How can you achieve financial and emotional peace while thriving in today’s challenging economic landscape? Discover strategies for adopting a minimalist lifestyle, prioritizing mental health, smart financial management, and investing in personal growth. Lets talk about balancing your life, accumulating wealth, maintaining a high quality of living, and building long-term happiness.

Let's discuss how retirement plans can provide tax benefits and serve as a retention tool for employees. We’ll also explore the role of financial advisors in helping entrepreneurs optimize benefit packages and the importance of understanding the scope of their services. Discover how Littlejohn Financial’s unique approach sets them apart in the industry, with a focus on providing compassionate guidance and personalized solutions tailored specifically for entrepreneurs.

In this episode, we delve into the real stories of celebrities who went from riches to rags and explore the common financial mistakes that led to their downfall. Learn how to avoid lifestyle inflation, poor investment decisions, and inadequate financial planning to protect and grow your wealth. Tune in for essential tips and strategies to help secure your financial future and prevent common pitfalls.

Ready to dive deeper into real estate investing? In part 2 of this series, we'll cover important aspects you need to know about real estate investing to help you make smarter investment decisions.

Today's show provides quick, practical advice to help parents save for their child's college tuition. Learn tips, strategies, and insights from experts to make college savings simple and effective. Start securing your child's academic future now!

Let’s take a look at what goes into making real estate an investment. How do we evaluate price, timing and developing a healthy portfolio.

Discover the nuances of inheriting money & how different types of assets can impact you. We explore the key aspects of inheritance & gifting.

With inflation running hot and the middle class getting squeezed, how do we push through difficult times and overcome the financial adversity? Let’s explore the pain points and learn how we can be better investors.

In a time where everything costs more, taxes are a burden and wage growth might not feel adequate, how do we fight back? This episode breaks down practical ways the middle class can stretch the dollar and make smart money moves.

Episode Highlights:

The potential investment value of firearms and ammunition, and the challenges the middle class faces in ascending to wealth.

Impact of COVID-19 on global supply chains, the shift in manufacturing from China to other regions for resilience and national security, and the role of geopolitical tensions and media narratives on financial markets.

Insights into economic cycles, the possibility of inflation or deflation, the role of the Federal Reserve and the complexity of managing government debt and interest rates.

Strategies for wealth accumulation through asset allocation, the importance of investing in appreciating assets and balancing spending on life-enriching experiences with saving for financial growth.

Principles of scarcity and leverage as they apply to economics, including the high market value of professional athletes due to their unique skills and limited supply and the strategic moves in industries such as semiconductor manufacturing.

An understanding of how tax implications affect different income streams and the advantages of certain types of income such as long term capital gains, real estate and passive income over earned income.

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TRANSCRIPT

 

00:00:00 Here's the interesting thing about buying into, like the stock market. Okay? Now, admittedly–

 

00:00:05 This is what I tell my wife whenever I buy a new gun, honey, it's an asset. 

 

00:00:09 Well, and the crazy thing is that guns have historically appreciated in value. Unless they are abused, they typically hold their value or even go up. 

 

00:00:16 Interestingly enough, even ammo. You watch ammo prices continually jump, jump, jump. 

 

00:00:21 Yeah. You know when ammo prices drop though? After you shoot it. It's really not worth as much. 

 

00:00:27 Just hold on to it.

 

00:00:36 All right. It is that time of the week, the time where we complain about the inter music and get started with the True Wealth Radio Show. I'm your host, Dave Littlejohn. In studio today with me.

 

00:00:45 Matt Dickson. 

 

00:00:46 Right. Because we're like, how did we pick that one? 

 

00:00:49 Well, we didn't. So we just move on and–

 

00:00:52 Right. 

 

00:00:53 We love it. 

 

00:00:53 What song should we move toward? Can we pull the audio? I want everybody that's listening to throw, especially if you're watching this as a YouTube like thing. Go put the comments in there. We need some intro music. What should we try? Okay, so anyway, but this is not the show, this is not the True Wealth music program. We're not gonna do that. True Wealth Radio Show today. The topic of the day. Huh?

 

00:01:18 Are we talking about wealth? 

 

00:01:19 We are, no, so this is–

 

00:01:20 True wealth? Artificial wealth? 

 

00:01:22 Maybe. 

 

00:01:22 What type of wealth? 

 

00:01:23 Well, today we're gonna talk about being in the middle class and trying to break out of the middle class into the wealth class.

 

00:01:30 Okay. 

 

00:01:31 Okay? Because–

 

00:01:32 These tricks and everything in between. 

 

00:01:34 Well, there'll be a little bit of that. What did we say? It was kind of, I will call it mildly obnoxious, but like, right? Unfortunately, the middle class often gets–

 

00:01:45 Pinched. 

