You Can't Quantify Happiness (EP.335)

24:03It's not like the government is running this huge, huge deficit to finance everything. So you can't really say like the government is propping everything up here, which is I think a case that a lot of people have been making. Yeah, that is a case. I saw a doomer talking about that the other day, that it's all, Well, not only is it all government spending, but a lot of the government reports are untruthful. Well, of course, if the market doesn't agree with you, don't trust the data. Those go hand in glove. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to move your business forward, but first you need to find the right team.

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25:21And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-CONTACTS. Remember this for a take? Hyperinflation is going to change everything. It's happening. That was from Jack Dorsey on October 2000, in October 2021. Close. Do you think that when you have a large following and you say something like that, that there should be any sort of repercussions? And I can't even imagine what they would be. And I know that's not the world that we live in. You could say whatever you want, which I guess is pretty great for the most part.

26:06But I don't know. Shit like this pisses me off. It pissed me off at the time and it makes me madder now. I just think rich and powerful people never have anyone tell them no anymore. And they kind of just say and do what they want. Don't you think that the social media era has made you realize that like people who are rich, powerful, and even if they're geniuses, they can also still be really, really dumb. And I don't know if that's like a good thing or a bad thing, but it just makes you realize that like, oh, that's right. There's like literally no one out there that's perfect. Well, of course, of course.

26:39But I think in the past though, there were people, if you read books and stuff about the heroes that we had, these people were put on a pedestal because no one ever saw all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes or heard about it. And you didn't have to, you can kind of mythologize these people. There was no TMZ. Yes. And maybe that wasn't realistic either, but anyway. That's an interesting question to ask. Like, what's a better world to live in? One where you put people on pedestals. In many cases, I'm sure a lot of people back in the day that we thought were like gods were just absolute monsters.

27:14Yeah, don't ever meet your heroes. There was like, we like romanticized it. Okay. I don't know. So you wrote a blog post complaining about your vet bill, which I think, I swear the vet stuff, that has to be one of the highest long-term inflation things there is. Every time you get a bill there, it's never like, you never look at the bill from the vet and go, oh man, whew, that was a relief. You never have that feeling. I honestly, I'm still shocked. I couldn't believe it. So my dog is - You know what else I think about dogs? This is a Ben conspiracy. I'm not a big conspiracy theory guy. The heartworm medication.

27:48I think it's bunk. I don't think it ever does anything because. I think it's all bunk. We took a blood test and I wasn't going to say no and look like an asshole. I got a call. Blood test looks clean. And I actually, I said to the doctor, my dog's 12 and she's in, she's my angel. She's sleeping right next to me on the floor. I said to her, to the doctor, like, okay, she's 12. Like she's a boxer. So she's kind of getting a little bit up there in age. Like what would be the response to whatever we could possibly find? Like, am I really going to like, you know what? She's going to go on like a different dot.

28:24And he's like, well, it could be, it could be any number of response. I'm like, I know, but like, I'm going to pay all this money for the blood work. And then I'm going to pay more money to like, for what? Anyway, funny story, I guess. Logan was with me at the vet and he had like a book on his lap and he was like, I'm using air quotes reading it because Logan is four, he can't read. But he's just like talking over the book and flipping the pages. And he goes, daddy, you read it. And the book is called Dogs Go to Heaven. And so. That is the one thing that my vet did extremely well. Like the way that they handled putting our dog down was like one of the, the way that they handled it was just like perfect.

29:04and I was really happy with how that they did that. So maybe it's worth the money in the end. By page three, I had literal tears coming down my cheeks and I was wearing sunglasses, which made me feel a little bit less embarrassed, but I had like literal tears and I said, look, I can't read it. And he's like, why not? And I said, I just can't, go play. That's tough. Anyway,$570 for pretty routine stuff. So you made this chart for CPI changes. is this looks like a Nick Majuli created chart because there's no way you made a chart. But this is the entirety of why people are pissed off. But I love the fact that, well, I've got some other theories on why people are pissed off too.

29:43I'm going to save for later. I love that you put salad dressing on here. That's my favorite one. I don't know why. Because you have all these huge items and then you have salad dressing on there. So I'm glad we got to the bottom of salad dressing. Dude, everything is so much more expensive than it was. This just goes back to January of 2020. So you squeezed a decade's worth of price increases into like a two-year period. That's like that. We're shell-shocked. Maybe I'm just like the most unemotional person ever. This doesn't make me mad. Okay, salads with grilled chicken are literally$20. I can't get over it.

