What this hour covers
- The report Washington published, line by line
- The receipt in your hand walking out of the store
- Three things that cost nothing — one of them ten minutes on the phone, and the best protection there is against the scams going around
Full transcript
welcome to the Gold Hour on this amazing Sunday. You all know who I am. I'm Alan Johnson, and boy, I've got some news for you today. Before I actually go into it, I want to share somewhere I'm very proud of. Heritage Gold Partners is now alive on Facebook, and I want you to know I just didn't want to be another Facebook page. I wanted to become a community, a place where we can continue the conversations that we start right here on the Gold Hour. And we're going to be sharing market updates, information about gold and silver, actual clips from the program, audio's from the program, and some of the things that I simply don't have enough time to get into during our hour together.
So come join us, go to Facebook, all you have to do is search Heritage Gold Partners, follow the page, and then just become a part of our community. And when you get there, say hello, and then tell me that you heard about it right here on the Gold Hour, and I'd love to know that you're there. Heritage Gold Partners on Facebook, so come join us. Now, it's just you and me today, there's no guests, there's no interruptions. We've got a full hour here at our kitchen table, and after this past week that we just had, we're going to need all 60 minutes. Now, if you're new to the show, welcome. I spent more than 40 years in finance and 28 of those 40 alone in precious metals.
And the one thing all those years taught me is that the story is almost never in the headline. It's always buried in there in the fine print underneath it. And this week proved that better than any week that I can remember, because this week the government, our own government, told us that inflation is cooling. In other words, going down a little. And on those very same days that they said that, gas has hit its highest August price ever recorded in this country. Your paycheck lost to prices for the fourth month in a row. And American shoppers, they cut their spending by the most in over a year. All of that came out of the same week, and all of it is true.
So today's show has a simple title, and I title it the report and the receipt, the R&R. And the report is what Washington published on Wednesday morning. The receipt, that is the piece of paper that we have in our hand when you walk out of the store. The receipt is the piece of paper in your hand when you actually walk out of the store. And our whole hour is about the space between those two pieces of paper. Because that space is where your money actually lives. Three other things before we get started, so you know what's coming and you don't wander off on me. And it looks like my dog wants some attention. Well, later in the hour, I'm going to give you three things that you can do this week that don't cost you a dime and doesn't involve buying anything.
And one of them only takes ten minutes on the phone, and it's the best protection there is against the scams that are out there. Because let me tell you, I'm getting tons of people telling me about how they're getting this kind of offer in there. That kind of, I'm like, stop right there, that's a scam. So I'm also going to be talking and taking apart a scary headline that several of you sent me this week. And the one is about banks freeze in accounts, so I'm going to break that all down. Because there's a real law underneath it, and it's not what the headline says, and it's definitely not what people are calling you and trying to scare you about.
There's a woman that literally wrote in this week after somebody from a gold company listened to this. Listen, they told her to put all of her retirement savings into precious metals. I'm not going to mention the company, she told me that I'm going to say it, but it's a lot of them are doing it. And I'm going to answer her on the air what I said. And you may not expect that answer from a man, Alan Johnson, who sells gold for a living. All that's coming, but we start with the report first. And let's be fair to it. Wednesday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the inflation numbers for July. Prices rose 1/10th of 1% for the month.
And over the past 12 months, inflation came in at 3.4%. Now that's down from 3.5 the month before. And if we take out the food and energy, what the economists call core reading, you get 2.5% over the year. And here's the thing, those are genuinely 10 numbers. And I told you last Sunday that Wednesday was the day to watch, and that everything this month would bend around that inflation report and guess what it did. The spike we saw earlier this year, the one driven by the energy prices from the trouble over in the Middle East, it's been quietly easing off. Now I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the report is a lie because it isn't.
The people who build that number count carefully. And the number they published is the number that they got. And so the point I'm making here, the report is honest. The problem is it's just not complete. And the part it leaves out are the parts that live in your own home. Let's talk about the receipt. Here's the first thing the headline didn't tell you, inflation is running at 3.4%. Wages are growing at 3.2%. Now sit with that for just a second. Prices in other words, they're rising faster than paychecks. And that's now been true for four months in a row. Now let me make sure that everybody understands what that actually means.
