Animal Spirits Podcast - The Rich Man's Disease (EP.70)

Episode Date: February 27, 2019

The meaning of work, why so many people are miserable with their career, smartphone addiction, Warren Buffett's latest shareholder letter, the greatest investor you've never heard of, the huge upside potential in a retirement portfolio, the insane rally in stocks since Christmas Eve, True Detective reviews 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

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 Holt's 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 Ritt Holt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. clients of Rittholds wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. On today's Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben, we're going to be talking about the meeting of work, the Berkshire Hathaway letter, a billionaire who actually bought Microsoft at the IPO and never sold. We're going to do a few surveys, things that annoy us. Upside potential in retirement. We're going to talk about dying broke, the bull market, and we'll get to listen to questions and recommendations.

But we're going to start out with Ben's boy, Derek Thompson. And you know what? He's my boy too now because his writing is pretty tremendous. He wrote an article over the weekend about how the meaning of work has really morphed in the 21st century. Sorry. All right. I'll keep going. So, quote, in the past century, the American conception of work has shifted from jobs to careers to callings, from necessity to status to meaning.

But our desks were never meant to be our altars. the modern labor force evolved to serve the needs of consumers and capitalists not to satisfy tens of millions of people seeking transcendence at the office, end quote. And the implication is that because it can't provide transcendence to everybody, a lot of people are going to fall short and therefore just be sort of perpetually miserable. So I listened to Jay Leno on a podcast recently. I think it was one with Dex Shepard. And he talked about how he said there's an old saying that exhaustion is a rich man's disease. That's kind of what I thought about as I read this, because, and we'll get to another article after this one, too, by Charles Duhigg, which

was kind of along the same lines. And it kind of makes it sound like people who are in the sort of, call it, upper middle class, or I guess even wealthy class, work has become everything from them, but a lot of them are just miserable because of it. So I don't really, I, I don't know what my takeaway from this was, because he even admitted here that he's, he falls into this class himself, Thompson does. I don't think that he was necessarily advocating for this. I think this was was just his view of the environment. And I think that you and I can certainly relate to this. And I think we are definitely two of the very, very, very lucky, fortunate ones who basically skip to work every day. Yeah, it helps when you like your job. And I think that's the problem

for most people is a lot of them spend all this time and energy at work, but then they still hate their job. So that's how you end up hating your life pretty much, right? And he talked, too, about how a lot of it is how we've kind of tricked young people into assuming that they need to take out a bunch of college loans to get these jobs. And so they borrow a bunch of money to get a job that they end up hating. And so I don't know what the main takeaway is here from him or what the call to action is. But I do think the idea of sort of younger people worshiping something else and not having like a religion in their life and instead focusing their passions somewhere else is probably fair to call into question.

Yeah. He talked about, like, if you were to design a black mirror labor force, this is like exactly what it would be. And he said, quote, it is a diabolical game that creates a prize so tantalizing yet rare that almost nobody wins, but everybody feels obligated to play forever, end quote. And I wonder if, not wonder, if I do think that social media is probably having a huge influence on this. Yeah. From Twitter to Instagram, certainly. And we'll get into, actually, no, let's get into this right now. So there was an article. And Ben, we'll move right into this. New York Times article after this, but there was an article by Kevin Ruse of the New York Times, and it was basically like how to cut the addiction from your cell phone. And there was a really funny line in it. It was a caption under a photo, and it said, it was a picture of him reading a book. And it said, remember books? They're like Twitter threads, but longer. That's pretty good. It is always interesting to me when you see these stories of I quit the internet for a month or social media for a month, but then they post them on social media anyways.

What do you think about, like, phone addiction? Because obviously, it is a huge fact of life. I don't even want to say, like, it's not because it certainly is. I am absolutely addicted to my phone. And I tried one weekend to cut it out. And I guess it was sort of nice-ish, but I'm not really sure what to think. Because it is, it is a huge issue, but I don't, you know, I don't really know how to avoid it. Or quite frankly, I don't know that I want to. A lot of people evoke that John Maynard Keynes thing in 1930, which Thompson does, about how Keynes predicted that in the future we'd be so productive that we'd all be able to live a life of leisure. And in a lot of ways, isn't that what technology has done for us? Maybe it's not a life of leisure, but it fills

