Common, a lot of political courage and they were willing to make the compromises and sacrifices required gerri willis i jerry lewis is with us today. An anchor and correspondent for the Fox Business Network where the report ran nicely for five years. Before fox business, willisusins worked at cspan now imrkeda getting them turned around. She worked at cnn where she was the personal finance editor and host of open house and later at the bottom line. Pr before joining cnn, she was a longtime senior financial correspondent for smart money magazine. She is also owned to Business Books come in the guide to Real Estate Investing and she was born in North Carolina and lived in Westchester County new york with her husband of 22 years sol please welcome a geri lewis. [applause] can everybody hear me, am i loud enough . I have your book right here. Im so happy to be here in savanna. We had a great time and weo managed to go out and play golf. We had a fabulous time. But i have to tell you my brother is a minister and if he saw me up here i think that he and arbe completely appalled. You just heard im from North Carolina and my whole family is from the western part of the state of the mountains, population 4,000. I dont know, but if you are in georgia is that considered the south or is this somethin that e entirely . I dont know. I am wearing pink for a reason recovering from Breast Cancer so if i get a little tired, be u patient and i will fire it back up. Well, glad to be here. This is my love letter to those that want to make it on their own. A the people that want to getm, d ahead on their own. I bet all of you in here are that kind of person. You want to run your own lives. I am a big admirer of that and i want everybody to be financially successful. Harder i wrote the book because i thought that it was getting harder and harder to be financially successful. Ad we have a financial recession and its been hard to find a job that pays well and that keeps you employed fulltime. Th really difficult for people and then things we have never seen before. College tuition prices out of control. I tell people it is 3 over the average National Inflation and i look at me like im crazy so i say do you know how much moms and dads across the country, their kids that graduated from college and those that never even made it, they oweoo, desp 1. 4 trillion. Health care costs are out of control despite the promises ofr obamacare. It was all supposed to get better but it really hasnt and then people that are in retirement, trying to put money together for retirement. If you are saving money youve had a horrible time for about eight years now with the federah reserve i and keeping rates at zero, no rate, nothing for your savings, you are working to do the best you can and get no rewards for its im talking about those that want to do thee right thing t but have a heck oa time getting it done. I am on your side, absolutely. Did you see the movie manchester by the sea . Casey affleck, i saw him interviewed. Hes a member of the 1 no doubt about it. I saw him interviewed and promoting the movie. He has a man buying and scraggly hair down the side of his face, ripped tshirt, torn jeans and i thought is being wealthy that out of fashion . [laughter] i guess it is a. And may be out of fashion but its need to do what you need to do for your family to keep them safe, secure, happy and i understand the motivation. Its not t too where youre well on your sleeve to do what you b you need for everybody that you love. I have covered finances,ersona personal finance for 20 something years now. But i think you begin to realize when you talk to these Financial Advisors they prepare you for the challenges you expect. Youre going to get married, have kids, put them through college, all those things. Thats what they prepare you for but the surprises im talking about, the incredible cost of a college education, they dont know about that. They are not so sure what to do. They are surprised you pick up the phone, call your spouse and say we got the best news. They are not always there to help you with that. So today, but i am going to talk about is that moment when you get a call that the worst has happened and how to turn that into something good. Im going to start with a story from the first years of when i was a Business Reporter in 1987r my first job i was working for the virginia star in marvel virginia. Dont drink, dont smoke. I dont know if youve been there. [laughter] but i was excited to be a Business Reporter. My boss came to me on an october day in 1987 and sent the stock market is tanking. I need you to call some traders and find out whats going on so i got on the phone all excited, First Business job. I called my favorite trader in the world and ive got the phone handset is nohandsets not a celo my ear and ask him whats up with the market but i cant hear him. The news room was a noisy place. I keep trying and finally i crawled underneath my desk and i have this hand on my right ear, the handset is in my left and i realized there is a reason i cannot hear him. He is sobbing. Its october 19, 1987. The stock market is thinking like a stone. The dow is up nearly 23 of its value in a single day. It didnt happened before, hasnt happened since. Its a tragedy. This guy is having the worst day of his life, believe me. Newspapers the next day. Headlines like dow tanks, wall street chaos. People were really, really worried. A bad day. But let me tell you two days later it his readings 60 of its losses. Two years later it is up aboveth the levels that it was before it started tanking. It was a bad day that if you had been smart and you knew why you were in the market to begin with and if you had stayed steady, you would have been okay. Fastforward to today if you look at the chart, you can hardly see black friday october 19, 1987. It barely registers. It doesnt look like that big of a deal. If you would use the opportunity to buy stocks, you would have been very well. I was a kid tha i could barely e rent so for me it is a learning proporti