Q&A: Investing While Unemployed, Attending College in an AI-First World, & Selling $250K of Microsoft

20:17Robert Croak:Quick shout out. That was episode, if you guys want to go listen to it for yourself here, that was episode 146, Lease or Buy, the real math behind your next car. Really good episode there. We did a lot of apples to apples comparisons. So definitely go check that out if you are someone new and you've not yet listened to that episode. So Lori says, I'm trying to educate myself as it relates to making the best decision. I leased my last two vehicles and now I'm trying to decide if it's time I buy a vehicle. I previously pre-bought additional miles at 10 cents per mile to avoid miles surcharge at 25 cents per mile.

20:55Robert Croak:I drive roughly 12 ,000 miles a year. I enjoy driving brand new luxury cars. So if I purchased a car, I would be purchasing a brand new luxury car and I'd trade it in after three years. I've saved enough money to purchase a brand new luxury car in cash. Those funds are currently in a high yield savings account earning 4%. If I decide to lease, I will keep that money in that high yield savings account so it can earn some interest and I will pay for the lease from my monthly salary or maybe I use the cash in this savings account. I've yet to decide that. I can afford to lease while I'm still working.

21:34Robert Croak:I'm 59 years old and will work another six years. My yearly income is$150 ,000. And after my mortgage and bills and everything are paid, I save and invest$1 ,500 a month. Do you guys have any advice for my situation? Thank you so much. Lori. All right, Robert, I will let you kick this one off.

21:53Austin Hankwitz:Lori, I'm going to make this really, really simple for you and anyone else that is in this dilemma. You're 59 years old. If you're going to buy this car and keep it and drive it till the wheels fall off, go ahead and buy. But my general rule of thumb is this. If you're going to buy a car, you buy used. And if you want to get a car and trade out of a car every two, three, four years, you lease. So if you lease, you have very little, if any, money out of pocket. And if you want to go buy a car, I would definitely, you're saying luxury. So I assume like a Mercedes or a BMW or something like that.

22:27Austin Hankwitz:I would not buy new and I would definitely not pay cash. Here's why. When you buy it at the lot, let's say it's$75 ,000, you drive it off the lot, it's going to be worth 65. And then in two or three years, it's going to be worth 45. So I personally would not pay cash for a new vehicle just because it's going to continue to depreciate. And I would rather see that money working for you and growing over time. That's my take. If you're going to buy something that's newer and you want a luxury car and you want to pay cash, buy one that's one or two years old, that has very low miles, and then you're rocking and rolling.

23:01Austin Hankwitz:You own it. You can ride it till the wheels fall off. But otherwise, I would keep leasing, get the 12 ,000 mile lease. And if you own a business, you can write it off as long as you're using a percentage of it for business. You can write off that percentage and save some money there. That's what I would do.

23:17Robert Croak:I think that's a good perspective. I like the advice of, you know, if you want to have this luxury car. I mean, and Laura, you must understand this, right? If you want to buy a luxury car, that's brand new. Robert laid it out. You pay 75 and in three years, it's worth 50 or 45, right? You drive it off the lot and it depreciates like crazy. You know, I would just hate to see you take$75 ,000 and have it tied up all that cash tied up into something that goes down in value because that same$75 ,000 is now worth$150 ,000. By the time you retire, you mentioned six years, seven years, the stock market doubles every seven years, right?

23:56Robert Croak:So essentially you're taking that$75 ,000 and you're making it worth, call it 40 or actually in six years, I'm sure it's going to only be worth about 30, 35, right? So you're cutting it in half, let's say, to$32 ,500 versus if you invested it, it would double to$150 ,000. So we're talking about$120 ,000,$110 ,000 difference here in your net worth over a six or seven year period of time because you want to buy this luxury car, which again, now here's the big question that we don't know. So it's really hard for me to answer this. What is your net worth? Lori, if you are over here telling me, listen, guys, I got 2 million in my 401k.

24:29Robert Croak:I got my mortgage, but I got 700k of equity. I've got like, I'm going to go be just fine. Like sure, lease, buy. I don't care what you do with your money. You're going to be a millionaire. Like go have fun. You worked hard your whole life. Congratulations. Enjoy your money. But on the flip side, if you're telling me, yeah, I make$150 ,000 a year, I've got$312 ,000 in my retirement accounts, I've got$118 ,000 of equity in my home, I will have roughly half a million dollars. Now we're talking about something completely different, right? So that's where I stand. It's so hard for me to make a clear cut and dry decision because I don't know what her net worth is.

