Rich Habits Podcast - 26: Life Insurance: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly w/ George Kamel

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

In this episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, Robert Croak and Austin Hankwitz welcome their very first guest — self-made millionaire and Ramsey personality, George Kamel. For months now, we've been receiving countless questions in both our livestreams and DMs asking about life insurance. Term, whole, IUL, and everything in between. After weeks of planning, we present to you the definitive truth about life insurance alongside an expert — George Kamel. We break down all of the terminology, which one 99% of people should choose, as well as the cost ($700K) of choosing the wrong one. Thanks again to George Kamel for joining us! Check out his YouTube channel link here. ---Skip the Masterworks waitlist: https://masterworks.art/richhabitsEarn 5.6% with T-Bills on Public: ⁠Click Here!⁠Budget template: Click Here!To learn more about Robert: ⁠https://stan.store/robertcroakTo learn more about Austin: ⁠https://stan.store/austinhankwitzTo learn more about NEOS Funds: ⁠https://neosfunds.com/Contact: [e-mail]---Hankwitz Group LLC has an existing business relationship with NEOS Investment Management LLC. The opinions expressed are those of the author, and the author owns several NEOS ETFs.

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Rich Habits podcast, a top five business podcast on Spotify. My name is Austin Hankwitz and I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croke. Robert is a seasoned entrepreneur in his 50s with more than 200 million in company exits under his belt and I'm an entrepreneur on my late 20s with a background in finance and economics. Since quitting my full-time job in corporate finance a few years ago, I've built a seven-figure media business and actively advise some of the most well-known fintech companies around the world. As the show name might suggest, every episode, we talk about rich habits as they relate to business, finance, and mindset.

However, we try and bring you two unique perspectives along the way. One from an industry veteran, which is Robert and the other myself, someone who's still in the process of building wealth and figuring it all out. Now, Robert, I know we have a special guest today. So why don't you introduce him and tell us what we'll be talking about in today's episode. Yes, this is very exciting. we've invited a self-made millionaire and fellow money expert to join us as we talk about all things life insurance, specifically where it does and does not fit inside your wealth-building journey.

So we're going to tackle the good, the bad, and the ugly here together on today's episode. George Camel is a self-made millionaire and Ramsey personality inside of the Dave Ramsey Network. Dave and I don't agree on most things, but we widely agree on how you should, but more importantly, should not use specific life insurance policies throughout your wealth-building journey. We received countless questions in the DMs and live on TikTok about the different types of life insurances. So we want this episode to serve as the definitive truth about life insurance. When you need it, its purpose, and the potential cost if you get tricked into buying the wrong what. With that being said, George, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and take it away?

Absolutely. Well, I mean, it's hard to top that. And first of all, honored to be here. You guys, I feel like a wiener in a steakhouse with you two. So I'll try to deliver as much value as I can. I've been on the Ramsey team now for a decade. So I've seen a lot of things. I've grown a lot. When I started here, I was $40,000 in consumer debt with student loans and credit cards, couldn't get a handle on my money. And I followed those proven baby steps that Dave has taught for 30 years now. And I stand before you today. My wife and I, millionaires, not because we're so genius, not because we took out the right insurance. policy, but because we just started investing for the future. Long term and 401ks and IRAs, we thought, let's pay off the house. That would be cool to not have payments in our 30s. So doing all of that living debt free has just allowed us a really cool life. And I just want to help other people achieve the same thing. So we're on different sides of the coin here, but we're all trying to help people get better with money. And I love what you guys are doing to show them the habits of the rich. Man, that is awesome, George. Thanks again so much for joining us. Now, we want this episode to be extremely simple to understand for our listeners, right? Because at the end of the day, life insurance

is incredibly confusing and even predatory. To ensure our listeners aren't getting sold a life insurance lie, George, let's start by walking through exactly what life insurance is. Give us the breakdown. Well, you're in luck. I read on a fifth grade level and I think on a fifth grade level. So I'm going to speak as if you know nothing about insurance. So when you think about life insurance, what it actually is, before we talk about what it does, it's just a contract between the insured person and the insurance company. And that contract says, if you die, there's an amount of money that the insurance company will pay you called a death benefit. And in exchange to keep that death benefit alive, quote unquote, you have to pay something called premiums. That's just a monthly or annual bill they send you. And you've got to keep those payments up to keep this thing afloat. So that's all it actually, the intricacies of it. That's really as simple and as difficult as it gets. Of course, it gets very complex when you get into these whole life policies. But life insurance has one job and one job only, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they are lined through their teeth. And that is to replace your income if you die.

