YouSaid · the spoken record

Helaine Olen

lines on the record: 91
first: 2016-03-24
most recent: 2016-03-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, it's more, right? Yeah. It's more like 400 now, right? And understand, it's not in the DSM. So there's no code for it.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love wealth therapy, right? The idea is that people need psychological help managing the emotions around money, right? Now, somehow this mostly applies, strangely enough, to people who have the money to pay the bills for therapy. Because understand, financial therapy is not cheap. It's $250 an hour and up. Not in this city.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, and then the kicker is right. It is condescending. Thank you. And then so this women's financial advice has this weird combination of sounding empowering and infantilizing at the same time. It's kind of like, God, you're multitasking so much. You have so many burdens here. We'll take this one burden from you so that you don't have to bother your little head about it, right? So let's.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, it's ridiculous. The idea is that women have special financial needs. We do have special financial needs. Let me explain. We earn less than men at all. And of course, the final kick is we live longer, so we need more money. Now, the financial services industry says, oh, then you should save more money. And we have special advice for you. Now, understand, if you're underpaid, aren't working as steadily and living longer I mean, this is like the old lie about Ginger Rogers that I think Ann Richards once said. She had to do everything Fred Estair did, but backwards in high-heeled shoes. This is not going to work. So there is no special financial advice for women. What women have is a social and economic problem that needs to be addressed.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Situation. In fact, Jim Kramer doesn't even take personal finance clients. How could you be an advisory situation with him? That makes no sense.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Well, that's absolute falsehood. That's one of the things being put out there by the opponents to expanding the fiduciary standard. It got linked to by the drudge report recently, got hundreds of thousands of hits, hundreds, I think last time I checked about 500,000. And I, of course, went and checked this out. And I was like, really? We should only be so lucky, right? And the answer is, of course, this is absolute falsehood. The fiduciary standard only applies if you have a relationship with the person. If you call a financial radio program or a TV show and you discuss, you ask for advice, let me explain something. You might think you're getting legal advice. You are entertainment people, okay? That's exactly a 30 second overview of your financial situation and somebody just rants for a few minutes, a la Dave Ramsey, or Jim Kramer that you are in an advisor.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Well, the turnaround claim is that people won't pay for it. And of course, they might be right, but one of the reasons is because of the industry has basically told people that they're getting the service for free, which is not true, by the way. Well, of course not. But people don't see it that way because, again, they don't have to tell them. So people think that they're getting a free service when in fact they're paying commissions.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's got to be some real title there. So, you know, the idea is if there's no conflict, there's no commission discrepancy, you won't be able to have this conflict of interest. Over here, it looks like the Department of Labor is not going to do the commission issue. They're going to allow commissions, but they are going to insist that it can't affect your thinking.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“50 basis points over time and again? And so the idea is, of course, you can't have a conflict of interest if you are on commission because one of the things that's going on right now is people are financial advisor types. By the way, in financial advisor, I have to say it's just an absolute junk term that means absolutely nothing. You're either a broker.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It in the US. In the UK is a bit different. They've banned commission sales, which we're not looking to do here. And that seemed, and under the same theory, of course, because if you can't do a commission. And it's in the capital.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bonkers. This starts in 2008. It is going on to this day. And essentially they are claiming people won't be able to get good advice, middle class people, because they won't be able to afford to give them advice, which when you think about it, if you believe them, which I don't, but we'll come to that in a minute, they are essentially saying, if we have to act in our client's best interest, we don't have a business model, okay? This is the logical follow-through, but they don't admit that, right? So, in fact, what we know is because the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College studied this a couple of years ago, it will cut into their profits, but they can still make a profit giving financial advice. They just can't make as much of a profit as before. And they're really unhappy about that.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so the Department of Labor decides a few years ago that they're going to bring individual retirement accounts under the fiduciary standard as well. Okay. And you have to understand something. Regular accounts are managed under the rule of the SEC and retirement accounts are under the Department of Labor. So that's a whole other craziness. So the Department of Labor says we're going to deal with IRAs. But for most people, they're investing their retirement money, right? The financial industry goes insane.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they would say that that's perfectly okay. And you could even go further than that, right? So anyway, so most people don't realize this, though, because the kick is, of course, they don't even have to tell you this. So the fiduciary standard is, is what the registered investment advisors and certified financial planners mostly work to, which is the idea that they do have to act in your best interest and they have to put your best interest ahead of their own. The Department of Labor.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, they've got some Hippocratic oath to our finances. This is absolute BS. They work to something called them, not all of them, work to something called the suitability standard, which is sort of this idea that as long as the financial advice they're giving you is sort of okay. Yeah, suitable. It can line their pockets as much as yours.