Why Housing Prices Are So Expensive (EP.313)

24:17it's just up and to the right we love to spend money no I know I know but there's got to be some sort of reasonable explanation other than that no? or is it just that simple? I think the US is just becoming wealthier you'd think that other countries would catch up I think I mean I think if America is like we have the best basketball players in the world that's starting to waver a little too it's starting to waver a little we're better four of the top five are international if aliens came to like aliens came down and said, like, pick a skill for your country. The U.S.'s biggest skill would be we know how to spend money.

24:52It's really funny that this was a segment because in my notes right here, here's what I did when I was in my car. I wrote, American spending Sunday morning. So I thought about this on Sunday as I went to the bagel store to get bagels and tuna fish and, you know, what we do for Father's Day brunch. So I spent$80 there. then I went to start tuna fish. That's your father's day brunch. Well, it wasn't just tuna fish, but you don't, I'm not even hearing this when I'm having this conversation. So I spent a delicacy. I'll never understand. Like the, what's it? What locks? Is that the other thing? I don't do locks, but that's a very long Island thing as well.

25:36Do you do donuts? We had donuts. Excel and that Excel guy. That's just, that's just personal preference. I'm not, but fine. Let me ask you this. If you're doing a brunch that you're hosting, what, you bring in 40 donuts? What do you serve people? Eggs. You're making scrambled eggs for 10 people. Maybe like an egg casserole dish with some sort of protein on the side. Sausage, bacon, that sort of thing. I like that too. I mean, nothing wrong with that. Anyway, so I went from the bagel store to Starbucks where I did not spend$7 on a Tranta with a few shots because I used my points. but I would have, but you know, seven bucks at Starbucks.

26:17Then I went to CVS for whatever. And I was just thinking like, this is just what it is. We just, we just spend money, spend, spend, spend. Can you put some of this on like credit cards and apps and Apple pay and stuff where it's just, it's so much easier in Amazon where it's just clicking buttons. It doesn't feel like spending money. I thought too, because I, the money I spent this weekend, I thought if I would have had to go to the bank every time just to get the cash out and then to spend this money, it would have hurt. It would have been way more painful than just sliding my credit card or putting it in whatever.

26:50You know, it's, you don't think about it. That's a huge element. Nobody gets into debt with cash, right? It's so much easier to swipe because it's like out of sight out of mind until you see your credit card and be like, holy, wait, how did I spend that much money? But that's a big component as well as the rewards. By the way, did you see there was an article about it was like cards are ruining the travel lounge or something? Yes, we had our discussion last week about the travel lounge, and a lot of people wrote in to say, hey, listen, Ben, you're right about the travel lounge being overrated because so many people go into it now.

27:23There'll be lines out the door to get in there because every credit card now allows you access. Yeah, but I feel like the one that I got, I don't know if I said this last week, but I got the American Express Reserve, which gets you access to some of the nicer lounges. But I don't even care. I'm not a snob. I'll get into any lounge. I just want to get into a lounge. We looked at mine afterwards. I had the American Express Platinum, and Duncan said I get into the Centurion. Oh, same. So we have access to the same spots. Okay, maybe I'll see you there sometime. So we're ruining, you know, sorry. It's because I have like 12 different credit cards.

27:53All right, go to Eddie Elfenbein. Survey of the week. The United States is effectively bankrupt. True or false? 68 % said false. 32 % said true. I don't think people understand what the word bankrupt means in this context. Well, that's understandable. Do you think that there's... Not do you think. There's a huge difference in the portfolios from group A to group B. Huge. Oh, yes, yes. Huge. That's true. You don't even need to ask what's in your portfolio. You kind of know. I don't think there's many bogleheads that think the stock market, the economy is bankrupt. No. The people who say the United States is bankrupt.

28:30Probably a lot of hard asset people. Yes. They have physical stuff in a safe. Yeah. Okay. Here's our good news of the week. We talked about some good news last week. People liked that one. This is from Axios. He estimated Gini global income inequality coefficient is at its lowest level in 150 years. So I think this, I don't know how the Gini, we're talking about all the things, we don't know how they work. They just are. Let's see, on a scale, let's see. Inequality from 69 in 2000 to 60 in 2018 is almost certainly lower today. That means the world is more equal now than at any point since about 1875.

