How Much is Happiness Worth? (EP.321)

23:37And I just said, I cannot, no one predicted that mortgage rates at seven and a half percent or whatever they are in the housing market will remain so strong. And a bunch of people got in my, my replies and said, have you ever heard of supply and demand before, sir? economics 101 and it's like yeah but no one was saying this like two years ago that mortgage rates are gonna go to 7.5 and the housing market is gonna be fine that's the point it's so easy to look back and say like of course this happened or that happened but no one ever says it ahead of time it's just easy to look back with hindsight and say of course this happened right so i guess what we're all getting at is like right all this is in service to like will there be a recession right at what point yes and what will cause consumers to pull back Callie Cox tweeted this morning in light of the GDP sales.

24:21She said, consumer spending is 70 % of GDP. Okay? 70. It's everything, basically. It's hard to have a recession when spending is increasing at this peak and unemployment is still low. And this is fair. I mean, at some point, people are boy who cried wolf, but all of the stuff that we have in the data, by definition, we're looking backwards. Nobody knows where the data is going to be going forward. If you knew what data was going forward, then you would have an idea if the recession is coming or not, but we don't. And right now, I don't see signs pointed towards it. Although, of course, I can change.

24:54All right. More stuff from Kelly Cox here. I got a few more things in the credit card debt, then I'll leave this one alone. I've never seen this chart before. She did credit card debt as a percentage of total deposits. And she's saying that it's the lowest it's been in around 20 years almost. It's just people have more money in the bank, the ability to hold it. Liberty Street Economics, which is, I think, part of the New York Fed, they did credit required delinquencies by zip code and income level as well. So you can see from the income percentile there, starts at 100. Look at even like the lowest income levels, below 25, the lowest quarter of income, the delinquencies are not even there yet.

25:29Look at how low they are. Nothing like they were in the 2000s or 2010s. Kind of surprised. And I made this point on Twitter yesterday. I'm just reading my tweets for the show today. I have this theory that finance people only inflation adjust data if it helps their argument, right? Like the, the doomers who have been talking about inflation forever, like, well, inflation adjust those wages or inflation adjust those retail sales. Why don't they inflation adjust$1 trillion in credit card debt? Cause if you do inflation adjust that, we're talking about credit card debt being 20 % lower than it was in 2019 on an inflation adjusted basis, which actually takes it from like 1 trillion to 800 something.

26:06So I know everyone wants to think that inflation is only a bad thing, or some people want to think that it's only a bad thing, but for people holding debt, inflation is actually a good thing. It eats away at the fixed payments of your debt and makes your debt worth less than it would have been had inflation not been here. So credit card debt on an inflation-adjusted basis is way lower now than it was in 2019. Pretty wild. Right? I mean, this matters. You got to adjust. Speaking of like a - No, you only adjust if it helps your argument. I do the same thing. I'm a nominal guy. I'd say 95 % of the time I'm a nominal guy.

26:40I know inflation adjusting helps comparisons through economic cycles, but I think our brains work nominally. Totally. We don't work on a real basis. Did you see this chart from Sam Rowe? Which one? Via Bank of America. Our deposit data continues to show signs that unemployment is picking up from these very low levels at a faster pace for higher income earners. This chart is confusing, actually. It says number of households receiving unemployment benefits through direct deposit. It's a year-over-year change. We're going to have to have a talk with Bank of America because how many Bank of America charts do we read?

27:15And then you kind of say, wait, what does this mean? I feel like you did this last week too. No, no, no. You're right because, okay, if I just look at the lines, I understand what's going on here. But then the Y axis is 65%. 65%. So if you make$125 ,000... This is the year-over-year change. In what? Number of households receiving unemployment benefits through direct deposit. I think it's because unemployment benefits dropped so much that the gain is much higher now. Yeah, I guess so, because they went down 100%. By the way, I see negative 100%. Could something fall? Yeah, they have negative 120 on here.

27:56Is that possible? Uh, I wouldn't think so, but I, I guess. All right. This is not, this is not a chart crime. It's just, uh, I get what they're saying. I'm just confused. Exactly. I think the thing that matters is the trend. Okay. This is from Redfin and this is, this is what I was talking about. I read this Redfin thing. The total worth of us homes hit a record of 46.8 trillion in June, overtaking the prior all time high study or earlier as a shortage of homes for sales propped up the housing market. That's an analysis on more than 90 million US residential properties. Hey, can I ask you a question?

