You Can Land Your Airplanes and Helicopters at This 1,000-Acre Colorado Ranch
The $45 million West Creek Ranch is situated in the remote community of Gateway, Colorado, part of Mesa County, about five hours west of Denver near the Utah border. It's composed of three different parcels: one where the main residence sits, one designated as hunting lands, and another for water-based and motorized recreation. Currently owned by John Hendricks, the founder of the Discovery Channel, the property is now on the market with Haley Mirr of Mirr Ranch Group.
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When it comes to everyday living, the main home measures in at more than 22,000 square feet, with eight bedrooms and an equal number of bathrooms spread across four levels. Marble archways and custom ironwork frame the grand entryway, which leads into a commodious great room and a formal dining room with landscape views. Other highlights include six fireplaces, multiple wet bars, a two-level circular stone library housed in a stone turret, a private theater, and an art studio. Most unusually, there's a permanent installation of six rare fossils from animals such as a saber-toothed tiger and a stingray.
RELATED: A 150-Acre Colorado Ranch Owned by a Celebrity Hairstylist Can Be Yours for $25 Million
Of course, if you're splashing out for a ranch, the outdoor offerings are just as important as the indoor luxuries, if not more so, and West Creek really packs them in. The main house is complemented by a resort-style pool and spa that look out on the landscape, and there's a five-car heated garage for all of your automobiles. Guests can post up in the two-bedroom, one-bath guest house, which sits alongside the creek.
There are professional-grade stables and fenced pastures equipped for both horses and bison, while fishing, hunting, rafting, horseback riding, and more can all be done on-site. Most of the above is pretty standard for a high-end ranch estate, but West Creek outdoes most other spreads with an astrological observatory for stargazing, with the high elevation and dark desert setting making for easy spotting of constellations and planets. For travel to and from the ranch, the Grand Junction airport is just over an hour away. However, if you have access to a small aircraft or helicopter, you can take advantage of the estate's private grass airstrip and hangar and its adjacent helipad.Best of Robb Report
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
The nightmare scenario for America's real estate market
A few years ago, Brian Boero and his wife decided to buy a vacation home in Tuscany. They envisioned owning an apartment in a medieval Italian city, the ideal splurge for a couple of empty nesters after the height of the pandemic. It was also "kind of a 'YOLO' thing," says Boero, the CEO of 1000Watt, a real estate consulting firm. Once he started hunting for a place, though, his European dream turned into a total nightmare. Shop Top Mortgage Rates Your Path to Homeownership A quicker path to financial freedom Personalized rates in minutes It didn't take long for Boero to realize he'd been spoiled by the American market. That may sound strange given the country's housing woes, but even Americans who've never bought a house have probably enjoyed the quirks that make our setup the envy of the rest of the world. When you want to get a sense of all the homes for sale in your area, you can easily cruise over to Zillow or the website of one of its competitors. The listings on these sites are pulled from industry databases that police their accuracy to ensure you're not wasting time on old or scammy postings. If you like a place, it's pretty easy for your agent to schedule a tour, scoop the keys out of a lockbox, and show you around. The rest of the buying process may come with tears and headaches, but the matter of actually finding homes is fairly seamless. Not so in Europe. The Zillow equivalents there offer only partial views of the market, turning up inaccurate listings or homes that have already traded hands. In particularly maddening cases, the same house may be listed separately by several agents, each of whom is asking for a different price. Brokers are also known to gatekeep their best listings, hiding them from the view of the average buyer. Even aggregate market data is hard to come by since there's no central clearing house for listings — it can be difficult to know whether you're getting a really good deal or a really bad one. In Italy, Boero says, he ended up having to carry out much of his search on foot, hoofing around town to peek at home listings posted in the windows of various brokerages. His real estate agent spent a lot of time on the phone, calling around to see what was available. For Boero, the whole thing felt like "feeling around in the dark." "It was shadowy, confusing," Boero tells me. "We really didn't feel like we were in control of the process." Boero is among those warning that the US market could be headed down a similar path. Some of the country's biggest real estate companies are engaged in a fierce war over the rise of "hidden listings" — homes advertised in some places but purposely kept off other sites. Zillow has gone so far as to ban listings that it says weren't shared with everyone, including Zillow, in a timely manner. Compass, the nation's largest real estate brokerage by sales volume, has responded by suing Zillow in federal court. The feud could result in a fracturing of the housing market, with home listings scattered across the internet or hidden away in so-called "private listing networks." Such a future would have real consequences for American homebuyers, who are used to getting a near-complete view of the market simply by navigating to one of the many home search websites available. There's also a bitter irony at the heart of this fight. Groups of real estate brokers in countries around the world are trying to replicate the US model at the same time that big firms on this side of the pond are squabbling over that very setup. "In France, they're laughing at the