 

00:01:46 The middle finger. 

 

00:01:47 Yeah. 

 

00:01:47 Right? 

 

00:01:48 No, it's true. 

 

00:01:49 The middle class gets the middle finger. 

 

00:01:50 And every politician is gonna look at you and say, I got a plan to help you out. 

 

00:01:54 Well, they have to.

 

00:01:55 Yep. 

 

00:01:55 Right, and they have to because otherwise somebody else will say that. 

 

00:01:59 But is that the reality? Are they actually helping us out? 

 

00:02:01 You know, this is, well, let me ask the question another way.

 

00:02:04 Okay. 

 

00:02:05 When was the last time you got 535 people in a room and you came out with the best decision possible? 

 

00:02:10 Very, very rarely. 

 

00:02:11 Right, if you got a decision at all, right? 

 

00:02:14 And that's how government works. You get a bunch of people in a room, no one can agree on anything, and your results are so poor. 

 

00:02:19 And then you think to yourself, this is the cynical part of me, wait a minute. How do we get anything done at all? There's 535 people, right? Like some of you guys in the community are like, yeah, I have an HOA with a hundred people in it. We can't even determine how tall the fence can be. 

 

00:02:31 And it's probably a good reason for the government being the way that it is. 

 

00:02:36 Yeah, but think about this for a minute. Nobody can agree and yet we still get stuff done. Right? Cause like, what did we just see happen? 

 

00:02:43 $95 billion walked out the door today. 

 

00:02:46 $95 billion. We did some math because we're numbers people, right? 

 

00:02:50 Yeah.

 

00:02:50 And so we just looked around and said, hey, first of all, this is where ChatGPT is novel, right? Hey, what's the median income in the United States right now?

 

00:02:58 What was it like? 

 

00:02:59 Like 68,700. 

 

00:03:00 Sure. 

 

00:03:01 Right? And so we said, oh, okay, well, if you had $68,700 of income, how many people does it take to pay $95 billion? 

 

00:03:12 Wasn't it like 2% of the US population? 

 

00:03:15 It was more than that. It was like 2.37% or something. It was wild. And so–

 

00:03:22 Yeah, that number basically means that 2% of our–

 

00:03:25 The 2 ½%. Well that’s 2 ½% of the IRS revenue for the year. 

 

00:03:28 Right. Gave away their entire paycheck for the entire year. 

 

00:03:32 And keep in mind–

 

00:03:32 On one financial–

 

00:03:33 The IRS isn't just... So that is true, right? We were like, well, if you just took all of their income.

 

00:03:40 Right, all of it.

 

00:03:40 Then like, we had like 3% of the population just lost their income for the year to push this money out to, like Ukraine and elsewhere. 

 

00:03:49 Right. 

 

00:03:50 So now somebody somewhere in the Congress had to go like, well, how can this be a good idea? 

 

00:03:55 Probably a lot of them. 

 

00:03:56 Right. 

 

00:03:57 Yeah. 

 

00:03:57 And the answer was because there was compromises where they may have gotten stuff. 

 

00:04:02 Yeah. 

 

00:04:02 Right. Oh, well some of the money came back to where my constituents are, so I can tell them how great I am. And what happens is–

 

00:04:11 Someone got bought off basically. 

 

00:04:12 Enough people got bought off. That's the way I would phrase it. Enough people got bought off that this happens. And then people think they scratch their head and they go, well, why is it that we keep getting massive government debt and we keep overspending? Well, which part is the incentive to not do it? 

 

00:04:31 Bingo. That's the biggest piece. Why would you not do something? You're in government to do things and you got to appease people and how do you make people smile? You give them money. Somehow or another. 

 

00:04:45 Right. The question though is becoming, and so we also flirted around with this concept. Like Matt?

 

00:04:50 Yeah.

 

00:04:51 You know, it gets thrown around, I don't know if our listeners hear about this much, the concept of modern monetary theory. 

 

00:04:57 Right. 

 

00:04:58 Right?

 

00:04:58 Yeah, it's this theory that kind of looks at, how does money come into the system? And what are the certain ways that we either constrict that money flow or open it up? And what are the choke points and how does that money move through the system and how does it affect you? 

 

00:05:15 Well, here's what will blow everybody's mind. If you're unfamiliar, right, I'm going to try to distill this down to a couple sentences. It won't be fully adequate, but whatever, that's the radios for, right? So it's the idea that the government, because it creates its own currency, can control things like inflation. And the government's not being financed by the taxpayer, but by money creation. And the taxpayer is a mechanism to control inflation. So you raise and lower taxes to influence inflation, and the government can kind of print money to conjure for its needs. Now, this to me really does seem counterintuitive and counterproductive. Those that are out there swearing like, no, no, it can work. You get fringy conspiracy theories that spin off of this concept. ‘Cause we all look at this and go, well, I have to have something of value in order to trade for something else of value, right? 

