Oh, yes.

We're back, baby.

Yeah.

20, 25.

I'd love to say we're gonna start off this year with positivity, but this ain't the show for you.

This might not be it.

How was your New Year's?

It was great, man.

Stayed home, wife turned the house into a mini Mario party.

So we played like Mario Party games, but, like, were the characters, so it was kind of cool.

What character were you?

Mario dk, baby.

Always.

You were DK always.

Don.

Deal killer.

Yeah, Deal killer.

Exactly.

Donkey Kong.

What'd you guys do?

I'll forever hear Seth Rogen's voice as dk.

Have to.

Have to.

Yeah, we had.

So Carter has, you know, he's five and he had some friends from school over.

The first time he had a bunch of friends over, they just trashed the house, going back and forth, screaming.

They were just so wild because he'd never done it before.

That just means they're having fun.

They had a great time.

We had a balloon drop from the ceiling at night, 9pm our time, you know, midnight east coast time.

And then, you know.

Yeah, we watched.

We watched the.

The New York ball drop too.

What'd you watch, though?

Because you don't have cable, right?

No, no, we do.

We got CNN.

We watched on CNN.

You have CNN?

Yeah.

How's that?

What do you mean?

YouTube TV has CNN.

Ah, okay.

Because this is the first year we didn't have cable because you're a bad influence.

And I didn't know what to do.

Like I was.

I went to.

I went to YouTube, found channel like CBS has like their streaming live.

Yeah.

But it wasn't good quality.

Okay.

Which.

This is how I got into the bad financial decision that I kind of alluded to you earlier at the office that we can break down.

Are we going to get into that right away?

No, I'll do that.

Towards the tail end of the show, but before I had to make a bad, bad decision.

We're going to get into Chris's bad financial decisions here later in the show.

I make a lot of these days.

But before we do that, welcome back to the number one financial literacy podcast in the world.

Sitting next to me on my left is my partner in crime, Chris Nahibi.

And sitting next to me on my right, my partner in time.

The one and everybody.

Thank you, my man.

And still not behind the ones and twos is DJ Odun.

You know, and he's on that FMLA family leave.

I.

I don't know about that anymore, dude.

What do you mean?

There's been an issue.

It's been raised with hr.

Oh, but he ran hr.

He is.

Yeah, I know.

And unfortunately, I think I'm taking over in his absence, but he is no longer accepting our collaborative requests on social media.

Oh, I think that's because you started deleting any from the old ones.

I haven't had the.

The time to check, but I'm inclined to believe that.

That he may, in fact, be moonlighting on us.

Oh, yeah.

If anybody ever hears of DJ Ruin another podcast, please make sure to give that podcast as many one star reviews as possible.

Exactly.

Yeah.

We got a good episode for everybody today.

Mm.

And I think this one comes with a bit of an asterisk.

Why is that?

It's gonna sound negative in title.

And if you're looking at this on any streaming platform or YouTube or Spotify, and, you know, you see episode 263, what happens when a whole generation never grows up?

It's gonna sound a little elitist, maybe a little ageist.

Okay.

This is actually in support of the generation.

We're not saying they didn't grow up, so they're bad.

We're saying things were so bad, they didn't have a choice, so they seem like they didn't grow up.

Exactly.

The system kind of let them down.

And we're going to talk about the system and why it may, in fact, have let them down a little bit, and how some of the things that we take for granted every single day are monumentally different for this current generation.

And the next one.

Okay.

I like it.

Yeah.

Make it sound easier.

Yeah, yeah.

Better.

So.

Yeah, exactly.

I like how we addressed it at the top of the show.

Yeah.

I want to be the devil you love, not the devil you hate.

Yeah.

You want me.

Voldemort.

By the way, we're.

We just watched the seventh one, Harry Potter.

Yeah.

So good.

So we got the final one this weekend.

You're going to have, like, an empty spot in your heart whenever.

So you watched all of them, huh?

You've watched all.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

When they came out, they were.

My.

My daughter was in tears.

By the way, spoiler alert.

Hopefully you've seen it by now.

When Dobie died.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, God.

It was hard for me to explain that to her.

She cried.

She cried more for that than she did for a great grandma.

Her great grandma passed away.

She not shed tears the way she shed tears for Dobie.

Dobby, that's fine.

Dobby is fine.

It's okay.

You don't mess up the guy's name.

Rest in peace, Dobby.

Rip, Homie.

Dobby.

So, yeah, I.

I did some light reading over the holiday break for those of you listening to the show.

Yeah, we had an extra show.

We covered.

We did not do what all of your favorite podcasts besides us do and just leave you hanging for a week.

No, no, no, no.

We went all in the lack of appreciation.

I didn't get as many thank yous as I would have.

I know, right?

That was a back to back night.

Clearly we were delirious.

But we put out shows.

That's what we do here.

Yep.

We kept putting them out.

Haven't missed.

We don't miss, so.

But we actually took a week off.

Those are two shows back to back recorded in one single night, put out over the course of two weeks.

So we took a week off and in doing so I started to do a lot of reading about what I would call financially adjacent topics, stuff that is heavily impacted by the financial world that we typically don't think about whenever we're talking about just everyday life.

But this one from the Wall Street Journal really came up in a big way.

And the more I thought about it, the more I was like, you know what?

This is such a great broad topic for the show.

This is how we're going to start the year off.

Yeah.

Okay.

We're going to set a little bit of a tone in the beginning.

We're going to cover this Wall Street Journal article, but then we're going to get into some of the underlying housing data here because there's definitely two schools.

One school believes there is a supply issue, that the data is saying that housing is going to go up and we.

Lucky, read on.

I think it was episode 261.

You got a lot of the major data providers saying that housing is likely to go up incrementally next year.

I think Moody's the only one saying it's going to go slightly down incrementally again.

You mean as far as values?

Home values.

Yes.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, that's why you're in the show.

I think it means supply.

Okay.

Because we've been talking about supply.

We're going to talk a little bit about supply today.

That's where my head was at.

But yeah, we also have another camp that says, hey, something doesn't make sense here and the data is perverted.

Okay.

Not that kind.

I have to go there.

As in like wrong.

Right.

The old school English version of the definition.

Right.

We're being prop up today.

Look at you.

Yeah.

So what happens When a whole generation never grows up.

This was the title for the Wall Street Journal article as well.

As American 30 somethings increasingly bypass the traditional milestones of adulthood, economists are warning that what seemed like a lag may in fact be a permanent state of arrested development.

I found that to be a sensational and almost insulting topic.

Okay.

Because it refers to, I think, these milestones as something that people are choosing to live.

But as you get in the article, it's actually, they are a natural byproduct of the system and these milestones are not reasonably attainable anymore.

Yes.

So.

What'S the first milestone that they touch on?

It's not that I don't want to say.

This is a milestone that everybody should, should aim towards.

This is why I paused.

Right.

But we are seeing alarming trends with three clear milestones.

Number one, marriage trends.

People are getting married later and we'll get into that.

Childbearing trends.

Okay.

And number three, living at home.

And it's really easy to look at all three of those and go, oh well, TikTok fucked us up.

Seriously.

I mean, I know it sounds like, you know.

Yeah, it's easy to say that.

I mean, we've, I know we've talked about it before on the show and I know we'll dive into it more as we get into this article, but we've said, I know plenty of people personally that have chosen not to start a family until they buy the first home.

They've, they've opted to wait to start their family until they can afford to buy a home.

That's exactly correct.

And that, that's where it's easy to look at social media.

It's easy to look at the world and say, oh, this next generation, you know, they're just different.

It's harder to look at the underlying data and say, oh, this generation has it different, so they're acting different.

It's a chicken egg argument.

I don't think there's one answer.

I think it's a multi cocktail of all the things.

Yes.

But let's get into some of these stats and keep in mind as we go through this, how much of this is really caused by social media versus how much of this is caused by the economy, the overall financial position of the world, much less the United States.

And how much of it is expressive one way or the other?

Okay.

Right.

Because one of them is impacting the other one or both ways.

Okay.

So for the marriage trends, a third of today's young adults will never marry.

33% projects Conservative think Tank, the Institute for Family Studies, compared to less than a fifth of those born in previous decades.

Okay, so you're seeing a huge increase in the number of people that will ultimately not get married.

Now, some of this is speculative data.

That's what I was.

That's where I was going to go.

How do you know that?

It's a think tank.

So a bunch of people get together and they think in a tank.

But no, we weren't invited to that.

No, we weren't.

Because, you know, our answer would be like, does he have sex?

Don't get married.

To mention, don't figure it out.

They'll figure out which one's the right one.

Yeah.

Which is not actually in the show notes, but something that I also read this weekend.

There is an increasing symmetry between the amount of binge drinking that teenagers to young 20 year olds are doing and those in the age of age demographic of 30s to mid-40s.

Oh, wow.

And at first you go, oh, so kids are just drinking less?

It's actually not just that.

It's kids by that definition are drinking less and adults are drinking more by that definition.

Wow.

So you're getting kind of a shift where the stress is starting to weigh on that 30 to 40 year old crowd.

30 to 50, actually.

And then the, the wanting to be health.

Have you heard about this?

It's called max.

Max looking or max.