28:30When do you use the word analyses? I feel like if you and I were both doing some analysis, someone would say, Michael and Ben's analyses. I don't know if people ever have to use that. I don't know what realm you would ever have to actually put that one together. Put it as a word. Is it the plural of analysis? Sure. Multiple people doing analysis? I'm sorry, go ahead. All right. So if you collectively add up all the real estate in the United States, it's now back to an all-time high, even if prices maybe aren't, because certain ones pick up the slack. This is interesting. This is home values per generation.

29:11Home values for millennials surpass silent generation. So here's the total home value owned by generation. Boomers own$18 trillion. Gen X is$13.4 trillion, which Gen X is coming on strong. They're almost catching the boomers, right? 13.4. Millennials at$5 trillion and the silent generation at$4.7. It is kind of funny that no one ever talks about the silent generation, right? I mean, because they're so old. Yes. But I'm saying that you had the boomers that everyone talks about, then no one really talks about Gen X. Millennials everyone talking about. I don't know. It kind of skips a generation.

29:44I don't know. The biggest surprise was how much Gen X. So this is also interesting. Total value of homes worth between 500 and 750 increased 4.1 % year over year. And between 250 and 500 saw 4 % gain. By comparison, homes worth - Wait, hang on, hang on. Slow down, slow down. A lot of numbers. One more time. So we're looking at like the gain by housing price range. So houses between 250 and 750 both increased by like 4%. But homes between 1 and 2 million saw 2.6 % decline. Homes between two and five million saw 7.4 % decline. All right. So a bigger drop at the higher end. But unfortunately for people coming in to buy a first time home, that's why with all this demand for millennials and household formation, those prices are still rising.

30:30So this is a bad thing. It's a good thing if you're a rich person looking to pick up a million dollar house on great. But if you're looking to pick up a, you know, relatively good price home for your first time home, those prices are still rising. That's not good. Ben, I saw an article from Wells Fargo, how untapped equity could sustain the consumer. And they said, an excess household savings dry up and as, I'm sorry, excuse me. Duncan, start this over. As excess household savings dry up, and as - This is the first time we've had to do that in so long. Yeah, you know what? We were just talking about, you know what, Duncan?

31:07Leave it in. Leave it in. My bad. I felt bad coming out of my mouth. I don't like that. I don't like that. We're showing the warts, warts and all. Because Ben and I did a podcast the other day. I was on, what was I on? Ask the Compound. And I said, I can't remember the last time I asked Duncan to edit up one of my things. And I'm not sure why I just did it there. What was I thinking? It was in your head. As excess household savings dry up and as consumer credit is both more expensive and harder to get, households have become more reliant on income growth. But many households today have the benefit of a second line of defense to support spending should the need arise.

31:40homeowners have more equity in their homes today than they did at any point in this 35 years between 1987 and 2022? I saw this too from this, this, this report was in Sam Rose, uh, homeowner equity stands at 69.6%. That's slightly off its peak from 2022, but higher than any point since the late 80s. So that that's like the percentage of equity as a percentage of total value basically. And it's up a lot since the 2012 lows, obviously. This is something I've been, I've been talking about for a while. I think this is going to be a source, a piggy bank for people for a long time to come. And I think there's going to be companies that try to get into this space.

32:18I was thinking about the sentiment piece and we were talking about it last week about like the vibe session and why sentiment is so bad and why it seems like the economy is good and unemployment rate is so low, but people still seem kind of miserable. Don't you think the housing piece is one of these? Because if you have a homeowner... Hang on, hang on. I reject that premise. I don't think people are miserable. Do you? You don't, you don't get like the consumer sentiment being so low and people hating the economy, not miserable, people hating the economy, even though it's being, it's strong. I don't think that exists.

32:45We had this discussion last week. Okay. Sentiment numbers still show the soft, the soft data. Yeah. Yes. And so the soft data. So I think, I mean, isn't housing. No, no, no. I think, hang on, hang on. I think like business owners might not feel great. Small business owners don't feel great. Consumer sentiment numbers still aren't great. They're still... They're improving. Pull up the consumer sentiment data on Y charts right now. Consumer sentiment U.S. index of consumer sentiment. Look at how low it is. It's rising, but it's well below average. You're right. But it is bouncing pretty strongly.

