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Afford Anything | Get Smarter With Money
Q&A: How to Choose Between Financial Freedom and a First Home
01:14:26
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- [00:00]
A
Joe, do you think we're heading for a dystopian future, like the kind that you see in sci fi movies every day?
- [00:07]
B
But I've thought that since I was 12.
- [00:09]
A
If you've thought that since you were 12, when does the future begin?
- [00:12]
B
The future is now, Paul. We're living in a dystopian past. Present today. Present dystopian present. Right.
- [00:19]
A
All right, well, we're going to discuss the implications of that at the end of today's episode. Before we get to that, we're going to talk to someone who is 23 and makes a household income of $125,000 and only has expenses of 30,000.
- [00:33]
B
Wow.
- [00:33]
A
Spouse are at the beginning of their life. We're going to talk through what they should be thinking about and we're also going to hear from a caller who has some questions about tax loss harvesting. Well, there's a lot going on today, so welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything. Not everything. The show covers five pillars. Financial, psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship. It's double I fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia. And every other episode ish. I answer questions from you and I do so with my buddy, the former financial planner, Joe Salsihai. What's up, Joe?
- [01:11]
B
Paula, you should just call me Ish.
- [01:14]
A
Well, I mean, every other episode ish.
- [01:16]
B
Like with my friend ish.
- [01:18]
A
No, generally every Tuesday. Generally every Tuesday. We answer generally. Yeah, most Tuesdays.
- [01:23]
B
When we can make it work, when we can fit it in.
- [01:25]
A
I would say generally 48 out of the 52 Tuesdays a year.
- [01:29]
B
Yeah, I would say if this were baseball, it's a hell of a batting average. We do very well.
- [01:34]
A
Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I like the ish because it gives us some flexibility and I'm the.
- [01:38]
B
Ish in the ish.
- [01:42]
A
Well, speaking of financial flexibility, our first question comes from Anonymous.
- [01:48]
C
Hey, so I'm a 23 year old college graduate, married, and we have a household income of about $125,000 with pretty low expenses right now, probably around $30,000 a year. We came out of college with about $20,000 invested in retirement accounts, pretty much all Roth. And in the next two to three years, my wife and I are thinking about having kids. And for now we're going to take advantage of renting and having that flexibility in our early careers. But in about maybe six to 10 years, we'd like to buy a house. Right now I'm kind of torn as I have this out of nowhere kind of a big income between like two strategies. The first one is prioritizing retirement savings aggressively while we have low expenses. And I would do that to kind of aim for an early retirement or CoastFi. But then there's also the idea that I could build a significant cash fund for a future house down payment. Like before our expenses increase when we have kids in the future. It would just be harder in the future to save up for that down payment. And so I kind of have two questions around this. First one is how should I balance the aggressive retirement savings that I want to do? What with a future down payment, how do I decide what the right split is between like the opportunity cost of not saving in my retirement accounts but also making progress towards the down payment of the house for that long term goal? And then given like that, I don't know exactly when we want to buy the house and it may just be out of nowhere that we have a good opportunity. How do I save for the down payment? Where should I put that money? Should I put it in a high yield savings account? Should I invest the money? Should I do a mix of both? I love the idea of having like a ton of cash available if the market was to crash or something or even just go down, take advantage of that. But I'd also love for the money to grow. So how do I kind of balance those two things?
- [03:53]
A
Thanks, Anonymous. First of all, congratulations on everything that you've done. I mean coming out of college with $20,000 in retirement savings. When you said we came out of college with 20,000 dol, I thought for sure the next words out of your mouth are going to be student loans. Me too, for sure. The fact that you came out of college, it sounds like debt free. And with $20,000 in retirement savings, that's incredible. Steve, can we get a round of applause here? Big kudos to you for having such good financial habits in your early 20s. It pays off tremendous dividends. The 40 year old version of yourself is going to be very happy at the way that you are thinking in your 20s and the fact that you have an income of 125,000 and expenses of only 30,000. You know that that savings rate is going to set you up for incredible success.
- [05:03]
B
You keep that delta between those two very wide is a key to success for any of us.
- [05:09]
A
Absolutely.
- [05:09]
B
And by the way, also welcome to the fun world of financial planning where we want everything. I would love to have all the money for the down payment and I would love to have all the money for my long term savings like that is. That is the deliciousness, right, of this whole journey that we're all on. Can I get both?
- [05:30]
A
Here's where I would start. Specifically, what type of home are you and your wife interested in buying? What is the price point of that home? Are you looking at a condo, A townhouse, A single family home? Are you looking at staying in the same city where you currently live? What I want to know is what price point of home are you thinking about? Because once we know the price point of that home, then we can figure out what kind of down payment you're aiming for. And once we know the price point of the home, when it comes to the down payment, the second question then to ask is, do you feel strongly about wanting to put a 20% down payment, or would you be okay with making a down payment of 10% or 5% or even, I mean, with an FHA loan, you can go as low as 3.5%. You know, do you feel comfortable with the idea of putting down a down payment, a smaller down payment, even though that's going to require PMI or mip, an additional fee, or would you rather put down the full 20%, even if that might mean buying a smaller home or waiting a little longer?
- [06:41]
B
Well, that's answered 100%. By taking this from a philosophical question to a very tactical question, putting numbers behind these things will let you then ask allocate money toward each one until you're happy. I mean, the fun of this question for me is when you get those specific numbers, then it's no longer about math. This is this actually at its heart, Paula, I don't think is a math problem. It begins as a math problem. What do they cost? But then when you see what both of these goals cost, then you step back and now it becomes the MMA cage match. I value this and I value this. If I don't have money for both, which one wins? And that's exciting because then you're going to focus on something that you care about and you're going to make secondary the thing that you care about less, which is the way it should be. So I think that that getting the math down and then being able to have these two goals fight it out is, will be interesting. And when I was a financial planner, people would answer that question either way. I have no idea what the answer to this question is, but I do know that once you have the numbers and you see if you can't do both, I do know then that your brain starts working Hard to figure out what the strategy is and to say, okay, which one of these two do I prioritize? Is it more important for me to have the comfort today at the house, or is it more important for me to secure the long term earlier? I don't know.
- [08:08]
A
Let's just put some hypothetical numbers around it so that we can make this conversation a little bit more concrete. So let's say hypothetically that you're interested in a home that in your area would cost around $400,000. Now, I know that some people who are listening to this are going to go, whoa, that's, that's a lot of money. And other people are going to say, whoa, that's not enough, depending on the city where you live and your assumptions about what type of home you're going to buy. But according to the Federal Reserve bank of St. Louis, the median sales price of homes sold in the US single family homes was $410,800 as of the second quarter of 2025. So that's where the 400,000 number came from. All right, so at a 20% down payment, we're talking about $80,000, given the Delta between what you earn and what you spend. And I assume when you say you earn 125,000, that means pre tax. So let's just say ballpark. After taxes, you're taking home 100,000, you're spending 30, that means you're saving ballpark, roughly 70,000 a year. If a 20% down payment on a $400,000 home is 80,000, theoretically you could dedicate one year or one little over one year, one year and change worth of savings purely to this home purchase boom, be done with it, knock that goal out of the park and then focus everything on retirement savings. That's the Dave Ramsey snowball method as applied to savings. And what I like about that option, the Dave Ramsey savings snowball, where you laser in on just one goal until it's done, is the psychological win of saying, hey, we've got an $80,000 savings goal, and I think we can do this in 14 months. Let's go. Actually, I'm going to walk that back just a little bit because I assume you get some kind of an employer match and I don't want you to give that up. So maybe 15 months instead of 14, you know, maybe 16 months. But I mean, you're going to be able to pull this off in a little over a year.
