Motley Fool Money - Motley Fool Money: 03.18.2011

Episode Date: March 18, 2011

With the evolving crisis in Japan and rising tensions in the Middle East, what are the economic implications for investors? What's behind Warren Buffett's latest big buy? Will investors get a good deal on a Groupon IPO? And how should shareholders feel about Cisco's new dividend?  We'll tackle those questions and talk about the business of marriage with New York Times writer Jenny Anderson, author of Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're a small business owner, you already know what it takes to keep everything moving. You're juggling customers, invoices, and about 100 decisions every day. Thankfully, taxes don't have to be one more thing on that list. With Intuit TurboTax, you can get your business taxes done for you with a full service expert. TurboTax matches you with your dedicated tax expert. Who knows your industry understands your business write-offs and gives you the personalized advice your business deserves. Upload your documents right in the app, hand everything off, and still feel like you're in the loop the whole way through. You can even get real-time updates on your expert's

progress right in the app, which makes it so much easier to stay on track. And you can get unlimited expert help at no extra cost, even on nights and weekends during tax season. Visit turbotax.com to get matched with an expert today, only available with TurboTax full service experts. Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. Welcome to Motley Fool Money.

Thanks for being here. I'm your host, Chris Hill, and I'm joined by Motley Fool Senior Analyst, Seth Jason, James Early, and Ron Gross. Guys, good to see him. Good to see you, Chris. We've got the latest from Nike, Coca-Cola, Cisco, and more. We'll talk with New York Times writer Jenny. Anderson, author of the new book, Spousinomics, using economics to master love, marriage, and dirty dishes.

Can I get a copy of that, Chris? Oh, I got one of my desk. My wife loves nothing more than if I give her an economic argument as to why I shouldn't do the dishes. Since two of you want the book, you'll have to bid for it after the show. Plus, as always, a look at the stocks on our radar. But we begin with the situation in Japan. At the time of our taping, Japan has raised a threat level at the nuclear plant from a four to a five, the same level as Three Mile Island. And the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami continues to rise.

Guys, obviously, this is an incredible human tragedy. There's a lot of uncertainty here. But as a show about business, we're going to focus on the economic disruption and the market reaction. And Seth, Jason, I'll start with you. Yeah, and that's a tough thing to do. I have to admit that I feel a little weird talking about some of this. Our biggest problem is wondering, you know, are we going to get an iPad too on time? then you want to feel like get a life point, Dexter. But let's do get to some of that because it's more than just iPad 2 that may be affected by what's going on in Japan right now.

And what we're seeing, there are news stories all over. So GM, for instance, Toyota, among the carmakers who, of course, just can't get enough parts. And that's not because necessarily that factories have been damaged, but because they have to go into some of these factories. Sony is doing some of this. Also, Toshiba. and they may have to just test some of the equipment, make sure that everything is going to be producing fine once they're online.

And, of course, there are also power shortages because of down power lines, a nuclear plant that's offline. And so all of that means that there are rolling blackouts. Some of the businesses are voluntarily pulling back on production from time to time. So that will mean some supply chain constraints for some of these companies. But in the long term, it won't be as big a deal. Ron? Yeah, what I've been seeing or reading, I should say,

is that we might not see these disruptions immediately because a lot of these companies do have several months of inventory still. And once those get used up and put into the marketplace, then we'll start maybe three months down the road starting to see the disruptions. James? For me, the big impact is going to be the potential move away from nuclear power, which we're starting to see. And just for perspective, this is the safety equivalent of everybody watching a plane crash and then deciding to drive instead, thinking it's safer. This is going to be a big disruption if these countries in Europe, if China, if whoever else actually does end up backing away from nuclear power, it's going to cost a lot more because nuclear power is so inexpensive. And we are seeing nervous governments across the globe either push the pause button on their power plants. We're seeing people say they should never build a power plan here.

