We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP441: Balancing Financial Goals With A Fulfilling Life w/ Peter Mallouk

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. We have a very special guest for you today, and that is Mr. Peter Malook. Peter is the president and chief investment officer at Creative Planning, which currently manages get ready for it, $210 billion. Peter holds a law degree, an MBA, and is a certified financial planner, and is just an overall very smart and thoughtful guy. You may recognize his name as well as he was the co-author of Money Master the Game with Tony Robbins.

Starting point is 00:00:27 In this episode, we discussed the best investment Peter ever made. made, the unfolding events in Ukraine and Russia and how it could affect today's markets, what the inverted yield curve is telling us, Peter's thoughts on housing, Bitcoin and annuities, some of the biggest mistakes investors make, how to balance achieving our financial goals with living a fulfilling life, and a lot more. I hope you enjoyed as much as I did, so here is my conversation with Peter Maluk. You are listening to The Investors Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most.

Starting point is 00:01:04 We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Welcome to the Investors Podcast. I'm your host, Trey Lockerby, and I'm very pleased to have with me today. Peter Malook, welcome to the show. It's going to be with you. You know, there's a lot of things we could cover, and this is why I'm so excited to have you on the show. The first thing I just wanted to kick off with here was a little bit about your background.

Starting point is 00:01:35 We have a lot in common, it seems, and one thing in particular is that we both sort of started out in the music industry, you could say. And you've since gone on to achieve obviously incredible success in the world of wealth management. But I'd love it if you could share the story of your best investment of your life from your early days as an entrepreneur and how that has led you to where you were today. Well, the best investment ever had was an investment and an experience. And so I really did as I'm watching them develop. I'm big on education. I collected, you know, a bunch of degrees. I think they've all helped a lot on my journey. And I made a lot of investments along the way, some that worked and some that didn't work. But I had a lot of

Starting point is 00:02:15 businesses along the way growing up that didn't work. We had a lawn mowing business and then used to have to pack every bag of grass. This was back when you did that. And, you know, then people came out. I remember one day, me and my friends, we had our little business and we had like 20 different lawns. And we were just making more money than we ever thought we'd make. And then we saw this person like literally fly by, standing on a mower, and not bagging anything. And we looked up how much that thing cost and we realized we were going to be out of business really, really soon. And that's basically what happened. And I used to have a DJ business when you have to carry all this stuff around. I watch people just show up with a

Starting point is 00:02:48 laptop and I'm so jealous of how easy it is to DJ versus Beck when I was doing it. But the best investment I ever made was in some music stores that sold new and used music. And we got one store going and it did great. We opened another one. It did great. Open another one. Got to eight stores. And then online streaming came out via Napster, which was before iTunes and Spotify, and all that. It was illegal file sharing. But I remember somebody asked me if I knew what Napster was. And I mean, within a couple of months, we were out of business.

Starting point is 00:03:14 But I learned more from that than any other investment I made. And so I think when people, you know, when you hear somebody talk about their best investment, they usually talk about like where did they put a certain amount of money in that made the most money. But for me, it's the investment that makes you the most money. money over your life, right? And that investment was a total loss. You see, huge loss of a bunch of time and effort. But the lessons learned, I mean, were an incredible education in terms of how fast technology moves. You might think your competitors, the other music stores, but it's really something that doesn't exist yet. You know, it's Walmart thinking about Target and not thinking

Starting point is 00:03:51 about Amazon, for example, right? And so I think it's that kind of lesson. By far, the best investment. It really still impacts my thinking, you know, month to month. I love it. All right. So before we get into wealth management and some of the topics around that, I was hoping we could focus a little bit on the economy today. At the time of this recording, the Fed has recently raised interest rates up about 25 basis points, and you've seen the yield curve now invert. What is this telling us exactly?

Starting point is 00:04:19 And should we change our approach as we potentially expect a recession in the economy to come? You know, the yield curve inverting is an interesting thing because, first of all, it's complicated. A lot of people don't understand it. So maybe let's just start with what an inverted yield curve is. I mean, basically, it's when short-term interest rates are higher than long-term interest rates. And most people measure that by looking at if you loan money of the federal government for two years, they'll normally pay you less than if you loan the money for 10 years. And it makes sense.

Starting point is 00:04:47 If you go to a bank and you've got a one-year CD, they're going to pay you less than if you buy a CD that doesn't pay out for five years, right? you're tying up your money longer, you want to be paid more because interest rates could go up in the meantime. You don't want to be stuck in something. So it's really weird. If you get loan money to the federal government for two years and get paid more than for 10 years, what is that telling the market? It's telling the market that investors think the economy is going to be weak in the future and that the government will have to keep rates low to restimulate the economy. That it might be strong now, but it'll be weak later. And so people look at that as a signal of where the market might go. And sure enough, most but not all of the time when the yield curve is inverted, the stock market goes down later and there is a recession. Well, here's the problem. Sometimes it doesn't go down and sometimes

Starting point is 00:05:28 there isn't a recession. When it does go down and there is a recession, it usually happens a year and a half or two years later. So we don't know what's it going to happen anyway because the economy is always expanding and contracting. That's why it's called an economic cycle, right? It's not called the economic straight-up machine, right? It's called the cycle. It expands and contracts. And the world is dynamic. I mean, stuff happens. Pandemics and Ukraine and technological innovations, things that have nothing to do with that. They can flip the inverted yield curve the other way very quick. The last time the yield curve inverted was in 2018, 2019, and it was not a very good signal then, right? The market went on a tear unless you count the pandemic, which had nothing to do with the inverted yield curve. So I don't

Starting point is 00:06:06 like it as a signal. I understand why people pay attention to it, but other signals, I think, are a little more valuable. You know, the markets have been seemingly slow to respond to some of the evolving events around, say, Ukraine and Russia, et cetera. Talk to us about how we as investors should look at the potential impact from the world events that are going on outside the U.S. See, it's really interesting Ukraine because when Russia invaded Ukraine, the SMP 500 was down about 11 percent. Small tech stocks were getting destroyed, Chinese stocks were getting destroyed, meme stocks were getting destroyed. I mean, there was carnage everywhere. And that's 500 was finally in correction territory for the first time since the pandemic. And all the SB 500 did

Starting point is 00:06:47 was go down maybe 2% more. And now it's way, way up. So it's very, it's up a lot, maybe 10% from when Russia invaded Ukraine. So the stock market's not really looking at this and seeing World War III. I think it thinks Apple's going to keep selling phones and Nike's going to keep selling shoes. My kid's still going to want to go to Taco Bell or McDonald's or McDonnells or Chipotle or whatever and that stuff's not changing. The market's probably right. But I think that the issue with Ukraine is much more severe and much longer term. And I think we're going to be talking about it a lot later. And I would look at a couple of different things that are happening. So first of all, the U.S. imposed a lot of sanctions on Russia, which sounds super great for being tough and it's fantastic.

