Welcome to Retirement Unpacked with Al Smith, owner of Goldn Eagle Financial. You want a retirement plan that alleviates your fears about the future, so you know your money will last. As a chartered financial consultant, Al Smith will help you find a balance between the risk and reward of the market and the safety of your retirement income. And now, here’s your host, Al Smith. Welcome to another program of Retirement Unpacked. I want to thank you for listening on a nice day like today. There’s lots of other things you could be doing, but instead we’re going to talk about how important it is to be on track toward retirement. I’ve met with some people recently who had assets in different places from where they used to work and to the point where they were almost forgetting about them. And in order to make things much simpler, they came into my office and we looked at some of those old 401(k)s and things like that from previous employers and we made things much simpler by bringing them under one umbrella. And that really helps people as they move closer to retirement. If you are not certain where you are with respect to being close to retirement or having adequate income or having a resource that would provide dollars if you needed them for some unforeseen expense, long-term care or something like that, give my office a call because we can have a conversation about that and determine if you are on track or what steps we might need to take so that your retirement will be very pleasurable full of joy and not have concerns about having adequate income in retirement. My number 3037441128 and if I’m not there, I answer my voicemail messages rather promptly. This afternoon we’re in for a real treat because Jeff Patti, who is running for the State House of Representatives in the 38th District, is here with us today and Jeff, tell us where is the 38th District. Sure, Alan, first just thank you so much for having me on, I really appreciate it. The 38th District is Western Repo County and a little portion of Eastern Jeff Coast, so it’s a good bit of Centennial and little tin. Oh, that’s a nice part of the city. I know that’s where I both live and work and my vote has already been cast. I won’t tell a lot of listeners where it went, but I’m having you on my show today. Tell us how do you think you would be different than your incumbent and your incumbent, her name is Gritian, pardon me, Gretchen Riden. He’s presently on the City Council in little tin and I know she’s had the endorsement of Jared Polis, John Hickenlooper, Jason Crowe, and Michael Bennett and these are Democrats who could always find some other use for our tax dollars than returning them to us like table requires. Yeah, no, that’s right. She’s actually not the incumbent, this is an open seat, but you’re right, this is a Democraticly held seat right now and it’s one that we want to overturn. That long list of endorsements is exactly how we’re going to be different. It signals, even though she doesn’t have experience in the state house, it signals exactly how she’s going to act in the state house. And if you want, put all of those, those gentlemen and ladies have been pushing, then this is your candidate. But I would argue that that is not at all what we need for Colorado. We have got to get changed right now at the Capitol. We’ve got to get back to fundamental principles of liberty and justice and we’ve got to get back to fundamental principles of freedom. None of those individuals are advocating for that. They’re advocating like you said for more control and that’s what we’ve got to stop. Well, if I described her as the incumbent, I was incorrect. I meant to describe her as your opponent, maybe your opponent sounded like incumbent, but I looked up a little bit about her. She’s been in the city council in Denver and she’ll be up for reelection and her background is a therapist. So she is very much in favor of a lot of things having to do with the homeless and addiction, mental health and equity and housing. And while these are noble pursuits, they all seem to drain the public coffers without necessarily having the best results. Yeah, that’s right. This is one of the things that I think many well-intended individuals that are on the left fall into. It’s this idea that what they want is the moral good but how they’re going about it is all wrong. We have got to look at the results of what we’re doing. You know, Ronald Reagan said way back in the 60s and it’s time for choosing. He said every now and then we need to read the score. And that was 30 years after welfare program work. We’ve now got a lot more mileage, a lot more water under the bridge for what’s going on with all of these different programs and they’re not working. This isn’t the way they’re supposed to work. It’s not the function of government and as a result what we’re doing isn’t working. So we can mean well. We can go out there and try to tell everybody what we’re doing well but if we’re not actually getting the results that we’re saying what we’re actually doing is something that’s just appeasing ourselves. It’s a false sense of compassion and that’s one of the biggest problems we’re seeing. Well that’s absolutely right. Just one component of that for example, addiction and it’s truly sad when people have alcohol addictions