WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.840 All right. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Frankly Speaking. Today, we'll be talking about finance stuff just in general. I'm joined again by my lovely wife. 00:00:10.840 --> 00:00:13.660 Hello. How are you? 00:00:13.660 --> 00:00:25.200 So for some reason, there's been a ton of mosquitoes this year in Vancouver. Last year, there weren't too many, but just in the past day, we've each gotten like several mosquito bites. It's been very annoying. 00:00:25.200 --> 00:00:29.200 I feel like this year in general, we've just had a lot more bugs. 00:00:29.200 --> 00:00:30.200 Yeah. 00:00:30.200 --> 00:00:31.200 All sorts of bugs. 00:00:31.200 --> 00:00:44.200 All sorts of bugs, which is interesting because I read how a lot of bugs are disappearing because of pollution, climate change, other manmade factors. 00:00:44.200 --> 00:00:55.200 So when we were growing up, if you do like a cross country trip in your car, or even just a 40 minute drive on the highway, your windshield would be filled with like splattered bugs. 00:00:55.200 --> 00:01:08.200 But nowadays you drive and just anecdotal experience, like there's not as many bugs that you've hit. And then so I kind of looked this up and apparently there are less bugs around. But now again, we're seeing a resurgence of bugs. 00:01:08.200 --> 00:01:21.200 Yeah. And they come in waves. So like earlier in the summer, I got a whole like 20 bug bites and they just kind of went away. And then now it's coming back. 00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:28.200 So I think that might be more seasonal. But there's also the thing about how honeybees and bumblebees were going extinct and that was going to be a huge crisis. 00:01:28.200 --> 00:01:41.200 But apparently a lot of agencies and governments and just I guess honeybee enthusiasts came together and that the honeybee population has made a resurgence that's no longer an issue from what I can tell. 00:01:41.200 --> 00:01:53.200 So good job beekeepers and other other people. Yeah. So I guess we can kind of transition now into talking about just growing up being poor, essentially. 00:01:53.200 --> 00:02:03.200 So it's kind of funny because a lot of immigrants have a really similar story when it comes to what it was like growing up here. 00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:16.200 So usually when you immigrate over, our families were not wealthy. And even though we grew up in different countries, it is pretty similar story in terms of like how we didn't have money, essentially. 00:02:16.200 --> 00:02:27.200 Yeah, I feel like my dad always thought that he had a really hard like, oh, you know, look at us until he went to visit one of his friends in the States. 00:02:27.200 --> 00:02:34.200 And his friend kind of went the same route as your dad, like he came over here for college and then like, you know, made a life for himself. 00:02:34.200 --> 00:02:42.200 And they're doing really well now. But he listened to his story and was like, holy crap, like this is so much harder than what I had it. 00:02:42.200 --> 00:02:50.200 Yeah. So for context, Annie's parents came over when she was 11 and then my parents came over when I was one. 00:02:50.200 --> 00:02:53.200 And our parents are roughly the same age. So. 00:02:53.200 --> 00:02:55.200 Almost 10 years earlier. 00:02:55.200 --> 00:03:02.200 Yeah. So like my parents, when they came over, they basically barely had enough food for just like survival. 00:03:02.200 --> 00:03:13.200 Because for context, PhD students get a grant of roughly like 10 to 15 K per year and they have subsidized housing, which is how they're able to even pay rent, essentially. 00:03:13.200 --> 00:03:20.200 And I stayed with my grandparents for the first four years of my life because there wasn't enough money to support a kid as well. 00:03:20.200 --> 00:03:27.200 And then Annie's family, like her parents already had a job in China for a while. They came over with some savings. 00:03:27.200 --> 00:03:37.200 They had a business in China too, which like they converted one of my grandparents like basement for like a little hotel or motel or something. 00:03:37.200 --> 00:03:42.200 So it didn't make a lot of money because I don't think my dad's actual job gave him a lot of money. 00:03:42.200 --> 00:03:46.200 So he was like, we have two kids got to like find a way to make money somehow. 00:03:46.200 --> 00:03:51.200 So yeah, I know like growing up, it didn't feel like we were super poor. 00:03:51.200 --> 00:03:56.200 Like we lived in not so great neighborhoods. 00:03:56.200 --> 00:03:58.200 Definitely like we bought a lot of used stuff. 00:03:58.200 --> 00:04:04.200 So I remember going to like garage sales and thrift stores like Goodwill, bought a lot of secondhand things. 00:04:04.200 --> 00:04:10.200 And I don't know, as a kid, it just seemed kind of normal because like the other people around you are also poor. 00:04:10.200 --> 00:04:14.200 So it's not like you're comparing your own situation to people who are so wealthy. 00:04:14.200 --> 00:04:19.200 And like back then the internet and social media, all that wasn't really a thing. 00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:23.200 We had like our basic five free channels where I would just watch like PBS. 00:04:23.200 --> 00:04:28.200 And so it's, you wouldn't really see much opulence in your daily life. It was just normal. 00:04:28.200 --> 00:04:32.200 Yeah. I mean, I don't really, I think I was just more oblivious. 00:04:32.200 --> 00:04:35.200 Like I didn't really compare myself to other kids. 00:04:35.200 --> 00:04:41.200 Like I didn't really have friends that I would like always go to their house and like look at their things. 00:04:41.200 --> 00:04:50.200 But now, now that I'm older thinking back, I'm like, oh, okay, we were poor because like, you know, when we first came here, we bought all used stuff. 00:04:50.200 --> 00:05:00.200 And like, I think that was by choice again, because like we had savings in the bank, but my dad just like, he's like a very risk averse person. 00:05:00.200 --> 00:05:09.200 And he would rather know that like, if anything happened to him, we were going to get, be taken care of basically. 00:05:09.200 --> 00:05:15.200 And to fast forward a little bit, both of our families became less and less poor as time went on. 00:05:15.200 --> 00:05:22.200 Um, my dad got a more stable job, you know, obviously graduated, got his PhD, um, made very little money in the beginning. 00:05:22.200 --> 00:05:26.200 And which is also why he cautioned me against majoring in biology. 00:05:26.200 --> 00:05:29.200 So you don't make that much coming out of school, even with a PhD. 00:05:29.200 --> 00:05:33.200 I think he was making like, I don't know, 40, 50 K tops. 00:05:33.200 --> 00:05:39.200 So supporting a family of five at that point, because then at that point, my two little brothers were born as well. 00:05:39.200 --> 00:05:46.200 And so, um, for Annie's family, I think their business started to take off, right? 00:05:46.200 --> 00:05:52.200 Um, well, so my dad wanted to go into computer engineering, like he was an electrical engineer. 00:05:52.200 --> 00:05:56.200 He came here, wanted to do computer science, but his English was just terrible. 00:05:56.200 --> 00:05:58.200 So then he transitioned into construction. 00:05:58.200 --> 00:06:04.200 So he worked kind of like manual labor for the last like 20, 30 years, 20 years. 00:06:04.200 --> 00:06:13.200 Um, but I think because the real estate market in Vancouver was like just continuously going up, people in construction made a lot of money. 00:06:13.200 --> 00:06:21.200 I think like real estate, it's like, if you were in a city, it kind of blew up, regardless of which city, whether it's like Vancouver, Seattle, SF. 00:06:21.200 --> 00:06:25.200 But like in Iowa, where I grew up, our house is not really worth that much more. 00:06:25.200 --> 00:06:28.200 And real estate prices, like they don't have a whole lot to climb. 00:06:28.200 --> 00:06:30.200 There's like, there's so much room. 00:06:30.200 --> 00:06:31.200 There's so much room to build. 00:06:31.200 --> 00:06:33.200 There's not a ton of demand. 00:06:33.200 --> 00:06:34.200 Um, yeah. 00:06:34.200 --> 00:06:38.200 I mean, I feel like a lot of it is like, it's like luck, but then also hard work. 00:06:38.200 --> 00:06:41.200 Cause I remember my dad working like 12 hours days. 00:06:41.200 --> 00:06:44.200 Like they didn't have time to like send us off to college. 00:06:44.200 --> 00:06:45.200 Yeah. 00:06:45.200 --> 00:06:49.200 My dad also worked a lot, but then he would also study a lot after work. 00:06:49.200 --> 00:06:52.200 So he would, he got his MBA while he was working. 