Wealth! host Bradley Smith explores retirement planning, investment strategies, and the impact of technology on businesses and healthcare.
As Americans face the reality of longer life expectancies, the conversation turns to retirement preparedness. Yahoo Finance contributor Ross Mac offers practical tips for saving for an extended retirement, while financial expert and author Maddy Dychtwald provides valuable insights on the importance of retirement savings, particularly for women.
Shifting gears to consumer behavior, Bank of America Institute Senior Economist David Tinsley offers his perspective on consumer spending, discussing why he believes it has remained “soft but stable.” Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman also makes an appearance, breaking down the concept of fad stocks versus trend stocks and providing valuable investment tips.
On the technology front, the healthcare network Ascension is grappling with the consequences of a cyberattack, and Yahoo Finance’s health reporter Anjalee Khemlani joins the show to delve deeper into the situation. Meanwhile, Yahoo Finance Tech Editor Dan Howley explores how small businesses are leveraging the evolving tech landscape to improve their companies, highlighting the transformative power of technology.
And this is Yahoo Finance’s guide to building your financial footprint.
Our community of experts will give you the resources, the tools, the tips and the tricks that you need to grow your money on.
Today’s show, it’s all about the consumer wallet.
Here, we ask an expert about spending trends that we’re monitoring.
Plus housing hurdles, mortgage rates may have declined over the past week, but the majority of Americans think it’s still a bad time to buy.
We’ll bring you the pulse of the home buyer.
Plus we burn out that could be costing you thousands of dollars.
We bring you the tips and tricks to avoid becoming discouraged at the office.
And if you’re managing a workforce, how to avoid losing some of that top talent.
Well, let’s kick it off with a look at the consumer here.
Bank of America’s latest consumer checkpoint shows total card spending per household in April rose one percent from the year prior.
A big rise from 3/10 of a percent in March.
The bank attributing the gain to an early Easter seasonal factors and tax refunds for more on this we turn to David Tinsley who is the Bank of America Institute, senior economist here.
First and foremost, we just walk us through the top take away here and what you’re seeing in card spending per household and what’s really the catalyst there.
Thanks for having me on Brad.
Yeah, I mean, I think our manager at the Institute for a while now has been that the consumer spending momentum is soft but stable.
And when we look at our 69 million customers and sort of pass their credit and debit card spending, we get the numbers you referred to there.
So spending in April up about 1% year on year, uh actually looking a little bit better than March.
But the truth be told, the date has been pretty choppy over the last few months due to uh calendar effects, Easter leap year, et cetera.
Looking through that, I think the story is continued spending momentum uh not particularly accelerating or decelerating to any great extent.
And I think within that story and this is really interesting because there’s been a lot of kind of corporate and market chatter around the low end consumer.
What we’re seeing in our data is that the low income consumer is still spending, in fact, their spending growth is faster than the higher income consumer.
So that’s a pretty good news story.
I think, why do you think that is take us further into that data point because I was looking at some of the charts here, one of the exhibits showing that lower income card spending growth stronger than that of both middle and higher income consumers as of April, as you were just mentioning, what’s really driving that?
Well, you know, I think first and foremost, it’s a labor market story.
You know, the consumer always comes back to the labor market.
And when we look at our data, uh at the lower end of the income distribution, wages and salaries, which we can see by the money going into people’s bank accounts if you like is up 4% year on year.
And at the higher end, there has been some acceleration actually, but growth, there’s around 1%.
So what’s going on there?
Well, the labor market, it has been very beneficial to the lower end over the last few years.
You know, you kind of had that reopening story after the pandemic, lots of jobs in leisure and hospitality also in health care still, uh there’s momentum there.
Obviously, we have to watch the data really carefully from here to see whether that slightly soft the payrolls report uh last week, whether that keeps going uh in terms of, you know, developing in the data, but near to and the outlook is pretty solid, I think for the low end.
And just one other thing I think is worth noting that when you look at the savings, the cash in people’s bank accounts relative to pre pandemic times is still well, well up.
So, and that’s true across all income cohorts, uh, in actual right now due to the tax refund season, it’s up about 70% almost at the lower income end of the distribution.
So, you know, that gives a little bit of wind in the sales for consumers is receiving those when, uh, with receiving those refunds too.
Yeah, and it was interesting because there’s one thing to, to have the savings that you use that refund to build up.
