What is Upper Middle Class? (EP. 422)

26:50We've now had three bear markets in the course of this decade alone. People who invested in Bitcoin have sat through 70, 80 % crashes on multiple occasions. I think that's one of the reasons people don't freak out anymore is because they're more used to them. Whereas in the past, you had this long period where people didn't have this stuff to live through. Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. I wonder if people in the late 90s like legitimately thought or at least behaved as if it was never going to end. And I think people now know that, you know, it will end, it will resume, it will continue, it'll set setbacks.

27:22And you deal with it, yeah. All right, so this is from Bucco Capital. Someone tweeted, everyone has been taught, which I think is completely absurd, that investing is easy. And Bucco Capital says, and I think there's obviously a little bit of tongue-in-cheek here. He says he's exactly wrong. Investing is easy. Buy the 500 best businesses in the world. Enjoy your life. Play with your kids. Buy the dip. Never sell. Be an active member of the community. Double your money roughly every seven to 10 years by doing nothing. Investing is easy. You think Bucco is being facetious? I don't. Okay. Okay. Maybe he's being totally.

27:55Here's the way that I would phrase this. I would never say investing is easy. I would say investing is simpler than it's ever been. That's a simple form of investing. But there are always going to be periods where it's not very. There's no way anyone could live through the 2000s. Huh? Like April 2025? Yeah, that was scary. There was certainly. Dude, you were the most payash you've ever been. Yeah, and I was still buying stocks. No, I know. I'm just saying like that was not scary. Yeah, of course. Yeah, we had a, our president was literally trying to tank the market. That was kind of scary. But I'm talking about the 2000 period.

28:29There's no way anyone lived through that and go, ah, this is easy. Right? And so there are, there's still going to be, I would say 75 % of the time it's easy. How's that? Yeah. But those other 25 % are still going to test you. But I would say the Buffett quote of it's investing is simple, but not easy. I still subscribe to that. And the other thing is, it's really hard for people to just do this. Put money into something and then go live your life and not be tempted because there are a million different things to invest in these days. Why am I not invested in this? Well, this person got rich doing this.

29:01Look at how quickly they got rich. That's the hard part. Yeah. Yeah, no. That's the not easy part. I would and will never say investing is easy because, forget even about the bear markets and stuff, but to your point, the temptation. I mean, there's always something trying to distract us from… But investing is simpler than it's ever been. All right, another email about the sign of the times. You guys keep talking hood, Robin Hood, obviously, and maybe to trim after this run. I bought this in March for about$37 a share in my Roth. What's it at now? And believe strongly in the future for them. Obviously, easier after 180 % gain.

29:33Tell me I'm crazy to just leave this alone forever-ish. It is now 50 % of my Roth, but still only 20 %-ish of investable assets. Not asking for financial advice. I wrote it back and said, hey, does this make you nervous that Robinhood is 50 % of your Roth IRA? And he replied, not really. I'm 40 and have two kids in private school. Parents help a bit with that. But no, I kind of learned over the years to just be hands-off and let winners ride. If I give back 20 % after a run of 1 ,000%, oh well. My 401k and traditional IRA are all indexes, so I just try to single in during major pullbacks, ride that beta for a bit and level back off into VOO and QQQ.

30:07But Robinhood feels different in the moment. Go figure. here. Okay. This is, this has nothing to do with Robinhood. By the way, I love how he ended the email, not asking for financial advice. Uh, okay. Good disclaimer. This is not a statement about Robinhood. We've spoken about this many, many, many times in this podcast. Most stocks suck and most stocks eventually die. Most stocks are not worth buying and holding. And what do I mean by that, this is a stat that I've, that I'll repeat 70%. No, no, no. I'm sorry. 40 % of all stocks in the Russell 3000. This is from JP Morgan's agony in the ecstasy of stock.

30:5040 % of all Russell 3000 stocks from 1980 have had a 70 % decline from which they never recover. Four in 10. Okay. And Robinhood's the opposite. Robinhood fell 90 % and it did recover. Yeah. So again, Robinhood is an outlier. It's done incredibly well. But it fell 90 % three, two years ago. So most stocks are not worth buying. Most individual stocks are not worth buying and holding forever. Now, maybe Robinhood will be the Nvidia, not literally Nvidia, but maybe Robinhood will be the one. I have no idea. But just keep that in the back of your mind. Yeah. A concentrated position like this, it's a way for you to make a lot of money and lose a lot of money.

31:34And you just got to figure if it's 50 % of my Roth or 20 % of total and it gets cut in half and it stays that way for three, four or five years, how am I going to feel? Yeah. Now, if you say to yourself, guys, I get it. And I'm comfortable with that because of the reasons I just laid out, then more power to you. Yeah. But I would say more people are comfortable taking that kind of stance now than they have been in a long time. But it's also not irrational because if you are, let's say, doing all of the other things right, right, with your 401k and just saving in indexes and whatever and you want to get a little nuts with some individual stocks, okay, cool.

32:14Yeah, yeah, just go into the right light open. Because it is also true that you can have a 100 bagger and if you get one of those, it can change your life. Right. All right, Sean sent us this. I think this is from Datatrack. It's the University of Michigan It's from Paulson. Oh, sorry. Looks like a data chart chart, right? It does. So they look at the consumer sentiment by wealthiest 25%, less the consumer sentiment of the poorest 25%. It's crazy that we have the ability to look through this data like this. And this is from Sean. And the 25 % wealthiest feel nearly the same as the 25 % poorest on the survey responders.

