Q&A: Book Recommendations, Stocks That Go To Zero, and Spending $7M to Buy Out a Family Member

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0:35Have y 'all checked your email inboxes yet this morning? If not, you definitely should because you might have received the first edition of the Rich Habits newsletter. In this weekly newsletter that comes out every Thursday morning, we share updates on the markets. We have a chart of the week that illustrates some important financial information you need to know. We have Robert's biggest takeaways from the week. We have Austin's biggest takeaways from the week, as well as a general update on business news that has been released throughout the week. This is going to be your all-encompassing TLDR.

1:09What did I miss? What do I need to be reading to stay up to date on the markets, the headlines, the stocks, the indices, everything in between? It's super approachable, super easy to read, but comes away with a lot of actions that you can take to say, wait a second, I need to change this. I need to do this, or I need to learn more about that. It is a wonderful newsletter. Robert and I have been working day and night to get this thing figured out, and we are so excited to have all 42 ,000 email addresses now. in this newsletter database. And hopefully we grow this community to be well over 100 ,000 email addresses by the end of the year.

1:43Yes, I'm so excited for this. And as Austin stated, we have been working on this for a while. We're so excited to build the newsletter, build more educational tools for the community, and just really grow this thing that we have put together here with the Rich Habits podcasting community. So we're very excited. If you've not yet signed up, there is a link in the show notes. You can go there, check it out, look at our landing page, get signed up and just be right there with us in this journey and have all the best information we can provide. And yes, of course, the newsletter will always be free.

2:16Now, Robert, before we jump into this episode, I just, that webinar yesterday with direct indexing boggled my mind. I feel like I learned so much. The Freck team is so insightful. And if you've not yet watched the replay on that, you are probably losing money. Just how awesome this was and how important it can be from a tax loss harvesting perspective. Yeah, I feel like we're miners because we're always out there with our shovels and our picks, finding the new stuff, finding the old stuff, and really figuring out ways to help not only ourselves, but everyone that follows along with us how to build wealth in a better way and get those bigger gains and just really uncover the best information in the markets we can.

2:59So yes, I definitely learned a lot on the webinar and it was awesome. And you crushed it as well. Thanks. I appreciate that, Robert. And if you are listening right now, you missed the live webinar. There's a replay in the show notes below. Go click that. It'd be about an hour and a half long, but it's so worth it. You're going to learn so much. It's completely for free. We want you guys to be learning this stuff alongside of us. So definitely go check that out. All right, Robert, before we jump into this episode of the Rich Habits podcast, I want my optioned traders to listen up because I want to talk to you for a little bit about public.com.

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4:39Now, of course, this was paid for by public investing. Options are not suitable for all investors because they carry significant risk. There's a full disclosure in the podcast description below if you want to read it, and this is for US members only. Now, let's jump in to the first question of this episode brought to us by Jake. Jake says, hey guys, love the podcast. Here's my question. Should I rent or should I buy a house? I'm 20 years old. I live with my parents. I make$60 ,000 a year. I've got$30 ,000 in my taxable investment account on public and I contribute to my 401k. I've got$10 ,000 in my savings as my emergency fund and I'm unsure if I should really bulk up the savings to go have a down payment and put it down on a house or if I I should instead just rent for a longer period of time.

5:26Robert, I think we've been talking about the sort of buying versus renting dilemma for a while now. So I'll let you kick off this answer while I kind of gather some data to share with Jake. I love the question, Jake, and congrats on the well-paying job and then also having 30K put aside. In my opinion, in your situation, I would stay with the parents as long as I can, especially with the high interest rates right now. But also, I think it comes down to a mindset thing of understanding, is it really worth buying a home right now at your age? I would really want you to consider instead of buying a primary home or a condo or something like that to house hack right out of the gate with your first property, if you're going to buy, but man, at 20 years old, if I could stay with my parents two more years, think about that.

