Everybody in the Pool (EP.387)

24:42So 2025 is going to be the financial purge. Yeah. Right? Anything goes? Yeah. Get it all out. All right. Okay. Turn to the economy. Mike Sicardi via via. There's Bank of America. The median checking and savings deposit balances have declined over the past year for all income cohorts, but still remain above inflation adjusted 2019 levels. Okay. Surprising. The median, the monthly median household savings and checking balances by income. By income. So under 50K, 50 to 100. 100 plus all have a higher checking and savings balance adjusted for inflation adjusted for inflation the 2019. Everyone just has more money everywhere so this isn't coming down enough to explain the ETF thing either like where the money is going in ETFs right it's not like this cash on the sidelines is also going into the market or something and I don't think people would look at checking account balances that are high as a source of cash anyway.

25:47Somebody sent us, this is from Visual Capitalist, a chart, a table, a visual of US government income and expenditures. And of course, the total outlays exceed the total receipts by $2 trillion, give or take. So Elon and Vivek and the Doge thing, what does that stand for? Department of Government Efficiency? Did I lose you? You're muted. Ben, there's no reason to touch the mic. I didn't touch the mic. I think I hit mute because I was clearing my throat. I was looking out for the audience. Oh, okay. Very nice of you. We were sending around videos a couple weeks ago of speaking of podcasting for so long, you used to literally eat a salad while we were recording.

26:38You would pour a huge salad and you shake it up in your bag and pour it into a bowl and you'd literally be eating the crunchiest thing possible into the microphone. We have many videos of this of you shoving huge pieces of lettuce into your face. You know, I said last week, hand up, okay? I can laugh at myself. Hand up. I can notice, I said my mom's quote, I can notice a fly on somebody else, but not an elephant on myself. I was on the phone with Best Buy. I need somebody to come in and install my ring cameras or something. By the way, they just put on my – I just got a calendar invite for January 17th at 3 in the morning.

27:15What? For Best Buy? Okay. First of all, it's going to take two months to send somebody over here to just install a ring camera, number one. Number two, 3 a.m. I think somebody fat-fingered that. But either way, I left Best Buy. I didn't hang up on Best Buy. I was on the telephone with them. And after two minutes, they were like, hello? You did it. I'm like, yeah. They're like, sir, could you please hang up? Why didn't they hang up? So guilty. I am guilty, okay? I am a known world-class hypocrite, apparently. See, I'm very fast on the trigger finger with those things because they take forever to say goodbye.

27:53Speaking of phone etiquette, you called me last night. Were you calling to tell me the escalator story or was that a butt dial? Notice I didn't call you back because that's the etiquette. You do it right. Credit to you. That was a butt dial. Okay, getting back to this chart. I mean, this is just the way it's going to be forever though, right? People don't actually think that magically we're going to spend less than we bring in, right? I mean, short of cutting Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, how else do you really make a dent in this? Well, hang on. So let's look at the receipts, first of all.

28:28Okay, that's not going up, right? We agree. Taxes are not going up. It is funny to me. I feel like every accountant I've ever talked to over the past 20 years has said, just wait, taxes are going to be going up in the future. They have to. And they always just go down. They never go up. So, all right. So forget about the left side. What about the right side? Yeah. What's getting cut first? Social Security? Medicare? Good luck with that, right? I mean, maybe they'll try, but yeah. Good luck talking that one through. National Defense? I guess you could say the interest could fall if the Fed just cuts rates.

29:03We talked about that with Alex Moss a little bit. All right. Bit of a drop. I mean, not a drop in pocket. So, yeah. So what? The plan is that Elon is going to do to the government what he did to Twitter? Even firing hundreds of thousands of employees, how much is it really going to save? We spoke with, we had Sembalist on the show yesterday. Josh and I did it. He shared a chart with us talking about non-discretionary spending. So what could possibly be cut? So we compared all of the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid stuff in one chart, and that's up and to the right, obviously. And then non-discretionary spending, roads, like all the basic federal government functions.

29:40And it's not growing. It hasn't grown at all. Really? It's to the bone. There's not much more to cut. So it is just entitlements and interest expense, basically. Yeah. Okay. Apparently, the economy climbs the wall of worry as well. This is from Torsten Slok, his chart of the week. FOMC has constantly expected the economy to slow down, but it still hasn't happened. This is since 2022 when they started raising rates. And it's one of those charts where they show what the expectations for the economy are and what the actual economy does. And the Federal Reserve has been wrong basically the entire time.

30:12on what they thought growth should be and what it actually was. It was way higher than both. Yeah. All right. I guess not to beat a dead horse on the economy or on the election stuff here, but I thought this was interesting. Wall Street Journal did a poll on the swing states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And they asked, how do you feel about your home state? Like, how is it doing? Versus how do you feel about the national economy? In the home state economy, the net margin was positive. Like, we think we're going in the right direction. Our state is doing well.

30:43National economy was a total opposite. No, we think it's doing poorly. And I do think everything these days really just boils down to vibes almost. There's never one thing, but I think studying the vibes thing is very important. Because listen to this one from Kyla Scanlon. Did you read her piece on the Post? Excellent, excellent. Yes. So she says, before the election, these two researchers at the Washington Post polled voters about policies without revealing which candidate proposed them. Harris's were far more popular. Even Trump voters generally liked her ideas more as long as they knew they weren't hers.

