Episode 142: Personal Finance

0:09 Oh. Welcome back to a Record of My Father. We're going to be talking about personal finance today and how you're going to keep your money until you die. I think that that was a highly requested idea, or, Cambria said Top, yeah, top idea. I'm tired to listen to your to your BS topics. Why don't you do something that could actually help? She did not like sandwiches. That was not enjoyed. That was really not enjoyed but but we enjoyed doing that one, didn't we? Well, I, I think it's we've, we've, we ignore the audience and we realized that it's all about us and we just don't care 'cause we're selfish fucks.

0:50 What do you think? I mean, that's kind of what it is, yeah. I mean, we take the phone call, we take the phone call, we say let's put it on Zoom and let's just share it everywhere 'cause we talked enough already. Why not monetize your words? Not about. Well, I don't know if we're, it's, it's, well, it's monetization, but for the most part, it's not really that 'cause we say it's money, we're not making any money. We're actually doing it to, for, for you to truly have a record for your 19 grandchildren that are spread around the country and around the, around the world. So they can actually see where you came from and then they can understand why you're so messed up the the see look.

1:31 At that exactly. You keep from that No, but anyway, anyway, the finances I I am always I have so many stories about people buying things and not realizing what they had to pay for them. And I think that when you think about personal finance, it it, it bothers me that we don't have a class in high school that teaches personal finance that goes through like, you know, how to balance, how to how to have a checkbook, how to look at what are your expenses in a month, you know, and most people don't realize what they actually spend. If they have, they have to write down every single thing. Oh, I got rent, I got utilities. And you go, what about your phone?

2:12 Oh, yeah, I got to pay for my phone. Oh, what about your insurance? Oh, I got an insurance. Oh, and they'll go through everything and you're like, well, hey, do you eat? I think when money became a number on a screen, it became more difficult for people to understand. I don't know, I just think the whole idea of a credit card and being able to digitize everything was really to screw the consumer over. I really think it was because I think it was meant to gamify your own life and your own kind of decision making according to a number on a screen, when in reality the way we measure things is with our hands in the physical world. And this gamification has, I think, really destroyed a lot of people. You.

2:55 Can you can elevate your your current lifestyle by by by spending your future earnings? See what I'm saying? Everybody has an iPhone. Right. So you can, you can buy something you cannot, you could not afford today with monies that you will have in the future, But you're going to have to pay more. And then you're going to have to pay a little bit more as a finance fee. That's going to be added on to that. And the longer you, you take to pay that off, the more you're going to pay. And that's why I like when I've asked people, I, I have the old construction worker thing where I remember when I was working it, what was it? It was Reed foundations, poured walls. And I had a guy there.

3:46 What was his name? I think his name was Derek and he was going to buy a car and I was talking to said so how much does it cost? And he goes and it was for Ford Pento. So you'd know how long ago that was like 8180. It's $99.00 a month and there's like 3 guys. Oh yeah, that's a really great deal, $99.00 a month. That's great. I go well so how much does it cost? And he was like you dumb effort. It's it's $99.00 a month. That's what I said and and I'm just kind of like going oh, OK, well, like what's the total cost, you know?

4:27 And he goes, what do you mean? It's like, like how long do you pay $99.00 a month? Well, as long as you have the car, really. There's a reason why used car dealerships are located on the outside military base. He did not realize how long he was going to pay and it was like, so, so then you could figure out what the total amount is that you actually paid, how much its finance charges. And they actually have to show you that that's, believe it or not, that's one of those regulations that makes a lot of sense for people that don't understand finance. And you can't get shit on them because he didn't know you, don't you, you know, you just got to show people how to understand that it's not $99.00 a month for as long as you own the car. It's not, it's going to be $99.00 a month for whatever the time frame it is for you to pay it off. And I think it was like 4 or five years. So it was crazy.

5:24 And the, and the price of a pento at that time was like 3 grand or something. He was going to pay 5. And you know, and you were like, but the interest rate 16.6%, what difference does that make? You know, and it's like, well, that's because you're not actually buying the car. You're just paying somebody to use their money to pay for a piece of the car. That's why. And so you have to, but also people are very touchy when you talk to them about finances because they don't want to appear stupid, because that's a really hard thing to do. It's a really hard thing to talk to anybody about things that you don't know anything about. And that's a very and, and if you're, if you're, if you dropped out of high school or you're high school educated or you're a little bit of college, you don't want to be a peer to be stupid.

6:07 People have that in their mind that it really kind of steps on them. You know? I don't know anything about finances. Fuck you. You know, I'll just, I'll trust the banker. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. I'll trust the car dealer. Stupider the worst. Snake oil salesman in the world. And I don't know if it's I, I, I, I don't want to know if I say it's stupid. It's just like, what is it when you're not informed? You're you're you're ill informed or something? It's not about being smart and knowing a lot. Uneducated, I mean on the topic. And and but but not even uneducated because I don't want to say that because that sounds like really it. Does it sounds demeaning and it's not. I'm not trying to be that way.

6:50 I'm trying to find the. Way I would say it's that the thing that that that that gets me is people's inability to see where they could learn something and they will deny it to save for their pride. They do it for pride or for I need to feel better about myself because I had four people yelling at me telling me that the car was $99.00 a month. It was not one. It turned there was like 3 other people in the crew and they were looking well, it's $99.00 a month, you dumbass. You said it three times. You know when you're like, no, I don't know. That's not the total price that you pay.

