In this episode, Don and Tom saddle up for a tour through Schwab’s “Good, Bad, and Ugly.” They applaud CEO Rick Wurster’s warning about the growing overlap between gambling and investing, take a hard look at Schwab’s retail-side conflicts and non-fiduciary sales practices, and then recoil at the truly ugly: Schwab’s acquisition of Forge Global and its push to open private-company speculation to everyday investors. From there, they field listener questions about crypto’s pointless search for a purpose, how to implement a disciplined 5 percent retirement withdrawal strategy, the ins and outs of tax-free Vanguard mutual-fund-to-ETF conversions, and whether a younger spouse should convert a large TSP balance to Roth. It’s classic Talking Real Money: skeptical, practical, consumer-first, and mildly exhausted by the Wild West of modern finance.

0:04  Investing as the Wild West and why caveat emptor still defines the industry

0:24  Schwab’s role as custodian vs. broker and how they reshaped trading costs

1:14  Schwab’s discount-broker origins and institutional dominance

2:37  Free trades, market influence, and why Schwab became the industry’s leader

3:52  CEO Rick Wurster’s warning about gambling creeping into investing

4:43  Sports betting numbers, prop bets, and why only 5 percent come out ahead

5:54  The “bad”: Schwab retail selling and the fiduciary confusion

6:40  The “ugly”: Schwab buying Forge Global and pushing private-company speculation

7:23  Why private equity is riskier, pricier, illiquid, and over-hyped

8:17  The myth of private companies outperforming public ones

9:22  Why the Wild West persists: weak oversight, self-dealing, and revolving doors

10:48  Listener question: stablecoins, crypto legitimation, and the greater-fool problem

13:00  Currency concerns and why crypto still solves nothing

13:50  5 percent withdrawal strategy: when and how to draw from your portfolio

15:28  Rebalancing, total return withdrawals, and annual cash-flow discipline

16:47  Why withdrawals should follow rebalancing, not lead it

17:56  Vanguard mutual-fund-to-ETF conversions: how they work and why they’re useful

20:10  Expense-ratio savings vs. capital-gains distributions

20:55  TSP-to-Roth conversion question: tax-rate timing matters

22:44  Only convert if you can pay taxes from outside savings

23:08  Reminder: free adviser meetings, no sales pressure

24:10  TRM’s longevity and approaching episode 2,000

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