Die with Nothing

Mike Hambright (00:36.632)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show really excited to have my good friend Jason Hartman here fellow podcaster. We’ve been friends for a long time now

And Jason has a lot of wisdom talking about where the market is, where it’s headed. A lot of folks really kind of seek out his opinion and guidance on where they should take their business. But today we’re going to talk about a few things, including how to die with zero. Like how do you, the goal isn’t to get to the end of the road and you have this big pot of gold and you didn’t get to enjoy it. And so it’s an interesting book that’s called Die with Zero. I know we’re going to talk about that. And Jason has taken this to another level. So anyway, Jason, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks Mike. It’s great to be here and great hanging out at your office. haven’t been here

before but yeah you’re running an awesome mastermind group investor fuel and now I get to see the operation so yeah this is how we make the sausage yeah exactly you know I mentioned this many times before because I started podcasting in 2012 and I think there were like six podcasters at the time in the real estate space and I think at that time you had several podcasts right it wasn’t just one but I’ve mentioned this many times like I’ve been doing this for a long time I’m probably dating myself but it was me you were out there

Joe McCall, Matt Theriault, Sean Terry, and maybe one or two others. when did you start podcasting? 2005. 20 years ago. Wow. Long time using a cassette recorder? No, was using, I would do in-person interviews on a Zoom, you know, the Zoom recorders. not Zoom to be confused with Zoom software. And just audio, of course. And yeah, we were doing that. We were using Skype when we do phone phone interviews. Well, actually, we use the telephone.

before and I had a big thing that would convert the signal from the analog telephone signal I guess to a digital signal. Yeah lots of equipment back there. Yeah. Don’t need it anymore. Well it’s much easier now. Yeah. So.

Mike Hambright (02:26.572)
You’ve done a lot of things over the years, just for those that don’t know you, which probably isn’t, there’s definitely a lot of people that are listening to us that know who are. Tell us a little bit more about you. What’s something interesting? Yeah, so I’ll just quickly give you my kind of start and leading up to my interest in real estate. I grew up in Los Angeles, California, was poor, didn’t like being poor. When I hit ninth grade, I realized that all the cutest girls in junior high school were hanging out with the rich guys. And so I wanted to be in that group.

I saw an infomercial when I was 16 years old for Robert Allen, you know, way before Rich Dad and that kind of stuff. And he was talking about how he bought houses with nothing down. I went out and I got his book. I read three chapters of it. I was in high school now and I put it down. My mom picked it up, read the rest. And two years later, she said, Jason, you got me interested in this real estate stuff. I’ve been, you know, going to seminars, reading books.

There’s a big seminar in Anaheim this weekend by Disneyland Why don’t you go so I rounded up nine of my buddies from high school because I couldn’t do anything alone at that age And well, I got them all to go to the thing and it was like one of those pitchfests where they were selling their books and tapes and and the first speaker on Friday evening was guy named Hal Morris and I remember him talking about a deal he did where the seller paid his points I didn’t know what points were and so

Anyway, the seminar went on and all my friends except one Saturday morning went to the beach. One stayed and then by Sunday evening when I saw the last speaker, I was the only one left. And I got I went to school the next the next week and signed up for real estate school and got my license first year of college. Yeah. Well, I started it then. Yeah. And, know, I was just about to graduate. And then I was in college my first year in college. I got my license in my hand.

And I started selling real estate part-time. And it was amazing, Mike, how I could make money selling real estate when others were just sitting around complaining by the coffee pot in the office. Because I actually thought, well, you actually work. You have appointments all day. Your calendar is full. That’s how working looked to me. And I think I was right. so are, by the way. Yeah. So my start as a real estate broker was

Mike Hambright (04:47.542)
I placed little classified ads in the Orange County Register and I would get these ads. would be like government repos, HUD and VA repos. And it would say low down, government repo. People would call, they’d go to my phone machine with a cassette tape in it. I was dating myself. And then I would show them around in my Volkswagen Jetta. And my first full month in the business, I sold five houses. And all the agents in the office were like, who’s this young cocky kid, right?

And anyway, it turns out one of my clients that I was selling these investments to, he wanted to sell one of his properties that he bought from me. He didn’t really like it that much. He liked the others better. said, why don’t you take the listing? And I said, Jim, I don’t want to take the listing. I want to buy it from you. So I had my first rental property when I was living at home and I was 20 years old. that rental property, interestingly, was kind of a bad experience.

