Mullooly Asset Management Videos

A phrase we’ve adopted here in the office is “Semper Gumby”. It’s taken from the popular US Marine Corps motto “Semper Fi” that means ‘always faithful’, but in this case it means ‘always flexible’.

We don’t know what the world and the market is going to throw at us this year. We need to remain firm with our financial goals, but flexible on how we get there.

Semper Gumby – Transcript

Tom Mullooly: In episode 228, we cover all your concerns, all your fears, all your doubts. You’re certainly not going to want to miss this.

Welcome to the Mullooly Asset Show. I’m your host, Tom Mullooly, and this is episode number 228. Thanks for tuning in. The episode title for this video should be a phrase that I found close to 30 years ago, and the guys have used it as well in conversations with clients and it’s this: Semper Gumby. We stole it from… We merged it from Semper Fi from the Marine Corps, but we also used it from our favorite cartoon, or I guess that’s play-action, clay action, whatever they call that cartoon show from the sixties, Gumby and Pokey.

So the message is Semper Gumby, that means always flexible. And last year we got to see it in action. We had a global pandemic. We had an economic shutdown, not economic slowdown, economic shutdown. We saw the federal reserve take massive action. There’s no playbook when it comes to this stuff. And so we have to be flexible at all times.

When I went through the crash in 1987, a lot of the old brokers sitting around where I sat in the office said, “Oh, this is just like the market correction that we had in 1962.” I was born in 62. There is no playbook. There’s no two markets that are identical. We can have the same set of circumstances that come out that happened in 2020 happened again in 2021, we can see a completely different outcome with the market and with interest rates and that’s going to be important. And so these are things that we talk about here in the office all the time, these are topics that we’re concerned about, that we keep an eye on. We like to say, “We do the worrying for our clients.”

In fact, that’s what you should be paying your investment advisor to do. You’re paying him to worry for you. And so we could go through the same exact sequence of circumstances and get a completely different outcome. We can’t predict what the markets are going to give us from year to year. We can’t predict what the economy is going to give us. There’s a lot of people out there who think we’re going to a very vibrant recovery in 2021. What if it doesn’t happen? What if we trip over into a double-dip recession?

Now, a recession is two quarters of negative GDP growth. A double-dip would be two negative quarters, a recovery, and then we slip again right away back into another recession. So we had negative GDP in the first quarter of last year, negative GDP in the second quarter, third quarter. Very good recovery. We’re getting the fourth quarter GDP soon.

But what if the numbers aren’t that good? What if the first quarter of 2021 isn’t very good? There are fed governors out there who are talking about a possible economic slowdown in the second quarter. We can’t take action on our portfolio on what a fed governor is predicting. We’re not going to do that. And so we have to be flexible with all of these news headlines that come out. We have to be ready for that.

And so that’s why we adopt the phrase here at the office, “Semper Gumby,” because we always want to be flexible in our approach. We want to remain firm in our goals and what we’re trying to accomplish for our clients, but flexible in our approach. That’s the message for episode 228. Semper Gumby.

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In Ep. 227 of the Mullooly Asset Show, Tom gives viewers a strong message for 2021: focus on what you can control financially. There is PLENTY that goes on each day out of our control, but we can control a few VERY important things in our own financial lives.

Show Notes

‘Keeping Your Cool When Markets are Hot’ – Mullooly Asset Show Ep. 202

‘All At Once’ – Brendan Mullooly – Your Brain On Stocks

What Can You Control? – Transcript

Tom Mullooly: We’ve got a lot to cover in episode 227 so let’s hop right into it. Stick around.

Welcome to the Mullooly Asset show. I’m your host, Tom Mullooly. This is episode number 227. Thanks for tuning in.

Imagine that you and I have a DeLorean, we have a time machine. This was the topic of an article by Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal, and it echoes a video that we did back in August just a few months ago, episode 205. But imagine that you use this time machine to go back one year, to January of 2020, and you learn that there’s going to be a virus that spreads around the entire world, that it’s projected two million people in the United States are going to die from this virus, and the U.S. economy is going to stop for an unknown period of time. Now, also presume that you and I are the only ones who know about this. What would you do?

