Macro Regime Change: The guest expects a fourth-turning style crisis driven by debt saturation, loss of trust, and failing systems, making 2026 a highly volatile inflection point.
Hard Assets: Strong tilt toward tangible assets that can't be printed, emphasizing their role as protection against monetary debasement and systemic risk.
Precious Metals: Bullish stance on gold and silver as core hedges, citing recent strength and potential roles in any shift back to sound or asset-backed money.
Bitcoin: Sees Bitcoin as a potential component of a sound-money future and a long-term opportunity despite sharp cyclical drawdowns and current volatility.
Cryptocurrency: Crypto remains a risk asset in the near term with a four-year cycle profile; regulatory clarity is pending, creating a volatile but constructive setup over time.
Bonds: Caution on bonds, including Treasuries and some munis, due to poor forward risk-reward and rising concerns about third-party obligations in a stressed debt system.
US Equities: Equities remain a core portfolio component, but selectivity is key; AI-led mega-caps dominate valuations, so diversification into less correlated assets is advised.
Transcript
We're looking at something more akin to the Titanic. Just we we can't we can't steer it the other direction. We're going at the iceberg and in the next couple of years it the icebergs hit and we've kind of fulfilled this prophecy of a fourth turning crisis moment. And out of that out of the ashes we'll build new systems. There'll be new opportunities but it's not going to be a very pleasant uh you know ride through the Arctic. Don't forget to sign up for a free portfolio review with one of our endorsed investment partners at wealthon.comfree. [music] Hello and welcome to wealthon. I'm Maggie Lake and joining me to discuss the outlook for 2026 is Brett Rentmester, founder and managing director of Windrock Wealth Management. Brett, it's so great to have you back on with us. >> Nice to see you, Maggie. So, the countdown's on, right? We're in December. We're rounding the corner to 2026. And I think a lot of people use this time to take stock, look at their portfolios, maybe reeval evaluate their financial goals. What are you telling clients when you're sitting down with them? >> Yeah. Well, I mean, I think you start with the basics. The year end is a rush, and there are always year-end things that have to be done from gifting to, you know, IRA contributions to tax laws selling th those kind of things. And that's where most people's mindset is in this rush period. And then by January, there's kind of a a breath and a reawakening and a thinking about bigger picture issues. So I', you know, we've done all the checking the boxes. And I think, you know, we'd like to explain today, you know, what we're talking to clients about, which is a little bigger picture um discussion that we're not just in this normal cycle of everything will get back to normal and, you know, regular volatility. We're we're closer to what I call kind of a regime change. You know, bigger events happening. And a lot of that has to do with the system we've built. M and we'll talk about it more, but a lot of the systems we have in society were built in a different time and a different age. And today they're, you know, breaking at the edges. And one of the core things that's breaking is people's ability to afford what we used to consider basic lifestyle needs. >> And just to give a perspective on that, a lot of it has to do with your real wage growth, which peaked, by the way, in the 1970s. Since the 1970s, yes, wages have gone up, but the cost of living has gone up more than that. So, people are getting more and more behind. And how did they fill that void? Well, they borrowed. And because for the last 40 years, we've been in a falling interest rate environment. They've been able to borrow a greater greater amounts at lower and lower rates. We're kind of at a breaking point to that. And so now we are in this period of debt saturation and a lot of these systems that we used to rely on I think failing the average individual. So it it's a different prognosis looking >> yeah we have to think differently. I think that it I think this is a great topic to bring up now because what I hear from people is this sense of unease. It's just they can't really put their finger on it, but they just feel like things. They're not optimistic about the future. Uh when you talk to older people, they're worried about something bad happening or like a crisis, but they can't put their finger on it. If you talk to young people, they're afraid they're never going to get a job. Like you you people are picking up on it, but but that there's not a lot of vocabulary around it, I think, for for the ordinary person. And I think you're showing you saw it during the election. People are voting against something. They just want something to be fixed, but it doesn't we don't really know how it connects to our own money and our own investment. So I think it's it's I I think it's great you put your finger on that uncertainty. And and I and we hear, by the way, also sort of experts say we can't see the future. Like there's so much there's the fog of uncertainty is a phrase I've heard throughout 2025. And I I think people were hoping there would be resolution, but you're saying this isn't just a passing phase. Something's changed. So, what is happening in your mind? Why are we why are things breaking? Why are we fraying at the edges? >> Yeah. Well, um to put this in perspective, I mean, there's two books I've been recommending for close to 20 years that combined, I think, answer your question of why why is this a different path? or as we might talk about maybe it's the same path and we just think it's it's different because we we're kind of grow up and taught that we're on a linear path of history right and and really I think we're more on a cyclical path in history you know things repeat as soon as the collective memory of something's gone we you know have the same situation or make the same errors and so you know I'd like to highlight one one or two uh pieces books that I think are really instructive of where we sit in the First I think the most important is um the fourth turning and the newer edition um fourth turning is here by Neil how and this is really a study of western civilization and to my point it's an understanding that we go through these generational cycles and about every hundred years which would be right now based on the book there's a crisis period so-called a fourth turning a time where society becomes um uprooted because mainly because of a loss of trust in failing systems. And I I want to read you just one quote from that book that will frame this. And the author says, "Sometime before the mid 2030s, America will pass through a great gate in history commensurate with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II. So we're talking some pretty serious change. Now, not all of it's bad, but it's an uprooting of a system, this debt system that is so saturated that, you know, we're talking about Japan in the news. My gosh, their 10-year interest rates at 2%, you know, small percents by our terms, but enough to blow up their economy. So, we've the whole world is saturated in debt and I I think that's the real issue here. >> Uh yeah, the loss of trust in the system I think is going to resonate people with people. Why now? Like you know when you when you read those things like the fourth turning it seems like in the distance you know that like it's we sort of get why what they're saying but then you kind of go about your daily life. Why do you have a sense that we're hitting a tipping point now? What do you see around us that makes you think oh wait maybe we are at this inflection point? >> Yeah I mean you never know Maggie. You never know with certainty. Some people thought '08 would have been it and since then we've added just tremendous debt. But but if I just put some numbers to it just from a US perspective, not only do we have 38 trillion in official debt, people track like uh US debt clock.org tracks you know unofficial debt which is all these unfunded offbalance sheet things and they come up with a figure over hundred trillion. Okay. Well, how do we manage a hundred trillion dollars of obligations? Well, we only take in about 5 trillion a year in tax revenue, but we're paying almost a trillion a year now in interest expense and another almost two trillion in deficit. So, of the five, maybe three just gets washed off the board right away and then you've got just the the, you know, military, the basic things that eat up the rest. So, I think it's when you get to a point where, you know, a fifth grader can look at the math and just say like this just doesn't work. You know, now I'm not saying this is the end, but maybe there's one more mass printing of money, but I will say looking out from the perspective of the younger generation, this kind of system