Perpetual_head_scratching
00:00:00.000 | Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and I just wanted to check in because it's
00:00:04.160 | been a while.
00:00:05.600 | In this episode I want to talk about why I'm so positive that anybody can achieve anything
00:00:10.660 | they want due to all the strange, head-scratching things that are happening in this world.
00:00:16.800 | Here are three recent examples.
00:00:19.000 | 1.
00:00:20.120 | Felicity Huffman, the actress, gets 14 days in jail for paying someone $15,000 to boost
00:00:26.000 | her daughter's SAT score.
00:00:28.320 | Although as a parent I empathize with why Felicity did what she did, it just makes me
00:00:33.440 | believe that many more parents are now going to try and game the system to give their already
00:00:38.080 | privileged children a leg up.
00:00:40.680 | 14 days really is only 7 days because each day you serve, you get one day off for good
00:00:45.480 | behavior.
00:00:46.480 | Think about it, wouldn't you be willing to take a week's vacation in jail if you could
00:00:50.680 | set your kid up for life?
00:00:52.720 | I'm sure with the hyper-competitiveness today, some parents would probably be willing to
00:00:57.360 | spend a year in jail to help their kids.
00:01:00.160 | And speaking of parents, I met a whole bunch of parents this past weekend because it was
00:01:05.640 | our first parent-teacher-kids little playground get-together shindig.
00:01:10.680 | Raised a little bit of money and I got to see how other parents interact with their
00:01:14.520 | kids and how other kids interact in an open setting.
00:01:18.480 | And it was great.
00:01:19.480 | It was great to meet people, a lot of international parents.
00:01:22.480 | I would say at least 50% of the parents spoke another language so that really motivated
00:01:26.500 | me to speak more Mandarin at home.
00:01:29.640 | And the jury is still out on preschool.
00:01:30.880 | It's only been a couple of weeks, folks.
00:01:33.880 | But the initial reaction was preschool is where creativity goes to die.
00:01:39.800 | It's kind of a sad outlook where conformity begins and this is the start of how kids go
00:01:46.500 | through the system to enter these schools and these are the parents who are the ones
00:01:52.520 | who bribe their kids into these schools.
00:01:54.960 | But that's a pretty pessimistic way of looking at things.
00:01:57.760 | I'm still going to reserve judgment for preschool until I would say one or two more
00:02:02.920 | months and it's okay.
00:02:05.000 | It's a good place to learn.
00:02:06.760 | It's a good place to learn how to socialize and listen to instructions and so forth.
00:02:10.800 | But I'm not sure whether it's worth it or not.
00:02:13.560 | Okay, two.
00:02:14.680 | The second example, a recent example of why I believe anybody can achieve anything.
00:02:18.920 | Have you heard of this guy named Shane Gills?
00:02:22.120 | Well, he was recently hired along with a couple other cast members to join Saturday Night
00:02:27.200 | Live despite repeated racial slurs against Asians.
00:02:31.640 | He even called presidential candidate Andrew Yang a "Jew chink" on a podcast earlier
00:02:37.880 | in 2019.
00:02:39.400 | So this is not something that he was saying 5, 10, 20 years ago.
00:02:43.840 | It was just recent this year.
00:02:46.640 | So yet despite all this, he got one of the highest profile jobs on TV and will likely
00:02:52.360 | keep his job after his non-apology.
00:02:55.000 | He did write a note and posted on Twitter and said, "If I offended any of you guys,
00:02:59.800 | I'm sorry.
00:03:00.800 | I'm trying to push the boundaries, yada, yada, yada."
00:03:03.560 | So as someone who was called chink quite frequently while growing up in Virginia for high school
00:03:07.920 | and college, I've become desensitized to racial insults.
00:03:13.200 | When I hear this type of stuff, it just goes in one ear and out the other because that's
00:03:18.400 | just the way it is for minorities in America.
00:03:21.280 | And it's kind of sad.
00:03:22.680 | It is kind of sad, but the reality is I don't think anything is really going to change.
00:03:27.520 | I've been listening to this stuff for the past 20 something years.
00:03:31.840 | I came to the States when I was, what, 14 years old and I'm 42 years old now.
00:03:36.640 | I mean, that's a long time, folks.
00:03:39.920 | So if you are a target of racism or bullying, online bullying and so forth, you've got to
00:03:45.160 | find a way somehow to pay them no attention and keep on going no matter what.
00:03:50.360 | For me, I use racism as motivation, motivation to achieve financial independence.
00:03:55.800 | And I do believe one of the best solutions to racism is achieving financial independence
00:04:01.040 | because you are then beholden to nobody.
00:04:04.200 | If someone wants to come at you and tell you to do this, this and that and then say something
00:04:09.640 | bad about your ethnicity, well, if you're financially independent, you can just tell
00:04:12.840 | them to screw off.
00:04:14.560 | And then online, if someone's coming at you racially, I don't know, it just doesn't make
00:04:19.880 | any sense, especially if they still need a job and money to provide for their own lives.
