Jason Hartman hosts author and RetireMentor columnist on Marketwatch, Dennis Miller. Miller gives us an overview of his latest book titled Retirement Reboot. He explains what retirees are looking at in their personal finance and their investing. He examines inflation and illustrates why many retired people living on fixed incomes understand that prices of basic necessities have gone but do not have a proper plan in place to hedge against inflation. He gives tips on what people should be looking at as they approach retirement.
Investor 0:00
Hi, I really encourage you to get involved with Jason his team. The whole group over there is just fantastic. I started working with them probably 10 years ago, and I haven’t bought a property in a couple years. But I’ll tell you, I still reach out to them. And they just helped me they’re helping me right now with a refinancing question that I have. So the main thing is, get in the game, get started, get that first property or get six, many people by dozens. But I think the world of this group, they’ve helped me a lot. And I think that you’ll really enjoy the process.
Investor 0:32
Welcome to this week’s edition of flashback Friday, your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason has hand picked to help you today in the present, and propel you into the future. Enjoy.
Investor 0:48
Welcome to creating wealth with Jason Hartman. During this program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven’t thought of before and a new slant on investing fresh new approaches to America’s best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He’s been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities, this program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to financial freedom, you really can do it. And now here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 1:39
Welcome to the creating wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman. This is episode number 325 325. And we are going to talk to our guests today, in a little bit here. That’ll be Dennis Miller with Casey Research. You know, we had Doug Casey on the show before. And he’s got some interesting stuff to talk about today in terms of retirement reboot. So whether you’re planning to retire soon or not, this will definitely apply to you either way, because the discussion just generally went into a bunch of discussions about very important economic issues. And so we’ll get to that in a moment. But first, Steve is here with me to help with the intro portion of the show. And we’ve got a few things to talk about as well, Steve, we’re going to talk about condos manufacturing, a bunch of different things. Where would you like to start?
Steve 2:22
Well, we’ve got a full plate today, you and I, we need maybe a couple of peas on the plate to make a full show out of it. So we’ve got a we’ve got a hurry today.
Jason Hartman 2:31
Yeah, we’ve got a lot of stuff to cover. And you know, we always try to say, well, we’ll keep the intro portion to like 1520 minutes, and we never seem to pull that off. I’m sure we won’t do that today, because we’ve we’ve got quite a few things on on the agenda. But what should we start with?
Steve 2:45
Well, I would like to start with interest rates because they are up to everybody’s shock. The the chairman as I so kindly refer them in banking, yes, that the chairman is not so lenient with his free monetary crack anymore is he
Jason Hartman 2:59
know, he’s, he’s reining it in a little bit. And I guess he’s had some, some pressures to do that. But I’ll tell you the interest rates. My one wrong prediction. In the last Oh, you know, I don’t know my one major wrong prediction. I’m sure I made a couple minor wrong predictions. But a major one is interest rates. Frankly, I thought they’d be a lot higher by 2010 than they were but I you know, this crisis was so much bigger than anybody expected. The part I didn’t predict about that as the Wall Street shenanigans, I knew there would be a crisis created by the mortgage situation, I knew the lending was too liberal, I knew there’d be foreclosures, I knew there were a lot of stupid loans out there. And I was talking about that way back in 2004. So, you know, I knew that would happen. But never did I know that wall street was creating all these crazy products and selling them to other I don’t want to even say selling them off loading them onto other countries and other unsuspecting funds and buyers and selling the same loan 30 times into 30 different pools. That was just insanity. But what’s interesting in the mortgage meltdown, and then the financial crisis that I guess some would argue we’re coming out of I don’t know if I’d agree with that. But there were a lot of homeowners that went in contested their mortgage because the lender could not find the note. They couldn’t find the loan documents that the borrower signed saying they owe the money. And of course, the lender has to have that for it to be enforceable. And some people actually completely skated Steve on their mortgages, where the court ruled said, Look, you may say this person owes you the money and you’re trying to foreclose, but if you can’t produce the note, then you’ve got nothing. So the person like basically would win the lottery, you know, oh, that $200,000 mortgage you thought you had? No, I guess you really owned the property free and clear. It was a pretty good deal because the reality was, they did owe the money probably.
Steve 4:58
I’m guessing that This happened mostly in courts in the Bay Area, Santa Monica and the North East. I don’t imagine that happened a lot in Dallas, Texas or Louisiana.
Jason Hartman 5:10
I don’t know about that. There are some liberal judges in every town. I’m not sure about that. But you may be right. But I’ll bet you another place that happened a lot is Florida.
Steve 5:20
Yeah. Well, that place who knows what’s going on Florida,
Jason Hartman 5:22
Florida was such a mess. I mean, just Yeah.
Steve 5:24
I think that there just wasn’t any case law. There wasn’t much precedent on this issue. And I think that’s starting to come out. I mean, lenders are making the argument now that we don’t have the note, but we have this copy of it. They’ve been making us payments for two years, and they stopped, we’ve been in contact. Clearly there was an agreement. I think more often than not, the judges will side with the bank. But you’re right. Sometimes people do win that lottery and the judge waives his magic wand and by by mortgage, right?
Jason Hartman 5:51
Yeah, it’s pretty, it’s pretty amazing. But I got to tell you something else, there’s actually a reason I’m bringing this up. Because it just happened to me. You know, you’re not gonna believe this, you’re not going to believe this. One of the apartment buildings I own with a couple of partners. I signed about a year and a half ago, I had to go in and sign before, right before the new year, it was believed December 28 of 2011, we refinanced the property and pulled cash out of it. And it was a great deal got a 10 year fixed interest rate on a large apartment complex, that I’m a partner in and got some cash out to rehab more than four units. Okay. And I had to go in and I had to sign the loan documents. And so you know, so did the other partner, and it’s a $3.4 million loan amount. And it was, I believe, 4.6% for 10 years, which is a damn good deal on a commercial. Yeah, wow, commercial fixed for 10 years. Usually, you can’t get fixed for more than like five to seven years on the typical commercial deal. The residential deals are much more desirable. But this is a large 125 unit apartment complex. So $3.4 million loan amount. Well, guess what, just last week, I learned that they wanted me to resign the note. And I
Steve 7:07
said,
Jason Hartman 7:08
Why? And he said, Well, we lost it. We can’t find it. You know, can you can you believe in this era of computers and digital archival systems, that they would lose something that important a $3.4 million note? just lost? We lost it? Yeah, we misplaced the thing. Now listen, I misplace things all the time. I hardly ever lose anything, but sometimes finding it as an issue. I’m, I’m a bit of a packrat.
Steve 7:39
Well, what bank? Is it? There’s got to be Bank of America.
Jason Hartman 7:42
No, no, no, no, it’s not a bank, you’d recognize it’s like an insurance company or something like that. I can’t remember. I’ve got the note on my desk here. Right? I didn’t look at the new one. I
Steve 7:50
can you imagine being in that meeting where they’re, they realize that they’re going so do we call this guy? Or do we just let the dog sleep and not tell it? Oh, we lost the job.
