It Was a Very Good Year (EP.393)

23:03I'm going to have my drink in one hand, my phone videoing the kids. My phone got soaked. My drink spilled in the river. Lazy rivers are elite though, right? Very elite. I can't – I know it's now the third time. I can't wait for Future Proof. We're going to have so much fun. That's going to be great. So one of the books that I read was a book that actually a client recommended called Strangers in Paradise. and it goes to this topic of financial, the psychology of money to steal Morgan's book. And the gist of this book, Strangers in Paradise, was that like most 80 something percent of people in the United States with money make it on their own and typically make it coming from a background of not having money.

23:45And so I'll put myself in this category. Now, the people that are talking about this book are like actual wealth, right? But nevertheless, I've never been to the Caribbean before. Growing up, I had never been to the Caribbean. We did car trips, right? We did DC and Massachusetts and whatever. So there's no example to look to. Yeah. So the book Strangers in Paradise, it talks about this flipping from the background of where you came from and getting comfortable with money. And then it also talks about like how, you know, preserving it and how typically the third generation goes broke. But definitely is a bit of a mind being able to take my kids on vacations that I never got to enjoy when I was a child.

24:26Like it definitely, I think about it a lot. Yes. And it gets into the weird thing of spoiling versus giving them great experiences. And yeah, it's, it's all a big mental hurdle. Yeah. Like my kids just think vacations are normal. Yes. Yeah. So how do you get them out of that mindset? Right. I, all the time tell my kids like, you know, when I was growing up, I did not have a have this and I did not have that. And they're like, yeah, yeah, they don't care. Yeah. Right. They don't. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. You do the best you can. Yes. But you have to give yourself permission to spend some money and enjoy it and not just hoard it.

24:58Or they also given the, in the example, in the article, some people just decide like when the market's up really big, we're giving more money to our kids this year. And so if you're not going to spend it, great. Give it to your kids who can use it and make their lives easier. Yeah, the psychology of hoarding money, I don't understand it. I think probably a lot of that is just deep-rooted, whatever, psychology and how you grew up and all that sort of stuff. But thank God I do not have that affliction. All right. Torsten Slok, chart of the week. Why didn't car sales go down when rates went up? So he shows the Fed started hiking and automotive sales continued to go up and up and up.

25:34And he said the source for strong demand for cars has been robust income growth, low unemployment, and households having excess savings after the pandemic. So people basically rates because rates got really bad for auto loans. I don't know, talking 9%, 10 % in some cases, maybe even higher. And it didn't really stop people from purchasing new vehicles, which are way more expensive. Insurance is higher. The cost of the vehicles is higher. People are buying bigger vehicles, which makes them more expensive. Do you think that a lot of this comes down to the fact that, hey, I've got a 3 % mortgage locked in.

26:04That is fixed. I can spend more on my car, my vehicle now. You don't think that's part of it for some people? No. Okay. Because I do think like if I had to right size my housing cost to the market right now, pay market rate for a house plus market borrowing rates, how much more I'd be spending, like, oh, maybe that can be spent elsewhere. You don't think that that's how people's minds work? No, not really. Yeah. Maybe like five people. Yeah. Like you. Okay. But I do think that the slack that you're talking about is a real thing. So how about this? I feel like we've gone back and forth on this a million times, and I do too.

26:43Mike Sicardi tweeted, Goldman Sachs has a wealth effect from equity markets should provide an additional boost to consumer spending in 2025. He's just showing net worth at all-time highs and the fact that there's just more of a bump there. I just, I don't know what really stops this train outside of some sort of exogenous event that we can't see coming. Did anybody stop spending in 2022? No. Even when we thought a recession was coming. So, yeah, listen, a long bear market associated with a long real recession will change people's spending habits. Duh. That's what a recession is. Right. It's, yeah, it's not like really smart and intelligent to point out like the biggest risk here is a recession.

27:27Of course it is. I don't want to say that there's nothing that's going to stop this. A recession will stop it. And if and when, like, I don't know when it happens. It could be this year or in 10 years. But a recession will change people's spending habits because they'll get laid off. That's what a recession is. What's the cause of the recession? That's the hard part. And no one's going to predict it. That's my whole point is no one's going to predict the cause of the next recession. Economic expansions don't die because of old age. Right? That's not a thing. They don't just peter out. Right. All right.