30:19Help me understand. For some reason, I was looking at an old blog post of mine from like June 2020 in the conclusion. And it was asking like, how would people react to inflation? So kind of pressing on my part, right? I was just asking the question, not predicting. And at the end, I said, if we get inflation, that's the best case scenario. I think people forget you can't do, again, you can't do counterfactuals. I think people forget how bad things could have been from the pandemic. And you can't make, you can't go in people's brains and make them realize like, here's what would have happened had the government not shot the bazooka.

30:52Things would be worse. And I don't think people can realize that in their brain. Maybe that's the reason that this inflation doesn't anger me so bad, because I know that things could have been way, way worse. Ben, it could always be worse. It could always be worse. It doesn't make anybody feel better ever under any circumstances. It makes me feel better. That's all I'm saying. That's the reason like the high prices don't make me mad because I know that things could have been way worse. You don't think that high prices are the source of all of the disconnect? I'm going to say all. A lot of them, but not all.

31:21Yes, there are other factors. No, because there's times in history where inflation has been this high or worse and people weren't this upset or angry. False. people were living people were living in the 70s look at all the approval ratings of all the presidents and inflation was inflation was higher in the 1980s than it has been for this decade for the entirety of the decade the average inflation rate in the 80s was like six percent yeah but it was coming down it was coming down a lot different all right so walmart uh ceo cfo one of them in the u.s we may be managing through a period of deflation in months to come so i'm guessing they are looking at things for consumer like food and i don't know what the context was around, there's a bunch of people who shared this quote.

32:01That's the thing. When I said we don't get a lot of deflation, that's like in the overall price basket because the biggest piece is shelter. But there are places where... What do you got to do?

32:21It's not a good sign when you winced when you have to sit down. Honestly, the Middle Ages... You're going to have one of those big rolling foam things that you do stretches on? Yeah, I have one. You're going to have to get one of those. I have one. Of course you do. Middle-aged Michael. All right. Here's a—this is—what's that? Icy hot? Oh, is that the shack stuff? Here is a very surprising figure. And if this gets to your anger thing, I don't know. So this is from a new research report. It shows real hourly wages by education relative to January 2020. And it shows high school, some college, and then college or plus.

32:58And usually the income levels are the more education you have, the higher your average wages, right? And then lower your education. Look at this. Some college and high school saw a way greater increase on real wages than people with a college degree. And actually the group that's falling behind is people with college degrees. Is this not a shocking trick to you? Falling behind is like a bit of a stretch. on a relative basis to their... No, their real wages aren't increasing as much as the other two cohorts. Yes, but I'm saying this is kind of a shocking chart again because you assume... Wait, I think I just butchered that word.

33:35Did I say cohorts? Cohorts. Cohorts. Yours sounded like a Harry Potter word. But again, you assume the people with only a high school education, that's typically a lower average income group. So again, they've had the highest income increases. again, no one could have predicted this kind of thing. True, but. But does this also, so is this why? They're also the group that's most being impacted by higher prices. You see it in all the data. But is this though why like so many more educated, like upper middle class people are angry? Because they've actually fallen a little behind other groups a little bit in this run up.

34:18So it's like the low-income group is mad because prices are higher and it's impacting their budget more. And then the higher-income group is outside of the top 10 % or top 20%. They're getting squeezed because their wages haven't kept up. That's one of the reasons that more people are upset. All right, this is from Morgan Stanley. This number kind of shocked me. So it's the percentage of household debt locked in at a fixed rate. And it was 75%, 76 % in the mid-2000s. it's now at almost 90 % as of 2022. I guess I wouldn't have known what the, obviously it's the reason for this is because mortgages make up 70 % or whatever, but that's just a very high number.

35:01Torsen Slock at Apollo. Do you have his daily email? Do you get that? I finally signed up a couple of weeks ago because I always see his charts and he has a daily email where he sends from Apollo just a chart of the day kind of thing with a little paragraph on each. So this is residential investment as a share of GDP. And you can see it crashed following the great financial crisis because it messed up the housing market. And it went a little higher and then crashed right back down again. It kind of feels like high mortgage rates are just going to make the housing market even worse in the future as far as supply goes, you know, from a building standpoint.

35:35I really feel that if we get a pullback in mortgage rates, housing prices are going to go up another 10%. Maybe it can't work like this. But my thinking is there's just going to be way more activity than like housing prices streaming higher could be i could be wrong do you think we have to have both at the same time no no all right but but but housing pricing i'm sorry housing activity will skyrocket you're right i don't know where i don't know what i don't know what's happening with prices but i'd feel more confident in that assertion so this is from bloomberg this one was going on last week my my tweet was the share of americans who are mortgage free is an all-time high which actually the the headline is a bit misleading it's at an all-time high in like modern times, but back in the day before like the Great Depression, you more or less had to pay for like, you had to put like 50 % down or something.