Jason Hartman 8:01
Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s mind boggling. I mean, you know, we lost the note, but, but now they have provisions in the loan documents that say, if we lose any paperwork or paperwork is incomplete, you agree to cooperate in render, helping us remedy our mistake. They’ve gotten a little smarter, and they protected themselves. But I
Steve 8:22
put that in my in my mortgage docs for my investment properties. If I stopped making money or don’t want to pay you, you agree to cooperate. Yeah, exactly.
Jason Hartman 8:31
There you go. But you know, I’ll tell you, this is one of her kind of total wildcard oddball when the lottery rare benefit is that you might somehow get relieved of a mortgage obligation. I mean, it’s happened. I remember back in the early 90s, when I was selling real estate in Irvine Newport Beach, and, you know, Southern California, Orange County area. And, you know, I was just a traditional realtor back then it was before I owned a company. And I remember there were these these chafa loans like California Housing Authority, it’s some sort of acronym. Anyway, you know, it was to help people get into this one condo development that I I owned in myself, and I had two units there and I sold a lot of units. I was a farming agent, so I would take a lot of listings, and sell the homes in there. My signs were everywhere. Jason Hartman, you know, everybody knew who I was in this area and a couple other areas like that. And I remember some of these people, I don’t know why, and I don’t didn’t really understand it back then. But I remember they would just get relieved of their mortgages like some of these mortgages were just poof, walleye, it’s gone. Abracadabra. your mortgage is gone. For some reason. And I don’t know why that happened. But I remember how unbelievable it was, I thought this person had $125,000 note against their hundred and $50,000 condo in Irvine and it was just gone. Just they won the lottery amazing
Steve 9:57
just often to to the Fed. To the Fed’s balance sheet most likely is where it ended up
Jason Hartman 10:02
Who the heck knows. But there is another reason to as Rick Adelman, a former show guest and very well known author and financial planner, who’s been on the show, I think he was on like, somewhere around number 180, or 190, show something somewhere in that range, you know, he has this great video. And if you haven’t seen it, I am sure it’s on YouTube. In fact, I should look it up while you’re talking. I’ll be typing Steven, not paying attention to you. Because I will be looking this up. And it’s called 10 great reasons to carry a big long mortgage and never pay it off.
Steve 10:35
Well, this is how I can get a word in on the show, I just need to send Jason looking on YouTube, because otherwise I won’t be able to talk. But we initially were started talking about this with interest rates. Because, you know, most of the pro formas on our website for investment properties lately have had interest rates of anywhere from four and a quarter up to 5%. And it’s a different story today, just within the last two, three weeks. With Chairman Ben, he’s not he hasn’t even tapered the easing of the mortgage backed securities that the Fed is buying. He just said that he might later in the year, and that alone has caused rates to jump. And so now the the average investment property mortgage is 5%, or maybe a little bit higher. So we wanted to get that out to everybody that’s listening. That’s something you should expect. We’re trying to get all the performers adjusted for that. I just need to point out though, that historically, for an investment property, that’s crazy low.
Jason Hartman 11:31
Oh, yeah.
Steve 11:32
Yeah. And that’s, that’s why you have the the commandment out of the 10 that the deal must make sense. today. A lot of people have been waiting for the perfect one, or they’ve been waiting for the next one. Will rates go down? And you see what waiting does? I mean, that’s why they say don’t wait to buy real estate, buy real estate and wait. I would couple that with your commandment that the deal must make sense today. If it makes sense.
Jason Hartman 11:56
Go, I tell you something, you’re making me depressed here. Because, you know, I just as you were saying that, and I’ve experienced so many investors doing that for so many years, you know, always looking for the perfect deal and waiting and so many deals, pass them by. And you know what, God, if I do the same thing in my dating life, and this is why I’m single, okay, waiting to find the perfect girl to marry. Right? And I tell you folks do not follow my bad example, you run the risk of ending up lonely. Or, you know, in this case, with investment properties ending up broke, as inflation destroys your wealth. I’m pretty good at being decisive in business. I you know, I’m a Libra Libras are known for being a little indecisive. And I guess I’ve I’ve handled that in business. I kind of handle it and love life, though. Hmm.
Steve 12:48
Yeah. I mean, maybe so may a lot of our investors are you know, here’s a metaphor for you. Like Jason. He’s on the the deck of his penthouse in Phoenix looking down at ASU and, and all of the options and he’s just waiting for the perfect one to come. And now interest rates have gone up.
Jason Hartman 13:04
Well, perfect. One Zero Dark too darn young for me. So
Steve 13:08
they are right. That’s news to me. Well, that’s what I’ve tried to get out here is if a deal make sense today. I don’t know that you should wait. Because it might make more sense tomorrow. You don’t know. That’s why they say don’t wait to buy real estate. Buy it and wait. If it makes sense today. Great. You can’t just sit there timing it. That’s how people go broke in the stock market. They’re trying to time the market.
Jason Hartman 13:31
Oh, yeah. The market timers never win. Yeah, exactly. They just don’t. I mean, look, folks, think about it. Here are your options. Yes, maybe a better deal on a property will come along tomorrow. Maybe interest rates will drop tomorrow. I wouldn’t count on that one. But who knows? Okay, at least if you own the property and rates drop, you may have the opportunity to refinance, that’s a lower rate. But if you don’t own the property, you’ve got nothing. The thing you’re wrestling against is, is the opportunity cost of what else are you doing with your money? Well, your money’s in the bank. And certainly you’re getting destroyed there. Your money’s in stocks, you’re probably getting destroyed there. I don’t know. You could be one of the one 100th of a percent in the stock market who actually makes money and, and does well, but most people don’t. So that’s your decision. It’s not the decision between is this deal good enough? or will there be a better deal tomorrow, the decision is between this is what my deal. Now I have my money in the bank earning me maybe a quarter of a percent. And after inflation and taxes, I’m probably losing eight to 10% annually. If you believe the official numbers which of course are understated, you’re losing with inflation and taxes, probably three or 4% annually, depending on which number you look at there. But But I say you’re losing about 10% annually. So do you want to lose 10% annually or get a property that has a performer return? Maybe 25% annually, that only does half as well as that and gets you only 12 and a half percent annually, only half as well as expected or projected. And look at the difference there. Just ask yourself, how many times better than the bank is that? So if you’re doing a quarter of a percent in nominal return at the bank? Well, 12 times four, let me see. Okay, so here’s the simple math, you are 48 times better off in a property getting you 12%, only 12%, in multi dimensional return, then you are with your money in the bank. And we’re not even counting the destructive power. If your money’s in the bank or the stock market, versus the beneficial power of inflation, if it’s in a properly financed property. It’s even better than that. I mean, it just is so frustrating how investors just shoot themselves in the foot constantly. And we kind of got to stop talking about this. I know, we’ve been talking about this the past couple of shows, and we’ll stop harping on it because I know a lot of you listening are decision makers, and you’re doing stuff, and you’re making a lot of his decisions. And listen, my hat’s off to you applause to you. My only question would be are you doing enough? Because certainly, we believe this is the the time okay.
