Hi, everybody. It's Farnoosh just popping into our podcast feed here to use this extra special real estate to talk about Ukraine and to respond to some of the DMs and texts I've been getting over the last few days from you questions about what this may all mean for the economy, the stock market, you know, to be honest, I've been hesitant to do an episode on this and to reply immediately because in the wake of the invasion, I just I haven't had the headspace to think beyond

just how devastating this is for everybody in the Ukraine and even the allies in Russia to see their country doing this to another country must be just horrifying watching this all unfold on social media in the news to see the loss of lives, the nightmare that it must be for any Ukrainian right now, but continues to be in the country fighting for their lives. It is absolutely gutting so to be perfectly honest, pardon me, doesn't even care what happens to gas prices or the stock market because, you know,

we have bigger problems and we should address those first, but I know that is my emotional response to all of this and the reality is that there are real stakes for everybody around the world when two countries go to war. There are financial ramifications to all of this in addition to all of the other costs at stake. We have a lot of insightful and thoughtful coverage on CNET where my colleagues are writing about the impact of the war on everything from gas to the economy.

The economy to inflation, Dan Avery, CNET writer, has in fact a piece right now that he wrote about this. I will put that link in our show notes. There's also important stories on CNET about how to give, where to give, to summarize some of this. And I'm referring here to Dan Avery's article where it's titled Ukraine Russia War, Impact on Gas, Stocks, Inflation, and the U.S. economy. He writes that the invasion not only has ramifications for political stability in Europe and around the world,

and by inflation, rising energy prices, the ongoing COVID pandemic, and a constrained supply chain. So here's how the attacks on Ukraine, Russia's attacks on Ukraine, and the resulting economic sanctions from the West are affecting Americans and people around the world, number one, gas and oil prices on the rise. According to AARP, the average price of gas in the U.S. this weekend was $3.60 a gallon. That's up a little bit from Friday.

Russia is one of the world's largest producers of crude oil and natural gas. They provide about 40% of the European Union's gas. So sanctions from the West could affect that supply, Dan writes, and on Friday, some Democratic senators were urging President Biden to help bring down gas prices by releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve, which is a deep underground storage complex along the Gulf Coast that holds 600 million gallons of crude.

So that can help to lift supply and ease prices, hopefully. That's their hope. And Biden said in a press briefing on Thursday that his administration is using the tools, every tool artist's proposal to protect American families and businesses from rising prices at the gas pump. So that's gas and oil.

Secondly, there's going to be continued inflation. We're already experiencing so much of this as a result of supply chain disruptions, COVID disruptions. Russia is the largest exporter and second largest producer of palladium, which is a metal that is used in, I'm holding my phone right now, mobile phones, fuel cells, even jewelry and dental fillings.

Again, is Dan Avery's piece on CNET where he's done some incredible reporting. So we should expect more inflation. Then of course stock market volatility, which you've already experienced, the Dow Jones tumbled 830 points Thursday morning, the Nasdaq fell one and a half percent, the S&P 500 down to

half percent, the start of trading. This was on Thursday morning when we heard about the initial invasion. But then the next day, the market went up 835 points in fact for the Dow and it was the biggest gain of the year. So volatility is the name of the game right now. Where will this all end up? I don't know my advice. If you're a long term investor, you're not making any knee jerk reactions right now. If anything, you can be reviewing your finances to make sure that your allocation makes sense. If you haven't looked at your allocation in terms of

how much you're invested in the stock market versus safer havens like bonds and cash. If you haven't looked at that stuff in the last five years or even the past few years, I think it behooves a review. Not because of this war, but because your life may be in a different place. Your life over the last few years, I'm going to guess they have experienced some shifting and you're aging and the closer you get to retirement, the less exposure you want into the stock market.

Now, as you all may have remembered back during the beginning of the pandemic, when the market was doing all of its crazy gyrating and volatility was also the name of the game, I did review my retirement portfolio and I didn't realize that I was overexposed in the stock market more than I felt comfortable given where I was in the stage of my life.

A brand new homeowner, two growing kids, the breadwinner and our family and closer to retirement, I was like 90% in the stock market, I dialed that back to somewhere closer to 80%, 70%. I forget exactly where I landed, but that event did prompt me to look at my finances. It reminded me, hey, I should really look at my finances. So don't make knee jerk reactions to what's happening in Russia, Ukraine, but if you are uneasy, if you are losing support, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I

can't sleep over the fact that, the market is so volatile right now. Hey, look at your finances, face the fear, look at your finances. If you feel like you're overexposed in general, then talk to your financial planner or talked to an expert and thinking

to my investment portfolio so that I could still hit those projections. I could still hit the

amount of money that I would like to have at retirement. In Dan Avery's piece on Senat about what

this war is going to perhaps suggest about our personal finances and our financial systems,

the article does talk about more cyber attacks. The departments of Treasury and Homeland Security

here in the US have both sounded the alarm over possible cyber attacks on banks, hospitals,

government offices, power grids, all in retaliation for the sanctions against Moscow. So what does

this mean for us? We need to be extra vigilant about protecting our passwords, not responding to

suspicious requests for personal identifying information. If you get any texts, phone calls, emails,

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