Stocks, Stress, and Smiles

Our 2 Cents – Episode #182

Stocks, Stress, and Smiles

We are back with another great episode of Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit! On today’s episode, the hosts recap some key takeaways from their Mid-Year Market & Economic Update webinar and share the secrets to shedding stress in the world’s “blue zones.” Finally, they review how money can buy happiness or at least be a major contributor to it. Listen in now using a link below!

1. Mid-Year Market & Economic Update Webinar Summary:
   • Learn Steve and Gabriel’s perspectives on the current stock market performance, various factors impacting the economy, and a potential bubble on the horizon.
2. Stress Less in Blue Zones:
   • Uncover the secrets from those who live in “blue zones” and what is contributing to their longevity.
3. Money CAN buy happiness:
   • Discover how this study’s findings demonstrate how your financial income can be a driving factor to your happiness.

Request Your Free Consultation Today
847.499.3330

Podcast Transcript

Announcer: You are listening to Our 2 Cents with the team from SGL Financial, Building Wealth for Life. Steve Lewit is the President of SGL Financial, and Gabriel Lewit is the CEO. They’re here to discuss all the latest in financial news, trends, strategies, and more.

Gabriel Lewit: Welcome to Our 2 Cents. We are here. We’re ready to rock and roll today.

Steve Lewit: Well, I’m ready. You weren’t ready real. You took forever to get ready.

Gabriel Lewit: Steve was taking forever to get ready here.

Steve Lewit: I’m really annoyed. I’m sitting here 15 minutes. Anxious to talk to the folks out there.

Gabriel Lewit: Can I tell you why we took so long? Because we want to deliver a excellent show to our listeners and we had to prepare with all the no stops, right?

Steve Lewit: He speaks with forked tongue. That is a forked tongue. You had to get coffee, you had to roll up your sleeves, you had to fix your hair.

Gabriel Lewit: I did not touch my hair, period. I’ll tell you that much.

Steve Lewit: Okay.

Gabriel Lewit: But I did roll up my sleeves because it’s hot in here.

Steve Lewit: Folks, it’s-

Gabriel Lewit: You got to be comfortable for the show.

Steve Lewit: Folks, it’s finally so good to talk to you this morning. I’m so happy we finally got here.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, we are excited. As always, we’ve got a great show lined up for you. And I did mention last time many of you are our current clients, many of you are not our current clients, but do still listen to the show. But we did do a market outlook, a midyear summary last week, a client special event, and I mentioned on our last episode of the podcast that we might give a synopsis of that here for two reasons. One, some people listen to podcasts. If you already attended the webinar and some of this is going to be a recap for you, that’s okay, but if you didn’t attend the webinar or weren’t otherwise able to, I think this will be a helpful breakdown of some of what we’ve seen in the economy and the markets so far this year.

Steve Lewit: And if you would like a complete copy of it, it is recorded and available to any of you. We have sent it out, but you might not have received it, but you can get it, and then you can hear the full broadcast.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes, exactly. And I think there’s important takeaways here. So, let’s jump right in and talk about some of those. It won’t be the entire episode here today, but we’ll definitely spend a good chunk here diving into some of the nuances of the market. So, let’s start off with how has the market done so far this year? Well, today’s Wednesday, by the way, and the market’s nose diving today. But prior to that, Mr. Lewit, how would you say the stock market has done so far this year?

Steve Lewit: Terrific. Really terrific. It is up. I forgot the exact number. I apologize, folks. I’ve got a couple of numbers going on in my head. What is it up this year? Do you know, Gabriel?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, through the dates here of July, I think it was 16th, 2024, the S&P 500 up 19.72% on the year.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I was going to say 22 and that sounded a little high.

Gabriel Lewit: It is down a little less than that though as of today, given some of the recent earnings report misses and some of the losses that these indexes have experienced.