- [10:26]
B
But you can see how, starting to put numbers behind this, we're getting more concrete already.
- [10:31]
A
Right.
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B
Is there another piece we can walk back to?
- [10:33]
A
Sure.
- [10:34]
B
For a moment.
- [10:34]
A
Yeah.
- [10:35]
B
I love both of these goals. I get both of these goals. I see this from 57 years old, and I just think, what are the outcomes? That when I was 23, I did not think about that. I think about at 57. What I think about around the house when I'm 23 years old is comfort. The American dream. Right. That. That I get to own my own property. Maybe I'm building some equity. But he sounds like he already would understand that that is that smoke and mirrors.
- [11:11]
A
Right.
- [11:12]
B
But I do think that I did not pay enough attention to the fact that the house came with a bunch of other bills forever. The house brought a lot of friction to my life forever. Like, every single month, Paula, you know what's going on at my house right now? There is friction and more friction, and the friction never goes away. It abates for a while, but then it comes back. So every year, there are going to be more bills and more friction. Because I'm a homeowner. The retirement goal. And I'm not trying to put stank on either one of these. I'm just talking about the stuff that I didn't know then. The retirement goal. Had I known at 23, how much flexibility I would be able to buy in my life to be independent earlier and to be able to have, like. Our friend Paulette perhaps talks about fu. Money.
- [12:02]
A
Right.
- [12:02]
B
@ an earlier age, be able to do whatever I wanted to. At an earlier age, I would have focused on that one more. I'm not saying that you should, but I'm saying in 23, I did not appreciate that piece. So even though I think that the house you can do in maybe 15 months, I would also weigh the fact that you're not buying just a beautiful place for you to live in today. You're also buying a bunch of maintenance, a bunch of upkeep, a bunch of friction into your life. That, by the way, is delicious. I would never have. The stuff going on my house right now is so exciting. It's so fun. It is monster friction. It is hugely distracting from the rest of my life. Distracting me for the rest of my life. But is it great? Yes. Financially, it's stupid. Financially, it's a hundred percent dumb. Now I'm thinking about, you know, he said that they want to start a family. They want to have children. Maybe the extra space is needed for that. So I don't know. I definitely don't want to dissuade him from the house because I Get it? And it's amazing. But I did not put enough emphasis on that retirement. It sounds like he already has a foot in the right direction there, Paula. With that money out of college and no debt, he's already steamrolling down, down that track. It just seems like a very exciting track to me.
- [13:29]
A
You know, if we want to put numbers around this, the other way to put numbers around that retirement goal or that Coast Fi goal is to ask the question, how big of a portfolio balance does he want by what age? So, for example, recently we had Andy Hill on the podcast, and Andy Hill talked about how he and his wife considered themselves to be Coast Fi when they had $500,000 in retirement savings by the age of 40 plus a fully paid off house. Because their thinking was using the Rule of 72. Just go with very simple math here. Rule of 72 states that 72 divided by your return assumption equals the number of years it takes for your money to double. So, for example, if you make a return assumption that your money's going to grow at a long term annualized average of 7.2%, then your money will double every 10 years. So using that assumption, $500,000 at the age of 40 in a retirement portfolio means a million dollars at the age of 50, which means $2 million at the age of 60. And so their thinking was, if we've got $500,000 by the age of 40 plus a fully paid off house, that means we're set up to have a $2 million retirement portfolio at the age of 60. And so they felt comfortable that they could scale back on contributing to that retirement portfolio starting at the age of 40 once they had the 500 in there. And if we take that example, and I'm not saying those are the numbers that you should necessarily aspire to, I'm just highlighting Andy Hill as an example. But if we take that model and apply it to this person's question, which, by the way, he's anonymous and we haven't given him a name yet, we're going to do that in a moment. We apply it to this person's question the other way. To ask this question, instead of asking, how much of a down payment do you want for your home? The other way to ask it is, how big of a portfolio balance do you want by the age of 40? Because then using an investment calculator, and there are a ton of free investment calculators online, we can plug in the fact that he's got a starting balance of 20,000 based on when he Finished college. I don't know what it is right now, but we'll say a initial balance of 20,000 monthly contributions of X at return assumption Y over the span of the next 17 years between the ages of 23 to 40. All right, how big is that portfolio balance going to be by the age of 40? And then if we have a goal of what we want that balance to be at by 40, then we can work backwards from there to figure out what does that monthly contribution need to be today.
- [16:17]
B
Work everything back to right now.
- [16:18]
A
Exactly.
- [16:19]
B
And then I have my contribution for both goals now. I have what the house needs, I have what the retirement goal is. And maybe they live in harmony.
- [16:27]
A
Right, right. Well, and the beauty with the house goal is he's got options. He can either do the slow and steady monthly contribution. You know, he can go through that or he can snowball it. I personally, I like the idea of snowballing it. That's my psychology. I know that I tend to work best when I laser target on one thing for a very short but intense period of time. And so if he snowballs that goal, knocks it out in 15, 16 months, and then just sets the monthly contribution calculator to begin those monthly contributions, you know, with 16 years rather than 17 years. All right, cool.
- [17:11]
B
I hear what you're saying, but the fact that a lot of this retirement money is going to be spent so, so far away, the compounding effect of that money that he's not saving while he's laser focused on a much more short term goal is a far, far, far bigger opportunity than it looks like.
- [17:31]
A
But it's one year of compounding.
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B
It isn't. It's one year of, let's say you don't spend the dollar for 40 years. It's one year of contributions. It's 40 years of compounding on that one year. So you're missing out on 40 years of the one year. That's what I'm talking about. That's a big number.
- [17:53]
A
Yeah, but you're going to be making one. You're no longer saving for that house down payment. You're going to be making some big, big, big contributions into those retirement accounts.
- [18:05]
B
Yeah, I don't think he will be. I don't think. Let me tell you why, because here's what happens. He gets the house, then they want to have the family. I'll tell you what happened, not just to me, but to every single person I work with that had the family.
- [18:19]
A
I'm not talking about when he starts a family. I'm Talking about month number 16. Month number 16, he hasn't bought the house yet.
- [18:26]
B
It's the rat race, Paula. It's coming. The rat race is coming for you, Mr. Anonymous. It is coming. You're 23 years old. The rat race is coming. Whether you want it to come or not, it is on the way.
- [18:38]
A
I disagree, but go ahead.
- [18:40]
B
No, I think so he gets the house, they decide then it's time to start the family. Guess what happens to your budget?
- [18:48]
A
Right, but we're talking about he gets the house at 30, but he finishes saving for the house at 24. So from the ages of 24 through 30 before he buys that house, that's six years of being able to pour everything into retirement accounts.
- [19:05]
B
So 24 years old, stays for the house 15 years or whatever, locks it in and then cranks on retirement until he's 30, then starts the family and then he has some of each.