31:17The point is not that like, oh, these people are dumb and they're misinformed. I think the point is the way that we get our information, it's easier than ever to have confusing ideas about what's happening. To be the I'm fine, I'm doing great, my state's doing great, my congressman is perfect, but the national economy stinks. So there's this book called The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu. and he kind of goes through the whole thing of it started with newspapers, then it went to radio, then TV, then internet. He didn't really get there in his book yet. But then it's kind of social media and podcasts are the next step.

31:50So he says, the modus operandi by attention merchants is draw attention with apparently free stuff and then resell it. But a consequence of that model is a total dependence on gaining and holding attention. This means under competition, the race will naturally run to the bottom. Attention will almost invariably gravitate to the more garish, lurid, outrageous alternative. Whatever stimulus may make more likely engage cognitive scientists call our automatic attention as opposed to our controlled attention, the kind we direct with intent. The race to the bottomless bottom, appealing to what one might call the audience's baser instincts, poses a fundamental, continued dilemma for the attention merchant.

32:23Just how far would they go to get this harvest? And my whole point is that people have always been deceived by advertisers and hucksters and salespeople, but we've just never had the way of getting the information out to so many people at the same time in social media. And I do feel like in the future, there's going to be a turning point where people are going to look back one day and go, what happened here? To this, you know, the way people feel about stuff and the sentiment or whatever it is or how people… And they're going to go, oh, social media. Like when Facebook was… And Twitter were started.

32:55Like the way people consume… It just totally changed everything. I feel like we really did a pivot point. What if people say… What if people look back and say, people used to be so naive? What if now is… What if now… not what if now is a new normal and people will look back to pre this and say how naive people were. People thought that like the news was telling them the truth and that everything was objective. Like what if that's the take? Yeah, it could be. So just, yeah, don't believe anything. And of course the news comes to you from some, some anonymous person. I wonder if it used to be the opposite where people's only exposure to other people's opinions was their dumb ass neighbors, and maybe they thought that the people surrounding them were such idiots that their home state was doing poor and the national economy was actually doing well, because they heard opinions from their friends and family, and they heard truth from the news.

33:49It could be possible that, yeah, the people just didn't give much thought to the national economy before, because you're right, it didn't really impact them. And now people think about it a lot more. And yeah, I don't know. Again, the point here is not to say, like, look at how misinformed everyone is. The point is to say, like, people getting their information from all these different sources just jumbles everything up. And I feel like that makes it so the vibes are just more important than ever. Yes. Yes, yes. Anyway, I read this book when it came out. I remember… It's a very good book. It was good.

34:20He talks about how, like, when newspapers first came out, advertisers realized, like, oh, we totally understand human nature and we can get these people. And that's the whole point. It's always been going on. But now the megaphone is just louder. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, going forward, it's just who can influence the national mood better? Which side? Yes. And unfortunately, like technology and misinformation and TikTok videos and all that sort of stuff. It's a new world. Yeah. The point is not to like fight it. It's to figure out how to use it to your advantage. But it's just a different world. So let's talk about crypto for a second.

35:01Eric Beltran has tweeted, Bitcoin ETFs have crossed$90 billion in assets. They are now 72 % of the way to passing gold ETFs in assets, which is wild considering that gold ETFs came out in, I think, 2003. And gold is close to an all-time high. IBIT has hit the$40 billion asset mark in just 211 days. Their previous record was like six times that. So just really and truly off the charts type stuff. Cumulative Ethereum ETF flows, again, from Balchunas have been negative. I think there's mostly money coming out of the grayscale Ethereum ETF, I would guess. Oh, okay. And of course, that flipped after the election.

35:41And so, Ben, we had a bit of an argument a few weeks ago about Bitcoin being just a risk-on thing. And I differed with you. Zuccardi has a chart, I think, supporting my argument, showing I bid versus the Qs, or just Bitcoin versus the Qs. and there was a long period of time where they were, it was a risk on, risk off type asset and that has just got completely divorced. Like it is smashing the queues. Yes, you were right about that. It is just funny to me though that, I don't know, the crypto people always clamor on about regulation and stuff and I just feel like the whole regulation piece hasn't really stopped them from doing anything in the past.

36:21Oh yes, it has. I mean, obviously, it took longer to get ETF. Dude, Solana, you couldn't trade salon on Robinhood. Just as one example of a million things. So we were, I was in the airport. I guess I'm, maybe I'm thinking, maybe I'm naively thinking about it as just like Bitcoin. Like Bitcoin hasn't been stopped from doing anything, right? Bitcoin is the biggest player in the industry. So I was flying from Philly to Chicago. Yeah, Philly to Chicago. And a fan came up to me in the airport and, you know, nice to meet you. Thanks for listening. Oh, what are you doing? And he told me and As he walked away, he goes, enough of the Bitcoin stuff.