situation at this moment, honestly," Ali Attar, a real estate tech executive in Paris, tells me. The system in the US, he says, is more fragile than people realize. "They are taking it for granted in the US," Attar says. "And as soon as they destroy it, bringing it back will be extremely difficult." It took decades for the US to reach this kind of housing market transparency. The crown jewels of our modern real estate model — the things that make everything else possible — are the multiple-listing services, local databases where agents share detailed information on homes for sale. The MLSes then shuttle that info to search portals like Zillow, Redfin, or as well as the websites of thousands of local and national real estate brokerages. The average buyer doesn't get direct access to the MLSes, but with the help of the search portals, they don't really need it. Any home shopper can peruse the market, free of charge, from the comfort of their couch. The MLS model is considered by many to be the gold standard. Brokers in other countries have attempted to form similar databases, but the structure in North America remains unique. The problem isn't a lack of technological know-how — building the machinery isn't hard. The tougher part is getting brokers to agree to this kind of cooperation and enforcing the rules to make sure people don't take advantage of the system. In Europe, sellers are often represented by multiple agents who jockey to be the first to procure a buyer. There's a clear incentive to gatekeep a listing — share it around too much, and another agent might swoop in and broker a deal before you know what hit you. The popular, Zillow-like search portals in places like Spain or France are less unbiased repositories of information and more like advertising platforms. Agents ostensibly pay to display listings, but they're also marketing their own services. If a buyer inquires about a listing that's already sold, no matter — the agent can direct them to the other listings held behind closed doors. This is why listings may remain on these sites long after they've gone off the market. When it comes to drawing in more clients, there's no better lure. The ideal real estate marketplace is full of valuable, visible, and valid listings — what Attar refers to as the "three Vs." Buyers want these listings, they can find them, and the information is correct. House hunters in the US are accustomed to websites with postings that check off all three boxes. But in Europe, Attar says, home listings are typically missing at least one. "If it is valuable and it is valid, it's not visible," Attar tells me. "It's going to be hidden somewhere." Hollin Stafford, a real estate agent with eXp Realty in Portugal, can attest to these frustrations. She spent more than a decade working in the business in the States before moving to a town outside Lisbon in 2016. There she encountered a setup that, in many ways, still feels like "the Wild West," she tells me. Though Stafford has now spent years helping buyers and sellers navigate the Portuguese market through her company, Blue Horizon Properties, she hasn't forgotten the parts of the US system that she once took for granted. "You get so used to having the centralized system where you can see all of the details you need," Stafford says. "You can see what things actually sold for, and do a proper market evaluation, and all these things that you just think are par for the course." In September, real estate leaders from around the world are set to gather in Toronto for the third-annual International MLS Forum, a conference where attendees discuss plans to create the kinds of systems that buyers and sellers in the US already enjoy. Canada is the only other country with anything approaching a similar setup, says Sam DeBord, the CEO of the Real Estate Standards Organization, a nonprofit group focused on developing the technological rules and processes that undergird the MLS databases. Other places, like Egypt and France, have taken steps toward creating comparable databases. But in most cases, those with power — the big brokerages or portals that run things — have little incentive to make a change. "It's this concept of a tragedy of the commons," DeBord tells me. "If every individual goes out and takes as much as they can, all of a sudden the marketplace is ruined." There are some clear signs that the US real estate market could fall into something like the cutthroat, user-unfriendly European model. For one thing, the MLSes are basically a social construct. The National Association of Realtors — one of the most powerful industry groups in the country — effectively sets the rules for participating in these databases, and the local MLSes may levy fines against agents who run afoul of those policies. But there's no law that says it has to work this way, and recent troubles at the NAR have dented the group's influence over other power players. Actual enforcement among local MLSes is also known to be spotty. Some in the industry fear that it could all crumble if all this infighting turns into an actual exodus. Last year, Compass, which has more than 37,000 agents around the country, staked its future on a plan to draw more agents and clients by building up a stockpile of "exclusive inventory": homes that couldn't be found anywhere else. The company began heavily pushing a "three-phased marketing strategy" that encouraged sellers to test their home listings exclusively on the Compass website — first in the company's internal database and then on its public-facing landing page — before sharing them with the MLS and the major search portals. The crux of their pitch was that the MLS and sites like Zillow display information that doesn't help a seller, tracking stuff like price cuts and how long the house has been on the market. The brokerage's marketing plan, on the other hand, lets sellers fine-tune their approach and gather valuable feedback from other agents before making a broader debut. Plenty of industry figures cried foul over this plan — the whole system is predicated on the idea that agents