More Money Podcast - 266 The History of Money - Frederick Kaufman, Author of The Money Plot and English Professor

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

Although I’ve done 265 episodes of this show (well, more if you count any of my solo episodes), shockingly I’ve never done an episode on the history of money. As important as it is to discuss the management of money, it’s just as important to understand currency’s history. Especially as we enter this new age of currency with the rise of cryptocurrency. Luckily, I was able to get Frederick Kaufman on the show, who authored The Money Plot: A History of Currency’s Power to Enchant, Control, and Manipulate, and is also a much distinguished English professor who has spent the last decade focused on researching the fiction that is money. If you’re a money nerd and history buff like me, you’re going to love this episode and Frederick’s latest book! For full episode show notes, visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/266 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Welcome back to the show. This is episode 266, in case you're wondering, and I've got quite the guest for you. In this episode, we dive into a topic I've never explored before, and I'm very excited about it. So I have the wonderful Frederick Kaufman on the show to talk about his new book called The Money Plot, A History of Currency's Power to Enchant, Control, and Manipulate. Yeah. Yeah. We've never dove into the topic of the history of money, which is crazy because I've had the show for almost six years. How has this not happened? Possibly because there's never been a book that so specifically talks about the history of money, which is crazy because I've had the show for almost six years. How has this not happened? Possibly because there's never been a book that so specifically talks about the history of money,

and it's a really great, really great read. And I'm so excited to have Frederick Kaufman on the show. So just in case you don't know, he is an English professor by training and profession, has for the past decade focused his attention on the fiction that is money. His unorthodox insights into the ways of Wall Street have resulted in numerous magazine articles for publications ranging from Scientific American to Wired to Foreign Policy to Harper's, as well as television appearances on NBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business Network, and Democracy Now and invitations to lecture in both the United States and Europe, including an address to the General Assembly of the United Nations. And this is his fourth book. Yeah, this guy knows his stuff. And it was such a

treat, honestly, to talk with someone who's literally spent the past several years diving into this topic of money and currency and how, where did it start? How has it evolved? It's fascinating, guys. It is fascinating. So you're going to love this episode. But before I get to that interview with Frederick, just a few words about this episode's podcast sponsor. This episode of the More Money Podcast is supported by TurboTax Canada. I know most people aren't like me and spend the first week of the new year getting their tax stuff in order just for fun. Yes, I know I'm weird. But the fact is, it's tax season once again, and that means you need to decide how you're going to follow your taxes this year.

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tax season. It has never been easier to get your taxes done with TurboTax. So what are you waiting for? Start your return today and get 20% off any TurboTax assist and review or full service product by visiting jessicamorehouse.com slash TurboTax or by checking out the special link in the show notes for this episode. Once again, to save 20% off with any TurboTax assist and review or full service product, visit jessicamorehouse.com slash TurboTax. Welcome, Frederick, to the Mo Money Podcast. So excited to have you on the show. Well, thank you so much. Yes. So you wrote the book, The Money Plot, A History of Currency's Power to Enchant, Control, and Manipulate. I was interested in your book just because I've never had a guest on the

show talk about this. I mean, maybe there's not that many books on this topic, and that's why you wrote the book. But it's a very specific look at a part of money. Typically, I have people on the show talking about the management of money, but not so much the history and the philosophy. So I want to start kind of with, can you share a little bit what made you want to write this book? There's so many things that brought me to it. But really to cut to the chase, I became very fascinated with Nixon floating the dollar in 1971. And the idea that in that infamous weekend on Friday, the 13th of August, 1971, when Nixon and his administration and John Connolly, his Treasury secretary, realized that there was not enough gold in the Federal Reserve to cover all the dollars out there in circulation.

