Animal Spirits Podcast - The Re-Readables (EP.78)

Episode Date: April 24, 2019

On this week's show we discuss is inflation dead, what should we call our new podcast where we discuss classic finance books. what if the government eliminated all student loan debt, why eliminating student loans won't fix the high cost of education, the out of body, experience in private equity fundraising, the cult status of Dave Ramsey, the $400 emergency savings stat everyone uses is wrong, do rich people really watch less TV, are reverse mortgages the retirement crisis solution for those who haven't saved and much more. Find complete shownotes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Like us on Facebook And feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits is brought you by Y Charts. Welcome to Animal Spirits, the podcast that takes a completely different look at markets and investing, hosted by Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson, two guys who study the markets as a passion and invest for all the right reasons. Michael Battenick and Ben Carlson work for Ritt Holtz Wealth Management. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben or any podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritthold's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment

decisions. Clients of Ritthold's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Is inflation dead? Is it, Ben? So that was the cover on the Bloomberg Business Week magazine this week. And for some reason, they showed a dead dinosaur on there. I guess I don't really get that. but they want to say that potentially capitalism has killed inflation. And so they did a piece and they said, researchers are finding that low inflation is in large part of consequence of globalization or automatization or deunionization or a combination of all three which undermine workers' power

to bargain for higher wages. What say you? Are we measuring inflation wrong? Is that the problem? You know, every time people try to say that inflation is dead, someone on Twitter will comment. Have you been to the grocery store lately? So I looked at the data. Why charts has the U.S. inflation rate going back to 1914. Forget about your data. I went to lunch last week. Right. So I went to Y charts. They go back to

1914 to today. Today it says the truing 12 month inflation rate is about 1.8 or 1.9%. And if you look back going back to pretty much 1980 when inflation kind of came crashing down, there really isn't much changing it at all. And if you look back, say, pre-World War II era, it's crazy. There's these huge swings from like 20% inflation to negative 15% deflation. And so I took the data from Y charts. I calculated the standard deviation of the inflation rate. And from 1914 to 1945, the standard deviation was three times higher than it was from 1980 to now. And looking at it from 1945 to 1980, it was one and a half times higher than 1980 to now. So not only is inflation much lower than it was in the past. The volatility of inflation is much lower. So

things are just much more stable. Isn't that what you would expect in a mature economy? I would think so. And then other people would expect that the government is making up inflation statistics. Just to go back to the data, again, Whitecharts is the sponsor of the show. I got this data from them. Call them up, mention animal spirits, and get 20% off of your new subscription. And I don't know what to make of this. So William Bernstein book, Birth of Plenty, which is kind of kind of a history of how we got to where we are today and how modern economies were sort of formed. He has this theory, and he says it's from a guy named Richard Silla, who I don't know, I guess he's an economic historian. He says that interest rates have this U-shaped pattern,

and I'll use interest rates kind of as a precursor to inflation here. And he says, anytime there was a major civilization, they started out with huge rates at first, and then they sort of stabilized and then at the height of their development rates were really low because they were more mature and these countries were wealthier. So is it possible that inflation is just going to stay low for the foreseeable future? Do you see that being a scenario where interest rates and inflation stay low because we are such a much more mature economy? Sure, it's possible. I'm like the farthest from an inflation expert. I'm not even quite sure that I know what causes it. I'm not sure economists know what causes it. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. But I guess maybe

that is a point is that we are at full employment and wages should be creeping higher and inflation should be creeping higher, but it's not. And why is that? So I don't know. I don't really have any insights here. I guess anything is possible. They also throw out here that it could be demographics because they say a place like Japan who has a rapidly aging population has had basically deflation for 30 to 40 years now. What I think people, I don't know if this is available. bias or what it is. But people tend to mention anecdotes. Like, what do you mean there's no inflation? Did you see X? Without considering the places where we're not seeing inflation, as a for instance, I got an 82-inch television for $2,700. The first, some of the first

RCA TVs. I didn't even realize they made 82-inch TVs when you told me you got that. Some of the first RCA TVs in, I think, 1939, was like seven and ten inches. And they were the equivalent inflation adjusted of like $4,500 and $8,000, something like that. And when I bought my first flat screen TV, or my first big-ish TV, it was 37 inches, and it was the summer of 2010, I believe. And I paid as much in 2010 for a 37-inch TV as I did in 2018 for my 82-inch TV. So the idea is technology has made the things that we want cheaper. And unfortunately, a lot of things we need is more expensive, things like health care, education, education, these things. So it's hard to put it into a single number.