Most people would say, “Well, given that kind of information, I would probably sell all of my stocks or I would short the market”. But wait, let’s layer on top of that, a contentious presidential election. Understand that we can know everything about the future and we can know what certain events are going to do, but what we don’t know, whether we’re talking about the election, a pandemic, an economic slowdown, what we don’t know is how the market is going to react to these things. So you have to stay in the game. People saying that they want to just get out for, “I just want to sit this out until the election is over,” you’re making a huge mistake. Look at how much money you’ve left on the table. We calculated for a client the other day that we left a house for this guy on the sidelines because he wanted to get out.

We started getting calls about the election back in July. We’re recording this in January, we are still getting phone calls of this week about this. And we’ve talked about this contentious election in August in episode 205, in September, episode 212. We put multiple posts and podcasts up throughout October and into November about this. Look, the message is that the media and the news headlines are going to knock you off your game. They’re going to take the focus away from what you really need to be doing. They’re going to distract you and they’re going to tempt you into making the wrong moves. Don’t let that happen.

Look, I’m going to sound like my old man, focus on what you can control. And as far as what I can see, there are three things you can control as we’re talking about this. Number one, you can control your savings rate. In the past year, the CARES Act allowed people to dip into their retirement plan at work and take money out. I am astonished at the amount of money that came roaring out of these plans in 2020. That tells me that people were getting the message about long-term retirement, but their balance sheet at home, their cashflow situation, upside down. Needs repair. Control your savings rate or at least know what you can comfortably put away.

The second thing that you can control is having a proper allocation. We started getting calls over the summer, people asking us, “Why do we have all these small caps and mid caps? They’re not doing anything. We should just get out of them and go into the large cap stocks. They’re really moving.” Well sure enough, as soon as we started getting those calls, that’s when small caps started to wake up. Small caps had a good year in the fourth quarter. One of the small cap indices was up 33% in the fourth quarter of this year. It’s going bonkers. Brendan wrote a great piece about it, we’ll link to it in the show notes so you can read it. But you got to have a proper allocation because we don’t know when these things are going to catch fire and start to move.

So the first two things that you can control are your savings rate and your proper allocation. The third thing that you can control is, famous line from Charlie Munger, don’t interrupt the compounding. Look, if you want to have a day trading account, if you want to trade stocks at Robin Hood, go crazy. Do your thing. But do it in a proper amount that is relative to the size of your net worth. But for most of the money that we manage for our clients, it’s retirement, and so we have to make sure that we don’t interrupt the compounding. The worst thing you can do is try to be tactical with retirement money and zooming in and out of the market for whatever the news headlines are telling you to do.

Three things to focus on in episode 227. We appreciate you tuning in. If you’re watching this on YouTube, don’t forget to hit that red subscribe button. Thank you very much.

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This week, Tom addresses the 2021 market projections you’ll see over the next few weeks. If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that NOBODY knows what will happen in the next year. These projections are purely entertainment, and should NOT be taken seriously.

Show Notes

‘2021 Price Targets Don’t Matter’ – Mullooly Asset Podcast

2021 Market Outlook Season – Transcript

Tom Mullooly: In episode 225, we unmask the financial entertainment industry. Stick around for this one.

Welcome to the Mullooly Asset Show. I’m your host, Tom Mullooly, and this is episode number 225. Thanks for tuning in.

We’re getting to the end of a crazy year, 2020. We can see things clearly in 2020, not so much. I want you to think about where we were 12 months ago. The market was closing a very, very successful year, market averages did very well in 2019, and everybody was very bullish going into the beginning of this year, 2020. In fact, a lot of the economic strategists for different Wall Street firms were out with some pretty different looking numbers.

My point is, no one, no one could have predicted what was about to unfold in the first quarter of 2020, where we would see a virus that affected literally everybody on the planet. We shut down the U.S. economy, remember, two weeks to flatten the curve, and look at what happened to the market. We basically dropped 35% from the peak on February 19th through the end of March, then look at what happened to the market after that. Very hard to predict, very hard to get in and out of, very hard to get a lot of things done.