And it worked out for a while. people’s first rental is. Yeah, yeah. That’s not very common, right? But imagine me, right? Here I’m 20, and I’m not literally knocking on the door trying to collect the rent from these people. They paid for a few months, and they just stopped paying. I had to evict them. That was my first experience, right? Like now I’m probably 21. And so I ended up selling that property and made a nice profit on it, but it wasn’t a good experience during the rental portion, right?

And this is what I want to say to investors. No one would have blamed me if I said, hey, this real estate thing, just doesn’t work. I could have easily given up. And fortunately, I didn’t. I bought many, many more properties over the years and made lots of money doing it. I always say income property is the most historically proven asset class in the entire world. There is just nothing else like it because it has special characteristics.

that other investments don’t have. So we can talk about that if you want. Yeah, yeah. It’s changed my life for sure. It’s one of those things. And honestly, when I started, we were fixing flipping most. We were doing 70 deals a year, fixing flipping mostly a little bit of wholesaling and keeping like 10 % as rentals. In hindsight, I wish I’d kept way more than 10%. Right, yeah. At the time, I was like, these things suck. We’re foregoing. We could have rehabbed it and made $20, $25 grand or something, but we decided to just keep it. But in hindsight.

Mike Hambright (07:05.934)
I wish I’d get more of them because we’ve generated a lot of. Don’t we all. Yeah. before we get into kind of talking about this, the concept of, you know, dying was zero. Right. Let’s talk about where you think the market is headed. You’re you’re my you’re you’re kind of my economist and tarot card reader. And tell us a little about what you think. You know, there are many mixed signals out there right now in the marketplace. And

There’s certainly no shortage of do-mers and first let’s address the do-mers right these crash bros Okay, that are always saying everything’s gonna collapse They are almost always wrong there, know, a broken clock is right twice a day, right? And and and that’s basically what you have look we live in a world There’s an old saying in the newspaper business from the old days if it bleeds it leads Then there’s that great Don Henley song

the bubble headed bleach blonde comes on at five, she can tell you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eyes, right? And know, dirty laundry, that’s right. That’s what people like the most. It’s just the way our brains are set up. We look for negativity because since the beginning of time, that’s what kept us alive, right? But ever since the Industrial Revolution, we have abundance, okay? Too much abundance in many cases. I mean, look at the obesity rates in America, You know, too much abundance. And now, our old brain hasn’t…

yet trained itself to look for opportunity. We’re still looking for scarcity and negativity, right? And so, you you get way more clicks on the YouTube video with the, you know, the housing market’s gonna crash, you know, the podcast title that says, you know, the world’s coming to an end, that’ll get way more interest. you know, then, then everything else. I mean, you it won’t. And, you know, when it comes to the housing market,

I mean, this is just simple supply and demand. It’s the most basic law of economics. Coming out of the Great Recession, we didn’t build enough houses for over a decade. And there is a severe housing shortage. It doesn’t matter what anybody says about it. That’s just the fact. And so we have this housing shortage, which is especially acute in the entry level. And so these entry level homes are what we investors like. Right. We don’t.

Mike Hambright (09:24.856)
You know, we don’t usually invest in mansions, right? Bread and butter housing is our thing, right? And so that shortage is incredibly acute in that segment. And we just can’t build the homes fast enough. Now, the Trump administration, I think, is doing quite a good job. nobody’s perfect, OK? But I think overall, they’re directionally doing a great job. And he wants to sell.

federal lands to real estate developers. I tell you now that will not solve the problem, not even close. Here’s why. In entry level housing, the land component, if you look at the improvement cost versus the land cost, the land cost is nothing. Even if he gave the land for free to developers, which by the way, other people would be outraged, the government’s now picking winners and losers, right? It wouldn’t make a dent in the housing market problem. The fact is it’s

very inelastic. It’s very hard to create new supply. most experts will agree that we have a shortage between, you know, one and a half million and seven million homes. There’s about 140 million housing units in the country, 341 million people. So, you know, you can just kind of see where those dynamics lie. Right now, we have slightly over one half of one percent of the total housing stock for sale, slightly over 800,000 homes.

