Transcription
The Joe Rogan Experience.
"We tell everybody you're a finance guy. And did you start out in debt and then figured out how to get your [ __ ] together?"
"Yeah, exactly. I I was in college doing all the stupid American things, right? So, I got that unlimited student loan debt for a [ __ ] degree. I was going for music composition, so complete [ __ ] degree. Uh, maxing out every credit card. One of the first pieces of financial advice I got at 18 from the parents. Max out a credit card to get the piano I wanted. So that's smart."
"But parents,"
"Yeah, it's just the average American experience. You just max out a credit card. I I don't know if your parents taught you anything about personal finances, but most don't. It's it's bad. So I was just maxing out every credit card. Like everyone that comes on the show, like every American out there, we got $1.6 trillion in credit card debt in this country, by the way."
"Crazy amount. Crazy amount. Defaults are to like 7%. Which is insane. 7% of credit cards defaulting."
"That's crazy."
"Yeah. And"
"That is that that is really nuts. One out of 10 default."
"Yeah. It's absolutely insane. But we have more auto loan debt in this country than credit cards, too. This is even crazier cuz Americans, you know, they're big pickup trucks and everything. But, uh, either way, I was doing that. got my Nissan Ultima and you know thinking I was sick driving around and uh going into debt for that family debt everything. It was brutal. But it was the average American life. That's what people are going through every single day. And I finally got a wakeup call. I just I I was sitting in my shitty apartment that I could barely afford and I realized"
"The life I wanted to live just could not be sustained this way. I wanted to be a homeowner. It's the American dream. Pick a fence, all that [ __ ]."
"Yeah."
"Um but there's no way to do it with max out credit cards, private student loans, public student loans, everything. It was a mess. So, got a sales job, just started grinding it out, paying off the debt, fully funded emergency fund. That's what I try to teach people now. But, you know, again, the average American is kind of an idiot with money."
"Which is fair."
"Well, they're not informed, you know, which is one of the things I think your content really helps because a lot of people don't know what to do. Like, you're in debt. Like, how the [ __ ] do I get out of this? And"
"A lot of people they know are in debt. So, they don't have good advice. They're not going to get from their parents, right? So where, you know, they have to turn to somebody. And a lot of times like financial people online are very stiff and they're not enjoyable to listen to. But you talk [ __ ] and you're very vocal and it's like, 'Okay, I get this guy. I can relate to him.'"
"Tell me what to do. So there's a lot of folks out there that connect with you because of that, I think."
"Yeah. They call us the Jerry Springer finance,"
"Which I like. I take it. I take the ownership. They meant it as a dig at first, but I take it cuz it's fun."
"Yeah."
"People People don't go into financial topics because it's boring. Why are you clicking on a video of a dude just like sitting at the camera just like, 'You know, IRA or this?' No one's going to get into that, right?"
"The personal finance class, like 40% of states, which is or almost 40 states out of the 50 states require a personal finance class now, which is big progress over the last decade. But I mean, I was a piece of [ __ ] in high school. I'm sleeping through that class,"
"Right?"
"I'm I'm not going to listen to things there. I I I couldn't I could barely pass math. Um, school is just boring. So, people still aren't going to pick it up there. They want something a little more interesting to get into. And we give them that with the roast, the dramas, the relationship stuff. Couples episodes are my favorite because there's always financial financial stresses in relationship and um I don't know if that actually gets people into personal finances. That's the best. That's the best cuz we get a you know we get millions of views per episode on all platforms."
"It's kind of a Yeah, it's kind of a crime that they're not explaining to people when they're young and in high school how this could be a problem."
"Mhm."
"They're they're trying to set you up for life, but they're not setting you up for one of the biggest problems that most people face, credit card debt, and the big one, student loan debt, because that's the one you can't get away from."
"And there's a lot of people that are just go, 'Well, I guess I have to go to college.' And look, higher education's great. It's good to be educated. It's good to get an education."
"But if you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for an education that you aren't going to use at all, that might not be the best thing for you. And when you're [ __ ] 18, you really don't know, you know? You don't know what you want to do."
"Your parents don't know anything either."
"No, they might be [ __ ]. You might have idiot parents."
"Well, no. The average parent in America is go to any college to get any degree and borrow whatever it takes."
"Yeah."
"Cuz college is the answer to all."
"Because it used to be."
"Yeah."
"There used to be the way that you got a good paying job. You get out of college and hey, you've got a degree. Oh, you got your masters. Well, you're Oh, where you going to live? Where are you going to buy a house? Like you're going to be set. What they don't tell you is that you are going to be saddled down with insane amounts of debt and then that debt compounds."