Steve Lewit: So, if you use the S&P as a measure of the market, which it is not, okay, the S&P are 500 large-cap stocks, and of the 500 stocks, there are seven called the magnificent seven that drive the S&P. And those are actually slowing down. Their earnings reports are lower, which is why you see a little bit of a pullback in the S&P, but it has done terrific. The underlying, as we talked about in the webinar, Gabriel, the underlying factors of economics in the US are still very strong. So, there are a lot of people who say unless there’s a black swan event. Folks, a black swan event is an event that kind of comes out of nowhere, like China invades Taiwan or Israel invades Lebanon, which wouldn’t be such a black swan event, but something that comes out of a nowhere, they’re expecting the market to go up, continue.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah, we were going to dispel a couple maybe talking points related to that concept. Is the market going to keep going up this year? So, market is up, yes, year to date. Part of that, of course, I think is important to put in context. When markets have negative years like they did in 2022, and then they have recoveries. I think we’re still on the tail end of the bear market recovery that we saw in 2023, and now that’s just continued to ride that wave. The challenge we’re seeing, and one of the main themes of the recording that we did, is that stocks may be beginning to look overvalued, especially US stock.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. So that is called the price-to-earnings ratio. And the price-to-earnings ratio right now is 19. It’s higher than it’s been in a long time.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So, it depends on the specific obviously index. There’s an equal weighted S&P index, there’s a cap weighted S&P index. There are individual positions inside of that index. So, all of these have price of earnings ratios, but essentially the higher a starting point, if things are overvalued, meaning their price relative to their earnings is very high, then the forward-looking returns expectation of those positions or indexes are much lower because you’re starting at a much higher point.

Steve Lewit: It can’t go much higher.

Gabriel Lewit: People are only going to be willing to pay so much of a price premium. And if that price is already really, really high, then there may not be as much room for things to grow, and they might in fact experience a pullback. And so there was a number of measures here that we had talked about as far as relating to the price-to-earnings ratios. I’m trying to find it here in my sheets, but everything here, from forward PE, trailing PE, five-year normalized PE, price to book ratio, price to cashflow, dividend yield, everything on the S&P, is trading in very expensive range according to percentile rate and historical data. And the average one-year forward return when the S&P’s valuation is above 19.7, which it is today, is only two and a half percent on average.

Steve Lewit: That’s correct, yep.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Does that mean we can’t see another big year? No. But it’s just a data point for you to essentially assess what’s the likelihood or probability we’re going to have another big banner year ahead.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. And I would add to this, folks, we’re not sharing this information to motivate you to make a decision about what the market is going to do and an action to take. It’s not saying, Oh, well, if you think the market’s going to go down, you should go to cash. Or if you think the market’s going to go up, you should invest more. It’s really just for you to understand what is happening, because investing in the stock market is a long-term proposition. It’s not a matter of timing the market or trying to get in or trying to get out. This is really just so you understand what’s going on and where things are headed or might head and have a lot to talk about at your next party.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, just to piggyback on that, we don’t really condone market timing. We have a few strategies, buffer strategies, for example, where you can take a, if you want to call it a probability-based assessment, what’s the likelihood of the S&P having a big year, a flat year, a negative year? And that’ll help you choose the right buffer combination inside of a buffer strategy. But that’s very, very different than market timing, which most people tend to shift to cash when they want to market time. Okay, I think the market’s going to go down; the election’s coming up; let’s move everything to cash. And then, of course, if the market keeps rising, you’re going to be well behind.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. So, in the past month you have all of these analysts and gurus telling you which way the market’s going to go and always incorrect for the most part. I had one client that said, “I believe tech and AI,” which is artificial intelligence, “will drive the market up. I want more money.” Very aggressive in the market. And an hour later had another client, “Hey, I think the market’s going to collapse. Can we de-risk the portfolio?”

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, everyone’s going to have a different opinion.

Steve Lewit: So, I don’t know.

Gabriel Lewit: So, what we talked a bit on the webinar, we’re on the podcast now obviously, was is AI, you mentioned AI, is AI approaching bubble territory, right? So, it’s one thing for something to be overvalued. The other is, is it so overvalued that it’s in bubble territory where bubbles may face the risk of popping or bursting?

Steve Lewit: Yeah. And what that means, they go down quickly.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. And so, NVIDIA, for example, as of the date of the webinar we did, was trading at 77 times, price earnings ratio of 77. So very, very expensive. Not a lot of belief there that the earnings and the data supports that level of valuation long-term, and there’s risk there that that bubble might pop. It’s starting to be a little bit more of a trendy topic right now. Is AI going to reach a saturation point where people essentially just get tired of it?

Steve Lewit: They’re getting tired of it now.

