Mailbag: incl. Should we be outraged by Super taxation? March 23, 2025

25:26I am that person as well. Let's be really honest. I'm that person as well. But I think super funds, particularly industry funds that are not for profit, they should just ETF index because that's their best ability to deliver long-term outstanding returns for their members. Yeah. Well, in your and our defence, I will say this. there is a massive amount of difference between managing Scott's personal portfolio and those of quote unquote retail investors. That's true, yeah. And there is many, many hundreds of billions of dollars. I know with my portfolio, if I was to say, I'm now looking after the pension fund of Australia, oh, I'm just going to replicate my portfolio because by definition, that's what I think are the best investments.

26:09There's just not enough liquidity in those stocks. Like I just, I can't do it, right? And this is, Buffett makes the point. He's made the point many times. I mean, that is a handicap to him. And so when it comes to these guys, it is ludicrous to try and even do it because the amount of money that you have got at your disposal, the fund flows, you can do nothing other than buy the very biggest. So you just, any outperformance, if you do manage it, will be marginal at best. And by the way, it's always a bit of solace for those of us who aren't managing billions of dollars. is like, well, you've actually got a huge edge because you can invest where a lot of the big quote-unquote smart money can't.

26:50Yes, so that's honestly my answer. I think that's probably the best way to go about it. Question two, will funds start paying a lot more tax in the future when there are more sellers of fund units than buyers? This is a massive question, Nathan. It applies to the stock market as a whole, frankly, because if that is the result, that's where we're going to end up. I would suspect, and I haven't done the numbers on this, I would suspect that most people are going to cash out their entire super at retirement. And most people, frankly, the way super is designed at the moment, will probably end up dying with more super than they have at retirement in dollar terms.

27:23So I would suspect, unless we see meaningful tax changes, you alluded to, the fact it's possible, I suspect there won't be a time when there's more selling than buying in my lifetime. And if it is, it's probably decades away because the value of those funds keeps growing, more people keep adding money in, and between the working population adding superannuation contributions and the retired population reinvesting at least a portion of their earnings. I haven't done the maths. I could – smarter people than me can work it out with fancy tables. I don't suspect – my lifetime is probably a very long – hopefully it's a very long time.

27:58I don't expect anytime in the next two or three decades we see net outflows from super, maybe greater than inflows, but probably not greater than inflows plus fund returns. Right? I don't know. Probably not. But even if it were true, I don't know if it changes the practical so what of it all as well. I'll sound like the crazy conspiracy theorist, but I'll say it anyway. Here we go. My bigger worry over 30 years is that it's just such a massive honeypot. For governments in huge amounts of debt and structural deficit, it's called financial repression. It happens regularly. It's like this thing that it's like, oh, but that would never happen here.

28:40It's like it's happened tons of times, right? Yeah. The EU is actively talking about taxing unrealised capital gains right now. Yep. I might say that's a federal government. Yeah. Unrealised capital gains on more than three million super is the current government's policy position. Look, I can't predict the future, yada, yada, yada. But my very strong assumption is that when you're talking about a 30-year timeframe, at some point, as you say, every single worker in this country is putting, what, 12 % is it now of their money into super? It is growing. Let's just take the long-term average growth rate.

29:20Let's halve it, right, just to be generous. And that's growing at 5 % per year. And, oh, there's a housing crisis. maybe if we just touch some of this money for, you know, nothing is likely until there's an emergency. And then when there's an emergency, all kinds of things, sacred cows get slain all of the time. You know, we would never do that. Oh, we actually will do it this one time because it's an emergency measure. Yeah. You know, we are facing a catastrophic reaction to the invasion of Taiwan and we need to step up by military spending and it's just your sovereign duty to allocate 10 % and it won't be we're taking the money away.

29:59That wouldn't be that, I mean, that's exactly what will happen. It won't be that overt. It'll be we require every Australian super fund to hold 10 % of their funds in government bonds. Yeah, right. That's happened a lot of times very recently and throughout history. Or what does China do? Puts capital controls on. You can't take your money out of the country, right? There's all kinds of, and look, I know how all of this sounds, But I'm just saying if you want to worry about something, I think to me where the net fund flows are over a 30-year period and what that means is kind of like interesting, I would be far more worried about where this money will be directed and how it will be nibbled at.

30:41Yeah, fair enough. For the best of intentions. Yeah. Nathan's third question, should in brackets young and poor, close brackets, Australians, be happy? The capital gains tax is nearly completely avoided inside super via that pooling? or if you have the money for professional tax planning advice. Say again? Say, what do you mean? So basically Nathan's saying because of this pooling effect, capital gains tax is largely avoided because we're selling, you know, some fund members are selling to other fund members so there's no CGT at a fund level. Nathan's saying if there were individual transactions per account, there'd be a lot more CGT being paid because you couldn't avoid it by pooling that tax inside the fund.

31:17Oh, gosh. I'm trying to get better at when I don't know to say I don't know. I don't know. Well done. I think yes, they should be annoyed and angry and pitchforks in the streets. That's actually not the biggest issue though, mate. It's actually that they should be more annoyed that superannuation pensions aren't taxed. That is the, in proportional terms, the fact that it's not being taxed inside the pooled fund. I'm not in a pooled fund. I have no dog in the fight. No, it's not an issue. in my, well, it's not a big issue in my opinion, because that tax would then be recouped when the fund income was taken by retirees.

31:59It is far, far, far, far, far larger an issue, in my opinion, that we don't tax super withdrawals, basically because that's where, if you've got$1.9 million in pension fund, which you mentioned about the transfer, mate. So if I invested my money, my super, and when I retire, I've got a pension component of my fund for$1.9 million. Unless I earn the long-term market returns, do 9 % of$1.9 million for me, Ram, because I can't do it in my head. Sorry, what was it again? 9 % of 1.9. 1.9. Continue. So you've got 1.9 million. If you can earn 9 % a year. 171K. You're getting$171 ,000 on average, if you get the stock market average, completely motherless tax-free.

32:48$171 ,000. Now, I don't know what the average tax on that would be if you're not investing, so if you earn that money, but I'm going to suggest it's about 30%, and on$171 ,000, I'm going to call that$54 ,000. So I'm getting a$54 ,000 tax break every single year. I might be retired for 30 years. That's$1.5 million tax I'm avoiding if I have a$1.9 million pension account and I earn 9 % a year. That is what young and poor Australians should be absolutely ropeable about. And why? Because the federal budget costs what it costs. I don't know what the number is. Let's call it. I saw the number. GDP. I don't know what it is.