So when you think about that, you're going, all right, to replace income if you die, then why are they trying to sell a life insurance policy to a baby with Gerber? So you see all these policies and now they're touted as wealth building tools. And so remind yourself, replace income if you die. So if people depend on my income, my kids, my family, my spouse, if something happened to me, I want them to be able to cover their living expenses. cover the debts, cover education, cover whatever for the future. I want them to just be grieving my loss, but not also wondering how we're going to put food on the table next week. And we can get into the right type of life insurance that I hope we all agree on is the

right type. But that's it in its simplest form before you get more complicated. So what I'm hearing here is to replace income when you die. And just like I pay my auto insurance premium, right, in case I, something happens in my car, I crash it. This company, my auto insurance company is going to come in and replace it. So just like I'd pay a monthly premium for that, I'd also be paying a monthly premium for insurance. But instead of, hey, something happened to my car, come replace it, it's, hey, I died.

Here's the death benefit, right? So we got that part figured out. So if that's the case, though, like, give me the walkthrough as to, like, what whole life insurance is, the difference between whole life. I've heard of term life. I've heard of a couple of these different sort of scenarios, right? What is that? And why do people seem to like it so much if at the end of the day this is just a way to

replace income once someone dies? So the big difference between Whole Life and Term Life is that term life is for a specific amount of time or a term. So just remember that. Okay, it's for a set term. And it's going to be level, which means that the premium does not change. So if you're paying $20 a month, it's going to be $20 a month for all of those 20 years until the policy is over. Now, the difference with Whole Life, of course, you think Whole Life, it's for your whole life. It provides lifelong coverage.

And there's this little thing called a cash value portion. So you have the death benefit. That's the amount they pay out if you die. But then there's this kind of like savings account on this side that can accumulate cash value over time in a whole lot of ways, depending on what policy you chose. And so that's the attractive part of it. People go, wow, how smart. I have a death benefit and I can use this to save money like a piggy bank.

We'll get into why it's not such a great piggy bank in a little bit. But for over 30 years now, Dave Ramsey's recommended term life for everyone who needs to replace their income if they die. and he recommends 10 to 12 times your annual income on a 15 to 20 year level term policy. So that's very simple. And here's why 15 to 20 years are going, well, what happens after 20 years and I still need the life insurance policy? Well, there's this concept called being self-insured. And if you follow the baby steps all the way through and you actually do that 15-year fix rate mortgage, you will have a paid-for house and a whole bunch of money in retirement accounts and very little expenses because you've

done this the right way. And therefore, you're going to be able to cover all of the needs of your family if something should happen to you. They're going to inherit all of those retirement accounts. They're going to have a paid for house with very little expenses. And so that is why we say 15 to 20 years as adequate for most people. You can get a 25 year. Hey, if you're super, super young and you've got a lot of debt and you're like, hey, this is going to be a journey for me, you can go even longer with these policies. But here's the kicker. They're like 10 to 15 times cheaper than these whole life policies. So when you look at the math on this, you're going, I could pay $500 a month or $20 a month. Which one are you going to choose? You're going to choose the cheaper option. But the life insurance agents love to promote, well, here's why. The 500 bucks, that's going to make you a bigillionaire. And you can take money out of that thing tax-free. It's what the wealthy do. And so they start talking fast with a lot of numbers on the board to confuse you at that point. But those are the big differences. Love that takeaway. And they definitely make it confusing for a reason because it keeps people fearful. And in that situation where they believe they need that agent to really coddle them through the process. And that's why the commissions are so high.