It’s another thing as well to really reduce debt and look at it as a mechanism to, to cut into where you owe and lower income consumers using those tax refunds to reduce that.
Another core point within this report.
I, I wonder where else you’re seeing spending driven by some of the, the tax refunds right now.
Yeah.
So when we look at the uh tax refunds going into accounts and we look at the period just before the three weeks before and the three weeks after, uh we can kind of track the, the boost to spending and you do see the spending increasing in clothing and consumer durables actually, which is pretty interesting because usually speaking, the consumer story is around this pivot to services uh over the last year or so, uh services did increase as well.
There was some spending there.
And then, as I was saying, the deposits rose somewhat.
So in other words, people at least for now have banked some of the cash.
And as you were saying there, what’s interesting and perhaps a note of caution is that the lower end of the income distribution, the lower income consumers, they paid some debt down and more so than the than the uh middle and the higher end.
So in other words, they paid debt down what debt student debt it seems and credit card debt.
So, you know, sensible prudent actions, but perhaps also a little sign of caution on the part of lower income consumer as well.
You know, it’s interesting, caution seems like it’s gonna be a word that contributes to some of the moderation we might see in spending.
And, and I think back to the data that just came out this morning from the University of Michigan and the Consumer Sentiment Index showing that consumers have been reserving judgment for the past few months.
But now they perceive negative developments on a number of dimensions, whether that be inflation, unemployment interest rates, potentially all moving in an unfavorable direction in the year ahead.
I wonder how you’re evaluating that as well and what type of moderation you would expect as a result?
You know, that’s an interesting point.
So consumers, despite the economy in pretty good shape really, and a market is in good shape, we’re seeing the spending growth.
They’ve been pretty pessimistic for quite a long period of time.
And I think first and foremost, that’s been an inflation story.
So, you know, even now price inflation and although the rate of inflation has come down, you go and buy a coffee or something like that, the price is well up where it was pre panem.
And I think that still weighs on confidence and I guess people uh have seen the inflation rate come down but they’re still seeing those price increases.
And the other thing I guess that’s going on right now is, you know, the the Fed’s situation, the narrative around the Fed has changed from near term cuts to higher for longer, you know, be a cut at the end of this year, perhaps as a a GB of a global research and forecasting.
So I guess the consumer is also perhaps a little bit hesitant, a little bit downbeat on that outlook as well.
So there, there certainly are things uh weighing on sentiment there.
It’s, it’s really hard to keep the midpoint of my coffee purchases.
David at about $3.25 at this point right now.
Uh Sometimes I spoil and I go to the $7 coffee manufacturer out there, we all know them well.
But at the end of the day, a lot of decisions, micro decisions that add up to macro results, hopefully for consumers, David Tinsley.
Thanks so much for taking the time here this morning.
Thanks so much.
Absolutely great to see you bank of America Institute, senior economist David Tinsley there, moving things right along here coming up, Americans not too happy with the state of the housing market.
We’re gonna tell you why on the other side of this short break, let’s do a quick check of the market sponsored by Texas de trade here.
Taking a look at the Dow Jones industrial average right now.
That’s holding on to gains of about 2/10 of a percent S and P 500 flat just barely to the upside here in the NASDAQ composite.
You’re seeing that in the red right now.
That’s down by about 2/10 of a percent ever invested in something just because you see a craze or a fad think investing in Peloton fueling its meteoric rise when everyone was cycling in their homes amidst the COVID pandemic back in 2020 going nowhere.
But with Peloton down over 97% since its record highs, you might want to learn how to distinguish between a fad and a trend to break it down for us.
I mean, really the only thing that can truly tell you if it is is time, but I can give you a few examples.
And the thing that sparked this in my brain was Roblox, the company coming out with earnings this week.
People can build games on it, people can play games on it.
There are tens of millions of games on it and a heck of a lot of people on it, including my Children.
So this is, you know, if you think about Warren Buffett who has said frequently and famously invest in what, you know, Roblox is something that I am quite familiar with my own household.
But the stock as you can see fell quite sharply this week after the company came out with a bookings forecast that disappointed investors.
And you know, this is one of those companies where you wonder about its staying power.
If you go back and look at how the stock has done since it became public a few years ago, you have seen that it has declined sharply.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about this sort of definition of A f if you will, this is a f from a perspective, right?
A practice or interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal.
So it’s something that everybody is seeming everywhere all at once, very popular, but then a fad tends to fade, right?