can't just keep ballooning and going another 10x on debt. It's I think we're at the limits of it. And when will it break? Hard to know. The reason I think 2026 is very important is, you know, Trump basically has until the midterms for radical corrective change on some of these measures. And if not, I think we're looking at something more akin to the Titanic just we we can't we can't steer it the other direction. We're going at the iceberg and in the next couple of years it the icebergs hit and we've kind of fulfilled this prophecy of a fourth turning crisis moment and out of that out of the ashes we'll build new systems. There'll be new opportunities but it's not going to be a very pleasant uh you know ride through the Arctic. >> Yeah. So there there's sort of two things I think that people have trouble holding in their mind. We talk about government debt, right? And and you know it's these these huge it almost sounds like funny money. I mean these huge numbers and and I think when Trump came into office they were trying there was an attempt to fix that, right? Doge was going to cut spending. Besson had a 333 plan. There were that we felt like there was an an attempt to to sort of deal with that. But sometimes that's at odds with the individual struggle. And I think that's where that affordability that kind of has run into this affordability issue. And we've seen people really focused on that. Even as we're speaking today, there's an election in Tennessee that's going to go down to the wire because a candidate talked about affordability. Why is that so top of mind now? Is this part of the system you see failing? people just unable to >> there's a number of key systems >> I'm sorry there's a number of key systems failing right now but there's a bigger story behind why they're failing and let me just throw that out first and may maybe we'll come back to it and that is understanding the system we've built um there's another great book my second recommendation is called the creature from jackal island and it's the story of the creation of the federal reserve which is a central bank and the story of money and we have hundreds of years of experience being on sound money or things that you know have some cost to them like gold and silver. And so the early days of money were sound money where you know if you passed on $100 to a grandchild that $100 would buy about the same that it did for you. There was a soundness to money. But that changed. We went away from carrying gold and silver coins to taking paper claims on those. And we moved around from paper claims on coins to just paper. And so the insight in this book is that in a fractional reserve banking system, money is lent into existence. It's literally that's where money comes from. So if I go to the bank to borrow money, I would think, well, they've got Maggie's money. Maybe they're just lending me her money. No, they're just creating it out of thin air and charging you interest on it. It's really the whole system, when you really look at it from the lens of this book, is kind of fraudulent to the core because it's a debt system that has to just keep expanding. And if I could just one quick quote from that book that I think will frame this up. >> Since our money supply is tied to the national debt, to pay off the debt would cause money to disappear. Therefore, as long as the Federal Reserve exists, America will be must be in debt. So, we're talking about a system we set up in 1913 that we're now nearing the end of in some form. And that's the core of all of these problems. Now there are a lot of critical systems we can go into that are failing but that is a very important insight that I think a lot of people might miss otherwise. >> Right. So money is untethered to anything. It's just >> untethered to anything. >> Yeah. >> So talk to me about so so that we've got a debt problem but but I think it's really important that you highlighted the trust problem. >> How does that come into play here? Because that strikes me as incredibly important right now. >> Yeah. Well, psychology and trust is really when things tip, right? You ask like, well, why now? And I'm not saying it's immediate, but you can you could have made up arguments the last 30 years why Japan should have broken or why in '08 things couldn't come back to normal. But as long as people have trust in the system, they're willing to, you know, accept things. And and it's when you start seeing trust break that you get more concerned, I think, because it's a psychological shift. And I'd say maybe you're seeing that in some of the elections. Um I mean Mundami in um New York is a good example. There there's um we're more polarized and people especially the younger generation feels very disenfranchised of these systems. >> Yeah. Well, it's hard. It feels like it's hard to get ahead. I mean I you know speaking personally, I have college age students, >> right? >> I I it's impossible. I mean it's impossible to figure out how to how to thread this needle. And we all did it. People did it on salaries. Our parents got us through college, but it feels like that's becoming harder and harder to do. >> I think it's it's yeah, it's a very different world. I mean, I remember when my father went to college, you know, probably in the in the 50s, 60s, it was uh you know, you'd work for the summer and pay for college. And then it became well, you'd work all high school to save up and be able to pay twothirds your college. Now, it's a family literally from before a child's born putting every dollar they can to try to afford it. And Maggie, when we talk about collapsing systems, let's start with that. Let's start with education just for a moment. Um, the median or the middle income in America is 52,000. Um, so let's keep that in mind as a barometer. And obviously, if you live in a big city, maybe it's more, but just as a baseline, college costs, I was just looking this up and I've got a daughter in college, so I relate to all of this. Um, it's 12,000 instate on average. This is just tuition. So, forget about them living and food and 12,000 instate. That's 23% of the median income would just go to instate tuition. Out of state, it's closer to 30,000. It's more than half of the median income. And more of the elite private schools are closer to 70,000 tuition. So, that's 135% of wages. So, that's, you know, that's that's insurmountable for many people. But it's not just college education. Come down K through 12. Um, we've spent tremendous money as a society. We keep funneling more and more money in and we get poorer and poorer results. And I can only speak to the Chicago area where I am, but the public schools here, the data I just looked at over the last decade or 20 years, we've had a 50% increase in administrators relative to an 8% increase in teachers. So, we're creating more of a bloated administrative system. And yet only 18% of kids in the Chicago public schools are at sufficient math literacy. Now some people feel like, "Yeah, but I'm not paying for public schools." But you are. The real estate taxes in all these metro areas keep going straight up. So, you know, it's not just worrying about college. It's, you know, worrying about your real estate tax bill, uh, you know, doubling every three years because of all these demands. So, and that's just the beginning, right? education is is for a lot of people still down the road for kids or grandkids, but it's a very real cost. >> Yeah. And not to mention the national cost of having students that can't do the basic skills of, you know, of a what a society needs from a modern workforce. I know a lot of I mean this is interesting because I mean and just to just to bring it back when people will say everyone's situation is different and if you have assets you may feel like you're slightly um buffered from some of these concerns. Maybe you don't feel like you are the median income, but um again it it's sort of eroding the trust in everything that you're talking about and that affects us all. Like we're not living on an island, right? So if everyone else is getting sort of sucked down, this is where the K economy really matters, right? >> It is. And I'd say Maggie, look at everything from the perspective of a 25year-old two years into their career. Back to assets. average home and it can vary obviously hugely by area but the average or I'm sorry the median the middle price in America 47,000 for a starter home that's eight times the median salary right a new car average cost exactly the median salary $52,000 so just to get a car is basically your whole salary and that's before you pay tax etc and then of course if people have children there's 12,000 a year per child on average for child care costs where you are in New York it's probably double triple maybe quadruple that. I don't even know. >> If you're looking for a simple, secure way to invest and own physical gold and silver, visit our sister company, Hardass Assets Alliance, at