32:54Sentiment among the rich is only 3.3 points better than the poor, which is lower than 98 % of the time since 1979. 79. That's kind of wild to me. Do you make anything of this? Especially with the stock market booming. I just, I continue to think you can't trust sentiment readings. Yeah, to me, this is interesting, but it's garbage can. It's interesting in the sense that it confirms that surveys are nonsense, especially now. Yeah. Yeah. I think now they've, the internet has broken surveys forever. Yeah. Even though we'll still probably use them. All right. Walter Bloomberg last week tweeted, this was going around on Twitter for like a half hour.

33:28People said, all right, Trump's following, Trump's firing Powell. Sources say, I don't know who these sources are, but if it's, listen, if it's in all caps, you pay attention, right? I think I tweeted this. The all caps guys, they're wrong like 87 % of the time, right? But they don't care. All right, but like, I think this is, he's just pulling from a feed. I know, he's not, he's not, yeah. But a lot of people were saying like, listen, Trump is going to fire Powell. And then they went to a news conference and Trump said, no, I'm not going to fire him. He's done in like seven months anyway. Here's my take that I've had for a while now.

33:56I say Trump is or Powell is the last independent Fed chair that we'll ever have. From now on, people are going to say, no, you know what? We need to control this somehow. And I think this is the kind of thing where even if let's say Trump did fire Powell, people were saying, listen, stocks are going to crash. Rates are going to spike. The dollar is going to crash. Confidence is going to be gone. I actually think the opposite. I think you'd probably get an algo driven thing for like a couple hours. And in the short term, things would be fine. Problems would be more like longer term. Is there a trust faith issue?

34:27I don't think the markets would really crash. I don't think they would give a shit at all. Why would this be the thing that crashes market? Who cares? Oh no, we've lost, we've lost a political norm. What? How does this impact NVIDIA's earnings? Nobody cares. And let's say if, let's say presidents in one, whoever parties in office does kind of semi-control. The funny part is that Trump did elect Powell. I think the Fed matters most. Did you see that he was saying that like, he's not sure how he got appointed. Yeah. And I think the Fed matters most during a crisis situation. Like, I think the best thing Powell did was keep things afloat during the pandemic when things really, like, the markets really could have torn apart at the seams.

35:09Like, the credit markets, we could have had a nastiness. So the fact that they pulled things together and kept them together during a crisis, I think that's the thing that matters most. You could quibble with, ah, they should have raised rates six months earlier here. They should have cut six months later here. Whatever the thing, I think those... quibble. I think those on the edges, I don't think it matters as much as people think. I think the thing that matters most to the Fed is what they do during a crisis. And then obviously, like the Fed has never pulled a punch bowl away too early in a bubble situation.

35:37They've never done that. They've shown they've never done that. So I don't know. Like, would this just mean more volatility in the rates markets and in the equity markets? Probably. Because guess what? I don't think the stock market would care. No, I'm saying if the president is kind of telling someone in someone's ear, because you've heard stories in the past about Nixon yelling at his Fed chair and his Fed chair telling him to get lost in shoving matches and stuff. The president has tried to control the Fed chair in the past before. But if let's say the president does have control or the Congress or whoever is in power and they just they keep rates lower than they probably should be.

36:13Does it does it just introduce a little more volatility in the markets? Is that the end game? I don't know. I saw somebody like asking, what's going to end the party this time? Yeah, that was me. I asked that. No, no, no, no. I saw this on Twitter. Okay. Particularly the meme-er areas of the market. Oh, okay. Like in 2021, it was obvious. It was aggressive rate cuts. Just suffocated these companies, right? Like there was no count. Rate hikes me. Yeah, what did I say? Cuts. Oh, my bad. suffocated these markets. But this is happening with rates at 4.5%. No, but the point is the next move in rates is going to be lower.

36:56Right. So it's got to be something. That's an economic slowdown. I guess. That's the thing. That's the thing. None of these... A meme... The meme stock stuff has never lived through a recession. In a recession, a lot of these companies fall 80%. No, they did. In 2022. I mean, to me, that was a recession for these stocks. Yeah, but I'm saying in an actual economic recession, these stocks will all fall 70 or 80%. That's what will happen. But again, I think these stocks did experience, these companies experienced a legitimate recession. What do you think happens to Bitcoin in a recession? Is Bitcoin down 50 % in the next recession?

37:33Yeah. Probably, right? Yeah. Yeah, I, yeah, that makes sense to me. All right. From Colin Roche, I guess we'll talk tariffs. A lot of people, I've seen a lot of people say like, see tariffs, they're here and they didn't cause inflation. It didn't cause a recession. Everyone who was worried about them is wrong. But Cullen says, Cullen calls them the teeny tiny tariffs. So he says in the first six months of the year, we've incurred 86 billion in total custom duties. That's like tariff revenue brought in. In 2024, in total, we brought in$82 billion. So he says we're on track to double the custom tariffs.