27:53Good news of the week. This is from Gregor McDonald, I think, who is a former guest on Component Friends, right? Mm-hmm. This is interesting. Natural gas prices are so low, they should be making headlines. Just how cheap is American gas these days? is imagine walking into a supermarket this week to buy a last minute item for Christmas and discovering that everything has been marked down to 1999 prices. Yes, that cheap. Basically saying that we've gone nowhere for the past 25 years for natural gas prices. And he's basically saying any time the prices have been high, I've been an outlier. And when you look at this chart, it's kind of insane.

28:27In the 2000s, you have these big, huge spikes in natural gas prices, and now they've just gone nowhere for a quarter of a century. And this is the kind of thing that you just never hear about. Right? You only hear about prices that rise. You never hear about prices that don't rise. True. Right? Anyway. All right. Here's something I would have been wrong about, and we've talked about this. If you would have given me the mortgage rates this year and said, oh, they're going to be 7 % all year, I would have said something, I don't know, eventually something has to break. And Matt, chart kid, made this for me.

28:59Basically, right when the Fed started cutting rates, mortgage rates shot up. So they were falling from over 7 % to almost 6%. by September. The Fed cut now back to 7%, which I'm guessing a lot of normie civilians outside of the finance world would look at this and go, that doesn't make sense. I don't get this. We kind of know the reasons for this, but this is one of those, if you're not in it, you don't get it. Bill McBride said he's been arguing for a while that 6 % to 7 % would be the new normal for mortgage rates. He wrote this on Blue Sky. He said the so-called neutral rate is moving up, if we add 2 % inflation, 2 % real rate, a normal yield curve and 30-year rates at 175 basis points above the 10-year, that puts mortgage rates in the 6 % to 7 % range.

29:43How does this not have an impact eventually? It is having an impact today. What do you mean? I mean, on like the greater economy. Like it's bad for realtors. It's bad for people in construction. It's bad for home builders. It's bad for housing activity and all the areas that are tied to that, but it hasn't impacted the greater economy yet. When does that happen? Or is it just that we have these shock absorbers elsewhere that make up for it? Yeah, I think that's it. I just... Well, also, the numbers that we've mentioned a million times, is it two-thirds of Americans own a home? So McBride has it.

30:20So 55 % of mortgages are still under 4 % and 73 % under 5%. So I guess that's... All right, so that's it. That's it. Yeah. Solved it. It seems bizarre to me that's something that if you add up all the ancillary things that are tied to the housing market, furniture and realtors and construction and all these things, it's something like 20 % of the economy. Yeah. Somebody emailed us a PDF from the National Association of Realtors, like 2025 outlook. How about this one? Here's housing hotspots for 2025. Top markets amidst stabilizing rates. I see Grand Rapids, Michigan. What's Kentwood? One of the little suburbs of Grand Rapids.

31:03Grand Rapids offers a unique combination of affordability and promising long-term prospects with modern farmhouses. Oh, no, I made that part up. With 36 % of millennial renters able to afford homeownership and 12 % of households entering prime home buying age within the next five years, the demand for housing will remain strong. It does seem, so this area has seen a lot of - Wait, the availability of starter homes. allows newcomers to purchase a home and establish roots, making Grand Rapids a standout market for 2025. If you purchase in the city limits, it's actually relatively affordable to find a house.

31:35And there are lots of young people coming to the area. There's a huge healthcare, like all sorts of doctors and people coming. Can I be honest? I'm not positive I know what city limits mean. Well, there's the city and then outer sort of, I don't call them suburbs, but outside of the city limits. All right, so you don't know either. the city limits are literally drawn on a map so i guess the the outer burbs are where like it's just different school districts and different you know you know what else i don't know what it means i've been afraid to admit this for a while but i'll come clean anytime you see like neo in a word okay or or like post like we're living in a post i mean i know what post means but like i know i think neo means new but i still just don't really understand like neo-Keynesian I don't know if I just made that term up whenever you see neo posts with economics stuff I just don't get it it's new or modified it's like the Winnie the Pooh meme yes I agree it sounds like you're trying very hard stop sounding all educated we've talked about FU Money recently this was a good one and I feel like this is a lot of what fire boils down to I feel like you missed one of the core of what FU money can mean, probably because you have pleasant jobs you seem to enjoy.