36:22So the, so people would buy their mortgages off way quicker back in the day, but that's like pre-modern times. So the share of U.S. homes that are mortgage-free jumped five percentage points from 2012 to 2022 to a record drive of just 40%. More than half of these owners have reached retirement age. You can see this thing skyrocket. It also shows a change in the number of mortgage-free homes by age group, 65 to 74, added 2.8 million. Look at all those people, like 1.1 million, 35 to 44. What are these young people doing? Leverage is good for you. I don't care about the psychic psychology behind paying off your debt.

37:00I don't see why anyone in their 30s or 40s should pay off their house. You know what? I meant to bring this up, but I'm glad you mentioned that. So I prepay my mortgage. And I have since I bought the house. Every month, I pay a little bit more because I want to pay it off in 14 years instead of 30 years. But the other day, I was like, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I said, what am I doing? I reached that realization in my first house. I was paying double on the mortgage. And I thought, Why am I, what's the point of this? Why am I doing this? The money just sits there. Like literally, especially if I could get more from the bank that I'm paying the bank, I can get 5 % on cash or I could prepay my mortgage, which is like two and whatever it is, two and three quarters.

37:52Why the hell would I do that? I have a 3 % mortgage. It's equal to the inflation rate right now. Plus it's tax advantage. Why would I ever pay that off early? I wish I could pay it off. I wish I could go to a 50 year loan right now at the same rate. I don't, I don't get it. Uh, so if you have, if you, I get why people do it. The thing I've always heard from people is like, no one who's paid off their mortgage early has ever felt bad about it, but in the back of their mind, in the back of their mind though, come on, that's the opportunity cost there as a finance brain guy. I just, I don't care.

38:23I don't even care about the psychology behind it, even though I understand it. Most people don't think in terms of opportunity cost. And for most people that are not finance people and even finance people, there's a huge relief to paying off your mortgage, rightly or wrongly. It just is. So I have no plans to paying off my mortgage. No way. If rates go back down again, I'll borrow more. If rates go back down to where they were, not that maybe we'll never see it again in our lifetime. But if rates go back down to, I don't know, 4 % or something, I'll borrow more money. Same. When I bought the house, I thought to myself, holy cow, I'm going to have a paid off mortgage by the time I'm 50.

39:04That is super appealing. And it was at the time, but now I have changed my tune. Makes no sense. All right. Almost two thirds of all mortgage-free homes are paid off over a period of more than 21 years. So people, a lot of it is people just living in their homes for a long time. This is interesting. Of the 4.1 million new homes built in the U.S. from the start of the pandemic through 2022, 29 % were in Florida and Texas. Both states, the share of fully paid up homes tops 43%. I guess it's just easier to build homes there. Okay, this was a chart from, I think Lance Lambert posted this. He's got his new Resi Club real estate newsletter on Substack.

39:43Is it Substack or just his own, whatever it is. He always posts good charts. So he shows the national payment to income ratio. And you can see, he kind of shows like above the red line, housing prices are unaffordable, expensive, below the green line, housing prices are cheap. We were below the green line for pretty much the entirety of the 2010s, right up till 2021, 2022 when rates went up. How many people were pounding the table on buying a home in the 2010s? This is the, right? Like, this is the thing with, people only worry about it when the affordability is bad, but when the affordability is good, people rarely pound the table and be like, Like, hey, get out there and buy a house now.

40:18It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work the other way around, right? Yeah, that's interesting. Hey, I have a question. So getting back to the chart, the share of mortgage-free homes in the US. Remember like all the talk about a retirement crisis? Right, these people are set. The median 401k balance for people ages 56 to 65 is only whatever it is. How many of those people own a home? How many of those people are going to be collecting$40 ,000 a year in social security? Or whatever the number is. A lot more boomers are going to be fine in retirement than we previously anticipated. I mean, there was a lot of time spent worrying about the retirement crisis.

40:57Like, is that not a thing? Was it overblown? I'm sure some people are obviously struggling, as is always the case. Yes, I think it's probably overblown. But yeah, if you looked at those like median retirement balance numbers, they were always awful. But that's why for most of the middle class, the home is their financial asset. And it's a form of forced savings. Right. So I was going to say that, like we speak about like us not being so excited to pay off our mortgage. Like obviously we're blessed that we're going to have assets outside of our home. But for a lot of people, you're right. It's forced savings and it is their single largest asset for all.

41:35Is it for most people? So that's the hope for people too, is that like in the 2030s, the boomers are either going to have to sell their homes or they're going to want to downsize or they're going to pass them along when they die off or whatever. Like that's the hope for more housing supply in the years ahead. I don't know. I think there's probably going to be a lot of like reverse mortgages and home equity lines of credit. And I don't think it's going to be like this tsunami or wave of housing hitting the markets. I think it's going to be more of a drip. And for a lot of young people, if young people are worried about housing affordability, If someday they inherit a house from their parents, are they really going to be quick to sell it right away?