share their listings widely and freely. But the brokerage's play also seemed to be working. Buyers want to get a first glimpse at homes however they can, and sellers may not mind testing the market in a limited capacity if they think it'll net them more in the long run. In February of this year, Compass said that more than half of its sellers were choosing to "premarket" their homes using the three-phased plan. About 94% of Compass's listings last year, including those that went through this kind of premarketing, eventually made it to the MLS, the company says, though it's not clear how long those houses spent in the databases. Even if most of these houses ended up on Zillow and the like, Compass clients still had early access to thousands of listings that couldn't be found on the big search portals. The concern now is that other big brokerages could decide to follow suit, keeping homes on their own websites before sharing them elsewhere. In this state of play, a buyer could still visit a site like Zillow to look at homes for sale, but the portal wouldn't be able to show you all, or maybe even most, of the available listings at any given moment. Instead, you'd have to jump from site to site, scouring the web for homes. The choice of an agent would carry additional weight — you'd have to consider just how much of the market they could unlock via their access to private, internal databases. The closest analogy to this hypothetical may be the fragmented world of video streaming, in which companies like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max are racing to build walled gardens of exclusive content. Sure, you can try to get access to all the shows and movies out there, but doing so requires a lot of time and money. And, frankly, it's a huge pain. Mike DelPrete, a real estate tech strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been warning about this threat to the search portals for years. "When it comes to browsing for real estate, consumers want access to all of the available inventory," DelPrete wrote in a blog post four years ago. "If a certain portion of listings are held off-market, available exclusively on another platform, consumer eyeballs will naturally follow." For now, a lot of eyeballs are still on Zillow, which draws more than 220 million unique visitors each month. But that's of little comfort to those who warn that Compass could trigger a domino effect among other large brokerages. The 10 largest brands in real estate accounted for more than half of US home sales volume last year, data from T3 Sixty, a consulting firm for residential real estate brokerages, shows. Even some leaders who have come out against Compass' strategy have warned that they, too, could flex their sizable market share to execute a similar game plan. MLSes need "someone to enforce the rules," DeBord tells me. In this case, that enforcer may turn out to be Zillow. The home search giant has tried to put the kibosh on all of this by banning listings that are not shared with Zillow — and the rest of the MLS — within one business day of being marketed publicly. That means as soon as a "for-sale" sign shows up in the front yard or an agent posts about a house on their website, the clock is ticking for them to send it to the databases that share listings with pretty much every other site in the industry. Those who don't comply will be left to explain to their clients why their house won't appear on the most popular home-search portal in the country. Compass has sued Zillow in federal court, accusing the company of using its monopoly power to quash a competing business model that, Compass claims, gives sellers more control over where and how their homes are marketed. In a formal response last month, Zillow disputed the monopoly characterization and argued that it shouldn't be forced to help Compass freeride on the system by accepting its stale listings only after they haven't sold on the Compass site. The brokerage's three-phased marketing strategy, Zillow's lawyers wrote, "harms consumers, who face balkanized and less liquid markets for homes, and Zillow, whose ability to attract and serve consumers depends on comprehensive, up-to-date listings." It's important to remember that anyone weighing in on this battle has a financial stake in their desired outcome. Compass wants to grow its agent base and market share. Zillow needs fresh home listings to fuel its business, which relies on selling leads to agents who pay to advertise on its platform. American companies aren't the only ones who care about this, either — brokers around the world are watching to see how this shakes out. When I talked to DelPrete back in June, he had just returned from a weekslong work trip to Europe. The fight over inventory back in the States, he says, came up "a surprising amount of times." "I think it's a case of the grass is always greener, right?" DelPrete says. "The US wants what the rest of the world has, and the rest of the world wants what the US has." There's a case to be made that all this hand-wringing will turn out to be hyperbole. The real estate industry in the US is notoriously slow to change, and consumers are used to the current setup. Zillow draws so many visitors that it's hard to imagine real estate agents shunning the platform en masse — it's simply too powerful a marketing machine. The MLS model, at least as it exists in the States, is far from perfect. More than 500 local databases form a complex web of overlapping fiefdoms that agents have to subscribe to individually. The recent class-action lawsuits against the National Association of Realtors and major brokerages cast the MLSes not as models of transparency, but as shadowy databases that helped prop up agent commissions by facilitating a sneaky practice known as "steering." There are other models that could work, too: In Australia, for instance, there's a dominant search portal where most people go to find homes, and many places sell via an auction that offers more transparency than the US system of making blind offers. And while the search portals here offer