Because prices, wages, is one of those phrases that slides right past you. Prices beat wages. Let's say you're making $1,000 a week last summer, $1,000. This summer, with the average raise, you're making $1,032. Now that's a bigger number on the check and it feels like really good. It feels like progress. But everything that $1,000 used to buy, meaning the groceries, the gas, the insurance premium, now cost $1,034. So your new bigger paycheck buys now slightly less than your old smaller one did. You got the raise, you just got poorer. And they happen both at the same time. $2 a week doesn't sound like much. And I want you to be careful not to oversell a $2 gap by itself, because it's that it's nothing.
But it's been running in this direction now for four straight months. And every month the gap holds, the cart gets a little emptier at the same register. And, you know, nobody sends us a letter, nobody sends a letter about it. There's no line on your pay stub that says the word purchasing power. The check just quietly does a little less than it used to. And one chief economist put it plainly this week for middle income and low income and low income. And said this is the issue and said that she said that there's likely some belt tightening ahead. Well, I know what happens if I tighten my belt. Belt tightening, hold on to that phrase because on Friday we found out that the belt's already tightened.
And I'm going to get there. But here's the second thing. Gasoline. The national average is $4.07 a gallon. Now, that number by itself doesn't tell you much because we've all seen $4 gas before. Here's what actually tells you something. That's the highest August average this country has ever recorded. And I'm going to get it. That's the highest August average this country has ever recorded. Ever. Not the highest ever. You know, we've seen worse in other seasons, the highest in August. In the month when driving season is supposed to be winding down and prices are supposed to be coming off. And a month ago, it was $3.94.
A year ago, you were paying $0.92 a gallon less than you're paying right now. $0.14 is what it was. $0.92 on every gallon, every fill up, every week. Think about that. Let's do the kitchen table math on that. Let's see, your household runs two vehicles. You've got two cars, and between them you buy 30 gallons a week. Now, that's not live in March. That's a commute. That's either like a grocery run, church on Sunday, go into your friends, grandmas. $0.92 times 30 gallons is right around $27.60 a week. Let's call it $120 a month. You're actually leaving your house through the gas tank compared to last summer. And not one dime of it shows up as anything that you can point to.
No new shoes, no dinner out, nothing. Just the same driving you are already doing. The report says 3.4%. Your gas tank says $120 a month. And here's the third thing, and this one takes a minute to explain, but it's worth the minute. About one third of the entire inflation number, think about this, one third of the entire inflation number is housing. They call it shelter. Listen to this. This is going to surprise you. In July, shelter rose just one tenth of a percent. And even that small rise made up about two thirds of the whole monthly increase. Sounds like good news, right? Housing's finally calming down. But look at what did they call me.
A big part of this came from a category called lodging away from home. In other words, that's hotels and motels. Meanwhile, the measure of what it actually costs to live in a home has kept ticking along right about where it's always been. So, a piece of the housing is cooling story is being carried by cheap hotel rooms. Now, think about this. When's the last time a hotel room showed up in your monthly budget? Definitely didn't show up in mind. And if you're retired and settled, the honest answer might be never. What I'm talking about is your inflation rate and the published inflation rate, ladies and gentlemen, they're not the same number.
Yours is built out of what you actually buy. And for most of the folks listening right now, groceries, medicine, gas, property taxes, the premium on your house, your basket's been running hotter than the headline for a good long while now. I want to be careful here because there are people on the radio who will tell you that the books are cooked. And that's not what I'm saying. Nobody's cooking anything. It's the basket's problem. They're measuring the whole country's basket. You're living out of your own. You're living out of yours. And the report, what it's doing is it's measuring America on average. And nobody lives on average.
Now, let me give you something useful that you can do with all of this. And it costs you nothing. And it only takes 20 minutes a month. Listen very carefully to this because I want you to do this. And I promise you, it will make you smarter about your own money than half of any of the analysts or anyone tells you from television or on the phone or in books or magazines. I want you to build your own inflation rate. And I'm very serious about this. And here's how you're going to do it. And it's easier than it actually sounds. So I'm going to slow down when I talk about this. I want you to take 10 things, just 10. That's five on each hand, 10 things.
