Why Ric Won’t Use StubHub Again

Plus, Harris and Trump on transportation and infrastructure... And the great wealth transfer

Ric Edelman: It's Friday, October 25th. On today's show, transportation and infrastructure, plus a conversation with Tom Bradley, the Chief Client Officer at Charles Schwab about the upcoming great wealth transfer and what it means for you and your clients.

Got a couple of things to share with you today. We're going to be talking in my series on the presidential election and my indecision to date. I've gotten a couple of emails from people saying, Ric, I don't think you're undecided at all. I think you really have decided. Some of those folks are accusing me of already having decided to vote for Donald Trump. Others are accusing me of having already decided to vote for Kamala Harris.

I'm telling you I'm undecided. And even if I wasn't undecided, I wouldn't be in a hurry to vote right now. I really am a firm believer of voting on election day. Not only because it's fun, I just think it's a really patriotic thing to do.  Stand in line, chat with folks and do our thing. But you know, I want to delay the decision as long as possible because you never know what might happen between now and election day. I'm not going to speculate about, God forbid, awful things occurring, but those so called October surprises, I don't want to vote now only to have something happen in the next week and a half that could cause me to say, Whoa, I wish I hadn't voted for that person.

Anyway, I'm not in any hurry to make a decision, but I promise you I will. And I'll announce it next week. After I figure all this out, we're getting into the home stretch today, transportation infrastructure.

But before I get to that, I also have a question that I'm going to answer from David in New Hampshire on publicly-traded assets versus privately-traded assets, you know, public stock versus private stock. Before I get to David though, I just have to share with you a story. I'm just annoyed. I got scammed. Jean and I got scammed, this past week. It was harmless. It wasn't a big deal. In the end, it turned out just fine. Put it in the annoying category and the subject of funny conversation, but nevertheless, we were scammed.

Bottom line is I am never using StubHub again. I'm convinced and I'm not blaming StubHub, but the jerk seller we ended up interacting with. Here's the story. Many months ago, a bunch of friends of ours said, “Hey, did you hear that The Eagles are performing at The Sphere in Las Vegas?”  I mean, who doesn't love The Eagles and The Sphere is getting a lot of really cool attention because it's just very cool.

I actually have been in The Sphere. I went last January when I went to the Consumer Electronics Show. I went to check out The Sphere, I mean, how could you not?  It's a hot tourist attraction in the city right now. And, it is very cool. The technology is awesome. The video and audio is just really astonishing. The place is massive. It's huge. 12,000 plus seats, I think. Anyway, everybody was saying, “Hey, let's, let's all do a trip together. Let's go to Vegas for the weekend and let's go see The Eagles at The Sphere.”

So, somehow, I don't know how, but somehow, I'm the guy who got stuck with organizing and arranging the whole damn trip. So put it all together, ended up being 20 of us, 10 couples, who went to Vegas for four days, this past Thursday through Sunday. We chose Saturday night, which was their final performance.  Although they have since added more shows for next year. Gee, what a surprise.

Anyway, Jean and I have seen The Eagles many, many times all the way back starting in the 1970s. We're big fans. Everybody's a fan of the Eagles, right? And so we all go out there and I arranged for the dinners, for us all. And I arranged for a couple of other shows. I bought the tickets for two other shows since we're going out Thursday night, Friday night, with the Eagles on Saturday night. But when it came to the concert, I said to everybody, you're on your own, everybody buy their own tickets.

None of us can get tickets direct. We have to go to the aftermarket, so I'm not doing that for everybody. Everybody go on your own. Buy whatever seat you want to buy, and we'll all walk together to the theater, and we'll get together after the concert, and that'll be that. So, Jean and I, on our own, went to a ticket reseller.

We ended up using StubHub. I have never used StubHub before. And my team has gotten me tickets using other sites and never had a problem. And it's always been the same way, no matter where I've gotten my aftermarket tickets for Broadway shows or concerts or theater or what have you.

You do the deal online. You pay your money and they immediately email you your tickets. And there they sit in your Apple wallet on my phone until the date of the event. So, we buy the tickets for The Eagles on StubHub from a ticket reseller and the tickets don't show up. So, we check into this and they said to us, “Oh, the seller isn't required to send you your tickets right away. You'll get your tickets in couple of months as we get closer to the concert.”