33:30Call it. Some big number. Billions of dollars, right? So if I get that tax-free, you might say you worked all your life, you deserve it. Okay, let's assume that's... By the way, plenty of people are yelling at that right now because they hate it on Twitter when I talk about this. You're saying, I worked all my life, I deserve that. in retirement. Okay. That means every service you are drawing from in retirement, roads, schools, hospitals, national parks, pollution control, Probably not schools, to be fair. Sorry again? Probably not schools, to be fair, but everything else. Yeah, exactly. Fair.

34:04Universities, if you're going to uni in retirement, whatever public service, you're attributing literally zero to, which is bad enough, except what it means is the poor bastard working a factory line or a firey or a policeman or a nurse or a bank teller or an architect is paying more tax so you can pay less tax. Because the bill doesn't change. The question is who should pay the bill? And if I live for 30 years in retirement, let's say I'm lucky enough to live 30 years in retirement, that's only marginally less than I worked during my working life. I paid less tax and I'm going to get tax-free because of the size of my super by then.

34:36And I'm contributing literally nothing for 30 years. Maybe a GST, maybe a stamp if I buy and sell something, but it's bugger or maybe a bit of petrol exercise. effectively nothing compared to the poor buggers who are working who have to pay 30 35 37 45 cents in the dollar well i can live high on the hog it is it is dramatically you're probably you're probably having an increased share of health care spending as well absolutely virtue of your age and yeah of course it is it is so so nathan you're right about the cgt pooling thing uh but honestly if you want to get if you want to get annoyed about something that is tiny compared to uh 30 years of tax-free withdrawals.

35:11If people say, oh, I earned it, oh, I paid tax on my earnings, from an individual perspective, from a selfish, I'll say selfish, literally, or self-interested, maybe to be a little less pejorative, I get it. But at the end of the day, the question is, the government bill this year is going to be X billion dollars. Who should pay what proportion of that? And for a retiree with 1.9 million dollars in super, getting 170 grand a year to say, no, I'm done. I cannot, I'm not retired yet. I will be at one point. I will not be able to look any working age person in the face and say, sorry, dude, you've got to carry the load.

35:42I'm off doing my holidays and spending my money doing whatever I'm doing. So while you're working double hard, you're paying more tax than you should have to, because I'm not paying no tax. That is just unconscionable in my view. How's that for a rant? No, I strongly agree. I mean, a lot of the pension system was designed in a different time. You know, again, you step back for a second. Generally speaking, you know, not for everyone, But for a significant majority of people, you'd work until you were 60 and you probably had six, seven years left. You're dead. Like now age, it's not just the life expectancy, but it's a quality of life expectancy.

36:22You can be extremely active and fit in your 70s and beyond. And that was just not budgeted for at the time. So there were a lot of concessions and stuff given. And it was like there was the people are right at a point in time to say I slogged my guts out. I've now finally out of the cubicle or out of the factory and I've got a few years left of my golden years. I deserve a little bit, you know. I'm with you, mate. I was behind, I was in the IGA the other day behind some lady dripping in jewellery, handed over the senior's car, got a discount and jumped in the Mercedes and drove off. And I just said, I just couldn't help it.

36:58And I said to the girl, I said, it's like, it would be nice to have one of those cards, wouldn't it? And she just rolled her eyes like, yeah, huh? And it's kind of like you've got to be careful with something like that because it's sort of like, oh, you know, people will have an interpretation on it. And it's like I'm not begrudging anyone's success or anything like that, but it's like to your point, someone's picking up the tab there. Correct. And that's where people look at this. And like I get the self-interest, right? I get people are struggling. I get no one wants to pay more tax than they have to.

37:27And I get you look at that and go, I'm hanging for the time when I get to live tax-free and I get something back because I pay tax and I don't like paying tax. When I finally don't have to pay tax anymore, I feel good about that. I get that feeling from the individual perspective. It is just, it's literally unconscionable to design a tax system that says those with greater means and frankly greater incomes pay less tax because of their age. It's just fundamentally, that's why super animation for me is a moral imperative as much as a financial one, which is if I can say for my retirement, it is immoral for me to then ask my kids to pay for my golden age, not even my kids, your kids, Brad, someone else's kids, to pay for my – even though I can afford to.

38:05And even though they can't buy a house ever, right? But I deserve a tax-free retirement because I've worked all my life. It's like, well, get stuff. I might have to liquidate one of my eight investment properties. That's not – I'm way – whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Correct. Anyway, let's move on. Nathan asked the last question, mate, which I think we've probably answered. I don't think. Have I completely missed the discussion of outrage on this? Or am I off the mark? Or superannuation taxation, just too boring for discussion, especially for young people so far for retirement? No, I think it's the last one.

38:35It's why super is compulsory. No one in their, I'll say right mind, that sounds harsh. No one in their right mind who's 25 wouldn't contribute, wouldn't put money in super voluntarily, right? Except none of us are in our right mind at 25. None of us are in our right mind at 45. We're just not, it's literally, you know, Australia has the fourth largest compulsory retirement savings pool. not for compulsory, 40 % is retirement savings pool in the world. Why? Because it's compulsory. That's literally the point. You can't tell, and if there's a 25-year-old listening and you are the exception, I promise you, because you care and you're listening to this podcast, and God help you, because don't listen to Andrew and I.

39:07But you're listening because you care and you know that it's important. 99 % of your mates, unfortunately for me and for them, are kind of, I'll worry about that later. It's way too far away, right? It's just, again, Aesop was right. Tortoise and the hare. You can't. I try and tell my 12-year-old about investing. He's physically incapable. His brain is not sufficiently designed. And why? Firstly, his brain is developing. When you get 25, your brain is developed. Why is that hard for 25-year-olds? Because you mentioned our evolutionary biology, Ram. There is no point at which someone says, go and hunt that tiger, go and thresh that wheat and put it away for 47 years.

39:45You might need it later. It doesn't happen. There is no evolutionary benefit to that until we get to a financial society like we have today. So it's no one's fault they're not ready for this. It's really, really not. It's like asking a fish to climb a tree, right? They're not physically capable of it. Occasionally some of us have our brains wired appropriately. Buffett was one. Sounds like Nathan's the other if he's young. He sounds like he might be. To actually be doing this stuff, it's brilliant, mate. Go for it and please tell your mates. But I don't blame anyone for not taking an interest.