hardassetsalliance.com. That's hardassallalliance.com. I mean, but you see people not forming households because they are concerned about just really managing medical is another thing I think that you I'm sure you have this come up all the time because no one's immune from that, right? The medical bills. So yeah. >> Yeah. I feel like it's I feel like it is important though because this is it is creating this collective feeling that the system is failing. Um and so you think this will produce sort of radical change. It it sounds like it's going to it sounds like a pressure cooker >> that you I mean take medical. You just brought it up. We just got we're a small business got our renewal rates. I'm in my early 50s. Family of four uh is almost $40,000 a year. And it just so again, put this back to the median income earner. And maybe there's some tax breaks for them and other things, but okay, 40,000 a year, but then you've got deductibles and all these things. You've got doctors not taking on some Medicare patients. And quite honestly, I've lost a lot of faith in the medical system. I mean, it's clear it's a disease management system. It's not health care, and it's certainly not wellness. So, we just pay more and more in every year for worse and worse results. I just don't know how much further that can go. Um, maybe I'll be surprised, but could we be sitting here in four years and and you tell me it's $100,000 a year for a family of four to for basic uh medical care? You know, I would say at some point, again, just based on math and looking at these proportions of what people can earn versus what the basic cost of life requires, it seems like we're very close to a point of at least loss of faith. I don't know if it's going to collapse just yet, but loss of faith. And the key question, can we bring radical change and rethinking without hitting the iceberg first? And I don't know the answer to that. >> But it's but from an investment point of view, this is incredibly important because now you're talking about um going into a period where we're not just dealing with the sort of normal uncertainties because there's always uncertainty when you're investing the sort of normal uncertainties. We're talking about much bigger much more potential radical change. So how do you think about that through an investment lens? I mean, does this mean that uh volatility is here to stay? How are you think How are you thinking about this? And what are you saying to clients who are coming to you saying like it feels like I I'm worried about the future? It feels like I I can't, you know, things are changing. The sand's changing underneath me. What What are you telling them? >> Yeah. Well, let's acknowledge that you have to our our tagline recently has been you have to have one foot in the old system and one foot out. One foot in the old system because we're not here yet on some of these issues. But anybody looking at the data and mapping it out should have a level of concern. So there's a c embedded caution in all of this. Um but you've got to be dynamic. It doesn't mean don't take risk. It's might mean that some of the things we used to think were safe are no longer safe. Um maybe bonds issued by state municipal certain state municipalities. Maybe at some point the treasury bond. A lot has to go wrong to get there. But you know, obligations, third-party promises to pay feel a lot less certain in this world than say owning precious metals or something tangible and physical that you know can't just be printed into thin air. So I think there's a skew towards hard assets. There's a skew towards worrying about downside risk and there's an acknowledgement that we have to be very dynamic in what's probably as you said going to be a very volatile period of of ups and downs and you know one step forward two steps back. Um there's a lot of change >> that could be positive. You know the Elon Musk view of the world of AI plus robotics 10 years from now might give us everything we need. >> It's possible. >> Do you Yeah. I mean, and it's good to lean into, you know, we could all just sort of hide under our blankets because it seems like sort of almost too much big change. Change is scary, but um what are some of the sort of innovations or radical changes? I mean, you don't have a crystal ball. You can't predict that, but what are some of the things that you're thinking about that might be changing that we should be aware of? Well, let's start with the most important and that is my my read of all of this over all the years I've been thinking about this is that the core is rotten. The money system that we set up in 1913 is is near its last gasp. Now, last gasp in 2026, last gasp by the mid 2030s, you know, hard to know, but you can see the writing on the wall where there's more of a tradeoff now when Japan prints more money, you know, interest rates are going up or the yen's going down. So, you're seeing the trade-off where in the past countries just got away with kind of this lazy, oh, let's just print trillions of dollars and oh, seemingly no inflation. I think we're near the end of that. So, I I really think the key to this is coming back to sound money. And I think there's two ways you get there. First is a more proactive way, which I see the administration making some progress towards, which would be things like, hey, maybe the banks shouldn't control all money creation. Maybe we should have stable coins and any company can kind of issue money and we we decentralize money creation and Apple can have Apple stable coin or Meta or Amazon whomever and that will be backed in US treasuries. So something akin to that um you know might be part of the solution. I think ultimately a more radical view would be the Fed system's not working. We can either wait until it blows skyhigh or we can like corner it off as a bad bank, let it sink, get rid of kind of the old school central banking where we just keep printing worthless money and return to something where maybe the treasury takes over uh the creation of currency and maybe it is backed by tangible things, gold, silver, it could even be Bitcoin and we let those assets value, you know, revalue to their true potential. So maybe at a certain price point we know that if we have enough gold, silver or bitcoin, if they revalue up enough that might pay off or some or all of the debt. I mean it's not an inconceivable notion. So can we return to a path like that? If we don't do that, Maggie, what I expect is a choppy world where we have a couple crisis moments and they come in again and this time it's tens of trillions of dollars that just get created out of nothing. and maybe there's one more sugar high, but ultimately it's a path to nowhere. So, I think that those are that's the fork in the road. >> It sounds like a very inflationary path. >> I think it could be. I mean, I think the if they can be proactive and return more to a sound money principles. Um, and they've hinted at it, right? I mean, they've they've hinted at, hey, how much gold's in Fort Knox? They've hinted at Bitcoin reserves. A lot of these things they've talked about, but is there a real plan that can come together to put this in play and be proactive before you just end up in a predicament like you're saying? Now, keep in mind um you know, reading some of these books on history that that I mentioned, this country around the Revolutionary War had a currency called the continental that were never really taught about this in school. At least I wasn't. money, how money works that is lent into existence or that we had a currency called the continental and it basically hyperinflated. So it wasn't just inflation, it was inflation to a point of losing faith that the paper had any meaning to it. Um, and so we've had that on on American soil. Now people will say, "Yeah, it's a different time and that can't happen again." But the reality is those are the worries and I see more smart people wondering well what does protect you in those kind of environments and I think they come back to hard assets as a general you know core concept. >> Well certainly we saw silver just hit an all-time high. We we we know gold has had a huge run. So you know you you can see some of that I think concern reflected in some of the prices of hard assets. I want to ask you about Bitcoin because you mentioned that because I felt like we had so many conversations about that and it felt like um we had sort of entered a new chapter for cryptocurrencies generally. We were talking about a change in environment in Washington as you said murmurss about a Bitcoin reserve and then we've seen this huge decline over the last three months. lots of wealth wiped out again and a big owner of Bitcoin and from, you know, an OG from the early days unloading billions of dollars worth uh the big whale and that a lot [clears throat] of people that has a lot of people concerned again. Does it are does that worry you? Does it feel like this is just part of a cycle of