"It keeps going. So like"
"I was reading this thing. Maybe you can tell me about what the actual numbers are, but they were talking about the uh average actual debt that you owed, but what you wind up paying what you actually wind up paying over the 20 years that it takes you to pay it off. It's [ __ ] crazy."
"Yeah,"
"It's substantially higher than the initial loan."
"Part of it is laziness, too. People get on like that 20-year payment plan or 40-year payment plan because they want to spend a little bit, you know, just a little bit less right now because I mean, it makes sense. You get out of college, you want to get an apartment, you want to live it up, you want to go on nice dates and trips, all that good stuff. So, you do the little minimum monthly payment, but I mean, think about it. I assume you have a mortgage, right? Do you have a mortgage?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. If you took that 30-year mortgage, but you're like, 'Okay, I want to pay a smaller amount now.' So, let's stretch it to 60 years. The interest and overall payment you're going to do is insane, right?"
"So, the student loan, a public student loan, it's actually a 10-year payment. That's the standard. It's a 10-year payment. You'll be done in 10, but people stretch it to the 20 years. The repayment assistance under Trump, the uh the RAP plan, that can be as little as 1% of your income on a monthly basis. That'll never be paid off."
"No,"
"Those people will have it forever. It'll be forgiven in 40 years. It says we'll see cuz you know it's new."
"But when people are doing that, they're going to have it forever. It's going to balloon and then they're going to complain about it when they chose not to just take the standard 10-year plan."
"I saw an article about people with social security, so they're they're retired and their money their social security money is getting docked."
"Mhm."
"It's getting docked because they're taking money out of that to pay for your student loans."
"Yeah. I mean, I'm"
"That obviously didn't work out for you because you're literally in debt from that student loan while you're retired from life."
"Yeah."
"Which is [ __ ] wild."
"It is. But I'll be candid. I'm starting to not have sympathy for the boomers. I'm really not. Best job market ever. Best stock market in the history of the world. Every single boomer, Gen X, whatever that's been on my show, they lived it up and spent all their money to live the lifestyle they wanted. And they didn't even set 10% aside a month. 10% aside. They had the best housing market, college, jobs. They were set up for everything. If they just put 5 to 10% a month aside in the stock market that they had that they had, they would be they would be multi-millionaires. Most of them would be multi-millionaires. But instead, we're in a situation where"
"I want a new BMW."
"Yeah. They can't pay their student loans. Social Security. 2033, that's when the funds dry. So, payments get cut by 25%."
"Yeah."
"2033 is when the funds dry up for Social Security."
"Yeah. The actual fund that's sitting there. So, every dollar that goes out is money that's coming in."
"That's projected 203."
"Well, we have to pay for transgender migrants. It's really important. Some of them have back pain. They need to be on social security forever."
"Yeah. We just had a clip go viral uh two days ago. Uh transgender woman, Colorado. I saw the video."
"Yeah. Taxpayer of 100 boobs. So that's nice."
"Was the way you explained it or the way she explained it was hilarious, you know, like something about how her body's priceless. So like how much do they cost? They're free."
"Yeah. I can't blame her though. I mean, the program's there, right?"
"Of course."
"So I'd take it if I wanted some new tits."
"Of course."
"But it's crazy that we are. And of course, when we filmed it was like 2 days after I wrote a $4 million, you know, income tax check, whatever, to the federal government,"
"Right? And you're thinking about this like where's that money go?"
"It's going to tits not funding prop for social security."
"Well, we were talking before about how Gavin Newsome wouldn't do your podcast. Yes."
"But it's be probably because like that kind of debt when you think about like California's debt and California spending and and the waste and potential fraud. I look at it like a garbage dump. Like someone saying, 'Hey, go look into that garbage dump and clean it up.' like, 'Oh, it's too much.' And I think that's how most people look at it. They look at it like, 'What? 24 billions missing for the homeless? How much money went to that rail? That [ __ ] highspeed rail? Like billions of dollars later, there's nothing done.' Like,"
"What are you doing?"
"Which is insane because America, the leader of the world, should have incredible highspeed rail."
"Yeah,"
"I want it. I want to go to Dallas, Houston, in a couple hours on a highspeed rail. Maybe Texas could do it, but just give California anything and they'll find a way to mess it up and lose all the money."
"Well, this is like the the rail one is crazy because like nothing's been How much have they spent on the highspeed rail so far?"