36:59I'm not having it. And I was like, unless I misheard him, but it was so weird. I was like, what? It was just like a, I wonder if it was one of those interactions where he walked away. He's like, what did I just say? Well, we got one of those. He said, I'm not having it. It was so odd. We got one of those emails last week though that people are like, you guys talk about crypto too much. Like, guess what? It's not going away. This is part of the market now. It's a massive asset. It's a$3 trillion asset class. Kyle Bass tweeted, Scott Bessent is eminently more qualified than Howard Lutnick. We're talking about like the treasury secretary to run the US treasury.

37:34Scott understands markets, economics, people, and geopolitics better than anyone I've ever interacted with. Markets have already anticipated Bessent's choice. Lutnick is not Trump's answer. Lutnick is the guy from Canada Fitzgerald who'd be more crypto friendly. So anyway, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is going to be in a position, probably going to hold the cabinet position, tweeted, Bitcoin is the currency of freedom. a hedge against inflation for middle-class Americans, a remedy against the dollar downgrade from the world's reserve currency, and the off-ramp for a ruinous national debt. Bitcoin will have no stronger advocate than Howard Lutnick.

38:05And listen, you might not like that statement. I don't particularly like that statement, but you can't pretend like this isn't a thing. That statement sounds like 25 bots in my Twitter replies. But it's now in the White House, okay? And so forgive us for covering a huge story. and I understand that people are pissed off. They don't like it. They think it's spam. They think it's garbage. They're upset that they missed it. I understand all these feelings, okay? So to the person who told me I'm not having it, okay, well, then don't listen. What do you want to tell you? We're covering the markets and this is a big part of it for now.

38:39How about this? Walter Bloomberg. Bitcoin ETF options will start trading on Tuesday. So you can start trading options on IBIT according to Barron's and I guess that's a new way to trade, hedge, whatever. How quickly do we get a call option selling Bitcoin strategy? No, I think they already exist. Do they? So Alex Morris, in our live show, we were talking about crypto, I think beforehand, maybe not even during the show. He was saying like one of the options, that's a way to create new Bitcoin, essentially. People say there's no way to create new Bitcoin. Options are kind of a way to create more Bitcoin.

39:17Right? If you think about it. Well, it's leverage. Yeah. Yeah, but it is, I mean, whatever. It's a derivative, obviously, but. Well, here's the other thing. So somebody said to me, it was like, dude, how is one Bitcoin$90 ,000? And the price doesn't matter. It's not like you have to, it's not like they sell in increments of one. You know what I mean? It's like saying like, how is booking.com an$800 stock? It's like, how is that relevant? How is that relevant at all? The absolute, now, listen, I get it intellectually. Like, is that to be the thing? But it doesn't matter. The funny thing is it would have mattered in the past when you had to buy, like, there wasn't fractional shares.

39:59Yeah, you could buy$10 worth. What does the underlying price matter? It's the sixth largest asset in the world. And, you know, it is a thing. I was going to put this in here. It looks like Jake from Economic did it too. And he put a chart of historical drawdowns for Bitcoin. And my question to you is, is that cycle over? I feel like every time like more institutional money comes in, people wonder. Because the history of Bitcoin drawdowns is 90 % drawdown, 80 % drawdown. You know, even the last time was 75, 80%. Yeah, I think that's over. When I say it's over, I mean like, and even in the last one, it didn't get to 80%.

40:38Even in the FTX explosion. So I would say that 80%, the 80 % catastrophic wipeouts are over. You think the Great Depression scenario is off the table? Yeah, off the table. Off the table. Now, I would never say, especially with Bitcoin, that it can't get cut in half. I would never say that. But the 80%, like the Great Depression type risk, it's over. I would not be. Just because of the way, the 24-7 nature of it, it's just, it's a security that's made to be volatile. I wouldn't say it's over yet, but I can, I'm leaning that way, but I would not say that yet. I'm saying the Great Depression type risk.

41:13I know. I'm not saying it can't fall 60%, But the difference between a 60 % and 80 % fall is enormous. Jake tweeted, I have a theory. Crypto has clearly integrated more deeply into traditional finance and gained wider allocation among people beyond early adopters or hobbyists, obviously. So my theory is that in the next downturn, crypto itself may experience less severe declines thanks to mechanisms like basic rebalancing that can help stabilize prices. But the impact on the broader financial system is now more significant than zero. I would also say it's fair. Now, how about this? If Bitcoin goes to$150 ,000,$200 ,000, can that create inflation?

41:45Like, are we not talking about enough trillions that if money comes out of Bitcoin, it gets into the economy? I don't know, because it's... The thing is, all the big whales never sell, though. They're not using it in the economy. The mega whales... No, no, no. The mega whales haven't sold. But the whales are selling. Because we say, where is it coming from? This guy, HODL, 15 HODL Capital, whatever his handle is, always shows a chart of where their flows are coming from, like who's selling. And it is people that own 1 to 100 Bitcoin or something like that. Okay, so his, but Jake's point about the fact that it could have a bigger, broader impact on the broader financial system, that's why I'm thinking of selling some, because it's a bigger asset level for me now.

