From Living In His Car to Being a Multimillionaire (w/ Jim Cramer)

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1:21Our compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. I bought a company called Memrix Telex. It was$2 stock. I said, how much can you lose? How much can you lose on a$2 stock? I lost$200 million.

1:34Haley: What? This is Financial Tea. What's up, zippers? Welcome back to Financial Tea. This is a podcast where I teach you how to build wealth with a side of market drama, money scandals, and of course, financial pop culture. Today, we are joined by the one and only Jim Kramer. He is the host of CNBC's Mad Money. He is the co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk on the Street. He is my favorite financial journalist. I watch him every single morning. He is truly the blueprint when it comes to financial literacy and just putting economic concepts into terms that are actually digestible to people, getting people to invest, getting people to feel confident.

2:18Haley: and I'm really excited to have him in the studio today. Jim came to Brooklyn. Welcome to Jumbo. Jim Kramer on the financial team. But first, let's get into the MDJ Market Report. What's up, rich people? Today's Market Report is all about patron saint Anne Hathaway, queen of the summer, because it really is Anne's world. We are just living in it. Like, the woman has five movies out this year, including the Odyssey, which just reached over a billion dollars at the box office. Okay, Slay. And, drumroll please, she is expecting her third child at 43. Oh, and she has been absolutely crushing her red carpet maternity looks like Rihanna who.

3:03Haley: But the reason I wanted to talk about this was also because AOC is all over the news because she is freezing her eggs. She's sharing her egg freezing journey online. She's 36. It's been like everywhere. Obviously, like the right is picking up, the left is picking it up. And, you know, she said it's really expensive. Like even as a member of Congress, her insurance has covered 0 % of the procedure. So she's paying out of pocket over$8 ,000. So I just was like, these two stories together, like we've got an A-list movie star having a baby at 43 and then this 30-something-year-old congresswoman freezing her eggs.

3:39Haley: And this is what's dominating the news cycle at the exact same time. It feels like this isn't celebrity gossip, even though obviously I love celebrity gossip. It feels like we are looking at the poster children for basically one of the biggest macroeconomic trends of our generation, which is the delayed motherhood movement, which I talk about a lot. And by the way, I am 35. I have not had kids yet. I have an amazing career and I want to have kids. So I'm part of this. But let's zoom out and talk about how wild the contrast is between generations. Like for our moms, the playbook was so different.

4:16Haley: It was literally get married as fast as you can. Like you'd be 19, 20, whatever it is, have kids as fast as possible, do it first, and then figure out your career or reenter the workforce later if you could. And back then the math supported it. Like in the 80s and the 90s, a single income household could comfortably buy a house, could comfortably raise three kids and send them to college without taking on crippling debt. The American dream actually sort of worked, but today the financial sequence has completely flipped. Women aren't delaying pregnancy or freezing their eggs on some random whim.

4:54Haley: They're doing it as a rational economic response to modern prices. Because let's be real, if you have kids early in your career, you hit what economists call the motherhood penalty. And that is where taking time off during your peak building years permanently damages your lifetime earning potential. So as a result, modern women are staying in the workforce longer. They're getting promoted. They're securing their damn financial bags. And they are pushing family planning into their mid-30s, into their early 40s. Sienna Miller did it. Aubrey Plaza did it. And as AOC put it, she said that we've effectively turned having kids into a luxury good, which is so true and so sad.

5:41Haley: Like in the U.S. today, raising a child zero to 18 costs over 300K, and that is before higher education. And then when you factor in a housing market where the median home price is nearly six times average income, plus daycare that costs as much as private college tuition, people aren't just delaying kids. millions of people are realizing that they simply cannot afford them. Like maybe they would have liked to have them, but it just really doesn't make sense financially. It's not responsible. But what's crazy is what this is doing globally. So while delaying or opting out of kids obviously makes financial sense on an individual level, that does have a global impact because to keep a country's population stable without relying heavily on immigration, you basically need a fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman.

6:33Haley: And right now, the U.S. birth rate has dropped to around 1.6, and countries like South Korea have plummeted below 0.7. And by the way, this is not on women. This is because the system has made it so hard to have children, so people are opting out. Duh. But fewer babies means a shrinking workforce tomorrow. You know, people are going to retire, and then there's not going to be enough workers to take their positions. And economists call this the demographic cliff, which is when you end up with fewer young workers who are paying into tax bases, paying into social security systems. And then at the same time, you have a massive generation of retirees leaving the workforce.

