017 - Halloween Fun Exposes Bad Behaviors That May Be Hijacking Your Ability To Invest

We noticed some disturbing behaviors that may explain why so many investors lose money during our yearly Halloween entertainment.  

This is something we love and prioritize since fun is an essential part of a happy life. But problems arise when you find yourself unconsciously spending/consuming and needing instant gratification. 

There's a high probability that your behaviors transcend all areas of your life. Join us today where we compare our Halloween choices to those of others so you can assess your own. 

Cool places we've been for Halloween

• Sleepy Hollow (Breakneck Trail and Bannerman Castle) 
• Salem (Captain Bills Whale Watching)
• Trail of Terror in Connecticut
• Universal Studios Orlando
• Dorney Park
• Hershey Park 

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Transcript

Welcome to Roaming Returns, a podcast about generating a passive income through investing so that you don't have to wait till retirement to live your passions. 

A quick note before we get started, we had some issues with the microphone on this episode. Apparently my computer decided to record on both the microphone and the laptop and created some weird echo effect. Which sucks. If this episodes on variable just skip it. We're going to come back and probably record another episode at some point that covers the gold nuggets that were in this episode. So don't stress out too bad you can handle it, listen to it. We have some fun Halloween stuff. Otherwise, we'll get to the important stuff later.
Today we're going to talk about Halloween and all the places that we've been to. And then we're going to segue over to the financial components of things with budgeting and how we make that happen. And Tim's got a couple of Tiffany's that he came to all we were people watching at the amusement park. Instant gratification is the root cause of a lot of people's investing issues. So tune in so you can avoid those kinds of mistakes. Happy Halloween y'all. But that was that's a cat is. Oh my god.
What's up guys? The best time of year. We are quite partial to the this this holiday ticular
Yeah, we absolutely love Halloween because it's the time of year where everything goes like people don't judge weirdness conical, so everybody kind of doesn't have that. Okay, Friday the 13th I would not have guessed that.
Lily. She's happy to see us. So what we're going to talk about today it's gonna be not as structured as previous podcast. We're gonna talk about past experiences with Halloween and we're gonna talk about this year's nonsense with Halloween. And this this will tie in to finance at some point, I promise so it's not going to be Halloween episode. There will be some financial
pundits but we got some good stories if you'd like to go different places like we've been up to Salem, we've gone to Sleepy Hollow.
Connecticut Connecticut have a really cool outdoor walking partner. Well, since
we're in Pennsylvania, we did a road trip up to Salem and on the way up there like I navigate I love doing trip planning and I do some crazy stuff but there's this thing called the trail of terror in Connecticut. And it was it was really cool. It was like a giant I don't want to call it a haunted house. It's like set in the middle of the woods but it's got all those like things up. So most of those little dinky haunted houses are like real quick and dirty and this was like a lot longer as we had the best like people with us. Not like we had met them we just happen to be like paired up with them in line we were it was great. I think it was fun. They made me go first and some places they assume you're not scared person in the front and other people they attack the front regardless but this place was like hit not the front and I kept like I kept giving them the number three because I was like it's the third chicken line. Because as soon as one person screams like all the people that the actors target that the screen. It's
like It's like It's like the Serengeti, the lions like the
antelope. It makes it so fun because Willoughby's will be so weak the weakest lobbyist but it makes it really fun when you're behind or like with somebody who just terrified of everything because they screw
you over whether they're firstly
but I always wonder that why are they there?
They're scared of their shadow but the one we
just went to the other week. There was a girl in our group. She was like so tweaked out she was like hunched back like, rolling in on herself. She was like pulling it and it was kind of hilarious. We're supposed
to we've been we've been to Salem, Massachusetts, and it's awesome. It's really cool. Like, obviously, the history of that. City's quite a grotesque love it's really cool. What they do is really cool, like the historical context and like,
Salem reminds me of Roswell or like we went to Roswell actually after Salem, but it like the entire town is themed with the witches obviously because of the witch trials and everything. But there's a lot of like misconceptions with the history actually was like nobody was actually burned. I think most of them are home. Some of them are John and then that one guy was like crushed in stones door. That's where the hocus pocus movie was filmed. But what's interesting is the B which show from way back in the day,
if you're old like us, which was cool.