They call it maxing.

This is a new slang term for you.

Maxing.

Maxing.

Okay.

I like this hole we got.

Take a little sidetrack.

Yeah, no, no, this, this is a whole thing.

There's been lots of articles about this and it's called M A x xing.

Right.

It originated on I think Reddit or 4chan or something like that, but basically.

Oh, term that refers to the process of maximizing one's physical attractiveness.

That's right.

And our generation, and I'm including you and me in the same generation, so don't be an asshole here, okay?

You are an 80s baby.

Our generation is.

There's a lot of memes going around.

Right.

They kind of broke it down into tears.

Soft maxing.

Yeah.

Which is having proper hygiene, skincare, exercise, hairstyles, and fashionable clothing.

That's not me, that's us right there.

Come on.

No, no, I'm not soft, baby.

Proper hygiene.

I'm hard maxing.

Come on.

You are.

The next one's hard maxing.

More extreme and permanent methods such as cosmetic procedures like jaw surgery.

Yeah.

No, you're not doing that.

Yeah, not yet.

You never know.

And then this one, I've heard the kids are doing this.

My son does this around the house all the time, so.

It's called mewing.

Oh, yeah, the face.

It's duck face grown up.

They all do this.

Yeah.

It's another one of those celebrations that we're talking about.

They'll score and they'll go and they start doing this.

It's like.

I don't even why it's duck face's next evolution, right?

When girls are doing duck face in photos, now they're mewing and dudes do this too.

But this is actually.

So that's just like a.

Something that they do.

The kids do as like.

I don't even know.

They do it in photos, dude.

Well, here.

No, this.

What.

What this definition is saying is it's a tongue posture practice that claims to improve jaw structure.

Tell me about your.

What type of tongue practice you doing over there?

Yeah, but it's.

But it's not scientifically supported.

No, it's not, because you look like a jackass.

But it's fine.

You've seen that thing that.

Where like you.

Yeah, Chew it.

Yeah.

It makes your jawline look stronger.

Right.

Come on, guys.

I mean, just work out.

I never bought that.

Yeah.

I swear.

Anyway, so Maxing and Max looking, whatever you want to call it, it's a real thing.

And there's social media pages dedicated to teaching everybody how to Max.

And like it's.

It's a whole thing.

Yeah, yeah, but I feel like it's.

That's Kids are focusing on the wrong things.

Right.

Well, I mean, look, it's one thing.

To be healthy, but I don't.

I.

I don't want.

One of my favorite works of Banksy.

Okay.

Okay.

Was a piece of art that he had put on a wall.

Right.

And it was actually a picture of a.

Of a little girl, the backside of a little girl looking at a painting on a wall of a.

Of like a supermodel, like laying there on the beach or something.

Yeah, yeah.

And it said on there in bold print, you don't have to look like this.

And I get that, and I fully understand and appreciate where that's coming from.

But there's nothing wrong with wanting to maximize your self preservation, your longevity.

Oh, no, not necessarily.

From a vanity purpose.

From a health purpose.

From a health purpose.

But this is not insinuating.

Hard ma.

Hard maxing is not.

I don't know.

I'm not saying you should.

Hard Max site.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Soft Max.

Yeah, Softmax.

Yeah, knock yourself out.

Anyway, the Point of this is that, look, our generations are typically looking better than our parents did at the same age.

And I think the aspiration of the younger generation is to do the same and to look better than the previous generation did, than they did.

Okay.

But for some reason, the 20 to early 30 year old demographic at this particular juncture tends to look a little older than the 40 year olds in some cases.

Right.

It's a weird, It's a weird vibe and it's been all over social media.

So there's a lot changing the landscape of what we think and how we look.

But looks are certainly part of it.

Staying younger forever.

I mean, I think it all started with jay Z saying 30s, new 20.

Okay.

Right.

Yeah.

And now we have childbearing trends that indicate that these things are lasting longer.

The problem here with the difference between marriage trends and aesthetic trends and maxing versus childbearing trends, you have a biological clock which is in fact ticking.

A man and a woman.

Now, for a woman, it's probably a little more definitive.

Right.

But the share of childless adults under the age of 50 who say they are unlikely to ever have A kid rose 10 percentage points between 2018 and 2023, from 37% to 47%, according to the Pew Research Center.

I can actually attest to this.

So I remember vividly over a decade ago having conversations with people outside of work, at work, who were very.

Who.

It was rare to hear somebody.

But you would hear it.

Occasionally they would say, I'm okay with not having kids.

And I remember, for me, I did not grow up in that kind of environment.

Right.

Culturally speaking, it's kind of, you know, what you aim for.

Right.

For me, that's how it was for me growing up.

To hear that, it was kind of shocking, alarming to me.

I couldn't comprehend or process it.

Why.

Right.

And then you, you, as you grow older, you, you figure out, you know, people have, you know, different expectations or different things they want in life.

Right.

Which is totally fine.

And then a decade later, I'm just hearing this conversation more and more.

It's like almost becoming more acceptable for people to come out and say it.

Yeah.

Because there, there is, number one, there's a financial burden there that I think a lot of people feel like they can't pay for themselves.

So how am I going to pay for this other life, this other person that I'm raising this life with, you know?

Yeah.

And it winds up becoming the snowball effect of fear.

Because, look, let's be honest, we're not In a generation where people would literally have like nine kids in a three bedroom home, they'd all be stacked up and that was just life.

Right, Right.

My mom had.

Was one of nine.

My grandparents on, on my grandfather's side, he was one of 11.

Right.

So.

But you couldn't do that by today's financial standards, you can't.

Well, we talked about it on the show too, that every household now, or a majority of households now, have dual incomes, if not three incomes.

Yeah.

Somebody in the household's working two jobs.

Right.

That's for the majority of people.

So you can no longer to have a traditional family, whatever that means.

I think that's, that's changing now.

And you have to be willing to accept a different level of financial profile in order to, to have a big family or just a family at all.

I mean, I spend and I recommend everybody does this at the end of the.

Every single year.

I'll go to our credit card statement, and for us, it's one credit card.

Because.

Because that's what I, that's what I use.

And I look at how much my wife and I have spent and I look at the category breakdown.

If you have American Express, you can literally go in and get your end of the year statement and it breaks it down in categories for you in a PDF document.

We'll do it in an Excel document.

If you want to nerd out like I do, and I like to go through and just see.

And it's a good way to check for fraud, but it's also a good way for you to go in and look and say, okay, hey, where can we be a little more thoughtful about where we're putting our money?

You know, how much we spending here and there?

Like last year I spent $6,000 on haircuts.

Yeah.

$6,000.

Wow.

That's a lot for a year.

That is.

Well, that's in.

That's you and Carter combined and, and my beard too.

It's a separate individual.

I know, I know.

It's.

It's.

They're really capitalizing on the whole extra.

Yeah.

I mean, let's be honest, guys.

Like, you're.

You're not doing a whole new haircut, so why is it the same price as the haircut?

Yeah.

You know.

Well, it's because they added in the whole fading.

Yeah, yeah, but you're not fading my entire face.

You're fading like an inch of my.

Cheek into my cheek, you know?

Yeah.

I'm just saying, you're not perming my beard.

You.

You're still going to the same.

Same guy, right?

You're not gonna mention his name.

You're not gonna say any of his name.

He's a podcast.

He forgot.

He dropped me like a bad habit.

I saw your barber there.

I had to keep quiet.

I was like, oh, oh, no.

I don't go to Anna anymore.

You don't?

No, I don't go to Anna.

It was too far.

She was great with me and Adam, but that where she was before it was.

It would be like a three hour commitment.

Okay, so where do you go now?

Someplace like a.

Literally down the street.

Super cuts.

You're that guy now.

No, no, it's a barber shop.

It's still a barbershop, but it's.

It's a little bit.

It's not.

You ain't gonna really.

It's not as hip.

They don't like you.

No, I.

There's no relationship.

No.

It's some bald dude.

Just go.

Most people get their hair cut there.

They have their eyes closed.

What?

I'm like, how do you guys do this?

And I'm talking to some of the guys there, and they just don't want to have a conversation.

Eyes closer to taking it on faith or.

Because they're hoping for the best outcome.

I think a little bit of.

A little bit of.

I'm like, I could never.

What?

Aren't you curious?

And.

And then this barbershop is also weird.

This is.

This is how I know.

This is.

This was the key giveaway that I knew that.

Oh, this isn't.

This isn't a real barber shop.

So, you know, if you go to a barbershop, they usually turn you away from the mirror as they cut your hair.

I found out from Andy, who's been on the show, shout out to Andy, that that's not because they don't want you to see what's going on.

It's.

They check the fade line when.

In the mirror.

Because when.

When they're too close to it, you can't see it.

They can compare.

When they look in the mirror, they can actually tell if everything's being faded properly.

Yeah.

Right.

This shop has you staring at yourself in the mirror the entire time.

Like.

Yeah, but you like looking at you.

I mean, you don't.

God damn it.

You don't know what you're doing.

How much are you yourself?

Right.

Give away.

You're mewing the whole time.

It's weird, bro.

You're making.

You're making eye contact with everybody through the mirrors.

I do that all the time.