But to touch on whole life policies, permanent policies, let's touch a little bit on the benefits with estate tax or inheritance tax or even like succession plan help that that whole life policy would give. I've heard a lot about that for people that are very successful and they keep the whole life or the permanent insurance, not just for the death benefit, but also the succession plan benefits and the tax benefits. So let's touch on that for a moment. There's a place in time where if you're if you are ultra wealthy and this is just something you're doing as part of your strategy you've been working with, the financial advisor, your investment pro, and they're like, hey, this can be a way. You've already maxed out every single thing possible. You don't want to touch real estate. You don't want to touch the taxable brokerage account. Some people use these as kind of a hedge. If they're kind of scaredy cats, because you're not going to get the returns you would see in the market, but they want some safety. Some people turn to these. I would still say if you have that much money, you have a lot better options. But there are people out there who, who, who use these to kind of pass down some of this wealth they've built in a more tax-efficient manner than just having it sitting in a checking account. So that is possible. My guess is most 99.999% of people, it's not them. And so everyone wants to say, well, that's me. That's who I'm going to be. So my buddy said, and usually the people who have these policies are the ones selling them,

if that tells you anything about it. Yeah, and I think the key takeaway here is, is that a lot of times investment strategies should be simple, watching paint dry with ice cream coming at the end. Because at the end of the day, so many of these complicated projects like IULs and Whole Life and Term Life, it gets so complicated that you might be better off just putting your money in the S&P 500 like VO, letting it rip for 30 years and you'd be a lot better off. Okay, finally, let's go over the biggest hot button topic in the insurance industry these days. Indexed universal life insurance, otherwise known as an IUL policy. I know we're all excited to dig into this.

and really kind of tell the good and the bad and the ugly about these types of policies. I am definitely not a fan of IULs and the ridiculous commissions and fees. But George, break it down for us and let's chop this one up. Yeah, so let me go through the different types that you can figure out how this fits into the other forms of permanent life insurance. So with whole life insurance, there are fixed premium. So the premium does not change. There's a guaranteed death benefit that does not change. And there's that growing cash value.

With universal life, there's flexibility. premiums and a flexible death benefit. There's still that cash value growth and it's based on a minimum interest rate. Then you move into index universal life. So this is kind of a play on that universal life we just talked about. But the cash value here is tied to a stock market index. So it's not actually invested in the stock market. They're just saying, hey, if the market goes up 12%, your money's going to go up, maybe not quite that because the returns are capped. And here's the crazy part with these policies. The capped returns, that amount goes down every year, while the cost to ensure you goes up every year because member term life the amount stays the same the insurance companies aren't

dumb they know that you statistically have a higher chance of dying the longer you live so with term life they take the average so if you're going to go from 30 to 50 that 20 years they're going to take the average at cost to insure you and then give that to you as 20 bucks a month with these there's called ARTs in the whole life world annual renewable term and so every year it's going to renew at a higher rate because it's now more expensive to insure you and so that's what happens inside of these policies they'll say hey your premium is never going to change it's 300. Well, the problem is the cost to ensure you has gone up inside the policy, why your returns have gone down. And so now there's a chance of this whole thing crumbling in on itself, because at some point

in your life, it's going to cost more to insure you than your premium even covers. So that's just one of the really scary things with index universal life that happens. But the premiums are much more expensive. It's riddled with fees. And Jeremy from Personal Finance Club actually took out a policy, just to see what is it actually in the fine print here? And it turns out, out of his $200 monthly $96 went to fees. So there was like a 50% front load on these fees. And then it makes sense why these insurance agents pitched this so hard because they're making Buku bucks when they sell it.

Yeah, I just never want to own a product where the person selling me the product makes more off of my money than I do. And that's why IULs drive me crazy because I think it takes like 20 years before the fees catch up to where they level out to a point where they're reasonable like having a fiduci fiduciary manager money would be. And the other part that the IUL sellers don't tell anyone is the surrender fees and all of the penalties. Let's say you set it up that you're going to do $3,000 a month towards this policy. If at one point down the road, you go down to $2,000 or $1,000, you can be upside down in the policy and then find yourself having to surrender the entire policy and lose your

money because the fees overtake the money ingested into the account. So that's why there's just been no one on earth yet, and they've all tried, that have been able to convince me that an IUL is a good strategy for anyone. Absolutely. And I would hope your listeners are smarter than that already. But these people have such good sales pitches. There's a reason they have to like take you to dinner at a nice restaurant just to pitch this thing, like a timeshare, if that tells you anything. The thing they use to try to get people to invest is they call it, you know, they'll use terms like infinite banking. You'll hear that a lot with the whole life world. You'll hear words like they'll call themselves wealth strategists and tax-free growth experts. And you'll notice they never mention insurance at all