7:13Haley: And this creates labor shortages. It drags down GDP growth. And it just like completely flips the economic dependency ratio on its head. And for this, I say, thank G-D for all the data centers being built because, you know, we're not going to have that many children, but we will have AI to take the jobs. Just kidding. But the silver lining of this whole thing is if you're an investor in fertility, because all this capital is aggressively following this shift, because more women are delaying childbearing, we are seeing a massive boom in what they call the femtech and reproductive longevity market.

7:51Haley: The global IVF and fertility industry is projected to top$40 billion, which basically turns egg freezing and fertility preservation from this niche medical service into a standardized corporate benefit offered by Fortune 500 companies to retain top female talent. Obviously not Congress, though. Sorry, AOC, but other companies. So yeah, whether it is Anne Hathaway starring in five movies while pregnant at 43 or AOC talking about the$8 ,000 out-of-pocket price tag of egg freezing or Aubrey Plaza just had a baby, Sienna Miller, like I said, we just see women prioritizing financial and career security first and then having families second.

8:38Haley: And that is forcing the entire global economy from labor markets to healthcare tech to adapt to a totally new timeline. I think that the female autonomy part of this is really exciting. Like as a successful woman, I don't think that I would have the career that I have and be making the money I have if I had children. There's no way. But I also think it's really sad that, you know, people can't afford to have kids anymore. And that really needs to be a priority for the government to work on. Talking about things that are rewriting the rules of modern life, Bumble announced this week that it is officially killing the core feature that it was founded on, which is that women make the first move.

9:18Haley: So Whitney Wolfe heard built Bumble in 2014. It was a direct response to her time at Tinder. She, you know, was discriminated against there. She wanted women to be in control. And it was very 2010s, girl boss, feminist empowerment, women take control, send the first message, dictate the terms core. And that single feature was the entire brand identity. Like that was the marketing campaign. That was the whole IPO story. That was Bumble. But then as of this week, that rule has been found dead. So now anyone in a match can now send the opening message. And Bumble is even stretching the reply window from 24 to 72 hours because men are pigs, but also because users said the pressure to respond fast was, quote, stressing them out.

10:08Haley: But this wasn't like a branding play. It's just that Bumble is broke. Like they are not doing well according to their Q2 earnings report. Total paying users has fallen over 16 % year over year down to 3.16 million. Quarterly revenue has dropped 15 % to 210 million. The stock is down more than 90 % from its 2021 IPO high, which I always tell you guys not to invest in IPOs. But I will say also, this abandonment of ethos always happens when companies are strapped for cash and sort of just like struggling. And this women messaging first was a brand strategy, clearly, not an ideology, which is disappointing.

10:48Haley: And it's just sad that when it stopped delivering downloads and dollars, it got scrapped because that was sort of the whole thing. Like, what is Bumble now? And I just think also when a company loses their brand identity, it becomes easier for them to fall off the map. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happens here. Maybe I'll talk to Jim Cramer about that because he is so smart. He's on the episode today. He is a star at CNBC. He's been on air talking about money and stocks for over 20 years. He really is a goat in this game, and I adore him. So enjoy the episode and stay rich.

11:26Hilly, first, while I appreciate all those things that you said about me, those are all par for the course versus what you've done. No, I'm not kidding. There's a cohort of people, maybe about 50 % of this country, who I think are mistreated, I think are regarded as being contemptible at times. Well, let me speak to the man. My own wife was told, look, you're not big enough to be handled by us. And I'm telling you, it was all women because they never would have said it to a guy. And along you come. And people are scared. People are scared.

11:59Haley: Ooh. The sexists are scared. Thank you. The sexists are scared. Clip it. Well, they should be. Clip it. They should be. They should be. Because you have them on the run because you're wise to their game. Yeah. Your family's in the business. You know about all this stuff. And you've broken the code. I don't think people, there are a lot, there's a huge percentage of people who wish you go away. There's no, there's no higher. For sure. There's no higher confidence. But for you too. There's no higher. Well, yeah, the old days. I don't know. So now I'm like, uh, vuncular, but you are changing. Jim, this is not about me.