The 10 things your household buys over and over every single month with no exceptions. And for most folks listening, the list is going to write itself. First of all, you buy gasoline, a gallon of gasoline, a dozen of eggs, ground beef, coffee, the electric bill, your auto or your homeowners premium, a prescription copay, bread, whatever your 10 are, here's what I want you to do. I want you to write them in a notebook. You know, one of the old fashioned spiral bound that always lives in the kitchen drawer. I know I have one. And once a month, every first Sunday of the month works fine. Write down what each one costs.
Straight off of the receipt or the bill, write it down. It only takes 20 minutes. That's it. And that's the whole system. And then, six months from now, you'll have something that the barrel of labor statistics will never mail to you. And that, my friends, that is the inflation rate of your house. Not the national average, weighted with hotel rooms that you never rent in cities that you'll never visit. It's yours. The government's thermometer measures the whole country. This one hangs on your porch. And I'll tell you the real reason I want you to do this. And it's not to catch anybody in a lie. We covered that. The report is an honest math over a basket that isn't actually yours.
It's because a person who knows their own numbers, then you cannot be scared into anything. Not by a headline, not by a fellow on television, with a countdown clock and a red arrow. They know what I'm talking about, not by me, not by any of those people that call you from other gold companies, insurance companies. And for that matter, and that's exactly how it should be. When you know your porch thermometer reads 5% and the news says 3.4, then you don't panic and you don't argue. You just plan with the five because the five is yours. Every good financial decision I've watched a client make over 40 years starts the same way with a person who knew their own numbers.
What am I telling you to do? Start that notebook. So that was Wednesday. Now let me tell you about Friday, because Friday is related a report and the receipt they only finally met together in public. And Friday morning the Commerce Department released us the July retail sales numbers. Now retail sales, what they do is they measure what Americans actually have spent at spurs, at restaurants, at gas stations, online, all of it. It's the closest thing we have to a receipt for the whole country. And in July, that receipt shrank. Spending the six tenths of a percent in a single month. Now that's the biggest monthly drop in more than a year.
And it's the steepest since the spring of last year, and it was the first decline in nine months. Nine months of the American shopper showing up and then July. And here's the part that matters and nobody even saw it coming. The economists, they were all looking for a small increase. And what did they get? I just told you they got a decline. And where did that cutting happen? Well let's take a look at the list because it tells us something. Car dealers down almost two percent, the worst of any of the categories. Online shopping down 2.2%. Electronics and appliances, they were down a half a percent. Now look at what those three have in common.
Now one of them is a thing you have to buy this month. A car, it can wait. A new television can wait. That's not a family in trouble, that's a family postponing. Now the honest caveat, because you know I always give you the honest caveat. Part of what happened in July is a hangover. Ever had one of them? Earlier this year, big tax refunds were putting money in people's pockets and they were actually lifting those numbers. That tailwind faded, so some of this drop is a comparison against an artificially strong stretch, not a fresh collapse. That's real and anybody who leaves it out is just juicing up the story to make it sound better.
But you can't explain your way out of all of that. And the same morning, we got a second number that tells us why. The University of Michigan, they've been doing this for a long time. U of M runs a long-running survey. And what they do is they ask regular Americans how they feel about their money situation. And do you know that survey fell about 8% early August down to a reading of 51%. 51 is a low number, not recession headline law, but it's where that survey goes when regular people are worried about paying for things. Knocking on some people's stores I'm sure right now. So put Friday's two numbers side by side.
Americans, they spent less. And Americans feel worse. The belts didn't wait for the economists' forecast. The belts have already tightened. And folks, think about who that is. That's not Wall Street. Wall Street had a fine week. That's the entire country. Looking at the highest August gas prices on record and a paycheck, that's three months behind the grocery store and doing the only sensible thing a household can do. And that is spending less. And there's a word for people who look at their receipts and adjust. And we used one of them as a contest word last week. Y'all know that word. The country is being thrifty.
The report just hasn't caught up to it yet. All right. I spent 20-some minutes telling you what happened. Now let me spend five telling you what to do about it. And I want to be clear before I get started. Not one of these three things involves buying anything. Especially from me. Nothing on this list makes me a dime. Number one, the notebook. We just covered it. Ten items. First Sunday of the month. Kitchen drawer. If you do nothing else, I say today, just do that one. Please. Number two. And this one takes about ten minutes on the phone. Here's what I want you to do. Call your bank or your credit union. This is so important because I'm hearing this every single day for quite a while now from different people.