pretty comprehensive views of the market, they've never had all of the listings. There have always been so-called "pocket listings" that float around beyond the reach of the MLSes, available only to in-the-know agents who can offer their clients a leg up on the competition. But hardly anyone in the industry disagrees with the basic premise that buyers like being able to find homes easily and in one place. People may gripe about Zillow's power in the industry or the questionable accuracy of its ubiquitous Zestimate, but the ability to scroll through all the listings on the site — or those on any of the other search portals — is unique to North America. Few probably appreciate this better than Boero, the real estate exec who set out to buy the Italian getaway of his dreams. He did eventually find a place that checked off his boxes: "We're happy with it," he says. But he made that purchase with far less confidence than he had in any real estate transaction in his life. And even today, he has no idea whether it's worth more or less than it was when he bought it three years ago. The whole experience, he tells me, gave him a new appreciation for the American way of doing things. "Within the industry, we've made these comparisons ad nauseam," Boero tells me. "'Hey guys, let's not destroy this very special thing we have. Because just look at the rest of the world and how messed up it is.'" James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team. Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Why personal finance isn't so personal
In this eye-opening anniversary episode of Living Not So Fabulously, hosts John and David Auten-Schneider explore why so many Americans, especially in the LGBTQ+ community, are financially unprepared, how personal money stories shape financial behavior, and which real solutions exist. From stories on failed 401(k)s to hidden discrimination in housing and banking, this episode gives practical advice and the financial wake-up call you didn't know you needed. For full episodes of Living Not So Fabulously, listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on our website. Yahoo Finance's Living Not So Fabulously is produced by Dennis Golin. Welcome to Li fabulously, where we serve candid cash combos with a side of sass and zero late fees. So we are just about ready to celebrate the one year anniversary of Living not so Fabulously. And in that year, we've received a fair number of questions. If you have a question, email us at YF podcasts@yahoo or if you're watching on YouTube or on Yahoo drop a comment in the comment section or drop a David, we're getting old. Speak for do you meanby that? Well, we're, uh, well, we're entering early retirement ourselves, but, um, we're at one year mark, and that's pretty old for a show. It is, yeah, some shows don't make it past the first couple of episodes, 3 episode because the average, right? Yeah, we're beating the average for sure, which brings us to our first question. I'm at 55, 65 years old, somewhere in I have little to nothing saved for retirement. What do I do? Um, we actually get this question quite a bit. We've gotten it even before we started working with Yahoo Finance, we, we get this question from our community, and I think it just kind of pinpoints where we are in the retirement crisis. I mean, we all know that we're in a retirement crisis right now andWe had Teresa Ghilarducci on our Queer Money podcast, uh, last year that we, when we interviewed her, she said, so it's sort of the 401k experiment, sort of a failed experiment, and it's not serving Americans. And here are some recent statistics to share. According to TransAmerica in 2023, when they surveyed baby boomers, the average median savings for retirement for baby boomers was $194,000. And when you consider the average cost in a nursing home without any special services for Alzheimer's or dementia is about 10, 194 is not going very far. Yeah, and I think it was Fidelity that even said that the average couple in retirement will spend $168,000 just on healthcare, not on those extended living situations or nursing homes, places like that, just on healthcare. So if the median savings is only $194,000 that means that 50% of people have less than that and 50% have more. All those have less than that, yeah, they bring down, right? Exactly. And according to Transamerica, 10% of the people that they surveyed or studied had nothing saved for retirement, these are baby boomers, like they're already technically in at the retirement age, right? So they don't typically have a lot of options available to them, although we'll talk about maybe some solutions here in a bit, right? And I hope for those people and for those who have a little bit more, but not much more saved, that they're tapping into some sort of from somewhere, although hopefully they don't have a golden girl moment and have the have the letter that arrives that says the pension has gone bankrupt, right? Then recently there was a 2024 PRIP study um by Alliance for Lifetime Income. They found that 51% of women between the ages of 61 and 65 had less than $100,000 in investible assets. Now that's investible assets that they have for themselves. Among single, divorced or witted women, that rises to 67%.This is just one example of how a minority group, um, a different demographic, uh, is struggling more so than maybe the general population. Yeah. So if you're just tuning in, this is living not so fabulously where we mix real talk with flair. Uh, we're taking listener and viewer questions today. If you're watching on YouTube or on Yahoo drop a question that you may have for us in the comments section episodes. John, let's talk about this. We, we know the data out there. We know that there's, there's a crisis happening when it comes to retirement, and more and more people are coming to us saying that they are worried about what they do they do in retirement. Let's maybe talk about what's causing this and what some of the solutions are, because maybe some of the solutions are actually in discovering what the causes are. Yeah. Well