So the other sort of poster child or example that has really been in the news lately is Peloton, right?
And Peloton sort of faddishness perhaps is evident if you look at its sales trajectory, of course, back in 2021 when everybody was home is when it saw high in sales of around 4 billion.
And since then, it has trended lower as especially the hardware, the bikes themselves, the cycles, we have seen a fall off and the company has tried to sort of replace that by the subscription growth of the platform, for example.
So that’s been an interesting trajectory.
Peloton stock chart looks a lot uglier than that of roadblocks.
As you see it here, it’s down 95% over the past three years, down 97% since its highs that reached uh back in 2020 beyond meat is another example here.
Now, you know, plant based meat, you could argue is here to stay.
But if you go to your grocery store, you definitely see a lot of different varieties in your freezer, not just a beyond meat.
So we’ve seen a collapse in that stock.
On the other hand, there are some other things that maybe people thought were fads that ended up having staying power and I think of Uber in particular here, if you max out this chart, right, you’ve actually seen it go higher.
There were some real questions about whether Uber was gonna be sustainable business in the beginning.
Both because of some things going on with the business itself.
They were tracking people after they out of the after they got out of the cars, but just regulatory hurdles, etcetera, airbnb is another one I think of that when it first came out, people said I’m gonna rent out a room in my house to strangers and yet obviously that’s had some staying power, although that stock is down from its early highs.
It has had uh definitely more recent out performance.
So that’s sort of how I’ve been thinking about it.
And, you know, there are examples of each, but again, it is sort of a time game Brad where you just have to kind of see if it ends up staying around.
Yeah, so let’s talk about investing fads versus consumer fads and where the case studies have kind of netted out for each there.
Yeah, I mean, some of them are both right?
In the case of something like a Peloton, obviously, the stock followed the enthusiasm for the product itself.
But I think you do have to differentiate between investing fads and consumer fads.
The ones I’ve been talking about are more on the consumer fad side.
When you’re talking about investing fads, I think you can say meme stocks are one example, here’s our heat map of the meme stocks, right?
And there was the meme stock craze.
Uh that was more about the stocks themselves than necessarily the underlying products and the popularity of the game stock, for example, A MC or a couple I think of it’s not that everybody was all of a sudden going to movie theaters or going into a game stop.
But is that people want to invest in these types of stocks.
You might think of Bitcoin as another type of investing fad.
Although maybe that one has a little more staying power because people have come back to it as it has seen different cycles.
So just to sort of categorize them in your mind and think about uh sort of consider that when you’re figuring out whether to chase something or not, Julie Aman herself.
Well, mortgage rates falling for the first time since mid March this week, this marking the first decrease after five straight weeks, pushing the borrowing costs well above 7%.
So to break down what this means for potential home buyers and owners, we’ve got Yahoo, finance reporter Rebecca Chen.
So we did see that mortgage rate for a 30 year average fixed rate dropped to 7.09 this week.
And you know, this was a welcoming drop, as you said, after five weeks of rising, but I did want to point out that mortgage rates are still pretty high for home buyers in today’s environment, it is still over 7%.
Um So if for a new home buyers who are interested in looking for a home to purchase, they are facing a financing cost that has more than doubled over the last three years when rates was about 3% in 2021.
Um So this obviously is a point of sort of struggle for many people who are trying to find that affordability.
And Rebecca, a New Gallup poll finds 76% 76% of people who are in this market here in American say it’s a bad time to buy a home.
So can you tell us more about the sentiment around home buying?
Absolutely.
So we actually been seeing a similar number across different survey.
One of this another survey that came out this week, uh very similar to this one also said that 80% Americans are not feeling like it’s a good time to purchase a home.
Now, this came from Fannie Mae, the mortgage lender.
What we really saw was that because of the high interest rate in an environment where home prices are also very high buyers just don’t feel like now is a good time and many of them are taking that wait and see approach.
And this is pretty significant because if you really think about it, let’s say you ask five strangers on the street, four of them is going to tell you that now is not a good time to purchase a home.
So apparently, so it’s quite obvious to us that right now, Americans are not feeling very confident in this home buying arena.
And another thing I wanted to highlight from the survey is that this kind of pessimism or lack of confidence in home buying has been sort of consistent.
And the reason why we think it’s consistent and based on talking to a couple of experts in the industry say that because we are so unsure of what’s going to happen next with mortgage rates.