00:06:52.200 --> 00:06:54.200 Like he would work and then he'd come home. 00:06:54.200 --> 00:06:58.200 He'd like read books, take his classes and he got his MBA eventually. 00:06:58.200 --> 00:07:01.200 I'm not really sure if that helped or not. 00:07:01.200 --> 00:07:04.200 Um, but then yeah, we each went off to college. 00:07:04.200 --> 00:07:11.200 Um, in college was the first time I really had like actual money to spend on random stuff to buy. 00:07:11.200 --> 00:07:19.200 Because in, when I was in high school, I had like the part-time job, um, detasseling corn in the fields in the summer. 00:07:19.200 --> 00:07:20.200 But like, it wasn't many hours. 00:07:20.200 --> 00:07:23.200 It was like two to three hours per day. 00:07:23.200 --> 00:07:26.200 And you wouldn't, you would only do it for a couple of weeks. 00:07:26.200 --> 00:07:30.200 So I remember my first paycheck that I ever got was only like a couple hundred dollars. 00:07:30.200 --> 00:07:32.200 And I was thinking like, wow, what a rip off. 00:07:32.200 --> 00:07:35.200 Like I spent my summer doing this garbage and I got like no money for it. 00:07:35.200 --> 00:07:37.200 Wait, what's detasseling corn? 00:07:37.200 --> 00:07:41.200 Like you, like the little like fibers, is that what it is? 00:07:41.200 --> 00:07:42.200 Okay. 00:07:42.200 --> 00:07:47.200 I just say detasseling corn, but my actual job is we would measure the length and width of the leaf. 00:07:47.200 --> 00:07:52.200 And then also like count a bunch of statistics and put it into a computer. 00:07:52.200 --> 00:07:56.200 Um, I just say detasseling corn because that was the more typical job. 00:07:56.200 --> 00:07:57.200 I didn't actually do that. 00:07:57.200 --> 00:07:58.200 Okay. 00:07:58.200 --> 00:08:03.200 I feel like that's kind of the difference between us because like you were like, oh, I do this job. 00:08:03.200 --> 00:08:05.200 It was such a waste of my time. 00:08:05.200 --> 00:08:10.200 I remember like I got a job at American Eagle when I was like kind of in the summers between college. 00:08:10.200 --> 00:08:14.200 And I would take a two hour bus to and from work. 00:08:14.200 --> 00:08:18.200 So that's four hours a day where I just like commuted. 00:08:18.200 --> 00:08:20.200 I thought that was completely fine. 00:08:20.200 --> 00:08:22.200 Like I would get home at like 12:00 AM. 00:08:22.200 --> 00:08:24.200 Like I would, you know, start my shift at 1:00 PM. 00:08:24.200 --> 00:08:27.200 So I leave my house at like 12:00 PM. 00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:30.200 And then like, I wouldn't get home and there are sometimes no buses. 00:08:30.200 --> 00:08:33.200 So then I have to call my parents to like pick you up. 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:37.200 I mean, even when I was younger, I still made random amounts of money. 00:08:37.200 --> 00:08:40.200 Like I would sell some of my Yu-Gi-Oh cards or something for money. 00:08:40.200 --> 00:08:44.200 That's actually how I got my first GameCube is I sold some of my trading cards for money. 00:08:44.200 --> 00:08:47.200 And then I use that money to buy myself that GameCube. 00:08:47.200 --> 00:08:55.200 And also I would basically download music from the Internet and then make CDs out of it for my friends at school. 00:08:55.200 --> 00:08:56.200 And I would sell them those CDs. 00:08:56.200 --> 00:09:01.200 And back then it would take like an entire day, two days or several days to download one song. 00:09:01.200 --> 00:09:03.200 It was very annoying. 00:09:03.200 --> 00:09:06.200 But yeah, in college, I finally got an internship. 00:09:06.200 --> 00:09:08.200 I had a full scholarship for college. 00:09:08.200 --> 00:09:16.200 So I didn't really have any expenses besides if I wanted to go out eat food or I didn't really buy clothing or anything back then. 00:09:16.200 --> 00:09:20.200 I was very frugal and maybe buy games. 00:09:20.200 --> 00:09:24.200 But how much did you save after like your internships? 00:09:24.200 --> 00:09:27.200 I didn't really save much because I was always trying to make money with that money. 00:09:27.200 --> 00:09:33.200 So I think for my first internship after tax, I had probably 10 to 15 K. 00:09:33.200 --> 00:09:35.200 But I would spend most of that money on stuff. 00:09:35.200 --> 00:09:44.200 So the laptop I was given by my parents when I went to school was this really, really cheap gateway laptop that barely worked. 00:09:44.200 --> 00:09:46.200 So I bought myself a new computer. 00:09:46.200 --> 00:09:48.200 That's probably one to two K. 00:09:48.200 --> 00:09:52.200 And then I bought and resold a ton of electronics and video games. 00:09:52.200 --> 00:09:55.200 So I was always trying to get my money to make more money with it. 00:09:55.200 --> 00:09:57.200 So I bought a bunch of that stuff. 00:09:57.200 --> 00:10:02.200 I mean, towards the end of college, I had two, three internships. 00:10:02.200 --> 00:10:09.200 I don't remember, but I had probably 20 to 30 K after tax and like a bunch of stuff. 00:10:09.200 --> 00:10:16.200 So monitors, games, game consoles, like I bought everything that I was denied as a kid. 00:10:16.200 --> 00:10:22.200 So I bought like every video game console and all the games I never had. 00:10:22.200 --> 00:10:25.200 I don't, I didn't really buy clothes or anything back then. 00:10:25.200 --> 00:10:29.200 But then I also tried to invest it, but I don't really. 00:10:29.200 --> 00:10:39.200 Oh, I put like 4K into Bitcoin, but then I sold it at a loss the next year because it dropped by like 50%. 00:10:39.200 --> 00:10:42.200 I bought it when I was at like 800 and I sold when I was 400. 00:10:42.200 --> 00:10:44.200 Even though I told myself I was never going to sell. 00:10:44.200 --> 00:10:46.200 I like couldn't, couldn't hold on to it. 00:10:46.200 --> 00:10:50.200 I feel like my spending phase came like way earlier than that. 00:10:50.200 --> 00:10:56.200 So we had a paper route when we were in high school and we would spend every single penny we will have. 00:10:56.200 --> 00:11:00.200 So like, I mean, it wasn't a lot of money, like maybe 30, $40 per month. 00:11:00.200 --> 00:11:04.200 And we would just go to the gas station and buy snacks every day after school. 00:11:04.200 --> 00:11:10.200 And I remember going to, we went abroad to Europe during high school. 00:11:10.200 --> 00:11:15.200 And then I would spend, like we spent $300 on gelato over the course of like 10 days. 00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:18.200 We bought every single souvenir that we've ever seen. 00:11:18.200 --> 00:11:23.200 And we literally like took back a luggage full of just garbage. 00:11:23.200 --> 00:11:26.200 And my parents were really pissed because again, we weren't rich. 00:11:26.200 --> 00:11:33.200 And I think at that point it didn't occur to me like how, like what money is worth and whatnot. 00:11:33.200 --> 00:11:35.200 So we were just spending a lot of money out. 00:11:35.200 --> 00:11:37.200 Like my parents got super pissed. 00:11:37.200 --> 00:11:42.200 And it was after that, that I started to realize, okay, like you need to save money. 00:11:42.200 --> 00:11:44.200 You shouldn't be just buying all this junk. 00:11:44.200 --> 00:11:48.200 So that I didn't actually like spend any money buying stuff in college. 00:11:48.200 --> 00:11:50.200 Like I bought all used furniture. 00:11:50.200 --> 00:11:56.200 I like, I flipped those furniture at the end of my school year to make even more money. 00:11:56.200 --> 00:12:01.200 So like I would buy a desk for like $10, use it for a year, sell it for like $20. 00:12:01.200 --> 00:12:04.200 And then I bought textbooks from this one guy. 00:12:04.200 --> 00:12:08.200 He was just like, he didn't really care about how much he was selling his textbook. 00:12:08.200 --> 00:12:11.200 So I bought all my textbooks from him. 00:12:11.200 --> 00:12:17.200 He sold me this like thick math book for $40, but everyone else was selling it for $120. 00:12:17.200 --> 00:12:19.200 And then, so I flipped it the next year. 00:12:19.200 --> 00:12:21.200 Like after I used it for a year, I sold it for $100. 00:12:21.200 --> 00:12:22.200 Yeah. 00:12:22.200 --> 00:12:23.200 So it's, it's hilarious. 00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:28.200 Cause it's like looking back, most of this was essentially a waste of time. 00:12:28.200 --> 00:12:31.200 Um, and like I took the reselling to an even bigger level. 00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:33.200 So I would browse deal sites. 