I let people in the barbershop.

See me staring at them?

Yeah.

And then when they look away.

Yeah, when they look away, you're still staring.

I don't look away.

Yeah.

I'm that guy.

Just over half of Americans between the ages of 30 and 40 were married as of last year, according to an analysis of American Community Survey done by Aspen Economic Survey Strategy Group economist Luke Pardue.

This is down from more than Two thirds in 1990, when those in the middle of the cohort were born.

The share of women in this age range who had even or had ever given birth fell 7 percentage points between 2012 and 2022 alone.

The Current Population Survey data shows from 78% to 71%.

And I'm gonna go on the record here and say this is not just women.

Women are the easiest proxy because they're the ones who, you know, birth children.

Okay.

But you can look at men's testosterone levels over the course of decades and you see it dropping pretty visibly each generation.

And you.

The frustrating thing about this topic when you, when you have it with, you know, doctors in this space, because they're, I think they're, they're a little jaded.

Okay.

They're just not trained on it.

They're not.

They, Their immediate knee jerk reaction because they want to combat the, everything that's going on with.

We came to say it because we don't want to get flagged on the show.

They won't promote the show.

But all the therapy that's going on.

Right, the peptide therapy.

There you go.

Right.

Their immediate knee jerk reaction is.

Yeah, but, you know, everyone is optimal at different levels.

And, and they, they don't want to acknowledge that.

No, like this, this is something that should be of, of great concern.

Yeah, it really should be.

And I don't give a damn what biomarker you're looking at.

No healthy biomarker should be as wide as testosterone is for both men and women.

Like, for men, it's 300 to 1200 is normal.

That's wild, right?

That's not a normal range.

That just means that there's a lot of variability.

But your normal should be tested, you know, annually.

But we don't do that.

And it should come down and it's like one of those things where you can't pinpoint exactly what it is that's wrong with you.

In some cases for men, it's like, okay, well, I'm having, excuse me, I'm having arousal problems or something to that effect.

Right, right.

That's a pretty obvious problem.

Their libido is dropping off.

Excuse me, but for most people, that's, that's not one of the first symptoms they get.

They usually get tired, they're lethargic.

All the, all these things happen.

All, all this really to say that not only are women having less children as a percentage basis of the population, but men also have testosterone that's dropping.

And you're looking at all these things saying, oh, this generation is just weaker, it's softer and it's like, ah.

Or here's an alternative theory.

I'm just throwing this out there.

Maybe we're putting a shit ton of abnormal pressure on the generation.

Financially, yes, physically, mentally.

And what happens, Their bodies are saying, we're not doing this.

People tend, I think natural behavior for a lot of people is they shut down.

We had an article on the show not too long ago when people were falling under too much stress, they were electing to not even open their credit card statement.

Yeah, they just want to shut down and ignore the problem.

And there's a lot of people right now, first couple weeks in January, they're like, nope, not looking at it.

Oh, yeah, that for sure.

No.

But also with to your point about testosterone levels dropping, I mean, there's studies out there where young males are having less and less sex like every year or even going up in like even speaking to girls and speaking because I think they're so used to, you know, either a, working from home, keeping to themselves.

I mean, you couple all these things together.

Video games have gone like wildly out of control.

Right?

Where people are just comfortable staying at home playing video games all day, all night, and then you just lose the ability to interact with people.

So the article, the Wall Street Journal article goes on to say that nearly 9% of those age between 30 and 40 years old still live with their parents, according to Purdue's analysis of the census data, up from 6% in 1993%.

Sounds like a lot.

But this article, and I didn't put it in the show notes, goes into a really interesting example that I think was more profound.

Okay, this gentleman was in his late 30s, 36.

Okay.

Lives in New York.

At first you're like, okay, he lives with three roommates in New York.

It's expensive.

But maybe he's just not independent.

Maybe he's trying to save money.

They start talking to this guy, he's got $1,700 a month in student loans.

He went to law school, he graduated law school, got a job at a law firm.

But the opportunities to move up are much, much Slower than they had been historically for other current senior partners at the same age, because those senior partners are not retiring at the cadence that they once did, if they retire at all.

He was saying in his firm, there's 60 something, 70 something year olds that otherwise would have retired that are still working because they need the money because life is so expensive for them.

They don't have the full retirement that their predecessors had and life around them is expensive.

So that, you know, even if they did have the retirement, it wouldn't go as far.

So it winds up being this really delayed maturation process for an attorney like him.

Not only can he make less money over time because he can't get the promotions that he would otherwise get if that generation were moving on, but now here he is saddled with student debt, the cost of living in New York so expensive he can't live alone.

And he, yeah, sure, he's not in that 9% living with his parents, but is he really that much better off?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

This is a topic that I wanted to find a way to weave into this show too, which actually nicely dovetails into.

This is one key economic data point that isn't captured very well in a lot of these economic data reports that we look at is the startup of small businesses.

Right.

It's, it's very, it's very hard to track.

And by small businesses we talk about 50 employees or less.

Think mom and pop shops, if you will.

Yeah.

Right.

And it's no secret that, you know, small businesses is basically the backbone of the economy, is a huge part of the economy and it's a huge way a lot of people create wealth for their families.

Right.

And if it's harder for them, someone like him, Right.

Like this individual here to grow like, and you have to ultimately lean towards maybe starting something yourself, maybe starting his own law firm.

It's even more difficult now more than ever because the way these small businesses fund themselves now are on these floating rates.

Right.

So it's even harder to get loans.

You, he'd have to save up so much capital.

And how is he going to save up the capital to do so?

Living in New York, paying $3,000 in rent with three other roommates.

He's got student loan payments at $1700 a month.

Yep.

God knows what else cost of living is out there.

So it's a really tough time for a lot of people.

And to piggyback on the comment I mentioned earlier about people waiting to start families until they get into a home, the average age for people to buy Their first home used to be 30.

Now it's like 36, 37.

Actually it's 38.

38.

Look at that.

We're going to cover that later on in the show.

Even worse.

Thanks for not reading the show notes.

Yeah, I'm kidding.

I just put them in there.

But that's off the dome, though.

Yeah, but you're not wrong.

And look, the trickle down effects are so monumental that people don't think about it.

So just let's talk about those three things.

Marriage trends, childbearing trends, and living at home.

Less weddings, less homes being sold.

Right.

Less, you know, consumer spending.

Right.

Less clubbing.

There's a whole trend in Los Angeles.

Remember when we grew up, clubbing was a big thing.

It was.

Yeah.

There's a lot of people who don't go clubbing in the traditional sense anymore.

And they go to like day parties, like at coffee shops and stuff now.

Yeah, yeah.

Because some of that is like the looks maxing thing and wanting to be in like, you know, great shape.

But some of that is just, it's expensive paying for $20 drinks.

You know, you get four or five of those a night.

It winds up being pretty expensive a single night just to go out.

Yeah.

And it can be like a pretty interesting expense to try to explain to yourself at the end of the month, oh, I spent $5,000 drinking.

Yeah.

This is before table service, bottle service.

I think we hit this inflection point where people just can't keep spending the way they were spending before with all the costs that are rising.

And I promise this show will get into the financial aspects of it.

But I wanted to touch on the human element because we don't talk about the human element enough.

I agree.

And we don't talk about these topics to, I guess, make people feel bad about them.

It's more so to make you feel inclusive, like, oh, we're, we're all going through this together.

Yeah.

And it's not lost on me that when we do this show that there's a certain demographic, listen to the show that owns homes already and they're like, ah, it's not that bad.

And there's a certain demographic listens to this going like, I can never afford a home.

It's that bad.

Yes.

It's not lost on me that there is a very valid reason for both of them to feel the way they do because of how life has unfolded for them in different decades in a very different way.

And I always say this on the show.

I've said it in front of investors on Wall Street.

I've said it all the time.

14 years of artificial interest rate deflation.

Right.

Leading to where we are today, where we now have rate volatility and variability back in the mix for the first time in literally 14 years.

If you started off at 18 years old in business 14, 15 years ago, you're now 32, 33 years old, and you feel pretty damn good about your business acumen, but you've never really been tested in the market.

And what we're going to show later on in the show is how disturbing some of the data points are in the market currently.

There are some things that are happening from a cultural and financial shift perspective, particularly as it pertains to the housing market and its nexus to inflation, that I think are really important for everyone to at least understand because it's going to be meaningful in how it impacts all of us, whether you're a homeowner now, whether you're not.

Right.

I mean, to your, to your point, you know, home prices and home values have gone up 45% since the pandemic.

Mm.

Okay, then that means.

That's such a crazy number when you think about it.

Yeah.

I mean, just five years ago, right.

That means a home that was $500,000.

Such a crazy.

That same home today is now $725,000.

Couple that with how unaffordable it is.

That PNI mortgage payment at three and a half percent is approximately $2,600 a month.

Yeah.

How much do you need to make a month to be able to afford 26, $2600?

You can afford that right now at the rates today at 7%, that's $4,600 P&I payment, including PMI.

By the way, that's only.

I did this before the show, and that's why I have it off the top of the head.

That's including the PMI.

That's only 10% down.

Yeah.

So I've accounted for the fact that, okay, you didn't.

