Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Social Security Controversy： What Everyone Is Missing ｜ Ron Simmons

00:00:00.000 Well, hello, everybody. I hope everybody's having a great day when this comes out this

00:00:13.720 Saturday. It was so great to see so many of you at the Share the Arrows conference last

00:00:19.900 weekend. We've heard from a lot of you already on how much you enjoyed it. Of course, Allie

00:00:26.420 and Timothy announced their new app that's coming out, Anna Kate. If you haven't signed up for that,

00:00:32.760 make sure that you do that. There's already been tens of thousands of women signed up for that, 1.00

00:00:37.760 and that is very exciting. Also, I just want to thank you for coming up and introducing yourself

00:00:43.680 to me. So many of you did to Lisa and I and took some pictures, had a good time, but it's going to

00:00:49.680 be even better next year. So be thinking about fall of 2027, making sure that you reserve your

00:00:57.080 spot and share the arrows coming up. But thank you so much, too, for listening to Allie's podcast.

00:01:02.160 Y'all know she's just a couple of weeks away from her birth of their child, and we're excited about

00:01:07.800 that. Lisa and I, that'll be our seventh grandchild, and that is the perfect number, right?

00:01:13.460 That's what the Bible tells us. And then also, you know, Allie, though, will still have recordings

00:01:18.880 coming out right up like she always does. She's done a lot of great interviews and pre-recording 0.60

00:01:24.520 of some stuff. You're not going to want to miss that. Of course, I'll be here every couple of

00:01:28.540 weeks. And if I need to step in and do something in addition to that, just to kind of update,

00:01:33.500 I will. Our next episode is going to be really exciting because it's going to be right after

00:01:39.460 the election, the one that you do for me. It'll be the Saturday, or maybe we may even play it

00:01:44.480 before the Saturday after the election. And I'm going to be doing that from London, England. So

00:01:50.360 that's going to be exciting to record that. And I'll tell you a little bit about my trip over

00:01:55.760 there. I've got some great things planned, part of a group I'm going with. So we're excited about

00:02:01.100 that. But today what we want to do, we want to talk about three different things. We're going

00:02:04.860 to talk about social security. That's been a real hot topic on social media in the last couple of

00:02:11.180 weeks. We're going to talk about, obviously, midterms coming up. And then third, we're going

00:02:15.780 to answer a bunch of your questions. So let's get started. Start with Social Security. There's a new

00:02:20.360 poll that's about Social Security. U.S. baby boomers, which I'm included, support tax hikes 0.88

00:02:27.920 on young workers to keep current Social Security checks. Well, I can imagine that's controversial 0.79

00:02:34.040 because I know that when I was your age, if you're younger listening to this, I would have been

00:02:39.280 against increasing my taxes to take care of people that had already paid in. But, you know,

00:02:47.700 now that I'm a boomer, let me tell you the way I look at it, okay? First of all, let me go over

00:02:51.340 the poll results. 89% of Americans over 65, they say they support preserving the current retirees

00:02:59.620 benefits, even if that means raising taxes. Obviously, as the age goes down, there's less

00:03:08.260 support. By the time you get down to age 30 to 54, only 57% support that. 30 to 44, only 57%

00:03:17.900 support that. And under age 30, it's a minority. Only 47% of the people surveyed would be in favor

00:03:26.940 of raising taxes in order to maintain benefits. Now, let me just explain to you the way this works

00:03:34.320 because I'm getting close to the age where I can get full benefits.

00:03:37.480 Now, when I first started, you could get full benefits at age 65.

00:03:41.440 Then they came along and changed it.

00:03:43.380 They increased the retirement age.

00:03:46.040 And increasing the retirement age means that people in my age and younger

00:03:51.420 would pay more in for a longer period of time before we were able to get benefits.

00:03:58.500 But I've been looking into it as to what that's going to work.

00:04:02.880 I'm going to be able to get my benefits here in the next year or two.

00:04:06.220 And it shows how much I've paid into Social Security.