00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:38.200 And if there was like a mispriced thing, I would basically spend all the money I had, all the capital I had to try and then flip that. 00:12:38.200 --> 00:12:45.200 So one time there was like a brand new game, uh, some sort of Pokemon or fire emblem game that was mispriced for like half off. 00:12:45.200 --> 00:12:46.200 It was just came out. 00:12:46.200 --> 00:12:50.200 So I bought like a hundred of them or something, however many I could at the time. 00:12:50.200 --> 00:12:54.200 And then I would resell on eBay, but it's like that, that takes time. 00:12:54.200 --> 00:12:56.200 You have to then list all this on eBay. 00:12:56.200 --> 00:12:58.200 You have to package and ship all this crap out. 00:12:58.200 --> 00:13:02.200 Uh, it was just like, and I felt really good about myself back then. 00:13:02.200 --> 00:13:06.200 Um, but it's like, I could have used that time to do anything else. 00:13:06.200 --> 00:13:10.200 No, well, I mean, it's worth your time because I remember like my cousin was kind of doing this. 00:13:10.200 --> 00:13:11.200 My cousin's younger than me. 00:13:11.200 --> 00:13:16.200 So she was also doing this in college, like years after I had already, already graduated. 00:13:16.200 --> 00:13:18.200 And my mom was like, Oh, look at her cousin. 00:13:18.200 --> 00:13:23.200 Like, look at her being so like, you know, savvy and whatnot, like reselling all these things. 00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:26.200 And I was like, like, why don't I do that anymore? 00:13:26.200 --> 00:13:27.200 Like I used to do that too. 00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:30.200 And then it occurred to me that it's no longer worth my time. 00:13:30.200 --> 00:13:32.200 So like at one point you got to start somewhere. 00:13:32.200 --> 00:13:36.200 I also think it's like, it's way easier to learn things these days. 00:13:36.200 --> 00:13:43.200 Cause back then I feel like Amazon drop shipping and all these things were already like in their infancy, 00:13:43.200 --> 00:13:44.200 but I just didn't really know about it. 00:13:44.200 --> 00:13:46.200 I didn't have a network of people who knew about it. 00:13:46.200 --> 00:13:49.200 I didn't know how to research, how to do things more effectively. 00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:51.200 I just did things through trial and error. 00:13:51.200 --> 00:13:56.200 And there was even like, I remember one interview where I was like, Oh yeah, I buy and resell stuff. 00:13:56.200 --> 00:13:58.200 And he's like, Oh, like how much revenue do you have? 00:13:58.200 --> 00:14:00.200 And I was thinking like, what revenue? 00:14:00.200 --> 00:14:01.200 Like I don't have a business. 00:14:01.200 --> 00:14:02.200 It's just me doing this on my own. 00:14:02.200 --> 00:14:06.200 And it's because someone else he was interviewing basically did this at scale. 00:14:06.200 --> 00:14:09.200 Like he would import from China and sell a bunch of stuff. 00:14:09.200 --> 00:14:11.200 And I was making like a hundred K while in school. 00:14:11.200 --> 00:14:14.200 And I was thinking like, wow, like I am really not on that other guy's level. 00:14:14.200 --> 00:14:17.200 I'm pretty sure I didn't get that inter internship either. 00:14:17.200 --> 00:14:18.200 Yeah. 00:14:18.200 --> 00:14:22.200 But it's like, I guess nowadays you can find all this information super easily. 00:14:22.200 --> 00:14:24.200 There's tons of people who give out the information for free. 00:14:24.200 --> 00:14:26.200 But yeah. 00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:32.200 I feel like when I, when you treat something like a business, it takes the fun out of it almost. 00:14:32.200 --> 00:14:45.200 Like, so when I did bodybuilding, I saw opportunity to make bikinis and just like out of curiosity, I went online to like Taobao Alibaba and just like looked for all the materials. 00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:51.200 And I like sourced the fabric from the States and all the raw, the other materials from China. 00:14:51.200 --> 00:14:58.200 And that was interesting to me because I was like, oh, I want to like make my own like bikini for a competition. 00:14:58.200 --> 00:15:03.200 I ended up like selling a bunch of them and like maybe six thousand dollars per month kind of thing. 00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:09.200 But if you were to tell me to be like, hey, Annie, like design this thing, source the materials. 00:15:09.200 --> 00:15:12.200 Here are all the resources to like learn how to do that. 00:15:12.200 --> 00:15:14.200 I'd be like, I do not want to do that. 00:15:14.200 --> 00:15:15.200 Too much work. 00:15:15.200 --> 00:15:16.200 Yeah, way too much work. 00:15:16.200 --> 00:15:17.200 Yeah. 00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:18.200 That's what people don't really tell you. 00:15:18.200 --> 00:15:21.200 It's like, it's always more work than you think. 00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:27.200 Surprisingly, like there's a bunch of small details that are annoying, especially customer service. 00:15:27.200 --> 00:15:29.200 It's an annoying aspect. 00:15:29.200 --> 00:15:36.200 But I guess like after graduating school, we both got jobs, both started making more money. 00:15:36.200 --> 00:15:39.200 And this is where I've made a series of mistakes. 00:15:39.200 --> 00:15:42.200 Like I kind of knew I should invest in the S&P 500. 00:15:42.200 --> 00:15:44.200 I don't know how I found that out. 00:15:44.200 --> 00:15:47.200 Probably just random online forums or Reddit or something. 00:15:47.200 --> 00:15:53.200 But me being really young, really reckless, I thought, OK, well, I'll kind of become really rich really quickly. 00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:58.200 And so I at first I invested in like tech stocks. 00:15:58.200 --> 00:16:01.200 But after six months, none of my stocks moved. 00:16:01.200 --> 00:16:03.200 I thought, OK, this is taking too long. 00:16:03.200 --> 00:16:05.200 And at that time, I thought six months was a long time. 00:16:05.200 --> 00:16:06.200 Right. 00:16:06.200 --> 00:16:11.200 And so I just sold all my tech stocks, which would probably be worth like 10X whatever I put in. 00:16:11.200 --> 00:16:16.200 I think I only put in like 11 to 15K, but I'd still be like over 100K a day easily. 00:16:16.200 --> 00:16:18.200 So that was just the S&P or you? 00:16:18.200 --> 00:16:19.200 No, no, no. 00:16:19.200 --> 00:16:24.200 I picked random individual stocks like Facebook, Google, Nvidia. 00:16:24.200 --> 00:16:27.200 Some of that stuff has like 10X or more since then. 00:16:27.200 --> 00:16:30.200 But I only put like 10 to 15K in. 00:16:30.200 --> 00:16:31.200 But I sold all those stocks. 00:16:31.200 --> 00:16:37.200 And then I put a bunch of money into penny stocks and which I doubled in like a week or two. 00:16:37.200 --> 00:16:42.200 But then I lost it the next like in one day, essentially. 00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:47.200 And then I also dabbled in more penny stocks, got some of my friends to invest in penny stocks. 00:16:47.200 --> 00:16:49.200 We all got wiped out, essentially. 00:16:49.200 --> 00:16:50.200 And you can't even sell it. 00:16:50.200 --> 00:16:51.200 So it's in your brokerage. 00:16:51.200 --> 00:16:54.200 It's like it's so there's zero demand for it. 00:16:54.200 --> 00:16:57.200 And it's like point zero zero zero one per share. 00:16:57.200 --> 00:16:59.200 Do you still have it now? 00:16:59.200 --> 00:17:00.200 Probably, yeah. 00:17:00.200 --> 00:17:05.200 I think it still might be in my account and my friends accounts because you can't even sell it really. 00:17:05.200 --> 00:17:06.200 It's worth nothing. 00:17:06.200 --> 00:17:16.200 And essentially, it's crazy because even though you have these organizations that are designed to protect people, there are so many scams going on. 00:17:16.200 --> 00:17:19.200 Like all the companies that we invested were essentially scams. 00:17:19.200 --> 00:17:21.200 Like they were even run by serial scammers. 00:17:21.200 --> 00:17:25.200 So entrepreneurs who would start a company, they know it's fake. 00:17:25.200 --> 00:17:27.200 They like try to drive up hype in marketing for it. 00:17:27.200 --> 00:17:28.200 It fails. 00:17:28.200 --> 00:17:30.200 And then they do it again with a different company. 00:17:30.200 --> 00:17:34.200 And if you look into their backgrounds and do your research, you find out like, oh, yeah, these companies are all garbage. 00:17:34.200 --> 00:17:35.200 They're all worth nothing. 00:17:35.200 --> 00:17:43.200 So it's basically there are also these series of like gurus who teach you like, oh, here's how to make money shorting these like garbage companies. 