29:05Countries with the richest citizens are generally the world's most powerful. That power is now more broadly distributed than any point in over a century. They're basically saying countries like India and China becoming more wealthy are - Thank you, blockchain. Evenly distributing things. And this, I don't know, this surprises me. The funny thing is, is that it's probably becoming more unequal in the United States, but on a global basis, becoming more equal. Does that make sense? Yeah. If you look at it in the United States, it's probably not falling this much, but globally, that makes sense. But anyway, good news.

29:38Uh, the layoffs section of our dock has fantastically been pretty quiet. Uh, Sonos, actually. Okay. Do you have a Sonos? You know, I do. I just had a good experience with them. I have one of those little Sonos roams. It's just a little one. You know, I have a big Sonos speaker, then I have a little one that you can kind of move anywhere. Like take to the beach type thing? Yeah, I hadn't used it in a while, and it wasn't, it just, I got no light. I was charging it, nothing. And I called them, and they said, hey, we're going to send a, something to it. And they did it, and it worked. I couldn't believe it.

30:08How about that? They fixed it for me. I thought I was going to have to buy a new one. Anyway, Sonos is laying off 7 % of their staff. Sonos went public, no? I feel like that's a stock that I never, ever did. I'm assuming it crashed. Let's see. The stock has been, yeah, not good. This was definitely a pandemic play then because it went bonkers in the pandemic. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Bottom of$7 and it topped out at 40-something. It's almost where it was when it IPO'd, but yeah, hell of a ride. Okay. This is interesting. Did you see this? Instant pots. I think they're filing bankruptcy. I don't know if they're going away or if they're restructuring, but net sales fell by 22%, the seventh consecutive quarter of decline.

30:52I feel like with the benefit of hindsight. That was a fad, right? This is the type of thing that is easy to see coming. I don't know if this was a fad. It was just, you know, it was the work. It was the pandemic type thing. I remember people talking about them a lot when it happened. But what did you – is this – is it like a – I've never used one before. Is it kind of like a crock pot? I think they make slow cookers, yeah. You know what? So you'd make brisket in it. Did you make brisket in an instant pot? Tons of brisket. I'm surprised that's the only way to make it, right? You can't make brisket anywhere else.

31:23Just kidding. But I haven't used mine in like a year. I'm not quite sure why. I love that thing. We never got – my middle-aged thing is that I'm definitely – Duncan says you can make a baked potatoes in five minutes. My big thing that we still use a lot - I'm not middle-aged, by the way. I had an epiphany. Middle-age is once you're 50. I'm sorry. Stop me being in denial. I'm just not middle-aged. It's 50. You're definitely - Every week in the comments on YouTube, someone says, Michael slowly realizing he's middle-aged is the greatest thing ever because it's been happening like six months in a row.

31:51But my middle-aged thing is - Unfortunately - Yeah, go ahead. The air fryer. I've heard people say that people swear by their air fryers. I cooked some asparagus in it last week. and usually put it in the oven maybe or on the grill and it takes forever, like 10 minutes in an air fryer and you get crispy, nice crisp. Yeah, air fryer. Air fryer is great. Air fryer is great. So remember I said I'm turning into my dad? So my dad always, so I have a brother, Matthew. My dad always like calls me Matthew or mixes up, which is understandable, but I cannot keep my kid's name straight. I always, it doesn't make sense.