You weren't able to save 20%, you're able to save 10% only.

So is that your way of caveating?

So if anybody ever ran up on you in the street and said, yo, human calculator boy, come over here, that's.

My way of doing enough for the.

Enough research for the show to be like, oh, yeah, he prepped for the show.

He knows what he's talking about.

So Saeed does read occasionally.

He plays with mortgage calculators.

Well, to your point, let's get into the median wages I think that's really impactful here.

The median wages for full time workers age 35 to 44.

Right.

In my mind, this is close to or at the peak of what your earning potential should start to be.

Okay.

35 to 44, you should be hitting that top part of your sine wave of earning potential and hopefully staying up there for as long as you can.

And sure, you can make more in passive income over time, over investments, but your active earning potential, this is where you really should aim to make the most possible money here.

And if you can make it earlier, closer to 35, great.

If you make it into 48, 49, that's also fine.

But that's where you should start to think about when am I going to earn the most that I can make?

Okay.

So meeting wages for full time workers age 35 to 44 are up 16% between 2000 and 2024 from $58,522 to $67,652 adjusted for inflation according to the Labor Department.

Now these aren't big ass salaries.

This is year over year.

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay.

The Overall wealth of 30 somethings too rose 66% between 1989 and 2022 according to the St.

Louis Federal Reserve, from 62,000 to 103,000.

I'm sorry, can you repeat the years again from 1989?

89 to 2022.

2022.

There's a, there's one huge problem with this.

Okay.

That sound, that, that may come off as like a lot, a huge increase.

Okay.

The problem is people are walking into the real world now with student debt levels that are so high that because I have it here that student loan payments have increased 1700%.

Yeah.

From the 70s till now.

So.

And that's a debt that you cannot default on.

They will garnish your wages if they have to.

And you can't, you can't bankruptcy out of.

You can't.

Yeah, exactly.

You can't bankruptcy out.

You were paying them back.

Yeah.

Because they, the way they view it is your education stays with you forever.

Yeah.

Okay.

Does it really though?

Yeah.

I feel kind of stupid most days.

I'm not gonna lie.

Yeah.

Unless I take, unless I take creatine.

It gets a little foggy up here.

There's a whole like X like thread about how dumb my ass is.

So I know it's out there, and.

I hate to say this, that I.

Feel like I'm right.

I'm gonna slap you.

No, no, no.

I feel like a majority of what I do.

And what I've learned has been on the job.

It's true though, man.

That's what I'm saying.

We place all this emphasis on kids going to school.

Which you should.

Yeah.

It's good for you, particularly if you don't know what you're going to do.

But you're going to learn way more.

To be honest, man.

School, it's more for the networking.

Yeah.

Get a head start.

To get a head start in networking.

One of the.

One of these guys is going to make it.

They need to look out for you.

Yeah.

I mean that.

That's what it is.

That's what it is.

I mean like that guy over there who's always playing with all the electronics.

Get to know him.

You want to be.

Yeah.

That's the guy you want to be friends with.

The one working out of the garage.

Yeah.

Or like, you know, maybe if you're lucky enough, his last name is Jobs.

You know, he might get you a job back one day, you know.

Oh, there you go.

You never know.

Dang.

Yeah.

So I'm just saying it's one of those things.

So there's also a perception gap here in addition to the financial reality.

So while people are making slightly more.

Right.

And they are worth slightly more, it's not enough because as you've noticed, inflation has taken things like student loan debt and had it increase by an Exponential potential number 1700%.

Right.

Since the 70s.

Yep.

And it's not just unique to that.

Housing is going to be an issue.

We'll get there, I promise.

Let's talk about the perception gap.

Okay.

In many ways, the age group is in a better place financially on average than their parents were at the same age.

And yet they still feel so disenfranchised.

Pause here for a second.

Okay.

We are in the office in the middle of the afternoon.

You catching this?

There is like.

There'S.

There's my dad screaming in the background.

A war zone going on.

I don't know what the hell we might get this office.

They might have done the left.

The whole city might be eviscerated out there.

I wonder how much of it is actually getting picked up.

Oh no, the noise gate.

We'll just sound like some weird a holes who keep pausing for no reason.

Yeah, they doing drugs.

The level of concentration that is being taken place right now is, is impeccable.

Yeah, it sounds like someone's going to ask it outside.

So the problem is that this generation doesn't seem to know that they're doing better than their Parents.

Now, I think that's an interesting statement in and of itself, because how do you measure.

Like, how would you measure doing better than your parents?

What does that mean?

So I have always felt that I'm a failure.

Even today, I still feel like I'm not doing enough.

Okay.

And I know that I'm probably my own harshest critic, so I'm gonna take it with a grain of salt.

But what I will say is, compared to my parents, I probably bought more of a house younger than they did, where my house is probably worth more than theirs was at my.

My age because of the housing trends.

My.

Me.

Me as well.

But that's only because I benefited off the timing.

Right.

But you are doing better.

But you don't feel like you're doing better.

And I.

I've also.

I don't.

You.

You've.

I've learned.

And it's okay.

Someone's dying out there, right?

Shots.

The.

The idea of building wealth early was not.

Is not lost on.

I think the younger generation.

Now, they understand the value of owning real estate and getting into your first home versus I think my parents were just more concerned on growing whatever business that they were in.

Yeah.

And I think the.

The.

The stress of building wealth at.

At the cadence you needed to then was a lot lower than it is today.

Like, today, everybody feels like, I got to be.

I got to be a millionaire.

I got to be a millionaire.

I got to be.

I got to get there.

Yeah.

Because the billionaires of today are yesterday's millionaires.

And that's the sad reality where I think a lot of people online, you know, oh, my God, look at that thumbnail.

That guy's going to, I'll show you how to become a millionaire.

I'll become a millionaire.

And it's like, dude, all these things are so desensitized that everybody thinks that a million is attainable.

It's no big deal.

When you look at the average salaries here, even going up is still under the $70,000 mark.

These are not huge leaps.

Your net worth, $100,000.

Good.

Congratulations.

Bigger than your parents.

At the same time, these are not big numbers on average.

And keep in mind, these are average numbers.

Average.

Exactly.

So there's people who make a lot less than that.

So you could blame social media, too, for part of this.

And again, this is where the chicken egg argument comes in.

Only 21% of adults in their 30s rated the overall economy as good or excellent last year, per the Federal Reserve.

And economists say young adults are significantly more pessimistic about the future than.

Than prior generations were.

That's negativity, dude.

Like, that's, that's real negativity.

Because they're what's going on because they're going through it and they understand that whatever they're currently dealing with is not sustainable.

Maybe.

Or maybe they just feel, they just feel like, look, this is not a fair hand I'm being dealt.

If you're a kid growing up and I could totally see somebody who hasn't bought a home saying, you, Chris, you get to buy homes when the values were low and the interest rates were low.

You got the benefit off that time.

That's a valid criticism of me.

To which Saeed would turn around and say, look, man, you bought bitcoin when it was worth $5.

Well, I mean, it's the same.

It's not.

Look.

Oh, now you're backing up.

No, no, no.

Yeah, you're afraid.

X.

I know what you're afraid of.

It's.

I, I had, I had a neighbor the other day who founds out.

He found out that we have a podcast.

Okay.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, no, and he listens older gentleman.

Okay.

Bought his house for $17,000 and.

Minus $17,000.

My next door neighbor.

Yeah, good for him, right?

He had a house there.

His mom had a house in our cul de sac and his sister had a house on her cul de sac and they.

17.

So what is he, like 70?

It has to be.

Yeah.

70S.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyways, he was talking about, this is your podcast.

I really liked the way you guys do the show, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he said, wow.

Yeah, he's very, very open minded to it.

Amazing tennis player too, by the way.

He's still nationally ranked for, for guys in their 70s.

Oh, yeah.

So many questions.

I know.

So you must hate pickleball then.

Hates it.

Good man.

Yeah, good man.

I respect him taking over, but he was saying, you know, you guys, you guys talking about, you know, mortgage.

You know, I, I was around at a time when mortgage rates were 18.

Yeah, but I'm like early 80s.

But listen, man, it's not the same.

You can't compare it.

They're literally two different times.

We're talking about how much people earn back then compared to the, what home.

Values were plus the wage gap.

Inflation is pretty big.

Yeah.

So it's like, it's two completely different times.

You can't come out and be like, oh, the back of my day, we had 18% loans.

Like, no, bro, it's not the Same.

Yeah, I try to post something to this effect about the gap in wages versus the gap in home value increasing over time.

And we'll.

We have a little bit on the show later today.

Not quite the same thing I posted it to.

I think this one was actually on threads and some guy was like, bro, you're obviously a realtor.

And I'm like, okay, that's condescending, you know?

Yeah, but me being a realtor or not being a realtor for the purpose of this conversation is irrelevant.

I gave you data in a chart, right?

And I'm like, this is the problem is so many people want to give you their perspective and, and I always go back to the same old school statement, I'm gonna screw it up.

But that can be like that.

That can be submitted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

So if you're gonna come at me with some statement like that, come to me with some data to back up your, your opinion.

If you just take shots across the ball like name call and say like, I'm wrong, I'm just going to dismiss.

You as you should.