38:11But that's just not much in the grand scheme of things. is he says back in April when the tariff banter was at its peak, the administration was saying that they could bring in$3 trillion. And that's why the market panicked because that's a colossal tax increase. So he's saying like, if you just go buy the receipts, not buy what people are saying, not buy the tariff rates that people are saying in letters, it really, the numbers haven't increased all that much because we're not bringing in that much revenue. So we haven't done them yet. And that's why the market doesn't care. Because yes, it's some prices have probably raised.

38:42And that's that's a, but in the, it's a drop of the bucket in terms of the economy. $82 billion, $86 billion in the grand scheme of a$30 trillion economy doesn't matter. Right. I don't know what the number would have to go to make it, make an impact, but it's a lot, it's a lot higher than it currently is. We haven't gotten a lot of emails about Bitcoin, which is kind of interesting. Like there was much more, did we talk about this last week that there was much more fervor when Bitcoin hit 60 than when it hit 120? I think we got a lot more emails when the ETF came out. Yeah. All right, anyway. Yeah, you're right.

39:22It's because crypto is becoming TradFi. That's why. It's becoming just more accepted. I guess. Yeah. So somebody wrote in the subject line that was still trying to understand Bitcoin. I've been in the market for a few years now, and I would like to think I've built a pretty sound foundation for someone at my age of 27. I genuinely enjoy following the market, but I've never really understood Bitcoin. The fact that it was created by some mysterious guy named Satoshi, there's no clear use for Bitcoin. Imagine trying to explain to your grandfather, so this is a modest creator, no central authority, no real use case, but trust me, it's worth$120 ,000 per coin.

39:55I'd love to have some exposure, but I just don't understand it. Can you help the listeners make sense of Bitcoin beyond it being a hedge against inflation or the dollar? Isn't that what gold is for? At least I could touch things with gold. Right now, it still feels like one big myth that everyone's just decided to believe in. I saw someone tweet last week, like, um, people just created a bunch of numbers and now it's worth$2 trillion or something. When you break it down to its core components in that, in those terms, it does seem like, wait, what? Yeah. That, that, that still is the, that's, that's not part.

40:26A lot of people at the beginning always have trouble wrapping their head around. Wait, so we just decided this is worth this and now it is. Yeah. All right. So my answer to that is, you know, the scene in Dune 2 where Javier Bardem screams, I don't care what you believe, I believe. That's how I think about Bitcoin. Yeah. It's a religion. It is. And when I say like, I don't care what you believe, I believe, I'm saying like, that's what the Bitcoiners would say. That's like me. And I definitely don't want to convince anyone of anything about Bitcoin because that's, you know, that's for you to decide on.

41:04And certainly at 120 ,000, I'm not like, yes, buy more because it's going up. But for me, it's just - I can't wait for the Photoshop of you in the Javier Bardem doing thing. Can I be Shalmey in that one, maybe? It's just, for me, it's always been about this. It is, for me, supply demand. That's it. You're an Econ 101 guy. I mean, I've been saying this for how long? there is more people that want to buy Bitcoin than people that want to sell Bitcoin. Yeah. And then this guy would come back and say, well, why don't they just create another Bitcoin? Okay. Why don't they just? Yeah. The thing is, they kind of tried.

41:43Remember Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash? Bitcoin is a$2 trillion asset. It's a brand at this point. It is a brand and you can't just make a new brand. Why doesn't a company just make a new Netflix? I mean, maybe a ridiculous comparison, but all right. Anyway, getting back to the supply demand, because I don't care to have the philosophical debate. I don't care if you think it's an inflation edge or a dollar edge or whatever. I guess at this point, wait. I don't necessarily believe any of that, but I don't care. What? But if you don't get it yet, you're probably never going to get it. Well, listen, if I am this person and I've watched Bitcoin go from 10 ,000 to 120 ,000, I'm not like all of a sudden be like, oh yeah, now I'm going to buy.

42:26Right. Exactly. And you kind of shouldn't. Oh, shit. Now I get it. Now I know why I should not want some. Like, you can't have the mental flexibility to do that because it's just too self-destructive. Yeah. And we said, like, if you didn't love it at 60, you shouldn't love it at 120 either. So Bitwise has this chart that shows new Bitcoin supply since spot ETPs launched versus Bitcoin purchased. and it is over two to one in terms of Bitcoin purchase just by the ETPs to say nothing of spot, to say nothing of treasury and Michael Saylor and all that he's doing. Here's this chart from Todd Soren showing the huge swing from Bitcoin and ETH outflows in early April in the first quarter to$11.7 billion in.

43:15How much is in the Ethereum ETFs now? Do you have any idea? It's a 25 billion. I don't know. Okay. Anyway, so for me, I'm not here to explain to somebody why they shouldn't buy Bitcoin. Again, I don't care about the philosophical discussion, but there are enough true believers, enough people that for them, it's a religion. And there are just more people that want to buy than want to sell. And at some point, there will be an equilibrium. I had the same feelings as this guy when I first started learning about it. And I'd say 2017-ish is when I really started like, okay, when that first thing happened.

43:44And instead of banging my head against the wall, I just bought some, just a little bit. I didn't buy a lot. I bought a little bit. And I don't know. The first time I bought it was at like$3 ,000 or something. And I didn't put a lot of money in. And I just had to do it just to like schmuck insurance, whatever you want to say. That it made me feel better about watching the madness around it. Yeah. Yeah, me too. And not here to defend that I'm not a technology person. But like to say that, oh, it's just like this made up thing. Like, well, I mean, the blockchain, the Bitcoin blockchain works really well.