Ithink the first thing to do isStop beating yourself up over the fact that you might not necessarily be where you want to be at this particular age with retirement savings. I mean, I think it's really hard to send people to careers to become HVAC experts and plumbers and uh graphic designers and architects and all this stuff, and to become expert at their craft or the service that they provide their local communities and then to also at night learn how to at investing in the stock market and trading crypto and and ETFs and all sorts of stuff. I I I think it's asking a lot of people to do that, especially if they don't have a passion for that topic. It's different if you have a desire for that, but if you don't have a desire or interest in that, know, it's gonna be really hard. And I think when you add on to the psychological effect of what's called hyperbolic discounting, uh, where we put off what we know we should do today for tomorrow because we're more concerned about with what's happening today than we are about tomorrow. If tomorrow is 2040, 60 years in the just not that concerned about it. No, you'renot. Yeah, you, you think how many seven year olds are thinking about retirement, let alone 27 year olds, we don't think about it when we really should be thinking about it. We're not trained to. There is very little conversation with us as young adults, as early adults, uh, as kids should be planning for retirement. And for that reason, I think it's so easy for us to get lost in all of the scrolling or the other things that go on in life, and then say I'll I'll deal with it later. And so it's very common for people to not really be thinking about this until, and you know, it was interesting, uh, we had umUh, Shamina Singh on the podcast several weeks ago, and she mentioned this idea that most people learn something when it comes to finances when they actually need it. Well, this is one where you really should be learning about it long before you need it, cause you need to take advantage of compounding interest. Exactly. And then I'll add to the fact that we are in a consumer culture. We have a consumer economy where condition and almostTold by our presidents to spend, spend, spend, prove that the economy is strong by spending, spending, spending, right? That's, that's the indication, you know, we're always talking about the consumer is, is propping up the economy. Well, the consumer is propping up the economy on credit card debt, on crutches, and it has no retirement savings. And the only solution that our government is coming up with is, how can we make people work longer and how can we take away any benefits that they've already put into the system. So let's talk about the solutions. I think that the whole idea of and consumerism may lead to some of the solution, and that is we need to talk about this more, not just ourselves with our family members, but just in the general population. We need to talk about this so that it reaches young people when they're able to do this. And maybe we need to encourage more people to segment out that consumer culture, consumerism culture and set aside some of that for retirement. Yeah, I, I would say over and over and over again, I think the best prepare people for long term financial security is for more people to talk about their financial situations, what's working, what's not working. Um, make sure you're sharing what you learn, making sure you share the mistakes that you made, um, that right there, that's the nucleus of building generational wealth. And unfortunately, but there's this popular notion that talking about money is rude, and we shouldn't be talking about how much money we have. Um, it's, it's impolite, whatever, um, that, that strategy is failing people. But I think on top of that, I mean,Unfortunately, in this economy, we have to get a little bit creative with how we prepare for retirement. We can no longer retire, I rely on W-2 income because as we all know, real income is not keeping up with the cost of inflation. I mean, CEOOs are doing great, but everybody else is struggling. So unfortunately, um, we need to figure out how can we create multiple streams of income, in addition to uh maybe your W-2, how can you figure out maybe just to create a small business of your own that you can generate additional income and then maybe it'sSome point in the future sell, how can you tap into maybe real estate investing, even if that real estate investing is uh renting out a room in your, your house or your apartment to someone else, or renting out space in your garage, your attic or your basement for storage for other people to be able to store other things at your place for afee, right? I think the whole idea here is somehow, you know, if you're between 55 and 65 and you're looking at retirement being anywhere from 2 to maybe 5 or 8 years have to figure out how to create a gap between what you spend and what you earn, um, and there's multiple ways to do that. Focus more on how to generate more money than necessarily cutting back, although I'm sure all of us could cut back a little bit, but the, the larger that gap is, the more money you're going to be able to invest. And, and some people may say, well, I'm 55, I'm 60 years old, will I even get any benefit out of investing? Well, the reality is, is that if you're 55 or 60 years old today, you're likely to live to your 70s, maybe even early 80s. So some of you are looking at having a time horizon of 15 to 20 years to invest. So if you're able to put away $5000 for the next 3 to 5 years or 8 years, that money, if invested, will grow to the point where you are going to be able to supplement the whatever other income streams you have, especially if that only other income stream is Social Security, right? And then there are other potentialSolutions to look at, right? You can look at getting a life insurance, uh, with particular riders, you could look at getting an annuity. Um, I know that uh reverse mortgages is some sort of a controversial topic, but that may be, I think they've evolved over time, so that may be