42:23And the 50 % crash from a higher asset level would be a lot more painful to live through than when I had way less money in it because the prices were lower. That's why I'm thinking of rebalancing and taking some money off the table because - Coward. Yes, I'm not a diamond hand, and people are going to say, it's going to go to$400 ,000,$800 ,000, you're going to be sorry. But for me, it's the monetary value of it that's much higher. And I don't want to sit through another crash situation after seeing it at this level. I got it. I totally got it. But just a PSA on this. Please, if you did not own Bitcoin, do not FOMO in.

42:57You know what I mean? Like, pump the brakes and don't do anything that you might regret. If you're asking, should I be in it now? No. You probably shouldn't. if you weren't asking that question at 30, 40, 50, like a long time ago at lower prices, and now you're saying, hey, maybe I should get into Bitcoin. Yeah, because what if it doesn't go from 92 to 100 in a straight line? What if it goes from 92 to 75? Are you going to sell? I would be nervous of people asking me, should I buy Bitcoin now? Now is the wrong time to ask. Yeah, agreed. Oh, I forgot to mention earlier in the show when we were talking about Robinhood.

43:32So there was news this morning that Robinhood is acquiring Trade PMR, one of the largest custodians in the REA space. So that is certainly noteworthy. Robinhood is going to be working with financial advisors. So congratulations to Rob Baldwin and the whole team at Trade PMR. That is exciting. Well, Robinhood has made a huge push into IRAs. I guess they got a ton of money going in. So the fact that they're making this step makes sense to me. Yeah. Interesting. All right. Another chart for real estate. Visual Capitalist has a chart on the median home price by state. And they look at the, as of August, 2024, the median sales price for a single family home in the U.S.

44:10is 385. And they look at it by state. So the highest one is Hawaii at like 850. California is close to 800. Higher in New Jersey. Colorado is pretty high. Yeah. There's a few pockets of mega wealth there. Washington's high. But look at the middle of the country. Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, Indiana. Oh, look at Mississippi. Mississippi is a value state. Yeah, Mississippi and Louisiana. So my point is, look at how low those prices are for the median single-family home in those states. All right, so what's your point? I think some people would be surprised about this when they hear about how expensive housing is.

44:48There are certain states where housing is still not expensive when you think about it in a national context. the coast versus the middle america erroneous why is that erroneous because what percentage of the population lives in mississippi or what percentages of single family homes are mississippi of course it's a small amount but i'm saying the the the conversation on housing is dominated by people who live on the coasts where housing prices are ridiculously high and it's not like that everywhere these these numbers were way lower than i expected is my point i was i was surprised at how low they were.

45:23263 in Michigan. There's good value in Kansas. Wait, Kansas City, Missouri? Wait, Missouri or Kansas? That's the question. Both. All right. This surprised me. There's a good follow on Twitter. It's at borrowed underscore ideas. Okay. Do you know how to say this brand? I think I do. In fact, I do. Vora. I'd like to hear the story behind how they named this company because I can't ever pronounce it. Go ahead. Vori, Vori, Vui. Like, I'd like to buy a vowel, please. All right, so he tweeted, Vori raises— Also, I wear their warm-up pants. They're very nice. I have three or four pair of them. Very, very high-quality stuff.

46:02They raised$825 million at a$5.5 billion valuation. Their earlier round was$4 billion in 2021. So there's a press release. Southern California performance lifestyle. $5.5 billion valuation for that company? I mean, the clothes aren't that nice. No offense. Oh, I'm sorry. So the press release is not the exciting thing. So he also tweeted, Lulu reached similar levels of market cap with$700 million in revenue back in 2011. It's hard to be sure, but based on some quick Google search, it seems that they currently have $300 to$400 million in revenue. Athleisure is so hot right now. Yeah. Half the revenue that Lulu did at the time, same valuation.

46:47Duncan said, sent us that the word comes from the Finnish word for mountain. Yeah. Okay. Wasn't there another Nordic word that we were like, what is this? And we had people from one of those beautiful countries emailing us. It's possible. All right. Survey of the week. Wait, did you get, I got to ask you a question. Did you take survey off the dock here? I don't see surveying anymore. Not me. That puts it under personal finance. Not me. Maybe it got deleted on accident. I'm going to put it back in. All right. Survey of the week. This is from Pew. Pew, Pew. I was about to do that. A couple weeks ago, we talked about the cost of the American dream, how it seemed ridiculously high.

47:25It was like$4 million to reach the American dream with kids and housing and vacations and all this stuff. According to Pew, the majority of Americans say they are on their way to achieving the American dream or already achieved it. 31 % say they achieved the American dream, however they define it. 36 % say they're on their way to achieving it, and 30 % say it's out of reach for them. These numbers are actually higher than I would have anticipated. So two-thirds of people say that they've either achieved the American dream already or they're on their way to achieving it. That's great. Does that make, I guess, not to make it too simplistic, but two-thirds of all people in the country own stocks or a home?

48:02Is that too simplistic to say? It kind of matches up? I don't know. I'll allow it. Higher than I thought. All right. Email. I'm 38 years old. pay off my credit cards every month, paid off my cars, and I just paid off my mortgage 20 years early. This guy paid off a 3 % mortgage. He deserves a slap in the head. Okay? Sorry. Congratulations, though. I think that my score would be the highest it could possibly be, hey, this guy pays this shit off. He's trustworthy. Give him the lowest possible rate if he wants to finance things. Some guy to experience, probably. However, what happened was, after taking a$72 ,000 balance off my credit, my score went down by 23 points.

