Ep. 122: Tariff Market Rebound—Why Staying Invested Paid Off Big
The X's and O's
Just weeks after the U.S. imposed sweeping tariffs, the market snapped back with one of the biggest rallies in modern history—and if you followed the playbook, you were ready. In this episode of Retirement Plan Playbook, Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal, and Joshua Winterswyk break down the market rebound, the political pivot, and how diversification, patience, and AI-powered earnings helped investors come out ahead.
Here’s what we cover:
The 90-day tariff pause that sparked a 12% S&P rally.
Why panic-selling during volatility destroys long-term wealth.
International and emerging market stocks—are they still holding up?
Housing gridlock: Why nobody’s moving, and how to think about real estate today.
AI earnings, job growth, and economic resilience: What’s real and what’s hype?
GDP contraction vs. private investment surge—are we slowing or just adjusting?
Plus, we talk about retirement timing, recession fears, and why more people are hitting pause—not on retirement, but on making any decision at all.
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Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated. Please excuse any typos or transcription errors.
Welcome to the Retirement Plan Playbook hosted by Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal, and Joshua Winterswyk of Evermont Wealth. This podcast dives deep into investment strategies, retirement planning, and current events, equipping you with the insights needed to craft a robust retirement playbook adaptable to any political or economic climate.
Join Brent, Matthew, and Joshua as they guide you through the complexities of retirement planning. Offering expert advice. to tackle challenges and the later stages of your journey. It's time to build your optimal retirement playbook. Now let's dive into today's episode.
Brent: Were we not right? Did we not call it last pod?
Matthew: I think Josh did. Josh was always good about that.
Josh: What'd I call
Matthew: the top or the bottom, I should say?
Yeah, not the top. You,
you told everyone to hold and
Brent: do nothing.
Mm-hmm.
Brent: And then, what was it, two or three days later, then the bottom kind of hit and the,
Josh: we called that toe too. Yes. One,
Brent: one
Josh: change of policy. Hey, we're gonna get a pause in tariffs and market's gonna skyrocket. And it did exactly what we said.
It's literally one message they put out from the White House and then
Brent: just. Took off
Josh: you guys. Now, to be fair, a lot of people had that same take kind of theme. You know, if you're kind of in tune to what's going on. But it's nice to be right sometimes.
Matthew: And you guys are referring to the 90 day pause, correct?
Yeah. And then the market went up as, I think 12% on the s and p in like 13 or 14 on the Nasdaq day. What a
Josh: day. I mean, what a day to watch the market just skyrocket.
Matthew: It wa it was the biggest gain of our careers. They said in 2008 or 2009, there was a bigger one day gain. I was working then I was in the industry.
I don't remember that day. I. So I'm calling, I don't remember that day either.
Brent: Can you? That's the biggest one in my career. Can you imagine being out of the market that day or selling right around that time? Like you would, your portfolio would never make up that day?
Matthew: I saw a lot of people did, a lot of people on social media said, you need to sell your stocks and get out and I and one 800
Brent: get me out.
Matthew: Yeah.
Brent: I mean, I was getting the vibe from you that you were thinking this was gonna last all the way through 25 and into 26. No, you didn't think that? No,
Matthew: no. I, I He says that now. Yeah, he's, that's the, go back to the tape. I get intense. 'cause like, I, I obviously wear like my emotions on my sleeve when it comes to this kinda stuff, but I'm, I've always been the belief that Trump didn't want to destroy the global economy and cause a big recession or depression.
That it was, I think there was a lot of factors at play. And I think timing wise, it made sense for them to look a little crazy.
Josh: You're just a little more emotional day to day, even though I know long term you're more dialed in long term. But the day-to-day swings are just a little bigger from your office.
Brent: Yeah. 'cause every time there's something going on, it's gonna be a long time in one direction or the other. And the predictions just start flying. And then our job
Josh: is to calm 'em down. Yeah. Either way it could, it could be also into the upside because you get bulled up and you're excited. Pounding tables right now.