"It's something bonkers."
"Billions."
"Some some insane amount of money and nothing's been done. And there's this guy on YouTube. Do you remember the guy on YouTube, Jamie? Uh he's on uh Instagram rather. The guy was on Instagram who uh says in the same amount of time that it took California to not do that, this is what China's done. And it just over and over and over again all the miles of highspeed rail they put in all the this all the that all like for the same amount of money that California spent. This is what could have been done and it's"
"Crazy."
"[ __ ] nuts."
"Bright lines private"
"Spent in order of mid teens of billions mid- teens so far on the highspeed rail roughly around 14 to 16 billion dollars as of the mid-2020s."
"How much of it is done Jamie? How much of that rail is done?"
"Well, some of it is actually getting close to done, I think."
"Oh my god. Amazing."
"To what? Bakersfield to"
"Completed, I guess."
"Yeah. How much is completed?"
"14 ft."
"Very little."
"119 miles are under active construction."
"Oh, 119 miles. Madera near Bakersfield are under active construction. What a great way to spend $14 billion. I bet the homeless people are pissed. You could have spent that money on us."
"And then once it's done, you'll get on the train. You'll have fair evaders, people that just jumped over that are doing drugs on the train."
"Check this out. I asked the question."
"If you were 25 in 1990, you made an average US salary for 40 years saving 5 to 10% per month in the S&P 500, how much would they have now? They would have around 2 to 5 million depending on exact assumptions."
"Starting with $21,000%. That's insane. Like, this is hard for me to"
"And they"
"We have the best disposable income in the history of the world."
"This is how crazy inflation is. The average salary in 1990 was $21,000."
"That's crazy."
"Isn't that nuts? You imagine someone told you you had to live off $21,000 today? You'd be like, 'Oh, fuck.'"
"And yet, even still, they could retire multi-millionaires. Even still, even with that, it's beautiful."
"That is nuts if you know how to do it. But how was how would someone start doing something like that?"
"Honestly, low-cost index funds. I'm sure you got a money guy, but for the average American, uh there's these target date retirement funds. So, Fidelity or whatever you want to use, they have essentially just pick like within the 5 years that you think you're going to retire, you just buy into that and it just it balances it for you. It goes more aggressive now and just more conservative by the time you retire. It's so easy. There's no reason most people like aren't doing it even in their 401k where it's free money matches and everything. It it doesn't really make sense."
"So, do you have to teach yourself all this stuff?"
"I mean, I'll be honest. Uh pretty much any personal finance book or just like not even a class. Just watch like a couple YouTubers, the dry YouTubers that maybe no one's watching and I mean, you'll get it like this. It's it's super simple that kind of stuff. It it gets a little harder if you're thinking like what kind of perfect insuranceances do I need? You know, if you're trying to individually stock trade, you know what scares me though? Um, people in our position right now, uh, people under 30, 60% 60% of them are doing their portfolio trades based on the podcast they're still listening to. That's what's scary to me."
"What? Really?"
"Yeah. 60%."
"Which podcasts are giving them advice?"
"Any personal finance?"
"Any personal finance? No. No. Even on like kick or uh Twitch, there's streamers. I'll log on in the morning just see who's streaming and some of the top viewed people are day traders."
"Really?"
"With like 25 thousand concurrent viewers that are getting hundreds of thousands of views a day."
"Okay. So the kick streamers that are doing finance are they just essentially like letting people know what they're trading and what to trade."
"Exactly. It's crazy. So they're following basically just mirror them."
"So you can say okay buy Black Rockck and you could whatever you want to buy whatever they're doing you'll do like sort of like the Pelosi stock trader."
"Yes. Which I bought into the Pelosi fund."
"Yeah,"
"It's doing really well."
"I bet it is."
"Yeah, I only put $1,000 in there. I was a little scared, but it's doing really well. It's beating my own money, guys. So,"
"It's kind of hilarious."
"I mean, she knows what she's doing or her people knows what she's doing."
"Yeah."
"Yeah. Someone knows something."
"Yeah, they know something. It's just It's crazy that it's legal. It's crazy that you could know, oh, we're going to do this big deal with AI chips, and so, uh, Nvidia makes AI chips. I'm just going to buy a [ __ ] ton of Nvidia stock, and then boom, we pass this thing. Hey, look at that. 500% increase."
"I think my thousand's up like 20 or 30% in just a couple months."
"It's crazy. It's crazy. S&P 500, what he searched up, averages 10% a year. So, it's crazy."