48:38So now I have less debt. I may actually have a higher interest rate to finance something. TLDR, to get a higher score, I have to take more risk. Yeah, you know, this is interesting. It kind of is like, if you go to a bookie and you're like, hey, my name is Michael and I do dumb bets, but I only lose three to five cents on every dollar, depending on if I'm hot or I'm cold. Does the bookie want to work with me? Not really. Am I a good client to the bookie? Not really. So maybe it's the same thing. Like the credit score people, they see you. They see you and your, and your willingness to pay off your debt early, and you're not a good customer to them.

49:16You want to jack it back up? Call all your credit card companies and ask them to raise your limit, and then take some new credit cards out, get those reward points, pay them off every month. Now you have more credit. I bet your credit score will go back up. Yeah, but I get the gripe, obviously. It's like, yo, I'm a great customer. I have great credit. I should be maxed up. All right, did you see this story in the New York Times? This was flying around social media, a lot of comments on it. The headline of the article is the unspoken grief of never becoming a grandparent. A growing number of Americans are choosing not to have children.

49:47Their parents are grappling with what that means for them. So they say a little more than half of adults 50 and older have had at least one grandchild in 2021, down from 60 % in 2014. Amid falling birth rates, more U.S. adults say they're unlikely to ever have children for a variety of reasons. Chief among them, they don't want to. So it's funny, this article was not painting it like as it's too expensive to have kids or whatever people would think these days. They're just saying more people these days do not want to have kids. I'm sure finances are part of that, but, and it was kind of, they're interviewing people, interviewing these people who are in their older years and talking, telling, they're like sharing their feelings about not having grandkids and how bad it hurts them.

50:24And then they were talking to the kids too. Like, how do you think that makes you feel about not, you know, it's a very like deep article. But the thing that I can get - Imagine being a grandparent and like all your friends have grandkids and you don't, that's gotta be really tough. Well, that's what the article says. It's like peer pressure. They see the pictures being shared by their friends and they don't have that. And yeah, so I don't know, like, and they're kind of, the parents are like, listen, whatever they want to do to make them happy makes them happy. But this is something that I never had to, never thought about.

50:53I assumed I'd have a grandkid someday. That's why I diversified and had three kids because it increases my chance of having grandkids someday. Think about the grandparent thing. So we went to, my daughter is really into women's basketball. She got really into women's college basketball in the last couple of years because of the Caitlin Clark thing. She's 10 years old, and she plays a lot of basketball. So she wanted to go to the women's Michigan basketball game this weekend. So we went on Sunday. We had nothing else to do. They were playing a local team, easy to get seats. And I got seats, like, right in the front row because it was so cheap and not that many people were going to this game.

51:24And they came up to us before the game and said, Hey, you're sitting this close. Would your daughter be interested in doing, like, one of the timeout games in between, right, where they come on? Yeah, so of course they did. and my son was so pissed because he didn't get to do it. He was so mad. So she got to do it. She did a game against another person where they had to put like the basketball jersey and shorts and shoes on from a Michigan basketball player, like size 13 shoes and she like slowly but surely goes on the court and you have to make a layup. My daughter did it and she made it and she beat the other girl and she got a big swag bag of Michigan stuff.

51:56Now, the only person that I would want to tell about this would be her grandparents, right? Like I wouldn't want to share this with anyone besides my whole podcast audience. I wouldn't want to share but the person that I immediately sent it to was my mom because as a grandparent she would love to hear this story and see the pictures and see the video and stuff and yes having that missing piece would be tough I would imagine yes but the interesting part is that people just say we don't want to have kids for whatever the reasons are I thought that was interesting listen I get it everyone's obviously entitled to live the life that they want to live and if you don't want kids don't have kids but guess what having kids is hard.

52:34Yeah, it is. It is. And I think in the past, it was just kind of like, yeah, everyone has everyone has kids. And now I think people have more information and realize like having kids is not easy. It completely upends your life. I think there's probably people that have really strong feelings about this. Yes. Right. Right. Like, I guess if I'm, if I'm being honest, I would, I would say that like, isn't it like sort of like your, your duty to like procreate and populate the world. On the other hand, like the idiotic argument, we had an old friend of mine who's a dumbass. No offense to him. He is.

53:11But him and his wife said like, we would never bring a child into this world. And my wife and I said, that's probably a good thing. They shouldn't because he's kind of an idiot. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah, no, that's true too. That is true too. And there are plenty of people. And do we really need more? I get it. I mean, the guy last time on the escalator, does he need to have an offspring in this planet? Probably not. All right, Ramit tweeted, this commenter wrote a sarcastic summary of my video without watching it. And the comment was this, stop buying luxury goods, raise your income without raising your expenses, buy a pre-owned Toyota and invest your savings in a decent ETF or mutual fund safety 20 minutes.