25:05Robert Croak:Lori, if you've got a great net worth, you've got millions in these retirement in accounts and you're going to retire just fine, like, yeah, go buy the used car, one to two year thing that Robert said, go have your luxury fund, lease it. I don't care, right? You're going to be rich regardless. But on the flip side, if you were very much living below your means here as a normal person that might not have that much money, but you still want to retire one day, I would say do neither of these things. I would just take, call it$25 ,000 of that$75 ,000, use that to go buy a Toyota RAV4 or a Honda Pilot or something that's 8 to 10 years old but still very reliable, take the$50 ,000 difference, invest it so it turns into$100 ,000 by the time you want to retire here at 65 ,000 and you will set yourself up for a better situation by the time you're ready to retire and all that fun stuff.

25:55Robert Croak:All right, now before we jump to our next question from John D via email here, got to give a shout out to public.com. I've been using public since 2020, six years now I've been using their platform. I remember when it was like a social media platform. I mean, they were doing all this stuff, but now they're doubling down on AI, specifically with this generated asset stuff. Generated assets are so cool. Essentially, what you're doing here is just like you type into ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever you do, you say, I want to invest into companies that are doing ABCXYZ. For you, that might be, I want to invest in companies that have the highest revenue per employee.

26:32Robert Croak:I want to invest in companies that pay a dividend over 5%. I want to invest in companies that whatever, literally anything you can come up with. And it will use AI to find those companies and then back test what it would be like to invest in those companies in an equal weighting against the S &P 500. It's insane. It's so cool. So it'll tell you, historically speaking, if it's a winning strategy or not. I like generated assets. We've got, I think, what is it? 13 generated asset strategies that beat the S &P that we've shared inside the Rich Habits Network. One of them was like thousands of percents.

27:04Robert Croak:Pretty cool. So join the Rich Habits Network to go check those out or just go to public, make up your own generated asset strategy and backtest it and have some fun.

27:13Austin Hankwitz:Yeah, I remember the day you told me about public because I wasn't using them. And I think this was back in 2023. And when I see stuff like the generated assets that they just built and released to the public, it just really realizes how far they've come, but the cool tools that they provide all of the investors and people that we talk to and send to public. And I just think the generated assets is a game-changing tool, especially for people that really want to understand better how to build a portfolio on their own. So go check it out. There's a link in the show notes below. You guys definitely want to get a public.com account.

27:49Robert Croak:So our next question comes from John D via email. Again, richhabitspodcast at gmail.com. We love the questions. John D says, Hey, Austin and Robert, thank you both so much for the Rich Habits podcast. For a long time, I felt very conflicted about money and I was even afraid of it. It felt greedy or selfish to want more of it. But after listening to you guys consistently for the past couple of years, my mindset has shifted. I now genuinely want to be a good steward of money and you've been powerful teachers along the way. Here's my situation. I'm turning 30 in February. Happy early birthday. And I'm getting married in March.

28:22Robert Croak:Congratulations. Big couple months for John here. That's awesome. John says I'm a New York City based multi hyphenate actor, handyman, gardener, life and spiritual coach. My rent is$1 ,275 a month. My total monthly expenses are$3 ,000, including Roth IRA and high savings contributions. This month, I opened an LLC for my home improvement and gardening work. Last year, across all income streams, I earned$60 ,000. My current net worth is just over$26 ,000, broken down as the following,$18 ,000 in my Roth IRA, $2 ,000 in a traditional IRA,$5 ,000 in a high yield savings,$1 ,000 in a taxable brokerage, and$3 ,000 in my checking account.

29:06Robert Croak:I also have$3 ,000 in student loans, currently in forbearance until 2028. My question is, if you were my position, what would you focus on next? I want to build real momentum and provide for a future wife and family, but I feel like I'm doing so many things that I'm not moving anywhere in any direction. Also, how do I make sure that I'm using my LLC to its fullest benefit? Any guidance would mean a lot. Respectfully, John. Robert, what advice do you have for John He's doing a lot here, right? Actor, handyman, gardener, life, spiritual coach, all the fun stuff. What advice do you have for John that's going to help him move in the right direction in his 30s as he gets married and starts a family?