Yes. Yes, it's, there is nuance. So if you were someone who grew up in the 70s and 80s, you probably think inflation is just dormant right now and it's going to rear its ugly head eventually. If you're a young person like us, you probably think inflation is dead and it's never coming back. And I don't know, it's probably somewhere in the middle. But yeah, I really don't know.

But honestly, sitting here today, again, maybe recency bias. I wouldn't be surprised if inflation is just much lower than it has been because I think technology is hugely deflationary. Maybe the variance in inflation is sort of a permanent characteristic of a mature economy. I don't know. I don't feel too strong in one way or the other. Nothing would surprise me. All right, let's move on. So Ben had a really good idea for another podcast that we're going to do and it'll stay under the Animal Spirits banner.

And the idea was something called the rereadables, much like how Bill Simmons does the rewatchables over at the ringer. And we had been speaking about this for probably, I guess, three months now. The problem is that in the interim, Bill Simmons has started doing something that he calls the rereadables where he will take a article from an old column that he wrote and say how wrong he was or just riff on it. So being that that name is taken and we're not going to literally steal from him. him, even though the idea came from him, what we are asking for is ideas from our listeners.

So please email us. Don't you think it be good PR of Bill Simmons in the ringers suit us, though? Any press is good press. As we were discussing this, I had a thought that I have thought about previously, that I now think about a little bit differently. You know that there are some books that you've read and you cannot remember anything? Yes. And so I thought, like, I guess the knee jerk is like, so why read and whatever, whatever.

but how many movies are there that you've watched where you don't remember anything and then you'll see a scene come on and you're like oh I remember how great this was so I think that books are sort of similar in that with a lot of the books you might not remember like I read a biography on Herbert Hoover and I can't remember any of the specifics of what I read but I took you know I outlined stuff and wrote on the margins and I'm sure if I opened it up it would all come flooding back to me so in that vein Ben and I are going to do this podcast where we spend probably 30 minutes talking about, and I don't know about you, Ben. I don't plan on actually rereading this. I'll like scam and look at my notes and stuff. So I got this idea because I thought

about the big short was by far one of the best, the best book written about the crisis. And I read it so long ago. It's almost been 10 years now that I would love to go back and reread that. And I think that's going to be the first one that we do. So if you have any ideas, give us an email and also email us what you think the name could be because after the rereadables was kind of taken away, we're kind of at a loss. So we're asking for our listeners to send in some ideas on what we should do. And then send in some book ideas too for anything. We're going to stick to the classics probably.

No, no, no. Please do not send us any book ideas because our inbox will be flooded with book ideas. I think that we could handle it. So at first, we're going to do the big ones. We're going to do the big short. We're going to do thinking fast and slow. So if you have ideas for names, please send us that. Do not email us book ideas, please.

All right, fine. With peace and love, I'm asking you, please do not do that. All right. Moving on. Do it. So somebody, I think it was a non-related sense who was tweeting about how when he's dating, he doesn't want to date somebody in finance or I forget what the exact thread was. But you and I have spoken a little bit about this previously, how we speak to our spouses about our jobs and I guess more specifically personal finance topics. Did you ever used to watch friends at all?

Did you ever get into that show? Yes, I was a friends watcher. Okay. So back in the day, the running joke was no one really knew what Chandler did. they'd always kind of joke and say like, yeah, you do stuff with number. That's kind of like how my wife and I are. Like, you do something with money and no, she knows more than that. But so how do you approach the idea of investing in running your personal finances with your wife?