32:22There's a 50-50 chance. I always get it wrong. I don't understand. My mom would like that too. I'm pretty good. so I you had the epiphany of turning into your dad I had one too this is gonna sound like a humblebrag it's not because my one of my dad's favorite things to do is he loves to just take his dog for a walk he goes for like two or three walks a day it's great activity but when I was growing up my dad would bring like a plastic bag from the grocery store and pick up trash on the way and that I'm like that's such a trash like trash on the side of the road like what a good Samaritan yeah my dad's a good guy but so he and I'd be like why are you doing that it's so gross it's such an old man thing and in a young age i would think like why would you ever do that and now with my kids i'm turning in my father i pick up trash all the time like i want to get is that you have some pride in your neighborhood well my kids were learning about like littering and and like being kind to the environment and so i started picking up my kids will now be like dad there's a piece of trash and there's some stuff i obviously won't touch but i i want to get one of those walking sticks with like the sharp thing in the end you can stab i want to get one of those because because once you start seeing it it makes me angry that people just litter all the time i hate it littering is gross i'm not a fan of i mean i've been in situations where people throw things out the window i think it's i think it's a dirtbag move you never you never get into mad i will flick gum which is probably not nice but but i won't throw a piece of i won't throw a donut out the window well food is okay because that that's uh are you being serious throwing food right food's okay food's not littering so here so decomposes my dad is notorious for saying things incorrectly for example you know how last week when i was like holy shim talking to my dad i called dennis green dennis allen right that's what i did my dad yesterday or on father's day we were talking about like my tails my dog's tail was wagging he's like oh that reminds me of the scene in that movie with jack black what's it called dust uh along came along came mary and i'm like first of all you're thinking about you're thinking about shallow how and it's along came polly not and then something about mary but he called it along came mary and that's i will i'm not far from that.

34:24I can see that. Okay. Good one from our colleague, Nick Majuli. Why are houses so expensive? This was a good stat. Over the past decade, US housing prices have increased nearly 4.7 % above the rate of inflation, while median household income has only grown by 1.5 % per year over inflation over the same period. That's a tough stat. That's a massive, massive number if you're not in the housing market. If you're in the housing market, you're golden. If you're out of the housing market, you're screwed, unfortunately. Look at this chart. Wild, huh? It really is. The funny thing is that - What are we looking at?

34:57What are we looking at? So real U.S. housing index since 1890. This is from Robert Schiller. It's adjusted for inflation. From the end of World War II until 2000, U.S. housing price is appreciated by basically 30 basis points a year after inflation. In the seven years that followed, they grew 6.3 % above of inflation, which is 20 times faster. So we've had these huge, you know, just a takeoff in housing prices in the 2000s and then now. And I remember Robert Schiller first wrote his book in like 2000 talking about, or the early 2000s, talking about how housing should basically track inflation over the long term.

35:38And ever since then, it hasn't at all. But wait, that's like a national index, obviously. Yes. Yeah, I don't know. I have a feeling they're going to be studying this period of the housing market for a long, long time in the future. Because I don't know how it's going to get better. So next piece basically said three things. It's a lack of supply. It is a lack of new homes, which I guess are the same thing. It's just, and it's, this is demographics. This is like the big one, right? There are 70 million millennials that are moving out of the cities. It's kind of weird to think about that the crash in housing prices in 2008 and that lasted in 2012 basically set up the bull market that's happening that happened in the pandemic.

36:22If that crash didn't happen and people didn't stop building homes, things would probably be a lot more healthy right now than they are. So this is a good one from Twitter. This is price indices for housing relative to construction costs. and it's showing the UK is like 3.25 times the cost. The US is still relatively low. It's at like one and a half times. So there's like the markup? France is high. Yeah, so this is essentially like, I don't know, how much does land cost, right? Because it's replacement cost versus prices and things are way, way worse elsewhere. It says relative, not to nitpick, it says relative to construction costs.

37:01You assume that includes the price on the land probably? probably no i think it like means how much to build a house so that's what so the land this is the reason it's so much higher there is because land is so much more expensive because if it costs five hundred thousand dollars to build a house but it costs two million to buy it in london the difference is the price of the land right so i don't know so yeah this is yeah this is stripping out land so it's basically just saying it costs to buy a house it costs way more because it's so hard to get where you could actually build a house but if you didn't have land, you're screwed, right?

37:32Look at the UK. That's wild. It's really, really, yeah, exactly. They're in a way worse position than we are. Maybe that's why their inflation is still 9%. I don't know. Good one from Redfin here. One third of US home purchases made in cash in April up from 30 % a year ago, comparable to 33 % in February, which was the highest in nine years. Typical down payment,$52 ,500, which is pretty high. Down 18 % from a year ago. But look at this look at this typical down payment. If you go back to 2011, it was, I don't know,$25 ,000, $30 ,000. It got as high as$65 ,000 in 2022. Now it's falling. And I think that's because the median down payment as a percentage is going down.