a solution for some people to figure out how can I just create multiple sources of income, manage my expenses as much as I can, keep them as low as possible, especially if, to your point, I am 55 or or or or 60, um, and don't have a whole lot saved for retirement, havingThat sort of combination is sort of what we need to sort of lean into, I think, because unfortunately, the government isn't necessarily coming up with great solutions and we can no longer retire on our employer. But if we are younger, this hopefully uses as a sort of a clarion call to say, how can I start investing for retirement as soon as possible before my my lifestyle inflates too much, right?Before I, I, I, it becomes too hard to reduce the number of subscriptions that I'm currently addicted to, um, how can I put more of that money into the stock market? Because, um, now David and I have been saying this for, for years. There's no part of the economy that's designed for success quite like the stock market. And I haven't had the chance to read. There's an article out there right now where economists are saying, to everything that Trump is doing and all these tariffs and this this chaos has been caused, why is the stock market up? Nobody knows. And I think it's because there are so many rich and powerful people who need the stock market to continue to increase that the sooner you can catch that train, the better it is for your long term financial security. So please wait on for one moment, we'll be right back after this quick back to Living Not So Fabulously. We're back taking your listener and viewer questions. Again, if you're watching on YouTube or Yahoo drop a question in the comments and maybe we'll use that for a future episode, or you can always email us at YF podcast@ So we're gonna take our second listener question and our second listener question is one that has been kind of an amalgamation of not only people asking this question, but maybe some of the trolling that we get, um, especially on trolling on, on the YouTube comments. Uh, we're going to talk about how money is different for LGBT people than everyone else. And, uh, the reality is what we're going to talk about here is not just that it's different for LGBT people. Money is different for every single person. Every single one of us looks at money differently. One of the comments that we get is that money is money. Credit cards are credit cards. Investing is investing. It's all the same for the way that we look at it is it breaks down very similar to the Pareto principle. 80% of personal finance is the financial side, the transactional side, where you're right, swiping a credit card for you and me is exactly the same. Investing in Google is exactly the same for you and me. That transactional stuff, that is the same. The 20% is the personal finance. And I'm gonna quote Morgan Hall here from his book The Psychology of Money. He says, your personal experiences with money make up about 100 millionth of what's really happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works. So what he's really saying here is that our personal experience with money is so tiny, it'sSuch a tiny fraction of what really happens in the world when it comes to money. But our perception is what we then blast out as 80% of reality. You don't see the world how it is, you see the world how you are, and we're each individual with different life experiences, different races, creed, backgrounds, socioeconomic status, histories, um, and that's why even twins, right, twins can in completely different perspectives and success with their finances, right? Yeah, exactly. That's why you have one twin that may be very successful, and one that may be not so successful. It's because they interact with their surroundings and their money. They've had different experience because of the experiences they've had in So here we're gonna share some experiences that show how money shapes the way LGBT people maybe work with or deal with money or have the perspective or money story, that's what this show is about, money stories, how our money stories may be different. So for example, LGBTQ youth make up 40% of the homeless youth there is a larger number or percentage of homeless youth that identify as LGBT. Why is that? Well, because many of them have either left home or have been kicked out of home because they're not accepted or welcomed there, right? So how does that shape your perspective of how you work with or deal with money? Well, if you're leaving home when you're an adolescent, you are not getting the kind ofEducation, you're not having that kind of discussions with mom and dad. You're not seeing your parents interact with money. And you also may be put into the world in a very desperate or scarcity mindset because you don't have anything. And so the way that you look at money is always that there's never enough of it, right? You develop this money story of, I'm alwaysSearching and trying to find money. And so it's difficult. And so you develop this idea in your head, money is difficult. And that really frames how many young LGBT people think about money moving forward in their lives. And Ialso think too that if you're homeless and living on the street and you're seeing other people going about their daily lives and they they look like they're flourishing.I can see how you would have maybe a negative perspective um on people who are financially secure, right? Those people are they're they're not giving me a handout, they're not helping me out. Um, I, I'm not being treated well by society, so you have this sort of negative perspective of people who are wealthy. So not only do you feel like that getting money is hard, and then if you think that getting money is hard, it's, uh, you know, as Ford said, it's gonna be hard. IfYou see people who have money, then you sort of see them as as as um evil in in a way, then you don't definitely don't want to be those people. But regardless of whether or not you've had a good experience with money or not, we're all gonna be at some 0.65 or 75 years old, but we can all for the