#17 Sheldon Marcelline

In this episode Matt and Sheldon discuss remote work, careers & retirement, finances, HR benefits, real estate, subscriptions, corporate profit models, facing financial adversity, leadership, future generations, education, tech & innovation, policy, politics, taxes, veteran life, conspiracies, investing, and much more!

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Divergent thinking is a thought process used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing, nonlinear manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent cognitive fashion. Many possible solutions are explored in a short amount of time and unexpected connections are drawn. Welcome to minds and formation. Alright, welcome back in the flesh, bro. Let's go, let's go. I guess so used to us doing our our remote ones. I'm like, oh snap, we got an in-person joint. I'm like, man, it's like a but when you kind of look at it that way, it's like, oh, I mean, we at work we do teams, right? So it's like, oh man, you can actually do everything that you need to do. You know, I mean, human-to-human connection and you know, being here and looking at this person and talking to them is always gonna trump all that, but you can still do those type of things and meetings and and you know, engagements via all these things that became popular, especially during the COVID era with the Zooms and the Teams. And sometimes it kills me, right? That especially, you know, at our job, it's like, oh, I'm coming to work to sit in a cubicle, to get on a Teams meeting that I probably could have did this meeting at home. So it's kind of weird that way. Uh when a lot of things, especially, you know, we work with a lot of entities that's outside of our building, you know, that I'm doing this thing digitally anyway. Why do I have to sit here and kind of kind of do that? So I know it's funny, especially in our organization, because you know, it's a problem that we're all aware of that there's a there's a bit of an issue with stove piping and people kind of just operating independently. So it's like there's not a lot of great face-to-face collaboration that's necessarily happening anyway. So it is kind of silly. It's like most of the jobs in that building w should be hybrid out of out of miniature. Yeah, you know, but you're just dragging everyone's ass in every day for what? I mean, I don't really know. Yeah. And man, uh, you know, what really kind of when it really kind of struck me, when that struck me, is when I tore my Achilles and I was out and it put me on telework, and you know, I had my computers at home and everything, and I was like, I could do 90% of what I was doing in the building here. So it's kind of like you know, kind of seeing what was behind the curtain. Like, I could do most of my stuff from the house or whatever. But I had this kind of epiphany of like my sister being retired now and not, you know, trying to figure out what to do on the daily. I mean, I got school-aged children, so I always got something to do with as far as their care and care and feeding is concerned. But it's like work is like an adult daycare. But you get but you get paid, right? So it's like you go in there, obviously you go in there with a purpose for what you're getting paid for and what you, you know, you signed your acceptance letter for, but it's the place where you go and you have your social interactions, you know, me and you obviously we cube from each other, so having our, you know, our socializing, you know, what they call it, you know, water cooler talk and things like that. So, you know, now kind of being out almost I'll be a year in August. So kind of being out, I see why folks go back to work and like can't take it, can't take it. You know, lucky for me, I again I got school-aged children, so that keeps me pretty busy, but I see that they probably missing those, you know, those social connections outside of your spouse or whoever lives in your home that you know a lot of people's identity is wrapped around work. Oh yeah, especially ex-military people. I think I think that community, I mean, I think a lot of people are tied to their career, but maybe that community a little bit even more so because people have been running and gunning for 20 years, and then just to go back and sit down and and be peaceful, I think, is is really hard for a lot of folks. And you know, and I know even you know, no matter what, going to work, you know, at you know, where we worked at or even when we worked prior prior to, it's like I know no matter how I felt that day, I was gonna go in. Something was gonna make something's gonna make me laugh. It's gonna be some drama going on or whatever. So it's gonna be something that's gonna be entertaining, you know, entertaining outside of you know my primary, primary function there. And I never hated going to work. I mean, I never hated being at work, except for them slow days. Some of them slow days, you like kind of clock watching or whatever, but when we kind of rock them and sock them, like I love being there. But I know it was the getting to work, getting up, going to do this again. Yeah, here we go. But once I kind of get it, get in, I'm locked in, and you know, I always know that somebody's gonna is gonna be a conversation in there, you know, that's a casual conversation about something, and you're gonna be there. It's kind of you know, we we have kind of have a relaxed environment too. So it's like, all right, you're gonna be there with your buds and you're gonna talk shit during the day and get your dab done and go home and then do it all again tomorrow. So 100%. I mean, that's one of the only things that keeps me going at this point because I'm I'm not super passionate about the mission or the job or anything. You know, I've been doing it for a long time. So I'm like, it's just it's the same old thing. But the the homies that we have there, the little circle, like I love those guys, you know, and and and they they mean a lot to me. If it wasn't for them, I don't think I'd be able to stomach it. I'd I'd be going looking to figure something else out. But but yeah, I mean you kind of alluded to it, but I was wondering, you know, how how is it going being completely free from work? You know, you're staying busy with the the family and whatnot, but uh I can only imagine there's still large chunks of time where you're like, I could do whatever I want. So what do you what do you plug into those white spaces? So obviously, you know, kind of the podcast thing. So obviously that's kind of you know social there. You know, I'm a big finance guy, so now I get to kind of look at finance all day and look, you know, kind of see what everybody's talking about and everything like that. So that's kind of I I look at finance and financial news. That's kind of like my soap opera, and it is something different every day. So that kind of keeps me entertained. Again, obviously kids, kids in sports and everything like that. So that's kind of that's a big chunk of time. Have my another son in college right now, so you know, I have one car right now, so I've been taking him back and forth. You know, we're about 20 minutes from his. He owned community college, so he's about 20 minutes from that. So kind of drop him off, do my thing. So that's right now, really working a bunch of kind of side endeavors, right? Getting, you know, just getting my my trading plans down for finance, you know, looking at what do I want to, because I'm looking for probably next. Um, you know, when you go to Army ACS and then you do, you know, somebody come help you with a budget and all that stuff. So I'm looking to get that certification as accredited financial financial counselor or coach, counselor, or whatever, the AFC search. So that's probably my next goal in there. So it's really that's like, where do I want to pivot? I know I don't want to go back to IT, but I do, I wouldn't throw away all the 26 years of military training. I I can focus those efforts and that discipline to to something else, something that I'm gonna hopefully enjoy, you know, kind of doing, even if it's for free, right? That's it, enjoy doing. So I'm really just kind of switching my focus. So I mean, I'm at I'm in El Paso now, so I love El Paso, actually. I like, you know, I didn't know what to expect about it, but it's a nice, it's a nice little town or whatever. People nice, everybody kind of, you know, neighbors good. But but it again, I see why people go back because that's hard to find that if you if if work was your purpose the whole time, it's hard to kind of pivot and kind of find find your purpose. And you know, only time I'm uh I joke, the only time I miss work is on Fridays when that check doesn't hit, you know, that never deposit doesn't hit or whatnot. But but I think that's where everybody needs to start kind of thinking about. I I'm talking, even if you span on staying your job for up teen years or whatnot, you need to everybody needs a social outlet or something that they're passionate about. If it's your job, then fine. But most people it's probably not that they, you know, something creative, especially in this current society where creativity is becoming, you know, is kind of going away because everybody's kind of creating via AI tools and everything like that. So, you know, whether it's gardening and hobbies. So I think the the art of the hobby, you know, is loss of a lot of people because and I get it now that I see because a lot of people don't have time. I don't have time to, you know, knit or I don't have time to do, you know, so people don't have time to read now, right? Oh, I read all day at work, I'm not gonna sit, you know, lay and read or read a book. So a lot of people need to, let me say a lot of people need to, right? That's kind of I would urge everybody to kind of get back to a hobby that brings them, brings them joy because the money comes and goes, man. And a lot of people get wrapped around the money axle. You know, I used to talk to you at the job. I'm like, yo, I think I'm being greedy, man. Like, like, man, how much is enough? Like, I'm making a lot of money right now. And I'm like, how much is enough though? I don't, you know, it's cool. It's cool. I mean, it's a little flex too, right? It's a little flex, you know. But it's like, how much, you know, how much is it enough? And then it's a certain of it's a certain amount of money that doesn't really change your life. I don't think I want to talk numbers here or whatever, but a certain number six figures to a certain number six figures doesn't change your life a lot. You might upgrade your flight, you know, you might get a stay at a better hotel or something like that, but it doesn't change super duper change your life or whatever. So uh I was talking to one of my sons, I'm like, you know, I'll show him the numbers, right? Here's where we are. I don't think low six figures, you probably don't get another lifestyle change to probably about 500,000 or something like that. Anything from the ones to the 250s to the to the threes, you kind of it's all the same. Yeah, yeah, they're the same. And it's it's the old cliche too about money and happiness, right? And it's and I think as you make more, you you realize that, you know, it's like, well, I still got the same problems, I still wake up feeling shitty sometimes or have poor sleep or whatever, you know. I'm still the grind is still essentially the same. But it's like you said, you know, like, oh, maybe you can get a business class seat on a plane, or you can take an extra few days of vacation a year, but your life is predominantly the same. Like yeah, I think the only difference now is I I I I think before I swipe, like, okay, well, uh, you know, you know, I I stick a little more to the budget. Uh and I, you know, I debt free save my, I ain't gonna say save my life, but it made me be able to do things. I didn't have to do things in a panic, right? When it came to like a divorce, right? I didn't have to panic about it because I know, you know, it's just gonna be a split of money. I could get it back, right? A split of money, but I don't have any debt that I need to worry about. I don't have to worry about selling a house and doing everything like that. We didn't have any big mutual assets together or whatever, you know, lost a little retirement, lost a little pension or whatever. Lost stuff a buffalo. Lost TSP, you know, whatever, but I mean, it's cool or whatnot. But and you know, my son has passed away too, right? But with that happening, you know, it wasn't, even though it was out of nowhere, I didn't have a bunch of burdens in the background. So we was able to, hey, pack stuff up. You know, come on now, gotta get six people from Texas to Philly on a last-minute, you know, a last-minute ticket or whatever. But again, not having the financial stress of super debt. I don't have any debt, but being in debt, you know, was allow me to, you know, come back up here, you know, take care of everything with his placing everything up here or whatever, get back to Texas, pack everybody up, get everybody to um Philly, you know, honor them the way, you know, and and friend was not cheap. Uh so I do want to I do wanna uh note. So everybody who, you know, who listens to this, you gotta I you gotta check your paperwork. And I think the military does a good job of that with the you know SRP process and the the the periodic records review and everything like that. And I jacked up with that because I didn't, after I left the job, I kind of stopped doing it. I was kind of floating around. And when my son passed away, I was like, oh man, he