44:14Yeah. Unhackable so far, obviously. It just keeps working. And that's not nothing. All right. It would be kind of hilarious, though, if AI got so smart, it just hacked Bitcoin. If AI got so smart, why wouldn't it hack the Federal Reserve? Why wouldn't it go after your bank accounts? Why wouldn't it hack Schwab? Why wouldn't it hack Bitcoin? Because Bitcoin… Hacking Bitcoin would be way more funny. That'd be way more hilarious to the internet. Right? True. All right. This one's from Datatrack. Nick and Jessica. They show… We've talked about this a little bit. Remember, we talked to David LaValle from Grayscale about this.

44:50And a lot of the crypto people we've talked about said, listen, we think volatility in Bitcoin is going down, or it will go down. And Nick and Jessica at Datatrex says it has become less volatile. This favors incremental adoption, but also suggests future returns will be lower than historical norms. So they show the rolling 100-day standard deviation of daily returns. And this has gone down a lot. It's funny. Remember that 2017 period? That was nuts. It was rising and falling 20 % in a day. That was like the first real Bitcoin craziness when like retail or people actually talked about it. But this makes sense to me at whatever two and a half trillion dollars that volatility would decline and also returns would decline.

45:35All right. Is the Midwest recession proof? I ask you. Recession proof? You mean the housing or what? Yeah. This is from Resi Club, Lance Lambert. He shows housing markets where prices are falling. And he's showing different, and they're all Florida and Texas, Louisiana. Most of them are Florida and Texas. These are all places that are either weather-driven and or real estate that had a big run-up, right? Yes, I think that's the point. So he shows the one-year change in metro level, and it shows where things are falling. And it's the West Coast, and it's the Southeast. That's where home prices are falling, essentially.

46:14and then anything in not much on the northeast a little bit but the midwest there's no areas no big metro areas where prices are falling and then he shows the prices where they're rising and obviously in those areas prices are rising but i i think yeah you could say like the weather stuff but part of it is the fact that the places that are falling there was a huge migration of people and prices went up a lot. Yeah. And that's part of it. So, yeah. But I'm still sick of my thesis that the Great Lakes are my greatest hedge going forward. Fresh water. We take our boat out to Lake Michigan and we're in 20 feet of water.

46:55And it's crystal clear and I can see to the bottom like it's the Caribbean. Wow. It's nuts. I wish I would have dropped my phone in that lake instead of the other lake, which I'll get to in a little bit. But you always ask, I think we had this discussion before. You always say, like, I can't get over prices of this. And for you, it's some meals or like just the inflation stuff that you still have a hard time wrapping your head around. Like, I get it. Prices are up. But like, you see this price and you go, oh my gosh, I still don't get it. And I'm still trying to wrap my head around housing prices.

47:25I go on a jog and I go like the same route every day at lunch, right? There's a nice path. And there's this house that looks like it was built in. I don't know, 50s, 60s, 70s, old, old house. I put pictures in here and it's for sale. And I thought, when I get back, I'm going to take a look at this. And you can see that there's no modernization of this house whatsoever. This house looks like it's still from the 80s. And I look at the price and it was$425. Jeez, even for Grand Rapids, that's a lot of money. Not a hugely desirable area, just decent area, old, old house. And I looked at the Zillow, the Zestman history.

48:02and this thing was selling for 200 ,000 in 2016. It's up 85 % in the last 10 years. So my question to you, if you were a young person who's trying to buy a starter home and you're ready to give up on the system, would you become a socialist or would you become a libertarian? Which one would you become if you're ready to just like throw it all away and do something? Because I still can't believe that this stuff - I would be a libertarian because that's like the burn it all down mentality. Socialism is like way too calm for me. But you'd have to pick one of them, right? If you're ripping your hair out because these are the kind of starter homes that you're going to buy.

48:38And obviously, guess what? You're not going to get your dream home right away. Not everyone does the first home you buy. I still just have a hard time wrapping my head around housing prices. Do we get an update from you on your housing situation? We're going to save it. Next week. Next week. Okay. Here's a middle-aged thing that I really, really enjoy. So we're doing a home renovation right now and we're putting a new flooring. I think I've talked about this before. we had to get the whole house ready for new flooring because we're getting the whole house done which is insanely expensive and we just we for the last three weeks we've been slowly but surely throwing stuff away right all this stuff has to come off the floor off from under the beds put stuff up in the closets um I can't tell you how many trash bags full of stuff that I've that we've gotten rid of and thrown away it seems like a waste but that is a very fun purge to do in middle age I can't wait.

49:30It feels so good to get rid of junk. Yeah. That just has sat there forever that you don't use. I saw an Instagram story where it was scanning through a lot of stuff that's being thrown out. And the caption was, this used to be money. Right? Yeah. We buy a lot of shit. Us Americans. We really do. Speaking of which, oh, someone sent me this blog post. And I don't know how they figured this out. I didn't really get some math, but I'm going to just pretend like they did their research. They say, it says poorchoices.org, 52 million Americans can't park in their own garage because they have too much stuff.