12:30Haley: I love that you want to shine the light on me. Well, the book. Today is about you. Let's just start with a few rapid fire questions. Sure. So Jim, we always ask our guests, what are your best and worst purchases of the week so far and how much did they each cost? Because my stepson is getting married. Yeah, it's a big week before the wedding. You're spending a lot on the wedding. I bought, uh, I went to the bank to get money for the tips. Okay. Bought a lot of liquor. How much should we spend on the liquor? How much? We love a number on the show. Well, you know, I think the liquor's going to come through.

13:01It may come through as high as$10 ,000.

13:03Haley: Okay. And the only reason I say that is because the greatest thing in the world about liquor is that if we don't drink it, it's still good. Yes. These are not flowers. Now, we did go buy flowers and I don't want to – flowers are very expensive. Oh, it's insane. And we – Since the pandemic too, they've gone up so much. Holy cow. And I – so then we were – all right. So we have to, we got port-a-potty, a giant thing. So we decided we're going to rent some trees, okay? And so we go to my favorite Hampton Bay nurseries, like the greatest guys. My wife's looking at the bill and she goes, wait,$1 ,200 to rent trees to hide the port-a-potty?

13:38Get me some$700 trees. No one knows the difference. So that was my negotiation this week. Get me some$700 trees.

13:45Haley: So we bought a port-a-potty, we bought trees, we bought liquor. Yeah. That sounds like the week before a wedding. I bought some cone sunflowers because I'm having trouble getting bees. And even those have gone up in price, but not crazy. They gave me a little discount. Okay. Let's take a step back because for people who, I mean, everyone knows you, but for people don't know you, let's just broadly, how many hours a day do you spend on TV? Because I feel like whenever I turn CNBC on, you are there. They should just call it JimBC. I'm on for two hours and then I'm on for another 10 minutes for the CNBC Investing Club.

14:18I know it does seem like my wife says, listen, Jim, you're the most overexposed man on TV. And I come back, I say, do you know that all the anchors have two hours?

14:26Haley: I'm just another anchor with two hours. Yours just packs a bigger punch. Well, I think that I can be more off the cuff. How about that? Yeah. Like you. Yeah, I love that. Now, is it that we're not afraid or is it that we don't know how to not be afraid? Don't know how, that we're impulsive. I think it's the latter. Yeah, 100%. I think we lack some sort of fear around that. At one time, I had a big fight with a fantastic couple at home where she said, and I love her, she said, you, you have no governor. We're leaving. And I looked at her and I said, you're right. I have no governor. That's a really good tune.

15:01So I always use that term.

15:02Haley: I love that. And I don't think we need governors. We don't have governors. But so you got into finance 30 years ago. And I sort of want to start the interview just asking, like, what are the changes that you've seen in how we actually talk about money? Well, I think that we've actually regressed, I'll tell you. Oh, wow. I think that we talked a lot about money and the opportunity of making a lot of money by picking good stocks. And somewhere along the line, we were convinced that you shouldn't pick good stocks. You'd just be in index funds. I don't mind index funds if you have not an ounce of time to be in.

15:34But I do think that there were a lot of people, if they had listened or had their eyes open, they would have had Apple. They would have had Meta. They would have had Amazon. And these were much better than the S &P. So I've been recommending a mixture, some S &P, and some keep your hand in. And I think that the latter has gone away. So the thing that's changed is the idea that anybody who works hard can pick individual stocks. At the exact same time that we have CHAT, GPT, and we have Claude, and we have Grock, and we have Prox, well, we have pretty much everything that you need to look things up.

16:12And yet we're not - we're not availing themselves of it. And I think people should.

16:16Haley: So you think that people should buy individual stocks and a mixture with that of index? Yes, I do. So when you started on TV in 2002, were a lot of people talking about stocks on TV at the time? What was sort of the climate? Well, I think this is a great question to see because I first started as a co-host on Squall. I was in Good Morning America, but that was just doing straight business. Then I was a co-host of Squawk, 1998 to 2000, and that was the heyday. Oh, that's huge. In 2002 was the investigation. Oh my gosh. 1998, boom, 1999, boom. 2002 to 2004, an investigation of everybody who was too bullish.