- [19:18]
A
Yeah, yeah, but so month number six, if he laser focuses, let's say he saves $80,000 over the span of the next 15 months. Month number 16, boom. All of that money snowballs over to the snowballs into retirement accounts. And he can do that from the age of 24 to the age of 30. Right. He can do that from month number 16 until the age of 30. If we assume that he buys the.
- [19:42]
B
House at 30, why do the house first then?
- [19:45]
A
To get it out of the way.
- [19:46]
B
But it seems like the opportunity cost of doing the house first versus the opportunity cost of doing the retirement first. The retirement contribution cost is higher. It's much higher.
- [20:00]
A
Well, with the snowball method, you take the smaller of the two goals and you just knock it out of the park first.
- [20:05]
B
A hundred percent. I get it.
- [20:06]
A
You can check it off the list.
- [20:08]
B
I 100% get it. I love the snowball method. I think that it works. I'm just being devil's advocate in a big way because, man, I don't know, I'm going to go back to the beginning of this. I would love, instead of our made up numbers, I would love to have the real numbers. I would love. And if. Mr. Anonymous, if you get real numbers in front of you and you want to bring those to us, I would love to dig in on that because it's difficult for me to, to put math behind what the opportunity cost would be on either side. I would love to see that. I love seeing that data of, okay, if I do option A, what's the cost of waiting on option B going to be either way? Like I want to see what that Cost is either way.
- [20:50]
A
Yeah, but I do think, I mean, we don't know what his numbers are, but national median home sales price is 400,000. So I'm just working off of that. And Andy Hill's model of have $500,000 in your retirement portfolio by the age of 40. Cool, that seems reasonable because then you'll have 2 million at 60. So I'm running off of those baselines.
- [21:13]
B
His number is going to be bigger, though. His number is going to be bigger because there's a significant age difference between Mr. Anonymous and Andy. And so it's going to take to drive the lifestyle that Andy's trying to drive. It's going to take more money for Mr. Anonymous to drive that number, which is why I like starting with what's the lifestyle that I want? And then back into the number. And I know that there's a little bit of a shortcut there where Andy said, okay, can I do it on this amount of money? Like, is this an amount of money that's commensurate with the lifestyle I want to live? The answer is yes. I generally start just flip that around. Not a big deal. But I flip that around and go, what's the lifestyle I want to live? And then how much money is that going to take? And then I back into the half million, you know what I mean? Instead of start with half million and go, can I do it? But I think because of the age difference, I think for the Anonymous, Mr. Anonymous here, I would. We seriously got to give him a name.
- [22:07]
A
Yeah, we do have to give him a name.
- [22:11]
B
For him. I think it's going to be a little more money to just get to the same place that Andy wants to get to.
- [22:17]
A
Well, certainly $500,000 17 years from now is not going to be worth the same as $500,000 today. So if, if nothing else, he would have to adjust that goal for inflation.
- [22:29]
B
Well, I believe Andy is 40. Ish. Maybe 40.
- [22:32]
A
Yeah, I think he's mid-40s. 45 maybe.
- [22:35]
B
Yeah, 45 year old. Let's say he's 40. If he's 40, then that's 17 years. And that's about the amount of time it takes prices to double on average if the same rule of 72. So half a million for Andy is.
- [22:48]
A
A million a million for Mr. Anonymous. Yeah, right. If we adjust that for inflation.
- [22:53]
B
Right.
- [22:55]
A
All right, well, but then it's still a numbers question. Well, how much would he have to save? And I want to run the numbers both ways. Let's say that he doesn't start saving until month number 16. All right. If he starts saving at month number 16, how much would he have to save every month in order to get his portfolio to 1 million by the.
- [23:15]
B
Time he's 40 versus if he started now? Yeah.
- [23:20]
A
So what's his name going to be.
- [23:24]
B
Now that we finished answering his question and we're not going to refer to him anymore?
- [23:27]
A
Yeah, I know, right?
- [23:29]
B
Do this backward. You know what, Paula? The Seattle Mariners beat my Detroit Tigers. And the Mariners. It's bittersweet because I love my Detroit Tigers baseball team. For people that don't follow sports, that's a baseball team. The Seattle Mariners have not won a home playoff game until they beat my Tigers very dramatically, by the way. It was a great series. They hadn't been there in 24 years. And so the city of Seattle was just as. I would be just absolutely so excited. And as we recorded this, they're now going head to head with Toronto Blue Jays to see if they make it to the World Series. The big top. But anyway, their top guy is Julio Rodriguez, and Julio Rodriguez is a fantastic player. So to pay homage to the team that beat my Tigers that I'm super on board with hopefully winning the World Series, let's call him Julio.
- [24:30]
A
All right, Julio.
- [24:32]
B
And so we'll say the word Julio twice, and then we're on to the next one. So as we record this, we don't know if Seattle's in the World Series, but either way, the fact that they had their first home playoff win in 24 years, big year for the Seattle Mariners and for Julio Rodriguez, as this is a big time for our friend Julio that called in for two reasons. A, he's at an exciting inflection point. I think this is great that you're thinking about all this at 23 years old. And I also think it's exciting that you're on the show with us.
- [25:07]
A
Ah. Oh. There's one element of his question that we haven't answered, Joe. One element of Julio's question. He asked where he should put his down payment money. Should he put it in a high yield savings account or should he invest a portion of it in the market?
- [25:22]
B
Yeah. It sounds like he wants the money available at any point in time.
- [25:26]
A
Right.
- [25:27]
B
And because he wants it available at any point in time, then you can't go any further than a high yield savings account.
- [25:33]
A
Yeah. And my assumption is that by virtue of telling him that that means he's going to buy this house sooner than later. Like, if he saves this down payment. Let's Just say he takes the snowball approach and he super saves the down payment. If that money is sitting in a high yield savings account. And he's also watching home prices steadily increase and they're thinking about having a kid.
- [25:59]
B
This isn't going to wait until 30.
- [26:01]
A
Yeah, this is. This is likely not going to wait until 30. Should we take bets on whether or not he'll have a home by the time he's 27? Is it over? Under.
- [26:10]
B
I'm glad you said home and not baby. I'm like, I'm not betting up. I will pass.
- [26:20]
A
It's the afford anything prediction market.
- [26:23]
B
Home. I can bet on home.
- [26:24]
A
Yeah, home.
- [26:25]
B
If he goes with your home first savings rate and he has the money available, he will pull the trigger before age 30.
- [26:36]
A
Oh, before 30. Definitely. My. I'm asking 27 over or under on the 27 under. Under. All right.
- [26:46]
B
I'm thinking if he starts now, I'm thinking 25.
- [26:50]
A
Wow.
- [26:51]
B
Yeah, 25. Wow. 10 bucks. You want to go 10 bucks?
- [26:55]
A
Ooh. All right.
- [26:56]
B
Okay, here's the deal, Julio. If you buy the house before you're 27, I need you. I need you to. To make sure that you call in so I get my 10 bucks off. Paula. Pant. If it's after 27, forget this whole discussion.
- [27:13]
A
No, my. My guess is going to be 27. Exactly.
- [27:16]
B
Okay, how about this, then? I'll even give you six months. I'll give you 26 and a half and above.
- [27:23]
A
Oh, all right.
- [27:24]
B
And I'll take earlier than 26 and a half.