00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:48.200 But then sometimes they get burned because it goes higher than what they can withstand. 00:17:48.200 --> 00:17:53.200 So they're actually making money by selling you these courses rather than like doing the trading themselves. 00:17:53.200 --> 00:18:00.200 It's but yeah, we also like went on a gambling trip during college, which we won a couple hundred dollars. 00:18:00.200 --> 00:18:04.200 But then we keep on going on more gambling trips and we had more money. 00:18:04.200 --> 00:18:07.200 So we would lose a lot of money, like thousands of dollars instead. 00:18:07.200 --> 00:18:16.200 And so it's like, but I think it's good that we did this early because we lost the money before we actually had a significant amount of it. 00:18:16.200 --> 00:18:24.200 So if we did, if I learned these lessons later on and then I would lose money again through trading options, I lose money again trading crypto. 00:18:25.200 --> 00:18:28.200 I did like all the risky things you're not supposed to do. 00:18:28.200 --> 00:18:31.200 Lose your money several times to learn all your lessons. 00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:37.200 It helped a lot because if I had done that now, like while we have a lot of money, like that would be devastating. 00:18:37.200 --> 00:18:39.200 And also have a family. 00:18:39.200 --> 00:18:41.200 Yeah, have a family, like have a life. 00:18:41.200 --> 00:18:42.200 Right. 00:18:42.200 --> 00:18:45.200 But back then, it still sucked a lot. 00:18:45.200 --> 00:18:47.200 I was still really unhappy about it. 00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:53.200 But I think for the long term, like it's better to screw up early in life because you have a lot more time. 00:18:53.200 --> 00:18:55.200 You don't really have much assets. 00:18:55.200 --> 00:18:56.200 So, yeah. 00:18:56.200 --> 00:19:00.200 If you think about it, like the higher you climb, the fall is going to hurt. 00:19:00.200 --> 00:19:01.200 Right, right, right. 00:19:01.200 --> 00:19:12.200 But yeah, so Frank and I went to Vegas at one point and then we start like we were like, let's just go play like $20 each or something. 00:19:12.200 --> 00:19:13.200 And like we play until we lose it. 00:19:13.200 --> 00:19:16.200 So we were like, okay, just $40 total. 00:19:16.200 --> 00:19:20.200 And then we go and I feel like one of us lost it really quickly. 00:19:20.200 --> 00:19:24.200 The other person actually made, I think I made some money. 00:19:24.200 --> 00:19:28.200 So I like, I ended up making like $25. 00:19:28.200 --> 00:19:32.200 And we were, you make us for like a total of what, two days. 00:19:32.200 --> 00:19:35.200 And so from that point on, I was like, ooh, this is fun. 00:19:35.200 --> 00:19:36.200 Let's do more. 00:19:36.200 --> 00:19:39.200 And we, and we proceeded to lose like all of our money. 00:19:39.200 --> 00:19:45.200 And then we kept on putting in money, even like as we were trying to get on the flight out of Vegas. 00:19:45.200 --> 00:19:50.200 I was like, let me put in $60 more just to see if we can like make any more money. 00:19:50.200 --> 00:19:53.200 And so we were out like $300 by the end of that trip. 00:19:53.200 --> 00:19:54.200 Something like that. 00:19:54.200 --> 00:19:57.200 But it's like, yeah, I mean that one, we still kind of capped it. 00:19:57.200 --> 00:19:59.200 Wasn't too bad. 00:19:59.200 --> 00:20:06.200 And then like one of the, in hindsight, one of the best financial decisions that we made. 00:20:06.200 --> 00:20:08.200 So we're a bit older. 00:20:08.200 --> 00:20:11.200 We have been together for a couple of years as Annie was really into real estate. 00:20:11.200 --> 00:20:15.200 Even though she's really into it, she like doesn't know a whole lot about it. 00:20:15.200 --> 00:20:16.200 Yeah. 00:20:16.200 --> 00:20:17.200 Like the specifics. 00:20:17.200 --> 00:20:23.200 So I went into this pre-construction like gallery, like in 2018 or something. 00:20:23.200 --> 00:20:26.200 And I was like fully prepared to go in. 00:20:26.200 --> 00:20:30.200 And my sister and I were going to like invest on it, like in it together. 00:20:30.200 --> 00:20:32.200 And I walked into the like gallery. 00:20:32.200 --> 00:20:35.200 I was like, no, I don't think this is a good project. 00:20:35.200 --> 00:20:36.200 So I left. 00:20:36.200 --> 00:20:41.200 That project, it was on hold for like, it was 2018. 00:20:41.200 --> 00:20:43.200 It was like 2016. 00:20:43.200 --> 00:20:47.200 That project was on hold for two years and then they canceled it. 00:20:47.200 --> 00:20:51.200 So people that put money into that project didn't make any money. 00:20:51.200 --> 00:20:54.200 And for this project, I walked in with no intention of buying. 00:20:54.200 --> 00:20:55.200 I came out. 00:20:55.200 --> 00:20:56.200 I was like, I need to buy it. 00:20:56.200 --> 00:20:58.200 And then, so like, I went home to Frank. 00:20:58.200 --> 00:21:00.200 I was like, we need to buy this project. 00:21:00.200 --> 00:21:03.200 I don't know why I didn't look at the financials, but we need to buy it. 00:21:03.200 --> 00:21:04.200 Yeah. 00:21:04.200 --> 00:21:09.200 And I was so like upset because I would ask her all these like normal questions and she wouldn't be able to answer any of them. 00:21:09.200 --> 00:21:14.200 Like I just asked her even basic stuff like, Oh, like what are the comparable prices? 00:21:14.200 --> 00:21:16.200 Or like, what's the, I don't know. 00:21:16.200 --> 00:21:19.200 I don't remember what questions I asked, but they were like a checklist. 00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:21.200 I just like found online or something. 00:21:21.200 --> 00:21:22.200 Yeah. 00:21:22.200 --> 00:21:30.200 So like very anecdotal experience is like, so back when I was growing up in Vancouver and my parents bought real estate, 00:21:30.200 --> 00:21:34.200 like they just bought a house when everything was like going up and all of their friends were waiting. 00:21:34.200 --> 00:21:36.200 So they were kept waiting. 00:21:36.200 --> 00:21:37.200 They kept waiting. 00:21:37.200 --> 00:21:41.200 And for the 20, for the last 20 years, the prices just kept on going up. 00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:45.200 And so like looking back, it's like waiting is never good. 00:21:45.200 --> 00:21:49.200 And when we bought the Toronto condo, it was the prices at the highest it's ever been. 00:21:49.200 --> 00:21:53.200 So we were thinking like, there's no way that it's going to go higher. 00:21:53.200 --> 00:21:54.200 Right. 00:21:54.200 --> 00:21:57.200 But if you look at the prices now, it just, it keeps on going up. 00:21:57.200 --> 00:22:01.200 So, but again, like that's my anecdotal experience. 00:22:01.200 --> 00:22:04.200 It probably doesn't work for everyone. 00:22:04.200 --> 00:22:08.200 It's somehow has to happen to like work out for us this time. 00:22:08.200 --> 00:22:10.200 But well, if you, um, so I actually looked at studies on this. 00:22:10.200 --> 00:22:18.200 If you look at the comparison between like stocks, bonds and real estate bonds, basically underperform. 00:22:18.200 --> 00:22:21.200 You should never really buy bonds until you're nearing retirements. 00:22:21.200 --> 00:22:23.200 And you really need that for us this time. 00:22:23.200 --> 00:22:26.200 But well, if you, um, so I actually looked at studies on this. 00:22:26.200 --> 00:22:33.200 If you look at the comparison between like stocks, bonds and real estate bonds, basically underperform. 00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:38.200 You should never really buy bonds until you're nearing retirements and you really need that stable income. 00:22:38.200 --> 00:22:40.200 And even then there's like different types of bonds. 00:22:40.200 --> 00:22:43.200 It gets pretty complex because bond prices can go up and down. 00:22:43.200 --> 00:22:46.200 Companies can go bankrupt and that's built into the price. 00:22:46.200 --> 00:22:52.200 Um, but essentially, uh, bonds are safer depending on if you know what you're doing. 00:22:52.200 --> 00:22:53.200 Essentially, there are different types of bonds. 00:22:53.200 --> 00:22:54.200 Some are safer than others. 00:22:54.200 --> 00:22:58.200 Uh, but the returns are never as high compared to real estate or stock. 00:22:58.200 --> 00:23:03.200 And then stock, whenever people mention stock, it's usually indexed against S and P 500. 00:23:03.200 --> 00:23:06.200 That's what you look at for stock performance. 00:23:06.200 --> 00:23:11.200 Uh, and so stocks have much greater fluctuations than real estate. 