every spare minute of boredom. We have social media in our little pocket supercomputers to do that for us. So isn't that kind of what has happened? So the workforce has traded physical in the early 1900s for mental exhaustion today. Trademark that one. But don't you think all these people that say they work so much, how much work are they really doing? Like back in the day, people on the farms working six or seven days a week from sunup to sundown, they were really actually working. How many people at a desk job are actually working the entire day when you have all this tempting

internet and other things to go to? There's no way people are actually being productive that whole time they're at a desk. True, but they did not understand the mental exhaustion of crap. the perfect tweet. That's true. Do you know how long it takes to do a good meme? So what was the just of the New York Times article? Because I didn't get to that one yet. It's kind of the same thing. So Duhigg, he's written a couple really good books. And the power of habit is one of my favorites of his. But he said he went back to his, I think it was his 20th anniversary or something for Harvard Business School. And he thought these people would all be happy because they were

masters of the universe. But the problem was, even though they were making a ton of money, they basically weren't happy. And so he talked about a few of his friends that he talked to that had taken jobs in investment banking and consulting. And he talked to one person who's making like a million dollars a year. But of course, they're working a ton and not happy and overstressed. And so he talked to this person and the guy quoted and he said, I'm jealous of everyone who had the balls to do something that made them happy. It seemed way too big of a risk for me when we were at school. So the point was when you go to a place like Harvard where there's huge expectations for you, you kind of take the job that you think you're supposed to,

not the one that you maybe want to. So even if you make a ton of money, it doesn't matter because you're so stressed out. And he put a few stats in here. So he said in the mid-80s, here's, here's our first survey of the day. Sixty-one percent of workers told pollsters they were satisfied with their job. And in 2010, it was only 43 percent based on this survey. So kind of a big decline there. So I don't know, it comes back to your social media point that maybe it's just so much easier to compare yourselves on a relative basis to everyone else these days, that that's what you end up doing? Wait, here's another trademark.

Relativism is everywhere. Hashtag. Not blessed. So I like this line from the article. If you spend 12 hours a day doing work you hate, at some point, it doesn't matter what your paycheck says. There's no magic salary at which a bad job becomes a good job. So maybe this just boils down to the simplest point is that you say, you say, you

that earlier in the article, he said that he wished he had the balls to do something meaningful or whatever. But isn't this just the case of the grass is greener on the other side? Because don't you think the people who did take the leap and decide to do something meaningful that failed, wish that they had gone the more traditional route? So I think that there's people with money who aren't happy because they wish they did something else. And there's people without money who are obviously unhappy because they're having trouble paying the bills and stuff. And I think it was almost forced because that's just the way it is. But the way it was, The way that I've found balance in this personally is I have a family now. And on the weekends,

I don't have time to answer emails all day or be on my phone. And so I think that's forced me to be more balanced in life. And I think that's a good thing when you, it's almost taken out your hands. You don't have that choice. And I think, especially in terms of Thompson, the way that he, I think that's kind of Lennel, the Lennel quote I use was it's a rich man's disease, exhaustion. But I think a lot of times it's kind of a young man's disease too. And you see all the, a lot of these tech elites and people on the coasts who are younger and do this. And you see them succeed because they dropped out of school and they worked 90 hours a week. And you kind of fantasize that that's the way to go. But I think a lot of times you're looking at a lot of everyone

there and not what's actually realistic for most people. So are you saying that you should cherish your exceptions? Did you like that one? I did. We'll get to that. I have a question a few about that later. But did we, wait, I think what you're saying, if I'm hearing you correctly, is have three kids and then you won't have time for, did we just solve depression? Yes, pretty much. And that's also an economic expansion because kids are damn expensive. So I just solved all of our, all of our ills. Man, too easy. All right. So did you read the Berkshire letter? I skimmed it. I'm going to stand brand. I got to admit, it just doesn't really excite me that

much anymore. It's kind of one of those things where you know what they're going to, you know what he's going to say. It was okay. Okay. What I appreciate big time, the fact that it was down to 14 pages, as was the previous letter. And I think that this is the new trend, because I think it used to be like, you know, it used to be work to read them, not in a bad way, but it used to, I mean, now you can read it in, you know, 20, 30 minutes. Yes. So did you have any big takeaways? So maybe the ROI is not what it used to be because we've read so many of them. But yes, I did have a takeaway that I really thought that they had a good point about the buyback stuff. So here's a quote from the letter. If Charlie and I think an investee's stock is underpriced, we rejoice when management employs some

