What's up! It's episode 46 of Payne Points of Wealth and it was a crazy week on the street of dreams. We had a mini sell-off or mini correction on Monday as markets looked like they were ready to crash, but markets were marching higher by Tuesday. Earning seasons got off to an awesome start! Company’s earnings are blowing away estimates, Economic data keeps coming in stronger and stronger. Is the party going to continue? What's going to happen between now and the end of the year? We're going to give you our viewpoint on exactly what's going on right now. On the tipping point today, we're going to talk about financial catastrophes. What could derail your entire financial plan? What do you need to be aware of to avoid any sort of disaster in your financial life? We're going to give you our blueprint for that.

You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...
Delta variant headlines driving the market [3:22]

Expect unexpected booms [5:48]

Everything is at a peak. Are stocks at a peak too? [7:47]

The Tipping Point [11:03]

Losing a spouse and access to your finances [11:59]

Taking more risk than necessary [16:46]

Hidden Facts of Finance [19:36]

Valleys in the mountains
Last time we recorded this podcast the market was at all-time record high. Here we are a week later recording the podcast and the market is at an all-time record high. What correction are you talking about? 

It happened so quickly. We saw some sectors sell-off like 5%, energy was down big on Monday and you just thought, okay, here it comes. We're going to get that proverbial market correction, where markets are going to sell off between 10 and 15%. Gird your loins, as someone we know used to say, but it just didn't happen. The next day all of a sudden the market turned and it hasn't looked back. 

A real-world example of this is a client called on Thursday in an absolute panic because they checked their account on Monday. How come the market's crashed? We're losing all of our money. Is this the end? And I said, did you look at your account today? They said, no, so I said look at it today and tell me what you see. They went and looked, whew, everything's back to normal. I said one cold day doesn't make a winter.

This week on the tipping point: Financial catastrophes
Not being involved in your finances can be a catastrophe. It seems like in every single relationship with two spouses involved, there's always one extremely interested spouse, the one who pays attention, and stays on top of everything. Then there's the spouse who isn’t, the one that doesn't care or doesn’t know. And that's a scary thing. We see this a lot. Suddenly, one spouse passes away, and the other spouse is grieving because they just lost the person they love more than anyone else in the world, and they also have to get on top of this financial mess. What we've found is there's no excuse, with all the technology we have, not to get financially organized.

One of the things we use here at Payne Capital Management is our 360 Portal, which is an electronic catchall for all things financial. It's got a document storage vault. It goes so far as to allow you to add someone onto that account so they know where everything is if something were to happen to you.

This week’s hidden facts of finance
Domestic production of semiconductors has been declining for decades today. Only 12% of semiconductors are manufactured here in the good old USA. Taiwan Semiconductors Manufacturing Company alone makes up 56% of market share in certain global markets for advanced technologies. This is not the only thing that gets manufactured overseas. And that's why it's so important to not just be invested in the US but to also be invested overseas, especially in those emerging markets.

The federal deficit is now 1.3 times the size of the GDP here in the US. That's the highest it's been since the end of World War II. Plus the US has about $20.5 trillion worth of accumulated debt. If rates rise by one perce