It was actually the reason that Salem became a tourist attraction. Before that happened. Everybody was like super, like, a bit embarrassed or ashamed of I guess the tragedy that happened there. And then when they brought I guess they recorded an episode of the witch there. I forget exactly why but that's why there's a B which statue actually in that town. So she actually kind of made a thing and it's it started to embrace it, even though it is sad.
It's pretty dope. It's actually really, it's, it's quite, it's an interesting area of architecture like they left like most architectures from like the 60s 1700s. So it's still like looks cobbled
streets in some places. You got that really old, like who's dark brown. It's pretty neat. But the history of it so screwed up. It's like the whole political thing. So that was
fun. there and that was that was a good time and then we went to the Sleepy Hollow twice in the hallway. There's literally the whole town is all about. Yeah,
I was gonna say Sleepy Hollow has a completely different feel to it, because it's not actually based on like a real world tragedy. It's just like the mythological fiction story. And the entire town gets into it like we were walking up the one sidewalk. I don't even think it was on Halloween yet but we were walking up the one sidewalk and this cop was actually like, blaring the Halloween themed song out his megaphone, just driving around town. And their mascots was the head was
my only complaint if I had one complaint about City Hall is they have all year that we were there for 100 attraction. We went to there for a few days and it was all it was the Headless Horseman
I think it's even cold to have this person hot or something. There was no
like anywhere to be found with some bullshit. And
Tim was so mad he came home and I guess did some deep research and real I guess somebody said that they skip the Headless Horseman like once every three years
or four years. periodically. It's not like an every year so that was nonsense. But that's a really, really, really cool setting.
It's really cool, too because we really liked the hike. And if you go slightly north of Salem, there's a trail called breakneck I keep saying
breakneck trail. If you've ever hiked it, it's always called regnant trail so you get this awesome panoramic view if you've ever hiked it. The reason it's called breakneck trails because you've literally had to climb and do like a rock scramble straight up the side of a freaking clip if you follow that. That's probably why it's called I don't know why that that's why I call
but it's really cool and it's actually not as hard as it sounds other than the validation aspect when it's not like I'm legit scramble. You like
castles? There is like one of the top five castles in America is like two miles from City Hall was one that you always see this in New York. It's like across a bridge and I think it started to be from something. Castle that is super awesome. We never actually went there. It's actually that big. It's not like it's
almost like it's still structured. It's really weird the way it's set up.
All we see like you look up castles in America as
a cemetery. This is we'd be sleeping Hollow is freaking incredible. Some of those Rockefeller are very there has so many famous people and others like Carnegie has like some crazy murder people. Some woman but they have these giant like monastery like mod Mongolian things that are just ginormous. So apparently they the Carnegie and Rockefeller were in a pissing contest.
They're like my mom is going to be bigger than yours. So that was fun. And the other cool thing is if you ever go there, I'm there they have a cemetery tour. It's well worth the mind. Actually. It's very interesting.
And then there's another thing that I absolutely thought was fantastic. The great Jacqueline and blaze they carved like, I think 6000 pumpkins and they light them up. Really? Really, really cool. Cool.
So so like probably my favorite house so far. Yeah,
really, really awesome. And the reason we did it twice is because we did it the one year in itself and then we went up to Seattle. We made sure we stopped again because it's so cool. We're actually talking about going back up again.
We're probably one on one. So before we leave the
Salem trip when I was doing the extra research on driving, I found we had never done an escape room at that point. And I just loved the concept of solving puzzles and like the weird creepiness thing going on. Like I looked at the best ones in the country and there happened to be one in New Jersey. Like the northern part. So we actually hit that on the way back.
Not a fan of Jersey. But that was Shepard. So many jersey is the East Coast, Kansas.