40:14That's frankly why people like Ram and I and old people should take more interest. It's the old line, society grows great when old men plant trees under which they know they will not sit. That's the only way it gets done. Young people can't plant a tree at 12 to sit under at 70. They just don't have the perspective. If we have the perspective, it's on us to say, actually, I'm not going to be selfish. Yes, I would like more money in retirement. Yes, I would like to buy the new boat, Mercedes, 85th investment property. but at some point you've got to say it's just not the right thing to do. Yep.

40:46How's that for a rant? No, it's good. Absolutely. Let's go to a Michael question or question from Michael. It's a Michael question. Now, good morning, gentlemen, says Michael. That's very kind of you. Square a circle for me, if you will. That's all we do. That's all we do. We got a great tweet during the week on squaring the circle. Yes, yes, yes. We did indeed. Yes, I loved it. There you go. It was really cool. It was one of those optical illusions. Very, very cool. Thank you whoever I sent that through. You both talk about opportunity costs, says Michael, as a reason to sell individual businesses and how sometimes it's better to move on.

41:19Maybe, Andrew, more so than yourself, Scott. Speaking then about the other businesses that go sideways for years and backwards at times, you speak of conviction and making sure the thesis still holds. I know you will both cite examples, and we all know of companies, that have gone to the moon after long periods of owning them and the value of the shares going nowhere. I absolutely will. Tesla and Amazon are two that come to mind. But where do you draw the line, says Michael? When should the business going sideways or down become an opportunity cost that one moves on from? When do those Kogan shares get sold?

41:50Sorry to pick this example. Thoughts greatly appreciated, Michael. Yeah, great question. Go on, mate. The mistake, Michael, there is you're using the share price as the measure of success. Now, ultimately, that is the only measure, right? Because, you know, like at some point, if you need to spend that money, You need to sell your shares. You can't sell it for intrinsic value rather than the actual share price. Yeah. It's like, well, the market's only going to give me a dollar a share, but the real value is. Someone should give me 10. Yeah, exactly. It matters. It absolutely matters. But I can tell you, and it's not just me, it's like anyone who's ever done this for any length of time, is that, you know, it's the waiting versus voting machine that you mentioned before.

42:32Like if the intrinsic value is growing over time, the market can ignore it for a long time. but it won't ignore it forever. So the measure here is, so there's two scenarios or maybe three. One is the share price is going nowhere for a long time and underneath it the business is also going nowhere. That's very different to a share price that's going nowhere for a long time but the business is continuing to advance. From the share price perspective, they're indistinguishable. From the investment perspective, in fact, one has just become, by definition, a better investment. You know, it's like maybe it's time to add more to it.

43:12So that's the measure that you've got to, that's the yardstick that you have to use here to make that analysis. You're absolutely right that if the company is going nowhere and its prospects aren't improving and it's been a long time, you've given it plenty of rope, you're not just, you know, knee-jerking it on every little bit of bad news, absolutely there's an opportunity to cost, get out, right? I would 100 % endorse that move. Just make sure that that's the case and not the share price. I can't add anything. That's exactly what it is. The problem is, Michael, there are those examples. That's kind of the point.

43:46And not everyone does it. Kogan has been an okay investment for me. I bought it at higher price and lower prices. I'm not very happy about where it is now. They get – and honestly, I know – here's the thing, Michael. You want to hear something different. And there might be other people who agree with you and don't agree with us, and we don't pretend to be the font of all wisdom and we don't have the only way to invest even ram and i don't invest exactly the same way um but our approach is exactly the same which is simply if i see an opportunity for better value in the future um when does kogan get sold to i own shares as everyone knows when do they get sold they get sold when i don't think they can achieve the heights that if they achieve will deliver me a better share price that that you know i think they can be a much bigger business revenue wise now i've got to say sales growth hasn't been as good as i wanted to be recently Adore Beauty is another one I own, which is in the same situation.

44:32They grew sales at 2%. Now, I'm hoping Adore is meaningfully larger to grow to scale and deliver for shareholders. If those businesses have... So when would Kogan get sold? I reckon if I had two to three years of subpar growth, revenue growth, I don't care about the share price, subpar revenue growth, i.e. I'm not sure they're going to get as big as they need to be to pay me off, then I'm going to sell. That's the answer to Kogan. Adore, similar thing. Now, again, Kogan's been weird. So part of the reason... By now, I proved as old Kogan had they been at this level without stupid COVID bumps and lumps, right?

45:04They boomed, they crashed, they boomed, they crashed. Hard to understand the fundamental underpinning. Right now, they're growing nicely. Gross margins are lifting. They're in a good place. The market doesn't like it yet, but that's okay. That's not my issue. If they stop growing meaningfully, and I don't think they can get to that level, I'm out. If I think they can grow slow, because if they grow slowly to that final level in 25 years, I'm never going to get a share price that outperforms the market. My view is they should be worth a whole lot more if they can grow sales to a reasonable level.

45:32This is not to give you a bull case on Kogan at all. You just ask the question. It's a good example. You say, sorry. Don't be sorry. It's a great example. That's my answer. And the answer or the fundamental underpinning is patience, is if I think it can get there, I'm going to hold on. When I no longer think it can get there in a quick enough time to pay me back, I'm going to sell. That's what it is. Am I lucky to hold on too long? Actually, yes, by the way. You said Andrew's going to move on more quickly than me. That's probably true. I won't speak for the relative speed, but I will say I absolutely am likely to hold on companies too long.

46:01In my experience, that's better because on average, giving good companies more rope is going to do better. Even though you're going to have losers still, Kogan might be the loser. Others might do well. How long do I wait for Kogan to do better? Longer than I should. Because having done that across multiple, Amazon's a great example. It went nowhere for, I did an article five years ago, well, maybe not three years ago. I looked at the previous five years and for something like four years and six months of that period of time went sideways in two in two large chunks in between those two times they went up something like doubled or something right overall and it was only two two six month periods ish maybe less than that over over five years was where all the value came from uh and so that's i don't i never ever judge my investment thesis by the stock price i just don't um i judge value by it but that's different and if it doesn't move, it doesn't move.

46:52If the company is creating more value, I'm prepared to believe the market will eventually recognise that value. The market is there to serve you. It's not there to inform you. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

47:10Marcus sent us an email, thankfully on the PS says you can use my real name. Marcus, I'm glad you said that because as you well know, if you didn't want me to use your real name, putting in the PS is not a great way to avoid me saying it. Dear Scott, and Rami says, thanks for all the rants and the insights. I'm going to assume he means that in roughly proportional order. Probably. I do a lot of driving, he says, in my line of work, and every Monday morning I can't wait to slot another motley-filled pod into the pod machine. Hit play and wait for that creamy goodness to start flowing through the airwaves and into my ears.