32:53Fair. FU money means your boss can demand you do something unethical or degrading, and you can just tell them no, thank you. In automotive, I've seen guys, out of fear of their jobs, fudge emission results to the government or engineers work the production line during strikes. We should get Dateline on this, I think. FU money turns you into the kind of worker who can stand on principle and do what is right. And again, I think this is a lot of what the fire thing is about. I know there's a lot of people, especially in the internet, love to dunk on the fire people for actually being unhappy. But I think a lot of it is they're unhappy in their jobs.

33:20And that's why they do the fire thing. And of course, you don't find fulfillment by getting a million dollars and living off of it forever. But if you're in a soul-sucking job, I totally understand the idea of, I'm going to do everything I can to get out of this soul-sucking job. And for some people, it's not going to a different job. It's getting out of the rat race completely. Yes. I totally get it. That makes a lot of sense to me. Good email. All right, somebody sent us an article. The New York Times is getting in on it. What's the secret to choosing a good airplane movie? Did we start this trend?

33:53We've been talking about it for a while. So in the article, there was a link to another article talking about how you're more prone to cry in an airplane. So here's what a psychiatrist said. I've never cried in an airplane. I'm sure you have. Oh, yeah? Just wait. Being in an airplane means you're traveling, and that often has some kind of sentimental value. So if you think about it, you are really primed to be more emotional. Traveling can increase oxytocin levels, especially when traveling with loved ones. It's the same reason couples have more sex on vacation. Okay. So anyway, I watched on the way down to the Bahamas, I watched the Christopher Reeve documentary.

34:32I'm guessing you haven't seen it. No. Is that HBO maybe? Yeah. Holy shit. Thank God I had my hood on. Because I didn't have like a tear. I was literally crying, like crying and almost, almost sniffling. It was so heavy and sad. And Christopher Reeve for the young people was one of the most famous people on the planet. He played Superman and, uh, he had a devastating accident. He fell off a horse and broke his neck and was paralyzed and was a huge advocate for the whole community. So where was I going with this? Yeah, just thank God Robin didn't look over because she would have been like, what in the world?

35:22So yeah, tears coming down my face. And this is not exactly a ringy endorsement, but if you lost a loved one, like I did, my mom died in 2011. And thank God the pain gets a little bit easier with every passing year because if it didn't, your body would die. You would just die of sadness. So the tears don't flow the way that they once did. So if you are looking for a reason to cry, because I like crying. I love it. It gives me the feelings. It does feel like your body just needs it sometimes, right? Sometimes you just need to cry. So if you just need to cry and you can't get the tear ducts working like they used to, watch this documentary.

36:02It was really incredible. Yeah, so grief is the kind of thing where like something will just trigger it again and it'll all just come flooding back, right? So it was so sad. Like not only what happened to him, but then his wife, who was by all accounts an absolute saint, she died like 14 months after he did from lung cancer. She never smoked. And the poor family, just an unimaginable tragedy. All right, enough of the sadness. One more thing that I experienced on the airplane this week. on the way home. What else did I watch? I think that's it. So - You know what I'm always doing though? Like finding the right movie it's talking about.

36:38I'm just like this scrolling for a minute. I scroll everything and then I go back to the start. Same. So I did the new releases and then I did the A to Z. Yes. So I did all of that and there wasn't anything that I was super into. So I said, you know what? Let me hit the TVs. Let me hit the TV show. And I started watching Linus and I saw four episodes of the first season. I will, I'll finish this thought later. And then I binged the rest of it. yesterday and this morning in bed. Hell of a show. Lots of fun. I started that one too. Okay. Super bingeable. So maybe, anyway, maybe that's another tactic.

