Are You Middle Class? (EP.379)

25:00Could be. I still don't think it's too late, though. For what? For this to help, potentially. I do think, whatever. If everyone says that the raising rates was on a lag, it's not like lowering rates is going to all of a sudden fix things. But I think it's more of a psychological signaling mechanism. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree that the impact is psychological, if nothing more. And guess what? It better help because markets are acting like it's going to help. Yes. market. If I'm in CNBC after the Fed rate cuts, I'm saying, listen, the stock market is priced to perfection here, right? Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the economy.

25:38Guy Berger at EconBurger tweeted a chart of unemployment versus employment. And it's a bit confusing. So let me try and walk you through this. It's showing the unemployment divided by population ages of population ages, 20 to 24. And he's showing 2001 to 2007, 08 to 09, 09 to, why is it broken down like this? He's showing the different cycles. So he's showing, okay, this is interesting. So he's looking at the different cycles and seeing where we compare today, basically. Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out why he breaks it down the way that he breaks it down. Either way, here's what he said. Some things are different.

26:16The job market for people in their early 20s is behaving like a pretty standard recessionary, albeit early in that cycle. Employment is falling. Unemployment is rising. Again, this is for people in their early 20s. Which is interesting. So people just getting out of college are having a hard time finding a job these days. Yeah. I don't know if it's a hard time, but. They missed the boat by what, 18 months? Let's say that it's getting, the unemployment rate is ticking up for that cohort of people. It's not like out of control, but it's, right. He said, but the prime working age labor market is not.

26:49unemployment is rising, but employment is not falling. And that's 25 to 54, right? Yes. So he says in a typical labor market downturn, these have an inverse relationship. Not sure how long the sideways motion in the past year can continue. So something to keep an eye on. But yeah, this is just an interesting little nugget, so to speak. And speaking of young people, this blew my face right off my body. From Lance Lambert, Gen Z just overtook baby boomers in terms of the US full-time workforce by generation. That is a cool chart. This is a great chart. You know, we've said the stat, 10 ,000 baby boomers are retiring every day, which in fact, I didn't believe it, but some people said, no, it's actually a thing.

27:32So we'll go with it. This chart makes it look like, yeah, that is happening. The baby boomers in the workforce is in secular decline, obviously. They've gone from 50 million at the peak in 2000-ish to$17.3 million today. 17, yeah. They've gone from suck to blow. And for those of you who aren't familiar with that, go watch Spaceballs. Spaceballs reference, okay. I like it. I would finger you for a huge Spaceballs guy. I love Spaceballs. I mean, that's John Candy, right? Oh, that's right. He was a barf. Yeah. Rest in peace. In peace. All right. Pew Research came out with a new middle class income calculator.

28:19You put, it says, are you in the middle class? You put in your income, then you can pick your state and your metro area, and then how many people in your household and calculate where you fit. And now for the U.S. at large, it's 28 % are considered lower class. This is by income. And this is for adults. 52 % are middle class and 19 % are upper class. I think the numbers are$56 ,000-ish to$170 ,000. For what? That's for middle-income households. Upper income is$170 ,000 plus. Lower income is$56 ,000 or$57 ,000 and below. Okay. Now, of course, where you are is highly— No, I did this. So I did this for Grand Rapids versus New York City.

29:03All right, go ahead. Hit me. Okay. So Grand Rapids. And they show the breakdown. So there are fewer lower-income families because there's only 23%. Middle income is higher, 52 % for the national average, 61 % for Grand Rapids area. And upper is lower, 19 % versus 17%. Okay, but wait, but that's compared to the nation, right? That doesn't make sure. Yeah, so there's more middle class in Grand Rapids, and there's less upper class and lower class. But in New York and the surrounding area, there's a lower middle class. Lower class is average. There's way more upper class in New York. Which I guess makes sense that it's because the salaries have to be higher for some people.

29:40I would think higher, lower income and also higher, higher income, higher upper income. Yeah, but lower income is right at the national average. And again, it says the US median household income had incomes ranging from about 56 ,000 to 169 ,000. Nice. This is in 2022. But look at this chart. They show the share of total US household income held by the middle class has plunged since 1970. So the crazy thing is, is that if you look, lower income has basically been stable over time. And so what's happened is more people have moved from middle class to upper class. So that's why the upper class income has gone up so much.

30:20It's interesting. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It should be seen as a good thing, but the problem is so many people see themselves as middle class that if there's more people in upper class, it'd be like if first class was packed all the time, right? If they made first class 20 seats instead of eight or whatever it is, first class wouldn't mean as much to you. So first class has been extended. You ever read the star-bellied sneetches by Dr. Seuss? No, I don't think so. Okay. One of my favorite stories. There's a sneetches, which is a creature, and some of them have bellies on their stars.