00:23:11.200 --> 00:23:14.200 Um, but they actually perform relatively the same. 00:23:14.200 --> 00:23:18.200 Uh, so for real estate, the performance is a lot more steady. 00:23:18.200 --> 00:23:22.200 So it goes up kind of steadily where a stock has kind of greater fluctuations. 00:23:22.200 --> 00:23:27.200 Uh, but then there's also other things to consider like, well, for stocks, you have to reinvest your stock. 00:23:27.200 --> 00:23:29.200 Um, and then also there's, there's really good liquidity. 00:23:29.200 --> 00:23:31.200 So you can take your money out whenever you want for real estate. 00:23:31.200 --> 00:23:33.200 Obviously you're typically leveraged. 00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:35.200 Like you do like a down payment of 20%. 00:23:36.200 --> 00:23:39.200 Um, and then you have your interest rates, which you can do fixed or variable. 00:23:39.200 --> 00:23:45.200 And then with like interest rates going crazy right now, a lot of people who had fixed rates are pretty happy. 00:23:45.200 --> 00:23:47.200 Um, either beginning of this year or last year. 00:23:47.200 --> 00:23:50.200 And I guess, fun fact about that. 00:23:50.200 --> 00:23:59.200 If you took out a 30 year mortgage last year at like two to 3%, um, because you can actually make money on that now because interest rates are so high. 00:23:59.200 --> 00:24:01.200 So you can borrow against your house. 00:24:01.200 --> 00:24:04.200 You're basically getting free money, like free guaranteed money. 00:24:04.200 --> 00:24:09.200 Cause, um, but not a lot of people are able to do that. 00:24:09.200 --> 00:24:21.200 Uh, but also it's like the same house, like a $600,000 house, uh, is going to be the same mortgage payment as like a $400,000 house now because of how high interest rates have gone up. 00:24:21.200 --> 00:24:25.200 Uh, I don't know the exact numbers, but it's like the interest rates are still going up. 00:24:25.200 --> 00:24:26.200 Like they haven't stopped yet. 00:24:26.200 --> 00:24:27.200 Yeah. 00:24:27.200 --> 00:24:35.200 I think a lot of the mistake that people make in terms of like real estate or when they're buying their first house, it's like, they look at all the calculations there. 00:24:35.200 --> 00:24:37.200 They're like, Oh, let's wait, let's wait. 00:24:37.200 --> 00:24:47.200 But typically for your first home, you shouldn't look at the cost of like, it's not your first home should never be an investment and you shouldn't think of it as an investment. 00:24:47.200 --> 00:24:51.200 And I see a lot of people on TikTok making that comparison, like doing calculations. 00:24:51.200 --> 00:24:53.200 Like, no, your first home is a home. 00:24:53.200 --> 00:24:57.200 Like you living it, whatever the cost is, that's for you to live in. 00:24:57.200 --> 00:25:03.200 Now, if you're buying a second home for an investment property, yes, you have to do all the calculation on that and treat it like an investment. 00:25:03.200 --> 00:25:15.200 And like, there's a saying that, um, my dad has always said it's called, which is like, you need a home to be able to like, as like your foundation as a base. 00:25:15.200 --> 00:25:22.200 If you don't have that base, if you're renting, like, it's almost like, like, I don't want to say it's like more like feng shui stuff. 00:25:22.200 --> 00:25:27.200 But just like, if you don't have that base and foundation, you're not going to be able to build upon it. 00:25:27.200 --> 00:25:30.200 So a home base is really, really important. 00:25:30.200 --> 00:25:37.200 Yeah, I think there's other considerations to like if you're still planning to move around, you're still like early in your career. 00:25:37.200 --> 00:25:39.200 Like for us, we moved to so many different cities. 00:25:39.200 --> 00:25:44.200 And if we had a home, it would have been really annoying to like, rent it out or sell it or do whatever. 00:25:44.200 --> 00:25:50.200 Um, like we actually were considering buying in Chicago and luckily we didn't because Chicago winners are absolutely brutal. 00:25:51.200 --> 00:25:54.200 Uh, and also we wouldn't have made nearly as much money living there. 00:25:55.200 --> 00:25:57.200 Um, I mean, I think things work out for a reason. 00:25:57.200 --> 00:26:02.200 Like we thought at the time that like, Oh no, like it's not going to work out. 00:26:02.200 --> 00:26:07.200 Like we actually found a house that I really liked and I was going to buy it, but Frank just wasn't into it. 00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:11.200 And I was like so sad, but in hindsight, it was like, it worked out for the best. 00:26:11.200 --> 00:26:14.200 Yeah. So Annie's always really been into real estate. 00:26:14.200 --> 00:26:23.200 Uh, I've always been more into stocks and crypto and back then the first couple of brokerages had terrible UIs. 00:26:23.200 --> 00:26:28.200 I remember E-Trade was huge growing up and I remember logging into E-Trade thinking like, wow, this is trash. 00:26:28.200 --> 00:26:30.200 Like I don't want to use this at all. 00:26:30.200 --> 00:26:33.200 But yeah, like nowadays it's way easier to invest. 00:26:33.200 --> 00:26:35.200 Um, so like recently we both got Moo Moo. 00:26:35.200 --> 00:26:37.200 We got a bunch of free stocks from that. 00:26:37.200 --> 00:26:40.200 And so I never invested before meeting Frank. 00:26:40.200 --> 00:26:43.200 And I remember like going to the States for the first time. 00:26:43.200 --> 00:26:46.200 And we got into a relationship and you were like, do you have a Roth IRA? 00:26:46.200 --> 00:26:49.200 And I was like, what the heck is a Roth IRA? 00:26:49.200 --> 00:26:53.200 Um, and then, so he set me up with a brokerage and I remember just being so confused. 00:26:53.200 --> 00:27:02.200 It was so hard to sign up that I had to have Frank sign up for me because it was like all the like little fine prints was so little. 00:27:02.200 --> 00:27:05.200 I'm, I'm just like, I'm going to like sign my life away. 00:27:05.200 --> 00:27:07.200 I like, I'm going to lose all this money. 00:27:07.200 --> 00:27:08.200 I don't know anything. 00:27:08.200 --> 00:27:09.200 I don't even know how to get started. 00:27:09.200 --> 00:27:10.200 So I have Frank do it for me. 00:27:10.200 --> 00:27:15.200 But now I feel like, so we signed up for Moo Moo recently and the UI was just really clear. 00:27:15.200 --> 00:27:21.200 They only ask you for a few like questions, your social insurance number name, full name, blah, blah, blah. 00:27:21.200 --> 00:27:23.200 You have to be a U.S. citizen. 00:27:23.200 --> 00:27:27.200 I think that was a lot easier to get started with than some of the older brokerages. 00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:37.200 Yeah, I think a lot of this, they're trying to streamline it nowadays, like before they'd ask you so many questions, but they also had no incentive to make the UI better. 00:27:37.200 --> 00:27:39.200 Whereas like now there's way more competition. 00:27:39.200 --> 00:27:45.200 Not only do they make it easier, you also get a bunch of free money for signing up, which was never a thing before. 00:27:45.200 --> 00:27:49.200 You can get up to 15 free stocks by signing up for Moo Moo with the link in my description. 00:27:49.200 --> 00:27:55.200 I'm surprised that other brokerages aren't doing it as well to like give more lucrative sign up bonuses. 00:27:55.200 --> 00:27:57.200 Because right now inflation is like insane. 00:27:57.200 --> 00:27:59.200 I've never seen inflation this high in my life. 00:27:59.200 --> 00:28:03.200 And like not only is inflation bad in like U.S. and Canada, but around the world. 00:28:03.200 --> 00:28:07.200 Like the British pound is at its lowest point in its entire history. 00:28:07.200 --> 00:28:10.200 I feel like this is actually the best time to get in. 00:28:11.200 --> 00:28:14.200 That's debatable because it's like it's you can't really time these things. 00:28:14.200 --> 00:28:15.200 Yeah. 00:28:15.200 --> 00:28:17.200 And so like everyone's kind of fleeing to the U.S. dollar. 00:28:17.200 --> 00:28:19.200 U.S. dollar values continually going up. 00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:21.200 Everything else is continually going down. 00:28:21.200 --> 00:28:27.200 Like if you look at all the other currencies, I don't know about the Chinese RMB though. 00:28:27.200 --> 00:28:29.200 I think they're actually doing decent. 00:28:29.200 --> 00:28:30.200 They're doing good. 00:28:30.200 --> 00:28:36.200 And they're taking over a lot of like the reserved currency in a lot of developing nations. 00:28:36.200 --> 00:28:37.200 And this is really funny. 00:28:37.200 --> 00:28:43.200 I'm going to get hate for this because like my dad consumes a lot of Chinese media 00:28:43.200 --> 00:28:46.200 to the point where like Frank and I are like, that's weird. 