42:14Or are they just going to keep it? I don't know. Okay. Okay, so prices are falling in certain places. Again, this is Lance Lambert. He posted from the peak, Austin home prices down 18%. San Francisco down 11%. Seattle down 9%. So there are certain areas where, but if you compare to like since March, 2020, a lot of these places still up 30, 40, 50 % housing prices. So I don't know how much of a reprieve that is for people, but I guess it's, it, it's something that places that got completely out of whack with reality, the prices are coming in a little bit, or do you think it's just like a marginal, the prices are being set on the margin and it's like.

42:53I mean, I also don't like just, yeah, if prices are up 40 % and then they're at a 10 % drawdown. You think anybody feels better about that? All right. So I have a local one I'm checking. You had your house forever that in your neighborhood you were checking. So on my, I have a nice, they put a nice new running path in for me. So I go for a run three or four times a week. And there was this house that had a huge lot and the lot was so big on either side that I think they must've sold the lots and they built two new houses on either side of this really old house from like the fifties. And one of them got finished in like late 2021.

43:23I looked on Zillow. They sold it for$5.75. They just relisted it for whatever reason. This is a picture of the extra house in here. It's a, what do you call it? A modern farmhouse? This is not a modern farmhouse. Okay. Modern farmhouse-ish. So again,$5.75 in late 2021. A little less than two years later, they're listing it for$6.99. This does not look like a very big house. It might be bigger than it appears. I looked, it's like really nice finishes and stuff. It's a nice house, but I don't know. 20 % higher price in two years seems a tad excessive. me. Are they going to get that, do you think?

43:56I'll check back with you. This was interesting, too. Do you follow Zillow Gone Wild on Twitter? They post, like, random houses that are for sale that are kind of weird or odd, but this one, this is in Rochester, New York, which is where? It's got to be up in Northern. Rochester is way up north. Okay. So it looks like a pretty nice little house, like a little bungalow, and inside it looks like it's totally been redone, and they say they went way overboard with the gray, because the floor is gray, the walls are gray, like the whole house is just gray, gray, gray. which is a millennial thing. The gray tone is nice.

44:28$154 ,000. It's a pretty nice house for$150 ,000, right? I didn't think those houses really existed anymore. I guess if you go to certain places, you can still find affordable housing. Does that not seem really cheap to you for a house that looks that nice? Yeah, I don't know what sort of neighborhood. Rochester's way up north. Okay, well, I guess that's the point, though. If you want to live in a nice, desirable area, you're going to have to pay up. If you want to pay to live somewhere else and you want affordable housing, you're probably not going to have a – that's the tradeoff. I was in a store the other day with Logan and he was scrolling on my phone on Amazon and he saw like a toy set that he wanted.

45:13And you know what it had on the QR code or on the app or whatever? it had like you could take a picture of the room or scan the room and you could see where the toy would fit into the room like how big it is oh that's kind of cool how cool is that i don't know if that's new but i've never seen it before okay i've seen stuff there was like a sunglasses one where you could put a picture of yourself upload it and it would put the sunglasses on you to see what they look like that's kind of cool uh all right so on the quarter app i searched for the term recession. Okay. And on the app, you could like just hit it in a term.

45:53So I'm doing an app recession and you could search through all transcripts to see how many, you know, like company mentions and stuff like that. And in Q3 and Q4, 28 % of companies were using the word recession in their earnings call. This is from 2022. Yeah. Isn't that kind of wild? Basically one out of three. This is crashed. Crashed. in Q3, it's down to 10%. I mean, it was something everyone was talking about. It was the most predicted recession ever and it never happened. All right, so here's my thing about - But wait, like, hold on. This morning I spoke about, this morning, I just spoke about companies like, I'm just starting to notice like more and more caution, which, remember in 2022, when we were talking about like all the retailers and how they said everything was and a lot of it was just...

46:46Inventory mismatches. Yeah, a lot of it was just that. So Walmart, by the way, like totally took care of that and cleaned that up. So it was a bit of a red herring. Best Buy this morning. This is from the transcript. Best Buy this morning. Here's the CEO. In the more recent macro environment, consumer demand has been even more uneven and difficult to predict. Based on the sales trends in Q3 and so far in November, we believe it is prudent to lower our annual revenue outlook. I guess you could say this has been like the most volatile consumer period this last three years in a long, long time. And you can also say it's just very mixed.