In fact, they were outnumbered and a number of other countries, notably France, wanted to redeem the dollars they were holding in their sovereign banks for gold at a rate of $35 an ounce, which was how it had been set since the 1940s. And they couldn't do it without the United States government completely going belly up broke. And so Nixon got on national television two days later on Sunday, the 15th of August, 1971, and simply said, the dollar is no longer convertible into gold. Well, then what was the dollar? I was fascinated by that idea. What was the dollar? And I realized at that point that really the dollar was just a story. You know, what we in the English department call a narrative because I'm an English professor. And so this kind of really compelled me because if the dollar were a story, I thought it should act like a story. So in other words, it should have a plot, the money plot, for instance. And

I thought it was kind of a kooky, wacky idea that I had just come up with. And so I sat down to talk to some of my friends who were economists and, you know, ex-Tregory secretaries. And I said to them, you know what I realized? I realized money is a fiction. And they were like, yeah, we know that. And so that's kind of, and so I was like, well, okay. And I originally pitched the book as a book about that weekend at Camp David and back in Washington, D.C., but it just kind of grew until, yeah, it is a history and it went back 60,000 years. It looks into the future.

I got, this book took me seven years to write. Don't tell anybody, but it was way too long for a book. And I really got lost in the K-hole of the medieval period for about two years. Because honestly, when it comes to money, that's the room where it happened. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, reading the book, it is in depth. I mean, it really goes deep and detailed. And I mean, I learned a ton that I didn't know. I mean, I've never really studied the history of money in this context. And it's fascinating. I think the most I learned back in school was before there was currency, we traded

goods for other goods. That's pretty much, I think, what most people kind of know. And of course, it turns out that that's not true. That was one of the first things that was shocking to me. It's like, well, right, obviously before money, there is barter. And, you know, because that's what Adam Smith told us in The Wealth of Nations, he published in 1776. But as it turns out, once again, this is widely debunked. Nobody who actually studies money takes that seriously at all. And this happened because in the early 20th century, in the late 19th century,

a lot of ethnographers and anthropologists went out to actually say, okay, let's find some barter economies. Let's see how it works. And they went to all these, quote, unquote, primitive locations across the planet. And everywhere they went, they were like, oh, yes, we're using bird seeds or we're using shells or rocks or whatever it happened to be, jars, gongs. There was always a symbolic representation that was their unit of value, right? That there was their unit of account, that there was a store of value.

And there's an entire field of what's called pre-market economics. So before there were markets, there were money. It's really not to Adam Smith's fault. His brilliant theory of money and labor and capital and markets was born when England was a land of shopkeepers. And so all around him, this is what he saw was this massive exchange. And he was able to see through the chaos. But in fact, money is a lot older than markets. Yeah. I mean, that was something new i learned because again yeah i remember just learning about like the the fur trades and hudson bay and all

that kind of stuff and that was so i'm like okay so that was that and then then there was currency all of a sudden but it was fascinating to know that no thousands of years ago there was always some type of currency um which makes sense because when you think about the concept of trading i'm like so you have some sort of good and you have to find a customer that fits exactly what you want to get from them. And they're going to exchange, you know, that for your potatoes or something like that. It doesn't make sense. That'd be difficult. What you see, what's really fascinating here is that actually barter is a post-money economy, not a pre-money economy. So we see barter, obviously, in prison economies.

There's no money, so you use weapons, you use drugs, cigarettes, this sort of thing. That's all of a sudden. Or in war economies, right, when all of a sudden the money is completely hyperinflated. And it's only after you have very deeply embedded in you a money economy system, a value, you know, a symbolic system that you can participate in barter. So he just got it backwards. Yeah. And you did mention in your book. So sometimes these barter systems come out of the fact that currency has no value or it's scarce. Is that kind of right?

Yeah, well, absolutely. Absolutely. When money is no longer worth anything, when hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, when a loaf of bread costs, what was it, something absurd, like two billion marks. And they literally were cutting down trees. They couldn't cut down the trees fast enough to print their bills. Then obviously money becomes worth it. And I think that's like one of the issues that has not gone away, particularly today in the United States, where people are banding about trillions of dollars in aid for COVID. And a lot of others are very concerned that if we just go to the printing press whenever we need, that there will be hyperinflation and the value of the dollar will tank. And of course, there are all sorts of bizarre global recriminations and what would happen. But I don't think that's the case. I'm not an economist, but that is not something that concerns me at this point. I feel like we saw a bit of a glimpse of this, or at least the panic

of what if money means nothing when it was the beginning of the pandemic and people were hoarding stuff. And you're like, oh, I feel like people think it's definitely the zombie apocalypse and they think it's going to be, we're going to, I feel like people think it's definitely the zombie apocalypse. And they think it's going to be, money's going to have no value. And we're going to just barter toilet paper or something. Well, I think there are two terms you use in that regard, which are really salient here. And one is panic. And the other is apocalypse. Because realize that most people are like, oh, my money is going to be worthless.