38:14So I guess it used to be 16.5 % a year ago. Now it's 13%. So I think housing prices rising and interest rates being so much higher, people are putting less down, which honestly makes sense to me. Totally. Right? I'd be putting it down as little as I could. Yeah, you could afford what you could afford. Right. So yeah, people are trying to make it work by putting less down, which I think actually probably makes sense. We've talked about this a lot, but more than 9 in 10 mortgage holders have a rate below 6%. This is also from Redfin. Look at that, how that changes over time. Let's see. Yeah, 82 % have below 5%.

38:52So yeah, it's not great. They gave this hypothetical about a buyer who bought in 2018 when home prices were on$280 ,000 median-wise and 4.5 % mortgages, which, you know, not 3%, but not bad. So they would be paying$1 ,000 less today. So you bought in 2018, you're paying$1 ,000 less in months. I mean, that monthly payment spread over the course of how many ever years? Here's my question. Why are mortgage rates so much higher than 10-year treasuries right now? I know we've talked a little about the reasons. Why aren't spreads coming in at all? Is this just a mortgage bond thing? Because look at this.

39:28I put this on a Y chart. The average historically, going back to 1971, Sean did this for us, 1.7%. Currently, it's like 3%. Because 10-year treasurers are not that high. They're 3.7%, 3.8%. Mortgage rates are 7%. Why is it so much higher? What drives the spread of mortgage rates? Is it demand? I think it has to do with mortgage bonds and the fact that you're not going to get prepaid. Oh, right. We've spoken about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joe and Tracy did a deep dive on this. I don't know. It's just hard to fathom the fact that the 10-year treasury is still relatively low relative to history. 3.7 % is pretty low for a 10-year treasury yield.

40:08Not lower than it was in the pandemic, but it's still pretty low and mortgage rates are still this high. I don't know. I'd be pretty angry if I was getting a new mortgage right now. Did you see that there's a chart from the Washington Journal about renters. We don't speak about renters that much, but... The new lease asking rents percentage change from a year earlier, according to Zillow, Redfin, and a bunch of others. According to Redfin, the prices are down year over year. So this is disinflation too, where prices are still rising, but the speed at which they're rising is crashing. Are these going to go negative?

40:42This is good news. I think it probably will. Looks like it, right? Yeah. This is good news for people who decided to sit out the home buying process and just want to rent, right? Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Every year, Vanguard puts out this How America Saves report because they have like, I don't know, trillions of dollars in 401k IRA plans. This is, so across the Vanguard universe for participants, 83 % of eligible employees were enrolled in their employer's voluntary savings programs in 2022, which is pretty good. Eight out of 10 people who had a 401k enrolled in it. it's up 8 % since 2013.

41:23But if you had automatic enrollment, 93 % participated versus 70 % with a volunteer enrollment. So that automatic stuff is good. What do you think the average savings rate is for someone in a Vanguard 401k? The average savings rate in terms of dollars or percentage of zero? Percentage. Percentage of. Their target is 12 % to 15 % to meet retirement goals, which I think is a pretty good target. I'd be aligned with that. 12 % to 15%. Let's say 8%, 7 % or 8%. Yeah, it's like 7.4%. But they said 20 % of participants would need to boost their savings 1 % to 3 % and hit their target. That's pretty good.

41:57Not bad. But I like that 12 % to 15 % as a goal. Anything else interesting? Any good takeaways? Tidbits, if you will? Not really. I mean, there's one that shows, they show the average deferral rate by income. And even over$150 ,000, the average is still only 8%. which I would have assumed would have been higher. This doesn't include a match. So with a match, it's obviously a little higher if you get one. Ben, we've spoken about this a million times, and it's a topic that will just probably come up every so often because I think it's a trend that's up and to the right, unfortunately. Steven Ratner had a tweet thread, if the economy is so good, why are so many Americans grumpy about it?

42:43So he shows different opinions, surveys, if you will, country on the right track. Everybody says no, or not everybody. 75 % of people say it's going the wrong direction. Optimism about the economy, not good. Consumer sentiment, terrible. Presidential approval, awful. Americans, and they said Americans feel a lot better about their own lives than they do about their country. 73 % rate their personal situation as good or excellent, but just 18 people say the same about the US as a whole. And I don't think this is complicated. It's just social media for the most part, right? You have more access to what other people are doing.