7:32 That's all you write a check for every month. That's it, you dumbass. You know, when they got hostile. Because they saw. They saw what you were really asking. And all I was trying to do was say like, maybe you should compare that to another car dealer and say, well, I pay 5 grand here and I pay 4 grand here. And then, you know, whether you pay 119 at the other one for a year or two, three years, and this one you pay 99 for five years, it, it ain't the same. And so figuring that out and, and it's complicated. It's very complicated. Well, that reminds you of a Ford Raptor that you went in to buy and they snacked that.

8:12 What did they stacked like a $10,000 service charge or something? 15 and you said but this. Was an excessive. It was an excessive order fee. Oh, there we go. There we go. Yeah. No, no high demand vehicle fee, something like that. And that was a really cool story. But anyway, I ended this story by just giving up. I let that go, you know, I said OK, and I just walked away. And they're like, yeah, yeah. He doesn't know what he's talking about. College boy, because I was going to Community College at that time, so I was a college boy anyway. That I just was like, OK, I'm trying to, you know, I was trying to get him to see, you know, to measure. Like what, $99.00 a month actually meant?

8:54 You know, I had a roommate that did that too. But what were we talking? What was the other other one? We jumped off onto the Ford. Raptor or the Ford Raptor the. Ford Raptor was I was going to buy a Ford Raptor. I, I got, I got enamored by them. I thought they were really cool. And my, my, my wife said, Oh my God, it looks like a, it looks like a penis with an engine. Maybe that's why I like it. I don't know, man. It's a closet gay thing. Or I'm, I'm a bro man. I'm a bro man. Anyway, so I'm looking around and I'm just, I'm kicking the tires and it's like $60,000 for a pickup truck, which that's, I mean, I, it, it wasn't going to financially hurt me in any way, but it was sort of like, wow, that's, you know, I, I do stupid shit all the time.

9:39 So this is not really and and it's not the biggest dumb thing I've ever done. So, and that's what I always measure things and it's like, what's the stupidest thing you've ever done, Phil? Well, it's not that. There's many more anyway, anyway, so I, I'm, I'm all excited. I find a dealer and I go and I call the Ford dealer and I say, OK, so it's advertised that it's 62 something or 45. Is that it's list price? You don't give a discount, but that's what you're charging, right? Yes, yeah, absolutely. Come on in. We'll fill out the paperwork and we'll do it. I get there and I'm talking to Bob or Jim or Harold or Sheila or that was a guy and I bought my dog with me. Yup Yup, don't know why I did this and I have a pick up too 'cause I'm driving at that time.

10:20 Yeah, why'd you bring the dog with it? That makes no sense. I have no idea. I was just like, we had the dog and no, you were gone somewhere. The wife was gone somewhere and I didn't want to leave them at home, her at home and she liked to ride and it's like, I'll take the dog for a ride, What the hell? So I took the dog with me and I said maybe it'll make a difference when buying a truck. I don't know why I did it. It was just kind of weird. So I walk in there and I'm walking around the parking lot with a dog on a leash. We go inside, we sit down, I talk to him, he goes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's going through and he's going like, OK, so you want the big wheels? Yeah. You want this? Yeah. You want this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want this? Oh yeah, You want this? You want you want the spotlights on the top? Yeah. You want the leather seating inside? Yeah. You want the, you know, auto backup camera, sideways quivering.

11:01 Love Harvest. Yeah, yeah, I'll take that too. So I got. I mean, I'm doing, I'm doing the whole thing 'cause then usually when I do it, I overdo it, which is kind of typical for me. And I get screwed and I know I'm going to get screwed. And I know that's why I'm going to pay that list price that he said. And he comes back and he goes, oh, that it's going to be 85 or I think it was, yeah, it was 80. Five that's for for a truck for Ford, all the. Things I added on to it made it about the high 60s, but now it's going to be 85 and I'm going like what's what's you guys said, 63 nine or 64 nine? He goes, Oh well there's a a high demand vehicle fee on it.

11:42 Like what? He goes $15,000 for the high demand vehicle. Fee. Oh my gosh. Like, but but I called you. What do you mean? I said I called you and I asked you guys here what was happening and I really want this car. I've been wanting this vehicle ever since they started showing the pictures. So, so the inside of me is just like, I want this, I really want this. You know, when you really want something and you're willing to and then, and then so, and I got to put a down payment on it. It's like 5 grand and then they order and it comes in six months or whatever, you know, because there's a line, the guy is there and he's punching all the stuff and he and he goes and he tells me the fee and I'm there and he goes, what?

12:22 Your credit card? And I just and I'm holding Yup, Yup, my arms and I pull my credit card out and I hand it to him and I'm standing there and it hit me every time I get into that truck. I'm going to feel like I was screwed every single time because he didn't tell me. Because if he had told me 85,000 from the front end, I probably would have just gulped and paid it before I came there. But I felt like it was a sneak and steal or a switch and bait and switch. I was. So I just started to blow up angry. And he has a credit card like right here. Right next. To his his laptop and he's starting to type it in. And I reached down and snatched away and just start yelling. And this is Saturday.

13:09 This is in the Ford dealerships. So there's a lot of people there. I learned this from my mother. And I'm holding the dog. And I start and I say you told me over the phone before I came here, you're the third dealer I called and you guaranteed the price, and now you're raising it by 15 to $20,000. And I was loud. Which is another car he's like, doesn't. Doesn't say a word and then so I get louder and the people that were down at the other tables, you're ripping me off, you're ripping me off, you're ripping me off and it's wrong and I will not stand for and I got I got angry.

