By Peter Wechsler
President & Co-Founder, Franklin Retirement Solutions
[email protected]
The rain held out last Friday until our annual Ice Cream Social & Shredding Event wrapped up at 4pm. At 4:05, the rain came down—and really hard—for a short time. We had around 250 clients, friends, kids, and grandkids for fun, food, and shredding. We started doing this event in 2018, but Covid held us back in 2020. Since 2021, we’ve hosted this event every year.
It’s always fun being with our clients, and our entire staff enjoyed seeing everyone. Quite a few clients brought friends, and several got on the calendar to visit with us.
Clients are always asking how FRS is doing. So far, it’s been a good year, with 49 new families coming on board. Many have come from referrals this year, as our Ambassador Program is working well.
As for the world, it’s still a mess. Kyle’s writing about the housing market and the effect of high interest rates on home buying. Besides Iran, the three big topics I keep seeing in the news are the effects of AI and data centers on the economy, the weak job market, and the strain of inflation on a large percentage of families in the country.
With inflation, it’s not just the cost of a gallon of gas. Food in the supermarket and at restaurants is rising above inflation numbers. Manufacturers continue to raise prices based on the tariffs still in effect, with prices going up for steel and aluminum, but also auto parts, produce, and other food items. With gas and diesel fuel so high, shipping costs are going up on many products. Oh…and don’t forget about the higher airfares. No fun!
One big topic today is jobs, employment, and the effects of AI. Over the centuries, displaced workers would get retrained in a new field. Secretaries doing shorthand were retrained on a word processor and Dictaphone. Back in the day, folks who kept horses and buggies running ended up on the production line building automobiles—or airplanes.
For the last 10 or 15 years, as folks lost jobs, they were told to “learn to code”, said Pascual Restrepo, an economist at Yale University and a member of Anthropic’ s economic advisory council. Restrepo continued, “With AI, that career advice has gone out the window. AI happens to be super good at computing. Maybe the next thing is economics. Then law. Then journalism. We don’t know in which order AI is going to advance and make leaps.” This is scary stuff.
Nothing stays the same and I’m sure we’ll figure out the AI thing. As I say often, fasten your seat belts.
Enjoy the summer weekend before we run out of them…
Peter