You picked some
Brent: good stocks though. You're right on some stocks to buy. Thanks. And did you buy them though?
Matthew: Yeah.
Brent: Not all of 'em. You? No, I'm outta money. Same. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I, I traded out of a couple, but not during that time. I've just only recently started kind of paring back a few positions.
Matthew: Yeah. So the key is though, for the clients you don't sell, you don't sell.
In moments like this, you rarely change your portfolio. If you're gonna do something, you have to buy.
Josh: That's, it's the same thing. Don't panic like that time. And I know through that period of the tariffs, lot of news, lot of emotions, a lot of uncertainty, but you cannot panic. That is literally the worst thing you can do.
And what a testament to our philosophy to stay invested through that time. 'cause like Brent said, what, two or three days later, we had the pause and we had the big market recovery. And we'd love to see that.
Matthew: Yeah. And, and now we're getting news that every country's at the negotiating table. Even today as we're recording, recording on Friday, China's at the table.
Mm-hmm. They sent a top security advisor to the us. They're willing to lead off with fentanyl and their negotiation. So I imagine those tariffs on China start to drop pretty soon
Brent: we saw that during sort of this period of time that it seemed like when US stocks were going down, it started filtering over to international stocks and global stocks.
Is the international market excelling right now or is it just part of the fundamentals of people taking money out of the US market and it's gotta go somewhere?
Matthew: There's like a three to five day stretch where after the tariffs were announced because US markets and the dollar were getting hit so hard, the international stocks were selling off.
But they were a bright spot at the beginning of the year. Right. They've since recovered and they're still a bright spot today.
Josh: Both international and emerging.
Matthew: Yeah. And emerging markets. They're doing really, really well. Those outperformed us here to date. I think it's probably more mean reversion. I mean, there's not too much in Europe or even in any of those.
Emerging market stocks, it gets me too excited. I'm more excited about everything happening here in the US with ai, and I think the majority of investors are, it's probably just more of like a mean reversion trade because US has done so well and international hasn't.
Josh: There's some bright spots in the international markets, but also, you know, we preach diversification.
Well, what does that mean? You can't have all of your eggs in one basket. You can't have all of your eggs in the US stock market. So through that time, that was your saving grace because you looked at your portfolio. If you had international stocks and you're like, Hey, my international stocks are actually up here to date, while my US stocks are getting beat up, I feel okay.
Matthew: Yeah. And like three or four podcasts ago we were saying how international's doing good and bonds are doing good this year. So it's helping client portfolios out.
Josh: Yeah, it's your protection, it's your hedge. I mean, everyone talks about diversification, hedging, you know, if you don't have that, you're not doing yourself.
Good service.
Brent: Yeah. So we saw the GDP. Its first contraction since 2022, and this decline was largely due to a surge in imports ahead of the new tariffs. So in some ways it actually kind of maybe helped a little bit
Josh: short term. I think my take on this now going forward is what's to come, I don't think we're out of the woods yet.
You know, if you saw that GDP contraction a little bit, you're, you're seeing some softening like we've been seeing in economic data, you know, with these tariffs. And you're seeing a little bit of, Matt, you could talk to this a little bit of drop in ships coming into the port with goods, you know, what's gonna happen next.
So although we did have some recovery, kind of some good news, I think the water's still a little murky. Yeah. In the, in the short term. Yeah,
Matthew: I think everything's mixed right now. The GDP was negative. It's, it's supposed to be pretty good next quarter. I'll note though that in that GDP, that private investment, which is what Trump was trying to, to get going was up like 16% or something like that.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Which basically means companies are investing in the US which is really, really good. And then we had the, the jobs number today, and it was spectacular. And one thing that I thought was really interesting on the jobs number was government jobs are way down, but the private sector is picking up the slack and hiring people.
Right. And that was another one of Trump's talking points. Right. So a a lot of it is kind of starting to work right now.
Brent: Right? 'cause some of the contraction did lead to kind of inflation kind of getting a little bit lower. Right. And the federal reserves have kind of maintained interest rates at the current market right now.