30:54I'm sorry, stars on their bellies, and others don't. And the star-bellied sneetches, they thumb their, oh my god, I'm doing it again, Ben. Thumb their noses? Thumb their noses? Is that a phrase? That makes no sense. Thumb their noses? Yes. How do you thumb your nose? I don't know. Okay. They thumb their noses at the Sneetches without Bellies on their stars. So then some guy comes into town and says Sneetches without stars, I can get you stars. Then they get stars, and then the star Bellies Sneetches say, no, no, no, no. Take our stars off. You with me? I gotcha. Okay. I see what you're saying.

31:27Anyhow. That's a good analogy. Thank you. So my question is, though, how many households are actually middle? The funny thing is, is that like no households actually say they're upper class. Gallup has a poll. I think it's like 2 % say they're upper class, even though it's more like 20 % in total. Oh, yeah? How about this? Hand up. I'm upper class. Yes. I'll be that guy. All right. Me too. How many households are middle class but live like they're upper class? I had the car discussion together with my brother the other day because he is one of the last few holdouts that drives a minivan. and we were talking about how you just don't see minivans anymore.

31:58And actually taught us from Abnormal Returns, who works with us, sent me an article from msn.com, which is the ultimate, speaking of boober candy website, my dad's favorite homepage is msn.com, right? Wow. I mean, you have to be over 60 years old to have your homepage be msn.com, correct? Hold on, but let me ask you this. That's correct. We're gonna come back to msn. But I would guess that you, like I, identify as middle class. Growing up? Just how do you view yourself today? No, we're upper class. But how do you view yourself? It has to be upper class. You can't, I'm not delusional. But mentally.

32:36No, mentally too. You just said you're upper class. So they had this thing out in the minivan. There was a 1.3 million minivans sold in 2000. That's when it peaked. It's down 80 % since then. And the whole point of the article is it's all aesthetics and millennials not wanting to drive them and people just thinking they're not cool. My wife refuses. I want to get a minivan, ironically, but also because they're practical. Huge. They have the huge carved out trunk. They're, they are the most, and they're, they're relatively inexpensive. So my point is, how many people that are really middle class should be driving a minivan, but aren't, but instead they're driving an$80 ,000 SUV and acting like they're upper class.

33:14Lots. That's gotta be a lot of people. Yeah. Listen, don't, don't shame the people below you. That's not, that's not what we do on this podcast. So wait, what's, what's more though? more people who are middle class that live upper class lifestyles or are there more people who are upper class but assume they are middle class oh i would say i would say no no no no it's not more upper class assume the middle class okay yeah um i saw at future proof some dude brought a cyber truck and the trunk is wild there's so much space and then you could like open there's like a window in the back. It's pretty neat.

33:51Does it have a frunk too? What's a frunk? A front trunk because there's no engine. Oh, I don't know. So listen, it's still a heinous looking car, but it's kind of cool. Okay. Kind of cool. If nothing else, it stands out. Speaking of cars, I've got my Jeep Wrangler for another year and a half. And I'm not too thrilled with the car. I like how it looks, but I don't like how it drives. Because you get like six miles on your electric charge? Yeah. Yeah, like it just, it has this like, and then it'll just like, the engine will hum loud and then it'll go silent. Remember, it's a death rattle. It's called a death rattle.

34:25No, no, no, it's not the death rattle. I did have that. So I don't know if I got a lemon, but my car is, hold on, I put this in the dock. How much am I paying for my car? $5.60 a month, I think. To me, that feels like a, where is it? It feels like a 3 % mortgage. I think that's exactly what I pay for my car, too. I think we have the same car payment. How do you get away with that? I drive a Ford Explorer and I lease. That's a good deal. Can you believe I did that without a car broker? My car, yeah, my car is 5 to 66. Listen, did it cost me anything more to get my car, the exact color that I want, the exact model delivered to my house?

35:03If you like to haggle with a dealership, that's, you know, by all means. I don't mind haggling. That's, it's true. You're not a haggler. You might be a Grand Rapids haggler. Let's be honest. You cannot haggle in New York. No offense. All right. Well, we'll talk about my haggling and get into cable cutting in a minute here. All right, Ben. Good news. U.S. food prices tumble. This is a chart from Bloomberg. The August monthly drop in online grocery prices was the largest on record. And I got to be honest, anecdotally, I'm noticing it. You feeling it? I'm feeling it. Chipotle. I got a bowl. I'm back.

35:39Remember, I was boycotting Chipotle? $12.35. So you think they lowered their prices somehow or what? I know they did. Okay. Or maybe they got used to$12 ,035. Either way, I'm back at Chipotle. I got a bushel of bananas yesterday. Is that what they're called? A bushel of bananas? Bananas have always been cheap, though. Okay. Well, maybe, you know why? I never checked the prices, but I was doing self-checkout and I noticed it. $1.43 for six bananas. I got five pounds of bananas yesterday. Excuse me? Five pounds. I put two stacks. What are you doing with that? I love bananas for my kids. I have some bananas every morning in my yogurt.

