The Cost of the American Dream (EP.384)

23:44So you know when you go to parade in the summer and you see the old... The guys walking with their hats that served in the military? Like they're... Is that the silent generation? The white... No, but here's the thing. You used to think that, oh, those are World War II veterans. No, it's Vietnam. They're Vietnam veterans. It's kind of hard to laugh here. There are no more World War II veterans. I mean, I know there's probably a handful, but they're in their 90s. Oh, I know. I mean, think about how old Matt Damon was in Saving Private Ryan and that came out in 1999 or something, right? Remember when he flashes forward and he's old?

24:14Or is that Tom Hanks? That was Matt Damon. Matt Damon. Okay. All right. Paycheck to paycheck. This is from Axios. They did a look at Bank of America card data, and they said, among households making$150K a year or more, nearly double the median household income, 20 % live paycheck to paycheck, using their definition of paycheck to paycheck. And then they say, this is a study, and they say, how can that be? And then this is the answer from their senior economists. One reason is that higher income households may have bought larger, more expensive homes and consequently have bigger mortgages. And often along with bigger homes come bigger insurance costs, property taxes, and utility bills.

24:51So it's not like people who make six figures living paycheck to paycheck are like in the poor house. They still have this financial asset. They have more bills. Yes, they bought bigger houses and technically they're still saving in that house and building equity. It's just that they probably spent more than they should have because their income rose. Yeah, I don't know what the line is, and it's person to person, but at some point, like your spending will rise faster than your income. Yes, for a lot of people, that's the reason. And they make the point, too, that a lot of the paycheck to paycheck stuff doesn't take into account the fact that people are already saving in 401ks, and it's just coming off automatically.

25:26I don't think it. Okay, this is a question that I hate. Are you better off than you were four years ago? Gallup asked this, and they say the majority of Americans feel worse off than four years ago, so they have this economic confidence indicator. and they say 52 % of people feel worse off, 39 % say better, and 9 % say we're the same. And now if you took objective data, housing prices are up 40%, stock market is up 80%, net worth is up 50 % over the past four years. And if you remember four years ago, guess what we were living through, the pandemic. People were still wearing masks. We had all these weird rules about going inside places.

26:00Schools were opening and closing. If you objectively look at, you're better off than you were four years ago. And it has nothing to do with the president, right? So this is not a question that people answer honestly. When they answer this question, they're really answering, who am I going to vote for, right? Like this is another sentiment question that you can just throw out the window. It doesn't mean anything. Well, yes and no. I think that you're right that objectively, if you were to just look at people's bank accounts, their real estate, their brokerage accounts, their retirement accounts, if they have one, objectively, most of the country is better.

26:35If you put a number on it, I'd say 80 % of the population is doing better than they were four years ago. Yeah, I would agree with that. But it does matter in the sense that, like, there is definitely a mood in the country. But, like, look at this up. But don't you agree with that? There is definitely a mood in the country. Yes, but again, I think this is the kind of question I think you can now throw out. It might have made sense in the past, but now you can throw it out the window because of how polarized everything is. Like, look at this next one from the Federal Reserve. Assessment of your own financial well-being.

27:03going back to 2017 it's basically flat right it's about 75 percent of people 70 to 70 to 80 percent somewhere in that range say my financial well-being i'm doing good i'm doing fine but the national assessment keeps going down yeah so this so my point is that like how you ask the question if you say are you better off than you were four years ago everyone instinctively goes ah this political question i know it i'm gonna but if you ask how are you doing on your own and don't put the politics in it, you say, oh, I'm doing great. I don't even know if I should hesitate to even share these thoughts.

27:35But whatever. I feel like if you're offended by this... Are we living in a post-political world? Or maybe I'm projecting that I was talking to Josh about this yesterday. I feel like sort of people are less on edge and more over it than they were in 2016 and 2020. But perhaps I'm just over it. That's me too. I'm totally over it. I want this to be over. I think the, I wish we had like a week long election cycle. Like I don't need to be 18 months or whatever, however long it is. It's way too long. So I'm like, I do kind of feel like a lot of the country would agree with that. But I also don't know if I'm like literally just making that up.

28:15If I'm just projecting my thoughts into the rest of the country. Yeah. Some people obviously love it. Some people are really into this and they go into the battle every day. And I don't know. I do have some thoughts on the election polls and betting markets because I thought that the lesson we took from 2016 and from 2020 and pretty much all of the in-between elections there is that you can't really trust the polls anymore. Like you can't trust, it's not like saying the pollsters are putting their finger on the scale and they're leading us astray, but it's like, what percentage of people actually, what percentage of people in your life would answer a phone call from a pollster and answer honestly?