of its earnings to increase Berkshire's ownership percentage. Here's one example drawn from the table above. Berkshire's holders of American Express have remained unchanged over the past eight years. Meanwhile, our ownership increased from 12.6% to 17.9% because repurchase is made by the company. This is a wild stat. Last year, Berkshire's portion of the $6.9 billion earned by American Express was $1.2 billion, which is basically what they paid for the stake in the company. It is pretty crazy how much their ownership percentage has increased. The one thing I do say I will appreciate about Buffett is the fact that he, especially in the last few years, has always taken the time to talk about how lucky he is. And he talks about how great things have been in this period that he came up in.

And so that's kind of something we touched on a little bit here too. But I do give him credit for always talking about that and saying that he just happened to hit the lottery in terms of when he came up, no matter how, you know, what he did with that luck. Yeah, good point. Another thing that stood out in the article was he said that prices are sky high for businesses possessing decent long-term prospects. And they're now sitting on over $100 billion in cash. They almost made a big purchase in the fourth quarter. Now, a lot of that $100 billion in cash is just money set aside for future potential liabilities from the insurance. So that has grown commensurate with the asset base that they've had. However, maybe they are market timing a little bit,

which is fine. They obviously have proven the ability to be very savvy when it comes to making purchases. But if I could have one complaint, and this is really nitpicking about these Berkshire letters, is that you read it and they make it sound so darn easy. And I don't think that's their intent, but that's like the takeaway after I'm done reading these letters. It's like, oh, you just buy a great business. You pay less than what it's worth. And that's it. You just hold on for 30 years and that's it. And maybe that's why the letters have gotten so much shorter because he's become such a good communicator over the years that he can simplify his message in a way that maybe he couldn't in the past. And yeah, I agree. It's much harder than it sounds the way that these guys say it.

And that's kind of what Munger's been saying lately, too, is it's not as easy. Maybe it's not as easy as we made it sound because all these people trying to copycat us can't do it. So sticking with billionaire investors, there was an article in Forbes about this optometrist who is now a billionaire. He actually bought Microsoft at the IPO. And his shares are now worth more than $160 million. So this was called the greatest investor you've never heard of. And I think my favorite part about this story is the reporter mentioned that he brought in his Fidelity statements to prove that he actually had made these investments, which I thought that was kind of hilarious to prove. So no one questioned if he actually did it or not.

So there were some inconsistencies in the story. Like the article said that he adds to his losers. However, he bails after 25% declines. And then also he owns 15 million shares of GE. So GE obviously has had a much deeper decline than that. So all right, but anyway, I guess what do you make of this, of this whole story? He's probably getting up at 4.30 every morning and reading the annual filings. Some of his stuff was interesting. And he admitted that he bought Microsoft in the 80s and Apple in the 80s, but he also was a huge investor in Blackberry. And I guess probably to your point about cutting you losers short that he actually didn't do it, a lot of times you look at one of these people who have been super successful and you try to back out how they did it. And in a lot of ways, you can't. There is no like 10-step program to do it. It's sometimes they just, they They do what they do at that time, and that's the way it worked out. There's no rhyme or reason to it. To me, the best part of the article was this. I never really thought about it this way, but this is just very well put. He said, quote, you take what you earn with a sweat of your brow, then you take a percentage of that and you invest it in other people's labor.

Very good, yeah. And he, yeah, the way he went about it too is interesting how he was investing. He said he reads patents every day, and it's because that's the, he kind of came up in the technology world. So, yeah, I'd never heard of this guy before. It was pretty interesting. So why don't we talk about the stock market for a second? Holy cow. So we did a show either the day before or the day after right around the Christmas Eve bottom. And you made a comment that stocks are down so much right now. It would take like a 22% rally or some, you throw out a number just to get back to all-time highs. And we both kind of looked at each other and said that would be insane, would it not?