36:20Dude, you have a banana problem. $3 for five pounds of bananas. I've read the book. Everyone always says the fish that ate the whale book, and I still don't understand it, how bananas can be so cheap. Here's one question about the economy. And Conor Senn asked this on his Bloomberg column. Are people going to be disappointed where mortgage rates end up? if we get a soft landing. So Eric Finnegan tweeted this out. He's from John Burns. Really good charts. He says, Paul says lower rates will bring sellers and buyers back into the housing market. In fact, more locked-in homeowners and renters are itching to move soon.

36:54They said a sharp increase year-to-date and expected household movers. 18 % of households expect to move in the next year, up from 13 % at the beginning of the year. That's good. A lot of people are probably expecting mortgage rates to be lower. Connor Sen says, it will surprise some home seekers out there that 30-year fixed-rate mortgages were broadly flat to a touch higher last week, even with the Fed's bigger than expected half a percentage rate cut. This is because markets and the Fed now agree that a softish economic landing, the Fed funds rate is likely to eventually fall around 3%. That limits how much mortgage rates can decline, particularly by next spring's housing season after dropping to 6.15 % from 8 % in over 11 months.

37:30Those hoping for much lower rates should be careful what they wish for. A world of substantially lower mortgage rates is one of substantial job losses. So I talked about this a few weeks ago. If we do get a soft landing, unless the spread between 10-year and mortgage rates shrinks, we're probably not going to get—we're not going to get into fours by any means. Maybe like the mid to high fives would be probably best-case scenario in a soft landing environment. Okay, okay. So unless—it's going to take a recession to get mortgage rates much lower. I agree. A 5.5 % mortgage, though, is pretty good, especially compared to 7.5%.

38:05It is. But I just, I think some people are expecting like, okay, we're back in the fours again. And that's short of a recession. That's probably not going to happen. Okay. Yeah. I would agree with that. Right. All right. Speaking of Eric Finnegan, he was on the podcast with Mike Simonson, who we had on this show not too long ago. He has a podcast called Top of Mind talking all about real estate. I really like it in the housing market. And they went through some demographic and housing supply issues. And so they figured at John Burns, we need 1.8 new homes over the next decade to meet demographic demand.

38:42You sent us a, are you writing a piece on it? Maybe you sent us, me and Josh, the Slack this morning on the fact that there's going to be huge demand because there's so many people in their 30s. Yeah. Right? So he's saying over the next decade, we need 12 million new homes and 6 million new rentals. Okay? So it's almost 2 million homes a year, which is we barely got to 1.8 in the peak of the low interest rate 2021-ish area in the pandemic. Then it crashed. Immigration is a big contention point in this election. And I don't feel like talking politics here, but this was interesting to me. He says 50 % of all construction labor, it's estimated, is foreign-born.

39:19So, like, we need, if we want to have enough housing supply in this country, we need immigrants to come and take those construction jobs, basically. There's not enough construction workers to build the homes we need to fill the housing demand that's coming. I didn't figure you for an open border guy.

39:38Yeah, I was open border when I went to Windsor every year in college for, in Canada. Because, 19 drinking age. What's the best Through the Border movie? Through the Border? What do you mean? Like... Like Border Crossing. Suriana. Are there a lot of Border Crossing movies? What's... Suriana. Not Suriana. Sicario. Sicario. Yes. Is that the only one? That's a good movie. There's got to be more than one. Sicario 2 is good too. All right. This is from Clever. They had a whole piece on... Who's Clever? Boomer housing markets. It's like a real estate something. I don't know. 54 % of boomers who currently own a home never plan to sell it and expect to live in it the rest of their lives.

40:23One in four wouldn't move because of their emotional attachment to the home. One in five wouldn't want to give up the community ties and friendship. And a quarter say they just wouldn't be able to afford a new home or pay for the assisted living. I kind of, I don't know if directionally this is right. That most boomers I think will not sell their home. Yeah, I agree. They're just going to live it out and die in their home. Yep. All right, how much did you purchase your first home for? This is from a survey of boomers. I'll tell you. Oh, go ahead. Two-thirds of them paid less than$100 ,000 for their house.

40:56All right, but adjusted for inflation. Why not? Well, it's still probably not that bad. But what do you mean, well? Yeah, it's not, it's - One-third paid less than 50. Yes, you're right. Inflation and, but this is going to be millennials in 30 or 40 years as well, right? I guess, 30, yeah, 25 years. There's going to be the similar thing for millennials. The percentage that purchase it for less than$400 ,000 or something. Just given the demographics, and you're right, I didn't throw this chart in here. Maybe we'll talk about it next week. I'm still bullish on housing. Just the supply-demanded balance seems structural.

