Everything is Up This Year (EP.319)

24:58households only have to pay 9 % of their disposable income to stay current on their debts in the first quarter, according to the Fed. That is above where it was at the depths of the pandemic, but way below post-crisis average. People just locked their debt in for so long that it's not going to be a problem for a long time, I feel like, for consumers. Yeah, now, for companies and people that are exposed to higher rates, oh, they're feeling it. It hurts, yes. It sucks. But this is why the economy is not coming unglued, because most people just aren't impacted by rising rates. Yes, exactly. So I want to talk now about government debt, okay?

25:34So I posted this one on Twitter last week. Just, this is a statement. I'm not making any opinions. The US economy has grown by more than$5 trillion since the start of the pandemic in 2020. So it went from 21 trillion and change to 26 trillion and change. What's the matter? Your legs getting tired? You know, I don't know. Just felt like searching it up. I've been standing all day. Okay. Actually, and Josh and I went on a decent walk, so. 90 % of the day, I used the standing desk. So I posted this saying that, you know, the economy has grown by$5 trillion. And I know Twitter people are not real life, but everyone on Twitter, well, of course, but how much did the US government print?

26:11How much money did we borrow to get that? And I want to say, unequivocally, government spending that leads to good outcomes, that's a good thing. Like, obviously, we don't want the government to be wasteful, but if the government's spending money, I think some people assume that like before, I don't know, 2008, there was never any intervention from the Fed or from the government. How do you think we got like the such – people look at the 50s and 60s as this glorious time, like they're nostalgic for that period again. How do you think we paid for World War II? Yes. How do you think we got this wonderful middle class?

26:44Because coming out of the war, there was a GI Bill. The government basically backstopped the building of suburbia. like they backstopped and put insurance up on the home builders to build houses. How do you think people got cheap houses back then? It wasn't because people were bootstrapping and doing it on their own. The government backstopped a lot of that. The government spent a ton of money. That's what got us out of the Great Depression and brought us into the 50s. It's the government spending. That's what did it. I thought you were going to say people in the 50s woke up at 4 a.m. and meditated.

27:13Well, they had a good morning routine. Ernie Tedeschi said about 0.4 % of Q2's 2.4 % real GDP growth came from the construction of manufacturing structures such as factories. The last time construction contributed so much to quarterly growth was 1981. And a lot of that is because the government did this chip thing where they're incentivizing companies to build. Did you see this frying pan chart thing? This is a really good take from Alex Williams, who is at Employ America. and he's comparing gross domestic product and personal consumption expenditures and state and local government. And he calls them frying pan charts because in the 2008 crisis, they crashed and went way below trend.

27:52And now all these economic charts are coming back to trend. So it's shaped like a frying pan. It looks like a frying pan? Think about it. Down, flat, up. Took me a minute to find it too. You'll get it. Do I have to turn my head? Yeah, turn it to 45 degrees. Oh, there it is. All right, I guess. Sure. And the point is that we totally underspent coming out of the great financial crisis. And it's almost like we needed to go through that period to do it better the next time. And now we're back on trend on all these economic policies. And I think my biggest takeaway here, can we at least agree that fiscal policy is like 10 times more important than monetary policy for the economy?

28:31I think monetary policy is definitely important for the markets and a lot of pieces of it. But I think fiscal policy in terms of moving the economy in the right direction is way more important. So what caused the pan, so what caused us to go below trend, he's saying what? It was because all that we did was monetary experiments after the GFC and not enough fiscal response. Is that it? Yes, the government did do enough to help bring that back. So I will agree that I will definitely agree that fiscal has a more direct impact. Right? Yeah. But monetary policy, as we just lived through and experienced and explained, monetary policy can only do so much when so much of your debt is fixed.

29:20If you are in an economy, like a developing economy where I'm guessing most of the debt is floating, monetary policy can have a massive impact. But for the United States in 2023, yeah, fiscal policy is at this point, no question, more important than monetary policy, at least in the short run. I flip-flopped on this like six times now. Right after the pandemic, I said, now fiscal policy is going to be used after every crisis going forward. And then we had inflation, and I flipped the other way, and I said, no, there's no way they're going to use it. now that we're seeing the positive effects of this, I think it's going to depend on who is in charge politically.