00:04:09.880 In my career, I've paid in just hard dollars.

00:04:14.040 It said $350,000 or $360,000.

00:04:18.160 Now, when I backed into just average how much I would have paid each year over my working career,

00:04:26.080 and if that would have been invested at 5% interest,

00:04:30.360 that that would have been a value of about $900,000.

00:04:35.600 So my account, if it was like in a 401k,

00:04:38.700 would probably be sitting there with about $900,000 in it.

00:04:42.660 That $900,000, if I went out and bought an annuity,

00:04:46.740 meaning an annuity is something that pays me every month

00:04:49.820 until the day I die,

00:04:51.780 then that annuity would be about $5,000 a month.

00:04:56.220 Now that's less than what I'm gonna get from Social Security

00:04:58.720 based on the estimates that I've found on the website, social security website. But I don't

00:05:04.060 feel like that somebody, that I am taking away somebody else's money or that somebody's having

00:05:09.980 to pay for me. The problem is, the problem is, is that money wasn't invested like it should be.

00:05:17.080 What happens is we all put money in social security and then the government takes that

00:05:23.620 money and does other things with it. And they leave an IOU that essentially is not earning us

00:05:29.000 any interest, right? And so that's what the problem is. If I was someone that was less than

00:05:35.040 a baby boomer and was concerned about having taxes raised on me to pay for, you know, Ron's

00:05:40.500 benefits and other people's benefits, I want you to know, first of all, that's not the real issue.

00:05:46.020 The real issue is that they're taking your money and doing other spending with it and putting an

00:05:51.700 IOU in there from the government with no growth calculated in that. What I would be arguing for,

00:05:57.880 and this is what President Bush 43 tried to do, is to be able that you could direct the investment

00:06:04.920 of the amount that you put in there. Your employer puts in, I think the number is a little over 7%,

00:06:12.140 and you put in around 7%. That's what's required. So that's about 14% to 15%.

00:06:20.220 percent. If it was invested in a balanced portfolio, a mixture of stocks and bonds,

00:06:28.020 that's going to grow at eight or nine percent a year. And over your career, that's going to

00:06:34.320 create a huge account that, again, you could draw on or they could even just buy you an annuity and

00:06:41.680 pay you a certain amount at every month. That's the issue. The other issue is, and I don't really

00:06:47.560 have an answer for this, but the other issue is that you take, for example, Lisa. Now, Lisa was

00:06:54.060 primarily a stay-at-home mom, my wife, and so she didn't have a lot of Social Security income. She 0.99

00:06:59.900 had some in some of the years she worked, but the way the law works is that she gets the greater of 0.92

00:07:05.980 half of mine or what she earned on her own. Now, obviously, if she gets half of mine and her own 0.97

00:07:13.960 contributions wouldn't have yielded her the same benefit, then that's, you know, I don't know where

00:07:19.720 that money comes from. I mean, that's a challenge. I get that. And I don't have the solution for it,

00:07:23.760 but that's one of the challenges. So some of you smart young people need to be thinking about that,

00:07:27.980 but it has been a, it's really been a big controversy. Now, the other thing is, is what

00:07:35.440 you're finding out and what I'm just, this, I'm giving you a little inside information here for

00:07:39.080 you voters, that the average voter in America, the median age is 52 years old in the general

00:07:48.640 election. In the primary election, it's 62. So what do you think politicians, who do you think

00:07:53.300 they're going to listen to? If you want them to listen to you, you need to make sure you get you

00:07:57.760 and your colleagues that are under these ages out to vote, and you'll have more swing and more sway

00:08:04.520 in what they do with Social Security and everything else in the government.

00:08:08.640 That's one of the challenges is that young people don't vote in the highest percentages.

00:08:13.160 And we need for that to happen.

00:08:18.000 But there's been a couple of podcasters that are pretty popular.

00:08:21.740 Steve Deese came out and said, oh, this is disgusting. 0.99

00:08:24.980 It was the boomer generation that broke America,

00:08:27.780 and we undid every single moral creed of the republic 1.00

00:08:31.360 and leaving the most debt in human history to their progeny.