47:43You know what I love? One day someone will invent a retro podcast machine where it comes on cassette tape. You literally put the podcast cassette into the podcast cassette machine. That's the picture you painted for me, Marcus. I'm going with that. Marcus, I started my investing journey at 21. I'm now 37. By investing through properties. Well done, mate. I recently, in 2021, decided to delve into shares. By investing in two broad-based, low-cost ETFs, you are putting in buzzwords that make me very happy. After following your pod religiously since then, forgive you, Father, for you have sinned, I have got the courage to sell one of the ETFs and invest directly into individual companies in September 2023.

48:23I signed up to ShareAdvisor, thank you, mate, and other newsletter subscriptions, and have been adding more individual companies when I have the capital to deploy. My portfolio has now grown to be, and I'll say this in advance, the more detail you give us, the less we can answer in absolute personal terms, but we'll do it anyway. The Nasdaq 100, around 45 % of my portfolio, and 19 individual holdings, making up the rest, averaging around 2 % to 4 % each. My question is, if I am to dollar cost average each month, how would you suggest I decide which of these holdings to add to or if I should purchase new individual companies?

48:58And to prove he's listening, Rami says, please help this hairless ape. Full on, Marcus. Marcus, you've hit all the key points to have your question answered. A bit of positive feedback for us. Some podcast references only a listener would know. So that's the magic formula, as you well know, Marcus. And we can use your real name. So there you go. You've even thrown that in. What do you reckon, Ram? 45 % of the NASDAQ 100, 19 companies two to four each. How do you decide what to add to next? Well, theoretically, it's an easy answer. Practically, it's much harder. But in theory, just allocate to the best value option in front of you.

49:35Often that'll be what you already hold, presumably. Like if you've got some extra money and you look around, and it's like nothing of what you hold is worth buying. It's like that's a take a good hard look in the mirror kind of moment because it's you admitting to yourself that of all the companies I hold, I wouldn't buy them now and maybe you shouldn't hold them now either if that was the case. So and you can overthink that, right? So you don't want to sell down just because it's a little bit ahead of what your estimate of value might be. but it's a good way of thinking about things. And you might find that one month, you know, stock A is just like dirt cheap relative to what you think it's really worth.

50:19And next month it's the most expensive, you know, stock in your portfolio. So that's what informs your decisions, not whether there's a profit or loss, not whether you're up or down, just sort of like, what's the best option for my money right now? And as I say, often and hopefully it will be what you already own. Now, why that is easy to say but hard to do is that that, are you saying that I need to have an independent valuation of all of the stocks that I own and might consider owning? And the answer is yes. Yeah. Literally, that's how it works. Or just stick with the passive approach, which is no harm, no foul, right?

50:55No judgment whatsoever. Perfectly decent approach, as we often like to say, you'll outperform most of the pros. So there's nothing wrong with that at all. The vast bulk of the pros. The vast bulk of them. So, but if you like this kind of stuff and you've done a little bit of work and you've got, and again, I'm not saying 12 decimal places here of evaluation, but you've got some reasonable expectation of value. I really like this company. I think based on the work I've done, it's at least worth$8 and gosh, it's at six. It's probably a good bet. You know, if you think it's probably worth around$8 and it's$7.95, maybe it's fair.

51:27And maybe one of the other ones I've got is at a big discount. So, yeah, that's exactly how I would and do do it. Whenever new money comes in, it's just like, right, what's the best, where's the best bang for my buck today? And by the way, even if fresh money doesn't come in, it is still an exercise I like to do from time to time, which is just because within the little stable of assets that I own, I'll be looking at some of them and they'll go, oh, gosh, I really, ProMedic is my favourite go-to example here. I find it easily in the top five of the best businesses on the ASX. Right, right. Right?

52:03But it's just so ridiculously expensive. Yeah. And so now again, it was dumb in hindsight. Well, I don't know. I don't think so. No, I don't. I convinced myself it's smart, but, you know. You're right. No, you did right, mate. Reality suggests otherwise. You're not forecasting share prices. And I think I actually want to make this point, mate. You've been very self-effacing. I know you've looked at how much money you could have made had you held on, and that just feels really painful, right? So I get all that. but honestly no but but for you you know this anyway i'm just telling you because i'm telling you for our listeners it's really important that they understand this one you are not wrong just because you sell the share price goes up why because people can be stupid for a long time you are not wrong to sell enron when you thought there was something dodgy even if the share price continues to rise you are not wrong to sell myer even though the share price went higher because it's a really crap company in the market you know it was it was 40 higher you know three months ago Now, if you're timing the market, I'll sell in December, you got very, very lucky.

52:54You are not wrong because a share price moves after you buy or sell. You're not wrong if the share price falls after you buy. So you can't be wrong if the share price rises after you sell. It's got to be – now, where you are wrong is has the intrinsic value risen. If you said, look, this is worth$30 and you look back now and go, oh, actually, it was worth$40. I should have been able to see that. That's different. But if it's the share price going from$30 to$50, it's like I sold out when I thought I was getting a good price. If it's worth$40 now, okay, they're still overpriced. If it's worth$30 now, well, more fuel to market.

53:21I'm not playing their game. I'm not trying to play chicken on that particular highway. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Well, thank you for saying that. It is. Well, I'm not saying for you. I'm saying for our listeners. I think you did the right thing because it surpassed your estimate of value. That's the only responsible way. It's literally the only responsible. It would have been more irresponsible for you to make money, luckily, because you went, oh, I think it's worth this, but who cares? I'm just going, I'm YOLOing this thing. I mean, YOLO set the NASDAQ down 85 % in 2000. Buffett wasn't wrong for ignoring tech during 1999.

53:51Yeah. And that's a really, really important point to make. Well, yeah, I mean, it is, right? And so, and the other thing, the part of that is as well, while we're making my ego feel better, is that I didn't just take the money out and just pop it under the mattress. Like, I bought other stuff. Good point, yep, exactly. And some of the stuff I bought was rubbish. Opportunity cost, baby. But other stuff was pretty good, right? Like, so it's not as though it was a wasted effort. So I guess what I'm saying is outside of the fresh capital component, you will just find at times that it's just sort of like, I cannot in good conscience continue to hold this, especially by virtue of it going up in price.