29:52Because, I mean, I'm sorry, but the fiscal experiment that we did, it's never going to be as big as this going forward. But I don't see how you, if you're weighing pros and cons, couldn't say that the benefits far outweighed the downsides on this fiscal policy experiment that we had. And that I think we could be seeing a sea change here. If you look at what the United States did versus the other countries and how far they've fallen behind. It's because we used the bazooka and it's helped. And we have low unemployment and inflation is falling and the economy is booming again. I think it's on the table again.

30:28I'm doing the double flip-flop here. Andrew Ross Sorkin tweeted, the self-checkout at the airport kiosk today asked whether I'd like to tip 15, 20, or 25%. It is a self-checkout. What is happening? It is getting out of control. It really is. Can we put a tip button on YouTube? If you like this podcast, tip us 25%. There we go. Hey, what do you tip room service? Okay, good question. I'm all over the place with this, but go ahead. My very first job was a busboy at Minerva's. Google it right now. A restaurant in the Park Place Hotel. And part of that service was taking food from the kitchen to people's room service.

31:09What? I'm sorry. I just looked at the number, but finish your thought. And I always felt as someone bringing up the tray to someone's room, the busboys, we always felt that we should get a bigger tip for room service. So what do you, are you asking for a percentage for me? You know, my bad. I, I, I, I miss, I didn't explain this properly. Cause when I saw the number, it says 15 to 20%. I'm not a room service guy. Okay. I don't do it. I'm not judging. I know people happen to love room service. I'm not, it's just not what I do. What I meant was, and it says 15 to 20%. What I meant was, and I Googled how much should I tip room service?

31:49What I meant was how much should I tip cleaning service at hotel? That's what I meant. Housekeeping. How much should you leave? Yeah, that's what I meant. How long are you going to stay for? The other question is a lot of hotels don't do it anymore. You have to actually request like 24 hours in advance to get your room cleaned. All right, apparently I'm a very generous tipper, which credit to me, I already know I'm a very good tipper. What do you leave, 20 bucks? I take pride in my tipping. So I said to Robin, I only have$30. Do you have any money? I was there three nights. She said, how much do you need to tip?

32:23I said, I don't know, more than that. We've been here for three nights. So she Googled it and it says, housekeeping, one to$5 per night. What the hell? That's ridiculous. I bet if we did a survey, probably 70 % of people do not tip cleaning people at hotels. One to$5 per, I mean, okay. Duncan says you're causing inflation and tipping. You're the problem here. So, well, listen, I grew up in the hospitality business. I get it. So I tipped 30 and I gave a$25 casino trip. Yeah, from your winnings, huh? By the way, I forgot to, I think I forgot to tell you this. Did I tell you this? What happened with my credit card?

33:03I can't remember if I told that story. You lost it at the restaurant. Did I tell you the outcome? And someone else got it, right? Someone else walked away with your credit card. So did I tell you that I spoke to the owner? So what are they going to give you? So here's what they said. They're like, ah. You think someone snagged it and tried to use it? No, no, no, no, no. No, she gave it to somebody by accident. Because I saw they were charging at Costco and gas station. It wasn't criminal. It wasn't mischievous behavior. It was an honest mistake. So I'm like, listen, I'm not asking for anything.

33:35I just want you guys to know, like, I'm kind of annoyed because my main credit card, all my bills are tied to here. And they're like, yeah, man, I'm sorry. Like that happens. You know, here's what we recommend. Like every time you get a drink, just swipe and close out and then just, you know, tip when you're done, which is kind of annoying, but okay. And then, you know, he was like, just, you know, next time you hear it, let me know, I'll buy you a drink. And I was like, I feel like the, it felt inequitable. Like this is a major inconvenience. So anyway, I went back to the bar this week and I ordered a vodka on the rocks.