We're seeing power plants that have been perfectly safe now being accused of being too close to fault lines. So there will be some follow-out from this. You don't have to have nuclear power. honest about it, but everybody loves to consume a lot of power. You have to pick one source of power, and they all have some very big potential impact. Turning our attention to Libya, the UN authorized a no-fly zone and attacks on forces loyal to Gaddafi, who subsequently announced a ceasefire. James, there are still reports of heavy fighting. We've also got the political unrest in Bahrain, the Saudi government, providing military support there. When you look at that region,

your thoughts. Obviously, some news in the Middle East for a change. With Libya, now that Gaddafi is not backing down, that could significantly prolong the conflict. That's going to take Libya's production, or at least reduce Libya's production, a few percentage points of our total oil output. But to me, Bahrain is maybe the bigger news. Because you have Saudi Arabia and Iran sort of both using Bahrain as something of a battleground, and the U.S. has a naval base too there. So Bahrain itself doesn't have much oil, but Saudi Arabia. Arabia has a ton of oil. So if the unrest were to spread there, that could really, really impact oil prices much more than Libya. Seth? And that is the big worry. Here in the United

States, the Saudi Arabians aren't the most forward-looking government on earth. And we are very cozy with them for the simple reason that they keep the oil flowing for us. And so they're obviously worried about any attack in the region on the kind of royal model of government. And again, this is what traders are looking at and nervous about, is the unrest in some of these other countries like Bahrain, the thin edge of the wedge. Is that the place where it starts? And do we have problems in Saudi Arabia next? If we did, you would not have seen anything yet for oil prices. All right, guys, we had talked a couple of weeks ago about Warren Buffett's annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. And in it, one of the things Buffett pointed to was the likelihood of acquisitions, the famous quote about his... pointed to his elephant gun. His elephant gun is loaded and his trigger finger is itchy. Well, earlier this week, Berkshire agreed to buy Lou Bresol, a chemical company for $9 billion. Ron, you're a shareholder. I am. Are you happy with this deal? Yeah, it's a nice deal. It didn't take him long to scratch that it. No, it was quick. This is right up Buffett's Alley. Old school kind of industry, really strong management team. Perhaps not the sexiest business around, but really profitable.

nicely. They're very tied to the oil industry, so they're affected by oil prices. But one thing Buffett loves is pricing power, and this company has it. And they have the ability to raise prices when their raw material prices go up. It seems like he paid a reasonable price, about seven times cash flow, eight, 12 times earnings. So that's great. So as a shareholder, I'm pleased. Now, fill me in since I own Berkshire shares too. What is Lubrizol's lubricant ed? Where are they selling these products what's the specialty so it they're additives and they sell them into all different types of industrial applications whether it's cars or

manufacturing facilities they even have gone as far as acquiring a personal care product a segment which is very small three-quarters of the business is true industrial additives but they kind of they really scan the gamut of yeah being all over the place so so most people in their day-to-day life are not coming into contact with lubrazole products you are not purchasing them off the shelf but They are in your car. The best kind of thing. The thing that irks me, though, is the $200 million breakup fee to Buffet.

He always gets these big fees somehow. Wait, what is this fee? If the deal falls apart, he gets $200 million. He's done this before, and he's made a bunch of money just by having the deal fall apart. That sounds like he's being smart as hell. Good for him. He knows what he's done. All right.

Coming up, a Groupon IPO may be coming sooner than you think. We'll explain after this. Stick around. This is Motley Full Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. here in the studio with Seth Jason, James Early, and Ron Gross, as we go through some of the headlines of the week. Cisco Systems is planning to pay a cash dividend to shareholders for the first time. James is our resident dividend guy. Is this going to appease investors like me who are concerned about Cisco's growth or lack thereof?

The stock is actually up, Chris. I would argue with $40 billion in cash and frankly no elephant gun, it's about time that Cisco paid some kind of a dividend. And I would say the delay in paying just illustrates the extent to which dividends have become a fashion accessory. In other words, companies either want to sort of be in the dividend fashion club or not, and tech companies like Cisco did not want that for the longest time. But thanks to Microsoft to Oracle and now Cisco, they're sort of breaking the ice there. So good for them finally. And let's hope companies like Apple do the same. Cisco, frankly, has no excuse because all of these tech companies that had all this cash,

They need some of that for good acquisitions. But Cisco, over the past few years, has made some really bad acquisitions, especially in the kind of personal or home electronic space, stuff that just hasn't worked out. And so that's really money down the drain. And I think shareholders would rather have it in their pocket than see it go to the next big device that will soon be disrupted. This shareholder certainly would. On Friday, shares of Nike dropped following a disappointing third quarter earnings report. Ron Gross, whatever happened to you?