Steve 16:24
Yeah, we’re in this every day, we see how historically great the returns are. And so we can’t help it. We kind of beat the horse to death here, I guess, didn’t we?
Jason Hartman 16:34
Yeah. Well, we’ll we’ll tone this down. Okay, folks, let’s let’s talk about condos. And let’s talk about manufacturing, Steve, manufacturing as it relates to the broader economy. Which one do you want to go for first?
Steve 16:45
Well, the manufacturing comes off of a question from a listener that got sent into us. So tell you what, why don’t I just read it and we can get into manufacturing from there.
Jason Hartman 16:55
Sounds good to me
Steve 16:56
from a listener. Chad, thanks for sending in the question, Chad. Basically, he says with about one 10th of us workers in manufacturing? Do you see things as out of balance? Can a service based economy be sustained in the long run? And is our nostalgia with manufacturing holding us back? Or our technologies like 3d printing needed to help us gain back the advantage in manufacturing and have a more balanced economy? Like in the past? Just curious, on your view, keep up the good work?
Jason Hartman 17:24
Well, that’s a good question, Chad. So thanks for sending it in. First of all, I think we need to define service economy and understand what companies are in the service business, what type of businesses or service economies. So I would define as service economies. And Steve, maybe you can help me add to this list. But this is just off the cuff. Certainly a place you go to get your haircut is a service business, a law firm as a service business, a realtor is a service business. These are service businesses. Okay, a chiropractor is a service business, that that kind of thing
Steve 17:59
you pay they do something for you. Yeah,
Jason Hartman 18:00
exactly. You know, those are like retail service businesses. Now, what is not manufacturing, although they did just move some of it back to the US, I believe, for the iPad product. And that is Apple. Apple is pretty much until just recently not a manufacturer in the United States. they manufacture in China’s pretty much everybody knows. But but then look at a company like facebook, facebook employs a lot of people, certainly they’ve had a pretty big impact on the economy. And all of the other sort of software based technology companies like that. I mean, those aren’t manufacturing companies. But I also wouldn’t really classify them as service companies. I guess you could call apple. You know, let’s just say before they brought some of the manufacturing just recently back to the US, okay, say they did it all overseas, all of Apple’s manufacturing is in China for purposes of this discussion. I guess you could call Apple a design firm. Right. You know, when you open their products, it says, designed by Apple in Cupertino, California. Right? So, we got to wrestle with that a little bit. What really is a service versus manufacturing? I think there’s really more to the economy than just service versus manufacturing. I mean, what do you call all of the oil drilling in North Dakota or the golf? Well, I guess that’s manufacturing, right. I mean, that’s heavy industry, for sure. But then all the firms that are the geology firms, and they, you know, all the ancillary businesses around those firms that help in the exploration and so forth, America’s turning into a pretty awesome energy producer. I mean, what an exciting thing for America if the government, namely the comrade Obama, will get out of the way and let us exploit our natural resources here. But Steve, what are your thoughts on that before we move on to answer the rest of the question?
Steve 19:54
Well, I it’s all very interesting and comrade Obama’s not going to get out of the way on a side note, but
Jason Hartman 20:00
You know, when we go yeah, hey, I want to say something about that before your comment. Okay. And this I’ve said it before, folks, environmentalism is a luxury of a rich society. In here that again, said, Jason Hartman, quote, unquote, me on this one, environmentalism is a luxury of a rich society. And when when things get tough, all of all of our tree hugger friends at their yoga classes and sitting at Starbucks, they’re gonna want their stuff, and they’re gonna want an economy and listen, I go to yoga and Starbucks too. Okay, I’m just making fun of myself a little bit. Saying that, and I like trees. By the way. That’s one thing I really don’t like about living in Phoenix is I miss trees, okay, you’re
Steve 20:45
one of the few libertarian hacks.
Jason Hartman 20:48
I’m a strange guy. It’s hard to fit me into a mold, although people try. But if things get tough, and some would argue things are pretty tough now or are still tough, and that the recovery is not for real. And I would agree with that in a lot of ways. We’re gonna go and we’re gonna, we’re gonna exploit our natural resources. Okay. That’s a power struggle that will be dictated by economic hardship and realities.
Steve 21:12
Agreed. I lived in a third world country for two years. And and they’re, they don’t have the luxury of environmentalism. They’re too busy trying to stay alive.
Jason Hartman 21:21
Yeah, yeah. And you’re referring to the Dominican Republic? I assume? That’s correct. Yeah. So go ahead. What was your comment about service versus manufacturing? No.
Steve 21:28
Well, you know, I think service is blurry, too, especially here in the United States. While we’ve been talking down the street a little bit, a couple of properties away, a landscaping crew pulled up to perform some service to this property. And as I look at them, I can tell they’re not from around here. Which is not a shock to you, I’m sure. Yeah, so much of the service economy is not reported. So much of it is not tracked. You know, so I don’t think that that, that the US has ever been predominantly a service economy, and to a degree, 15 million or so people that are in the service economy, a lot of it isn’t reported. I mean, they buy goods and services. But I think the US is more of an innovative economy, we’ve always been on the cutting edge of technology, many of the inventions that are in the technology that’s used in the world, they showed up first here in the United States of America. So, you know, I think that gets into the second part of the listeners question about technologies like 3d printing, helping us get an advantage in this once again, we can innovate it here. But I don’t think that we can produce it here for the cost that it needs to be produced at
Jason Hartman 22:37
Yeah, one of the interviews that you and the listeners are going to love that I just recorded yesterday is with James all teacher, that’s a LTU. CAGR James all teacher and he was a head of hedge fund manager a.com guy got very rich, got very poor, got very rich in in very poor again, and then rich again. And so he’s got a great story. And we really talked a lot about the economy and financial instruments and Wall Street and so forth. And you’re really gonna like that interview. It’s coming up fairly soon here. We’ll get that one published. But yeah, when you look at 3d printing, Motley Fool, there are a couple of guys that publish newsletters and they had radio shows, and so forth, the Motley Fool radio show I used to listen to, and they’re in the stocks on the stock market. And they, they published an interesting video recently about 3d printing. And as you regular listeners know, I’m a big fan of 3d printing, I think it’s a huge shift in technology, it’s going to change the game and a lot of ways However, it’s not for mass manufacturing. Okay, I doubt that 3d printers will be used in mass manufacturing, but they will be used in small run and custom manufacturing, that will provide a lot more options for a lot of things. And you know, 3d printers right now started about 12 or 1300 dollars and, and you know, when that price comes down to about 700 bucks, I’m gonna buy one because I just start to think about the things I can do around my house myself with a 3d printer, just as little utility things I don’t know if you know this, Steve, but when I was growing up, I was so much into being like an inventor. I love Thomas Edison biographies and I would really follow Him and you know, I used to do all kinds of experiments that probably made my mom really concerned I used to make hydrogen in the kitchen sink. You know, you can do that. It’s pretty easy to do. You can make your own hydrogen and then what dorky but I’m pretty dorky guy. This is maybe the reason I’m actually not married. But make hydrogen in the sink and then let it let it into a paper bag. And then we used to light the paper bag on fire. You would never do that nowadays, way too dangerous by today’s standards, but things were a little bit wild and crazy. back then. You know, I remember I