Starting point is 00:07:30 But they did something unique this time. They tried to push them out of the international monetary system. They try to actually make it where they can't do business with people. Now, if you're not super friendly with the United States, this is not a great thing. You're looking at this and going, wait a second. The U.S. dollar is the reserve currency, which basically means it's the currency that everyone in the world agrees. If you trade your currency for that or your oil for that, you'll have something everyone will take. They'll take the dollar. Well, if we're going to start kicking people out of that system, that's raised a few eyebrows, right? So now China is looking at the world very differently. and it's going to accelerate trying to make their currency, the reserve currency.

Starting point is 00:08:08 Saudi Arabia is talking about taking payment in Chinese currency instead of U.S. currency. So I think the U.S. might have a self-inflicted wound from this, as it is, you know, we're racking up a bunch of debt. And the more debt you have, you only get away with that if you're the reserve currency. If the whole world goes, you know what, who cares if their debt went from $15 trillion to $30 trillion, they've got a bunch of people that they can tax more. And we still believe in that dollar. Maybe we don't love that they're in a huge amount of debt.

Starting point is 00:08:37 It doesn't feel as strong as when they're not in debt, but it's still probably better than everybody else. But if you add all of that debt plus this desire for countries not to want to count on us with the reserve currency, because we just told them they can't count on us if we don't agree with them with whatever they're doing, right or wrong, it's going to drive people away from the dollar. And the question is like, how long can the U.S. contain it? But what changes a country from being the world leader, it's not minimal.

Starting point is 00:09:02 military, it's not social if you're the reserve currency. The reserve currency means the world sees economic strength that can be protected from the military and economics and of the taxpayer base and so on. We have made it easier for China and others to have a reason to accelerate moving away from the dollar. I think that's one very serious implication here. I think another implication that I think is too early to feel it, but it's going to be big, I think is de-globalization. So I think one of the things that we've seen is the world generally coming together. And if you think about what contains prices, one of the things that contains prices is technology, right? The TV you have today, the phone you have today, the computer you have today is way

Starting point is 00:09:46 better than the TV, phone and computer you had 10 years ago. And it actually costs less, adjusted for inflation, right? That's the power of technology in terms of creating deflation. If we look at the other factor, it's that we can always go get something done where it cost the least. So most things in America have a part made in China. Why? Because it costs less to make it in China. And when China's economy gets stronger, a U.S. company will go to India. And when that gets stronger, it'll go to Africa. And so it starts to lift people across the world out of poverty as they get paid more than they were from their local companies. And it keeps the price of goods low. Because when you get something, when you buy a product, it might be made in six different countries

Starting point is 00:10:22 where the company can make that part the cheapest in each country, whether it's an iPhone or a car. Well, what we're seeing here is instead of the world really doing commerce together, we have put all these sanctions on Russia. And so you start to look at we're going backwards in the sense of all of us working together. What we're seeing now is a supply shock. Oh, fertilizer costs more, food costs more. It's adding to the supply chain issues we already have and we're seeing inflation built into that. But part of this is going to be permanent because people are looking at working with other countries and saying, well, wait a second, if I need this, if Germany needs energy from Russia, Russia, that's a problem for Germany.

Starting point is 00:10:59 So what's Germany saying now? They're saying, we're not going to do this with Russia. So now they're not going to their lowest cost option. They've got to solve for it some other way locally, which means it's going to cost more for people in their backyard. We're going to see this de-globalization have more of a permanent impact on inflation going forward. I think we're just scratching the surface of what it means.

Starting point is 00:11:17 Think about from a national security perspective, the fact that the United States relies on Taiwan for chips, the beginning of the war in Ukraine, China, flew some fighter jets on the border. I mean, if they invaded Taiwan, we'd have an interesting situation, but we would also have the United States very dependent on the outcome. What are we going to do because of de-globalization? We're going to start to do these more in our backyard, which costs more. And I think we're going to see that all over the world. Every country's asking itself, how dependent am I on everybody else? Because I can see how quickly things can change.

Starting point is 00:11:46 And that's not going to be any help to the inflation we are seeing today. That's right. That Ukraine piece is really interesting because they are the breadbasket of the world. world, right? There's a lot of wheat coming out of those regions that is not going to be planted, and we're going to see some disruption and things like that, which could just affect the overall food supply. Do you feel like the markets just aren't actually factoring that into the equation yet as far as the commodities have still been rising pretty significantly over the last couple of months? And are we just not factoring that in yet? Well, I think the market basically looks and says,

Starting point is 00:12:20 what do I think is going to happen. And what the market basically is telling us is there's going to be a resolution here. Now, I don't know what the resolution. is going to be and someone can accidentally fire a missile in the wrong direction. We have World War III. Putin really could be crazy. Anybody else could do something crazy. But what the market's basically saying is they're probably going to sit down. There's going to be three new independent countries that are friendly to Russia. And Ukraine will be neutral and sign something that they won't join NATO. And everyone will probably go about their business without this spilling over into Eastern Europe and then dragging the whole world into it in a bigger way. That's the market's betting on that.

Starting point is 00:12:53 If there was one second that there was an indication that was going to get worse than that, the stock market would get much, much worse very, very quickly. So I think it's just looking at that short run and it doesn't see something going on for 10 years, or if it does, it sees it as very contained. And it sees this as something that the likelihood of it spilling over is low. And I think that's why we're seeing the stock market reaction today. The repercussions of what happens with de-globalization, everything else is less certain, right? And probably way out in the distant future.

Starting point is 00:13:19 So you mentioned it's a matter of how long the U.S. can kind of keep the music playing with the U.S. dollar, so to speak. And the recent events, as well as what we talked about, the yield curve inverting, shortly thereafter raising interest rates, just 25 basis points. Does that give you cause for concern that things are escalating maybe quicker than you might have imagined maybe even a couple of years ago? I think we have high inflation in the United States, and it's definitely more than what is being stated by the inflation index, which is at 7.9 percent or whatever it is, it's too low. When used car prices are going up and food prices are going, all these things are going up double digits. Somehow we extrapolate the cost of housing is up double digits. Somehow we get to 7.9 beyond me. And everyone knows that.