was 24, going on 25. He was still, I was like, oh, he's probably still covered underneath my rider. So I called the, I called my insurance. I was like, hey, you know, you know, apologi you know, of course they're gonna be apologetic and everything. But I was like, hey, I'm trying to check that is my son still on my rider because we got a funeral coming up. So they pulled up the files. They're like, nah, he just he just he just aged out. Damn. Yeah, he just aged out. And I'm like, damn. And that was my and uh that's whole wholeheartedly on me. Because even when he got his adult job, because he worked here at Lockheed, right? When he got his adult job, I never told him, hey man, when you go to HR, pay attention. Pay attention and make sure you sign up for this, this, that, or the third, and you know, at your age or whatever. So yeah, so I ended up having to pay for the funeral out of pocket. So again, not having the debt was like, okay, I could pull something from somewhere and just pay for it or whatever, and this, you know, and just rebuild, rebuild that thing back, right? Or whatever. So, you know, debt is the I'm just an anti-dept person, and uh, and you know, that's kind of also allowed me to walk away from the job because I, you know, I already knew what was I bringing in prior to the job, doing the job. So I know if I walked away, my lifestyle is not gonna change, change drastically. So it's like apparently like old Dave Ramsey does know at least a thing or two, right? You know, you start with those basics. Yeah, everybody give, you know, I think it's a popular thing right now to go against Dave Ramsey. And again, some of his advice, I get it. I get it in this day and age, he's kind of giving advice from the from his era of things. And I mean, you're talking about a guy who has real estate and has all these, you know, educational or the educational program and you know, that probably brings some money every day. You probably hit her, you know, hit her register ringing a book sale or something like that, or you're getting some type of affiliate thing, etc. But if you take away all, take away everything, take away everything and take away the credit card thing and everything that you probably disagree with when it comes to that seven baby steps, it works. It's pretty solid. If you eliminate your debt, save up a little, you know, emergency fund, and then start working on your investments or whatever, you're gonna be good. Yeah. And you know, even with that, that's why I take his advice on, you know, like I talk to him, right? But I listen to his show, so I kind of just text him real quick. Hey Dave, I just retired. What should I do right now? But that's what I took as advice because he always used to say a lot of people get hung up around the seven baby steps, but never, and and I like listen to it for the calls, because if somebody else is jacking up with their finances, let me hear your mistakes. So I don't gotta make the same mistakes or whatever. But he said something and a lot of people kind of overlooked us. He said, Hey, your first real estate, get a paid for, get a paid for real estate. Once that starts cash flowing, if you want to keep going, keep going or whatever. So that's what I did. I got a uh cashed out, bought a house, and then rented it out or whatever. So my and what on the military side, I think I could always, I always, but you see the the you see the ease of life when everything is paid for. I don't know if you ever lived on posts or not, but you live on posts, everything is paid for, you ain't got no bills coming to the house, etc. So once your once your shelter is taken care of, that leaves a lot of opportunity and leeway to, you know, a lot of stress off of you to do, you know, the things that you that you want to do. But that housing, you don't want to, you know, that thing that's people where it's fair is to be homeless, right? So but once you got that taken care of, your your aperture opens up a lot of you know things that you you can and and want to do or whatnot. So right now, I use myself as an example. My rental pays or I'm renting right now in El Paso. Didn't plan on being El Paso, but I'm there. Um so my rental right now pays for my house in El Paso, so that zeroes me out right there, and then everything I get, you know, from you know, serving so long takes care of everything else. So yeah. Yeah, it's a pretty clutch situation to be in. And military guys got a great opportunity, and I've I've seen some dudes take advantage of it as well, people that are kind of savvy with this stuff. But you know, you heard hear about these guys, you know, you PCS every three, four years or whatever it is, and some of these cats have really done it the right way where they're buying a house at each location, maintaining it, and renting it out. So that by the time they retire, they got four or five properties underneath their belt. Now they're like, I'm looking to buy, you know, a small apartment complex or something. And you literally can do whatever the hell you want from that point. Yeah, and you know, I think, you know, obviously being military retired to pension, that's a sweet that you know, that pension hits every month. That's sweet, right? You're like, oh man, wow. Like it's like magic money that show showing up. So it's the golden parachute. Exactly. So what people don't realize, like you're really looking for, you know, no, not to sound all, you know, hey, finance bro, and you know, and kiosaki and all these folks or whatever, but cash flow is really the key, right? You want to make sure that you have, you know, most people's cash flow is their bi-weekly check. Yeah, but you're you're working for that. So, you know, and especially the days we gone. I mean, I think we just talked about it on text messages, right? The days of you know, the 7, 10%, you know, in the market, people ain't looking for that anymore. They look like, yo, hold on. This this is weird. In April, this stock that went up 100, 200% already. Like, why am I why is my you know, 401k or my, you know, X, you know, pick your whatever HR told you to sign up for? Why is this thing only up five percent or six percent or whatever? So people aren't happy with Vu and Chill anymore. Nah, yeah, like I need that. Hold on, man. Then now it's sensate and it's sensationalized right now, man. I'm gonna switch gears a little bit, but man, we we done became a gambling society, man. And I I don't even remember we had a conversation in reference to the polymarket thing. This is when it was first kind of bubbling up. When we ate when to go eat pizza when I was here last time or whatever, and I brought up, man, I'm like, yo, you're gonna be able to bet on every and anything. Anything you can think of. So it's everything, but all that stuff, it's departure from your dollar. So everything that's all these products that's coming out right now, it's departure from your dollar. I just seen the news the other day that that Zuckelberg said he's gonna, they're they're doing a tear of like Instagram and Facebook where it's like a paid tear. I'm like, man, we done had this thing for free for 20 years. Like, what is a paid tear? Like, we give you all our data. Like now you want us to pay you for to steal our data and and target ass to us and everything like that. You know, it's probably more advantageous to small businesses and everything like that, but everything is becoming a subscription. And this is that's really this. Every time I see somebody announce a Apple just did it with their creator tools, subscription, Adobe, you know. You used to go and you used to go find a bootleg Photoshop, you know. You used to go find a bootleg Photoshop and does, you know, have Photoshop cards. I saw her. I haven't actually seen it yet, but I watched some videos, I'm like, yeah, are they charging you to all these extra features? So like I bought this truck, I got like a fairly new Toyota, and I didn't fully pay attention to some of the stuff when they were explaining it when I first got it. They were just like, Yeah, you have an app on your phone, it'll like locate your truck, remote start, you know, all this, all these cool features, you know, get all warmed up in the winter. So you go out there and you just hit the road, you're ready to go. But all of that shit was on trial. So you got a like a one-year trial, and then any of those features that you want to keep, then it's a subscription on top of that. And I've heard about cases, I haven't really dove into it, but it going even further for you able for you to be able to actually use some of the features within your vehicle. And then people go off on you know, these rabbit holes, these memes, and be like, yeah, it's gonna be subscription for cruise control, a subscription to you know, get better quality lights, like you have like everything, you know. It's like you're saying like they're gonna try to find a way to suck up a little more money money every month. Nah, but it goes right back to what I just said. It's cash flow, right? If I have you on a subscription, let's take the Netflix model, right? If I Netflix, let's do simple math. If I have X number of users at this tier that's paying this, I know every month, you know, what that revenue is gonna be. Alright. So everybody is stiff, uh, stealing or you know, copying a Netflix model. And I get it, you know, shareholder value, blah blah blah, or whatever, but you know, this this subscription stuff gotta stop because you got the subscription stuff gonna go on, you're gonna subscribe to everything. You ain't gonna own a damn thing. And then you got the and now this token thing is just getting crazy too. Like even with ChatGBT, I was using it, I was using the free version. I was um, I was doing some some coding on it or whatever, and I reached the end. It was like, oh yeah, you you you you reach the end of this model, you know, we'll bump you down a tear of a model, or you could go ahead and sign up, you know, sign up for plus. I signed up for plus, but I get to a degree, but it's like when they start trying to throw out subscriptions for stuff that was typically free, again, like car features or even Instagram. I'm like played paid platform, like get the fuck out of here, dude. I'm not playing this game. Yeah, everything is gonna be subscription based, and and until I always say all these corporations are gonna they're gonna they're do it until it hurts them. Yeah, right? They don't care about hurting the the common person, they're gonna do it till it till it hurts them. So if I, you know, everybody, oh grocery's so expensive, okay. We still paying it. So guess what? Yeah. I'm hey, I'm charging this price for beef. Well, I know there's a whole bunch of, you know, that's a commodity. So it has a lot of things behind the supply chain of beef. So I get it, you know, if it goes up and down or whatever. But let's take a restaurant then. Let's take a restaurant. Let's take the the grocery store out of it. If I bump up my burger, I bump up my steak to two more bucks, and people are still buying it. I'm going to, I'm not going to go back down. Yeah, man. I mean, you see, McDonald's has got hooked up. Like McDonald's, everybody started kind of, you know, crying. No, man, it's crying. Let me not use that word. Everybody started kind of voicing their concerns that, hey, when McDonald's gets so expensive, I could go to a restaurant versus coming coming here or whatever. So they started panicking, you know, that that stock started going down. Guess what they brought back? Hey, let's bring back the value, the value menu. And hey, come on back in. You know, we got a $5 meal for you. Come on, we're gonna, we're gonna meet you where you at. We're gonna provide something for all, you know, all price points or whatever, you know, because they know that once people, once the once people get in an uproar and that bad PR, come on, everything is PR now, right? Because I could get on my phone right now and bash a company and like and somebody will say, no, I'm not going there. Like if that was his experience, I'm not gonna go there. So all that bad PR, you know, via social media, you don't want you don't want that in your life. But um But just like you said, it's like the only thing that matters is shareholder value. It's like the army, you know. Anybody who's been in the military knows you do all these PowerPoints. The only thing that matters when you're briefing the commander, whether it's your training slides, whatever, you just need to have everything be green, right? You can't be anything else on there. These companies are just operating the exact same way. If profit profits are coming in and the numbers are good, that's all that matters. Anything else is a footnote. Yeah. But in order to keep going up and to the right, you gotta crank it a little more. You either gotta have a new offering or you gotta crank it a little more. Hey, let's crank it, crank it some more, right? Until you're gonna crank it until it breaks. And then you're gonna either back it down a little bit, have a new offering, offer a new product, a service, or something like that. But you, you know, a publicly traded company job is to go up and to the right. If you're not doing that, you're gonna you're gonna you better figure it out. I I I feel for people too. I think I was talking about this on the the last last episode I put out, but you know, I'm a person that like I'm comfortable. I'm not bawling out or anything, but I'm comfortable, I'm good to go. So I don't have to worry too much. I mean, I'm still like, what the fuck's going on with these gas prices, right? But I just think