47:17So Dix, for example, here's Dix CEO. Our Q3 comps were driven by increases in both transactions and average ticket. As a result of our strong Q3 performance, we are raising our full year outlook. So it really - We've been keeping Dix in business single-handedly with all our sports that we do in our household. It's a mixed bag. It is not one economy. No, no way. So here's another, so I totally agree with you on like the biggest reason if we're ranking for people being mad is prices. But I also think there's a lot more going on. So look at this. Share of people who say the economy is good by Democrats and Republicans.

47:52Personally, 71 % of Democrats say the economy is good. 57 % say it's good for them personally of Republicans. Nationally, 58 % of those same Democrats said it's good. 5 % of Republicans said it's good. Okay? There's a lot of politics involved here too. The whole 14 % of American voters believe they're better off financially now than Joe Biden took office. that one from the FT that was going around. How different would that poll look if you would have said, how are you personally doing better financially than you were in 2021 or 2022 when he took over? What did the poll say? 14 % of voters believe they're better off financially.

48:28But this other one say - Wait, wait, wait. But how is that different than what you just said? I'm saying, if you would have take the Joe Biden name out of it, or Democrat or Republican, just say you personally since this year. And that's what the other poll does. And it's showing a lot of people saying they're doing just fine. Derek Thompson had the guy from New York Times on who does the political polls. And he was asking him, like, how much different are polling? Because do you ever answer your phone if you don't know the number? Ever? No, of course not. And so the guy from New York Times said, listen, that's much harder because young people these days, they literally never do.

49:03It's only old people. And it's usually people who answer surveys. And he said, the number now is 1 % of people who are asked to do a survey ever even answer the phone. So like, I just don't know how representative these surveys about sentiment are anymore when you're asking a narrower and narrower group of people who like to answer surveys. Look at the cartoon I put in here. We've seen this before, sampling bias. Yes, I love responding to surveys, 99.8%. No, I tossed them in 0.2%. So it's like the survey part is the hard thing. So we did the one of our own. This is not representative of the United States.

49:37What's interesting. So how do you feel? This is in the compound. Almost 5 ,000 votes. How do you feel about your current financial situation now? 6 % said horrible. 12 % said not good. 33 % said okay. No, no, no. I said just okay. Just okay. Sorry, that just. 33 % said good. And 15 % said never better. This is obviously not. Our audience skews people who are doing better financially probably. This is not representative. But that's the thing. I think you could have 10 different surveys give you 10 different answers right now about the economy. Yeah, that's probably right. I think the sentiment piece is just so far out of whack.

50:13And I think that politically and social media-wise has kind of broken down those barriers where it's much harder to trust any sentiment figures these days. True. Right? Yeah, I think that's right. Okay. A good one from the Wall Street Journal about happiness. We've talked about this before in a survey. Most people said it would take a pretty significant pay bump to deliver contentment. The respondents had a median salary of$65 ,000 a year, said a median of$95 ,000 would make them happy and less stressed. The highest earners with a median of$250 ,000 income said a median response of 350%. They show this chart, which is just the, what do you call it, the coup de grace?

50:49So they show your salary bracket and what you'd need. And for everyone, it's just a little higher. For the lowest salary, it's higher. So for everyone, the needle is just a little further away. The carrot is a little further away. And again, there's two ways to look at this. One is this is kind of sad that people never realize that no matter how much money you make, there's never going to be enough. It's never going to make you happy. On the other hand, this is what pushes us to make things better and get up in the morning. And this is why the economy continues to grow. Because people are literally never happy with their current situation.

51:21It's like a tragedy at the micro level and an incredible thing for the macro. It's like the opposite of that Stalin quote, right? What is it? One death is a tragedy and millions of deaths are a statistic? It's the opposite of that. Yeah. Here's the thing. Maybe it's the same. These surveys about what money does to your happiness, you can't quantify happiness in a survey or in a study. It's impossible. True. You cannot measure somebody's happiness. And when you ask them, matters more, like, if you'd have asked about your happiness right after you got your vet bill, that's a totally different situation than asking you after you had a great day with your boys at the park or something.

52:00Like it's when you ask someone also matters like how happy they're feeling. Yeah, your happiness is variable. Like if you're a relatively happy person, you're not gonna be happy all the time. There's gonna be times when you're gonna be very upset or very annoyed or whatever. You're not, it's not an even keel. Also, how about this? Like just not being truthful, right? I remember in high school, they used to give us these surveys to like what teens are doing in the state of Michigan or whatever. and it would ask like how often do you drink and I'm like I'm not gonna someone's probably watching this I'm not gonna be truthful on this not that I drank in high school wink wink but I think that's the thing like I lied people lie that's all I'm saying about the sentiment stuff that people are have never been more displeased with the economy or inflation or I don't know I just think I don't I don't really trust a lot of it I think that directionally that's right but I don't think it's like the worst ever or whatever you know those kind of things make me...