Starting point is 00:14:02 And the Federal Reserve who said, don't worry about inflation. And then it's going to go away really quick because now saying they're very concerned about inflation. So I don't think the yield curve is inverting because the interest rates went up 25 basis points. I think it's inverting because the Federal Reserve has made it very clear. They're going to raise rates a lot more very quickly. Right. So they're looking and saying, look, and next month, they're going to raise it probably 50 basis points. And the market thinks they're probably going to raise it a few more percent before they're done. Right. I mean, we've still got probably seven rate hikes to go before this is done. I think the market's pricing all that in. So like, if I was

Starting point is 00:14:31 going to build a house, if I'm a home builder and interest rates went up 0.25 now, I don't really care. I'm still going to build, if I was going to build 20 houses, I'm still going to build the 20 houses. But I think by the time my houses are done a year from now, interest rates are going to be two, three percent higher. Am I still going to build 20 houses? Maybe not. Maybe I'm not so confident. Well, that's how the stock market's looking at it is saying, what's this going to look like when the rate hikes are done? And there's no reason for the market to think the rate hikes aren't going to happen. And when you talk about indicators, one of the indicators of the stock market is what are real estate stock, housing stocks doing? And the home builder stocks are getting crushed.

Starting point is 00:15:05 You know, so people looking at that space are saying these builders are probably going, well, if rates are going to be higher, I'm not going to build as many houses. And so then the people that they hire to do drywall and electricians and plumbing, they say, oh, I don't need that many people. And then the next thing you know, these companies might be laying people off and then you have a recession. That's why the yield curve is inverting as it's looking forward like that. That doesn't mean it's the outcome we're going to get, right? So the Federal Reserve is saying that they have a high degree of confidence in a soft landing.

Starting point is 00:15:30 And a soft landing means we think inflation's too high now. And we don't want to raise rates so quickly that we make. make home builders stop and everybody else stopped hiring and buying cars and houses and all of that. And we have our session. We want to play it perfectly, you know, not too hot, not too cold, Goldilocks, soft landing. We want to play it perfectly where there's raise rates enough to take the air out of this little bit of a bubble that's forming in the housing market and with planes and boats and cars and second properties and all that stuff.

Starting point is 00:15:56 We want to take the air out of that and control inflation without ending the party. And the stock market's holding up because it believes probably they have a decent chance of pulling it off. And so that's of all these different tensions happening at the same time. And again, one thing happens out of the blue, terrorist event, pandemic, whatever, and all this conversation doesn't matter, which is why it becomes not actionable, right? A great investor really isn't looking at those things necessarily because stuff always happens. 9-11, tech bubble, 0809, pandemic, Trump, Biden, whatever, stuff for Ukraine. There's always something happening. So the great investors basically saying, like, what do I need for the next five, seven years? I need to have that

Starting point is 00:16:35 in investments that are accessible no matter what happens in the world. Pretty safe that I can go get the money and it's not down a lot. What do I need seven, ten, twelve years from now? Well, I need stuff that stays ahead of inflation. Probably a Hershey's bar is going to cost more. Probably a a cat of Diet Coke is going to cost more. Probably a meal at McDonald's are going to cost more and a ticket to Disney World. I need stuff that stays ahead of that or I lose my purchasing power. And so you have that in the growth oriented stuff. And if you happen to be super wealthy, you can even do a liquid stuff that goes beyond that. But I think the intelligent investor is doing that because all the dynamics you're bringing up

Starting point is 00:17:05 that impact markets quarter to quarter year to year. I love that you give these examples using real estate and home prices and homes in general because I think it's just so easy to understand and grasp. But you did mention housing entering quote unquote a little bit of a bubble. But over the last year, we've seen a 20% increase in homes nationwide here in the U.S. And now we're seeing mortgages creeping up to 5% or so. This should mathematically negatively affect home prices, right? But will it affect people's decision making around buying homes, in your opinion?

Starting point is 00:17:37 So I think that there was this mythology that millennials don't want to live in homes that was ridiculous. I mean, I never believed that for one second. They just weren't grownups yet, right? When you've grown up and you're going to have kids, you go, hey, maybe it's nice to have a little bit of a yard and stuff like that. And so there was a legitimate shortage of homes. And especially look at all the people in the industry that left the space after the 0809 crisis, just really, I first hand saw a lot of clients that were extremely intelligent, did a great job, that were developers that just got destroyed. So you see a lot more caution in developing. People weren't as willing to do a whole, you know, all these neighborhoods at the same time.

Starting point is 00:18:10 It was more like, hey, things can change. I'll take it easy. So you didn't have enough supply. So if you don't have enough supply, the prices go up. You couple that with, you know, all kinds of stimulus, corporate bailouts, forgivable loans to private businesses, stimulus checks. to everybody else, and you lower interest rates. So the Fed lowers rates, gives everybody money, and you don't have enough homes. Of course, home prices are rocketing. Now, the Fed's going to take care a part of this. They're taking money out of the system and they're raising interest rates.

Starting point is 00:18:36 So that will diffuse it a little bit, but we still, to your point, have a shortage. And until supply meets demand, they can't solve all of the inflation problem, right? But they can take a lot out of it by raising rates a couple points. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future. That's what the Oslo Freedom Forum is. From June 1st through the 3rd, 2026, the Oslo Freedom Forum is entering its 18th year, bringing together activists, technologists, journalists, investors, and builders from all over the world. many of them operating on the front lines of history. This is where you hear firsthand stories from people using Bitcoin to survive currency collapse, using AI to expose human rights abuses, and building technology under censorship and authoritarian pressures. These aren't abstract ideas.

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Starting point is 00:23:06 So I'm currently recording this from Miami where I'm at the Bitcoin conference. And I'd like to touch on that a little bit. You've gone on record dismissing gold and Bitcoin. And you gave this great overview on the Tim Ferriss show a while back, discussing that, so we won't rehash it here. But that interview was in 2019, and that was before a global pandemic and all of the things that have happened since. The government has now proceeded to print over something like $11 trillion, and Bitcoin has 10x in value since then as well. I'm sure the two are correlated. Has anything in the last couple of years made you reconsider

Starting point is 00:23:39 at least the use case of Bitcoin? So I'll start with cryptocurrency, right? So I think if you look at the case for cryptocurrency is, hey, the blockchain, when you say why does a cryptocurrency has value, people will tell you that there's the blockchain, but the blockchain isn't really have anything to do with it other than it's the template that you have the cryptocurrency on, right? So lots of things run on the blockchain. It's like saying you like Google because of the internet. The internet can work out great and have excitonle likeos not work out. Or saying, I love the iPhone because it, you know, uses this mobile technology. Well, Palm didn't work out. and neither did Blackberry. So I accept blockchain from day one is going to revolutionize everything