Call your bank or your credit union and ask them to put a trusted contact on your account. Now why is that? But what is that, should I say? It's a name and a number on file. It could be either your son, a daughter, a friend, or somebody that the bank is allowed to call if something on your account looks wrong. It does not give that person any access. Listen to me very carefully on this too. It does not give that person any access to your money at all. They can't move a dollar. They can't see your balance if you don't want them to. It's just a phone number the bank can reach when they're worried. Why am I telling you this today?
There's two reasons. One, it's the single best defense there is against phone scams that hit folks outrage. And I'll come back to that later here in the hour. Two, if a bank ever does listen to this. If a bank ever does put a hold on something of yours, having a trusted contact on file is what gets it sorted out in an afternoon instead of a month. Ten minutes, one phone call, do it this week. It's very important. Number three, go find your last 12 months of statements. You're talking about bank or credit card, whichever you use most, and add up one category. Just one, whichever one you suspect has gotten away from you.
And for most people, it's our groceries. And for some, it's the pharmacy, or the vehicles, or the streaming services nobody remembers hanging up for. Add up that one category for the last 12 months, and then divide it by 12. Divide it by 12, and now you know your real monthly number for things you spend the most on. Not what you think you spend, what you spend. Now, I'll be honest with you, that exercise is very uncomfortable. It was for me. But every person I've ever known who did it found at least one number that surprised them. And a surprise you can see is a surprise you can do something about. Think about that.
Notebook, trusted contact, one category, 12 months. That's the whole word. No charge, no phone call to me required. And if you never call this show again, you'll still be better off doing all three. Now, a word specifically for the folks on Social Security, this is very important. And for everybody who loves somebody that's on Social Security, which is everybody. It's everybody. Something important started happening in July, and it got very little coverage. Your next raise is being measured. And here's how it actually works, because most people never explain it to you. Every January, Social Security checks go up by a cost of what they call a living adjustment, called the COLA.
You know that part. What most folks don't know is where this number even comes from. And it comes from three months of inflation data. And those three months are July, August, and September. What the government does is they take a version of the inflation index, and that's the one that's built around the spending of working households, and averages it over those three months and then compares it to the same three months a year earlier. And whatever that difference is, that's your raise. I'm not talking about the whole year's inflation. I'm talking about three months of it. So understand what that means about right now.
July's number just came in. The window is open. Remember, July, August, September. The very gas prices and the grocery prices that we've been talking about, the ones running through August, the ones that will print in September, those aren't just this month's pain. They're literally writing the size of your next year's Social Security check right now, this week. Now here's the part that always struck me as backwards, and I say this every year in some form. That three month window means that your raise gets set by late summer prices, and then you live on that raise for the following 12 months, whatever prices are actually doing.
So inflation moves down in the fall and stays cool, fine. You come out a little bit ahead. But if it runs hot after the window closes, let's say oil keeps climbing up through the winter, then you're going to eat the difference for a full year with no adjustment. There's no mid-year correction. And the index they use is built on the spending pattern of a working household. A younger household less weight on the things that dominate a retired budget, like medical care being the big one, which has run hotter than general inflation for most of the last 30 years. And I'm not telling you to make you sour on Social Security.
I don't want to do that. I'm just giving you the information. It's a floor under half the retirements in this country, and thank God for it. I'm telling you because it's one more version of today's whole show. The COLA is a report. Your actual costs are the receipt. When I said the two are joined together, they're related. And they're not the same, and the space between them year after year is quietly paid out, and it comes out of your savings, which is exactly why the savings themselves need to hold on to their value. The check gets a raise every year and perfect as it is, and the nest aid gets no raise at all unless you give one, you know, you give it to yourself, you give it to yourself.
Now, before we get to gold, there's one piece of news that came across my desk, and it belongs in this hour because it's going to land in a lot of your mailboxes next month. Humana, which is one of the biggest Medicare advantage companies in the country. They are dropping plans that cover about 600,000 people. And the company confirmed it at the end of July, that the letters are going out in September. And if you get one, it means that your Medicare plan ends December 31st and does not exist next year. 600,000 people, that's about eight out of every 100 Humana Medicare advantage members. And if you're one of them or somebody you love, here's what you need to know.