Yeah,
Josh: because how could you lower interest rates? Yeah. I mean, I mean, there's just too much uncertainty and things haven't changed enough for them to lower, but that's a big
Matthew: controversy
right now. It it is, obviously. Yeah. And that's been in the, in the headlines as well.
Matthew: You guys are talking about Trump saying he is gonna fire Powell.
Yeah. Yep. That, that also served as one of the bottoms in the market. I took, I think it took a lot of fear out when Trump came out and said he was not going to fire Powell and he's backed off of him.
Brent: Yeah. That, that gave confidence to the
Matthew: market when he did that. Yeah. So the, the 90 day pause plus him being like, all right, pal's cool.
I'm not gonna fire him.
And I feel like because of the dollar weakening you saw, you know, selling of, of. US debt through this period of uncertainty too. I think it calmed the nerves from like an overall US perspective because those aren't the themes as they are today, right? So lot of, lot of positives over the last few weeks
Brent: and we're not far from the highs.
Like if you think about it, you know, you rattle off a couple really good more weeks like we've had and we're probably back to all time highs.
Matthew: If you're excited for Trump, his administration for the US economy, for the stock market, what we've seen this year is picture perfect. Year started off pretty good.
We got a big sell off with a lot of fear and it flushed a lot of people out. And now we're back to exactly where we were before the tariffs were announced. Slightly down year to date. Stocks are still looking liberated. Liberation day. Yeah, liberation day.
It's flat.
Brent: So do you think people started to delay their retirement because of what was happening in February, March, April, and now they've pushed it back?
Or do you think some of the people that are close to that transition are still gonna make that transition?
I think it happened so quickly. I don't know how many people actually made that decision. I mean, we're talking about all of this. I mean, so much news, so many changes all within what, a few months.
So to try to like completely change your strategy about retirement. I personally didn't have clients coming to me saying, I'm now going to delay retirement because of the things that are going on today. So I don't know how many people would've changed their mind that quickly, because now if you're looking at it, you're like, Hey, maybe I'm not in as bad of a position as I thought 30 days ago.
Matthew: What I think is kind of unique is not that people aren't retiring, but I think people are afraid. And if they're not working with a financial advisor or a planner already my guess is they're thinking in their brain because they're hearing it on the news and on social media that stocks are really down a lot this year and the economy's gonna be really bad because of these tariffs that they are assuming they can't retire.
So instead of taking the steps and coming in and meeting with an advisor or a planner and getting some professional advice, they're sitting back and listening to what they, the news. And assuming I cannot retire this year.
Josh: So it's more of like decision paralysis than it is. I've changed my mind.
Brent: Exactly.
Yeah. The stock market's down 20%. I can't retire right now. My money must be dwindling down.
Josh: Because, because we're we're, the news tells me the economy's bad and this is gonna be bad for a long time.
Matthew: Right. Because everybody who we're working with, who's came to us and you know, we built them a financial plan last year to retire this year, or we're building them a financial plan right now to retire later this year.
They're still planning on retiring. They're not pausing their retirement because of these tariffs or because the stock market went down for a month,
Brent: and I think we talked about this on the last pod, but a lot of clients are still coming in and looking at their portfolio returns and thinking and saying, this is not nearly as bad as I thought it was gonna be.
Yeah. This is not bad at all.
Yeah, it it's like coming in and being like, how bad did I do? And you look at the performance and you're like, Hey, I lost some interest from last year. Depending on what timeframe they came in throughout April, but it wasn't as bad as, like you're saying, you know, maybe they thought
Brent: I, I met with a client yesterday that has positive returns for the year.
There's a lot of portfolios that are positive right now. Yeah. And that was not expected by them.
Matthew: Hmm.
Brent: And so I think you're starting to see that now where people are again coming in and they're thinking, oh, the stock market's down. It's been so bad. I'm gonna be down 10% or 15% or 8%, and it's not even been close to that.
