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THE WATER COOLER
The Big Three
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#1: Walmart May Cut Prices as Tariff Refunds Come In
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The U.S. government is now required to refund most of the tariffs it collected, and Walmart says it could use that money to lower prices in its stores. Company executives also flagged that rising gas costs are already making shoppers pull back on spending.
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The Raw Truth: If you are stretching a grocery budget right now, this is the first genuinely good news in a while. Lower prices at Walmart — even on a handful of staples — puts real dollars back in your cart. But do not relax yet. Gas is still eating your paycheck, and when Walmart says shoppers are getting skittish, that means the people running the biggest store in America are watching the same stress you are living every single day. |
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#2: Should Your Sister Wait Until 70 for Social Security?
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A common question is surfacing for people approaching retirement: is it smarter to start collecting Social Security at full retirement age, around 67, or hold off until 70 to get a bigger monthly check? The answer depends almost entirely on health history and how long the people in your family tend to live.
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The Raw Truth: This decision is worth thousands of dollars over a lifetime and most families never sit down and actually run the numbers. If your family tends to live into their late 80s or beyond, waiting until 70 can mean hundreds of extra dollars every single month for decades. If health is shaky or money is tight right now, waiting may not be realistic — and that is okay too. The point is to make the choice on purpose, not by accident. |
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#3: UK Borrowing Hits Highest Point Since Covid
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The British government borrowed more money than expected last month, and retail sales dropped at the same time that fuel prices spiked. It is a signal that households and governments alike are under serious financial pressure heading into summer.
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The Raw Truth: This one is across the Atlantic, but the pattern is identical to what American families are feeling right now. When fuel prices jump, people stop buying everything else — clothes, home goods, restaurant meals. That spending pullback ripples into layoffs and slower hiring. If your budget already feels like it has no room left, you are not imagining it. The pressure is real and it is global. |
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"Do not value money for any more nor any less than its worth; it is a good servant but a bad master."
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TRACKING YOUR S&P 500 INDEX FUND
The Ownership 10
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Your 401k S&P 500 index fund — whether you know it as VOO, FXAIX, or the Vanguard Institutional 500 Index Trust — owns all 500 of these companies. When they win, you win.
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The Heavy Hitters — Working Hard for You Today:
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Ford Motor Company (F) 🟢 Up 3.40% — People are feeling better about Ford's ability to keep making and selling trucks and cars despite all the trade tension noise lately. They build the F-150 in your neighbor's driveway and pretty much every other Ford vehicle on the road. |
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Merck & Company (MRK) 🟢 Up 2.55% — Investors warmed back up to Merck today after the stock had been drifting lower for a while. They make prescription medicines you have probably seen advertised on TV, including some big cancer and diabetes drugs. |
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Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) 🟢 Up 2.24% — Demand for their weight-loss and diabetes drugs is still showing no signs of slowing down, and people keep piling in. They make Mounjaro and Zepbound, the shots your coworker or family member is probably already talking about. |
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AT&T Inc. (T) 🟢 Up 1.64% — Drifting along with the broader market today with a little extra lift. They are the AT&T that sends you a phone bill every month and keeps your cell service running. |
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General Motors Company (GM) 🟢 Up 1.41% — Drifting along with the broader market today, picking up a little momentum alongside Ford. They build Chevy, GMC, Buick, and Cadillac vehicles and have been pushing hard into electric trucks. |
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The Benchwarmers — Having a Tough Day (But Still on Your Team):
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Walmart Inc. (WMT) 🔴 Down 7.27% — Walmart told shoppers and investors that rising import costs from tariffs may force them to raise prices on store shelves pretty soon, and that spooked a lot of people. They run the giant Walmart stores and Sams Club warehouses where millions of families do their weekly grocery run. |
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Deere & Company (DE) 🔴 Down 5.19% — They made noticeably less money this quarter than people were expecting, and farmers buying less equipment right now is a big reason why. They build the green John Deere tractors and farm equipment you see out in the fields. |
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Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST) 🔴 Down 2.19% — Drifting down alongside Walmart today as worries about tariffs pushing prices higher rattled the whole retail world. They run the Costco warehouses where you buy the giant tubs of peanut butter and the $1.50 hot dog. |
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Salesforce (CRM) 🔴 Down 2.10% — Drifting along with the broader market today on a softer day for tech stocks overall. They make the software that helps businesses keep track of their customers, sales calls, and deals — stuff running in the background at a lot of companies you already do business with. |
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NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) 🔴 Down 1.77% — Some new rules limiting where their most powerful computer chips can be sold overseas rattled investors a bit today. They make the chips that power artificial intelligence — basically the engine inside most of the AI tools everyone is talking about right now. |
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Takeaway: Five companies are winning today. Five are hurting. Your index fund holds all 500. You never have to pick the right one. You just have to stay in. That is the whole game.