Well, that's odd. I thought, but okay, this is the way it works on this site. Didn't give it any further thought. July comes along, August comes along, no tickets. We contact them and they give us the same story. Sellers not obligated to give you the tickets in advance. You'll get the tickets prior to the show.

It's now the week of the concert. We're getting ready to fly to Vegas and still no tickets. We go to Vegas. We're in Vegas. We're doing our thing in Vegas. No tickets. We contact them and they say, “Oh, the seller will deliver them to you this week.” No. Then they said the seller will deliver them to you on Saturday. The concert is Saturday night. And the seller has the opportunity to send you the tickets by 4:00pm. Really?

The concert's at 8:30pm and the seller has until 4:00pm to send me my tickets that I bought months earlier for which I had already paid and he'd already received the money?  That's really odd. And I'm like, this isn't going to work. Sure enough at around, I don't know what it was noon, one o'clock in the afternoon, we get an email from StubHub informing us the seller is unable to provide us our tickets. And the seller has offered an alternative set of tickets, which were vastly inferior.

I mean, Jean and I paid thousands of dollars for this pair of tickets in the best seats in the house, which everybody told us was Level 400 or was it Level 200? I don't know. Whatever level it was. Not on the floor because this is a huge massive planetarium-style sphere and you don't want to be on the floor where you're craning your neck straight up in the air looking at the ceiling. You want to be up higher so that you can get a good view of the whole place - combination of the stage and the environment. So, we paid for primo tickets, paid primo dollars.

And now the seller is telling us a few hours prior to the concert, “Sorry, can't deliver the tickets.  I'm offering you alternative tickets” that were down, you guessed it, on the floor. Terrible tickets. We rejected that offer and said, “No, I don't want those tickets. I want the tickets you were promising us.” He said no. We went to StubHub. StubHub said, “Sorry, we have a price guarantee. If you don't get your tickets, we give you your money back. You'll get your refund in eight to 10 days.”

By the way, I'm still waiting. It hasn't been 10 days yet, but I've not yet gotten my money back. I assume I will. StubHub by all reports is a reputable company. I'm assuming I'll get my refund, but I didn't want my refund. I wanted two tickets to The Eagles that we had arranged for months and brought 18 other people with us to go enjoy the show.

Anyway, we ended up not going to the concert. We couldn't get tickets. There was another alternative where they said, yeah, we can get you tickets, but we can't deliver them to you by e-mail. You have to print them out. And I'm like, well, that's nonsense. First of all, I'm in a hotel, how am I going to print out the tickets? Second of all, what do you mean you can't send them to me digitally? That's absolutely absurd and ridiculous. That's another scam.

So, as far as I'm concerned, I have no proof of this, I have no evidence of this, but I think what happened is that the guy we bought the tickets from sat on the tickets for months, hoping to be able to resell them for even more than we paid.

And sure enough, he finally succeeded a few hours before the show, and he stiffed us. Resold our tickets to somebody else, then with a ridiculous claim, “Sorry, unable to deliver your tickets.” Yeah, no kidding, because you sold them to somebody else, and then tried to fluff off lousy tickets on us. Anyway, StubHub refused to do anything other than give us a refund, which I haven't yet received, but I think I will.  And there we are. So, everybody else got to go see The Eagles. Jean and I did not.

Well, it turned out actually fabulous after all. We weren't all that enthused about seeing The Eagles. We've seen them a gazillion times. The guys are a gazillion years old. And other than having Jean see the facility of The Sphere, which I've already seen. So no big deal. And I saw a show there. So, I've seen it, but Jean had not. Looking forward to her having her see that, but she didn't really care one way or the other all that much. So, we didn't get to go. So what?

So, we looked for something else to do. I went to the hotel concierge and said we want to go to a comedy club. What can you recommend that's in walking distance? And they said, Jimmy Kimmel's Comedy Club, 10-minute walk. We said, great, we'll go. We walk over to Jimmy Kimmel's. We walk inside without knowing who was performing. We were shocked, astonished, and just thrilled to death, our favorite comedian, sheer dumb luck, pure coincidence, Orny Adams, was performing, headlining at Jimmy Kimmel's that very night. We had an hour plus show, second row with Orny Adams. He's hysterical. If you've never seen him, he has a wonderful Showtime special he did about a year ago. You got to go watch it. He's hysterical.

Orny Adams: “The Tide detergent aisle, the Tide First of all, This is what's wrong with this country. We have scented trash bags? If your trash smells like trash, take it out!”