I'm going to hoard toilet paper. In fact, the people in finance and the Wall Street people are like, oh, there's panic. We're going to make money on that. And in fact, what we see in the markets and what we see with large macro trading hedge funds is that this last year has been extraordinary in terms of their profits. And this also deals with the money plot because what drives a plot, like when we think of a movie we love or a book we love, we love risk, fear, jeopardy. The more the plot winds up into a position where people are panicking,

that is where the money is in the story. And that is where the money is in Wall Street. And a lot of the book has to do with this idea of transforming literary ideas or emotional ideas such as panic or fear and showing how they transform into actual cash, into actual cash value, which we saw happening uh which you've seen very clearly happening over the past year um the other term you use of course is apocalyptic thinking and if we want to discuss it you know remember the kind of the great renaissance of apocalyptic thinking and feeling about the universe does happen in the middle ages in christian europe where people are really obsessed about the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse. And of course, this story of the apocalypse coincides precisely with the explosion of

commercial culture throughout Europe and the birth of money as we know it today. That is a credit economy, one of paper money and a global economy, one of mortgages and shareholding and corporations. That all begins at the same time in the midst of this insane apocalyptic thinking about the second coming of Christ. I spent a lot of time in the book talking about how the popes create the idea of the modern corporation. Wow. Yeah. Like I said, this book goes into so many different twists and turns. You're like, I've never thought of it like that. I know one of the messages or things that you want to share in the book is how we need to maybe

change our thinking or just change the way money works. Because right now, and you see this all over the media, it's the 1% or this very small group of people that have the majority of the money. What, like, what, how, like, it just seems like such a big idea. Like, how on earth can we ever change how money, like, works right now? Well, I mean, look, I think one of the examples, which is so blatantly obvious, is a candidacy of somebody like Andrew Yang. When he was trying to get the, you know, the democratic nod before Biden got it last year. And of course he's running on a platform of universal basic income, free money, right? Free money. And if you really think about it, uh,

40, 50 years ago in the 1960s, seventies or eighties, he wouldn't have never even said such a thing in public. He would have been branded communist and a thing in public. He would have been branded a communist and thrown out of town. But all of a sudden, he's being taken rather seriously. And there's a very strong sense that, in fact, there is some sort of basic equity that we all deserve. And then what is money? Remember, money is not just this monomaniacal market-based idea. That's really a deformation that's happened in the past 200 years about other things that money also includes.

And so just, you know, for instance, think about it, the idea of a universal right to education for girls and boys up until about 12th grade. Well, that's called public school, right? And that's free. And that's called public school, right? And that's free. And that's a fairly new and progressive idea. Or if you look at the United Nations and they talk about, well, there is a universal right to food. That doesn't mean everybody gets a steak for dinner, but it means that seven-year-old girls and boys should not be starving to death. They actually should just have food. And a lot of that has to do,

people starve for the most part, and there's a lot of starvation going on right now, particularly in Ethiopia today, with the war in the Tigray region, food is used as a weapon of mass destruction. Really, the issue with food is not the presence or absence of it, but the money to buy the food. And so money and food have always been very closely related. Uh, early money, of course, being, uh, not only livestock, but grain, which are both remain at the basis of the modern derivatives market. Yeah, no, I feel like, I mean, I'm based in Canada. So we definitely have a different system than the US. Like for instance, healthcare is the big thing.

Everyone has a right to healthcare no matter what. And it seems radical in the US, not so much in Canada. We're like, yeah, we've had it, it's fine. Nothing's changed, it's great actually. But the thought of universal basic income, that's definitely been more in conversation. Why do you feel like so many people, even people that are, you know, they don't have a lot of money that are still against the idea of something like universal basic income, where the idea is like, well, don't you want your brothers and sisters,

your neighbors to have their kind of needs met? Why do people are rich or poor against an idea like this, do you think? That is an excellent question. I think this has to do with, really, I think it has more to do with politics than it does with economics. I really think in America, for instance, that trick that you're talking about of making people who could actually use universal basic income, identifying with somebody whose platform is they will never get it, really happened with Ronald Reagan. And he was able to all of a sudden make people identify with him as a charismatic leader. And same thing we saw with Donald Trump, which is people like, I want to be that billionaire. I'm only one step away from being that billionaire.