Gabriel Lewit: And once they do, then the demand will dry up and then businesses will stop investing, and then NVIDIA won’t have as many chips to sell, and their price, for example, is going to come crashing down. That is the example of a bubble bursting. And we can’t say for certainty that that’s going to happen, but it is one of the risk factors out there because, as you mentioned, the S&P is up, but the primary driving factor of that is seven companies right now.

Steve Lewit: And the primary of the seven companies is one company.

Gabriel Lewit: NVIDIA.

Steve Lewit: Is NVIDIA, right?

Gabriel Lewit: So yes, the S&P is up, but if you took what’s called an equal weighted S&P index, for example, where all the different 500 components of that have an equal weighting, not what’s called a cap weighting, then the returns are much more subdued for the year. Still positive, but much more subdued, meaning a big chunk of that return is due to those handful of stocks that we mentioned. Okay. So that’s what’s going on in the market, obviously lots of more. Yesterday, of course, or a couple of days ago, you might’ve heard the news about CrowdStrike, by the way.

Steve Lewit: Oh, I was in the middle.

Gabriel Lewit: You were in the middle. You were flying somewhere last weekend.

Steve Lewit: This is the most amazing story. I was going to New York to visit my brother, so I fly United, which is never on time.

Gabriel Lewit: They’re sometimes on time.

Steve Lewit: Really? All right.

Gabriel Lewit: Is any airplane on time?

Steve Lewit: Well, they’ve gotten better. I went through their worst period of time when they were never on time. So, I always fly United. So, I go on my phone. This is Friday, right in the middle of CrowdStrike. So, you’re on time, you’re on time, you’re on time. I go to the airport, all of the overhead signs that tell you what the gates are, Gabriel, where you’re supposed to go, and all of that, they’re all black, they’re all dark, but the planes are flying and Starbucks is working, and it’s like, okay.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, that’s all you need.

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Coffee and planes.

Steve Lewit: So, I get to my gate and we’re supposed to board. We’re delayed a half an hour, and we board, and it’s like, wow, this is good. And I get to New York, and everybody around me is canceled, and I get there, and then coming home, everybody around me is canceled.

Gabriel Lewit: And your flight wasn’t?

Steve Lewit: No, and I got home on time. I think I’m the only one that got to and from without a problem, really.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, now this is just a single stock essentially that got impacted by a black swan event. But this is what you mean by a black swan event, right? Nobody could have predicted that all of a sudden on Friday, July 19th, CrowdStrike update problem would just shut down half the country.

Steve Lewit: Parts of the world, really.

Gabriel Lewit: Right. And the stock, of course, cratered for CrowdStrike. And that’s the risk you see in the market, right? Is there going to be some sort of black swan event that will cause a ripple effect, not just for one company but for the broad market as a whole?

Steve Lewit: Well, if that wasn’t fixable real quick, the market would’ve responded to that.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So anyways, there’s also, if you haven’t Googled it, I think there’s a fun spoof of what happened with the CrowdStrike thing. Some guy claimed he forgot to plug in the right cord, but that’s not really what happened. I was watching it yesterday. I think it was fake, but I’m pretty sure it was. But it was very funny, anyways. Okay, so the other thing we talked about not just the stock equity market, but what about the bond market? Bonds, of course, have had a pretty meh, that’s my technical term, year.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it’s technical. It’s meh.

Gabriel Lewit: And when I say bonds, we’re mostly referencing bond funds. You can go out and buy an individual bond, individual treasury, hold it to maturity. That’s a little different, right? Because you’re going to get that rate on a bond that you hold to maturity. But a bond fund, US AGG, A-G-G, Bloomberg ticker is a good bond fund index to measure. It’s been a pretty flat year. And also, we haven’t seen a lot of recovery from the bond bear market that we saw in 2022, along with the stock bear market. The stocks market, of course, has recovered since then. The bond bear market hasn’t notably due to interest rates have not yet fallen. And that’s going to be the catalyst for a bond bear market recovery.