Starting point is 00:24:20 from the way we handle detitles to concert tickets to transactions and contracts and everything else. The blockchains and incredible technology, we're just scratching the surface of what's possible there. Now, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin sit on the blockchain. So the argument for, well, what makes Bitcoin worth something is there's only 21 million of it. Well, anyone today could create any cryptocurrency and only have 21 million of it. That's not what makes Bitcoin. coin special at all. So it drives me nuts when people make that argument. I could come out with my own cryptocurrency by an hour from now. There's 9,000 cryptocurrencies, I believe today. I can say there's only going to be 5,000 of this. It won't magically be worth something. Money quite simply is worth something

Starting point is 00:25:00 if someone will accept it as money. That's it. So when you look at a dollar bill or a $100 bill, you will take it from me because you believe it will hold its value later. That's the only reason. But the difference between that dollar and the 9,000 cryptocurrencies is 9,000 cryptocurrencies are not backed by anything, right? So you just have to believe the cryptocurrency is going to be worse something to somebody else. If you look at the dollar, it says it's backed by the full faith of credit of the U.S. government. So every currency of a government's backed by that government. Now, we can make a decision this specific governments, we don't trust them to pay us. You know, people in Greece did that.

Starting point is 00:25:34 People in Turkey did that. People in Zimbabwe did that. It happens all the time. This is an argument for cryptocurrency, is that eventually, the government will screw things up and we won't trust that currency. But if you give me a million dollars, do I think that probably someone will say, hey, I will sell you cars and houses for that a year or two from now? Yes, because when it says backed by the full faith in government of the U.S.,

Starting point is 00:25:54 it means that they can tax people or print more to take care of it, right? Now, there might be inflation that diminishes the value of the dollar, but there's a reason it holds value. There's only one reason that any cryptocurrency, Bitcoin or any other one, can hold value is going to be if people believe it's a sustainable, currency. That's it. That's the reason. It's not blockchain. It's not that there's only 21 million. And that's the reason that another cryptocurrency that uses the same technology and has similar limitations in terms of the amount that's out there as Bitcoin, most of them are worth zero.

Starting point is 00:26:25 The reason Bitcoin is worth where it is is because a growing group of people is beginning to believe that it will be the cryptocurrency that will prevail. My position on cryptocurrency has always been the same. Blockchain's real technology. It's changing the world. cryptocurrency, there are going to be digital currencies, there are going to be cryptocurrencies that people use. I don't know that it will be Bitcoin. Is Bitcoin the palm or Blackberry before the iPhone? Is it exciting Lycos before Google? Or is it really the case where the first mover is going to be the one that becomes the global currency that everyone accepts? I don't know the answer to that, right? So if I don't know the answer to that, would I rather have a million dollars or a million

Starting point is 00:27:03 in Bitcoin? I'd rather have the million dollars. If you told me I'm going to be in a machine in a box for five years and come out and I've got to use one as currency. I think the million dollars, we all would agree, would probably still be a currency. The Bitcoin might be worth five times more or five times less. So Bitcoin is still speculative. Once it actually becomes a currency, it can't keep rocketing. Because for a currency to work, it has to be relatively stable. If it's going to go up 20% in value or down 20% in value, you're probably not going to sell me your car, your house. Like if I was using dollar bills and they were changing in value 20% week to week, that's not a currency. So what we have now is a bet that Bitcoin will become the currency. And it might be the currency. That might be what happens.

Starting point is 00:27:42 People that are doing it just need to know. It's just speculating, right. They might be right. They might not be right. Maybe it's cryptocurrency number three, four or five. I still stand by this idea that 99% of cryptocurrencies are going to be worth zero. Not one percent of what they are today, but zero. There will be a few cryptocurrencies that emerge that if you're fleeing Russia or Canada has frozen your assets, which by the way, incredible cases for cryptocurrencies. If you're a Russian citizen and nothing to do with this, all of the sudden, you can't use your money. If you're in Canada and whatever protest is happening there, leave the politics out of it. And the government can freeze your money.

Starting point is 00:28:18 This gets people interested in cryptocurrency. So I'm a big believer. There will be digital currencies. There will be cryptocurrency. Which one, you know, I'm not certain which one it'll be. That's fair. You know, I imagine, though, that as the price has been rising, it's putting pressure on creative planning in particular, you know, to make incorporate something. I mean, I imagine you're getting a lot of requests around this. Is that

Starting point is 00:28:41 in consideration at all? Well, I think it's interesting. It's like people, you know, if you really like Apple stock and you go, why don't have Apple in my portfolio? Well, I mean, our largest positions that's S&P 500 and Apple's the biggest position in SP 500. Both of our clients have more Apple than they realize. As Bitcoin is going mainstream, it's all over our client's portfolio, right? They own Tesla stock. They own square stock. I mean, they all of these things. So this idea that they don't have exposure, I reject that idea, right? They have exposure to it. And they have exposure to other cryptocurrencies.

Starting point is 00:29:11 They're probably going to go to zero as they work their way out of the balance sheets of these companies. And so if you look at the weighting of the types of positions we use at Creative, by far the biggest sector, creative planning clients are invested in as technology and in the U.S. And that's where you see the most exposure to cryptocurrencies is through these companies. So I think most of our clients might even, if they really knew what they owned, might feel like they have more than they bargained for in their portfolio. And is it, do they directly own and no? But at the end of the day, there's not really a difference. You own Berkshire Hathaway,

Starting point is 00:29:41 you own the company's Berkshire Hathaway owns. And if you own Tesla Square, whoever happens to have some of these cryptocurrencies on their balance sheet, you own those as well. I'm kind of in agreeance right now that Bitcoin is more of a store of value, hopefully. And you've mentioned it becoming a currency, which I found interesting. It can't be as volatile. And I totally agree with that. And there's this interesting dilemma with the use of case of Bitcoin for a lot of the population who are living poverty, say the 40 million of folks who are in the U.S. specifically. And how that factors into our current situation is interesting because those folks don't typically store any wealth, right? They're not using it as a store

Starting point is 00:30:17 value and they can't use a currency that's fluctuating as much as it is. However, if it is a store value, it would help them probably the most because right now in our country, we have a wealth gap that is, you know, 0.1% of the people hold as much as the bottom 90%. So we have these ideas around UBI, higher taxes, things to close the wealth gap, but UBI could, you know, lead to higher inflation that we already have. So I'm just asking with all these things kind of in consideration, Peter Malook, if he were the wealth manager of the U.S., what would you do to fix these pieces of our economy? What you're talking about is the unbanked.