- [27:27]
A
Deal.
- [27:28]
B
So $10. The big money. Julio, you have to call back and settle this bet. But once again, if it's after 26 and a half, feel free to forget about it.
- [27:40]
A
And the afford anything prediction market begins.
- [27:45]
B
That's when the IRS comes knocking.
- [27:47]
A
I know.
- [27:48]
B
Seriously, I heard you made a $10 bet on a podcast. You didn't pay any tax on that money.
- [27:54]
A
Oh, thank you, Julio, for the question, and congrats on everything that you've built. We're going to take a moment to hear from the sponsors who make the show possible. When we come back, we're going to answer a question from Lindsay about tax loss harvesting. And then after that, we're going to tackle a question about a dystopian future. Ever feel like your money just disappears each month? It's easier than ever to overspend. From subscriptions piling up to impulse buys after seeing an ad on your phone to ordering takeout a few times a month. Rocket money helps you rein it in by showing you where your money is going and helping you make better decisions so you can keep more money in your pocket. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Their dashboard lays out your total financial picture, like bill due dates and paydays, in a way that's really easy to digest. And if there's a goal that you want to save for, Rocket Money can analyze your accounts to find the best time every month. To put extra money aside, Rocket Money has saved users over 2.5 billion, including over 880 million in canceled subscriptions alone. Their 10 million members save up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com Paula today that's RocketMoney.com Paula RocketMoney.com Paula P A U L A the holidays are approaching and if you are hosting, there's a lot that goes into getting ready to host. Maybe you need more servewear. Maybe your guest room needs a new comforter. Whatever you need, Wayfair's got it. They've got Christmas trees, wreaths, all kinds of holiday decor. You can refresh your guest room with bedding, linens, throw pillows, and accent chairs. You can make holiday hosting easier with quality cookware. You can upgrade your living room with seating rugs, lamps, get holiday linens and towels decorate the kids room. They have a massive selection for every style and every budget. I have lots of shelving from Wayfair which helps me keep my apartment more organized. So I've got shelving right at the entry door. I've got it in the bathroom. I've got it all over the apartment because I live in Manhattan where square footage is really small, which means organization is important no matter what your space or budget. Wayfair makes it easy to tackle your home goals this holiday season, and there's free and easy delivery, even on the big stuff. Get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W A Y-F-A-I R.com Wayfair Every style, every home right now. What's one thing you could do to change your life for the better? One thing that worked for me is I got Masterclass and I took R.L. stine's class. If you remember him from childhood, he's the author of the Goosebumps series and the Fear street series. And from his class I learned a ton about how to craft an engaging story. So with Masterclass you can learn from the best to become your best. With plans starting at 10 bucks a month billed annually, you get unlimited access to over 200 classes taught by the world's best business leaders, writers, chefs and more. You'll get thousands of bite sized lessons across 13 categories that can fit super busy schedules. For example, you can learn from CIA hostage negotiator Chris Boss or Sports sports super agent rich Paul or CEOs like Bob Iger or Howard Schultz. And three in four surveyed members feel inspired every time they watch. Plus, every new membership comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. Right now our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership@masterclass.com afford that's 15% off@masterclass.com afford masterclass.com afford afford welcome back. Our next question comes from Lindsay hi.
- [32:08]
D
Paula, My name is Lindsay and I have a question about tax loss harvesting. I have about $200,000 invested in a taxable account at Fidelity that's not part of my retirement account. I anticipate using it within the next 10 years, maybe sooner, probably to help pay cash for a house. At some point I had it invested in no fee, large and mid cap index funds and a couple of individual stocks until Fidelity suggested I switch to an individually managed account that would perform tax loss harvesting for me. Now this money is invested in a large cap index strategy that includes tax loss harvesting and fidelity charges me 0.4% per year to manage the account. This is costing me about $870 a year in fees for what Fidelity tells me is around $3,000 plus of estimated tax savings. I've been happy with the returns in the account, although I've always preferred a do it yourself no fee strategy. I definitely don't have the patience to do tax loss harvesting myself. However, I'm concerned that this current strategy will slowly increase the amount of short term holdings I have in the account and potentially my short term capital gains tax if I decide I need this money in the next couple of years. My income is around $100,000 a year right now though that could drop if I change jobs, which I plan on doing. Is this worth the money I am paying for the tax loss harvesting? If not, what is a good strategy to transition out of this account and back into self managed index funds? Thank you and I appreciate so much all the resources you make available.
- [33:40]
B
Lindsay. I love this Question. And I don't love it, but because of the question that you're asking, it's a great question for all of us to ask, but it's a question to ask before you get into the new product. And by the way, most. Most people don't. So, Lindsay. I'm not busted on Lindsay. This is everybody. People all the time. You know this book that I thought was. Yeah, okay, when I first read it, that I keep referencing Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And I can't even make it through the title without laughing because I reference this book so often. One of Stephen Covey's, the author's Seven Habits is when you pick up one end of the stick, you got to think about the other end too, right? You pick up both ends of the stick. And that is 100% of what we're talking about here. You picked up one end of this new product stick, and now that you're in it, we have to talk about the other end of the same stick. What if we get out? I think I got a bunch of good news for you here, though. The first thing is, Paula, I think, Lindsay, the product that you're in is the wave of the Future. I truly, 100% do. I think you're a little bit ahead. I think the fees are also a little higher than they will be in the future. It's funny because everybody points to Robinhood as being the first company to make trades. 0m1 Finance was doing it before Robinhood did, so who knows who really did it? It wasn't Robinhood. Could have been M1 Finance. But when all the companies followed suit and trading costs became zero, all of a sudden it was like, why do I need to own an index fund that's made for the masses when mass customization now is so much easier? Between the automation that can happen, I can now take the S&P 500. I can sort it out, the stuff that I don't like very easily. I don't pay any money for all of these trades anymore. So the average person, your ability to own an S&P 500, that is just yours. Maybe it's the S&P 480 is great. And the thing that comes with it is what fidelity is selling you. This tax loss harvesting.
- [36:04]
A
Well, it was not that long ago that E Trade was charging $7.99 every time he placed a trade.
- [36:11]
B
Right before that E Trade. E Trade, Paula, was the first company to go 29. I remember $29 a trade.
- [36:19]
C
Oh, my God.
- [36:19]
B
That's great.
- [36:20]
A
Wow. I Remember the eight bucks a trade. And even at that, you know, that's $16 round trip to buy and sell. And so what that meant was that you couldn't have a small position in anything. Because if you, if you had a 200 position and you're spending 8 bucks to get in and 8 bucks to get out, well, that, that 200 position just doesn't really make any sense.