about all the people that are struggling, you know, and just trying to pay the bills, just living check to check with how expensive things just and it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. I'm like, bro, like there's gonna be some sort of breakdown at some point. There's gonna be some sort of chaos that's going to ensue once you get enough people that are desperate. Yeah. I don't know. Is it just history repeating itself? Because I'm pretty sure in the 80s, 70s, 80s, 90s, I think folks. I think folks just really just all right. I'm going from beef to chicken. Like people just kind of adjust, right? Adjust to the times that they're in and in the in the in the situation that they're in or whatnot. So 100%. Like, yeah, you're gonna adjust, you gotta do what you gotta do to survive. But now we're in this period where I think the the information's out there, right? People are just much more aware of what is going on. Because if there was a financial crisis in the 80s, you would just listen to your nightly news or check out the newspaper, and you'd be like, well, I guess this is just what's going on. Where now, you know, you have the the wealth of information across the internet and things are more transparent. So people are just asking a lot of questions as well. Like, not only is everything expensive, and I and like, you know, the little guy feels like he's getting fucked over, but then you just find out that there's fraud, waste, and abuse everywhere, there's fake, you know, Somali daycares, there's endless amounts of money flowing to fucking Israel and Ukraine and all these other things. What is it? We're giving millions of dollars every week to the fucking Taliban still. Hey, we got a fund for if you storm the capital, we're gonna give you some money. Right. So yeah, is that that's a man, it's a slap in the face of the citizen sometimes, a lot of times, right? You know, and you know, we kind of started off talking about investing and stuff like that, but it's hard to if you don't have any discretionary, I guess that's discretionary, right? Discretionary income, it's hard to invest. Like, dude, I got you know, everybody gonna say, oh, but you fractional shares and this, that, and a third, it's still not that easy. It's that easy to do, but if you're really budget constrained, budget constrained, nobody's kind of thinking about, nobody's thinking about investing or whatever. Especially if you're late to the game. I mean, I saw a number the other day that was kind of terrifying, but it was like the amount of like 55-year-olds that didn't have any sort of retirement account or plan or anything, and I was like, holy shit, that's crazy. So I talked to everybody, you know, I'm kind of contradicting myself because I didn't tell my son to do this, but again, I I went through it when I first I used to work at University of Pennsylvania Hospital. I was young, but got out of the military, I got a job there as a medical assistant, then later I was a cardiac stress tech technologist, right? I worked there probably two years, not contributing. So they switched me over from the they switched me over from the hospital side to the research side when I started doing cardiac stress tests or whatever, and I had to do HR again. And I will and I actually paid attention to the HR brief. And I'm looking at the HR B, I'm like, man, I missed old matching. And then I'm young and dumb, right? Running around. But I'm like, I missed two years of matching, two years of this, and even at University of Penn, they'll they have I forgot what the zone is called, but they have a zone of where they incentivize you to buy a house inside of that area because they want folks to kind of work in the area to you know get back and forth to work or whatever. So they give you down payment assistance and stuff like that. And I'm like, man, I've been working here for two years and I missed all of this stuff, not paying attention. So cautionary tell HR, read everything. Read everything, ask questions. There are no stupid questions. Because if you missed that HR brief, you probably won't never hear it again unless it's at a water cooler talk with your buddy. Or after HR, you really don't hear anything from HR unless you're in trouble. But um, or you know, what is it? Uh your yearly like the open season. Yeah, open season. Hey, make sure you pick. If you don't pick anything, we're just gonna keep rolling with what you got. So, but after that first HR, that heavy HR brief, they never gonna talk to you again. No, no, and you're missing out on tons of probably tax advantages and retirement accounts. That's why I'm obsessed with talking to my kids and showing them a compound interest calculator. Because I tell people all the time, I'm like literally, if you're 18, you could squirrel away 25, 50 bucks a month and let it ride until retirement age. You know, obviously we don't know what's gonna happen in society between now and then. If that's 40 years, a lot, a whole lot could change, right? But still, like the as the system is now, you might as well participate in that. But again, time in the market beats timing the market. So if you're trying to play catch up, you're in a you're in a tough spot. Not saying don't do it, you should definitely still do it. But what you really need is just time to work on that. Yeah, I mean, hey, you know, because again, kind of in that vein, right? If we had SP or NASDAQ 20% the last three years, you let's you know, let's say you had a hundred thousand dollars kind of leading up to that, you know, you'd made sixty grand and didn't do it, didn't do, didn't do anything, right? You'd have made sixty percent on your money there, but if you're not in it, yeah, what right? You can't do it. But again, uh say that HR brief and the people some people think I'm trying to go all mentalities that I I wanted to bring that money home. I don't want that money coming out of my check. I don't want that, you know, oh it's gonna take this much money, you know, a 401 is gonna take this much money out of my check every month or whatever. No, but you know, you always gotta think about your future self, you know, and obviously being damn near 50 now, going on 50 is like, you know, it's oh I wish I knew this when I was kind of 20. That's like we're trying to tell our kids this stuff, like, hey, I've been down the I've been down the road, I played these games before. Like, whatever you do, sign up for this, set it in, set it and forget it. So that's why I always admire soldiers. I didn't have this when I was a young soldier, but when they say, oh no, when I came in, my my squad leader or my you know, my team leader told me to make sure, you know, that's when you had to you had to elect in, right? To be doing the TSP or something like that. So, you know, you gotta even if you think I'm not gonna do a 20-year career, you know, you gotta start when you gotta start young. Because as you said, the compound is where the is where the the magic is where the magic happens. So yeah. I had a platoon sergeant that did that for me, and I still thank that dude anytime this conversation comes up. I'm like, I don't know where he's at right now, but staff sergeant from back in the day, you really hooked it up. Yeah. I had a sergeant Keith McNair. So I remember him because he helped me out, right? You always gonna remember somebody who kind of helped you out along the way. You know, I don't remember a lot of names from back in the day, but Keith McNair, when I first got there, this was in the in the 90s, right? This is 96, 97. I first got to the unit, took me to the side, he was like, Hey, you need to do your correspondence courses. Handed me a box of yellow books. I'm like, oh, what is this trash? He's like, hey, these are all your books that's in your subcourse of your MOS or whatever, and show me how to, you know, go through, I forgot what it was through, but to go to, you know, make sure you're doing all the core go do all the correspondence courses. So when it came time, you know, because as a young soldier, you ain't think about, well, why am I doing this or whatever? But when it came time and you know that points, I never had to play the points game because I already had, you know, I maxed out correspondence as a private already. You know, private private especially already maxed out correspondence courses. So when it came time for the points, I didn't have to worry about the points game because I already had, you know, that unlocked, you know, my PT was already up there or whatever. So between PT, I think that what was it back then? PT weapons and uh and the board and everything, bullet points and everything. So yeah, so you know, but again, but I say that to all the leaders that you know might this mic might touch their air. Let your soldiers know your mistakes. Let your soldiers know, even if you know, luckily he showed me that to kind of play that game. But it's okay to, you know, soldiers, children, somebody you care about, niece, nephew, anything like that. Explain to them your mistakes. Now, if they go and choose to kind of make that same mistake, that's their choice at that point in time. But you told them the stove was hot. This is what could happen if you put your hands on the stove. If they put their hands on the stove at that point, that's a personal decision. But I always learn, you know, I always say that I probably learn more in the military from bad leaders than than good leaders, you know, because kind of like, no, I don't want to be like that guy or whatever. So when you actually got a good leader, or get a good leader, you you hold them in higher high regards because it's a you know, I'm gonna say there's a lot of bad there's a lot of bad leaders in the military. Oh yeah. There's a lot of bad leaders, and their erosion of leadership, you know, erosion of leadership that's happened year after year after year, and I get it. Long war, you know. Then you got the clash between the the war folks and then the garrison folks, because you know, uh, you know, we started getting that cycle of I don't like to call people slick sleeves, but you know, kind of that whole fight, the internal fight between that or whatever. Like, hey, a soldier don't choose the time they come, you know, they choose to come in, they choose to come in. Somebody told me when I got in, you know, because I was a I was chasing too. Because I'm like, oh man, I gotta get, you know, because I didn't want to be a stereotype, right? I'm like, yo, I gotta get out there. Like, oh, calm down. It's gonna happen, man. Like, you don't need to chase it, it's gonna happen. And sure enough, it it happened. So this is another thing that I was talking about last week. So I don't want to be overly like repetitive, but in general, and it goes across the military or with families and just society. Uh I think there's a serious lack in what we do to prepare the next generation for for life, you know. I think at least in the Western world, or maybe not even that, maybe just America, and it's but this is generalizing a whole lot, but it's just something that you see. You can just go out in society and you see it. There's something missing in how we prepare the the younger generations for the future. They all ultimately have to take over. And I feel like we don't do a really good job at that overall as a society, you know. I think maybe it's I don't know if it's like a self-centered thing or it's just our culture. It's just we're so individualistic. It's all about like, let me just get mine and like kind of fuck everybody else. When I mean, I get a like like a certain degree of that is fine, but it's very short-sighted to not be thinking like, yeah, it's critical that I prepare my junior soldiers, my children, the the kids down the road or whatever, to prepare them for life and prepare them to take over. Because it's gonna fuck me over if I don't, you know. So it's like if you want to be self-centered and only think about yourself, whatever, that's fine. But you have to understand, like, these guys are gonna be running shit next. And if you don't help them prepare for that, then I mean, you're gonna deal with that, however, when it comes, when everything falls apart and you're like, oh, these kids fucking suck. I mean, like, well, nobody was helping them. Yeah, so let me take the other side of that. So, you know, you say you brought it up before, so let me take the other side of that and kind of see where you're at with this. So okay. But what are you what are you telling me that for, boomer? You still remember no internet. You still you didn't have half the tools that I had, you know. I have all the tools. Like, well, so what are you trying to tell me when you're you're you're in discovery learning just as I am in this in this current in this current thing that we call life or whatever? Yeah, yeah. I mean, touche, you know, like that that's a that's a thing. I would argue, and this is just me specifically, I'd be like, well, I'm a I'm a tech bro, at least to a certain degree, so you're not gonna pull a fast one over on me. Like you're you're 16, you think you're shit hot on fucking Snapchat or whatever, be like, cool, cool story, okay. Maybe I don't know how to use Snapchat that well. But otherwise, I'll run circles around your dumb ass, you know, and I can probably teach you how to use these tools in a much better way, right? As opposed to just trying to like create your own anime chick with big tic or whatever, you know, whatever it is that you got going on in your basement, you know. But but that is a fair point, you know. And that's something that you're always