Wealth Formula Podcast

Asset Allocation Diversification and Leverage Permanent Life Insurance and the Wealth Accelerator Multi-Family Real Estate Asymmetric Investing: Taking a Risk How to Avoid Single-Point of Failure?

Zulfe Ali is a broker dealer and investment advisor—but not your run-of-the-mill type in this field. He's been in the middle of the action on Wall Street as a mergers and acquisitions guy for JP Morgan and Bank of America in the 90s and ran a multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund for over a decade. I've seen photos of him with world leaders like former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and others as part of his former position. To say the least, he's not one of those 6 week course advisors out there. While he has now opened his door to individual investors like us, he is using institutional principals to help clients grow their money. As you can imagine, those principals are quite different from your typical advisor and I am happy to endorse him to anyone looking for a third-party financial advisor. Many people have asked me for a recommendation throughout the years and I have not been able to give one until now. In this episode of Wealth Formula Podcast, I speak to Zulfe about his perspective on asset allocation and the current economy. Make sure to tune in to see what a guy at his level is thinking. And later on this week, tune in for my "Back to School" episode where I give you insight into how I design my own investment portfolio. Listen NOW!

Return to Personal Finance: Estate Planning Do You Need a Will? Is the Estate Tax Stupid? Avoiding the Estate Tax

Those of you who have been listening to me for a while know that I am not really a precious metals guy. I know the arguments and I respect them. Gold has held its price over an unprecedented amount of time. An ounce of gold got a guy a nice toga and sandals in Roman times and today it will get you a nice suit and a pair of shoes. In that regard, gold has been the ultimate hedge if you are looking for wealth preservation over a thousand years. And that's what people selling you gold will tell you. They aren't lying but there is often an element of fearmongering involved in that world that I find distasteful. The thing that I don't really like about gold is that it is an asset that doesn't throw off any money. And if you are storing it somewhere it's going to cost you money to do so—kind of like real estate that has negative cash flow. With negative cash flow, leverage doesn't make sense either—not like it's available on gold anyway. So I guess my perspective is if you want a real asset that is hedged against the dollar and keeps up with inflation, why not buy real estate? In fact, if you don't put any leverage on the real estate it's pretty much behaving like gold but giving you an income as well. I remember Dante Andrade and I looking for properties for Touro and seeing Chinese buying $30-40 million dollar assets for cash. They were essentially buying a storage of value outside of China. Kind of sounds like gold, right? Except the real estate cashflowed of course. Anyway, today I'm not anti-gold by any means. I'm just not a gold bug. As for other precious metals, they often have more utility than gold so that certainly is an appealing quality. Silver, for example, is used in several industrial applications. In that sense, there may be some additional value there that could lead to price increases in the future. I'm certainly not an expert in this area though. That being said, personal finance is personal and you should hear the argument for all types of assets and make your own decision. My guest this week is an expert on silver and makes a pretty interesting case for why you might want to add some to your portfolio. Make sure to tune in! P.S. Later this week, look for another podcast as part of our "back to school series"!

I live in Montecito, CA. It's a small beach town of about 5 thousand people at the southernmost part of Santa Barbara. I moved here from Chicago in 2017 and started living here as a renter. One thing I learned over the years is that whenever I move to a new area, I always end up finding a part of town I like better so it's best not to buy right away. There was also quite a bit of sticker shock when I moved here. In the northern suburbs of Chicago where we moved from, I paid $2 million for a 7000 square foot home on 2.5 acres and an indoor pool. $2 million didn't get you much of anything in Montecito so I needed some time to digest this new reality for a bit as well. In hindsight, that wasn't such a good move. Since 2017, Montecito homes saw an average sale price increase of over 60 percent—the steepest rise in prices in California during this time. And to be frank, that number sounds a bit low to me. Covid didn't help. Rich people from LA, San Francisco and New York realized that if they had to work from Zoom anyway, they might as well do it from paradise where they could also hike the mountains and go to the beach on the same day. You know what else didn't help?... Low interest rates. However, I will say that the number of cash buyers of multimillion-dollar homes in my area is unreal. As for the rest of the country, the suburbs pretty much everywhere took off. Near zero interest rates and nowhere to go made people buy homes so they had a nice place to be all day long while quarantined. Now that quarantines are over and interest rates are high, you might think home prices would have fallen off the cliff. Nope. Remember it's all about supply and demand. Right now, supply is low. Why? Well, if you bought an expensive house at a fixed rate in the last few years would you be selling anytime soon? Mortgage rates have more than doubled. In other words, many people today could not afford the house they bought a few years ago. That's a problem across the country. As a result, supply is so low that even minimal demand is keeping housing prices high. All I can say is thank God I ended up buying a house before it got too crazy. The issues around real estate prices right now are complex but worth understanding. My guest on this week's Wealth Formula Podcast is an economist who specializes in these specific issues. Make sure to tune in and see what she has to say about this very unique time in real estate history.