6:10If the average rent, let's say in America is$1 ,500,$1 ,800, and you could stay there for two more years and keep investing that money, you would be setting yourself up in such an incredible situation. But if you're really hell bent on owning a property, I would look at a duplex, triplex, or a quadplex. Look at that Fannie Mae 5 % down mortgage and go that route rather than just buying a traditional home or condo. So according to rent.com, Jake, the median monthly rent price in America right now is$1 ,987, which is up from$1 ,584 in January of 2020, right? So the pandemic definitely accelerated rents.

6:51And so Jake, if you actually wanna go out and buy that median priced house in America right now, I also ran the numbers there and you'll be paying after you include PMI as well as taxes and all the other different things you have to think about for repairs, you'll be paying around 27 to$2 ,800 a month which is about$1 ,000 more here than the average rent. in America. So if I were you, Jake, especially you're 20 years old, man, like, of course, your long term goal should be to buy a house, but you shouldn't want to, you know, be emotional about it. You should want to be very methodical. This is not something that should take, you know, only six to 12 months to figure out this is a multi year process, especially only making 60 ,000 a year.

7:30So if I were you, I would continue to rent, I would mooch off mom and dad for a little bit longer, right? You've got a wonderful taxable investment account on public at$30 ,000. That is huge for your age. I know you're contributing to your 401k. You mentioned you've got a couple thousand in a Roth. Just continue to invest and build your base. I'd really encourage you, Jake, to build your$100 ,000 base, which I think would probably come in the next four to five years, considering the trajectory you're on. And then when you're 25, 26, or 27, that's when I'd really consider going out, buying a house, house hacking, things like that.

8:02But at 20 years old, man, I would just keep it cool and be a kid. You don't need to go out and buy a house, to take on a crazy mortgage. What a great question from Jake. Our next question comes from Rachel. Hey guys, love listening to the show. I missed the webinar, but I'm going to watch the replay this weekend. You all always talk about continuing education and staying up to date on the markets and business in general. Do you have any book recommendations for me as someone who's learning about investing in wealth building for the very first time? I can start this one out. I have three of my favorites and the good thing is, is they're different from Austin's.

8:34So my three go-tos, if someone's just learning and wants to get the mindset right, understand how the markets work and how people build wealth, I would start out with Think and Grow Rich. Okay, that's Napoleon Hill, Richest Man in Babylon. I love that book. And also check out Atomic Habits. I love that one for the mindset stuff. It really helps you get things in perspective. So those would be my top three. Robert, I love those recommendations. I've read them all myself, 10 out of 10. The first book I would recommend Rachel to read is called Own Your Money by Michaela Aloka. The sort of subtitle there is Practical Strategies to Budget Better, Earn More, and Reach Your Six-Figure Savings Goals, like that first$100 ,000 invested that we always talk about.

9:17It's one of those books that you got to sit down, take notes, and get after it. Another book I really like is The Little Book of Common Sense Investing. That one's very straightforward. If you're having trouble thinking about investing over the long term, maybe you have these knee-jerk reactions and you kind of get a little bit of emotional when the markets go up and down. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John C. Bogle is an incredible book that's going to help you zoom out, think about investing for the long term, as well as just keeping it simple with the index funds that Robert and I talk about.

9:45And the last book that I would encourage people to read, especially if they want to get a little bit more, Rachel, on the side of single stocks and analyzing companies and better understanding kind of how to build a portfolio is a book called 100 Baggers by Christopher Mayer. This book really opened my eyes to all the variables that goes into stock picking and understanding and analyzing different companies. So if you're a super nerd like me and you really enjoy learning about the stock market and very specific things that these companies are doing to make their stock prices go higher, 100 Baggers by Christopher Mayer might be a good book for you.

10:22Another one that I wanted to mention, and it's an older one, but Peter Lynch Beating the Street. I love this book. I learned a ton early on in my career from it. And don't sleep on this book. I think it's a really good one that no one really talks about. When Peter Lynch was running his fund, his annual average return was 29.2%, beating by double the S &P 500 during that 1977 to 1990 sort of time horizon, right? So I love that book. I think, gosh, man, if people really care about investing and want to learn more about market beating strategies, beating the street, what a great idea to read that one for sure.