And what are we? We're almost there. We're at a 19 or 20 percent. It's happened so fast. It never ceases to amaze. It is just remarkable. I don't really know what else to say. There was a chart floating around the share of S&P 500 market cap held short is as low as it's been in basically the last decade, which is, I guess, I guess not a huge surprise that people are covering their shorts as the market rises. But yeah, I'm out of the loss of words. It's just, if you look at a chart, it's just really, truly remarkable. So you, so let's take about it. fact to your post about cherish your exceptions. And so I guess the point was like never say never because truly the market humbles you over and over and over again. So I had a question, do you, because it was a very good title, do you come up with the title first and like have like a working title? Or do you just write the post and then do the title after? Or is it sort of,

does it just depend? It depends. I'd say, no, it's pretty rare. I'd say five to 10 percent of the time I have a title in mind. Usually I backfill afterwards. I can't remember. I heard I wish I could give credit because I heard someone say this a long time ago or read it or something. And so it just kind of stuck with me. But the point was, and you kind of wrote about this at the time, like, what does a market bottom look like? And the point was, remember everyone said because stocks were up almost 5% the day after Christmas, suckers rally, stocks don't, stocks don't bottom on a big up day. And that's exactly what happened. And I think that's just the point is that anytime you're certain about these things. Even if you're thinking probabilistically, you still have to allow for

those outlier events to happen because they seem to happen all the time. I mean, I still think that this ridiculous rally was the lower, if I had to go back in time, and I think I felt this way at the time I felt this way now, feel this way now, this was the lower probability outcome, right? Like, did anybody expect that this would happen? No, but to your point, this thing, these things happen all the time. And you have to be an idiot or just told totally delusional to think that, like to not be constantly surprised by the market. Yes. Yes. I think the quote I heard one time was, don't be surprised that you are surprised. So it's just going to happen again and again. And that's just the way the stock market works.

And of course, it seems easy from here from a lot of people can look back and say, well, the reason stocks fell in the first place, there wasn't really a reason. But there hasn't really been a reason for the snapback rally either. So this is just the way that it works sometimes. So let's get to another survey. The Wall Street Journal had an article. And they said, quote, for the first time in at least six years, investors rated fund performance as equally important as fund fees according to an annual survey of 300 institutional investors. Okay, I do not believe this, not for one second, that for the first time in six years, investors said that performance is equally as important as fund fees. Is that, are they saying

that fund fees have been more important than performance? Because I don't buy that. Especially if this is institutional investors, that's pretty much all they care about is performance. Right. Yeah, there's no way that this is the first time that's happened. So there was another interesting nugget in the article. It said not one of Fidelity's four zero fee funds is among the firm's top 10 most popular this year. I guess maybe there is fee war fatigue or, and we've spoke about this. Listen, the difference between four basis points in zero or even, I mean, 10 basis points at zero,

it's for most investors that doesn't do anything. This is kind of interesting. So it looks like more money went into Fidelity's 500 index fund. than the zero total market fund. So it says $290 billion in January went into the 0% fee fund versus $5.2 billion went into the $500 index fund. So in a lot of ways, it's almost like people are going for something they're more familiar with.

And so that one costs 20 basis points versus 20 basis points or two basis points. I don't know. 20 cents for every dollar, for every thousand dollars invested. I can't do the math that quick. But that is interesting that we've talked about this in the past about how there's shifting changes in like S&B 500 funds going into lower cost, but within fidelity, it doesn't look at working that way. Yeah.

So what's this Kitsis article? Okay. So we've talked about this the last few weeks here in terms of if you use a 4% rule, take the inverse of that and you need 25 times your money. And we've kind of said, is that a little too defensive? Stop saying that. Stop saying what? I just feel like I'm going to forever point out the fact that I don't understand that thing.

I understand 25 times 4 is 100, but I just don't think it works that way. Okay, all right. And you can tell William Bernstein, I said so. Okay, so Kitsy's looked at, like, I think the way that people don't realize that the 4% rule is kind of looking at in a vacuum of your worst case scenario. So he looked back since the 1920s, a 6040 portfolio who has earned 8% a year, which would seem a little touch high in the current environment still. That would imply investors should be able to spend at least 6% of the

starting account balance in retirement and adjust that for inflation each year, and that's including 3% inflation year for 30 years and not run out of money. If you spend 6%, do you need 15 times your savings? That sounds about right. Yes. Yeah. All right. Nice math on that one.

