably gotten this, from people that came our way where you think of Vanguard as an example, people that have a couple million dollars with Vanguard. One of our clients came to us because they wanted sustainable investing. They weren't certain about Vanguard's, ability to do that. Vanguard's obviously gotten in trouble with some of their voting. And so they were looking for that. And so they said, look, and they were so ready. They were like, here's our plan. Tell me what you think. They sent me a 30 page plan, and the 30 page plan was basically their investments. And their name and address and age chopped up in 30 different ways. There's no insurance, there's no state plan. Conversa, there's, it wasn't a plan. It was a 30 page investment report, by the way, not even really an investment policy statement, which you and I know what those are. It wasn't that either. It was just their numbers. Repeated in different ways for 30 pages I should say 28 pages, cuz there was like two or three pages of disclosure

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
29:46

disclosures, of course,

Jason Howell, CFP®:
29:48

right? And that's too bad. And so you, when you know that and you think, wow, it's not like those large firms have these tiny clients that we'd be better served as coaches. With coaches. Now these firms have fairly really good clients, right? For RIAs, a seven figure client, a great client for an ria. And we would be able to give them all of us. And I think that's why people come to us. Really when they could go to the big brand name firm, but they come to us, it's because they want an intimate relationship and they want everything

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
30:18

taken care of. And I think that comes all the way back to E s G and Sri. I think that comes back to humanity. I think our value comes back to us in just our relationship with them and being there for. That's, I believe our industry shifting. Obviously RAs have been exploding, but I think that's where people want, at the end of the day, yes, you can get a roi, you can get a return on your stuff, but is this person gonna take care of me and are they going to be able to adjust as we go? That's where we're getting to. I really can feel it in, in my soul that's gonna be a huge snowball for all of us that are in that space as we get going. Because at the end of the day, the traditional models and traditional investing are one, getting feed to death. But two, that they're all within a very similar range of returns. There's not much adjustment there. You need to throw in your other opportunities, your alts in all of those to really build it. And if those advisors aren't doing'em cuz they're stuck in that traditional side, then here we are. That's what we.

Jason Howell, CFP®:
31:21

and the flexibility that people in the independent space have and someone like you who got your hand slapped for being too analytical. You having that flexibility, someone like you means that you are gonna look into other parts of the investing world, which you've done in the alternative investing, and you are gonna study not what's happening this year or next year though, you'll pay attention to it. But what are the academics saying? What are the economists saying about the next 20, 30 years? And we know the next 20, 30 years, the prediction for public. Is much smaller than it was for the past 50 years. And so when we're projecting where our clients are gonna be in 20, 30, 40 years or where their assets are gonna be, if they're not gonna be around in 20, 30, 40 years, what are you using? Are you using what you would find in a Ramsey book at 10, 12%? Are you using what you might find in today's numbers based on the past 50 years at six to 8%? Or are you using something more akin to the four to 6%? That the studies are showing that we're likely to be in for those public investments. And if you are and the folks don't have enough to make that happen, are you interested enough and curious enough and deaf enough to participate in what is happening now? Right now, the US House of Representatives is banding about conversations regarding the 1982 S E C rules around accredited investors and how much more they should open. Right now we have registered funds and interval funds that can be made to accredited investors that it wasn't there before, but that's exploding right now. Whether it's Franklin Templeton or First Trust or gosh, even Black Rock, so many others are creating mutual funds in ETFs that have an alternative ring to'em in which include things like hedges and private credit and the rest of it right now. And if you're not interested or curious, then you're gonna be waiting for two, three years from now to get involved. At best, you're waiting for your large corporation to turn. Its big, Titanic around to change how they do things. For people that have less than a million bucks. It's a disservice to the public in that regard. If if that's what you're waiting for and you have an opportunity when you're independent like yourself to say, I'm gonna look into this now. I'm gonna be on the far edges of it. I'm gonna study before I do. And then I'm gonna walk my clients through ease. By ease, maybe starting with their small cap allocation and then growing from there.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
33:47

Yeah. And I think it's our responsibility and our duty personally. I really do in regards to that. But I want to end with two more political or policy questions for you. One is near and dear to me, and I get a little heated about it. The other is actually coming up on the 28th. So let's start with that one on the 28th. The hearing. How about student loans and the student loan forgiveness? And what's going on with that one? What rumblings have you heard? And two, what's your, stance, but your thoughts on, the forgiveness and where it is and what, how that happens and what things could happen from a political sense, but also for end.