gonna deal with in every generation. The older generation is gonna be like, fuck them kids, and the kids are gonna be like, fuck those boomers, you know, and they're never gonna quite see see eye to eye. But it's just something that, again, I think that we're just missing in the development phase. You know, our education is fucking horrible. And then with all these families, you know, you can't control a family, but you know, all parents are not created equal. And you got a lot of single parent households, and sometimes it's just evident. You see these fucking hoodlums running around and you're like, what is going on? Where are your parents at? Yeah, and I saw you brought that, I saw you brought that up in one of your previous, I think maybe two episodes ago, in reference to you know, the school system, and I totally agree. The school system needs to change. Like big time. The teachers are miserable, the kids are not engaged, you know, and again, you know, even you know, they gotta roll out our kids' school, no phones, this out there. I mean, kids still had a phone to school, but why are we still teaching to the industrial revolution standards? Like, it's over. All right, most of these kids aren't going to go work in Detroit at a at a factory, like create programs, create charters, create things in schools that's gonna benefit these kids post-high school. Because I went to high school, military, then went to college, like stayed at college, like full college experience or whatever. And you know, obviously now being world-traveled and then going to college, and I'm sitting in there looking around, like, this is high school plus this is the 13th grade. Like these kids don't realize that they're gonna get spit out of this institute. It's a cocoon, like college, especially if you go to a college and dorms and everything like that, and you go to the de facto diversion. Like, this is a cocoon. Yeah, and one day this cocoon is gonna spit you out, and you're gonna be all right, thanks for the money, figure it out, you know. Oh, you got all that student debt? All right, but did you did you enjoy yourself? Did you have a good time or whatever? So it's just like the educational system has it needs a complete revamp, you know. You know, I I I you know kind of look into the Montessori kind of you know, for the young for the young young kids or whatever. And then when they get to that high school, luckily I went to a high school that's still at that point, I graduated in 96. I'm age myself, but in my high school, we had charters. If you was mechanically in kind or wanted to be mechanically in kind, you go to auto shop, you know. If you wanted to be, you know, a business person, we had the the the business portion of the building. If you want to do hospitality, we had hotel, restaurant, and tourism charter in there, right? So everybody that first, I think that first year, you don't pick a charter. That's kind of basic learning. But your next three years, you pick a charter to which you uh to where you want to, where you see yourself in the future or whatever. We need to get back, you know, to to something, just to something like that. Because the the raise your hand, answer a question, a bunch of, you know, even my kid in college. I looked at his syllabus, I'm like, what? Like, what this gotta do? You trying to be a theater major. Why are you doing these classes? Just to get money out of my pocket? Like, like, come on. This is like meet the kids where they at, not where you think that's because you keep repeating the same thing over and over again. These curriculums are so dry and boring, and you're giving them you're giving them a bunch of knowledge. They might be good if they need to play Jeopardy one day or something like that. But to get out here, they need applied specific knowledge on a thing. Oh, yeah, big time. I mean, if you make me ruler for a day, there would be two fields that would be highly lucrative to work in, and there would be they would have tremendous funding and with the focus of creating like the highest quality product we possibly can, but it'd be education and law enforcement. Because I think with those two things, if they're done right, that does a lot for kind of what I'm talking about of like kind of helping to shape culture, keep keep things operating appropriately and preparing the next generation. But both of those fields, I mean, police is a little bit better, but you know, you're asking these guys to deal with horrendous shit, and it doesn't pay that well, you know, and it's not that glamorous of a job, especially these days, because a lot of times police get vilified. One thing goes sideways, then everybody across the nation is like, fuck the cops, you know. Like they should have the best training, the best candidate selection, because you need those guys to be the best, or as close as you can can be to the best. We've all heard those horror stories of some fucked up cop that just makes everything tremendously worse. But education as well, being a teacher should be lucrative and it should be a program, like a high quality program focused on like results and not just kicking the can down the road until it's somebody else's problem, barely, you know, barely paying their bills. I was talking to this one lady and she was like, most of the teachers, and this was in D49 here in Colorado Springs, she's like, There's multiple teachers that go do like DoorDash and shit on the weekends, or they got roommates and shit like that, and they're trying to tell the roommate to shut up because they're grading papers in their off hours, you know. Good good luck having a good quality education with when that's the system that you're dealing with. Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously if we pay somebody to shoot a basketball billions of dollars, and the future of society is nothing. I was even thinking about compared to like the the AI stuff. I mean, these are individual companies that are doing their own thing, but there's billions and billions and billions of dollars floating around towards a capability that we don't even know exactly how it's gonna be realized. There's massive amount, massive amount of investment, and the return is still a little bit of a question mark. Super question mark, yeah. So that's why I was texting you the other day. I'm like, is this a bubble? Is this thing gonna burst? I think everybody agrees it's a bubble, and out of that bubble, kind of like the dot-com bubble, you'll have the the rising stars that survive it, and then everybody else will just go away. Like a failed, it'd be a failed failed AI business uh uh uh or whatever, you know. To the school thing also, I think, you know, as a as a child, I think everybody, you know, you don't know what you don't know, right? But I want to be a police officer, I want to be a basketball player, I want to be that, right? So that's you're just gonna say what appeased you as a child doing that. But in high school, I think at the middle school, high school level, you're gonna know a child is gonna know what they gravitate towards more, right? What would be the least path of resistance? So put that kid to the least path of resistance to what their brain is is focused on. Don't put them, you're gonna you're it's two cars colliding with education and a kid's brain is two two cars colliding with each other because you're teaching them a bunch of knowledge that they don't need. Yeah. Read and write arithmetic. Get it, I get it. Addition, subtraction, know how to read, know how to write. Everybody needs to know how to do that. But post that's that's a fire. Like put them on a track where you see that they're that they're geared too. And I think most kids, especially at the high school realm, know what their what their interests what their interests are. So we need them to do more directional, you know, directional training for these children. Yeah, it's almost like the education should go up to like sixth grade, teaching the basics, kind of like what you're saying. And then it needs to go into like more of like a mentorship program. Yep. Where you're trying to help people develop and choose that direction and find find and that's why I do love the Montessori method, like you were talking about, because they kind of let kids gravitate towards their strengths. And so you might have a six-year-old that works his way up into algebra two or pre-calc just because you had that capability and they'll let him run with it, which is great, instead of tailoring all 30 kids for that hour to the lowest common denominator. A kid that knows that he wants to be a scientist wants to be a scientist, trust me. Like, and he'll do what he or she will do what they need to do to be that scientist. Everybody don't need to learn all deep, you know, how many science uh I got bucku sciences, right? Uh all those sciences, right? Uh why, you know, it's cool, general knowledge, you know, microbiology, anatomy, physiology, and all these other things, but I'm not that's not what I want to do. Like, why you keep forcing me to do things that I don't want to do, and then that's when you start getting a rebellion or school's a waste of time and everything. So, but the what's what's happening, what I see is going to happen is corporations are seeing that, yo, first of all, I don't need your long ass pipeline. I don't need your four or five years, eight years, and some, you know, doctors, hey, go eight years or 12 years, however long it takes. We need you, we need you to get deep in the weeds, especially going to the surgery and things like that, but at least for a little bit longer until the robots take over. Exactly. But these corporations are gonna say, no, come to us. Come, you you you finish, you know, read and write an arithmetic or whatever. You interested in this, come to us. We'll train you in-house, and it'd be a lot faster. It's kind of like an apprenticeship, right? If I want to be a plumber, I'm gonna do, you know, I'm gonna do my trade school and then I'm gonna apprentice and learn and learn a job. So I think corporations are gonna start taking that model. I think they already are, that's gonna take that model and be like, all right, you're not a can I say the word retard on you? Go for it. You're not a complete retard. So come to us, you have the building blocks of things you're interested in in this company, you're interested in what we do, we'll take you in and we'll train you in-house. And I'm pretty sure that's gonna be a lot faster glide path to what we need, and we can specify you to where what we need versus you four years of school and all everything that goes along with school. Because I mean, college ain't nothing but a disco with books. I mean, a school, you know, a disco with books as a as Chris Rock would say, right? So it's like, nah, we don't need you to do that anymore. Come to Google, come to Amazon, come here, and we'll we'll train you in-house to to what we need. Because we need you, we're gonna need you faster until we don't need you at all. Right. But yeah, I mean, teach teach people skills and and capabilities and and stop wasting time with shit that they can Google, you know. Like, why do I need to take a test on this like super specific civil war battle? Like, it's cool to know the basics and like what was going on. Yeah, that's great. But anything beyond that, like again, if it's if it's a quick Google away, then I don't really think there's any reason to be teaching it anymore. Teaching memorization is fucking nonsense. I think everybody, you know, who's been in that era that had to take the SAT could have realized that test was the dumbest test ever, right? You're gonna sit me here for hours on all these general knowledge questions and everything like that to give me a to give me a score. One, if I'm sitting there for hours, I'm probably gonna be fatigued for one. So are you testing my are you testing my my brain power under under distress? Yeah, is this an endurance test? Yeah, right, exactly. Right. So what is the purpose of this test? You're gonna spit out a, you know, you're gonna spit out a grade, I mean, you're gonna split out a number that college are gonna use, and you know, and I think they you know, COVID, I think they stopped doing SATs for a little while for interest criteria. I think they just brought it back that that they brought the SAT back. But that shit is just a dumbass test. I mean, ASVAB was kind of stupid too. Like, yeah, again, what are you trying to? All right, do I know what size this nut is and anything like that? Like, what you I get it. You try to see where I'm where my aptitude kind of lies in reference to trying to point me towards a career that probably more suited suited for, sure, right? But again, the test is so long, it's like what are you testing? I'm tired, man. Like maybe it's just to fill up, filter out like the the complete window lickers. That seems to be the only thing that it actually identifies. You know, like you pass, you pass, or so it really only matters if you do really bad or really good. Other than that, it doesn't matter. You just get a check mark. Yep, yeah, so go about your day. So switch gears a little bit. You see your boy's ship that's blew up. Which one? Uh Bezos. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't even make it off the launch card. Yeah, nice little fireball. Yeah, good luck. Good luck competing with Star Star or SpaceX anyway. I was about to say Starlink, but uh I mean, they're so deep in the game, they're basically the only game in town. I mean, I don't know who is really gonna become a competitor at this point. Did you see his Roy at our interview? Oh, you ain't see the Bezos interview? Oh, you gotta take it out. But um, I do agree with him on something like, you know, uh American Way and Monopolies and stuff like that. You do need competition, right? Competition competition spurs ingenuity and spurs do you know different things, you know, kind of that race, you know? Kind of that race. Oh, we gotta talk about the the endurance games too. Kind of that race. So you kind of at least need at least a two-party thing to kind of keep, you know, kind of keep keep keep the keep the innovation going, or whatever. So he has some interesting talking points. Shooter hit me up and ref the interview too. It's like, so he's saying the bottom half of society only contributes to 3% of the taxes. He's saying that bottom 3% don't charge them any tax. For what? It's not helping. Why are they sending their money to the government? So if you really want to increase people's uh spending, saving, investing, just take their tax out. You're gonna give them an automatic, automatic raise. And I agree with him in that statement. But then let's go to the opposite side of the pendulum. He's has a problem with right now, with the I forgot to do the New York, but like the billionaires being vilified, you know. You know, they just passed the thing in New York where if you don't stay, if you have a second home in New York, we we your property taxes is going up. Talking about Bam Dami. So, yeah, right. So he like, yeah, I don't appreciate the vilification. I pay billions of taxes a year. I don't appreciate the vilification of billionaires or whatever. So he had some pretty good talking points in uh in in that conversation. So I'll have to check out that interview. So I say all to say is they probably sabotage the ship. Yeah, no kidding, right? Like, oh, good ideas, we gotta get rid of those. Yeah, uh I was gonna end that maturely, but no, they they they blew your ship up. Yeah, they're like, that's enough from you. That's enough from you, Jeff. Shut up. Egon was probably laughing his ass off, like, uh, he's blown up plenty of ships too. You know what trips me out in reference to this whole space race and ships and everything? So I'm obviously I was in school in the 80s. It's mainly the 80s. I really didn't hear too much about it in the 90s, but science always consisted of Haley's comet and the ozone layer. So when I look at the last, well, what's what's the what's the what's the what's Elon's call? The Starship? Starship? Yeah, the big one. Yeah. So I look at it go up, I see all this exhaust and everything or whatever. It comes down, lands, I think that's the Indian Ocean or whatever. It lands in the ocean, blows up. I mean, it blows up, and I'm like, I haven't heard Jack squat about the ozone layer when I was in the school in the 80s. It was, oh, these cans got chloroferl carbons and they're holes in the ozone layer. So anybody who hears this, how's the ozone doing? Can somebody tell me how the ozone layer is doing right now? Because we send a lot of stuff, stuff is blowing up in the atmosphere, ionosphere, all those spheres or whatever, and we don't say anything about it, but spray cans, like hairspray cans back in the day was a was a was a thing, right? I know. I don't fully understand it. Definitely not a scientist, but there was like a specific chemical that we used to have in a lot of like aerosol cans. Chlorophluorocarbons. Is that what it was? And those have been outlawed, and I remember seeing something somewhat recently, and they were like, the ozone layer is like good. So it was that one specific chemical that was somehow attacking it, which does seem crazy. You're like, was ladies really using that much hairspray? I mean, in the 80s, they're right. Maybe they were. Yeah, it's just like this. That shit's like a helmet. Uh, but I apparently the ozone layer is good, but the climate conversation is just hilarious in general, and it's all over the place, and you don't know what to believe. Because one side will tell you, you know, the house is falling down, the other side will tell you it's fake news, it's not even real. The the earth's climate just changes naturally. So it's hard to get down to the fucking brass tacks on that one. Yeah, so listen, like was everything I learned as a child, was it a lie? Or y'all just don't care anymore. Like, I don't I don't know, because I mean uh it got beat down with the ozone layer. Like, oh, let's do a science project on the ozone layer. I'm like, okay. It's back to the charts. As long as the charts are green, who cares? I don't remember anything from elementary school but the ozone layer. That's how much it was and Haley's comet. That's how much that was beat down into us in the damn late 80s, man. I'm like, come on, man. That we were supposed to have flying cars in cities on Mars by now already. Yeah, I'll never go to Mars. No. No, that sounds like a horrendous journey. Nah. I watched a video on that the other day. And it's funny, so like, yeah, SpaceX kind of scaled back a little bit from the Mars thing, and they were focusing more on Moon Base first. Totally makes sense. NASA's now like gearing up and getting on board with Moonbase, but with the travel to Mars, it's gonna be brutal, brutal on any human being that goes, you know, sending robots all day long, but it's something like a nine-month trip, and you can only leave a certain amount of time, so you only have limited launch windows because of the orbits, because there's sometimes where Mars is on the other side of the sun and Earth is over here, so you have to wait until they're kind of sinking. So it's something like it's like a minimum, like a three-year deal. If you go to Mars, nine months to get there, like 18 months on site, like nine months to get back. We don't know what that will do to biology. I mean, space travel alone already completely wrecks the human body, not to mention that Mars is like one-sixth of the Earth's gravity. So I don't even know if those people ever make it back. Yeah. Again, the space race thing, I don't call it a space race. I'm like, I understand man's desire for exploration uh beyond the stars. I get it. And you know, I admire anybody who wants to contribute to that conversation and and and contribute to seeing what's up there. More power to you or whatever. But again, if we go back to our early conversation, if beef is now $10 a road that used to be $5, why are we so focused on building more data centers? I made the joke of like the data centers being the new farms, right? But how come we're not investing more? I mean, most of these things are corporate farms these days anyway, that's producing the food that's coming to the market. But it's like, why are we not trying to build more farms? Because if we just go back to simple supply and demand, obviously there's a there's a constraint of supply of these things, is why, and it's still a demand for it. That's why the prices go up. So why are we not investing more your finding the land for these data centers? I'm pretty sure a data center needs to be near a source of water or some type of cooling and this, that, or the third. So I would think that same type of land would be suitable to grow grow something, also, right? So why are we so focused on these data centers? I mean, I understand why we focus on a data center, because now when I think about it, you know, deeply, like if I'm you know, a user of Chat GPT and I need it to recall, you know, you guys think my my iPhone, right? I pay for storage every month, right? Because and I'm just holding pictures and and bullshit in it, right? So I get that if somebody, uh people all over the world are using AI agents and all this AI stuff and they need to recall, that's a lot of that's a lot of information storage. Yeah. So I see why these companies like Sand Discs and everything, you know, when we think about Sand Disc, you think about the little, hey, let me put the little my little flash drive in my computer, right? But now when I think about it on a bigger scale, I'm like, oh shit, you know, yeah, that's a lot of holding of information and and data or whatever. So Yeah, I mean, what's even in the data center at this point, you know, 10,000 of those drives plus 10,000 chunks of RAM for all the compute or whatever, and just endless amounts of power and cooling. Every time you prompt something, you write in, you write in, you write into the memory, right? So it's like it's all stored somewhere. Yep. And it's like they're not gonna purge it every night because you need that, you need to recall. So like now I see why you know I kinda had to do a deep dive in my brain of man, why sand disk and all these memory and all these companies kind of going to the moon or whatever, but I see if they're saying what what what's going to be the future, that stuff gotta get stored somewhere. Yeah. But I mean, maybe, you know, to start a business, all you need is a problem to solve, right? To have a successful business. So maybe we'll see a resurgence of somewhat kind of more traditional style businesses, you know. Food is expensive, everything's expensive. Maybe somebody is like, hey, there is some property over here. I'm gonna start a regenerative farm, and I got crops in the summer, and I got beef and chicken in the all year round and sell at the farmers markets or to your local community or whatever. And maybe we'll see a little bit of resurgence of that type of thing, you know. People making their own products and their own arts and crafts or whatever. Kind of like a beefed up farmers market, you know. Like, let's just cut Walmart out of the equation. Yeah, right. Walmart, Walmart ain't having that. Hey, Walmart, he's just playing. Yeah. Well, we just bought the farmer's market. So just bought your house. We're gonna put a Walmart damn market center right where your house is. Like, yeah, man. Uh yeah, the Waltons in some bunker somewhere. So yeah. But I have to figure out something until we get to this uh universal high income, which you know that still seems like a bit of a pipe dream. I don't know how that transition would ever work. Yeah, I don't I gotta when we do this next time, I gotta do some research because there are some states. Uh Asian guy, Senator, I don't I forget his name. He tried to run for president. Oh Andrew Yang. Yeah. So wherever you Chicago, where is he? I think so. I think they tried it. Or maybe New York. I think a town wherever he presides over, I think they tried it where where he where he's at. Obviously, he's the universal basic income guy, right? He the big push uh uh of it or whatever. But I think there are some townships that have tried that program or whatever. I don't uh yeah I don't know what the answer is for as far as that's concerned. But yeah, because I because now you're gonna keep now inflation, do I keep bumping up universal basic income every year and it starts? So that's gonna be a a mess. And we gotta go back to simple math. We're in we're in trillions of dollars in debt, right? So what does that mean? We're just gonna print more, you know. It's like the debt, the the United States debt problem is this is ridiculous, like when you start to see those numbers. Like that debt clock, you go look at it at debt clock.org and you'd be like, That thing's cruising. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, it's moving out. Ridiculous, man. But like that's why everybody like where does the where does the rubber read the road? When does it, you know, does it stop? Is it ever going to go backwards? It's just not. We just not that's not that's not how things are done. Well, it's like they started trying to tackle it, but you know, I don't even know what's happening with Doge now. I don't even know if it's even really a thing or but they were finding all this shit, but uh I'm pretty sure it had to get passed through Congress to like officially be cut off or whatever, and I'd never really caught up with it. You know, there was so much hype around it initially after the new administration took over. Yeah, Elon peace out. He was like, I'm doing all this shit, and you know, but what? Peace out. Y'all gonna take my EV credits too? Man, I'm out of here. Yeah, yeah, that did nothing but hurt him. Shoot, all his companies were tanking there for a while, people burning down Teslas and shit. Like, I'm out, man. Let me go focus on let me pay what pays, pay attention to what pays me. That's just crazy in general as as well. That people are so caught up on like in their bipartisan channel, you know, or or like their specific team, that something like making the government more efficient was somehow a terrible thing, you know, just because it was under the Trump administration. I'm like, god damn, I'm so sick of this shit. Yeah, I think that's part of it. I just think I'm trying to choose what words wisely here. But um you can't America is not gonna go for the bull in the China shop thing, right? Yeah. We're especially when you're talking about messing with GS jobs and things of that, you're talking about folks that probably it's probably a second generation in, a third generation in the GS system, right? So something that when you get that job, you're like, okay, I'm set for, you know, I'm set till I I plan to to retire or whatever. So when you go in there and you start and I'm you know, he's exposing some stuff that that's true, right? And you know, a common person because like, oh yeah, that's inflated or whatever. I think that was uh the bigger problem. And you know, I know this administration was trying to be of action, but yeah, you can't you can't run America like you run a business. And