28:501 % of people you don't? Like how many people do they have to go through to get the people that they actually get for the polls? I know they're doing the best they can, but I guess I'm surprised. I got a call the other day and I don't even know why I answered. I thought of somebody else and I hung up. I mean, I said, sorry, good luck with the election. Now's not a good time. So yeah, who answers? I don't know. I'm surprised that the amount of people who live and die by these polls and the election betting markets saying like, look at the polls, look at the betting markets. They take it every day, the movement as fact.

29:20And I thought the whole lesson was supposed to be, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's pump the brakes. And like we, maybe we, the whole, the way to do it now is like, we don't know. So just be careful. I don't know how anyone can have certainty either way at this point with the election. That's my stance. So everyone has an opinion, whether, whether or not like you really are watching the news and like are really personally invested in the outcome. Everybody's an opinion. I just think like for me, it's, it's been eight years. You know what I mean? It's just like you can't, it's hard to keep up the same level of anxiety because it's just exhausting.

29:56Yes, but I don't know that that's going to go away. It seems like this might be the new world. I don't know. So what, Nick Kolas had some thoughts on the betting markets. It's funny to me because it was 50-50, then 45-55 and 60-40. And to me, that's a toss-up regardless. But some people, again, take that as like, no, that's, this is gospel. I take the betting markets as gospel. I don't, I can't believe anyone in the markets thinks that way. So now we have liquid betting markets. Robinhood just rolled this out. I guess it's been legalized. Kelsey has it, Polymarket, Robinhood. So there's a lot of volume on Polymarket, and people are saying, like, listen, it's a wrap.

30:33Like actual bettors, like actual dollars, not just opinions, are putting their money where their mouth is, and they're saying it's – I don't even want to throw out a number, but it's skewed to Trump. I don't know what the actual number is. Nick Kolas says – Yeah, it's like 60-40. Okay, so Nick Kolas says it doesn't – it's really noise until you get to 70 % in a betting market. I guess it's like the analogy that I gave is like it's like the weather. Like if this is 65 % chance of rain, it's probably not going to rain. But the funny thing, Hillary was at 70%. She lost. So even then. Okay. So anyway, but there's a whale coming in from France that's been reported on and Polymarker that's betting 30,$40 million.

31:05And Nicole has made a point that I was like, oh, yeah, of course. Like now we can't prove this, but it, you know, it's, it sounds reasonable that if you're betting that sort of money, this is like real money. And perhaps, just perhaps, it's to influence other markets. So if there is a perceived outcome, likely outcome for one winner over the other, in this case, Trump, it has geopolitical impacts on currencies, sure, certain commodities. So they're using this 30 – Oh, rates and oil and – So they're using this$30 million to push the narrative here and then investing like$200 million or whatever it is here.

31:47So this is sort of – I don't really care about this$30 because I'm really going to make money on the peso or the whatever. I like that take. I'm just surprised at the amount of markets people who've seen this stuff that like the markets are – we've talked about it already. They're not always right in the fact that people are taking it as gospel. That's the thing that's surprising to me. But I guess people are, again, looking for certainty. It is interesting though. The market seems not, I mean, there's, there's no volatility and it's like people, you talk about like all this anxiety about the political outcome and all that sort of stuff.

32:17Not that the market's end all be all, but it's just, it is interesting that the market seems to not be bothered. So would it be more surprising to you or less surprising if we had like, let's say we have the election night and whatever, I don't know how long it takes to figure out who the winner is. We have the winner and there's just not much movement in the markets at all. Would that surprise you more than seeing a big move in the morning? No. Okay. I think that would be shocking to a lot of market people if we just had kind of a, eh, stock market's up 50 basis points or down 50 basis points, but not really a big move in either direction.

32:47No, I wouldn't be surprised with anything. If you tell me that somebody wins and the market's down 2.5%, I mean, I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised. All right. Let's talk about the American dream. So visual capitalist, somebody sent this to us. The American dream costs$4.4 million. and they broke it down by the lifetime cost. So retirement, owning a new car, a wedding, raising two children, owning a home, pets, yearly vacation, and a funeral. Hey, I can't afford a funeral if I'm going to be paying$4.4 million for this stuff here. Sorry, dump me out back. So what do we think? I think anytime you add these cumulative totals like this, it's going to look weird.