Jason Howell, CFP®:
34:27

the last I heard was that it would likely get reversed. The executive order situation would get reversed, but that doesn't mean it's over. It's, it's gonna be mired in the back and forth and potentially go to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court seems like a group of people that would be stacked against something like that. And so a lot of question about where it's going to be and where it's gonna land eventually because of that. But I think one thing to highlight that hasn't gotten highlighted, a lot of student loans have gotten forgiven for people who really had the worst of it, meaning people who went to those private colleges that advertised during the day on tv. The Strays of the world, the University of Phoenix's, of the world, and others, a lot of that debt has been forgiven to the tune of billions. The administration doesn't get a lot of credit for that, but I don't know why. There, there should be some credit for that because that wasn't the case prior to the past two years. And that's fantastic for those folks. People in our space, like you and I, who may have gone to school, just they just went to school five years ago. And they had advantage and they picked the good school. Hope to get the student loan forgiven. That's a different issue than I've had a sibling who's gone to a couple siblings who've gone to these ridiculous universities that were private and they paid a premium for him. and I'm so thankful that they have a path for forgiveness because that's a waste. Going to those kinds of schools. What's happening now in the conversations that are happening now around, why was it$10,000 that Biden wanted to forgive? Apparently there's so many people that 10,000 bucks is actually the difference. Right? Which is interesting to me because when I think about student loan forgiveness, I think of the people who are in the six figure realm. And so I'm not too passion. Around what happens with this particular end of the issue. I'm actually much more interested with the interest rate that the US Treasury is charging students on these two loans. Why is it eight to 9%? Amen. I know. What's that about? Why can't not, why can't, because it can, why hasn't that been changed? Because that's something that can, go to the heart of the issue of these loans is that they are so expensive. If these were 1%, 2% loans, I think the majority of people would say, oh, hey, that's on you, man. Come on, We gave you a loan. You couldn't afford it. You wanted, it's a 1% loan. But when you have loans that are accruing, especially for grad school, While you're in school and you come out and you do the arithmetic and it'll be, twice as much or three times as much what you paid for it by the time, if you ever paid it off. That's why people are using the phrase academic mortgage. That doesn't seem to be right. And the first issue that I would empower people to run up and speak to is identifying why the US Treasury has this over 8% for folks. And it's not just this year. This was back when interest rates were 0%. So they can't throw the inflation thing at you. Or the Federal Reserve raising rates thing. This is, again, this is a couple years ago when we were at 0% for the federal funds rate. So why is it there? Whatever they say, good to know. Let's fix it. let's get this down to 1%. And let's he, and let's re reimagine all of the people who are in school. Who maybe make six figures who probably have two to$300,000 worth of debt and we're not gonna be affected by this current proposal anyway, I'd like those people who are trying to make something of themselves to reduce that from eight to 1% on the debt and go ahead and pay it back. Then they could do that. because they're gonna be making 200,000 in five or 10 years. It's not as daunting when it's a 1% interest rate. That's Ry stand on

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
38:16

that issue. I'm a hundred percent behind you. Literally just talked to Rommy Piron for the CFP series and she's as a student loan goddess, if you will. And she's, her stance is, more about forgiveness and all that. And I said I get that. That's cool. It'll help. But we gotta fix the issue because once that's out and done, paid, It's gonna, it's gonna happen again. And I'm a huge proponent of the 1%. Because think about it economically, the government, our country wants intelligent, educated people cuz intelligent, educated people bring more GDP global or to us, right? That's it. They want us educated well, they want, if they want us educated, why are they charging us more as more or the same as private? That something don't, it doesn't ma it doesn't add up. So yeah, charge 1%. You don't need to make money off of your society future to get education. Let them educate cuz then they're gonna pay more in taxes later, which is where you make your money. So Exactly. Stop charging eight, 9%. So I definitely wanted to bring that up and love your point of view on that. And the other one we'll end on. the accredited investor rule. Obviously I'm in the private space a lot with our real estate and having our own fund and stuff like that, and what I'm seeing now is this huge younger generation that has not had generation of wealth handed down, so they're not gonna trigger that they are accumulating and starting to get their cash flow and salary. right? But we know there's a, there's an issue there, but they have been educated, they're intelligent and want to be in the alternative space. Now again, we've already discussed that there's better, there's other ways to get an alternatives that's coming through, but I'm more speaking on the private, the accreditation side which is where it hits me in the heart. So what is your opinion on it? Where do you think you see it going? And I just want to hear your advice.