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, we all think, or most of us think, that when we go off to seek financial advice, we're going to go off and see somebody and they're the equivalent of a doctor, right? They've got some hippocratic lawyer.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To go find somebody with a couple of billion to invest, or even better, set themselves up on a yacht outside the Caymans or some other really nice place in the Caribbean and trade for themselves and make a lot of money. Why are they selling you the secret? Makes no sense whatsoever.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a subsector of the whole public. But don't buy individual stocks. Don't buy go into managed mutual funds. I mean, the thing is, is people are being ripped off blind here. They're being sold on this idea that there's a secret out there and that they're going to find the person who's going to give them the secret and they're going to do better than the markets, right? A couple of things. First, this is a really expensive way to invest. So Wall Street is making a killing. That's why you're being sold on this idea. Second, every study we know shows that the vast majority of people, by which I mean about more than 99%, have no ability to outguess the markets year in and year out, especially after costs are taken into account. And third, you then have to ask a certain amount of common sense. If you have found that rare person who actually has that ability, right, or you think you are that person, why on earth would anybody tell you this, right? You and your 10,000 or 100,000 or even million or two million dollars, right? Surely they're going to.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think for people who are investing, and this is a big, you know, what if, right? Because not what if, but, you know, a big.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. And so he puts it online on the same blog that he interviewed me with. And the next thing I know is on Google Alerts, I'm starting to get my name with index card. And I'm like, what the heck? Index card? And then, of course, we ended up, you know, I knew what happened pretty fast. And we ended up deciding to do a book together.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the way the index card came about is he was interviewing me for a blog cast. Remember when people used to do video blogcasts way back in 2013, right? And he interviewed me about Pound Foolish. And at some point in the interview, he said, well, this is just ridiculous. Everything you need to know about personal finance could be put on an index card, meaning, of course, the industry is selling BS, right? And we laughed about it and we go on with the interview and neither of us thinks about it for the next half hour or whatever we're doing, right? And then people begin to write him and say, that index card, that sounds great. Where is it? Thinking like he had done an index card. Of course, he had done no such thing. So he decides to do an index card, which you have right here in front of you. I mean, literally, this is.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Remember that line of argument. Exactly. And as I always say, try getting a job anywhere without a smartphone, first of all, right? Right. But second, it's just absolutely, again, untrue. If anything, people with less money actually have less smartphones than anybody else. They actually do surveys on this. But so this whole idea that we're just spending ourselves into oblivion is ridiculous.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything. It's that great line from Three Petty Opera. Live life in luxury. That's what it's for, right? We like luxury. There's nothing wrong with it as long as you can afford it, right? So on the other side, though, on the right-wing side,”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And therefore, it's tainted. Right. You shouldn't be wearing good clothes, or you shouldn't be enjoying good food. There's something not right about it, right? And on the way, does that?”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, my older son might frankly be one of them, but that's neither here nor there at the moment. But the issue is that what was going on is people's salaries were stagnating and falling relative to inflation, but what was going up was healthcare, housing, education, childcare, stuff like that. And that was going up at rates over inflation, not for years, not for a decade, but for decades and continues to this day. So the idea that you're throwing your money away at Starbucks is absurd. What was really going on is you can't keep up with the cost of living. The other thing that really makes me crazy about this is that the idea that we're spending too much kind of falls into this sweet spot in the American, you know, canon, right? Where on the left wing, spending is always seen as somehow morally wrong in some way, right? It's a”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's absolute BS. I mean, there's a couple of things wrong with it on a mathematical level and what's going on in our society, it makes no sense, right? Our problems are not, and I particularly use a Starbucks latte because it became so famous, our problems are not that people are drinking too many Starbucks lates, though I'm sure there are people who are spending too much money at Starbucks, right? Or too much money”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fairly rampant way back then. Right. It was when we were children, elder poverty was still fairly significant. And so that's Sylvia Porter.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Down on inflation Well, poor Sylvia, right? She never recovered from this. So she starts giving advice to people like, don't buy veal, which was then very expensive. Buy chicken. And of course, most of her people were never buying veal. And what had to be my favorite, and unfortunately I found this column after I wrote Pound Foolish, actually suggested to people they substitute several teaspoons of peanut butter for lean meat if they couldn't get their social security check to stretch far enough for meat. Actually, the United States government at the time had a better idea. That's when we got the cost of living adjustment for Social Security. Because the elderly were increasing trouble as the inflation began to pick up in the 1960s. Elder poverty was.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, she started very political. She started off as an extremely political figure. She would get into arguments with the Roosevelt administration over bond issues. She gave tax advice to JFK, as I said. But then over time, like a lot of gurus, she starts to become increasingly wealthy, increasingly prominent. She gets increasingly cut off. And what starts happening is by the 1970s, she's giving inflation advice. She joins President Ford's Whip Inflation Now campaign, which was really absurd.