54:29It's now, this was a big factor with the ProMedicus thing as well. It's like, you know, it's like, I can't even remember, but 30, 40 % or something at one stage was like, this is way, not only am I hyper concentrated in this stock, but by my own reasoning, it's incredibly overvalued. so I had to sell some down again I could have would have should have and if I didn't I'd be a lot richer but but whatever you know it's sort of like that that is a a something you want to do periodically the mistake that people make with that approach is they get hyper specific you know it's like five percent over some valuation and your valuation's a guess and it's going to be wrong anyway so that hyper specificity is going to send you mad it's going to make you pay a lot more tax than you otherwise need to yes that's transaction fees and the rest of it but when something is just like not even within a cooey of of decent and sensible by your reckoning then by all means i mean i mentioned this on on the forums the other day on straw man is that the i too many people do dumb things in the name of tax and a little not unrelated to this but but not entirely whereas like and i told the story of some friends of ours who have got a mountain of bank shares and have for forever did extraordinarily well out of it.

55:38And you look at their portfolio today and it's just like you are hyper-concentrated into a range of entities that are, in my humble opinion, extraordinarily overvalued. And as I said, when I interviewed Kohler the other day, well, he called bank stocks a bubble, right? So not to try and play the affinity kind of social proof there, but, you know, I'm just trying to make it like it's not an edge view. And in fact, most in the industry will tell you that, gosh, it's a little bit up there. And they don't sell. And I'll make the argument opportunity cost, relative valuations, all of this kind of stuff.

56:15And I go, yeah, but I'll have to pay a bunch of tax. Now, I actually had this argument with them five years ago as well. Yeah, that's right. Every time I see them. And now it turns out on average all the major bank stocks have gone sideways over the five years. Even with dividend. Commonwealth Bank is a bit of the exception there. But as a basket, they've underperformed the market. They've been a pretty awful investment. They would have been far better off. By the way, it was in super, right? So it's like, what tax are you paying anyway? Hardly any. But you would have been, even outside of that, even if you're on the highest tax bracket, with a CGT discount, the most that you are possibly paying is something like 23%.

56:50You would have been far better off to take that and then reinvest it into better assets and get the upside of that. So today you would be in a scenario where you would have paid more dollars in tax. but you would have more money. And more people than is sensible say, I want to have less money but still feel good about myself because I paid less tax. And that to me is the most ridiculous thing. I know it's a sort of a tangential point to what's being raised here, but it does, I mention it because you'll find that it's a very easy rationalisation to make. It's like, I hate what you're saying, Andrew, but if I do that, I have to pay tax.

57:27I'm like, yeah? I mean, by the way, to be clear, I'm not saying ignore tax. You know, even 10 % is a big chunk that you've got to now make back. It absolutely matters. But there'll come a point when the valuation differential between what you own and what you could own is so vast that it's better to pay the tax and get that upside, right? So, yeah, hopefully that helps. It does. It's great, mate. Really, really nice points to make. I think that's important for Marcus. Just my thought really quickly, Marcus. I would be, I can't tell you what to do, Marcus. If someone had 45 % of their portfolio in a NASDAQ ETF, I'd be a little bit mindful of that.

58:08Not because I don't expect NASDAQ to do really well. I actually do. I think NASDAQ will beat the ASX over the next 20 years, right? That's my guess. Problem is, it's just a guess and being half your portfolio in one index. And I love index investing too, but this is not a passive index the way S &P 500 is a passive index. This is a bet on tech. And that's okay. But betting 45 % of your portfolio on tech, on US tech, is an active bet. It's a pretty concentrated active bet. Yes, across a range of companies. You don't run company risk. You absolutely do run currency risk. You run sector risk. And you run sentiment risk.

58:42If it turns out that the NASDAQ is overvalued by 25 % right now, you're going to take a 12 % hit to your portfolio to fair value. And that's not going to kill you. But do I want 45 % of my portfolio in a subset of a country's index? No. I own those units, by the way. I love the NASDAQ ETF. it's about 12-ish percent of my portfolio I think um I think I think um so I'm not saying don't have it and again I'm not too you should do marks I'm not allowed to um but just just keep that in mind I would I if I had 50 % of my portfolio on the S &P 500 I'd be okay with that 50 % in the NASDAQ don't love that's just me that's just my personal view I'm not telling you what to do I can't tell you what to do please don't take this as personal advice work out what you want to do based on your needs and objectives and incentives and all that kind of stuff.

59:25I wouldn't do it. One from James, mate. G'day Scott and Andrew. I like this. I'm glad you've both been enjoying playing with the dials and buttons on that old pod machine of yours, which of course is the sole reason for the recent rate cut. I followed the wires and I've discovered the RBA board are all avid weekly listeners. They just forgot what you said by the time they made it to the next meeting. I can only suggest that Andrew runs a marathon into the boardroom for the next meeting and starts his rant just as they arrive. Can I tell you, James, Ram is not a million miles away from having a sandwich board outside the front of Martin Place, so don't give him any ideas.

1:00:01I've thought about it. I've thought of a bucket of slightly off tomatoes and I'm ready to go. The end of the world is nigh. James continues, I'm in my mid-30s. He even puts bastard in brackets for me, which I really appreciate. Let me do that properly. I'm in my mid-30s, bastard, and I've got the most important part of my life going great. Kids, family, pure happiness. Good on you, mate. You're getting the priorities right. Even the finances are working out right. In early 2020, I started to find myself finally having a bit of leftover income. And I started to plan to enter the stock market, finally doing so in late March.

1:00:34Well done. Beginner's luck with the best time you can get. You're absolutely right. The stocks I picked weren't the best choices, but it was hard to go wrong when unintentionally buying a big dip. I've since refined my methods, cut a few loose and added a few, including within the last year. Mate, you're doing it right. To count a very long story, very short, I'm at a point where I need to liquidate everything for a major life expense planned in around mid-2026. No, it's not land. By then, we'll own the dirt outright, but it is a house to go onto it. The cost of construction is through the roof, exclamation mark.

1:01:07To have the capital to build alongside a new mortgage from the bank, I have accepted that all our investments need to be sold. Winners, losers, middling in the middles, I still believe in them all, but they all have to go. Sounds like a closing carpet store, doesn't it? Everything's got to go. Everything must go. Exactly. I have 2025 scheduled as my sell window. So I have locked in numbers to show the bank about what I'm bringing to the table this time next year. So the question at last, if you had to sell it all over a year, every last share, where do you start? In brackets, P.S. You have to sell your crypto too, Mr.