Ric Edelman: And we had an absolutely fabulous time. We're actually kind of glad that all this crap happened with StubHub and our Eagles tickets, but nevertheless, lesson learned for us. I'm never using StubHub again.

So my point is every time a door closes, a window opens and something fabulous is going to happen. So we went with the flow. We weren't upset about it. It turned out even better than possible. Made the trip. It was absolutely great.

Okay, let's move on. David in New Hampshire. He wrote to me the following.

David: “Hi, Ric. I listened with interest to your podcast on private assets. As a new retiree, my goal is to use our investment portfolio to provide a stable inflation-adjusted income stream for however long my wife and I may live. Plus be a blessing for our children, including after we pass.

As the number of publicly-traded stocks shrinks and the number of privately- traded assets grows, how do I deal with what I see as the risks and problems of private investments? I'm talking about high investment minimums, large commissions and fees. A lack of liquidity and a lack of transparency. I recall your podcasts of several years ago where you regularly railed against Apple Hospitality REIT's, a private investment that suffered from these problems to the detriment of its investors.”

Ric Edelman: Yeah, you're right David, this is the dilemma, this is the challenge. For those who are unfamiliar with this, because the podcast was quite some time ago. The issue is this, there are only about 3,500 stocks publicly traded in America today. There were over 10,000 stocks 15 years ago. Companies are leaving the public markets because of the onerous regulation that exists in the financial markets today.

The cost of operating as a public company is so onerous that many companies are saying the heck with it. We're pulling our stock out of the market. We're leaving the New York Stock Exchange. We're leaving NASDAQ. And we are going to once again, be a private company.

I did that. My company was publicly traded at one point. And after a couple of years of dealing with Sarbanes-Oxley, I said the hell with this. Dodd-Frank, the hell with you. And I took the company private. This was great news for me and my few fellow private equity owners. It was a real shame for the public who lost the opportunity to invest alongside me in the company.

But that's the way it was because I was spending $2 million a year on compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley. That $2 million did not benefit my clients. It did not benefit the shareholders. It did not increase safety for anybody. It merely enriched the lawyers and the accountants who were handling the legal compliance obligations. It served no useful purpose. And by going private, I saved myself $2 million a year.

So, this is what's happening. This is what's going on. The problem is that ordinary investors who are trying to invest in the stock market have fewer stocks to choose from. Secondly, a huge number of wonderful companies you would like to invest in, you can't because they're private.

And this is why I focused on this in the show, that there are now increasing opportunities for you to be able to invest as a retail investor in funds that invest in private companies. But what David is concerned about are the risks inherent in doing so. Yeah, David, you're right. These are risks. That's why I like the idea of these funds that you as a public investor can invest in that are managed by a Wall Street professional, letting them choose the private companies that you ought to be investing in.

I think it's the way we solve the problem that you otherwise incur as an investor. It's why Jean and I are doing a lot of private investing because the opportunities there in many cases are bigger and better in my view than the opportunities available in the public markets. But unfortunately, most investors are limited to the public markets because of the limited amount of money that they have to invest.

That's the situation that our regulators and our members of Congress who have created all those laws have foisted upon us.

 

All right, let's move on to today's topic, transportation and infrastructure. If you haven't downloaded my Excel spreadsheet, I encourage you to do so. It's free. It'll help you reach a decision.

If you're undecided like me or to help you validate, confirm the decision you've already made, as to how you ought to be voting for the presidential campaign…34 topics. You can rank the 34 based on how important each issue is to you and how closely aligned your view is with your preferred candidate on that issue, Trump or Harris, so that you can quantify your voting rather than just shooting from the hip and going, based on gut instinct.

Anyway, today's topic, transportation and infrastructure. The Urban Institute looked at a thousand federal infrastructure programs that were paid for by the Department of Transportation. They paid this money out to cities and towns all across the country. How did they do that? They asked the cities and towns to ask for the money.

So, these cities and towns were applying for grants to the Department of Transportation. The money was provided to DOT from Congress as part of the federal budget and DOT said, we need to spend this money on infrastructure around the U S. We don't know what the infrastructure projects ought to be that the money should be used for. We want the cities and towns and states to ask us for the money. They'll tell us what they want to use it for. We will look at the grant applications and we will choose which projects to fund, says DOT. So, the Urban Institute looked at a thousand of these infrastructure programs that DOT approved that they paid for. In the Trump administration, 40% of that grant money went to projects that involved building new highways or making existing highways bigger. 40% of the grants went to that.