34:08I'm trying to, I gained five pounds. I don't know if you can tell. I gained five pounds. To what you're eating this summer? Middle-aged. Gained five pounds. So I got a vodka on the rocks and on the receipt, it said$13 for the vodka,$4 for the rocks. Now, I don't mind paying$17 for the vodka, but. But that's a weird way to break it out. Yeah, just write$17. And so I asked the bartender, just, hey, what's with? I'm like, and I prefaced that. I'm like, I'm not complaining. I'm just curious. Why do you put the charge for the rocks instead of just writing$17? And she was like, well, because if it's just a shot, then it's like one ounce.

34:50But with the rocks, it's like whatever it is, one, two, whatever it was. What if you would have said I want a vodka neat? That's a good question. But anyway, but the owner was there. He saw me talking to her and sort of jumped in. And I wasn't, again, I was not like causing a scene. I was literally just, I was smiling, just making a conversation. And you know what he did? He did not buy me my vodka. Did he pay for your rocks? No, nothing. I don't know if he knew it was me, but I'm bald. How could he forget me? And it was only a week ago. That's a lot of you. I guess. Oh, I had a little credit card one too.

35:23We got an email from Wayfair a couple weeks ago. We've been buying some outdoor furniture. hey we got a doubt we got a uh someone logged into your account from some other place was this you or not and it wasn't so we went on our wayfair account and someone had charged three 250 gift cards on our wayfair account so like you was a george like you we had to cancel our credit card and then all the stuff that was tied to it my wife had to go change and it was a huge but did i ask did i ask wayfair for like a new patio furniture set for my inconvenience no I just canceled it and got them all shut. Well, hang on.

35:57I didn't ask the guy for anything. I asked you what I should ask for, but I didn't. I just said, you know, it's annoying. Yeah, but it's also annoying to close out your tab every single time. Leaving your tab open is kind of a boring move, right? It's just easier. Yeah, it's easier. Should I want to close your tab out? No, leave it open. That's a great feeling, right? No, we're here for the time being. Leave it open. Yeah. Zillow did some sort of survey and it says more homeowners say they are either listing their home for sale or considering selling their home. Did I say hair? Did I say hair?

36:36In the next three years. Now, I wonder if there's probably a lot of factors at play here. I wonder if like, for example, In Q2, 2021, you weren't selling your house. There was a lot more buyers and sellers, right? You're still in the pandemic. True. But that was like the height of the... I could see this stuff thawing out eventually. People are going to... After a while, the shock of the 3 % mortgage is going to wear off. People are going to have more equity and they're going to go, you know what? Let's just do it. Like, it's going to be tough to go to like a 6 % or 7 % mortgage, but we'll be able to refinance.

37:11People are eventually going to say, we're not going to be beholden to this mortgage rate for our whole lives just because it's a great financial deal. Eventually, people are going to say, screw it. Let's just rip the bandit off and do it. It's going to happen. Ben, you made the case that during the next recession, people are going to tap their home equity? Big time. What if when rates come down, people refinance and all of that spending, all that savings gets spent back into the economy and then no recession? No, that's what I'm saying. That was my point exactly. You just made it for me. That's going to be the floor for people for spending.

37:45If their income falls or whatever, they're going to pull that equity out and spend it. That's my case. We're saying the same thing slightly differently. I'm saying people are going to refinance, and then they're going to have more money to spend. You're saying people are going to take the money out of their house. Oh, yeah, right. Yes. So I think both. But there aren't going to be that many people who have the ability to refinance unless it's a cash-out refinance. That's what I think is going to happen. You're going to get a wave of cash-out refinancing and home equity lines of credit. and people are going to use that as spending to make up for any shortfall.

38:13So Zillow, who has a pretty good read-through into the housing market, they expect home prices to rise 6.3 % from June to June. How about that? How's the Zillow stock doing? Are you still holding? I'm still holding. They are reporting earnings tonight. Okay. It's up 70 % year-to-date. I sold Airbnb. Because you know what? I mean, Airbnb reports tomorrow, too. I'm not like super long-term bullish on the stock, but I do like the company. I thought it was just an opportunity to make some money, so I made 30 % and moved on. You still on Airbnb? Yeah, I'm going to hold that one forever, I think, until the CEO leaves.