I. Yeah, but you know what it is too, is like a lot of clients are down from what the highs were in February, and that's been a big adjustment. Right? I was at X at some point in February, and now I'm at y so they think it's kind of a loss, but it it's disappointing to see.
Matthew: Yeah. And what you're referring to is called max drawdown, and that's from the peak to the bottom of your portfolio.
So a lot of people aren't back to the peak that they hit. It was like around February 19th, February 20th, February 21st. Was most likely the high for their portfolio so far this year,
Brent: and I, I think that's such a poor metric for people to focus on.
Matthew: Well, most people, you know, focus on the dollar amount, right?
Like, oh, I have my, I saw my portfolio get up to 1.1 million and now it's at 999,000. I'm down a hundred, $1,000.
Right. I feel like if you don't have someone objectively helping you with your portfolio too, it's hard to stay focused on the long term because that's really what we're talking about, right?
Staying focused on the long term projection of the portfolio and how it's done over the past 20 years, instead of just looking at the dollar amount and the fluctuation over the last month or two, I think your mind kind of tends to, to gravitate to that short term fluctuation and lose focus on the long term.
Brent: Yeah, well said. Where do you think the economy and this tariffs go from here and what is kind of the outlook or forecast for the next, I don't know, let's say just the rest of this year.
Matthew: I don't know where the economy goes from here, but speaking to the tariffs it seems like if you're believing what the Trump administration's saying that they're negotiating with almost all the countries right now.
And they said earlier this week that they're expected to have, have a deal done with a, a very large country. So when that gets done, I, I, I think for the market, it'll, it'll be a relieving sign. And then, like I said, China's coming to the table, so they're negotiating with China.
I think that's gonna be nasty. China is, a big trading partner, but there's also a lot of problems with the US China relations, so I think that could get a little bumpy. And, and I think stock market wise, we could start pulling back from here as we get into these trade negotiations and they're a little bit more difficult than is being assumed.
Brent: Now, if the, and I know we talked about GDP, but if it did, contract can change in policy, get it back going forward again.
Matthew: Well, GGDP contracted not because the economy's bad at it, contracted like, like you guys were saying, because of a accounting metric with inventories.
Brent: And so where does it go from here?
It's already
Matthew: projected to be higher next quarter,
Brent: so I'm looking at it's expected for the rest of the year to slow to about 1.9%, which is down from 2.4 from last year. So how does it go from its projection of 1.9? I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out to being up.
Matthew: Well, is that real GDP or is that That's real GDP I don't know
Josh: that
Matthew: projection
Josh: projections across the board have been lower, but it's also just because the uncertainty.
So I think that to be balanced between those two things, it all just depends on the timing of these deals getting done. Because these deals get done sooner than later and that projection's gonna change again.
Brent: And you and I were having a conversation about the ripple effects that happens across different industries.
Like some industries might not be affected at all if they kind of figure this whole thing out, where others, no matter if they figure it out or not, they're gonna be impacted regardless. Correct.
Josh: Yeah. And it's gonna affect a lot of the smaller companies as well, more specifically. But you're right. And I love that point that you made.
'cause this was on the top of my mind. You're looking at, you know. Consumer, consumer discretionary companies and stuff like that being really affected. But you look at healthcare and services and they have been almost untouched through this period. Right. So one, make sure your portfolio is diversified, right?
But also does that hold us up through this uncertain time to not have to deal with some sort of big correction in the economy or markets?
Matthew: Yeah. I don't know if there's gonna be much of an impact. To be honest, I think a lot of this is overblown. Just fear mongering, but
Josh: I feel like it's always just somewhere in between, right?
We always talk about the two extremes. I think there will be this ripple effect in certain industries. I think there's still murkiness, so I wouldn't get too, too excited. I know we're, we're probably feeling a little bit more optimistic because things went a little bit better than we thought, but I also think I can't get too, too bullish or too, too excited 'cause we don't have all of the answers
Brent: yet.