16:58Haley: Oh my gosh. Yeah. So you were really like right on the front lines. Well, fortunately, I wasn't on air during the too bullish period. And I did bring a company public to the street, but I was very upfront saying, listen, it doesn't belong where it opens. Yeah. And you weren't supposed to say that. But I said, look, I don't want people to get hurt. Yeah. You don't want people to get hurt. No, no. Our first is like it's like do no harm, Hippocratic Oath. You don't want people to be in stuff that they can't handle or have the time. But you want them to be be conscious of their money. Yeah. And and to know that they're what they own and to be aware or else they're going to get hurt.

17:36How do you encourage someone to gain that knowledge of their money if they've never had it before? Okay, so my solution, and it's from a thing I needed to do for my father so I knew where everything was. If you can't put all the things you own in one page, you're doing something wrong. My wife has the one page. It's a one page. It's got everything. It's got everything you need to know. Obviously, you don't want to pass from this earth any time soon, but I am available at a very easy page that she has where line by line, where it's kept, what it is, and who to talk to. And she knows it. And I'm glad she knows it.

18:19And I update it when something changes. One page. Anything else, you're just trying to make it too hard for that person.

18:26Haley: Yeah, totally. And, you know, you talk about your wife. And we talk a lot on the show about, you know, money and relationships. And, you know, obviously you've been so successful. and so with your wife how do you guys handle finances and how do you you know make sure there is that transparency all right so we're split um i handle it's not like i handle anything at all i do the uh allocation of bonds and index funds and i think that that's fine she handles all the businesses she has a liquor business that i think is going to be very successful and she has a real estate business that she handles that's running at cashflow positive.

19:13I don't intrude on hers and she doesn't intrude on mine. It's a flashpoint if I say, can I just ask you about Fosforo?

19:19Haley: What's going on? That's the liquor business. Because it's none of my business. I'm not on the board and she really doesn't like it. She says, I'll ask you for help when I need it. And I say the same, which is I'll ask you for help. We recently bought a piece of property in East Quag. And we did it because my wife said, this is a good buy and we'll fix it up and maybe we'll rent it and maybe we'll sell it. But my instinct is to rent it. And I said, look, you know this market. I don't know this market at all. And she had to go, you know, a couple of closing difficulties, stays very much in touch.

19:47And I, and I just say, and not irresponsibly, I think, just tell me where to wire. I went to see the property at her suggestion, but that's all her business. She runs a villa in Italy and she runs a housing project in Mexico and I don't bother her unless she wants my help. In some ways, I'm more clueless than she is about what I do because she got the one page.

20:12Haley: Got it. So, but when it comes to like your household finances, how do you split that? She pays the bills. Anything that hits that's too big, she asked me about. Yeah. Like I just bought her son, my stepson's getting married. Yes, it's so exciting. She said, okay, what is this X at Brioni? And I said, I plead guilty. It was wrong. Maybe it was the champagne. Maybe it was how great looking your son is. But yes. And she goes, well, first of all, that was obviously way too much. Second, you look terrible in the pants. So I had the pants taken in yesterday. I had to have that. But she spots the ones that - She's the CFO.

20:53Oh, most definitely. Yes. And I have a CFO who is actually a CFO.

20:56Haley: But if the household finances, she's in charge.

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21:57Haley: So back to, you know, you're talking about individual investors and how, you know, most people, if they have that curiosity, should try and own individual stocks if they are interested. But, you know, part of that is getting things wrong. You know, you have to, with an index fund, you have a lot of padding. But when you buy an individual stock, you don't have that. No, you don't. So you make a ton of predictions on your show, though. So how do you react when you get things right or wrong? Well, like yesterday I said, I'd be, I said I had really believed in Arvind Krishna. I think he's terrific.

22:36He's the CEO. I thought that they could transcend this problem of software getting pushed down. They've got a good hardware business. I did not see that the cost of smaller hardware like DRAMs had gone up so much, semiconductors, that people were saying, you know what, Arvin, we can't buy your heavy machines right now. We have to buy these, the DRAMs. And I said, this was a mistake that was not a rookie mistake, but it was a mistake I believed, and I got it wrong. And you could say, well, Jim, does that mean I shouldn't own individual stocks? And I say, well, look, I want you to own five individual stocks, but again, you're going to make mistakes.