Steve Lewit: So, if you recall in 2022, the market went down and bonds were supposed to be a supporter of the market. So, when the market goes down, bonds are supposed to hold their own and go up. So, we had a double whammy. The market went down 22%; the S&P, if you use that as a market gauge, and bonds were down 16.4%, which is the worst year in history. And nobody saw that coming. And why? Because interest rates were raised five, six, seven times within a very short period of time.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And so where are bonds headed? We believe the worst of bonds is behind us. They had a bad 2022. If you look at the history prior to that, my gosh, it’s been 30 plus years since you’d seen substantial risk in a bond portfolio. So hopefully the bond bear market’s going to be behind us. We’re going to start to see some recoveries of that. And then the other topic we talked about was international performance year to date, which has lagged US. And so, we do continue to get the question: is international an important component of a diversified portfolio? We did answer that. The answer is yes.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, because the immediate reaction, folks, is, well, if US is doing better than international, why don’t we just get rid of the international and just own US? And the reason for that is long-term that makes your portfolio more volatile to take out something that is underperforming today.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, that question, just to put some commentary on it, is actually a market timing-based question. So what you’re saying, okay, you have US and international two broad asset classes, we want to figure out when do we get out of one and into the other and then get out of the other and into the other one prior to each of one underperforming, which is market timing.

Steve Lewit: Market timing.

Gabriel Lewit: You’re not doing it on an individual stock, but you’re doing it on an asset class.

Steve Lewit: It’s asset class timing.

Gabriel Lewit: And that is also quite difficult. You never know when that year is going to be a good year or a bad year. If I said to you, let’s take the next 12 months, Mr. Lewit, despite all the data that’s out there. US outperform, international outperform, what’s going to win?

Steve Lewit: I don’t know. And the fact is you’ve got parts of international, like, I believe, emerging markets, is it, Gabriel? That’s done very, very well.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, it depends. I mean, overall you’ve got here, do you mean the last year or last five years?

Steve Lewit: The last year.

Gabriel Lewit: Last year. I don’t think it was the emerging markets. That was the lower of the bunch. But the best international has been international value over the last year. You’ve got international small caps have done pretty good, but again, less than the US market has done over the last couple of years.

Steve Lewit: Folks, I don’t know if you know what a bubble chart is or a quilt chart, but it shows all the asset allocations. There’s almost 22 of them, but it usually shows like-

Gabriel Lewit: Can I jump in?

Steve Lewit: Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: In the one-year, year to date, apologies, the emerging markets has done pretty good year to date.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Gabriel Lewit: But over the last five years, it has lagged.

Steve Lewit: It has lagged. So, if you kept emerging markets out of your portfolio because it underperformed the last five years, well, it might overperform the next five years. It’ll take you three years to recognize that if you recognize it at all and get back in.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So that’s the risk with market timing. We had discussed: is diversification still important? We believe so very much. Not just asset allocation diversification but also strategies across different types of investment products. So, a lot of really great stuff in that economic outlook. I know just to kind of touch on this, and then we’ll shift gears. How is the economy doing from our resident economist, Mr. Lewit?

Steve Lewit: Well, the economist says the economy is doing great. All of the data, the leading economic indicators, the earnings backed off a little bit, but all of the production data, unemployment data. There are two different unemployment numbers, folks. One is a measure of unemployment, and the other is a measure of underemployment. And that includes people that want to work or are working in jobs that they feel they should be working in something better. They just took a job just to get a job, basically. But still, all those numbers look pretty good. So from an economic point of view, I look at the economy, I say, Well, GDP is running a little slow, but that should pick up no matter who wins the election.

Gabriel Lewit: But still positive GDP.

Steve Lewit: It’s still positive. It’s a little lower than we’d like it to be. Inflation is a little higher than we’d like it to be. So, I don’t know if the Fed is going to… I think they might lower interest rates in September. I think the market has already discounted that, but things look really, really good, and we’ll see what happens. We just don’t know.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So the Fed, of course, is hoping for what’s called a soft landing, meaning bringing inflation down by raising interest rates but without triggering a recession. And at the moment it looks like that may, in fact, play out.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It does, definitely. Because a recession is two quarters of negative GDP and the likelihood of that happening is-

Gabriel Lewit: Seems low right now.

Steve Lewit: Very, very low.

Gabriel Lewit: So that’s a quick recap in about 16 minutes of what we spent an hour.