I don't. So Robin's paycheck and my paycheck obviously both get deposited into my back account. So I pay for everything. I am on top of like the personal finance household type stuff. but she has no idea about investing. She knows that we're saving in a 401k and that she's saving in her 4-3B, but she doesn't know and she doesn't want to know, I think. When we first got married, I sat my wife down and I literally walked her through, I like walked

through a blog post with it before I was a blogger. And I walked her through why we're going to put the bulk of our money into the stock market. And she was kind of nervous about that. And I ran her through like the numbers. And I mean, her eyes glazed over the whole time. sure. But after that, I mean, I sat her down for like 45 minutes and went through it. I still can't believe I did this and walked her through like why we're doing this. And even though it seems risky in the short term, it makes sense over the long term. And that's how you build

wealth. And I think I probably scared her away from ever asking too many questions after that because I just beat her over the head with the data. But it's probably something that the communication about that stuff is really important in terms of keeping both parties happy in America. Does Courtney read your blog? She'll do it occasionally, and every once in a while I'll tell her you should read this one and otherwise skip this one because, but she is a podcast listener, so I've got to be careful what I say here. I am positive that Robin has never read a blog post or actually a few, not a few weeks ago. It was probably a few months ago, maybe like eight or ten months into the podcast. She was like, does anybody even listen to this? So she, not in a bad way, it's, you know, but she just has really no interest, which I think I'm, I'm, I'm, pretty okay with. But it's one of those things where there still has to be some sort of

communication there to understand, you know, are we okay? What are our sort of unwritten rules? Do we ever have to ask each other about certain purchases of a, you know, a certain size or variety or something like that? So I think you always have to lay those sorts of ground rules down. True. So I think I'm lucky in two ways. One, we're lucky that she doesn't have to worry about money on a day-to-day basis. She knows that we're okay. We, you know, we don't have a lot of student loans, thank God, or anything like that. And also, So she's not a very big spender. She's not like really into fancy clothes or anything like that.

So we're pretty fortunate that way. I spend more money on clothes than my wife does, I think. So yes, I think if you can find someone who is not very material in their possessions, that's I found my wife too. That's a huge plus in terms of keeping the financial strain out of your marriage. So let's stick with the student loan theme for a minute. Elizabeth Warren has a new plan out where she wants to eliminate. as much as $50,000 in student debt for anyone with household income of less than $100,000

and partially canceled debt for those who make up to $250,000. What are your thoughts, Ben? The price of avocado toast is going to skyrocket on this. This seems like one of those things that it's probably a good short-term idea in terms of providing an economic boost, and a lot of people, frankly, probably need the help. But long-term, like, this is just a huge, like, gift to the colleges that have overcharged for people for years on this stuff. So, like, doesn't this just open the door for colleges to continue to overcharge people for their education if they know that the loans are going to be

forgiven? Like, the colleges already have the money. So I think it's a great idea to help these people. But unless you put some kind of penalty or give, like, tell the colleges, like, you're not going to get any sort of tax breaks unless you work to systematically let more people in or lower your tuition. Because guess what? All they're going to do is jack tuition. up because they're going to hope the government does this again for another generation. So I just don't see how this really helps long term. It's going to happen again. And it's probably dead on arrival because how do we pay for this? Well, it would cost estimated $1.2 trillion over a decade. And the revenue is going to come from a proposed annual tax on

wealth of more than $50 million, which to me seems, okay, in a vacuum, this seems pretty reasonable. People that have over $50 million have been huge beneficiaries of the laws, of this country and just, you know, are lucky to be born here. And maybe they should give back to society. However, the counterpoint is that they are already doing that. I don't know what the top 1% pays in terms of the total pie of income taxes, but I know it's a great, it's a lot. And I wonder if this is the type of thing where I will change my mind on as I get older. Because right now, as a young person, this seems sensible. On the other hand, as you get older, you tend to be a little bit more wary of the government get off my lawn type of stuff.

Why don't they start small? And I know this is how politicians were. They put out a huge plan. That's very ambitious. And then that plan will never, like, this is never going to happen. Let's be honest. And they want to just have some sort of concessions. But the government charges the debt. Why don't they just make these all interest-free loans? I mean, maybe that's another way of helping colleges because they'll just crank it up the, crank it up more. But I think either way, somehow you have to fix the cost of college before you fix anything else, just eliminating this debt for one generation of people. While maybe that does give us a nice economic boost and it boosts home prices, the next people in line are just going to experience the same thing. And then they're going to expect their own bailout eventually, too. So I just don't see how this ever works. And like you, I just don't think it ever happens. I don't agree with everything Elizabeth Warren says. I think that this is a, I don't know if it's a sensible solution, but I think there's probably something here. I mean, something needs to be done for sure. But this gets to the point of the generation and I guess the age that we live in where nuance is lost. It's either you love somebody or you hate somebody or somebody