Starting point is 00:30:51 There's people that just cannot open a bank account. And that's a terrible thing for society and not just those people, but for all of society. And I think it's a great case for digital currency and bypassing this whole process. And whether that's Bitcoin or something else or something sanctioned by the government that's beyond probably the scope of this conversation. But we have to get the unbanked banked. You can't pull people out of poverty if people can't bank. That's maybe not a case for why Bitcoin's going to succeed, but it's a great feeling for

Starting point is 00:31:18 people to have. You were talking about, you know, I said that crypto Bitcoin is a currency. Something's a currency when you can go use it in most places. When you walk around town, you don't bump in a. too many people who say, we won't accept your money, your dollars, you know, your checks that convert to dollars, your credit card that's in dollars. But if I go to 100 places, somewhere between 99 and 100 will not accept my Dogecoin or my Bitcoin. You know, it's great when Domino's runs an ad that they'll sell a pizza for Bitcoin or someone posted for a house. It's really a publicity

Starting point is 00:31:46 stunt. You know, I have an athlete as a client who said he was taking a salary in Bitcoin. He wasn't taking it in Bitcoin. He's taking it in dollars and he was putting some of it in Bitcoin. The NFL's not paying him in Bitcoin. So when it's a currency currency, you'll know it, because people will be using it regularly everywhere. Until then, there's people betting it will be the digital currency of the future. In terms of the wealth gap, I think we make this way harder than it needs to be in the United States. We've politicized it so much. It's very frustrating to watch.

Starting point is 00:32:13 And I think that it really can be simplified just through the tax code, right? So if you look at the billionaire class, the centimillionaire class, you get there by owning things. You own a bunch of real estate or you own businesses or like Warren Buffett. you're really good at owning a bunch of stocks. And the United States, we used to tax those things at 28% or more. And the Bush administration lowered that tax to 20%, which was just remarkably low. No one would ever thought it would stay there. And here we are, right, it's still at 20%.

Starting point is 00:32:42 If you're a lot of people like my dad, who was a doctor for many years, they do really well in the United States and they make six figures. And many of those people who make several hundred thousand dollars a year, they're paying 35, 37 of the federal government. You start to pay your state. and you're losing, you know, 40 to 50 percent, some states more, of your income, you know, to the government. And then you have, obviously, the poor who don't pay, or even just say the working class, we don't even have to go to the level of poor.

Starting point is 00:33:07 They might be paying, you know, between 5 and 10 percent, but on a very small base. But the difference, the real issue with the wealth gap is really simple. It's the difference between the capital gains rate and the income tax rate. If you just tighten those up and you get rid of the step up and basis on death. So right now, if I get hit by a buck, all the stuff that I passed on my kids, they pay no capital gains taxes on it. So we have an estate tax in the United States. They have over a certain amount of money.

Starting point is 00:33:33 The government takes 40% of your money. And we let people out of the capital gains tax and the capital gains tax is low. If we simply had, and I'm not making any political statement, I'm just saying if you're trying to solve this problem, you would have the capital gains tax and the income tax closer to each other. You get rid of the step up and basis on death. And the estate tax will capture half of Jeff Bezos's money. There's also this mythology that really wealthy people don't pay estate tax.

Starting point is 00:33:59 It's just not true. It's absolutely not true. Now, they can give it to charity and not pay estate taxes that way. That's what Bill Gates is doing. It's Warren Buffett is doing. So Mark Zuckerberg is done. They're taking their money and they're putting in a foundation. And you can go, oh, they're getting out of estate taxes.

Starting point is 00:34:13 But, I mean, I think we're doing okay here. If they're going to give their $50 billion, $100 billion to charities, and it's going to go to food banks and world hunger and water systems and school systems, you could argue they're doing a better job of deploying that to the government or they're not, right? That's not their political debate. But it's not like saying they got out of taxes and passed it on to their daughter. They got out of taxes and passed it on to society. You could also get rid of the charitable break if you feel real as the government.

Starting point is 00:34:38 I don't think that. I think the charities do a great job, for the most part, the right charities of deploying capital. But the state tax is going to capture Elon Musk eventually. And if you get rid of his ability to step up his taxes and he pays a capital gains rate that's a little higher, you will close the wealth cap. I mean, it will be closed very, very quickly. And you go, well, he might live his whole life and die with all his Tesla stock. Well, a couple of things.

Starting point is 00:34:59 One, it's a minor miracle for a stock to stay very, very strong for 40, 50 years, a minor miracle. If you look at the top five stocks, that's a B 500 and 30 years ago, you would even recognize some of them today. It just changes all the time. And I think number two, so what? You know, so what if he has a whole bunch of Tesla stock until he dies? He has, think about how many less people are going to die on the roads because of the technology he invented.

Starting point is 00:35:21 Think about what he's going to be doing for the climate. Think about what he's doing, moving people away from traditional energy. So if you're doing something that's contributing to society like that, he's not spending the money, sitting in his Tesla stock. If he's spending it, he's paying taxes. And on his death, then the government will take half of it or will all go to charity. So I'm not too concerned about that in between years. But I think the political discussion purposely overcomplicates it.

Starting point is 00:35:45 I think the right gets caught up in a lot of things that divert some attention from how easy is, I think the left gets caught up and some ideas that just sounds so over the top. Like, we're just going to, even if you don't sell something, we're going to just guess what it's worth and we're going to tax it. I mean, these two, both sides are just making it too messy. And it does not take a brain surgeon to say, if you think this is a problem, this is how you could solve, you know, 90% of the problem. So if Elon or Bezos or any of these other billionaires we just mentioned called you up

Starting point is 00:36:18 and said, hey, Peter, I want you to manage my money. We all know that they get somewhat of a different playbook. They have access to other assets or other strategies that we just don't have on Main Street. So maybe walk us through how the wealthy invest. And do you see a shift in the level of access happening from here? There's a couple different categories. So there's my son in college. He's starting out.