And inventory actually has been declining for a couple of weeks now. So we’ve got this lock-in effect where tens of millions of homeowners have ultra cheap mortgages and they’re not going anywhere. They’ve realized the mortgage is the asset, not the house. The mortgage is the asset. When you have a mortgage at 2%, 3%, 4%, that is an incredible asset and you don’t want to give it up.

And they won’t sell because they can’t afford the next thing. Yeah, I mean not only has there been appreciation just the just going out and your rate is double what it is today, right? Like you just can’t you couldn’t afford your house if you refinance it with a current rate I know I absolutely have this a very good way to look at it You couldn’t afford your own house if you refinanced it and so these people have a record amount of equity Equity has never been higher and you know

Mike Hambright (11:49.312)
I always say there’s one ingredient that you absolutely must have if you want to have a housing crash. And that is tens of millions of distressed homeowners that become millions of distressed home sellers. have the complete opposite of that. Right. Now, the housing market, I would describe it as boring right now. It’s pretty boring. OK, it’s slow. Activity is way down.

This is why you hear realtors and lenders and mortgage people and title companies and everybody attached to the real estate transaction, including furniture and appliances and everything else, right? You hear them complaining because activity is way down. Although prices are still overall appreciating, slightly. It’s not exciting. know, the latest survey I read was prices nationally were up 3.8 % in the trailing 12 months. That’s not exciting. Nobody’s like,

got the scarcity mentality thinking, hey, if I don’t buy now, I’m going to lose out. I’m going to miss out. So it’s just kind of a boring market. And the glut of inventory that the media talks about is, obviously, they use broad strokes. They never talk about specifics. They talk about national stats or one large area that, like even in Dallas, where there’s 8 million people here now. So it’s like some areas of town are very different than others, right? That’s a good point. All real estate is local.

entry level, like they don’t talk about affordable housing. So if they say, hey, all these houses are set on the market, it’s like, yeah, they’re million dollar houses. I that’s not affordable housing. Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. And, all real estate is local. In fact, it’s hyper local. So there are some markets in the country that are declining slightly. And there’s a couple of markets nearing crash, you know, numbers, so the do-mers get to be right about like, you know, a few markets out of Yeah, I mean, look, let’s think about how big this country is for a minute.

There’s nearly 400 what they call MSAs, metropolitan areas. There’s over 3,100 counties, over 9,000 cities, countless neighborhoods. It’s a giant country. And there’s a couple markets in Florida and in Texas that are, like Austin, Texas is a great example, that’s down like 14, 15 % now. And most people would agree that you call it a crash when it’s down 20 to 25%, that’s a crash.

Mike Hambright (14:10.038)
So they’re getting close. And the values went up there in Austin, way more than Dallas or Houston as well. Yeah, those markets got out over their skis. I mean, it would be totally immature for people who invested in those markets, whether they just bought a house for themselves or an investment, to think that they weren’t going to give some of that back. Right. know, the market’s always retrenched in every market, whether it be precious metals or cryptocurrency or stocks, real estate too.

So let’s talk about you and I run in circles, or we help people build wealth, and you more so than me. I help more of operators. You’re helping people build wealth. And I think as we both get older, we think of wealth differently, or we think of our own lives, what we want it to look like. And I think there’s a point in your life where you’re like, I just want more. I just want to make more money. I to make more money, without necessarily knowing why. But then you get to a point to where

you get a little bit older and you’re like, okay, well, what is this all for? You go through COVID, you go through some weird stuff and you’re like, okay, what’s this all for? Like, what’s my goal here? And you’re like, you know, not everybody is this way, but it might not seem like it from some of the decisions I’ve made with building a ranch. We generally want a simpler life. Lindsay said that. She’s like, I thought we were gonna simplify our lives. Why don’t we just buy a hundred plus acres? But at any rate, there’s this concept of dying was zero. And there’s also people that, you know, we probably have both known people.

that did really well, died prematurely, and you’re like, my god, what a shame. Yeah, sold their company for $100 million, died the next week. Yeah, so let’s talk a little bit about this concept of kind of dying was zero. Yeah, so I came to kind of look for this type of content because a few years ago, I had a bad breakup with a gal. And I just started kind of doing some soul searching. And I thought, in some ways, her life is better than mine. And she doesn’t have any money at all. She was always complaining that she’s poor.