00:04:25.160 | Because if you're financially independent, you can go to war quite easily and win if
00:04:31.760 | you choose.
00:04:33.320 | So folks, it's a rough world out there.
00:04:36.440 | Try to pay no attention or use racism and bullying to give yourself motivation to work
00:04:42.480 | a little bit harder and achieve financial independence because it is one of the best
00:04:46.920 | ways to live your life free and live the life the way you want.
00:04:51.680 | Okay, finally, number three, Andy Rubin, quote, the father of Android at Google.
00:04:58.260 | He got a 90 million severance package despite having some rather questionable relationships
00:05:04.520 | with multiple women at work, including a subordinate.
00:05:07.960 | He said he did nothing wrong, it was all consensual, while all the other women said he did do something
00:05:13.000 | wrong.
00:05:14.000 | So who knows the real truth other than he was asked to go and there's probably something
00:05:18.780 | going on there.
00:05:20.800 | And the point is, I still get people all the time saying that negotiating a severance is
00:05:25.040 | too good to be true.
00:05:27.220 | Despite very sketchy people who probably did something to violate company guidelines getting
00:05:31.700 | massive, massive severance packages all the darn time.
00:05:36.920 | 90 million dollars, folks.
00:05:39.560 | So please, you're fooling yourself if you feel like you don't deserve something you've
00:05:43.160 | worked hard for.
00:05:45.080 | People less worthy than you are getting everything every single day.
00:05:50.140 | It really is a mindset, folks.
00:05:51.840 | You need to believe you deserve to be rich.
00:05:54.180 | You need to believe that you deserve to get that promotion or that raise.
00:05:58.680 | You need to believe that you belong.
00:06:01.680 | And once you have that positive mindset, that strong money mindset, things are going to
00:06:06.240 | get much, much better for you.
00:06:08.400 | So what else is going on?
00:06:09.640 | Well, in the market, the S&P 500 yield was at one point higher than the 10-year bond
00:06:16.480 | yield.
00:06:17.480 | And that's really unique because the S&P 500 has historically shown a positive return of
00:06:24.360 | anywhere from 5.5% to 10% a year.
00:06:28.440 | And so if you've got that yield on top of that principal return, that is a really attractive
00:06:33.920 | proposition.
00:06:35.920 | And we've done a little study that shows that whenever you buy the S&P 500 when its
00:06:40.560 | yield is higher than the 10-year bond yield, you tend to do well.
00:06:45.000 | Moving on to real estate, my favorite asset class over the long term, things are a little
00:06:50.080 | bit of a conundrum right now because the 10-year bond yield has actually moved up over the
00:06:56.080 | past couple of weeks.
00:06:57.440 | It bottomed out at around 1.55%, and now it's back up to 1.9%.
00:07:02.680 | So that arbitrage of going long online savings account for 2.2% or 2.3% and then shorting
00:07:08.480 | the bond, Treasury bond fund, for example, IEF, has closed quite significantly.
00:07:15.320 | But don't worry, there are other arbitrage opportunities every single day, so you just
00:07:19.560 | got to go look.
00:07:21.280 | For real estate, I am seriously, seriously thinking about pulling the trigger and buying
00:07:26.940 | a nicer home or bigger home with panoramic ocean views because there are more opportunities
00:07:32.840 | right now.
00:07:34.280 | Rates are still low, inventory is high, and people are nervous.
00:07:39.120 | Now the question is whether we're going to roll over 10%, 15%, 20%, maybe more like in
00:07:46.000 | the past financial crisis.
00:07:48.480 | And I honestly think the answer is no.
00:07:50.600 | I really believe that real estate, again, real estate is local too, so you just can't
00:07:54.880 | take my word and apply it to every single market because we all live in different places.
00:08:00.360 | But at least here for San Francisco, I see at most a 10% drop and then it's kind of steady,
00:08:06.840 | stabilized and then off to the races again.
00:08:09.560 | That's just our market.
00:08:10.560 | You've got to look at your market and check out the inventory numbers because the inventory
00:08:13.860 | numbers definitely look like they're piling up in places like New York, Seattle, Portland,
00:08:19.760 | San Francisco, and Texas.
00:08:23.080 | So just be careful, but if you're looking to buy a property, you need to buy a property
00:08:27.440 | because your family is expanding or you just are too cramped in your place or you just
00:08:32.440 | want to acquire a street or whatever, it's worth looking aggressively right now from
00:08:37.540 | now through the end of the year because this is probably one of the weakest periods of
00:08:43.840 | real estate I've seen in a while other than the second half of 2018.
00:08:48.680 | All right folks, I hope you enjoyed this episode.
00:08:50.480 | I think I'm going to do more of these check-in type quick episodes with more real-time thoughts
00:08:55.960 | and things.
00:08:57.120 | So let me know if you like it, if you don't like it.
00:09:00.320 | Please leave a comment or a positive rating if you enjoyed this episode and I'll talk
00:09:04.360 | to you guys later.