Be calm, stay calm, because this is not a scary story, it's actual, here's what to do story. First, if that letter does come, keep it. Don't throw it out with the junk mail, because that letter is your proof and it unlocks protections. I want you to take a picture of it with your phone. Second, the letter opens three doors, and one of them is bigger than the other two. Let me tell you something, door one. Door one is the regular fall enrollment, October 15th through December 17th. You get to pick a new plan for the next year, same as we always do. Door two, because the company canceled the plan, you didn't, you get extra time.
You have a special window that runs all the way to the end of next February. And door three is the big one. When your plan gets canceled on you, you get 63 days where the supplement insurance companies have to sell you a meta-gap policy. And here's the other thing, they cannot ask you any health questions, they cannot ask you any physical questions. No saying, because of a condition that you already have, they can't ask you any of that. So understand what that means for a lot of folks, especially folks with health problems. This is the one chance for you to move back to original Medicare with a supplement at a time when the insurance company is not allowed to turn you down.
Miss that 63 day window, and in most states they can start asking health questions again, and they can say no. And third, Humana will offer to move you into one of their other plans. They said they expect to keep about 40% of these folks, and maybe their offer is right for you, or maybe it isn't, but compare it on purpose and check your doctors and check your medicines. And if you want help, you don't have to pay anybody for it. Every state has free Medicare counselors, or call Medicare directly free, and nobody is selling you any time. So nobody is confused about why I'm telling you this, because I don't sell insurance, there's nothing in this for me.
But 600,000 retired folks are about to get a letter, and the ones who know what it means before it arrives will make better decisions than the ones that it catches by surprise. That's why I'm telling you this, and it belongs in today's show for one more reason. Nearly 3 million people got moved out of these plans heading into this year. Humana is just the first big company to show its hand for next year, and others are expected to follow in the coming weeks. Why? Cost. Medical costs are rising faster than these companies plan for, so what they're doing is they're not planning, they're pulling out of the plans that are losing money for them.
The report calls that an adjustment. The receipt is a letter in your mailbox telling you the plan you counted on is gone. So watch the mailbox in September, keep the letter, and know your 63 days. Now, how did gold take this past week? It was a big week. And let me walk you through it because the shape of the week matters more than any single price. Wednesday morning, the cruel inflation report hit, and gold liked it. Why? Because tame inflation means less pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise the interest rates. And you, longtime listeners, know the drill by now that rate hikes are a headwind for gold, and fewer hikes expected lighter headwind.
Thursday, that was a second report that came out. This one was on wholesale prices. The prices businesses pay before you ever even see the shelf. And that came in also soft. And Thursday is when gold started to really moved. It touched $4,449 an ounce, which was a two-month high. And then what did it do? It backed off. It gave a piece of it right back. So the question is, if you ask, what happened? Did something break? Did the story change? The answer is a big fat no. What happened is that people who bought gold cheaper ended up selling gold higher. That's called taking profits. And it's the most ordinary thing in markets.
Gold ran up hard in a month. And some of the folks who rode that move decided to ring the register. That's it. That's the whole mystery right there. And then by the end of the week, it's steadied off. The week retail sales numbers pushed rate hike expectations down again, and gold settled the week in the mid-4300s right now. So we had a strong week up on the week, up meaningfully on the month, with one profit taking pause in the middle of it. Now, I'm telling you this because there's a temptation. And my industry is guilty of feeding it to narrate every update as destiny and every down day as manipulation. I'm not ever going to do that to you.
Gold had a strong week because the interest rate picture improved. It paused because winners decided to cash in. So both halves of the sentences are just markets doing what they do, being markets. Now, where does that leave the price? Sitting in the mid-4300s. Well, above the 4000 floor everybody was worried about in July. And I'll say the thing I say every week. Gold can go down. It went down 16% in a single quarter this spring. And anybody who tells you otherwise is just trying to sell you something. Now, before I move on, I want to slow down on something strange that happened this week. Because if you noticed it, it probably bothered you.