The armpit of the US, but I'm the guy. They're not cookie cutter like escape rooms. The guy designs everything himself. He builds everything himself. They're really intricate. Like, they're just so cool. And I know we don't have anything compared to but I kind of feel like we shot our load on our first one and now everything's gonna like fall short compared to what that is. It was just incredible. And the guy actually told us that we probably shouldn't do the one that we signed up for because it's meant to have more than two people. And Tim was like screw it let's do it anyway and I'm like Alright, so what they do they handcuff you and they blindfold you they they stick you in individual cell like to start out it was freaking awesome. was really cool. Beat it. We totally like did it within the timeframe which was awesome. Like Tim is really good at the pattern solving stuff and I'm good with like the, I guess the pieces that are
gonna help him so that people felt
better, but Well, there are a couple things that like technical difficulty, but I mean, we still made it I was actually gonna that was just fun.
Really, really fun. Like if you like amusement park type things we went to Universal and Orlando and that one was well so
that was the trip so that was a bachelorette thing which we got drunk into but that was actually really really cool. It's probably the best one I didn't know amusement park for doing that kind of Halloween stuff because we like I like the static concept or like the factor where it's like you get to see all the different like, costumes and decorations and everything. And I just like the full sensation experience. We don't like the super loud screaming stuff as much but it kind of comes with the territory with you. The amusement parks are really cool. You get the ride coasters are still open
verbal rollercoasters. It's a weakness of mine.
Pretty fun and we're real close to that one. I feel like
the whole park is like no, you gotta like I'm not sure if you've went to amusement parks and know that they only cordoned off like a little part of the park for the for the Halloween festivities. Dude, like universal it was like half the park was just like chaos and like Mardi Gras there was people in costumes everywhere live
bands, there were these entire section. And last year we had Season Passes to Hershey Park the year before that so we ended up going to Dorney state and Hershey Park didn't do the Halloween thing. They just did like lights off on the coasters. So we they didn't have as much as the Halloween time stuff. So we decided to go up to Dorney Park instead I know we we decided to go to Dorney Park instead and I actually was blown away by the decorations and like the they have these like sections you go through like you came in and there was like a biohazard thing. So it was like a theme. And it's specific characters to like that little location then you'd walk a little bit further and then they actually have this like, giant tunnel built where it was all Cloudsoft and they have a smoke going and it was actually fairly long things and they had multiples of those. There was a pirate section. There was an entire hollow with like, pumpkins and all sorts of I love that section. That was really cool. Yeah, Tim doesn't like them. The roller coasters that one is good, but it was was really interesting seeing the different coasters available. They have one of the exact same rides they do in our shark which was which is interesting. But then this year, like two days ago, we just went to Hershey Park. They supposedly have gone all out for the like Halloween attractions and stuff. We ended up spending more than we normally would on park tickets. And we were
to say disappointed is being unkind. I
said disappoint under underwhelmed and I was
disappointed that it was just loud music and a bunch of so much snow like bunch of smoke machine like overboard on the smoke like there was like because it was a nice day, I guess like it was it was packed in the 70s there was like probably five or 6000 people there. It's crazy. So they only had like, I'm guessing if I had to guess maybe 100 actors or like 5000 people so there was like, we couldn't interact with
the audience, but I didn't even think they really have that many actors like the one thing we walked through that was supposed to be one of the many haunted houses like most of the freaking stuff had missing people and you can tell they were supposed to be there and they just weren't like it was
the houses were. The lines were so long. So
I was like I don't think I want to wait for something that's going to be crappy. So luckily we got there early. They did put a new roller coaster in since we got season passes the Wildcats revenge, which is a new they took a pre existing wooden roller coaster and they did like a steel advert or condition to it to make it smooth out because we used to call the like skull cracker of a backbreaker like rattle your teeth together. But it's so smooth. That was really fun. So we were able to get on that with no blindly click for
remember the week performance report we went up to Lehigh Valley So
yeah, that was just a screen book. So that didn't have any the roller coasters but that was pretty cool like out in the middle of nowhere
or you're driving around the middle of nowhere for like half an hour and you make a turn on residential street and again in the street. There's like industrial
complex, but it's a cornfield. It was it was kind of interesting. For fun. I liked how they had that setup where you didn't really have to wait there like a central area where you could supply a fire flow
tractions and then you just go from one and then when you got down with a one year we're like right at the second one and it was pretty it was pretty nifty. Like I like the efficiency of it. Nice.