50:09They somehow did the back of the envelope math on this and figured out that that many people can't park in their own garage, which is kind of crazy. All right, survey of the week from Scott Galloway. Share of Americans who are millionaires, 8%, believe they will be wealthy, 35%, believe the next generation will be wealthy, 75%. And they say wealthy is defined as having a net worth of$2 million or more. This is one of the reasons that this is the American exceptionalism thing. We are delusional, sometimes to our own detriment, but oftentimes in the benefit of society, right? These numbers don't, there's no way these numbers could possibly be correct.

50:49Yeah, ask, do the survey in Great Britain. No offense, but it's different. Yes, it's true. All right, Nick McGiulia's new book, The Wealth Ladder. And it's one of those books, I haven't read it yet, but I will because he's coming on TCAP this week, that is not just like, oh, another book about personal finance. It's like one of Nick's strengths is it's tangible. It's actionable. And so whether you are just getting started. Or it's not just philosophical or here's some context. fortune cookie stuff. Whether you were just getting started or you're somewhere between or even further along in your journey, like at every stage, there's something that you can apply to your life.

51:30Yes. And we talk a lot about this. And our audience spans a vast number of these different ladders, right? And yes, it's a very simple, easy book and idea. But Nick puts a lot of thought into these kind of things too. Yeah. And very clear, concise writer. Nick's the man. Good stuff. Go get it. we've been talking about the upper middle class thing. And CNBC had this cool thing where they actually showed, and the retort is always, well, where do you live? They showed the low end of upper middle class and the high end of upper middle class and the median by every state in the Commonwealth. Is that still a thing, Commonwealth?

52:09So they say nationwide upper middle class households earn between 117 and 150 ,000, according to the Census Bureau. But then they break it down by California, much higher, obviously, West Virginia, a little lower, New York, higher. Michigan, a little lower. Pretty close to, Michigan is pretty close to average, actually. But you can we'll put the link in the show notes. You can click through all of these. And then it can make you feel either way better or way worse about your current situation again. But the funny thing is, you get the state level data and you go, yeah, but I live in this city.

52:39But yeah, but I live in this neighborhood. But anyway, they do a good job of breaking it down by state. What's the retirement thing? We'll blow through this quick because we're getting kind of long here. but somebody sent us a retirements, a summary from chat, which basically shows that people are working longer. So it shows like the percentage of people that retired at age 65 to 69 and age 60 to 64 in 2000 to 2007 versus 2016 to today. So this shows that more people in these later age groups are still working. And so it's like, well, you know, what do we do? What happens? Are we sure this is verified stuff?

53:18Can we, this is AI, so I'm not. Whatever, but let's just, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Not really that important. But this makes sense to me. Yeah. People are living longer. But, so, this chart from Semblist shows what does a federal government spend money on. And it shows non-defense discretionary spending as a percentage of GDP, which has gone sideways to down, versus entitlement spending, which is straight up to the right. And here it is. It's a social safety net. So you're, you're, you tying these together is kind of like social security is the answer. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how people, yeah.

53:51So yeah, the question is like, these numbers make you think how, how in the hell are, are some of these people retiring in social security and working longer? And that, that if you haven't saved enough money, that's the answer though. Yep. Right. Okay. We got three emails about my broken TV, which I was able to fix. and I commented last week on how the cheaper TVs, the picture quality is fine, but the problem is the apps, so they slow down. So we had three people email us. I'll just read one. These days, smart TVs are cheap because you are the product. Once you connect a smart TV to the internet, it broadcast your watching habits back to advertisers, blah, blah, blah.

54:30So anyway, buy an Apple TV or a Roku, plug it in and use that. Yeah, or the Kindle Fire. I use the Kindle Fire stick. So I was like, oh, duh. I didn't even realize. Yeah, so they're saying that, yeah, that app, as long as you have internet, that will be the fast one. Yes. IMAX put out tickets for The Odyssey, which is not coming out until 2026. And I feel like, what are they doing? Like, I don't get it. Well, anyway, the one in Lincoln Square sold out in under three minutes. Jeez. Pretty wild. I don't know. I'm sure that movie is going to be good. It sounds like a book report to me. Just because I remember reading that book in high school or college or whenever I read it.

55:15It feels like homework. I'm all the way in. So IMAX, there was an article in Bloomberg talking about how like Cinemark and Regal and Marcus are trying to fight back against how powerful IMAX is becoming with all the branding. Because people are going to theater less, obviously. And when they do, they want to go to one of these premier theaters. So last week, I don't know if Duncan hopped on the stream or if he told me after about A24. I think that was a conversation after. Okay. A24 is another very powerful brand. Not very powerful, this may be strong, but it is the brand in independent movies.

55:54It's them and Neon, but A24 are absolutely kicking ass. So Duncan told me about this service, and Duncan, come on and correct me if I'm wrong, where you pay like 10 bucks a month and you get access to one free new release a month. So I signed up and I got a push notification. You can see Eddington. What's Eddington? I Google it and I see Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, and Austin Butler, a sheriff in the small town. I'm in. Nope, say no more. I'm in. Hey, Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal, I've never heard of this. So I will give my review of the movie later, but I got a envelope yesterday from a 24 with this little like packet of whatever.