33:30Yeah. and not, because if you ask someone how much money you're going to make over your whole career, like, I don't think people would have, people would understand the, I saw something, I saw a doctor post this on Twitter a couple months ago saying, I'm in my, I'm like 40 years old. And by the time I retire, my lifetime earnings will be like$10 million. And I felt like $10 million. That's crazy. And I looked up, I think the number is probably for a doctor, like 250 a year or something to get that. I, the numbers, you know, I'm not, it's direction right. It's not accurate. But the cumulative total probably makes things seem worse than it actually is for most people.

34:07Is that fair? When you say worse, oh, you mean the cost? Yeah, it makes the cost look way higher than… Here's the question. How many people actually get to these levels? Of what? Spending? Yeah. $800 ,000 for car. By the way, speaking of cars, Dude, Audi still has my car. And they're not, I haven't heard anything from them. Like, I'm just, I think Robbins put 5 ,000 miles on the loaner. Driving to the ground, man. I don't care. Good. I'm not putting my, like, but it's just, what sort of customer service is this? They've had my car since August. I heard from them once. That is crazy. Parts supply problem?

34:49I have no idea. I don't care. Keep it. Okay, back at the envelope from American Dream. So if you make an average of 150K for 30 years, that's the average. That's like$4.5 million. So that's the number. So does that square a little better? Yeah, when you put it that way. When you put it that way. All right, Ben, where are we going next? All right, the Wall Street Journal had a piece on how inflation has cooled, but Americans are still seething over prices. Seething. That's not just mad. They're seething. They interview this woman, and she says, it's hard to adjust. A 54-year-old engineer from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, you lived with these stable prices all your life.

35:29Mentally, it's hard. And she's saying, like, we've had to make some changes. And the thing is, like, prices haven't been stable your whole life. There has been inflation. And I looked at this. I had ChartKid Mac. You're never going to win this, Ben. No, no. I'm just, I'm making a point here. Just go with me. Okay? So, inflation in the 2010s, which included a period of deflation, obviously, in, you know, coming out of the crisis, was 19%, roughly 20 % in total for the whole decade, right? So we had, I think it was like 1.7 % inflation, very low, but we still had 20 % rise in overall cumulative prices.

36:02We've now roughly had that same cumulative rise in the first five years of this century, right? It's been 22 % cumulative inflation. So my whole thing is that we could have 0 % for the rest of the decade and people for a long time would still, obviously the cumulative for this decade is probably gonna be what, 30 % now? it's going to be higher, maybe even more, 35 % after all is said and done, depending on what it comes in at. But the fact that we pulled forward and compressed it, that's the thing people can't handle. They need the slow but sure rise. And it's kind of like early success. If you look at all the stats of the people who go bankrupt from winning the lottery, it's way higher than people who just have a regular stable income.

36:38So the people who slowly but surely build their wealth and their 401k and their IRA from age 25 to 65, they're far less likely to go broke than the person who wins the lottery at age 25 and pulls it all forward. That same thing applies to inflation. It's the earliness or the pull forward or the volatility. That's the thing that affects you psychologically. Does that make sense? Yeah. So that's the problem. It could be the same cumulative price rise, but if you compress the time horizon, it totally screws with your perception of everything. Yeah, well, have you mentally adjusted to the price of everything?

37:13I'm still like$24 for a salad with chicken. Like that will, I don't know at what point will that not boggle my mind. It might take me four years to digest that. I don't know. I guess the new normal thing is just kind of, I don't know if there's anything that I've looked at and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's probably housing prices for me. Like when I first bought my house for what it, they just sold the house that we, so we bought our first house. We lived there for 10 years. We bought it in the 2008 crisis. So we brought it at a fire sale price. And we sold it for a hefty gain. And the people that just sold it again that we sold it to, because we get the Zillow alerts, you know?

37:55It's like, they sold it for how much? It's that, the housing prices thing to me is probably the most shocking. Yeah, that's going to take a longer time. All right, last comment on politics. Just to get ahead of the comments or whatever. Oh, you're going back. All right. The last thing. I understand that like us not having to really worry about who's in the White House is a position of privilege. I understand that. So for everybody that's going to email us and say, well, it's easy for you to say, I get it. I understand. Okay. We are privileged. I get it. Okay. Moving on. There's nothing you can say about politics right now that won't get someone angry.