Bezos kind of alluded to this also, right? He's like, if I ran if I ran Amazon the way that the the government runs America, you'll get your package two weeks later, and then when you get your package and open it, the right thing. So I don't know what the answer is in reference to figuring that piece out. You know what? It also highlights such a major flaw in our system, too, because I think you're you're exactly right that uh w it's a slow-moving ship and it has to be handled delicately to a certain degree. But if the trajectory changes every four years, then that means the the ship just does this and doesn't ever go anywhere. New leader, new, new ideals, right? Yeah, so it's it's a it's a it's a problem with our system. I mean, I heard some that some of these even uh European countries, I think it was Poland, and they were talking about how we need to distance ourselves from America and not be relying on them so much because they have a different priority every four years. One administration, we're best friends, the next administration wants nothing to do with us, so it's like that's not a good homie. You know, yeah if you're if your homeboy is like that, one week he's cool as shit, the next week he's like being a total dick. You're like, okay, well, I'm just not gonna fool with you, man. Yeah, I got my I got my own opinions about Poland. So Poland, a lot of their things are from America. Like, oh yeah. We've done a lot of, we did a lot of so it's kind of like let's say you asked me to help you move, I help you move, you know, whatever, going on about my business. Then I asked to hey, help can you, hey, I'm about to move too, can you help me? And you're like, nah, nah, I don't feel like it, right? So, you know, being stationed in Europe and kind of seeing the in vet the capital investment that we put over into those those those that those Eastern European um countries, we have a lot of investment over there, right? So when it comes time to rubber meets the road and I ask you for some, I I can uh like I'm playing devil's advocate here, right? Sure. I'm not one way or the other. But if I all this capital investment, you know, helping out with your state plans and everything, how you gonna defend yourself, how we gonna defend you if some shit pop off or whatever, I expect some loyalty, you know, in return when I when I need you. Right, wrong, or indifferent, right? We'll we'll we'll settle that up when the when the deed is done, right? But you know, we're you know, you get you could go to another daddy, he right there, he wants you back. It's true. But I guess to play devil's advocate to your devil's advocate is like, is America really out there and investing this money and infrastructure or whatever, like out of the goodness of their hearts to like build up their their their buds? No, it's it's all self-interest, it's a hundred percent self-interest. So we might like try to package it to make it think like, oh yeah, you're gonna love this, you know, but it's secretly all about me. I mean, but in in business and in negotiations, right? You want to find something that's you know, somebody's probably gonna benefit more, but you want to find something where, you know, it has mutual beneficial for the both, right? All right, big daddy over there don't fuck with you. We're gonna make sure you got something. Assurances or whatever, but hey, we need this. We need the grain from there. We need this, you know, we need this this export from this that or the third, right? So you're kind of looking for a mutual beneficial relationship. And again, I think where we went wrong. I mean not say that. I'm trying to be at least political power. Trying to say apolitical, but the bull in the China shop thing, right? It's like these nations don't have the same. If you've been to any other country, you know is the West has its own vigor, right? Yeah. You know, they take holidays, buddy. They let their people go for six weeks in the year and go, go, go sit on a beach and get paid or whatever, right? We are uh grind, grind, grind, get it done, enemies necessary, and keep and then once you get that done, what's the next and they get done or whatever. And you know, a lot of these European countries are not, that's not their demeanor or whatever. So it's kind of hard trying to, you know, we've seen it when if it in Afghanistan, right? We're trying to make this not their culture, you know, the the the the way we do things is wasn't their their culture or whatever. So we're trying to teach them Western ways and Western ways of war and and and you know and things, and it just doesn't work out. But again, well, it's gonna keep going, you know, the whole NATO conversation and everything, that's gonna be it'll survive me. So yeah, who knows how it'll turn out, you know, and again, what two and a half years from now, something completely different will be going on. Who knows? Like my job at work could be completely different, you know. It's just it's that ship I was talking about, back and forth, back and forth. So let me ask you a question then. You know, you kind of alluded to, you know, our you know, obviously senators have long terms, but if we just go just go to the top and we'll talk about the POTUS, right? In your mind, how long should that term be? For the president? I don't think there's anything wrong with the term as it stands. In my mind, I think there's like three things that I think it would significantly help everyone out breaking away from the two-party system. So I think if there was room for extra parties that could actually be viable, I I think that would be a positive. Term limits in the House and Congress, and you know, this is like a blanket term that you'd probably have to kind of nugget down to limits and who can do what, but removing money out of politics, you know, super PACs and lobbyists that can just try to sway their guy to just support their thing. Because the whole system was supposed to be you left the farm, you went and you served your nation for however many years, you know, whether you were in the military, you were in the Senate, you were in Congress, you were in politics, whatever, you did your time, you did what you could, you represented your constituents, and then you went back to the farm, and that was it. The whole career politician thing and the massive amount of money and politics and just being stuck in this polarized two-party system seems to be a bad deal. And I think if you just look at it a little bit, you're like, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of issues, there's tons of corruption, insider trading, career politicians, fucking people just getting bought off, and they're like, Well, my guy, my constituents want me to do this, but this guy just gave my my camp $10 million, so I'm gonna do what he wants, you know. So multiple things, but those would be my three get away from two-party system, term limits, and uh removing at least some money from politics. But you so you still think the four-year presidency is a good is a good time to to serve as president? I think so, because with those other things that I mentioned, I think that you can start to develop a system that's a little more cohesive and not just such a pendulum, pendulum swing back and forth. Alright. So let me ask you a question then. So four years obviously, let's take Trump for example, he can't run this year, right? That's due to the rules, right? So we saw four years, but you gotta you start ramping back up 24 months in, like a little before 21, right? We're coming to a midterms right now, right? So you start ramping back up, you're gonna start campaigning again. Well, you know, I'm just saying, like if I'm a first-termer, right? You're gonna start campaigning again, and now you're gonna campaign campaign for then the remainder of 24 months to try to get re re-elected. So, you know, and when I you ever look at what these campaigns be costing, I'm like, what do you look like a class president, right? Yeah, you spending all this money to be you spending all this money to be the class president. That buddy can't, you know, that buddy can't be put somewhere else. The churn of the political system is expensive itself. Yeah, because you know, I'm like, man, how much did the campaign cost? Oh, hell no. Like, so yeah, and I I feel like it should be cheaper these days. I mean, we're making a podcast right now in my basement with bare bones equipment that's gonna go on the internet that anybody can check out if they're so inclined. And anybody can do that. You don't need to pay a hundred thousand dollars for 30 seconds of cable TV time or all this other bullshit that you used to have to do in the past. And maybe I'm looking at it through rose-colored glasses, but I think in a perfect world, your campaign, especially if you're if you're the incumbent, you know, you're already in this seat, your work performance should speak for itself, and that should be your campaign. Be like, if you guys appreciate the direction that we're going now and you like what I'm doing, then vote for me. If not, then pick somebody else, bro. I guess it is what it is. Maybe just whittle it down to the debates, right? Yeah. I mean, it already became a popularity contest, but maybe just whittle it down to the debates, and like you said, all right, you spend a couple hundred grand or whatever, podiums, mics, whatever, and speak, speak your case, you know, speak your case. But I get I, you know, on the other side of thing, I get it where constituents and voters want to be seen, want to be heard, want you to do the tours and get on the planes and come over and talk to us and talk to us about the specifics things that you're gonna do for us in in in our area, you know, because every location is gonna have their, you know, their their nuances of what what you know what industry is popular out there and you know, and things like that. So again, I could look at it at both sides, but that should be coming more from like the state and local level, in my opinion. Like let's say we're we're here in Colorado, then it's I should probably be paying more attention to who's gonna be the governor, who's gonna be in Congress, who's gonna be in the house, and I mean who's gonna be the mayor, who's gonna be on the city council, whatever, things of that nature, and then it should trickle up from there. Yeah, it's like the who the president is is almost irrelevant to a certain degree. You're my mouthpiece and you're my you go to that thing, right? You're our representation when you go and go up, right? Exactly. So yeah, so like I don't need to shake the president's hand. Yeah, it doesn't matter. That's why I kind of get, you know, I hate talking politics, but you know, when everybody kind of gets bent out of shape when X rule or something, like we're gonna send it to the state, right? I'm like, bruh, that's your state. You can handle it. You don't need daddy. Yeah, you don't need you don't need daddy, you know, and it works gonna worse, y'all can't figure it out. That's why we got Supreme Court and all that shit that goes on, right? But you handle it in your neck of the woods and come up with a state rule to to that. And if that rule you don't like it, guess what? It's 50 more, 50 plus more of those things states that you could go to that that aligns better with your, you know, your ideals or whatever. So I do agree, I do agree with you on that. That you know, we want I don't know what people want these days, right? Do you want more more state, less government, you know, less federal government, more state, or do you do you not, right? Because yeah, you're right. Like you're gonna make the most change in your local, in your local, you know, minus uh municipality. Yeah, 100%. So yeah, I mean, last thing, and then we can get off of fucking government bullshit. But uh I I I think there is some wisdom in states being a little bit more independent and a bit of a reduction in the federal government, you know. I don't see how we can be looking to Washington, D.C. to manage, you know, 300 mif 350 million people, this massive country. And state by state, you know, like cultures and priorities change a whole lot. And I think that kind of thing should be fostered. Like if you like the Colorado vibe, again, like you can do what you can to like get to Colorado, or you know, you like the West Coast thing, you want to be in Oregon or California, you know, pick your pick your poison, so to speak. But I think state should be a little bit more independent and not under this massive umbrella. I mean, I ain't like Colorado tax system, take my ass to Texas. There you go. I don't want to pay 10 cents for a bag, right? I want to I want free uh I want free grocery bags, like, come on. Shoot, Florida's going for it. I they they keep pushing this this proper abolishing the property tax. But uh the DeSantis came on recently and I and he had a good point. He's see he was saying that there it will take uh a bit of a buy-in. So it's like we're not gonna have this flood of people that move to Florida. So if you've been here already, you're good, you know, your property taxes disappear. If you just move here, you pay property taxes under the old system for five years and then they they time out. Yeah, that property tax thing is just like uh I it's just where's it where's it where's the motivation, right? Where's the motivation? Because if you've you know 15 year, 30-year mortgage, batting down the hatches, like I think if there's no property taxes and you know you're gonna own it free and clear, that more people would batten down the hatches and try to actually get their