Obviously, we are thinking many home buyers are thinking that, you know, the fed could cut interest rate next and they themselves have said so, but the indications are just not showing when or how much this is going to happen.
So this uncertainty has definitely caused a lot of lack of confidence in home buyers in the US today.
Rebecca Chen, thanks so much for continuing to track everything around the home buying market and breaking this down for us.
Appreciate it.
Well, are Americans doing a good job managing their savings?
That’s the big question.
And according to a new survey from Santander Bank, the answer is somewhat mixed with only about 20% of Americans saying they have more than $25,000 in their savings to help break down this survey as well as giving more tips on how to save.
We’ve got Tim Weiss, who is the Santander Us ceo?
Thanks so much for taking the time here with us, Tim.
We’ll get to the tips here in a hot second.
We just gotta dive into these findings though and, and really kind of get a sense of where you’re seeing this from the Santander side as well, right?
Thank you for having me on.
Um I’d say the positive take away from our survey is the majority of Americans were building savings adding to their savings in the first quarter.
This is against the narrative where we’re hearing that people are spending down uh excess savings coming out of the pandemic.
So, uh that was a positive uh finding and I think uh showing that three quarters of individuals do have savings goals and the majority are meeting those savings goals.
So I take that as a positive on the flip side, uh we’re finding that people are not necessarily doing all the planning that they need and that many people don’t have good awareness.
They don’t have financial confidence in terms of their knowledge and aren’t taking the actions necessary uh to get to achieve those savings goals or paying attention to what interest rate they’re earning on that money.
They’ve worked so hard for.
How has the confidence kind of moderated of people of savers to continue adding to an account where they’re building up the nest egg?
What’s interesting?
Some other research that we do, we’re finding that three and four Americans are uh uh they’re optimistic that they’re on the path to uh financial prosperity.
Uh And the big obstacles to that have been inflation for the past year and some of those are starting to come down.
But what we’re still saying is seeing is far too many people are not taking action.
Uh And only one in five have taken the opportunity to move to a higher rate savings account or certificate of deposit in the past 12 months.
Uh, and still 60% of savers are earning less than 3% on their savings.
And with market rates in the 4 to 5% range, they’re leaving real money on the table.
What is the, the benchmark figure right now, on average that you’re seeing people move over to a savings account on a, on a monthly basis perhaps.
Well, we’ve got the, the majority of Americans are kind of in that middle, uh tier federal reserve data says about $8000 is the median savings account.
And if you think that we’ve got the majority of people earning less than 3% market rates would be closer to five.
They’re leaving as much as $20 a month on the table uh in terms of foregone interest.
Ok.
So let’s get to some actionable tips for people who are trying to, you know, turn the tide or, or kind of turn the corner here and their own savings habits.
I was taking a look at some of your own gps tracker data as well here and, and the report that was the impetus for this conversation.
Where are you seeing people employ the, the necessary kind of tricks in order to just change the mindset around savings.
What interest rate are you earning and what are some of the other options for some people.
If you haven’t started savings, uh, or you’re not accumulating as much savings as you would, like, make sure you’re setting the appropriate goals and make it easy for yourself to save, pay yourself first, set up that automated transfer into your savings account.
Right.
When your paycheck comes in to help you start to accumulate those savings, the majority of Americans have a savings goal of less than $300 a month.
So it doesn’t matter how much you start with the, the what matters the most is you start now, uh and that you’re doing it on a consistent and regular basis.
Tim, great to see you.
Thanks so much for taking the time and, and breaking down some of the findings here from Santander Tim Weiss, who is the Santander Us ceo.
Coming up everyone, the connection between health and wealth.
We’re talking about how a stressed mindset could impact your financial goals.
That’s next nonprofit health care network ascension which operates 140 hospitals in 19 states and the district of Columbia was hit with a cyber attack earlier this week.
As the results, the health care provider has confirmed a number of disruptions to services here with more and tracking this throughout the week.
So after the initial attack was found on May 8th that we did get the update that the company was looking into to just how widespread this issue was.
They did have service interruptions at the time and they’re still investigating whether or not these attacks had any impact on personal health information.
We do know that it has disrupted access to that including my chart, which is one of the largest in the country as well as delayed surgeries, appointments and postponed appointments.
In addition to having to divert ambulances until they could get back online.
And that is not very different from what other health systems have had to deal with and contend with whenever they are attacked.
And Angeli, this was one of many cyber attacks on health care networks in the last year.