33:25And again, it might follow gas prices, but is housing one of the missing pieces here? We're trying to figure out, like, why are people so unhappy? Like, homeownership rate is two-thirds of the country. I don't think it's exactly two-thirds of the people own a home because of apartments and all this stuff. But anyway, let's say 6 % of the people own a home. But I'm sorry. When are people going to be so happy? I think I reject that premise that people are so unhappy. I agree. When will a survey show that the entire populace is super happy? It's just not a thing. The political climate in the internet and social media have made it so people aren't ever going to say they're happy anymore.

33:58Or they're not going to think other people are happy. but don't you think like if you're not owning a house you are if I was a young person I'd be so angry right now if I miss the boat on this once in a lifetime bump in housing prices and low rates and I'm renting and rent is going up I would be so angry at the system right now and I'm sure there are a lot of people who are like that so is that like a missing piece of this sentiment that like if you didn't own a house you feel like there's this dividing line and I missed it I'm on the other side of it I got screwed guess what I don't even think those people are included in sentiment data.

34:31These young people, they're not giving surveys. Guess what? They're not being asked. And if they were, they wouldn't answer. These are older people. Okay. So what point do we see trickle down to younger people actually answering surveys? Never? Never. Okay. Maybe BuzzFeed will do it. This is interesting from the Washington Post. First time home buyer, they go through all these reasons that we've already talked about why housing market is broken or whatever. as a result, first-time homebuyers are older with a median age of 36. In 1981, the median age was 29. I think the affordability is part of it, but don't you think that is pretty high for first-time homebuyer, but don't you think part of it is too that just people are going to school longer and waiting to settle down way longer than they did in the past?

35:12Yes. For homebuyers, I think that's part of it too, especially compared to like the 1980s. Remember the big trope of BlackRock is buying all the houses and that's why housing is so unaffordable? We debunked this a few times, Rick Placios Jr., mom and pop investors for Q2 2023 bought 64 times the number of homes and institutions did. So then there's this chart from John Burns here that shows buyers, like they break them up by tiers. And it shows that mom and pop buyers are the biggest buyer. You can see from that gray chart there, by far the biggest buyer. There's some more institutions than there were in the past, but it's still a tiny, tiny percentage.

35:48I don't know. Maybe it shouldn't, but it just, the U.S. home market, I think, what did I say? it was 47 trillion. That's like the, a little bit bigger than the stock market. Probably the stock of clams. It's a huge, huge market. And it just, it surprises me that it's still these, these regular normal people who are buying the rentals there that are buying houses to rent them out. And it's not, that hasn't been taken over. I think it just shows how hard it is to hyper local. It really is. It's it, I'm just surprised that institutions in wall street haven't had more luck coming in and trying to do this.

36:21And maybe it's just because technology doesn't scale in the housing industry, in the housing market, but it just surprises me that that many regular people are the ones who are landlords. Ben, here's one thing that I got right. A lot of things I got wrong, here's one thing I got right. Victory lap time. No, no, no, I mean, this is nothing. Voice not really being a thing. The Alexa. The only thing we use it for is music. That's it. Same. I was never bullish on the idea of people talking to their gadgets to get them groceries or whatever, whatever. So the person that was responsible for the Alexa at Amazon stepped down or retired.

37:00The Walsh Journal wrote, while Amazon has sold more than 500 million Alexa-enabled devices, the smart speakers largely sell without a profit on each unit. The Journal reported last year that the devices unit in some recent years had an annual, annual operating loss of more than$5 billion. pretty wild. I love, we love the Alexa at my house. My kids put music on all the time. And it's funny. We were driving, I can't remember where we were. We were driving a rental car and I didn't have a cord to plug my phone in. So we just had to listen to the radio. And my kids are like yelling at the radio to play a song.

37:32I'm like, guys, it doesn't work like that. They had never heard commercials before going back from listening to a podcast or music on demand on your phone, hooked up to your car via Bluetooth or whatever, or a plug versus the radio. I can't believe we ever used to listen to the radio back in the day. Remember you would - Radio? You would have to wait to - Who needs a radio? The top five at five to listen to a song you liked. You'd have to wait for it. It's just mind boggling to me that people would just, hopefully the song I wanted to listen to comes on. Yeah, and remember commercials? Yes. So I've got, I think people don't realize how good they have these songs.