house paid off and and like liquidy liquidity split, right? Or whatever. But but I get it, right? At the same time, is back to what I said earlier, is it is a revenue generator, is a is a cash flow, right? Every year you're gonna pay property tax, you're gonna pay vehicle registration, whatever tax you gotta pay on your vehicle. Is this is a cash cow for the for your local government or federal government when I just pay taxes this year to the federal government, right? So it's just like you know, and they abolish that property tax. You are gonna that's exactly what's gonna happen. Like, oh, we all we in Florida. So but yeah, you definitely gotta protect your people because you're gonna have an influx of of people, and you had an influx of people now. The values of the house, the house is gonna go to everybody gonna start paying anything to get into the get into the houses and everything. So that's a third, as we call it, third and fourth order effects will be pretty, pretty drastic in in reference to that. But yeah, they gotta do away with that property tax thing. Like let somebody own their home. If somebody you want to get people in houses and get motivated back to houses and something that they can actually own, and then when they pass away, the kick it has hand over to an air or something like that without no BS or whatever. I'm pretty sure people across the United States would want to buy into that, buy into that. 100%. Or on the flip side, like I'm fine with taxes if you get to realize the the product or or the result, right? So let's say, you know, we're paying our taxes as is, but all the roads are squared away, school system's good to go, you can just walk in the doctor and get taken care of and then walk out, you know, like that would you're talking about something different at that point. But when you feel like you're just paying taxes out the ass, you know, like you look at how much you pay every year and you're like, what the fuck? And you look around, you're like, what am I actually getting for these like thousands and thousands of dollars that are just being squandered? I mean, because that's how I think it probably feels to a lot of folks. So I see you have your 27, your 27 stickers, right? So I just paid my my 27. My vehicle's still registered here. Gotta change that. But um, you know, so uh look at the receipt. Like your registration renewal is like maybe 30 bucks or something like that, but it's so many feet. Man, it's um I gotta send you a picture. There's so many BS fees in there. Like, I don't know. This is ridiculous, dude. It's like thank thank God I got the DV plates on the truck. Otherwise, that registration would be out of control. Yeah. Looking at that, because uh yeah, I'm like, let me look at this receipt and see what I'm actually paying for or whatever. And it's just like, all right, registration 30 bucks, and everything else is a bunch of fees to pay for, and it's like funny sounding stuff, like fee for this program, a fee for this, or whatever. I'm like, okay. So again, so I say all that to say is even if you get rid of property taxes, I got a feeling they're gonna sneaky, sneaky, sneaky. They go sneaky sneaky somewhere else, right? It's never a loss, it's never they never plan anything at a loss. They're just gonna, it's it's a shell game. They're just gonna move it to somewhere else, and you know, now you're gonna pay 25 cents a bag or something like that for your groceries. Yeah, dude, it's it's trash. Like, how how are you gonna pe keep paying taxes every year on something that you allegedly own? And there's examples of it, like the worst case scenario, like the little old lady that has owned her house free and clear and just is surviving off Social Security but can't afford her property tax anymore. Even the house has been paid off for fucking 20 years. Share sell you shit. Yeah, that shit right up from under you. Whatever. That's why they say a house is not really a house is nice to have, but it's really a is a banking product, right? You don't pay, you know, when you sit there and do the math, and then you got 30-year mortgages at a certain rate, you know. Again, back to the simple math problem, right? You're gonna pay up teens amount of thousands of dollars above what you paid for the house. So, you know, so that's why I kind of like, you know, what's the difference between having a mortgage all these years and and and living? Because math is like a math is a uh what'd they say, math don't lie, but it's kind of like a it's a it's like a sexy liar, right? Because let's take this house, for instance, right? Let's just say you lived in it for let's say I'm gonna 10 years, right? It went up in value. So in your mind, you have equity. But if you're not you're not borrowing against your house, right? So it went up in equity, but that house for across the street probably went up in equity too. So if you sold your house and you wanted to move across the street, you're gonna zero out. You're gonna zero out. So the only way you make money if you're gonna sell your house and then move into something something cheaper. Right. Other than that, pretty much doesn't happen. Everything else, the the tides are rising together, right? So, because if that house sells for above your house, that's gonna automatically kind of bring your property value up because if it's comparable anyway, right? That's something comparable sold in your neighborhood. So now if you sell your house and I want to move across the street, all right, I just zero myself out. I didn't make any money, you know. I mean, yeah, you know, it's kind of sexy to think about it, like, oh yeah, went up in you know, fifty thousand dollars in equity or whatever, you know. The only way you're gonna achieve that equity if you're gonna borrow against it. Other than that, all the neighbor all your houses and neighborhood doing the same thing. So it's a is a farce in reference to, you know, it is is a mathematical farce as far as that's that's concerned. Yeah, yeah, that's why I I feel like a little bit trapped. I mean, I'm no I'm not truly trapped, but every once in a while I look around at houses or you know, think about an upgrade. But I got such a good interest rate and everything here, I'm just like, fuck, it's like to your point, like all my equity is gonna be gone. I have I'm probably gonna have to roll it into the new house. My payment's gonna be higher because interest rates are so much higher. So I'm like, yeah, I mean, I could upgrade if I want to double my mortgage payment, but I don't really want to do that. So I guess I'll just hold it down. You know, you know, any loan, right? Mortgage, you know. I used to look at my student loan. And when I used to look at my student loan, I used to pay it every month. I'm like, man, this thing ain't really going down. When I looked at it, I'm like, oh shit, no wonder it ain't going down. It's all going towards interest. Like, you know, so I'll, you know, I had to take the personal responsibility and call up Sally Main. Like, okay, no, this going, you know, I'm paying the base, and then everything else above that go goes towards the put that towards the the principal. The principal, yeah. Thank you. Put that port towards the principal. And that loan, I paid that loan off when I started doing that, quick, fast, in a hurry. Yeah. Whatever. That the interest is a interest is a is a is a trap. I'm gonna call it a trap. But if you're not paying attention to it and you just kind of roll it along, like I pay, you know, we're in a society where I can afford this every month, right? But what are you affording? Are you really looking at the numbers and seeing what you're actually paying? Because most of that stuff that you're affording, it ain't going towards the asset that you have. You know, that car you that car payment you're paying, most of it is going towards an interest payment to some finance company that's cash flow. Right. So yeah, man. Yeah, it's like to bring it full circle back to what you were talking about before. It's like stay debt free. Do whatever, or if you do got debt, get rid of that shit like your damn hair is on fire, because that's what ultimately can lead you towards like some element of freedom. Yeah. I mean, when you get when you get, you know, when I started, because I I did Dave Renzi playing twice. I was I'm so smart I had to do it twice, right? Yeah. Quick learner. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my wife needed a car, I got a car and all this other bullshit or whatever, right? So, but then I'm like, you know what, but what, but I needed to see that. I had to put my hand on the stove and like, you know, even though I got away from it, I put my hand back on the stove and it was still hot. Right. And I told myself, next time I get out of there, I'm like, all right, I know I know I did it once, I could do it again. Next time I do it, I'm not, I'm not going back. Can't do it or whatever. And these days, you can't afford to do it. You gotta, the way society's going, you gotta sock your money in all assets. Like, it don't matter how much money you got in your pocket, nobody cares. Nobody cares. You need to sock that money away into assets, whether that's real estate, stocks, something that if worse came to worse, you could just borrow against it. If you really in that bad of a bind, you could just borrow against it. That thing is still hopefully appreciating in value, and you sit your ass down and you pay back, you pay yourself back, right? You ain't gotta go run to no bank and well, you might have to run to a bank, but you know, if you borrow against your stocks, you don't gotta run to a bank to say, hey, all right, I got a margin account or cash account, I'll just borrow against that, right? But the dollars in your pocket is it it doesn't make, it doesn't matter. And what's gonna happen is, and we kind of talked about this before, is you're just seeing the erosion of the middle class, and it's gonna be we're we're leaning into a have and have not society. Yeah, and uh the problem is the have not man, I'm knowing that generalized here. My apologies, but you know, they still, you know, it's kind of we still in the and it's even worse now, like give them games, right? Let me give you games, and you're not gonna pay attention to anything that's going on. You entertain, you know, with these phones, and we give you your little dopamine hits every every couple of seconds with these reels and and TikToks and everything like that, you're not gonna pay attention to anything that's going on. That's why conspiracy theory here, like you look at like I'm home in the daytime now, right? So again, I watch financial news. I know if something of the world breaches into the financial news, I need to pay attention to it, right? Because mainly it talks about companies, but if something that's gonna happen something important happened in the world, it's gonna it's gonna breach that news. Even in like sports news, if something important or an important person or something happens in the world, it's gonna breach, it's gonna it's gonna breach that news, right? That's that's all about sport or that's all about finance, it's gonna breach that news, and that's when you know you need to need to pay attention to it. But again, people don't have the adult daycare, you know. Why you the market open at nine? Most folks work from nine to five. You know, the market opens if we go New York time, 9.30 to 4:30. You don't have what you know you didn't see anything on the day because you had you at the job, so you don't know what's going up, what's going down, what's going left, what's going right, who's you know, what's trending right now, whatever. You don't have time. You don't have time to. Yeah. Yeah, I tell you, but it is a is a so is a beautiful game they set up where go ahead, go do your job. 401k. Hey, no, let's put it right there. We're gonna make sure you're you're you're in the market. You're in the market. You don't need to just pick that right there and you you're in the market, right? While while you're busy, we're gonna be talking about where all the money is really moving around. Exactly. It's wild, man. I try to tell people, I'm like, for the for the love of God, don't worry about flexing. You know, like that's an and that's still like an issue that you see, especially in young men, right? They'll spend all their money on the outfit or the chain or the vehicle, just riddling themselves with debt, just so they can try to pull a couple extra chicks or like flex on their homies or whatever. When you got to look at it from the other side, you know, you see these memes or whatever. And it's like this is every millionaire in the world was at this point at one time where they had 500 bucks in their checking account, a thousand bucks in their saving account, a couple hundred grand invested, and they're driving a Prius. Yep. But you know, you you might look at that guy and be like, what a fucking loser. Check that dude out in five more years, though. Now you know when I pulled up with my Prius, I was like, Oh, they're gonna laugh at me. Fuck it. Who's laughing down? Yeah. Yeah. I know, right. I'm still $25, maybe $30 now at the at the at the at the pump. But yeah, the the the the the Yeah, the flex, I don't know. People uh it goes back to what you said, man. People just gotta pay attention to time. Time is something that you you just can't get back, you know. It's just gonna go on and on. And you gotta set yourself out for compounding and growing money. Because guess what? If you do that stuff early, you can enjoy those type of things, right? You could