Don't engage.

Yeah, and another one that bothers me too, since we're on the topic is I love how all these anonymous accounts on social media try to call you out for doing things publicly from a verified account with your real name.

And it's like, bro, you can't call me out for doing stuff on social media when you're hiding behind an anonymous account.

Right?

Like that makes you a.

It is.

Those are like tendencies.

That's.

That's assness.

That's.

Oh, we can't, we can't do that bitch assness.

It's too far.

No, that's.

Isn't that, that's coined by Diddy, right?

Oh, is it?

I think so.

I gotta have a whole list of phrases that are coined by Diddy that I can't use.

Yeah, you gotta be careful.

Gotta be careful.

Take that.

Take that.

Man.

He's still in jail.

He's not going anywhere.

Chosen one, bro.

Chosen one.

It's still funny.

Younger adults are far less likely than Americans over 50 to say, achieving the, quote, American dream, end quote, of success from hard work is still possible according to a Wall Street Journal article and poll.

So that to me is pretty damning.

When younger adults say that.

I mean, to say that anybody over 50 was, could say, and would likely say, if you work your ass off, you're going to get what's due to you.

I fall into the second category Here, believe it or not, that I believe that you're not going to get success from hard work.

That in and of itself is not enough.

And I know that sounds really negative.

Yeah, work smarter, not harder.

No, I don't even like that expression.

Bothers me too because working smarter, not harder implies that you can work in a way based off your intellect to give you the opportunity.

No, no, no, no, no.

I think when I say it, it's supposed to imply a being financially literate.

Right.

Putting your money to work in a way to where like you did this from a very young age and kudos to you.

Right?

Like you, I don't want to call it as much passive income because there is actual work that has to be put into owning real estate.

Right.

Even though they people like to classify.

It as passive income, it's not passive.

It's not as passive as people like to make it seem, but whatever.

But to do that at such an early age, right.

Like that's being financially literate, knowing what else I can do to help me.

I just during this process, right.

So that, that's one way of working smarter, not harder.

Right.

Creating multiple sources of income in ways where you can.

I get it.

That may not be the case for everybody.

You might not be able to own, buy as many properties like at the cadence that maybe you did, but laying down the, you know, the foundation and to where you can ultimately grow that portfolio over time, that's working smarter.

Yeah, but I can also be equally critical of my decision making.

Back then.

It all stemmed from the book that we talked about in the show.

Multiple Streams of Income by Robert G.

Allen was the first financial book that I ever read.

And then I went on to read Rich Dad, Poor dad and a bunch of other books and obviously got much more financially savvy over time.

But I always thought that you should have multiple different paths of making money.

And I was really bothered that I only had like my job and I always wanted everything else that I had to offset the.

Because here's the problem with America today.

You don't have the fuck you power anymore at your job because most people who work for somebody else, you need health care.

What's the fuck you power though?

The healthcare is saying fuck you.

I can pay for this myself or I can get another job and be feel comfortable with it.

Because once you get to a certain point, if you're making good money, right?

And good money is different based on perspective for a lot of people, health care, the system, inflation, all these things around you make you Feel trapped.

And because you feel trapped, and I don't think this is anecdotal, I think this is really by design in the system.

I'm not saying, I'm not going to wrap a tinfoil hat on at this point in time in the show, but I've always believed the system was built against most Americans.

That's why there's such a huge gap between the wealthy.

Look at Nancy Pelosi.

Do you really think she's making that money legally?

I mean, do I got to be that guy?

No, come on.

I mean, you know, you know.

Yeah, that's why they have those, they have those funds that track her.

If you're in your late 70s and early 80s and you're sharp and spry, which I would say there's a handful of people who fit in that category, good for you.

Stay in power in whatever political office you're in if you feel like you can contribute.

But if you are Mitch McConnell, you're Nancy Pelosi.

Give it up, man.

Come on.

You're power hungry and you've made millions doing this.

Yeah.

So when I look at the situation, I think to myself, like, okay, like, you guys have built the system to benefit you, not to benefit me.

Right.

And I'm not, I'm not saying that.

They'Re playing a whole different game.

Yeah.

But that game is being played against all Americans.

And it's those who have power, want to stay in power, want to keep power.

And money is a way, is a vehicle for power.

And people feel like they can't leave their job.

So I'll use you as an example.

Say if I told you tomorrow you had enough, you had to draw an ethical line, you would leave your job tomorrow.

Would you not worry about health care?

Would you not worry about finding the job?

100%, yeah, you would worry about your family.

You'd start thinking about, like, long term viability.

Even though a smart person would say, hey, well, say you got skills, you can go get another job.

Yeah, but that's, that's the, the fuck you power.

That, that's, that's the to your power.

That I wanted to, to your point that you mentioned earlier with the gentleman that was working at the law firm and the partners are staying around longer.

I mean, no greater example than we talked about it before Bill Clinton was in office over 20 years ago.

I don't know.

That man is.

Yeah, I don't want to know who that man is either, personally.

On a personal level, I don't want to know.

Feel like you do No, I don't.

But he, he, he was president of the nation over 20 years ago.

Yes, he was.

He's, he was currently younger than Biden and Trump.

Yeah, Today he's younger.

Yeah.

Think about that.

So that goes right into what you said.

Yeah.

People want to keep working for longer, stay in power for longer.

It's becoming a trend and I'm not knocking it.

Like there are some brilliant minds that are 100% sharp, physically capable, well into their 70s, in some cases even 80s.

And I, I aspire to be that when I grow up, you know, but at the same time, there are financial ramifications to people in society by nature of them having jobs and the next people up in the system not having the opportunity.

Yeah.

You know, and it's a trickle down effect.

I know.

Because there's something about being in a position to where if you're in charge of making decisions where you will have to live with the consequences of those decisions yourself makes, that makes me feel a little bit more comfortable.

So a, a younger person in charge making decisions for everybody at an institution or for a country that I know once you leave, you will have to live with those consequences of those decisions versus somebody that's almost on their deathbed.

Well, and that, that's.

So this is a big problem I have with the political landscape and what's going on in the zeitgeist.

There is, you have lawmakers who are generally so wide of age and experience, they are making laws for people who grew up very differently.

Right.

And I'll use again, Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi is a great example of this.

But do you think Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi can relate to the life that I've led?

Oh, no, they don't understand the same cost of homeownership.

They don't understand.

I mean, they're so different from a generational just lifestyle, economics, lifestyle that their ideology.

Now that they may be.

Look, there's always examples, people who kept up to date.

I know some guys in their 70s that were fantastic with it, you know, with computers and technology.

No knock against them, but those are anomalies.

Those aren't the consistent rule of thumb.

Right.

So I've always had this problem and I'll go back to our main point.

I think in order to be wealthy in this country, you need a little bit of luck.

And luck is in fact the combination of preparation and opportunity.

So you do need to be smart.

You need to prepare.

But some very smart people who prepare their asses off never get an Opportunity.

And I don't want to take away that.

That intelligence from them by saying, hey, you didn't work hard enough or you didn't work smart enough.

Right.

Those people just didn't get the opportunity.

And some of them are missing key elements, like they're not networking to get the opportunity.

I was just going.

You got to understand at an early age that, I mean, politically, I'm that guy, too.

I hated networking.

I still hate it.

Yeah.

I mean, it's part of.

I took a class in.

In college.

I'll never forget political theory.

They're gonna say sex ed is sex ed networking.

God.

See, it's you that does this because what.

Political theory.

Right.

And this is one of the variables that you have to account for and that you have to actually actively work on to try to get better at.

Yeah.

You get.

You're not just gonna roll out of bed one day after going to school for 10 years and feel like, okay, I can go now.

Start conversations with people.

It's just not gonna work.

Yeah, it's a practice apathy.

You've got to be good at it.

Or there's some people who are inherently talented with it the same way.

Some singers are just fantastic.

But those are far and few between.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, they all can't be Chris.

See, there it is.

There it is.

There's the Eric.

There it is.

All right, so let's recap the delayed homeownership, the changing priorities, and the housing market outlook.

Cause I want to get into the housing market outlook because this, to me, I mean, we are a financial literacy podcast, after all.

Let's do it.

But this, to me, is symbolic of all the other macro financial trends.

But it's something we can all relate to because housing is such a hot topic of conversation.

And there are two sides of the spectrum.

There's very much opinions on either side.

And I have an explanation as to why those sides are different beyond the, hey, ones on the realtor side, ones on the buyer side, and they have different interest.

Okay.

I've got a much different perspective here that I think I want to conclude with, so stay with me till the end.

I think this will give some perspective to a lot of people on why you're hearing very, very different opinions on the housing market.

Yeah.

Because, you know, there's a lot of people that are waiting on the sidelines to try and figure out what their next move should be.

Should they continue to wait.

Oh, yeah, Hairball gets it.

This is what happens.

Your knuckles are fuzzy.

Probably get some contact Hair every time you.

We need that air filtration system.

But the way there's people that are waiting on the silence to see what's going to happen in the housing market.

Are things going to become more affordable?

Will there be a slight adjustment?

Or is there going to need to be an exodus out of the state?

Yeah.

Follow along on your phone for this is going to be some charts here.

