Happy Monday Future Funders Family!

If you are a Harrison Ford enthusiast, today in 1983 the action adventure film Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark was released. The movie was a huge success and it spawned numerous sequels including a new one coming out at the end of this month.

Ok, let’s get to it!

💬 Quote Of The Week

🍽️ The Main Course

Headlines That Matter

Investing

Your Money, Your Choice

🚀 The quick version: BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink was trending on Twitter this past week for 4 full days as a controversial video resurfaced of him discussing his view that BlackRock should use its power to “force behaviors” (here is the YouTube clip).

BlackRock is the biggest investment management company across the globe with more than $10 Trillion in assets under management (AUM). Some of their other competitors you may have heard of include firms like Vanguard, Fidelity, State Street, and other asset management firms (Sidebar: the way all these firms mainly make money is through fees on your investment accounts with them).

These companies have a significant influence today on corporate America; they hold that power because of us. Here is how it works: .

• The funds or single stocks you own in your brokerage account with firms like BlackRock theoretically are supposed to give you a say in how those companies conduct business (usually 1 share = 1 vote).

• Because investment management firms have massive amounts of assets under management, they wind up owning a lot largely on your behalf (collectively they can wind up owning 30% or more of an individual company).

• How much of a stock they own is data that is publicly available by the way if you search for a stock you own and look at the holders list (here is an example using Apple’s stock).

• They largely vote these shares how they want on all votes around company matters. Whether it’s deciding a new CEO, deciding on what the company spends money on, or deciding how the company chooses to do business, these large investment management firms have a big say.

Many prominent investors have taken notice and are warning against the growing power of these institutions. 

👪 How it affects your family: If you have investment accounts at one of these firms, chances are the firm is using the underlying shares in your accounts to shape company behavior.

This may be totally fine with you if you agree with what they are doing (we will never tell you what to think), but the broader point is that you should at least be aware of this trend when it comes to your money.

If you want to take charge of this issue, here are some productive steps today take today:

• Watch the headlines around whatever investment firm holds your accounts. Watch what the leaders are saying and doing.

• Proxy voting is when these firms vote the shares you own on your behalf. In most cases they will have to ask your permission (this may have been something they showed you in fine print). But the fact is you have a legal right to the shares you own (where it gets gray is if you own mutual funds or index funds); you can call up your investment firm and ask them about what you own and your voting rights. They also should have information on how they have voted historically upon request.

• Talk to your kids around the broader point of being aware of how you spend and invest your money. They need to be aware of these issues as they think about investing their own money.

For more resources around investing, here are some recent posts to help:

• How Interest Rates Impact The Stock Market

• Safe vs. Aggressive Investing Options Explained

• What’s a Short-Term Treasury Ladder? We Explain

Personal Finance

Don’t Put Your Home In Your Kid’s Name

🚀 The quick version: American boomers alone are estimated to hold more than $53 trillion out of the total $431 trillion of privately held assets worldwide, and over the coming decades as the baby boomer generation (born 1946-1964) continues to retire and enter their golden years, one of the greatest wealth transfers in American history will take place.

One stat showed that millennials will hold five times as much wealth as they have today and the group is anticipated to inherit over $68 trillion from their baby boomer elders by the year 2030.

The problem is, not many parents are prepared for this transition which can lead to a lot of headaches for loved ones. Most millennials will likely wind up having to deal with probate court to sort everything out, costing nine months to two years or more, and not to mention many thousands of dollars in fees.

👪 How it affects your family: Money is always a difficult topic to talk about within families, but not having a plan can be catastrophic.

As parents, we all want to protect our kids and part of that is preparing for a time when we are no longer around (we have some further discussion around life insurance here too).

Here are a three things you can do today to start having these conversations with either your boomer parents, or millennial kids:

• Documents: Work on obtaining and gathering your most important financial documents and put them in one place or have the locations written down (here is a helpful list of 12 documents to prepare). Talk to your family about this and who can access them.

• Personal property: Have a plan about how things will be divided and how assets will be managed. In our topic of focus below we talk more about wills vs. living trusts and when people typically use one or both. Also a pro tip: don’t put your house in your kid’s name unless it’s in a trust (here is a helpful article explaining why).

• Health: Discuss and think about your desires for long-term care. Who will make end-of-life decisions? Is there money set aside for end-of-life care and funeral expenses? These may not need to all be decided today, but should be in the back of your mind as the great wealth transfer is imminent.

Dinner Discussion ❓

🥘 The Side Dishes

A few things to know…

🦐 Free stuff. Anyone in the family have a birthday coming up? We found this list of 102 places that will give you free stuff on your special day. 

💁‍♀️ Suffering from ‘tip fatigue’? From self-service fast-food restaurant kiosks to smartphone delivery apps, there are more opportunities to tip for a wider range of services than ever before. Experts weigh in on how to handle it.  

🍓 New food chemical role out. If your family is big on fruits and veggies, there are conflicting reports about a new (Bill Gates funded) chemical coating being rolled out at several large grocery chains. If any of our readers are food scientists or nutritionists, we’d love to hear your take.

⛽ When to buy gas. Did you know that there is actually a best day of the week to buy gas for lower prices? Yea, we didn’t either and found this useful. 

🐕 Not sure how much to pay your pet sitter? Here is a recent discussion around the topic for all the pet lovers out there (we are!).  

📱 Proof your kids are being watched. Somehow this news flew under the radar this week, but we now have sworn testimony that the Chinese government is accessing user data on TikTok.

🤖 Want to keep up with AI news? Get the rundown on the latest developments in AI before everyone else. Join 200,000+ daily readers from Microsoft, Tesla, Nasa, Meta, and more (here is a one click subscribe).*

👩‍🚀 Space camp now has more than 700,000 alumni. If your kids (or you) are interested, NASA offers many packages to sign up for a mission!  

*this is a sponsored post

🗓️ The Week Ahead

June 13th

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for May gets reported today. The experts are predicting an inflation number of 4.1%, down from 4.9% in April; as we talked about last week, we would expect to see signs of inflation coming down over the next 6 months.

June 14th

The FED will meet and decide what to do about interest rates. Most people expect them to pause but we think it doesn’t really matter. Whether they pause or hike by 25 basis points (0.25%) this meeting or next, we believe the FED is close to done with interest rate increases.

June 18th

Today is Father’s Day! We want to wish all the great dads out there some quality time with your family…and some quality naps.

🍨 Dessert

This Week’s Topic of Focus

Do I need a will or living trust?

In our topic of focus this week we break down a will vs. a living trust. We look at both as ways to help protect your family financially when you are no longer around and aim to give you a better understanding of each.

Dinner Discussion ❓