37:10Like shows are so bingey these days that maybe movies are out and TV shows are in on the airplane. No, I actually never, I only do movies on airplanes. I never do TV shows. Because you didn't even know. Yeah. Now you know. All right. Another Torsten Slok one. The average daily rate for a hotel in New York is$417. Shot up a lot this year. actually. It must be one of the most volatile prices that there is. And I know it's seasonal or it depends on when you come. Because when I come, there'll be times when I come and stay at the same hotel. And the range is, I don't know,$300 for literally the same hotel, depending on the day or the month or whatever, whenever I'm coming.

37:47Like I'm coming there in a week. And it was ridiculously cheap for New York. And it's just because I guess no one is traveling then. So I did a little traveling too. We did a weekend with some friends in Chicago. stayed at the hotel where they did the home alone pool, which is kind of cool to see. Kids like that. Home on two. Really cool. Yeah, because they filmed the pool there because they didn't have it in New York. My son became obsessed with big buildings being in Chicago. And so we took them to the top of the Hancock building and did the lean over thing, you know, where you lean over and it puts you down and you look out.

38:17I did that with Josh when we were there. Very cool. Years ago. Yeah, very cool. So here's my tourist request for next time coming to New York. How come you've never taken me to the top of the Empire State Building before? I've never done it. You've never done it. Okay, so next time I come, if we have time, we have to do it together. Wait, should we do it next week? Sign me up. Actually, it's probably a good time to do it because nobody's going to be here. Yeah, let's do it. All right, let's get tickets. Speaking of Home Alone, do you ever appreciate the Home Alone soundtrack as one of the greatest soundtracks of all time?

38:45We were listening to it in the car. All right, so it's John Williams, composer of Superman. Really good background music. The kids were like, we did some light shows, and the kids were napping on the way home, and we put that on as a nice, soft. All right, so here's a plug. Did I talk about that I went to see Elf at the Philharmonic? Okay, so I went to see Elf with the kids and the family, and it was so much fun. It was so much fun. And of course, I've seen Elf a million times, but seeing it with people, laughing like it's the first time you've seen it, with a live orchestra. So they do that. They do it with Home Alone.

39:21And I think they also said Back to the Future in Star Wars. But I was thinking about the music. That is really cool. So if you ever take your family to New York City, or if anyone listening, highly recommend that for family activity. Did you see Will Ferrell dressed as Elf at the LA Kings game? Just a national treasure. So actually, my wife and I don't have a lot of financial talks anymore. We used to have more probably. But once a year, she's kind of like, hey, so what's the story with next year for spending? Like, what are we doing with our money? And every once in a while, she'll kind of hit me with one of these.

39:50And she said, the only thing I care about, I'm like, all right, let's hear it. She said, I make a big travel budget. She says, I love taking trips, little, big, whatever. Like, I want to keep traveling and having experience with the kids. Like, forsake all else, and that's the thing is traveling. Because for years, when we had twins at first, like, we did not want to travel. Because it was too much stuff. It was two car seats or two strollers or whatever, the double stroller. That was not fun. It's just a pain. So for years, we didn't really do anything. And now that we can and the kids are enjoying it more, so that's our annual spending talk is just more travel.

40:23There's no better money spent, in my view, than vacations with the family. Because also, it's so fleeting. I heard somebody talk about this. Like 80 % of the time you spend with your kids is before the 18th birthday. It's brutal, right? Yeah. My oldest daughter's 10, and it's going to go on. Bunch of people sent us this. Flying was already the worst. Then America stopped using headphones. So it says if security lines, flight delays, and long layovers weren't enough, There's a new scourge for facing holiday travelers. A surprising number of people who think it's okay to have phone conversations on speaker or watch movies and shows without headphones.

40:59Is this made up? I don't, is this, is this really? Oh my gosh, you don't. So I'll at least once or twice, I'll get on a plane. And most of the time, it'll be a parent shoving a YouTube iPad in front of a kid with no headphones. And you hear their video games or their YouTube videos out loud. No, no, come on. You've never experienced it. I always give a nasty, like, are you serious? I gave one of those like head turns, like what? you've never experienced this? Oh, yeah. Or people doing like a FaceTime or a speaker. Like, it happens a lot. That is so rude. I think the solution should be you get a ticket and you either have to pay the ticket and keep talking on speakerphone or you show proof that you bought a pair of AirPods or the equivalent.