- [36:44]
B
That part drove me nuts. The part that I liked about fees for trades. It turned us much more into investors instead of traders. I feel like too many people look at the stock market as a place to gamble because I don't have to pay a trading fee. That trading fee was just enough that you're like, I gotta make up to eight bucks before I do anything. And it made you hold onto it just long enough that you're like, well, I might as well stick with this longer term, which you and I know is the better strategy. Fidelity. Lindsay's not the only one doing this. I can hear in your voice that you think that this was a Fidelity. Come on. Vanguard has a product. In fact, we had a gentleman from Vanguard on stacking Benjamin's maybe two years ago talking about the same thing. And we called it just the future of mutual funds and kind of where things are headed. Two years ago a guy from Vanguard was talking about this. So Vanguard's doing it. I'm sure everybody else in the market is doing it. So this is not a Fidelity. Come on. It isn't widely accepted. I feel like this is, would be like you and I talking about exchange traded funds. Back in the mid-1990s. They were around, but not many people use them. Lindsay's calling us then going, I'm in the. They recommend this thing called an exchange traded fund. I'm not sure if it's cool or not. The good news is you can tell. So let's talk about the fees first. The good news is you can tell if they're full of crap about the fees or not because you can see all the trades. So it is just a simple math exercise to look at. When did you buy? When did you sell Fidelity tracks all this stuff for you? You'll be able to then take your tax rate and see the amount of taxes that you got to put on your tax form. It frankly is a 10 minute thing to see if their numbers are baloney or not. Their numbers probably aren't 100% right, because they have to estimate because they don't know what your tax tax rate is. So they estimate for the average person so they're saying, well, based on, you know, the average person it might be. She said $3,000 that you.
- [38:51]
A
$3,000? Yeah.
- [38:52]
B
Yeah. You're saving 3,000 bucks on this. I don't know if that number's right. It's probably in the ballpark. They're not going to be that far off. They don't want to get sued. If I look at $3,000 of savings and you can compare that to the four they're charging you versus if you'd gone with an ETF strategy at 01 or whatever number, you can see which one wins. I don't think using this strategy, you end up with a significant amount of. I can see why you would think this, but if the stock has gains, these strategies will sometimes, and I'm not familiar with one versus another, so I can't speak directly to Fidelity's product. They will often just sell the losers to create your tax loss that you can report on your taxes. They will then replace it, by the way, to your point, they'll replace it with new stuff. But your whole portfolio is not turning over every 12 months. In fact, there is a stat that I believe Fidelity probably keeps for you called the turnover rate. And that number might be 30%, 40%. That tells you that 30% of your positions are turning over every year. 40% of your positions. That will also tell you then depending on how much money you might need. Because you said, what if I need this money and now I'm paying short term capital gains taxes on all of this, you can then see what percentage in an average year is going to be short term versus long term. So let's say it's 30% turnover. That means that she has $200,000 invested. $60,000. Then is short term capital gains $140,000 she has available at a long term capital gain.
- [40:35]
A
You know, if Lindsay runs the numbers and decides that the juice isn't worth the squeeze with, at least with the Fidelity product, I mean, sure, Wealthfront and Betterment also offer tax loss harvesting, but they charge 0.25%, 0.25% or less. So they offer a similar service at a lower price point.
- [40:57]
B
Yeah, they do. I would either do it or not do it. The middle ground where I have ETFs, which is the wealth front and the betterment products coupled with tax loss harvesting. I don't think then the tax loss harvesting is going to be significant enough to make the juice worth that they highlight tax loss harvesting. I get why somebody would do wealth front or why they Would do betterment. I think those products have a place in the market. I think the tax loss harvesting is. They're marketing to the wrong audience for that. Like, why are you marketing to people Julio's age, which is largely who they talk to when tax loss harvesting is fantastic. For somebody like Lindsay, who has a couple hundred thousand dollars, you know, so maybe, maybe, I don't know. I think I would either do this or I go back to her index fund approach that she was talking about. The way out of this is difficult. Here's Lindsay. You've two options. Option number one is hold on to the stocks. So you own all these stocks, hold on to the stocks and drop the management, which means that you then divorce yourself from the fee. And now it's just you and these stocks. So now you have a garden of stocks that is not being weeded. And you have to then pick every year what you sell and then divest them. If you want an orderly manner out of the exit and you want a lower tax bill out of the exit every year, you're going to pick some and sell and then pick some more and sell and pick some more and sell. And it's just going to dwindle over time. I think the way I look at that is that this is just a mutual fund. It is a mutual fund. It's just you're seeing the guts of the mutual fund. It's the same thing your mutual fund would have owned. So had we been sitting here and you were asking, how do I get out of fund a and go to fund B? My only answer would have been, you just go to fund B and you rip the band aid off and you go. The cool thing is you have this opportunity. But that's what we get in our own heads for something that wasn't an issue until we introduced the cool part of this product. So there's a big piece of me that says, find out what the tax is going to be to sell. If you think it's not the place to be, understand what that tax is and get the hell to the right thing. Because having all of this messiness in your portfolio that isn't pointed toward your goals might even be worse end up worse financially than the tax that you would pay to get out. And we wouldn't be worried about any of this if we didn't see the guts of it like we do in this product. So that's the issue of getting out of this product is it creates all these hems and haws like you're hearing from me. Right now, this man. But I think the first thing to do is, is just to say, okay, what would the tax be if I just sold it and got up? The good news is I don't think you need to though I would look at the turnover first and I don't think it's going to be as high as you think it is. I think that you'll have enough money in capital gains maybe. You didn't tell us how much money you might need this year right now to add to your emergency fund. If things change. For me, that would be the reason why I wouldn't have this product if it's, if it's not a ten year goal.
- [44:32]
A
Right. Because if she's planning on using the money in relatively short order, like if she's risking the possibility of paying short term capital gains, that's going to be substantial and that's going to outweigh any benefits from tax loss harvesting. Because the short term capital gains rate, especially at her income level, she makes $100,000 a year like she's in an income bracket where she's going to be paying a steep fee for short term capital gains.
- [44:58]
B
Sure. And at that point it just adds to the injury because even if she were in an index fund, Paula, we'd say she's in the wrong place because of the volatility of the index fund.
- [45:09]
A
Right.
- [45:10]
B
Index fund goes down and she has short term capital gains on some of her positions. Yuck.
- [45:17]
A
Well, Lindsey, I hope this gave you some positives about this product. I mean, there are many advantages to what you're in. The question is simply whether or not it's the right fit for you at this time.
- [45:29]
B
Absolutely.
- [45:31]
A
So thank you, Lindsay, for the question. We're going to take one final break to hear from the sponsors who make the show possible. When we return, we're going to address a philosophical question around whether or not we're heading for a dystopian future.
- [45:47]
B
Of course we are.
- [45:48]
A
And if so, what implications that has. Because you remember I said on an episode recently that investing inherently is an act of optimism. Investing is necessarily the act of believing that tomorrow will be better than today. That is the fundamental premise that underpins the inherent act of investing. How do we square that with a dystopian future? We're going to address that next.
- [46:21]
B
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- [46:31]
E
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B
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E
Pieces at the right prices this holiday.
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B
Season at the Home Depot.
- [46:56]
A
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more at WhatsApp.com what I bought a new Blink Mini 2K plus smart security camera. What I got 2K clarity sharp enough to see every detail of home when I'm away. Plus audio like I'm in the room, not with my bestie traveling to another city. Plus easy plugins and set up to install faster than skipping through podcast ads. But you'd never Skip ads, right? Plus I got all of this for just $49.99. Blink Mini 2K+ Mini Camera Max Performance Shop now at Amazon.com blink welcome back. Our final question today comes from Greg.