Jason Howell, CFP®:
40:08

I think, ethics rules for CFP and other things, they always say disclose your conflicts. And my conflicts is I just figured out that we should be going after these folks in the middle who have the couple hundred thousand dollars and I would love to just keep it to the just that way and provide all this value to folks as opposed to, yeah, I can get that myself too. But in, in all seriousness, I think of crypto. and crypto is essentially an alternative asset class. And we saw what happens when anybody and everyone gets involved and there are no guardrails. And so I would be hesitant to open up the aperture for everyone to just what start investing in venture capital. I don't think that benefits a lot of people. You know what happens now one of the areas? That's a challenge. It's a challenge for me. It's a challenge for you. We're not multimillionaires, so we don't have access to the best Sequoia Capital, the best Andreessen Horowitz funds necessarily. The best we might be able to do is partner with other folks who do that access issue is huge. Meanwhile, there are some other things that we would have access to that you might find on I Capital or Case that may not be any good. And the best thing we can do is try to filter some of that and see if any of this might be some, we, wheat in the chaff type of stuff might be the best. If you opened it up to the entire public, then what you would have in the private markets might look similar to the public markets where it's a. There's a lot of behavioral, manipulation. And then there's a lot you can play with just knowing that the public doesn't understand. And so you can just throw anything out there. There might be a whole volume of new private investments that are garbage. So I'm just thinking of this now as I create the logic around my bias that it doesn't sound like that's the answer. I'd underscore it this. You just asked me about student loans. The answer that we got say in the seventies, eighties, and nineties about being able to excel and exceed and survive in the world was more formal education. The message that was received by academia was, oh, we can have as many clients as we'd like no matter what the message that was received by politicians. oh, we want people to be happy and successful, so let's give them student loans up the wazoo. And you have these two institutions essentially working together to create opportunity for anyone in a way that they didn't necessarily know. To discern. Someone who gets a degree in art has a different opportunity than someone who gets a degree in finance, but the art degree might cost the. And so you have too many people chasing something called formal education as a pathway to success that for many of them has not been success. And so now we're having to reimagine what that looks like. And I would say in the same world when it comes to private investments and public investments, we almost, we don't need more people in that market. As much as we need more people who are coaching them to put two pennies together and save half of'em, right? That, that is what we need. More often than not, I always tell whether it's students or people that are in their twenties, if you don't know anything else, just save, because eventually one of us will be happy to guide you if you have any money. But if you take the little money you have and the s e c releases their restrictions on private equity venture, your capital, private credit and the like, and you throw your$2,000 that should be in an emergency fund onto, some new startup that goes to zero. That doesn't help you and it doesn't help me as someone that wants you on the back end as a client, I much prefer that you just saved, you take the three to 4% interest you can get in a savings account. Which is half of what I can promise you in a long term public investments in a diversified passive portfolio. Go get your 3% today. Get to five figures there, and then let's talk again. But in all likelihood we want you to then like then maybe dabble a little bit with some passive investing in a fund s and p 500 fund and go away and then come back to me again when you're at six. I think the public is well served and well suited to do that again from that example with crypto. And from the example we've seen with higher

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
44:47

education. That's a very good point. And I'm a very big proponent of, I don't like the rule. I think it needs doesn't need gone away. Don't get me wrong. That what you're, to your point, that would be just detrimental. But I believe there should be other avenues to pass a test or something. In regards to that, but your two points were spot on. And I'm gonna highlight those a lot on some of the clips because I think people need to realize that. And I, my example I usually use is like the meme, stocks and all that craze. And at the end of the day, who's holding the bag

Jason Howell, CFP®:
45:18

right? You don't know. You don't know it. And I will to undergir your point, it was a kind of a rough way to do it by the s e C in 1982 if you make this much money. And then they didn't index it to inflation and no one changed it. No, Nope.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
45:29

Just changed. Did they changed it last year. They added what? A hundred thousand to the net worth. Woohoo. Good job. Yeah. Oh, I didn't even see that. Yeah. Yeah. Just, and it, what's a hundred thousand on that at that point? What are you Right

Jason Howell, CFP®:
45:39

to, to net worth. You could just say your net worth is a hundred thousand dollars more. Correct. Yeah. So that doesn't make anything. But I did love the change around getting financial advisors to have access because we have the education. And so to your point, if there's some kind of quiz or something else, there's a, there's one that's coming out now or an idea to self attest. That doesn't work. Cause people don't even know what they're attesting to. But yeah, if someone's going to go through some sort of examination as we did, which this is why they exempt series 65 people, series seven people, ah, you must know something then that could be a mechanism for doing it. However, it's Shay BTS out there now, who knows what's gonna happen with the test And I don't have the best idea around it. I haven't given it a lot of thought. of course, you and I don't have the responsibility to figure that out now. Right now we gotta take care of

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
46:24

our clients. Amen. Amen. Those that are in that 200 range that are really needing help, don't know where to go. Reach out to Justin. How here we are, reach out to us. We're here for you specifically. Man, it's been great. It really has this hour flew by. Really appreciate everything that you are doing for your clients in this. Look forward to many other conversations as well. And I can't wait to get this one out and see what the public listens to and hear us from. But definitely appreciate your time today

Jason Howell, CFP®:
46:54

and thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Awesome. The proceeding program was sponsored by Black Mammoth. Any awards, rankings, or recognition by unaffiliated third parties or publications are in no way indicative of the advisors future performance or any individual client's investment success. No award ranking or recognition should be construed as a current or past endorsement of black mammoth. Information regarding specific awards, rankings, or recognitions is available on the Black Mammoth website, www.black mammoth.com. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or laws. Investment strategies such as asset allocation, diversification, or rebalancing do not assure or guarantee better performance and cannot eliminate the risk of investment losses. There are no guarantees that a portfolio employing these or any other strategy will outperform a portfolio that does not engage in such strateg. This broadcast should not be construed by any client or prospective client as a solicitation to affect or attempt to affect transactions and securities or the rendering of personalized investment advice due to various factors including changing market conditions. The information discussed in this broadcast may no longer be reflective of current positions or recommendations. While information presented is believed to be factual and up to date, black mammoth, do not guarantee its accuracy and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. The tax and the state planning information discussed is general in nature and is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal or tax advice. Listeners should consult an attorney or tax professional regarding their specific legal or tax situation. Past performance is not indicative of future results.