38:53All right, Len Kiefer at Freddie Mac has some good stuff on the mortgage rate lockdown that we haven't seen before. The mortgage rate lockdown? Yeah, like the people being stuck in their house and how much they've saved. I think this is like an annuity stream that people have created by not having to go to market rates. So he said in a rising rate environment, homeowners with a fixed mortgage provided by Freddie Mac have locked in over$50 ,000 per household in value. He did basically the present value of the savings you're getting between what the rate you've locked in versus what the rate is now.

39:24We estimate that considering the company's single-family mortgage portfolio, homeowners with a fixed-rate mortgage financed by Freddie Mac have locked in savings of a collective$700 billion in total value. this is equal to about 25 % of the outstanding unpaid principal balances in their single family mortgage portfolio. Just like, I don't think people thought through the ongoing savings that people have opened up like on a monthly basis in their biggest, for most people, for most households, their mortgage is by far their biggest payment they make, right? Of their monthly budget. And you've locked in a low rate for that or a low payment for that from now until whenever you get out of it.

40:02Right? And it's a monthly stipend, essentially, that you've locked in. And I don't think people thought through how much those savings continuing forward would give people a margin of safety that it has. So it's like saving. So Jake at Economic did a - That's such a good point. Like if my mortgage rate was not three-ish, whatever, if my mortgage rate was 5.5%, 6%, that would be another, I don't know, I'm making this up,$25 ,000 a year, whatever it is. It's a big number. So look at Jacob Economic did this. Person A has a$500 ,000 loan at 7%. They put$5 ,000 into retirement per year with 10 % returns.

40:39Their balance is$822 ,000 in 30 years. Pretty good. Person B has a$500 ,000 loan at 2.5%. They put$5 ,000 into the market per year, plus mortgage savings of the 2.5 % versus 7%. Retirement balance in 30 years is 3.5 million. So if you just invested the difference, that's how much bigger your balance would be. It's a huge amount of money that you're saving every month. Wow. Wait, did I say, did I tell you how much I love Jerome Powell as a Fed chairman? I think he's one of the best. Just great. Is someone vacuuming there or what's going on? You know what? What is that? Yep. That's what I thought it was.

41:23It's the coffee grinder. Okay. I'm sorry. Grinding your own coffee beans? I'm not a coffee guy. It's a bit pretentious. Like you can't just buy the coffee like in the little capsules already made. That's a great point. The only time I buy whole beans is when I buy them by accident. Right, I mean, what's, I don't like buy a bunch of tomatoes and make my own ketchup for my burgers. What's the point of grind your own coffee beans? Does it really taste much better? That's not apples to apples, but point taken. I'm on your side. All right, I'm looking for some good news for first-time home buyers because I feel like it's always bad news.

41:56So this is from the Washington Post. Rent is finally cooling. see how much prices have cooled in your area. They show that rent growth in the country is back to pre-pandemic norms growing around 1.1 to 3 % per year. The biggest reason for that slowdown, more housing, nearly 1 million new apartment units, an all-time high are under construction around the country. 520 ,000 expected hit the market this year, 460 ,000 next year. So look at this chart here, more new apartments under construction today than any time in the past 50 years. This eventually has to be a good thing for the housing market.

42:25I would love it if we just built more houses, that would be a quicker way there. But if we're building more apartments and rents are coming down, eventually that has to lead to lower demand in the housing market and potentially opening up supply. Correct. Is that fair or not? That makes sense. Again, I would rather just not use the workaround and just build more houses. But I think this eventually will be good for first time homebuyers that there's I think more supply in apartments is a good thing for that. Ben, last week, I was asking you, like, dry powder, what does it really mean? Is it a number that's sort of nonsensical?

43:03Bank of America tweeted, or tweeted, Bank of America has a chart showing private equities have a record amount of dry powder that can be deployed to offset some impact of tighter credit. So they show the dry powder, and then they show the dry powder is a percent of total bank credit. And it's both lines are going up dramatically. And I thought, come on, there's no way. If lending standards are increasing or if they're more restrictive, then these companies are not going to step in. They're probably going to follow the banks. And actually, actually, the CEO of Lazard, who knows, who actually knows about the space This is saying that their borrowing costs are much higher.