You know, and all she has to do is go meet the next guy, right? Like it’s easy for her. But you know, she had largely much more freedom than I did, right? And so I started thinking about this and you know, I got that book. I got a bunch of other books. I interviewed the author of a book called 4,000 Weeks on my podcast. And you know, there’s many aspects to it, but let’s just talk about a couple. So.

Mike Hambright (16:25.376)
My mom likes this show called Downton Abbey. I don’t even know if it’s still on the air, but she used to love that show. familiar with that. I watched it like once. That’s something I would watch maybe once. Yeah, I watched it like once. I’m like, no more. Exactly. But anyway, so this show about like, you know, the British elite or whatever it was about, right? The Butler had a saying, and it’s brilliant. He said, the purpose of life is the acquisition of memories. That’s it.

And then I another book that’s a good book is called the purpose code. I can’t think of the author’s name right now, but I read his newsletter and just two days ago in his newsletter, he said the basic equation for how good or bad your life is is not how famous you are, not how much money you have, not how many followers you have, none of that stuff. What it is is how much of your life is spent doing what you love or what makes impact, right? Versus what you don’t like to do.

And I thought that’s a really good equation, know? So back to the Bill Perkins, die with zero stuff. What he does is a really interesting idea. He’s a financial guy. That’s his background, okay? And so he looks at life like a financial perspective. And what he says is he says that memories have a return on investment. So think about this. You you I’m sure remember things from when you were say 25 years old, you know.

great memories you had, adventures you did or whatever. And those memories will last all your life. And each time you remember that thing, you’re getting a return on investment. So the sooner you can have memories, the longer they have to grow. Just like the sooner you invest money, you have the compounding effect. Einstein called compounding the eighth wonder of the world. And so that’s an important concept.

Is to a lot of people put off the making memories because they get so busy on the hamster wheel And I am certainly guilty of that, you know, listen There’s an old saying people teach what they most need to learn and I needed to learn this I wish I learned it sooner and i’m i’m now i’m trying because i’m more conscious of it But for a lot of life, I was just kind of on the hamster wheel And I remember during covet, you know sitting around the house not much to do and I finally pulled out a google sheet and I started

Mike Hambright (18:49.3)
adding up my net worth that was tucked away in all these places. And I thought, what am I doing? What is the actual point of all this? So I would recommend to all of the people watching this or listening to this, go and do a search for die with zero calculator. There’s a whole bunch of people in the financial planning industry that gathered around this concept. And with these die with zero calculators, you can put in how much you have now.

how much you plan to make when you plan to die, right? And none of us exactly know that date, right? But it’s gonna happen. And a potential return on investment. And it’ll show you what you need to spend, not earn, not save, not invest. Listen, I’ve made a life and a career, a really good career out of helping people invest money. And there’s a point at which we need to consciously think about how to spend our money to get the most return.

on spending, and increase our, what I call ROL, return on life, right? And so it’ll tell you how much you have to spend to die with zero. And it’s just a really interesting concept. Now, a lot of people listening, and we were talking about this before, think, well, does this mean I’m gonna blow all my money and not leave anything for my kids? No, it does not mean that. What it means is that if you wanna leave something for your kids, don’t wait until you die.

and you’re forced to give it to them or someone, right? Or the state or something, right? You know, the thing to do to be generous is to choose to give your money while you’re alive. When you’re dead, you are not generous. You are legally obligated to distribute that money out of your estate, right? The court’s gonna distribute it for you. And so, you know, if you wanna help your kids, you know, don’t wait till when, you know, they’re 60 when you pass, right? Hopefully they figured it out and they don’t need your money by then, right?

They need your money that can make the most impact when they’re in their 20s and 30s, right? When they can really grow. And guess what, Mike? You’re here to coach them and guide them. Now, the thing you have to realize, though, is that when you give them your money, it’s their money. So you can’t really control it like it’s yours, right? But you are there to give them some guidance. Wouldn’t that be better than not being here to help them with all the struggles that you’ve just have to be money. It’s not like here’s cash. It could be family vacations.

Mike Hambright (21:14.074)
family trip things to create those memories those memories are or as you said those are dividends right they did memory dividends are the whole key but I will say that for most people certainly for you and Lindsay you know you can’t spend that much on a family vacation right so you do have to give them like an asset or money it’s some point yeah yeah yeah because the goal isn’t to necessarily die with a big pile of things that

get divvied up somehow, get taxed to death, whatever, Right, right, right. You know, there’s a book you might have heard of. It’s an old, but great book. It’s very short. It’s called The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. And he has this chapter. It’s a bunch of little chapters. It’s really great life lessons. And one is a chapter on giving. And it says, you know, don’t wait, you know, or what’s it say? says something like, give now so the giving, the joy of giving can be yours rather than your inheritors.