41:44Because you can buy a knockoff brand of headphones for$20. Okay, I honestly, I feel like I would be pretty sensitive to this stuff. As a considerate person, this would bother the hell out of me. It's true. All right, I have a service question for you. You were in the service industry. You worked as a waiter. Damn right I was, yeah. Not just a waiter. I'll remind the audience. Bus boy, cabana boy for years, caddy for one day. I didn't do well there. Long time waiter, yeah, service industry. All right, so we were another family who has three kids, and we have three kids. So that's 10 people. So big table.

42:15And I think it's one of those deals where a party of eight or 10 or more, gratuities included. But the waitress didn't tell us this. So I got the bill and I go to write the, the, and I don't ever even look at the bill. I just signed it and I looked at it and it said, add additional gratuity. And I said, wait a minute. Does this mean it's already added? Cause it didn't, it didn't itemize it. It just said it, you know, we, we just split the bill in half and had to ask him. And they said, oh yeah, that it's already included in there. Not nice. But she didn't tell us. She should tell us, right? No, you detract the tip in that case.

42:42No, I'm kidding. But that happened to me one time at dinner. We had a, we had a dinner that was way more expensive than it should have been. And then the next morning, my friend texted me the receipt. he said, hey, this jerk didn't tell us. And it was already an expensive meal that they put 20 % on top. That is so effing rude. Yes. You have to tell. I can't imagine not telling the family that, hey, tip is included. Yes. Okay. That is so dirty. All right. A bunch of people email us to say, you guys are wrong about merging in traffic and construction saying the zipper method actually works where you should keep going all the way to the front of the line and then merge.

43:16Yeah. If everyone did that, it would work. But that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about people who've already merged and then the jerk who goes to the front. And actually there's a book on this. It's one of the better books I've read. It's called Traffic. Why We Drive the Way We Do by Tom Vanderbilt. It's like 2009. It's really worth a read. And he talks about this in the book. And he says, the problem is not necessarily the people who go to the front of the line. It's the construction signs. So you shouldn't have a construction sign three miles back saying left lane closed ahead.

43:42You should have, you should have the sign like maybe more like a mile in advance, maybe a half mile. So people don't start getting over too. So that's the problem is the signs that tell people and then people start breaking and getting over too fast. So that's the problem. That's, that's what he's talking about, the zipper thing. Yeah. You getting closer. Okay. All right. So somebody sent this random knowledge here. Harriet Winslow from family matters early on in that show, she was fired from her job at the Chicago Chronicle where she was an elevator attendant. I did not realize that that was Friday night back in the day.

44:13Family matters. How good was TGIF? So my daughter - Step by step? So my daughter got - I remember that one too. Dinosaurs? That was kind of crappy. So my daughter got into Fuller House on Netflix over Christmas break. And she binged - That wasn't - Fuller House was not bad. She binged all five seasons of Fuller House, which is the new one on Netflix, right? They made five? Five seasons. I didn't realize that either. And she watched the end and she was like, you know one of those things where you binge a show and you're kind of sad when it's over? She was like, I'm kind of sad it's done. But then she moved on to the regular Full House.

44:41It's on Hulu. Where do you see that? On Hulu? And totally into it. The premise of that show, if you think about it, Uncle Jesse, Joey, and Danny with the girls was really wild. Yes. It was a little out there. Okay. Why people look older in the past. What has this been? Someone sent us this thing from Roger Ebert talking to Spielberg about doing war movies. Saving Private Ryan. And he said, today boys 17 or 18 look like children. but back then, 16, 17, 18-year-olds' face actually looked sometimes like a 29 to 35-year-old. He said, if you look at all those guys coming down the game planks in the documentary footage, they all look much older than they actually were.

45:23And he's saying, like, they asked him why. He said, I don't know. Part of it is just stress back then. Like, living through war times, like, hardens you as an individual. So he said he had to really look for people who looked older to play those roles in Saving Private Ryan. That makes so much sense. You know, Macaulay Culkin was 37 in Home Alone. no but just think about how much harder life was yes that's part of it life is easier these days and people said sunscreen I mean look at us I mean how young do we look very youthful you know Christopher Reeve speaking of this was 24 when he played Superman wow I did not realize that you gotta be kidding me he was 24 years old he did look a lot older didn't he geez alright story time We ended up in the ER on Christmas night this year.