38:28That's the problem. Should we just delete that whole thing? I know. No, it's probably best. But no, I don't think we said anything that's too up. I know. But you know we're getting emails. Whatever we say. From Bloomberg. Back to normal. Food inflation. Americans are now spending the same percentage of expenditures on food as they did before the pandemic. So food makes up 7.4 % of consumer spending, the lowest since before the pandemic in February of 2020. And they, I don't know who wrote this one for Bloomberg, but they're saying like, what if it was transitory? They look at the average, the CPI back to average.

38:57I know. But the question is, what happens to make it come back? That's, I think that's the thing that people are. When you say it come back, are we talking about price levels? No, no, no, not, that's never going back. Higher, higher prices. What's the thing that makes inflation get back to 5 %? What would it take? I have no idea. You see what happened to oil yesterday? Down 6 % on the day? Oil just goes into— Oil's in a lost two decades, are we, almost? It's crazy. It's funny. There was, like, concerns about, like, the end of oil, like, that we would run out or something. Yes. It's under$70 again.

39:32And obviously, I don't know shit about energy, but, like, obviously alternative energy, clean energy, just there's a lot of supply, which is a good thing. So oil is now at$67 a barrel. That first happened in the spring of 2007. All right, so on a real basis. So even on a nominal basis, oil has gone nowhere for almost two decades. That's insane. Yeah. This is not great. It's about things going up. Bill McBride tweeted, the 30-year mortgage is now 7%. That sucks. It's unbelievable because the conventional wisdom was always, okay, rates go up much higher. You have the same level of activity. Prices have to fall.

40:15Instead, the housing market has gone, no, no, no, no, no. Rates go up. Activity falls. Prices go up a little bit. And that's what's going to happen again. I think, I was listening to Joe and Tracy. They had somebody on talking about the spread between mortgage rates and the 10-year. And like, why is it so high? It's like, investors demand a premium because it's, the term is like, there's negative convexity in the mortgage bond market. Yeah, that was a very good episode. Yeah, because if rates go down, people prepay and that's it. Like you just, you get your money back and now you have to invest in lower interest rates.

40:51And we know, we don't know, we think that rates are probably gonna go down and people are probably gonna refinance. And so mortgage buyers, mortgage bond buyers are demanding a premium as well they should. Yeah, that was a very good episode. Tom Graff, I think is the guy's name. All right, the Wall Street Journal is coming around to the Ben Carlson way of thinking. America's primed for home renovation resurgence. And they show the amount of spending has gone up considerably. They talk about the amount of $35 trillion in home equity. They did this poll where they say, they recently polled almost 500 households and they broke down into two groups of people with renovations.

41:2430-somethings planning work in the$60 ,000 range and then older homeowners eyeing updates that will cost$30 ,000. And they say the former are motivated by marriages, babies, and career changes. They are less sensitive to interest rates and prone to remodel sooner. And I think you and I fall into this category. And here's what I'm going to make the pitch for. People ask us a lot about home equity line of credit questions and stuff and renovating. If you locked into 3 % mortgage, your capacity to borrow is way, way higher than you think. Because if you had to buy a new home right now, you were forced to, and you had to take on that 7 % mortgage and a higher home price, you'd be borrowing more money.

41:56So that's why I'm okay taking out a home equity line of credit and borrowing a little bit. Because if I was in the market for a new house, I'd be borrowing more anyway. Now the opposite, the frugal person would say, no, no, no, you just save it. Save the difference. That's the thing and that makes sense to me too. To each their own. You know, there should be, not that I would read it, but there should be like a new homeowner manual, a handbook, if you will, for some of the things that you need to know. Like for example, oh, your boiler has filters that need to be changed and if it's leaking, don't just put a bucket underneath it for four years.

42:32Actually look into it. And I say this because... 40 years? Three. I don't know. When did I move in here? Yeah, five years. How often do you have to change the bucket? We change the bucket. It's cold in my house. There's a big difference between 60 degrees inside and 60 degrees outside, I learned. Yesterday, I took a warm shower because my hands were starting to freeze. My fingers were starting to freeze as I was typing. So you have no heat in your house right now? I have no heat in my house. So I called my HVAC guy. Shout out to Raphael. Why don't you just sell your Peloton if that's going to, if you need to.

43:07That guy's the best. He's showing me the boiler and the filter. And he's like, Michael, dude, you got to stay on top of this stuff. And I was like, nobody ever told me. So we were going to get a new dishwasher. Our dishwasher finally kicked the bucket because we just use it all the time, at least once a day. And I'm going to show you a picture of it because it's got a nice new rack for putting things in nice and orderly. And they're like, if you buy this lower end model, you have to change the filter once a year. And if you buy this higher end model, you don't have to change the filter. And I'm looking at the lower end model, which we currently have.