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YOUR MONEY
The Household Dashboard
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| Item |
Today |
Status |
| National Gas Avg (AAA) |
$4.55/gal |
🟢 1¢ down today |
| DC Gas Avg (AAA) |
$4.66/gal |
🟢 1¢ down today |
| 30-Year Fixed Mortgage |
6.51% |
🟢 Trending |
| S&P 500 YTD Return |
see Scoreboard |
🟢 Still growing |
| Credit Card APR Avg |
22.30% |
🔴 Record highs |
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Gas is down just 1¢ today nationally — barely a rounding error, but prices are fragile right now, so if your tank is below half, fill it up today and log your work miles while you're at it. |
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That 22.30% credit card APR is at record highs — every single day you carry a balance it is quietly eating your paycheck alive, so today's action is simple: log in, find your highest-rate card, and throw every extra dollar you can scrape at it right now. |
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YOUR RETIREMENT
The Scoreboard: Daily vs. The Long Game
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| Investment |
Today |
5-Yr Return |
10-Yr Return |
| S&P 500 — VOO / FXAIX / Vanguard 500 |
🟢 +0.19% |
🟢 +86.4% |
🟢 +320.0% |
| Nasdaq — QQQ |
🟢 +0.19% |
🟢 +107.7% |
🟢 +613.1% |
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The TV wants you to panic about the red dot on the left. The green numbers on the right are your real story. Stay in.
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The Mailbag
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"Hey Rock. My husband and I are currently on Step 2 of the Roadmap, fighting our way through $45,000 of high-interest credit card debt. The problem is the 24% interest is making it feel like we are completely spinning our wheels. We bought our house five years ago and have a ton of equity in it right now. Our local bank just offered us a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) at 8.5% to consolidate and pay off all the cards instantly. It would drop our monthly minimum payments by almost $700 and save us thousands in interest on the spreadsheet. The math seems like an absolute no-brainer to give us some breathing room. I want your raw truth before we sign the paperwork. Should we consolidate?" — Theresa , Nashville
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Put the pen down and step away from the bank counter. Do not sign that paperwork.
I know the spreadsheet is telling you this is a massive win. I know the idea of instantly dropping your monthly payments by $700 feels like a massive breath of fresh air when you have been suffocating. But the bank is not throwing you a life preserver—they are setting a trap.
Here is the raw truth about debt consolidation, and specifically about using a HELOC to do it: You cannot borrow your way out of debt, and you cannot mathematically cure a behavioral problem.
When you consolidate debt, you do not actually pay off a single dime. You just move the mess from five different piles on your kitchen table into one big pile, and you let the bank wrap a shiny new bow around it. You feel an instant sense of relief because the credit card balances hit zero, but you didn't actually change the habits, the budget, or the lifestyle that built the $45,000 mountain in the first place.
Statistically, families who consolidate their credit cards without changing their behavior end up charging those exact same cards right back up within 24 to 36 months. Only the next time, they have the new credit card balances plus the massive consolidation loan.
But here is why a HELOC is the absolute most dangerous way to do this: You are taking unsecured debt and turning it into secured debt.
If you hit a crisis tomorrow and default on a Visa card, the absolute worst thing Visa can do is ruin your credit score and blow up your phone with annoying calls. But when you move that debt to a HELOC, you just attached your credit card mistakes directly to the roof over your family's head. If you default on a HELOC, the bank doesn't just call you—they foreclose and take your house.