46:11My son accidentally got his lips split open, had to get some stitches. It was the end of a Christmas party. My wife and I show up to the ER in our matching Christmas vacation sweatshirts, ugly sweatshirts, one I wore on the show last week and she got the matching one. George has been through some stuff. He's been to the ER like seven times. So he got some stitches and it was a bummer for him and he kept saying this is, you know, the worst Christmas ever, but it was actually a very proud parent moment for me. He gets his stitches. They come in and they didn't do the shot for the numbing. They just put some, the cream on it.

46:45And they said, you know, and he split his lip open really bad. And they said, you know, we could give you a shot or we could just try it with the numbing. It might hurt a little more. And he said, I don't want the shot. Just do the numbing. And the nurse came in and I said, do you want me to hold your hand while you get stitches? Because it might hurt a little bit. And he said, no, no. Kind of like, get out of here. And he got stitches. he didn't flinch once when she did the stitches he didn't cry he didn't squirm he just let her do the stitches and was kind of like shrugged his shoulders and it was over and it was like honestly my wife was like you know so upset that he was bleeding and I was like that was a very proud moment for me that he was so tough because I told him I got stitches in my lip when I was in fourth grade and I bawled like a baby when they gave me the shot and like I was crying and he didn't like even move and I was like dude I can't believe how much tougher you are than I was back I was crying like a baby, and you did it like nothing.

47:37So that was actually a very proud moment for me as a parent. He was so tough. But, yeah. The funny thing is that, you know, they use a little hook thing to give you— Like, I was watching. And he kept being like, where's the hook? Where'd she put the hook? I think if I were you, I would have been crying. My wife was, so she had enough tears. But I was, yeah. I was a proud parent. That's, yeah. Not a fun moment. We were in the ER until midnight, I think, on Christmas night. But yeah, he's all good. One more thing that I noticed at Bahamur. Thong bathing suits. Women or men? I did see one man in a bikini hammock.

48:17And banana hammock, I'm sorry. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I really want to wear one of those, just for the lulls. All right. Robin will not have it. So yeah, thong bathing suits. Used to be like a very non-American thing. I don't know if it's like European or wherever where it was, you see it more frequently. It crossed over, came across over the pond. It's now a thing apparently. I did see Punta Cana too. It is bizarre. Now, I don't have daughters, but it is odd seeing a girl in a thong with her dad. And even like Robin said this to me multiple times. She's like, another one. I have two daughters.

48:54Please don't have, I don't want to have this conversation. Well, you're from the Midwest. I think you're okay. That's true. They're going to be wearing like snow pants. Here's one other thing I noticed when I was on a live trip a few weeks ago. Tell me if you thought, like you see a lot more people with tattoos now on vacations, right? Like tattoo, like women will have tattoos on their thighs or like lots of guys with tattoo sleeves. Do you think people with tattoos find each other to co-mingle? Because I saw a lot of couples who both had lots of tattoos. You usually don't see one, a couple where either the guy or the girl or both got, just one person has all the tattoos and the other person doesn't have any.

49:28It seemed like they were, the couples you saw, they both had a lot of tattoos. You think that's a trait you look for in a mate if you were a tattoo person? Oh, yeah. It's gotta be, right? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. All right, Ben. Recommendations. What do you got to end the year? Okay, I don't have any new stuff because all we've been watching is holiday movies. So I just want to give my appreciation for, I just love the Christmas movie discourse that we have every year now. I do, I do too. Because the classics are, they're not changing. So we have to look for different things every year. You can't be having the same conversation of, is Die Hard a Christmas movie?

50:03Or what did Kevin McAllister's dad do? You can't have those same conversations anymore because they've already been had. He was an investment banker, no? Probably. Where do you stand on It's a Wonderful Life? It's my mother's favorite movie of all time, or Christmas movie of all time. I've only seen it once. I should probably revisit. Next year. Okay. I don't watch a lot of the oldies. To me, it's like 80s and forward. Sorry. How about a New Year's resolution for you? Watch Casablanca. I tried, remember? I made it halfway through. No, no, no. You watched Citizen Kane. I did Casablanca too. You couldn't make it to Casablanca?