43:36And I go to my wife. I'm like, I've never changed a filter in a dishwasher. What? I didn't know that dishwashers had a filter. Yeah. Did you? No. Obviously, you don't. The way that you load your dishwasher. Of course not. Actually, Raphael came from my house. So I was laughing with him last night when my hot water went out last night. It'll be fixed today. But credit to me. What a husband I am. You have Raphael and Tito. You basically have the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. running a house over there. So I filled the bathtub for the boys and I didn't realize that the hot water had conked out. So I said, all right, they could skip one that it's fine.

44:08She goes, but I need to think about it. So I filled the bathtub and I boiled like eight pots of water did nothing, did absolutely nothing. The water was still freezing. So living in medieval times. Yeah. How did people do it back then? But anyway, so I called, I was joking that I called Rafael probably four years ago when my air condition conked out and all that I needed to do was replace the filters. You know, like there's like, you have like vents up top in the ceiling and there's just that little tiny filter that you get from Home Depot for four bucks. Do you know about that? Yes. Yeah, of course you do because you're a homeowner.

44:42I didn't know about that. My father-in-law tells me when to do these things. I don't know them. Here's my one pitch on renovation project. To your point, to each their own. Here's what I will say. If you want to do, if you really want to do a home renovation project, you want to redo that kitchen or bath, like, I don't think you wait. I don't, I don't think you wait and say, I'm going to wait for, I don't think prices are going any lower. If that's your thinking, I think if you, if you have the means, you do it. I don't think you wait because I think if you wait a year, price is going to be higher.

45:12If we had another year, the price is going to be even higher. I don't think the demand for this stuff is going down. Insert the Jennifer Love Hewitt, uh, meme. What are you waiting for. There you go. By the way, I think they're bringing it back. I don't know if they're making a show. We spoke about it. It's a show or another movie. A reboot of what I know you did last summer. Terrible movie that scared me in the 90s. Not a good movie. Great cast, though. Right? Sarah Michelle Gellar. See, that's my kind of horror movie. Oh, Ryan Felipe. You definitely love that guy in the 90s. Oh, Freddie Prince.

45:42You were definitely a big Freddie Prince guy. Freddie Prince Jr.? Were you not? Come clean. I mean, She's All That is... Listen, She had glasses on and her hair in a ponytail. And they took the glasses off, put the pony down, and she's beautiful. I was not another teen movie guy. That was hilarious. That introduced us to Chris Evans. That was a funny one. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh, actually, speaking of movies and scary stuff, somebody emailed us. It is Halloween after all. By the way, we have a Halloween party on Saturday night, which I'm not a Halloween party guy. That might shock you. So what are you going to wear for your costume?

46:15So I wasn't – I'm, like, not involved in this. So Robin like picked out, like she got, I'm going to be like coach stable and she's going to be a ref. So coach, that's a coach of the giants. So she got me like a, a head piece and a, I don't know. I don't even know what she got me, but I woke up this morning. I'm like, wait, I don't want to do that. I hate the giants. I can't stand, I can't take it anymore. You should wear your, you should wear your headset. You're wearing right now. I should be a podcaster. No, I'm saying wear the headset. Cause the coach was a headset. No, she got me a headset.

46:41Oh, okay. Uh, I just, I don't want to be him because I hate us. But anyway. Oh, I'm sorry. So here's – I distracted myself twice. So somebody emailed us asking about horror movies like slasher movies from the 80s. Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Freddie, et cetera. And he was wondering if those movies are like so dated that if somebody was to wear a hockey mask on Halloween, would kids today just think that they were being a goalie? That's a good question. I think – I don't – We went to a... There's this house... 10 minutes from our house that the people do a crazy Halloween... Like, their house is on a trail and they do these crazy Halloween decorations.

47:24People walk by it and look at them. And, like, you walk by stuff and it moves and jumps out at you or whatever. And there was a Michael Myers mask. And it freaked the kids out even though they'd never heard or seen of that movie. So I think it still plays. Oh, interesting. I'm not a big fan of, like, haunted jump-out people even though I like horror movies. I took Kobe to one a couple of years ago, and he wasn't scared because he had no idea, but it was like dark, and there was like... I did not enjoy it. That was too scary for me. You can't handle it? Even being a horror movie guy? Like spook walks, whatever they're called.