used to make light bulbs, and I made a carbon Arc Light that I would run in my bedroom. And that’s like the light comes out of the arc between the two pieces of carbon there. And so I would do all kinds of crazy things like that, and a 3d printer. I mean, you can do all sorts of cool things like, do you want to make a new door handle? Or do you want to make an model of something like a prototype? I think it’s going to advance technology a lot more quickly, just with the way designers can make prototypes of things. And you know, if you have an idea, just say, stick it on the 3d printer and do a little CAD work, and it’s going to bring this to the masses. So that will be an economic stimulant, no question about it. And then the reason I brought up my interview yesterday with James all teacher, is we talked about ways that people can make money. And we talked about the the way, the Internet, and this distribution, this, this, what they call the distributed electronic network, that’s another name for the internet really creates a lot of value and allows a lot of people to play in the game, who could never play in the economic game before. And I’ll give you one example. Maybe some of our listeners have heard of it. There’s a website called Fiverr. f fi ve r r to rs.com fiverr.com. What an incredible innovation. Brittany, who works for us told me about it a couple years ago, you can you can basically buy all kinds of crazy things on Fiverr for five bucks. And why is this important? Well, these are services, but they allow a lot more people who probably are under the radar making pretty good money, and maybe not reporting it, to make a living for themselves. Where people do things on fiber, like some good looking girl, for example, will say all hold a sign with your logo or your website for five bucks and send you the picture. Okay, now, you might think, Oh, that’s so stupid, right? No, folks, the fact is for websites and blog post, a lot of people buy stuff like that, you know, you can have someone on Fiverr for five bucks, send me a postcard from Paris with a picture of the Eiffel Tower. You know, I don’t know why someone would want that really. But maybe it’d be fun way to make new friends I you know, who knows. But but all sorts of stuff, people will help you with search engine marketing, design a book cover for you. Five bucks. That’s it. $5. Really, that’s all it costs. And what this is doing is it’s allowing prices to fall dramatically, so that more people can create more stuff, more products, more information, more books. I only gave a couple of examples of fiber. But there are so many, you know, if you want someone to Oh, I did this one. Once I got my mother, a mother’s day video on fiber, it cost me five bucks, she probably think thought it cost me a lot more to have this done. And my mom and I are both dog lovers. And so I hired this guy on Fiverr that has his dog, talk to mom on the video and watch her Happy Mother’s Day. And you know, I mean for five bucks, right?
Steve 28:08
Hey, more ridiculous ideas have been successful
Jason Hartman 28:11
in there are thousands of people making real livings off of Fiverr and there are many other websites like this. Okay. So I’m telling you that there is a huge shift going on. And there are a lot of reasons to be very optimistic. The fiber categories gifts, graphic design, video and animation, online marketing, writing and translation, advertising, business, programming and technology, fun and bizarre music and audio. People will do voiceovers make you a piece of handmade jewelry and send it to you make you a personalized greeting card. Call your friend on their birthday and sing happy birthday to them. Crazy ID I mean, capitalism is so incredible. Steve, it really is incredible. What people will think of it blows my mind every day. Yeah,
Steve 29:01
yeah. And you know, 3d printing. To go back to that is gonna make a lot of things interesting. I was just looking here. My cover on my smartphone is getting a little flimsy and broken. It’s only a matter of time before you know, hey, I need a new cover. You just print it out.
Jason Hartman 29:15
Yep. Yeah, you know, good point.
Steve 29:16
People are doing it with parts for firearms.
Jason Hartman 29:19
Yeah, you can print in guns there. There are gun blueprints where you can make I believe in ar 15 which is the gun that the Obama administration is attacking so much, the so called assault rifle, which, by the way, doesn’t fire any faster than any other semi automatic gun. Because it’s not a machine gun. It just looks like a machine
Steve 29:40
gun. It looks I saw an AR 15 walking down the street the other day just indiscriminately shooting people.
Jason Hartman 29:46
Yeah, you’re right. I get what you’re saying. Yeah, the gun guns don’t kill people. people kill people. Yes, that’s correct. Okay. If you want more on this, listen to my holistic survival show. We’ve discussed this concept quite a bit. Actually. But blueprints for guns a gun that you can make on a 3d printer. Someone actually made a car on a 3d printer. Someone posted on their Facebook page about two weeks ago, I thought it was pretty funny. Can a 3d printer print another 3d printer? And And the answer to that, by the way is yes they can. Okay, well, ultimately so so they can recreate themselves. Okay, we had
Steve 30:26
a part, a pump go out on our washer yesterday. It’s a plastic part, I’m sure and I had to call Sears and give them the part number. I’m sure that you’ll be able to download Sears you as someone actually stole shops at Sears. Well, they had the part they could get it to me fast. But I was surprised to find that they still exist. To my that was my most recent interaction with Sears other than 15 years ago. But you’d probably be able to print out replacement parts for appliances, computers, it’ll be crazy.
Jason Hartman 30:56
It really is amazing. There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic. You several years ago, a guy named Stan Davis wrote a book that’s pretty interesting. It’s called mass customization. And it’s about how Levi’s well I mean, one of the stories and it was how Levi’s, obviously Levi’s jeans is struggling, that company has been around forever. I think they’re still in business. But I know they’ve had some problems and I maybe file bankruptcy. I haven’t kept up with them. But they were offering to make custom blue jeans for people. And you know, you can do this really easily nowadays. So the consumer can get jeans just the way they want them. Exactly, you know in the in the color in the style in the fit everything. I remember my ex girlfriend, Lynn, she went in and wanted to get a new bathing suit. And they had her put on this this blue colored one piece bathing suit and went into this like booth where it took pictures of her and suggested just for her body type what the most flattering swimsuit was, this is an example of mass customization. And then she can just have it made, and the price is not high anymore. So these things are all tremendous. They have tremendous economic value to them. And a lot, a lot of good stuff coming out of this. Yeah, this disintermediation that allows people through the internet to get right to the source. You know, I realized this back in 1999, when I published my first book become the brand of choice, okay, which is about relationship marketing. And I remember, it took me about seven minutes, my first experience ever, in doing this, to go on amazon.com and list my book for sale. And I thought, wow, before I you used to have to get a publisher, and you have to have to be picked by somebody. And now you can just pick yourself, and you can say, Hey, I’m gonna publish a book, and I don’t care what anybody thinks of it, I’m gonna expose it to the world. And I’m going to find my own audience or let them find me. And in seven minutes, I can have my book exposed to the entire planet Earth on amazon.com. And I can get money for that. And I mean, what it what a shift that is going on what a what a brilliant, wonderful shift, where there are so many opportunities and a lot of amazing Yeah, a lot of this, it changes the economic game. And a lot of it changes the way we do real estate, as we talked about before, how geography is less meaningful than it’s ever been in human history. And that’s true for your tenants. But it’s also true for you as a real estate investor, because from your desk, or from your iPad laying in bed. Okay, you can research your properties. You can look at satellite images, you can go to Zillow, and Trulia take everything with a grain of salt there because it’s not that accurate. But you know, it’s better than nothing. It’s a guide, you can get all sorts of information that you just never had access to before. I mean, incredible, incredible world in which we live.