Right? So you’re gaining something from giving that, right? And part of the problem, of course, with all of us is we’re all in fear that we won’t have enough. Like we got to hoard everything now because we might live too long. And we think we’ll live forever. Yeah. You know, I mean, sometimes your card gets pulled a little early. Yeah. Right. Exactly. But, you know, regardless, you know, probably most Americans will have the problem of too much life left at the end of the money. But for the people listening to this, that’s probably

Opposite problem. They will have too much money left at the end of the life. Okay, so, you know, there’s a balance to it and there’s rationality to it But you know just start thinking this way start thinking how can I not only you know use my skills and my time and my ambition To create a better life, but how can I use my actual money? I mean, isn’t this the reason we accumulated all this money right to use it. I think in the book he also talks about

You know, you could use the money to take care of yourself better. Yeah, like there’s a lot of things that people just wait until they get too far in life and you’ve seen it like somebody Gets really sick at some point in their life. They lived an unhealthy life and they get sick and they turn things around It’s like just be more proactive on that. Right? Absolutely. easier said than done. no, of course it is You know, we all have our indulgences, right? But you know Wayne Dyer I remember years ago reading one of his books and he said if you do not take time out now for health and fitness

Mike Hambright (23:35.502)
and eating right, you will be forced to take time out later for sickness and infirmity, right? So, yeah. Good point. So how do you teach people? You advise people a lot on building wealth and using real estate as a vehicle for that. So what’s the balance between, I think it’s easier for some people that see us like, oh, in hindsight, you made some good decisions, right? But at the time when we’re building these things, building businesses, and for those that are listening, like you feel like it’s never enough.

Right. You just want to keep going because you’re just caught up in the game. Yeah, right. So how do you how do you balance between playing the game and playing it? Well, yeah and saying well This concept of like well, how much do you really need? Right? Yeah, I don’t have the answer Okay, I just have at least I have the question like the goal of me talking about this now is Be aware of the question. You’re not gonna answer it overnight. You know, this is not simple. This is an ongoing

process there’s it’s kind of like in life there are things that you problems you solve and then problems you just manage this is a management right you’re not gonna solve it right it’s different for everybody yeah it is different everybody has different goals yeah yeah absolutely absolutely but you know the point is be conscious of all of the assets you have you know you have your skills you have your knowledge you have your wisdom you have your relationships you know these are all assets right you have your

motivation, ambition, right? And these all can make you money in the marketplace. You know, you’re a member of a group like Investor Fuel and you have a great network, right? And so that’s all great. But the other asset you have is literally wealth, in most cases, right? For people listening here. Use that asset too. You know, it’s interesting because when I teach real estate investors, I talk a lot about how leverage compounds your return. And we all understand that.

being in real estate, right? You you multiply your return, you can do things much bigger than you can with cash, right? And also inflation diminishes the value of that debt over time, because it debases the debt. I call that inflation-induced debt destruction, famously. We talked about that many years ago. And, you know, you have this asset of this wealth to use. And when I teach people about using leverage, I say that if you were looking at a balance sheet,

Mike Hambright (25:57.368)
You know, everybody knows what that looks like. On one side you have assets, the other side you have liabilities. Subtract the liabilities from the assets and that’s your net worth. But you know, there’s an asset that people don’t put on their balance sheet? Their credit. Their ability to borrow and use that borrowing to make money. Right? That’s another asset that a lot of people, and you know, it’s funny because people brag, I see them post on Facebook about this, you my credit score is 850.

Well, that means you’re not doing anything with your credit, right? Your credit score should be in the sevens, like the high sevens would be a good enough score, because that means you’re using your credit. You want to use your credit to make you money and create wealth. So let’s talk about, we talk about inflation a lot. So I don’t believe the media, you know, you and I are probably up in the same cloth in that regard. So it sounds like inflation rates are down from where they were for sure. But where do you see inflation going from here?