- [48:04]
E
Hi Paul and Joe. This is Greg from Colorado, longtime listener, first time caller. I've always wanted to call him with a question, but we've answered pretty much everything, so here's a philosophical one for context. I've been listening with interest to your many podcasts about the efficient frontier. I've also been familiar with Charlie Merriman's work for years. Today I'm almost 37 years old and I'm on the path to fire. I currently have a net worth of about 360,000, which is almost entirely in total stock market index funds, way past Joe's recommendation to start getting more complex at 100k. Which leads me to my philosophical question. I've been a long time sci fi and fantasy nerd and I think the one version of dystopian sci fi that has a good chance of coming true is a future in which a small handful of ultra powerful corporations are struggling for control. For well known works that cover this, consider Ready Player one and two. And if you haven't read the books, be sure to do so, as Ernest Klein has plenty of capitalistic commentaries that didn't make it into the Hollywood movie. In some ways I think we're already there. And if so, that means we can't rely on the historical info used to create the efficient frontier itself. Instead, it would make the most sense to Invest not in the S&P 500, but an ETF that holds the top 50 companies in the world or less, aka large cap growth. However, I know that VTI is cap weighted, so it seems a bit unnecessary. As further evidence, let's talk about small cap stocks. The core of Merriman's argument for holding small cap stocks, especially small cap value, is that there's more potential for massive multiples of growth than with large cap, and that's the one asset class he says to add to your portfolio. However, many of the most successful companies going public do so at massive valuations where they'd never be included in a small cap index to begin with. And let's think about a bunch of the small companies are growing really fast, especially AI companies. These companies experience explosive growth, but then most of them have been snapped up by Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc. Before ever being considered for listing on a stock exchange. That means that normal investors like myself don't have the opportunity to even buy the small, hot growing companies before the massive corporations acquire them. So then why would I ever want to buy a small cap index? Also, I've worked for a few tech companies myself and have seen this on the front end worked for companies that have been acquired. So to keep it short, the essence of my question is why should we trust the historical investing data and make our decisions based upon it in light of what's happening in the business world today? Thanks guys.
- [50:39]
A
Greg, I love this question. All right, I'm going to start by addressing the piece that you asked about small cap value, because small cap value. Well, all right. First of all, I do want to acknowledge IPOs are happening later in the business cycle, meaning a lot of companies are huge before they ipo. We're certainly seeing that privately held businesses who have not yet gone public, or maybe who will never go public, are getting bigger and bigger, and companies that are ipoing are doing so later and later. We're also seeing that big tech companies are snapping up potential competitors. The big companies are certainly on big acquisition sprees. We also see that the biggest companies, the largest of large cap, make up a huge proportion of the S&P 500. All of that is true. And all of that was also true in the days of Rockefeller and in the days of the major railroad companies, when it seemed as though a handful of small railroad companies were going to be the dominant players. And in this industrial era, it seemed as though the giants were giant. We had Carnegie, we had Rockefeller, we had Vanderbilt, and it seemed as though these Big players could never be unseated. And what we know is that even the biggest behemoths ultimately end up unseated. The Dutch East India Company, which is responsible not just for being a highly profitable company, but for reshaping the globe, literally reshaping national borders, no longer exists the Dutch East India Company. What we've seen throughout history is that even the big players who seem unshakable ultimately get unseated. What we've seen just recently is that Google, which we thought had the ultimate search monopoly. Google has lost its search monopoly. People use ChatGPT to search. Google is not even a, I mean it's a powerful company still. But we thought that that search engine monopoly would never get disrupted.
- [52:55]
B
Funded in large part by Microsoft, who 25 years ago people thought was dying. Right, was gone. They were the grandpa company then. Google was the hot new thing.
- [53:06]
A
Yeah, exactly. Who would have guessed that Microsoft would unseat Google in search? But not through Bing, right through a completely different search mechanism that doesn't even take, it doesn't even direct you to a website anymore. So we see that society shifts in ways that we could never imagine. And so that leads me back to small caps. Because small cap value is not just about getting in on a company before it blows up into, into being the next Amazon or, or Google or Apple. Small cap value is also about buying regional banks, it's about buying REITs, it's about buying mid sized industrial suppliers, it's about buying these small but profitable businesses that are not in the tech sector and that are not on the road to becoming a mega cap. But they're going to be a solid regional bank. You know, they're going to be the third largest regional bank of the Southwest and you're going to own a stake in that too.
- [54:15]
B
That was part of what my remarks were going to be, Paula, but I really want to kind of end there. I'm excited about where you're at, but I think that we end up at that same place. But I think that's a really important point, is that it's not just the tech companies, it's the other companies that are involved. I think for my remarks though, I have to begin with the efficient frontier. Why do we use the efficient frontier? Specifically the efficient frontier versus the total stock market index? Number one is I'm going to say a lot of stuff. Even if you disagree with everything that I say after this, even if you think the efficient frontier will not help you as much as just buying the 50 biggest companies that you think are going to take over the world. I will tell you this. The efficient frontier is better than VTS X. When you get over $100,000, it has been over and over and over and over again. And so by getting scientific, historically, you've won versus vtsax. But the second thing is, and this is the important thing, because of the fact that you put it together yourself, it has proven to be stickier. Meaning that when markets go down, you know why you own it, you know why it's there. It's part of a coherent strategy that you put together. I love that. I love the fact that you got your fingers a little bit dirty and you're like, oh, why would I sell this when the market's down? Now, there's a lot of people out there who every, every time we talk about this, they're walking the dog. They're like, I would never sell when the market goes down. Why every time the market goes down do we get so many calls about what do I do? The market's down over and over and over. Every time. Every time we get those. So people do it. People who don't think that they will do it. You're much less likely to if you put it together yourself. This is the. The fun of planning is that your goals become much more tangible. So I like that. But with the science of the efficient frontier, the efficient frontier moves, moves. It isn't a static thing. So that's the first thing you have to know is that as the world changes toward this dystopian future that I read Ready Player one, I didn't read Ready Player two, but do I, you know, see a bunch of today in that. That's the fun of science fiction is, of course I do. I mean, it. It is. People doing science fiction are a lot like comedians. They can say these truths that you just can't say in a straightforward way. They can say this stuff. But the efficient frontier reflects that change. It will give you a more efficient portfolio over time, showing that shift. Will it be 100% on? No, it won't. Because it is going to reflect the past where it's been. So the second you put it together, it's out of date. But what's cool is, is that three years later, when it moves, or whatever you put in your investment policy statement so you're not reacting to the market. You have this machinery that you're building. If it says, every three years, I'm going to go back and look at the efficient frontier again, you're going to drift with it. And it does that, it drifts. Because the change you're talking about, and I think this is what we need to be clear on, the change you're talking about is not new. It isn't new. We've always been headed that way. Which is why I love Paul, that you talk about the Dutch East India company. Jeff Bezos talks about the biggest threat to Amazon is some company that will come. He didn't say it might come. Jeff Bezos has said it will come and it will destroy Amazon. They talk about Elon Musk and Elon Musk making huge inroads. You know why Elon Musk was able to make such huge inroads? Besides the fact that, you know, the whole concept of what he's doing is brilliant, is that Ford and General Motors plants, these legacy plants that they've invested tons of money in, are made for all of these suppliers. Elon was able to look at that and his new disruptive technology was, we're going to get rid of all this supplier third party stuff. And now I can press a button and I can update all the electronics in your car. It's incredible. He's not going to keep that advantage forever. There will be another wave of the next Elon Musk. There will be the next Tesla at some point. That's going to dis. This has been happening forever. Is there more consolidation? 100%. So, Paul, I totally agree with you. There are there fewer IPOs and there these monster IPOs. Yes, a hundred percent. But. But none of this is new. This has happened before. My favorite board game, Paul, you know how much I love board games. My favorite board game is a board game, actually, Paul, that you've played. It's a board game called Acquire. And Acquire is a game where you put these companies on this board and the guess what happens in Acquire? The bigger company swallows the smaller company and there's consolidation from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. The entire game is about what you're talking about in this dystopian future. And it's about all these little companies on this board. Companies get bigger, the bigger company swallows the smaller company. You know how you win that game, Paula? How you win the game. Not by owning the bigger company. You can that rarely wins. You own the smaller companies that get acquired. You create these new companies that are hot, great, fantastic companies that get acquired and then you end up with more money. So as we're consolidating, I would say, do I want to own the big boy? The big girl?