1:01:44Page. Regards, James. He will bristle at the dimension of crypto. I don't own any crypto, James, so that's easy to do. Of course he does. He doesn't like to call it crypto, but of course it is crypto. It's not. I will die on this hill. Bad shares are still shares. Let's go with the answer, mate. Needs the money mid-2026. Again, we can't tell you what you should do, James. Ram, if you had to liquidate your portfolio and meet a lump sum expense in mid-2026, how would you go about liquidating between now and then? What timeframe process, stocks? How would you think about it? I'd probably just sell the lot.

1:02:19I'd probably just log on and sell it all now. Now? Okay. Well, bird in the hand, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, whatever you do, you are guaranteed to have regret because unless you just happen to nail it, right? Yeah, yeah. So as passionate as I am about investing in the share market, I would never touch it with money I need in the next 12 to 18 months because anything could happen. Anything could happen. And it doesn't do you any good to say to our earlier answer, right? It might have all the intrinsic value in the world and still be a great company, but again, Taiwan's just been invaded and Canada's been annexed.

1:03:02Who knows? I'm not taking that risk. And it will be painful if in a year's time the market's rallied another 20%. But we feel the pain of loss twice as much as we feel the joy of gain. Yes. And if it's down 20%, and again, I'm not saying it will be. I have no clue. But bird in the hand, right? You just said, I need the money. And I need to show the bank I've got the money, take the money, pop it in a high interest savings account, and it'll be fine. That's probably the easiest way. I could be more clever and say do dollar cost averaging in reverse and maybe sell a little bit here, a little bit there.

1:03:37And that could be an undesirable outcome too, depending on how the market goes. One option you might want to consider, I don't know what you think about this, Scott. I'll do. I might be tempted to hedge to some degree. And I'm usually against hedging because hedging usually, because markets tend to go up more than they go down, if it's any sort of sustained policy it just tends to act as a drag on your returns so is this and then and then people say yes but what if you get the timing right in which case i'll say yes it works brilliantly but then you've got to get the timing right so but in this instance it's kind of like and i don't like we could spend all day talking about the various tools and strategies and techniques but if you had a strategy that basically meant that i am locking in a minimum and giving myself some exposure to the upside, I could think of worse.

1:04:35I think that's probably, in the same way you've talked about before, it makes sense for farmers because they just want to lock in the value of their corn now. Right. It's the same thing. Yep. But there's some, yeah, I mean, I don't want to get too detailed here because, well, how? What techniques? Do I do options contracts? Is it some CFD thing? Is it an inverse ETF? There's a million things, and a lot of them are pretty unsavory. But as a concept, if you can find something that a big picture says, I mean, the cost of it will ensure that it's less than what you would get if you sold right now.

1:05:07Yes, yes. But if it gives you exposure to the upside to some degree, you might want to take it. I wouldn't do that, mate, partly because I don't like options, partly because it's a zero-sum game. Options are zero-sum almost by definition. Not every option, not all the time, but effectively zero-sum. Why? Because if you can find someone to take your bet, which is I think the market will go up from here. That person is either taking the opposite view or they're saying, well, if you do think it's gone, I'm going to demand a premium, effectively an insurance premium, but the hedging cost is an insurance premium, which is equal to what I would forego by accepting your premium in the first place.

1:05:41In other words, if I'm taking the other side of that, I'm saying, well, how much have you got to pay me to give you back exactly this amount in 12 months' time, for example? Yeah, you could be wrong. And I'm not going to take that risk if I get paid enough to offset my risk. So what we're really doing is betting against each other's best guess of future value. and it's a zero-sum game. And so conceptually you're a million percent right, mate, but let's say you're at a 6 % premium. The market's up 9 % a year on average. Maybe you have a great year, maybe you don't. You know, you're paying the premium up front.

1:06:08It might go up 30%. That's the other thing we talk about a lot. The average never happens. Correct, correct. The market's up 30%, then down 15%, then it's up 60%, then it's down 20%. So it's unlikely to be a 9%. It will probably be something massive in one direction or the other. I'm going to be doing minus 15 and plus 20, anywhere in that range. So if that was like we haven't done the mass and looked at the specific instruments that would be required, but if the broad brush picture was I have to pay 6 % of my portfolio value now, in other words, I'm selling it for 6 % less than I otherwise would if I sold it right now, but I get the upside.

1:06:45Yeah. If it happens. If it happens. So you're right, you're right. The minimum you'll get is 6 % less than your current value. I'd be tempted to. The maximum is something larger than that. I'd be tempted to do it. Okay. I wouldn't. Because let's say I didn't. Let's say I didn't. Sorry, mate. Let's say I didn't and I just said, oh, I'm just, I don't take the other technique where I'm just going to dollar cost average out of it. Well, I might cop a 6 % loss anyway because the market falls 30%. And, you know, so it's not, if one approach is silly and so is the other in terms of the range of options that could happen.

1:07:15I agree, which is why I would go back to your point. It was a bit, my theatrical really was actually pure theatre. I completely agree. That's exactly what I was going to say. Sell it now. Okay. Sell it now. Well, here's the nuance, James, to the answer, is sell it now if you need the dollar value now and you can't sustain any loss from there, which is exactly what we're am sorry about with options. If it's like I've got a 100 grand portfolio, I need exactly 100 grand, I need it in 18 months' time, sell it now, put it in the bank, be done with it. Just don't risk it. Because maybe it's 120 or maybe it's even 94 if you pay to pay your 6 % premium, you still got less than you actually need.

1:07:46So when you know what you need, that's the amount you need and you need it and you need it. And when it comes to building a house, you go to the bank and say, I would have liked to build a four-bedroom house. I only afford a three-bedroom house because my shares fell last year. I mean, that's a terrible outcome, right? Now, maybe you could avoid a fifth bedroom. You don't really need it. The fifth bedroom, you needed the four at least. You mentioned burden the hand, Matt, another fable. It just is, right? Again, nothing new happens up to$1 ,600 in investment thinking because it's life advice, right?

1:08:10Just burden the hand's worth two in the bush. It just is. Could you go and try and shoot the two in the bush? I guess. Should you take one and go home and go, at least I've got dinner? Absolutely. Why would you not, right? So yes, sell it all, sell it all now is what I would do if it was in my situation. If we're going to upside, almost certainly, no, almost certainly, very likely is a better way to put it because the mark goes up more often than not. It goes up two years out of three. It goes up 9 % a year on average. You've got 18 months to do it. Mathematically, you're probably better off holding on.