something that is still volatile? Does it rule it out as something that can be used as a as as you just discussed? Well, I think one thing we've been talking about, including our interviews this fall, is that um one, until proven otherwise, crypto is still a risk asset and and gets a speculative nature to it. So, it's volatile and people that haven't been through past cycles see it crash and think it's dead and then a couple years by they wish they had stuck in it. The other thing we talked about is um despite all these positives, we're ending the we're ending this fall the four-year cycle timing, which normally is a danger zone for cryptocurrencies. So, it's kind of followed that pattern thus far, but it is not atypical for Bitcoin to correct 35, 40, 50%. And here we sit. So, I think one of the problems here on a lot of the things we're talking about is there are plans, there are legislation and maybe a reserve and all these things, but they're not enacted yet. The Genius Act, the Clarity Act, all these things haven't happened yet. So, we're kind of in this gap. We had like the hype excitement over the change in, you know, regime as it relates to crypto. And we've got the promise of once this is in law and we're letting, you know, Wall Street and banks and other companies get involved, that's a promising future. But we're in this gray zone right now where that hasn't happened yet. And I think that's part of the volatility. I think we are on a path to all of that happening. So I think there's reason to continue to think of it the same way we've thought of it, investing these last 12 years in it. But um you have to do it the right way. You've got to, you know, be in a system that understands when to take profit and not get greedy at at, you know, points like we've been in this fall. Take some chips off potentially. >> Yeah. Uh what about taxes? Because we'll talk to people in in in this sort of changing regime as we deal with and maybe it's the transition part as we deal with these high debt levels and a government that can't meet them. Uh there is a lot of talk that we could be seeing drastically higher taxes. Is that uh something we need to worry about or is this an area where maybe things get innovative in a way that we can't see right now? >> For taxes, I mean, I don't think you can tax yourself to greatness. I I I think I've mentioned this quote before. I had a client that worked with many Fortune 500 companies and he always said, "You can't cost cut yourself to greatness." Like eventually you need revenue growth. You can't just cut cost and go to the bone. And I'd say in similar vein, you can't just keep taxing the productive capital and and just keep spending. I think if people felt like we were doing spending efficiently and the system was just running, you know, great, we'd feel different. But we've talked about medicine, we've talked about higher education, we've talked about, you know, all these systems. And I don't think anybody I talked to feels like um we're being, you know, frugal and thoughtful about every dollar spent. It's just I feel like it's going out in every direction but to the benefit of the local people in the community. So one of the other provocative ideas would be why do we need the IRS? You know we're taxing people but we can print money. You end up in the same place kind of. But I would not be shocked if somewhere down the road this is just my own personal view. You end up with a system that's maybe maybe tariffs plus a consumption tax or a sales tax and you simplify the whole thing. Now, it's still tax. I think um the Trump administration looks back to this era of the late 1800s when we just had a tariff system and that supported all of our needs. And that's a great vision, but we've now got this massive welfare state built on top of it. So, you can't support that with a tariff system, at least not the way it's operating today. So, I don't know, maybe there's something in between, but I think the idea that we can just keep taxing to prosperity is a broken thought. We've got to rethink the whole system and and I think it comes down to thinking about how we're spending money, right? Because you're taking money from people that have no a lot of them have no safety net, right? Pensions are gone. Social Security, we've known, has been a pyramid scheme for years, for for 40 years. It's it's based on, you know, workers supporting a retiree. So, there's 2.7 workers per retiree now. But the demographics are we're aging and you know people aren't having as many children. So that whole pyramid of support is breaking down. So you know I I think it's a losing proposition to become a high tax jurisdiction. I think the people that are going to win are people like Dubai who have come up with investorfriendly tax policies that are you know and you see it in the US too Maggie going outside of federal tax. Where are people moving? Uh, yes, they're moving where there's jobs, probably sunshine over cold, but they want to go somewhere where there's freedom. And more importantly, maybe than anything, they prefer to be somewhere where taxes are lower, even 0% compared to, you know, New York, LA, Chicago. >> Uh, yeah, I'm the only person who's staying cold. [laughter] You can't you can't you can't win me with the sunshine. So, we're in a in the midst of all this change, which is coming. I mean, that's what I hear you saying. It's coming. How we resolve it, it remains to be seen, but this change is coming and systems will change. You need to be dynamic. You need to definitely lean into hard assets to protect against some of the inflationary issues and and money problems that you see. Um what about equities? Because this is where most Americans have a bulk of their portfolio right now. Um, if you have been invested, uh, and I I hear people talk about rebalancing, you're probably overweight equities more than anything else because we've had a tremendous bull run. How do we think about that? Are we still in equities? Is an important part of a portfolio, but you just have to really watch you, you know, where you're dedicating your money. How how do equities fit into the picture? >> Yeah, a core part of portfolio, but you have to be very mindful of calculated risks. There are a lot of areas that we think are undervalued in a market like this. Obviously, the AI stuff has been driving the market by every measure. That's what's pushing valuations up. It's the, you know, top 10 >> companies are almost 40% of the S&P 500. I mean, you you're getting these distortions. Yet, there are some AI companies we think are worth considering, but we're not chasing it. And I think for the average American um that's not watching their portfolio, their equities have drifted much too high. 25 years ago, we probably would have recommended rebalancing and putting it in bonds. Today, bonds are part of the problem. I I don't think they're going south immediately, but there's very little um of an attractive payoff, you know, riskreward as you look out the next decade. So I think broadening a perspective to include hard assets, some unique private investments, and just things that don't correlate as closely to the stock market because yes, we probably will keep printing money that might push the market up more. On the other hand, we all live through 08 or like you brought up with crypto. Yeah, everybody thinks it's going up up up and boom, 50% correction. So these things do happen and I think will continue to happen in this kind of regime where it's all about is money supply expanding right is there more money being printed that's what the market wants but the irony about what we talked about is that is the root of the problem because money we can't pay down the debt or we shrink the money supply we shrink the money supply and all the kind of lubrication in the engine goes away and things break down. So unless you have a wholesale rethinking of the system and I don't know if they'll be able to pull it off it sometimes the populace is not in it until it's at a pain point. So are we at a pain point? I think for the 20somes we are. I don't know about um the rest of the population yet. >> Yeah I think we're going to find out in those midterms Brett. Um really fantastic stuff. Thank you for sort of pulling the lens up because I think this is really important uh stuff for us all to think about as we look at our investments and especially as we turn the corner into the new year. I think 2026 is going to be uh something that's really volatile. So uh fantastic overlay for us. Thank you so much. >> Thank you Maggie >> as always. Uh if you would like to look I think we need to look at our portfolios but if you would like to do so as you turn the corner on the year uh and you want some help you can get a free portfolio review from a member of the team at windrock just go to the description in the link or you can go to wealthy.comfree. Thanks so much for watching everyone. We'll see you again next time.