Generally speaking, tell us about the system that these providers operate under and how everyday Americans could be affected when something like this happens.
Yes.
So they’re legally required to and by regulatory law are required to notify patients if their health records are impacted.
And that’s the very part that they said they would once they find out now the way that these health systems operate, we saw a little bit of this with the United Health Change health care attack with how widespread of a problem that can be.
Most of these hospital systems differently from United Health operate within sort of the insular bubble of themselves with the addition of third party technology platforms and that includes the likes of Oracle Microsoft, as well as that largest private holder of electronic Health Records.
And so these entities are on the back end of the operations and that is the system that they operate under.
So they, they really uh you know, aren’t necessarily on their own responsible for some of this.
They really do have other parties to contend with and other players in the whole process that, that they have to work with.
In order to find any of this information, health care has repeatedly been called one of the of vulnerable sectors.
The most vulnerable sector in cybersecurity is you’re talking about an industry that still uses a fax machine.
So they still make those we need to stop that Angelique.
Thanks so much.
Appreciate it Angeli Kamlani joining us there for that, plus everyone.
And this is why we have a topic like this for health is Wealth week.
Listen up employers out there.
It may be time to re evaluate your workplace strategies, especially when it comes to mental health.
Employees are feeling the burnout.
A key report from Aflac found that an overwhelming 89% of workers feel high levels of stress from their jobs.
For more on employee burnout and the financial challenges it leaves on employers and employees.
I’m joined by Jerry Hawthorne who is the Aflac Chief Human Resources Officer.
Great to have you here with us, Jerry.
And first let’s start off by breaking down some of the findings and what you’ve seen more broadly here among the employee employer relationship, especially related to burnout.
Yeah, thanks so much for the opportunity, Brad and, and the, the, it’s a startling statistic that 89% are feeling burned out and it, it aligns both with our internal population as well as what I think most organizations are facing And burnout has direct impact on employer productivity.
It has direct impact on employer success on business success.
So employees that are less engaged in work that are feeling um, less supported, less, well, overall, they’re less likely to exercise high levels of discretionary effort, which means that when they’re engaging with customers, it may not be at the level that employers want and it means the customer service could go down.
So it’s really important for employers to take a hard look at how they’re supporting employees and how they’re the types of programs they’re offering around wellness, not just physical wellness but mental and emotional wellness.
Overall.
What, what is the leading driver of feeling burnt out or feeling stressed at work?
From what you’ve found in so much of your research, looking across things?
Yeah, I mean, I would tell you that one of the things that we found was that more than half of the people that we surveyed said from, from the AF Aflac workforces report said that they couldn’t go one month without a paycheck, right?
So when you look at inflation, when you look at the continuing rise of the price of services and goods, and you have people who can’t go one month without a paycheck that says to me that financial impacts and financial wellness are probably one of the biggest drivers of anxiety and concern for employees.
In fact, our workforces reports found that more than half of the people we surveyed said I can’t go II I don’t have $1000 for an out an unexpected out of pocket medical expense, right?
So if you can’t pay for those unexpected expenses, that creates anxiety, that anxiety leads to other issues.
From a health and wellness perspective, it increases absenteeism, it increases performance, it increases toxicity in the workplace.
All of these factors impact overall wellness.
It almost creates a cycle of negative reinforcement around how people are feeling and around the impact that it has on organizational health.
You know, it’s interesting and especially when you have so many generations, I, I don’t know if this is a point where we’ve had the most crossover in generations that are actually supporting the workforce, but it certainly feels that way at least.
And from some of the more seasons generations or those who have a lot of workplace history, they might say I, I’m not trying to call anybody old, but they might say, hey, just toughen up whereas other younger elements of the workforce might say, hey, there are actually ways we can be more efficient if you listen to the things that we’re suggesting here.
So where are you seeing kind of that push and pull between generations even?
And how work is approached to create more balance?
Yeah, and that’s interesting, you know, so I think that every generation has that.
So, so, you know, I can remember when I first entered the workforce and um we were considered very radical on a relative basis to employees that had been with the organization a very long time.
So I think that tends to be cy cyclical.
But, you know, if you look at newer employees to the workforce, they’re typically lower paid employees.
And so, you know, our workforce report found that 68% of Gen Z and six, 4% of millennials say that they’re facing high levels of burnout, which is about 10 to 15% more than your Gen Xers and higher high uh longer tenured employees.