And so he says even after 30 years of inflation, the bulk of the principle would still be left over if taking a 6% initial withdrawal rate against an 8% long-term return. Of course, that's the kind of rosy scenario where a lot of people don't think we're going to be getting an 8% return from 6040. which I would fall into that camp too. But he said even if we look at the worst 30-year periods for a balanced portfolio, and it was 6.3% for an investor starting in 1929, you could still have a withdrawal rate, an initial withdrawal rate of 5.4% and barely run out of money at the end of the 30th year, which I think

would probably surprise some people. So you invest at the very top in 1929, see stocks fall by 85-ish percent and still be okay 30 years later, taking 5% of your money out. Yeah, I thought this is really good because I never thought about it this way. I do think it's more important for investors to worry about the downside and let the upside take care of itself. But he said at a 4% initial withdrawal rate, the odds of nearly depleting the portfolio are equal to the odds of growing it by more than 800%. So his point was, what is the plan if things are far better than you go in initially thinking

in how do you deal with maybe getting higher returns than you thought and having a bigger portfolio, which obviously is a good problem to have? But I think people don't really think that way. Wait, is this, this is America, right? Yes. Because has he shown this in Japan? Nailed it. Now to Japan, okay.

Sorry, couldn't help myself. All right, here's another survey. All right, this one is from bankrate.com. And this is confusing me. Maybe I just didn't have enough coffee today, but Ben, tell me if you can make a sense of that, of this. Well, I didn't have any coffee today. On brand. Only 44% of households have more money in emergency savings than the amount that they owe in

credit card debt. Okay. So that's the shot. Here's the chaser. That's actually down from 58% last year, and it's the lowest amount in bank rates nine years of conducting the survey. So you think it should be higher or lower than that? Well, here's the part that I understand.

Then they also go on to say, no, I'm just saying only 44% of households have more money in emergency savings than the amount they owe in credit card debt. That sounds so high. But the fact that it's down from 58%. And this is the best it's been in nine years. It's just like, that's kind of scary. All right, but here's the part I don't understand. Now they say,

29% of those surveyed reported having more credit card debt than emergency savings. Okay. So that was taking the other side of it, but it didn't match. But aren't they asking the same question and getting away different answers? Yes, this is why we're an anti-survey podcast. And I agree. There's no way credit card debt is so rampant in the country. There's no way that that many, and you always see these surveys.

about people having can't come up with $400 to fix an emergency if they need it. And so I, 60% seems way high in terms of people having more money in emergency savings than in credit card debt. Maybe I'm wrong. Yeah. So sticking with this theme, there was an article, The Inheritance Enigma showing that about 40% of Americans die more or less broke, implying that 60% of people managed to leave some money to their errors. And they showed that there's a chart that we'll put in the show notes showing inheritances by size. And by far the most common is a small inheritance under $50,000. It's around 55% of total inheritances and only call it, I don't know, 2% of

inheritances are over a million dollars. However, when you look at inheritances as a proportion of total U.S. dollars, of course, it's the exact opposite, meaning that inheritance is over a million dollars only represent 2% of all inheritances, but they represent 40% of all dollars left to heirs. So this is like a nice wealth inequality chart more or less. Yeah. Showing that the rich stay richer. If I had to guess, so that 40% number about people dying broke, if I had to guess

that number is only going to rise over time because people are living longer, wouldn't you assume that more people will end up spending all the money they have because health care, as health care improves, they're going to live longer and not be able to, they're going to outlive the cash they have more or less? Yeah. I definitely think that's going one way. We were in, you and I were in Chicago last week and had to go run to the cash machine or the ATM. I don't know I said cash machine to pay for Uber because we messed up. But anyway, the point is. We got in the wrong Uber. So as I went to the ATM, I saw something like, I don't remember, I think it was a 12-month CD paying 2%. And I thought, who is? is going to lock up their money for 12 months for 2% when you could get the same return in a, or the same rate, higher rate in a liquid wrapper. But I guess like people buying CDs

are not the same people buying ETFs. Well, obviously it seems like there's a lot of inefficiencies in the cash management game because we talked about this a number of shows ago that about, what is it, $8 trillion in a bank savings account that yields an average nine basis points or something. Yes. So obviously, I don't think people are thinking through this decision as much as we would hope in terms of getting yield on their cash and thinking about it the right way. So I think a lot of times you go with the options that are right in front of you. Is there good data on CD flows? Flows, I'm not sure.