extraordinaryry proportions. But my whole career is full of lessons like this where something that seems bad at the beginning turns out to be something that is really good. When i was at smart money magazine they were doing a bunch of books on different topics come heres your topic. I was assigned to real estate, something i knew nothing about living in a thirdfloor walkup in new york city. I was nervous. You have to rightclick 250,000 words. But i decided that i would do it and that is how i got over my anxiety i sat there staring at the empty paper and it is that book that propelled me on to tv and started my career in television, cnn, fox and on. So it can become good news. I didnt have one of the worst days of my life a little more than a year ago. This book had just droppe droppd by that i mean it had come out. Thats like industry jargon, thats what they call technicala wording. I had a great week that week. I had been on fox and friends, all the big show was promoting the at the same time, i felt something in my right breast that i knew wasnt right. So i set up an appointment with my primary care physician. I went in to see her and she examined me and said youve got to go get this tested. I pulled out my book and i said next tuesday looks good to me and she said no, no. Youre going right now. So i went to the white plains hospital and had a biopsy. They said this wont be painful. Ha y prim two days later my primary care physician called me and said the tests were positive. I said you mean my Breast Cancer tests are positive and she said yes. I said you mean i have breast . Cancer . They kind of clos close it, yout is positive. So, i then went on a multiweek journey of trying to understand what that meant and to sort of embrace it, right . I couldnt accept it. When i thought about it, the only thing i could think was i want to be done and get back to normal. The finish line is going to be maybe 12 months out when im going to be cured. That is the only thing i wanted to think about. I did everything they said. I had a vasectomy and aids treatment of chemotherapy. I have Breast Reconstruction and then five weeks of daily radiation treatments. It was the worst news and im sure everybody in this room has some experience with cancer. That is one of the learning curves. But i did have one day i turned around and stopped thinking about eight to ten comment ten to 12 months and that was my last red devil treatment. I was being treated at kettering and these people are fantastic. Nu the nurses are fantastic but even that day on my fourth treatment they couldnt get any of my games to hold up under a needle. They tried once, twice, three times, four times. They started bringing nurses from other places. The longer it goes the more anxious i get. My shoulders are up at my ears,m my hands are clenched and then realized this false passes across my brain scan. This could either be your worst day of treatment or your best. Its really up to you. The nurses, they dont want to kill you. They just want to administer this drug that you need to survive and get better and at that moment, my shoulders came down, i breathed, my hands opened up and i started participating in my recovery and treatment in a way i never had. The next needle by the way was number six. It went in like that and that ai was a turning point for me. After that, it was all different. I started realizing that people were arounwho were around me atg all the time. My husband, david, who is sitting over here was unbelievably patient and kind. He would make silly jokes if i got too grumpy he would let me know that. He was wonderful. We bought a small house, a second home and work shires. I dont know if you know the area but its western massachusetts and it looks like North Carolina. Its the same mountain range. We would go there a lot and it spent a lot of Recovery Time there walking in nature and walking in the hills, taking a breath enjoying my life. My brother came and visited. I told you he was a minister. We reconnected in a way that we havent since childhood. We got to know each other and it was magical. As i would walk the mountains i was filled with gratitude and happiness. I was surprised by joy if you know that book. It was revelatory. And i never would hav it never d if they had not had cancer. I dont think you should go have cancer. Im not saying that, i am not an advocate of that, but i am just sayinim justsaying as bad as td as bad as a kind of sentence i was facing, there were positives to come out of it. The worst they can translate into what was a great year ofow growth for me personally and for all of my relationships. I just want to say i hope that you get to experience the feeling of being surprised by joy. Most of you are used to hearing me talk about money and the stock market or four o. One k. Or what you need to do to get your kids to college. Theres rich in that way and in the way that i experienced it this summer, close relationshi relationships, being able to do what you want to do with your friends and family, enjoying your life and filling in fulfillment. I want you to have both sides of that coin. That is what i wish for you. Bact getting back to a story that i told earlier about black friday october 1987 remember what the level was then, can anybody guess . 1,738. 1,738. 