00:08:35.440 We think their children and grandchildren should pay even more to subsidize this generational implosion.

00:08:40.920 That's pretty harsh, Steve. I know Steve. That's pretty harsh.

00:08:43.000 Now, Matt Walsh says, stealing from young families to pay much higher net worth boomers is immoral and ridiculous.

00:08:49.240 Young families already have to deal with economy where everything is exponentially more expensive than it was for boomers at the same age.

00:08:56.320 Well, I'm just going to disagree with you, Matt, on that.

00:09:00.280 Again, if you looked at, let's just say right now, okay, I was talking to somebody about this

00:09:06.480 this morning. Let's say right now that it takes a family in a suburban area, it probably takes

00:09:13.140 less in a metro area, I mean, in a rural area, may take more in some metro areas. Let's say it

00:09:19.340 takes $200,000 to have a good middle-class income lifestyle. Well, 30 years ago, you could

00:09:30.800 have made $90,000 and it would be equivalent to $200,000 today. So in 1995, if you made $90,000,

00:09:40.260 you were about the same if you made $200,000. Now, $90,000 in 1995, those jobs weren't just

00:09:47.720 everywhere. Now, people were making it, okay? Lisa and I were making that much in 1995,

00:09:53.020 but so that grew from, so in order to have the same lifestyle, same equivalent,

00:10:01.660 you had to make about two, a little over 2.2 times more, all right? So think about that,

00:10:07.220 2.2 times more 30 years ago when I basically started to work, all right? Now, but if you go

00:10:14.600 back and you look at from 1965 to 1995, when you were making $90,000 in 1995, in 1965, you could

00:10:29.000 have made $18,000 to have the equivalent of $90,000. During that period of time, to get to

00:10:38.140 $190,000, you had to increase your income five times. So you had to increase your income five

00:10:44.740 times to keep up with your same buying power you had in 1965 in those 30 years. And so telling me

00:10:52.500 that inflation was more back now than it was back then, that just doesn't hold up. In fact, up until

00:10:59.240 the last few years, inflation has been probably the lowest that it has been in a very, very long

00:11:04.380 time. From 1965 to 1995, the inflation was much higher than it is today, and that's why you had

00:11:13.740 to increase your income 5x in order to keep up. From 1995 to now, you increase your income about

00:11:21.380 a little over 2x to keep up. So it's interesting. Now, not everybody's against it, all right? Not

00:11:26.620 everybody's against it. Dr. Hank Desmond says, boomers like me spent years supporting our adult

00:11:32.660 children. I thought this was pretty funny. Okay. You have to laugh about some stuff as they pursued

00:11:37.860 art history degrees and failed to find meaningful employment. Now it's their turn to take care of

00:11:42.500 us. If you're younger than 49, this guy thinks you should pay 50% of your income in taxes. Now

00:11:48.040 that's crazy. I totally disagree with that, but it's just, it's just really, it's just really

00:11:53.620 interesting. We'll see what happens with that. I don't, I can't imagine they're going to do away

00:12:00.640 with Social Security, but I'm just telling you the thing that we need to be pushing our elected

00:12:04.640 officials on is let's get an investment plan going. If you look at Bush's Social Security plan,

00:12:13.460 just let me remind you of that just for a minute. President Bush proposed a major overhaul of Social

00:12:18.060 Security in 2005 where younger Americans could divert a portion of their payroll taxes

00:12:24.400 into personal retirement accounts. That's exactly what needs to happen. But of course, 0.51

00:12:28.940 the Democrats have been against that, all right? This is a Republican-Democrat thing.

00:12:33.000 Democrats have been against that because they want the government to control all of your tax money.

00:12:39.180 We argued that, Bush argued the existing system was becoming unsustainable. He brought this up.