38:10This is our walking to school uphill both ways is the stuff we had to deal with pre-technology. I was listening to – I had Siri sound the other day in my car. There's no commercials. You could put like your favorite artist in and it tells you when your favorite artist comes on the radio. It's incredible. Okay. There's no commercials. Are you at least – because that's the easiest negotiation on the planet I've heard is serious. Do you at least negotiate with them every one or two years to get a lower rate? I know your cable company doesn't allow you, but please tell me you negotiate with Serious.

38:42I should. I don't. You don't? I've heard that's the easiest one on the planet to negotiate. All right, done. I'll report back. And you know what else I was thinking while we're on this topic? This is not an epiphany. This is Captain Obvious speaking. How great are podcasts? And I know we're recording one right now. But they provide so much free entertainment. We were talking about productivity with Bob. You can't measure that. How the hell do you measure satisfaction that people derive from listening to a podcast? Can't do it. I agree. But that's – I used to – How many hours a week? I don't know.

39:18I'm probably five hours a week at least. Oh, yeah. My wife and I were – after college, we're in a long-distance relationship. I moved away for a job. She went back to school. And on the weekends, we would each drive like two hours to see each other. and I would listen to music the whole time and it felt like I was like losing my mind after a while. Like I can't imagine now it would be so much easier if you had that kind of stuff to do, right? Just to, yeah. It makes the most mundane entertaining. Are you going to listen to the rewatchables just dropped? Oh my God, this reminds me. Eyes Wide Shut, right?

39:53Eyes Wide Shut. I said I didn't, it was my least favorite Tom Cruise movie, but I'll pull this out, I guess. So Ryan Russo does this thing that like there's nothing, or he did this thing recently in his podcast. There's nothing worse than like people that tell you about their dreams. Yeah. Like I'm not, stop, just stop it right there. Don't, don't care. Same, same. I'm sorry. I'm about to break that. I, so if I could be on any podcast just once, I would kill to be on rewatchables. I'd dump you Ben just, just to be on one time. That's fair. But I, but I had a dream last night, I believe it's just coming back to me that I met Sean Fentasy in person and acted like a complete psychopath and he wanted nothing to do with me.

40:31I tried to make a joke and it wasn't funny and I blew my chance. All right, thanks for that. But you would have to do a rewatchable for a horrible movie like Crawl or The Meg 2 or something. That would be your punishment. You couldn't do a good movie because you only like bad movies. One last thing on this. Sorry, I know we're getting way off topic here. First of all, Quentin Tarantino said, unironically, Crawl was the best movie in 2019. Now, I wouldn't go that far. That's crazy talk. But I rewatch it, and it holds up. It's a good movie. Okay. I'll take your word for it. It's a good movie. And The Meg 2 is coming out.

41:02I have no interest in seeing that. But The Big Picture did a podcast on garbage fish movies. And they left out Deep Rising, which is Ashonda. But Deep Blue Sea, Jaws, which is not really garbage, obviously. Anaconda. Those are my movies, as you well know. Right? Monsters in the Ocean. Yes. Give me that all day. Okay. All day. Back to you, Ben. What were we saying? I got nothing. Okay. Oh, we were talking about Alexa. Anyway, that's it. I don't know if they're going to be like winding it down or I mean, they're still selling a buttload, but anyway, the future is not voice. Let's just say that. Yeah.

41:38Because no one likes to listen to someone else yell about something. It's going to have to be a brain chip plant into your head and you think it and then it turns on. There we go. That's what I'm here for. Okay. Ben, did you know this blew my face? Great quarter, guys. I'm going to give a shout to some of the updates on quarter app, which has been sweet. in a second. But before I do, Yum! Brands reported earnings last week. Are you looking at this or can I quiz you? I see it. Okay. Well, I was going to ask you a trivia question, but now that you're looking at it, I won't. So between KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, now that I know the answer, I can't undo what I'm about to say, but I think if I had to rank first, second, third by sales, I think I would do probably, I would do Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC.

42:24See, I would have put Taco Bell up top. So you're showing here that KFC is by far their biggest growth engine. Sales. For sales, right. And growth. So not only is that wrong, it's dead wrong. Kentucky Fried Chicken, now known as KFC, does more revenue than Taco Bell and Pizza Hut combined? What? Really? That's surprising. When's that something you've had KFC? Long time. We were never a KFC family. Me either. Especially since there's more chicken. There are more chicken substitutes these days. Popeyes and Chick-fil-A and such. All right. Interesting. Next. Okay. So, Quarter app. Actually, I got to open this up.