10:56Really, really good question, Rachel. Our next question comes from Tanner H. Tanner says, hey, Robert and Austin, first and foremost, thank you all so much for such a wonderful podcast. I absolutely love it and I listen to it every single week. I'll be earning a lump sum of$21 ,000 from my job as a bonus at the end of the summer. I plan to take this money and park it inside of T-Bills to save it as a down payment on a house, but I know interest rates are high right now and Jerome Powell might not cut them by the end of the year. So should I keep this money, save it up and build it? Or should I begin to try and find a better place to put this money?

11:30Or should I focus on house hacking? What do I do? Robert, I'll let you kick this one off, man, because you are the guy that knows house hacking like the back of his hand. Tanner, great question. Yes, I'd love to kick this one off. This is a tough one. I love that you're thinking about T-bills. I love that you're thinking about saving the money, but I definitely don't want to see you take all the money you have and put it into one property while not having built your base yet. So I would rather see you take that lump sum from the job, get that into the T-bills, get that Roth IRA started, get this basket of index funds we talk about all the time up and running.

12:05So you're moving towards building your base, then maybe consider the house hacking a little bit further down the road. I just think it's so important for people to not jump into real estate as their first investment. It can work out really well, but many times it doesn't. So many people jump in head first with that first chunk of money that they've saved or gotten from an inheritance or their job or whatever, only to find out that then their money and their credit is tied up and it doesn't cashflow or do as well as they thought, or even worse, they lose money on the first property. So I'd love to see you build the base first, keep your eye on the prize as far as adding real estate and house hacking after.

12:43and that's how I would get started. I think that is the perfect playbook. And as someone whose first big investment was real estate, the only reason it worked out for me was because I got a 3 % interest rate on my mortgage. And I happened to buy a house in a wonderful part of the country, Nashville, Tennessee, which was booming and has been booming for so long. And I bought this house back in 2019, right? And so that's why it worked for me. Those situations aren't exactly happening right now, right? Interest rates on mortgages are closer to 7%, 8%. A lot of Florida and a lot of other, Texas, other parts of the country right now are definitely in a gully, as we might say.

13:19Shout out to the big short. But there's a lot of volatility happening right now in real estate. So I'm right there with you. Tanner, if you want to buy a house, we're all for it. House hack, do the thing. It's a great idea, but maybe not right now. To Robert's point, build your base first. Don't put so much of your invested capital and your net worth into something that could go south. Whereas we know putting our money in the index funds we talk about, the S &P, the NASDAQ, things like that, we might see some market volatility, but we know that's a very long-term play. Whereas real estate right now seems just kind of too rocky.

13:50So Tanner, if I were you, I'd build your base, aim for that$50 ,000 to$100 ,000. And then once you have that invested and working for you, then it's time to say, okay, I need to go find$20 ,000,$30 ,000,$50 ,000,$100 ,000 to put down as a down payment. Oh my gosh, crazy to say that. on a house. And hopefully by that time, interest rates, well, I'm sure by that time, interest rates will begin to sort of pull back down a little bit and things will be a little bit more optimistic for first time homebuyers like you, Tanner. And also I do want to mention many people don't realize or don't consider that real estate is illiquid.

14:21So when you take that lump sum and you put that into one property, you can't just go back in and grab some of that money out unless you were to do a HELOC or another type of loan against the property. So just keep that in mind. Whereas if you took the 21K and you built it towards your base, you could have that money anytime you want if you decided to change lanes and get that piece of real estate. But it doesn't work that way. Conversely, if you put that money into a property. That needs to be clipped up, mic drop, like that needs to be a headline right now for people to realize. I mean, talking from experience, Robert, to buy the house I'm sitting in right now, I had to put 20 % down on it.