00:28:46.200 --> 00:28:48.200 And like, you know, Chinese propaganda. 00:28:48.200 --> 00:28:54.200 But in the beginning of this year, I made my dad make predictions for what is going to happen in 2022. 00:28:54.200 --> 00:29:01.200 And the things that he said, I was like, there is no way that any of those things are going to come true. 00:29:01.200 --> 00:29:05.200 But now that I looked at his predictions and like almost all of them have come true. 00:29:05.200 --> 00:29:11.200 Or joking, like we should make my dad make predictions for like what stocks to invest in the future. 00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:15.200 Yeah, so I think that like the interesting part. 00:29:15.200 --> 00:29:18.200 So we mostly consume like Western media. 00:29:18.200 --> 00:29:20.200 And then Annie's dad, he'll consume all media. 00:29:20.200 --> 00:29:26.200 He'll consume like Western media, Chinese media, just try to get different sources. 00:29:26.200 --> 00:29:32.200 And I think that's like, you have to realize that each side has its propaganda, like everything's propaganda. 00:29:32.200 --> 00:29:36.200 But then if you get both sides, then you can kind of make your own decision on like what's real or not. 00:29:36.200 --> 00:29:43.200 In terms of like what people should do, it's really, we're in unprecedented times like that. 00:29:43.200 --> 00:29:45.200 I feel like that word gets thrown around a lot. 00:29:45.200 --> 00:29:49.200 But people think that there might be a collapse in Europe. 00:29:49.200 --> 00:29:56.200 So a lot of the British pensions and retirement funds, they're actually tied up in these kind of speculative investments. 00:29:56.200 --> 00:30:08.200 So like how these things work and how they get leveraged and how people get liquidated, essentially, is let's say I sell Annie some debt. 00:30:08.200 --> 00:30:13.200 Like she wants to get a mortgage or not even a mortgage, just say a small loan, I give her $5. 00:30:13.200 --> 00:30:21.200 But then what ends up happening is then I package up her debts with a bunch of other people's debts and then sell it as a security. 00:30:21.200 --> 00:30:27.200 And then people can then make bets on whether Annie and all these other people will pay back their debt or not. 00:30:28.200 --> 00:30:30.200 And then other people can then make debts on that. 00:30:30.200 --> 00:30:33.200 And it's like a daisy chain of people betting on certain outcomes. 00:30:33.200 --> 00:30:34.200 It becomes very convoluted. 00:30:34.200 --> 00:30:41.200 There's a bunch of like ratings that go into it as well, which is also kind of sketchy because you can package a bunch of bad debt. 00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:44.200 Let's say like Annie's actually a homeless person who doesn't have a job. 00:30:44.200 --> 00:30:47.200 And there's no, realistically, she's not going to be able to pay back the debt. 00:30:47.200 --> 00:30:51.200 And, but they'll package all this garbage and say like, oh, this is triple A rated. 00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:52.200 Super sick. 00:30:52.200 --> 00:30:53.200 Very diversified. 00:30:53.200 --> 00:30:54.200 Yeah, like you're super diversified. 00:30:54.200 --> 00:30:58.200 All this garbage somehow makes like a good investment. 00:30:58.200 --> 00:31:04.200 And this is a very simplified version of what happened during the 2008 housing crash. 00:31:04.200 --> 00:31:07.200 So they packaged a bunch of bad home loans. 00:31:07.200 --> 00:31:16.200 And I hear nowadays the same thing has happened with car loans, even though car loans, that market is much, much smaller than the housing market ever was. 00:31:16.200 --> 00:31:18.200 But this kind of thing is still going on. 00:31:18.200 --> 00:31:20.200 Like there are more regulations. 00:31:20.200 --> 00:31:21.200 There's more scrutiny. 00:31:21.200 --> 00:31:23.200 There's more laws surrounding it. 00:31:23.200 --> 00:31:25.200 But people are always greedy. 00:31:25.200 --> 00:31:27.200 They haven't really learned their lessons. 00:31:27.200 --> 00:31:30.200 A lot of people don't know what they're actually putting their money into. 00:31:30.200 --> 00:31:33.200 Even these like large sovereign funds, people's pension funds. 00:31:33.200 --> 00:31:39.200 Like there's, it seems like Britain is not having a good time because they also don't know how to make correct policies. 00:31:39.200 --> 00:31:44.200 So they're doing tax cuts for the rich, which is exactly what you're not supposed to do. 00:31:44.200 --> 00:31:48.200 Like they're basically getting less money into the government. 00:31:48.200 --> 00:31:51.200 So they're going to have to print more money, which will make inflation even worse. 00:31:51.200 --> 00:31:58.200 And instead of cutting back on spending and, you know, unpopular, but they're supposed to raise taxes to bring in more money. 00:31:58.200 --> 00:32:00.200 And they're supposed to really cut down on their spending. 00:32:00.200 --> 00:32:06.200 But instead they're expanding it because that's usually what conservative governments do. 00:32:06.200 --> 00:32:11.200 They do tax cuts for the rich because they're rich people's like blackies essentially. 00:32:11.200 --> 00:32:12.200 Yeah. 00:32:12.200 --> 00:32:22.200 Which like, okay, if you're a rich person, fiscally it makes more sense for you to be Republican or conservative or whatever right-leaning party because they benefit you more. 00:32:22.200 --> 00:32:24.200 They just straight up just help you out more. 00:32:24.200 --> 00:32:29.200 That's the reason why older people are typically more conservative because people vote in their self-interest. 00:32:29.200 --> 00:32:30.200 It makes sense. 00:32:30.200 --> 00:32:35.200 And typically younger people are more democratic or left-leaning because they don't have that wealth yet. 00:32:35.200 --> 00:32:37.200 They don't, they're still building up to it. 00:32:37.200 --> 00:32:39.200 And they actually did a study on this as well. 00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:45.200 Whereas the older you get, the more conservative you'll be because it also correlates with you becoming wealthier. 00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:51.200 But that trend is actually reversing or not reversing, but it's not happening anymore because young people are not getting wealthy. 00:32:51.200 --> 00:32:52.200 They're not making as much money. 00:32:52.200 --> 00:32:53.200 Yeah. 00:32:53.200 --> 00:33:00.200 They're not able to, so they're still left-leaning because they're still trying to vote in their own self-interest of being poor essentially. 00:33:00.200 --> 00:33:01.200 Right. 00:33:01.200 --> 00:33:09.200 So like if you are poor, it makes more sense to be left-leaning because left-leaning means more like you're more socialist essentially. 00:33:09.200 --> 00:33:10.200 Right. 00:33:10.200 --> 00:33:12.200 You want policies to benefit more of like everyone. 00:33:12.200 --> 00:33:15.200 Whereas like if you're more right-leaning, you just want policies to benefit rich people. 00:33:15.200 --> 00:33:24.200 So it's like from a basic like financial, economic standpoint, that's disregarding all of like the political, humanitarian, all that other stuff. 00:33:24.200 --> 00:33:27.200 From a purely like money perspective, that's what makes sense. 00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:33.200 And yet so many people like don't, you know, they care, people say they care about a lot of things, but like- 00:33:33.200 --> 00:33:35.200 At the core, it's just about money. 00:33:35.200 --> 00:33:36.200 Yeah. 00:33:36.200 --> 00:33:37.200 It's mostly money. 00:33:37.200 --> 00:33:41.200 Like if you even look at how people vote, a lot of it hinges on the economy. 00:33:41.200 --> 00:33:49.200 It's like 60 to 70% of public perception of the current administration is based on like how the stock market is doing, how your 401ks are doing. 00:33:49.200 --> 00:33:53.200 Do you have enough money to pay for rents, like pay for groceries, live? 00:33:53.200 --> 00:34:17.200 Like a lot of people, I think, especially in developed nations that where there's a lot of wealth going on, people tend to argue about a lot of social policies more or like they focus really deep on fringe issues that are kind of, I think, manufactured to a certain extent to like drive divisiveness to kind of pit us against each other. 00:34:17.200 --> 00:34:25.200 But like, I think a lot of people assume that Republicans are like the far right parties or either side. 00:34:25.200 --> 00:34:34.200 It's like when things are going bad, people look to really authoritarian or like strong leaders to like fix things, even though they kind of just make it worse a lot of the time. 00:34:34.200 --> 00:34:42.200 So it's, I don't know, it's hard to say like where everything is going, but it definitely seems like a lot of nations are in the decline. 