Starting point is 00:36:41 He works three jobs. He's a big saver. He's putting every single dollar in the S&P 500 until he gets to $50,000. Right. So that's what I tell everybody, you're just starting out. Just do that. You want to become a millionaire. The first thing you have to do is open an account. A lot of people, just go, I'll do it later. Just open an account. Number two, automatic savings. If you've got a job,

Starting point is 00:36:59 401k, add an IRA, try to make it automatic, even if it's small, force yourself to get going on it. If you can do that, the younger you are, the bigger deal that is. You can get to 50,000, a million bucks, or even up to five million. You can start to diversify. You add international. You had emerging markets. You add real estate and other things. Then we get to this group of people called qualified purchasers who have five million or more. They do have access to other. things. And really, I'd even say a step below. When you get to a million, the government says you're an accredited investor. And so you're allowed to buy certain private investments. It's usually too soon to really want to add those to the portfolio because you can't get diversified

Starting point is 00:37:32 enough. But some people do. They add one or two private investments that qualify for people that are accredited investors. Then you get to $5 million, you're a qualified purchaser and kind of the whole world's open. The government basically says, look, no laws for the most part because you're smart. If you want to invest in a private company, private equity, private lending, go do whatever you want to do, right? We're just going to assume you're sophisticated or you've got access to sophisticated advice, so we're not going to regulate you as much. So the world does open up to the people with $5 million or more. I mean, they can invest in private equity, which are just funds that invest in private businesses. You think about the typical person gets excited about an

Starting point is 00:38:04 IPO, a stock going public, but really, usually that's owned by a private equity. And that's how private equity is getting out because they think the returns aren't going to be as good anymore, right? So that's when the IPO happens. So yeah, people who have $5 million and up, they've got a different deal. Now, when you get up to these billionaires, the difference is they run their own private equity funds, essentially. They might create their own family office. They might hire, you know, five or ten people that used to work in venture capital or private equity. And they just say, look, we're not even going to invest in these funds. We're going to buy private businesses ourselves.

Starting point is 00:38:33 We've got enough money. We'll own 30, 40, 50 private businesses ourselves. And we'll skip paying the 2% and 20% of the profits and all that. That's a whole other level. But yeah, the bigger you get, the more access you have to things, partially because of regulation in the law. and partially because of the ability to acquire talent and diversify by investing privately. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination.

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Starting point is 00:42:20 working three jobs, just trying to build wealth, right? Sometimes having access to get the wealth is so hard when you're just starting out and maybe oversimplifying here, but you could have employees not even able to invest in the company that they're working for that could build their wealth for them, even though they're the ones building it, you know, for the company. We have driver's licenses. We have, you know, other things that say, hey, you're smart. You know how to do this thing. What about a license for investing?

Starting point is 00:42:45 I don't want to think I want a government program telling people that they have to pass something before they can buy a stock or something like that. But I think financial education. And it just, it amazes me that there is not financial education requirement in every school, every high school in America. So I think to graduate with a high school degree, it'd be nice to have, you know, even a half hour credit of financial education, you know, how to balance a checkbook, how to use a credit card, what a 401 is. Very, very basic. I just was today teaching a university, and I was teaching

Starting point is 00:43:15 the very most basic thing to juniors that were business majors at a major university. And there's 150 of them and the questions I'm getting really a 13 year old should know. We need to have that financial education. The number one thing that people over 50 worry about is money. The number two thing married couples fight about is money. And the number one thing is probably obvious. It's nothing to do with money. It's way more interesting. But I think that money is a very big deal. It would also be nice if they then took that other half hour of credit and just taught people how to cope, you know, with the world, how to have relationships, how to manage relationships and all those things. But this half hour credit or one hour credit, I think would really transform the country. Most people are not going to college.

Starting point is 00:43:56 You know, two-thirds of people are not going to college. And even in college, they don't have financial educational as you're a very specific class in a very specific major. So we're pretty much guaranteeing that most people are going into society not knowing how to handle any of these things. And so then they have to find their way to a podcast like yours, which is fantastic. But how much time has lapsed before they, on their own, navigated their way to the right place? I mean, I think that I'll pass on the regulation and the government getting involved in this, but I would be a big fan of more education. All right. So say we're now starting out as investors and we've got a little bit of money. We want to put it to work. You've

Starting point is 00:44:30 I've written this book called The Five Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them. Could you just cover the five things? And you wrote this book. It was released in 2014. I'm curious if it's the same five things. It doesn't matter how much money people have, where they live, how long they've been investing. It's always the same thing.

Starting point is 00:44:48 I'll cover a few of them, the big ones. One big one is going in and out of the market. And some people are dramatic about it. Like, I'm going to go to cash because of Ukraine. I'm going to go to cash because of the pandemic, right? or I'm going to go to cash because I don't like Trump or I don't like Biden or whatever. And that's deadly. I just deadly because the market can go up if you're in it.

Starting point is 00:45:08 Great. You're happy. It can go sideways. It's still better than cash. You're collecting dividends. And it can go down. Your worst case scenario is it goes down. What happens if it goes down?

Starting point is 00:45:15 Well, this has happened a hundred times before. We know how the story ends. It comes back. That's your worst thing is you suffer through the pandemic or tech bubble or 8 or 9 or 9-11 or whatever. If you go to cash because you don't like who was elected or you don't like the war that's happened or whatever, you think it's going to impact your money. Well, again, the market can go up and you're in trouble.

Starting point is 00:45:32 It may never go back to where it was when you exit it. I mean, there are people that exited a Dow 10,000. Is the Dow going to go back to 10,000? Probably not. Could it? Of course, it could, but probably not. So if it goes up, the problem for you is that loss is permanent. If you're in the market and goes down, it's temporary.

Starting point is 00:45:48 If you're out of the market, it goes up, it can be permanent. And I think that's the real problem with market timing. All you have to do is mess it up once in your life and the game is over. So you've got this lifetime for people to go. this time is different and get out. And I've seen it with the pandemic. I saw it with Trump. I saw it with Obama elected. I saw it with the tech bubble, 0809, 9-11. I mean, it just takes one mess up, right? The other, I think, is this active trading and the friction that comes with active trading. And things can turn very, very quickly. I mean, something can look like it's doing really great for

Starting point is 00:46:22 three years and lose everything in three months. I think that's really surprising to new investors that if it can go up 30% in a week, it can go down 30% in a week. You might not have seen it yet, but that's how it works. And so I think people get surprised sometimes at how quick things can turn on them and you really get cut up in that and active security selection. And I think, you know, the biggest one, I'll go to the end, which was kind of the sixth bonus mistake. But it's probably the biggest, saddest mistake I see,

Starting point is 00:46:47 is that people don't enjoy their money. And I think that people that are great savers and great investors, they kind of get some joy out of saving and investing, and they forget the purpose of the money in the first place. So at one point, they wanted money to do charitable things or to help their kids or to go on vacations or to have a nice car. And then instead it just becomes piling up money just to have money. To be, that's the most tragic mistake. And I'm constantly talking to clients about, hey, enjoy this.