most part expect to live to be older age, and if we haven't had the healthy perspective of money, we're not likely to have a healthy uh retirement account or a healthy relationship with how we use let's talk about something that is apples to apples, the same for everybody. That's getting a mortgage, right? Getting a mortgage is something that everyone should be able to do and do it equally, right?We actually have laws to to protect us so that we all have equal opportunity when it comes to getting a mortgage. Well, a 20 year study that was done found that same-sex couples were 73% more likely to be denied a mortgage, even though their credit scores and incomes and debt to income ratios were the same as opposite sex couples. And we know we have historical data and reference points that show what has happened to individuals who have been how they were not able to participate in the growth of what was going on in their communities financially, right? There were certain areas of town where they said, we're not going to invest in that neighborhood, we're only going to put these kinds of people in that neighborhood, and we're not gonna go in there, we're going to stay away from that, so it areas depressed. Well, the same thing is happening to folks in in the LGBT community. Historically, 33% of LGBTQ individuals own their home versus 66% of the general population, and much of that has to do with the fact that many of us were denied mortgages or maybe giveGiven unfavorable information about getting a mortgage so that we didn't get one, right? So we talked about earlier how the stock market is one of the great wealth builders in America. Well, obviously we all know, the other great wealth builder in America is real estate, and for a lot of people, a lot of Americans today, most of their financial security is tied up in their the the home in which they if, would you say, what percentage of the LGBT population own their own home? Roughly 33%. That's that's from a prudential study that was done, I think in 2018. So many people in our community are being left out of that great wealth order. Yeah, other data that we have, John and I did a uh an LGBTQ plus money study with the Motley Fool back in 2022 and 2023. That showed some very interesting information when it came to how queer people use money. Yeah, in the 2023 survey, 55% of respondents said that they've been discriminated against by somebody in the financial services, banking, insurance that that's could be real or perceived, of course, and 49% of those those people said that that had an adverse effect on their long-term financial security. So overall, by and large, for a lot of LGBTQ plus folks to put this into perspective that maybe many of us can relate, going into a bank and asking to open up an account or to get a loan is a lot like going into the gym class locker room. Yeah, it brings back a lot of negative effects. As a matter of fact, we have a friend of ours whoStarted a business, wanted to get financing from a local bank for that business, walked in and literally was told, we do not lend to people who look like you. And that'sWithin the last 5 years. This is not something that happened 25, 35 years ago. So these, these kinds of things prevent individuals in the community from having a positive outlook on not only the money economy, but also individuals within the money economy and they want to separate themselves from it. Sowe all know that small business, starting a business, entrepreneurship is the other great wealth builder in America that many people are being excluded from because we're just not all playing on the same playing field, they're different playing fields and some are slightly inclined, some are steeply inclined, and some are for those who benefit are completely fat. But, but I think a great example is the, uh, wedding analogy that we oftentime use, right? The average cost of a wedding these days is, is, I think it's actually over, but it's about $25,000. Well, now it's, it's $35,000. When I originally did this data, we were talking about $25,000 being the uh the cost of a wedding. So let's just say that there's two different, different couples who are going to get married. You have a same-sex couple and you have an opposite sex couple, and both of them plan on spending about $25,000 on their wedding. The opposite sex couple gets help from mom and dad. The same-sex couple, like John and I get zero help from our family, but we decide to fund that wedding ourselves. Well, the opposite sex couple, let's just say that they take that $25,000 that they didn't have to spend and they put that into their and the same-sex couple doesn't have that opportunity. What's the difference 30 years later when they're both able to retire? Well, depending on the rate of return, that $25,000 will grow to anywhere between 350 and $665,000. That's the retirement question that we were being asked of earlier. I'm 55 to 60 years old. I don't have enough money to retire. That's why we get that question a lot in our community. And that's just one example. I mean, obviously know that um Speaker of the House Johnson, uh I mean Supreme Court Justices Alito and Thomas are now threatening to, to, to remove a marriage equality, and there are like 1000 plus tax laws, benefits that come with marriage, that if marriage equality is overturned, then same-sex couples are going to be left out of that as well, which makes it just that much harder, um, and for opposite sex ability or the right to marry isn't up for debate every 4 or so years, yeah, what are the takeaway? Well, my takeaway from this particular episode is we may not have convinced you, and that's fine. Everything isn't for everybody. We're serving a particular and underserved niche, money stories and conversations relevant to our community, or relevant to them. All are welcome, but attendance is not required. Yeah, and with that in mind, Yahoo Finance is serving up a multitude of flavors of personal finance for folks of all demographics. If you're looking for personal finance from a black or personal, a person of color perspective, catchan freestyle with our friend Ross Mack. If you want to have deeper conversations around retirement, check out Decoding Retirement with the great Bob Powell. If you love small would like that to have a woman's twist on it from time to time. Watch or listen to the wonderful Elizabeth Gore show, The Big Idea. What's the easiest way to do all of that? Scan the QR code to follow Yahoo Finance podcast for more videos and expert insight, because when you do, you'll find the money conversations customized to help you build financial security. And until next time, stay fabulous. This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services. Related Videos AI Startup ElevenLabs Launches Music Service Sign in to access your portfolio