Steve Lewit: Why did we take an hour if we could have done it in 15 minutes?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, we definitely cut quite a bit out of this recap version of it, but if you would like to receive a copy of the entire presentation, email us at info@sglfinancial.com, and we will get you a copy in your hands.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I’d like to add, we did get one comment, which I took very seriously from a client that said, “You scared the living out of me.” All these things that could go wrong, and the market might collapse, and so on. What you all have to be aware of is in your plans, if you’re our client, in your plans, these kind of market fluctuations are already built in. There are protections in your plan with different kind of products and strategies so that if the market does have a big drop of 20 or 30% like that, it’s not going to affect your income or have very little effect on your total plan at all.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And I’ll just add on to that. Well, essentially, if everything’s going good, if you’re on a boat and you’ve got calm waters or a wind behind you blowing you in the direction you want to go, life’s easy, right? The challenge is when you have the choppier waters or you see storm clouds ahead. They might pass you right by, there may not be a storm, but you want to be prepared for those things. So, if you’re looking at your plan and if you have any concern that there’s going to be a pullback in the market or valuations are high or there’s going to be an AI bubble, we’re not bringing those things up to cause you to panic because they’re not here yet. But you want to have those on the radar just in case, and make sure you have a game plan for that in case it happens.

Steve Lewit: Or if you’re not sure if you do, you call, what’s that phone number?

Gabriel Lewit: You call (847) 499-3330 or you go to sglfinancial.com and click contact us.

Steve Lewit: Did you see how he did that, folks? It was seamless. That was good.

Gabriel Lewit: Good amount of practice there. 181 episodes worth I think at this point.

Steve Lewit: I think so.

Gabriel Lewit: All right, so we had mentioned last time, we’re going to switch gears, and we had ran out of time last time to talk about some ways of essentially eliminating stress. And we were talking about the lobster lady who had some life tips, but also there was some areas of the country that are called Blue Zones, which is kind of an interesting name. I’m trying to figure out why it’s called the Blue Zone.

Steve Lewit: I couldn’t figure it out.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, it doesn’t actually tell us. But they call them blue zones, places where people live very, very long and have some of the healthiest habits in the world. And basically, what can we learn from these people? So not just one lobster lady, that’s 104, but what can we learn from some of these blue zones? And we just Googled this. And with the help of Google, it says, “The term ‘Blue Zones’ is a non-scientific term used to describe geographic regions where people tend to live longer than average and maintain good health.” The author, some guy named Dan Buettner, coined the term after drawing blue circles around those areas on a map while studying them.

Steve Lewit: Ah, blue zone.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay, there we go. So the blue zones in case you’re wondering are Okinawa-

Steve Lewit: Okinawa, yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: … Japan, Sardinia, Italy, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, Icaria, Greece and Loma Linda, California, USA.

Steve Lewit: Really?

Gabriel Lewit: That’s what it says.

Steve Lewit: Loma Linda?

Gabriel Lewit: Loma Linda.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, Loma Linda. I have a client that works in Loma Linda.

Gabriel Lewit: Is it Loma Linda or Lo Malinda?

Steve Lewit: It’s Loma Linda.

Gabriel Lewit: Sorry.

Steve Lewit: It’s not like-

Gabriel Lewit: It sounds like you’re saying Loma Linda.

Steve Lewit: It’s not like Lo Malinda

Gabriel Lewit: No. Loma Linda.

Steve Lewit: Low Melinda.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, anyway.

Steve Lewit: You kind of put it together, Loma Linda

Gabriel Lewit: So, let’s talk about these. All right, the first one here we’re going to talk about is Okinawans.

Steve Lewit: It’s Loma Linda.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay, Okinawa is a Japanese Hawaii essentially, okay? It’s 1,000 miles away from Tokyo. And so, if you want to go there, you’re going to have to take a plane or you could boat it, I guess. It would take you a long time. But here’s their tips. Go outside, get 15 minutes of sunlight. All right, so it’s dubbed the Land of Immortals by Chinese expeditions, and they have a reputation for extreme longevity there, all right?

And so, one of the options is go outside, get some sunlight, and also get together friends to have fun, complain, and lend support. It says Okinawans are in general pretty sociable, and they’re part of a social support group in their community as part of their village. And when one of those members need financial or emotional assistance, the others are readily available to support them.

So having some emotional support. And take 10 minutes to pray, meditate, or reflect, if you’re not religious, each and every day, and respect your ancestors. It says the Okinawans go out of their way to maintain a close connection with their ancestors and to pay their respects. And last but not least, gardening, okay? So, Okinawans make exceptional gardeners. Almost all centenarians, 100+ year olds in Okinawa, have grown gardens of their own or have picked up gardening as a hobby. Now why do you think that might be?