43:48So the fact that they have dry powder is just going to help take away some of those costs or help make it easier to eat those costs. If companies aren't being able to get funded the way that they were because lending restrictions are increasing from banks, then these companies will be able to step in and fill the void. And I thought that was nonsense. But the CEO from Lazard says, no, actually, that's not nonsense. Here's a quote. And this is, by the way, this is from the transcript. Huge shout to them. We're going to use them later on in the show. They do a great job reporting consolidated snippets on earnings season.

44:23And oh boy, is it earnings season. Okay. Combining quarter with the transcript is a very good thing if you want to know what's going on with companies. Yeah. So it says, credit funds are disintermediating banks. So here's the quote. What this is really addressing is the rise, the significant and very substantial rise in the private credit markets and accessing that source of capital. It's a very flexible, very creative source of capital that now competes, if not equally, even ahead of what traditional financing banks' public markets do for our corporate client base, and now restructuring client base.

44:53And we're kind of making sure we're talking to all the sources of capital on the database. Anyway, you get the point. So maybe these are viable sources for non-bank lending. Yeah, that makes sense. The other problem for private equity is, though, this is probably a better business right now for them than a leveraged buyout. Because if they're doing a leveraged buyout, it's costing them more to finance something too. Good point. I do wonder if they're pulling back on leverage. You'd assume so. You would think. Okay. All right. So here's from the transcript. So they break it down. So the cat headline is this.

45:22The consumer is very resilient. And this quote's from the CEO of Chipotle, the CEO of MasterCard, and the CFO of Visa. And they're all saying the same thing. I'm not going to read all these quotes because they're all saying the consumer is demonstrating how resilient they are. That's from Chipotle. LA, MasterCard is saying consumer spend across all spending bands from affluent to low, remained stable. Visa said, I mean, almost word for word, the exact same thing. Our data did not indicate any behavior change across consumer segments. So any sort of, I'm using air quotes, credit crunch from the regional banks, forget about that.

45:54That just never came to fruition. I mean, that feels like it was 15 years ago at this point. The banking crisis, crisis, you know, in quotes. Does that not feel like it was so long ago? And it was like five months ago, four months ago. Yeah, I'll say what I said then again. I do believe that if the Fed didn't do what they did, it could have turned into something really, really nasty. If they didn't take it as seriously as they did and they just let it go. After our talk yesterday, we have a talk about coming out next week with John Neff from Acre Capital Management, which I always thought was Acre.

46:29I was totally off there. They're a concentrated portfolio of like 18 stocks and their biggest holding is MasterCard. And did his take of MasterCard's business fundamentals versus our stock price, did that not make you want to buy the stock after listening to that? I did buy the stock. You bought it yesterday? Did you? I did. I did. Well, listen, I mean, the stock looks like it's breaking out. So I'm an easily influenced. What can I say? All right. But I bought a starter position. I want to add. Okay, keeping your trading hat on, what's your tell for if you're right or wrong? are you price only well i'm gonna i'm gonna give mastercard a little bit a little bit more time so if it falls eight percent i'm likely to add there's some stocks that i'm like no i'm not losing money in the stock if it doesn't break out here i'm out this is not one of them it's also you know what the market cap of the stock is right it's bigger than i thought it's like three something 370 billion dollars it's a big company yeah but okay um credit to uber they dara their CEO was the first CEO to publicly come out and said, all right, the game has changed.

47:35Wall Street doesn't care about growth anymore. They care about profitability. And they achieved their first quarter of operating games. I'm sure there's better examples. There's other examples of this. But is Uber not the only example of a VC started fund up that essentially ate a lot of the costs for you upfront and then was successfully got all these clients just hooked to their service and then were able to raise prices down the line, right? They were being, they were subsidizing cheap rides forever. And then once people got hooked on it, they could raise the prices. And people said, I'm used to this service.

48:13I love it so much. I'm sure there are other examples, but this is a damn good one. So the company, the company lost cumulatively 31 and a half billion dollars since 2014, which is a hell of a battleship to turn around. Sounds like a lot. They made$326 million this quarter. Last year at this time, they lost 713, then they lost 495, then they lost 140, then 260, and they made it. So credit to them. The stock is down 6 % today. It's up like 90 % of the year, so maybe not super surprising. Again, this just goes to the fact that expectations are super high going into the quarter, and And stocks have been on fire, just in general.