Those of you listening, driving, whatever it is, we're going to post charts to all this stuff.

We're going to post all the links in the show notes like we normally do.

But these are visually stunning, so they will help as a learning aid.

In Saeed's case, you won't really learn anything, but you look at pretty pictures.

All right, so delayed homeownership.

The median age, as said alluded to earlier, the first time home buyers hit a record high of 38 this year in 2024, according to the National association of Realtors, up from 35 in 2023 and 29 in 1981.

That's exactly what I said.

God damn, so smart.

Okay, now there's your arrogance.

Okay, I feel like mine was sarcasm.

Yours was real.

Like you felt that way.

Comedic relief.

No, that wasn't.

You felt okay.

That was off the dome, man.

Creatine works, people.

Creatine's amazing.

You're taking creatine?

Yeah.

Yeah.

How many grams a day?

Yeah, five grams a day.

Sorry.

Five grams a day, obviously.

And I did.

And I.

And I did a loading phase of the first week just to.

You really don't need a loading phase.

But that makes you feel better.

You don't need to.

Because if you're going to do it long term, then it just gets in your bloodstream.

It works its way up.

But I want it to.

Yeah.

Fun fact.

Nutrient timing is not a problem with creatine.

You just take it whenever you can ever see single day.

I like that.

It's flavorless.

Yeah.

I mix it into my fiber at night, which.

Look, I'm gonna be the old guy here.

You mix it with your fiber, I mix it with my protein shakes.

Metamucil.

I.

Well, if I go to the gym, I'm mixing with my pre workout and I'll drink it during the workout.

Oh, you're.

Oh, okay.

But good workout, guy.

Mine's always post workout.

We have to work out to have a pre workout.

Come on, man.

I was hitting him when I was in Texas.

Yeah, that was weird.

How do you go to a different state and work out and work out more?

I work on walk around there, by the way.

Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

No, no, no, no.

We gotta address this.

You cannot be labeling walks with your family as working out.

No, no, no, I was working.

I was in the gym.

No, you weren't.

I was lifting.

You were lifting weights in Frisco?

Yeah, they were.

They have the gym inside the.

Inside the hotel.

It was nice.

Oh, yeah, they had a.

They had a half squat rack and they had a full dumbbell set.

It was nice.

I did not see the hotel gym thing coming.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Come on, man.

That's where we stay.

We didn't go Airbnb.

Okay.

I expected you to.

That's your normal.

Because we stayed at one of those Hyatt houses that has, like, a little living.

Oh, those are nice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like those.

Yeah, because the kids.

It was nice for the kids to have, like a, you know, couch to sit on.

Yeah, they have a couch.

They have a little kitchen area, usually kind of open against the wall.

Yeah, but we went.

We went there and there's, like, a store that they have out there that's Dick's Sporting Goods.

Like, on steroids.

I thought you're gonna say Bucky's, but.

Yeah, you're.

Now everybody knows about this, so I didn't.

We didn't go to one.

And I know.

I feel stupid for not Bucky's.

No, we didn't go to Bucky's the bro.

Everyone says it's the.

I feel like I missed out.

You gotta go and buy a hoodie.

Yeah, you gotta go buy a hoodie and then cut the sleeves off at your elbows and rock around with a hoodie with no sleeves on it.

That's the move.

That's the move.

That's the move.

Heather Gray.

Bucky's, bro.

Yeah.

You don't know?

Ask somebody.

So this store is called Shields.

Shields.

Yeah.

It's kind of got a massive.

What's called Ferris wheel inside and fish tank, and they got every sporting good thing.

And Adam left with, like, two basketball jerseys, and Ari got a cowboy hat and cowboy boots.

She's all into, like, the cowgirls thing.

Yeah, Beyonce.

You blame her for that?

God damn Beyonce.

Yeah, Beyonce.

Every couple of years, as soon as you change your style, you can expect your.

Your checkbooks gonna be writing some checks.

Damn.

Beehive.

Yeah, you're done, done, done.

Okay.

So changing priorities for the younger generation and I, you know, social media, chicken egg argument once again.

Experiences, travel, technology, seem to take traditional investments like home ownership and retirement savings.

People want to live in the moment now because they don't.

They're not.

We've seen this in the comments for a lot of the stuff we post on social media.

Everyone's like, bro, I don't want to invest in the S P500 index fund and be a millionaire when I'm 65.

I need the money now.

Yeah, but we're not telling you to invest all you have into it either.

But some people feel like that that is all they have.

So they're, they're going to buy the phones, they're going to, you know, travel, they're going to pay for the experiences.

A great example.

He's my brother a lot on the show.

He is currently in Las Vegas.

He spent, you know, the big globe thing, that big circle.

Oh, the sphere.

The sphere, thank you.

He went to that big concert DJ thing inside of there.

I saw, I saw footage of that too.

That was remarkable.

Okay, let's not justify the expense.

But yeah, yeah, it is expensive though.

It was expensive.

He went, had a good time and look, that's what he's paying for.

That's where his money's going.

He wants the experience, he wants it now.

Yeah, he, right now.

So look, I get it, you know, and if you feel a disenfranchised like you can't buy a home because the data we're going go over here shortly.

I'm not saying that I blame them.

Yeah, people need that dopamine.

Yeah, you need that little, little hit of dopamine.

I get that every time I walk in the house and see that big ass tv which we are going to talk about later at the end of the show.

Yeah.

So the housing market outlook we talked about Logan, he works for Housing Wire.

He's our chief economist, I believe Mota Shami I believe is his last name.

He's Iranian, nice guy.

We've debated a number of times.

He's all over cnbc.

If you watch the news, he's been on I think a couple local Los Angeles based news channels as well.

According to Logan, the current loan to value data in housing is at 46.6% down from nearly 85% during the housing bubble crash period.

And I've got a chart to show you that Loans loan to value.

The amount of money that people owe on their home versus how much it worth has gone down at a pretty visible 45 degree angle aside from some slight bips in the 2020 period where people started getting a little more cash out.

But that being said, as we covered on the show right now, more people have equity in their home today than ever before.

And Saeed was the one who first quoted this in the show.

I thought he was wrong.

We triple checked.

Combine that with 40% of Americans owning their home with no debt.

Yes.

You have got such a massive amount of wealth stockpiled in equity in homes.

Yes.

That's a great thing if you own a home.

It's a fantastic thing if you're in the retirement era, which a lot of These, you know, 40% of the population who own their home in cash are.

So there is clearly a tremendous amount of net worth there, but that younger generation isn't getting access to it because it's so expensive.

That's where that equity came from.

Valuation appreciation over time.

Mm.

So Logan has been a pundit saying that there is no way it's going to crash.

There is a deficit of supply coming into the markets.

We can argue housing inventories and supplies for a long time, but I thought we'd take a different tact based solely on values.

Let's forego the nuances of the.

Of the debate for this conversation.

Let's talk about the meaningful meat.

Let's have the ribeye.

Oh, the rib.

The best one.

Yeah.

The Hawaiian one, if you will.

So, conversely, real estate expert Nick Gurley, who you've heard us talk about from Reventure, warns of a potential housing bubble in the southern parts of the United States due to an oversupply of new homes, which could lead to a market correction.

Again, correction.

Less than a 20% change in value crash.

20% or more change in value in a single year?

Yes.

Okay.

Especially if a recession occurs.

Via his X account, he says that the value of homes in America since 1924 have gone nothing but up.

And there's going to be a chart here between said and I.

And, yeah, it has gone way the hell up.

Wow.

To give you an idea, in that span of time, the typical value of a house has gone from $6673 to approximately $356,654,000.

That's over a 4,000% appreciation number.

So student loan has gone up 1,700%.

Home prices have gone up 4,000%.

Wow.

That is a wild number.

And if you look at the chart, the majority of that home price appreciation has really happened from 1970 to where we are today.

So I just.

I just looked this up right now to something that I thought of and something that a coworker of ours put me on that made me Think about as well is perhaps some people that are not, not a majority, but some people that are continuing to work far later in.

In life has something to do with the fact that across the country there's approximately 27 states that reassess property values annually for their taxes.

Yeah.

Becoming more and more rare though a lot of states are California's Prop 13, where unless there's a change of vesting of ownership on title and you sell the property, transfer it to somebody else, usually a non related entity.

So if you transfer it to your, your own personal trust is usually okay.

Anything else outside of that kind of transfer would trigger a taxable event where they come out and reassess it.

Where they reassess it.

Yeah.

Otherwise taxes only go up around 2%, usually matches inflation.

It depends on the local market area.

But yeah.

Yeah.

But other states, I mean if it's getting reassessed and property values have gone up 45%.

Yeah.

Since pre pandemic levels.

So long term ownership is very much encouraged.

Yeah.

People, people did not plan for that when they were planning their retirement.

Yeah.

So that's a scary thought.

Something, something that you need to also account for.

Yeah.

And of course looking at the annual percentage growth chart year over year, in addition on property looks like this, you know, pretty much vertical hockey stick.

But when you take that chart and compare the annual percentage growth in each year as opposed to the cumulative number, like instead of your house goes up 10 one year plus another 5% the next year and up and up and up, you just look at how much it changed in an individual single year.