And so there does tend to be the, the push and pull between, hey, do it this way, leverage technology and you have employees who have been there a long time saying, you know what?
We’ve always done it this way, it’s very effective.
And I think it’s really incumbent upon man managers to balance that because both are correct, meaning that processes and the way organizations go about things exist for a variety of very specific reasons.
But organizations that don’t capitalize on trying to leverage new ideas on trying to become more innovative, to become more efficient.
Those are organizations that end up getting left behind in the, you know, in the overall, in the overall um evolution of the world.
So it’s very important for managers to kind of to take a look at both and say, how do we actually integrate both of these ways of working and get the best for our customers and make our employees feel valued and heard, Jerry, there’s much more to this conversation.
Would love to have you back on to continue and we haven’t even got to the four day work week.
Would love to hear your thoughts on that in the future.
Jerry Hawthorne Flac, Chief Human Resources Officer.
A new bank rate survey finds nearly half of us adults say that money has a negative impact on their mental health.
This includes effects such as anxiety, stress, worrisome thoughts, loss of sleep or depression.
And the same data reveals women are worse off with 51% reporting the negative effects versus 42% of men here with more.
We’ve got Yahoo Finance’s Carrie Hannon and Maddie Dick Walt, who is a financial expert and author of the book Ageless Aging.
Maddie first and for most, you know, going into some of the findings and then ultimately trying to figure out how, uh and this kind of dovetails into our previous conversation as well about burnout and where there’s stress and elevated stress, particularly among women in the workforce right now.
Where are we seeing some of those tides shifting and the additional work that still needs to be done?
Uh And yeah, there is a lot of stress out there and that stress oftentimes comes from our financial well being.
I mean, if we don’t have our finances in good shape, then chances are that our stress levels go up and if our stress levels go up, it can create inflammation in our bodies, which matters in a variety of different diseases from diabetes and uh even heart disease to just having aches and pains and just not feeling very well.
And it’s even worse for women than it is for men.
As your statistics just showed, uh, we know that women in many ways have lots of great advantages in terms of we live longer than men.
I mean, we’ve actually won the longevity lottery living an average of six years, excuse me longer than men.
However, when it comes to our health and well being, we’re not doing as well as men.
Uh, the average woman spends 12 to 14 years in a cascade of health problems and these health problems oftentimes emanate from stress and that stress is, as I said earlier, oftentimes comes from finances.
So, Maddie, what, what can women do?
I know you’ve done a lot of research, uh, with women and money.
What can they do right now to take control of their financial lives?
The first thing that we, all women need to do is we need to realize that we need to plan for the 100 year life.
I mean, thinking that you’re just going to live to 75 or 80 or 85.
I think we need to make sure that our financial knowledge, excuse me, uh is really up to par.
There are so many resources available, Carrie, you provide so many of them uh that we all ought to take advantage of them.
And third, we need to build our financial confidence.
Uh It’s really important, knowledge creates confidence.
And then if we have that confidence, we’re more likely to invest.
One of the things that we learned from some of our studies at age wave is that women, their biggest financial regret is not investing more.
And the main reason they don’t invest more is because they lack financial confidence and they also would rather talk about their debt than their money.
Uh One of the other things that we’ve learned from studies at age wave is that there’s this kind of taboo for women against talking about money.
Now, we sure will talk about like you said, debt.
We’ll also be willing to say how much our shirt costs or our handbag or something.
But when it comes to talking about how much money we make or how much money we save and invest, we don’t really talk about it.
No, no, I was just gonna ask, you know, I, I in terms of just quickly about working uh that I, you know, I’m a big work person.
So uh how can work help us age better?
Yeah, it’s a great question to be asking uh work, believe it or not is one of those elements in our lives that can actually add a great sense of purpose.
Uh So, and having a sense of purpose, believe it or not, according to science, it can actually add years to our life.
But let’s take it even a step further because this is a really important point.
One of the key things that we’re hearing more and more about is this whole idea of social connections and how social connections are.
One of the keys to living longer and living healthier.
So it can increase our health span and our lifespan.
So one of the studies that we’ve done at age wave, we asked people what they were going to miss most about the workforce.
And we asked people who were in the workforce, pre retirees and we asked retirees, pre retirees said we’re gonna miss the money.
But then we asked retirees and they said the number one thing they missed were the social connections.
So work provides not only a sense of purpose, Chris, but a sense of community, a sense of social connection.