get the you can get the new truck and you can get those things because those assets are going to pay for those things for you versus you keep having to bust your ass and grind and then now as an albatross around you trying to, you know, car payments and insurance and everything like that. Is you know, it gets as they say, it kind of gets greater later or whatever. And it I didn't really I probably was in my 30s until I started kind of having that mindset, like, oh man, I wasted a lot of fucking time. And I'm a party animal. I was a party animal back in my day. It's like I just think about all the money I wasted on drinks and partying and every all the bullshit that don't matter. Good memories now. Sure. Good memories, but yeah, the ones that you have. Yeah, right. Good memories, but it's like, man, you know. And I guess that's a comes with maturation, right? You you mature, you different mindset, different experiences, and you know, you you you start to kind of look back at your life and like, okay, I could have did, I could have tweaked that a little bit. Could have still had fun, but I could have tweaked that a little bit. They're wasted a lot of money over the years. So I mean, I wouldn't have to tell these these young guys. I I try to tell tell my boys, I'm like, I get it, you know, you just got hormones coursing through your body, you know, pretty much all you're gonna think about is trying to get chicks and whatever. And I get it. But if you can, kind of what we're talking about, if you can grind now and get your ducks in order, trust me, if you can get to a point where you're like financially stable, you know, and you're in your mid-30s or even your 40s, you're gonna do well, bro. You're gonna have a great time. You can become one of those high value men that you know people always talk about, and you're not gonna have any issues. But like, if you can kind of get out of the game that is being played when you're a little younger and kind of focus on the future, it's gonna reap massive rewards. But no one's ever gonna listen to that. Yeah, no, I mean it's what it is. So, I mean, I think we spoke about this before, but so you know, my kid just turned 21 and he had an Utma, right? So they had a bunch of Apple stock in it. Bunch of it, right? So when he turned 21, I signed it over to him or whatever. Actually, I just met with him yesterday. We just had we had lunch yesterday. I'm like, yo, don't touch that. Like, leave it alone. Let's leave it alone. Because I always hit him up when I cause, you know, I watch the market every day. So if I see, you know, when Apple went down to like two something, like maybe 260, 270, and he he he hit me up and was like, oh man, yeah, lost 4,000 or whatever that day, right? I'm like, so so now that it's up to I think it was last time I looked at like 310. I'm like, look at it now. Look at it now. You see, you don't touch it. If words come to worse, shit hits the fan, you could just borrow against it if it shit hits the fan. You just don't, don't, don't break the egg. Don't break the egg. So that's my plan is to give give all my kids a golden, little golden egg when they turn 21. You fuck it up. That's on you. But don't touch it. You have time on your side. The time that I I don't I don't have that time anymore. I don't want to sound that morbid. I got time, but you know, well, you know what? I'm gonna have four years. But I'm like, yo, I'm gonna give you a golden egg, don't scramble the egg. Let it just sit it there, let it do it. Even if you forget about it. Even if you forget about it and you turn 25, you turn 30, and you look back and like, oh damn, damn, look what happened. Or whatever. So, but that's my kind of my my my plan. Everybody kind of to bring up Trump. Everybody, yeah. Well, I got the concept from was from Trump when everybody started kind of shitting on him about he got the he got the money from his dad or whatever, right? So what? Good for him. Take the same, take the same thing, and you know, as as a father, take the same principle, and it ain't gotta, it ain't gonna be, it might not be a million dollars, right? It might not be a building that you could sign over to him or whatever, but you can set your child up for for their journey easier. Just set them up. You ain't gotta ask them, the kids. And then when they turn 21, you ain't looking at them dumbfounded, like, I wulda, coulda, shoulda, did this, that, or the third, or whatever. You hand them over something. Like, hey, this is your start right here. You keep building on to it, and then you could get to where I got way faster than I did. That's I think that's every generation, you know, folks who have kids or folks that they love. Your job should be to shorten that, shorten that race for shorten that that journey for your for your heirs or whatever, right? They're gonna go, they're gonna fuck stuff up too, but again, yeah, there's we have like a little bit of a weird mentality with that, because like I th I I totally agree, it's a great idea, but uh you hear about so many families who are like, oh, you're 18, get the fuck out of here, go figure it out. When why not like give them a little bit of a leg up and give them a head start and do it sooner rather than later? You know, I see these things on the internet, and it's like, you know, why are you waiting until you're dying and you're 90 and your kids are in their fucking 70s or something or in their 60s? It's like they could have used that help a long time ago. Yeah, so start that process earlier. Yeah, I told my mom, you know, as they say, like grandmoms and mothers are two totally different people. Oh, yeah. Like the way my mom is towards my kids are is I'm like, who is who are you? Like, who are you? You were a nightmare to me. So you all cap right now. Yeah, this is fake news. So um, but I used to tell my mom, like, yo, mom, stop giving them stuff. Like, if you if you really want to give them stuff, give me the money, let me put it in a little up my account, or I'll send you a link, you send it in there, whatever. They don't, they have everything. Like, these kids, and I know how I grew up, right? So I always compare, right? I ain't have all this shit. Yeah, I'm not my first hundred dollar pair of sneakers. My mom pie, man, mom read me the riot act on that, or whatever. And I thought, oh, I'll pay you. You know, I was working at the time. I was like, oh, okay, can you go half with me or whatever? When half, you know, Jordan's, uh, blah blah blah, right? But it's like, you know, my kids got everything. Like, each, each one of my kids have uh their own console. Like, for what? You know, back in the day, you had your Nintendo, two, two controllers. When the 64 came out, you had four controllers, and like, you know, it's a community thing. Now everybody was in the living room, it takes turns. Exactly. Now everybody got their own system of what I'm like, mom, these kids have everything. Like, like, and I think sometimes, you know, I I'll blame myself for some things, right? Because you always want your kids have stuff you didn't have, and you know, like, you know, you ain't got big for these things or whatever. Like, here, right? That's a, you know, no, but sometimes I think that does do a disservice because they struggle is a little bit different, I would say, or whatnot, you know, could I grew up in a financial struggle and you know, and make sure, you know, 14, working a summer job, you know, could I want to get to, you know, to spend it on bullshit, right? You know, gotta get my school clothes and you know, I gotta be fresh for school and everything like that. But I'm like, mom, you ain't got stop giving them, stop, stop giving them these things. They have everything they need. Like, they have everything they need and some. Like, can't you see that? Like, you already know these kids ain't living like how me, you know, how you brought us up. Like, they have everything. Yeah, if anything, they're too comfortable. Exactly. Let's uh put the money up and you know, set them up for the next thing in life. I got every everything from here to 21, I got it. Like, mom, I got it, mom. But if you already want to contribute, help me out. Just give them the money and we'll put it in the other accounts, and then we, you know, that is that does the bigger shovel, right? A bigger shovel to put in their accounts and we'll give it to them when they turn when they turn of age. You know, but but different mentality, right? So well, I guess with that, you know, bring it full circle, you know, take care of the kids, fucking get your shit right, uh, eliminate your debt. Cash flow. Yeah. And don't go with any rockets anytime soon. Them things blowing up. Yeah, yeah. Give it some time. Don't be on number one. Now they want to do rockets from in the in inter like US, they're inter like globe travel. I'm like, you crazy as shit. So you could be LA to Singapore. All right. Like I said, again, I'm not gonna be on the maiden voyage, but maybe after it's all ironed out, I'll give it a whirl. Yeah. You know, I'm still traumatized, man, because I grew up during the challenger days, you know. We all in school and you got us watching a rocket blow up with astronauts in it. So I'm still kind of I still, you know, like, hey, thanks for the thanks for the trauma bond now. Every time I see a rocket go up, that's all I can think of is you know, they're kind of that, you know, sitting in elementary school and watching that damn ship blow up. So I know it, dude. It can always go sideways. Yep. So what before we wrap it up, what's uh what all you got going on YouTube? We'll drop some links and stuff. So we got our show, we got uh the last shop at run. Yeah, last shop at run, um, you know, hobby, so it comes up when it comes up, whatever. So you can look that up on YouTube. So it has its own page now or whatever. So what I'm doing is I'm taking our main, I'm kind of letting her main thing kind of run a couple days, and then I'm just clipping it up, whatever, right? Just keep the keeping the algorithm or whatever. I have my own page, so that's O N O old school, new school. So it's O S N S, and I'm kind of doing what everybody's doing right now, kind of just riding in the car and kind of kind of what we talked about here. I'm like, hey, I want people to learn from my mistakes, so let me just, you know, put my mistakes out there or put my successes out there too, of what worked for me also. So if it helps somebody out, more power to it. If it reaches somebody's ears and it helps them out, cool. And then worse come to worse, is my kids could look at it as an archival thing. If I'm not around or if they kind of need something, they could go back and look at look at that and say, okay, that's where his mindset was at the time, and this is what he did to kind of get where he at, and you know, and some of the things I did to get where I'm at, also. And then you get the newsletter too, right? Instagram, so Instagram, mission command, mission underscore cmd215. So I'll try to make this fast. So what I'm doing with that is really just financial stuff. So like I watch financial news all day. So what I just do, kind of like a book report, I kind of chunk everything up for that week and to the key points. Because uh again, what we talked about, like folks aren't working during the market hours, right? So what I'm trying to do is make something easy, digestible, in a newsletter format. And what I do, so everything in that newsletter is from my brain. So everything is I'm cutting the pasting, I'm doing the the chart analysis, the support resistance levels, everything like that. I'm doing my blurb, that's from my brain, looking at the Mag 7 and everything like that. And so I take that product and then I create derivative products from that. So that's the no, you know, I'm a retired major, so I could do slides, but now with you know the advent of AI, it could take everything. You know, I have I built some prompts in Chat GPT where weekly I just asked it to do, uh I feed it the newsletter and it makes me derivative products off of the newsletter, easy digestible things. And I just post every day one of those, one of those nuggets if somebody doesn't have the time to go and actually read the read a full newsletter. And that's probably yeah, that's what I got going on right now. So cool. Mission Command 215, so CMD, mission underscore CMD 215. Old school, new school. That's my personal page. So you'll see things, and you'll see me and my kids when I started. If you go deep into the videos, you'll see when we when we started the eBay business, and I had my kid running the eBay and everything and uh whatnot. So, and that's I we still do that to this day. I used eBay as kind of a in-house business program to teach my kids profit, loss, you know, margins and things like that. So I use eBay to to do that. And then um and yeah, that's it. Well, hell yeah. That's dope. Yeah, we'll put all those those links in the show notes so people can check them out. And like always, pleasure having you out, bro. Appreciate you coming by. Yeah, I know Bordemov. I'm on a I'm on the caffeine. I haven't had caffeine in a while, so okay, now I appreciate it. Always a pleasure, man. I'm glad I got a chance to link up you while I'm while I'm up here. Hell yeah. Yeah. I'm ready to get back to the sun though. But I'm sure it won't be the last one. And uh yeah, you always catch us out on catch check us out on the last shop at run before too long for the show. Hell yeah. Thanks for listening, everyone. Please make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. It really helps the show out. See you next time.