00:12:43.740 You remember I talked to you last time I was on that I was at a small gathering with President

00:12:46.940 Bush, and he talked about this as something that he wished he would have been able to get done,

00:12:53.000 but he wasn't able to do it. He proposed slowing the growth of future Social Security benefits for

00:12:58.880 higher-income Americans, I get that, while protecting benefits for lower-income workers, 0.79

00:13:03.600 I get that as well. Bush promised that Americans 55 and older would see no changes to their

00:13:08.500 benefits. This was in 2005, so I was 45 at the time, so I would have been affected by this,

00:13:14.340 but I understand. And he opposed raising payroll taxes to keep the system solvent.

00:13:19.660 Taxes are never the answer, really. It's usually a spending problem, and what this has been is an

00:13:25.160 investment problem, or really a spending problem, because as I said, the government was taking that

00:13:29.080 money and giving it to other people. So I don't know. I encourage you to make your voice known.

00:13:34.380 That's really important to do. And how are we going to do this? Social security is not going

00:13:38.760 to go away. You can't just say that. So we need to come up with solutions. And again, older Americans,

00:13:44.960 we work for this just like you're working for it. So what do we do about it? All right. Do we extend 0.99

00:13:49.660 the retirement age? Do we reduce benefits at a certain income level, which kind of seems

00:13:54.240 socialistic to me. But what is the good answer? You guys are smart. Come up with some answers. I'd

00:13:59.400 love to hear from you. Ron at ronsimmons.com. Now, let's move on. Next thing we're going to

00:14:04.340 talk about is early voting. Early voting, by the time you get this, has already started in some

00:14:11.100 states and will be starting on Monday, October the 19th in a lot of states. In Texas, early voting

00:14:17.860 is October 19th through the 30th. And you know, we've got very close races here in Texas. We've

00:14:23.440 got this crazy James Tallarico and his colleague, Gina Hinojosa, he's running for Senate, she's

00:14:30.680 running for governor. Those two will raise your taxes every time they can. And to think, somebody 0.99

00:14:38.260 told me the other day, well, I don't think Tallarico, he's elected, will be able to do anything. No, no,

00:14:41.880 you don't understand. The judges and the U.S. attorneys, the appointments, he and Ted Cruz

00:14:50.380 are going to have to agree on those judges' appointments and the U.S. attorneys and all

00:14:55.680 the governmental appointments that go through the Senate because that come into Texas. So

00:15:01.160 Cruz is going to have to moderate in order to get anybody passed. He won't be able to get the same

00:15:07.480 people as judges. And we know how important federal judges are that they've been able to do

00:15:12.220 when Senator Corner was in there. So listen, we're voting for policy, not a person. I don't like a

00:15:17.220 lot of the stuff Ken Paxson's done, but I will tell you his policy will be what you and I believe

00:15:22.820 in. Iowa, voting's already started. It started on October 14th, and it goes through November 2nd,

00:15:28.860 but it's specifically for in-person absentee voting at county auditor's offices and designated

00:15:35.760 satellite sites, rather than early voting for everybody. North Carolina, October 15th through

00:15:42.340 the 31st. And I encourage people to vote early. Don't pay attention to all this. We'll wait until

00:15:47.440 the election day. Otherwise, it's rigged. It's not rigged. There are people that cheat. There's

00:15:52.740 no question about that. And President Trump and his administration and a lot of Republican

00:15:56.760 attorneys, generals across the country have really tightened up on that. So I feel much better every

00:16:01.780 election cycle about that. But North Carolina, October 15th through the 31st. Michigan, October

00:16:09.040 24th, so you've got about a week. A week, the Saturday after this comes out, through November

00:16:14.920 the 1st, Georgia has already started. It started October 13th, all the way through October 30th,

00:16:20.980 all right? October 30th, which is a Thursday. You will not be able to vote on Halloween.

00:16:26.880 And then Ohio started October 6th, and it runs all the way through November 1st, which is the day

00:16:33.040 before the general election. So I don't know what state you're in. I don't know where you are, but

00:16:37.840 please, please, please get out to vote and vote early. Vote early. Get that over with. You never

00:16:43.820 know what's going to happen on election day. There could be a bad storm. You could have a sick kid.