And this has to do ultimately with really the cohesion of a society. And I think what's missing about a lot of people's understanding of money is that money is not simply in that kind of Anne Rand idea of, I'm going to take mine and it's a big fight. If you look at the history of money and if you look, you know,

all the way through what you see is that money is, it only happens within a cohesive self cultural unit. Like the first money comes from ancient Africa in Kenya. And people are agreeing. And of course, 40,000 years ago, 60,000 years ago, human society is already extremely advanced. There is wedding ritual. There is funeral ritual. There is all sorts of symbolic ideas and mythology. And within those very cohesive cultures, that's when we start seeing these first trinkets, symbolic beads, all of these things which are clearly made to secure the future, which are made to mitigate risk, things that can help us speculate about what will happen in the future, gift

economies, funeral economies, economies where people pay fees to join secret societies. All of this has to do with a cohesive social unit, right? That, to a great extent, has been lost post-Adam Smith with this idea of everybody against each other vying for who will get the most. And that really came to the fore, as we know, in the 1980s with this notion of greed is good and the Gordon geckos. And I think too, and certainly we saw a lot of the credit markets and banking markets opened up, not just by Reagan, but by Clinton. We saw that collapse in 2008 and 2011. And so money is a very interesting moment of transition right now, particularly with gold and silver and metals and commodities used

to be our basic store of value. But now we're opening up, obviously, to ideas of cryptocurrencies as being the store of value. And this, to a great extent, shows the essential, fictive nature of money. Yeah, I wanted to bring up cryptocurrency. I was trying to find the right time since you mentioned it. Now it's been around for a little while. It's not such a new idea, but still people, even like myself, it kind of freaks me out. It kind of freaks me out and probably because it's something new. What are your thoughts on the idea of this completely digital and completely new non kind of centralized currency called cryptocurrency? And there's so many different ones. It seems just so massive. And I think it's probably because we're still at the very beginning of it. Well, look, when I first started writing this book, and people asked me what I was writing about, they'd always say, oh, you're going to be writing

about crypto. Crypto is the new thing. And from a very, very early point in terms of my understanding of this, crypto is actually a very old thing. There's actually nothing really new about it except the form, the logical form. Money has always been a code. Money has always been an algorithm. Money has always been something which is a way of assuring our path from the present to the future. Okay, so one of the key things about crypto is that the original batch, the Genesis block, appears in 2009. At the same time as the Genesis block appears, there's also the idea that in 2140, the last batch will appear. So like a lot of money, there's this idea of this tick-tock of time going to a set time in the future when it will be over. So in a way, crypto is kind of like a mortgage. When you sign the mortgage and you

start paying into it, you already know exactly what the last date is. Or the same thing like when you pay your rent, you pay the rent at the first day of the month, but that's to pay you to the last day of the month. So everything is then counted in reverse. The dollar is really crypto. I mean, if you really think about the dollar really only five percent of of currency in the world actually exists in any physical form anyway yeah so it's like we we think we have this fantasy of money under the mattress the banks of course the banks in fact don't hold your money in fact that the banks hold negative balances. Every time when you put your money in the bank, the bank owes you that money. That's a negative on their sheet. People don't

realize that either. The bank is not just storing your money. They're loaning it out again. Yeah. I know. I think that's an old cartoon kind of idea that they have the money in the vault. It's like, there's no money in the vault. There's no money in the vault. No, in fact, what it is is a bunch of debt. What they're doing is balancing debts at different interest rates so that they're going to skim off the top, right? So crypto is really a very old idea. Like if you look at the original money

from 40,000 years ago, there were these ostrich eggshell beads, which are kind of cards with these kind of strange filigrees and slashes. You know, that's cryptography. That's an alt idea of something magical that you can hold, which will allow you then to speculate into the future so that in the future, you will be safe.