Yeah, that's one of the biggest things I don't like about her. She's the efficiency things lacking especially after being done in Disney World in Orlando. They got that they got that locked in universals
about like we ever have a chance to go to Universal Halloween. I recommended it so it was
really it's an incredible experience. Not
so much like as long as the same trip we were there. We were waiting in line for like three hours or going to Harry Potter and that was
well that's because we ended up on a Saturday because of his poor planning on the person hosting the whatever situation. Had we actually gotten that trip we would have not spent near the amount of money I was actually kind of jaded with Donald Trump in general, because
of the call here is like part of the reason for the podcast like you hear all these incredible locations to go and you hear like sounds like a lot of money but really, we don't like we sleep out of the car. We take food with us or with a grocery store and we'll come out of the car we we like we don't pay for hotels we don't we eat out like I'm not missing.
Like Terrell there's this great place that that was one of the other things I was gonna say about Sleepy Hollow because it's just north of New York City. The food is incredible. It's just absolutely fantastic. We eat that every time we go in there cheesecake. Oh my gosh. It's amazing. And when we were actually in San Juan, we usually eat out one day and we do a lot of research to pick the place use wood pretty intentionally. And Salem was like the Northeast in general is so so expensive. Like it's not even it's
hard to remember saying if you plan it correctly and you withhold certain amenities you can go to the even in the Northeast expensive places for probably like half the money that you would if you didn't plan. Yeah,
like for example and then the other thing would be amusement parks. What we spent like I actually ended up finding discounted tickets. We actually did not pay to park at the car. We actually walked quite a long distance to actually get in the park because we don't mind walking. And that saved us $25 There. We didn't buy any food at the park we ate before we went
to what gets all that even in the park. And we didn't
buy the fast passes which Hershey parks are like, more expensive than the cost of the actual tickets because
I just if you've signed up you got an email there. They're kind of went over this topic. But the Fast Pass is that even in the park drinking in the park is like it is an astronomical how much this stuff and I think
because it was so busy, and we were standing in line longer than we normally were like when we had Season Passes We'd only go like during short stints when it wasn't busy. But I hate the whole weekend thing for for the Halloween stuff they do because they don't do it during the week. Otherwise we'd go during the week of
Christmas and you probably got to get we're not doing that.
We're not going I've already been that wants to deflower
I'm going to DC Christmas Christmases, okay. I
like the like. That's all I care about. But my problem so we were people watching and it was mind blowing.
Like if you keep you if you pay attention to the news, this also will get into some of the financial harder you pay attention to the news. All you hear is about how we're in an economic downturn and that worked towards a recession and that people don't have money we were in line for probably three hours and I stood and watched people and you'd be amazed at the number of people that were eating out like in the park view like like they have a Chipotle in Hershey Park. There's Chipotle right outside of Hershey Park to Chipotle in Hershey Park cost like $4 More than this boy that's right outside of our prime example. They would eat in there or they would they get this drink pass where you spend I don't know that ridiculous amounts of money for a cup and they have like a Pepsi machine. They
have different ones. Yeah, you give it a cup so you get discounted because the individual drinks themselves are expensive and then I noticed they actually had like a food package where I think it was $35 or I can't remember was $35 or $70. But you get five different locations. You get like a sampler, some kind of food that was Halloween themed like five or five or seven different places throughout the park, which I thought was incredibly interesting because we work landscaping for my dad quite frequently and will sometimes go eat nine hours without eating to the back. People can go to a park for five hours and not be stuffing their faces. There's
a lot of people eating. There's a lot of people drinking there's a lot of people that bought Fastpass on Fastpass if you're familiar with Disney World Disneyland they both have similar
I think at this point, every amusement park is doing
something that you put on your wrist and you can really skip the line through not the way now to me waiting is part of going through new parks.