56:46I don't know what you call this, but it's just a little magazine, but check this out. It's postcards promotion from, from within the movie. So why can Phoenix plays a sheriff? Oh, I thought it was an actual. No, Pedro Pascal plays the mayor and they go at it. And I'm thinking like, these guys are like, this is like genius marketing. It's pretty smart. Isn't that really cool? But I've literally never heard of this movie before. So maybe they aren't geniuses. I'll talk about it later. But anyway, thought that was neat. Thank you, Duncan. Great idea. All right, Ben, so you dropped your phone, huh?

57:24Yeah. So we were out on the pontoon and there was a storm coming in. The kids wanted to get tubing in before it rained. so we whip them around in the tube a few times. I'm getting really good at, they like to do donuts in the tube, so I fire them around in a circle, you know, and you slingshot, now the kids weigh a little more because they're bigger and they play off. So we hustle back and my wife and kids get all the stuff off the boat and I say, just leave me here, I'll put, I'm always, I'm the dad, so I'm always left to put the cover on, right? That's a dad job. Everyone leaves me and I put the cover on.

57:55Fine, I don't care. I'm hustling to put the cover on because I want to get it before it gets wet. and on a pontoon, you put the cover on and you put these like sticks in the middle to hold the top up so the water will, like a house, right? Yep. But then you have to crawl out underneath the little door to get out. And so I'm crawling out and usually when I'm in the lake, I have this little Patagonia like messenger bag and I put my boat keys in it, I put my wallet in it, I put my phone in it because I don't want to drop anything. When you say messenger bag, you mean like man fanny pack? No, it's like over the shoulder.

58:22Yeah, it's a man fanny pack. But with a backpack behind it. That's a man fanny pack. I'll show you. It's not a fanny pack. It is. Yours is a fanny pack. No, I mean, mine goes over my shoulder too, sir. Except what? Your bag's in the back. Mine's in the front. So we're, somehow you're better than me. It's a backpack. You can't wear it in the front. You can't wear it on your fanny. Maybe you could. So I usually put my phone in there. I was in such a hurry to get out of there because I wanted to beat the rain. I had all this stuff. I have like an empty can here. I got this. I got a towel. I'm trying to get everything off the boat.

58:52And my phone was in my hand. I didn't realize it was my hand. So I crawl out. I get up. I drop hits my knee boom hits the front of the boat my foot comes forward not even realizing is happening and then plop into the lake devastating and uh it's one of those where you just go well shit and you kind of shake your head I didn't freak out but how do you put your way back together that's the thing and we had dinner plans that evening so I couldn't go get a new phone so I went basically 24 hours without a phone and um I gotta say at first don't don't tell me that you enjoyed it. Don't. No, I, it was socialist.

59:29I, I, I found myself reaching for all the time. When I woke up the next morning, I thought, Oh my God, where's my phone? What did I do the last night? It actually, I kind of enjoyed the break from it. Okay. Then give it to your phone. Tough guy. No, but then you realize, so I had to drive a half hour away because we're, we're our places. There's not a lot of stores. I had to drive a half hour away to the AT &T store the next morning. And guess what? No car play. Couldn't listen to anything. And guess what? No car play. I had to write the directions down because I'm so reliant on Google Maps and Apple Maps.

59:59I got lost trying to find a store because I've never been there before. And so you realize how reliant you are on this stuff. Did you pull over and go to a 7-Eleven and ask somebody for directions? Luckily, I had my Apple Watch on and I figured out you could type it into my Apple Watch. Without that, I was lost. And so you realize how much you... And so I thought that movie with Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts, Leave the World Behind, where like all of a sudden the power grid and internet is shut off. Like that would, if that happened to us for like three days, humanity would like cease to exist.

1:00:31There would be riots. People like, you don't realize how much you rely on your phone for everything these days. People would lose their minds. I could be wrong about this, but our street sweepers. But also, sorry, losing your phone is kind of like when you have a flight delay or something and you want to complain about it. No one else cares but you. It's the biggest pain in the ass to you, but everyone else is like, yeah, that sucks. I have my phone. Yeah, right. I don't care about you. All right, I could be wrong about this, Ben, but are street sweepers the biggest scam on the earth? Really? You and I were talking yesterday.

1:01:01I said, hold on. There's a street sweeper next to me. I couldn't hear you. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, hey, wait a minute. What is this person doing? If Elon could get back in there and doge out these street sweepers. So it's these big trucks that sweep the sidewalk. I mean, it brushes the sidewalk. It's like getting rid of garbage. What is it doing? Literally, what is it doing? So in Michigan - It's moving food around the plate. So in Michigan, we really need these because they put dirt down on the roads in the winter. So on the side of the roads, it's full of dirt. So after the winter, they have to come through and street sweep.

1:01:37You know what we don't have in America? And that really helps the dirt. Dirt. Yeah, see, that's the problem. So in Michigan, we need them. You probably, maybe you're right. They're checking a box that, ah, we did it. Yeah, I can't, I mean, maybe street supers, Maybe they do something I don't know about. Maybe they are actually sucking up the garbage. But as far as I could tell, they were moving the garbage from this side of the road to behind the truck. And I couldn't hear you. All right. I want to play something for you, Ben. I was going through my notes today on my phone, just deleting a bunch of stuff.