29:48Austin Hankwitz:I would say first and foremost, I would go into his living room and throw away the shiny ball syndrome that's sitting there next to the couch. Because I feel like when I look at all of these titles at 30 years old, I'm all about diversity, but I'm also all about trying to figure out your way, your path to making more money. You're making 60 grand a year. That's not bad, but I feel like you're distracted because you're trying to do too many things at once and it's causing you not to focus and really figure out where you can make the most money. Two or three of these items are probably more of a distraction and less of an income earning strategy for you.

30:28Austin Hankwitz:So that's what I would do. I would get out a notepad, write down everything you're working on, how many hours a month you're working on each thing, and then scratch out what you can that is underperforming the most, and then focus on the other ones more so and figure out what works best. And then with the LLC, I wouldn't worry about that as much. The main thing you have to worry about with the LLC is that you're not co-mingling all of these different things. Because at the end of the day, if you're co-mingling funds and you're not operating the LLC as a company with its own bank account, its own operating agreement and you're just kind of commingling all the funds from all these different things, you're going to get yourself in trouble if you ever need any protection from the LLC.

31:10Austin Hankwitz:So that would be my take.

31:12Robert Croak:I like the idea of the notepad. John, if I were you, I would write down what you do for each of these activities on a notepad and ask yourself if none of them could fail. If I could be the best gardener in New York City, if I could be the best actor in New York City, if I could be the best life or spiritual coach, if none of them can fail, which one would you choose? And if the answer is handyman or gardener, right, circle that and say, okay, for the next 12 months, I'm giving myself a one-year shot clock. For the next 12 months, I'm going all in on being the best handyman and gardener that has ever existed in New York City.

31:49Robert Croak:I'm going to learn everything I can about gardening. I'm going to learn everything I can about being the best handyman. I'm going to do everything I can to get more clients as it relates to those activities. I'm going to research different ways to acquire those customers. I'm going to ask for referrals from existing customers. I'm going to expand upon my services so I can make more money from different clients. Go all in on one thing and you will be so surprised about how much and how quickly you can begin to make so much more money that the life and spiritual coach and the actor, like they just, they don't matter anymore.

32:28Robert Croak:Cause now you're making$96 ,000 as just a handyman and gardener than you were making 60 ,000 as doing a third, a third, a third. And the thing that people forget about, and Robert, you mentioned like shiny ball syndrome, but I genuinely believe in this so much, which is any growth, any growth at all, 1%, it compounds. right? Any growth at all compounds. And so if you are getting just 1 % better at being a gardener or 1 % better at being that handyman, that 1 % over 365 days, right? The next 12 months is going to be dramatically more than where you are right now. Zero though does not compound. Zero will stay at zero forever.

33:09Robert Croak:And if all of these are at zero because you're trying to juggle all of them, right you will see no growth so just find that one thing go all in on it be the best of it you can possibly be document the journey on instagram and tiktok because people love a good hero story right i love seeing someone go from hi i'm like there's a guy named connor right now at startup connor on instagram he's part of the rich habits network he's documenting his journey making six figures a year with a web design side hustle and i think he had this really cool series where he was like I need to make$20 ,000 in the month of December so I can like actually make 100 ,000 in 2025.

33:46Robert Croak:Every single day, I'm just going to like make a video and explain to you guys how I'm going to try and get new customers. Did I land that customer? Like whatever. And the series did really well. And it was really cool to follow along on his journey. So like, same thing to you, John, like just document the journey, literally pick up your iPhone and just talk to the camera, hit publish and forget about it because there are people out there that might be a handyman or gardener in Idaho that's trying to do a similar thing. And they're going to give you some tips. Oh, yeah, my handyman business blew up when I started doing this.

34:14Robert Croak:Or yeah, my gardening business started blowing up when I started offering this specific service or started using this specific platform to get new colors. Whatever, right? It's not a zero-sum game. And John, by going all in on one thing, you're going to do a lot of good. Now, when it relates to the LLC to make sure you're using it to its full benefit, anything as it relates to this gardening or handyman or whatever, maybe you choose to be actor or life coach, whatever, like whatever that thing is you choose to go all in on, Anything you use to make money or run that business is a write-off, full stop.