It’s interesting in this market, I’ve said for years that the only way out of this is to destroy the dollar, and probably at a faster rate. There’s some interesting things going on right now with the Trump administration. That might not be, not that there’s not going to be inflation, but I feel like there’s going to be some big changes to the overall debt, the structure, revenue into the country. There’s even talks of eliminating the income tax. know initially, I don’t think anything’s happened with this, or I haven’t heard anything. I was really interested to hear when.

Trump created a sovereign wealth fund. It’s like, okay, how do you use the assets of the country to run it like a business, which quite frankly, this is a great idea. Yeah. To eliminate, ultimately eliminate people from having to pay taxes because the country is making money from tariffs or other things like that. And so it doesn’t look like that’s the exact path they’re going down. Right. Like, where do you think inflation is going to go from here? And it’s this, this discussion probably is way bigger than what’s going to happen in the next three years. Cause sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s a great question, you know? So first of all, the

most common measure of inflation is the CPI, the Consumer Price Index. I call it the CPI, because it understates inflation. you know, folks that don’t know, so it doesn’t include the cost of food or energy, right? Essentially, which is well, that’s yeah, that actually the CPI does include that. But the measure they use is called the core rate or core inflation. Yeah, right. And that strips out food and energy because they’re too volatile. Right. But I don’t know anybody that

Mike Hambright (28:19.468)
doesn’t need food and energy. And for the average American, that’s a significant portion of their expenses. Yeah, it is. No question about it. you know, Trump is a disruptor. He’s changing a lot of things. you know, I know many people hate him. Many people have Trump derangement syndrome. But if you just look at his actual moves, they’re pretty good. OK. And, you know, the tariff discussion, there’s this biblical concept called equally yoked. OK.

And it refers to marriage, right? When you’re in a marriage, both partners have to be equally yoked. have to have, you know, one can’t be fancy free and, you know, going out, you know, flirting and stuff like that, and the other’s staying at home, right? You got to be equal. And same with trading partners. And if you look at China, our biggest trading partner, they’re not equally yoked. They don’t have OSHA. They don’t have labor laws. They don’t have our minimum wage requirements.

They don’t have HR departments and massive environmental regulations and the EPA. And they’re not equally yoked. So the tariffs are an attempt to level the playing field. It’s just fair. And it’s reasonable. We will never replace the IRS’s income of nearly $5 trillion a year with tariffs. There’s just not enough tariff revenue there. But it is a start. And the more important thing is that it incentivizes businesses.

operate inside the US and Trump is doing and he is achieving those goals like a rock star. I mean you look at all the stuff that happened literally his first week in office and and it’s happened since it’s incredible how that money and that those jobs are flowing back to the US so it’s great news but to really answer where’s inflation going it can’t go anywhere but up. We’ve got thirty seven trillion dollars in debt.

We’re running deficits every single year. This is a much bigger problem than anyone president could ever fix. Math can’t even fix it, okay? The GDP of the country is about 30 trillion a year. So you’d literally have to tax everybody at 100 % and you still wouldn’t pay off the debt. And obviously no one would work if they’re getting 100 % tax. And what’s worse than that is what’s called unfunded mandates.

Mike Hambright (30:38.658)
because these are the promises the government has made into the future. opinions vary on this, but I’ve had Lawrence Kotlikoff on my show a few times. He’s a professor and economist, and he’s probably done the deepest studies on this. And he used to say that this was about $220 trillion, the obligation. So think about it. That would take, what, eight years of the entire economy

to pay for those unfunded promises in the future. So not only do we have the deficit and the debt, we have the unfunded promises, right? Which simply cannot be kept. So the only way to keep them is to lower their obligation by making the dollar less valuable. And the government will pay for the promises in nominal dollars. Nominal just means in name only. The name of it is a dollar, right?

but the value of it, the real value is much lower. And so that’s the way, it’s the business plan of every government and every central bank is to inflate your way out of the problem. And that’s what’s gonna happen. And that’s a big opportunity for real estate investors on many fronts. One, the asset value goes up in price with inflation, right? Because everything gets more expensive, all the ingredients of the house gets more expensive, the copper wire on the walls, the drywall, the lumber, the concrete.

the petroleum products in a house, all of that stuff. And then the value of the debt declines with inflation because you pay it back in cheaper dollars over time. And this is the hidden wealth creator, inflation-induced debt destruction. So it’s a great opportunity for investors. There’s a shortage of housing, supply some housing for people, right? Do what the government incentivizes you to do, get incredible. It’s the most tax-favored asset class in America. So a lot of opportunities for investors.