- [59:56]
E
Yeah.
- [59:56]
B
I want to own that, but I want to own those companies that might be acquired. And while venture capital certainly has deeper pockets and is holding onto these companies more often, they don't have a 100% monopoly on these companies. There's still a ton of opportunities out there and this is where the opportunity is that especially people in technology forget the leading edge is always the technology player. It always has been. When they first came out with ships, I'm sure it was the. Whoever made the new ship was the hot thing. But the big ass, the big, huge ass change is the second wave AI companies right now are the hot thing to buy AI. If you're making AI, you're creating AI. It's that thing to buy. You know, it's going to be hot five years from now if the past happens again. It's the companies that use this to disrupt the publishing industry, the insurance industry, the healthcare industry, all of these. And you're going to see this reversion in the market because we always have with every technology where the companies that can disrupt using that technology. This is small compared to what's coming. It's going to be huge and it's going to be much more of a wide place. So.
- [61:21]
A
Right. Think about how AI is going to disrupt furniture manufacturing.
- [61:25]
B
It's incredible.
- [61:27]
A
It's going to disrupt the pet food industry, right?
- [61:31]
B
Yes. So do I think all this is happening? Yes. My favorite game to end that, to end this discussion, by the way, a big companies. Do you know when this game was created initially? 1963, mass market in 1964. The guy that created this game, Sid Sachs and was thinking about the same things you're thinking about in 1963 about. Isn't it going to just end up being a few companies? Yes, it will. The way you win the game by the companies that are being acquired. And I'll tell you, when these companies do from time to time collapse upon themselves. General Electric used to be much, much bigger. Right. Used to be much broader than it is today.
- [62:12]
A
Yeah.
- [62:13]
B
IBM was bigger and broader.
- [62:15]
A
When you saw Kmart.
- [62:18]
B
Yeah. When you see these companies get disrupted, what you've always seen is people talk about the 25 year old entrepreneurs that, that, that change the world. When you actually go back through history and you look at the entrepreneur who changed the world, it generally, Paula is a woman or a man who's closer to 45 years old who's been through it, who used to work for one of these big companies, was either downsized or left the company because they saw an opportunity to Disrupt the big player. I don't think that's going away. I don't think it's going away.
- [62:55]
A
That makes sense to me because at 45, you're old enough to have experience, but young enough to have energy.
- [63:01]
B
Yes. Yeah. I can agree with everything, Greg, that you're saying. I can agree with everything, but I don't think it's new. I think it's in a different way. What's that deal? The past doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Right? So this isn't exactly the same, but this stuff has happened before there, during the first wave. Companies gobbling up these AI companies before they go public 100%. That furniture manufacturer in Nebraska that nobody's talking. Everybody's talking about for your furniture.
- [63:36]
A
Right.
- [63:36]
B
Nebraska Furniture barter. I think everybody knows what that is. I should choose a different state in Utah.
- [63:43]
A
Wait, are you talking about Berkshire Hathaway? Is that what you're thinking when you think Nebraska?
- [63:48]
B
No, Nebraska Furniture Mart is this huge company. Oh, furniture manufacturer. So off the top, I had. I said, you know, some. I was trying to think of a random place where people don't think about furniture. And I'm like, oh, my God, of course I said Nebraska.
- [63:59]
A
Oh, I literally have never heard of the Nebraska Furniture Company.
- [64:02]
B
Welcome Furniture Mart. Not furniture company. Oh, Utah or Rhode Island. Let's go Rhode Island.
- [64:09]
A
Okay, Rhode Island.
- [64:10]
B
Some furniture manufacturing. Rhode Islands. Nobody's heard of small cap stock. Right. Just sitting there, company's gonna buy them up. It's that second wave that is much harder to predict, is where small cap value ends up being a fantastic place to be.
- [64:27]
A
Well, and Joe, you mentioned shipping. Think back to the days when shipping first became a thing. Imagine the power of being able to cross an ocean. You know, being one of the few manufacturers that can build the vehicle that. That crosses the ocean, which is the only way that you can get from land mass A to land mass B. There was tremendous power in that. Nobody ever imagined that, like, we'd be able to fly like the birds, that there would be that level of disruption that didn't come until centuries later. But you think about the power that shipping companies had back in the day because they had the monopoly on the only way that you could have intercontinental commerce. And then you think about the unexpected thing that came out of that was insurance. The insurance industry. The concept of insurance as an idea that all came out of shipping. If there was no shipping, there would be no insurance industry because you had.
- [65:27]
B
A huge amount of money invested in this thing making it across this ocean.
- [65:33]
A
Right, right. Which is subject to storms and Poseidon. Right. The wrath of Poseidon. You've got to make sure that it gets there. And if, if the ocean decides to swallow you up, you need some way of covering the cost of everything that you put on that boat. And that's where insurance originally came from. And you look at, you know, how big the insurance industry is today, and that was an completely unexpected, unplanned consequence of figuring out how to make wood float on water. And that's how technological innovation and technological disruption creates. Not only does it get surpassed by things that we can't imagine. Nobody in the era of shipping ever imagined that humans would be able to take flight. But also nobody in the era of shipping imagined that this would create a brand new concept that had never been around before, and that that concept would grow into an industry that would be worth a tremendous amount of money and that would have a tremendous amount of power. You know, you used to load your camel up with all of your riches, but if you got robbed by a marauding caravan, you, you know, you had no way of covering that.
- [66:56]
B
You were done.
- [66:57]
A
Yeah, fire existed and your home could burn down, but there was no insurance coverage that would secure you against that.
- [67:07]
B
You know, and if we look even more broadly, it might be hard to see, Paula, what we're talking about in the United States, as big companies get better and better all the time at defending their turf, defending their territory, learning from history. But this is where, as we become more global every day, we then look at developing economies, Right? Because even if you go, yeah, I don't believe you, Paula, and Joe, I don't believe in the U.S. i think that it's the top 50 companies in the world. Let's talk about Vietnam, let's talk about Indonesia, let's talk about, heck, let's get even closer to home to a developed economy that's surrounded by a lot of developing economies. India, and the excitement of some of the explosion in India, like I get, I get very excited when we talk about India. So even if you think that the US Is going to become more and more dystopian, there's so much change still to come to get to what Greg, you're talking about.