48:53Again, going back and forth on my pendulum example, we've gone from expectations were way too low to now expectations are high again. Yeah. There's another sub-stack or blog, Platform Aeronaut. This guy, Thomas Reiner, has some good stuff. And he posted on travel and leisure stock performance. And the year to date for the airlines, rideshare, so even DoorDash is killing it, booking an Expedia and Airbnb and then cruise lines, hotels, car rental. I mean, all these stocks are on fire. I know a lot of this has to do with the fact that Uber went public at a very weird time. But here's Uber's returns by year since 2020.

49:34They're up 71 % in 2020, down almost 20 % in 2021, down 40 % last year, and up 100 % this year. Wild ride. Yes. This guy has a chart showing domestic airline fares for 2019, 23, and 2022. And it looks like in June and July, we are below prices paid in 2022, which is a good thing. And 2022, just a little bit of inflation there. Just a little. Just a little. Here's a great tweet from Wasteland Capital. By the way, I saw a stat about Snap. And we were joking that. It feels like it falls 15 % every time it reports. It just gets slaughtered every time it reports earnings, it seems like. Yes. I really think for the last four quarters, it did decline double digits.

50:21All right, so here's a tweet. Snap has paid out a total of$8.2 billion in freshly issued stock since its 2017 IPO. The company's market cap today is$16 billion, and it has never showed a profit. It's lost$9.2 billion since the IPO. Look at the long-term chart of this. It looks like a shit coin. they invented a literal money printer for themselves looking at snap that does seem wrong i mean you have to pay your employees i guess and incentivize them but yeah i don't know moving on the journal did a good a good post on five ways car buying has changed forever slim pickings was the top was the first one that you now need to use a car broker to buy a car well you do that's how many people how many people have emails over the years asking for your car broker's number.

51:10Lots. Slum pickings, they're just not making as many cars. The days of the lots being full with hundreds of cars, that's gone. Stubbornly high prices, lower industry-wide sales, fewer lease deals, and more expensive used cars. So the average price for a new car is up 36 % from the end of 2019. I don't see this going back to where it was. The average monthly payment for a new car is$733. That's nuts. Well, part of it is because you're paying 8 % to borrow, right? That is so much money. You know what the MSRP range is for a 2023 Honda Accord, which is what I'd be driving if I didn't have kids or if I didn't need it.

51:51A 2023 Honda Accord. Yeah. $27 ,000? Yeah, it starts at$27 ,000 to$37 ,000. I'd be driving a $27 ,000 new Honda Accord. And I'd drive it for 15 years if I could. By the way, those are much, much, much nicer than they were when we were in high school. I've always loved an Accord. Why? It's just the most vanilla car. I don't mean that. Not in a bad way. I'm an A to B guy. I'm an A to B. Yep, that's it. And it's a nice car. Okay, here's an interesting one from Morningstar. John Reckenfeller looked at the pension or the retirement income, the median person had, the median retiree had in 1973 versus 2021.

52:35And he broke it down by social security, pension. And then he also gave pension participation, which everyone assumes that like everyone had a pension back in like the 60s and 70s. He said it was actually closer to 44%. And it was the pension payment he received is right around social security. That's a great myth bust, by the way. Everyone had a pension. No, not true. Right, 44 % of people. So he said you received$166 and a monthly income for the Social Security. And if you apply that to$20,$21, it's like$1 ,000 a month. He said the median private sector retiree was getting about$1 ,400,$1 ,500 a month in retirement income between Social Security, pension.

53:10And then they didn't have like defined contribution plans back then, right? There's no 401k, there's no IRA. Versus someone in 2021 received more like$1 ,900 a month in retirement income. And a big part of that is because Social Security was up by 60 % in that time, which is a pretty darn good deal. And again, I'm not a government sponsor here, Booster, but easily one of the most successful government programs in history. I know people complain about how much the government spends on Social Security and Medicare and stuff. That program alone has kept millions of people out of poverty in retirement.