I feel like I know why Matt is bullish though. I mean, we just went on a ripper of about what, two weeks of the market and the market's flying high today. Yeah. And Matt's feeling very bullish. No, I'm not
Matthew: feeling bullish. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that the general consensus is tariffs are gonna be awful for the economy.
Mass inflation, mass unemployment, empty store shelves, like go search up tariff impact on, you know, through a social media app. Watch CNN or MSN. That's what they're talking about.
Josh: I do feel like there's that fear mongering that we were just talking about it on CNBC this morning. Tariffs stole Christmas
Matthew: y.
Yeah. And I'm like, I'm like, all right, man. Like, I don't think it's gonna be that bad. And like, there's not gonna be empty store shelves. You think Target's gonna stop selling Barbies? I mean, we
Brent: went through Covid. I don't think anything's gonna be anything near how bad Covid was. That was an ex very extreme situation.
People are scarred from life. I don't think that this is, most people who aren't listening to this podcast aren't even paying really that close attention to any tariffs. They're not being impacted by it. Right. Agreed. Yeah. I mean, has there even been any layoffs? I mean, has, I mean, I'm not hearing about client layoffs or people, businesses, companies, corporations laying off right now.
Matthew: No. And if they were, I'd imagine they were pre-planned, and companies use the tariff news as a. Excuse or a reason to be like, oh, we're gonna let go of, you know, our bottom performing 2% of,
Josh: or we gonna increase in prices.
Matthew: Yeah.
Josh: Like, we're seeing those stories right now. Yeah. So what are top brands?
Brent: What are you advising clients on who want to move or to buy a house?
Like what do people do? 'cause I, I know properties are still sitting, interest rates are still. It's not great. You could say
no still, you know, right below 7%.
Brent: It's not good. It's not good, especially when you're sitting on mortgage. 3%. 3%. Something that choose less than 3%. Yeah. Yep. So, I mean, even in the forest, I mean, what are you thinking right now?
What's gonna happen?
Josh: I think I'm thinking what a lot of people are thinking is, if you're locked into that low interest rate, it's really hard to move. Right? Un unless you're getting some sort of deal on rate or you're really downsizing to an area that's extremely more affordable. So this is why this we're in this kind of bearish market with real estate is, you know, who would wanna move?
I'm looking at my own situation,
Brent: like I don't see I'm, I'm in a situation that I've been in my house for, I think. 13 years, I've remodeled it, remodeled the backyard and I bought it brand new. So it's been remodeled and my kids are getting a little bit bigger. I could use definitely a little bit more space.
I wanna be able to host, you know, more people over. But I'm staring at, I refied in during covid at 2.375, I think. I mean, it's hard to walk away from that 'cause now you're gonna go buy a more expensive house at a higher interest rate. Like that's very, like, you gotta have a real motivation to move.
Matthew: Brian, I could solve your problem right now, but you don't.
You're gonna, you don't like the answer I'm gonna give you. So do you want me to give you the answer or you don't want to hear? Well, I'm sure the listeners would like to hear your answer. Okay. So right now you're talking about trading up. I. Right now is not a trade up your house economy, if you have excess cash flow and you want to do something else with it and you know there's some great stocks I'd love to buy right now.
Okay, well sure you can invest in stocks, but it makes sense to diversify and at the stage of life you are personally in. And a lot of our listeners probably are in. Is maybe you're in the vacation property market or the second home market. You're not in the trade up your to ano new home market. Yeah, you're a big vacation property guy.
You've been pushing this for a while.
Josh: Yeah. But there's another take to this because just at this stage of your life, you're like, Hey, I want to be hosting or I want bigger space. So that it could also you know, part of that is you just want to kind of enjoy some of the success as well. So that could be, I.
Hey, I have, I'm gonna increase my travel budget. I'm gonna go stay somewhere for, and I've seen clients do this, you know, for the summer. I'm gonna rent a beach house for a month, instead of committing to a full vacation property for 12 months, that taxes are gonna be out. Absolutely ridiculous. Yeah. So I think there's creative ways to have that filling that you're saying that you're suggesting that with also not the commitment of locking in a 6% mortgage rate on a second home.