Gold went up on bad news. Friday morning, the retail sales report lands. It was the worst spending drop in a year. Showed us families cutting back, confidence falling, bad news for the country. No way to get around it. And you know what? Gold rallied off that news. Now, if that feels upside down to you, congratulations because you're paying attention. So let me show you what's going on under the hood because once you see it, you'll never be confused by a financial headline again. Markets don't react to whether news is good or bad for people. Markets react to whether news changes what the Federal Reserve does next.
Bad news for families, weak spending, soft job market means the Fed is likely to raise interest rates. Less likely to raise rates means holding gold costs you less compared to a savings account. So gold rises. That's the whole chain. Bad news, easier Fed, better gold. And they've even got a saying on Wall Street for it that bad news is good news. They say that out loud without even blushing. Now, the wrong lesson to take from this is to start rooting for bad news because you're holding some gold. Listen, I've been like I said, I've been doing this for a long time and I've heard other people in the industry get awful closely to that.
It's bullish and it totally misses the point. The right lesson is this. You don't own gold to win when the country loses. You own gold so that when the Fed flips or the dollar softens or the report and the receipt drift apart for the fourth month running, not every dollar you saved is depending on the same thing going right. And here's the way I think about it and it has nothing to do with Wall Street. It's the spare tire we have in our trunk. Think about that spare tire for a second. It costs you money. And it's been riding around the back there for years doing absolutely nothing. It doesn't pay you a dime, it takes up space and most years may not even touch it.
And you would never, ever take it out unless you needed to. You don't buy the spare after you're sitting on the shoulder. You don't check the weather to decide whether to carry one. You carry it because you don't get to know which Tuesday it'll be. That's the whole idea. Gold doesn't pay you anything. That's the cost of carrying it, the same as your trunk space. And it's not a guarantee of anything. A spare doesn't promise you'll never have a bad day. And gold can actually lose value and it has hard this very year. What it is is it's just the part of what you own that isn't riding on the same four tires as everything else.
Now here's my favorite chart of the week and it's not a gold chart. It's the market betting odds on whether the Federal Reserve raises interest rates in September. Reserve rates, and here's the market, but here's what it is. Follow the bouncing ball with me. At the end of July, the odds of a September rate height stood at 67%, which is better than two out of three. Then the jobs report landed, the one that we talked about last Sunday, the one where the economy lost 23,000 jobs and the odds fell into the 40s then. And then they bounced back up to 51% by Tuesday of the week, which 51%, that's a coin flip. And then Wednesday, the inflation report, and then Thursday, the soft wholesale prices, and then Friday, the ugly retail sales.
By Friday's close, about 32%, 67% to 230%, in roughly two weeks to 32, in roughly two weeks. The two weeks, the most likely outcome, flipped to its opposite, and the Federal Reserve didn't even do a single thing in between. They didn't even meet, they didn't even vote, the data did all of that. Now I'm not mocking anybody, the honest forecasters updated their view because the facts changed, and updating on facts is exactly what you're supposed to actually do. But remember this bouncing ball the next time somebody on television tells you with a straight face and a confident voice? Well, the Federal Reserve is definitely going to do next.
They don't know is the point I'm making here. And here's the part I want to be fair about, because it cuts against the story that I just told you. Chairman Gross has signed, not privately, and substance, but publicly enough, that it was reported that he is prepared to support a rate increase in September if the inflation data runs high. There are voices inside that building right now still arguing for a hike, and they've not gone quiet just because of one week's data that came in soft. So the odds say one in three, the chairman says the door is open. And both of those things are true at the same time, and anybody who tells you, only the half that fits their sales pitch is not being straight with the deal.
There's a whole month of data still to come as the point I'm making. Another jobs report, another inflation report, before that September meeting. And if they do hike, gold's going to take some pressure. I told you that last week, and it's still true this week, even with the odds falling. That's not me hedging, that's me refusing to pretend that I know a coin flip. Now I want to do something a little different, because this week's headline started making the rounds that I know some of you saw, and several of you even sent it to me, and it deserves the full kitchen table treatment. Listen carefully. The headline reads more or less that banks can freeze accounts starting this week under new good faith law access restricted for 90 days.