34:44Robert Croak:You use a portion of your apartment, that's a write-off. You use your phone, a portion of that bill is a write-off. You use your car for it, a portion of that's a write-off. Just make sure that you're tracking all of your expenses so that whenever you do earn that$80 ,000 in 2026, it's not 80 ,000 is what you're taxed on. It's you earn 80 ,000. You had 20 ,000 of write-offs. So you're only now taxed on that 60 ,000, right? That savings of 20 ,000 at an effective tax rate of let's call it 20%. That's$4 ,000 of tax savings that you just made because you took advantage of this LLC, 4 ,000 that you can reinvest back into your business to go make 110 ,000 in 2027.

35:26Austin Hankwitz:This gave me goosebumps because when I was probably 12 years old, I was at a garage sale with my mother and I bought a sign and hung it above my bed that said, don't be a jack of all trades and a master of none. And it just blows my mind because you just spelled that out perfectly. So many people just get distracted by every new shiny ball thing and they can never figure out how to move forward and really be great at one or two things to be able to make a lot of money and build wealth. So I love that breakdown.

35:59Robert Croak:100%. Our next question actually comes from Inside the Rich Habits Network from Carson B. Carson says, is college still worth it in today's economy? I'm curious to hear everyone's thought on this, as I know this group has hundreds of people in it offering plenty of different perspectives. Robert, you want to kick this one off? Is college, in Robert Croke's opinion, still worth it in today's economy?

36:21Austin Hankwitz:It's a tricky question, and I'm going to try to do my best. I think college is only worth it in today's economy if you're forward-looking at the degree or the specialized task you wanna learn. So, because so many jobs that currently you would want a college degree for are gonna be gone in five years because of AI and humanoid robotics and all of that. So you have to look at that, especially white-collar jobs, because you think about surgeons, you think about lawyers, you think about all of these things, a lot of that is gonna go away in the coming five years. So I would say generally a college degree is not worth it currently unless you have a highly specialized degree you want to get and you believe in five to 10 years, that job role in that sector will still exist.

37:10Robert Croak:So in my opinion, an example of that would be nursing. I firmly believe that we will need nurses for, I don't, I'll never see, maybe sure, humanoids and AI and robots can help with some of that. But like, that's a career that in my opinion will never be replaced by AI. If you're asking, like, you know, hey, is it worth it to go X amount of dollars into college student loan debt to become a nurse to make X amount? Like you got to figure out what that ratio is, how much debt you're going to, because you could do the community college route for two years and then parlay that associate's degree into a bachelor's degree at a state college, you know, state university, go get that nursing degree.

37:49Robert Croak:Maybe you're all in for$27 ,000 of student loans because you got some scholarships and grants and you, you know, did the community college thing and you live frugally And now you've got, you know, something that's paying you$70 ,000 a year as a nurse because you're working the 12-hour shifts at nighttime, like a lot of variables. But at its core, Robert answered this question perfectly, which was like, you have to do the research to figure out what is your end game, how much will you make, and how much will it cost you? The rule of thumb that I've heard is you don't want to borrow in student loans more than your first year salary out of college, right?

38:25Robert Croak:So theoretically, that would mean if I'm making$60 ,000 or$70 ,000 as a nurse, I don't want to go borrow$250 ,000 because I won't be able to afford the monthly payment on that first year salary. Where I could go borrow$50 ,000,$60 ,000 or$70 ,000 against this rule of thumb and still be okay from a monthly payment perspective. A good way to think about that monthly payment is for every$10 ,000 you borrow, your monthly payment goes up by$100 ,000. So if you borrow$50 ,000, your monthly student loan payment is about$500 ,000. If you borrow$100 ,000, your multi-payment is about$1 ,000. That's rough, rough math depending on your interest rate and your terms and things like that.

39:00Robert Croak:But at its core, is college still worth it in today's economy? When you ask, like, is it worth it? You're genuinely asking, should I spend the money? That's what you're asking. Do I spend the money to go to college? And I think it depends on who's spending the money. If it's your parents because they've got a 529 or they want to pay for your college, like, yeah, like, sure. Go on the four-year vacation. learn how to be social, learn how to lead committees and be on different organizations and do all the fun stuff that college allows you to do. I learned so much in college that allowed me to be the man I am today.