1:08:37Probably you don't get to play this. When I say on average, I'm talking about 120 years of history. You don't get 120 goes at this. You get one, right? Imagine in saying in, let's ask this question in 1999. I know, sorry, 2009. Someone said, I need some money in April 2020. Should I hang on or should I sell? We're like, oh, no, get your own mother. Share market falls 38 % between February and early March, late March, sorry. You're like, oh, my God, I needed 100 grand. Now I've got$62 ,000 and I've got to buy a unit rather than a house and it blows up my entire future. You're doing this, James, for the kids and the family.

1:09:11You just talked about that, right? So you don't need to maximise your returns. You need to have as much money as you need to do the house you want to build and only you know how much you've got. Maybe you've got twice as much as you need, in which case I'd probably let it ride. Maybe you haven't got as much as you need yet, in which case you've got to save in the scrimp and I wouldn't risk the capital at all. You couldn't make me do it. So, yes, I would sell everything. I'd sell it now, put it in a high return account. You'll get 4.75%, give or take, which is half the average return, right? You can pay tax on that, but it's a pretty bloody good result.

1:09:40So, yes, I would do it. I'd sell it, sell it now. Don't try and get too clever about it. Maybe you do get clever and you win. You think, ha, ha, I'm a genius. Maybe you try and get clever and you lose and you're like, oh, my God, what have I done? Not worth it. Whatever money you need in mid-2026, if you've got it, keep it, put it aside, you're done. By the way, housing, finance, or construction always costs more than you think it's going to cost. So the other reason to sell now is to make sure you've got the extra readies if you need them because they're going to come to you with, oh, we know that didn't include taps.

1:10:07And, oh, you wanted a driveway, what that cost you? Seriously, trust me, if you haven't done it before, be very careful. It'll cost you more than you think. It'll cost you more than the bank currently is playing. I wish the government learned that lesson too, right? It's just like cost blowouts. What? No, not for us. Can I say something else if a little controversial? Oh, God. Yeah, go on. Come for the rant, stay for the controversy. Normally we would say, or I won't include you in this, I would say, you know, debt is the only way a smart person can go broke. Uncle Warren told us, that's true.

1:10:40There is something to be said. Now, I don't know the state of your finances. You might need to sell every last cent and still be left with a very high LVR, in which case, okay, do it, but, you know, careful. Be careful. It might be that you need to sell the lot and have a 50 % LVR. Now at that point you might be thinking, well, I'm paying 5.9 % interest on my loan and I don't know what's going to happen short term, but I'm not unreasonable in my expectation that I can get more of that in the market. maybe so what I was going to say what I would do. What I have done in my real life is my mortgage is much larger than it needs to be or would be if I liquidated everything else.

1:11:30But it's not. I'm happy to have the mortgage because the way that the rules work when it comes to mortgages is that I'm very unlikely to be rugged by the bank. Yeah. So no one's going to margin call me. And it means that I can now take that money and invest it in the market. So if you've got an opportunity to invest that money with, I mean, debt, it's a spectrum, right? Like 1 % of LVR is the most non-risky thing in the world. 99 % is the stupidest thing you can do in the world. Now, wherever you are in between those two points, we can argue the toss for the next 14 episodes. But there is somewhere where I would argue it's actually imminently sensible to have a little bit of debt, secure it against your own home, never going to get a margin call and have the capital working for you in the market.

1:12:21Now, maybe that's not viable under your scenario, but if it is, that might be some food for thought too. Yep, I think that's absolutely right. As long as you have... I did that when we did it a little bit differently here. We borrowed more than we needed and kept in the offset. But either way, the only thing I would say, the maths on your view, Ram, is just it's a question of the average return of the market and the current interest rate. And by the way, allow for tax. So average return less tax versus the current rate. And you can't know either, obviously, because you don't know what the rate's going to do and what the return's going to do.

1:12:52But you can just eyeball the two of them. I think I've said last week, the week before, right now I wouldn't do that personally just because if you're paying six and a half and you're getting nine before tax on the market, you're kind of not miles away from each other. And paying the mortgage off is an absolute certain return. It's a guaranteed return by definition. Every dollar saves you that interest either way. If I think I might get nine on average and I don't, I get eight, well, I'm actually behind. If I get 10, I'm ahead, but gee, I'm not sure if I want to play that game. When rates keep coming down, assuming they do, if a mortgage rate is 5 % and if it's below that, I'm in your court every day and twice on Sundays.

1:13:28So I would just do that maths a little bit. I don't think – we talk about risk-adjusted returns and I hate the term because it's kind of in academia it's used to a lot of algebra and stuff. But risk adjusted, a certain 6.5 % return on my mortgage or a possible 9 % return in my investments, you allow for the range of outcomes on your investments and say, well, I really want to take that risk versus a certain 6.5%. I'm taking a certain 6.5 % every day. It feels like I'm being too conservative and not taking risk. I'm supposed to be a shares guy. Money's money, right? Take the win. Personally, you might disagree and you're welcome to.

1:13:59My personal view is I'd take the win. But the bigger the gap between the expected average return and the mortgage rate, the more likely I am to say, you know what, hang it, I'll put it in the market and use those returns to eventually pay off that house or pay down the house or fund an income that allows me to do that. Those are things that are definitely worth doing in my mind. Yeah. It's actually fascinating because let's touch on the macro very briefly and this is where things get subjective and who knows, but if you are of a view that we are hotter for longer in terms of inflation and that central banks are rather between a rock and a hard place in terms of how they can handle that.

1:14:40Debt, tell you who loves inflation? Debt holders love inflation. Yes, yes, yes. Right? Like inflation is your friend when it comes to debt. So if you were, I don't want people to form your own opinion, and I certainly wouldn't use this as the crux of my investment strategy, but it is part of the thinking is informed by, so I'm holding a debt in a currency that's devaluing by 3 % to 5 % per annum. Yeah. and I'm investing in an asset that is growing in purchasing power by, let's call it, 10 % per annum. You know, like it's kind of, I don't know. You know me and my thoughts on inflation. I do. I think it's a heinous tax and an absolute blight on our society and our system.

1:15:25But if it's going to exist, you might as well use it to your advantage and, you know, debt is the friend to the citizen in an inflationary environment. See, I don't want to necessarily depend on the box at an hour 15 to the podcast. And I'll ask the question. We can leave it pretty short. Talk as long as you want, obviously, as always. The only thing I think that's right, but I think it's a bit like tax and other things. It ignores the cost of the debt. And so if you're paying higher interest to pay off the debt, then the opportunity that otherwise might be seen. If I could have no interest, no repayment debt, I'd take a lot of it for exactly the reasons you say.