00:16:48.680 All sorts of things. All right. But your vote does count. We were at a deal last night, Lisa and I

00:16:54.600 were, where the local justice of the peace, Republican, won by 300 votes last time. It's

00:17:01.840 that razor thin. All right. It's that razor thin. So get out and vote. Now, let's take some of your

00:17:07.580 questions. We've got several minutes left to be able to do that. And I'm going to go through

00:17:12.540 quite a few of them. And as always, they're good questions. All right. This is the first part on

00:17:17.600 finances. What's your best financial advice for a young couple in their 20s before kids?

00:17:23.840 Well, obviously, the best financial advice is to make sure that you are saving as much as you can

00:17:31.020 and that you're living within your means, meaning you're not adding any debt. Obviously, if you

00:17:36.800 want to buy a house and take a long-term mortgage on that, I understand that. I recommend 15-year

00:17:42.560 mortgages, but 30-year mortgages are okay as well if you can get the right deal. The other thing

00:17:47.700 that I would say that's a little outside of this, I'm not sure that Mr. Ramsey would agree with me,

00:17:53.340 but I do think it's valuable. If there is something that you and your spouse want to do

00:18:00.760 that's going to be much harder when you have kids, let's say it's an overseas trip, then that

00:18:05.720 becomes harder, right? Like for example, I wish I would have taken my whole family to Israel before

00:18:12.140 they all started having kids. It's very difficult now to get, you know, sitters and all that type

00:18:18.480 of stuff. And so I don't know when we're going to be able to do that. I hope we can still do that,

00:18:22.800 especially as the grandkids get older, we can take at least some of them that are old enough

00:18:27.020 to appreciate it. But if you have something special that you want to do, and the reason I say that

00:18:31.820 because my oldest son and his wife went to France before they had kids. She had worked in France

00:18:39.560 for a while as a teacher and grew up here in Texas, but worked in France for a while as a teacher.

00:18:45.360 And they went to France for a few weeks. And I encouraged them to do that because I said,

00:18:50.940 you know, it's going to be much cooler when you go back and you have kids that you're able to say,

00:18:56.300 hey, this is what mom and dad did. First of all, it makes them believe they can do it.

00:19:00.880 And secondly, you're able to give them a first-person account of the experience and to build up excitement in them about maybe, you know, traveling or whatever it happens to be.

00:19:12.060 So I would encourage you to do that.

00:19:13.820 But the most important thing financially is make sure that you're saving everything you can.

00:19:18.780 You're putting money in your 401ks, what have you.

00:19:21.260 If you can afford to buy a home, get that taken care of.

00:19:23.580 Don't buy a bunch of new cars.

00:19:24.860 Don't buy things that are going to depreciate.

00:19:26.520 That's the number one thing I would give advice in your 20s or whatever age you're in.

00:19:32.180 What steps should young adults, college kids be taking right now to be financially independent?

00:19:37.420 Same answer.

00:19:38.500 You want to make sure that you are living well less.

00:19:43.340 I think I've told this story before.

00:19:45.680 You know, my investment business, we manage money for retired commercial airline pilots.

00:19:49.820 That was our job.

00:19:50.900 And what we found was an absolute trend was that the pilots, when they, you know, they're a first officer and then they're a captain.

00:20:02.620 First officer sits in the right seat, has three stripes, he or she has three stripes on their sleeve, and a captain has four stripes on his or her sleeve.

00:20:13.080 So first officers make less money than captains.

00:20:15.540 Captains is the final responsibility in the airplane.

00:20:18.920 But the pilots that bought a house when they were first officers and they stayed in that house even after they became captain,

00:20:27.960 in other words, they didn't increase their lifestyle, those are the ones that ended up having the most financial independence.

00:20:33.820 And so make sure that you don't increase your lifestyle every time you get a raise in pay.

00:20:41.100 That can be detrimental to you.