39:32Robert Croak:And so at the end of the day, if it's like your parents are paying for it, yeah, just go to college. Like what's the worst that can happen if you have to pay for it? Right. Is it is it worth it in today's economy? Because I'm paying for it and I'm trying to figure out, is it a good return on my investment money that I have to go into debt for and I have to repay? Then you have to do what Robert said, right? You have to figure out what that money is how much money you have to borrow to get there, what's the math on that, how quickly can you pay it off. Do not be the person that go gets that communications degree or the marketing degree or the underwater basket weaving degree, right?

40:04Robert Croak:Whatever these meme degrees are, have to scoop chicken at Chipotle at$18 an hour with$72 ,000 of student loan debt because you thought getting this degree was going to be really cool for you. Don't go to college just to get a degree, go to college to learn to do a job in the future and make sure that that job that you're learning to do, you have a clear path to do that job. And that job pays at least as much as you are borrowing over that four-year period of time.

40:30Austin Hankwitz:And that is why our 30-year age gap in this podcast is so important. When I went to college, it was all about if you want this type of job, you have to get a degree. And it's all about you learning to be able to follow the rules and do the processes. And like you said, be in those committees and do all those things. We are in a different world now in a different economy. So I love your perspective on that.

40:55Robert Croak:Let's expand upon this a little bit more. Let's say that Carson B did not go to college, right? Because is it worth it also has to do with lifetime earnings. And we all know the stat that if you go to college, on average, you earn a million dollars more throughout your life than if you did not. And again, that's just average. So Robert, what's your perspective on that? Like, what if this person does not go to college that's listening right now, what should they be doing instead?

41:19Austin Hankwitz:I would be figuring out what direction I want to go in and then make sure to do the same thing, the research, to figure out how I can prepare myself, whether it's AI, becoming an electrician, whatever it is, and how can I be really good at it so I'm a top earner in those fields? Because if you think back even 10 or 15 years ago, it was all learn code, learn code, learn code. Now everyone's backtracking on that. They're saying don't learn code because AI is going to do it better than any human can do it. So now everyone's learning how to utilize AI at its core the best way they can to make themselves more valuable.

41:58Austin Hankwitz:So I think it just really comes down to what works best for you if you don't go to college because there's so many opportunities and even the big companies no longer really require these college degrees. Most of them just want people that are very intelligent and understanding of the sector of business they're in to be able to allow you to thrive in that company or go the different direction. All of the blue collar people now that were once scorned because they were electricians and plumbers, they're all making six figures now and they work nine to five. They're not working weekends. So just really understand what you think is best for you and your future and get educated on that and get licensed on that.

42:41Robert Croak:I think there's two routes to take if you don't go to college. Route number one is for maybe six months at a time, you go try everything that interests you. Right. You try being a chef and working on a food line at a restaurant. You try doing stuff at Amazon or Walmart. You try retail, working at T-Mobile. You try all of these different things to figure out what you like and what you don't like. You figure out which one makes the most sense for you. And you follow that career path making$35 ,000 to$55 ,000 throughout your late teens and early 20s, working your way up whatever the corporate ladder definition for you is.

43:20Robert Croak:in that maybe become a regional manager of Chipotle's making 82 ,000 a year here in Nashville. Like who knows, right? But like you work toward that long-term goal of I started at this thing. I'm really interested in it. I'm good at it. So I'm going to rock and roll and do that, right? Maybe it is becoming a plumber, electrician. Maybe that's part of your journey, what Robert said, but like that's one way you do it. And I think that's what 85 % of people, 95 % of people have done in the past. But Gen Z is very different. Gen Z is also doing option two, which is how can I live for as cheaply as possible while becoming an entrepreneur.

43:52Robert Croak:And becoming an entrepreneur at its core just means earning money in a non-traditional fashion. That could be being a content creator and a YouTuber. That can mean starting a podcast or a newsletter. That can mean offering web design services or AI automation services. That can mean doing drop shipping with Walmart, whatever it's called. That can mean almost anything. And we're seeing now a larger portion of these 18 to 25 year olds bucking the system and saying I don't want to go to college but I also don't want to just go scoop chicken at Chipotle which I've said now in this episode which is funny like nine times I want to go be an entrepreneur and like go all in on figuring something out for two years and now because of the rise of artificial intelligence information is free knowledge is free and essentially there's so much free labor that you can get with these AI agents now we just saw what Claude released right so like there's a lot of stuff now that you can do as this technology first human in your late teens or early 20s that increases your odds of being a successful entrepreneur exponentially than what was when Robert was in his late teens or early 20s.