 

00:06:13 That's how it works for us. 

 

00:06:14 So how is it that the government can simply create something, say it has value, and then go use it to trade? Yeah, I had the same response of like, and why I have to interrupt Matt, because like when you give the silent nod and the confused look on the radio, that works great on video. 

 

00:06:32 For you, yeah. 

 

00:06:33 But on radio, you guys are like, what? What happened? 

 

00:06:37 Yeah, because there’s–

 

00:06:38 We all had the dumb look. 

 

00:06:39 Right, because there's no good answer for it. 

 

00:06:42 Yeah, and so to me, sometimes the joke is also called magic monetary theory. Like, oh, we could just conjure it and it'll be okay. I prefer to think of it more like,...

Dive into the parallels between today's AI hype and the late 90's tech bubble. Discover similarities, differences, and valuable lessons for smart investing. Explore how historical trends can guide us in making smarter investment decisions amidst the current AI craze.

Episode Highlights:

AI's transformative potential, economic disruptions, and cybersecurity risks, balancing its benefits with potential drawbacks.

The true cost of technology, particularly AI and its impact on the job market, including potential job losses.

Energy usage and carbon footprint of AI platforms like ChatGPT, alongside the resource requirements of electric vehicles and AI technology.

The adverse impacts of technology on social behavior, productivity, and the risk of dependency, prompting the necessity for a 'tech detox.'

The speed of market transactions, the shift to decimal stock prices, blockchain technology, and the environmental impact of AI and digital technology.

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 What's the diminishing return, right? AI can do everything in 0.001 seconds, but we need to get it down to 0.0001 seconds. And you're like, what's the differentiator? Right now, if it has to fight another AI for something and it needs that speed, maybe, you know, military, something like that. This is for most of us. It's like, I can wait the one 100th of a second and I don't have to spend twice as much.

 

00:00:32 All right, that's the new music. It tells us we're going again. Welcome to the True Wealth radio show. I'm your host Dave Littlejohn. Matt's in the studio with me today. And we're currently setting up cameras and making sure that they are live because we are chatty and sometimes, we're a little slow on the uptake here, but we've got a very interesting show for you. And again, this is the greatest Tuesday you've had all week. 

 

00:01:01 First, I'm just going to say this out loud. I think we're going to have to try to get different music, right? This is not a news program. This is like a financial entertainment program. Right? So we got to talk about money and we got to talk about it. Make it fun. Right. So we, this, that news thing, it just makes me all stressed out. 

 

00:01:22 Well, it's not my favorite. Yeah. 

 

00:01:25 All right. So Dale, we've officially put our vote in Kyle. We were officially voting. We're going to change the music for our program. You know why? 

 

00:01:33 What's like if your life was a theme song, what would it be? 

 

00:01:36 Oh, probably something goofy. It's not like--

 

00:01:39 I had a tiger or something super cool. 

 

00:01:41 No, no, that's cool. That I'm like, I'm not the cool guy. I'm firmly in dadland now. And so my life is a stream together of dad jokes and finance. Yeah. 

 

00:01:57 In that order?

 

00:01:57 Yeah. Do you need me to, are you going to fight the microphone? 

 

00:02:00 I am. 

 

00:02:01 That's like literally just, you guys are going to have to watch the video of it later because it's going to look ridiculous. Like, what are you, are you arm wrestling the microphone?

 

00:02:10 I'm just going to give up for the segment and say, you know what? We'll fix it at the break. 

 

00:21:16 Yeah. So anyway, we got to thinking today, what would be the most valuable thing that we can talk about? And I will tell you, I feel like I was chasing a curveball today. 

 

00:02:28 Yeah, but. 

 

00:02:29 Well, why? You know, cause yesterday was tax day, right? So tax freedom day, which I haven't checked the actual date. You know, there's a thing by the way, you know, there's a thing called tax freedom days.

 

00:02:37 You have to work in order to like start to break even. And it's like, you work for the first, what, three or four months.

 

00:02:43 It's usually really close. It's somewhere in early February. It's usually the crossover point where great, you're done paying your taxes, the rest of what you earn can be yours, at least at the federal level. So, and then there's different tax freedom day for different states, right? Oregon's historically been on the higher side of things, so, you know, who knows? But anyway, so if you didn't get your IRAs funded. 

 

00:03:07 Well, too bad. 

 

00:03:08 Now you have to do it for this year, right? Yeah, but 2023 is officially in the books. 