53:44And then Ramit said, just one problem. There's nothing wrong with buying luxury goods or raising your expenses or buying an expensive car. Too many people in the personal finance community genuinely believe that spending more money is a bad thing, it's not. The point of money is to spend it on living your rich life, not to mindlessly accumulate it. When I point this out to him, Here was his reply. As you could see, his entire worldview is that money is meant to maximize investments. What a waste. I cannot agree more with Ramit. And again, this is one thing that's personal. Listen, if you're the type of person that you're motivated by hoarding cash and stacking and whatever, getting as rich as you can in terms of banking, okay, that's your right.

54:18I think that's a really bad way to live. I think that that is the opposite mentality of the way that I think about money. I think that money is a tool to be spent and enjoyed however you want. Of course, there's a line, you know, like don't buy a luxury car that you can't afford. Like, duh, stipulate all of that. But once you've got what you need, you know, for some people, money becomes a source of anxiety and not having enough and worry that they're going to run out. And that's like, that's a personality thing. That's a nature versus nurture thing. That's not a, it's not a conscious decision that people make.

54:52It's like, it's in their being. And I think that if you are free to think about money as pleasure and joy and giving it and spending it and all that sort of good things, it could be a wonderful thing. So I've been going through a little bit of a battle with the fire community lately and asked the compound. We had a question from someone who asked – Jill on Money was on the show and they asked about retiring at age 36 about Roth conversions or something. And Jill kind of gave the stuff about the pros and cons of doing the Roth conversion. But then we spent like the next 10 minutes talking about the psychology of retiring early and how it can be like knowing what to do.

55:23And there's people get a lot of fulfillment from a job and having a network of people. And there's all these studies that actually show that people who retire early die sooner than people who retire later. Of course. Because that human interaction. And we brought up all these psychological points. And the fire community was mad at me. They said, listen, you spent 90 % of that answer not talking about the math. You talked about the psychology and the emotion. So you're talking to different people. These are just – it's fine. These are people that think differently than we do. That's okay. Yes, but the whole maximizing of numbers and spreadsheets, and that's where I used to be, and I've totally come around on that from dealing with thousands of investors and clients and stuff over the years that, no, the psychology component is so much more important than the math component.

56:05The math stuff can only get you so far in terms of fulfillment and these things. So yes, I'm way more on that. I want to enjoy my money as much as I possibly can while I'm here, and I'd love to leave some to my kids. But my goal in life is not to just leave my kids as much money as possible at all? No. Yeah, I'd rather make them comfortable while I'm here. Right? Yeah. All right. So on Friday, my parents were in town and nothing else to do. So my dad has always been, he always talks to me about like the Ali-Fraser fights. I think growing up, boxing was a big part of my dad's sports consumption.

56:38And he always talks about how Ali and Frazier and the thrill in Manila. And I grew up, I've got some really good memories of boxing matches, is like the fight night with your friends. That's just a different level of energy. Yeah. Right? For sure. So my dad said, let's watch this Tyson thing. And I never would have ordered it if it wasn't on Netflix. And I'm like, okay, it's on Netflix. We'll watch it. And we watched the first couple fights. And the first one was like some YouTuber or something. And it was awful. The second and third fight were actually pretty good. And the whole night, Netflix was buffering for me.

57:09It was buffering. It was going down. I had to turn it on and off like 12 times. It was just not working. so they did not pass with flying colors for me in terms so we didn't even watch the tyson fight it happened it was on too late for my dad probably and it netflix kept going down on me so is that a good thing or a bad thing for netflix because it's bad because it's a good thing because it's so many people watched it it worked it worked for me i know there's a lot of people that it didn't work for i'm not really sure what's going on uh i mean they'll figure it out they'll fix it for next time so the most boxing the most watched boxing matches ever um mayweather alvarez is number five.

57:45Mayweather La Jolla is number four. Mayweather McGregor is number three. So the number three was 4.3 million. Number two, the second most viewed boxing match of all time was Mayweather Pacquiao was 4.6 million. And Paul versus Tyson was 60 million. 60 million. 60 million. I'm not sure some of those fights back in the day weren't much higher. I guess because you had to pay for it. You have to pay for it. That's true. In one house, you pay for it, and 20 people would be there watching. Yeah. So they'll figure it out, but obviously it was not a great experience. Speaking of streaming, so Disney reported earnings.

58:22The stock that I jumped back in. Disney, at the peak, their peak losses was$1.5 billion. All of their streaming properties. Sorry. Sorry to— Go ahead. The fact that they had Rosie Perez on the cast for the— We kept being like, why is Rosie Perez here? It was—the announcing team was bizarre. Oh, she was there? I didn't see that part. Rosie Perez was one of the announcers for the fights. Like the actress, Rosie Perez. Yeah. It was very bizarre. So anyway, Disney streaming has certainly turned a corner. Who wrote this post? I can't remember if it was Lucas Schar or somebody. So John Malone said it's a terrible business.

59:01He was talking about like streaming. It may be a frustrating business for Malone and others who got very rich charging people for cable channels they didn't watch. Maybe this is Matt Bellany actually. But in fact, thanks to subscriber gains, the ad tiers, and yes, relentless cost-cutting, all the major mass market streamers except Peacock are not profitable. That's interesting, huh? So the analogy here is the cable channels are kind of like – the old cable way of doing things are kind of like the baby boomers. It was easy for them. Yes. The streamers are like Gen Z. Exactly. So there's a chart here showing the operating income, subs revenue, ad revenue of all the major streamers.