In the Biden administration, only 10 percent of the grants went to highways. The rest of the money went to public transit programs, pedestrian sidewalks, and lanes for bike riders. Trump did very little of those things. You see, in the Trump administration, Elaine Chao was the Secretary of Transportation. She emphasized support for road projects, you know, stuff that helps move cars.

 But in the Biden administration, Pete Buttigieg is the current Secretary of Transportation. He calls for making transportation cleaner and advancing equity. So, in the Biden administration, the projects that have gotten funding were for poor communities that are also facing environmental challenges. Communities that are mostly filled with minorities. The grants issued in the Trump administration went mostly to white communities. Wow. What a difference.

If the past is the future. If we can assume that how Trump behaved in his prior term is how he'll behave in his next term, then we can expect the Department of Transportation is going to go back to expanding roads, and it's going to cut funding for trains and buses, bike lanes and sidewalks.

If Kamala Harris wins, we can predict that she'll probably keep doing what Joe Biden was doing. That means ignoring the needs of people with cars, in favor of focusing on poor communities where people depend more so on public transportation. Makes sense? Does to me. So that's where the decision lies.

Do you like the Trump approach? Focusing on cars, which moves the economy, or do you choose the Harris Biden approach, which is focusing on people who don't own cars, who are dependent on public services to be able to get to work and have a job in the first place, and maybe even make enough money in that job to one day buy that car and move up mobility wise, economically.

But here's the amazing thing. Neither one of them have really said anything about any of this. Transportation as a topic isn't even mentioned on either one of their websites or in their campaign platforms. Have you seen either one of them say a word about transportation in any of their stump speeches?

I would want to see a policy. This is just me talking. I would want to see a policy that gives proper allocation to both of these needs, because they're both legitimate. Keep the economy growing by funding the expansion and improvement of our highways, but also give support to lower income households that don't own a car, they don't care about highways. Let them get a job by giving them access to those jobs via buses and trains. But neither Harris or Trump. took that approach in the past. Neither has said they'll do that in the future.

All I can say is that, therefore, on the topic of transportation, Trump versus Harris, Harris versus Trump, on transportation, because neither one of them has said a thing, and neither one of them are doing both. They're only, I think, going to do one or the other, on transportation. At least right now, for me, it's another draw.

 

I'm glad you're listening to The Truth About Your Future. I am really excited to bring onto the program, Tom Bradley. If you don't know who Tom Bradley is, it means you're not a financial advisor. Tom is one of the best-known people in this industry. He was President of TD Ameritrade's retail and institutional business.

He is now Schwab's Chief Client Officer. Tom is known by everybody, everywhere in the RIA field. He's been named one of the 25 most influential people in the RIA. community. Tom, you and I go way, way back. My entry into the RIA. space was with you. Way back when in the early 2000s.

Tom Bradley: Yeah, it was, Ric. Going way back, our businesses really took we had dinner in New York, the two of us, and I think we had Joe Moglia with us as well, and that dinner kicked off a multi-decade of a wonderful relationship where both of our businesses really took off.

Ric Edelman: And so I'm really glad to talk with you here today. We're going to talk specifically about what Tom, you refer to and a whole bunch of others, the great wealth transfer. And we're going to talk about the trends that are going on in the RIA industry, affecting advisors and thereby affecting clients. If you're not an advisor, if you're an investor who works with an advisor, you're going to get a behind the scenes look at the big issues that are affecting the industry right now.

You're really going to enjoy this conversation. First off, Tom, talk about the great wealth transfer. What is it and why should advisors care?

Tom Bradley: Well, the great wealth transfer Ric is pegged to be approximately close to $70 trillion in assets that will be passed on to the next generation as individuals pass on or decide to gift before they pass away, they decide to gift assets to their heirs.

Ric Edelman: And so the big issue here is twofold. One for the advisor, you're managing a big book of clients. You're managing tens of millions, hundreds of millions, in some cases, billions of dollars of assets. If those clients of yours die and they pass their assets to their kids, you don't have any clients anymore. You don't have any assets to manage. So advisors have to care about this issue.