just do it. What happened here? Yeah, that was going to be my lead. You stole it right for me. All right. That's good. Oh, come. I'm sorry. The most obvious Nike joke in the world, and I stole it for a new. I'm sorry. I was creative. So the quarter came in fine. Both revenues and operating a game were up 7 percent, but the game is about expectations, as you rightly said, and they missed those expectations. What we're seeing is higher costs in their business from cotton, oil, labor, transportation, and that's really hurting their margins. And they've taken some price increases, but they're going to do a really widespread significant price increase

next year in the second half. And the street is really focusing on that. So I think for those people who don't think we're seeing inflation other than in food or energy, I think we're starting to see it bleed into things like apparel and shoes. Athletic supporters. Yes. They make them. That's a legitimate product. Hey, wait a minute. Is it a legitimate product? Do they still have Tiger Woods? Is that a way to save some money? Or has that money been saved already? They do still, yeah, they are still a sponsor of his because they have that money his way

still. So you're suggesting maybe Nike cuts back on the endorsements and the sponsorships and... Well, maybe. Bloomberg reported this week that Groupon could be valued at as much as $25 billion in an IPO. Yes, by all means, don't hold back

to laughter. The IPO may happen this year and would likely value Groupon at a minimum of $15 billion. Seth, we made some jokes in this room, I among us, about Groupon walking away from the $6 billion offer. Well, now you know why. They knew there were a bunch of even dumber people out there. I find this absolutely unfathomable, especially because the competition is coming a lot more quickly now, and it's not just sort of little imitators out there in the internets. It's companies

like Facebook doing daily deals, and I've got my phone app, my Facebook app in front of me when I go to the check-in app, it gives me the deals that are nearby right now. I think Facebook can do this better than Groupon. The only thing that Groupon really has had as an edge so far is this first mover edge in a large sales force. I don't think that that is a long-term advantage. The other thing we've spoken about here is that Groupon isn't really a good way to bring customers in, at least for a lot of small businesses.

It simply costs too much. They have to look at it as advertising. And I'm not so sure that it's the best way to do that. and the competition is going to have the effect of lowering the margins. And just to pile on that point, you could argue that this business model, whether by Groupon or somebody else, is really about habituating people to pursue these daily deals. And if you sort of train the ecosystem to do that, that permanently deprives these businesses of capital. You get people who don't continue to patronize the same business.

They just look for some other deal. Or you have to lower your prices. And the auto manufacturers in this country found that out. And the lead up to the big economic crash, the only way they were selling cars was by giving huge cash paybacks and discounting the cars. And it was killing them because as soon as they stopped doing it, the next month the sales would go into the tank. Luckily, we've come in and help them clean up their balance sheets. Their costs are a lot less.

But that's a lesson you should bring over. And if you're a small business person, you don't want everybody only coming into the store when they think they're going to get half price. Ron? And as we debate these facts, the social media internet bubble keeps on building. and as we know, bubbles typically do not end well. You're listening to Motley Fool Money, Chris Hill, Seth, Jason, James Early, and Ron Gross, as we go through some of the big headlines of the week, Diet Coke has topped Pepsi to become the second most popular soft drink in America after Coca-Cola.

It is the first time Coke has occupied the top two spots. James Early, this seems like it's kind of a big win for Coke. How big a win is it? I'm going to say it's less of a big win than people think for a few reasons. First of all, just for perspective, Pepsi is primarily, a snack company. Freeto owns Frito-Lay and Quaker Oats and maybe gets 40% or so of its revenue from beverages. The second thing is that in the U.S. soda consumption has been declining in the past like five or six years, so it's sort of a bigger share in a declining market. And we've also

seen a lot of population growth in the South where Coke is king. In fact, if you go there, you order, you go to a restaurant, you say, I'd like a Coke. The waiter will say, what kind of Coke do you want? We have Pepsi, 7-Up, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's their kind of generic term. So, I mean, it's something, but international, I think, is going to be a bigger story for both of these companies. Seth Jason, your Brown-Zoon, your beloved Brown Zune, may soon become a collector's item. Why did I drop it in the parking ramp? Microsoft announced this week that it will not introduce any more future models of the Zune. Apple's iPod, which you may have heard of, has about 77% market share, the Zune less than 5%.