So a couple of things to remember is that money that you’re going to need in the next year, or two, or even three years from now, money that’s needed in the short term, should not be at risk. It shouldn’t be tied up in stocks or in the stock market. It can be in other investments where you might earn something more than you could get in a checking account, but you want to be very careful about the money that you need in the short term. Anything beyond that, you can let the market kind of do its thing, because you’re giving the market time to work itself out.

But that short-term need, you really shouldn’t be having at risk anyway. So we, I say we, but Tim and Brendan recorded a podcast just about week ago that we’re going to link to in the show notes that talks about these projections that come out at the end of every calendar year. You need to listen to this podcast. It talks about how you can’t take any of these predictions, and that’s all they are, they’re predictions. You can’t take them seriously. They’re financial entertainment.

It’s amazing to note that, as Brendan noted in the podcast, that as the next year unfolds, like this year, we had this pandemic and this huge market drop, and then the Fed stepped in and printed a ton of money, these economists and strategists, they just moved the goalposts. They just changed the target where they’re going. This is purely for entertainment purposes, these projections that they make into the following year. Don’t put any weight into them whatsoever.

Remember, the money that you need in the short term shouldn’t be at risk and basically winging it on some strategists or some economists forecast about what’s to come. Again, take some time, listen to the podcast. I think you’re going to find it very eyeopening. Don’t get hooked on that financial entertainment. That’s really all it is. It’s got no economic value to you whatsoever.

That’s the message for this week’s video. Thanks again for tuning in. Don’t forget, if you’re watching this on YouTube, to hit that red subscribe button. Thanks again.

If you would like a PDF version of this transcript, please follow this link for a download!

In this week’s episode, Tom stresses the importance of a firm financial foundation. That starts with knowing your monthly numbers. If you don’t know how to figure out your numbers, we can help you!

A Firm Financial Foundation – Transcript

Tom Mullooly: In episode 224 we talk about starting with a firm foundation. I know you’re going to like it.

Welcome to the Mullooly Asset Show. I’m your host, Tom Mullooly, and this is episode number 224. Thanks for tuning in. In order to know how much you’ll need in retirement, you need to know your costs, your expenses, today. The best way to do this, if you’re just starting out, is to go over your bank statements for the last three months, see where the money is going. Keep track of it. This part isn’t rocket science. But the reason why we lead with planning at Mullooly Asset Management, and specifically cashflow management for our clients is because it gives our clients the conviction, the understanding that their finances won’t crack under pressure. A good foundation will be able to withstand a hit. It will be able to absorb a hit while you’re still moving forward. Otherwise investing on top of a shaky foundation is really putting the cart before the horse.

Without a plan, the most recent headlines, oftentimes gloomy, may be hard to ignore, and that can often lead otherwise pretty bright people into making some really foolish financial decisions. A firm foundation in finance begins with knowing your numbers. So questions like how much should I be investing? How much risk should I take? Am I on track to have enough? These are some big questions. These are topics we discuss often with our clients. They’re only answerable, however, once a firm foundation is in place.

That’s the message for this episode. Thanks again for tuning into episode 224. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button if you’re watching on YouTube.

If you would like a PDF version of this transcript, please follow this link for a download!

In Ep. 223 of the Mullooly Asset Show, Tom addresses the popular question: will I have enough money for retirement?  In our office, that’s one of the most common questions.  He addresses the challenges of retiring at the Jersey Shore, asks folks what their current plan is, and offers guidance to those who need it!

Will You Have Enough for Retirement? – Transcript

Tom Mullooly: Survey results are in, and we’re going to talk about the number one concern most folks have. You’re going to want to tune in.

Welcome to the Mullooly Asset Show. I’m your host, Tom Mullooly. And this is episode number 223. Thanks for tuning in. The number one concern of most folks from a recent survey, 70%, 70% of Americans state not having enough money for retirement as their primary financial concern. And this is not 17%, 70%, seven, zero. This was the top response for folks across all age groups. So, people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, even folks in their 60s, this was the number one response.