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And over time, over a period of several years, I mean, this isn't instantaneous. Yeah. She sort of creates what we today call personal finance. And by 1960, she's on the cover of Time magazine. She gives advice to JFK. Lyndon Johnson actually says something like, why can't my economic advisors talk and give advice more like Sylvia? She becomes this massive guru. And of course, today she's all but forgotten. I mean, it's kind of wild to me. Nobody, almost no one under the age of 50 even remembers who she is anymore.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who is a 19 at the time, 19 year old college student at Hunter, when her mother loses the family fortune in a stock market scam after the 1929 market crash? And Sylvia Porter decides to make it her life's mission to make sure something like the Great Depression can't happen again. And she decides to go to journalism. These are the days when you can actually make a living in journalism, right? So anyway, she goes into journalism and she starts writing for the New York Post and she's got this sort of engaging voice. And over a period of a number of years, they give her a column. This turns into a regular feature. And it's initially SF Porter says. They don't even say she's a woman until the early 1940s.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so there was always little bits of like budget guidance and papers, right? And there was also always investment advice, you know, prior to the Great Depression. What happens afterwards is a woman named Sylvia Porter.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I get this gig and I run down to the BEF center. I lift a couple of blocks from the Beverly Center and I buy a copy of personal finance for dummies and a couple of other personal finance books. And with this background, I go off to do my story. And at some point, I start asking the subject all about her money life. You know, makeovers work like fashion makeovers, right? And I write this thing up, had the thing in, wait for my screaming phone call. And instead of a screaming phone call, I get, that was great. Can you do another one? I'm thinking, well, they just paid me double my usual fee. Sure. And I do another one. And the same thing happens and another one. And at some point, I realize I'm something of an expert.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, this is great. It was totally by accident. I was living out in LA with my husband and someone in late December of 1996 calls me up from the big paper in town and says, we need someone to sub in at the Money Makeover feature over Christmas, of course. Do you know anything about personal finance? And all I know about personal finance is the fact that it pays a heck of a lot”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of saying, well, we shouldn't have given loans to people we knew were lying or that our people, you know, filled out the paperwork for them or, you know, we gave them these loans with gotcha clauses”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But at the same time, of course, they are not acknowledging that, right? So the whole thing is kind of misbegotten, but we all believe it because it just sounds so good. What could, like you said, what could be wrong with teaching personal finance? One more thing. And so the final kick to this is, is it then turns around and sets you up as the person to be blamed when it goes wrong. So when 2008 happened, the banks literally turned around and said, well, if people had just managed their money right, they never would have bought these houses. They couldn't afford.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's like teaching financial literacy in elementary school and high school. And, you know, and if we can just teach children how to manage their money, they'll remember it as adults. Now, of course, this doesn't work. Again, this doesn't work because they test these kids and year in and year out. The kids who've taken these classes know no more than the kids who haven't taken these classes. But the other thing that's going on is the financial world moves in a fast, fast pace. What you're teaching people in 1995 is not necessarily what they're going to need to learn in 2005.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“PSA in late 1995 on auto loans that absolutely nobody remembers except for the fact it is in the Nexus database. And then they get this idea that they're going to hook up and do children's personal finance. And this is what takes off because it's the late 1990s. And zero to three.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Instead of saying a 30 year fixed mortgage, they're going to claim that they can teach you how to read 100 single space pages with tiny little print, with more gotcha clauses than gotchas exist. This is obviously false. And when you look at the history of the movement, the modern movement actually begins in the 1990s with Ford Motor Credit. And Ford Motor Credit had something of a problem. They were getting involved in subprime auto loans, which of course all the automakers were. But Ford had a problem because a publicity problem, a PR problem, because Henry Ford was always against credit like that. So they came up with this idea that they're going to teach people about financial literacy. And they're going to teach them how to do how to manage these loans. So they hook up with some Washington people and some economists and sure enough their first effort is a”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does it work? And it doesn't work for a bunch of different reasons. First of all, people just don't remember stuff. Second, financial literacy doesn't work for another basic reason. It's people literally don't remember. But more to the point, financial literacy is a movement brought to us by the financial services sector. And it was always set up to work around the fact that they are doing what they want to do. So instead of giving us financial I hate using the word products, but that's the word they use, right?”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Financial literacy broke my heart. I started looking at it several years ago as a solve. I now always feel like when I talk about it, I'm badmouthing apple pie or Thanksgiving people. Okay, so here's the real”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what's wrong with it? Well, there's a lot of things wrong with it, right? But the overriding issue is that it's being sold to people under false pretenses. There's this idea that somehow if you can just save up enough money and invest correctly, you're going to work your way out of what is a greater economic problem that we have right now, which is wage stagnation, the growth of the 1%, wealth inequality, and so on. That is just simply untrue. It doesn't work for most people.”
2016-03-24 · Masters in Business · Barry Ritholtz’s Masters in Business: Helaine Olen Interview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source