or opiate addictions but our church has a program called Celebrate Recovery, our church’s redemption hills and that’s grown from about six people to about 30 or 40 people every Thursday night at redemption hills. And we have a lot of positive results through faith in the Lord and some of the folks who are providing free needles and things of this nature. It just makes the addiction worse rather than really helping people with a step forward. Yes, that’s absolutely right. My wife and I work with a program that helps the homeless and particularly homeless mothers and one of the things that people misunderstand when you pull up to an intersection for example and you have no relationship with the individual and you feel compelled to hand the individual money outside of maybe hearing from the Lord otherwise you may be doing more harm than good. And in some sense you’re just driving away and it feels good. It feels good. It feels like you’ve done something and this is what we see a large part of the Capitol too but you’ve created a transaction on a relationship. The program we work with actually builds those relationships so you can know whether there’s any abuse in the situation. You can also know how best to help the individual. You spend the time and the quality time to really pick them up when they’re willing to come up. Otherwise you can find yourself just in situations that’s more codependency enabling where you’re actually creating more of a problem and solving it and we’re doing that very thing at the Capitol. Their intentions are not enough. We have to do the right thing not just mean well. You know I totally agree and I don’t provide resources or funds for the people on the street corners not because I don’t have compassion but I know I have a son who’s an alcoholic and he told me about people in some of the treatment programs he’s been in that could make $100 by noon. Once they got it they’d go by alcohol or heroin. So if you give a lot of those people cash you’ll just be furthering their addiction if you give them something to eat that is better if you happen to have it in your car. That’s right but it doesn’t mean we don’t want to love our neighbors. This is actually what this comes down to is what’s the right way to love our neighbors. And in fact when you look at it when it’s done to the state it gets to be sort of a perverted sense of this. Instead of me loving my neighbor and taking the time to build a relationship and actually investing into that person that has need is I see fit and fill lead. I’m taking the sort of the state and I’m holding it to someone else’s neck and making them do this for me without actually any investment into the individual and relationship is transactional. Frederick Bostiott has a really great quote I think you’re going to like this out. You know because this battle of socialism goes way back and he says socialism like the ancient ideas from which it’s brings confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this every time we object to a thing being done by government the socialists can conclude that we object to it being done at all. It’s not that we don’t want to help those that are in need. It’s that we need to do it in a way that’s right and that is inside freedom and society where you and I in our choice and in liberty get to go and reach out and love our neighbors not by compulsion by the state. Well I think a great example of that and this isn’t bashing FEMA but the work that Samaritan’s purse has done in western North Carolina is unbelievable compared to some of the work that’s done by FEMA and Samaritan’s purse is completely privately funded for Christian help for those people who are suffering enormously from Hurricane Helene. It’s a great organization you know what this is another example of when in a private endeavor we’re able to go out and make a difference because here’s the thing about it if Samaritan’s purse wasn’t doing a great job I could take my donation dollars and I could give it somewhere else. If you’re compelled by the government to go and give through that means only your stock you can’t take those dollars and put them somewhere else. I mean you can look at California right now. They have billions of dollars that are invested in the homeless programs. They did an audit in April and they cannot demonstrate that there was any effectiveness or even to the extent of what it was spent on. There’s such a hole in that line of sight. If I was giving to that program I would stop giving and I would give to one that’s actually effective. But when government’s involved it’s a one size fits all player in the room that sucks all the oxygen out of the other players could otherwise have. Well and I make perhaps a silly comparison but the comparison I often make is that people are like bears. Bears if they can get free food in the dumpster they’re not going to be digging for roots or doing things in nature and the homeless if they can get all kinds of free things in California that’s not going to get rid of the homeless problem. It’s going to make it bigger. Yeah, the homeless problem is very complex. There’s a lot to it. You mentioned before there’s addiction. There’s also mental health issues. There are also those who are genuinely in need. And then there are those who