00:20:44.900 I'm buying a business, and what are the top recommendations for managing it, marriage,

00:20:49.080 family, and church? Well, I don't think those have to be conflicting with each other. They can be,

00:20:55.160 but they don't have to be. The first thing that I would recommend if you're buying a business is

00:21:00.380 that you have enough capital to run that business, not just buy it, but there's enough capital to run

00:21:05.600 the business that doesn't force you to go into debt to operate the business. The second thing

00:21:09.960 that I would do is make sure that I set up a board of advisors of people that you trust that

00:21:16.160 have been around longer than you, that have experience, not necessarily in your, it's good

00:21:21.080 if one of them has experience in that particular business field, but just that they have experience,

00:21:26.320 you know, Lisa, Allie and Timothy with this new app business that they have. I've spent a lot of

00:21:32.860 time with them. I don't know anything about their app. Okay. I mean, I know that it's a women's

00:21:36.580 health app, but I don't know anything about the details of that. What I do know and what I can

00:21:41.240 help them with and have been helping them with is just the general business. What are your

00:21:45.180 financials? What does your pro formas need to look like? How are you going to raise money from

00:21:49.760 investors? What do we need to communicate with them? You need to have a group of senior advisors,

00:21:55.160 a board of directors, so to speak, that are there to aid and guide you. And as your business gets

00:22:00.900 successful, I would recommend you compensate them for that, all right? Because they bring value to

00:22:07.640 you. Now, as far as marriage and family, I do believe that, and the church, I think you have

00:22:12.640 to balance those. Sometimes you have to put more effort in your business while you're getting it up

00:22:18.120 and moving that you'll be able to back off of after it gets going well. And so it may take,

00:22:25.800 you know, you don't, there's never a perfect balance, all right? You're always working with

00:22:30.540 that. There's always friction between that. But just remember, what are your priorities today to

00:22:35.040 be able to get that done? And if I focus on these priority days, how's that going to help the other

00:22:39.920 things that are important to me in the future? Think about that. This is a funny one. Investing

00:22:44.900 for idiots. What do we do for ourselves, our kids? We don't even know how to start. Well, the first 1.00

00:22:48.960 thing I would do is if you work for a company, make sure that you're investing in your company's

00:22:54.020 401k plan. They probably match some of that. If you're not, then I would begin saving some money.

00:22:59.560 If you're just saving on your own, make sure that you have at least, I like to have six months, but have at least 90 days worth of cash or what I call money market, immediate funds, emergency funds, so that you don't have to go out and go into debt when your hot water heater breaks or something like that.

00:23:15.120 So start that.

00:23:16.260 Once you've got that involved, then you should invest for longer term.

00:23:19.860 And again, depending on how old you are, if you're in your 20s or 30s, I would just put that in a long term if it was me.

00:23:26.420 You have to decide what's best for you and talk to your own financial advisor.

00:23:29.860 I don't have all your information.

00:23:31.240 But what I did was put money in the S&P 500 fund, which is an index fund.

00:23:36.440 And if you want to email me individually, I'm happy to give you more thoughts on that.

00:23:41.120 All right.

00:23:41.680 Is there a limit to how much financial help we should receive from our parents as young family?

00:23:47.260 That is a great question.

00:23:49.860 And I'll just tell you, I struggled with this with my own children.

00:23:54.460 My mom and dad didn't have money to give us, so that wasn't an issue for them.

00:23:59.340 They provided us a bringing up and a focus on education, but they did not have money,

00:24:08.740 so that wasn't something we had to talk about.

00:24:12.000 However, that's something Lisa and I have had to talk about, and it's a blessing.

00:24:15.320 I'll tell you it's a blessing.

00:24:16.740 Now, first of all, let me tell you something.

00:24:18.980 When your parents are able to help you, it's a blessing for them.

00:24:23.480 I've had to talk to my kids about this.

00:24:25.400 We've helped every one of our kids buy their first house.

00:24:28.820 And we're happy to do that.

00:24:30.760 Didn't expect to be paid back for it.