says something that you disagree with. They're a teller person. So let's talk about this Dave Ramsey article for a second. And we'll get it to it in a minute. But one thing that really stood out to me was somebody said, I don't agree with everything he says, but something about his personality resonates with me. And I thought that that was really like a Bethafeshire, that this person had the sense to enjoy listening to Dave Ramsey, even if she doesn't agree with everything he says. So he was on the cover of Money Magazine, which they actually announced last week, I guess that they're going to do away with Money Magazine, the actual print edition, which has probably been on the bathroom floor of people 50 years of age and older for the last two decades. But they had this

really long article about Ramsey. And there was a lot of really surprising stuff in here to me. So the biggest one was, it says roughly 15 million people tune into the Dave Ramsey show every week, which he goes on the air for, I think, three hours a day, five days a week. And it said last year, his show was in the top five of Apple Podcasts for all shows on Apple iTunes, which is crazy in terms of podcasts. So the big surprise here, obviously, is the fact that we say people don't really care about personal finance, but that's literally all this guy talks about, is getting out of debt and spending money and paying for college. So maybe there is a bigger market for this than people realize. It says only Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have bigger audiences than him

in terms of talk radio. That's wild. I mean, I guess part of it is political, I guess. He has sort of the right-leaning Christian background because he does a lot of this stuff in churches, but it's impressive. And they went through in this article and talked to a bunch of young people who have paid down their debt using stuff from his books. So one of his sessions was in Grand Rapids. How was that, by the way? I forgot to ask you. That was kind of funny that the whole show talked about him coming here. And I didn't, I've heard of people going to his stuff before. And I know he's got a book. They said his book sold like five million copies. And the biggest thing that he talks about is like this debt snowball approach where you pay off your debts with the smallest balances

first, regardless of the interest rate. So you can kind of see some progress. And it's the idea of getting small wins in place. And then you can sort of build up and get into building bigger habits, which I actually think is a really good idea. It's just, I can't believe his audience is so big for what he does in terms of people call in and say, hey, I'm thinking about buying this or this is how much I own. And he kind of berates them for spending money is kind of the way I took it. But it's, it's impressive that he's built such a big audience. Yeah, again, with the idea that you could listen to somebody not like everything they say or actually, my cousin over the weekend told me that he listens to the podcast and the first thing he said was like, well, I don't agree with everything he say.

And my reaction was like, okay, so, I mean, I think that's kind of the point. I think that there's a lot of people that listen to us precisely because they disagree with us, which is fine. I mean, I don't think that you and I hold ourselves out to be experts in all the topics that we're discussing. much of the time we're just shooting the shit. And I disagree with myself all the time, right? Like, we say something in the heat of the moment. And then a day later or two days later when we listen to the podcast, I don't think that my knee-jerk reaction was necessarily a good one. So I do think one of the reasons Ramsey is so popular is because in some ways he's like the Susie Ormond type where he is more of like a motivational speaker and he's a really good salesperson. And he

tells he kind of gives people tough love, which sometimes I think maybe people frankly want or need. So last week we talked about Ormond on the show, and on Twitter, she made a response to someone else who posted the blog post where I talked a little bit about Orman and Ramsey. And I said the fact that they're so successful makes them maybe a little out of touch. And I guess reading this, maybe about Ramsey, I was a little wrong. But Susie said that it was the stupidest comment she's ever read in her life, which you post to our Instagram feed, if anyone wants to see. That was really a big moment for me. I just wanted to acknowledge that. That was one of my crowning achievements in all of social media. think. Yeah, that was a big one. So sticking with the article magazine indicator, Steve Schwartzman over at Black Rock, they've had a pretty good 2019. They raised $43 billion in the first three months of the year, $126 billion in the past 12 months. And man, I know they don't ring the bell at the top, but E, Schwartzman likened it to an, quote, out-of-body experience. You know what? I think that I used to think it was outer body experience until I saw it in print. Outer. There's an inner and outer body. Like outer space. If you're one of these pension funds that has piled into