America’s Breaking Point: Debt, Inflation & the Fourth Turning | Brett Rentmeester
Summary
Transcript
We're looking at something more akin to the Titanic. Just we we can't we can't steer it the other direction. We're going at the iceberg and in the next couple of years it the icebergs hit and we've kind of fulfilled this prophecy of a fourth turning crisis moment. And out of that out of the ashes we'll build new systems. There'll be new opportunities but it's not going to be a very pleasant uh you know ride through the Arctic. Don't forget to sign up for a free portfolio review with one of our endorsed investment partners at wealthon.comfree. [music] Hello and welcome to wealthon. I'm Maggie Lake and joining me to discuss the outlook for 2026 is Brett Rentmester, founder and managing director of Windrock Wealth Management. Brett, it's so great to have you back on with us. >> Nice to see you, Maggie. So, the countdown's on, right? We're in December. We're rounding the corner to 2026. And I think a lot of people use this time to take stock, look at their portfolios, maybe reeval evaluate their financial goals. What are you telling clients when you're sitting down with them? >> Yeah. Well, I mean, I think you start with the basics. The year end is a rush, and there are always year-end things that have to be done from gifting to, you know, IRA contributions to tax laws selling th those kind of things. And that's where most people's mindset is in this rush period. And then by January, there's kind of a a breath and a reawakening and a thinking about bigger picture issues. So I', you know, we've done all the checking the boxes. And I think, you know, we'd like to explain today, you know, what we're talking to clients about, which is a little bigger picture um discussion that we're not just in this normal cycle of everything will get back to normal and, you know, regular volatility. We're we're closer to what I call kind of a regime change. You know, bigger events happening. And a lot of that has to do with the system we've built. M and we'll talk about it more, but a lot of the systems we have in society were built in a different time and a different age. And today they're, you know, breaking at the edges. And one of the core things that's breaking is people's ability to afford what we used to consider basic lifestyle needs. >> And just to give a perspective on that, a lot of it has to do with your real wage growth, which peaked, by the way, in the 1970s. Since the 1970s, yes, wages have gone up, but the cost of living has gone up more than that. So, people are getting more and more behind. And how did they fill that void? Well, they borrowed. And because for the last 40 years, we've been in a falling interest rate environment. They've been able to borrow a greater greater amounts at lower and lower rates. We're kind of at a breaking point to that. And so now we are in this period of debt saturation and a lot of these systems that we used to rely on I think failing the average individual. So it it's a different prognosis looking >> yeah we have to think differently. I think that it I think this is a great topic to bring up now because what I hear from people is this sense of unease. It's just they can't really put their finger on it, but they just feel like things. They're not optimistic about the future. Uh when you talk to older people, they're worried about something bad happening or like a crisis, but they can't put their finger on it. If you talk to young people, they're afraid they're never going to get a job. Like you you people are picking up on it, but but that there's not a lot of vocabulary around it, I think, for for the ordinary person. And I think you're showing you saw it during the election. People are voting against something. They just want something to be fixed, but it doesn't we don't really know how it connects to our own money and our own investment. So I think it's it's I I think it's great you put your finger on that uncertainty. And and I and we hear, by the way, also sort of experts say we can't see the future. Like there's so much there's the fog of uncertainty is a phrase I've heard throughout 2025. And I I think people were hoping there would be resolution, but you're saying this isn't just a passing phase. Something's changed. So, what is happening in your mind? Why are we why are things breaking? Why are we fraying at the edges? >> Yeah. Well, um to put this in perspective, I mean, there's two books I've been recommending for close to 20 years that combined, I think, answer your question of why why is this a different path? or as we might talk about maybe it's the same path and we just think it's it's different because we we're kind of grow up and taught that we're on a linear path of history right and and really I think we're more on a cyclical path in history you know things repeat as soon as the collective memory of something's gone we you know have the same situation or make the same errors and so you know I'd like to highlight one one or two uh pieces books that I think are really instructive of where we sit in the First I think the most important is um the fourth turning and the newer edition um fourth turning is here by Neil how and this is really a study of western civilization and to my point it's an understanding that we go through these generational cycles and about every hundred years which would be right now based on the book there's a crisis period so-called a fourth turning a time where society becomes um uprooted because mainly because of a loss of trust in failing systems. And I I want to read you just one quote from that book that will frame this. And the author says, "Sometime before the mid 2030s, America will pass through a great gate in history commensurate with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II. So we're talking some pretty serious change. Now, not all of it's bad, but it's an uprooting of a system, this debt system that is so saturated that, you know, we're talking about Japan in the news. My gosh, their 10-year interest rates at 2%, you know, small percents by our terms, but enough to blow up their economy. So, we've the whole world is saturated in debt and I I think that's the real issue here. >> Uh yeah, the loss of trust in the system I think is going to resonate people with people. Why now? Like you know when you when you read those things like the fourth turning it seems like in the distance you know that like it's we sort of get why what they're saying but then you kind of go about your daily life. Why do you have a sense that we're hitting a tipping point now? What do you see around us that makes you think oh wait maybe we are at this inflection point? >> Yeah I mean you never know Maggie. You never know with certainty. Some people thought '08 would have been it and since then we've added just tremendous debt. But but if I just put some numbers to it just from a US perspective, not only do we have 38 trillion in official debt, people track like uh US debt clock.org tracks you know unofficial debt which is all these unfunded offbalance sheet things and they come up with a figure over hundred trillion. Okay. Well, how do we manage a hundred trillion dollars of obligations? Well, we only take in about 5 trillion a year in tax revenue, but we're paying almost a trillion a year now in interest expense and another almost two trillion in deficit. So, of the five, maybe three just gets washed off the board right away and then you've got just the the, you know, military, the basic things that eat up the rest. So, I think it's when you get to a point where, you know, a fifth grader can look at the math and just say like this just doesn't work. You know, now I'm not saying this is the end, but maybe there's one more mass printing of money, but I will say looking out from the perspective of the younger generation, this kind of system can't just keep ballooning and going another 10x on debt. It's I think we're at the limits of it. And when will it break? Hard to know. The reason I think 2026 is very important is, you know, Trump basically has until the midterms for radical corrective change on some of these measures. And if not, I think we're looking at something more akin to the Titanic just we we can't we can't steer it the other direction. We're going at the iceberg and in the next couple of years it the icebergs hit and we've kind of fulfilled this prophecy of a fourth turning crisis moment and out of that out of the ashes we'll build new systems. There'll be new opportunities but it's not going to be a very pleasant uh you know ride through the Arctic. >> Yeah. So there there's sort of two things I think that people have trouble