23:16The work that I've done have shown that if you have one real big win, the book was written in 2023, then I redid it in 24, then I already did it in 25, but I used 1924 to 2024 data. And I looked at the top 100 stocks, almost all were recognizable names. And if you had bought any of those, Volcan Materials, it's a company that makes rocks. Philip Morris, you might have tobacco issues, but there were just too many opportunities that would have made so much more money than an index fund, including owning Berkshire Hathaway. And yet there's there is Warren Buffett saying don't you dare own a stock but you should have owned his stock.

23:57You know I like to you know I'm talking about owning Costco because I like.

24:00Haley: So today though if someone's watching this and they're like okay Jim I want to expand out of index funds. I want to buy some individual stocks. Do you have any that you recommend? Yeah I do. I happen to think that let's say you had $10 ,000. put 7 ,000 index fund I like to get most people I like to get up to 10 ,000 for index fund before they can own an individual so my floor is when you get to 10 ,000 you can buy stocks I don't want to exclude anybody but why not buy 100 shares of Intel at 104 I like Intel a lot Johnson & Johnson AAA balance sheet $250 really really good company I think that that's great I like Eli Lilly I really believe in oh we love Eli Lilly yeah it's good So the kinds of stocks that I'm talking about are not obscure.

24:49They're pretty good in terms of how we view them. I like Amazon. Not love, but like Amazon. And so what you do is you try to do it slowly. And maybe you can only own three. I don't know. But the reason why I favor individual stocks is because I already have the bedrock. The bedrock is the index fund. So I tell everyone, if someone came to me on the street and said, Jim, I want an individual stock, the first thing I say is, do you have an index fund? If they say no, I said, listen, talk to me when you have$10 ,000 in your next fund. Then you'll have the bedrock. So then you can start taking some risk with an individual stock.

25:22And that's how I view it.

25:23Haley: I love that. That's a good boundary. But you've been trading individual stocks for a long time. Since 1979. So it's your fourth grade, right? Well, I did in fourth and fifth grade, yeah, Mrs. Mixer's class. Because my dad tried to encourage me to understand what a stock was. My father lost everything in a company called National Video. So I'm completely aware about the need to be an index fund and not go too heavy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. National Video was his brother's tennis player partner, ran an office in Philadelphia and told my father's brother to buy National Video. My father's brother told my father to buy National Video.

26:02He kept putting money in it when it was going up and money when it goes down. And I asked Pop, what do they do? And Pop said, they're in the entertainment business. They were not. They were in the vacuum tube TV business. And then along came Solid State one day and they went bankrupt. And my father lost everything. It was very tough.

26:22Haley: What do you think about these moments in life where you do sort of bottom out? Like I know that you had one like that where you lived in your car. Yeah, that was bad. You know, so it's like we do learn a lot though from those moments where we, you know, sort of hit rock bottom a little. Talk to us a little bit about that. Until you came along and talked about the desire to be, and you used a word that's very specific, rich. You want to be rich. I was the only person who said, I want you to be rich, really rich. That's the first line of the book of real money. And it was crass. But I was coming from when I lived in the back of my car and I said, you know what?

26:57I'm sick. I have mono. I have jaundiced liver. I'm drinking too much. I'm living in the back of my car with the same clothes. I put baby powder on it every day to make it so you don't know it. and I'm going to get rich. Yeah. And people would laugh, laugh and laugh.

27:12Haley: So how old were you when that, that you were? From when I was 21 to when I was 26. And during that time you were living in your car? The last year I lived in my car. Yeah. And so that was, but you said that even while you were living in your car, you were still investing. I was, my father said, there's this guy, there's this Magellan fund. You got to be Magellan. It was pre-Pierre Lynch. He said, you got to send$5,$10. He used to go to Security Pacific now, Bankrupt Bank, and just say, here's$10, here's$5, you know, here's$3. and I wanted to put it in and save some money. When I had$100, I would then send it to Fidelity.