What are your feelings at this? They actually use the number of. five, that surprises. Well, it's... They only have up to go. Yeah, less than five. It is, it's not a surprise to me. In fact, I'm wondering why anyone's surprised.

The hardware, the Zun hardware, never really got a foothold. So, and they also haven't put out a new model since the Zoon HD, which a lot of people really do like, but it's just... He's perfection the first time around. Well, actually, see, James makes fun, but people really, really like this. And James and the other guys are going to take pot shots at the entire effort, and everybody out there and the Internet's well. It's actually accomplished some pretty interesting things as far as the space goes.

One is that, of course, the Zune HD was the first place you saw the interface, which is now on Windows Phone 7, which is a pretty slick interface. And it's selling probably a lot more on Windows Phone 7 than the ZunHD ever did. They also were widely ridiculed for sticking with a or for utilizing a subscription music plan. I believe Apple fans and maybe Steve Jobs himself were among those. saying nobody wants to do that. And of course, Apple now is offering subscription plans. So they really did widen the market. They were one of the first to put a Wi-Fi chip into the player that was, you know, imitated everywhere else after that. So it's okay to look at this and say, oh, it's gone, but they actually did for some interesting changes in the market, and that's been good for consumers.

And finally, guys, the French have surrendered again. This time, the category is wine sales. For the first time, U.S. wine sales have topped the French. In 2010, the U.S. wine market grew 2% to 330 million cases, several of them in my own home. 321 million cases in France. Guys, we're number one. Woohoo! Break out the band. Mondeu!

Well, not really, right? On a per capita basis, we are number 20, 30 or something. Yes. On a per capita basis, the French, I think the average person in France consumes something like five or six times the amount of wine. I've got the numbers from the Wine Institute in front of the French. me. The average French person is at 2008. Latest numbers they have. 53 liters. Number one.

Anybody, anybody know what number one is? You'll never guess it. Argentina. And it's so awesome. It's going to blow your mind. Vatican City at 65.6 liters. I don't know what's going on there. Let's not forget. The French don't actually have a drinking age, so they've got a whole swath of population there that are enviving.

You're saying it's like a Major League Baseball team. They've got a farm system. All right, we will wrap up with a, just sort of testing your knowledge of wine. First question, what is the right way to hold a wine glass? A, by the bowl, B, by the stem, C, by both. Ron? Definitely by the stem. By both at the same time, you mean? Both at the same time. If you're a dude or a guy or girl, the dude by the stem, say, all about warming the wine, so you don't want to do that. Seth? I wanted to answer off the board and say by the little bit on the bottom, but it's got to be the stem. Steve, what do you think? Let's bring an arm of a Steve for them.

I'm not a big wine drinker, so don't know. By the edge of the Dixie Cup. It was actually by the stem. Ron was right on that one. Next question. A University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study found that wine may protect you against which of the following.

A, sun damage, B, radiation exposure, C, tooth decay. Ron, what do you think? What was the first one? Sun damage, radiation exposure, tooth decay. Wow. Wow, they have a medical school at that kind of They're doing wonderful

They're doing wonderful research Funding might have come from the wine industry I'm going to say the sun exposure one Okay All the above All the above, Seth Oh, did we still have trick questions? I thought it cannot be tooth decay

So it's got to be one of the first two I'm going to go with radiation Because it's the weird one Steve, what do you think? I'll go with sun damage all the way It's radiation exposure It was B, so Seth is right Final question

An Italian study found that women who were moderate drinkers of red wine reported A, improved short-term memory, B, an increase in mood swings, or C, higher levels of sexual desire. Ron? See, from personal experience, Chris. With Italian women. I'm going to go with A. You're going to go with A, improved short-term memory. James? I'm going with a sex one. Let's hope it's the last one.

All right. Steve, what do you think? I'm going with C as well. I've seen television. I know what happens. It is, higher levels of sexual desire. Yes, the University of Florence study found that levels of sexual desire were higher in women who were moderate drinkers of red wine than their counterparts who preferred other alcoholic drinks. I am going to Italy again. All right.

Yeah. During the break, we'll go out and pick up a case of red wine. But coming up, money can't buy you love, but economics can get you a better sex life and a happier marriage. Our guest this week explains it all. Next on Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. Forget love and romance. My guest this week says the key to a happy marriage is economics.