It's a lot less exciting.

But home prices have gone up an average of only 4.2% per year going back from the 1920s all the way to today.

Oh, because of that dip after in 2018?

Well, there's a number of years where it wasn't huge, but I mean effectively.

So to put this in context, you said earlier that we've seen a 45% appreciation in homes.

Remember how much, what year span that was?

Well, yeah, that was from pre pandemic till now.

So 2020 till now.

So approximately four full years.

Yeah.

Right.

You've seen 45% appreciation over time.

Historically, from 1920 until now, the average appreciation is 4.2%.

Right.

Take that with a grain of salt.

Yeah.

What does that mean over the last four years?

Exactly.

That means you've seen over 10 times the normal average growth going back literally a hundred years.

That 100 year look back in my mind is indicative.

And we as humans go oh my God.

It's a long time.

Could you think of all the generations, it's usually that's really only one today, human life.

Yeah.

From birth to death, about a hundred years, hopefully.

So we are seeing trends emerge that we think are well healed and known.

I love when people like debate the semantics of well, I was alive in the 70s and I was alive in the 80s, and I was alive in the 50s.

All good, dude.

But the economy as we know it today doesn't have as much data as we think it does.

A hundred years of data is not meaningful.

Right.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not.

You just need more data to really feel comfortable about it.

So let's, let's do a little experiment of another chart for this one.

In reality, all home prices do is track the rate of inflation, the average rate of inflation over time.

You can see an incredibly tight relationship between the inflation rate in the home price growth rate over time.

This relationship is essentially pronounced from the 1920s especially to the 1990s.

And why I bring this up and compare the two of them to show, and I should quote, this is a lot of Nick Gurley's work here.

Again, I'm just taking a little bit of his work and layering it in.

But I think it's very valuable.

Okay.

Is we all know that inflation is cumulative, right?

If inflation, if the inflation rate is 2% per year, that's what we're aiming for.

That's 2% growth every single year.

That's not deflationary.

Values are coming down.

Right.

It's disinflation.

Right.

We're seeing value, we're seeing the rate of inflation slow but still be positive.

Things generally cost more over time.

And just like the national debt, you keep having this increase, percentage increase over time, you wind up going vertical, which is where the national debt is, which is where home prices are, which is where inflation is.

Credit card debt.

Yeah.

So there is a problem here that is meaningful and real.

Another chart for you.

Inflation adjusted prices are at an index of nearly 300 today.

This from our, our boy Robert Schiller, who we talked about on episode 261.

The long term average index is around 150.

So going back literally 130 years, comparing home prices, okay.

Against inflation from 1890 to 2024, the average is an index number of about 150.

Only two times in history has any peak in prices like this occurred.

2006 and the pandemic, where we are at 3002006 in the pandemic this from a man, Robert Shiller, who's known for calling recessionary economies, who's known for calling bubbles and bursting and crashes.

His charts that he put together in response to this knowledge, which won him a Nobel Prize, Right.

They're, they're all screaming red warning signs right now.

Again, I'm not being a doomsday person.

I'm not saying crash.

I'm just saying these are data points.

Okay.

So it's, it's hard because you have, during those times we haven't seen the unemployment figures increase in such a way to where this would make it very alarming, right?

Not yet.

But you have to think that if, God forbid, the unemployment figures do move even a couple percentage points, right, all of this house of cards can come crumbling down fast.

And I haven't even touched on the CMBS bubble that's out there, which probably touch on in a future episode.

But the commercial mortgage backed securities market is, I mean especially in the office space sector, it is really volatile right now and there are some alarming trends there we can get into in a different show.

But I want to wrap this up for context and give you some, all some thoughts before we talk about some personal financial decisions that I've made that Sayed wants to make fun of me for.

What the housing market was far was for most of the last 100 plus years, okay, it was an asset class that directly tracked the long term rate of inflation.

Inflation moved up, housing prices went up and household income growth.

Those three things, inflation, household income growth and housing prices were always tied.

More money people made, the bigger the home they bought, right?

The more things cost, the more homes cost.

These are all just kind of intertwined.

But something along the way broke and I don't know, and I don't think anybody knows for sure where that is.

But what's become the last 20 years, at least it seems from the data, is that a volatile asset class that is becoming increasingly decoupled from fundamentals is what you're getting in the housing market.

So I think the problem that you have with people on both sides of the spectrum of like the Logans of the world who believe that housing is going to go up next year, there's a shortage of supply versus the Nick Girlies of the world that says there's, there's an issue here, there's a problem with the housing market.

I think the problem is, is that some people like Logan's are looking, looking at the fundamentals that these things behave in a certain way.

And what Nick Gurley is trying to say, without responding this way, he's trying to point out other data points and say, hey, I hear what you're saying, but look at all these other warning signs he's trying to say is disconnected to the fundamentals.

Right.

I'm not saying that anybody shouldn't buy a home if they, if they need to, frankly, if you can afford to buy a home, buy a home.

It's never a bad time to buy.

But we're also seeing an increasing number of people that bought homes in the last two or three years hoping that rates are going to come down because all the realtors and people around them that were financially savvy said date the rate, marry the home.

They bought a home hoping that rates would come down and they would be able to reduce their payment in the next couple of years because the Fed was going to cut rates.

We'll be able to manage.

We'll be able to manage.

We'll manage.

We'll manage.

And then, then the rates never came down to the point where they needed it to.

They went up.

The Fed cut 100 basis points.

Mortgage rates went up 100 basis points.

We are now higher today than we were to start the year.

That's a big misconception that we talk about on the show.

When the Fed decides to change their monetary policy does not impact mortgage rates directly.

It impacts the bond market and then the bond market.

It influences the bond market and then the bond market actually impacts mortgage rates.

And I, it's so frustrating to have this continual conversation over and over and over again with people who really believe that that's going to happen.

Right.

They don't understand the nexus of the Fed funds is not what influences mortgage rates.

Yeah.

And if you're wondering why what happened recently, you can, you can, you can blame a lot of what happened to mortgage rates with the fact that when the Fed came out and said, you know, in, in their last December meeting, we're not going to be cutting rates as much as we thought we were going to next year.

Okay.

That, in that influenced the bomb market and people started reacting differently.

And then that's where the 10 year decided, decided to stay where it was because now you, there's an even greater level of uncertainty with what's going to happen long term.

So before we go into the, the poppy culture section, because we're crossing into that hour, Mark, I do want to, I want to leave with some positive takeaways because a lot of this stuff can be very negative to some people.

I want people to reframe the narrative that they see on social media and that they tell themselves more important than social media, frankly, is what you believe.

Right.

Young adults today in the 20s and 30s, they're harder on themselves than they should be.

And I do this to myself a lot.

I still do it, so I get it.

But they are in a financially stronger position than they feel that they are, than they think that they are.

Mm.

So understanding the shift in mindset, I know you can't buy a home.

That's not your fault.

The economy's in a terrible place for you to buy a home.

I don't care what social media says.

I don't care what economists say.

That's the truth.

It's difficult.

It's hard.

It's harder now than it's ever been in history.

I don't care if it was 18 in 1981.

Okay.

The world is a different landscape, but their net worth is higher and they're making more.

It's true.

And look, you're not.

I actually have a cousin that has said these exact words to me that said, I can afford to buy a home right now, but I will choose to not be house poor.

Yeah.

And that.

That's a part about real estate ownership that I think is.

Is not talked about enough on social media.

And I try my hardest not to be that person.

But you and I have seen it a million and one times over the course of the last 10, 10 plus years.

Is that a lot of people who own real estate have a light liquidity position.

They just continue to reinvest into real estate.

Yeah.

And they build up cash flow over time.

And they reinvest and reinvest and reinvest.

And that's all good if you got a day job.

But a lot of real estate investors don't.

And they're just waiting to pull out equity in their properties.

And that's kind of a game on some level that I don't recommend that most people play.

Another thing I want to encourage before we move on from the section is actionable steps.

We provide actionable steps on the show all the time.

How to Save Money, how to build Wealth, S and P index 500 funds, which we should talk about another show.

I think now is if there's any time I was concerned about investing the Index 500 funds, I would say now.

Is probably the time you'd be concerned about doing it.

Yeah.

Because if.

And I thought I was thinking about this over the weekend.

If The S P500 is carried largely by the Magnificent Seven and it outperforms I think we should do a show explaining why if one of the Mag 7 falls, you could see dramatic changes in your.

In your S P500 fund.

Right.

But do not get what Chris said.

Don't get it confused with pulling your money out.

No, no, no, no.

Not suggesting that at all.

That's not, that's it.

It's whatever you have in there, you would still leave in there.

Yeah.

And let it, let it go through its cycle.

I would say if, to be specific, if it were me and we talked about my investment strategy with funds earlier, I would go into a non S&P 500, maybe like an emerging markets index fund or something like the low cost ending fund like that just to, just to kind of hedge a little bit against the current S and P world because I think it's at a bit of a high, it might correct a little bit and then I go back into that normalized investment over time.

Yeah, absolutely.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

And also for me personally, I don't.

I'm not spread out across so many different funds as maybe somebody like Chris.

Right.

But the, the three funds that I am spread out across it, I continue to dollar cost average and I'm just going to ride the wave for me personally.