holding in their mind. We talk about government debt, right? And and you know it's these these huge it almost sounds like funny money. I mean these huge numbers and and I think when Trump came into office they were trying there was an attempt to fix that, right? Doge was going to cut spending. Besson had a 333 plan. There were that we felt like there was an an attempt to to sort of deal with that. But sometimes that's at odds with the individual struggle. And I think that's where that affordability that kind of has run into this affordability issue. And we've seen people really focused on that. Even as we're speaking today, there's an election in Tennessee that's going to go down to the wire because a candidate talked about affordability. Why is that so top of mind now? Is this part of the system you see failing? people just unable to >> there's a number of key systems >> I'm sorry there's a number of key systems failing right now but there's a bigger story behind why they're failing and let me just throw that out first and may maybe we'll come back to it and that is understanding the system we've built um there's another great book my second recommendation is called the creature from jackal island and it's the story of the creation of the federal reserve which is a central bank and the story of money and we have hundreds of years of experience being on sound money or things that you know have some cost to them like gold and silver. And so the early days of money were sound money where you know if you passed on $100 to a grandchild that $100 would buy about the same that it did for you. There was a soundness to money. But that changed. We went away from carrying gold and silver coins to taking paper claims on those. And we moved around from paper claims on coins to just paper. And so the insight in this book is that in a fractional reserve banking system, money is lent into existence. It's literally that's where money comes from. So if I go to the bank to borrow money, I would think, well, they've got Maggie's money. Maybe they're just lending me her money. No, they're just creating it out of thin air and charging you interest on it. It's really the whole system, when you really look at it from the lens of this book, is kind of fraudulent to the core because it's a debt system that has to just keep expanding. And if I could just one quick quote from that book that I think will frame this up. >> Since our money supply is tied to the national debt, to pay off the debt would cause money to disappear. Therefore, as long as the Federal Reserve exists, America will be must be in debt. So, we're talking about a system we set up in 1913 that we're now nearing the end of in some form. And that's the core of all of these problems. Now there are a lot of critical systems we can go into that are failing but that is a very important insight that I think a lot of people might miss otherwise. >> Right. So money is untethered to anything. It's just >> untethered to anything. >> Yeah. >> So talk to me about so so that we've got a debt problem but but I think it's really important that you highlighted the trust problem. >> How does that come into play here? Because that strikes me as incredibly important right now. >> Yeah. Well, psychology and trust is really when things tip, right? You ask like, well, why now? And I'm not saying it's immediate, but you can you could have made up arguments the last 30 years why Japan should have broken or why in '08 things couldn't come back to normal. But as long as people have trust in the system, they're willing to, you know, accept things. And and it's when you start seeing trust break that you get more concerned, I think, because it's a psychological shift. And I'd say maybe you're seeing that in some of the elections. Um I mean Mundami in um New York is a good example. There there's um we're more polarized and people especially the younger generation feels very disenfranchised of these systems. >> Yeah. Well, it's hard. It feels like it's hard to get ahead. I mean I you know speaking personally, I have college age students, >> right? >> I I it's impossible. I mean it's impossible to figure out how to how to thread this needle. And we all did it. People did it on salaries. Our parents got us through college, but it feels like that's becoming harder and harder to do. >> I think it's it's yeah, it's a very different world. I mean, I remember when my father went to college, you know, probably in the in the 50s, 60s, it was uh you know, you'd work for the summer and pay for college. And then it became well, you'd work all high school to save up and be able to pay twothirds your college. Now, it's a family literally from before a child's born putting every dollar they can to try to afford it. And Maggie, when we talk about collapsing systems, let's start with that. Let's start with education just for a moment. Um, the median or the middle income in America is 52,000. Um, so let's keep that in mind as a barometer. And obviously, if you live in a big city, maybe it's more, but just as a baseline, college costs, I was just looking this up and I've got a daughter in college, so I relate to all of this. Um, it's 12,000 instate on average. This is just tuition. So, forget about them living and food and 12,000 instate. That's 23% of the median income would just go to instate tuition. Out of state, it's closer to 30,000. It's more than half of the median income. And more of the elite private schools are closer to 70,000 tuition. So, that's 135% of wages. So, that's, you know, that's that's insurmountable for many people. But it's not just college education. Come down K through 12. Um, we've spent tremendous money as a society. We keep funneling more and more money in and we get poorer and poorer results. And I can only speak to the Chicago area where I am, but the public schools here, the data I just looked at over the last decade or 20 years, we've had a 50% increase in administrators relative to an 8% increase in teachers. So, we're creating more of a bloated administrative system. And yet only 18% of kids in the Chicago public schools are at sufficient math literacy. Now some people feel like, "Yeah, but I'm not paying for public schools." But you are. The real estate taxes in all these metro areas keep going straight up. So, you know, it's not just worrying about college. It's, you know, worrying about your real estate tax bill, uh, you know, doubling every three years because of all these demands. So, and that's just the beginning, right? education is is for a lot of people still down the road for kids or grandkids, but it's a very real cost. >> Yeah. And not to mention the national cost of having students that can't do the basic skills of, you know, of a what a society needs from a modern workforce. I know a lot of I mean this is interesting because I mean and just to just to bring it back when people will say everyone's situation is different and if you have assets you may feel like you're slightly um buffered from some of these concerns. Maybe you don't feel like you are the median income, but um again it it's sort of eroding the trust in everything that you're talking about and that affects us all. Like we're not living on an island, right? So if everyone else is getting sort of sucked down, this is where the K economy really matters, right? >> It is. And I'd say Maggie, look at everything from the perspective of a 25year-old two years into their career. Back to assets. average home and it can vary obviously hugely by area but the average or I'm sorry the median the middle price in America 47,000 for a starter home that's eight times the median salary right a new car average cost exactly the median salary $52,000 so just to get a car is basically your whole salary and that's before you pay tax etc and then of course if people have children there's 12,000 a year per child on average for child care costs where you are in New York it's probably double triple maybe quadruple that. I don't even know. >> If you're looking for a simple, secure way to invest and own physical gold and silver, visit our sister company, Hardass Assets Alliance, at hardassetsalliance.com. That's hardassallalliance.com. I mean, but you see people not forming households because they are concerned about just really managing medical is another thing I think that you I'm sure you have this come up all the time because no one's immune from that, right? The medical bills. So yeah. >> Yeah. I feel like it's I feel like it is important though because this is it is creating this collective feeling that the system is failing. Um and so you think this will produce sort of radical change. It it sounds like it's going to