private equity over the past decade or so, this is not what you want to hear from your money managers. How could you ever feel good hearing that from someone that you've given billions of dollars to because you're hoping that it'll juice your returns. And it's almost like he couldn't believe how much money these places are throwing at him to invest. There's already like a couple trillion dollars of money waiting to be invested from private equity. I just, there's going to be so much disappointment in this space. I mean, it's just, it's one of those things that you just know is coming. I don't know when, but it's coming at some point. I'll stick in with that theme of potential disappointment. Ben and I are big fans of charts that show a peak in 2000 with a red

circle and getting back to that level. And so this chart that I'm talking about doesn't exactly have those red circles, but you can draw it, and I'm drawing it for you. The percentage of IPOs with EPS under a dollar. So the percentage of IPOs with negative income is back to 2000 peak. What say you? Is it different this time? I guess not. It's, so this is from the, that Professor Ritter in the University of Florida who tracks all the IPO stuff. It's harder to say because there aren't as many IPOs. So I guess the percentage of them sort of equalizes it. But back then there were so many more companies that were doing it. So the sheer number of the volume of them was much greater. I don't know. The thing, the funny thing is, is that these days, all the new

IPOs, for the most part, are getting hammered after they come out. There was one that came out last week, I guess that Zoom that was up 60% on the first day or something, which I guess they're a video conferencing company. I never heard of them before. But Lyft has gotten absolutely shalacked since it came out and went public, which I can't imagine how places like Uber and Airbnb are feeling looking at that since they're going to be the next one online. But I don't know, any comparison between now and 2000, I think is kind of, that doesn't hold water for me. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, obviously, there are a lot more variables than just one line on a chart. All right, we don't have a survey of the week, but we do have a little busting of the survey business.

This is kind of an anti-survey of the week. Honestly, I mean, I'm sure both of us have used this stat before. People see it all the time. Oh, I've definitely used it. Fed survey shows that 40% of adults still can't cover a $400 emergency expense. And that's one of those stats you read where you go, the whole country is going to be screwed then financially. So this guy named Paul Millard did a tweet storm about this on Twitter, and it kind of blew up a little bit. And he showed all these articles that cite this.

And he decided to go back through the actual Fed survey, which is where they get this from. And I pulled a few pieces out of here. He showed that it's probably closer to, say, 15% because of the way that they sort have asked the question. And really, so it was never really as high as 40% anyway. And he said a lot of these surveys are really showing that people are doing much better in their finances. It's just that that's the one piece people pulled out. He said he found 8.5% of people on the survey are finding it hard to get by financially, whereas 30% are just getting by. So he went through the survey and

showed kind of the way that they asked that question made it look like it was much worse than it is. and when you actually dig into the data, it's not as bad. And I guess, again, this is why we're an anti-survey podcast, because even when you look at them, it's easy to be fooled by this stuff, right? Yes. And let's, you know what? We do have a survey. Ben, you saw this chart television consumption versus family income?

Yes. This one was flying around Twitter, and it basically shows a straight line down going from left to right showing the more money you make, the less TV you watch. And the less money you make, the more TV you watch. I think there's something to the more money you make, the less TV you watch type of thing. That's possible. So you can say you're working more, you're busy. This just seemed a little too neat for me. Like it followed a perfect linear regression. And the idea was, well, all these poor people are poor because they're just watching TV all the time.

And I say BS, a lot of the people who are actually filling out these surveys, these rich people don't want to admit that they're watching a lot of TV. Think about the surveys you got when you're in high school. they used to ask you, like, how often you smoke and drank. Did you ever fill those out, honestly? I remember, do you remember getting those in high school? I would always think it's going to be a trap. Like, I'm going to fill out that I drink a few times a week, and they're going to be, someone's going to be waiting for me on the other side of the door to get me in trouble. So, of course, I lied on them every time. And I think there's a lot to going to this, too. You have a bias against surveys. No wonder why you're so anti-survey. But if they ask rich people, how much do you read? Don't you think people would cite the number of books they're buying and not the number of books they're actual reading? Because a lot of people

buy books and they never finish them. Yes, I do think that. And do you actually know how many hours of TV you watch a day? I probably got a pretty good approximation. Probably one to two hours a day. Okay. Yeah. Not to brag, not to brag, but I'm probably 15 minutes. How do you, was that a life hack? You watch three hours. of TV in 15 minutes? Yes. Okay. Are you fasting on the weekends, like Jack Dorsey as well?