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Credit card debt is higher than ever: 5 ways to reduce what you owe now
Credit card debt is continuing to climb, and it's not just inching upward, either. Americans added $27 billion to their credit card balances in the second quarter of 2025, pushing the total credit card debt tally to a staggering record-high $1.21 trillion nationwide, according to the latest quarterly Household Debt and Credit Report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That represents a 2.3% increase from the previous quarter and an uptick of nearly 6% compared to this time last year. And it's not just the rising credit card balances that are cause for concern. According to the report, nearly 7% of credit card balances have also transitioned into delinquency over the last year. That's a signal that more borrowers are struggling to keep up with their credit card payments as interest rates remain stubbornly high at nearly 22% on average. Rates that high can cause card balances to balloon quickly, especially as the compound interest charges accrue. With balances at near-record highs and delinquencies on the rise, and with economic uncertainty continuing to loom, now is the time to take action. Luckily, there are several strategies you can use to get ahead of your debt and start to regain control of your finances. Find out more about the debt relief strategies available to you now. If you want to lower your credit card debt, the following strategies could help you do that: If you have multiple credit card balances and decent credit, a debt consolidation loan might be a good way to simplify your payments and potentially lower your interest rate. With this method, you take out a personal or debt consolidation loan and use the proceeds to pay off your credit card balances. You're then left with just one fixed monthly payment to manage. The key to lowering your debt here, though, is securing a lower interest rate than what you're currently paying. Lowering your rate by even a few percentage points can save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars in interest charges over time, especially if you're carrying large balances. Explore your debt relief options and find out how to get started today. Another option for reducing interest is taking advantage of a 0% balance transfer offer for an introductory period, typically between 12 and 21 months. This wipes out the interest charges for the full introductory period, which can be a smart strategy if you're confident you can pay off most or all of your balance before the promotional period ends. Just keep in mind that most balance transfer cards charge a balance transfer fee, which is typically 3% to 5% of the transferred amount, so you'll want to do the math to ensure that the savings are worth the extra costs. You should also understand that if you don't pay off the balance in time, you'll be subject to interest charges at the card's regular rate. For disciplined borrowers, though, this can be a highly effective short-term solution. If you're already struggling to keep up with your credit card payments or your accounts have been sent to collections, debt settlement, also referred to as debt forgiveness, might offer a way out. With this approach, you or a professional debt settlement company acting on your behalf negotiate with your creditors to offer a lower lump-sum settlement in return for the remainder of your balance being forgiven. While this strategy results in paying 30% to 50% less on average, it's not without its drawbacks. Debt settlement can negatively impact your credit score in the short term, for example, and not all creditors are willing to settle, either. But if you're overwhelmed by unmanageable balances and delinquent accounts, it could be a lifeline worth exploring. If you're not sure which direction to take, a credit counseling agency can help review your financial situation and walk you through your options. These agencies offer free or low-cost consultations and may recommend a debt management plan if you qualify. A debt management plan consolidates your debts into a single monthly payment, and the credit counselor will work to try and lower your interest rates and have fees waived. While you won't be settling the debt for less than you owe, this route may make your payments more manageable, reduce your interest charges and help you avoid falling further behind. Don't underestimate the power of making a simple phone call, either. Most credit card companies would rather work with you on a solution than get nothing if you file for bankruptcy, so they're often willing to negotiate payment plans, reduce interest rates or put a temporary pause on your payment obligations if you're facing a hardship. So, call your issuer and explain your situation honestly to see if they can provide some breathing room while you get your finances back on track. Credit card debt is hitting new highs, and delinquencies are rising alongside it, but you don't have to stay stuck in a cycle of minimum payments and mounting interest. Whether you're behind on payments or just feeling the pinch of high rates, there are real, actionable ways to reduce what you owe. So, compare your options and find the right strategy to start digging out of debt and take control of your financial future.