it sounds like a pressure cooker >> that you I mean take medical. You just brought it up. We just got we're a small business got our renewal rates. I'm in my early 50s. Family of four uh is almost $40,000 a year. And it just so again, put this back to the median income earner. And maybe there's some tax breaks for them and other things, but okay, 40,000 a year, but then you've got deductibles and all these things. You've got doctors not taking on some Medicare patients. And quite honestly, I've lost a lot of faith in the medical system. I mean, it's clear it's a disease management system. It's not health care, and it's certainly not wellness. So, we just pay more and more in every year for worse and worse results. I just don't know how much further that can go. Um, maybe I'll be surprised, but could we be sitting here in four years and and you tell me it's $100,000 a year for a family of four to for basic uh medical care? You know, I would say at some point, again, just based on math and looking at these proportions of what people can earn versus what the basic cost of life requires, it seems like we're very close to a point of at least loss of faith. I don't know if it's going to collapse just yet, but loss of faith. And the key question, can we bring radical change and rethinking without hitting the iceberg first? And I don't know the answer to that. >> But it's but from an investment point of view, this is incredibly important because now you're talking about um going into a period where we're not just dealing with the sort of normal uncertainties because there's always uncertainty when you're investing the sort of normal uncertainties. We're talking about much bigger much more potential radical change. So how do you think about that through an investment lens? I mean, does this mean that uh volatility is here to stay? How are you think How are you thinking about this? And what are you saying to clients who are coming to you saying like it feels like I I'm worried about the future? It feels like I I can't, you know, things are changing. The sand's changing underneath me. What What are you telling them? >> Yeah. Well, let's acknowledge that you have to our our tagline recently has been you have to have one foot in the old system and one foot out. One foot in the old system because we're not here yet on some of these issues. But anybody looking at the data and mapping it out should have a level of concern. So there's a c embedded caution in all of this. Um but you've got to be dynamic. It doesn't mean don't take risk. It's might mean that some of the things we used to think were safe are no longer safe. Um maybe bonds issued by state municipal certain state municipalities. Maybe at some point the treasury bond. A lot has to go wrong to get there. But you know, obligations, third-party promises to pay feel a lot less certain in this world than say owning precious metals or something tangible and physical that you know can't just be printed into thin air. So I think there's a skew towards hard assets. There's a skew towards worrying about downside risk and there's an acknowledgement that we have to be very dynamic in what's probably as you said going to be a very volatile period of of ups and downs and you know one step forward two steps back. Um there's a lot of change >> that could be positive. You know the Elon Musk view of the world of AI plus robotics 10 years from now might give us everything we need. >> It's possible. >> Do you Yeah. I mean, and it's good to lean into, you know, we could all just sort of hide under our blankets because it seems like sort of almost too much big change. Change is scary, but um what are some of the sort of innovations or radical changes? I mean, you don't have a crystal ball. You can't predict that, but what are some of the things that you're thinking about that might be changing that we should be aware of? Well, let's start with the most important and that is my my read of all of this over all the years I've been thinking about this is that the core is rotten. The money system that we set up in 1913 is is near its last gasp. Now, last gasp in 2026, last gasp by the mid 2030s, you know, hard to know, but you can see the writing on the wall where there's more of a tradeoff now when Japan prints more money, you know, interest rates are going up or the yen's going down. So, you're seeing the trade-off where in the past countries just got away with kind of this lazy, oh, let's just print trillions of dollars and oh, seemingly no inflation. I think we're near the end of that. So, I I really think the key to this is coming back to sound money. And I think there's two ways you get there. First is a more proactive way, which I see the administration making some progress towards, which would be things like, hey, maybe the banks shouldn't control all money creation. Maybe we should have stable coins and any company can kind of issue money and we we decentralize money creation and Apple can have Apple stable coin or Meta or Amazon whomever and that will be backed in US treasuries. So something akin to that um you know might be part of the solution. I think ultimately a more radical view would be the Fed system's not working. We can either wait until it blows skyhigh or we can like corner it off as a bad bank, let it sink, get rid of kind of the old school central banking where we just keep printing worthless money and return to something where maybe the treasury takes over uh the creation of currency and maybe it is backed by tangible things, gold, silver, it could even be Bitcoin and we let those assets value, you know, revalue to their true potential. So maybe at a certain price point we know that if we have enough gold, silver or bitcoin, if they revalue up enough that might pay off or some or all of the debt. I mean it's not an inconceivable notion. So can we return to a path like that? If we don't do that, Maggie, what I expect is a choppy world where we have a couple crisis moments and they come in again and this time it's tens of trillions of dollars that just get created out of nothing. and maybe there's one more sugar high, but ultimately it's a path to nowhere. So, I think that those are that's the fork in the road. >> It sounds like a very inflationary path. >> I think it could be. I mean, I think the if they can be proactive and return more to a sound money principles. Um, and they've hinted at it, right? I mean, they've they've hinted at, hey, how much gold's in Fort Knox? They've hinted at Bitcoin reserves. A lot of these things they've talked about, but is there a real plan that can come together to put this in play and be proactive before you just end up in a predicament like you're saying? Now, keep in mind um you know, reading some of these books on history that that I mentioned, this country around the Revolutionary War had a currency called the continental that were never really taught about this in school. At least I wasn't. money, how money works that is lent into existence or that we had a currency called the continental and it basically hyperinflated. So it wasn't just inflation, it was inflation to a point of losing faith that the paper had any meaning to it. Um, and so we've had that on on American soil. Now people will say, "Yeah, it's a different time and that can't happen again." But the reality is those are the worries and I see more smart people wondering well what does protect you in those kind of environments and I think they come back to hard assets as a general you know core concept. >> Well certainly we saw silver just hit an all-time high. We we we know gold has had a huge run. So you know you you can see some of that I think concern reflected in some of the prices of hard assets. I want to ask you about Bitcoin because you mentioned that because I felt like we had so many conversations about that and it felt like um we had sort of entered a new chapter for cryptocurrencies generally. We were talking about a change in environment in Washington as you said murmurss about a Bitcoin reserve and then we've seen this huge decline over the last three months. lots of wealth wiped out again and a big owner of Bitcoin and from, you know, an OG from the early days unloading billions of dollars worth uh the big whale and that a lot [clears throat] of people that has a lot of people concerned again. Does it are does that worry you? Does it feel like this is just part of a cycle of something that is still volatile? Does it rule it out as something that can be used as a as as you just discussed? Well, I think one thing we've been talking about, including our interviews this fall, is that um one, until proven otherwise, crypto is still a risk asset