Now, look, I know that living in New Jersey, the great Garden State, not cheap. In fact, it’s expensive. And living in Monmouth County, where our office is located, more expensive. And living at the shore, very expensive. So, it’s important to know that we provide guidance and advice for three kinds of folks: folks who are retired, folks who are getting close to retirement, and folks who aren’t even thinking about retiring. Do you find yourself in one of those three groups?

So, the big question we ask all the time, what is your plan? What’s your plan to get from here to there? Wherever there is for you. For some people they want to live here in Monmouth County, or live on the Jersey Shore, or live in New Jersey, and not have to rip up their whole lives. That’s great. We can help you with that. Other people want to retire out of state, we can help you with that.

There’s a lot of things that we can help you with. You can visit our website, we’ve got a free report about how to live and retire well, we’ve got all the details for you. Just go to our website and you can download that report. And if you’re watching this on YouTube, don’t forget to hit that red Subscribe button.

Thanks for watching episode number 223.

If you would like a PDF version of this transcript, please follow this link for a download!

Show Notes

St. Vincent de Paul Society – Belmar, NJ

Fulfill – Monmouth & Ocean County NJ Food Bank

A Useful 2020 Tax Deduction – Transcript

Tom Mullooly: In episode 222, we talk about a useful deduction that you can take this year. So stick around.

Welcome to the Mullooly Asset Show. I’m your host, Tom Mullooly, and this is episode number 222. Thanks for tuning in. We’re recording this on Giving Tuesday. We have Black Friday and then Cyber Monday. The next day is Giving Tuesday, and it’s a good reminder to everybody to think about your fellow man. So the problem that we have is that the 2017 tax law really streamlined deductions for a lot of people. And you don’t want to, I mean, you want to help people, but you also want to think about the financial aspect of it too. It’s no surprise in 2020, there’s a lot of people who are struggling with the recession and the pandemic. However, if you’re in a position to help your fellow, man, there’s now a way where you can do something.

Enter the CARES Act. There’s a couple of goofy provisions in the CARES Act that came out this year in light of the pandemic that lets people take money. One in particular provision, lets people take money from their retirement account at work while they’re still working. Think about how extraordinary this is. We’ve run into situations where people have come to us and they’re like, “I have some real financial problems. I have a spouse that’s not working, out of work. I’m out of work,” whatever. And they’ve got a pile of money sitting in their 401(k) at work and I can’t do anything about it. So this is really extraordinary that this money is now available. It is going to be taxable. It is last resort money. So you have to be super careful about tapping into it.

But there’s another provision under the CARES Act that allows people to deduct charitable gifts. Now I just want to spend a moment talking about these two different factors. The first one is normally when you make charitable gifts, depending on your tax bracket, you can usually write off, the net result is something like 50% or 60% of your gift is allowed to be written off. You have to be able to itemize and it has to be something that’s really going to make a dent in your numbers. This year under the CARES Act, they are now allowing people to deduct gifts up to 100% of their adjusted gross income. That’s really unusual. So they’ve lifted those limits.

The second thing, and this impacts everyone, is they’ve created an above the line deduction of $300. What that means is whether you itemize your taxes or not, you can make a deduction to a charity of your choice up to $300, write the whole thing off. It doesn’t matter if you itemize or not. So look, $300, not a gigantic amount, but every little bit helps. And now everyone can make a charitable deduction and everybody can make a donation and still get a deduction.

We’ve got a few local charities that we support here. I’ll mention St. Vincent DePaul Society of St. Rose Parish in Belmar and also Fulfill, which is the Monmouth County food bank. We’ll link to both of these organizations in the show notes. But just something to think about between now and the end of 2020, while this CARES Act is still in place, consider making a gift to your favorite charity and you can get a deduction.

That’s the message for episode 222, not room 222. That was a pretty lousy show in the ’70s. Anyway, thanks again for tuning in and don’t forget to hit that red subscribe button down below. Thanks.

If you would like a PDF version of this transcript, please follow this link for a download!