I do have some data that I can post in the show notes showing what the annual rates have been on CDs and bank yields. and they haven't been great, obviously, and they're still far below what you could get in, like a traditional, or not a traditional, an online bank account like we've been pushing on people. But it does seem like one of those areas. And I guess a lot of it depends on how much money you have, because if you think about the difference between 50 basis points

or even 1%, if you have $10,000 in your emergency savings account at one of these places, how much money you really making in addition each year? And so I think people can't overthink these things. And a lot of it depends on how much cash you really have in there. But obviously, a lot of people aren't being very thoughtful about these decisions. So there was a tweet from Bridget. I guess who has name is Fetacee?

Something like that. We'll put this in the show notes. She said, brunch is for people who like cheap champagne, splitting checks, 12-person group texts, and wasting four hours on a meal that should take two during what could be some of the most productive hours of your day. What are your thoughts on this? I couldn't tell you that. I have kids. I don't have brunch.

I eat breakfast at 7 a.m. every day with them, so brunch is a thing of the past to me. Well, okay. Put yourself in the pre-dad era. Were you a bruncher? I mean, it seems like something people do in New York. Is that fair? True. Brunch is a big city thing. Okay. I am anti-brunch. On the record. I'll just say it. I hate spending $40 for egg whites. Have you ever been to... For the record, I never order egg whites. I'm just saying. Okay. Have you ever been to brunch?

brunch on your own before like you do when you go to movies never have never well okay so i read this tweet as i was sitting in the car uh waiting for my wife to do something and then i said i was like yeah you know what brunch is kind of annoying and then i saw something else that annoyed me and i never really realized it until i saw it in action so this this happened uh while i was pulling to the parking lots i didn't almost hit somebody but i was driving and they were driving and then they pulled the old, like, loop out and then back into the spot. Oh, yes. For no, for no reason.

For no reason. They could have just pulled. I always make that comment to my wife. Why did that person have to back into the parking spot? So I don't know that people who eat brunch are the same people who back into their parking spots. I don't know what the overlap is, but. Probably pretty high.

Probably pretty high. So on the way back from Florida, I was sitting next to a pilot. I was in the row with more extra leg room. Oh, speaking of that. So I tweeted from Chicago that the $50 upgrade seat next to me was empty and it smells recessionary. And of course, I was kidding. But some of the replies that I got were just beyond moronic. Like, it sounds like it wasn't full. You're confirming your priors. $50 is a lot of money. You call sole lead asshole. Really? It just, I don't, like, it just made, I want to just crawl into my butt and never tweet again. That's, like, basically where I'm at these days. Sarcasm does not, I don't know how many times I've typed on Twitter. I was being facetious to people, just to be like, listen, I was just kidding.

Yeah, I hate doing that because then I feel like the idiots win. If you have to explain that something was a joke. All right, but anyway, so from Florida, I was sitting next to a pilot, and one of the flight attendants was also in the row, like, sort of in one of those flight tendencies. And so he was talking to her and they were schmoozing about her routes and whatever, whatever. And she's like, oh, I have to make this quick flight. Can you just look it up for me? And so he's on his computer telling her which gates and which gates and whatever. And I just got me wondering, how the hell did people fly before the internet? That's a good point. The same thing applies to how did people ever meet their friends at a place before the internet

existed? Like, what if you're going to be late? You had no way of contacting someone without a cell phone or anything. People actually existed in this world. You know what probably happened? People that were late, and I think that's one of the worst qualities somebody could have, people that are chronically late. Like, I think that you just probably wrote them out of your lives. Like, oh, this guy is late. Never again. I'm done with you.

That's true. All right. We ready to get into some listener questions? Let's rock. And roll. All right. This is a follow-up on our stuff from last week about the 401Ks and Target Date funds. And this listener said, I have my own, I have my money in a 401k and I have it in a Target date fund.

would it be worth it to create my own allocation and then just that allocation once a quarter or so based on performance or is it better to set it and forget it and just use a target date fund? By the way, I know people are very passionate about brunch. You know, if you like brunch, have brunch. Are you worried about the hate mail here?