That's all crypto is. It's just the digital version of a bead. I liked that also, kind of going back, because I really enjoy that chapter, because I obviously had no idea about the ostrich egg. I'm like, oh, wow, that is so fascinating. That's so cool. But also the idea that money or, you know, the purpose of it was it was kind of a form of insurance, which I feel like that's a concept I've never really, I'm like, oh, I've never kind of put those together, but that's exactly what it is. What is money? Money is a form of insurance and risk. It's risk management is what money is. And it's telling a story about the future based

on time, fear, and your appetite or lack thereof for risk. That's what money actually is. And so, right, those ostrich eggs, that was, that was something that, that really blew my mind also, which is that the first money are these ostrich egg beads that were, that were discovered in archeological sites, but also they discovered that these, the ostrich, the black necked African ostrich has the largest eggs of any bird in the world. And each of these eggs can hold about a quart and a half of liquid or berries or nuts. And what these ancients were doing, actually pre-ancients, these archaic Neolithic people were doing, is storing stuff in these eggs. Freshwater, berries, nuts.

That was money. Money is a storage container for that which is going to keep you safe through the winter months. Right? That's why grain is money. That's why livestock is money, right? That's why money bears interest, right? And so the interesting thing that happens though is, and this is so deeply human, and this is why money is so deeply human and why I believe that we can actually have power over it and do what we, you know, make money, do more for us than we want to, than other people think we can. This human moment when they took the ostrich eggshell and as it collapsed, they were like, now I'm going to take these fragments and I'm going to mark them and I'm going to string them on my body. And they are symbolically going to mean, because that's the human moment, only human thinking symbols, they are symbolically going to give me the sense of security that this egg full of fresh water or berries had for me. So that's exactly what it is. Money is an insurance policy.

And we can see in the global meltdown of 2008, that this is not just some strange fancy. This is, you know, AIG is this large insurance company and insurance is entwined in everything we do. And that's, you know, that was the money that, that was the issue. That was the corporation that brought the whole thing that, you know, almost brought the whole thing to its knees. Yeah. I mean, and when you think of it, I guess, in modern times, it's either you get that because I talk to a lot of people about why is money so emotional? It kind of shouldn't be because it is just a tool. But like you said, it's a symbol for so much greater than that. Like insurance, security is a big thing. And so when you look at your account balance or your net worth statement or even just what you have in your home, it makes you feel a certain way.

Typically, security is a big thing. Money is deeply emotional. Money is deeply emotional. Money is deeply emotional. And that, again, this is what Wall Street, this is the secret that Wall Street knows that most ordinary people don't understand, which is that you can make money in times of fear. You can make money in times of jubilation because you know that those emotions are actually going to drive the market. It's not that the market drives your emotions. It's that emotions drive the market, and they've been able to quantify these emotions,

the modern age of the quantitative financial expert, the quant. That is precisely what they're doing is they're trying to mathematize emotion. And in fact, that's what the VIX is, the quote-unquote fear index on Wall Street, VIX. And that's exactly what it is. What it measures is how much panic and fear is raging through the option markets. And during the pandemic, there were days when the VIX was up more than 100% in a single day. And so, you know, this is the example I like to give about emotion driving money. Let's say you're, you know, you're, you're at a hedge fund, and your your desk, you are personally given a million dollars to trade. So you go to your credit desk, and you take that 1 million, and you turn it into 10 million on

credit. And you don't take that 10 million and put it in the VIX, you put it in the double VIX. So all of a sudden, your 10 million is in the double VIX. It goes up by 100%. And the next thing that you know, your 1 million leveraged into 10 million in a single day has given you $40 million. Now that's the way to make money off panic and fear. And that's, I think, why I have this podcast is to have smart people like you to explain that. But also the kind of key thing when it comes to money management is to understand that and understand how you should react. Because I think a lot of us, I mean, we get fearful. I got fearful during the pandemic because I'm like, I've never seen, I mean, I'm a millennial us, I mean, we get fearful. I got fearful during the pandemic because I'm like, I've never seen,