Tom Bradley: Big time. It's a huge opportunity for advisors, but it's a retention opportunity, number one. That's the number one priority. And they really need to think about the boomers that they have as clients, it’s actually where the transfer is coming from. It's going to move from the boomers to the Gen Xs, the millennials, the Gen Zs. And advisors have to really be thinking about how do you make those connections to those next generations so that, essentially, they don't get fired when their clients pass away or when their clients give assets to those other generations.

Ric Edelman: In fact, instead of losing the client when they die and therefore losing the assets because the assets pass to the children and grandchildren, instead of having one client who had a million dollars, now you might have four clients who each have a couple of hundred grand. So, it's an opportunity not only to keep the assets, but to the broaden the client base with a younger set of clients and perpetuate the practice as you go.

So, yeah, retention is really the key, retaining the assets and serving the next gen. What do you think, Tom, is the most important step an advisor can take to make sure that happens?

Tom Bradley: I mean, the number one thing that advisors have to do is they have to have the conversation with their existing clients about this asset transfer. And they have to be at the ready to provide critical services to the millennial, to the boomer clients so that they can help them with this transfer of assets. So that's going to be tax planning, estate planning, charitable giving is critical to a lot of these boomers as well.

So, they have to be kind of ready with services. And number one, they have to have that conversation. What are you thinking about boomer client, in terms of the transfer of your wealth to the next generation.

Ric Edelman: Do you think advisors are doing enough in this area? I mean, what a lot of surveys are telling us is that the children and the grandchildren say, most of them, that when their parents and grandparents die and they inherit assets, they're going to find themselves a new advisor.

They're not going to keep daddy's advisor or granddaddy's advisor. Do you think that that's true in many cases? And advisors, are they doing enough to prevent that from happening?

Tom Bradley:  Well, Schwab conducts a survey and a good percentage of advisors are doing something about it. But I think you could say that more should be doing something about it.

But let me just give you a couple of stats here. 75% of the advisors we surveyed said they're talking to their older clients about this transfer and 70% of advisors are involving more family members in the conversation. And that really, those two things are the key. I think, yeah, more advisors should be 100%

There shouldn't be an advisor out there that isn't having this conversation with their existing clients. And every advisor needs a strategy around how do you bring the next generation into the conversation? We had some advisor meetings a couple of weeks ago and I was sitting down with some firms and we had this discussion around what they're doing.

One of the top things that we're seeing advisors do is they are serving their clients through a team-based system instead of one on one. They're going team-based and they have multi-generations on the team. So, you might have a boomer to a boomer that had the original relationship, but then you have a next gen on the team and then maybe even another gen on the team. So, when you bring the family in, it might be more natural to make connections generation to generation.

Ric Edelman: Makes a lot of sense. I find, for example, that a lot of older established advisors, those in their sixties, and more than half of the nation's advisors are in their sixties, they really don't care about crypto, for example. And they argue that their clients don't really care about crypto. But their clients’ kids do. And what we're finding is a lot of boomer advisors are bringing on younger associates who care as much about crypto as the client's children do. And it works out really well, because if you die and your children have never met your advisor, there's no relationship. There's no reason for your children to stay with that advisor.

So, if that advisor gets to know the family and gets to understand their needs and their concerns, their risks and their fears, the advisor has a much greater opportunity to keep the assets to be of service to those children and grandchildren. And the children and grandchildren avoid the hassle of having to go find a new advisor when they know nothing about any of them. So, everybody wins when they do it right.

Tom Bradley: That's right. This is such a relationship-based business, Ric, as you and I know so well, and other advisors know so well. And that relationship is critical. And also just the model itself, right? It strengthens that relationship, that fiduciary model. It's just more investors are picking this model.

And so, the model in and of itself is phenomenal, but how do you build those relationships and communicate the advantages of that model to the next gen. That has to start now, not at the funeral home, it has to start now.

So, bring the next generation in, build those relationships up over not even months, but over a year. So you want to start early. And there's no reason even to wait until the kids are 18 years-old. I've talked to advisors that say, listen, they bring the kids in that are under 18 and they have different activities and ways that they engage the youth in the family so that the youth gets to know the advisory firm, the wealth manager from a very young age.