and and gets a speculative nature to it. So, it's volatile and people that haven't been through past cycles see it crash and think it's dead and then a couple years by they wish they had stuck in it. The other thing we talked about is um despite all these positives, we're ending the we're ending this fall the four-year cycle timing, which normally is a danger zone for cryptocurrencies. So, it's kind of followed that pattern thus far, but it is not atypical for Bitcoin to correct 35, 40, 50%. And here we sit. So, I think one of the problems here on a lot of the things we're talking about is there are plans, there are legislation and maybe a reserve and all these things, but they're not enacted yet. The Genius Act, the Clarity Act, all these things haven't happened yet. So, we're kind of in this gap. We had like the hype excitement over the change in, you know, regime as it relates to crypto. And we've got the promise of once this is in law and we're letting, you know, Wall Street and banks and other companies get involved, that's a promising future. But we're in this gray zone right now where that hasn't happened yet. And I think that's part of the volatility. I think we are on a path to all of that happening. So I think there's reason to continue to think of it the same way we've thought of it, investing these last 12 years in it. But um you have to do it the right way. You've got to, you know, be in a system that understands when to take profit and not get greedy at at, you know, points like we've been in this fall. Take some chips off potentially. >> Yeah. Uh what about taxes? Because we'll talk to people in in in this sort of changing regime as we deal with and maybe it's the transition part as we deal with these high debt levels and a government that can't meet them. Uh there is a lot of talk that we could be seeing drastically higher taxes. Is that uh something we need to worry about or is this an area where maybe things get innovative in a way that we can't see right now? >> For taxes, I mean, I don't think you can tax yourself to greatness. I I I think I've mentioned this quote before. I had a client that worked with many Fortune 500 companies and he always said, "You can't cost cut yourself to greatness." Like eventually you need revenue growth. You can't just cut cost and go to the bone. And I'd say in similar vein, you can't just keep taxing the productive capital and and just keep spending. I think if people felt like we were doing spending efficiently and the system was just running, you know, great, we'd feel different. But we've talked about medicine, we've talked about higher education, we've talked about, you know, all these systems. And I don't think anybody I talked to feels like um we're being, you know, frugal and thoughtful about every dollar spent. It's just I feel like it's going out in every direction but to the benefit of the local people in the community. So one of the other provocative ideas would be why do we need the IRS? You know we're taxing people but we can print money. You end up in the same place kind of. But I would not be shocked if somewhere down the road this is just my own personal view. You end up with a system that's maybe maybe tariffs plus a consumption tax or a sales tax and you simplify the whole thing. Now, it's still tax. I think um the Trump administration looks back to this era of the late 1800s when we just had a tariff system and that supported all of our needs. And that's a great vision, but we've now got this massive welfare state built on top of it. So, you can't support that with a tariff system, at least not the way it's operating today. So, I don't know, maybe there's something in between, but I think the idea that we can just keep taxing to prosperity is a broken thought. We've got to rethink the whole system and and I think it comes down to thinking about how we're spending money, right? Because you're taking money from people that have no a lot of them have no safety net, right? Pensions are gone. Social Security, we've known, has been a pyramid scheme for years, for for 40 years. It's it's based on, you know, workers supporting a retiree. So, there's 2.7 workers per retiree now. But the demographics are we're aging and you know people aren't having as many children. So that whole pyramid of support is breaking down. So you know I I think it's a losing proposition to become a high tax jurisdiction. I think the people that are going to win are people like Dubai who have come up with investorfriendly tax policies that are you know and you see it in the US too Maggie going outside of federal tax. Where are people moving? Uh, yes, they're moving where there's jobs, probably sunshine over cold, but they want to go somewhere where there's freedom. And more importantly, maybe than anything, they prefer to be somewhere where taxes are lower, even 0% compared to, you know, New York, LA, Chicago. >> Uh, yeah, I'm the only person who's staying cold. [laughter] You can't you can't you can't win me with the sunshine. So, we're in a in the midst of all this change, which is coming. I mean, that's what I hear you saying. It's coming. How we resolve it, it remains to be seen, but this change is coming and systems will change. You need to be dynamic. You need to definitely lean into hard assets to protect against some of the inflationary issues and and money problems that you see. Um what about equities? Because this is where most Americans have a bulk of their portfolio right now. Um, if you have been invested, uh, and I I hear people talk about rebalancing, you're probably overweight equities more than anything else because we've had a tremendous bull run. How do we think about that? Are we still in equities? Is an important part of a portfolio, but you just have to really watch you, you know, where you're dedicating your money. How how do equities fit into the picture? >> Yeah, a core part of portfolio, but you have to be very mindful of calculated risks. There are a lot of areas that we think are undervalued in a market like this. Obviously, the AI stuff has been driving the market by every measure. That's what's pushing valuations up. It's the, you know, top 10 >> companies are almost 40% of the S&P 500. I mean, you you're getting these distortions. Yet, there are some AI companies we think are worth considering, but we're not chasing it. And I think for the average American um that's not watching their portfolio, their equities have drifted much too high. 25 years ago, we probably would have recommended rebalancing and putting it in bonds. Today, bonds are part of the problem. I I don't think they're going south immediately, but there's very little um of an attractive payoff, you know, riskreward as you look out the next decade. So I think broadening a perspective to include hard assets, some unique private investments, and just things that don't correlate as closely to the stock market because yes, we probably will keep printing money that might push the market up more. On the other hand, we all live through 08 or like you brought up with crypto. Yeah, everybody thinks it's going up up up and boom, 50% correction. So these things do happen and I think will continue to happen in this kind of regime where it's all about is money supply expanding right is there more money being printed that's what the market wants but the irony about what we talked about is that is the root of the problem because money we can't pay down the debt or we shrink the money supply we shrink the money supply and all the kind of lubrication in the engine goes away and things break down. So unless you have a wholesale rethinking of the system and I don't know if they'll be able to pull it off it sometimes the populace is not in it until it's at a pain point. So are we at a pain point? I think for the 20somes we are. I don't know about um the rest of the population yet. >> Yeah I think we're going to find out in those midterms Brett. Um really fantastic stuff. Thank you for sort of pulling the lens up because I think this is really important uh stuff for us all to think about as we look at our investments and especially as we turn the corner into the new year. I think 2026 is going to be uh something that's really volatile. So uh fantastic overlay for us. Thank you so much. >> Thank you Maggie >> as always. Uh if you would like to look I think we need to look at our portfolios but if you would like to do so as you turn the corner on the year uh and you want some help you can get a free portfolio review from a member of the team at windrock just go to the description in the link or you can go to wealthy.comfree. Thanks so much for watching everyone. We'll see you again next time.