Yeah, I don't want it. I just don't want it. Okay, back to the question. I think that it's better to set and forget on the target date fund, assuming that it's a good target date fund they're not created equal. I think it probably doesn't matter as much either way. If you want to create your own asset allocation, the great thing is a lot of these 401k providers

have a tool where you can automatically set rebalancing. So I think I would tend to think that if you can't do it automatically, you're probably going to forget. And so whatever's easier to get over your own human nature, I think, is the key. So creating your own asset allocation or target a fund asset allocation, unless you deviate substantially, it's probably not going to get you that far off in terms of performance, but I would automate as much as you could. I think that's that for listener questions. We just want to give up a shout out to one of our listeners, Jimmy said he's relatively new in the business. He started his own financial planning from two and a half years ago, currently undergoing chemotherapy. He listens to a podcast

as he's doing it as a way to help him get through it. So we just wanted to tell Jimmy that we're giving him a shout out. He's in our thoughts and prayers and hope he kicks cancer's ass. Here, here. It's hard to transition away from that. So we, Josh announced at Inside ATFs that we are doing a, we are partnering with those guys on a conference called Wealth Stack in in September in Arizona. So what we're doing. WealthSec is going to be a conference for advisors. It's put on obviously by advisors, and we're going to talk all about integrating technology, which could be overwhelming into our practice, growing it. And it's going to be just something that we are extremely,

extremely excited about. So we will post a link where you could sign up for some news. We haven't announced any speakers or anything like that yet, but we are, we will be doing so shortly. And then lastly, Ben and I were in Chicago last week to record a few talk your book episodes, so we will be having a few of those in the coming weeks. Yeah. If anyone has any ideas for those, we're kind of trying to expand our palette a little bit and who we talk to on those and getting some sort of interesting, unique strategies. Hit us up if you have any ideas on that.

Animal Spiritspot at gmail.com. Okay. Recommendations for the week. Go ahead. Okay. I stayed up and watched the finale for True Detective last week. It was one of those shows. We talked about this before.

The first episode hooked you in and then probably episodes two through five, we'll call it were just mind-numbingly boring and I probably would have given it up on it a lot sooner if Marshall Ali wasn't such a great actor but man it was one of those things they had the big like the last two episodes finally picked up a little bit and they finally started giving away some stuff but I just have to say if you want to binge this show if you haven't watched yet I would I would stay away it wasn't that great it was like they did the reveal and it was kind of like ah that's not what I thought it was going to be and then they had the twist after the reveal and it was like Oh, that was a pretty good twist, but it was never like I was in the edge of my seat going, oh, no, what's going to happen now?

Like, you could have watched the entire show on your phone, so I give it if I'm... Wait, what does that mean? It just, it never got to the point where it was so suspenseful I had to, like, put my phone down and watch it and try to understand what's going on. It just, it never really got me. I'd give it a five and a half, 5.5 out of 10. Okay. It was an interesting reveal, but it wasn't worth eight episodes to get to that reveal. I have to finish the final two episodes, which I will do because...

Honestly, you could start from the last episode and just watch the intro that tells you what happened and just go from there. I will say that. All right. I will do that. I read The Match King by Frank Portnoy. Did you ever read this one? No, Josh read that, I think. Ivar Kruger, who was a guy in the 1920s who probably had one of the biggest financial frauds in history that you don't really hear about very much.

and it was really good and there was a lot of sort of mind-numbing stats and mind-blowing stats but that period to me is just like endlessly fascinating because there was just so much going on in the run-up in the roaring 20s and then the downturn in the 1930s that started in 1929 and this is one of the things

it's almost like there was so many there's so much good stuff going on that so many people got taken advantage of because things were going so well and this was kind of proved to that point so it was a good one. All right I am recommending free this week. I don't know how this happened, but I'm currently reading like five books simultaneously, not finished with any of them. I think that probably happens when none of the

books are that great. I do that too, where I got five or six going at once. I'm enjoying all of them, because if I wasn't enjoying them, I would certainly put one of them down. But I am loyal. I don't know why. I'm loyal to books for no reason. All right, I guess that's enough. Thank you for listening. Animal Spiritspot at g-mail.com. We'll see you next week.