I don't know about you but my kids are about to head back to school. In this spirit of that, I thought it might be nice for us to get back to basics as well. For the next few weeks, I will be releasing at least one podcast that involves the basics of personal finance in addition to whatever else may be on the docket. This week's back-to-school episode is about asset protection and my guest is Doug Lodmell. Make sure to tune in and let me know if these shows are helpful!

I have a medical degree and am a former board-certified surgeon. Yet that is not my identity. My identity is that of an entrepreneur and investor. This is an identify for which I did not go to school. Without trying to sound dramatic, I was born this way. I think it's a genetic thing. You see my dad came to this country in the late 1960s and trained as an engineer. He eventually got caught doing real estate on the job and got fired shortly after I was born. That's sort of my story too—I was working at a cosmetic surgery company while planning to start my own company. When they found out, they perceived me as a competitor so they fired me. The apple does not fall far from the tree I guess. He went on to a career as a real estate entrepreneur and continues in that endeavor even today into his 80s. Despite my detour into the surgical world, I too have spent the majority of my life as an entrepreneur. It wasn't a choice. It was in my nature. I am unemployable. I hate having to answer to others and I despise hierarchy—unless I'm at the top. That's why I am a business owner and not an employee. Again, to be clear, I don't think there is anything wrong with being an employee. I just am not built that way. Now, in my case, I had the daredevil instinct to start businesses from scratch. Some of my business ideas failed and some were wins. The good news about being an entrepreneur is that you just need a few big wins. Now if I did not have daredevil entrepreneurial instincts would I have been able to be a successful business person? Yes, but I don't think I could have started businesses from scratch. But that does not mean that you have to have to be born an entrepreneur like I was. It just means that you might want to find a more structured way to get into the arena. Buying a business is certainly an option. I will say that when you start a small business you get suspicious of buyng other small businesses because you know that somewhere in your own business there is a closet full of skeletons. When you buy a business, you don't know where that closet is. That closet often has all kinds of secrets. For example, it may tell you who the key people are that make or break that business. What if those people leave when you buy the business? The only way to avoid buying a business with such an Achilles heel is to buy one of sufficient size that can't rest on just a few shoulders. But not all of us can afford a $50 million business with an executive team in place. That's where franchising might make sense. The value proposition of a franchise involves having the playbook on how to successfully run a business with the backing of a larger entity behind you. In theory, this should provide you with play-by-play directions on how to start and run a successful business. In addition to guiding the less business inclined into ownership, franchises may also provide some level of risk mitigation to people looking for business opportunities but reluctant to deal with the unknown variables of business ownership. That said, it is not without a price. Franchise fees are real and must be weighed into the entire equation. My guest on this week's Wealth Formula Podcast helps people navigate the world of franchise opportunities and is a great resource for those interested. I should point out that I have no financial relationship with Kim nor have I found franchising suitable for myself at this time. But it might be for you and you should certainly know a little bit about this option. So tune in!