27:43It was important. It was important because I didn't want to be poor. I was embarrassed. People feel it's very glamorous. Initially, it was glamorous. It was. It was glamorous. I was covering first-page homicide stories. I was on the front page every single day. I would meet people. I said, that was my story. But in the end, I was living in the back of my 1978 Fort Fairmont And it was just really terrible. So after I left LA and then I moved to New York for$20 ,000 a year, I worked for Steve Brill and American Lawyer. We started that. And then I was able to start really making some good picks.

28:15Haley: So wait, so you go from living in your car to then you got this job in New York. Yeah. Walk us through sort of how you then found your way into financial media. Well, I was, I realized, I said, geez, everyone seems to be making money on these takeovers. What they were doing at that point was the oil consolidation. So you would look and say - When you were in the car, you were like, I'm going to be rich. Let me figure out how I can get rich. Okay, I'm seeing that people are doing this thing where they're making money with the takeovers. I want to do that. Like you were laser focused. Ten shares of Natomas.

28:46Haley: Yep, yep, yep. You know, five shares of Kermit Giddy. A hundred shares of Conoco before the deal with DuPont. And then I realized, I said, you know what? I got to get out of this. I thought I wanted to be a prosecutor. I applied to Harvard Law. I got in. I deferred. I was having too good a time. By that point, I was really getting my act together. Then I went back, and at Harvard, I was a very, very big option trader. I had one trade that paid for law school. Whoa. Yeah. What was it? We think of it as Chevron, but it used to have been – it was Southern Cal. It was the Exxon of California. They merged – they bought Gulf Oil.

29:28Gulf Oil looked like the deal wasn't going to go through. I was taking an antitrust class, and I went up to the professor, Professor Rita, he was the greatest antitrust mind of any generation. And I said, listen, I want to ask you a question. You're never in the class. I said, no, I'm always in the class. He said, look, you're reading the journal in the class. It's a little disrespectful. I say, okay, absolutely. But will this deal go through? And he said, 100 % it'll go through. I said, but no one thinks this is going to go through. No one thinks that Chevron is going to be able to buy gold because I don't care about no one.

29:59I'm Phil Rita and this is antitrust. so I just bought the farm. I mean everything. I put everything on it. Put everything, everything. How much are we talking? I put in enough to be able to make about 80 ,000.

30:11Haley: So but you don't remember the exact number? Well whatever it was a you know it was a factor of like six. Oh wow. Okay amazing. And how long did it take for you to make the money? Like 10 days. Was 10 days. But I was able to put a lot of money away and then I took everything and put it on this because I figured, well, a reader knows more than everybody. And it wouldn't have been – the strike price that I bought would not have wiped me out. So it wasn't all or nothing. Yeah. But it did pay for law school. That is pretty impressive. And it paid for my credit cards, which you really – you know you can't beat the credit card.

30:42You cannot. That's a grim reaper.

30:43Haley: Yeah, that really is. Is there a deal that you didn't make and you regret? Oh, God, yeah. You know, I sold Conoco way too soon. DuPont went higher and higher. I missed that. That was bad. And I should have bought, there was this period where you had a lot of smaller diamond shamrock. I mean, that was just right there. Yeah. You're listening to a quick ad. You know what else is quick? Selling your car on Carvana. Just put in your vehicle information and we'll give you an offer. Done. No hassle. No negotiation. No guy from an online listing lowballing you. which means by the time I'm done explaining this, you could have basically done it.

31:32Haley: Still haven't started? Hey, better late than never. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. I also want to talk to you a little bit about your morning routine because I feel - It's insane.

32:10Haley: It's insane. Yes, we need to know because it's true. I think you might have, you know, now every CEO is like, pretends that they have a morning routine, but I think that Jim Cramer invented it. Well, look, I mean, when I was at Goldman and when I was a hedge fund manager, I had a very hard time getting past 247. Sleeping past 247. Yeah. And I just decided I'm just going to get up and just go to work. I now go to 330, which is much better. And I attribute that to melatonin and Klonopin. Yeah. Okay. Klonopin only take a half. Don't worry. I know it's a good thing. But I need to be able to stay asleep for four hours.

32:49And then my trainer comes at four and beats the bejesus out of me for an hour and a half. What do you do? What does he do? Yeah. We do cardio and strength. So it's like, you know, the first 40 minutes on the treadmill. Yeah. And then it's just dreadful. And we finish with three sets of 50 pushups, which I still can't believe I do.