47:54Okay. Doesn't do it for me. Question from our listener. We are expecting our second child this month and are coming up on school decisions for our oldest. We're thinking through the public versus private K-12. Spreadsheet warrior perspective, the opportunity cost of private school is gargantuan, well under the seven figures over time. However, there are upsides to it that we value. We have access to highly rated public schools in my area. So this is an option as well. Since you have young ones, I'm sure you've thought through this at length. Curious your opinion. Disclaimer, this is obviously like, this is up to you.

48:24My thinking is, if you have a highly rated public school, I don't see the reason. I think private school, unless you have a kid that needs a certain specific area or something, I don't do you think the private versus public is really going to matter for your kid if you have a good public school that's my that's how I think about it and this is I went to a private school when I grew up oh you did well Catholic school does that count yeah okay I would have been just fine going to a public school that's my that's my line of thinking I don't want to I know nothing about private school I'm sure there's people who have very strong opinions on this but it depends on where you live I have great there's great public schools where I live so it wouldn't even occur to me to send.

49:07Your kids are going to public schools? Yeah. My kids getting out of daycare and going to public schools was like the biggest raise I've gotten in the past 10 years. That's just my line of thinking, especially if this person is a spreadsheet warrior. Oh, so let's be honest. I'm a man of the people. I'm a public school guy, okay? That's who I am. Or you could do a you could split your children up and send one to private, one to public and see which one ends up better. But it depends. Like if the option is sending them to like a crappy public school, like why would you do that if you if you could afford to not do that.

49:35So I don't know. It depends. But yeah, they have highly... Okay, this is a good feedback on Waymo. I was one of the earliest people to take an unsupervised ride in a Waymo here in Phoenix. They're fun and yes, like magic, for about five minutes. Then it gets oddly boring. They're one of my favorite things to do with visitors. However, given a chance, I will take Uber 10 times out of 10. Why? Because they're painfully slow and kind of annoying. They won't go a millisecond over the speed limit. They won't pass public buses. They take dumb routes. They often won't drop you at your exact location and will make you walk, et cetera.

50:02I've seen some videos where there's bumper to bumper traffic and the Waymo won't just nose out and get in line. So no one lets them in. So I can see the painfully slow part would really get to me because I've been in Ubers in New York before where they're weaving through five lanes of traffic and they're getting you there fast. Waymo sounds like socialism. I can see how that would be annoying. That actually makes sense to me. That sounds awful. All right. I got some stories. Okay. Kids puking in the middle of the night. We've been pretty darn lucky on kids puking in the middle of the night. But the other night, my daughter, my oldest, came in the room and said, hey, I threw up.

50:37And I walk in a room and there's a big pile of just sitting there. Smell does not go away. Oh, no, not at all. And she, for 36 hours, couldn't keep anything down. Couldn't keep water down. Couldn't keep food down. She threw up everything. And when that happens to your kid, it basically just puts a speed bump in your life. Like, your whole life has to stop when your kid is sick like that. Like, my wife had to take her to the hospital for IV fluids. we've always been lucky with that, but it's, it's tough. She's better now. All good. Kid puking in the middle of the night though. Like I was like, oh man, we've been so lucky.

51:10And then she threw up so many times. Awful. Awful. I've got a teen fashion take. Okay. Okay. This is coming from a guy who was Mr. GQ in his high school. Remember? Right. Voted on by my peers. Literally Mr. GQ. Like that, like that was a superlative that you won. Like in your senior year yearbook, you vote on like this person is most likely to be a CEO someday. This person, I got Mr. GQ, meaning I was best dressed in high school. So we've been going to some of the high school football games for my kids. Now they have friends. They're getting older. They want to go to the games and whatever, run around.

51:43They don't even watch the games. They just run around with their friends. I've got to take on teen fashion. It's time to step it up, teens, because I think the teens look like they work from home. They're wearing all pajama pants and joggers, and they're not, you know, where's the jeans with a flannel shirt and the vest that's what I wore in high school to the football games you did? I mean come on and that still plays today you know like I didn't see one pair of denim on a kid in high school they're all wearing joggers or even like pajama pants like step it up kids like have some respect on yourself that's my teen fashion take I was a slobby I was a slob of a looking kid in high school I definitely like stoned all the time just backwards hat dirty backwards hat I don't know.

52:31Not a teen fashion guy. Again, it might surprise you. Okay. I'm just saying, like, I think the pandemic probably changed things in them, but, like, I'm shocked at the amount of kids that are just way too laid back. Like, have some respect on yourself, teens. How about the mullet? There are a lot more mullets these days. The mullet is prominent. I don't mind it. I'm not going to lie. I forgot last week. Oh, no. No. I didn't forget. It was this week. I'm sorry. On the plane ride home, I was sitting next to a dude that was using a handkerchief, which is just so gross. Who uses a handkerchief? This dude was wiping his nose for four hours.