13:51 I didn't realize you got angry. Most people. I didn't realize you got angry in there. People that know me know that it, it's, it's a very, it's a precarious situation when you get me angry because I don't like I, it, it takes an incredible amount of stuff to get me to cross line. When I cross the line, I will burn your fucking house down. I, I just, I and, and I will worry about the consequences afterwards because I was real and I was pissed off. My car was parked behind him. I walked to the far doors to exit, screaming at him the whole way with with my dog holding my dog. With the small dog. Exited from there, walked the length the front of the dealership yelling through the window. I was a just I was a prick.

14:41 And I went back and my car got my car drove home and I said I can never buy a Ford Raptor. I can never buy a car from this place. I'll never buy it. And that was the one at Bailey's Crossroads. I would never buy a car there. I, I would, I would, it would be hard for me to stop there if I had to pee, OK, that would be, you know, only if I was going to pee on one of the vehicles. But that, that, that would be it, that, that it was just the most dissatisfying thing. But anyway, I mean, I've run into this over and over and over. My, my roommate had bought a Trans Am and I asked him what it cost and he said $12,000 or $15,000 something like that. And this is he got a settlement and the we went to Canada and got stoned and came back and his car broke down.

15:25 And there's, there's like a whole bunch of stories that go with that. It's really wild. Anyway, he comes back and his car's all messed up in the engine block melted. And he had a Mustang 2. So he buys a Trans Am or the other way around. He buys a Trans Am, comes back and, and, and he shows me the paperwork. And this is in the late 80s. It's not early, early 80s. This has been a go K The interest rate was 18.5% on a monthly loan and I was just like my God, you you realize that for for every time you give them a dollar towards the purchase of the car that you're only paying 82 cents, 81 1/2 out of every dollar.

16:14 Brutal. It's 81 and a half cents. That's that's the mindset that you have to think when you think about interest. There were fees involved too, which jacked it and made it actually more like a 20% interest. You know, oh, there's a, there's a dealer prep fee and there's an underwear check your underwear fee and there's a service fee and you know, all that other kind. Of oh, the undercutting, the under spray. Oh my gosh. That's $500 or 300 or 400. They asked us when we got my car if they wanted if we wanted that. Well, that's like when they they're. Like, oh, it's a black pain underneath the car and it's like, what? Yeah, when they tell you that they're selling the car at cost, we're selling you at an invoice price. And you're like, but, but it's not a real invoice. No, it's an invoice.

17:00 It's an invoice price. You're like, so you're selling your cars, all your cars, and you have a downtown location in Tyson's Corner where the real estate costs like $1,000,000 a square foot and you've got 100,000 square feet and you're telling me that you're selling it all at cost. So you guys should be out of business in like a week. And so you work for nothing, right? You know, And you're like. And then silence comes over. So it's volunteer. This is a. Volunteer car dealership stop that. I don't believe anything you say. You're just making it up because that's what they they gave you the sales book and that's what they're reading to do, you know, and you and you, you worry about that. I mean, this is really more of a finance about cars and stuff.

17:40 I think. I think that that he did that. I was shocked and I was like, you should go get a low interest credit card, borrow the money on there and pay your car off. But then I'll have another credit card debt. I'm like, but you're, you're, you're paying more. And he couldn't get over the whole paying more, you know, and he, but he, he, he, he could handle 400 a month or whatever it was to pay for the car at the time, which think about it. And that's Nineties 8880. Seven. That's really high. I was crazy. I was just like, what are you that's and it wasn't that expensive a car and it was used, but that was another car story, another. I mean, I have so many cars.

18:22 Well, I'll ask you for young people out there, what are the top 3 personal finance things that you would say? I would. Say probably the smartest thing that you can do is go in and make yourself a semblance of a budget. Just just ballpark once a month, write down, write down today what you're going to spend for the month of you don't even have to be the most current one. Look at January, look at February and write down. Every single thing is spent. And and now here's the thing to do. You get a paycheck, right? Everybody gets a paycheck. I assume your paycheck is auto deposited into your, is that auto deposit into your account, right, Zach? So every dollar that leaves that account for 30 days, itemize those lists, every single one of those, that is what you pay for that month.

19:22 OK, simple, simple, simple. Unless you haven't, Well, even if you have an auto pay out of that account, it's going to show that hey, I got paid $1000 this month. I saw $50.00 I took out in cash, which you can then you can write down it was cash for drugs. And then you could say OK, and I took $100 out for food. Or you can do the you know, 100 for drugs and 50 for food. That's probably what I would have done. And then $300.00 for alcohol. That's a little light, but some of us have that 50 bucks for rent, 75 bucks for food, which part of that's alcohol. And then you know, you write down, you know, you write down your phone bill, you write down your insurance, you write down all the little things that you know, you have heat, electricity, water, sewer, every single thing that comes out of that bank account statement. If you you know if you get a direct deposit from your check and everything you spend.

20:21 That comes out of there. This does not account if you get a you know, if you have a mother who sends you, gives you $100 cash a week or you know, you, you, you prostitute yourself and you get paid cash, then you should add that in into that bank account and see where that money goes. If you funnel all of it through 1 central account, you can actually keep very easy control to your finances. And if and a lot of bank accounts, a lot of them one in ours in particular were DOC Department of Commerce. I have wanted like 6 or 7 different banks, but almost every single one has a personal finance thing. It will allow you to make how much I make, how much I spend.