1:02:06And I saw this and I said, wait, what is this? Oh, yeah. I wanted to share this with you. I'm going to share my screen. so listeners i uh i heard this commercial for a drug the other day and i couldn't believe it the drug is called jardians jardians anyway then listen to the listen to this just listen to this and for adults with type 2 diabetes and can you hear that yep okay own heart disease Jardians can lower the risk of cardiovascular deaths too. All right, Jardians. Serious side effects include increased ketones in blood or urine, which can be fatal. Stop Jardians and call your doctor right away if you have nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, tiredness, trouble breathing, or increased ketones.

1:02:54Jardians may cause dehydration that can suddenly worsen kidney function and make you feel dizzy, lightheaded, or weak upon standing. Genital yeast infections in men and women, urinary tract infections, low blood sugar, or a rare life-threatening bacterial infection between and around the anus and genitals can occur. Excuse me? A rare life-threatening bacterial infection between around the anus and genitals can occur? Now I'm out. Wait, but wait. Does it get worse or is that it? Let's see. Call your doctor right away if you have fever or feel weak or tired and pain, tenderness, swelling, or redness in the genital area.

1:03:22Don't use if allergic to Jardians. Stop use if you have a serious allergic reaction. Call your doctor if you have rash, swelling, difficulty breathing, or swallowing. You may have increased risk for lower limb loss. Lower limb loss? What? Your doctor right away. If you have new pain or tenderness, sores, ulcers, or infection in your legs or feet. All right, anyway, the commercial is like 20 seconds, but the disclosure, like the risks are like, what? That sounded like an SNL skit. So that's exactly my reaction. Plus they're dancing the whole time. That's a - Lower limb loss. But this is like the, not quite as bad, but you know when you're - Oh, whoops, let me stop the screen.

1:03:58Sorry. When you're on the airplane and they've got to go over the nonsense of - what to do. And if there's like, you know, an emergency, pull the raft. It's like, what are we doing here? Yeah. I wish we could skip that. Can we just skip all that? Like, so these are regulations. I need to go anyway. Lower limb loss. Let's do recommendations. I rewatched air this week for some reason. I just like to have a movie under the background. It came up. I think it's one of the best business movies of the century. I watched it the first time I liked it. It, man, that's a really good movie. It's just, Damon is so good in that movie.

1:04:33Who else is in it? Ben Affleck plays Phil Knight. Jason Bateman is in it. Chris Tucker is in it. It's just really, really well done. And I think because it went straight to Amazon and it was around the pandemic, I think. But I think if we're looking for best business movies of this century, I have The Founder, Moneyball, Margin Call, Blackberry. I love Blackberry. I can't believe how much. Very good. I think Air is in the same class of those for best business movies of this century. so we have the movies that or the shows that are filler shows you're watching a show you like, you binge it and then you have a filler show like in between days of the week when this show's not on, I'll watch this show and for us that was Day of the Jackal and now for whatever reason, there's just no new shows I guess all the streamers decided we're not going to put any new good shows on so we went back to Day of the Jackal I like the break yeah, it's kind of nice for the summer actually remember in the past when shows would not be on all summer and then you'd have to wait until the fall for a new show that was fun so we got back in a day of the jackal and we didn't not like it we just like ah we never got pulled in and now we're three quarters of the way through and it's it's a very good spy assassin show it's really well done like guys shooting from 3200 yards away for a kill uh is it wait season two you said no season one it's you did you say you're re-watching it no we started it we watched a few episodes and now we got back in and we're almost done with it but it feels like a movie in a lot of ways.

1:05:57It feels like a kind of assassin. Remember there was the Bruce Willis Jack Black movie? Alright, finally, they had It's Complicated on Rewatchables. And I can't imagine you've liked this movie. I never, I don't know if I heard of it. It's Complicated, so it's Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, John Krasinski. Came out in like 2009. It's a kind of rom-com they do not make anymore. Okay, I've never heard of it. It's a movie about divorce. For some reason, movies about divorce usually work. For some reason, that dynamic. Oh, yeah. So this is a couple who got divorced, and then they come back to have an affair together, even though the husband has remarried.

1:06:35And it's just, it's not, it would be way cheesier if it came out today. But there's a scene where Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep are exes, and they happen to be at the same bar, and they're eating food at the bar and drinking. And it's one of the best chemistry scenes that I've ever seen in a movie. They're so good together. I don't think it's a Michael movie, but I haven't seen the movie in a while and it's really, really good. Okay. They don't make them like that anymore. That kind of movie. Yeah. All right. What do you got? All right. It happened to me, Ben. I'm an audiobook guy now. I never do it.

1:07:08The first audiobook I ever heard was The Hot Zone, which is a book that I used to do on cassette about the Ebola virus. This was what year was this? I don't know. Midnight, 93? I was on a car trip. I was on a car trip and that's what we used to do when we took car trips. We would listen to audio books. So I just don't read books anymore. I don't, I don't, I was gonna say I don't have time. I don't want to dedicate time to reading books, okay? Like there, I am a hyper productive person. I am never like lounging. I am always doing something and I don't want to sit down and read a book. I have officially admitted it to myself.

1:07:45I'm a fiction only guy, but I read right before bed. Okay, I can't do it. I just, it will not happen. You know, that part of that chapter of my life of reading books for now, it's on pause. Okay. I'm not saying I won't ever read books again, but for now it's on pause. All right. But I do love books and I miss books. So I was on my Spotify account and I saw an audio book section and I was like, okay, let's see what's up. So the first book that I saw or one of the first titles that I saw is called best movie year ever. How 1999 blew up the big screen. so I started listening to it and because I'm always listening to something whether I'm shopping or walking or driving or like I always am listening I don't know how many hours I listen to of stuff a week I'm like hey why don't I get audiobooks in the mix right like it's a great idea for a book by the way so uh I'm enjoying the shit out of it the only problem with the Spotify audiobooks is that there's no chapter details.