and you mentioned this to individuals who may be abusing the generosity of others in order to get what they want and what they will. And it’s only in relationship you’re actually able to distinguish who is who. And that’s why it’s so different than just handing out billions of dollars to government program that starts lending out to anybody. Everybody is though they’re painting them with the same brush. They’re all a part of the same group. They’re not. It’s complicated and it needs more individualized touch points. No I would totally agree. And I think a great deal of the homeless problems goes all the way back to the 1960s. And I believe it was the ACLU that said people who are mentally ill cannot be held without their permission in mental institutions. And so from that point forward they were released into society and some of them were able to fend for themselves but a great many fell into crime, drug addiction, homelessness and are the underbelly of our society so to speak. And we have not done a good job in providing the solutions for them. Yeah the way we treat our mentally ill and others in our society is borderline of crime. What we’re doing is wrong. We’ve also shifted entirely as a society away from my responsibility with my neighbors in conjunction with others around me to love one another. And we’ve shitted it to that’s the government’s job. I mean you think about if you were to go back to the 60s and you saw someone hurting on the side of the road, all likelihood you might stop and try to help them. Now today we have multiple problems of why you might not want to do that both for your own personal safety and otherwise. But there’s this thought of that someone else’s problem. Oh the government will come and get this. If you think for one quick example you think of the Good Samaritan story. You come upon the person hurting in the scriptures, the value is you come up and you take care of that individual. You carry them, you take care of them because that person was now your neighbor across your path. What’s happening in government right now is instead you walk up, you see that person, you go find a Roman soldier and you tell that Roman soldier they need to go help that individual by compulsion of someone else. That’s not right. No I totally agree. And the concept of bringing a freedom and smaller government and responsibility back to our state house, that is really going to help. And right now unfortunately there is a larger majority of Democrats to Republicans. We live in a blue state unfortunately. But we would certainly like to flip the 38th district. And I know the previous representative has elected not to run. But I think going forward having one seat that’s Democratic Republican will be helpful going forward in our state house and we’ll have more Jeff about what you would do if you were elected right after the break. Al Smith of Golden Eagle Financial as a fiduciary will act in your best interest. Many people misunderstand that it is critically important for your financial advisor to be a fiduciary. Like Al Smith, with retirement planning you won’t know you have problems until it’s too late. That’s why you need Al’s extensive knowledge and years of experience to strategize with you, taking into consideration your individual circumstances. And you’ll have Al’s cell phone number. If you have a concern or question no need to press one for English, just call him personally. If you need to make a change or have a question about something, you can reach him directly. Most importantly, financial advisors are typically fee based. Al doesn’t charge anything up front. Rather an industry standard rate based on your portfolio’s performance. So there’s no upfront cost. Find out more with a free consultation. You can reach out by clicking on Golden Eagle on the klseradial.com Advertiser’s page. Investment advisory services offered through bookstone capital management LLC, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Golden Eagle Financial Limited are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM but are offered in soul through individual license and appointed agents. Welcome back to retirement unpacked. We’re here talking with Jeff Patti who is running for the open seat, the 38th district in the Colorado State House. And we’re truly hoping we flipped that one also last week. I had George Muuma on and for the 25th district and we’re certainly hoping with his strong background in public service and being a police officer, chief of police and Morrison that he’s going to help us out. Also Robin Carnes is running for the state Senate. We truly hope she can win that also so that we can make Colorado a little less blue and a little more red. And Jeff, I know there were some things you were going to talk about what the government is doing with respect to utilities that are not going to be helpful for us residents and taxpayers. Yeah, thank you. So this is just one I’m picking on because utility costs and particularly energy costs, which is really what we’re talking about, impact everything. It’s not just the electric bill that you have that you see every month. It impacts everything you do up and down. It’ll impact it discreetly and underneath the cost of groceries, the cost of lumber, the cost of building, everything gets impacted by it. And one of the things that we’ve done, our governor has done, is put us on a direction and of course for a totally green as I call it, which is a misnomer energy, right? It’s a push just towards that as instead of what would be common sense, which would be a bundle of energy, all the different pieces of energy mix that make the most sense to have a real security in our energy system. Here’s the example since 2019, because of this move we’re on, since 2019, the cost of your electric, residential electric bill has gone up by nearly 40%. 