53:47Anyway, I know we always talk about how much worse things have gotten for people. This is a situation where things have gotten better for retirees in the last five decades or so. Duncan said I'm causing inflation with my tipping. No, you know who's really causing inflation? Taylor Swift. The average concert goer spent an average of$1 ,327. My family is bringing up this average because my wife and daughter went to a Taylor Swift concert in Detroit. And yes, I can tell you a lot of money spent. I think I did a bad parenting thing. Okay. What do you got? So last night, Robin told me that Kobe was wanting to make a wish upon a star, which was very cute.

54:29So we went outside, and she told me that he was going to wish for an Xbox. But he's not getting an Xbox. But he does not play Mario Kart on his Switch. So I said, Kobe, make sure that you wish for something that you might actually get. Because I said he's not getting an Xbox. So he's like, okay, okay, okay. So I said, did you do it? He's like, yeah. Wait, wait, no, no, no. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm done. I'm done. So we came inside. He said, do I tell you what I wish for? I said, no. If you tell me, it might not come true. So I said, what you do is write it down on a piece of paper. And, uh, and so I took, so he said, how do you spell?

55:12So he said, like, I wish for, he said, how do you spell for F-O-R? So he said, yeah, F-O-R. So he put it under his pillow. He folded it up. I said, run to the bathroom. And I said, go brush your teeth so that I could see what he wrote. So this is what he wrote down. So you see the four? What did he write down? I wished four. I can't get it. A trillion dollars. You see? It says T-R-I-L. And then on the next line, E-I-N. And then on the bottom line, D-O-I-L-R-E-S. A trillion dollars. Now, I don't speak to Kobe about money. He's six years old. You know what I mean? Like, he knows what money is, but I'm not like a psycho that talks to him about dividend investing.

55:55Right. So the reason why I say I think I did a bad parent thing was this morning, I put a$100 bill into that piece of paper. And when he woke up, he was so, so excited, like beyond excited. But I think I did a bad thing for two reasons. Number one,$100 is way too much money. If I gave him five, he would have been thrilled. I'm so excited. And the fact that I gave him his wish right after he wished for it, I feel like I should have made him wait for it. So I called Robin when I got off the train this morning. I said, you know what? I don't think that was – I think I did the wrong thing. I don't think that was good parenting.

56:29The funny thing is they assume that one bill is worth the same amount no matter what it says, right? But he knew it was$100. So he was like super, super stoked. But I wish I could take it back. We learned a valuable parenting lesson this week too. Our twin six-year-olds went off to camp, just a day camp. They get bused there and bused back, and they go to camp, and there's a little store at the camp where they can spend their money to buy candy or whatever. And the camp said, put$5 a day on your thing and let the kids spend like$5 there on whatever, little trinkets. And so my wife put$25 on their thing the first day, and it's like a credit card essentially.

57:02And they get home, and my son's got his arms full of stuff, a big stuffed animal and candy and a pen and all these little trinkets. And he's like, I can't believe you guys gave us$25. so we put$25 up front and they just spent the whole thing and so I got to work on budgeting a little bit so now they assume$25 a day we got a few comments from readers right? or listeners I thought this was a great email from Trevor Michael and Ben, showing some support from Michael sorry you lost your Maui gyms to the ocean but take no shame for quality sunglasses, the world looks 10 times better through HCL bronze especially in the water period makes for an interesting topic.

57:44And this is why I'm reading the email. What products in your life do you treat as we call BIFL, buy it for life? Things even early on you should go for high quality and keep forever. Mine is a Japanese knife. High quality, beautiful, and it makes me care about keeping you in a good condition. 250 bucks, but going on 10 years strong and well worth in my books. That's such a great point. Some stuff you pay for, but I don't know that I have anything. I don't know if I'm cheap or... I don't have great knives. I have terrible pans. the easy one for me that I learned right away is we didn't buy a starter home.

58:16I didn't want to buy a place that I had to fix up. That's a great answer. We reached for our first house and spent up a little at the top of our range because we knew we wanted, and we lived there for 10 years as opposed to buying something that was cheaper that we would have been fixing up and tried to flip in like four years or whatever. That's a great answer. Matter of fact, I bought new pants from Amazon and they're horrible. They were like 140 bucks and they're garbage. So I might get like grown up pots and pans. I'm also, I'm sorry. I'm calling BS on Trevor here. There's no way that, that things look better through a nice pair of sunglasses.