43:19And we don't like other people generally, the royal way, right? We like people that we know. So there was a sad state of affairs. There was a story in the New York Times today called, your brain has tricked you into thinking everything is worse. And Derek Thompson summed this up on Twitter. He said, basically, your memory is biased towards positive information, which is nostalgia. So you think positively about the past, but our present focused attention is being biased towards negative information, meaning our general perception is that everything is always getting worse. We look at the past more fondly and we think about the positives of the past.

43:52In the present, we think about the negatives. And that means that's why we constantly think things are getting worse, even though they are definitely getting better for society as a whole. So I thought that's a good piece. Good take. Good take. Somebody sent us a check from Denver, Colorado. Was this Sean? Yes. Okay, this is from Sean. I really would like to know what a strawberry daisy drink is. We have no room to talk since we drink Miami Vice's, but there's a strawberry daisy on here, which I've never heard of before. Sure, it's delicious. Although now that I'm examining this menu, who's drinking a strawberry daisy and getting miso soup?

44:29This looks like a sushi. Yeah, crunchy red. Interesting choice. I'm sorry, you don't drink daiquiris with sushi. Okay. But anyway. I don't eat sushi either. I'm a wimp when it comes to, you like the finest things in life, I guess. Me? I don't eat sushi. I mean, I'll eat like a, I don't eat seafood. I'll eat like a California roll. Oh, that's true. You and I went to a seafood restaurant once and we both said, we're out, sorry. Yeah, don't eat seafood. So, but there was an employee wellness fee of 3%, which is, that's over the line. I'm sorry. It seems excessive. Employee wellness, you pay your employee.

45:03We'll tip. So, you know, on the machines that ask for the tip now, you can write a little message there. And I saw one of them said like industry standard, like they're, they're pushing you towards picking a certain amount, you know? And I think it was like 20, 25%. It was like a higher end. That's high. Listen, I grew up in the service industry. Okay. Valet Parker, caddy only for a day, but I spent years parking cars, cabana boy, waiter. So I know from this, I take care of the people, but there's a time and a place and an employee wellness fee is not one of them. know what I tip my valley parkers what oh I'm debating about this might be too much might have to throttle it back 10 bucks a day or 10 bucks a park okay it's so expensive to park at a hotel though too if you park at a hotel it's like I don't know 70 or 80 bucks a night or something it's ridiculous that's a scam yes that is a scam all right someone sent me this uh credit card in front HELOC and back home equity backed credit card lower rates 8 to 15 percent I've never heard of the company here before, but I talked about how people are going to be using their equity for different financial means.

46:11Wait, what is this? It's a home equity-backed credit card, meaning your home equity is... I don't know how that works. It's a credit card to unlock home equity. I honestly don't know how it works, but I thought... I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued. The low APRs are good, maybe because there's obviously a lot of collateral there. I still can't believe that Amex charges 20 % APR. That's wild. Unsecured debt, I guess, but yes, that's... That's pretty high. Someone actually asked me the other day, do you think most people pay off their credit card? And the assumption was most people do not. My thinking is - No, well, you say most, over 50%.

46:47I would say most people do. I think so too. I think it's a small percentage, like, I don't know, a third maybe that don't pay it off. And they're the ones who get caught eating the late fees and they don't make them - I think it's a smaller subset than you think. By the way, this data has to be available. Has to be. But I would guess one in - eight don't pay their maybe i'm way off i don't know 15 ish don't pay it off uh all right uh got an email oh hey guys i'm a journalist and an author who cold reaches out to folks regularly i sometimes try to do the scheduling thing we're talking about the email thing that i spoke about this week i sometimes try to do the scheduling two or three weeks out not for my own sake of my own busy schedule because i assume that you are busy which is very uh very polite.

47:35That's not what I'm referring to. I totally respect that. If that's your thing, I'm saying like when somebody connects you and they do like, oh yeah, I could talk to you through because I'm so busy. I don't like that. I just don't like it. Sorry. Don't like it. I don't think anybody's too busy for a quick call. All right, Ben, I had a thought. I was in the deli the other day getting an egg wrap for breakfast and Robin said, get some gum. So I looked onto the counter and they had gum and some of the gums that hit my face, I was like, oh my God, it's still a thing. Juicy fruit, double mint, and big red.