Ric Edelman: So I get that point. It makes an awful lot of sense that advisors need to engage not just with their clients, but with their clients’ children, and grandchildren. Makes total sense. I'm wondering that if all the advisor is doing is including those kids in the conversations that they're having with the kid's parents, the kids are going to see the investments that mom and dad own. And those investments, I would argue, are going to be more traditional. The kinds of investments those parents have owned for decades, which are appropriate for their own circumstances, which suggests to me they're going to be more conservative in nature, you know, more income oriented as opposed to growth as opposed to technology, for example, and I'm wondering if the kids might say all that's great for mom and dad, but it's not what I would want.

So, do the advisors need to do something more than merely engaging with the kids? Do they need to appeal in a different way to this younger generation of investors?

Tom Bradley: You are 100% spot on, Ric. They have to be ready to go on a number of different fronts, things that they might not be used to or maybe not even believe in. They have to kind of open up their thinking. You mentioned crypto before. Whether you believe in crypto or digital assets or not, you have to be educated on it and you have to be ready to speak to it and at least explain why you believe or don't believe in any particular asset.

But I think alternatives in general, if you wanted to drop crypto into that alternative category, which I would, you have to be ready to go on all types of alternative investments. You have to be ready to go on derivatives and options and even simple things like writing cover calls or protecting portfolios.

And I know that what we're doing at Schwab to help advisors get prepared is we're providing a technology platform and an education platform that helps them get up to speed on some of these things. I know what you're doing around educating advisors on digital assets and crypto. You've got easily the best education platform that's out there on this.

At Schwab, we have what we believe to be a phenomenal educational platform around educating advisors on how to use options in their portfolios to execute against different strategies, like generating more income and protecting portfolios. And then we also have what we brought over from the Ameritrade deal and integrated into the Schwab platform, technology like iRebal and thinkpipes that enables advisors to conduct their business in an efficient and effective manner and do a better job for their clients.

Ric Edelman: TD Ameritrade was well known for its technology leadership, which has now moved into Schwab following that merger over the past couple of years, which you were a huge part of doing. And Schwab has been one of the leaders in crypto availability, making available the bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. Schwab has a variety of crypto ETFs on its platform.

So, advisors can no longer argue, “there's no way I can help a client in this space.” They certainly can. And as you pointed out, crypto is just the start. Options, derivatives, and other alternatives are a key element of this. So, advisors not only need to be engaging with the clients on behalf of the kids, they need to be saying to the kids, we might not be doing this for your mom and dad, but we certainly can be doing it for you, because the kids have a different set of needs and circumstances, goals and objectives, compared to their older parents. So, I think that this is really critical.

One of the fascinating things here though, Tom, is that this is an issue not just affecting the individual client and their kids.  This great wealth transfer is going to affect the RIA industry as a whole. And, Schwab's going to be a big part of that. I mean, Schwab is handling, as the custodian, massive amounts of money on behalf of RIAs and their clients all across this country.

So, what is Schwab doing? Talk about that. How you’re helping RIAs deal with this entire great wealth transfer.

Tom Bradley: Yeah, to us, Ric, it's all about access to things like alternative investment products. We're building out, in partnership with other firms, an extensive alternative investment platform, which represents a growing percentage of the advisor portfolios.

We're investing heavily into our bank. To have banking products like pledged asset lending in accounts and mortgages in accounts that we believe has to be an important part of the advisor's offer. And frankly, we're in the position to be able to make that available to advisors and their clients versus an individual advisor trying to open up their own bank. That's just not realistic, but we can do that and make that available.

Digital. The next generation, and frankly, even the baby boomers, I think even the baby boomers are very engaged digitally. And certainly the next gen, that's table stakes for the next gen to be able to interact digitally with your brokerage firm or advisor or custodian, however you want to view that. Whether that's opening accounts or moving money, you have to be ready to go digitally so that the next generation can pick up their phone and get done what they want to get done. And it's safer and more secure too than the old-fashioned paper. We don't call it good old-fashioned paper anymore. We call it old-fashioned paper, bad old fashioned in that case.

Ric Edelman: I think we all moved to the digital age grudgingly, as we changed how we run our businesses. But now looking back, we regret we didn't do it sooner because the digitization has made life so much easier, faster, safer, cheaper than ever before.

Tom Bradley: So much more efficient and effective for everyone. It's better for the advisor, better for us. But more importantly, it's better for the client.

Ric Edelman: You mentioned one thing in passing, and that's charitable giving. The survey also that you cited earlier that Schwab had conducted, you found that 75% of advisors are helping their clients with charitable giving.