43:08Quarter has this thing where you can highlight. You could, like, make highlights in the app. Kind of like a Kindle, I guess. where you could return to this. You could pull up your highlights. So let me just go to my Disney thing. So I listened to Disney. Where are my highlights? Transcript. Highlights. Oh, here they are. Okay. I mean, how easy is that? So I just, this is what I highlighted for when I was listening to the call last time. Walt Disney World is still performing well above pre-COVID levels. 21 % higher in revenue and 29 % higher in operating income compared to fiscal 2019. Remember they were saying that like there was an article in the journal, which I don't really buy that Disney World is like, I didn't say empty.

43:50Remember that a few months ago, weeks, months? Just that it was slowing, yes. All right, Iger said, since my return, we've reset the whole business around economics designed to deliver significant sustained profitability. I can't remember what the exact number is. I kind of want to throw out 5 billion. That rings a bell, but massive, massive, massive cost cutting going on there. Here's another quote from Iger. And in the highlight section, it shows you who said the quote. So sometimes it's the CFO, the CEO. We're prioritizing the strength of our brands and franchises. We're rationalizing the volume of content we make, what we spend, and what markets we invest in.

44:23Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? Well, how come you spent$34 million a show on Loki? And what was the other one with Samuel L. Jackson we spoke about? Invasion something. I digress. Disney's screwed. I think they're going to have to spin off ESPN or sell a piece to Apple. They're screwed. We're harnessing windowing opportunities, perfecting our pricing and marketing strategies, maximizing our enormous advertising potential. and we're making extensive Hulu content available to bundle subscribers via Disney Plus. Okay, whatever. Last one. All right, ESPN. Taking our ESPN flagship channels direct to consumer is not a matter of if, but when.

44:53And the team is hard at work looking at all components of the decision, including pricing and timing. It's interesting to note that ratings continue to increase on ESPN's main linear channel, even as court cutting has accelerated. How is that possible? So Brandon Katz tweeted, Q2 streaming subscription changes. Netflix up 5.9 million. Peacock up$2 million. Paramount to$1 million. Hulu up$100 ,000. Dollars. People. People. Max, minus$1.8 million. Disney, minus$11.7 million. It's not surprising. I mean, part of that is they lost like some India Sports Channel thing. But yeah, the funny thing is, a lot of the stuff they're trying to think about doing with ESPN now, the gambling and the spinning it off and making this on streaming thing, that's stuff they should have done like three or four years ago.

45:39And they just missed the opportunity. So Front Office Sports did an article, and they said Penn wasn't ESPN's first choice, and neither was the amount ESPN sought. Multiple betting industry sources told Front Office Sports, but after deals were unable to be struck with bigger players, ESPN was ultimately willing to settle for about 50 % less than it had ambitiously asked for in a 10-year deal. Yeah, Lucas Shaw and Matthew Puck on the town were talking about this, and yeah, they're late, super late, right? Yeah, I think they're screwed. I think ESPN is in a, like, they get rid of, they keep getting rid of people.

46:13I think, like, they're cost-cutting and stuff. I think they realize. Then let me ask you this. Why do you still own the stock, as do I? It's a call option, right, on something happening. Iger's going to do something before he leaves. He's not going to leave this thing in shambles. So I think he's going to do something. No, but this is an interesting point. How you think a company might be screwed and yet you own the stock. Those two things should not exist, right? Those should be mutually exclusive. Fair. But. It's the brand. I think the brand is a big part of it, too. Disney brand. Well, that's the thing.

46:39But it's one of the best brands in the world. It's down, what, 55 % from its highs. Bad news is not sending the stock lower. Doesn't mean the stock can't go lower. But the expectations, let's just say that they're not high. It wouldn't take a lot for this stock to start working. Or maybe it's dead money, as I mentioned, as I asked a couple months ago. We'll see. We will see. All right. Someone sent me a DM the other day. I still have mine open. And it was the guy standing behind the tree in a yellow suit doing one of these things like just so excited. I don't know where that came from. And it was the headline of here's what a$5 million retirement in America looks like.

47:15This is from the Wall Street Journal. And the funny thing is, is I already had this in the doc before he even said it. And okay, how much Americans have saved for retirement, and they break it out by different increments. And this is just in retirement accounts. So 401ks, IRAs, that sort of thing. And this is as of 2019. So take it, you know, most wealthy people have a lot of the money in taxable accounts. But they say 0.1 % of family households in the United States have$5 million or more saved for retirement. Only 3.1 % have more than a million dollars in a retirement account. And so it's a small number that has a ton of money saved in these tax-free accounts, right?