Right.

Which because it's just less mental gymnastics.

That I have, I just think about eking out a little little extra more over time.

But look, I don't want any of the things that we say on the show to suggest that people should not enjoy life and have those experiences in lieu of their ability to buy a home.

I think you should try to plan for both.

But I also think that you should.

You should what?

Enjoy some experiences.

Enjoy some experiences.

Making some bad financial decisions might be.

A self serving argument at the moment.

Sounds a little self serving, bro.

The timing of it is compelling.

I will say that.

Look, you got it.

You gotta, you gotta analyze what it is you do and what you appreciate and how you spend your time.

Okay, so what site is alluding to what I kind of alluded to the top of the show is I made a dumbass financial decision recently and I'm gonna be full open kimono here.

I wear kimonos at home.

You don't.

No, no, no kimonos.

I love it.

Yeah, the best.

Just boxers.

Oh, classy.

Yeah, boxers and belly buttons.

There you go.

So I made the mistake of going to Costco with your boy Hugo.

You went to go buy gift cards.

And of course I do what I do when I walk in.

Oh, look at the TVs, it's a dangerous place.

They're so big and bright and colorful.

Yeah.

And I look at the TVs and I'm just like, I'm aroused.

Have to be.

You know, it's easy.

I'm intrigued.

I'm engaged.

I want one.

When was the last time you were inside of a Costco?

I tried not to go at all times.

I know.

I try so hard not.

It's the devil during Christmas time.

It's the worst.

All the cool toys are there.

All there?

Yeah.

On display.

Doing cool toy shit.

Yeah.

Like, you know, and it's just like, damn it.

And then you see that some asshole pick one up, you're like, fuck, you're not better than me.

Yeah, I know.

I make more than you, motherfucker.

I'm gonna buy one too.

I saw the way you looked at me when you picked it up.

So I, I don't.

The first time I, you know, I went to Costco, I didn't think anything of it.

Right.

And Hugo didn't want to wait in line to get the gift cards.

There was a big ass line at like the Rack that you go to get the gift cards after you pay for them at Costco.

So whatever.

But I was like, damn, those TVs are really sharp compared to mine.

And I hadn't really thought about my TV.

Now you know that I bought my TV in 2012, was 2011 model.

So it's only 1080.

Right.

But it's been on the wall.

It's 70 inch flat screen.

LED back in time.

It was sharp.

It was a fantastic tv.

Don't have any issues with it whatsoever.

I know.

You know movies are shot in 1080.

Yeah.

I do some editing for the podcast.

Don't put that out there.

We shoot this in 1080, but I upstream to 4k.

Better appreciate that.

That 4k hit that like button.

Yeah.

So we go back a second time and he actually buys the gift cards and I'm again, look at these TVs.

And of course I decide I'm going to be a smart asshole.

Okay.

I'm Gonna go to ChatGPT and ask it about these TVs.

Which one's the best one?

Stupid question to ask ChatGPT.

Really?

Because apparently and I didn't know this Costco stocks like year old tech, so they have like the Sony Bravia 8 line, but they don't really have a Sony Bravia 9 line which is their most current line.

But that, that's your middle tier product.

They have a, a 95L QLED, bro.

I don't.

It's.

It's like a whole different language, right?

But it explains to me that they tier $5,000 TV at 77 inches, that would fit approximately maybe in my space.

You don't even know if it's going to fit yet.

I don't even know if it's going to fit.

It probably won't.

No, my l, it won't.

But I'm going to shoehorn that batch that, that in there figured out.

Is it going to be delivered or.

No, no, hold on, hold on, hold on.

So I can't justify spending $5,000 on a TV.

I can't do it.

It's.

That's a tough pill to swallow.

So I'm.

I'm going to be again, transparent with you that I decided that I could not justify spending more than maybe 1500 bucks on a television.

But I know I couldn't get any of the TVs that I want for that much.

Okay?

So after spending two weeks of research and going back and forth and thinking about it and deciding whether I want it or not, I came to a stupid ass decision.

Wait, so wait, what?

How did you prompt Chad GBT to make this decision for you?

I looked up models of televisions.

Okay, okay, because I know you told me you use it as a decision tree.

I did.

I did.

Because I'm a sick bastard.

I.

Because my wife don't want to talk.

To me about this.

Get the TV.

Don't get the TV.

Shut up.

Yeah, yeah, I'd rather pay $5,000 to not have this conversation.

Does it show us pretty pictures?

All right, fine.

My wife doesn't care.

So I said, look, okay, here's a space, took photos of it, measured it, told ChatGPT, Will this fit?

And said, maybe you got a 90 probability of it fitting.

I'm good with that.

Okay.

ChatGPT smarter than me.

We'll see.

It's 20 pounds lighter, you know, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

And then I said, then I went into the whole financials and it says, well, if you're not gaming, which I'm not, and you watch generally in brighter environments, you can go with the cheaper.

But I would generally watch in darker environments because we watch at night, my wife and I, we watch television a lot.

So I finally was like, chatgpt, what would you do if you were me?

ChatGPT gave me these politically correct answers, if you want a better experience, blah, blah, blah.

And then it dropped.

Just some beautiful logic on me.

Oh, Chad GPT, not me.

Your last TV you purchased in 2012 is a 2011 model.

You've had it for at least 12 years.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Right.

The technology in it is a bit outdated, but you don't want to buy a TV today that doesn't have the latest and greatest if you keep TVs this long.

So I'm like, okay, chat GPT.

I see where you're going.

All right, then chat GBT says, do you have points?

I'm like, oh, yeah, I got American Express points.

Yeah.

So I use $4,000 worth of American Express points, like half a million points to pay for most of tv.

Okay.

And I wound up paying fifteen hundred dollars out of pocket.

So you did pay fifteen hundred.

So I paid fifteen hundred for the tv.

This is boy math.

This is boy girl math.

Yeah, boy math.

My wife's like, that's vacation money.

No, it's not, but.

So I use MX points for it, and I bought a stupid top of the line.

When does it come in?

Monday or Tuesday, I think.

Wow.

Monday the 6th or Tuesday?

7th.

Now, does the bracket that you currently have on the wall, is it gonna be able to support this?

So the current TV, the Sharp, is 20 pounds heavier than the new one coming in, even though it's 7 inches bigger.

Small.

7 inches.

It's not big.

Yeah, but it's.

So I thought it was 75 inch we had on the wall.

Apparently it's a 70 inch, but the bezels are bigger.

It's gonna make a big difference.

Big difference.

It's gonna be ridiculous.

So this would probably be a really shit time to do this, but I'm gonna need some help.

Put it on the fucking wall.

Yeah, I would love.

I would love to.

And I'm at the point now in my life where I would totally think that paying 250 bucks for somebody to do it for me is worth it.

Just to bolt it in and put it up there.

Because I don't want to die.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, an extra 250 bucks.

Unless you want to come over the house and do it.

Yeah, I'll do it.

I've done.

I've hung a lot of TVs.

The Mount's already on there.

I just gotta put in the back of the TV and lift it up and it's wired.

It got that.

It has the outlet right behind it.

It's already done.

Oh, easy.

Yeah, let's do it.

You've seen.

You've been in my house.

You know this?

No.

And I haven't checked behind your tv.

Bro.

Yeah, I didn't hang that one.

I got the whole thing.

I didn't hang that one.

Here's the problem, though, is I think we got to move the mount.

It's on rails, so it goes left and right.

I gotta move it over to the right and tilt it more because it'll work.

See, this is the kind of.

That's kind of attitude I need.

It's that can do attitude.

Yeah.

My wife's like, you gotta get mine.

That's never gonna fit.

I'm like, listen, baby, we're gonna find a way.

We're gonna find a way.

Yeah.

Do you believe in magic?

I have so many inappropriate jokes that I can make.

And I hope you do always have a friend wearing off white shoes.

After.

After what we did on the last episode, I felt like I did an amazing job of tailoring it back a little bit.

I know it's very tasteful.

Keeping it.

I can't not stay tasteful.

Stay tasty.

I must have watched that.

That's a T shirt, bro.

I must have watched that clip like 6,000 times.

My wife still doesn't get it.

Yeah, I know.

I should have.

I showed that one, too.

She didn't get it either.

You don't understand.

You don't understand.

Yeah.

And, yeah, it's fine.

Yeah, I'm okay.

But I'm okay with it.

I enjoyed it.

Well, good show.

It was a wonderful show.

I think it spoke to a lot of people, and it should.

It should hopefully make people feel comfortable in that you're not alone.

And congratulations, brother.

You crossed over the 30,000sub mark on you.

30,000.

Congrats to all the listeners for helping us get there.

Only four of them actually comment, but, you know, it's fine.

It's fine.

Yeah, we do.

We appreciate every single one of you that have helped support the show, helped grow the show.

And now let's get this bitch to 40,000.

Yeah.

There you go.

Come on.

Can just enjoy the 30,000 for a little bit?

No.

All right.

On the up and up, baby.

Got anything else?

Nope.

Let's call it.

All right, brother.

It was nice after a week and a half.

Two weeks.

Two weeks.

Close.

Okay, bye.

Good night, everybody.