41:27It's hard to be bearish. That's where I would say I am. It's really hard to be bearish on housing. I kind of land there too. All right. Tal Smith tweeted from JP Morgan. Median balances. In June, 2024, we're 15 % higher. Balances for what? We're checking accounts. Okay. Yeah, combined checking and savings. We're 15 % higher than they have been in June 2019 for low-income households. Wow, that's surprising. And 5 % higher for high-income households. Again, real. So low-income households are holding way more cash. And they're checking real cash balances adjusted for inflation. Now that's adjusted for inflation.

42:20Yeah. So I'm not here to tell you that inflation is good for the lower income, but all of these sound bites that inflation crushes, uh, lower income people. And again, I'm not suggesting that it's good for them. The data doesn't show that to be true this time. Economists are going to have so much ammunition to study in the years ahead from this pandemic period. It's going to be one of those. I feel like there's going to be so many one-offs that here's what the textbook tells you should happen. Here's what actually happened. I think the COVID, just throw all this out. Not much to learn here. Unless there's another pandemic and we shut the economy down and do the stimulus.

42:56The weirdest economic period ever. Yeah. Very, very unusual. We talked about price gouging a few weeks ago for Harris. That was, I don't know, a terrible idea. Try to get the grocery store for price gouging. This week, Trump said that he wants to cap credit card rates, interest rates at 10%. He said, we can't let them make 25 and 30%. This is a terrible idea. Because if you did this, the people who need credit card debt wouldn't be able to get it. Credit card usage would plunge if the banks are capped at charging 10%. Only the highest of high FICO score people, not to brag, would be able to get a credit card.

43:33You're right. So I don't know where the line is. like obviously 30 % seems punitive, but there is a line where the banks would lose money. It's unsecured debt. Right. And there's, yeah. So it's, it would be a terrible idea. It would never work. Horrendous idea. Whose was this? Was this Senator Warren? Trump. This is Trump? Yes. I mean, let's be honest. So when I was in fifth grade, we, there was a student council president election and no one wanted to run for student council president. So our teacher made all of us run. Yeah. Smart teacher. Yeah, which was kind of a, so we all had to come up with a speech.

44:09And I did not want to be student council president at all. So I did not take it seriously. And I wrote my speech the morning of, you know, and I just made, I made it a joke. And I promised, we're going to have candy in the lunchroom. And I was being funny, you know? And I won. All these other people really wanted it. And they did serious speeches. And I was the guy who was promising everything that was never going to happen. Did you deliver? Did you deliver? It's, I had to be president. and I had to like go to all these meetings. It was terrible. Of course I didn't deliver. All the promises, but this is the kind of promise that is probably like that.

44:43Okay. Terrible idea. Yes. Okay. Oh, so I finally kind of cut the cord and I talked about this a couple weeks ago. I don't know if it's really cutting the cord because I just switched to YouTube TV, but I got rid of my AT &T U-verse after all the direct TV stuff and no ESPN. We had YouTube TV for our house up north that we used before. So we found ourselves using YouTube TV more and more at our primary residence. And finally, I asked my wife, I'm like, do we really actually need this? Because she can get all her Bravo shows on Peacock now. And she said, no, actually, we really don't. So we made this switch to YouTube TV.

45:21I think we're saving$180 a month because all we're paying for is internet now with AT &T. And I don't notice a difference, really. Okay. Credit to you. I would join you. I don't think, I don't know. I have to find out. I don't know that I could get MSG as a streaming standalone. So to me, that's the only holdout. So that's the thing. I might have to piecemeal a few things here and there that I forget. And I also, I consolidated too. I had, I was paying for Disney Plus and I was paying for Hulu and I was paying for HBO Max. Or no, I wasn't paying for it. HBO Max was free with my cable provider.

45:53So I put all those three together and I got the triple bundle for Disney, Hulu, and HBO Max as well. Oh, nice. Yeah, I got, you know what? I got to do some consolidation as well. It's getting out of control. So I'm sure that there are certain channels that I will have to add, but YouTube TV is such a better experience. College football, my daughter and I have four games going at once. It was amazing. And you can pick which four games they are. Yeah. It's such a better experience. I mean, clicking through the channels isn't quite as easy, but you don't change that often anyway. All right, credit to you.

46:23All right, Netflix released their, I think it's called What We're Watching or What We Watched, which this is new. They used to be very secretive about their data and who's watching what. Now they're letting it fly. So the top 10 titles for the first half of 2024. What's interesting here is are any of these... Bridgerton is theirs. Only one of them is theirs. So Bridgerton slash Queen Charlotte is number one. Suits is number two. Young Sheldon, don't know what that is. Grey's Anatomy, Fool Me Once, don't know that. Queen of Tears, House. My God, House, that's an old show. Gilmore Girls, Walking Dead, and Avatar The Last Airbender.