52:54Okay, here's one other personal finance thing I was thinking about. There's the old personal finance trope that material possessions are not going to fill your soul. They're not going to make you happy. Buying stuff makes me happy. This is one thing I've changed my mind about over the years. What type of stuff? Give me an example. Okay, so we had a good clean-out session in our house. It was supposed to be an office space in our house, but it got turned into a playroom for the kids, all their toys. And they would get toys and toys and toys and we're filling this stuff. We have bins and bins of toys.

53:23And my kids don't really like to play with toys that much. They like to play board games. They like to play outside. They like to do sports. They've never really were into toys. Even my youngest daughter, who's like the little princess of the group, she doesn't even like to play with dolls that much. So we said, pick a few toys out. We're throwing the rest away or giving them away to people who need them. We don't need them anymore. We cleaned this whole toy room out. And the trade-off for my kids was, they wanted to turn it into a movie room. So we're turning our little office space into a movie room.

53:52Like a couch in there and a TV. So we took the TV from downstairs and hung it up in there. And I got to get a new TV. And I went with a big one. I asked for a line across the middle. They said they don't have those anymore. Only New York. But I got like a 75-inch TV. And that TV makes me very happy. I know material stuff is not like watching a football game. I watched the Chiefs-Eagles game last night with my daughter on the TV. This huge TV with great picture. It made me very happy. I bet the Eagles last night I'm back. Good job. So anyway. Wait, I will say, hold on. But a TV is not a material possession.

54:25Material has utility. But there's materials, buying stuff now, there's certain stuff that I figure out that I like makes me more happy. Buying a nice pair of shoes or clothes, like that actually makes me happy. I know that's against personal finance religion, but it's true. For me, it is. You know what gives me satisfaction? Buying a$200 button up and then losing it before you wear it. T-shirts on Instagram. That's why I keep it simple. All right. Somebody said this to us. Quote, vests look good. Number one, we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one. I wouldn't be caught dead in one.

54:59I can live with Midwest Ben being a best vest guy. But Michael, I thought New York dudes were too cool for something so unfunctional and goofy looking. Wrong. I feel like the New York vests are like a puffy vest though. Well, we're going to get to that. Number two, if you think vests are only cosmetic, I believe you're missing the usefulness. Vests work to keep your core insulated, leaving your arms free from the bulky sleeves of insulated jackets when you are engaged in activities where you need a full range of motion. Vests keep your arms free while still providing wealth. I'm sorry, warmth, Jesus.

55:31But this part is interesting. Vests are useful in milder temperatures. You produce enough heat that your jacket is too warm, but it is still too cold to wear only a base layer. A vest can solve both problems and take place of the light or midway jackets. So where I reside, cool coastal weather, nearly everyone has multiple vests of varying weight and fabric, wearing them year-round. Yeah, because they like the way they look, not because they're functional. I'm sorry, the functionality. A lot of people sent me the thing about the vest keeping your arms free. I don't do manual labor. Are you kidding me?

56:02Sorry, I wear vests because they look good. How many people actually have a vest to do work outside? But I'm a sweater. 2 % of the people? So sometimes if I'm wearing a coat, I'll sweat. If I was wearing a vest, maybe I wouldn't sweat as much. Yeah, lightweight coat. That's what a lightweight coat is. I'm sorry. I like vests. I have like four of them, but they're not functional. My arms are always cold when I wear a vest. It's true. Or my core is hot. There's never a happy medium there. It's true. What's this one? Hey, guys, love the show. During Wednesday's episode, Michael said, Ben, oh, by being born in 1981 is a millennial.

56:35That is wrong and it's a pet peeve of mine. I wish it didn't bother me, but it does. I'm going to preface this email with, I agree with this person. I was born in 1980, graduated high school in 1998. My wife, 81, graduated in 81 and high school in 99. When the term millennial was first introduced, it was clearly referring to people younger than us. It referred to kids growing up at the turn of the millennium with access to new technology and graduating in the new millennium. Neither my wife nor I had email until college, nor cell phones. Our upbringing was more similar to someone born in the 1970s than one born in 1985.

57:13Playing outside all day, meeting up with neighborhood kids, parents having zero idea where you were, having all your friends' phone numbers memorized. I had that. In recent years, the goalposts have moved, perhaps due to silly clickbait headlines. I think of the earliest it starts since 1983. Can we make that official? I think this person's right. What's the difference between 83 and 81? They had the same exact upbringing. But my point, the thing is, the Boomer generation was 1946 to 1964, I think. No, no, no. That's the same thing. No, no, no. This is how they define generations. The millennial generation is way too wide because what does a millennial generation go through?