21:04 And that's what you really need to do. And then you just need to look at the 2 lines and say, OK, I make 1000, I spend. It should be less than 1000, OK, because that is the only way you're going to move forward. That's the only way you need to spend less than you make unless you're waiting for some, you know you have some windfall that's going to happen every quarter, then you would want to look more work this in a more than one, one month financial statements. That's why I would look at it over the course of like 3 or 4 six months and just see where you are and just get a visual idea in your mind to see. I don't keep track of my checking account, but I know how much is in it. I don't keep track.

21:46 I know what I spend, I know what I spend on things. I know with something's unreasonable and if something comes in big, how it will affect things and if someone wants to borrow money or loan me money or invest. And usually more than anything, my biggest numbers are investments where I write a check to somebody for big numbers and that it it materially changes the makeup of whatever portfolio I have. Another thing to consider early as you possibly can on investments is at, I would say if you can start with a mutual fund, go to Vanguard, go to Fidelity, fill out the fund. I think it's a hundred or two. I think it's a $250 minimum save an save money, save money enough to open a mutual fund account and have them take $25.00 a month out of your account, 1530, whatever.

22:39 So you don't see it just like it's an expense. And if you start that in your 20s, you'll have 1,000,000 bucks by the time you're in your 40s. And that will be irrespective, you know, and, and a lot of people will actually add more and more to that as they go. And they'll start to see while, while this thing is constantly tight, my, my, my monthly expenses will grow. My, my salary should grow along with them. But also now I'm saving for the future, in the future can be just anything. It can be, you know, just, it could be anything you want to be. You want a house, you want a car, you, you want a, you want a retirement.

23:21 You know, those are the kind of things that you plan. And I will tell you that every year that you start earlier. I started my first mutual fund when I was 30, Nicholas Fund. No, my first real job, I'm sorry, 27. I started doing that because I had, I got paid $15,000 a year and I was spending it all on alcohol and women and travelled so. And then, I mean, that was, that was the whole thing. It was about sex and drugs and that was it. And I didn't really, I didn't care about anything else. I had the cheapest department in the world. I had a car that didn't cost very much. I had insurance.

24:02 It was low, you know, And so outside of that, it was like party money. And so I put, I started that and I think I did 50 bucks or 75 or 100. I don't remember who told me to do that, but it turned out to be like I had $25,000 when Global Securities came around, which was two or three years later, which was saved. In addition to I had C DS coming out of College of all things. I actually had money coming out of college, weirdly. How did my? C DS coming out of college. Who who give what I did what I did was see I started working when I was 7, which I think maybe that's you know, or six or five or whatever. I would go out and collect and I would get money. My parents were Piedmont federal savings and loan. There was a savings and loan that you would physically go to and you open up a kids account.

24:54 And I, I had, I forgot I got some money. Oh, I stepped on the neighbor's, I stepped on a glass bottle in a neighbor's yard. And the insurance company was all freaked out that we're going to sue the neighbors. Like now we're not going to do that well for your pain and suffering. They wrote me a check for $100, which, and this would have been 6867. So I immediately was going to take the money and put in the account. And actually, you know, I was 8 years old, so I was probably going to buy some drugs. Probably not. What I, what I, what I did is I, I opened up a savings and loan account because this is my, my mother had me do this and she and I had the check and we put that and we said, OK, well, you're, you're only going to put $50.00 in. I'm going like put the checks for 100. And she goes, well, you're going to pay, you're going to give $50.00 to the Volunteer Fire Department. They picked me up.

25:51 Oh, OK. They came there and they were so nice. They were full. They had, they gave me like a little stuffy toy, like a little plushy toy. I mean, they were just amazing and didn't do amputate. No, it was really, it was just it was 13 stitches. They did a couple internal stitches. I saw white internal. I mean, yeah, it was, I mean, it was deep. So this was it was bad all the way to the bottom. And it was about this one. Yeah. And, and I bled like a stuck pig. And, you know, everybody came and looked and laughed at. Well, they didn't laugh. They kind of like, look, that didn't happen to me. That's good. And so I went to the hospital and they sewed it all up and all that kind of stuff like that. But they. But we got the check for $100 and I signed some document or something. I don't know, my parents did, but I put 50 in the count and that was the start.

26:39 And so every time I got money, I would put it in. And once I got to $1000, my mother knew that, you know, I would be into drop whatever the bad stuff, you know, you, you, you'd want a PlayStation, which there were no PlayStation. You want something that cost a lot of money, you'd use it. So, and her wisdom is, well, you're, you're earning 4% on your money And, and as savings loan buy ACD, you get 5 1/2, six, 6 1/2. But here's the kicker. It's not about the interest rate. It's about it takes your money and it puts it somewhere where you don't have immediate access to it. And as a kid, I didn't, I, I didn't have anything that I had to do, you know, I wasn't going to have pay an insurance bill or anything like that. It, it kept me from bleeding the account dry buying candy every fucking day, which is, you know, you can see how you'd want to do that.