47:04It is kind of funny how Netflix has essentially turned into USA, TBS, and TNT, where people just go to watch reruns. Yeah. That's what Netflix is. You used to go to watch reruns on those channels, and now it's just on Netflix. So Chart Can Matt, we were talking about this. I was asking him to make some charts for me, which we ended up not doing because there's just not a lot of stuff to chart here. The number one movie by far is Damsel. And he's like, oh, I love that movie. I watched it six times. And I said, what? I've literally never heard of it. It's the Millie Bobby Brown. I said, why did you watch it six times?

47:34He's like, I just really like it. I'm like, dude, have you ever seen The Departed? Why are you watching Damsel six times? I've honestly never heard of this movie. I didn't get good reviews. What stood out to me on this list was my favorite movie, not just of the first half of the year on Netflix, but ever on Netflix. I might be missing something, but I don't think I am. It was Hitman. I think that's my favorite movie that I've ever seen Netflix produce. Yeah, that was a good one. And it was number 47. Yeah, that's probably one of the higher quality movies Netflix has ever done. Isn't that crazy?

48:07Wow, okay. Under Paris is number four. Was that the shark movie? Definitely a lot of, oh yeah, my son loved that one. Definitely a lot of kids movies on here, I see. Boss Baby, Despicable Me, Woody, Woodpecker, Shrek, Minions, a lot of kid stuff. Mother of the Bride, don't know that one. Super Mario, that was a good one. Yeah, people are watching the shit out of Netflix, I'll tell you that. Uh, Disney consensus gurus tweeted, check out this deal. Disney is running on their new service called Disney plus sub sub trends must be stellar. So Disney plus ran an ad that says save 75 % on three months of Disney plus.

48:45So I got Disney Hulu and HBO max for 29 99 a month. That's the no ad premium, whatever. Yeah. I got to upgrade cause I'm watching ads and I don't care for it. Oh yeah. You told me you're upper class. What are you living like a middle-class person for and watching ads? Don't get the ads. See, this is you stuck in the psychological trap. I don't pay. I pay for everything. Get rid of the ads. I do think, just getting back to that, I do think the way that you see yourself socioeconomically is how you grew up. Yes, I agree. Right? Yes. And I, yeah. So we were upper middle class growing up. And that's probably where I would.

49:22You were upper class. Growing up? Yeah. See, the problem is, income-wise, my parents probably were. but my parents did not live like that. So I didn't even know it until I was in like college that, oh, my parents are probably doing better than I thought. My father lived like he was lower class, especially with his wardrobe. So I grew up, it was interesting. So my parents were divorced when I was six. So I really did grow up with, I lived with my mom and my siblings and did weekends and one night a week during with my dad. And it was just different. Like when I went to Blockbuster, I was able to get two movies.

50:01And I remember once going to the diner and my mom said I can't get chicken parm because it was too expensive. So that was weird for me. But I identify more with that than the luxuries of being able to get two movies at once. I agree. How you grew up is a big piece of it. Okay. AC in Europe, I mentioned a couple weeks ago. Someone sent us this. There were 61 ,672 deaths attributed to heat in 2022 in Europe. What? this saying that like, maybe they really do need more AC. I don't know how much you can ascribe that to AC, but yes, that's a thing. Ben, you go to Detroit a lot now? I do. A couple times a year.

50:39So the journal wrote an article, a headline, reversing the real estate doom loop as possible. Just look at Detroit. They showed that between 1950 and 2020, Detroit's population shrank by two thirds. Kind of crazy, right? To be fair, most of those people just moved to the suburbs. Okay. But yeah, so that's out of downtown. Yeah, but still. Right. So they said Rock Bottom Office rents long ago forced developers to come up with other things to build. They added casinos and sports venues and restored aging theaters. Dan Gilbert at Rocket was a big part of this. Every time I go to Detroit, there's like five new restaurants and a new hotel.

51:18They're constantly building there. It's awesome. Here's a quote from somebody. It said, an allegedly smart urbanist would have probably said, don't do that. Billions of dollars on stadiums and casinos. It sounds odd to say this, but in a way, their downtown looks more like Miami or Las Vegas. 20 years ago, it was unrecognizable for what it is today. That's awesome. Let's turn around stories like that. It's very cool. All right, this is random. I don't really have much to say on this, other than this just is like a mind-blowing stat from Greg Zuckerman via Bloomberg, via via. Novo's sales of Ozempic and Wegovy, Wegovy?

51:47Wegovy? I don't know. Are so high. On track to hit$65 billion by the end of 2024. They will soon surpass the drug maker's entire research budget for the past three decades after adjusting for inflation. You think everyone has a doctor now that prescribes this stuff to them? 65 billion. It's unbelievable. It's kind of like before weed was legal. Like I had friends who would go and get a doctor's note for having like glaucoma or something. Isn't it? Do you think it's got to be so easy to find doctors to prescribe this? Cause I think it's supposed to be for people certain health conditions, but it doesn't really matter.