Super scary. Read that cold, and it sounds like every bank in America just got the power to lock up your money for three months on a hunch. Now let's do what I've been doing in all this hour, and let's put the headline next to the fine print. And here's what's actually true. This is one state, Colorado, a law called the asset act. It's under House Bill 26, 11, 10. And it actually took effect this past Wednesday, August the 12th. And it's not a money grab law. It's an anti-scam law. And here's what it does. If somebody at the bank reasonably believes an older or vulnerable customer is being scammed, they can hold up that particular payment before the money actually walks out the door.
The institution then has to notify law enforcement or adult protective services that's required, not optional, that's required. And there's a clock on it. A decision generally within 90 days, and it can stretch to 180 if an agency investigation is still running. And I want to be accurate about that because 180 days is a long time, and the headline writers didn't even mention it either. And it's a hold on suspicious transactions, not a padlock on your whole account. So why does a law like that exist? Well, here's why. And these are the FBI's own numbers, not mine. And one year -- listen to this -- Coloradians age 60 and older reported losing more than $70,000,000 to scams in one year.
3,125 of them filed a complaint. Now, do that division, and it comes out to write about $24,000 a person. $24,000, that's somebody's entire cushion gone to a phone call. A fake grandson in fake trouble. A gift card or a fellow who sounded official. And it's getting worse, not better. Colorado now ranks fourth worst in this country for this. And Colorado is not the first state to do something about it, and it won't be the last. So the headlines say banks can freeze your account. The actual law says a bank can pause a suspicious transaction from a suspected scam victim while somebody checks. Those are not the same sentence.
Now, two pieces of honesty before I move on. First, there is a rule trade-off inside this law. And reasonable people are allowed to not love it. Love it. And if you're 75, sharp as a tack, and you want to move your own money for your own reasons, a well-meaning bank employee could slow you down. That's a real cost, and pretending otherwise would be selling you something. And that's exactly why item number two on your homework list was the trusted contact that I told you about. That one form is what turns a 90-day question into a phone call. Second, and listen close, because this is the part I actually got on the microphone to say.
There are fellows in my industry right now cutting advertisement off of this headline. And they're saying that banks can seize your money, get it out before they do. And you may hear it over and over again, but you will never hear that from me, not ever. If you are purchasing gold from me, you'll buy it for the reasons that we've spent this whole hour on. They'll receive the paycheck gap, the spare tire in your trunk, not because somebody twisted the law meant to stop scammers into a horror story, to hit a sales quota, or a fellow who has to scare you into gold. Doesn't trust his own case, I trust mine. Don't fall for those scams, don't fall for those gold guys.
Now for the quiet storches we're winding down of the week, the one they got may be one paragraph in the financial press, and the one I think matters most over the long haul is China. China's central bank bought gold again in July, about 20 tons, 19.9 to be exact. That's their biggest single month in nearly three years, and it makes 21 months in a row now. 21 straight months of China's central bank adding gold to its savings. Think about what's inside those 21 months, gold at 3,300 they bought, gold at 5,595, the January record they bought. Gold following 16% in a single quarter this spring, the worst quarter gold has seen since 2013 they bought.
Two Sundays ago we talked about why, and how a bond is a promise that depends on the fellow making it, and gold in your own vault isn't a promise at all. I won't re-give that whole sermon, but here's the thing, I'll just add one thing that 21 straight months teaches you that no single month can. They're not trading, traders take months off, savers don't. A trader buys when the setup looks good, a saver buys on the first month, the first of the month because it's the first of the month. I'm not going to tell you that central bank's reasons are your reasons because they're not. They're managing a country's reserves, and you are managing a retirement different job entirely, but it's worth knowing what's happening.
All right, I could go on and on and on, I wrote this and it just keeps going on, but I want to talk about the silver lining giveaway. I've got a good word for you today, and if you're just joining us this month all through August, I'm giving away two full rolls of silver American Eagles. That's 40 ounces of American silver struck by the United States men to one listener, no purchase necessary, no obligation. Nobody calls you afterward trying to say anything, that's a promise. And the folks who, the gentleman, should I say, Bullard, who won my July contest, I just got a picture of him holding it, and it's going to be in my Facebook page as well.