27:34 No, exactly. That's what it prevented me. Phil's buying. Phil's buying. He's going. We're going. Yeah. Everybody loves Phil because he buys candy for everybody. No, because we went to. Cardinal for me, I remember that. No. And we opened up a kids club and then, right, Cardinal became United. And then, yeah, they got bought up by United. But it was always a way, you know, saving pennies, all your Dimes, all the change and all the different things like that. That's what it taught me. And each time I had a job, I would put money in there quite regularly. And every time I got $1000, I would turn it into ACD like a, and it was usually a three to five year CD because those were, you know, the longer they were in, the more, more, the higher interest rates you had. So I'd make more money and also would be out of my hands longer. So paychecks for McLean hardware were pretty sparse. I remember that because 725 and you're only working like 4 hour shifts, four or five hour shifts. So man, yeah, some of those checks, it's like, wow. I was making $1.65 with a $0.25 an hour meal ticket. So I was making a 40 to buck 40 an hour and I was putting money away and I was buying weed so.

28:49 And you were buying weed. Yeah, weed was $20.00 an ounce then, so weed was. $20 a gram when I was in high school an. Oz Man but it was Mexican so. And now it's cheap. Now it's $100.00 an ounce. Crazy I could smoke half of an ounce of Mexican and not be as high as one hit off of the weed today. That is true, I can believe. Yeah, I would do one hit off, no, do another one. I don't understand why we have a fascination upon going nonverbal. I don't know what that is. Any sort of drug that has been legalized, it's like how do we make this strongest we possibly can so that its user is going to be as massively uncomfortable as possible.

29:33 And I don't get it. I don't get that. Well, I'm going to say that what it is, is it's for chronic users because they use it all the time. Medicinal, that would make sense, yeah. Not medicinal I'm talking about. Habitual user. Yeah, okay. Habitual. That's that one. Because I'm thinking that they build up a tolerance just like you and I, when we go out and drink alcohol, it's like, you know which drink 3 gallons, you know? Intolerance you need to to build up to now it that would take a year. I mean if that it would probably take more. Than I think about weed. I mean weed's the same way. I mean all these drugs are the same thing. It's like that's why when I take pills I always have to take 1 1/2 times because I was such an abuser in my teens.

30:15 I don't know why it still sticks most of the time it sticks for the most part. I don't get, you know, it's it's or or maybe it's just in my mindset that hey, if I take 2 oxy, it's not going to no fat. So that's why I take. 3 or 4? Interesting. You know, and maybe it's just the mindset. What about Adderall? Does it do the same thing? Same thing for. You Adderall's 11 and done for me, it's it's good for the day because I've done it and it's it's still it'll interrupt when I sleep. That's how even if you take it in the. Beginning that's like the that's the capsules, the big. Facts are yeah, the extended. Rolling, that's not the roll in and out and snorting it, that's actually taking the Adderall pill and. Well, that's how you're supposed to do, because the last way it's. An amazing drug.

30:58 It's focused like when when I was prepping for long hikes, then I would have to go out and just be mindset that hey, the only way I'm going to get ready for this to do 10 miles a day for three days in a row is I'd pop an Adderall in the morning and just go out there and be a mile of fuck walking 10 miles because. It was good focus. No, it definitely is. Because it helps you focus on you know your you have a task before you and you will do it no matter what. I think it's really interesting to see those that have ADHD and how drug addiction correlates with that. So predominantly, it's pretty crazy. Well, you think that there isn't There's, there's I think the problem that I have with the doctors and the diagnosis at early ages is that there's no off ramp. There's no, and there's no even thought to an off ramp to a child that's 7-8 years old.

31:52 That's going to be, you know, and not just one out of 100 or 1000, you know, 'cause I mean, I would understand that there are kids that are going to have to be medicated their whole life. I'm, I'm fine with that. They're they're, they're, they're beyond. They will not fit into a normal atmosphere. I mean schizophrenics and things like that. But when you're talking, you know 40% of a class. There's. There's there's somebody's pushing something on somebody that they don't really need. No, exactly. Well, it's like, how? Why is an 8 year old acting like a child? That's very odd, right? It's a very odd thing that 8 year olds some.

32:32 Of us are worst others. And they act like children. I don't understand. I don't understand that. But oh, going back real quick, we said budget, budget, top budget. Budget's the biggest thing. Mutual fund, right? Mutual fund starts as early as you possibly can. I know people always say, oh, don't buy the the I have never been someone. Well, I don't want to say that I've always been someone that looked at prices. I I mean we used to what? Do you mean prices on ETFs or on? When, when When we would shop when my mother. Oh, you mean just general shopping? OK, gotcha. My mother would get a paycheck and my father would do the grocery list and the grocery list. And this is really kind of unusual. And this is in the 60s because, I mean, we were making 68 grand a year for six people.

33:25 So it was, it was tight. And so we would get a grocery list and it'd be a list of all the things and should get paid every two weeks, all the things that we would buy and we would fan out and food fair. This is down in Shirlington area. We would fan out the kids and we'd all, oh, you got to get the, the washer, the dishwashing or the, the laundry detergent and the peanut butter and you, you get blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we would go and we would get, we would, we knew what brands we could get if we ever came back with the wrong brands. But my father would calculate every single thing what it cost. He would have the coupons there. He'd have the total and the taxes and my mother would write a check 04.

34:14 She went in for the total amount at the grocery store. That's how and, and, and it was right. And, and if it was wrong and if it was wrong, which is the weirdest thing in the world, she would go like, what do you mean? No, no, those are not snap peas. Those are snap peas. And then the the, the, the checkout lady would go, Oh yeah, I'm sorry, I'm mis wrong. And then it's it's 18142, you know, when you were and I was just by amazed by how much detail. And that was in the early years as he drank more. He didn't. The math skills kind of fell apart. Yeah, I mean, he was always like really brilliant at looking across huge things and pulling all the facts out.