And by the way, that really does help lower our stress.
Mattie, thank you so much for the time.
The tips here as well, Mattie Dick Wald, who is the author of book, uh author of the book Ages Aging there.
You see the cover.
Thank you so much and my thanks as well to carry Hannon joining us for the.
So with Americans living longer, what are some steps to financially plan for a longer life?
Yahoo, finance contributor, Ross Mack has more.
All right guys, it’s your boy, Ross Mack of economics and look as life expectancies rise.
So does the importance of planning out our finances for an extended future?
Look longer lifespans means that retirement funds need to last us a lot longer than they did before.
Therefore, guys, we have to shift how we approach our savings and investing.
So here are a few things to consider and some actionable steps to take to ensure that our retirement funds never ever run out.
First things.
First, I want you to actually re evaluate your retirement age, for instance, right?
The life expectancy for healthy females is roughly about 80 years old.
So you need to ask yourself, do you have enough money saved for retirement that will actually last you till you get to 80?
Another thing, right?
What are your annual expenses using the fire rule?
Which stands for financial independence, retire early.
You wanna have roughly 25 times your annual expenses saved for retirement in order to feel comfortable.
Now, look, third, I want you to diversify your portfolio.
You wanna have a mix of safer assets and higher yielding assets that balances the risk and the returns that you want.
And look guys, it’s important to note that as you get older, you wanna shift your investment mix to safer investments.
Look guys, as you get older, that risk tolerance is gonna go down just because you don’t wanna have those volatile returns in your portfolio.
Fourth, I want you to take advantage of your retirement accounts, right?
Try your hardest to max out those contributions and your forward one K and your rough Ira s now.
The biggest tip I always recommend is make sure that you’re maxing out your employer contributions.
And fifth and lastly, another thing to consider is that we’re living longer, guess what?
We’re also gonna mean that we’re gonna have higher medical costs.
So therefore, I want you to consider investing in the HS A account, health savings account which offers you tax advantage ways to cover your medical expenses when it comes to retirement.
Hopefully, that helps you guys prepare for a longer life.
A new read out on the pulse of the Consumer National Retail Federation reporting.
Retail sales grew modestly in April with the total sales including automobiles and gasoline up nearly 3/10 of a percent from March.
For more on this.
I’m joined by Catherine Cullen, who is the National Retail Federation, Vice President of Industry and Consumer Insights, Katherine.
I I read through this report, I looked through some of the line items as well here.
Just want to get the broad read right now on what we should be making on the pulse of the consumer.
Well, thanks for having me on Brad.
And what we’re really seeing is is something we were expecting this whole time, which is a normalization of consumer spending.
We’re seeing shoppers across income spectrums facing various uh challenges shifts in their spending patterns.
They’re really prioritizing what’s important to them.
And as we expected, we’re seeing a model rated level of spending on goods.
So still above what we’ve seen, what we saw last year and we’re still on track to achieve between 2.5 and 3.5% growth year over year uh for the entire year.
All right.
So as we get towards normalization, what does that mean for the category level?
What performs best during normalization and what underperforms?
Well, we know that today’s shopper is facing high inflation in some aspects of their life like services.
So they’re rebalancing their budget uh on some goods, they are looking really for value for some consumers.
That means maybe shopping a little bit more discount, maybe um trading down to a private label brand, maybe pulling back on dining out, which is a category that we saw performed a little less strongly um this past month in order to spend on some of the other areas of their lives.
But we are seeing that consumers are expecting their wages will keep up with inflation.
Um They are expecting to continue, continue spending and we’re even seeing that with some strength and category like sporting goods um heading into some of the warmer months of the year as well as home and gardening sectors.
Um As again, we’re heading into kind of spring summer time with people sprucing up their lawns and spending more time outdoors.
Yeah, big green thumb energy there for sure.
You know, Katherine, as I think about how the way that the consumer has been defined has shifted over this past 18 months, from resilient to healthy and to now it seems like the the consumer as we’re defining more broadly scale because it is tiered between high income, middle and then low income.
It seems like on aggregate, we’re, we’re saying that the consumer is normalizing or where, where is the true definition of that?
What is the one word I like to use savvy?
This is a shopper who is used to balancing their budget and they’re reacting to forces that they’re seeing in other parts of their lives.
If they see higher prices in one area like gas or travel or health, they’re being smart with their money saying, hey, I’m going to rebalance my budget, look for sales, looks for promotions, make sure I can really afford the items that my family needs.