00:34:42.200 --> 00:34:46.200 And like the U.S. I thought has been in decline for like the past couple of years. 00:34:46.200 --> 00:34:50.200 But again, when you compare it to these other nations, like they're all, they're doing a lot worse. 00:34:50.200 --> 00:34:54.200 And Japan actually never recovered from the 2008 crash. I don't think they ever hit their peak again. 00:34:54.200 --> 00:34:58.200 So Japan has actually been in a decline also because of like population. 00:34:58.200 --> 00:35:00.200 They have too many old people, not enough young people. 00:35:00.200 --> 00:35:08.200 Yeah, I mean, I think the U.S. is actually headed towards that point where there's going past it. 00:35:08.200 --> 00:35:18.200 I forget what exact year, but the projections are like, oh, there's actually going to be more people passing away or retiring than there are new people entering the workforce. 00:35:18.200 --> 00:35:21.200 And so that's why they predict like pensions are going to run out. 00:35:21.200 --> 00:35:29.200 Yeah. Didn't Elon Musk say that like the declining of like population is going to be a more of a threat than like global warming? 00:35:29.200 --> 00:35:34.200 I mean, no, he's wrong. That's only true for nations that are already on top. 00:35:34.200 --> 00:35:41.200 So like countries like the U.S. that have already developed and are kind of on the decline. 00:35:41.200 --> 00:35:47.200 But for countries like India and Africa, where a lot of their population are actually still young, like they're going to be on the rise. 00:35:47.200 --> 00:35:54.200 So that's why a lot of nations are trying to like kind of insert themselves into those countries and continents. 00:35:54.200 --> 00:36:02.200 So it's it's more he's wrong in the sense that like it's not everyone. 00:36:02.200 --> 00:36:11.200 For Western countries, for developed nations, that is going to be a problem because there's not going to be enough workers to replace that tax income and support all these older people. 00:36:11.200 --> 00:36:17.200 But for countries like Africa, that's great because most of their population is still young, like their curve. 00:36:17.200 --> 00:36:22.200 They have a lot of people, potential workers, and they have a lot of industrialization that can still happen. 00:36:22.200 --> 00:36:26.200 A lot of modernization in a lot of African countries. 00:36:26.200 --> 00:36:35.200 And then India is kind of, you know, they have the most people and they're I'm not sure exactly how far into the rise they are, but it still seems like they're going up. 00:36:35.200 --> 00:36:39.200 And now like China is actually getting too expensive for a lot of manufacturing. 00:36:39.200 --> 00:36:46.200 So India is now taking, I think, one to 10 percent of iPhone manufacturing, which is like the first time it's ever happened. 00:36:46.200 --> 00:36:52.200 And so India is now like cheaper than China for a lot of even high end tech goods. 00:36:52.200 --> 00:37:00.200 I hear that the medicine is also industry is also really good as well, like especially compared to the U.S. where our health care is all messed up. 00:37:00.200 --> 00:37:13.200 Do you see in like the next 50 to like 100 years that like, let's say, U.S. falls, China becomes number one and then eventually China will be overtaken by like India or like Africa at some point in the future? 00:37:13.200 --> 00:37:20.200 I would say Africa is still really far out. Like I don't see that happening very quickly, but I definitely think that the U.S. is going to fall from number one. 00:37:20.200 --> 00:37:27.200 China is going to be on top for a while. It's hard to say who's going to overtake China because like. 00:37:27.200 --> 00:37:40.200 Basically, when you rise, you're guaranteed to fall. No one remains number one forever, like within your lifetime, maybe because it takes a long time for countries to kind of lose that top spot. 00:37:40.200 --> 00:37:50.200 Like when you're the reserve currency, which is the U.S. currency is right now, you'll see that everyone going fleeing towards it, which is why the U.S. dollar is still going up. 00:37:50.200 --> 00:37:56.200 Other countries currencies are going down. So you're able to print more debts and you basically have a ton of advantages. 00:37:56.200 --> 00:38:02.200 So and you're able to kind of snowball that into more advantages until like the decline, which is kind of what we're seeing. 00:38:02.200 --> 00:38:14.200 But as far as like who will overtake China, I can't even begin to imagine because I think there's going to be a really large global shakeup when that happens. 00:38:14.200 --> 00:38:22.200 I think their current standing of like a lot of countries now, it's hard to say where they will be after the conflict. 00:38:22.200 --> 00:38:34.200 I do think there will be some sort of conflict, but it's kind of crazy because like it feels like there's a lot of things coming together that are all really bad for just the stock market in general these days. 00:38:34.200 --> 00:38:44.200 Because like really high inflation, really high interest rates, all of these global disasters happening now, like there's a hurricane that's sweeping through the southeast right now. 00:38:44.200 --> 00:38:49.200 I feel like there's a natural disaster that happens to like Texas and Florida like every single year. 00:38:49.200 --> 00:38:54.200 And they're getting worse, right? It's not just hurricanes, but there's also more forest fires. 00:38:54.200 --> 00:39:04.200 There's more floods. There's more tornadoes like there's earthquakes, mountain or volcanoes erupting, like all sorts of stuff is happening. 00:39:04.200 --> 00:39:10.200 And then combine that with kind of increased global tensions. 00:39:10.200 --> 00:39:15.200 So obviously the tensions between Russia and Ukraine haven't really simmered down. 00:39:15.200 --> 00:39:23.200 If anything, they've continued to escalate where now there's talk about like Russia maybe using nukes like who knows like what's going on there. 00:39:23.200 --> 00:39:31.200 So it seems like there's a lot of things that could make the future seems less certain than it does before. 00:39:31.200 --> 00:39:38.200 I'm not sure if it's actually that way or we're just getting a lot of bad stuff like the pandemic that happened in the past couple of years as well. 00:39:38.200 --> 00:39:52.200 Yeah. I mean, I think the thing that I feel like is kind of alarming is just like how quickly the rich people are accumulating wealth and like how quickly the gap is happening in the states. 00:39:52.200 --> 00:39:56.200 I'm not sure about the rest of the rest of the rest of the world, but it just like really sucks. 00:39:56.200 --> 00:40:00.200 And I feel like that's going to like cause a lot of issues in the states. 00:40:00.200 --> 00:40:07.200 Yeah. And it only accelerates because if you think of capitalism, the best way to make money is to already have it. 00:40:07.200 --> 00:40:12.200 And they like people have done very rigorous analysis of this as well. 00:40:12.200 --> 00:40:20.200 Like there's a book where a guy basically makes like, hey, you know, let's let's see how wages keep up with just compared to having money. 00:40:20.200 --> 00:40:22.200 And essentially wages do not keep up because of inflation. 00:40:22.200 --> 00:40:28.200 Like wages very rarely match inflation unless you're a CEO, in which case you're already super wealthy and connected anyway. 00:40:28.200 --> 00:40:30.200 So it doesn't matter really. 00:40:30.200 --> 00:40:42.200 But essentially having capital will always beat like income because of the way it's taxed, because of just math, how you can snowball your wealth into more wealth. 00:40:42.200 --> 00:40:48.200 And during the pandemic, like billionaires got way more wealthy than everyone else. 00:40:48.200 --> 00:40:51.200 Like rich people made out like a killing. 00:40:51.200 --> 00:40:52.200 And it's it's strange. 00:40:52.200 --> 00:40:55.200 Well, I guess it's not strange because this is how the system works. 00:40:55.200 --> 00:41:03.200 But when you're already wealthy, regardless if the market is going down or up, you kind of benefit because if it's going down, you're able to scoop up assets at a cheap price. 00:41:03.200 --> 00:41:05.200 When it's going up, you have more assets. 00:41:05.200 --> 00:41:08.200 So your net worth is that much higher. 00:41:08.200 --> 00:41:21.200 And a lot of people, even billionaires, have come out to say that wealth inequality is the most debilitating or most disastrous thing that can happen to everyone. 