47:51And they profile these people who have$5 million or more on how much they spend. And this one guy is - Can I say one thing? People also have taxable money. Yeah, I just said that. I'm sorry. I'm sick. I've got a lot going on. That was a 2020 of last week. But yeah, as I said, most wealthy people have more money outside of tax deferred. So take these for what it's worth. But they do profile this guy who is a 65-year-old guy. He has$6.1 million as a Southwest pilot. So I don't know what he got, stock options or what. But he spends$144 ,000 a year. and he's set to receive like 40 ,000 a year from social security.

48:26So he has like a 2 % spending rate. He says, my plan is to continue living below my means, staying invested and having something to leave for my kids. This other couple is$4.2 million to spend 130K a year. And this guy's talking about how when the market was down in 2020, he was scrutinizing every purchase down to napkins, quickly realized I was doing so as unnecessary. Thanks to their healthy Nessick. We've talked about this before, about how people have a hard time spending money in retirement. And there's this EBRI study that says that the median household spends the income from their portfolio and tries to avoid taking the principal.

49:01And I think this is one of the areas that people with money have one of the hardest times doing is turning around and going from saver to spender. And I love profiles like this because it proves my point. All these people have more money than they probably could spend in a lifetime and they can't spend it. They're spending like 2 % or 3 % of their portfolio. I mean, there's like a big gap between those people. There's a retirement crisis on the one hand, and there's people who can't get themselves to spend money on the other. Yes. And then there's, of course, a million miles in between. I mean, what percentage of the population has like the happy medium of, I saved a lot, but I'm also spending a lot, and I'm not going to like bring it all with me in the grave or whatever.

49:42Like 5 % of people have like a good, healthy relationship between spending and saving? Maybe. Not to brag, I feel like I'm in that category. I'm a healthy spender and I do what I can to save. I used to be. I'm a good saver, but I'm not an over saver. Definitely not an over saver. No, having kids change my feeling on that. I used to be like an over saver and think frugal and spending money is bad all the time. And I've definitely let that feeling go. But I think there aren't many people who have a healthy relationship with money is my point. Fair? There aren't many? Yeah. It's a low number. All right, let's see if you agree with this.

50:26This is a happiness study by Rob Henderson. I think it's from a book, but he highlights it. In terms of your effect on happiness, having a friend you see regularly is worth$100 ,000 a year in income. Being married is worth$100K. Wait, hold on. Time out. Slow down, slow down. Hold on. We're quantifying? Okay. Quantifying happiness. Okay. Getting divorced is like slashing your income by$90 ,000. Wait, start from the top. Start from the top. Seeing a friend regularly is worth$100 ,000 a year in terms of income to happiness. I don't like my friends that much, but go on. Me neither. Being married, also worth$100 ,000.

50:57Getting divorced is slashing your income by$90 ,000. Seeing your neighbor regularly is worth$60 ,000. No way. And good health versus not good health is worth$400 ,000. I don't know how they determined these, but these numbers all seem so far off to me. I mean, this is very made up, obviously. This is a weird exercise. It is, right? The friend at the neighbor stuff, especially. Neighbor? Hey, John, how you doing? Right? Good weekend? Believe the weather? Yes. Okay. Someone emailed us, Ben. I think taking a shot at you specifically, or maybe me too. Okay, bring it. Love the show, but come on, man.

51:39Looking at cash as a percentage of brokerage accounts in isolation. Oh no, this is me too. And comparing that to cash percentage of retirement accounts is silly. Cash positions can only be understood as a percentage of overall net worth or wealth and their liquidity needs. Liquidity demands that it cannot be in the retirement account. Okay. The percentage of the brokerage account that is cash reflects more about the size of the brokerage account, not the size of the cash position. If 20 % of a brokerage account is cash, but the retirement savings are three times larger, then the cash percentage is only a not unreasonable 5 % of the total holdings.

52:20I agree with that. However, why would you have idle cash in your brokerage account? Right. Most brokerage accounts are meant to be invested in, not for cash. I mean, sure, some people might have a cash sleeve, but I don't agree. I think most brokerage accounts, you put money in there to invest it in financial assets. I will stand by our statement that I think this person's right about the fact that retirement accounts are often much larger, so it's not apples to apples. That's fair. But I will stand by, and I will actually die on this hill, that people behave much differently in retirement accounts than they do in brokerage accounts.