Steve 33:54
Yep, yep. So to sum it up, in one corner, we have the vast natural resources of the US and innovation and the other we have socialism and the Fed and we will see who wins out
Jason Hartman 34:05
well, right. It’s going to be it’s this is an epic struggle. It’s been going on since the beginning of time. Okay, the haves and the have nots. This is nothing new. And we’re just going through it today. And it’s just more consolidated and powerful and has more media and so forth. But this has been going on forever. Okay. Yeah. And the pendulum will keep swinging back and forth.
Steve 34:24
Yep. Yep. And, and so of course, you know, with the market changing people, because of those things we mentioned, they want to own hard assets, they want to own real estate. We’re getting asked more and more about condos, which you have will, according to you covered ad nauseum on the show. Yeah. And you get asked about it. Yes,
Jason Hartman 34:40
yes. Yes. And you know what, we don’t have time to really cover this. We got to get to Dennis Miller. And I hope you liked George Gilder on the last show. We’ll have Jerome Corsi coming up. And we’ve got James all teacher did a great interview yesterday. I can’t wait to air that one as well. But suffice it to say, Steve, let’s talk about condos in detail on another show, but I’m not sure crazybulk condos, folks, and be careful. You’ve heard me say it probably condos are just not the ideal. I’ll make an exception here and there, but it’s certainly not the ideal. I love the good old tried and true single family home, duplexes. triplexes. And for plexes can be okay to the only problem you get into sometimes with those is that some of them I see a lot of the market and by our competitors, the few competitors that we do have, that are in pretty bad areas, some of them can become pretty, pretty bad areas. Okay, so that’s what you got to be careful there. But the same is true of condos and homes to just do your right due diligence. And we of course help you with that. But we’ll talk about that more. We got to get to our guests, because we went on so long again,
Steve 35:43
just like we said, we would don’t say we didn’t stick to our word, everyone.
Jason Hartman 35:48
That’s true, folks. Anyway, Steve, anything else? real quick? No,
Steve 35:51
I’ve said enough. They’re tired of me.
Jason Hartman 35:53
All right. Hey, we’ll get to our guests now. We’ll be back with him in just a moment here. Okay. And we’ll be back with dennis miller in just about 60 seconds.
Announcer 36:03
Now you can get Jason’s creating wealth in today’s economy home study course, all the knowledge and education revealed in a nine hour day of the creating wealth boot camp, created in a home study course for you to dive into at your convenience. For more details, go to Jason hartman.com.
Jason Hartman 36:27
It’s my pleasure to welcome dennis miller to the show. No, he’s not Dennis Miller, the comedian or political consultant. But it’s Dennis Miller, who is a new Casey Research author. Of course, we’ve had Doug Casey and some of his people on the show before, and he is the author of retirement reboot. And today, let’s talk a little bit about this stuff. Dennis lives in two places, both in Florida and in Illinois. But he happens to be right near me in Scottsdale, Arizona today. Dennis, welcome. How are you? I’m just fine. And thank you for inviting me on the show. Well, it’s my pleasure in your book, retirement reboot. It’s your personal story of how you realize your retirement without being threatened by the low interest rate environment. And, and you know, let me just make a comment on that most people love low interest rates except retirees or people living off savings, because there’s just you can’t get a yield out of the savings that you’ve created throughout your life. But of course, if you want to buy properties or finance things, or use financing to grow your business, it’s a good thing. But it’s really a double edged sword for a large part of the population. But how did you work your retirement based on what’s going on nowadays?
Dennis Miller 37:32
Well, I’m I was the typical Benjamin Graham, passive investor fundamental.
Dennis Miller 37:40
Yeah, I got my first Social Security check 10 years ago, and for the first several years of my retirement, the old formula 100 minus your age. So you take 100 minus 65, and 65% of your income, or your nest egg, rather, would be put into Texas Instruments, the other 35% you use to protect yourself against inflation. And basically, we did that we had nice CD ladders, and not very hard after a CD in the tour. So go out and buy another one, five years out, living off the interest and never touching the principal. Well, that all works until something you’re very familiar with here, real estate market change. And all of a sudden, they’re bailing out the banks with the first tarp though. And literally, I woke up one morning and opened my computer and had more cash in my cash account than I could have ever imagined. And it’s almost like, Honey, did we win the lottery, and you didn’t tell me. So I go into the history and find out that the banks have to take that money to put it out of the economy, they took the money and basically paid off their debt. And I have just all kinds of CDs, all called in within a two or three day period. So picture having, at that point in my life, probably better than 70% of my retirement money, and six and 7% CDs, all getting called in. And the best I could get was maybe 2%. So so you know, it’s like, every time a CD got called in LA, we just lost another $400 a month, we just lost another $200 a month, and I couldn’t replace the income. So I had to do a 180 as Benjamin Graham talked about going from passive investor to full throttle active investing. Either that or I’m going to have to radically change my lifestyle. So I called up some mentors, the Lakeland Kirsch of asset strategies, and a few other people and the first thing I said to him is, government’s printing money hand over fist. Isn’t that what causes inflation? I’m not sure I want to go on into anything that’s a long term Treasury or something like that. And they all said, Yeah, you understand it. And therefore you’re going to have to put your money in different places in order to survive. So over the next three years with a lot of Help. I became a full throttle active investor have money. You know, I’ve tried to countries seven different foreign currencies and all kinds of things. This part of the process, I started getting a lot of investment newsletters, Casey being one of them, some of the other ones vehicle or group and several of them because I needed to get educated. I started writing these people saying you’re not, you’re not relating to seniors. You’re not relating to savers. And I don’t know if you know, David Deland is managing editor from the KC group, it got to the point where, you know, we became pen pals, because he’s asked and answered all my questions. And then one day he finally writes in says, You’re 100%, right, we’re really not relating to the problems of your peer group. Why don’t you take it as an assignment? Yeah, you know, interestingly, that’s also so true on a governmental level, because they’re inflating away the value of the currency. And at the same time, the interest rates are so low, those don’t necessarily go together. I mean, in the Carter era, at least, because of Volcker, who broke the back of inflation, you had higher interest rates. Now, granted, it could be argued the real rate of inflation was higher than the interest rates, but that’s usually the case. So ultimately, people are always moving backwards. But the government and the central bank is definitely not relating to Savers, either. I mean, this is what upsets me so much, Dennis, is that people who have done the seemingly right thing all their life, they’ve delayed gratification, they’ve saved money, they put away money for a rainy day, they didn’t send it all they were responsible, and yet they’re getting burned by the system. They’re getting more than they’re getting more than burning. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, let me let me get, let me just reinforce what what you said, by some things, since I’ve joined the KC group, because they’ve asked me to help out with that person that you just described, the first thing I did was, I went back and check now, with a CD rate, when my CDs were called in my interest income was five times my Social Security check. If I was foolish enough to have CDs today, and the current rate, my interest income would be half of my Social Security check. So that’s how much the the Federal Reserve and the government has taken the money out of the hands of the seniors and savers who played by the rules. The other side of the squeeze, is, we got a social security increase this year, that was under 2%. But our Medicare actually went up three times that amount. We did a survey of our subscribers, and said, okay, we all agree that inflation is not what the government’s telling us. What do you think it is? And it was incredible what happened? We had 3000 responses, and we gave them one question, what do you think it is? And then any comments at the end? Well, the composite number was a hair over 8%. And I asked the people who helped us with the survey, can you send me an email if there were any comments? I had 96 pages of subscriber comments. Wow. 96 pages? And what was the comments? The upside of the comments is we’re seeing it in everything. We’re seeing it in the downsize. In other words, you can go buy a Canada tuna fish, but it went from six ounces to five ounces, but it’s the same price. And then some of them were pointing out astronomical increases, that they’re saying and the stuff that they need to live with. And so that the you have this entire generation is getting squeezed on the income side, and the inflation is squeezing them on the spending side. And they have they’re trying to scramble and figure out what to do. And that’s what we’ve been doing since the first appeal.