Jenny Anderson is an award-winning business reporter for the New York Times and the co-author of Spousinomics using economics to master love, marriage, and dirty dishes. Jenny, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So I've been married for 15 years. And you've never learned as much as you've learned from my book, right? I got to say, there is some amazing stuff in this book. And amazing, in a number of ways, not the least of which,

is the amount of economic research that has grounded it. This is definitely not one of those squishy books about marriage and how to get in touch with your inner feelings. This is very grounded stuff here. Yeah, there was a lot of work behind that. I'm sure there was. in a nutshell, how can economics help someone like me who's in year 15 of his marriage? Well, the book takes a very simple premise that, you know, economics is the study of the

allocation of scarce resources and what is a marriage but a daily waking up and deciding who's going to do what and how are your resources, your very limited resources, I might add, your time, your energy, your libido, your love, how are those going to be allocated every day? And as far as I can tell, like the source of 99% of marriage tension is over that allocation, who's going to do what, and who's doing what well, and who's not doing what well, and who needs to be nagged and who needs to be encouraged and what incentives are going to work. So the book comes up with, we take 10 principles, both from classical economics, but mostly from behavioral economics, and say, here are some things that are influencing the way you approach things in marriage.

So the way you approach the division of labor, are you doing it 50-50, or is there maybe a better sense? system like comparative advantage, how you fight. Do you fight like crazy because you're afraid of losing? That's loss aversion kicking in. You know, how can you do that better? So you name the subject. I think we have a solution for it, including sex, which of course is a very common topic among married couples. I was going to say, I mean, one of the basic economic principles that I think even someone who is in school in economics knows about is the concept of supply and demand. And for those thinking about picking up a copy of Spousinomics, I will just spot you up with the title of Chapter 3, Supply and Demand, or How to Have More Sex.

Right. So we all know the more something costs, the less demand there is for it, right? So we did a randomized survey of people across the country and asked them, do you want to be having more sex? Most of them said yes. And then we said, why aren't you having more sex? And most of them said, because we're too tired, followed not long afterwards by too busy. So you start from the premise that you would like to be having more sex with your spouse, but you're too tired to do it. So what is the best way to sort of up demand? You need to make it cheaper for yourself, not money, but, you know, in terms of expending your time and energy. And it's amazing how often couples can either talk about how much

sex they're not having or complain about how their schedules won't permit it or there's a lot of sort of ways we make it expensive for ourselves. And our, again, you pointed out this doesn't sound very romantic and this will not sound like a romantic. advice, but, you know, you've got to make it easy for yourselves, you know, especially if you're in the rush hour of life, you know, you're managing jobs, you're managing children, you're managing a lot of things for that moment in your lives, you need to make it easy. Maybe you need to schedule it. Maybe you need to set a goal. Maybe it needs to be put in the Blackberry. Maybe, you know, you need to stop hoping that he's going to sense the right moment and be really romantic,

and you need to just sort of seize the seven minutes in the shower and go with what you've got. But make it cheaper and easier for yourself, and more demand will materialize. We have, the book, every concept we have, we have three case studies. So this is not sort of, you know, made up in the abstract. There are couples who do this stuff, and it actually works for them. And I think this is probably the first book about economics that deals with cheaper, easier sex. So, I mean, I think that alone is going to help you sell a lot of books. I hope so.

You're listening to Motley Fool Money. My guest is Jenny Anderson, the co-author of Spousinomics using economics to master love, marriage, and dirty dishes. is one of the things that you write about goes against one of the sort of classic pieces of advice for couples that are about to get married. And the classic advice is never go to bed angry. And you and your co-author are saying, actually, sometimes you should go to beg angry. Why? Yeah, I think that's pretty bad advice.

It's like the most common sort of bridal party advice that you're going to get. the reason is because, and I alluded to this before, loss aversion, when we feel like we're losing, we act irrationally. And for stock traders, that means, you know, think Jerome Kevier at Society General, right? He actually said, like, I knew I was down. I had to bet the house. Like, I had to do everything in my power, including risking $7 billion from my bank's capital, to win. You act. You can't see clearly.