44:59Robert Croak:And so those are your two alternatives, right? You can one, go to college. Let's call that option three. And you can go to college, go get the degree, do the thing, right? Or you can do option one, which is like, go figure out your thing with Amazon or the plumbing or the electrician or Walmart or DoorDash or your local pizza shop. And like, there's a lot of different ways you can go make money. Option two here is you buck the system and you do this entrepreneur stuff with AI, which is a lot of people are doing now. Or option three is, you know, you go to college. And so I think those are kind of the options laid out.

45:27Robert Croak:I know how old Carson is. He's around that college age. If I were him and I was as smart as him and knowing what he was up to, like he's part of the Rich Abbots Network, he's trying to learn. I would go with option two, which is like bucking the system, figuring out how to start a business and go make 100, 200, $500 ,000 by doing AI automations or dropshipping or the podcast or a newsletter or any other website design or copywriting or whatever this online service is that you're providing.

45:52Austin Hankwitz:I love all of that. You think about TikTok shop and TikTok affiliate and TikTok live, you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with no overhead, no nothing. You need a tripod and an iPhone, and you can literally create a job just by becoming an affiliate on TikTok for a product that you like and that you use. And so there's just so many ways to do this option too, and be an entrepreneur in today's society. And it's definitely the route I took early on in my career. I didn't work well with others, so I wasn't good at the job thing, even though I was in corporate America early on. So I love that.

46:32Austin Hankwitz:And just what a great breakdown. So if you're younger and you're out there and you're not sure, try everything, learn, and you'll figure it out. I promise you will find a home that is really what you want to do and you can crush it and make a lot of money.

46:45Robert Croak:Robert, I'm so glad you said TikTok shop because there are people right now that are doing option two, but they're not doing the AI automation stuff, the online services. There's a guy on TikTok named Morris Made, where he makes leather belts and he's sold already just on TikTok shop by making these videos of him making leather belts in his garage over one and a half million dollars worth of revenue of making leather belts in his garage which I'm sure started as something as a weekend project that he did for his buddies yeah guys I'm actually I'm gonna make a leather belt y 'all want one and then he made a video about it now he's doing seven figures in revenue on this this one thing so like I could not agree more opportunity to make money is so abundant right now and I just I wish I could clone myself so I could be doing these things but you know this is I'm doing my own thing, but long story short here is y 'all, there are so many ways to make money.

47:35Robert Croak:College is not the only way. And we hope that this podcast is an inspiration for you out there with that. If you are trying to buck the system and not be a part of what everyone else is doing and you want to get right with your money and do the side hustle and start the business that this podcast inspires you and teaches you how to think about these things in a very thoughtful and just meaningful, intentional way.

47:55Austin Hankwitz:I love, love, love. What a great episode. So many incredible questions and we really just get to just help everyone where they are and help them get where they want to be. And I just love these episodes. The Q &A was probably one of the smartest things we did was creating these episodes just to answer the questions of the audience and take it from the dome and really use our experience and knowledge to help others.

48:20Robert Croak:Everybody, if you learned something from today's episode or you enjoyed the conversation, please consider leaving us a five-star review on Spotify, on Apple, or anywhere where you're listening right now. They go so far with us. They teach the algorithm that other people like this. And it just, it's incredible. It's the biggest compliment you can give us is a five-star review on any podcasting platform or whatever you're on right now. Thank you so much for leaving a positive five-star review. We very, very much appreciate it. As a reminder, these are our Thursday episodes. We've got a Friday episode now.

48:52Robert Croak:It's called the Rich Habits Radar. You all are loving these episodes. We debuted it in August. And now it is like the momentum with those are insane. So be sure to come back tomorrow for our Friday episode titled Rich Habits Radar, where we talk about the biggest headlines impacting you and your money.

49:09Austin Hankwitz:Thanks, everyone. And we'll see you tomorrow.

49:34We'll be right back.