Jason Hartman 43:48
Yeah. Okay. talk just a little bit more about some of the solutions to this. What can people do?
Dennis Miller 43:53
Well, what’s the first thing is, I read an article recently, I’m a believer that we’re all money managers. Now, unless you got a pension from a branch of the government, most of us retired, had a 401k you know, some sort of an IRA. And regardless of how you played by the rules, and you earned your nest egg, now it’s our job to make sure it lasts for the rest of our life. The employee benefit Research Institute just came out with their latest report, and said, Unless you work for the government, 3% of the people that are working now in the in the private sector, have some sort of defined benefit plan, so that everybody who hasn’t worked for the government gets their gold watch. It’s their lump of cash, and they’re having to make that life savings last for the rest of the generation. The first thing they got to do is wake up, money will not manage itself. I got an email from a 72 year old subscriber a couple of days ago, and she She was really having trouble with a stockbroker? What font or something? Could she put it in? So she didn’t have to worry about it? And my answer to her is, I don’t know of any set it and forget it investments today they don’t exist. So rule number one is you better take charge and start to get some education, then we can start talking about investments and diversification and yield and dividends and appreciation. But I’m seeing one of the biggest problems is people are gonna have to wake up, no question about it. And it’s been a rude awakening. And as terrible as it sounds, I think it’s gonna get a lot ruder. In some cases, Well, one thing you would appreciate with your real estate background is my wife inherited part of a family farm that has been in the family now for 100 years, nobody in the family is thinking about selling it. That’s one big, big hedge against inflation. That is, in effect, also providing some income. That is one of the one of the things that we’ve been very, very fortunate with. Because if you’re concerned about inflation, buying the right kind of real estate and farmland is one of the first places to look along with precious metals.
Jason Hartman 46:08
And I think the farmland is more interesting than precious metals, conceptually, because at least with a piece of property, you’ve got leverage, you’ve got tax benefits, and you’ve got the commodity value of farming, of course, food has universal need. But there’s management, and there’s their risk with crops and so forth. But you know, let me ask you about the metals for a moment, that’s what’s commonly thought of is the best inflation hedge Dennis and I have a little most people think my view on this is a little bit odd. And maybe you will, too, and feel free to take issue with me. But in all this being said, before I jump into it, I invest in metals, I mean, I own gold and silver, platinum and palladium. And I think it’s okay, I purchased them. And they’re a way to store wealth, to have a savings account that hopefully will not be debased, as the dollar or whatever currency in which you live, your life is debased. But at the same time, these are defensive strategies. They’re not all offensive strategies. If you ask a metals investor, even the most staunch goldbug, did your gold go up in value? Or did the dollar go down in value, and most will say, well, the dollar went down. And so all you’re really doing is is treading water keeping pace, which is a it’s a lot better than losing. But it’s speculative. It doesn’t produce income, there’s no financing, no leverage, no tax benefits. In fact, the tax treatment is rather bad, because it’s taxed as a collectible at 28%. You know, and some other things there. So I don’t know your your thoughts. I mean, there’s another scenario to the Goldberg argument, which is the sort of economic the full on economic collapse into the world scenario, where that it may be useful there too. But without talking about the end of the world scenario, just talking about as a, you know, a hedge against inflation, if you will, any thoughts there?
Dennis Miller 47:57
Yeah, I can show that. This way. I went to a KC conference actually here in Phoenix back in 2011. And they had a lot of speakers. And that was what they were talking about was golden. What percentage of your portfolio do you have in gold? And they would tell us, and many of which I’m not showing my gold. And finally, by the second day, I realized that the audience was not asking the speaker the right question, because I looked at gold and silver and metals in a different vein. The first part is what I learned from Glenn Kirsch is what they call a core holdings. Now, the core holdings is the metal that you have, that if it all hits the fan, you’re going to have to have to fall back on regardless of where the price of gold is, it’s like a fire extinguisher you have it, you hope you never have to use it. So that I segregate in my mind what I call the core holdings, from investment for profit holdings. And that we have to really in our mind, determine which is which. Because then if you want to start looking at gold for appreciation, then you can have physical metals if you want, or you can go into some of the more popular exchange traded funds. You take companies like Newmont Mining, they’re an established company, they’re not out looking for gold, they’re harvesting gold, they’ve actually tied their dividend to the price of gold. And I think that gold is a multi purpose. I say gold I mean metal is a multi purpose investment. And we have to segregate in our mind what we’re trying to accomplish with it. As opposed to I’m a gold bug. I don’t I’m not a gold bug. I use gold and silver for different purposes. And I buy them with that in mind if gold doubles I have certain investments I’m going to sell. I’m still going to hold on my core holdings.
Jason Hartman 49:57
Yeah. So when you when you look That, you know, what’s kind of interesting about that, too, is the the whole question of supply and limited supply and so forth. And this one’s a little far fetched for me to believe that. I know it’ll happen someday, but which is will it happen too soon, there’s a company that is raising money now. And I hear it’s doing reasonably well, I can’t remember the name of the company to send spacecrafts to asteroids, to mine precious metals off of the asteroids. And then so I hear that. And then I read another article, just recently talking about how earthquakes create new gold supply.