59:41And Lucas goes on to say, so no, streaming was never a terrible business. It just wasn't nearly as good of a business as cable. Saying that streaming is a bad business is like saying that retailing is a bad business. Both are misnomers. This is from the former CEO of WarnerMedia. Strong financial returns can be achieved, but it requires the right strategy, appropriate resources, and great execution over long periods of time. So it's really interesting that in a couple of years, maybe we'll look back and say, oh, huh, streaming actually is a good business. Right. They just all spent too much money.

1:00:10Yeah, it just took a while to get here. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, I've got a few travel things, once you've got more on the TV. Go ahead. Nope. I had early flight into Chicago, early foot out of Chicago, and both times, I think we were, I got in like, I flew out at nine, flew in at nine, and so I was getting into the city at rush hour in both directions. It was just bumper to bumper the whole way. Hour and 15 minutes to get to O 'Hara from downtown. Yeah, me too. That was terrible. That was really terrible. Long commutes like that are soul-sucking, and I can't imagine doing that every single day or even once a week.

1:00:41I can't even imagine that. Obviously, some people live where they live. That would be, I had one of those, my first job. For the first six months of my job before the office moved, I had an hour and 15 minutes there driving hour and 15 minutes back in heavy Detroit traffic. And it was, I felt like I was losing my mind by the end of it. So my wife does three hours a day. And I really don't know how she does it. How does she stay sane? she's, you know, she's a long Island Yanta. So she talks to her friends the entire time, but she, one time she picked me up from JFK on her way home and it took an hour to get home from JFK.

1:01:21I'm like, I can't believe this. And she's like, I've been in the car for an hour already. I think I, but in fact, I do think she's done. I think this is gonna be her last year because it's, it's, it's, it's too much. It's soul sucking to your point. Like, and obviously we're lucky that we could do this, but she leaves at 6.30 and she gets home at 5.30 or yeah, 5, 5.30. It's like, what? And then to first be with the kids, the dinner, the bath, she doesn't stop. She doesn't like get to like chill out until like nine o 'clock. It's just – Yeah, so you're not decompressing in the car, right? There's no decompressing.

1:01:59That's why she needs a self-driving car. She can just do stuff in the car. Okay, so the people who jump ahead of you in line on the plane. So I was sitting more towards the front of the plane when I got off, and this lady, without me looking before I could get up, jumped me really quick, you know, to get out. And I'm sure she had a – but she didn't look back, didn't say anything. And I just want – all I want is a, hey, I've got to get off because I've got to catch a – can I get ahead of you? That's all I want. It's just like getting in on traffic. Just mention it. Yeah. You know? What if I had to get off for a commute for a second one too, right?

1:02:27Yeah, people are rude. People are rude. People are rude. All right, Ben, you see these things that I put in the dock? See these yellow glove things? What are they? Okay. These are sneaker cleaning bags. You know, in the past, I've griped the fact that every foamy sneaker cleaner, oh, the wipe, this, they're all bullshit. All of the Instagram ads about the shiny sneakers, they never work. Yeah. I'm here to tell you, my friend, these work. So you put them in the bag and then you put them in the washing machine? So you put them in the washing machine and they come out sort of dry. Like they don't even come out soaking wet.

1:03:02So I got them in Amazon. Go to Amazon and type in. Why is my internet not working? See, because usually I just put my sneakers right in the wash with the clothes. Sneaker cleaner bag. Okay. Okay, there it is. Go to Amazon, type in sneaker cleaner bag, 32 bucks, and this thing cleans the shit out of your sneakers. Okay, so it's got little bristles in there. It looks like a car wash. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's a car wash. It's a car wash for... Did Instagram get you on these? Probably. So... I would try them. Ben, you're going to Blue Sky? Okay, so I tried it out. So I signed up for Blue Sky, which the names are horrible.

1:03:47It's like your username,.bsky.social. What is it? Is it the same thing as Twitter? It's the same thing as Twitter. So I signed up for it. I'm not like posting or anything. I just wanted to check it out. Same thing I do with threads. and I will say there's enough people who have moved over there where it's kind of interesting where I don't think I have the bandwidth to try another social media network and build a following and post there and then post like I don't want I'd be fine if I could hit post and it cross-pollinates to both places but there's enough people on the econ finance side that I follow that are there that it at least has me intrigued but it also has me thinking like I follow I don't know how many people on Twitter like would I follow this person again And for a lot of people, the answer is actually kind of no.

1:04:33I don't want to follow you anymore. So I don't know if I'm actually going to go through and post on there and check it all the time. But it's Twitter. Without as many psychos, I think. So I really hate Twitter. And I know it's lame to complain about Twitter. I don't do it on Twitter because that's super lame. I'm addicted, even though I don't post anymore. I'm still on it. I'm just addicted to my phone. And I really hate it. I feel bad that I'm with my kids. And I'm still on it. But it's just – I don't know where I'm going with this. I hate that I'm addicted to Twitter. That's all. And it has nothing to do with like new Twitter or Elon Musk or the fact that Twitter has changed.