00:41:21.200 --> 00:41:27.200 Because I think a lot of rich people think that like, oh, who cares if the environment gets destroyed or who cares if there's nuclear war? 00:41:27.200 --> 00:41:29.200 Like I have my bunker or whatever. 00:41:29.200 --> 00:41:35.200 I think that's a very just dumb way to think about it, because you can't just you can't just abandon everyone. 00:41:35.200 --> 00:41:37.200 It's like, what was that? 00:41:37.200 --> 00:41:40.200 Don't look up where all the rich people escape in this spaceship. 00:41:40.200 --> 00:41:42.200 And then they just get killed by these aliens. 00:41:42.200 --> 00:41:44.200 It's like, no, it's not how things work. 00:41:44.200 --> 00:41:51.200 Yeah. And Frank was looking into like what like, oh, to prep for like a nuclear winter. 00:41:51.200 --> 00:41:53.200 And he like sent me this article. 00:41:53.200 --> 00:41:55.200 I was like, oh, we should like buy all this food. 00:41:55.200 --> 00:42:01.200 And I looked at the article and I was like, you need to have enough food for like one to four years. 00:42:01.200 --> 00:42:02.200 And I looked at the food. 00:42:02.200 --> 00:42:04.200 It cost like $70. 00:42:04.200 --> 00:42:12.200 Oh, no, $250 for a seven day supply, which means it's going to cost like $200,000 to like prep for four years. 00:42:12.200 --> 00:42:17.200 I'm like, might as well just give up at that point and just be like, yeah, if there's a nuclear winter, we're just all going to die. 00:42:17.200 --> 00:42:21.200 Yeah, I mean, it's like realistically, you won't be able to survive it. 00:42:21.200 --> 00:42:24.200 Even if you have the food, it's like, well, other people are going to come and steal your food. 00:42:24.200 --> 00:42:26.200 They're going to fight you for it. 00:42:26.200 --> 00:42:30.200 And so I was like, not only do you need the food, you also need munitions. 00:42:30.200 --> 00:42:32.200 And then you also need an air filtration system. 00:42:32.200 --> 00:42:38.200 And then you also need a way to like recycle your water and grow crops and like do all this stuff. 00:42:38.200 --> 00:42:39.200 It's an entire endeavor. 00:42:39.200 --> 00:42:45.200 And even if you're extremely wealthy and you have all these things, like it's, is that even a life worth living? 00:42:45.200 --> 00:42:50.200 It's just no sunlight, just kind of stuck in a bunker for who knows how many years. 00:42:50.200 --> 00:42:51.200 Yeah. 00:42:51.200 --> 00:42:58.200 That's like assuming that you live long enough to like see sunlight again, like otherwise it's not even worth it. 00:42:58.200 --> 00:42:59.200 Yeah. 00:42:59.200 --> 00:43:08.200 Um, but all in all kind of to wrap up this episode, things look kind of grim now, but you will want to stay the course. 00:43:08.200 --> 00:43:11.200 You'll want to continue dollar cost averaging into your investments. 00:43:11.200 --> 00:43:13.200 You want to hold for as long as possible. 00:43:13.200 --> 00:43:24.200 So if you invested and pretty much any 10 year stretch of the entire existence of the S and P 500, there's like a 10% chance that you would have actually lost money. 00:43:24.200 --> 00:43:29.200 It's like very unlikely, uh, basically to lose money over the longterm and that's 10 years. 00:43:29.200 --> 00:43:41.200 So your investment horizon should be 20 years, 30 years, as long as possible, basically until you retire, uh, not only for the tax benefits, but also because the longer you hold, typically the higher it'll go up. 00:43:41.200 --> 00:43:44.200 People always say like past performance doesn't indicate future performance. 00:43:44.200 --> 00:43:45.200 Uh, and that is true. 00:43:45.200 --> 00:43:47.200 Like we don't know what's going to happen in the future. 00:43:47.200 --> 00:43:55.200 Um, Ukraine actually just is applying for NATO acceptance or ascendancy. 00:43:55.200 --> 00:44:00.200 Uh, I don't know what the correct term for, but basically trying to get into NATO and NATO has a defense clause. 00:44:00.200 --> 00:44:03.200 If any of our countries are attacked, we have to provide military supports. 00:44:03.200 --> 00:44:11.200 Uh, I think a lot of the European countries are actually against it because they don't want to fight a war against Russia. 00:44:11.200 --> 00:44:12.200 People don't want to escalate. 00:44:12.200 --> 00:44:20.200 And even in the U S Biden, whenever Biden makes a statement saying like, Oh, Russia can't do X, Y, Z, or China can't do X, Y, Z. 00:44:20.200 --> 00:44:24.200 The white house immediately walks it back because they don't want to increase tensions. 00:44:24.200 --> 00:44:31.200 And it's kind of interesting cause I see a lot of people, a lot of nations really kind of turtling up. 00:44:31.200 --> 00:44:33.200 They're saying like, well, stop giving foreign aid. 00:44:33.200 --> 00:44:34.200 Like what about people at home? 00:44:34.200 --> 00:44:39.200 What about like, even in this case, the hurricane victims, like stop giving aid to Ukraine. 00:44:39.200 --> 00:44:44.200 Like we need to help people in Florida or in the, these states that are affected by the hurricane. 00:44:44.200 --> 00:44:52.200 Um, but as an individual, all you can really do is continue dollar cost averaging, continue to hold. 00:44:53.200 --> 00:44:58.200 And there's, there's not a whole lot more you can do. 00:44:58.200 --> 00:45:00.200 You can try to have other income streams. 00:45:00.200 --> 00:45:02.200 Um, you can continue to increase your skills. 00:45:02.200 --> 00:45:11.200 I think there's really, there's several aspects to investing or just having a good financial status. 00:45:11.200 --> 00:45:15.200 And like one of them obviously is to improve yourself as much as you can. 00:45:15.200 --> 00:45:20.200 Uh, job hop, gain skills, make as much money as possible, negotiate, have leverage there. 00:45:21.200 --> 00:45:23.200 Uh, the second one is to live below your means. 00:45:23.200 --> 00:45:26.200 So don't go buying stuff you don't need. 00:45:26.200 --> 00:45:29.200 Don't spend all of your money wastefully. 00:45:29.200 --> 00:45:30.200 It doesn't mean you can't take vacations. 00:45:30.200 --> 00:45:35.200 It doesn't mean you can't buy nice things or go out once in a while, but don't just spend all of your paycheck. 00:45:35.200 --> 00:45:37.200 Like we did when we were kids on chocolate. 00:45:37.200 --> 00:45:41.200 Yeah. I mean, I feel like I started saving like much earlier than you. 00:45:41.200 --> 00:45:45.200 And like, by the time I met you, I had like 60 K saved up already. 00:45:45.200 --> 00:45:50.200 But I think my life lesson is that I wish I had invested earlier. 00:45:50.200 --> 00:45:53.200 I wish I had like, that was what, uh, 10 years ago. 00:45:53.200 --> 00:46:01.200 If I had taken that money and put it into like, if I hadn't even known what SMP 500 was back then, I don't even know. 00:46:01.200 --> 00:46:04.200 I can't even imagine how much money that would be right now. 00:46:04.200 --> 00:46:04.200 Yeah. 00:46:04.200 --> 00:46:09.200 And then which kind of leads to the third point, which Annie already mentioned is you need to invest your money. 00:46:09.200 --> 00:46:16.200 Like just saving money and having it gain interest or savings at a bank, even if it's like 1%, that's nothing. 00:46:16.200 --> 00:46:23.200 And inflation will eat away your money or actually have less money in the future, even if the amount is higher because your money is worth less. 00:46:23.200 --> 00:46:33.200 And so you do need to invest it into productive assets or productive might not be the right word, but essentially assets that will be able to match or beat inflation. 00:46:33.200 --> 00:46:36.200 So like real estate has historically done really well. 00:46:36.200 --> 00:46:41.200 The stock market has historically done really well and bonds are typically not good. 00:46:41.200 --> 00:46:44.200 Uh, but if you're a bit older, they can be good. 00:46:44.200 --> 00:46:52.200 So it gets a bit more complex, but it's really like living a good life and being financially stable really comes down to those three steps. 00:46:52.200 --> 00:46:55.200 It's people make it seem way more complex than it actually is. 00:46:56.200 --> 00:46:58.200 Uh, and that's, that's really the gist of it. 00:46:58.200 --> 00:47:04.200 Yeah. So like to summarize one, make a lot of money to save your money and three, invest. 00:47:04.200 --> 00:47:05.200 Yeah. 00:47:05.200 --> 00:47:08.200 Yeah. And if you don't have a brokerage yet, you should sign up for me. 00:47:10.200 --> 00:47:12.200 All right. Thanks for watching everyone. 00:47:12.200 --> 00:47:17.200 I hope you enjoyed this episode of Frankly Speaking and we'll talk to you later. 00:47:17.200 --> 00:47:17.200 Bye.