52:21Yeah, no, I think, you know the meme where the security guard is just barely patting people down? Yeah. That's this. Okay, this is from Twitter. Breaking X, which I'm not going to call it X. Twitter is about to remove the current block button, meaning that if an account is public, their posts will be visible to blocked users as well. And Elon Musk says, high time this happened, the block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing the public post. Hang on, what is this? If an account is public, meaning you're not - If you block someone, that makes them so they can't see anything from you anymore.

52:49But now they're going to change it. So if you block them, they can't respond to you, but they can still see your posts. And I like the ability. A block is get out of my life. You are no longer able to see what I write because you are an asshole. So the Financial Times had this thing that says Twitter user numbers have declined significantly over the last year, falling especially steeply in the UK. So it's down from, it's down like 30 % in the US and UK over the past year in terms of number of users. I've always had a pretty good filter. So the political stuff, even though it's annoying, doesn't get me that bad because I just, I block all that out.

53:22And I have a pretty good filter. But I've noticed lately that the number of spam ads is out of control. Really? You get the spam ads? No. It'll be like a picture of someone's feet or something. And I'll get like 12 of them every time I scroll. and so I feel like that stuff and then the paying the users to tweet I think has made it that gives you all the thread boys and people just posting the same videos over and over again so I do feel like the experience of Twitter has degraded a lot in the last like 12 to 18 months I'm still there I still follow I feel like the right people but the experience is getting slowly but surely worse I'm still all the way there as much as I hate it I can't lie I'm there Yeah.

54:03All right. Story time. I can remember when I said this maybe a year and a half ago. We had to put our dog down. It was a terrible experience. Hey, but at least you're upper class.

54:19And I said, my wife forever said, let's get another dog. Let's get another dog. I know some people who get a dog right away. Or their dog is going to die and they get a puppy before the dog even dies. I didn't want to do that. I just didn't. I don't know. and my wife has been pushing me to the dog. My kids have wanted the dog forever and my wife has handled the whole thing and I've just kind of like, she's getting on me because she's like, why aren't you more excited about this? And I'm thinking through like all the responsibilities of it and I just, I didn't want to put myself out there again.

54:46You know? It's like I was burned once. Yeah, I got it. I had a hard time and I knew what would happen. I knew right when we get the dog, I would melt and that's exactly what happened. We got a new dog on Friday and like all it takes is sitting on the couch and the dog lays next to your leg. It's like, that's all I needed. They were manufactured to love us. There's nothing quite like it. This is a really good dog so far. She's really calm and chill because my kids are not at all. They're just so excited and they're taking responsibility for letting her out and helping feed her. Yeah, it's cool.

55:23I knew this would happen. My wife was getting mad at me because I wasn't excited going into it. And I just needed like to thaw my, my frozen heart. Yeah. I got it. I can't wait to get a dog. I'm probably going to get one in a year unless I see one. Yeah. I needed that. I needed the buffer. Now I'm back. Um, also, okay. Based on last week's show, I am running again now. How are you doing? I was kind of tight lipped about it last week because I really honestly didn't know what happened to my knee. You like asked on stage and you're like, why are you talking about this? And I really had no idea what happened.

55:52So I tried to jump through some plans because there's all these people in my way from sidewalk to sidewalk. And one of these like triangle blue agave something plants pierced my knee. And two of the guys that we work with, Patrick and Matt, saw it happen. And blood started gushing down my knee and I tried to like run it off. And I herky-jerky kind of, and they, are you okay, Ben? And I saw Schwendy later that night. He goes, I thought you blew your ACL out, man. That's how bad it looked. And so I didn't know what I did. And I looked it up and it said, if you come into contact with one of these plants, It can lead to like skin irritation and swelling.

56:26And my whole leg went numb, like immediately. It was a very weird experience. I didn't know. I thought I blew my knee out. But I think I just, I'm, it's still a little sore, to be honest. I'm icing it every night, but it's, I'm back to running again. Oh, wow. I told my wife, but I don't think she believed me. Because it's kind of, it doesn't make sense. So yes, I'm back. Well, glad to hear you're on the mend. All right, Ben, are there, I feel like you're, I feel like you've experienced this. Are there people in your orbit, friends or dad friends or whatever, where you never had the conversation of, oh, what do you do for a living?

57:02And you've known them for like 11 months and now you can't possibly ask. Or same thing with like their name. You can't – The name thing. You can't think, I'm sorry. I know we've spoken. What's your name? There's like a small-ish window, right? Well, the job thing, that was a whole – that was a running joke on Friends with Chandler. No one knew what he did. Yeah. Yeah. Why do you have that with you? obviously. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's several people who I would, I'm curious, but it's too late to ask. I would say, I guess I could find them on LinkedIn, but most other parents, like it's kind of funny.