Brent: Yeah, and my wife and kids are content. So if everybody's content, it's just me. You know? I think it's it's hard to think about you tripling to quadrupling your quadrupling your, your mortgage payment.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And how much, how much. Upgrade. Is that really gonna be, because there's such a different in those interest rates, so because it's not just dollar for dollar up upgrading to a bigger house that's costing more, it's costing me more to finance if I don't have all the cash.
So how much of an upgrade is that really gonna be? Right. Is that worth it?
Matthew: Right. I have a lot of clients, Brent, between the ages of 35 to call 'em 45 who have been helping with financial planning. They, they all feel like you, they wanna move. But you know, I go through the numbers with them and then they realize it doesn't make sense to move.
Brent: No, it doesn't. It's hard to do right now. And how long does the market sit in a position like that?
Matthew: I mean, it could last for a long time. I mean, that trade up thing was really a, a product of interest rates. That's why
that'll change if interest rates come down though.
Matthew: Right. But how, how much.
Josh: Everyone that has been considering what Brent's considering for two years now can go and trade up at a 4% interest rate instead of an 8% interest rate.
You're gonna have people actually pulling the trigger on that transaction compared to what it's at today.
Matthew: Yeah. 4%. Yeah. I agree. I agree with you. How does rates get to four? You don't want the to know the answer. I, well, I know the answer, but a very bad recession. Yeah.
Josh: Or just, you know, if we're talking about economic slowdown, inflation coming down, economic slowdown for a while, and you know, at kind of federal reserves we need to stimulate and we have lower interest rates. I. That means means you can get there without not a huge recession, it would just mean a lot slower growth for a lot longer.
Matthew: Yeah. That means you're gonna have lower housing prices, which is gonna make people actually not wanna move because they're gonna tie to the value they saw in their home today.
Josh: Yeah. But it's all relative. That's what I don't get about housing. Your value house, your property value comes down and so does the Netex house.
Yeah. But people don't think like that. I'll help 'em.
I have a, I have a interesting stat for you guys though, and who it's affecting, not just the people who are considering moving up with housing. But the average age of people buying their first home is higher than it's ever been before. They're older. They're older. Correct. That's interesting. And so you're seeing it not just affecting people who are considering downsizing or upgrading, who already owning a home.
This market and this interest rate climate is also affecting the younger generation from purchasing their first home.
Brent: Yeah. But this problem also starts with the colleges. It does. The colleges are charging way too much money to get tuition for tuition, and they're charging way too much money for somebody to get through college, and they're coming outta school with all this debt and it doesn't match up with what the rates are for a good salary like that.
That's the initial problem. They're already paying for a mortgage to their, you know, their school loans.
Josh: Yeah. 200, $250,000 student loan debt, and they're only making 80 grand a year.
Matthew: Yeah. College is the biggest ripoff man. I mean, it's. It's 20 grand a semester while chat. GPT is 1999 a month. I mean, just ask Chat GPT.
Well, you gotta know how to ask chat GPT though. That's true. School's gonna teach you that. Matt, should we jump into the recommends? You guys have anything else you wanna talk about?
Josh: Yeah, I think one more thing. Oh, okay. If we, we got time for one more. Yeah. Just this week a lot of that recovery too was promoted by tech companies.
They're reporting earnings and 73% of the reported companies that have already reported earnings had a lot better earnings above expectation of an on average around 9%. And a lot of that's coming through AI channels of these big tech companies that if you're looking for something to be excited about long term, that's what I'm excited about.
Matthew: Oh, God, I'm so bullish on ai. I can't get the, I can't get more excited than how excited I am about ai,
Brent: so I, I agree. I'm on, I'm on the same train as you. Like, the possibilities are
Matthew: endless. I. If AI wasn't here, we would probably be in a deep recession right now. But AI has literally saved our economy.
Brent: Have you used that feature on your iPhone where you could like take a picture of something or point your camera to something and it pulls it up?