Steve Lewit: The connection with the earth. They get nourishment from it. Nature-

Gabriel Lewit: Sunlight, exercise-

Steve Lewit: Sunlight, exercise.

Gabriel Lewit: … relaxation.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, that sounds boring.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I guess you don’t want to live to 100.

Steve Lewit: Well, I don’t want to live in Okinawa to 100. I don’t think.

Gabriel Lewit: These are in the blue zone habits.

Steve Lewit: Okinawa was a tremendous battle, a fierce battle in World War II. The beach for Okinawa. There’s a whole story that everybody should become familiar with.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, let’s move on to Loma Linda. Okay. It’s a treasured find in southern California, located 60 miles east of L.A., known as America’s longevity oasis. All right, so there’s over 21,000 residents that live there, and here are their tips. Okay, well, they don’t consume alcohol, caffeine, or smoke. There’s some Adventists, at least, that live there. It says here, pray, meditate, or reflect every day. Okay, apparently that’s a key thing here.

Steve Lewit: That’s a common theme. That’s a common theme.

Gabriel Lewit: Boost your mood with food. It says their diet, at least of the Adventists, follow a clean vegetarian diet that mainly consists of fruits, veggies, and legumes and plenty of water. Okay.

Steve Lewit: Boring.

Gabriel Lewit: How about Icarians? Icarians? Why are you were laughing at me? You laughed like you knew I said it wrong.

Steve Lewit: No, no, no. I was laughing at Loma Linda’s diet.

Gabriel Lewit: Oh, okay. Well, so here on the eastern Aegean Sea, residents of the famous Greek island have exceptional longevity. One in three residents live past the age of 90 and making it to 100 is often very common. One of their secrets is well-managed stress. Okay, they embrace mountain living. All right. And their favorite activities include gardening, exercise, yard work, and walks to their neighbor’s homes.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: But to me, the next one is the most important one. They take naps.

Steve Lewit: I love that.

Gabriel Lewit: I love this one.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I love that.

Gabriel Lewit: I will nap every day if you give me the time to do so.

Steve Lewit: I didn’t know Icaria.

Gabriel Lewit: Icarians.

Steve Lewit: I never heard of Icaria. Interesting.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, it says here, individuals who nap regularly may have a lower risk of heart disease.

Steve Lewit: Really?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And helps balance your stress.

Steve Lewit: Wow.

Gabriel Lewit: I love napping.

Steve Lewit: Wow.

Gabriel Lewit: They also have a weekly friend date, they say. So, where you spend some time with friends and that gives you, again, some of that social connection.

Steve Lewit: These are very laid-back, peaceful. Take one moment at a time. Do this. Very laid-back lifestyles. Have a thunderstorm once in a while.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, let’s talk about the Sardinians, the last one here. It’s the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. All right, let’s see. It’s got a village called Arzana that has the reputation for the highest percentage of centenarians in Italy. And again, it has to do with the method of stress management. And let’s see, they’re saying don’t take life too seriously and laugh daily. Apparently, residents love cracking jokes with their friends in the afternoon.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes.

Steve Lewit: I’m sorry for my lack of enthusiasm on these topics.

Gabriel Lewit: Plan a happy hour.

Steve Lewit: Oh, yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Do you like fun?

Steve Lewit: I do like fun.

Gabriel Lewit: I’m not sure.

Steve Lewit: Plan a happy hour. Is this in Sardinia?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.

Steve Lewit: Do they eat sardines during their happy hour?

Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know if they do, but they have glasses of wine with friends.

Steve Lewit: Good, good. Good for them.

Gabriel Lewit: The wines they have two to three times the level of artery scrubbing flavonoids, though. Wow. How about them apples?

Steve Lewit: All right.

Gabriel Lewit: And lastly, it says call your grandparents if you have them. I think if you’re a centenarian, you probably don’t have the ability to call your grandparents anymore. But the point is, they have very close family ties. And even when people are younger, they really try to stay connected with the elder generations in their families.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. So the theme here seems to be don’t get involved in high-stress kinds of things. Don’t put stress on your body by eating bad food. Take time out and just connect with the universe in any way that you connect with it. And drink wine with high levels of flavonoids in them.

Gabriel Lewit: I forgot the last one. I’m sorry. The Nicoyans.