Starting point is 00:47:11 You know, it doesn't matter if your kids get $2 million instead of $3 or $12 instead of $14,000 instead of $700,000, no difference. But a huge difference if you spend a little bit more incrementally every year. If you can, like if you've established. a good path. Don't kill yourself to save the extra dollar. Enjoy yourself now. There might not be a tomorrow. And it's not just you. Everyone around you care about. You lose one person. You know, you see this a lot. Someone retires and maybe they're perfectly healthy, but the spouse has an issue and then they can't travel anymore. I mean, you've got to have fun along the way. To me, that's the biggest tragedy that comes with, and it happens to the great investors because they're the ones that create the big

Starting point is 00:47:49 pile. They have a hard time enjoying it. Yeah. And I've heard you talk about how sometimes to create that big pile. It comes with habits that you just can't break at the end. You're being frugal or whatever have you and they don't enjoy it. And that's why I was so interested in talking with you specifically because you have seen this story over and over. You have such a big pool of experience to kind of draw on. And I'd like to talk a little bit more about that balance that comes with investing and life. What are some actual tactical ways that we can balance achieving our financial goals, but also balance it with actually living life along the way. I do think it helps to have something written down. Like a financial plan sounds like a big thing, but it can really just be, here are the things that I

Starting point is 00:48:33 own and the things that I owe, my assets and liabilities. Here's how much I'm setting aside to accomplish what I want. So if you're 30 and you want to retire when you're 55 with a certain amount of money, you get back into in five minutes how much you have to save every month to make it happen, right? So now over time, you get raises and you might wind up ahead of schedule. Start to intentional enjoy the difference, right? You can accelerate retirement, add more and so on, but remember what your goal is and what you need to get there so that you give yourself permission to enjoy the difference,

Starting point is 00:49:03 some of the difference, at least, along the way. And I think that people are, it's easier for them to enjoy if they have a little bit more certainty around their future. You know, it certainly really frees you up to make a decision. If you go to a doctor and they go, oh, I think, you know, if we do this, then probably this will happen. But I'm not sure, maybe that. The first thing you're going to do is go get another opinion from another doctor.

Starting point is 00:49:21 If instead the doctor tells you, she says, hey, I've seen this a thousand times and here's what it is, and this is the treatment and there's 98% chance you're going to be okay. You're going to go sign me up. Like, where's the treatment? Let's get going. Certainty is really empowerment, right? So I think a financial plan gives you that certainty that empowers you to enjoy your money. So I think people find it liberating, but they need to see that there's a high probability they're on track. It's something they could do on their own or with a financial planner.

Starting point is 00:49:46 But I think that really is what I've found just saying, hey, go enjoy yourself. That's not going to work. people have to see that they're not enjoying themselves at the expense of financial insecurity later. Most people spend their honeymoons on a beach and they'll be reading fiction like James Patterson. I was on the beach with my wife reading Money Master the Game. And Tony talks a lot about you in the book and creative planning. And actually one of the biggest takeaways for me in that book was the calculation around retirement and living your dream life. And the dollar amounts can come out much smaller than you might even originally get.

Starting point is 00:50:21 So why is this such a profound realization for most people? And how do you recommend we go about calculating it for themselves and maybe we surprise ourselves? Yeah, I think you have to go through the exercise of what does happiness look like for you? Like, what do you have to be able to do to be happy? Now, one thing that makes people happy is the freedom to do what they want when they want to do it, right? But if I want to eat out five days a week versus someone who's perfectly content eating at home all the time, or if I love traveling 10 weeks a year and someone else, they don't like to travel at all. You know, they just like to be at home and watch sports or whatever.

Starting point is 00:50:51 Documenting what you want to do and backing into what that lifestyle costs, people can be surprised, really what the big driver in retirement, the big expenses are housing and health care, right? So where you want to live and how you want to live, that roof you want over your head, or if you want two roofs over your head, that changes the game a lot. If you can control that cost, it really costs less than people think to be financially independent and to be retired. But part of it's just documenting what do I need my life to look like? Okay, now what pile of money do I need to accomplish that? I do it. For most people, it results in a smaller pile of money than they thought. But I have done the exercise, you know, quite a bit of the time where people go, wow, if I really want to do that, if I want to have the home in Cincinnati, but I also want to have a home in Naples, Florida, and I'm going to go back and forth between them and ensure both of them and maintain both of them. Wow, I need more than I thought. It can be eye opening the other way to. in the book, if I'm remembering correctly, there might have been another product in there that I'm misremembering, but I remember him talking about fixed index annuities, but it was basically

Starting point is 00:51:52 about generating income later in life. Do you have like, with creative planning, do you go about discovering or offering up annuities, products like that to that kind of fit into a portfolio in any way? So I don't like variable annuities, which kind of takes in active investing mutual funds and puts them in an insurance wrapper. I think it's an expensive way to accomplish that. So we never recommend that scenario. And I don't like equity indexed annuities, which are tied to the stock market. And it's kind of a lot of mathematical games played with how those returns work.

Starting point is 00:52:24 I'm not against fixed annuities. So fixed annuity is basically you give an insurance company $100,000. And they tell you, we'll give you a fixed amount of money every month for the rest of your life. We don't recommend them because rates are low. And so I'm not really interested in a client having to take their money and give it to an insurance company in exchange for a very low monthly income for the rest of their life. It's going to be very hard for them to fight inflation and get where they need to be in that format. But if rates were higher, I might look at that differently. If you can get to that at a very low cost and you have a reasonable return, you can start to look at it like a bond-like portfolio

Starting point is 00:52:59 with a little more certainty. But up to this date, you know, my career interest rates have been low and it's not been something that I recommend declines. I prefer liquid stock bond, cost low, no commission. Let's buy the stocks and bonds and construct a portfolio that way. And that's worked incredibly well over the last 20 years. So starting out, maybe dollar costs averaging into the S&P 500 as you make this part of the game plan. As you get older in life, the allocation changes, right? You have to change up the diversification, maybe even incorporate things like bonds. That's definitely the old philosophy. Maybe it's still relevant. Obviously, bonds are kind of questionable with those low rates, as you just kind of mentioned. As we're getting older and nearing retirement,

Starting point is 00:53:38 how does the portfolio shift nowadays? Well, I think a lot of people think that, it's really based on age, and I'm not a believer in that at all. So I've got clients that are 80 that are still 90% in stocks, and I've got people that are 40 that are 60%, 70% in stocks. I think you start out and you say, where am I and what do I want to accomplish, and what does the portfolio need to look like for me to get there? Now, for people that are 80, usually they need a pretty low level of income. They're usually done traveling.