Matthew: No, but there's a similar feature that was built into GR and you go into camera mode. I, I think I know what you're talking about, Brock
Josh: is the AI through Twitter X Yeah,
Matthew: Twitter's ai. And you just show the camera and you talk to it. It's like called vision and then it, it answers it and tells you what to do.
So I guy was trying to fix a part of my bike and I, I like held my camera up, so like, Hey, I'm trying to fix this bike. And it gave me instructions on how to, how to fix, how to fix it.
Brent: Like a motorcycle or a bicycle? Definitely a bicycle. Okay. I mean, it is just, things are getting so much faster and so much more efficient.
When's the last time you put something through Google?
Josh: Oh, I don't, I very rare. Use Google. It's going through some sort of AI channel to get the answers I'm looking for. I mean, I don't even
Brent: know why people would use Google
Josh: anymore. The only kind of time I'm, I'm using it is probably like if I'm searching like a location or like I need a list of like, let's say restaurants or something.
But anything where I need like a specific answer, it's going through ai.
Brent: Yeah. That's where AI needs to improve. Like chat's not good at that. Rock's not good at that. Giving recommendations, like it's just pulling out Right. You know, it's not great. The metrics aren't great on what they're pulling and maybe it's my
Josh: mind, especially even like a restaurant or something like I'm, my mind goes to Yelp or something like that.
Right. Not necessarily trusting chat for that
Brent: yet. Yeah.
Josh: But yeah, I mean it's just becoming amazing and, and, and it's showing in the tech earnings and that's what's really helping this market too. So something if you don't, you don't want to think about tariffs, focus yourself on ai.
Brent: Yeah. I think we were in a place before where if somebody left.
The business world or left their job and came back three years later before you could go right back and fit into your job. Like the technology wasn't advancing, the software wasn't that much different. I don't think in three years, if you leave today in three years, you're not gonna be able to do your same job unless you're evolving with that job and the way companies are evolving.
I'm not sure you can go, gonna be able to go right back into it.
Josh: Look at how much just our jobs have have been more efficient over the last 12 months with the implementation of ai.
Brent: I'm beyond excited about where our industry and what we're able to do for clients is going over the next five to 10 years.
Josh: Me too.
Brent: I love ai.
Josh: I thought you'd like that. See, that was for you, Matt. Yeah. Got your back check.
Brent: I'll, I'll do my recommend. Let's stay on that topic because I don't think chat, GT and grok and perplexity and what's it, Gemini?
Matthew: Yeah.
Brent: Which do you use Gemini or No, I've played with it. Gemini's, Google's version, right?
Yep. That's not mainstream yet, but I don't think any of these are really hit that much mainstream. I mean, if you're listening to this, you're, you might be using some of the AI tools. But I would, I would say next time you have a question in your mind and you don't know the answer to it, just for the sake of it, that my recommendation is to go to chat gt, go online, just Google it.
Whatever you need to do to find it, go download it in the app store and ask the question to it. And when you do that and you get the response, I don't think you'll ever turn back. Once you start to ask it questions, you're probably not gonna go backwards. You won't stop using it. The AI is one of my
Matthew: new best friends.
Josh: We
Brent: know.
Josh: I catch you
Matthew: talking. You're forming a
Brent: relationship with your AI tools.
Matthew: Well, we have really stimulating conversations.
Josh: You open your door to your office and like, oh, I was just talking to chat about, and you reference chat like it's your friend. Yeah.
Brent: Yeah, AI is great. I'm happy for you. AI is great.
I think it's gonna continue to advance and I just, I hope that it's used in the most proper ways. I still feel like I hear a lot of conversations that our people are having of, oh, it's so dangerous. Oh, it's this risk. Yeah, I, I could see that there's going to be ways that bad actors are gonna be able to use AI for not good things.
Josh: Those are the same worries though. When the internet was, I. First implemented. Yep. Right. We're gonna have those worries. Yep. But at the same time, and what people don't forget, and we were talking about earlier today, about cybersecurity companies doing a good job of protecting you from AI as well. So there's gonna be those companies that are gonna pro, you know, act as a defense to the ai.