57:45Boomers, 46 to 64. That's just as wide. Millennials, 1981 to 1996. I'm sorry. Wait, what is it? 81 to 96? Yeah. I mean, this is just what people, of course, there's different types of millennials. There's just like there's different types of boomers. Somebody born in 96, at that point, there was already internet. Well, that's the thing. If you're at the front or the tail end, you're going to be a tweener. So yeah, I'm like a tweener between Gen X and millennial. But yeah, I probably lean more Gen X in terms of like pop culture and stuff. But this is just how we define it. It's a wide range. That's how it works.

58:21Yeah. Okay. For recommendations, I don't have good recommendations really. I just have a few finance brain takes on movies I watched. Okay. Okay. So my son George loves tsunamis for some reason. I don't know how he got onto tsunamis. He loves talking about tsunamis and thinking about them. And for some reason, we mentioned, like, hey, there's this movie with a huge tsunami at the end. So we found Deep Impact. I think it was on Paramount Plus or something. This is why I have every streaming channel because I know I can always find a movie. And so we watched the last 10 minutes. Of course, you know, where Taylor Leone is sitting with her dad on the beach and they get swallowed up by the tsunami.

58:56He just loved watching the big tsunami. But then, like, we watched the last 10 minutes. I'm like, you know what? I kind of want to watch this again from the beginning. It's not nearly as good as Armageddon, obviously. I don't remember Deep Impact. Was that they built tunnels or something? and they picked random people by lottery? a meteor is coming to Earth, but it's a poor man's Armageddon. No, but am I confusing this with a different story? No tunnels. No lottery system for saving people? I don't think they did a spaceship. But I was kind of in and out of it. Morgan Freeman is the president.

59:23And he talks about, listen, we know this asteroid's been coming for a year. We've built the spaceship ready to go blow it up. We don't want to tell anyone. But he says to avoid like economic calamity, they're freezing wages and prices. They don't want people to prosper off of this. So they froze wages and prices. What do you think the economic impact of the president saying, listen, we've known for a year there's a meteor coming to hit the earth. We're going to try to blow it up. What does the stock market do? Goes to zero. You think so? Don't you think everybody sells? Yeah, but the relief rally when they blow up that asteroid, would we be up like 90 % on one day?

1:00:01Yep. If it crashed? Yep, yep, yep. Okay, one more. I think I've mentioned this before. Wait, wait, wait, wait. wait i i don't is deep impact worth watching it's not i mean it's a 90s movie again armageddon is 10 times better but it's there's a lot of good it's elijah wood and tay leone and morgan freeman plays the president does does the day after tomorrow have tsunamis day after tomorrow is when like everything freezes over yeah uh you know what's a great tsunami joke i i saw that kevin nealon do this live was i with you when i saw this no i wasn't with you i was somebody else I saw it. I was laughing for three weeks.

1:00:35He said the tsunami, remember the one in Southeast Asia? The tsunami was so strong it sucked in the letter T. But just his delivery, you can imagine. That's not bad. All right, one more. Downsizing with Matt Damon. It's on Netflix. It's not a good movie, but the concept is good. So it's actually an Alexander Payne movie, which I think he's got a new one out with Paul Giamatti that looks really good, The Holdovers. But I'm a huge Alexander Payne guy because I love Sideways. His other movies haven't been as good. Descendants was okay. Is that with Clooney? Huh? I like his movies usually. Wait, is it Descendants with George Clooney?

1:01:08I think of somebody else. Yes, that's the one in Hawaii. I love that movie. I like that one. Okay, so downsizing is the scientists figure out how to shrink you, right? Shrink a person down to like six inches tall. And they do this because they are trying to save the planet from all the resources we use, but also because like you're way richer. So they say that like Matt Damon has a net worth of$152 ,000, but that translates into 12.5 million in downsized land. Because he can like live in a mansion there, right? They say like$1 buys$1 ,000 worth of stuff there because it doesn't cost as much as not as much materials because you can be like a mansion for tiny you.

1:01:41And I think they said like 3 % of the population did it. Like how many people do you think would do this if they had the chance now? Because people complain about inflation. They complain about like how affordable housing is. People would do this if they had the chance, right? These days? Like the people who complain the most, do you think they'd do this? And it's kind of like, listen, you can basically retire if you go to downsize land. and just party all the time because your money goes further. I don't know about that, Ben. All right. Anyway, the movie's not very good, but it's a really good thought exercise and like the premise is good.

1:02:13What are your thoughts on the Adjustment Bureau? I like that one. I like that one a lot. Slopped on, underrated Matt Damon. Yes, I'm a big Emily Blunt fan. She's great. All right, Ben, last week you mentioned that you had a pet peeve how people in movies just take pills without water, which is a great observation and 100 % true. I got another one. So over the weekend, I was watching The Lost World, the Jurassic Park movie with Kobe. And I noticed how in movies, people just seem to be totally unbothered by walking through rivers or puddles. That's true. As if getting your socks wet isn't the worst thing in the world.