15:00And so I had to put down total cash out of my bank account about$90 ,000. And that was July of 22. I had to buy a house, a couple of things going back there, but it was the right decision for me at the time. All is well, worked out great. But that$90 ,000, I mean, a lot of people are in that same situation, right? If it's 90, it might be 50, it might be 60, it might be 30. But to your point, that's money that is now locked away in equity inside real estate that is not a liquid asset. Sure, you could get the money out if you wanted to go into debt or if you wanted to sell the house, but I mean, gosh, that's just a whole process.

15:34And yeah, I 100 % agree. So, so important, Robert, for people to understand that you can always build your base and use that money to go buy a house, but conversely, you can't buy a house then use that money to build your base. What a great, great takeaway. Our next question comes from Amir L. Amir says, thank you guys so much for the recommendation about carry money. I've been using it for my solo 401k and make it back to a Roth IRA as Fidelity doesn't offer that. I'm now on a pursuit for passive income, which means I'm investing into SPYI and QQQI. However, I'm scared to have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested because I remember Austin once said any stock can go to zero and I just don't want these to go to zero.

16:17That'd be very bad for me. So what do you guys think I should do? Amir, if yes, if they went to zero, it'd be bad for us too, right? Because we're big investors. Okay, so let's talk about this for a second, Robert. When I said any stock can go to zero, I was talking about that from the perspective of sort of penny stocks and other very single stock companies. Peloton is a great example of this. Let's just look at their stock price real quick. So if we go to Peloton stock price, we will see that Peloton IPO'd around$25 a share. During the pandemic, they went up to about$200 a share, and now they're at$3.56 per share.

16:54They are down 85 % all-time, and they are down, gosh, what is it here, 98 % from their all-time high. That is what I talk about when stocks can go to zero. Single stocks can go to zero, and it's not exactly that common, but it does happen. Now, the difference between a single stock like Peloton and the ETF SPYI or QQQI is that SPYI and QQQI are tracking the indices of the S &P 500 and the NASDAQ 100. That, again, are the 500 largest most profitable companies in the United States, right? That's the S &P 500 and the NASDAQ 100 are the 100 largest companies trading on the NASDAQ, which are also massive profitable companies.

17:41And so, Amir, what I'm trying to get at here is SPYI and QQQI are not exposed to the one anomaly of a single stock that might be under bad management and go under like Peloton or Carvana was last year. But instead, they are exposed to 500 of the largest, most profitable companies, right? So by investing into SPYI, you are essentially buying VOO. You're buying Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Tesla. You're buying these big names that have been around forever and will continue to print profits for their shareholders. So Amir, SPYI, QQQI, they're not going to zero. Will they have volatility as the indices that we all know and love also experience volatility?

18:21Sure, right? But that's just part of investing. But I can say with certainty, the S &P 500 and the NASDAQ 100 are not going to zero. And this takeaway really illustrates the importance of diversity. That's why we tell everyone to build their base. Don't start with individual stocks. We don't think people should start with their first investment being buying a piece of real estate. We believe that you should build your base within these funds that we talk about because it's been proven over decades and decades of time that they go up into the right and that these drawbacks are going to occur over time.

18:53But the markets are generally much safer when you're in these funds rather than individual stocks. It's just so important to understand that because some people tell you if you find a good investment, go all in. Well, guess what? A lot of people thought Peloton was a great investment during COVID when everyone was locked down in their houses. They couldn't go outside. They couldn't go to gyms, et cetera, et cetera. And they were wrong. And like Austin said, this just doesn't happen very often. So I wouldn't worry about it. The S &P 500 and the NASDAQ are great places to put your money. And I would never worry about going to zero.

19:25And just so we're on the same page too, SPYI and QQQI are allowing you to take some of the price appreciation that you would experience in the S &P or the NASDAQ and translating that into monthly dividend income that hits your brokerage account, right? You're trading the price appreciation for income. And SPYI has a 12 % distribution yield. QQQI is about a 14%. So every year you can expect between 12 % and 14 % of income yield against your investment to hit your brokerage account, assuming you own both those ETFs. So really great question, Amir. If you're wanting to build passive income, you're in the right ETFs.