So what do you think the impact is on, and quite frankly, I’m way behind in this, but crypto. Where do you see the role of crypto playing in, mean, it’s a bit, we could probably have a week long show on that, but what are your kind higher level thoughts? Yeah, no, good, good question. So first of all, when it comes to the crypto discussion, there’s crypto and there’s Bitcoin, and those are completely different classes. Bitcoin is not run by anybody.

Mike Hambright (33:04.35)
it’s truly a currency of the people, right? And cryptocurrencies are run by companies, okay? So, XRP and whatever cryptocurrency, Ethereum, right? These are all human controlled, whereas Bitcoin is market controlled, okay? And so those are very different. So Bitcoin is in a class by itself. And I love the Bitcoin story. I always have, but I’ve always had…

the exact same reservations from when I first learned about it when it was $74. Okay. You can tell the date was probably like 2012, right? you know, Bitcoin is, it doesn’t produce income. I know there are ways you can produce income, staking it, lending it, you know, I get it, okay, but the asset itself does not produce income. And it is nothing. It’s computer code.

Could quantum computers hack the blockchain? I don’t know. It’s just above my pay grade. I really just don’t know. I was very worried for a very long time about governments viewing it as competition for their currency. If you think of it, the main product of any government is its currency. For the U.S., it’s dollars. For Japan, it’s yen. For many Latin American countries, it’s pesos, right? And that’s their product. That’s the product of the government.

And I don’t know about you, but any business person generally doesn’t love competition, right? They want a free market that’s, or a market that’s just theirs. And so Bitcoin is an alternative form of store of value, an alternative form maybe of currency even. And I don’t think governments are too friendly to that, although the Trump administration’s seemingly extremely friendly to it.

But remember, we’ve only got three and a half years left of that. Yeah, we’ll see what I don’t know where it’s going to go. So what do you think about it? I don’t know. Honestly, I’m so far, it’s like I’ve put blinders on a lot. My wife recently started investing in crypto. I won’t even do it justice. She’s doing some interesting stuff with crypto and covered calls and stuff like that. Oh, she’s doing the complicated stuff. She’s doing some interesting stuff. I’ll leave that up to her. Yeah, yeah, cool. I mean, listen, I own a bunch of Bitcoin and I hope it works. I’ve always said the same thing.

Mike Hambright (35:29.388)
I would love nothing more than to see a decentralized money not controlled by the powers that be. It’s a great idea. It’s a great story. I hope it works. But you know, I limited my gambling. OK, I bought a bunch of it and I’m staying put. not buying anymore. Yeah, we covered a lot of stuff today. Yeah, we did. Yeah. if folks want to connect with you, they want to learn any more about what you’re doing or how you might be able to help them or just follow along. You had to have been the first podcaster.

2005. Real estate guys were out there too. So they were also very early like me. We were very early in the podcast in space and you know one of my big mistakes was that I did not appreciate that early adopter position enough. You know I really should have done more with that at the time but you know. But if folks want to connect or learn more where do they go. Yeah. My main website is Jason Hartman dot com.

You know, you can find me on any podcast platform, just type Jason Hartman. That’s J-A-S-O-N-H-A-R-T-M-A-N. I’m on social media, Instagram, Jason Hartman One, YouTube, all that good stuff. And, you know, we help people buy properties nationwide, you know, turnkey properties to create nice assets and retirement. It’s very conservative. It’s not quick money, but it does work. It’s very reliable.

And we also help people buy notes, short-term notes, if they want to be basically in the hard money space where they’re getting 10 or 12 % for one year with, I don’t love being a lender, OK? But when you’re a short-term lender, you don’t have that inflation risk. So just one year short notes, paying 12%. I mean, that’s pretty great. Yeah, that’s awesome. We’ll add the links down below for folks to go check you out and learn a little bit more. Good stuff. Yeah, awesome. Everybody, thanks for joining today’s show. Hopefully, you got some good value from it.

We appreciate you following along. We’re pumping out a lot of shows these days, so make sure you’re following along. If you go to investorfuel.com, by the way, by the time this airs, we’ll have launched two more shows. We have a couple more shows coming out, a few different formats and a few different topics. So make sure you go to investorfuel.com to learn more. Appreciate you guys. We’ll see you on the next show.