You're TV fasting. So, yes, TV fasting. Remember recently we spoke about how Taco Bell was Glenn Bell and Price Club was Saul Price? I found another one. Okay. From a new book called Alpha Girls, which was very good. It's coming out in, I guess, a week.

Page rank, the original name of Google, I guess it had multiple meanings, obviously, but that comes from Larry Page. Oh, I didn't get that either. Wow. I read that and I still didn't get it. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Right. That's not bad. And here's a crazy step from the book. Benchmark invested $5 million in eBay and a stake was worth $417 million a year later when it went public. Wow. Which year did eBay go public, obviously, the late 90s? Yeah, I don't know exactly which one. That's wild. So I've got a good story. I had a high school buddy whose older brother went to the University of Michigan and lived in the the same dorm as the guys from Google. And they were always building technology stuff with Legos.

So they actually built a printer made out of Legos for their dorm room that would print their term papers and stuff. Come on. Yeah. At least one or two of them went to the University of Michigan. So, yeah, it's kind of crazy, huh? So there was a video I found on the YouTube sticking with a Google theme. So Buffett was talking, a kid in the audience asked him if now was a good time to buy stocks.

and he gave a great answer. I will link to it in the show notes. When was this video taken? I think it was 1999. But the point is this. Last week we spoke about how people just love to hate Game of Thrones or for anything that's like you would think is just accepted as a good idea or a good person or a good message or whatever it is. So this video had 956 dislikes.

Now, granted, there was like a gazillion likes, but still. Still, 956 people hit dislike. Wait, I, maybe I'm an internet noob here. I didn't even realize you could hit dislike on a video on YouTube. I guess I don't ever pay attention to that stuff. Yep. So people actively went out. So people gave like a Yelp review on this Warren Buffett video and they didn't like it.

Correct. Wow. Okay. That's pretty good. Okay. So I feel like once a week, you and I talk about the retirement crisis and how they're basically is no solution to it and what are people going to do besides rely on social security. There was an article in advisor perspective perspectives this week and it said it's called what critics get

wrong about reverse mortgages by Wade Fow who's kind of like a retirement expert. And I think he's even written a book about reverse mortgages. Full disclaimer, I'm not a big expert on reverse mortgages. I haven't really studied like the Tommy, Tommy Lee Jones School of Thought on that. But he goes over kind of a number of ways that maybe for people who are really in trouble that a reverse mortgage could actually be the way out in a way to really help you manage your finances. And the fact that so much, the biggest financial asset in so many, especially middle class households, is their home. I mean, again, I don't know how like the fees work on this. Maybe someone can school us to this, but this actually sounds like it might not be the worst idea

for some people that are really in trouble in terms of retirement. And as long as they're okay, not handing over much in the way of assets to their next generation, a lot of people may have to do this. So it seems like a topic that could kind of, I'm saying I'm buying some leaps on reverse mortgages, if that's a thing for retirement people. From what I understand, the products are much less predatory than they used to be. Okay. It definitely seems like a place that could have some, yeah, some shady people and predatory aspects because you're dealing in such large numbers. But for people who need cash flow in retirement and don't really have much in the way of investable assets in the financial markets, it seems like your house is obviously

your next best bet. So anyway, if Tommy Lee Jones, if you want to come and advertise an animal spirits, hit us up. Okay, listener questions. I'm a grad student in my mid-20s, have a high-yield savings account and use Robin Hood to buy ETFs, as well as pick some stocks for fun. Do you think Utilizing an ACORN account is worth it as opposed to just buying some more SPY on Robin Hood. Curious what you guys think about ACORN in general compared to other platforms such as Betterment. I don't have an ACOR's account, so I really can't talk to it. Do you know? Well, we talked about this a couple weeks ago, how like the average balance in it is $400 or something.