00:24:32.820 That was what we wanted to help them with.

00:24:34.680 We didn't pay for the whole thing,

00:24:36.020 but we made it so that they could buy a decent house,

00:24:39.560 not a mansion, but a decent house.

00:24:41.360 And we're happy to do that.

00:24:42.680 So I would, and that was a blessing to us

00:24:45.720 to be able to do that.

00:24:47.360 And that, you know, our kids are not kids

00:24:49.980 that would take advantage of that.

00:24:52.120 and we're fortunate in that.

00:24:53.820 In fact, they're uncomfortable sometimes

00:24:56.080 when we try to help them,

00:24:57.620 but I let them know that I get it,

00:24:59.740 but that is a blessing for us.

00:25:02.100 The other thing is that we need to help our kids

00:25:05.520 when they need it the most.

00:25:07.240 You know, when Justin and Amy and Daniel

00:25:10.720 and Allie and Timothy,

00:25:12.620 when they get to be in their 50s,

00:25:15.320 they're not going to need it as much as they do today.

00:25:17.840 So if we can help them maybe with Christian education

00:25:20.640 or something else, we want to be able to do that.

00:25:24.120 I would say help your young adult family, your kids, when they need it the most.

00:25:31.660 And it's during that early child raising time, generally speaking.

00:25:35.360 Now, if they're using that money and going on these big vacations and all that type of

00:25:40.440 stuff, I wouldn't do it.

00:25:41.520 But if they're using it prudently, then I don't have any issue with that.

00:25:44.960 And I wouldn't worry about the amount particularly.

00:25:47.980 All right, marriage and family.

00:25:49.840 In a marriage when the spouse is texting opposite sex outside of the marriage, 0.66

00:25:53.720 well, it depends on who it is, I guess.

00:25:56.300 But if you're talking about just a random coworker or something like that,

00:26:00.380 if it's a personal relationship, I'm not comfortable with that.

00:26:03.780 But I think you have to talk to them about that.

00:26:05.420 You have to talk to people about that.

00:26:07.060 I don't, if it's an old friend that you know as well, you know, we've got some,

00:26:12.320 Lisa and I have some friends that I might, it's pretty unusual,

00:26:16.320 But occasionally I might text him, but it's usually for a specific point.

00:26:19.660 You know, it's like, hey, do you have this person's number or something like that?

00:26:24.760 So that's not a that's not a great thing to do.

00:26:28.020 It doesn't mean it's always bad, but I would I'd be cautious about that also.

00:26:32.440 But you got to sit down and talk about it.

00:26:34.300 I mean, that's that's what you have to do.

00:26:37.720 How can I best nurture my relationship with our new daughter-in-law? 0.99

00:26:42.040 Oh, you know, I should have got Lisa to answer that one.

00:26:44.620 But for me, you know, I've been fortunate.

00:26:47.660 Amy is a great daughter-in-law.

00:26:49.040 She was at Share the Air was as well.

00:26:50.640 In fact, some of you might have met her.

00:26:51.780 She was helping work behind the merchandise counter along with my sister, one of my grandsons.

00:26:57.660 But what I would say to that is that you have to give your daughter-in-law space to be your husband's favorite girl.

00:27:07.840 And you've been in that position for a long time.

00:27:10.120 This is the mom asking me, which I think it is.

00:27:12.620 Um, and so you're going to have to step back a little bit from that. You can't be, you can all,

00:27:19.280 you're always going to be his mom, but you have to be careful about mothering him. All right.

00:27:24.420 And trying to even inadvertently take the place of his spouse. You just have to be really,

00:27:30.380 really careful about that. Uh, and then find things that you and her like to do. Maybe I'll

00:27:34.840 like to go get your nails done together. Maybe you like to do a spa there. Maybe I would go,

00:27:38.340 even go on a trip, maybe with her mom. You know, Lisa gets along very well with both of our sets

00:27:45.660 of in-laws. She does a really good job at that with Amy's mom and with Timothy's parents. She

00:27:50.860 does a great job at that. But just look for things that y'all have in common and try not to

00:27:57.240 give more advice than is needed. We're building on in-laws land. My parents are jealous,

00:28:04.640 feeling stuck in the middle. Advice? Well, first of all, they shouldn't feel jealous.