117,000, but 1,738 and we are now at 20,000. Things do get better. You talk about how everything is so awful and so bad theres so much to look forward to. I appreciate you having me here today and listening to me speak. I would be happy to take questions. [applause] anybody have any questions . How will it play in the future . That is a great question. The question is how well bitcoin play in the future. I think theres something as the opening in the mind and its becoming increasingly institutionalized. Whether it can become a larger player depends entirely on how it is treated by the fed, congress and that to me is the real unknown. Bu innot predict that but it iss interesting that its gotten so much traction and we continue to watch it and we spent a lot of time thinking about it but it really hasnt been mainstream in my view quite yet. Ok the Pension System looks like it is coming under greater and greater strain. Its a question down the road. For more and more people necessary to provide their own pensions because a lot ofov companies are not providing them anymore. What can we do or wha with natil policies would you propose to help americans save more money . Thats a great question. Its funny you say the Pension System. Nobody i work with is going to be advantaged by the Pension System. We are all saving on our own. It is a generational change. But to me, this will sound somewhat circular but i believe what we neethat what we need tos more people working, earning a good salary so that they can save. Weve tried lots of different ideas. Barack obama introduced a lot of peaks to the system. I dont see that introducing more vehicles helped. Its already complicated enough. There needs to be more education at the elementary and secondary level. That to me is a way to go to help people understand the importance of it. Nobody is coming in to save you if you dont save. You have to do that on your own and have a Strong Enough economy so people can participate and have something to save to begin with. But without knowledge its difficult to get people to move forward. Thank you for the question. Do e what policies do we need to adopt to get back to 4 growth in this country . Its with donald trump says he wants to have 4 gdp growth which is hire. I believe it is all about getting companies to spend heree and that is what we are working towards right now. It is not easy or simple and our tax system in this country doesnt help people that want to do business here in fact it encourages them to go overseas in my view and that this tragedy for american workers. Right now the Corporate Tax rate is one of the things pushing American Companies out of this country. I think people think Companies Just do business in the usa because they like it here. Youve got to have more of it these days you have to have a competitive tax structure and by reducing that you will be much more competitive in the rest off difficult. T. Comp ireland has 12 or something tax rate. There is no reason for the companies to stay here these days and do business if they are automatically put on worse thing than other Companies Across the globe so that would be a great first start. There seems to be a conflict between the consumer driven society and 60 to 70 driven by consumerism but then that counters the savings so peopleay are always to spend, spend, spend and it comes out of the things that are fundamental to building the savings. How do we resolve that . You make a good point i think people love to talk about the fact the Consumer Society encourages people to spend at the detriment of their own savings and their own future. What was interesting to me during the Great Recession people actually held onto their money more and i think that is fascinating because all of the smartypants economists are making fun of consumers about how they cannot hold onto their money and here they were for the first time in my memory reallyir holding onto their cash. My feeling is why dont we get some of the companies to spend more money and invest more in their operations that will propel the economy forward and then consumers wouldnt have to be the last. We wont have to be the peoplebe that are buying everything. There is a more conservativepprc approach. Its been fascinating to watch as they get smart and outthink thoseit economists. What is your opinion on dodd frank . This is the wall that was wat passed. The idea is you have control from the bang so they would never do this again but what they ignore is the federal government played a big role in the housing policy and it was the federal government making loans that a lot of people underwater. What i saw personally is it discouraged a lot of small and mediumsized banks from doing business and especially in the Small Business dodd frank was too big for them to deal with. There were too many rules and regulations. We lost a lot of banks in that category and those are the very few. One of the reasons we cant get past 2 of gdp is the banks are not doing their job right now because they dont like dodd frank. They can make money because they keep raising the zero doing almost nothing and where do we fit . You want a loan for your business but you cannot get it. That would be my answer. Thank you for the question. I wan i want to thank you for sharing your soul with us. Very touching. I teach seniors in high school. For myself and most of the people i know we have the benefit if they go off to college. Ng what would you recommend toor seniors in high school now if they are going to have to take out Student Loans to go to college . There is a lot going on here and it has to be a partnership between mom and dad and the child. Its fine by me if they say i want to do this on my own but mom and dad have to be in the circle. Second, as you begin to look at the schools and youre deciding where to go, understand the Sticker Price may not be the price youre going to pay. Even a private school, they cant command the numbers they are asking for. Its a matter of negotiation. In the book i describe how you do that because it is tricky you cant call it negotiation. Its like what else can you do for me. Those are two things to think about. Th for the moms and dadsin this situation, the easy piece of advice, the simple thing is is a four year program, fiveyear program, its not a sixyeara program. Do you know that 40 of incoming ancan only 40 of incoming freshmen will graduate in four years . Thats ridiculous. Double major, no, no double major. Get your single major comicr figur, figureout what you want. Its a serious step, its a lot of money on the table and you have a responsibility to get the grades and do what you need to do. So yes, i think kids see this as they have a right to this education. You have no right to a college education. Where is the part of theof constitution th