until you fill out a lead form and then halfway through the pitch they go. And so that's why you need to max fund this index universal life insurance policy. And that's what you should have known you got duped earlier than that, but that's the moment where you go, oh gosh, I'm an idiot. The people selling it make way more than the people buying it. You know, we hear infinite banking a lot, George and Robert. And I think what people, when they hear the tax-free wealth and things of that nature, right, they say, okay, I get to now put in $500 a month in premium toward this, if it's like a cash value, whatever's going on. And then, oh, yeah, when you're ready to retire, you just borrow against it, borrow against it,

borrow against it, borrow against it. What are the downsides of that, George? What are the downsides of borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars? Sure, it's tax-free money, but it's also debt. Why do people do that? Why do people have that kind of mentality that it's actually a good thing? Well, it's similar to like taking out a 401k loan and you're thinking like, bro, this is a wealth hack, man. I'm paying my self-interest.

I'm not paying to it. And I'm going, dude, you just went further into debt. Like, the goal should be to increase our net worth to become wealthy. And so the more we borrow against these policies, the further we're going into debt. And what are we borrowing for? That's another question that I always have. And usually it's not something worth putting your money into, or it's a flashy purchase and they want to flex on their friends. And so, you know, I have a very weird concept that we all should and can live debt-free.

And I know you guys, we could go toe-to-to-to-and have some fun with that another date. But I found that living a debt-free life is just a higher quality of life for me and the piece that it brings me and the lower risk in my life is better. And so continuing to just borrow and borrow as some sort of wealth hack does not make sense to me. And so it's going to catch up with you. You're going to have to pay the piper. The policy is going to explode if you keep doing this thing. And, you know, everyone saw some video of Waka-Flocka talking about how his buddy told him to open one of these policies. Now he's gaming the system, man.

And like the government doesn't know that this is happening. So the whole thing is kind of hilarious if you can just sit back and laugh at it. Well, I think one of the key components of everything we're talking about goes back to one simple thing. And that is everyone wants a cheat code and everyone believes there is a cheat code to creating massive wealth. And at the end of the day, they don't realize and that's why we name the podcast rich habits is that if you implement these good tried and true habits over years and years and decades of time, you will become wealthy and debt-free. But they all just want the cheat code and feel like people like us can provide it to them. So at the end of the day, I think that's why the IULs and the pie in the sky things that are being pitched out there with these paywall crazy, you know, commercials and TikToks and Instagram is because people want to believe that someone else has figured it out.

And for the low, low price of $2,000, they're going to give it to them. So that's, that's to me the ultimate reason why so many of these programs pop up and proliferate through society is because everyone wants that cheat code, that easy way to create wealth. 100%. Now, George, we've talked about term life insurance, whole life insurance, and indexed universal life insurance. But what should people actually be doing with their money? Right? You mentioned a little bit of the term life stuff, but I want to better understand like there's a difference between, you mentioned the $20 in term life versus the call it $400 on an IUL policy, should they take that difference and do something with it?

Absolutely. So you may have heard the quote out there. And, you know, almost everyone agrees with this quote who has a good head on their shoulders, buy term and invest the difference. That's the strategy here. So let's do some math on this just to kind of help your listeners get a picture. Because once you, it's so eye-opening, once you see the numbers and you go, oh my gosh, why would I ever touch a policy like that?

So let's say your whole life policy, whatever permanent life insurance policy you pick up is $300 a month. The equivalent coverage for term is $25 a month. That means there's a difference there of $275 you are paying to try to build this cash value. Because that's really what you're saying is I can do better than the market by investing in this cash value. That's going to give my insurance agent 50% returns and not me. And so when you do that, you take that 275, skip the whole life. Let's do term. You have an extra $275 to spend now.

Let's invest that into an index fund. I know you guys are fans of those. Let's say that an index fund over that period of time gets an eight and a half percent return. Now think about that from 30 to 65, 8.5% to 75. That's not a lot of money to most people if they have it to spend on insurance. Well, that turns into $700,000 later in life. Now, show me the cash value policy of the equivalent account. You will be lucky to have anything in there because the thing probably imploded on itself. And so just thinking about it in terms of where do I want to be 30 years from now, 20 years from now, you want $700,000? Oh, and by the way, you have that money freed up in your life in the meantime. Let's say you're already investing. You have an extra $2.75 to put towards your goals, your dreams, investing, saving, paying off debt, whatever it is, versus making an insurance company rich. Because guess whose buildings are in the skylines? Banks and insurance companies.

That's it. You paid for that with your stupid sky high premiums. And so do not fall for this stuff. And by the way, when that $700,000 is sitting in that account, you can give it and pass it down as an inheritance. and you can have all kinds of tax strategies when it comes to that. And with these whole life policies, a lot of times the cash value doesn't go to the family. Most of these policies, it's not set up in a way where they get the cash value. They just get the death benefit, which means that 180 grand sitting in that cash value

disappeared into thin air into the life insurance agents pockets. So it's just one more reason to buy term and invest the difference. Stick to level term policies 15 to 20 years, 10 to 12 times your annual income. it is going to be very inexpensive and you will thank us all later. This all makes so much sense. We're absolutely thrilled we're able to join us this episode and help us walk everyone else now through exactly what purpose life insurance serves as well as clearly outlining what it doesn't do.

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Q&A. Our first question comes from Amy Z. She says, My husband has been contributing 16% to his 401k. The company matches 4%. Now, we're considering dropping it down just to the match and instead investing the difference toward the S&P 500 inside of our Roth IRA. We're conflicted, though, because the return in the 401.

K is 11.22%. What do you guys think about this new strategy? Amy Z, I think it's a great question. I would love to know more about what the timeframe of that 11% return is because generally 401k's underperform the S&P 500. But regardless of that point, I would say you're definitely on the right track. I would only match four for four so you get that free money. I would take the additional 12. I would get it fully maxed out in my Roth IRA into the VO's, maybe QQQ, Q, Q, look at VT in that account. I would do that next because I believe over the long term, it's just going to outperform the 401k. And every two, three, or four percent of gain maxed out over those 10, 20, 30 years going into retirement is going to mean massive gains for you implementing that strategy. This is spot on. We've taught this simple strategy. It's five words,

match beats Rothbeats traditional. And so that's exactly what's happening here as you kind of flow down this thing. Let's take the company match. That's 4%. And then we're going to move on to any Roth option. So a Roth IRA is a great place to go. Let's max that out. And then if we still have money left over, we can go back to those tax advantage, you know, the normal 401k account and all sorts of things. And it's also income dependent. There's a thousand questions I'd love to ask about her financial situation. But, you know, we recommend 15% until you've got that house paid for. And so she's right there at that 16 mark, maybe a little bit high like you guys are saying. So depending on what other goal she has, you know, she's on the right track. And so she's asking the right question.

Why that is so important is because one match, that's free money. But then beyond that, it's the autonomy that is given to you with the Roth IRA, right? You have the ability now, Amy, to go in and choose I want to be in VO only. I want to have a mix between VOO and VTO and QQ, right? These specific ETFs and index funds that we know do so well over a long period of time versus, well, maybe in your 401k, your employer dumps you into a target date fund, or maybe they've got you in bonds for some reason, right? you don't really have autonomy over that 401k like you do a Roth IRA. So that's why I think it's so so important to not overly invest to a 401k, especially if you don't have that autonomy inside of it. Yeah, I think that's a great takeaway from the question. Nice job, Amy Z.

So our next question comes from Judy F. Judy says, I love y'all's podcast. But Robert always says own nothing but control everything. I purchased my first rental property about six years ago. I still have a mortgage on the property. And my question is, how do I move the property into an LLC? when the mortgage is in my name. So this is a great question, Judy F, and write up my alley and I love it. Let's step back a little bit on this question. And the reason I say own nothing and control everything is, as you're growing your wealth, let's say you're buying small businesses, you're buying properties, maybe multifamily,

you always want to have each one of them in a different LLC. Some people will argue that you could combine five or six properties in one LLC. That might be fine, but I like the separation. because it just gives more protection. So look at it from this standpoint. In a perfect world, you're going to have those individual LLCs. They're going to be wholly owned by the holding company. And then if you really want to do well by yourself and your family,

then you're going to go into the revocable trust. This gives you all of the layering you want to give you that added protection over time. So to answer your question specifically, yes, you would want to contact your mortgage lender, ask them if you can put it into your new LLC that you've created for your properties, for your holdings, and most of them will allow that so you can migrate that mortgage over, and then you just want to make sure that you set the LLC up properly. Make sure you have an individual address for the LLC that is not your home. Have a phone number for the LLC that is not your

personal cell number. And most importantly, have a separate bank account so you're not co-mingling funds for the LLC. If you do these six, steps to keep it all completely separate, that will give you the benefits of the limited liability corporation that you want because you never know if you're going to have an inside or an outside attack. Say someone comes to your house, they're helping you set up a party and they get hurt, or they slip on your sidewalk because you didn't shovel the snow. The LLC is going to give you that added protection so you never have to worry about having your personal assets attacked in case of a lawsuit. So it's a great question. Really think you should.

do it and start with your mortgage lender. I'm learning so much. This is incredible, Robert. What a great walkthrough. So for instance, what I mentioned at the house setting up the party, I witnessed a situation. This was probably three years ago where a boyfriend of one of the daughters of my ex was at the house, says to the mother, hey, let me carry that for you and it was a water jug to refill their water jug in the kitchen. He slipped and fell and the water jug was glass and cut his hand. Okay? He had to go to the hospital. He had to get stitches. Well, guess what? His family sued their family and won, and they didn't have the liability protection or an umbrella policy to protect themselves. So they had to pay for the damages that they sued for and for the medical bills of this person. So that's why it's very important

to always look at having these protective mechanisms in place, especially as you're growing your wealth. That's a great reminder. I've got an umbrella policy myself. I don't have any LLCs. I'm not a business owner, but the umbrella policy for the average person is a great way to, you know, you layer that on top of your home and auto to protect you in those situations, especially as you start to build some wealth. So that's a great reminder, Robert. Yeah, nobody ever talks about umbrella policies. And I think it is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. as you're growing your wealth, because everyone always thinks when something bad happens, that's never going to happen to me. They think that's for other people. But guess what? Life gets in the way, especially as you grow and grow and grow. And there's always something that's going to pop up. And that umbrella policy is really just a great way to let me sleep well at night, knowing that if something gets out of hand that's not covered by one of the regular

insurance policies, that I've got that backup with the umbrella policy. I love it. All right, so our last question comes from Jake S. Jake asks, what do you all think about investing in commodities? I love this question. So let me jump into it first, Robert. What is a commodity? First off, a commodity is anything that's like sort of investable if you think about it as an object or you can assign value to it.

Think corn, oil, gold, silver, timber, all those different things that go up and down in value over time. And you think, why do they go up and down in value over time? The simple equation we all know and love supply and demand, right? Price equals supply and demand. So if demand is increasing, the price likely will increase as well, assuming supply stays the same. We saw that happen with timber during the pandemic.

We saw it happen with oil last year, right? Oil prices skyrocketed. Timber was going up like crazy. Now, here's the question, right? What do you think about investing in commodities? Personally, I'm not investing in commodities, and I do that for two reasons. Reason number one is I would much rather invest into actual companies that produce profits and dividends and cash flow and good things for my investment portfolio over time.

You know, American capitalism is moving things up into the right over a long period of time on the stock chart. So you think of an Amazon or an Apple or a Microsoft, right? They have incentives to want to sell more, have more profits and have their stock price go higher. That gets me excited. The second reason I don't invest in commodities is kind of coming back to my first reason of the price moves so closely with supply and demand. I have no idea if we're going to have a crazy

oil shock with OPEC or something's going to happen that's completely out of my control, therefore the price might plummet. But what I do know is that the management team of an Apple and Amazon or Microsoft are not all just going to quit one day and say, oh, don't want to run the company, let's go run it to the ground, right? That's not going to happen, right? That's just not reality, where there are so many different factors that come into investing into commodities. That's my quick take. That's my perspective here why I don't invest in commodities. Now let me say, I do own a bit of gold. I own a little bit of silver, a little bit of cryptocurrency, a little bit of, collectibles like fine wine and luxury watches. I think that's fine. A little bit of diversification.

That's great. But it's not really an investment to me. It's more of like a way to park 5 to 15% of my total net worth. And the things that aren't all just the stock market that might move up and down so volatile like it did in 2022. George, Robert, what's your perspective on this? I'll go first. So I have a completely different take. Over the last, let's call it, 20 years, I have done so well investing in commodities, let's call them like alternative investment strategies. I talked about this the other day on one of my TikTok lives, whereas luxury Rolex's, automarkis, pottex, and omegas, those vintage watches have outperformed the S&P 500 for the last 10 years, as has fine art. But then also, one of the things that I've done really well with when we talk about commodities is silver. And so I love

silver and gold, and silver has been one of my best investments of the last 15 years. I've done really, really well in that category. So for me, I definitely love having a portion of my net investable assets in commodities, just because I think I understand them well. And not all investments are exciting. And so with having these luxury watches and the gold and silver and some of that, it gives you a little bit of playfulness to that investment strategy while still being able to make profits. So that's kind of the fun part having commodities as part of your investment strategy. Good takes. I guess I'll be, I guess I'd go team Austin on this one, maybe even for, I'm probably the furthest on the spectrum, because I'm so boring and so unknowledgeable in all of these areas that I'm just like, I'm going to

invest in mutual funds, index funds, and real estate. And that's it. Until the day I die, that's probably all I will touch. I might never own a single stock, probably won't ever own crypto at this point. I don't own any silver or gold. And here's the thing, we're all going to be fine. That's just something I firmly believe. And so for anyone out there was like, well, I don't know. They said to do this. And they said to do this. There's a lot of different paths to wealth. Mine is much more simple than most people's. And like Robert said, only invest in things you understand. You guys are like nerding out over watches. I don't know what you spoke a different language there. And so if you don't know anything about watches, don't go invest in luxury watches because

Robert said he does. And so make sure it's something that you're passionate about. I don't have many hobbies. You guys, this is your life. It's just talking about this stuff. And so that's a good reminder. Exiting out of this question is only invest in things you understand that you're willing to do the research on. George, where can the people find you if they want to learn more about what you're up to? You have a new YouTube channel, I think, right? Absolutely.

Yes. You can search for me on YouTube, George Camel with a K. I've got episodes coming out Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We make them as fun as we possibly can because doing a topic like life insurance can make people just snooze. But I make it fun. And we did a video on this if you want to check it out. with extra memes. It's not going to be as juicy as, you know, three handsome guys talking about it, but we'll at least have one. So you can go check that out. And of course, follow me on Instagram

at George Camel with a K and DM me if you listen to this episode. Love it. Yeah, thank you for joining us. We're just really excited to have you. This is our first guest. So this is a different format for us. I'm honored, guys. You could have had anyone. That's right. You could have got Mark Cuban and you chose me. You are the flagship guy and I'm glad you were here. And it's really for us. Rich Habits is really about breaking down the big, bad, scary topics in a way that it creates these simplicity and these little nuggets for everyone to take away and take action from it because so many people are put in this situation where they have this analysis paralysis that just takes over their investment strategies because of the fact they don't know what to do and there's so much misinformation

in the markets. And that's why we believe it's just really great to have a guest like you, break down this topic so it's easier for everyone to understand the good, the bad, and the ugly. I appreciate that. Well, you guys are doing a great job, turning down the noise of social media and all of the options and making it less overwhelming and just showing people that right next step they can take. So keep it up. We appreciate it, George. Thank you. Well, hey, this has been a blast. Thanks so much for listening to the Rich Habits podcast. It has been an honor to hang out with our friends Austin and Robert today. If you want to check my stuff out, you can search George Camel with a K on YouTube or

Instagram and make sure to leave a five-star review. If you haven't already, what are you doing? These guys are putting out this value for free every day. The least you can do is hit a single button. My man, I thank you so much, George, for hanging out with us. This is a great episode. And everyone, have a great start to your week and happy Monday.