00:28:08.060 that's not your issue. It's their issue. That's a heart issue for them. They should be happy for

00:28:13.540 y'all. If this is a good thing for you and you're happy about it, you know, everybody makes their

00:28:19.620 own choices, right? And so why this worked out this way, I don't know, but they should not be

00:28:26.020 jealous. So I wouldn't spend any time worrying about it. If you have to sit down with them and

00:28:29.460 have that conversation, you should, but I would not take your time. You got enough other things

00:28:35.480 to think about. You don't want to take your time to worry about that your parents are being

00:28:39.940 inappropriately jealous of you building a home on your husband's family's properties. Nothing wrong

00:28:46.600 with that whatsoever. If men did a shoot the arrows event, what arrows should Christian men 1.00

00:28:53.640 be shooting? What we should be shooting is at the cultural degradation in our society from pornography, 0.98

00:29:01.700 from, you know, politicians and our leaders that are not honest, all of those things that are going

00:29:10.720 against the Constitution, going against the Bible. Remember, a lot of the Constitution is based on the

00:29:16.220 values that are in the Bible. And those are the types of things that we need to be standing up

00:29:21.740 for. We also need to be standing up individually for our wife and kids. We need to make sure that

00:29:27.900 our daughters are respected and honored. And then our sons learn how to respect and honor

00:29:33.760 the opposite sex. There's absolutely no question about that. And remember, your wife always wants

00:29:40.660 you to be her knight in shining armor, always. Which is more conservative, school vouchers or

00:29:45.580 homeschool tax exemption? Those are mutually exclusive. Those are both conservative. Anytime

00:29:51.560 that an individual has more control over the tax dollars he's paid in, that's a better thing to do.

00:29:57.200 So those are not conflicting with each other.

00:29:59.980 Now, let me, you know, I told you that, and we went through this last time,

00:30:03.400 I'm reading through the Bible a year,

00:30:06.520 and I write down a precept every day that I learned.

00:30:12.480 And I'm going back through my book here that I write these down.

00:30:15.260 Hopefully I'll get this published for my grandkids one day.

00:30:18.120 But I ran across one today.

00:30:20.440 This was what I wrote down May 1 of this year.

00:30:23.120 And my precept was that God uses whomever he wants, believers and non-believers, to carry out his perfect plan.

00:30:34.020 And the Bible references for that are Judges 14, 4, which is the story of Samson.

00:30:40.460 And you know, Samson, he really wanted this lady, and his mom and dad were kind of against it, but they went down and got her.

00:30:50.220 He was a rebellious guy, but think about how God ended up using Samson.

00:30:58.020 And so while he may not have been mine and your choice, we may not have liked it.

00:31:04.620 God used him.

00:31:05.740 And then if you go to John 1, 29 through 34, this is about John the Baptist.

00:31:16.440 So John the Baptist was a little bit opposite of Samson.

00:31:19.900 John the Baptist was someone who was a believer and how God used him.

00:31:24.620 In fact, he used him to baptize the Messiah himself, our own Savior.

00:31:29.920 And if you just read those, go back and read Judges chapter 14,

00:31:37.040 and then also read 1 John 1, 29 through 34.

00:31:43.580 It's a great two examples of how God uses whomever He wants,

00:31:49.560 believers and non-believers, to carry out His perfect plan.

00:31:53.460 Remember, Allie says that God's perfect plan is always going off without a hitch.

00:31:58.320 Thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

00:32:00.780 Thank you for supporting Allie,

00:32:02.120 and we'll look forward to talking to you in a couple of weeks.

00:32:07.160 Have a good day.

00:32:13.580 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - October 17, 2026

Social Security Controversy： What Everyone Is Missing ｜ Ron Simmons

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