57:34The one, the thing they want to talk about most is just their kids. Don't you get that feeling that parents just love talking about kids in the kids' sports and the kids' schools. And that's what they love to talk about. I went out to dinner with three other couples on Friday night, which I hate going out Friday night, but we did. And the wives talk the entire time. The entire time. And there's some dead air with the dads. You know, we're just eating the salsa, whatever. And I'm always like, what are they talking about? And it's always the kids. Yes, it's parenting. It's what are you doing with this?

58:07Yes. All right, speaking of, I had a tough phone call last week with somebody who reached out. This is a young person. And tragically, his wife was diagnosed with a brain cancer and, you know, don't know how long she has, but it's not looking good. And he reached out to ask me if I had any advice about how I dealt with loss or, you know, for his kid who's much younger than I was. And I didn't because I wasn't, you know, I was 25 when my mom died. I wasn't seven. But I bring this up just to say that life is so short and unexpected tragedies happen all the time. And I think most people, most people, especially people that like didn't lose a parent at a young age, go through life acting as if you're going to live forever.

59:04and this is just a PSA. You're not going to live forever. Enjoy your life because my uncle used to always say something about like life, like this is not a dress rehearsal. And it's true. You only get one chance at this. So I think a lot of the stress that people are on under a daily basis. Now I probably take it to extreme where I'm like overly aware of the fact my mom died when she was 57. And so maybe I overdo it in terms of the activities that I do or don't do. But things strike quickly. You got that lesson early, though. Yeah, thank God. Well, not thank God. But yeah, life is short and enjoy yourself while you can.

59:45We got a question on that. We get these questions and ask the compound occasionally. A couple weeks ago, it was my wife just got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We don't know. It's a pretty bad diagnosis. and it's weird how many of those uncomfortable conversations you have to have in finance. And I can easily talk about the finance aspects of it. Like I can, you know, because we've had those conversations with clients before, right? Client is going to retire a week before retirement or selling a business, something that they die, right? So we've had these uncomfortable conversations before and I can handle the finance aspect of it.

1:00:18The other personal stuff of it, having those kind of, that's a lot harder. All right. So that's where I shine, not to brag. I'm very comfortable having those conversations because I lived through some of it, but I was on the phone with a stranger crying because it's horrendous. There's nothing positive to say. And it's hard to find the right words, but hopefully this person got something out of the conversation. Yeah, maybe that's the point is that there is no perfect thing to say. It's just you be there for someone. Yeah, I guess my one thing, the one thing that I tried to leave him with is that as impossible as it feels like at the time, time really does heal all wounds.

1:00:58Now, you're never going to completely heal from a tragedy like this, but if you felt the same level of sadness a year from now, three years from now, five, your body would shut down. And you wouldn't be able to function as a human being, right? Yeah, you would die. So the mind and the body heals because you have no choice. Right. And so that's just, that's what I would say. to anybody that's going through it is that eventually, as impossible as it sounds, eventually you'll be okay. All right. No, let's just get off this horrendous topic and onto some recommendations. So Michael Antonelli came up to us after the show when we were talking about movie recommendations for the airplane.

1:01:35He said, guys, Ocean's 11 is the best airplane movie of all time. And you know what? He's 100 % right. Because the number one thing that you want from from a movie on an airplane is fun. You want to have fun. We got another email. Great recommendation, The Italian Job. That's a perfect airplane movie. You could tune out. It's background. It's fun. You've been there before. You've seen it before. Just a chef's kiss of a recommendation to Michael Antonelli. Okay, I want to make the case for going to the theaters. This is a weekly occurrence for you, I feel like. I'm making the case, and not just because I own IMAX.

1:02:11I saw Civil War in the movie theater. Okay, so I was circling it on my plane, but it's not an airplane movie. I couldn't force myself to watch Civil War on an airplane. No, it's really not. I saw Civil War in the movie and it's not the most fun movie. It's not the most action-packed movie, although the action scenes are gripping. But it's a type of movie that you need to be locked in for because, again, it's just not that exciting. So I saw Civil War in the theater and I had a hell of a time. I really enjoyed myself. in the theater, I'd give it like a solid 7-6. So Ramp texted me about how much he hated Civil War and he's telling me why he didn't like it.

1:02:52And then Benny Markets slacked me that he thought Civil War was a 2 out of 10. And yeah, if I saw it on my couch, I'd probably say, that's it. It's on HBO Max. I'll have to give it a try. It's really not a couch movie. There are couch movies and there are theater movies. And there's an overlap with the Venn diagram, but sometimes they're completely, there's no overlap. Can we say that you are susceptible to the premium of the movie theater though, sometimes. Susceptible? You make it sound like it's a bad thing. Well, I'm saying sometimes you're viewing the movie theater lenses on a movie and it inflates, you're giving it a premium valuation.