48:16Remember those, obviously? You don't see a whole lot of new gums anymore, do you? Well, I feel like Orbit was like brand new back in the day, probably 20 years ago that hit the scene. But, but, And I'm not judging at all, but who do you think buys Big Red? Who's the buyer of Big Red gum? That's a good question. I never really did it for me. So for people that are, I guess, under 35 who don't know about Big Red, it's like a pack of gum, obviously, and there's like five sticks of like kind of - It's like you're snorting cinnamon. Yeah. I'm not a big cinnamon guy. But anyway, so I went on the Wikipedia to figure out like, hey, what's going on here?

48:56So those gums, all of those gum, can you pluralize gums? All of those gum were owned and made by Rip Wrigley, which was bought by Mars in 2008 for$23 billion, which blew my mind. But here's what really blew my face. Juicy Fruit. You know when that came out? Are you looking at the doc? I see it now. Okay. Juicy Fruit, 1893. There was gum in the 1890s. Doublemint, 1914. Big Red. Wow, they took a huge break. Big red is 1975. It's kind of funny that we discovered gum before penicillin. Hubba Bubba, what's that? You know what Hubba Bubba is? Yeah, that's like the pink stuff. Oh, Orbit. They make Orbit.

49:362001. So anyway, more fun facts on Wrigley, on the gum. Goose Island, that's where they're located. Where's that? Chicago. Have you been there? I've had Goose Island beer before. Okay, and they own the big building, the Wrigley building. You know what my go-to gum is? The lake. Did I call it the lake? The river. My go-to gum. Go ahead. You first. I like the Mentos gum. Mentos gum. Mentos gum is good gum. It looks like a little mento. Yeah, I like that one. It's fresh. I like not the Orbit little squares. Not like the little rectangle ones. I do the crunchy white. The one with the crunchy white outside.

50:16Well, we must be in a bull market because we're talking about gum here. Yeah, as I'm thinking, I'm like, literally nobody cares. I apologize. We got too far afield out here. All right, where are we going next? I've got some good recommendations. All right, I've got a new show, Apple TV, Platonic with Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen. I loved them together in Neighbors. I loved that movie. I think part of it is because we just had our daughter when that movie came out, so we had a toddler. I think Apple sneakily is putting out some decent content. So it's just weird because I don't have any comedies in my life anymore.

50:47There's not many, I mean, obviously Succession was funny, but that was more witty than funny as a comedy. This is an actual comedy. I think Rose Byrne is highly underrated. I think she's funnier in this show than Seth Rogen is. She's great. And it's a great midlife show because they have kids and dealing with, it's kind of like a midlife crisis kind of show. It's two friends who, they were best friends in college. Her and Seth Rogen were best friends and they kind of split, went their separate ways and now they're kind of finding each other again in their 40s and becoming friends again. It's not like a great, it would have been a funny movie in the 2010s if it was made, but each part of the show has funny parts to it.

51:21And the funniest part, it takes place in LA and they ride those little scooters around that you and I always ride when we go to cities, you know? And a running bit for some reason is Seth Rogen. Every time he sees one, he like drop kicks it or throws it. He hates the scooters and he pushes them over. And I feel like there has to be a backstory there, but it just makes me laugh every time. Speaking of LA, I'm going next week. Will I get access to my lounge? We'll have to see. You'll have to give us a review. All right. One of our newest advisors at Rithold slacked us a couple weeks ago, Eric, and said, you guys have got to revisit The Graduate.

51:51It holds up really well. I haven't seen it in like 15 years. It's on Amazon Prime. I watched it. He's totally right. This movie could have been released now and it would have worked. And I've got a few things to say. I read the Mike Nichols book about it and it's so funny because, or about Mike Nichols, who's the guy who directed it. And they said like when they picked Dustin Hoffman as the lead, everyone was kind of like, hey, he's okay. Like no one felt like this guy's going to be amazing. Was he like 25? How old was he? He looked like a baby. Yeah, he was pretty young. but it holds up so well.

52:21The movie could release now and it would have been good. I'm usually not a fan of really weird movies like that because it does have a weird tone to it but I love it. Here's two things that stood out to me. The 1960s style, that stuff could work today. The stuff they wore, like the short shorts at the pool and the loungewear, you could wear that. The style in the movie was great and I just love how every house had a bar in it. That was like a thing. You just had a bar and you assumed if you go to someone else's house, you go get a drink because there's a bar right there. Anyway, great one. I watched that.