53:12Yeah, that's gross. I mean, throw it away. It's walking season up in the Northeast. Great walking weather. And I was walking around my town, which I do frequently, on phone calls, business phone calls, I might add. Not just walking. That's your thing. and every time you're on calls me, I see this. I'm always walking. I saw a delivery for like the big water jugs. I think the brand is Crystal Springs, like the big ones that go like, I guess, upside down into somebody's water tower. How is that still a thing? Those are good though. You have those? No. You mean like the water cooler? The water cooler for the house?

53:58You have that? Oh, no, no, not for the house. But those things, when I was in college, we lived in Philadelphia for a semester. And we had that. We had one of those in our house, in our apartment. And that was the greatest thing ever on the weekends. Just the cold water waiting for you after now. We had that in college too. But for homes, what's wrong with the Brita? Oh, okay. I don't know. Yeah, that's a good point. Most refrigerators come with a water filter too. But listen, I listen to the market. So obviously there's demand for there. so maybe I'm wrong. All right, I've noticed two bubbles, Ben.

54:31Bubble number one. Bubble number one. Water bottles? Not this one specifically. I don't know what this is. This is called Zulu. Gigantic water bottles. I walked into Target and there's a whole section of oversized water bottles. A whole section. This will not be a thing in five years. The thing is, it starts young. Did you ever water bottle when you were a kid? No. Oh, yeah, yeah, I know kids have water bottles these days. My kids have water bottles at all times. Like my kids have the big Stanley cups. They have a water bottle. They have a sports water bottle. They have a house water bottle, a school water bottle.

55:02But we don't need 47 different variations of water bottles. Here's another thing that we don't need 47 varieties of that I think is in a bubble. Greek yogurt. You know how much I love to grocery shop. I'm a big Greek yogurt guy. Who doesn't love Greek yogurt? Do we need 40 brands? I agree. There's too many of them. A lot of shelf space. Get the zero sugar ones. They taste just as good. I don't do that. You don't need all the fat and sugar. I need it. Okay. All right. Recommendations. Can I go first? Please. All right. You said you went to see the movie Trap in the theaters recently, a month or two ago.

55:33And when you explained the plot to me, you said, hey, it's a serial killer who is brought to a concert with his daughter and they're trying to trap him in. I thought, wow, that actually, and you said the ending's kind of ridiculous, but the premise. No, no, no, no. Not kind of. Ludicrous. I will insert one more thing. I went with a friend. And so we had a great time literally chuckling at the absurdity of it. had I watched it by myself on my couch, I probably would have thought differently. This is one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. Oh my Lord, was it bad. But did you have fun? Not just bad, but bad because it took itself seriously.

56:09That's the problem. No. There's some movies that don't, you don't think it took itself too serious? No, not at all. I thought Josh Hartnett was very cringe and I'm a pretty big Josh Hartnett fan. Here's the other thing. There are no serial killers anymore. I don't think serial killers can exist anymore. And also, he's a parent who's a serial killer. There's no way you could have time to be a serial killer as a parent. Do not nitpick M. Night. Don't nitpick M. Night. Like, stop. Ugh. It was—I liked the Cabin in the Woods one. This movie was really, really bad. Like, in a cringey way. Yeah, yeah.

56:39No shit. But, okay, so you didn't even have fun? Like, I had fun watching it. I had to finish it just because I—but the—it just—it was off the—the plot itself, like, how he kept escaping, it didn't make any sense. Exactly. Okay. Speaking of serial killers, there's a movie on Netflix called Woman of the Hour where by Anna Kendrick, I think she directed it too. It was a true story in the 70s of a guy which is obviously got to be the height of serial killers in the 70s. I feel like all of them took place in the 70s. Yeah. That was like serial killer decade. And it was this woman who went on the dating game show.

57:10You know where you have one woman sit and then there's three guys on the other side and you can't see them and they answer questions? It was that show and there was a guy who was literally a serial killer who went on that show and she picked him as a date. And it's one of those stories where the true story of nature of it is better than the movie itself. But it was only like 90 minutes, so not bad. But it's one of those ones where I've never even heard of the serial killer. I think this guy killed anywhere between 10 and 130 people in the 70s. Speaking of dating shows, how great was Singled Out?