35:00 But he had other issues that kind of negated all that those, those good points. But anyway, but I was like, you know, knowing what you spend is a big thing. It's kind of like when people tell you you smoke cigarettes, how do you quit smoking? Well, first thing they tell you to do is, well, how much do you smoke? Well, like, you know, I have a pack and I smoke. I smoke like crumple up two of them a day and then I open a third so it's over 2 packs. You know, I crumple up. I, I don't, I hold it for two days. So I crumple half a pack. So if that's 10 cigarettes roughly, you know, and you can kind of figure out, and then you start to keep counting what you're doing and then, you know, cause a lot of times you don't realize that well, how many times you drink every week? Well, I go out on Tuesdays and sometimes Thursdays and Saturdays and Mondays and.

35:50 You know, sometimes on Wednesdays, so. But but you look at your, you look at your bill over here and you're like, my alcohol budget's like 300 bucks a month. It's more than my rent. You know, it's like, OK guy, you got a problem. You know, same thing. It, it's the, the first thing you need to do. Don't overcomplicate it. Get a budget, get a budget. See where you are, then step into investing and putting money into a fund and just do it in a generic fund. You know, you can do Vanguard, you can do Fidelity, you can do any mutual fund out there. Pick their their S&P 500 or their Russell. I mean, I've done really well with Russell 2000 because it's a really war.

36:34 You can do a whole world fund, you can do a whole US fund, you can do big company funds. You can do anything. At the end of the day, that's going to earn more money than anything you just leave in a bank forever. It's going to be riskier if you need it, if you need it in a timely fashion, you shouldn't be put in the market anyway. And remember, if it rises up to if it double s and triples really quickly, if you're in a really risky thing, well, there's a chance that it'll go down by 1/3. Well, there was advice that you gave me as well, that was would you rather have this money today or nothing tomorrow? And right. And that really resonated with me on a lot of things, on a lot of deals.

37:16 That was the GameStop. Yeah, that was GameStop and then also AMC as well. Well, you did the most with GameStop and AMC. You did some of the most amazing things that I would have thought were just for me. That was ridiculous. Yeah, I really thought of this. I bought AMC too. Way too late. Like it was way too late. A lot of people were like, it's never going to go up again. It's impossible. And then it tripled. And then they were. Wrong. And you told Yeah. And then you did the same GameStop you, you sold it at the halfway point or the 2/3 point? Not even I think I sold it at $80 a share, 805A share. No, it's over 100. Really, it was. Yeah, yeah, 'cause it went up to 330 the next day. I remember that you.

37:58 Paid 40 grand in taxes on it, yeah. That was crazy. OK, see, 40 grand in taxes means you made 160 roughly. See, So that's why I'm saying that it's that because it's. I thought it was 20 in taxes. I didn't think it was 40. I thought you paid 35 or 37? I thought it was around 20, yeah. OK. Maybe I mean, and that's it was a huge number and that was one of those things and it was it was basically Warren Buffett that tells you like what do you invest in? You invest in things you know that you know everything about. People. You don't. You don't need. You. Well, I was just going to say, you have these people in New York, they use phrasing specifically to make it sound confusing, to make it sound like it's way more complicated than it actually is.

38:46 And it's way easier for the average person to invest than they actually believed it to be. Because the reason why they do this in New York is it's to build status and to confuse people like the average person. And to confuse the average person then makes it seem like they're doing a better, bigger job than anybody else could ever do, and so that they can't have access to that. And that's what the whole thing is, is to distract the general public from being able to enhance their own lives. And I think. That that's we're doing. We're doing stuff that you don't. What is it? It's so. Simple too. Yeah, it's so. And that's incredibly simple. Well, I found that. When I put money with investment advisors and and and. I've done this one too.

39:31 They're all a bunch of crooks. Not crooks. Here's the deal. When I put money with Merrill Lynch, they are, they're going to make a certain amount of money and they're going to take my money. They're going to make money with it and then they're going to take a piece of that and they're going to put it in their funds, which load fees on to each one of their funds, which takes a piece of that. So they got multiple pieces that are coming out of it. So they're not these thumb funds may, let's say they're really cool and they actually are near what the market does, which is just what I'm telling you to do, buy a market stock by the NYSE. Exchange all the securities that are traded, all the you can buy it in a basket.

40:13 You can buy it through something called an ETF and exchange traded fund. You can buy it directly. It's a very, very simple it's easy to buy, it's easy to sell. You can buy it through Fidelity, you can buy it through Vanguard. You don't need to contact a stockbroker who will charge you a 1% or a half percent fee on going in and out. You don't have to do that. You can do it online. You can mail them a check and you can start your brokerage account. You can do this in a lot of different places and then you can do your own fund, your own investing and it kind of kind of like it makes you more interested in the market. And, but remember when you chase those little things like hey, someone said buy palantir blah blah blah and you buy it and it goes up six times, well, it can drop 6 times, remember and you didn't.

40:55 And the money isn't yours until you sell it. Exactly. And loss is not yours until you sell. It there's something I'll also say, people talk about Palantir and they talk about NVIDIA. These things are $400.00 a share, 4 or $500 a share. You're much better off finding something that's $20 a share and buying many, many of those. Well, you see, yeah, I see that. I see the movement that they loop when I used to work for a trader, he said. I want a, in a perfect world, I want a 12 to $15 stock that I can buy 10 dot because it's liquid and it's got to have like a couple $100 million market cap, like 4-5 hundred million. Now it's like a billion or more because you want to have liquidity in the stock.