I mean, I'm a millennial, so I remember the crash that very much affected the course of my life, but this felt different. And that was another kind of a concept, I think that was flying around at the beginning of the pandemic. Everyone was saying this time's different. And now that we have some perspective,

it's like, it wasn't really different. Like there's always some differences, but it's like, we've seen things like this before. And the idea of fear and money being very much intertwined isn't anything new, but I think maybe it's just the media that just wants a headline or something like that. Well, look, I think that it's not, it's not just the media. I think it's an, I think it's a natural, I mean, look, think about, for instance, just speculation. We're talking about insurance as essential to money. The other thing that's always been essential to money is this idea of

betting and the casinos and speculating on the future. That's also been like from the very beginning when there's shell money and there's stick money, people are gambling with it because what they're trying to do with money always is see the future because these economists are like the modern day version of the soothsayer, right? What's going to happen next quarter? What's going to happen next year? And we're always looking for them to tell us. And of course, people on Wall Street, they're the ones who keep on throwing the dice, throwing the dice or tossing the coin. And the goal of wall street and the goal of finance has always been to know how the story ends before anybody else does how to know how the story ends

before it ends like what would be like the greatest gift you could ever give a wall street guy tomorrow's newspaper because tomorrow's newspaper you just go to the horse track and that he'd be done for life right go to that go to the racetrack he'd be done for life, right? Go to the race track. That's all you need. So a great amount of the effort in Wall Street is predicting the future. And of course, that is an ancienters. We're the poets. We're the people who would tell you, no, put this bead next to your body. Put this under your pillow. This token, this amulet, this will get you through the future because you're afraid of the future. And so this is going to help you.

And so a lot of this is like, who's the soothsayer? Who's telling the story? And who's listening to the story? Gosh, yeah. Yeah, it's true. It's just kind of wild just hearing, you know, reading your book and reading all these different stories that even though they're from like hundreds or thousands of years ago, it's like the exact same thing's going on right now,

just in a kind of a different way. Well, what's interesting is that money develops, you know, money develops over long periods of time. And what I found most, what blew my mind about this book was, again, not as an economist, but as an English professor, seeing how story developed over time too, like around the year 400, 500 BC are the first precious metal coins. And this happens at the exact same time as the birth of tragedy. So you have a literary form emerging at the same time as you have a pecuniary form, a money form. And it just, you start thinking, what is more tragic than a coin? Right? Because what is a coin? A coin has your face on it. A coin, you know, kind of memorializes this moment. It gives you control and power. And then the next thing you know, in about 20 years, you melt it down, somebody else's face is on it. Yeah. Whoa. And I saw this again and again and again, you know, even to the point of postmodern novel, post-structuralist thinking about, you know, all these English terms have exact equivalent in what is going on in the history of money at the same time.

And so the point of the book is saying, wait a minute, this is weird. There is an equivalency between exchanging money and telling stories that we have not paid enough attention to. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm going to think about this and just stew on some of the ideas in your book for a while because I'm like, whoa. There's some moments where I'm just like, whoa. Yeah. My book is whoa. It's a bit whoa. It's a bit whoa in a good way. I think I'm going to end it there. Before I let you go though, I know lots of people are going to want to grab your book, The Money Plot, but where can they find more information? Are you online? Can people find you online? Or if not, where can they find a copy of the book?

Yeah, well, Money Plot by Frederick Kaufman. It's out there at Amazon. It's at small local bookstores. It's everywhere. I'm on Facebook, be my friend. And I'd love that. Anyway, thank you so much. It's really an honor and a pleasure to be here and great conversation. It was a pleasure to have you on. Your book really, really was amazing. And that was episode 266 with the wonderful Frederick Kaufman, the author of The Money Plot, A History of Currency's Power to Enchant, Control, and Manipulate. As he mentioned at the end of the show, you can find his book pretty much wherever you would buy a book. So make sure to grab a copy, check it out, or ask your library to get a copy because it honestly is a very fascinating read. I will also, of course, include links to find the book in the show notes

for this episode, jessicamorehouse.com slash 266. Also, I didn't mention at the beginning of this episode, but obviously I'm going to be doing this, giving away a copy of his book to some lucky winner out there. So yeah, I'm going to share some more details about that in just a hot second. Just to remind you, if you want to check out the show notes for any episode I've ever done in the past and the history of the 266 episodes of this show, all you have to do, well, first you can go to jessicamorehouse.com slash podcast. All of them are there. Or if you know the specific episode number, just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash whatever the number is, like 266 or 225, whatever it is, you will find the show notes for the episode. And that would be helpful for you if you're like, I want to learn more about the,