50:37It's too old. Like even a Christmas story, I feel because a little, because they try, it's like, I don't know, it was made in the 80s. It's color, right? Yeah. It was made, it's supposed to be in the 60s. So even that's a little too older for me. But so here's my, here's my attempt to add to the discourse of Die Hard since I watched it. So remember there's that part where Hans Gruber's like tell, in the 80s, every villain would have to tell what their plan is. And then the bad, the good guy would thwart that plan, right? They'd tell him what the plan is before the plan going awry. So he talked about how he wanted to steal these bear bonds, and he said before they realized what's happened to them, he was pretending that he was helping out political terrorism, but he just wanted money.

51:09So he wanted to get these 20 % bear bonds to live on the beach. And I think Die Hard is actually a movie about reaching for yield and the dangers of reaching for yield because Hans wanted to live that fire lifestyle with the 20 % yields on the beach, and so he resorted to a life of crime. That's my addition to the discourse. All right, finally, a couple more things. middle-aged dads and Christmas movies that I can relate to. Okay. So in family man, Nicholas cage, walking the dog in the middle of the night, waiting for the dog to take a poop. Now that I have a dog. I never, I never saw that movie.

51:36Oh my. Okay. You will cry. If you watch that movie, the family man. Oh, it's, Oh, I love that one. Uh, but he walks the dog in the middle of the night and can't, the dog won't poop. And he's like, why won't you just, and that's, that's me now that I have a dog. I, I'm the guy who walks, you know, I thought like, Oh, maybe the kids will walk the dog occasionally. Nope, but I actually love it. Wait, let me ask you this. Do you relate, because I think, is this Christmas time? Meet the Parents? Is that Christmas time? No, it should be, but it's not. Wait, do you, well, just do you relate more to Jack Burns or to, what's Ben Stiller's character in that name?

52:05Greg Fokker. Greg, oh yeah, geez. I'm still, yeah. Still Fokker, but eventually it's going to be Jack Burns. Uh-uh. You're, you're approaching Jack Burns territory. Probably. Here's another one. Clark Griswold in The Christmas Vacation dealing with the in-laws. Like he's dealing with his parents coming in and like this happened to us this year. My parents just decided to spring it on us. Hey, we're coming today early. Oh, okay. We're not ready for you, but sure. Yeah. We have enough towels. We have enough blankets. Everyone come on. So I dealt with that too. And finally, another one, Family Stone, which I watched occasionally.

52:35Sometimes you're parenting your parents and sometimes they're still parenting you when you get to middle age, right? Because here's something they don't tell you about middle age. You have to take care of, at a certain age, you're taking care of your kids and your parents to make sure everyone's happy. Is that the sandwich generation? I think so, right? So like now the grandparents expect you to like take care of their meals and stuff. Maybe that's payback for them being parents for you forever, but no one prepared me for this. I love the handoff. So now I'm the host. Yeah, you're the person in charge.

53:03Yeah, I much prefer it, to be honest. Okay. And when I say the person, I mean, my wife does everything, but we do it at our house. I don't know when this happened, but it's just like, oh, wait, we're the one in charge now. I didn't sign up for this, but I guess I did. Yeah, no, you did. Okay, that's all I got. All right. All right, I did make a, oh, the other book that I wrote on vacation was the McConaughey book, Green Light. Holy f***ing shit. Great book, right? The story about him fighting the warrior guy in Africa. I'm operating under the assumption that 20 % of the stories were false, but even if 80 % are true, it's a great book.

53:37What a life. So I almost want to read it or listen to it, the audio book. I'm not going to, but I almost am going to. Uh, so McConaughey, basically he made, he made a time to kill, got famous and then just bought an RV and just lived in a van for a couple of years, driving around the country and then going to the Amazon and Africa. And if he was alive during the Instagram era, I mean, just the coolest dude ever. Yes. I definitely appreciated him way more after reading that book. What an incredible, incredible person. Unbelievable. Okay. Okay, so I made a top 10 list for my movies in 2024. I saw a lot of movies this year.