40%. Now, that’s not just hurting every one of our pockets, but we were talking a minute ago about those who are financially in distress. It’s definitely hurting those in particular. It’s gone up 40%. But here’s the scary thing. When you look going forward to 2040, the independent institute did this study. Going forward to 2040. We implement what the governor wants. By then your energy cost is going to go up three and a half times what it is right now. It’s not inflationary dollars. If you couldn’t afford a bill three and a half times higher than it is today, you’re not going to be able to afford it where we’re going. This is the tragedy that’s happening in front of us and it’s completely unnecessary. That’s for sure. I know there’s on a national level, there has been enormous concern about inflation, but they often fail to break it down to the cost of energy because the cost of fuel, the cost of gasoline and diesel and so forth, that’s figured into every single thing that we purchased because it had to be brought to the Brook and Marta location of wherever you purchased it. So everything we buy had to be shipped and delivered there so the cost of fuel is incredibly important. And I think some of the folks in our state house and the governor and so forth would love for things to be more green but they never point out how are we going to pay for that? That’s absolutely right, but you know every little thing government does ends up having a cost. They’re not producing money. They might be printing it. That’s a different inflationary problem, but everything they do has a cost. And for an example, some of the regulations that we have in our housing, we talk about the cost of living, we talk about the cost of housing. According to the Association of Homebuilders, almost 24% of new housing costs are due directly to regulations. And that’s single homes, almost 24%. The Trump administration actually had some recommendations on how to lower those regulations at the state level that we should be taking a hard look at. But what really gets scary is when you look at a multifamily home, that same group said it’s 41%, nearly 41% of the cost are due to regulations. If you want to impact some of this inflationary cost that we’re seeing across the board, we’ve got to stop our bad policies and energy. We have to stop our bad policies and our homeing, our cost of living and our regulations. And we’ve got to really look seriously again at getting back to fundamental free market principles. They’re going to be much better for all of us. Well, I agree. Regulations have their place, but there’s something called over-regulation. I have heard stories of people who’ve had maybe a small fire in their home or something like that. And the cost for their homeowner’s insurance goes up enormously because rather than just repairing a small area in their home, they have to bring it fully up to code just like it’s a brand new home. And I think building codes are good for safety purposes, but when they cost people’s home owner’s insurance to become astronomical, and that has been an enormous inflationary thing in Colorado with the fires and the hail that we’ve experienced. And I think with additional regulation, it just makes it worse. Yeah, that’s absolutely right. We’ve, you know, there’s another quote, this one’s from Reagan that I think is spot on. This was from 81. He says, “We’ve gone astray from first principles. We’ve lost sight of the rule that individual freedom, ingenuity, or at the very core of everything we’ve accomplished. Government’s first duties to protect the people, not run their lives. What we’ve done is we’ve inverse that. We have built layer upon layer of regulations that are not necessary. These are the overly burdensome ones that are trying to dictate every little piece of your life as opposed to protecting the people. That’s why you can see how badly we’ve handled our crime situation, which is a whole new topic. But this is the problem we’ve gotten ourselves into. And if you look, for example, this may be shocking to some of your listeners, but if you look, for example, just in this last session, 2024, legislative session meets from January until May, you look at that four months, 120 days, we passed over 500 bills in that period of time. And those bills can average about 10 pages of changes to the Carter Vice Statutes of CRS. You’re looking at 5,000 pages worth of changes to the CRS roughly. That’s radical. I don’t think you need that much control and oversight by big government. I certainly don’t. And I certainly don’t think your listeners do either. It’s radical. I would love to have a candidate say, run for me, and I’m going to reduce the amount of laws on the federal level, the state level, the county level. I would just love to hear that because I think it’s safe to say that we are over-regulated. We absolutely are. Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court Justice, is from Colorado. And he put a book out recently on this very thing. I think it’s called Overrule. But he talks about in that book how, in his own lifetime, at the federal level, because of course, we have federal laws and state laws and local ordinances and such. He says, at the federal level, what we’ve seen in his lifetime is a doubling of the US code, a doubling of the US code alone. And he talks about different examples of how individuals have come up and been caught in the legal system. And great expense to themselves. A great peril to themselves. Because maybe they didn’t put the water fountain as high as it was supposed to be, or as far from the wall as it was supposed to be. A lot of stuff that isn’t common sense, but they were entrapped in the system. And all of that is what’s leading us to, rather than being free and able to do the great things the society that were made to do, leading us to be stuck, trying to figure out what of those 5,000 pages worth of changes are new that impact our lives now. Boy, you’re absolutely right. There’s another book I read a number of years ago. I don’t recall the author, but the title was “Undemocratic.” And it has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans. By “Undemocratic,” they were talking about all the enormous agencies that basically pass, they don’t pass laws, they create regulations. Like if a farmer, if there’s a really heavy rain, and he has an enormous pool of water on his land, he can’t eradicate that because that would be destroying a wet land, even if it didn’t exist, before a heavy rain. And now he’s falling under these regulations, which are burdensome and making it difficult for him to make a living. Yeah, and this goes back to what we were talking about in the first half of the segment. And that is, there can be a lot of good intention. There can be a lot of folks that are looking out there and thinking, if we just do this, it can help some people. But we have to be wise about what we’re actually passing. And if you look at history, what we have here in the United States is unique. Milton Friedman used to talk about this, “Liberty and Freedom are very rare in the world. They’re very unique and special. And it can be snuffed out as Reagan famously said, even in a generation. If we’re not careful, we will continue to push more and more control and more and more collectivization to the federal government and to the state government, like we’ve been doing. And what we’re going to get in the end is not a free and beautiful and moral society. We’re going to get what we see in the few states that are already ahead of us. And it’s now, unfortunately, just a few of them, like California. You’re going to get corruption and cronism. And you’re going to get a lot of loss of freedom. And you’re going to get a lot of overregulation. It’s not going to be a place we want to live. And in fact, worse, if you look at history, it can become even a very dangerous place. Or you’re absolutely right, Jeff. And what would be one of the first things that you would do, or you would try to move toward if rather not if, but when you’re elected? That’s right. Yeah. So the very first thing is something you mentioned before. And that is we need to stop the bleeding. You know, if you’ve got a swamp that’s filling up, the first thing is, as the gentleman told me, Ron Redden told me, the first thing you can do is stop filling the swamp. We need to stop all of these bills. We need to put a stop to all of this stuff that’s unnecessary and get back to the chief role of government, which is to protect the people. And to that end, one of the things that needs to happen is, I think there’s a loss of understanding of how much money we spend just at the state level. We have to have some transparency into what that is. Boy, I totally agree with you on that. Well, Jeff, how can people reach you or what is your website? How can people help support your campaign? Absolutely. If you live in District, please vote. We’d love to have you vote. That would be so helpful to our campaign. The other thing to reach our website, it’s Jeff Patty for Colorado. So it’s Jeff, P-A-T-T-Y for Colorado.com. Well, very good. I want everyone who’s listening to be sure to vote. And in Colorado, you’ve probably gotten a vote in the mail. Take that to your local ballot location or put a stamp on it, put it in the mail, and do it as soon as possible. If you have concerns about your own financial circumstances, if you’re on track, toward retirement, call my office and arrange a conversation with me. 303-744-1128. God bless you. Thank you for listening. And let’s keep the folks in Israel in our prayers. Thank you for listening to Retirement Unpacked with your host, Al Smith, of Golden Eagle Financial. Set up a free consultation with Al today at klseradio.com/money. Find your purpose in retirement with Golden Eagle Financial. Investment Advisory Services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, a registered investment advisor. VCM and Golden Eagle Financial Limited are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents.