The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – What Should I Do with My Money?: Economic Insights to Build Wealth Amid Chaos by Bryan Kuderna

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

What Should I Do with My Money?: Economic Insights to Build Wealth Amid Chaos by Bryan Kuderna https://amzn.to/3BlcNVK An eye-opening panoramic guide providing the economic literacy you need to be in control of your money decisions and get on the path to long-term financial independence “We are all on this earth together, and so is our money,” Bryan Kuderna writes. “You must understand that money, your money, rests at the heart of every major issue in the world.” Kuderna, a Certified Financial Planner™ and nationally recognized financial advisor, knows first-hand that the key to wise financial decisions is a deep understanding of economics. When his clients ask him, “What should I do with my money?” Kuderna has found the conversation quickly turns from one of personal finance to a 360-degree view of economics, illustrating why and how issues on the global stage and the kitchen table are directly connected. In What Should I Do with My Money?, Kuderna explains how economies and markets are affected by the way people live, learn, love, work, play, and pray―for it is these behaviors that determine how groups, corporations, and nations make money or lose money. Using history, storytelling, and sage insights, Kuderna takes you on a panoramic tour of the nine most important domains impacting your wealth: POPULATION―a rapidly growing and shifting balance of givers and takers ENTITLEMENTS―the past, present, and future of Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, pensions, and stimulus programs EDUCATION―costs and benefits of college and student loans ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY―political and monetary beliefs that govern our world ENVIRONMENT―the sustainability of our planet amid global warming, plastics, and finite natural resources TECH―opportunities and threats from the fastest-growing sector of the stock market WAR―the use of proxy wars, civil military fusion, cyber, and economic attacks RELIGION―how faith has steered economies from the stone age to the space age PERSONAL FINANCE―a plan to attain the Three I’s: Impact, Independence, and Income Each chapter includes special features explaining the “macro” problem and what it means to your personal “micro” world―helping you connect the dots of global issues to your own financial plan. Now more than ever you might feel overwhelmed, the victim of existing economic structures, but wait and see how there has been no better time for you to take control and build wealth.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, welcome to the big podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here.

Also, we've got some wonderful guests on the show and everything else going on. So it should be very interesting that way. Today, we have an amazing author on the show. We're going to be talking about finances, money, and all sorts of good stuff going on that should make a difference in your life. But in the meantime, share the show with your family, friends, relatives, dogs, cats. You know, leave the show on when you're at home so the cockroaches have something to listen to. That's an old bit.

Go to YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss. The big LinkedIn newsletter that just kind of grows all the time and all the LinkedIn stuff we do over there. The new AI podcast, check that out as well. And the leadership podcast. He is the author of the amazing new book. Out February 3rd, 2023, Brian Kuderna is on the show with us today. He's got his new book out called What Should I Do With My Money?

Economic Insights to Build Wealth Amid Chaos. And we're going to find out, should I put in my mattress or not? No, don't do that, folks. That's bad. But we'll find out because there's a lot of things going on nowadays. There's like inflation and bank failures and stock, maybe depression, recession, all sorts of speculative things of where things might go. It's almost as fun as the years of COVID. So there you go. He is on the show. He's going to be talking to us about his amazing stuff.

And we'll get into it there. So Brian is a certified financial planner and founder of Kuderna Financial Team, a name one of the New Jersey's leaders in finance in 2021 by, let's see, NJ Biz. He also hosts his podcast, a show about wealth and its original meaning. Brian is also the author of the latest book, What Should I Do With My Money? And we'll get into it. Welcome to the show, Brian. How are you?

Hey, what's up, Chris? Thanks for having me. I am doing well, although the bio we had written up for you crashed from some sort of Gmail thing that's going on right now. The internet's being really weird. We got some weird warnings from Facebook this morning, and everyone's getting it. It's crazy. So welcome to the show.

Give us the dot coms that people can find you at and learn's getting it. It's crazy. So welcome to the show. Give us the dot coms that people can find you out and learn more about you. Yep. Yeah, without a doubt. So you can just go to Brian Kaderna and that's Brian with a Y. So B-R-Y-A-N-K-U-D-E-R-N-A dot com. That's got everything about my books, my podcast, my blog, my weekly newsletter about how to stay healthy and wealthy. So that's really the main source for all things me. There you go. So give us a reason why you wrote this book. Yeah.

So, I mean, the main impetus, if we look at kind of the timeline in 2016, I came out with a book called Millennial Millionaire. And it was kind of a crash course on finance, you know, as a millennial kind of things timeline. In 2016, I came out with a book called Millennial Millionaire, and it was kind of a crash course on finance as a millennial, kind of things to think about, how to get off on the right foot. And so everybody was saying, hey, is there going to be a part two? Is there going to be a sequel? And then lo and behold, COVID happens. We got more things than you could think of to talk about in the economy. And so I ended up speaking with some big publishers, teamed up with McGraw-Hill, and they just said, hey, we want you to do a book on everything. And so that's where I came up with what should I do with my money, economic insights to build wealth amid chaos.

And really it answers all those questions of why. Why invest in this? What happens with taxes? Why does the government do this? Why do entitlements exist? The whole gamut, you know, I try and answer those questions. There you go. And it's, it's, it continues to be a crazy time from even what was going on, the millennial things. So tell us a little bit about your upbringing, like what got you into finance? What got you into the business that you're in, et cetera? Yeah. So pretty wild. I mean, I grew up in Ocean Township, New Jersey,

never would have foreseen myself as a financial advisor. You know, when I was in high school, I didn't know if college was really for me. You know, I thought maybe I'd go into the trades or something, just the normal subjects of geometry and biology and stuff just didn't really resonate with me. I was always a good student, but just didn't have a passion for that sort of thing. So I actually was looking at culinary schools to become a chef. There you go. Yeah. And then ended up pivoting and I ended up getting accepted to George Mason University and thought, you know, my dad worked for the Department of Defense and the government thought maybe I'd go that route work, you know, in the FBI or do something cool like that.

Eleventh hour, get a scholarship from the University of Tampa, fell in love with the campus, just completely switch. Even after I got my classes from George Mason, go down to UT, get into business. And then, you know, there's a whole nother story behind all of that, but, uh, you know, I ended up changing from marketing into finance and then it all started with an internship in 2008 and, um, just wanted to be an entrepreneur and, uh, you know, it, everything kind of came together in a roundabout way. And I was able to kind of accomplish all the things I wanted to through being a financial advisor. There you go.

And so how many years have you been a financial advisor now? Yep. Since oh eight. So I guess that would be 15 years now. There you go. Congratulations, man. 15 years in any given business.

And it was all the craziness has gone on. It's hard to do. In fact, we wake up every day. We're on, I think in August we'll be 14 years old. It's hard to do. In fact, we wake up every day. We're on, I think in August we'll be 14 years old. The Chris Voss show. I mean,

we, I, I, I can remember the early days of starting it and be like, no one's going to listen to this crap. Um, here we are. And,

and here we are. Uh, and you know, back then it was so much harder to just get the internet to work with video and audio. And it was crazy. So, uh, there's a lot of things you talk about and you kind of have a unique fit with this book i think at least in my

opinion where you talk about how economies and markets are affected by the way people live learn you know how they do their stuff tell us a little bit about that because you know a lot of people hear oh another business book on where i should put my money. I think there's a kind of unique slant that you have. Yeah, I think there is. And that goes back to kind of where my passion from economics really came about. And just in college and as I started studying and reading, I was like, man, economics just finds its way into every conversation, every debate, every decision, you know, big or small, whether it's, you know, you decide, hey, do we want to go out for pizza tonight? Or should we go to Ruth Chris Steakhouse? You know, there is an economic component to that decision.

When we decide, you know, are we going to get some oil from Venezuela? Are we going to get it from Russia? Or do we go back and, you know, speak with Saudi Arabia about, you know, what we're importing? That's an economic decision. And so you have these micro economies that all put together, create macro economies, and it's all dictated by one of the things I referenced in the book is an acronym called MICE, which I actually got from a spy book on the CIA. But what my stands for is money, ideology, compromise, and ego. And these are four motives that we all have to some extent that kind of make us who we are and dictate how we make our decisions. And so as you take these 8 billion people, these 8 billion decision makers that

make up the world, all these kind of negotiations and compromises each day really guide economies. And it's just fascinating when you get into it. And I think as you learn more and more, you see what exactly does that mean to me and my money? There you go. And you talk about a lot of the, what would you call them? Macroeconomic influences, or you probably know the better word than I do, but you talk about population entitlements, education, economic philosophy, environment, tech war, like, you know, we're in this proxy war or whatever with Russia. Uh, I didn't realize how important, you know, like rain and sunflower seeds and like all

the stuff that Ukraine was giving us and how centralized it was, you know, rain and sunflower seeds and like all the stuff that ukraine was giving us and how centralized it was you know it's one of the top three producers on some of this stuff for number one at one time exactly uh religion uh that's kind of interesting uh and i imagine that uh religion also affects uh macroeconomics is that what i'm looking for macro politics yeah yeah and personal finance uh and so you talk about all these different things and how they're moving parts of this of this whole uh conundrum we call an economy yeah yeah and it's funny you bring that up chris because like people see the the index for the book and they're like wait a minute you're talking about big tech, religion, entitlements, going green in the earth.

And it's like, what does all this stuff have to do with my financial plan? And then what I hear from readers after they're reading it, they're like, how could you not include that? Because each one of these, it may not seem that way on the surface, but as you peel back the layers of that onion, you start to see like, wow, these all play together and they all dictate the way that we live, the way that we learn, the way that we teach, the way that we spend our money, you know, what's important to us. And that's where you have kind of this yin and yang of, you know, you might think somebody's, you know, all the way on the other side of the world but then as you start to kind of dive into you know what makes the world go around you you know it's really not that far away and that all comes back again to economics yeah and and and with the globalized economy that we live in

that makes all the difference in the uh makes all the difference in the, uh, uh, in how everything works, the moving parts as it were, uh, it makes it, it's, it's hard to fathom. I mean, like, like I said, when the Ukraine war broke out and I was like, well, that's a crane war in Europe. And I don't know much about Ukraine. Uh, you know, I mean, no one, I don't, you know, human beings shouldn't be, uh, put through that sort of horrific, uh, war. Uh, and I thought we were over that kind of stuff but uh evidently humans don't learn things which is why

we do the show on with historians um and uh but but to realize some of the impetuses of ukraine not being able to export grain sunflower seeds were like a huge thing i was like what and then you find out how much you know you first you go like sunflower seeds well you a huge thing i was like what and then you find out how much you know you first you go like sunflower seeds well you know i can live without that for a while and until this whole war gets worked out and then you realize how much that stuff goes into so many products like it's just it's it's infection it's in what's the right word i'm looking for anyway um but it's all interconnected yeah it's all interconnected there you go that's a perfect word and uh and so i like how you break this down how you need to read this so you know when when i'm looking at the markets and uh and what's going on

with it's not just bear markets and bull markets it's so much of like is this company impacted by a single ingredient that can't be get in a certain country anymore? Uh, you know, there's a lot of talk about EVs, electronic vehicles and mineral deposits and, you know, the fight over them, you know, we've, we've had authors on the show that talked about, you know, uh, China doing a lot of, uh, you know, mineral extraction and, uh, and, and controlling in Africa, which is a big thing. And then of course, you know mineral extraction and uh and and controlling in africa which is a big thing and then of course you know more and more as we need these electronic vehicles and like we have all these electronic devices you know there's a need for these special minerals that are really

unique and if we don't have them we can't make like chips and stuff so yeah i like how you go into all this yeah and we do get into that in the book you know we talk about china and their initiative you know the quote-unquote silk road 2.0 um where essentially you know what they're trying to do this master plan is to find you know all the different areas that have these rare you know minerals and earth deposits that um you know are necessary to like you mentioned the EVs and the semiconductors and things of that nature where, you know, ages ago, we were like, oh, it's just a rock, you know, who cares, you know, what's in it. And now we find out, you know, there could be these rare

earth metals that are critical to some of these really high tech, you know, products that we rely so heavily on. So they're trying to kind of get ahead of the curve and say, all right, if we can take ownership of them or collaborate, you know, often with these emerging market countries and help them and do the financing and build economies there, but essentially be their only customer, that that's a way that they could dominate the market. And it's, you know, it's somewhat scary because it's like, well, if all of that came to fruition, I mean, they could kind of push us to the side and say, all right, if you want these products, you need to come to us. And that's what you're seeing right now, in a sense, with both America and China being so dependent on Taiwan for semiconductors and microchips. So if they could do that on a much, much bigger scale, that would give them, again, a very big economic competitive advantage. Now, it's not really going as planned so far.

And the other thing I talk a lot about in the book, too, for the doomsday people that are like, oh, my gosh, what's going to happen to America? You got to think about it. Right now, there are two superpowers. There's the US and there's China. We have the biggest economy in the world and they're number two, but they have been gaining on us. However, our biggest customer outside of domestic America is China. And China's biggest customer outside of China is America. So it would behoove the two of us, as much as we may disagree on certain things, to say we need each other and our people are infatuated with what we can do for each other. So there's no way to decouple these two economies.

So I think that that is kind of the silver lining when people say oh there's a big disagreement you know china's military is advancing you know it's so scary you know it would not benefit them at all to come to a strong disagreement with us and conversely it wouldn't benefit us to do that with them so yeah and what do you think you know one of the things you're talking about your book is population you know the i've heard for i think it's 20 years now the rising of china and billionaires and and multi-millionaires and globalists have been sending you know their their sons and daughters to either go to china or learn mandarin because the newest biggest market is going to take over. You know, for years, our strength was being the largest market in the world. And so, you know, everybody feigned to our ability to buy and have power and, of course, the U.S. dollar.

And then with the prediction was by, I think it was 2025, that China was going to merge and be the dominant market and we were going to be a a fading empire we may still be whether and there's a lot of different indicators of that but uh what's happened it's kind of interesting to me is is you know china was faking i think for at least 10 to 15 years its gdp by building stuff they didn't need to be building and uh and that was creating a bubble for them and then on top of that the one child policy uh created a bubble for them as well they now have like i think it's a three to one ratio of eligible men to eligible women um they actually have these

weddings where they are not these they have these huge convention events where they actually bid out the wives, the potential wives, and they have so many men and they can't mate and they can't have children. So they've actually broken the decline as a declining population. And it looks like they're going to go kind of Japan-ish, if you're familiar with what's going on there, where the new younger generation can't support the older generation in retirement and everything else. We saw that in England after 2008 crashes, where they had to kind of go after pensions. And then India just recently emerged as the largest, fastest growing population in the world, bigger than China, and of course, bigger than us. And so it's kind of interesting. And so I like how you talk about these dynamics and people need to understand them

when they make their investments and what they're investing in. Exactly. Because at the end of the day, you're investing in people, you know, and it may not always seem like it when you go buy Apple or Microsoft or Facebook or Nike or whatever, but they're all just services and products for people at the end of the day. And so that's why the whole book starts with chapter one is population. And there's a lot of things we can talk on that if you want. But, you know, the fact of the matter is our earth is not growing at all. All right. It's been the same size for millennia. But if you look at population growth,

the numbers, the charts I put in there are just eye-opening of how it took thousands and thousands of years to reach a billion people. Then it just took another hundred years to reach 2 billion people at the turn of the 20th century. And then we fast forward to where we are now in 2023 with 8 billion people. You know, these are all people that we need to care for. There's givers and there's takers. There's people that are giving to the economy and then one's taking from it. And like you alluded to, you know, we're in a shift right now with the baby boomers where, you know, these entitlements that have become kind of the bedrock of the American economy are really under pressure. And so it's like, are we going to keep them all solvent for these baby boomers? And are we going

to ask, you know, Gen Z and millennials to really step it up and, you know, be able to fund these programs or what are we going to do? And that same kind of conundrum, like you mentioned, is really unfolding in Japan in a bad way. And China is kind of like us when you look at the aging demographics, but just much, much bigger than us. And so we're all right there. So do you have any outlooks for what cycle we're in? We were talking before the show in the green room that they just came out with the new sort of what's going on with inflation. I believe it's fallen down to 4.9%, which is still above the Fed's projected rate that they want to hit to balance the economy. We've seen a staggering amount of very late, in my opinion, I think a lot of economists agree with me very late that uh the federal reserve

came to the rescue of uh finding inflation but you know i mean you dealing with covet and i was at like eight trillion they floated during covet was it eight or twelve trillion they floated or funded an economy um you know it's we're in a game that no one's played before in fact what's even weirder about this time that i think is interesting and correct me if I'm wrong, please. Cause you're the pro, um, you know, uh, we're in a weird kind of quote unquote recession where we have, you know, this incredible amount of surge of demand for employees. We have all these companies laying off and we, and we have, you know, projected,

everything's going to go to hell, but we have this surge of top paid, you know, highly paid employees that are in demand. And I know one of the problems of that future to my understanding is a lot of the baby boomers and late gen Xers left the economy and retired early. They just said, fuck it, we're out with COVID.

And so there's actually a glut of employees. And so it's a really weird recession. I mean, I'm in a mortgage company for 20 years. I used to sit and live and die on Greenspan's thing with millions of dollars in my portfolio. You know, that guy could ruin my day. I could lose $400,000 overnight with that dude. And so I had to know what he was doing and how he was doing it and call the ball. But what do you see now with what's going on with this current state that we're in?

Yeah. And it's interesting because a lot of people have asked me that same question you're saying of like, are we in a recession? Were we in one? Are we going into one? And so the reason that technically we haven't actually been in a real recession yet is the way they define it in generic terms is two consecutive quarters, negative GDP growth, which we did realize in 2022. So some could say we had a recession. However, the other big metric is unemployment. And the unemployment number has been, from an economic standpoint, awesome. It's been very, very low all throughout. So like you said, strong labor market, but a lot of other things looking a little bit wacky. So what gives here? And I think, you know, and like you mentioned, it's so easy to get frustrated with like, how did the Fed not see this coming? Like, how are you telling me

inflation was transitory when the government just was like blowing trillions of dollars? Like it was absolutely nothing. It was almost like becoming comical. So it's like you had to know that inflation was on the way. But I understand it is easy to kind of Monday morning quarterback this. We were off the heels of just a historic pandemic. So nevertheless, they were late to the game. They should have been in it in 2021. They weren't.

Inflation got much worse. And so I think Fed Chairman Jerome Powell kind of said like, all right, you think I was late to the game? You think I don't have the guts to play this and raise rates that he just kind of let the dogs loose last year? And I think that's why those rate hikes were so aggressive. Yeah. Continuing where a lot of people said, hey, you know, you let the dogs loose. Let's see how it affects the economy now. You know, it could be 12 to 18 months for interest rate

adjustments to matriculate through the economy. So let's let this unfold a bit where instead he said, no, we're going to keep the pedal to the floor right into 2023. And here we are, like you said, fortunately, inflation has been coming down. We saw this morning morning it's 4.9% year over year, which is the slowest in over two years. So that's a good thing. So you're probably going to see a pause now. And now it's kind of like, did they negotiate that landing perfectly where we're going to get that soft landing? Or did they go a little too far and we could see some volatility now in the markets? There's just so much. So you have that to deal with. And then meanwhile,

it's almost like that's yesterday's news. Now we're on to, are we going to hit the debt ceiling? There's always something new that we're dealing with. And that's why as a financial advisor, I'm always telling clients, keep your eye on the ball, keep a long-term vision, and do not get emotional because every night you turn on the news, there's plenty to freak out about. There you go. What do you think about these bank failures? Now, my understanding is this has a lot to do with the rate increases, but also has to do with a lot of banks holding commercial real estate. One of the problems that is going on in San Francisco, and San Francisco gets a lot of bashing for stuff, but people don't understand, I think, what's going on on the ground.

And 30, I think it's a little bit more than 30% of downtown San Francisco is empty and vacant. And it's not because of, you know, people throw all sorts of political crap at it because they, I don't know, they listen to memes and they have no idea what's going on. But on the ground, COVID basically drove people from office buildings and they haven't returned. And so they're literally sitting on 30% of the office buildings in San Francisco that are empty and people just aren't coming back and and there's a lot of real estate around the country that's held that way and a lot of that is bank held by banks and we're seeing these uh massive bank failures in fact it's kind of quieted on the news but they're still

happening yeah and uh uh part of it is part of to my understanding is there's a lot of trillion dollars in debt that are not trillion dollars in debt, trillion dollars, trillion dollars in cash that have been removed from the system. Like people are starting to hoard, uh, the first Republic thing, a hundred billion dollars, uh, on a bank run that people did on the bank to withdraw stuff. Once it looked like it was scary. And, uh, it's kind of interesting what's happening with that on the meantime you've had the used market i know is crashed used car market is crashing uh so that's interesting and that's kind of the intent of what the fed does but it's really crashing hard because it was really to an extreme but then on the flip side i saw a thing that um sales of homes are up.

But then you have people like, I think it's like BlackRock, who are like hoarding homes. And so it's really, I mean, the dynamics of this market are crazy. Yeah. And there's so many things there, Chris, that you just touched on. I could do an episode on each one of them. No, we could be here for hours. Yeah, exactly.

And it's just the speed in which our economy moves today. We're at breakneck speed in the transfer of information, the transfer of wealth and money. So, you know, it's a great thing. You know, when things are going good, we can expand our economy very quickly. That's awesome. But when things go bad, it can get out of control sometimes before we can get our hands around it. That's what you saw with the banks. That's the only way that a bank run happens is when too many people too quickly get emotional and say,

oh my gosh, what if something goes on here? Get your money out. That's what happened to Silicon Valley Bank. They were the first one. I read the Federal Reserve came out with their bank report a couple of weeks ago on that or the autopsy report, they call it. And there were a few things there. They were unique in that they were so concentrated in their depositor base with startups, venture capital and tech that it was kind of like, you just invite like a little click to your party. And if they say, you know what, I don't think that party's

going to be so hot. If they leave all the parties over, there's nobody there. That's what happened to Silicon Valley bank because on social media and through a couple of emails with their, their biggest customers, it spread like wildfire that they weren't in the best shape. And then it was an overreaction that caused the bank run. Having said that, they weren't well capitalized. That could have been a lot better because there was deregulation around the banking system during COVID. That's a whole other thing we could talk about. And then the other thing is they didn't manage their interest rate risk too well. So it was kind of like this little bit of a perfect storm that caused that. And then there was a trickle to Signature and then to First Republic. But the thing I always tell people is it's like when they went to Silicon Valley Bank and they

said, I want to take out my $20 million deposit. They didn't take that out and just light it on fire. They took it out and they moved it to another bank. So it's still in the economy and some of that may get invested and so forth, but it didn't disappear. And I think that's important to recognize. And that's how J.P. Morgan was able to go buy First Republic is, I think you're going to see a system in which the very big, very well-capitalized banks are going to have to pitch in to help out their smaller, you know, the minor leagues, the regional banks. And then the government's also always got to be there as a backstop, which they have been. So the depositors were kind of okay, knock on wood so far, but the investors and some of the employees of those banks, that's where you got to be kind of careful in how these companies are being run.

There you go. You know, it was interesting to me how much money the Fed, can you call it printed? And I believe it was the tune of eight or $12 trillion over COVID. And it was initially as soon as things started hitting, I think they spent 8 trillion, um, to, to balance the economy and take on a treasury debt.

Um, I think it was. And so don't quote me on these figures, folks, uh, go do your own research, but something like that. And,

uh, uh, they were floating the economy. I'm reading something from march of 2021 from nasdaq.com uh we try and stick with the legitimate websites uh and it quotes is all the all the the all-in money printing total 13 trillion dollars as of this was uh in uh what i say march of 2021 so there's been more of that since. But yeah, it was, do we just get drunk on all the government?

You know, the government gave everyone a lot of COVID money. So that was kind of floating a lot of households and economies. People were spending it like crazy. They were just having a ball with it. Consumer confidence took a dip initially, but came back. It's still quite high considering everything that's going on it's it's nowhere near what happened in 2008 um do we just get drunk on like all this money we flood in the system to get through covid that's it's a good way to put it i think just the simple answer is yeah we did and uh you know there's a saying sometimes you hear thrown around

that no good politician you know lets a crisis go to waste. And it's there. You had a lot of that going on, too, because think about it. I mean, was it all warranted? Yes. From a conceptual standpoint, we had this unknown pandemic we were dealing with with tremendous loss of life, impact on the economy, closing our restaurants, our hotels, all this stuff. So we were in a pickle. We needed an emergency bridge loan of sorts to say, we got to get from A to B, and we don't know how long this chasm is that we're going to have to

cross. Having said that, imagine a scenario, Chris, where I said, all right, we're going to just print trillions of dollars to give to everybody. Everybody just come grab some. Borrowing is going to be free. You want a loan, you want a program or anything, have it, 0%, no real underwriting. It's there for you. And oh, by the way, you don't have to work right now. And we're going to give you money for that too. So you don't have to work. That's not an economy. And we did that for like over a year. And so when you think for that too so you don't have to work that's not an economy and we did that for like over a year and so when you think about that with something so big as the u.s economy you know the the repercussions to that are we still haven't realized them all yet uh so it's it was unfortunate

that it went so far but you know the the opponent the opponent to that argument or that debate would say, well, what if we didn't? What if we didn't do those things? I mean, could we have gone into the Great Depression? And it's possible. So in a perfect world, we look backwards and say, well, we should have had a balance. But nevertheless, here we are, and we spent a hell of a lot of money. It's hard to balance an economy. I mean, like I say, I've gone through a lot with the Federal Reserve and Alan Green spend days, and I used to have to sit and try and figure out if he was going

to do a quarter point or a half point. And, you know, it's hard, you just can't get an even keel, especially with the global economy. You know, no one predicted after COVID, you know, war breakout with Russia and Ukraine. And so you talk about a lot of these factors in the book, which I think are important and all that good stuff and how to make sure that you understand. So when I'm looking at a company or stock, do I need to apply all these different metrics that you have in the book to it? Do I need to say, is GE going to be impacted by global wars and populations and people buying washers and dryers? There's a weird thing going on now. I don't even fully understand it, so I'm not going to comment on it. But there's a weird thing going on now where New York is banning gas stoves. I mean, if I'm investing in GE, and I don't know if GE still does gas stoves,

but I imagine I think they are, you know, or whatever gas stove company, you know, what's the impact going to be in their stock price, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah, you do. I mean, that's kind of the truest answer of it is, you know, all these things play together. And so when you're looking at an investment and

you're weighing kind of the fundamentals versus the technicals, you know, you can get into all the what's the price of the stock trading at right now? What's the price to earnings ratio, the book to value ratio, you can get into all these things that they all look just like math, but they all tell a story as well, if you kind of dive under the hood and see how the company's performing. So that's important. But from a fundamental standpoint, and from what's going on in the global economy, you know, I often say there's like that cool factor, you know, it can can a company, you know, do well, are they are they cool? Is it something that people are going to want to use their product or service, and it's going to spread like wildfire,

like an Instagram or a Tik TOK or one of these or an iPhone, just because we like it. You know, there's a value to that, that maybe isn't always apparent on paper initially. And so you have to kind of recognize these things. And there's, there's a story to every one of them. You know, a lot of clients and friends of mine have invested in properties that they said, oh, I'll do Airbnb. I love it. And they then go make an investment with that intent. And then lo and behold, the municipality it's in says, oh, we're banning short-term rentals. It got too crazy. And it's like, wow, I made a monster investment in this beach house. And now all of a sudden you kind of change the rules of the game yeah that's that's all economics there and that's where the book you

know hits on so many of these different competing points yeah i saw that with a lot of airbnb people it almost like the market got saturated um and uh and then of course i you know airbnb i think changed some of their policies and then uh like like you say, cities went after it. When I was in Las Vegas a few years back, they started really banning it hard because the hotels were not happy about losing business. The HOAs and people in neighborhoods were tired of houses turning into party homes and if you're familiar with the way party people party in vegas especially young people they're not very kind to the place they party i had friends that had multi-million dollar uh uh units in turnberry i think it was in vegas and uh they got trashed and they're like we didn't understand that they would party this hard i'm like have you been to vegas yeah but uh yeah

a lot lots of things what do you think about gold gold uh right now is pretty much almost or just short of its all-time high which it hit uh i think in 2020 and it seems like it's still raging onward that's usually a safe haven a lot of people go to for pending recessions depressions call it what you will yeah yeah so and one thing i i just wanted to kind of close out on the point you were making before and and i i have a chapter in my book called economic philosophy that just compares socialism and capitalism and a lot of the things that you were just kind of describing are the result of a capitalist economy. We want a free economy.

But then if there's not constraints, you know, certain parts of it can kind of get a little bit haywire. So then you have on the other side of the pond, if you will, all the way in China, you know, that's considered our socialist counterpart. But they will be the first to tell you that socialism, you know, isn't really working. And they're, you know, everything that works for them, that expansive growth that they had was through capitalism, which now they're branding as state run capitalism. So they're saying, you know, we want all the benefits of economic freedom and of capitalism, but we're going to control it. And so now it's kind of like you're talking out of both sides of your mouth there and i think they're in a real kind of tipping point of like can they then take control of what capitalism gave it or are they just going to kind of reverse courses as communists and uh you know

upset the boat there or upset the apple cart so a lot of interesting things when you get into kind of the socialism capitalism conversation do you talk about generational because one thing that is interesting you brought the socialism thing it's very interesting to see this new gen z uh you know the participation trophy generation who loves having everything handed them for free uh i mean that's just it really um you know they they seem to want this socialism thing i think studies have shown and polls have shown with them that they're more supportive of socialism over over uh capitalism than anything ever before i mean that's that's another economic factor of people's spread and that's that was a huge part of the book of, you know, what I want to do. I'm

not telling people pick capitalism, pick socialism. I'm just trying to educate. Here's exactly what the two are. You know, I think it was Thomas Jefferson said, you know, not every difference of opinion is a difference in principle. And it's because sometimes we don't understand really what the two are and how they actually operate and what the consequences are so i tried to really just put some of the history there in the book um and it's true i mean you're seeing young people lean more socialist than ever and that's that goes against kind of the fabric of americana um so that that's really kind of like a testing point but on the flip side you know these younger generations identify more than ever as wanting to be entrepreneurs which it's always funny to me

i'm like you tell me you're a socialist but you want to be an entrepreneur that's like you telling me you know i'm a vegetarian but you know i want to go to five guys tonight for a burger it like doesn't totally add up. So I think there's a bit of a disconnect there too. And if we can just kind of, you know, get some information out there and not be so married to our ideas and willing to kind of, you know, be open-minded that, you know, you'll see we're a mixed economy. You know, we're not purely capitalist. We're not purely socialist. We're what works, which is a little bit of both. And I think just people need to come to grips with that and not be so, I pledge allegiance to this one side and I will never, ever move against it.

Because once you stake a belief in it, then it's very hard to improve. Yeah. I think people default in ignorance to a black and white sort of model like uh capitalism so yes you know they see billionaires and people uh you know buying scotus judges and other things going on and like uh capitalism sucks we're an oligarchy which we kind of are actually um but uh you know and then the other hand, they're like, you know, we want socialism because we really like handouts because working's hard, eh? Um, and, and there are things that are going on with that generation that they have a real

problem. They can't afford houses, houses. You know, we just went through this extreme inflation, so they can't afford houses. They can't afford cars. I'm watching a interesting TikTok channel where there's a very young accountant like you, and he goes through people's finances, and they're all Gen Z people, and probably the late curve of the millennials, but it seems like they're all Gen Zers, maybe some of the late bit of the years of millenn millennial but he's going through their finances and he's he kind of excoriates them a little savagely but he's he's it's not it's it's a bit

of a beat up but it's also like hey man he's trying to shake these people you can tell they're in denial about their expenses and i mean these guys are paying like $1,500 a month for, for, uh, cars, you know, that they can't afford. They're making like $30,000 a year or something. And he's like, Hey man, you, you can't afford rent and you're running up credit cards. And, you know, and it's really an interesting thing to watch as TikTok channel. And, uh, and, and he's really raw with these people and he has to be because they're getting it. And, you know,

and he's like, he's like, you make $30,000 a year and you're ordering all your food three times a day off of, uh, off of, uh, uh,

grub hub, you know, it's like, you know, every now and then I'll have, uh, I have, uh, who is it? It's the, it's the, it's, every now and then I'll have a, I have a, who is it? It's the, it's the, it's the hero place. They make the sandwiches, uh, Jimmy John's paid for this plug.

Jimmy John's if you're out there, you owe me money. Um, but I'll have Jimmy John's deliver for me. And it can, it gets to be extraordinary. It's like, I think an extra five or seven bucks between the tip. Cause I tip well, well um and the delivery fee but even then like sometimes i've gone on dominoes and i know i shouldn't eat dominoes but i'll go on dominoes and i'll see the between the delivery fee and the tip and i just go you know what i don't need it i don't need the fat fuck it but i can't i never avoided off a grub hub like 40 bucks or something for delivery for some food yeah i just cannot cross that line as a gen xer i mean i'm a miserly old man but i don't care how rich i am i'm not paying you know for a ten dollar meal 40 bucks for a ten

dollar meal it's not happening but he interviews these people that are making like 30 grand a year and there's they're living on grub hub three times a day yeah it's and that's so much of what i talk about chris is like this need for both financial responsibility and also financial literacy because um i think some people throw their hands up in there they're like man i got student loans you know college has cost me a fortune i haven't found the job that i love yet these houses now are unaffordable like screw it i'll just go get grubhub every week because whatever. And it's unfortunate to kind of see that. So that's really my message to people is like,

it's not insurmountable. We might just have to work a little bit harder or get a little bit more creative, but you're either going to be a part of the economy and thrive or you're going to quit. And when you quit, the success rate is 0%. So it's like, why? We're not going that way.

You can't. And we can't make that okay through the participation trophy, like you mentioned. We've got to kind of get back to reality of like, if you do not want to work and you don't want to be a part of this economy, then you can't enjoy all the benefits of this economy. And that's a whole other thing I could get into as well. Yeah.

I mean, so I'm teasing out a lot of stuff because we want people to go pick up the book. Yeah. You know, the Gen X thing or the Gen Z thing is very real. You know, they're not making families like we used to. They're not starting families early on like we used to. Families are a building block to any economy in the U any economy in the world in taxation base families are an economy. You know, I've always joked that the reason, you know, I'm single, no kids, like I couldn't afford the millions of dollars in divorce attorney fees. So I never got

married. Um, that's actually less of a joke than it is true. Um uh if i said that right and and and so these these kids can't get married and being able to reproduce and expand the population is a tax-based thing and so i always used to tell the joke to people i'm like the reason you guys pay less taxes than i do because and you get all those write-offs for dependents is because you're breeding taxpayers future taxpayers for the government you're expanding the economy yeah and uh that that belies the future of empires and and economies if you understand it you see what's going on japan where the new generation can't support the old generation and they're an empire and collapse uh and not a good outlook really when it comes down to it so um so we we're facing that now with the gen z and if they can't afford cars and and houses

you know men are men are the gatekeepers to marriage they're not going to make families they're not making families they're not mating actually for a lot of other reasons. And we need those families and kids to breed and build the economy. And instead, we're going to have a population decline, which everything gets sucked into the void. And so lots of different moving parts. There are. There's a lot. And that's why I love, and you'll see a lot in my book, you know, there's a lot of references to history, a lot of history lessons in there because no empire has withstood the test of time. You know, that every empire, you know, it kind of has this big climb to glory.

And then for a period of time, it sustains itself as kind of like the superpower of the world. And then it starts to kind of go by the way the dinosaur kind of evolve into a different sort of empire. So, you know, it kind of sounds silly, almost like talking about that now in 2023. But it's the reality of it. And I think, you know, a lot of these population dynamics are things that we're going to have to live through. And what makes it tough in our system is being this two-party system of Republicans and Democrats, and we've got to vote for somebody. And so that person getting elected has to go out and get all those votes. It's like, all right, well, let me go look at my

audience here. If over on the right, I've got older folks that are like, you better keep my social security. Long-term care is getting expensive as hell. Is my Medicaid going to be there? My Medicare going to be there? My Medicare going to be there? And then you got young people just like, I can't afford a house because my student loans are a noose on my neck. As the politician, you're just trying to get elected. You're like, all right, how do I appeal to both of them when they're on two polar sides of the spectrum and they're both asking for help? And so it's a tough thing to kind of navigate. And I'll tell you what, the one thing, and I talk in the book about this too,

that has been our strength, kind of our secret sauce for America has been immigration. We have always been the land of the free. We've always welcomed people. And frankly, for like a lot of the 1900s and 1800s, even in the later part of the century, we were frankly a brain drain on the world. We said, let's take the wealthiest, the brightest, the smartest, the hardest working and put them in this place called America that has tons of resources and just watch it go crazy. And it's been a beautiful thing to see unfold. And I think that's something that we always got to keep our eyes on

and make sure that we can allow people who want American ideals and principles and are ready to work for them to have a pathway for them. And they can't get crowded out by some of the bad things that maybe are already going on here or other people that

are saying, ah, screw that, I'll just come into the country and do whatever I want and make that okay. So we have to keep that immigration system very strong because that's what's been able to plug the gaps for us. And we need it more so now than ever with the population collapse that I talked about. You know, we had, I forget the name of the gentleman, but we had him on. He wrote the book, One Billion Americans, I think it was called.

And it was a case study for why we need to expand immigration, why we need more people in this country to compete with, you know, China, India becoming larger markets. People don't understand that dynamic. And that's, like you said, that's what made our country great. I mean, the reason we have the nuclear bomb first was because we took,

uh, Oppenheimer and a lot of these guys from, I don't know if Oppenheimer was from Germany, but we took a lot of the, the, the great rocket people that, uh, Hitler sadly had and brought them here and utilize them.