 

00:03:12 Does it feel good to have another one like crossed off the list. Is it starting to go too by? Is it going by too fast? Or, I mean, you've been in business for a lot of years now. How many years have you been in this industry? 

 

00:03:23 So, Little John Financial's been around since 2010 now. 

 

00:03:27 Right, but you were in it even before 2010. 

 

00:03:29 I started, I had my licenses formally in 2000. So, I started going. 

 

00:03:34 24 years. 

 

00:03:35 Yeah, I'm in my 24th year, because I would say it's kind of easing into the industry in '99. I mean, I remember watching Y2K and wondering what was gonna happen. And I was in the business when that was happening. So I started in 99% insurance. 

 

00:03:48 Oh, so you started right at the tech bubble. 

 

00:03:52 Yeah. 

 

00:03:54 So that must've been kind of an interesting time to watch. 

 

00:03:57 It was fascinating to watch the NASDAQ just fall and fall and fall. 

 

00:04:03 And then here I start during kind of the COVID pandemic where markets are getting rattled around and...

 

00:04:09 Yeah, COVID was its own weird animal, right? 

 

00:04:12 And you've seen a lot of these, you know, kind of big moves in the market. You were there for the dot com bubble. You were there for oh eight and the housing issue. You were there for COVID. I mean, you've been through a lot of these market cycles. What have you learned? Let's let's go there. Like what has Dave learned over the last 20 something years of being in this industry? 

 

00:04:33 Okay, this is one of the things that I've learned is that the technology may keep changing, but the principles really don't. Like every time somebody says this time it's different, it's hardly ever different. 

 

00:04:43 Right, so right now, I mean, the headline articles are, oh my gosh, look at AI and how this is gonna reshape the entire stock market. Does it feel a little bit kinda like what the dot com bubble was, where everyone's like, forget earnings and forget everything, let's just buy the thing that's the internet? 

 

00:05:00 Well, I think you know my answer, cause you just totally, you know, aked it into the question a little bit. 

 

00:05:04 I did, but that's- 

 

00:05:06 Because what have I been saying? 

 

00:05:07 Well, kind of that, but I want you to expand upon it for the listeners so that they get a feeling of how you're kind of connecting the dots here. 

 

00:05:15 Right. So I remember in '98 and '99 when people started to say that Warren Buffett was washed up. Right? He'd just been underperforming and the Oracle of Omaha was old news and he was missing out because everybody was jumping in tech funds and they were making huge returns You know, you were seeing 40 50 60 percent returns in 99 some cases higher than that it was just money getting printed and The logic at the time was that well the internet had really exploded now The internet wasn't new at that point, but the dot-com phenomenon was really exploding It was personal computers. You were starting to see a lot more web browser search engines

 

00:05:57 Yahoo was really big news. There were companies like Alta Vista and Lycos and Netscape and Prodigy and AOL was big back then. Right. And so you had this this massive push to get people accessing the internet. And you know, to this day, you can go find Gen Xers and play the sound to a modem connecting and on dial up and everybody will kind of giggle about what that meant because we all knew. Right.

 

00:06:26 But there were things like, this is the new economy, right? You don't have to make money in stocks. The company doesn't have to make money as long as it's growing rapidly, right? Investors put money into these things and as long as they were acquiring customers rapidly, that was all it took to be relevant. Just find eyeballs, eyeballs, eyeballs. And then there was a big spend that aligned with that, right? The big spend was the scare around Y2K.

 

00:06:56 The idea that the computers, because before we had memory coming out of our ears, before memory was everywhere in computers, it was sort of a premium. I can remember actual, now I don't remember punch cards, but I remember the five and a quarter actual floppy disks that had very limited storage. And then the three and a half inch sort of hard disk that had very limited storage. And then it was a very big deal when DVDs started to show up on scene and you had as much as 4.7 games. 

 

00:07:31 Knowing your love for technology, I bet you, you bought hundreds of DVDs and you still have them. Am I correct? 

 

00:07:37 I still have some DVDs, yes. 

 

00:07:39 Oh man. I love them. I do. I like having a physical copy of stuff. Like gaming, I still have, you know, the original Xbox, the 360, I have the new one. And I'll tell you, I play the 360 more than I do the new one because I like putting the disc in there and playing the game. I hate having to download the game. Oh, I'm out of storage. Delete that one. Redownload that one. 

 

00:08:05 Right. Well, the storage thing was the gotcha, right? Storage was expensive. And so everybody had to be careful with it back then. And so when they design computers, even the code was about keeping the date had to be short to save on memory. 

 

00:08:24 I think it's interesting that, you know, it's evolved so much since then,...