Dennis Miller 50:35
And then I look at technologies like fracking, for example, which have dramatically increased the supply of the petroleum energy product. And I just wonder, nobody really knows what the supply is. And and the way gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper, pretty much anything is valued is buys the good old economic law of supply and demand. Well, there’s a second, there’s a second law with that, though, because I’m very familiar with fracking. And one of our best performing fiction or model portfolio, happens to have a presence there in the bucket. The problem that you’re relating with is using the concept of fracking The goal is, how expensive is it to get out? Right, right. In other words, not only not only do you have your supply demand issue, but the fact is, if you’ve got to fly to an asteroid to harvest it and send it back, both has to be 50 or $60,000 an ounce before it’s economically feasible. Well, that that’s
Jason Hartman 51:34
why that seems a little far fetched to me. But they must think that the math is worth it, because maybe it’s just laying all over the top of the asteroid and it doesn’t even need to be mined, if you will, the way it does on Earth, I don’t know, I really don’t know much about them.
Dennis Miller 51:50
Maybe they’re better at raising money than they are finding gold.
Jason Hartman 51:53
Well, that may be true, that may be true. And you know, another interesting concept here is diamonds. And you look at diamonds as a commodity, which you know, isn’t traded like gold, it’s not viewed as money as much. But diamonds are now being made in laboratories. And it makes you wonder, gosh, what does that do to the diamond investment market? They’re, they’re they’re literally the same thing. They’re not fake. They’re not cubic zirconia. They’re real diamonds. It’s just that they’re made in the laboratory versus mined out of the ground. So do you know just kind of some interesting thoughts there? If you’re
Dennis Miller 52:27
gone back and read about how debeers tried and true yours control the diamond market? Well,
Jason Hartman 52:33
I thought they still did.
Dennis Miller 52:35
Well, they control the law of supply and demand for many, many years. And then they lost control of it. So it actually turned into much of a free market. And, you know, bunker hunt tried to do it with silver years ago. And you know, what was the old story? He wrote a book on how to be worth $500 million? And the answer was start with 2 billion if somebody tries to sit there and control the gold market, I, I don’t know that they have enough money to be able to do that. And that was one of the aspects but you may be right, someday, the supply demand curve may change. But right now, if we look at history in the history of man, gold seems to hold its value better than most any asset that I know.
Jason Hartman 53:15
Yeah, well, it’s certainly got a lot of history behind it. The old saying is that 2000 years ago, you could buy a toga and a pair of sandals with an ounce of gold. And today, you can buy a nice man suit and a pair of shoes. But yeah, but But again, if that suit is made in Bangladesh, or China, you can actually buy several suits for that ounce of gold.
Dennis Miller 53:37
No dependence, I thought it was more contemporary. And then I lost the darn paper, but it was when a Ford Mustang came out, you could buy a Ford Mustang for so many ones at one ounce gold pieces. And ironically enough, 40 years later, it took the same number of gold pieces to buy a Ford Mustang. That’s so interesting. The concept is it holds its value. Yeah,
Jason Hartman 53:58
yeah. So but Okay, so let’s agree on that, that it does hold its value, that it’s a great measuring stick for inflation and in the debasement of fiat currencies, but you’re still only to the point where you’re really treading water, right? I mean, that’s not really being an investor, if you will, it’s being a saver. And hate being a saver is better than not being a saver. And if you can save in something that doesn’t lose value, the dollar loses value. We’re, we’re sure of that. I mean, history has proven that one out every fiat currency ultimately loses value. There’s, there’s no exception whatsoever to that one.
Dennis Miller 54:32
We’re I think, people I think people make this mistake, gold will hold its value. But we have pictures in our portfolio that are speculated. Now understand that our peer group is baby boomers and those that have retired, but we’re telling them not to put more than two and a half to 5% of their portfolio in speculation. Well, you know, if you go into gold if you go into high tech if you go into a pharmaceutical company that has just discovered written the hottest new pharmaceutical care for whatever, you have the possibility to double and triple and 10 times your money if you hit the right company, so that when you are looking for the appreciation factor as opposed to savings, gold is one area and one sector to look at. But there’s a lot of other sectors that we can also look at, you know, the right kind of real estate being one of them, that we’re sitting there trying to show our investors how to allocate their portfolio so that they can get that to appreciation without being overloaded in one sector. In other words, if somebody said to you, I get 2% of my investment portfolio in gold, you wouldn’t think anything of it. It would be more if they put too much of it in speculating and gold for appreciation is poor, as opposed to core holdings that they would really be at great risk.
Jason Hartman 55:56
I agree. I agree. So you surveyed readers about inflation in your newsletter? What are they thinking just a little more on that?
Dennis Miller 56:04
Well, I’ll tell you what the thinking and it was, I wrote an article that was on my website about it. Recall reading the tea leaves, let’s go back to the My generation, our paradigm, we sat down and figured out retirement planners through retirement planner said figure 6% for appreciation 2% for inflation. Well, that’s not the one that’s
Jason Hartman 56:27
hilarious 2% for inflation,
Dennis Miller 56:30
was that was what whenever, you know, I filled out my first one years ago when I get a PC Jr, and some sort of a program to do it. And it said, If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re good till you’re going to be 125 years old. And I thought, well, I can make it you know. And now that led though to another rule, the 6% 2% was how much can you take out of your IRA, to supplement your Social Security, and still not be champing the principal, when you’re factoring in inflation? Well, the old number was 4%. And that was if you grew 6%, you have 2%, inflation, you take out the other 4% supplement your Social Security, and you’re good to go. I did that for the first four or five years of my retirement with no problem. The real mission message now is if you believe it’s 8% that means you better be earning 12% if you’re going to keep your nest egg up with inflation and still throw off that 4% in order to survive. Now tell me that investors are sitting there looking for a set it and forget it investment, those don’t exist, you better be actively actively managing
Jason Hartman 57:43
that. That is a great point. And I think you made a great point there, Dennis, I don’t think there is any such thing as a passive a truly passive investment. Not anymore, you know not anymore. You know, if you if you give your money to some guy at Merrill Lynch or Ameriprise or one of these big brokerage firms, first of all, you got to have your head examined, in my opinion. But But second, you need to learn about stuff you need to stay engaged, you need to be reading all the right papers and looking at all the right media and paying attention to things. The world just isn’t the way you can just have a set it and forget it investment. Every investment needs to be active.
Dennis Miller 58:25
I totally agree with you. As a matter of fact, in our we have a Kree side and paid side to our service. And on our paid side. We sat down and did a subscriber survey and said what do you want us to write about? And they wanted things about income. We’ve written stuff on reverse mortgages and annuities. And one of the things that they asked us and we actually did this for an entire monthly issue was how do you find good professional help to help you manage your portfolio? And you know, as you said, if you’re gonna send it through, you’re gonna have to have your head examined. That was one of the most eye opening issues we ever had. How do we get good professional help? That’s going to help us hit a 12% or better Yeah, do you
Jason Hartman 59:12
think that does not exist? Not sure.