Um But we are really seeing consumers invest in what’s important to them, obviously getting through on essentials.
But also um we’re seeing strong spending around holidays and special events and we are continuing to see spending around experiences.
So this is a consumer that still feels comfortable, still feels somewhat confident in their own job security.
Um And feels a level of of comfortable continuing to spend, certainly things can change.
Uh We know obviously not to get too used to normal these days.
Um But we are seeing this consumer be very savvy, very smart with their money.
Thanks so much Katherine Collin, who is the NRF Vice President and Industry of Consumer Insights.
Well, we’re wrapping up small business week here on Yahoo Finance as well.
And what tech are small businesses using to push them to the next level?
Big question, we break that down for you.
On the other side of the short break, 95% of small businesses use at least one form of a tech platform and 87% report increased efficiency.
Thanks to tech.
According to American innovators, that data comes in as part of Yahoo Finance’s small business, big opportunities.
We we’re exploring how tech can help empower small businesses for more on this.
We’ve got Yahoo finance reporter Dan Halley here with more.
Uh obviously, you know, when it comes to efficiencies, tech is the only way to go.
And so there’s a few things that small businesses can look for as far as technology goes that can kind of help them step their games up.
Number one, obviously, when it comes to advertising, you want to get your business out there.
Social media is absolutely huge.
If you look at something like a meta or you know, Instagram also underneath meta uh uh Facebook, uh Google youtube, these are all social media companies that are going to allow you to hit a niche market uh rather than just spreading your image uh or your, your message across a large area.
So you can fi finally tune who you want to target advertising with through these companies.
And that will ensure that you’ll get more bang for your buck.
Really?
Um We, we saw uh how that actually impacts businesses when Apple turned off uh Facebook’s ability to get access to user data.
Uh The Facebook sales started to fall because they weren’t offering that exacting data.
So it’s just proof uh that these kinds of companies, social media companies are, are a good vehicle for marketing, for small businesses.
The other thing is A I I know we talk a whole bunch about A I uh because of generative A I but there are A I features that companies can help such as automated accounting that can uh allow them to kind of clean up their uh processes.
A lot of companies can’t afford to take hits when it comes to cybersecurity.
They’ll lose a ton of business then.
Thanks so much for take breaking this down for us and some of the important areas that small businesses are investing in major technology to help them in their business.
We are wrapping up our small business big opportunities week.
We explored the different headwinds that small businesses face like inflation and high interest rates and we spoke to business owners on what difficulties they’re facing.
Inflation especially has hurt us a lot in the cost of packaging, glass, um honey sugar.
Um all our ingredients is up, more than 50% gas is up and that’s hurting us.
Uh We have full health insurance and benefits for our employees that’s gone up a lot.
Finding people is still not easy.
We’ve seen a decline in the last year in sales online and at a brick and mortar store and we’ve also seen the struggle of finding great team members of being able to compete with wages and benefits and pay them well.
And we have just really struggled to engage with our customers again without throwing lots of money and a dollars and nearly half of small businesses fail in the first five years.
That’s according to the small business administration, but small business owners have learned lessons on how to beat the odds along the way just to be prepared for those mistakes.
You know, I think that’s really the key to, um, to really starting a successful business is, is it goes really, I would tell myself it’s gonna go beyond so much more than just your idea and your passion.
It’s going to, uh it’s going to take, uh putting your ego to the side and there are resources to help them thrive.
We spoke to the small business administrator, Isabel Casillas Guzman about what support the federal government offers small businesses as well.
My biggest advice to small businesses, especially coming from the sbas perspective is you got to know what, you know, and know what you don’t know and get the assistance that you can get out there that’s available through the federal government.
And, you know, so oftentimes small businesses when they start up have to wear all these multiple hats, they don’t have the resources to immediately higher up, uh across the, the key verticals.
And so for small business owners coming into the free networks and resources that the SB A helps you power up those skill sets.
And so, uh I would really highly recommend that small businesses get the assistance, build that team of free advisors that the SB A provides.
And so with nearly half of Americans working in a small business, accounting for over 99% of us businesses.
According to the small business administration, the sector’s resilience is crucial for the broader us economy.
You’ve been watching Wealth here on Yahoo Finance, I’m Brad Smith.
We’ll see you next week and you can stay tuned for market domination later today with Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton that’s coming up 3 p.m. Eastern.