And that happens when you're fighting with your spouse, right? You think in the same survey, 37% of people admitted to us that they continue a fight when they know they're wrong. And another 34% admitted to us that they continued to fight when they can't even remember what it was they were fighting about. So sometimes you're just fighting because you feel like you're losing, right? And so you sort of go into crazy mode. At that moment, it really is much better to go to bed angry and then reassess when you're thinking a little clear. And it's amazing. I can tell you from firsthand experience, I'm a very emotional person,

a lot of times in the morning, the issue does not seem nearly as monumental as it did at sort of 2 a.m. And you're a little bit better risk. That's one of the things that keeps coming up in the book over and over is this whole notion of cost-benefit analysis and looking at things in your marriage through the lens of, well, what is the cost here? What is the benefit going to be? And it's like, well, you know, I don't necessarily want to take out the garbage right now, but, you know, the cost of it is pretty minimal compared to the benefit. of my wife is going to be a whole lot happier.

She's going to be exponentially happier than the cost will be for me. Exactly. And again, it sounds very unromantic, and yet there is some real logic to this if you think about it. Like, marriage can be romantic, but dishes are not romantic. Trash is not romantic. You know, deciding who does the carpal, these are not romantic issues and do not require romantic solutions.

They require practical solutions. And I think we sometimes just hope that because we're married and because we're in love, all of these things should be easy. Like, you would never run a business that way, being like, well, I hope my business partner just knows what I need. You know, you would assume that, like, you would sit down and say, all right, here's how we're going to divide up the tasks. Here's what you're going to do.

Here's what I'm going to do. And when it doesn't get done, you would be upset about it. So we're really trying to address the business of marriage, because there is a business of marriage, and that's very sad probably for those, you know, perspective to be married. But it's true, and it doesn't have to be a bad thing, but the less bigger than you do about that business, like that the more time there is. is for romance and sex and love and hanging out with your kids and doing all the great things you want to do if you're not sort of, you know, at, at which end arguing about school lunches.

You're listening to Motley Full Money. My guest is Jenny Anderson, the co-author of Spousinomics using economics to master love, marriage, and dirty dishes. You and your co-author, Paula, you did a ton of research here on economics. You did interview, surveys, you went to seminars. How did you get the idea in the first place? So the idea was my co-authors, Paula Schumann. She's a page one editor at the Wall Street Journal, and she and her husband were having, they had been married for, they were in their first year of marriage, and they were having a horrible fight.

They found the first year of marriage to be pretty tough. And her husband's a web designer, a very visual guy, and he sort of whipped out a piece of paper and did a graph of their mood over time. And it sort of opened the pathway for them to have a much more rational discussion than they had been having about, like, wait, you were really happy then? I'm like, that's crazy. I was really unhappy then. What was going on? And it diffused a little bit of the emotion and really kind of led to a conversation and it sort of made him laugh. It just gave him another framework and she started thinking like maybe there's a, you know, maybe there's a bigger

idea here. And she wanted a co-author who had more of a grounding in economics and finance. And so we were set up on a blind date. You were set up on a blind date, but what, by your publisher? No, no, no, no, no. We have a mutual friend. So I was thinking about writing some books related to the financial crisis. And I was complaining to a colleague, actually, that none of them were sort of jazzing me enough to really want to take the plunge and spend the, you know, the other 15 hours that I'm not working on these issues at home doing them. And he said, oh, I have a friend who had this crazy idea about, you know, sort of marriage and economics. And it really immediately made sense to me. Like, I could see the idea. And I had written about behavioral

economics. And it seemed like a clever idea. And I could imagine spending all. And I could imagine spending all of my free time doing it, whereas I was having trouble imagining spending all of my free time on some of the other subjects I was contemplating. Now, as you mentioned, both you and Paula are married. How did your husbands feel through this entire process? Like guinea pigs, unwitting at times. Um, well, you know, the irony here is that we, in the process of deciding to write a book about marriage while producing three children and having full-time jobs, we definitely put a huge amount of stress on our marriages. Um, but at the same time, we, we're, we're doing, we actually, I think, learned a lot of very useful things.

