West Michigan's Morning News
Investing Success with Jill On Money
An official message from Medicare. A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. You may be able to save too. With Medicare's Extra Help Program, my premium is zero and my out of pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or a married couple who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov/extrahelp paid for by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Jill Schlesinger is here to talk a little about investing success. This is West Michigan's Morning News. Team Kelly Brett-Biquita. Schmitt, he's back with us in the next hour. But I wanted to start, Jill, if we could, reflecting on a jobs report that some of us missed because we may have been on vacation and what something, again, better than expected, might portend to use a word that I read in Reader's Digest about interest rates coming up. You know, you always make me smile with those big words. So, the economy added 206,000 jobs, a little bit better than expected. But, I mean, let's call it straight up. It was like they, the economists finally predicted it spot on, okay? Average monthly job creation, 222,000 a month for the first half of the year. It's pretty strong. Now, there are really interesting things inside of this report. First of all, the previous two months were revised lower. And that often happens because there are always, there are three shots at kind of fine-tuning the numbers. The initial report and then for the next two months, there's more data that comes in, okay? And when we see revisions lower, it can usually mean the job market slowing down a bit. And what's interesting about this report is that the job creation is slowing down a little bit. The unemployment rate was up to 4.1 percent, first time at 4.1 percent since 2021. Wage growth slowed down a little bit. And I think when you look at this report, this is what the Fed wants. They want to see the job market to sort of slow down, like downshift, not actually go into a full-blown job loss. You know, they want to just see things slow down. And the reason is that when the job market's really strong, it can contribute to wages going up. And that can help, that can sort of fuel inflation. So when things slow down a little bit, people tend to slow their spending down a little bit. And that's what the Fed's hoping for. Okay. Well, then let's get to the plan you need to make for investing success. Maybe this is best for your kids that are just starting out. We talked about that a little while ago. Well, maybe you need to revisit what you're doing. So three steps to investing success and go. Okay, first of all, the S&P 500 had a great first half of the year, up almost 15 percent. So for people who've been sitting around and saying like, "Oh, I was sitting in cash and I got 5 percent returner, isn't that great?" You've just missed 18 months of amazing stock market performance. Okay. So how do you make sure that you're back in and you've got your head on straight? Remind yourself why you're investing. In other words, create some sort of game plan. What is it that you're prioritizing? Do you want to save for retirement? Do you want to save for college? Do you want to buy a house? And what you really are trying to do is have this game plan so that when things go really well and then really bad, you can go back to it and it will keep you on track. I think without a game plan, you're much more likely to veer off and maybe say like, "Oh, I really want to buy Nvidia. It's up 150 percent. Okay, fine." All right, next step. Mind what I call the big three. If you're just starting out or you're a seasoned investor, it does not matter. You've got to have an emergency reserve fund 6 to 12 months of your living expenses. You want to make sure that you're paying down your outstanding consumer or student loan debt. And you also want to try to maximize your retirement plan to the best of your ability. It doesn't have to be like 100 percent. All the money goes into retirement, but you have to try the best you can. Finally, how about you understand how much you are paying to be an investor? We have seen a massive reduction in the cost of investing over the last decade. If you're still paying somebody, maybe a commission to buy you mutual funds, if you're paying somebody an asset under management fee and they're really not doing very much for you, maybe you kind of ditch that and decide that you'll keep that money for yourself because that money that you save in investing, that's essentially like saying I'm making an extra one percent a year guaranteed just by maybe firing an ineffective advisor. There she is, Jill Schlesinger, CBS News business analyst, host of Jill on Money. Thank you.