54:20And so there was a lot of movies that didn't make the list. I thought it was a good year for movies. At least it was for me. So in, I guess in order-ish, Dune Part 2. Did you see Dune Part 2? I did. All right, just say check or note check if you've seen these movies. Dune Part 2. Yep. Onora? No, on my list. Strange Darling? What's that one? Is that the one over there? You think they're in the 60s, but they're not? What is that? How are you going to Google this? Movie where they think they're in the 60s, but they're not? Okay, that's definitely not the one I'm thinking of. Keep going. I'll find the movie I'm talking about.

54:52Okay. The Substance? Definitely not for you. No. Challengers? Yes. I like that one. Civil War? No. It's not a good catch movie. Probably skip it, but it was great in the theater. Love Lies Bleeding? You did see that movie. I made you see that movie. Yes. That was decent. Smile 2? Definitely not. Mads, which was a Parisian horror film, I believe. Steve, definitely not for you. And lastly, Hitman on Netflix. Okay, I love that. So there's - Oh, and there's so many good movies this year. Well, not some of them. I like Twisters, speaking of Glenn. All right, what's the movie you're thinking of? The one with Florence Pugh and Harry Styles.

55:32Oh, I did not like that. Okay. Oh, Blink twice for that. I like that. I like Blink twice. No, that movie is Don't Worry Darling. That's it. See, it had Darling in the name. Yeah, I liked the first 70%, but the ending just really fell flat for me. But I had fun. I had fun. So Ben, it turns out that I am a Taylor Sheridan stan. Full frontal. I don't know, full bore? Yeah. I told you I was giving up on it, but I started Landman and I really like it and I'm watching Lioness too, so. How far into Landman are you? I think we're only two episodes in, but I'm in. Okay, well, it's not what you think. Like it gets good.

56:05All right, so I'm Googling this Taylor Sheridan as if he hasn't been around for a long time, but I wasn't familiar with his work. Wait, where are you on Sicario? In Sicario 2? I love Sicario. It's a Denis Villeneuve, one of my favorites. Did you watch number two? The Denis Villeneuve-Taylor Sheridan connection? Oh, that's right. Did I watch the second one? I did. Okay. I did. I loved the second one too. I thought it was really good. All right. So he wrote Sicario. He wrote Hell or High Water. I love Hell or High Water. That's a good movie. Yep. He wrote Wind River. He wrote the second Sicario.

56:38I mean, to say nothing of his television, which we're going to say a lot about. Yellowstone, 1883, which I didn't see. Mayor of Kingstown, which people like, I did not see. Yeah, that one's his idea. Okay, Tulsa King, no interest. 1923, I'm in it and I'm liking it. Lioness, which again, I binged the first season. Awesome. And Landman. I mean, this guy, what a run. It's insane, right? And he does a lot of it. I don't know how he does it. What a run. And now he, then he puts himself into these shows too. He acts in the shows. He always gives himself one of the best parts, which is kind of funny.

57:12he acted in Sons of Anarchy oh I didn't know that okay it is yeah it's hard to believe how you can do all these shows at once some people do like one show their whole life and that's it he's very prolific yes alright you know they tell you like when you become successful you have to learn how to say no not him no please don't say no keep going same with Kevin Hart keep going he never says no to any commercial we have to say thank you to all of our listeners we talked this morning we had a a YouTube show come out on Christmas. YouTube and podcasts come out on Christmas. And we had so many people listen and watch.

57:48It was amazing. Great feedback from people. We have the best audience. We have the best audience. So, all right, in conclusion, 2024 was a good year for the stock market. I hope everybody made a lot of money. Let's not plan on making, let's not count on making as much money in 2025. But if we do, great. If we have another 20 % year this year, the dot-com bubble, like we're getting there. I'm telling you, if you have another 25 % year, I'm going to turn straight outright bearish. Okay. We're here in December with 25%. The funny thing is that would put us at 1997. Oh, oh, oh. Then there would be two more years.

58:25I take it back. Okay. Really and truly. Hit the inbox. We'd love to see you there. Animal Spirits at the compoundnews.com. Thank you to our incredible team. Duncan, John, Daniel, Sean, Nicole, Chart Kid, Rob, Graham. Hell of a year. Best to everyone in the new year. Thank you very much for riding with us, and we will see you next time.