Dennis Miller 59:15
What happened? What happened was we there was an article on Motley Fool which really exposed that then the bottom line for your listeners is the difference between what they call it the dictionary relationship and the suitability code of standards and the stockbrokers suitability. There are good people out there that you can have a fiduciary relationship with, what we put into our newsletter was, what do they look like? How do you find them? How do you interview and how do you measure?
Jason Hartman 59:44
Yeah, but here’s the problem, Dennis, even if even if your broker is a good person, a good ethical person and a competent person, they’re still investing in assets over which they don’t control. You can’t control the board of directors of the company from scratch. All the profits off the top, you can’t control the the C level executives from giving themselves huge bonuses, you know and backdating options, all of these things affect the shareholders. So there’s just too many layers. That’s the problem, the investments are just out of one’s control. That’s what frustrates me about the way the system is. Well, and you know what? That’s exactly, you’re expressing the concerns of my entire generation. And therefore, the real key is, was we are learning how to diversify, not only what we classify them as speculative or a little bit more secure, but how to also diversify them across sectors, so that you have a shot at getting a good return. But at the same time, you are limiting your risk for just those reasons, you qL one, exactly. So Dennis, what is your outlook for the future? Many, many voices out there are concerned about hyperinflation, there’s no academic definition for hyperinflation in terms of what percentage that is, but you know, and then there’s a few people, and there’s very few talking about deflation, not too many people saying that,
Dennis Miller 1:01:08
what are your thoughts? Well, I appreciate your asking, I think I want to temper it first, by talking about my background, I was the market that came to Casey Research with the need. And they said, we’ve got the greatest research company in the world. And I’m inclined to agree with them at this point. We need you to help us understand the market better and connect with them. So I’m not giving this to you from an academic goal and economic background. I’m giving it from the experience of a guy who’s almost 73 years old, and I’ve been an investor for a long time. I can’t sit here and say whether it’s going to be inflation or hyperinflation. But I know one thing, 8% is a realistic number. And that even if it take 10 12%, it’s going to wipe out seniors and savers. Because the government’s not going to keep up with it as far as our Social Security is concerned. And I get asked this question a lot, because they say, Well, what do you want to do to protect yourself against hyperinflation? And my answer is, I can’t predict the probability of hyperinflation any more than I can predict the probability of your house burning down. But I know one thing if either one of those happen, that’s a very traumatic financial experience. And just like you have insurance against your house burned down, a prudent investor today, better be having some sort of allocation to their portfolio. And those kind of investments that are going to help whether it’s inflation or hyperinflation, I can’t predict the probability of that event, but the cast three catastrophic consequences are so high, a prudent investor better take that into consideration. I think it’s going to be high for a while. I can’t say how high
Jason Hartman 1:02:51
Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree with you. I mean, if you’re saying it’s 8%. Now, I mean, I’ve been saying it’s nine to 10%. Now, the reported numbers are absurd. The only area where there’s really true deflation is in technology. But we did an article that said, when the iPad came out, I can’t eat my iPad. And then, you know, I saw, I saw another article with a similar title to that. And I thought, did they copy us? Or are we just thinking alike? But but but yeah, no, it’s, it’s really a scary thing. I mean, this can this is just going to this inflation that is already happening, that may get a lot worse, who knows, or you know, and who knows when is going to devastate 200 and 50 million people in this country, we’ll just say that the other 60 million is positioned better, and it’s going to actually benefit them. And one of the things Dennis, I’d love to get your take on and it’s the last maybe concept we can cover here is how inflation, of course, we know it destroys, it’s a pickpocket, it’s a thief, it destroys the value of our savings, our stock brokerage accounts, our bonds, bonds are terrible with inflation, and destroys the value of equity in real estate, because we have a million dollars equity in a property. And there’s inflation, that million dollars is worth less now the real estate may hedge the inflation, hopefully. But the good side of it is that it also thankfully destroys the value of debts. And if you look throughout history, and again, this is perverse. It’s not the way it should be. But the debtors actually kind of win in inflationary environments, because they pay back the debts and cheaper dollars, and particularly the biggest debtor of all being the government.
Dennis Miller 1:04:31
Yeah, well, that’s their business plan. You know, they’re doing it to China. And I got to think that China is gonna get pretty upset about this, ultimately, I mean, you’ll notice that China and Russia are buying gold with both just yeah, whatever the sure one thing I’d like to deal with, and then I also have an offer with your permission I’d like to offer to our listeners. Absolutely. The debtor is going to win in a highly inflationary environment. We’d get 10,000 baby boomers, a day. retiring every day for the next 19 years. The majority of the baby boomers now are seniors and savers and not the debtors that they were back whenever buying a McMansion in their 20s. So that in effect, what you’re talking about, is a huge, huge transfer of wealth from our largest generation that needs it to survive on. So there’s going to be some real social issues that are terrible, don’t get with it. And you know, you’re 100% waste. And therefore, it’s incumbent upon us back to really started our interview to make sure that we’re on top of things and looking after ourselves, because nobody’s going to do it for us.
Jason Hartman 1:05:40
Yep, no question about it. So we wanted to mention an offer for our listeners.
Dennis Miller 1:05:44
Yeah, yeah, I appreciated the opportunity to visit with you, if you’re listening to go to our website, www dot Miller’s money.com, slash free book, we would like to offer them a couple things. One is, if they go on that website, they can get a free copy of the book, so they’ll get a feel for, it’s basically my story of how I went from a passive to an active investor. In addition to them, every Thursday, we publish an article on all kinds of profits, much of which we’ve talked about today, and that’s free, and that will hit their inbox. And then we also have a paid side, which is very inexpensive, which deals with the model portfolio shows them how to allocate their investments properly, so that they’re not too high risk in any one area. those concerns have to express pretty well for so it’s www dot Miller’s money, comm slash free book, and they can download a copy of the book and see what we’re all about.
Jason Hartman 1:06:48
Sounds good. Hey, Dennis, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dennis Miller 1:06:51
I enjoyed it. Thank you very much.
Announcer 1:06:56
What’s great about the shows you’ll find on Jason hartman.com, is that if you want to learn about investing in and managing income properties for college students, there’s a show for that. If you want to learn how to get noticed online and in social media, there’s a show for that. If you want to know how to save on life’s largest expense, there’s a show for that. And if you’d like to know about America’s crime of the century, there’s even a show for that. Yep, there’s a show for just about anything, only from Jason hartman.com or type in Jason Hartman in the iTunes Store.
Jason Hartman 1:07:44
This show is produced by the Hartman media company All rights reserved for distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www dot Hartman media.com or email media at Hartman media.com. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax legal real estate or business professional for individualized advice. opinions of guests are their own. And the host is acting on behalf of Empowered Investor network, Inc. exclusively.