41:40 Because let's say you buy, you buy 10,000 shares or 5000 shares or 1000 shares or whatever. People, if everybody starts selling, if you start selling, people will see you selling, They'll see the trades go in and it'll put a downward pressure on the stock. If it's AOTC, people will always point to the over the counter stocks. They're usually penny stocks. They're you buy them for $0.80 and you sell them for $3 and you made 300% or 400% of your money. But you know 90% of the time the $0.80 turns into two cents and they go belly up. So there is that. And then if you try to sell an 80 cent stock at $2.00, people won't buy it at 2, they'll buy it at 18171615140.

42:27 So if you have like 1000 shares or 2000 shares, it's very hard to lose it because there's no, you have to look at the number of shares traded per day on that stock to get an idea on how liquid it is. You don't have a liquidity problem with a Palantir because it's what 40 billion and or whatever market cap and it's got, you know, 10 million shares trade every day. You know, unless you're it's a billionaire and you're and if you're a billionaire and you're listening to this, you need to call me, I'll sell you my laptop. OK. And and Zach, Zach has a podcast he wants to do with you anyway. That's that's kind of the difference. You know, when you think about it is like that kind of mentality, is it? You know, and the whole thing with investing in the, in the, in the beginning is that I have a lot of people now because I'm 66.

43:18 It's like they come to me now and they're at the end in their, their retirement and they're looking at it and it's not a lot. And they're like, well, I need to double it. You're like, well, here's the deal. If you got $500,000 in your retiring and you want to double it and you can, there's things you can bet on that'll double it, but they'll also cut it in half. Well, that was another thing that we talk about all the time, which is options. Rewarding. And options trading, me and my father never have done really at all. I've never done options. Have you done options? I kind of started and then I just never followed through. I thought it was a kind of a neat idea, but I'm not.

44:01 I don't. The level of attention required is about 100 times what you need for long term investing, which is what we're talking about. And therefore it's also a huge gamble too, because in the long term investment, it fluctuates and which in options it fluctuates and then you lose everything or you gain everything, you know, But that's why I'm I've been there's also. A lot of investment. There's financial, what do you call it? Gaming like commodities, CFTC, commodities, Future Trading Commission, trading on the Chicago CBO, whatever the Chicago Board. When you trade like hog futures and all this other kind of stuff like that.

44:43 That if a big player comes into the market and it's going to buy, thinks that orange juice is going to go up. If you go back to trading places that if they're going to buy in the marketplace, the price will rise whether or not it's a good idea or not. And if they sell into good news, the price is going to go down because only there's, there's there's a person who's selling at a lower rate than whatever the market should be. So they can control the market that way because they spend so much. If they're 20 or 30% of the market, that's, that's what happens. You know, so it's a lot riskier to do things. But a lot of people say, hey, I just got to know that Zac's going to be buying orange juice tomorrow. So with the opening bell, I'm going to be buying orange juice and I'm just going to ride his wave up. And then when he decides to sell, I want to get out before he sells, you know, so you got to have your ear to the ground and all that kind of stuff.

45:39 And then, I mean, there's a whole lot of stuff now, you see with the whole insider trades where, you know, when they said that we they were in talks with the Iranians that there was a 502. Was it a 500 million or $2 billion trade in the stock market on shorting oil? Yeah, Will was talking about that, Yeah. Shorting oil and it was like really, really timely and unusual and and this is happening a lot now. I mean, it's very and the SEC isn't like looking at these trades and because they know who did the trade when they say, oh, we don't know, yeah, you do we absolutely.

46:24 You could track who did the trade. You can every single trade that happens that comes across New York Stock Exchange, they can find a guy that executed the trade because the company executed for a person every single time. So if you start to hear that, that's that's just not true. And that's what enforcement of the SEC is supposed to do. They're supposed to go in there and say 500 million that the the morning before you gave a speech that you're going to do this, which made the whole market tank, which he just made $150 million in a day and then he sells out the next day because the talks that you talked about were fake. That's a little too timely, you know, so, or, or maybe it's not. Maybe it was perfect, maybe there was no problem with it, but it's it's certainly worth a conversation to look at. Well, I know it's kind of like.

47:14 It's kind of like if you saw money stuffed out of my pockets and running out and it had red ink on it and the bank right there was just robbed. Well, this was like the whole you. Should talk to me. Bitcoin thing in 2016 when he was doing Trump coin and he was going to do a Bitcoin rug pull and that's insane and everybody's like, but he wasn't president yet, but I'm like he was running for president. So, I mean, I don't really you had the potential president of the United States that was going to do a Bitcoin rug poll. But it's illegal. It's it doesn't matter. It's if you're the head of a company and you're touting something and you have a plan that's going to short it, then that's illegal.

47:55 OK, That is called front running there there are, you know, you see this all the time. That's that's the same thing that what was it Gordon Belfort, Jordan Belfort got nailed for and Wolf of Wall Street. It's that they were selling stocks that they were saying are going to go through the moon and then they were pumping them up. Pump and dumps is what we called them. And that's what they were doing was the standard pump and dump. They tell you that this is the greatest thing in the world, greatest thing in the world, greatest thing in the world. And they wait until it raises to say it double S their profit or triples it in a couple days. And then they sell into it as much as they possibly can. And then they take as much profit as they can. And then and then they say, ah, it was the market.