Schwab's got something that I'll call a pretty well-kept secret, although it's pretty darn big, and that's the Schwab Donor-Advised Fund. Talk about that and how advisors are using that to help their clients when it comes to charitable giving.

Tom Bradley: The donor-advised fund that we make available is really just a fantastic product so that the advisor can open up the account on behalf of the client or the client opens it up and gives the advisor authority over the account.

And the client can donate a chunk of assets today, or in a particular year, and we can align that with their tax planning and then they'll have those assets available to distribute over a period of time and donate to other charities. It's really extremely popular, it's a growing nonprofit for us, so to speak.

And if advisors want to engage more with their clients on charitable giving, I highly recommend it. If you're interested in talking more about it, any advisor can pick up the phone and talk to their relationship manager. Or if you're having trouble figuring out who you speak to, always feel free to email me directly.

Everybody at Schwab is easy to reach. It's first name-dot-last name at Schwab. com. So in my case, Tom.Bradley@Schwab.com It works for everybody except for Chuck. Don’try try it with Chuck.

Ric Edelman: And we've got a link in the show notes to Tom's e-mail address, and he's going to get bombarded. But Tom's okay with that.

One last thing I want you to be able to brag about, there are lots of industry conferences every year. This industry, you could argue, is over-conferenced. I host four of them myself, I'm part of the problem. But Schwab's annual IMPACT Conference is widely regarded as perhaps the most significant and influential.

Thousands of financial advisors attend every year. This year's event is November 19-21 in San Francisco. Talk about IMPACT 2024 and why it's the place to be for advisors.

Tom Bradley: Oh, it's just an incredible event. We highly recommend you attend if you haven't been there before. It's just anything and everything in the advisory industry.

We'll have keynote speakers, breakout sessions. We'll have a massive hall of individuals that have products and services that potentially could benefit advisors and all packed into a few days. It's work, but it's also a lot of fun. And the networking is just phenomenal. So, I mean, just incredible, incredible network. And we always get very high marks for that as well.

Ric Edelman: Hugely effective, successful advisors running the biggest practices in the industry are there, as well as new young advisors looking to learn and grow. Network is really the key thing. I've been honored to speak at IMPACT many times and it's a terrific event.

So, I would encourage you to take a look at that. Go to Schwab's website. We've got a link to IMPACT 2024 in the show notes as well so you can get the direct info on what that's all about. If you've never been there, make sure you do go this year.

That's Tom Bradley, chief client officer of Schwab. Great to be with you, my friend.

Tom Bradley: Good to see you. And we'll talk again real soon. Thanks for having me, Ric. Take care.

Ric Edelman: Monday, we tackle unions and veterans affairs.

If you like what you're hearing, be sure to follow and subscribe to the show, wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and remember leave a review on Apple podcasts. I read them all. Never miss an episode of The Truth About Your Future. Follow and subscribe on your favorite podcast app. 

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Links from today’s show:  

2024 Schwab Independent Advisor Outlook Study: https://advisorservices.schwab.com/resource/schwab-independent-advisor-outlook-study-2024

Schwab Advisor Services: https://advisorservices.schwab.com/

Schwab IMPACT Conference: https://impact.schwab.com/

Schwab thinkpipes RIA platform: https://advisorservices.schwab.com/thinkpipes

Schwab iRebal RIA platform: https://advisorservices.schwab.com/irebal

Schwab Donor-Advised Fund: https://www.schwab.com/donor-advised-fund

Tom Bradley E-mail Address: Tom.Bradley@Schwab.com 

Click here for Ric's worksheet to help you evaluate the candidates

The 34 Issues of Election 2024 – The Daily Podcasts https://thetayf.com/blogs/this-weeks-stories/tagged/election-2024

Kamala Harris Official Campaign Website Policy Page: https://www.kamalaharris.com/issues/

Donald Trump Official Campaign Website Policy Page: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform

11/13 Webinar - An Innovative Way to Generate Income in a World of Declining Rates: https://www.thetayf.com/pages/november-13-2024-an-innovative-way-to-generate-income

10/9 Webinar Replay- Crypto for RIAs: Yield, Staking, Lending and Custody. What’s beyond the ETFs? https://dacfp.com/events/crypto-for-rias-yield-staking-lending-and-custody-whats-beyond-the-etfs/

Certified in Blockchain and Digital Assets including Crypto Taxation Course/Webinar: https://dacfp.com/certification/

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