33:07Haley: That's amazing. Well, you know, he gives me a little breather in between. Yeah, that's amazing. I do think one of the best uses of money is a personal trainer because I would never lift a weight on my own if I didn't have a trainer being like, you need to do it. There's a trend right now online of expensive things that are worth the money. What do you think are the five most expensive things that are worth the money for you? Okay. Candidly, I had some bad problems with my eye that I now address. I had no peripheral vision and I had a driver to take me everywhere, not just to work. And now I have to admit, candidly, I kept that.

33:39That's amazing. Even though I've had the operation. Yeah. That's expensive.

33:41Haley: Yeah. But that's, I honestly feel like a driver, especially when you work as much as you, you can use your car as like a little office. Yes, and I do. How much does that cost per year? It's split with the company, but it has been as much as$225 ,000. Wow. Okay. But I do have an allowance. The company gives me an allowance. I mean, it's part of my contract that I have a certain amount of money that I can do. So how much is the allowance? I prefer not to say that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I just say it's a – when I say it's an allowance, it means like that I said, look, I'd like to have a driver provided.

34:14They said, absolutely not. We pay you enough. Why don't you earmark X as expense for Kramer worldwide? And that's what I can expense it.

34:22Haley: Okay. So back to your morning routine. So after you got your ass kicked by your trainer, what's next? Then I go back to look at the market. I try to write some thoughts down. I do this memo for the CMC Investing Club of the 10 things I'm watching. And I start putting them down. And then I go take my shower. I come back. I keep doing that. Then I have the driver pick me up and take in. I'm done that memo usually by around 7.15. I meet with my team to talk about what's going on. I meet with Jeff Marks about what we're going to talk about for what we're interested in for the club right now and whatnot.

34:53Then I really work hard to be ready with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber, two of the greatest partners in the world. Do that from 9 to 10, study for the 10-20 morning meeting that I do with the investing club. And then I have from 11 to 2 that we're literally just to think and write.

35:08Haley: So you really clear time to be creative. When it comes to AI, though, something I've been reading a lot about with, like, I tell everyone to invest in index funds because you're so focused on individual stocks. I'm really focused on just trying to get the most people investing. I think that's great. And you know, I love what you do. I do have a product, an investing club that teaches you how to do it. But I, again, default to, I mean, should my wife have been picking individual stocks? Yes, for what she knows. But she knew that most of her money should be in index fund. And when I saw it, I said, hey, that's great.

35:40I didn't say, what, how could you, but she owned Apple. I said, why? She was because the kids went up.

35:44Haley: So smart. I wish I had bought Apple. It was a great idea. But when it comes to index funds now, like the Magnificent Seven, and it's all so heavy with tech. And even if you're not buying individual stocks that are focused on AI, your portfolio is so AI focused. And so do you think that that puts us in danger, people who own index funds? You know, I've got to be true to what I've been saying, Hilly, and I've been saying that you've got to sell tech as it goes higher. I don't want – I want to AI-proof your – Yeah, so that's what I'm asking. Because I need you to be in healthcare. So say you own VOO.

36:26No, I want you to be in healthcare.

36:27Haley: VTI, like what should you do? You can go in. Just – S &P is still good. It's not too infected. Yeah. NASDAQ 100, no longer any good. Too infected. Okay. But you can own – I'd rather have you in a biotech index fund for 10 % of your money. Those are doing incredibly well. But I just think that what you want to do is if you're in – even though I like Micron, Western Digital, CKT is the hottest stocks of our generation. They're national video, okay? Not Micron, but the others, they could be. They could be disrupted. Get away from the stuff that can be disrupted and understand why it could be disrupted because they're not that hard to make.

37:05And someone could come up with something better.

37:07Haley: And China already is. Yeah. And I feel very – look, I really feel strong that healthcare is really undervalued. Banks are really undervalued. Retail is really undervalued. These are whole sections of the economy that are just way too low because of all the money that went into the data center. There you go. So even for someone as fiscally responsible as you are and thoughtful about planning for the future, what is the dumbest thing that you've ever bought? I bought a company called Memrix Telex. It was$2 stock. And I said, I bought it at$2, then$1, then 7A's, then 1, 2. I said, how much can you lose?