20:04I'm a big passive income guy. I've got both ETFs. Robert does as well. And we're super bullish. And if you want to learn more about their ETFs, we actually did an interview with Troy Cates, one of their managing partners at Neos Investments. I want to say six episodes ago, six or seven episodes ago. It's titled How to Generate Your First Thousand Dollars of Passive Income. So go take a look at that and go learn something. It's great. Really good interview. Great question, Amir. Thanks so much. Yes. Earlier in the show, you heard us talk about the investing platform, public.com. That's where you can trade options with no commissions or per contract.

20:35fees and you get a rebate of up to 18 cents per contract traded. NerdWallet recently gave public five out of five stars for options trading. So if you want to see why, go to public.com and start getting a rebate of up to 18 cents per contract traded. Paid for by public investing, options not suitable for all investors and carry significant risk. Full disclosure and podcast description. And remember, US members only. Our next question comes from Kiko T. Robert Nostin, I love the Rich Habits podcast, and I just use Shurians to sign up for term life insurance. Thank you for that recommendation. Really glad to hear that.

21:13Here's my question. My employer offers a Roth 401k, but there's no match. However, I have full autonomy over my investments, and I keep 100 % of it invested into VOO, your favorite ETF. I'm loving it. Should I continue to invest toward this account or take the money and invest it elsewhere? I'm already maxing out my Roth IRA. Robert, what a cool situation that Kiko's in having that sort of autonomy over there, 401k there, but I'll let you answer this question first. I was actually thinking I wanted you to answer it because I love the fact that they're using Shurianz, which was really, really a great learning curve for me last weekend at our event.

21:54But I'd rather you take this one because I want to hear your spin on it first because this is a really good question. All right, Kiko, I got you. You are doing everything right. If you are investing in your Roth 401k, I think you can max that out at like$23 ,000 or$24 ,000 a year. If you're doing that and you're able to put that into VOO, you're just double dipping at this point. I mean, so many people are jealous of your situation because we only have autonomy, generally speaking, over our Roth IRAs, right? Normally, the 401k is, you know, employer sponsored. They tell us what funds it's in. It's normally underperforming, blah, blah, blah.

22:31Robert has the stat. What was it about 401ks, Robert? Oh, I think it was 5.6 % over the last 10 years. Something terrible, very dismal. Something terrible, right? So no one wants to really have their money in their 401ks, but they've been told they need to. And that's what the whole thing is there. But you, Kiko, you are able to put all of your 401k money into VOO, which is the North Star of 401k retirement investing, right? So Kiko, max out the 401k, max out the Roth IRA, do everything you can to really pile money into your retirement investment accounts. Because when you turn 59 and a half, if you're doing this throughout your life, you're going to retire a multi, multi-millionaire, knowing that the S &P 500 returns anywhere between nine and 12 % per year on average over a long period of time.

23:15I love this situation that you're in and I would take advantage of every moment. Okay, so I'm going to put a little bit of a different look on this. When you're going to get that new job, say you're trying to level up in your financial situation and you're looking at a new job. This is hypercritical to understand when you're looking at the employee benefits package to look deeply at what the actual offer is on these 401ks, whether it's traditional or Roth, because you want to understand how much autonomy do I have? What offerings are in there that I can invest in? because obviously with having autonomy and being able to invest in VOO is incredible, but then also understanding the actual match from the company, because what people don't realize, most people don't realize, is it might say a 5 % match, but it might only be 100 % up to 3%, and then it goes 50 % and 25 % or whatever it might be.

24:07So just understand that as part of your compensation package, because it could be not as good as you think and hurt you in the long run. So this is a great situation that Kiko's in, but make sure you're really defining and reading up on yours when you take that new job or if you've been there for a long time, understanding your rights and what's available to you in your 401k package is so important. So incredibly important, Robert, and I am just rooting for Kiko. What an awesome, awesome situation. Our last question comes from Weston. Weston says, I'm 31 years old and for the last five years, I've been building up my uncle's retail shops and restaurants.