1:05:07I just hate that I'm addicted to Twitter still. Anyway, here's a tweet. Here's a tweet talking about the situation from Joe Light. Best case scenario, either X or Blue Sky just up and dies. That's not going to happen, of course. Worst case, they're both good for breaking news and I have to monitor both. Most likely case. That is the worst case. I agree. Most likely case, I have to stay on X, and it's a bit worse because the smart people who don't have to be here choose to migrate. I think that was a good take. I don't want to have two. That's why I never got into Instagram or Facebook because I didn't want to have three places to go, and I wanted just one central hub, and now I think we're going to have a few.

1:05:43And Blue Sky, it does seem to have some legs. I never thought Threads did. I think Blue Sky might. Okay. Well, cool. Yeah. All right. Recommendations. so I rewatched Meet the Parents because it was on rewatchables and that movie just ages like a fine wine and it is funny you and I were talking about the people the comedians always say you can't make funny movies anymore because people get too offended it's so lame it's so lame it's very lame and it's funny because now they all listen they all do their own podcast and they do their Netflix special and they can literally say whatever they want if it's funny they can say whatever they want you know why they don't make movies anymore because they can get paid a million bucks doing a podcast they don't have to get a whole crew together to make a movie that they're probably not going to make any money on.

1:06:25But Meet the Parents has like zero offending parts of it. And it's just funny because of the scenarios and it's probably one of the best written comedy movies of this decade. If you're a male nurse, you're offended. Yes. But we also laugh because you've used the, I have nipples, Greg, can you milk me line like a million times. No, no, no, no. I say you can milk anything with nipples. Ah, there you go. So that's the line that I use on every talker book that we have to edit out. It is. That movie is just phenomenal. Okay. So there's books that actually make the movie, a classic movie better. I have a new one.

1:07:01So I read the Sideways book after watching the movie. Explain, explain, explain. Okay. So I read the Godfather book after watching the movies. And reading the book makes Godfather 1 and 2 better for me because it gives me more background information on the characters. And same thing. I read the Goodfellas book. So which is the Henry Hill story. And then I read Sideways recently, which is based on a novel that this guy wrote. No way. What? That was a book? I didn't realize it either. And the thing is, part of it is when you read these books, you go, oh, they literally took this story or this conversation word for word and put it in the movie.

1:07:36And it kind of makes you like, oh, I'm not quite as impressed as the movie. But then there's other stuff that they take that were not in the book at all, and they make things look better. Like Shawshank. I didn't read Shawshank Redemption, but I'm guessing that was like that. Right. By the way, I just had a moment. You know in Airheads? You've seen Airheads, right? Oh, yeah. Where they make all of these crazy requests from all these crazy demands to release the hostages so that they complete insanity. Remember that part? Yes. And Buscemi goes, or one of them goes, get 500 copies of Moby Dick. And she goes, the movie or the book?

1:08:09And he goes, Buscemi goes, they made a book out of that? You have the most random 90s references. Thank you. Wayne Wayne's world airheads. But anyway, the sideways book, it, I love, love, love the movie. It's one of my, I think it's probably one of my all time top 10 favorite movies, but there it's, it's very hard to have a book to make me laugh out loud. And the book makes me laugh out loud in multiple parts. Hang on. That's a crazy take. That sideways is a top 10 movie for you. Like really? Or are you just saying that I'm positive? I love that movie. I think it, it gets better over the years.

1:08:43Every time you watch it. I, yes, I absolutely love sideways. I think it's very good. That's all I got. Um, All right. I don't think I, yeah, no, I didn't watch any movies this week. I was on the road. No movies for me. Although I will say, because I don't think I recommended these at the time when I saw them. There's a movie called Host from 2020 where these six friends do like a, they're on Zoom, of course, because it's the pandemic. And they do like a seance with like spirits. And it's sort of like found footage-ish only because like it's, you watch the movie through the Zoom. And it's only 57 minutes.

1:09:14And it's absolutely terrifying. Really, really, really scary. Another one. Do you ever watch these horror movies on planes or not? No. I get scared. Like, I will watch a horror movie with my hands over my eyes. Maybe that's why it doesn't do it for me because I don't get scared watching these movies. Oh, I get terrified. So sometimes I'll watch a horror movie during the day. All right. Maybe I shouldn't say something. I'll even watch a horror movie on mute sometimes if I get really scared. Like, I get very scared. Yeah, my wife can't watch. She has to cover it. So anyway, there's another movie that the Slack channel guys were going on about.

1:09:46So I don't think I recommended it at the time, but it's called Kill List. And Kill List does not fall in any of the buckets other than just Max f***ed upness. It's just a demented movie, and I really enjoyed it. And I think that this person who saw me in Chicago, is your name James? If it's not James, I apologize. But if it is James, James, you would love this movie. If there was a word cloud for your movie descriptions, demented would be the biggest word. Demented? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Please take the survey. We would very much appreciate that, getting to know our audience a little bit better.

1:10:27Link in show notes, of course. Animal Spirits at the compoundnews.com. Thank you for listening. Hope everyone is enjoying their fall. We'll see you next time.

1:10:46Thank you.