52:55And can't be talked off that. All right. We've been talking a lot on this podcast this year about being middle-aged, and I just have to share a story with everyone about how you and I are totally middle-aged. So I was visiting you in New York last week. We went out for dinner at a nice pizza, one of the famous pizza places. Good stuff. John's at Bleecker. And we saw a terrible comedy show. One for six. One comedian out of six were good. It was awful. Yeah, pretty bad comedy show. What do you get? It was a seven o 'clock show. But we had a few beers at dinner, a couple of pitchers. We had a couple of drinks at the comedy show.

53:22In our younger years, following the comedy show, we would have looked for at least another bar or two to go to. This time, we're walking through the streets of New York looking for donuts. And it wasn't even late. It was 930. It wasn't even, yeah, I was saying it wasn't even 10 o 'clock. It was, okay, 930. And as we were walking, looking for donuts, which we found eventually at Krispy Kreme, not our first choice, but they were, they still did the trick. Hang on, hang on. I just want just, this is, this is important for me. There was a donut shop that I'm almost positive used to be on the corner of 14th and 6th Avenue.

53:54So it's not like we were just randomly wandering for donuts. Yeah, we ate there before. It was a donut place. Yeah, we did, right? It's not there anymore. So anyway. But this has us to be middle-aged. In the past, we would have gone to look for a bar. And I think in the past, we would have woken up with a hangover from alcohol. Instead, we woke up with a hangover from food the next day. And also, as we were looking for donuts, we were crossing the street, and a fan of the show was walking the other direction and said, hey, it's you, and pointed at you. And then he looked at me and said, hey, and it's you too.

54:21And he said he loves watching us on YouTube at work. So credit to that guy for being a good listener. That was thrilling. All right, Ben, I got a few things. So Nicole's been asking us for our sizes for clothes for various reasons. And I say I'm a large, but would anyone describe me as large? What's going on with sizes for clothes? I'm not large. I'm 5 '10 and a half. And I weigh, listen, I put on some weight. I've said this before, so don't judge. But you wear looser clothes. It's a fat weight. I have a lot of muscle, so it's mostly fat. I'm 186 pounds. I'm a 5 '10 and a half. Is that large? I feel like average.

55:06Could you pull off a medium? Is that what you're asking? You need like a medium and a half. I can't wear a medium. I don't think. It's too tight. Well, I can't wear tight clothes. We need half sizes for shirts. But large should not be average. I'm an average-sized person. I should not be wearing a large. I don't know what you want me to tell you. Wear a medium and wear it a little tighter. All right. I saw... I can't do that. I saw a post, a New York Times article that I think is complete hogwash. It said, what's the title of this post? How to use your dishwasher better. All right, good news. Your dishwasher should get every dish completely clean almost every time you run it without your pre-rinse of the dishes before you load them.

55:48This is complete BS. So I, Robin does most things in our household very well. She does not participate in the kitchen. She doesn't cook. She doesn't do the dishes. She doesn't do anything. And that's totally fine. That's my domain. I rule the kitchen. And my secret to a clean house is a clean sink. The sink is the epicenter for dirtiness. Would you agree with that? If you start stacking dishes, your house is messy. Okay. But on the few occasions where Robin does do the dishwasher, and they are very few and far between, she doesn't rinse. She puts them in the dishwasher. And guess what? They come out with food all over them.

56:23And I have a newish dishwasher. I use the good tide pods. You can't, what? You have to. I've seen this before where, I can't remember what interview I heard this in a podcast where someone said for one of the companies, you shouldn't have to rinse. Our soap should be able to take all the stuff off. There's no way that happens. Well, yeah, that'd be great. But guess what? You have to rinse. So are you a rinser? Do you do your dishes? Of course I, yeah. I'm the dish, yes. I cannot allow dishes to sit anywhere. I'm doing dishes at all times. I'm the person who, if we have a party and have people over, I'm cleaning as the party's going.

56:54I can't help myself. Same. Not only do I do the dishes, not only do I rinse, I wash with dish soap. I clean the dishes before they get cleaned. Great point by Duncan. You're using Tide Pods on your dishes? What do you mean? You mean that they look like Tide Pods? You said Tide Pods. I don't know. I don't know. They look like pods. What are they? Okay. No, they're pods. Okay. Yes, they're a little. I know what you're saying. They're not Tide Pods. All right. Ben, a couple of weeks ago, I was in a house and I told you this on the show that somebody jiggled the handle in somebody's house and then knocked.