Starting point is 00:54:06 They're usually not maintaining two homes. And they want stability from their portfolio. They're starting to think about leaving things to their kids. and they don't want a lot of surprises or drama. They might see more bonds in their portfolio. Someone younger, I always tell them be as much in stocks as you can. I mean, if it goes up and down 50%, ignore it, buy more, keep going. But in general, I like to have enough in liquid assets to meet short-term needs

Starting point is 00:54:26 and everything else we're owning things, stocks, real estate, private equity, things that are going to stay up ahead of inflation. And that is correlated to age as a group, but each individual can be a little bit different. I know that you are getting this question a lot from your clients, I'd love to hear your answer. Why own bonds at all at this day and age? Well, we'll start with the idea that money has to go somewhere, right? So if it's in cash, at least today while we're recording this podcast, you're going to get zero, right? So that's not very good. Now, if you're in stocks, which I'm a huge believer in stocks, but you have to have

Starting point is 00:55:00 a long period of time. Like, if I put money in stocks today, the odds it'll be positive. A year from now is three out of four, which sounds great unless it's the one and four that doesn't work out and you're retired and you're taking out money. Now you're selling stocks while they're down. I mean, if you want to run out of money, sells, you retire, then the pandemic happens, and you're taking money out every month while the stock market's dropping 34%. That's a recipe for the math not to work. So we have to have something that is going to be there for us month to month, if we're withdrawing or near withdrawing, if something bad happens in the world that we weren't expecting, whether it's a 9-11 or a Ukraine or a pandemic. That's where bonds come in. It's basically covering

Starting point is 00:55:38 those short-term needs. It's probably going to be in pretty good shape. a crisis, at least about 29 out of 32 times. That's the case. And when it's bad, it's not that bad. It's down a few percent. It's not down 20 percent or 50 percent like stocks. So they're really there to make sure that you don't have to interrupt your withdrawal plan in the event of those types of crises. The other group of people it's there for are for people who just can't handle the drama of the markets, right? They understand the math. They understand probability. They understand staying at inflation, but they don't care. They're going, look, I've got so much money, it doesn't matter. I don't need the drama. Build me a bond ladder.

Starting point is 00:56:12 right there's nothing wrong with that either right i mean if the point of money is to accomplish what you want probably one of the things at the top of your list is to be happy if you're stressed out and worrying about stuff all the time you're not happy and so that's another reason to own things that are pretty predictable and steady all right so as we're nearing the end here i'm as i mentioned i'm at the bitcoin conference now everyone here a lot of people here would tell you hey we're nearing 30 trillion in debt we can't raise our interest rates it'll bankrupt the country the currency is defaulting bonds are going to implode. I mean, can Peter Malook provide some hope from here that the picture is not as dire as some folks here might be making it out to be?

Starting point is 00:56:50 Well, I think you have to look at the debt. I'm not a fan of having $30 trillion of debt. I think the government has proven both Republicans and Democrats that they have no sense whatsoever for running a balanced budget of any kind. Each party just prioritizes what they're interested in, but neither of them, no matter what they say, have been really interested in. in paying down the debt. And really, honestly, it's like, it's very much like an individual. If I get a credit card for four years, whether I'm in Congress or the president or whatever, I can make everyone around me very happy. I mean, I can take everybody to the club and put them on a private plane and get everyone to live in a nice house and just hand that credit card

Starting point is 00:57:25 debt to the next Congress, the next president, you know, eventually you're going to have a problem. I mean, the cryptocurrency crowd has a real point there. And that has created the demise of many civilizations, right? I mean, it's not like this is theory. At some point, it has to be controlled. But if you look at the United States and you look at the debt as much as it is, the difference between the United States and Zimbabwe and Turkey and Greece, you know, countries people like to compare this debt to, the difference is we have assets behind it, whether it's land or energy and gold. There are a lot of assets that the United States has. The United States is a naturally very rich country. And that's a big differentiator that kind of allows them to kick this can down

Starting point is 00:58:07 the road. Now, that doesn't mean the debt can be unlimited, but if you've got 30 trillion of debt and your house is worth 30 trillion, it's okay. If you have one trillion of debt and your house is worth a billion, you've got a problem. And so I think that's what's giving the United States the ability to get away with this so far is we really do have a lot of assets. We have leading technology, which creates a lot of service jobs, which creates a lot of income, which pays a lot of taxes. So there's real stuff backing this debt up. Now, I would say even if there's a problem, even if the United States winds up not being the superpower, that doesn't mean investments go away. The United Kingdom was the leading country of the world for centuries. What happened? It's ceded that to the United States after World War II and their stock markets, I don't know, up 20 times, 10 times since then.

Starting point is 00:58:48 This idea that if you lose first place, if China passes us that somehow the United States has collapsed, not really how it normally works out. You still have Japan. You still have United Kingdom. You still have countries that were leaders. Their markets can still do well, even if they're not in first place. Very interesting. I want to be mindful of your time. So we'll wrap up from here. Before I let you go, I'd like to give you the opportunity to hand off to our audience where they can learn more about you, creative planning. And then if there are any other resources you want to share, whether it be calculating your retirement or a book to get interested in that you gift out to get people interested in investing, any other resources you want to share would be great. Well, I mean, if anyone listening

Starting point is 00:59:28 wants to check out creative planning, you can obviously creative planning.com and you can let us know. and someone will give you a call. We'd obviously welcome that. You can follow Creative Planning on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter. And I'm pretty active on Twitter and other social media like LinkedIn as well. So you can follow me at Peter Malook on all of those sites. You know, the book I give all our clients is the five mistakes because I think it really touches on the emotional side of things,

Starting point is 00:59:50 the behavioral side of things, and the key things to get in place right away. I wrote another book that's more planning focused called The Path that I think is helpful as well. We will definitely have links to those in the show notes. So with that, Peter, thank you so much for the time. This is really enlightening, and I really enjoyed the discussion. I'd love to do this sometime soon. Yeah, it was great, Trey. And congrats on all the success you've had for the podcast.

Starting point is 01:00:15 All right, everybody, that's all we had for you this week. If you're loving the show, don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app. Maybe even leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. You can also give feedback on Twitter. You can find me at Trey Lockerby. And if you're looking to learn more about investing, definitely check out the resources we have for you at the investorspodcast.com. And with that, we will see you again next time.

Starting point is 01:00:36 Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to millennial investing by the Investors Podcast Network and learn how to achieve financial independence. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to The Investorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP441: Balancing Financial Goals With A Fulfilling Life w/ Peter Mallouk

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