52:50Wait, hang on. I'm a graduate. I watched that for the first time like two years ago. And you're right. Phenomenal movie. Yeah, it's so good. I have a recommendation for you. So from the man who brought you Tropical Bros and Bird Dogs, now you need a pair of sunglasses that you can wear in your jet ski that are not expensive and won't fall off. Gooder sunglasses. G-O-O-D-R. Okay? G-O-O. I put a link in the doc here for you. They're like 25 bucks. They're rubber. I wear them like in the pool, on the boat. When I go jogging, they don't fall off. And if they do fall off, they're 25 bucks and I don't care.

53:27So I have like four pair. And if they break, I throw it away and get a new one. Those are your summer beach glasses. Okay. You know what? I will buy a pair because I always lose my sunglasses. The ones that I currently have, I feel like it's my longest streak. It's like two years. But I'm afraid to buy expensive sunglasses. I lose them. I just bought, I did buy goggles from my jet ski. but i could i'll put 20 bucks on amazon i'll buy these two thank you uh speaking of bird dogs yesterday at the beach so my wife's friend was like so her colleague listens to us and the wife texted the friend that like my husband's buying a pair of shorts that your husband that your friend's husband was talking about my father-in-law bought some damn right he's buying bird dogs Nice.

54:11We influence someone. Okay. Two things for me. I rewatched The Purge, which I haven't seen since it first came out. What year was that? It's a really good idea. Even though I'm not a huge fan of those kind of movies, it's a really good idea. 2013. I'm going to say it holds up because it's only 10 years old. It's an awesome movie. Just a really kick-ass movie. Yeah. and I watched last night a movie on Shudder oh wait before I get to that do you know about this one Ben? about my father I'm holding my phone Sebastian Maniscalco about my father so this keeps popping up it's a new one with De Niro and Sebastian it's gotta be horrendous it didn't look great it's gotta be horrendous what did it get?

55:01about my father it's loosely based on his life Who's? Sebastian Menescalco. Oh, I stand corrected. Okay, this is a winner. The critics gave it a 36. The audience gave it an 81. I'm going to try it. That's a winner. I don't have my hopes, but I'll give it a try. Yeah, but when there's a giant spread favoring the audience for comedies, the audience is almost always right. I will definitely watch this. Okay, so I watched a movie called Influencer. You've probably never heard of it. No. I watched it on Shudder via Amazon. and it's a it's about an influencer who goes to thailand and starts to get stalked by a stalker and it's quite creepy it's in the horror genre i guess but it's not it's not scary it's not like slasher you know it's just very creepy very well done and if you are into those movies as you know i am i would recommend this and as i bet i see i see i see the wheels turning and you're about to say something before you say something let me just say my piece okay i think you and others think that i'm the only person that watches movies like this clearly that's not the case because they get made a huge audience for it yeah i mean there's there's got to be tens of thousands of us that enjoy these movies i just maybe even maybe even hundreds the horror it's like horror and sports in a horror and uh superheroes that's the only thing carrying the movie industry the last 10 years but it just occurred to me that like you don't go to the movies wanting to like sit back and relax and just kind of like turn your brain off.

56:31You go to the movies to be like freaked out or thrilled or skate. Like you, it's like a tense experience. You love having a tense experience in the movies. That's not me. Yeah, guess what? I don't even know if I enjoy it. But I love it. Okay. And I found this. So Rotten Tomatoes did like the top 100 horror movies of the year. So that's how I found Influencer. Quite good. In fact, see that, that's the problem. I'll say that. If there's 100 horror movies in a year, there's too many of them. But you, Nope, disagree. There's obviously a market for him. All right. All right. Anything else, Ben, for the audience?

57:06I got nothing. All right. You know what? Before we go, it's almost July. How does this happen every year? I'm not saying the year. You say you're not in midlife crisis yet. Summer is almost over. I know summer hasn't yet to begin, but it's almost July. It's the beginning of the end. You're an old man. AnimalSpiritsPod at gmail.com. See you next time.

57:30Thank you.