It's very hard to sort of talk about the research and talk about all these great tools and then not take any of your own advice. My husband is actually an editor at the Wall Street Journal as well, and he read the whole book. I can promise you he would never in a million years read any relationship book, so it was very useful to both of us because he read the book, and he actually, I think, found a lot of it very useful, could understand the more analytical framework,

but he could also use the book on me. when I use a horrible tone of voice, I'll say, that's not very spousanomical, you know, and say, well, it seems to me that your loss of versions kicking in, or, you know, is this really comparative advantage at its best? And, you know, and he's right. There are moments where, I mean, I don't particularly like it being used against me, but there is, you know, there are sort of tools that we can both use now. And I sort of feel like as married people, we just, I'll take any tool I can get,

like, I think marriage, you know, for 40 or 50 years is hard. And so you should look for as many tools as can help you. get through it. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. My guest is Jenny Anderson, the co-author of Spousinomics, using economics to master love, marriage, and dirty dishes. Jenny, before we move on to buy, sell or hold, what is one thing right now that every listener can do to improve their marriage? Commitment devices. Better, I'm going to say this, and I would probably not say this

to a lot of audiences, but you have a smart one, so I'm a really smart one, so I'm going to go out there with this one. better intertemporal decision-making. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I know. Decisions we make today that have consequences in the future. We are procrastinators as human beings. We say we're going to say for our retirement, we don't.

We say we're going to exercise. We don't. We say we're going to eat well. We don't. We say we're going to be a better husband or wife. We don't. We need to put in place commitment devices to be the husband or wife that we want to be. So, you know, if you've been talking for the past eight weeks, about, you know,

eight years about how you want to do more new things together, or you want to go on more date nights together, or, you know, you really do want to find a babysitter that you love so that you can get out of the house everyone's while. Do it. Find a way to commit to it. Force yourselves to do it. You know, prepay a babysitter.

You know, find the best babysitter in the town. Book them every other Saturday night. So you have to go out. You are forced to plan. Do something to make yourself do some of the things you say you're going to do and you never do. So, you know, as a couple, I've heard a lot of couples say, you know, there's scary research.

It says that married couples exercise much less than single people say, okay, let's say you as a couple have said you want to get into shape. Commit to doing a race where you have to raise money for a good cause. Like, are you really going to screw over all those people who are giving you money to cure cancer? No. So go do that. If that's what a court requires to get your lazy butt out of bed every Saturday morning to go running, you know, I feel like these commitment devices are a very powerful tool to get us to do things that we want to do, but we just never really get around to doing.

I love the idea of pre-paying a babysitter. That is brilliant. Especially if it's a babysitter, your friends know, because you don't want her ratting you out to your friends as like the couple who come Saturday night really just wants to sit on the couch at home. Exactly. All right. Let's wrap up with a round of buy-seller hold, and we'll start with. Buy-seller hold, the idea that honesty is the best policy.

Self. That was fast. But with a caveat, which is obviously honesty is the basis of a good marriage. but there is such a thing as too much information, right? You don't want to overload your partner, high information processing costs. You know, it's hard to process a lot of information. It can paralyze us. You need to be honest.

You do not need to tell your partner every thing you're thinking about them, especially if those are very negative thoughts. Buy seller hold separate bank accounts for spouses. I'm going to say hold on that one. And again, there's a caveat. If you have separate bank accounts because you've chosen to have separate bank accounts, totally fine. If you have separate bank accounts because you've never gotten around to having the conversation about whether you should merge them,

major self. Because that is active versus passive decision making. Passive decision making, it means you didn't make a decision. And so you're just kind of going with that which you had because it's the easiest thing to do. Not a good idea for anything in your marriage, but certainly not with your money. You need to make an active decision as to what you're going to do with it and how you're going to manage it. And finally, buy seller hold, Spousenomics, the Movie. Buy Spousanomics, the TV series.

Really? I'm just saying. I'm not saying anything's happening. I'm just saying if I were going to buy the film or the TV show, I would buy the TV show. TV is hotter than film right now. Okay, because the Freakonomics guys, they got a movie out of it, but Spousanomics, the TV show. All right. Spousinomics, the TV show.

All right, we are going to stay tuned for that. And as I mentioned, there's a whole lot more online at Spousanomics.com. The book is Spousinomics, using economics to master love, marriage, and dirty dishes. It is a fascinating read. It is a relationship book that guys will actually enjoy and find interesting. And, oh, yeah, it might actually help you with your marriage. Jenny Anderson, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me.