48:37 And it's like, no, it wasn't you, you, you, you made a phony market, you lied about it, you cheated. That's what happened in the 29 stock market. That's what happened then. I mean, and it, and it's happening again now. And that was the whole point of oversight, but they killed oversight into all of these different areas. So you gotta, you gotta wonder if it's going to happen. Maybe it won't happen until now. They're trying to put timelines on when you can go after people that cheat and steal. So which is kind of sad, but you know, it is what it is. Can you right before we end here, pre market trading and post market trading after hours trading is really what it's called. And then I guess pre hours trading.

49:18 Why? How does how does that exist? I still don't understand it. I still don't get it. Well, there's OK, let's say like. Why is that possible? General Motors stock is trading in New York, It's trade in London, it's traded in Tokyo. OK, OK. If you want to buy 24, you can buy on those exchanges. OK. One's pre, one's post. There's pre and post. If it starts to rise over there that that, then that that fee will come in and tell you the next day. There's, I don't know if there is a, a set vehicle for institutional investors to buy and sell and trade in a secondary market after I'm I'm not, I'm not you know, what is the pre market trading, you know?

50:05 Yeah, I don't understand because I remember GameStop was had after hours trading and I was not allowed, right. But at the same time, I think it was to control what was going on because it was fluctuating in such a way that people are saying these these firms were saying, well, we're getting screwed here. How do we how do we control this thing? That's what I thought it was. I thought it was a control method more so than. Buying and selling securities before the regular market usually started at a. It provides early opportunities to react. Overnight news. It is characterized by low volume, limited liquidity, higher volatility. Unlike regular auto trades are conducted via electronic communication networks Ecns, rather than through a central exchange.

50:52 So you know what it is but. Why are they allowed to do that is is really my question. OK. They allow pre market trading with active hours for beginning at 7. Schwab does. Interesting. OK, I didn't know. That OK, so you can, so you can run in and you can buy stock there. Interesting. But there's probably going to have to be paperwork that you fill out that says they may not be able to execute the order. And you know, because there's buyers and sellers in the marketplace at that hour and that's all you really need to do because that's what they're doing is they're matching them for a fee. You know, you want to, you want to sell your stock at, you want to buy a stock at, at $9 and I want to sell my stock at 9. And so they match this together, right? You know, you're a winner.

51:35 I'm a loser. If it goes to you're a winner. If it goes to 10, I'm a loser. If it goes to 8, I'm a winner. You're a loser. You're just basically taking money from somebody else across the table. That's what that's what it is. Unless the company's issuing new stock, you're basically there's 100 million shares of General Motors or whatever company it is, or 10 million or 5 million or whatever it is. That's what's in the marketplace. That's what's being sold. You're buying from somebody else that believes that they've maximized their value or they needed to pay for the kids education or they want to buy a new car or whatever the hell, and you believe that whatever that price is, it's going to go higher. So you're betting on the future being higher, you know, and if you look at and, and when I, when I talk about people buying and investing and not by investing in because they used to say you need a diversified portfolio to go across all the things.

52:26 If you're in your 20s, don't bother with bonds, buy stocks. You know, do do your income averaging, do your $25.00 a month or 50 or 75, whatever you can do. Just have that go into the marketplace continuously into a world stock Fund or all stock fund or you know, an SAP 500 fund, something to that degree. And over time you'll do better. And it's, it's, it's about, it's about playing a long game and a long, and it's hard in the marketplace to see that your stock only went up 7% in a year. But you know, if you look at the interest rate, if you left in the bank, it was 2.7. If you put it in ACD, it's 3.9. So you could double that.

53:07 And then if you start to look at other stock, if you start to look at the other, you know, random walk theory and you start to look at all the stock brokers, they're all doing 6. So you, you beat them because you don't have any other fees that they're going to tack on. You know, that's always the thing when they measure the returns that they'll say, hell, I'm Bob and I, I pick stocks and I got a 19% return when the market went up 27% like, and then they're saying, and then at the bottom, they'll have a little thing. This does not include fees and they charge three or four or five, whatever, whatever percentage they do. So you know, it's, it's always, it's, it's a simple thing to do, but there's steps in all this. And the first step is you got to know what you have. You got to know what you, you know what your income is and you know what your outflow is and know when your outflow is. If you're all your money goes through one bank account, you'll have a monthly statement that says, and you don't have to like I got to guess what it is for next month. Look at last month's go online, print it out. Look at look online.

54:11 They will have a little finance app that tells you it's called, It'll be a budgeting app. Most banks have it and it's free and you can just sit there and say, oh, I print, they put their or mortgage or mortgage insurance, all that stuff. You can put it all in and see where you are. And you just get a sense of your, because what you're really looking for is a dollar more being made than that's being spent. And what are you saving for? You're saving for when you retire. You're saving for all the wonderful things in life, you know, trips, whatever makes you happy. You know, buy your kid an ice cream cone. I don't know, you know, buying some.

54:52 Shoes well, I think that's a great place to to let off and that this is fantastic and as always go check out our reels. We are being really consistent on social media. We love to see you there Instagram. What is it? Instagram's Facebook and also YouTube Go there and then TikTok account is incoming as. And give us ideas for changes that works for things. We're we're always welcome. We don't read anything, we don't know what's going on and we'll deny any responsibility, but we'll definitely steal your idea like Spotify stole my idea. I can't believe that. I saw. That story. All right, we'll talk to you later. Bye, bye.

55:33 Party on.