58:49Remember those? I'm sorry. The world does not look better in certain pairs. By the way, I said that I look like Neo. What I meant was I really, I look, I look like Morpheus, not Neo. I meant Morpheus, the bald, Morpheus bald. Yes. Good point. All right. One more, uh, on male bikinis, put your comment on the podcast this weekend whether people actually wear Speedos. It goes beyond that. I was posted to Brazil in the early 2010s where Speedos called Asanga locally are ubiquitous. It was a shock for Americans when they were denied entry into local water parks because they used American bathing suits, which Brazilians consider dirty and inappropriate.

59:23It is a funny cultural difference. On the other hand, I now live in Indonesia and most people dive in pools or ocean with all their clothes. What? Yeah. Cultural, I guess. A lot of people thought it was funny that you called it a male bikini as opposed to a Speedo. I don't know. I guess you're right. It's a Speedo. All right. So I saw Oppenheimer, but before we talk about Oppenheimer, did we talk about the drop last week? I brought it up a couple weeks ago. Okay. So that came out before Gandolfini died. I mean, I'm sorry. After he died. So he shot the movie, died, and then the movie came out. Thoughts?

1:00:01I enjoyed it thoroughly. I thought Tom Hardy's Brooklyn accent was ridiculous, but that's my type of movie. It's dark and gritty and a little dirty. I liked it. Tom Hardy's good in that, right? Besides the accent. He's good in everything. All right, so Oppenheimer. I saw it in IMAX, thank God. I would say it's an incredible movie, an incredible achievement that I didn't care for. I thought you were going to love it. I'm surprised to hear that. So now this requires, I mean, a deeper discussion because I think most people loved it or at least liked it. Was it too long? Oh, it was way too long. The last hour, if you saw the movie, the last hour just completely dragged for me.

1:00:44Obviously, there's parts about it that I loved, like parts, but I'm not going to revisit the movie. I thought the story that they told was a little bit weird, confusing, hard to follow and disjointed. And if I saw it at home, I'd say this was a piece of shit. So I think one of the reasons why I found it tolerable and partly enjoyable was because I saw it on a 400-foot screen or whatever. So all credit to Nolan. I thought you were going to be blown away. I'm shocked by this review. All credit to Nolan. People have different tastes. And for me personally, it just didn't do it for me. I'm like a 6 '4".

1:01:13But listen, if you loved it, I understand. People enjoy it. Just wasn't for me. Personal preference. Okay. Wasn't for me. You know what? Here's the thing. I wasn't really entertained. I didn't have fun. You know, and even being able to appreciate what he did, like the fact that he did it was incredible. Just didn't laugh at me. I'm still reading the book. It's not exactly an uplifting story, his life. It's kind of dark and a little depressing, even though it's like crazy how smart this guy was. I got a new show that I'm halfway through. My wife and I flew through. I watched the first episode of this, and I told my wife, I said, all right, I'm going to stop now, watch the first episode, see if you want to watch it with me.

1:01:54She watched, she's in. It's called Outer Range on Amazon Prime. It came out. I think I saw an interview with Josh Brolin. He stars. I'm a huge Josh Brolin fan. I think he's great. He's incredible. Wait, did Amazon make this? Amazon show and - Is it sci-fi? Is it a sci-fi Western? If you watch it, you think at the beginning, you think, oh, this is like Yellowstone, but a little more serious than Yellowstone because it's like the rancher whose ranch has been in his family forever. But then there's a sci-fi element of it. And I think the show would be good even if they didn't have the sci-fi, but it does have the sci-fi and it's enough to keep me interested.

1:02:23and the first three episodes, I don't know how they're going to land the plane on this one, but I'm enjoying it so far. Really good cast. A bunch of people you'd know and like. I don't know how they're going to land the plane, but I like it so far. There we go. All right, anything else? All right, animalspiritspod at gmail.com. Thank you for listening. We will see you next time.

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