That man sitting on a little stool takes money from my hand while his eyes take a walk all over each. Hands made her ticket smiles and whispers good luck, well, cuddle up an angel, cuddle up my little dougain, well, ride down, baby, into this tunnel of love. Coming up, a look at the stocks on our radar. This is Motley Fool Money. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about. Don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. I'm Chris Hill and back in the studio with me, our trio of senior

analyst, Seth Jason, James Early, and Ron Gross. Guys, time to talk about the stocks that are on our radar, and we will go down the line and bring our man Steve Brodo in from the other side of the glass. One question for all of you. Ron, I'll start with you. I've decided to completely confuse our listeners. Earlier in the show, I spoke of an internet bubble. My stock on my radar is Google.

Ticker symbol G-O-O-O-G. I've heard of that company. 65% of all searches go through Google. 29 billion in sales, 8.5 billion in profits, $35 billion of cash. The stock has pulled back recently. We like it here. Okay. So an internet bubble, but not with Google. Got it. James? I'm going with Piedmont National Gas. Natural Gas, excuse me, P-Mont Natural Gas. This is a gas utility, primarily in North Carolina. It is an income investor recommendation. It just raised its dividend

3.6 percent, and it has raised its dividend for 33 consecutive years. And the ticker symbol? P-N-Y. Seth Jason. I'm going back to the well. It's a rerun from not long ago. Enernock, E-N-O-C, they provide services. They provide services that take people offline when there's high electricity demand. You see what's going on in the problem in Japan right now. We don't have the same problem here, but every summer we do get problems with the grid when all the air

conditioners are flipped on, and what happens is you either are rolling blackouts or you take out some of that demand. Enternaq does that. They arrange with businesses to shut down or lower their demand, and they in turn sell those negawatts, I guess you could call them. to grid operators and electric utilities, they recently got yet another positive ruling from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, which pretty much validates their business model. That doesn't mean this is going straight to the moon, but it does mean that some of the uncertainty has gone. Yet the stock dropped again.

And so it's back in bargain territory, and over the long term, I think it's a really huge potential winner. And one more time, the ticker? E-N-O-C. Steve Broido, one question to rule them all. Which stock is most attractively priced at this point, and for what reason? Oh, valuation. Mine, obviously. It has to be each of ours in their own way.

I can't speak further. I can't speak further others. We think Goog is definitely undervalued at price. Goog, you're using the slang term? Goog. He's known Goog for a long time. He can call them out. We've recently purchased more of the stock at a million-dollar portfolio, so we're putting

our money where our mouth is. Mine is not like a screaming undervalue play. It's just more of a steady, boring, chugging-along kind of company. Seth? Well, these two have the advantage of seeing this history of cash flow at these companies and being able to kind of come to a decision about what it's worth based on the cash flows that those companies have produced. Internaq is just starting to produce free cash flow, and the entire thesis is built on the idea that someday it might be a much larger business

and have much greater leverage. So this one is a bigger flyer. If things work out, this one will have been a lot cheaper. If they don't, is not going anywhere. Ron, do you want to make a counterpoint to that? I think I've already made it. Could you sooner turn off your washing machine or your refrigerator if you had to sell that power back to the grid? Well, see, they don't deal with the likes of us.

Just curious, though. Oh, me? Yeah, yeah. Oh, dishwasher? What was it? Washing machine or refrigerator? The fridge is staying on. The beer's in the fridge.

Exactly. Steve, do you want to pick a winner? I don't know. It's tough. I think Google does sound appealing, but I think at this stage and what's going on in the world, natural gas does sound very appealing. Oh, please, Bruno. You love stuff like Enternaw. You love... That's why he's on that side of the glass.

I think I'd understand it if I understood it better. But it sounds a little confusing about power. Didn't you buy a Chinese fertilizer company for crying out loud? You think you know what's going on there? Well, that's a good point. That hasn't worked out for a while. All right, Seth, Jason, Ron Gross, James Early. Guys, thanks for being here.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks to our special guest this week, Jenny Anderson from the New York Times. Her new book is Spousinomics, using economics to master love, marriage, and dirty dishes. Our engineer is Steve Brodo. Our producer is Mac Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.