It turns out that the conversation about getting out of fossil fuels and into green energy is a lot more complicated than just energy. Of course "black gold" has literally fueled our society into its wealthiest state since the beginning of man. No one argues that. But there is a clear movement globally to try and move to clean energy for the sake of the environment. Beyond energy, however, oil plays a pivotal role in the manufacture of several products that we rely on in our daily lives. For example, the petrochemical industry heavily depends on oil as a raw material. Petrochemicals derived from oil and natural gas are the building blocks for a wide range of goods from plastics to resins, synthetic fibers to rubbers, detergents to adhesives, and even solvents. Without these materials, you wouldn't even have the materials to make the computer or smartphone you're using to read this email. Right now, we literally need oil to live. Many pharmaceuticals such as aspirin and the coatings on time-release pill are made from oil derivatives as are artificial heart valves, artificial limbs and even contact lenses. I could give you a myriad of other products that rely on oil but suffice it to say that life without these products would not be the same. Does that mean that we should give up on alternative energy? No. We should always be looking for cheaper and cleaner alternatives. The point is that to truly get off fossil fuels we also need to start thinking about alternatives for all of the products that rely on oil as well. It's an underappreciated problem that my guest on this week's Wealth Formula Podcast addresses and it's worth your time to understand the full scope of the issue. Listen Now!

It has been a tough year for real investors. Inflation and interest rates have created distress and uncertainty. But let me remind you of a few things. Investing isn't for the faint-hearted. EVERYONE loses at some point. The idea that you can always win is a fallacy. Of course everyone would agree with that statement rationally. However, our brains are not wired to think rationally in stressful times. It's a tall order. There is a concept in psychology called "loss aversion" that means we are wired to fear loss more than we desire gain. So if you have an investment go bad in a distressed market, you might let the fear of future losses prevent you from investing in an asset that might create significantly more gain down the road. The Chinese word for crisis is the same word for opportunity. When there is blood in the streets, you want to activate your instincts as a predator more than that of the hunted. That's something all the world's greatest investors will tell you. And by the way, those investors have all lost money at some point in their life. Go back to basics. Why do you invest your money rather than leave it in the bank? I invest my money because leaving it in the bank is a way to guarantee loss of purchasing power. Think about it. Last year, inflation soared over double digits. Did you get even 1 percent return on the money in the bank? Money in the bank guarantees a loss of real buying power—double digit losses over the last year. Why do you invest in real estate or other alternative assets instead of only a portfolio of stocks, bonds and mutual funds? I invest in alternatives because they can result in extraordinary returns. I have experienced that over and over again and taking some losses now is not going to change my view of investing in the future. I stand by the notion that no one ever gets rich with a portfolio of stocks, bonds and mutual funds. At best they are going to preserve your wealth with modest growth. I'm willing to take a little bit more risk for the larger reward. So far it has paid dividends. The point of all of this is to say that decision making in personal finance is like anything else. The hardest part of it is to stay rational and not let fear or other emotions cloud your thoughts. My guest on this week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast knows a lot about making decisions under duress. He's a fighter pilot who has had to think clearly to avoid imminent death. And well…it's the same type of thinking you are going to need to do if you're going to make money as an investor in this unpredictable world. Listen to the interview NOW!

I was in high school when the Berlin Wall came down. The ensuing decade was really like no other I have experienced in my life. It was the 1990s. There was no more cold war. Decades of fear of nuclear annihilation vanished into thin air. And 9/11 had not yet happened so we did not yet know the new world of terrorism. It could be that I was young and stupid but life seemed good. The news of the day was about Monica Lewinsky's stained dress and political conflict seemed ludicrous but benign. Back then, I used to think that the world just got better with time. But in the last 20-30 years I have realized that it's actually more of a pendulum. There is no doubt that we now live in turbulent times. The country is horribly divided to the point where rational individuals have brought up the idea of a national divorce. Ronald Reagan is rolling in his grave. Nevertheless, as crazy as these times may seem, we should keep in perspective that we have seen worse before. In 1861 we actually did have a civil war. As for cultural wars. Well, all you have to do is go back to 1968 to see that what's going on now is actually pretty tame. Of course, I don't need to tell you that the United States has had numerous economic booms and busts throughout our history. Bottom line is that history does not repeat itself but it certainly does rhyme. My guest on today's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast is an esteemed historian that has recognized specific historical patterns and suggests that they are highly predictable. So what's next for the United States and its economy? He thinks we are in the final stage of an 80-year cycle. Find out what that means for you on this week's Wealth Formula Podcast.