37:44How much can you lose on a$2 stock? I lost$200 million. What? Yeah, because I kept buying all the way down. And then it went bankrupt.

37:51Haley: So you didn't know when to stop? Well, I met with the company many times. I thought that they actually had a good business plan. That I just, I lost. What did that feel like? Why does it hurt me right now? It was 40 years ago. You never get over it? Never. Neither did my former wife, Karen Kramer, who 100 % blames me for it and is right. And do you think that split you up a little? No, she got tired of me, though. I mean, she got tired of my – she ran the firm. I worked for her. And there were times like that one and a company called Rexon. She goes, you know, you don't even – these companies are worthless and you're just fooling around.

38:28Just get smart. She was an unbelievably good trader. She's all in – you can go read Confessions of a Street Act. It's dedicated to her. It didn't necessarily make things better. But I've made – I was doing some – that was a serious mistake that it's a$2. How much can you lose? And I just told you how much you can lose. It was pretty bad.

38:46Haley: That is a lot. Two and a half million though. Two and a half million. That's crazy. It was idiotic. Yeah. But I mean – but you learned from it though. I learned that it doesn't matter what the price is, how low it is. You can still lose everything. And so now, but you're still in the individual stock game. Well, look, I want to teach people. Look, I made a lot more money in stocks than I would have in an index fund. Much, much, much, much more. And people have asked me, well, how do I do it? And I set up a club and people have done well. People are interested. They want – it's like if you're going to do it and you want to own individual stocks, belong to the club and at least you'll know how to do it better.

39:27Yes. That's what I offer.

39:28Haley: And we'll put all the information for Jim's club, which is so amazing, in the show notes. Jim Cramer, Financial Tea. Let us know where we can find you. Yep. Well, you know, I'm on CNBC all day. All day. All day. The CNBC Investing Club. You're going to list that. I had a book. I had a book that came out. It's so good. How to make money in any market. And it's very basic. All of Jim's books are amazing. For how to open an account. IRA. How to open an IRA. Maybe you'll have to start somewhere, right? IRA, great place to start. Yeah. Love it. Jim, stay rich. Okay, guys, jump scare. It's me, Hayley.

40:06Haley: I just wanted to check in after that episode, because obviously Jim Cramer is a legend, but also there were some things that we didn't get to discuss that I wanted to just bookend before you end this episode. First of all, Jim Cramer is not buying individual stocks for his own portfolio. Let's get that straight. He buys them through a charitable trust and he has donated over$5 million to charity through that. So none of the anchors that you see on CNBC who are talking about companies are actually allowed to buy and trade those companies. So I just wanted to clarify that. Also, I just wanted to talk about his origin story because I think what's so amazing, the part about him living in his car, is that he was still investing while he was doing that.

40:47Haley: No one gave him permission. He wasn't an expert necessarily. He was really interested. But I think that's really good advice for anyone listening, because I think that we think that we have to have it all together in order to start our journeys, you know, creating a portfolio. And he's a really good example of that you don't need to, you know, have it all together. You just need to start. And I also think that he's a really good proof of how much access matters and that investing really shouldn't be for insiders. And I feel like we're really aligned on that too. But now let's talk about the Spices part, because I know that if you follow Mrs.

41:21Haley: Dow Jones, you were probably like, holy shit, Haley has this person on the show who's telling us to buy individual stocks. Does that mean that she likes individual stocks now? She always tells us to buy index funds. And I am still pro-index fund, you guys. I think that stock picking can be amazing if you're someone like Jim who has the time and the skill and the emotional stability to do it. But for most of the people that I know in our audience, we are busy. We don't really want to do that. And so index funds make it really easy and keep it really simple to grow wealth in the stock market. And so I think they're a really great place to start.

41:57Haley: But I do think that like if you are interested in a stock and you do the research and you can afford to lose the money that you're putting in, it can be a great way to learn more about investing, taking that risk. So I'm sort of between two, I'm between two ferns on my podcast stuff, but also with that. Thank you so much for listening. If you like this episode, make sure that you rate, review, and subscribe to the show. It makes such a big difference. We're working so hard to make financial tea great for you. So also email money at Mrs. Dow Jones if you have any questions about your finances or ideas for the show.

42:29Haley: We always want to hear from you. And yeah, stay rich.

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