And, and they built our NASAa program and rockets and and the nuclear bomb those were all the scientists that came and we need that i mean steve jobs was an immigrant uh his father was an immigrant to this country i think from syria yeah beyond musk i mean the list goes on and on and on the ceo of google right now exactly yeah and so but that's the key is like if we can get those, then America will keep getting kind of that shot in the arm to, to be all that it is. Um, so that's, that's a part of it is like, we want productive people. We want good people. Of course we want to take

care of everyone we can. Um, but you know, we can't have, and not only do we just want like a ton of people here, there's gotta be a strong balance of that givers and takers, as I call it in the book. Always tilt it a little bit more towards givers that are really productive people in the economy that are innovators. Because if we expand our population size by just adding people that are leeching off of the system, then it goes the other direction where we're starting to drown ourselves even quicker. There's a lot of misnomers about immigrants and how they come in the system and whether they're vetted or not. And there's a lot of political people who take advantage of that and are fear-mongering and, of course, funded by a lot of billionaires that slant that way.

And what's interesting to me because that surge is there's a surge of immigrants coming now you know now that kind of covid's over and i think title 42 is relaxing um and it's interesting to me that americans some americans are like well we can't have more immigrants coming to the country because they'll take our jobs and they don't understand that like i mentioned earlier in the show, the boomers and late gen extras like me retired early and they left the market. And we knew that when they left the market, I've been hearing about this for 40 years, that when these people left the market, we were going to have this upside down glut. And they left the market earlier COVID. And, you know, you've got people like, I don't want to have to pay, you know, four to $5 for eggs.

And you're like, well, somebody's got to pick those eggs. Right. And Americans don't want to pick. I, last time I checked the American children are like, yeah, I'm not doing farm work. Uh, no. So, you know, we need to fill the glut that's been lost from that thing. And we need to expand our economy into a population.

If we've got a declining one from, you know, all the, all the stuff we our economy into a population if we've got a declining one from you know all the all the stuff we talked about on the show we've thrown in so uh let's round out the show anything you more you want to tease out on the book before we go yeah and i'm sorry i didn't get to kind of the the gold conversation which uh i won't impart advice on that i mean gold sometimes can be a safe haven. I just want to acknowledge the question, but if you do look at like, let's say 2011 to 2020, you know, it didn't really move at all. So that's where it's, does it have a place? Sure. But I don't think it's something that you, you know, put the bank on. It's just one asset class in a portfolio. Yeah. It may be very well peaked out from, from what I've seen. It is at its highest marks, which is usually, I don't know.

It can always go higher. I mean, I come from being a stockbroker, trained trader, and doing day trades where I remember back in the day, there was like two rules. Gold will never break 800, and price-e should never break 15 that's like that was like the high point if it broke 15 you're like oh p ratios over 15 sell and uh yeah the dot-com era broke that yeah and then there was amazon and google and on and on um which i made a lot of money on sure yeah but in regards to the book um you know i'm glad we were able to spend some time

on it. Again, it's called What Should I Do With My Money? Economic Insights to Build Wealth Amid Chaos. I think it's really, it's educational, but also entertaining. And where we start with the population, we go through the biggest factors in our economy today, entitlements, education, environment, tech, religion, you'll see really finds its way in there with ideologies, all these different economies, and then talking about war too, and fold it all together. And then a nice little financial plan at the end of the book. So please go out, check it out. I'll hold up a quick copy here. It's this nice gold book. And each chapter has economic insights, which are

these really cool stories real stories about people and icons and business and history that you know capitalized when things seem like you know there's there's no room here this isn't fair and then lo and behold a new invention or a new turn in the economy so we're going to continue to see those so i think that's what's exciting that's where the opportunities lie but you got to be educated. You gotta be in the know. And that's what I tried to do. And whatever this is, uh, I don't know, 250 pages and under, you can kind of get all of that. There you go. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. It's been very insightful and a great, uh, uh, great, uh, discussion of just, uh, we covered like a lot of things we just boom boom boom boom

these are these are things that impact you i mean we're next month we're you know there's argument now with the politicians over over uh the budget thing and if they default you know that's a whole new crisis uh it's interesting to me and i think if i can do one psa we need to start demanding from politicians that they do stuff that are kitchen table things quit getting lost and all their stupid stuff you know about you know they're all their little things they hit to fire up people get them to fix infrastructure get them to fix the taxes get them to fix prescription health care get them to fix stuff quit getting you know they're using're using all the sort of things. Oh, immigrants over here.

You know, this thing over here. Whatever the thing is, get them to stop doing that. Stop paying attention and giving it action. Demand them to fix the kitchen table stuff. I agree. Yeah, it's like stop worrying so much about special interests and worry about general interests. And that's what can help people kitchen table politics um so thank you very much for coming on the show we

got your.com in there didn't we brian with the book yep yeah brian kaderna.com and uh you can follow me social media be kaderna on instagram twitter and the like and um you know definitely uh sign up for my newsletter check it out weekly wealthy wisdoms and you got the podcast as well too yeah the kaderna podcast and i always say we define wealth and its original meaning a state of well-being uh so check that out i'm sure you guys will like that too there you go uh order it up folks wherever fine books are sold what should i do with my money economic insights to build wealth amid chaos don't put it in your mattress people uh there you go read the book and you'll have a better understanding

of how to invest your money and what to do with it and how to stay safe at least uh you know it's the world you know it's i don't think anything's ever fully 100 safe maybe my mattress is no it's not anyway guys thanks for tuning in be good at your stay safe and we'll see you guys next time that should have us out great show brian awesome yeah thanks chris