And it basically takes some of your savings when you spend money in it and it sort of rounds up and throws that money into savings. That's the way I see it. So people, some people yell that the fees are egregiously high on a percentage basis for smaller accounts. But so what? Even if you pay, even if you pay like 10% fees on a $400 account, doesn't really matter if it's forced you to save because the fees are going to, as a percentage, come down dramatically as you actually get some money in the account? I guess the thing that matters is, do you need that form of forced savings? It sounds like this person. Probably. Well, well, no, it sounds like this person. Yeah, they have a high yield savings account. They're buying ETFs. And so they're kind of worried about the high fees. It doesn't make sense. It could. Again, if you need that sort of forced savings, if you don't, then who knows? I think a lot of it comes down to what's the easiest way psychologically to force yourself to save? I think a lot of people really need that. And so if Acorn forces you to do that and you're paying a couple bucks on your $400 balance and you're okay with that, then I think

that's fine. If you can force yourself to save in other ways and you're really paying attention to fees, then maybe there's other ways to do it. But yeah, I'm not one of these people that hates on them for trying to actually make money as a business. That's, guess what? People have to make money. They can't just do this stuff for free. Okay, any recommendations for the week? I finished a book that had stopped reading. I think I stopped reading it while we were moving. Destiny and Power, the George H.W. Bush book by John Meacham.

So I'm going back to my roots of presidential biographies. So he was reading. So the 41st president had a diary, and he was reading it from 2006 to 2015. So I guess it took him like almost a decade to write. If you are interested in learning about the 41st president, I highly recommend that. John Meacham is a great author, so it's a very good book. Any good tidbits? Yes.

Public perception on him changed dramatically with the passage of time, like many other things do. But I did not know that Operation Desert Storm was a big battle that I had to fight. Obviously, read my lips, not raising taxes was a big thing. It was a good book. Did he talk about when he was on The Simpsons? That was my fondest recollection of him when I was younger. I never watched The Simpsons. And I don't know why I think my brain is broken, but I was never able to get into cartoon comedies like South Park or family guy.

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I just can't laugh at them. No, I'm the same way. We would always watch Simpsons reruns in college when we got back from the dorms from dinner or something. But when it comes out on Disney Plus, do yourself a favor and watch like the first five seasons. It kind of gets bad after that. It eventually jumps a shark, but at least the first five seasons. That doesn't jive with my 15 minutes a day. That's true.

All right. Sorry. You're going to have to figure out a better life hack. Okay. TV recommendation this week is for Barry with Bill Hater. I watched the first season last year. I liked it. It started out a little slow but built on me.

And the second season and we're, I think it's three episodes in already. I think you mean that it grew on you. What did I say? You said it built on me. Oh, okay. Yeah, I guess I mixed up my metaphors. I'm going to say it built up a little bit and got better. I love Bill Hater.

And this show is like equal parts. hilarious and it also goes to like a dark place every once in a while because he's an assassin and there's a guy Hank on the show who is slowly rising up my list of funniest characters on TV right now he's just hilarious his his sense of humor is just great so I think Barry is one of the more underrated shows on TV right now and I think it's kind of an acquired taste but it's really good

went in with very low expectations or maybe no expectations my wife and I watch crazy rich Asians this weekend is on HBO I liked it I couldn't I was surprised I had no expect... I mean, it's basically like a romantic comedy and it's kind of like a cultural movie of people in Singapore and like the Chinese culture and a lot about family

and I actually kind of liked it. It got me thinking, though, like one of the casualties of the superhero movies is there really aren't any romantic comedies anymore. Besides like maybe the Judd Apatow movies, Seth Rogan, it seems like romantic comedies have kind of... They're gone, more or less. And this was one of the first romantic comedies I've seen in a while.

I'm not that that's at the top of my list in terms of movie categories, but it just kind of got me thinking. And I was like, huh, I kind of enjoyed this romantic comedy. This rom-com wasn't bad. I like a good rom-com. So, crazy rich Asians on HBO right now, I liked it. And I surprised myself a little bit, low expectations going in, and it was better than I thought it would be. So that's my recommendation. Remember, send us your ideas for names for the rereadables podcast, which we'll be doing sporadically.

and also send Michael all of your book recommendations to his personal email, and we will talk to you next week.