You can vouch for it. Every show, one word, you send me the word. In every word you send me this month is on a slip of paper in the bag when I draw the winner live on air. And at the end of August, the word so far, the words that I've done so far are work, grit, thrift, and on Wednesday was honesty. And today's word, word number five is family. And here's why I chose that word. Everything we talked about this hour, the gas, the math, the grocery, the paycheck, that's four months behind. And none of that lands on a spreadsheet. It lands always on the family. The report is about the economy. The receipt is about your family.
That's the whole difference. And it's why I do this show, the way I do it. So send family to contest at heritage gold. Of heritage gold partners dot gold, that's heritage gold partners dot gold. Five words down and also right in there and 250 words or less who taught you the meaning of a dollar. And send it again to heritage gold partners dot gold. Write down the word family and in 250 words or less who taught you the value of a dollar. Now let me tell you about a fellow that I've been thinking about all week and I'm going to call him Dale. I got some time. Dale ran a grocery store. It was a real one. Independent.
One location. His name was over the door for 31 years. And Dale used to tell me that he could actually read the whole town just by looking at his register tape. Not the total, but the items. And when the items were good, the cards had main brands. And on there he could see like the good stakes. He could see everything that was on these registers. And when times got tight, Dale saw it in the tape before he actually heard it in any kind of conversation. The name brands turned into store brands. The stakes turned into ground beef and the flowers disappeared first, always first. And here's the thing Dale told me that I've never forgotten.
I want to share this with you all. He said the customers never announced it. Nobody walked in and said we're cutting back. They just adjusted themselves quietly with dignity. A dollar here has walked there. And the tape knew it before the town actually admitted it. Now think about what we learned Friday. Retail spending down the most in over a year. The first decline in nine months. Consumer confidence down 8% in two weeks. That's Dale's register tape printed the size of a whole country. And the country is doing what Dale's customers did. Adjusting, adjusting quietly, swapping brands, skipping the flowers. And the reason I bring Dale into this hour is that his tape was never once wrong about that town.
But that town's official number always caught up late. And the receipt knows that. The receipt knew it first. The report finds out later. Okay. It's a lot to talk in a whole hour. But I want to read you the mailbag. We got five minutes real here. So I want to read you what came into the mailbag this week. And the first one came in through the website after Wednesday's show and he wrote. Alan, you keep saying a September rate hike would be a headwind for gold. So why wouldn't I just wait and let them hike and let the gold dip and buy it cheaper after? And that is a smart question and it deserves a real answer. First, notice what the question assumes.
It assumes that the hike happens. Two weeks ago that looked likely and today it's about one chance and three. As I said that earlier and the chairman has now left the door open. So don't let me talk you into certainty in the other direction either. Look at what gold did while those odds were falling. It went and had one of its best stretches since January. The dip you were waiting to buy went up several hundred dollars instead. So waiting for a certainty is still a bet. It's just a bet that feels like patience. And second, and this is the deeper answer, the question treats gold like a stock trade. You got to get the entry price right, win the trade.
And we've spent a long time on establishing what gold actually is in a retirement plan. It's not a trade. It's the spare tire I was talking about. And that answers the timing question by itself. Nobody shops for a spare tire like I said earlier on the side of the road. Now does that mean that the price never matters? Of course not. Nobody wants to overpay for anything. And if you're moving a meaningful portion, do it in two or three steps over the some months instead of one month is a perfectly sensible way to stop any single day's price from mattering too much. So old technique boring, but it works. A woman wrote and asked how much is too much.
Some of these I'm just reading, I'm just going through them real quick. Oh, here we go. This is a good one. Then I'll sign off with this. How much is too much? This guy is telling her to put everything, her whole retirement into gold. I have to say no to that. I always talk about doing a portion. Remember, you can always give me a call. I'm going to give you my phone number. It's 833-577 gold. That's 833-574653. That's it. That's the whole thing I want you to do today. Just give me a call. And when you call, you're going to get me not a sales floor, not a script, not a closure. Just give me a call and we'll go over anything that you want to talk.
So let me land this where we started. Wednesday, the report said inflation is cooling 3.4%, true numbers. And here's what I want you to take out of this hour. You don't have to choose which one of these to believe. You just have to know which one you live in. Washington actually lives in the report. We live in the receipt. I'm Alan Johnson. This has been the gold hour. I want you to take care of each other. I'll talk to you Wednesday. God bless you. God bless your family. God bless them. God bless your family. God bless your family. God bless your family.