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You leave the equity in your house exactly where it is. You and your husband sit down, lock in the budget, and you attack that $45,000 with the Step 2 Debt Snowball. You do it the hard way. It is going to take unyielding, brutal intensity. But the hard way is the only way the behavior actually changes. Now, tear up that bank offer and let's get to work.
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Send questions to [email protected]
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THE MILLIONAIRE MANUAL
The "Lower Payment" Car Dealership Trap (Rolling Negative Equity)
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📖 The Raw Truth Millionaire Manual
Topic: The "Lower Payment" Car Dealership Trap (Rolling Negative Equity)
The Opening Statement:
When you are staring at a budget that feels completely suffocated by a massive vehicle payment, it is entirely normal to look for an escape hatch. The pressure is real, and the desire to just breathe a little easier at the end of the month makes total sense. But when you walk into a dealership looking for relief, you need to understand the game you are walking into. The finance manager isn't throwing you a life raft. They are handing you a pair of concrete boots and telling you they are custom-fitted.
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Here is the raw truth about the auto industry: Dealerships do not sell vehicles. They sell monthly payments.
Let’s say you owe $28,000 on a truck that is only worth $20,000. That is $8,000 of negative equity—you are officially "underwater." When you sit in the finance chair and say, "I just need my payment to be lower so I can afford groceries," they know exactly what to do. They will take your trade-in, roll that $8,000 of negative debt into a brand-new commuter car, and stretch the new loan out to a brutal 84 months.
On the surface, your monthly payment drops by $75. It feels like a massive win. You get out of the gas-guzzler, you get a warranty, and you get some breathing room in the budget.
But look at the math underneath the paperwork. You are taking $8,000 of debt from a vehicle you are leaving on their lot, and stacking it directly on top of the price of a brand-new depreciating asset. You are literally paying interest on a car you no longer own for the next seven years. Because a new car loses up to 20% of its value the second the tires hit the street, you are instantly buried in debt on the new car before you even reach the first stoplight. What happens in three years when you want to trade that one in? You will owe $15,000 more than it's worth. This is the exact, mathematical cycle that keeps hard-working families permanently chained to car payments for their entire adult lives.
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The Move: If you are underwater on a vehicle, there is no magic dealership paperwork that makes the math disappear. You don't trade it in. You don't sign an 84-month paper to lower the payment. You lock in your $2,500 Buffer (Step 1 of the Roadmap), and you drop that vehicle loan right into your Debt Snowball (Step 2). You attack the principal every single month with unyielding intensity until that negative equity gap is completely closed.
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You cannot borrow your way out of debt, and you definitely cannot buy a new car to save money. The wealthiest people in this country don't have car payments—they own their vehicles. Stop buying the dealer's math. We do it the hard way, because the hard way is the only way you actually break the chain.
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BACKPAGE
The Wacky Corner
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At the height of their fame in the mid-1970s, the Osmonds didn't just sing — they built a full-blown merchandise and entertainment production company out of Orem, Utah called Osmond Productions, cranking out branded lunch boxes, dolls, fan club kits, and a short-lived record label, betting that the good times would roll forever. Then stagflation hit — prices went up, paychecks didn't, and discretionary spending on teen pop memorabilia was the first thing American families quietly cut from the grocery run. By 1978, the whole operation was drowning in debt, and Donny Osmond himself later admitted the family owed somewhere north of $50 million, a number that required years of relentless touring just to dig out from. They had confused being famous with being financially solid, two things that have almost nothing to do with each other. The fans loved them and still bought concert tickets — but nobody needed a purple-and-white Donny lunch box when they were choosing between gas and groceries.
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Lesson: Lesson: Fame, hype, and hot products are income — ownership of boring, essential things is wealth.
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🇺🇸 To the NICU nurse who works a twelve-hour overnight shift keeping a two-pound baby alive while parents sob in the hallway — your hands do what no paycheck can ever properly value.
Love y'all. Attack that debt. Keep those contributions running. The plan does not change.
See you on the road. — Rock (Craig)
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