- [68:15]
A
Well, and let's look at the area with the highest concentration of young people, Africa. Africa has more young people than any other continent. And with access to Internet and access to AI becoming more ubiquitous, and with Gen Z and Gen Alpha growing up as digital natives, very comfortable with technology from early childhood, imagine the innovation that's going to come out of Africa in the next 50 years.
- [68:46]
B
And Paula, some of that innovation is already happening in Africa and it began in Africa and I think a lot of people don't know. Using Venmo now is something that we all do. We think of Venmo and Zell that first became publicized in Africa, that got big in Africa first before anywhere else. And the reason was there wasn't an established banking system to slow it down down here in the United States it's slowed down a lot because the established banking system was like, oh, how the hell we going to roll that out?
- [69:20]
A
Right.
- [69:21]
B
It rolled out big time in Kenya very quickly. Namibia, that has a fantastic tech revolution that's been going on for the past 15 years. Yeah. The excitement in Africa around technology again just makes me go, oh my goodness, there's so, so much cool stuff happening. And it's the reason why earlier this year I spent a good part of the first six months of this year on stacking Benjamins, refuting this thing that I'd heard over and over at the end of 2024, which was, should I get rid of my international stuff? Should I. International looks like it's dead. I feel like whenever everybody's talking about something's dead, or if your cab driver talks about how much money they made in X, those are like my buy and sell unofficial sandals.
- [70:11]
A
Ye.
- [70:12]
B
If my Uber drivers high fiving me about how much money they made in some tech stock, I'm like, I gotta get the hell out of that. And no, I'm not throwing shade at Uber drivers. I'm just using that as an example of if it's ubiquitous, that we all think that this is a great buy. That's when I start questioning whether we should be there or not. Fun question, Greg. Paula, you said earlier on that buying stocks is intrinsically optimistic.
- [70:45]
A
Yeah. Investing, generally investing. Investing is intrinsically optimistic because you're putting.
- [70:50]
B
Your money in a place that you think is either going to A grow or B sustain. Right.
- [70:55]
A
Yeah. You are inherently betting on the future every time you invest.
- [70:59]
B
Yeah. We have these talks, I think, as does everyone, where you ask, well, what if everything just goes downhill? What if, what if XYZ happens? And I remember Cheryl and I were having this discussion in the car just recently and I said, well, think about this. The biggest companies in the United States, like, what do you think? Do you think Coca Cola is going to go under in the next five years? And she goes, no, no, that's not going to happen. That's what needs to happen for this collapse to happen that some people worry about. Just think of all the different. I'm sitting here looking at an Apple computer right now. Do you think that Apple's going to go bye bye in the next five years? No. You've got the smartest people in the world that run these companies and certainly anything can happen and they could go under. But imagine these brains get together and think about how do they protect their own livelihood and it's going to be to make a better product remain relevant. And on the small company side, it's how do I become attractive to be acquired? Most of these fintech companies that I've chatted with their founders over the years, I know Paula, and you know, these fintech founders are like, I would love to become a huge company, but at the very least, I would love to be attractive enough that I get eaten. Even then there's this optimism, right.
- [72:31]
A
Built to sell.
- [72:33]
B
When I play the game acquire, my goal is to invest in the companies I think are going to get eaten. I don't always win, but I win a ton. So if it works at a board game, it must work in real life.
- [72:45]
A
Thank you for the question, Greg. That was a fun discussion. I think my optimism is a contrarian position.
- [72:53]
B
I also don't think you have to be 100% optimistic. I think you just have to be optimistic enough to think that it's going to continue, that the economy will continue. Oh, you can still think, Greg, there's going to be a dystopian future.
- [73:07]
A
Oh, I am way beyond that. I am massively optimistic about the future. We can save that for a different episode. But I think our current lives are going to look primitive from the point of view of somebody in 21, 25, 100 years from now.
- [73:25]
B
I think I have a healthy amount of pessimism. I think I'm widely optimistic. But I also think that even if today seems primitive, are people going to be happier? But that's a whole different topic.
- [73:41]
A
Mm, we can get into that in a different episode. If someone wants to ask a question around that to cue that discussion, I would love to have that.
- [73:47]
B
Please don't. Please do.
- [73:49]
A
Somebody please call in with that one.
- [73:51]
B
Oh, man, I gotta keep my mouth.
- [73:54]
A
Shut because I can make the case. I'm gonna make the case that our lives in a hundred years in the United States will be substantially better than they are today.
- [74:06]
B
I think we'll be better. I don't know that we'll be happier. How could I be happier than being here with you right now?
- [74:13]
A
Oh, well, thanks, Joe. Joe, I think we've done it again. Where can people find if they'd like to hear more of your happiness?
- [74:22]
B
This is a big week, Stacky Benjamins, because every week we celebrate Halloween with a whole week of Halloween goodness. On Monday, Chuck Jaffe joins us. Every year he has this economic game that he plays with trick or treaters. And we hear about his new game this year. So instead of kids just getting the trick or treat, they get an economics lesson. Would you rather do A or would you rather do B? And it is so fun. And it's always kind of marks the week on Wednesday as kind of bam, bam to what you're doing here on Afford Anything. We're talking to Heather and Doug Bonaparte, but we're turning the conversation around. The. The scary discussions and the horrors of having bad communication, exploring how do we stay away from the negativity, which is a great way, a fun way for us to handle it. If you know Doug and Heather from Paula's interview, you'll know how fun it's going to be with them. And then third on Friday, our roundtables talking about horror stories, about financial horror stories in their life. So all things scary and money over at the greatest money show on Earth, Stacking Benjamins.
- [75:38]
A
Wonderful. Well, Joe, thank you again and thanks to all of you for being afforders. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do four things. First and most importantly, share this with the people in your life. Friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone who has ever recommended Ready Player one.
- [75:56]
B
You took mine. How could you take mine?
- [75:59]
D
Aw.
- [76:00]
B
I came here with one thing.
- [76:02]
A
Oh, man. You know, I've never read the book.
- [76:04]
B
For people with Ready Player Two.
- [76:07]
A
Okay, wait. Should I read the book if somebody cues this discussion that you and I are going to have around.
- [76:11]
B
Yes.
- [76:12]
A
The future 100 years from now. Should I. I should read Ready Player One before we have that conversation.
- [76:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that it's gonna help with that discussion, but I think it's a great read. It's a very good read. Yes. And to Greg's point, the movie doesn't do it justice. The book is so much better.
- [76:28]
A
All right, you know what? I will if someone prompts us to have a the optimism versus nihilism discussion.
- [76:37]
B
I'm not going to take the nihilism part just to let you know. The complete over the moon optimist with the healthy dose of pessimism.
- [76:47]
A
But I will read that book in advance of it, just. Just so I've got the basis.
- [76:51]
B
You'll like it. It'll be really fun.
- [76:53]
A
All right, well, so share this with the people in your dystopian book club. That is the single most important thing that you can do to spread the message of fi r e. Number two, open up your favorite podcast playing app and please leave us a review. And while you're there, of course hit the follow button so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes. Number three subscribe to our newsletter afford anything.com newsletter and number four join the community afford anything.com community where you can have conversations about these episodes with like minded folks. Thank you so much for being part of this community. I'm Paula Pant.
- [77:31]
B
I'm Josal Sehai and we'll meet you.
- [77:34]
A
In the next episode.