1:08:44There's no text. So I think I have to switch to Audible because I do want to be able to highlight. Right? All right. Yep. So anyhow, I'm listening to the movie. I'm listening to the book, which does sound weird. I know it's not the same thing, but I don't care. And I wanted to take you through the list of 1999 movies. So I'm looking at this right now. Wait, hold on. Stop, stop, stop. This is my show. I had ChatGBT give me a list of the movies in 1999. I said, grab me the top 100 movies of 1999 by Rotten Tomatoes scores and sort them by release date. Okay? So I don't know if this is 100 % accurate.

1:09:24Maybe there's things in here that we're missing. But listen to how crazy this is. All right. We're going to start in March, Ben, of 1999. How old were you in March 1999? And not 1999. I was a senior in high school. So I probably went to see half of these in the theater. Okay. I was 14. All right. Cruel intentions and analyze. This came out on the same weekend. All right. This is all in March. Then we got the iron giant, which I never saw, but then, but was a big hit at the time. Then we got the matrix and I have to be honest, hand up. I wasn't impressed by the matrix at the time. I thought it was overhyped.

1:10:00I've never been a matrix guy, but the, it was the, the effects were, I was impressed with those. 14 year old Michael was not impressed. So anyway, the book does a deep dive on the story of how these movies got made and the actors and the what ifs and that sort of stuff. All right, then we move on to April. Man, April slaps. Go, a movie I never saw. Oh, I love Go. I still rewatch that to this day. It's a great movie. Three Kings. Love that movie. Office Space and Entrapment. Moving on to May. John Connery. Moving on to May. We had Election. I never saw that one. Did you? Reese Witherspoon, yep.

1:10:33Okay, and Matthew Broderick. So in May, you had Election, The Mummy, Star Wars, and Notting Hill. Not a bad month. In June, Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me, Tarzan, The General's Daughter. Saw that one. Big Daddy and Wild Wild West. Did not see that piece of junk. In July, the blockbuster month, we had American Pie. Absolute classic that started the teen comedy stretch. The Blair Witch Project, I saw that in camp. Scared the shit out of me. The Haunting, which was terrible. Saw that in camp as well. And Runaway Bride. Then in August, The Sixth Sense, The Virgin Suicides, American Beauty, and The Insider.

1:11:15All right, I'm going to say something out loud that I might regret. This has shaken me to my core, Ben. So The Sixth Sense, I know for a fact I saw that on opening night with my dad. I'm positive of that, okay? That's not a movie you forget seeing. But I thought I was in fourth grade. like in my in my head in my head i was like in fourth grade and i went to school the next day and like i was in music class when i told people about that that never happened i didn't see that movie until it came out on video and it was never spoiled for me that was the 1990s true there's no way a movie like that could come out today and not be spoiled but anyway when i thought about that about me misremembering where i was when i saw the sixth sense i started thinking did i actually you see Kevin feel the dreams?

1:11:57I know I saw the dreams. September double jeopardy South park, the talented Mr. Ripley and sleepy hollow. Then in October we had fight club Magnolia being John Malkovich and eyes wide shut in November. We had the world is not enough in toy story two. And then in December, the green mile and Stuart little, how nuts is that? Wow. So you also had movies like What did I miss? 10 Things I Hate About You. Oh, yeah, yeah. Monster. I mean, that might be the best movie year ever. You're right. I saw most of these in the theater. Okay, so here's what I did not see. You might have intrigued me enough to read this book, actually.

1:12:35No, listen to it. Here's what I did not see this week. I did not see I Know What You Did Last Summer. Apparently, it was just pure dog shit. So thank you, I guess, for saving me a trip to theater. All right, so that movie, Eddington. It's an Ari Aster movie. he is a writer director he did um he did hereditary and midsommar which i enjoyed the shit out of both those movies eddington was not for me unfortunately eddington is it's a horror movie no no it is a film that's for sure it was too long it was it was a real grown-up mature movie. I'm just going to have a good time. So if you're like a film goer, I think the critics will enjoy this more than the audience.

1:13:21Like there are parts of it that I enjoyed. It's just not for me. That's okay. All right. So all right. We went long again. We're streaking. You read off every movie from a certain year. It was worth it for me. It brought me back down memory lane. I still remember seeing a lot of these in the theater. All right. Exhibit A for advice for financial advisors. Also financial advisors, check out the unlock. We got more stuff coming. Are you still doing it every single week? Actually, we're rebranding. We're going to call the channel Talking Wealth. So Josh is hopping on this week. But yeah, we're cooking over there.

1:13:55We are doing advisor-focused content. Industry stuff. You know what I'm recording with this week is Bill Bangen, the one who came up with the 4 % rule. Oh, wow. Very cool. He's got a new book coming out. All right. Email us. Animal Spirits pod at the compound new... Wait, what is it? God dang it. Animal Spirits get to the compound news.com and thanks everyone for writing in, listening, following, leaving reviews, driving all that stuff. See you next time.