57:31Clearly, it's not locked by accident, right? Right. And then said, so then I had to say, second, you're there. So I was in a restaurant last week, and I locked a door, and it's green or red, vacant or occupied, right? So there's no need to knock. It literally says if somebody's in there. Right. So I'm in there and I hear knocking. I'm like, unbelievable. Who are these idiots? I, it says occupied. I opened the door and it was my kids. Got to teach them. At least they knocked and didn't just try to like crawl under or something. Last thing I've got, I've got a, a$10 ,000 idea. Okay. I ordered, my friend had, uh, had surgery.

58:18So I ordered him a bottle of, uh, alcohol on Drizzly. So this was the day that everyone was over. We were on the water. So I'm on the jet ski and I get a phone call from Drizzly. And I said, oh, thank you so much. Please knock on the door and just leave it on the steps. And he said, no English. And I'm like, oh, no, what do I do? So I just spoke louder and slower. Knock on the door and please leave it. And he goes, no English. So I'm like, oh no. So I'm like, uh, uh, okay. Gracias. And, and I hopped the phone and I immediately, and I immediately went to Google to the English to Spanish translator and I typed it in and I copied it, you know, texted it.

59:05There should just be a button on your phone. There should be a voice button to translate into different languages. I'm sure that exists. You don't think so? That's going to be your AI assistant someday. I bet someone's going to email kneel in and say this app already exists. Meanwhile, my friend, it was nine in the morning. My friend texted me. He's like, thank you very much. I just limped. I just walked with a cane and a bathrobe to the door at 9 a.m. to get a bottle of whiskey. This guy definitely thinks I'm an alcoholic. Nice work. All right, Ben, recommendations. What do you got? Okay, I just thought there's this movie, the top 10 on Netflix.

59:42There's this movie called The River Wild. I saw the preview for it. It's got Adam Brody, who I'm not ashamed of it. Wait, it's got what? Adam Brody. Oh. Which I'm not ashamed to admit, I was an OC fan back in the day. Wait. Oh, I thought you meant Adrian Brody. Adam Brody. Yeah, Adam Brody. Oh, that guy. Okay. It's called The River Wild, and it's similar to the original one with Meryl Streep and John C. Reilly and Kevin Bacon. Great movie. Awesome movie. And this new movie was like, eh, it's like a 5.2. It's like, I watched the whole thing. Is it the same thing? It's just, it's, you know, someone gets taken hostage on a, yeah.

1:00:18on a whitewater raft. Different story, but similar premise. I just don't like the fact that a new movie can steal the old movie's name. I think that should be illegal, never allowed to happen. That's a rule. I agree with you. No stealing movie names. It happens. They couldn't come up with a better name and the movie was mediocre at best. One more. I agree. Hold on. You can't do it. No. Can't do it. One more. The Machinist, which is one of Christian Bale's first movies. I caught it on Paramount Plus. I think I watched it a lot. long time ago. He got down to 110 pounds. It's one of those movies where his acting performance is better than the movie.

1:00:55It's kind of a weird, dark movie that has a little twist at the end, actually. And it's an okay movie, but it's a better performance than anything. And just, it's kind of amazing that he got to 110 pounds and just looks like it's wild how small he is. I have a similar, I have a similar type of thing. I watched a movie on Hulu called Resurrection. It's not a good movie. It's not the worst movie. It's watchable. I'm not recommending it. I'm just saying it's watchable. So it's with Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth. Okay. And Rebecca Hall, I think she's the best female actor in Hollywood. She's the best leading actor in Hollywood.

1:01:35It's quite a statement. She's good. That's a leap. Oh, yeah? Who's better? I don't know. When's the last time she was in a good movie? The Night House? Never heard of it. But this movie was objective. This movie was not good, and she made it watchable. Okay. She's a great actor. I do like her. But best actress in Hollywood, that's a stretch. There might be better. I'm sure there are. She's up there. Leading. She can carry a movie. Okay. Anything else? I'm taking Dayquil. Airborne, some Zinc. You got anything else for me? Good luck. Nightquil at night. it helps. Oh, of course. But you wake up with a hangover from that as an old person now.

1:02:18Not a cool hangover? You ever had that before? Nope. Not great. AnimalSpiritsPod at gmail.com. See you next time.