Steve Lewit: The Nicoyans.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. They’re in the Latin America blue zone. Okay. I like one of theirs in particular. It says all Nicoyans have a plan de vida, or a reason to live. And essentially, they develop a personal purpose statement, and they find something that drives them to establish greater good or make them feel useful. And according to research, purpose-driven individuals are more likely to live longer.

Steve Lewit: And I love that. See, I think everybody should do that because especially when you retire. There’s data out that if you don’t have a purpose in retiring, you short circuit your lifespan because you don’t have that energy that purpose gives you, and inspiration gives you, and fun gives you, and flavonoids gives you.

Gabriel Lewit: The flavonoids, yes. Yeah. You need some of those.

Steve Lewit: You got to have them.

Gabriel Lewit: Two to three more times the average wine flavonoid.

Steve Lewit: Definitely.

Gabriel Lewit: All right, can I 180 one last part for this?

Steve Lewit: Yeah, man.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So, there’s one other study totally unrelated to the blue zones. All right. Where if you want to have a happier, healthier retirement, this is a new study, okay? Just in, hot off the presses, and this is the title, Money Can Buy You Happiness says studies suggesting that more is in fact more.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Does anything excite you today?

Steve Lewit: I’m excited. Well, I’m thinking, I’m agreeing because for a long time I would say money does not buy you happiness.

Gabriel Lewit: And I wanted to 180 of this because all the things we were just talking about are essentially saying-

Steve Lewit: And finally, a study that says if you have money, you could be happier.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, having money is a lot easier than not having money.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. There was a 2010 study that said that happiness tends to cap out the moment you make 75 grand a year. And what’s interesting about this study is it blows that study out of the water and negates all the things that that study had said. Because this is finding that, quite frankly, the more money you have, and this study really paid attention to making sure people that had lots of money actually responded. But essentially, more money equaled much happier people.

Steve Lewit: Well, think about it. More money is more freedom. If you have a desire, you can satisfy it more quickly. You can travel more.

Gabriel Lewit: You can go to these blue zones and check them out.

Steve Lewit: You can go to a blue zone and do nothing. You have all of that opportunity. Now, where it works against you is that if you worry about your money all the time and you’re uptight about it or about keeping it and having it, well, that’s where it works against you.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. It says one of the major reasons they believe it makes you happier is that sense of control over your lives that money provides. And that’s really what you’re buying with more money, is that feeling. And so, I think that’s great because one of our taglines here at SGL is Building Wealth for Life. So, with this new study, we can say literally just by us helping you grow your money and protect it, in other words, not losing it, number one. Building more of it, number two, we can by osmosis there improve, or whatever word I’m looking for, we can help improve your happiness levels.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. It’s our purpose. What do they call it? Credo?

Gabriel Lewit: Something la vita, right?

Steve Lewit: La Vita. DaVita, something. DaVita. Well, whatever they called it, that is our purpose, folks.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.

Steve Lewit: It drives us.

Gabriel Lewit: It does. Absolutely.

Steve Lewit: It keeps me working.

Gabriel Lewit: I know.

Steve Lewit: It keeps me young.

Gabriel Lewit: You enjoy what you do.

Steve Lewit: It keeps me young. I feel like I’m 10.

Gabriel Lewit: Sometimes I am not sure if you’re not. I’m just kidding.

Steve Lewit: Hey, hey, that was mean. Oh, that was so mean to your dog.

Gabriel Lewit: I was joking.

Steve Lewit: To your dog.

Gabriel Lewit: Come on.

Steve Lewit: All right.

Gabriel Lewit: All right, our friends. Well, we hope you enjoyed our journey today through markets, economics, blue zones, all those fun areas and topics. If you have questions of how we can help you here, give us a call, (847) 499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com, click contact us, and tune in for next week’s show because we will have totally different topics for you, okay?

Steve Lewit: Yes, we will.

Gabriel Lewit: We got through our happiness studies and now we’ll move on to greater things.

Steve Lewit: And that will carry over to the next episode.

Gabriel Lewit: Indeed, indeed.

Steve Lewit: Stay well, everybody.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Take care. We’ll talk to you soon.

Steve Lewit: Bye now.

Gabriel Lewit: Bye.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit. For any questions about your finances, give SGL a call at (847) 499-3330 or visit us on the web at sglfinancial.com, and be sure to subscribe to join us on next week’s episode.

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