1:15:58If I'm going to pay 6.5 % when inflation's at 5 % or 2.5 % when inflation is at one, it's the same repayment cost. Now, over a long enough period of time, depending on how it compounds, maybe you're still better off because the asset value rises and that gets a bit more complex. I just want people to think about you're thinking is a million percent right. I'm not that you did my agreement, but you're absolutely on board. You're absolutely spot on. If the cost of that debt is more significant as a result, then the benefit you think you're getting, you're making – it's almost like the people who say – this will rile you up – people who do negative gearing, right?

1:16:30It's like, I'm losing money now, but I'll make money later. it's kind of not miles away from that same analogy, which is I'm paying more interest now, but I'll have more later. It's like, yeah, but the later you have, you pay with interest now. And so really net net cashflow wise, maybe you're not that much better off. You may be. And again, that's why I'm saying you're right to say, do the maths, have a think about the situation, do the maths, work out what's right for you. It's not a major pillar. And it's really secondary to that degree of debt. Like, you know, when you've got a manageable loan to value ratio, it's just an easy, and it's like, oh, this might help if I think the world is going to go this way.

1:17:04Yes, that's true. It would be very dangerous for someone in the 70s to think that though. Yes, exactly. Oh, there's a lot of inflation. I'll take on a bunch of dead. Permanently. Volcker comes in and loose rates to 17%. And kills inflation effectively for 40 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the difference there, I think it's a tangent, but like the analogy, it's so often invoked these days. What people forget with Volcker is that like debt to GDP in the US is 20 % or something at the time. Yeah. Not anymore. Oh, anyway. We'll see what happens. Yeah, no, it's definitely, it's the right approach.

1:17:34I think that's, and we kind of get back to where we started almost on Friday, which is how do you invest in this environment? And the most dangerous thing to do is try to take a specific view that where you have heads I win, tails I lose a lot. Yeah. And that's why your point was 50 % LVA. You're not saying take a 95 % and bet on high inflation for 50 years. You're like, there are some options available to you, but whatever you do, not going back to square one must be, in my opinion, I'm sure in yours, the absolute non-negotiable, right? Nothing takes me to zero. Then from there, look at your pros and cons and think about your risk tolerance, think about your personality and your sleep at night and all that kind of stuff as well.

1:18:12My regret on my deathbed, if it is, gosh, you know, over my entire adult life I averaged 12.3%, but if I did this other thing I could have got 15.9%. Right, yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm not like, you know, I'm shuffling off to the afterlife, a very happy person. If it was like, oh, I could have easily had 10%, but I rolled the dice and I got negative 90%. Right, that's it. Yeah, you say, well, I got 12, I could have got 15. It was like, well, I could have got 8 to 12 and I got lucky to be at the top end of the range. Or I could have got minus 15 to plus 15 and I got lucky I was at the top end of the range.

1:18:46Like, that's a stupid bet. That's dumb. I'm just, yeah, right, just straight out dumb. Don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah. With that exploitation, calling our listeners or potential listeners dumb, we don't mean any of you, dear listeners, if you're doing that. I just, maybe, Rick, have a, Have a good hard look at yourself over the rest of the weekend. While Ram is out cutting down trees with his bare hands or a chainsaw, have a think about whether or not you should be taking on that much leverage and what risks you are taking. Getting there with slightly less than you want is an entirely different thing to getting there with either a fortune or nothing.

1:19:14It really is. And I tell you, you've been the same. Whatever it is about this stupid industry, you do sometimes mix in circles of people that are far wealthier than you. And I can tell you, they're not happy people. They're no happier than the rest of us, right? The other thing is that that's partly true. The other part of it is family offices. So if you're wealthy enough to have a whole lot of people investing for you in so-called family office, they're not maximising returns. No. Oh, God. Capital preservation. Right? And that's the other point is that we think, oh, we want to be rich and how you get rich is, and maybe how you get rich is taking a bit of risk.

1:19:48I get that. You have to take some risk. But they're not at their bit in the farm over and over again. They're like, we made it. Let's not jeopardise this. You know, let's absolutely grow it, but let's do it safely and responsibly and, you know. By the way, that's why Musk is the richest person in the world right now. Yeah, that's true. And there's a survivorship bias there. But what he did, and again, I'm not putting a value judgment on this. You know, I don't have to qualify everything these days because you're on eggshells, you know. I don't like you. But they're like, there's a million people who did what he did and it didn't work out and you'll never hear, you'll never know their name.

1:20:18And I very much say that there is, while there is certainly some ability and skill involved, there's also a bucket load of bucket load, a truckload, if you will, of luck that was involved, you know. But he had massive success with PayPal and he bet the farm and then he had success with Tesla and then bet the farm and then bet the farm and then bet the farm. And it's just like, wow, that's how do you begin from the richest person in the world? You take insane amounts of risk. Yeah. And hopefully you're that one in a million where it pays off. Someone bets black on roulette 50 times in a row and wins.

1:20:54Yeah. Yeah, that's right. It's happened somewhere. Yep, exactly. Somewhere it's happened, right? You know, the people who get the newspaper headlines by selling everything, going to Vegas and putting it all on one colour. Yeah, it happens. It's death or glory, right? And sometimes it's glory, but sometimes you walk away with literally zero and start again at whatever age. Yep. Absolutely stupid. And I'm just not going to do that personally, so I don't need to be the richest man in the world. I'm never going to be the richest man in the world. In fact, I will tap out well before I'm even in like the$10 million range, right?

1:21:22You'd probably think, well, you're missing a trick there. you could make more money. It's like enough is enough at a certain point, right? To be fair, your wealth won't fall to$10 million. You know, the best way to make a million dollars is to start with two, right? Yeah, and buy an airline. And buy an airline. All right, I think we're done. Thank you, listeners, for spending some time with us. You know the usuals. Info at fool.com.au if you have a question for the podcast. By the way, some people write in and say, I don't know how to get in touch with the podcast. It's because you're not listening to the end, people.

1:21:53I don't think I don't know that. Well, how are they getting in touch with the podcast and saying they're not able to get in? I get messages on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter or something like, oh, I've got a question for the podcast. I don't really know the details. Like, I know. Well, you don't know the details. You haven't been listening. Also, I probably should give them at the beginning of the podcast. Info at fool.com.au. Andrew is at strawmaninvest or sage underscore simian. I'm at TMF Scott P in all high-quality bookshops. Until we speak to you next week, have a great weekend and fool on.

1:22:19Cheers. The Motley Fool and people appearing in this program may have positions in the companies mentioned. General advice only. Please speak to your financial professional to understand how it may pertain to your situation. Subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener. The Motley Fool operates under financial services license 400691.