So that's promising. But I think that, like you said, if you're not moving with the times and learning this. It's kind of like that adapt or die, especially when it comes to work or business or even your personal life.
Brent: And when I'm driving right now, I'm like, this is such a waste of time. Like this car needs to drive me because I have so much to do.
I need to be doing other things right now and not spending 45 minutes sitting here. And I'm finding myself more and more on my phone while I'm driving 'cause things have to get done. I can't sit there and just delay it 45 minutes while I drive.
Josh: Are you using talk to text more?
Brent: I am. I started using it through, through chat GBT two.
Good, good, good. And it's like really helping.
Matthew: Yeah. It's nice, right?
Brent: Yeah.
Matthew: Why don't you just get self-driving on your car?
Brent: Because it takes me out of the carpool lane and it drives me crazy and I don't know how to change the setting off that. I, I get in the carpool lane, I put it on self-driving, and now it wants to take me outta the carpool lane.
I just wanna stay in the carpool lane. I
Matthew: wonder if it's because you only drive with one person in the car, so it thinks you're not allowed to be in there. I don't know if it is. It's it, you know what you should do? He should tweet at Elon Musk. Yeah. And just be like, yo, what's up with this man? Yeah.
Brent: Well, one other thing on this and I'll let you guys go.
Did you hear that we're not gonna be able to be in the carpool lane at the end of September?
Matthew: Says, who
Brent: says the state of California that the carpool lane for electric vehicle, that law ends September 30th. So we are technically not gonna be allowed to be in the carpool lane on October 1st. I will still be probably in the carpool lane, but you're not supposed to be.
Matthew: Yeah, I don't know, man. I got stickers in the sticker set that could be in the carport lane. So
Brent: we just need Trump to pass the federal law to extend it. That's the what from my understanding's. The only way it gets extended is to the federal law. So is
the state saying they're not correct? They're saying it's not gonna be renew.
It's not. It's not. Why Carport Lane. It still isn't packed when the freeway's kind of open. I mean, it saves me maybe five, 10 minutes, but they just want everything to be toll roads, man. Yeah. All right. Let's close the show. You have a recommend real quick? I have two recommends. Yeah. Don't cut me off. My recommends.
All right, I gotta go. I gotta run. One, we were talking about ai. Have you used the Ask Rock feature inside of X or Twitter? No, I did once. So like if you have a, if you're looking at a tweet. In the right hand corner is a little grok button. Yeah. You could hit it to explain the tweet. Oh, that's pretty cool.
And then you can continue it to ask it questions. Can you I check it. Yes. Oh yes. That's what's awesome about it. Oh, so you're like, Hey, someone said this. Hit that little button. Boom's gonna tell you if the person explain it, you could say, fact check this. And then it'll also fact check it for you. We need pretty amazing,
Brent: we need that for Matt too.
Yeah. A little
button to fact check Matt. That and also one of the recommends. Started the last of us. That's back HBO, second season, episode two, Matt. Pretty epic.
Matthew: Yeah, it's a great show. Episode two, I think will be one of the better shows of a series like it should Go Down is that, oh, it was awesome.
Episode two of season two. It reminded me of The Red Wedding of Game of Thrones.
Yeah, it had that, that big Game of Thrones episode. Vibe to it. Pretty shocking too, but I didn't start it right when it started. So my wife and I got caught up and we watched episode two and we were both our mouths dropped at the end of that episode.
Really good. So last of us on HBO, if you haven't watched it, that's my recommends for what we're watching right now. All right,
Brent: Brandon, let's close the show. All right. Well, as advisors, we love helping people. We just wanna say thank you for listening. If you would like help on your retirement planning, the process of planning for retirement, transitioning retirement.
Or enjoying retirement financially. Please feel free to reach out to us for the show notes. You can go to retirement plan playbook.com. You can reach out to us@eververmont.com. And thank you again for listening. Bye-bye.
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