1:03:30That's what the theater does. Hello? Hello? That's why you go to the theater because it is a premium experience. Okay. You have to be able to separate the quality of the movie from enjoying the theater, though. I can. I absolutely can. I'm conceding the fact. I'm going to have to watch this movie to give you my IMDb score. You're welcome for lowering your expectations. Okay. Somebody sent us two recommendations, and they both look great. I only saw the first one, and it was—I don't want to say it goes as far as great. Hell of a good time. It's called The Last Stop in Yuma County. Tell me if you like the premise, Ben.

1:04:07This is a slow burner of a movie. This guy is in New Mexico, absolutely no man's land, pulls up to the gas station. He's out of gas. Next gas station, 100 miles away. Don't worry. The tank, the gas station has no gas. The tank is coming to fill up the gas station. Go to the diner next door. He goes to the diner next door. Two guys show up. They're looking for gas. They go to the diner next door. These two guys happened to rob a bank earlier that day. So - I like that so far. The diner starts to fill up. I think it gets about eight people deep. And let's just say it's a slow burn, slow burn, and then boom, the powder keg explodes.

1:04:43Fun move. So this is a bunch of different stories and characters coming together, and then it all, at the end, kind of - It's not quite that. They're really sharing the experience in the diner, but it was a good one. I took my kids, lastly. Yes, I took my kids to the theater, Ben, because I want them to enjoy the premium experience of the theater. We saw - My kids actually love going to the theater, too. We saw, excuse me. We saw Transformers 1. Awesome. Oh, I didn't know it was out yet. My son is really excited about that. It was on par with like the Ninja Turtles movie. It was really, really good.

1:05:17So Transformers 1, it's the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron. And it's a, it's not a cartoon cartoon, but it's sort of like - That's good because I needed that, I needed that hole filled in, like where they came from. Yeah, yeah, seriously. I was, I was, I was dying to know. But strong recommend. Strong recommend. Okay. The only thing I've watched recently, besides all the movies on my flight, was the Sopranos doc called Wise Guy on HBO. And it was a doc about David Chase, the creator of Sopranos. And I was late to watching Sopranos. I watched it a number of years ago, I think, just before the pandemic.

1:05:46And I said Gandolfini, it's the best performance and it's the best TV character of all time, Tony Soprano. Like, there's some holes you could poke in that show. Some of the other actors aren't always the greatest, but his performance is the best. and the whole point of the doc is that like james gandolfini and david chase the creator and the show sopranos and their lives were all sort of intertwined and they they had some demons and like the a lot of the people in the that were writing for the show like had bad experiences with their parents and stuff and here's here's my take perma bears are terrible for investing advice but pretty great for entertainment purposes oh that's a good take right like he come david chase comes off as it's just sort of depressed.

1:06:27Just the weight of the world is on him at all times. And a lot of times that flows into creativity. Gandolfini too, he was a very tortured soul and died at a young age because of, in part because of how he reacted to getting the show. Here's another thing. AI will never be able to create the best art. I feel like Netflix is going to be creating AI in the years ahead, and they kind of already are. Did you watch that Perfect Couple show? With Liam Schreiber and Nicole Kidman? I saw 20 minutes. I said, eh, I don't really want to watch this. It feels like they took White Lotus and said, let's make our own Netflix version of it.

1:07:01So it's just, it's not very, my wife and I will finish it, but it's not very good quality. It feels like something AI would make. Like, let's try to make White Lotus, but Netflix. Because there's all these actors and actresses in it, you know, but. All right, no offense to my dad, who I hope isn't listening, but he keeps telling me to watch it. I'm like, eh. It's like, yeah, it's just, it's not, it's just okay. But all the writers for Sopranos took their personal experiences and put them into the show. Like the mother of Tony Soprano was based exclusively on the mother of David Chase, the creator.

1:07:26And the same thing was Superbad was created because Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. That was their high school experience. And they embellished it, obviously. So my whole thing is like AI is never going to be able to create the best art. It all comes from personal experiences. You just met. You're right. You just met Superbad. It would be remiss if I don't mention Incoming for a seventh time. You saw Incoming? I watched it. It was funny. The ending was a little eh. Well, who cares about the ending? It's hard to end one of those movies, but yes, it definitely was a throwback to a lot of the – hitting a lot of the touch points, but The Teacher was the one great addition.

1:07:59Stoods. I want to make Stoods a thing. So I've gotten so many texts from friends about it. So Phil Huber texted to me. He texted me, dude, it's so good. I think my wife liked it more than me, and I fully expected her to hate it. Yeah. My wife liked it too. It was a very good high school party movie. They don't make those anymore. They don't. All right. If you're a Sopranos fan, watch Wiseguy. It was very, very good. Okay. Keep the emails coming. Again, thank you to everybody who came to Future Proof. If you didn't go this year, hopefully we could see you there next year. Animal Spirits at the Compound News.

1:08:37Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.

1:08:50Bye.