you know, the guests. What are some of their social links or information about this episode that you mentioned is in the show notes for this episode. So that's where you can find that. Of course, I'm also going to be giving away a copy of Frederick's book. How could I not? So stick around. Just I've got some very exciting things to share with you. So stick around, just have a few words I want to share about this podcast episode sponsor. This episode of the More Money Podcast is supported by TurboTax Canada. Oddly enough, the most popular videos I have on my YouTube channel right now are about taxes. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that so many Canadians received income through benefit programs this year, like the CERB, or they've started a side hustle or became self-employed because of the pandemic. And wow, is there a lot of confusion about what to do about all of this when filing your tax return. Luckily, it doesn't have to be complicated.

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out the link in the show notes for this episode. Once again, to save 20% off with any TurboTax assist and review or full service product, visit jessicamorehouse.com slash TurboTax. Okay, first and foremost, of course, I'm giving away copies of so many books. Actually, if you go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contests, you'll find a number of books that I'm giving away, including The Money Plot. So make sure to go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contests to enter to win. Yes, you can enter every single book giveaway. Obviously, you would only ever win one if you are selected. But yeah, you can enter to win all of them. That's the exciting thing that's going on there. Other exciting things. Well, obviously, I dropped the news last Wednesday that my course, the Wealth Building Blueprint

for Canadians is officially open for enrollment. And what that means is you can apply to possibly enroll in the course. And then if your application is approved, get on a call with me and see if it's the right fit. I've literally, and I'm not joking, I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I've literally been like working 10 to 12 hours a day, just looking over applications and having calls with potential students and enrolling students. That is literally what my life has been since last Wednesday. I didn't expect the really big response. I mean, I'm pleased. I'm not mad about it. Not mad about it at all. But yeah, I feel like some people forget. It's just a one-woman show over here. I do not have an assistant. Maybe in the future. I just feel like I'm not at that point yet. And I kind

of like keeping things simple and small. And I like doing it all myself. So I think some people are surprised. They're like, no, no, no, it's me on the phone. It's just me. So that's very exciting. So with that said, I do have, you know, there's a wait list going on, that's for sure. So make sure if you're thinking about enrolling or just want to learn more about it, get your application in as soon as possible, because there is a bit of a queue going on right now. But I'm so excited because so many people have been able to enroll and start really dive into the course. And it's amazing. And I'm also, of course, going to be adding new lessons and modules and new videos and so many exciting things I'm going to continue to add to the course because there's always going to be fresh content. So I'm very excited about it. It's like something really, even though I

had my previous investment course, Investing Foundations for Canadians, for about two years, actually, this course, this particular course is something that this was the real idea that I had. I wanted to do a course that was to teach you about the foundations of investing, the key things you need to know, and also have the component of showing you how to invest in two different ways, using a robo-advisor or going self-directed as a DIY investor. And this is kind of finally it. So I feel like this course in its form as it is now is kind of like it's been in the making for like three years. It feels good. It feels good. It feels good. Also, it's kept my mind occupied as we

continue to be in lockdown and nothing has really changed in this pandemic world. So if you want to distraction, maybe signing up for my course would help. Anyway, so that little bit of self-promo. What else do I have going on? What else do I have going on? I feel like that is pretty much it. Honestly, that's kind of what's been taking up all of my energy and time. But there's going to be some other exciting things going down soon. So just you wait. Just you wait. Okay, well, that's it for me. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back here next Wednesday with a fresh new episode. Yeah. So subscribe, share this episode. Oh yeah. Follow me on Instagram. Make sure to do that. I'm at Jessica I Morehouse. You can also follow

this show on Twitter and Instagram. So Instagram is at MoreMoneyPodcast and Twitter is at MoreMoneyPod. So yeah, check it out. And that's it. Thanks thanks so much I will check you next week with a fresh new episode of the show this podcast is distributed by the women in media podcast network find out more at women in media dot network