1:02:47That's true. I step on like a quarter-sized piece of water in my sock and like my night's ruined. Ruins your day. Yeah. So they were just walking through the river when they could just be walking on the not river. so Kobe is super into like animal movies now I told you I was watching like King Kong vs. Godzilla he had a book thread the other day so he came on with a shark book and a shark tooth so what do you think I showed him? Jaws? Wrong. Jaws is too scary. The Meg loves it. Wait, he could handle the Meg because my son's been asking to watch it forever. We were watching the Meg this morning he loves it.

1:03:25Okay. We didn't know if it was too violent for our son. I mean, there is definitely a little bit of violence. Honestly, I don't really care about that. It's more my wife. Okay. I cannot wait for Dream Scenario, the A24 movie with Nicolas Cage. Did you see the trailer? Yeah. I just don't like people talking about their dreams, so I don't know if I'm going to be to watch it. Wow. You're that much of a hard-o for dreams? I'm just kidding. Nicolas Cage is in a movie out like every three months, though, so it's hard to get excited about one of them. Nobody emailed us about when evil lurks. Come on, people.

1:03:56If you're a horror fan, what evil larks? Let's hear it. Okay. I want some feedback. Got another dementedly gnarly Shudder movie. Very upsetting. Called Kidnapped. Some 2010. And I believe, I don't know where, it's a foreign movie, but very grisly. Very grisly. Do you enjoy these movies? I love it. Okay. I'm not an Apple TV guy. I don't think I watch anything on there except for Severance. But you know what I did watch over the weekend or last week, maybe probably last week, not over the weekend. There's a Godzilla TV show called Monarch Legacy of Monsters. Now, I have to say, and I think I've said this before, I don't love the Godzilla movies.

1:04:41I obviously watch them, but I don't really enjoy them. This one. There haven't been any good ones. Right? There really haven't been. No. This one, this show is promising. Now, only two episodes were released, but I'm trying to think why I don't like the Godzilla movies. You know what the best Godzilla movie is that was not Godzilla? It's Cloverfield. I rewatched that one recently. If they were to replace that alien with a Godzilla, that would have been the best Godzilla movie ever made. There's too much screen time for Godzilla in the movie. So once you see him, it's like, whoa. And then you see him 20 minutes later, it's like, I want to go home.

1:05:19I get it. with this there's actual character development and it's like sort of the origins that it's a slow burn and it's a good tv show and you barely even two episodes you barely even saw godzilla one last one last one last thing so that's an apple tv uh i listened to the ridley scott hall of fame with uh with the big picture listen to this man's resume now most of these movies you knew or him, but I'm sure there's some that you were like, Ridley Scott did that. All right. So Alien in 79, Blade Runner in 82. Thelma and Louise in 91. I'm on the corner of Blade Runner is overrated, but keep going.

1:05:59Okay. Okay. Thelma and Louise in 1991. In 1996, White Squall. I saw White Squall in the theater. Did you know that? It's actually a pretty good movie. It's a great movie. There was a White Squall joke in the latest season of The Bear. Did you know he did The White Squall? I did not know that. That's a good movie. No idea. I didn't know he did Hannibal. The guy from Party of Five. He did Hannibal. Not a good movie, but I didn't know he did it. Obviously, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men, which I love. That's a good movie. One of my favorites. I love Matchstick Men. I didn't know he did that too.

1:06:34You didn't know he did that? American Gangster, which good, but disappointing, but very rewatchable. Body of Wise. Man on Fire? He didn't do that. Is that his brother? That was Tony Scott, yeah. Okay. Body of Lies, Prometheus, The Martian. I don't even think I knew he did The Martian. That's a really good movie. What a freaking resume. And then most recently, he did House of Gucci, which I didn't see. Last Doll, which I liked. House of Gucci was trash. Obviously, Alien and Covenant, which was, you know how I feel about aliens. I absolutely love them. And then Napoleon, which I haven't seen yet, but I'm going to.

1:07:10What a resume. Holy shit. it's kind of crazy that him and his brother the because his brother obviously has iconic movies too top gun and fire a lot of the 80s movies good stuff okay true romance true romance is tony scott yeah okay uh happy thanksgiving to everyone happy thanks not my favorite holiday wait what do you say being thankful is overrated no that's what duncan said did you say that i said it's not my i just said thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday oh don't put words in your mouth okay Yeah, not the best week of the year, but it's a good week. Okay. Well, Ben, where do people reach out to us?

1:07:45Where do they find us? Animal Spirits at thecompoundnews.com. There we go. See you next time.