57:38Remember Jenny McCarthy and then Cameron Lutcher? I would watch that when I got home from school, for sure. Who hosted it? What was the dude's name? Chris something? Chris Hardwick. Yeah, great hair. Not bad. I started watching The Penguin. I'm two episodes in. So I'm guessing I'm going all Michael Batnick takes here. Here's my one nitpick with it. Good show. No, no, no. It doesn't even, it doesn't even, just wait till episode four before you, before you, but fine. No, but the only nitpick is not, not with the plot, but it's with just, I love Colin Farrell, but him in the fat suit in the makeup, like it's hard for me to take it seriously knowing that he's in all the makeup and stuff.

58:13Okay, I understand. Come back to us after episode four, okay? All right, I'm two episodes in. I like it, but that's my only nitpick. Okay. What do you got? All right. I saw Adam Neiman, a film critic who I very much enjoy, tweet something about a movie, like a horror movie that he will judge people's taste based on this movie. And I'm like, huh, this doesn't even look familiar to me. So I Googled it. The movie is Kill List, by the way. Kill List. So I Google it, and it shows – Ben, look at the doc. It says – it shows already watched. Check. And I'm thinking to myself, whoa, that's a cool feature.

58:50how does it know that I watch this? Wait a minute. I don't remember watching this. I've never seen this movie. So I fired it up on, I think it's on Prime. And it turns out I did watch this movie. And it is a very good movie. So who knew that you watched it? Google did. Look at this. I put it on the doc. It says already watched. Check. Interesting. And I had no memory of this movie until when I got in. I was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Very good movie. I did forget I watched this. I feel like you could get in trouble with some other types of adult entertainment. Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to speak of horror Terrifier 3 crosses $50 million at the worldwide box office and officially becomes the highest grossing unrated film even surpassing the highest grossing NC-17 films Damian Leone the creator tweeted that I don't love the Terrifier movies it's just not necessarily for me but it is incredible that there's people love this shit horror is like really killing it at the box office I guess the indie horror is the one thing that can really break through.

59:50Those are like micro caps that go to like, right? Yeah, because they cost nothing to make. So one of those movies is a movie called Strange Darling, which I believe I've pounded the table on here before. I love this movie. And I, so here's what I do, Ben. I don't know about you. I don't watch trailers for these movies. So like, yeah, Gladiator 2, like, yeah, I'll see the trailer, I guess, if it's on. But I don't go seeking out trailers. Oh, because they give away too much in the trailers these days, right? So I just, I raw dog it. So like, I was talking to Arts and a couple of the guys that we work with about another movie called Mads that I saw Sean Fentasy tweet about.

1:00:23So I'm in. If I see Sean Fentasy tweet about a horror movie, I'm watching it. I had no idea what it was about. And Arts is like, oh, I could have already probably guessed a twist. I'm like, why are you watching the trailers? Just go watch the movie. Just go watch the movie. No expectations. So anyway, Strange Darling is one of these such movies. Like again, I could probably guess a twist. Like just go watch the movie. Strange Darling, Table Pounder. Great movie. I'm sorry. You're the opposite to me of Sean Fentasy. These movies just don't do it for me, so no offense to you, but I just won't watch it.

1:00:51No offense taken. We watched Mrs. Doubtfire with our kids the other day. So good. I don't think there's anyone past or present who could have played that part that Robin Williams played. I think he's the only person who could have played that. Did I call him the greatest comedic actor of all time? The thing is, I don't think he's, there's no comedic actors who could also pull off what he did in Good Will Hunting as well. No. He really was a one of one. So I saw that movie, that hit home because I saw the movie, I think I saw the movie like a year after my parents got divorced. I was like six years old.

1:01:20So that movie really f***ed up in a good way. I feel like the 90s had a lot of divorce movies. You don't see those as much anymore. It's true. I love that movie. Yeah, it really did. And my kids were into it too. How great was Pierce Brosnan? The whole cast, even the kids were great. What a movie. What a movie. All right, Ben. Happy election week. No, that's next week. Happy Halloween. Do we need to tease our election special we're doing? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So know what are your thoughts next Tuesday. It's election night. So on Wednesday, myself, Ben, Josh, and Callie, we are going to talk about the market's reaction to the election.

1:01:56And maybe there will be a big reaction and maybe there won't be. We'll record Animal Spirits as usual on Tuesday. So the Wednesday show will be – I'll share my thoughts about if this person wins, this will happen, if this person wins, that will happen. So I'll have those two forks made up, those two paths. But yeah, then we're going live on Wednesday. Tune in at the compound. Email us, animalspirits at compoundnews.com. See you next time.