I kind of agree with that to like grandma's cat because it becomes strategic of when you go when you insert
prices of how much is best fastest cost and we're talking hundreds of dollars. Like
if you were doing Hershey Park, so I haven't figured out the exact thing so it's I think the lowest option you can get is skipping one of each ride which is the same price as the Park did which I think was like 70 bucks, but then you can pay like 120 to have unlimited line skipping, which again, was my actual absolute mind because that's like double what you need to pay for the two
points with this with what the cost of it. So we'll say 100 dog park ticket
with 6060 to 70 depending which day so
you're paying 60 bucks. To get in the park and then you got to park 45 The park probably at least 35 minutes you got the food pass. That's the 35 So you're like and then you get the Fast Pass. You're talking like three $400 for like a five hour
game. They have a game theory you can actually put money onto a card and play games I don't even know why you go to amusement park to play the
recession thing. If we were in a recession, people would not would have been five to 10,000 people there and they wouldn't have been paying for parking they wouldn't have been paying for bath passes and all this other nonsense because money would be so tied to the recession means you don't have any money. You're you're barely lucky to have a job.
Oh, you want to know what I found out too. I was looking at the parking thing. Check this out. If you have 15 people in your vehicle or more you can park for free. Usually they charge you more for more people. It's like the complete opposite. I thought that was kind of interesting. So let's pack 15 dummies in a van.
That was more important was we're not in a recession or at least not in north of us maybe like in Texas or Oklahoma there might be a recession in the Northeast. We're not in a recession. There's way too much money being spent on frivolous expenditures to even justify that conversation.
Yeah, and like recessions, people, the unemployment numbers, people would be searching for jobs and they wouldn't be available. They would never
run like a researcher and one night Hersheypark sorry, this wouldn't happen. And secondly, the problem that I that I saw when I was looking at this is the sheer amount of people that were using the Fast Pass got me thinking well, I bet you these people can't actually invest because they want what they want. Now they don't have
and what's interesting is I've noticed the numbers of people with the fast passes have been going up and up and up and it's gonna get to the point at some point where like, everybody's still going to be waiting because everybody's paying for the Fastpass. So that's going to be interesting when they work those kids out. But that goes to show that the instant gratification problem is getting worse and worse and worse. Or maybe that's just the demographic of people abusing the parks in general. Because even some of the lines we were standing in like everybody was glued to their phones
they were all on their phones they'll have like the newest iPhone they all have the fancy has earbuds when iPhone so just the the sheer and patients people means they wouldn't make good income investors and as we do this, you know on this we work landscape but we do that pretty much all of our free time is devoted to income investing and educating you guys and educating ourselves and investing for ourselves and to see that these are the people that probably buy every every ship coin all coin and cryptocurrency saying oh it's gonna go up 1,000% I'll be rich. It's probably the people that buy like the when they do research for dividend stocks, they probably buy that thing, just the highest yielding dividend stock regardless of the trending
Tesla or the trending any of the trending stocks when they're at their peak and then they'll actually drop down to the verses
that I was writing about that in that weekly email and like, you have to be patient like if you're patient, the money takes care of itself. Like you start investing in your 20s by the time you're 30 you don't have to invest a penny more and you'll be able to be a millionaire. Well,
I think another component of this is the intentionality of things like it sounds like we go to a lot of places but then when you actually hear us talk about how we cut corners and cut costs and cut all this stuff, we almost end up before their side of the spectrum is like very
even when we go to places we have our money parked away for the year and stuff that's given us a yield.
Yes but I was gonna say like we intentionally spend money on the things that we're getting, that we intend to so
like if we spent $120 for two tickets, well we would just take that out of our fun let's make it 6% So we're select that money even though it wasn't a lot and it was a lot 100 point a lot to go to a
call center and we left early because we were so frustrated with the noise in the crowds, which is something we don't usually do.
But even that money was tucked away in something that generates 6% Like it's actually I was looked at today one of the bullet shares is almost seven and a half percent so
it's really cool. So what our money isn't actually getting sent because every month we do not go and spend $120 on like crazy excitement type stuff. I mean, I probably should budget some of that in but as of right now I don't do that. So like Halloween is a big time of year for me or for us and it's a really big
like my the two places that we really want to go that we're still working on a budget for it New Orleans and Romania.
Romania, Dracula's castle and I think we want to do the Black Forest right Black Forest. I gotta look more my my girlfriend was over in the UK was telling me like Halloween is not bigger. They don't have
black forest Dracula's castle. There's a lot of psychological terror. It's not even about
like, and speaking of that, Tim does not there's a weather the penitentiary? Yeah, century
Philadelphia that I refuse to go to because I have like I'm pretty sensitive when it comes to spiritual stuff and I'm pretty sure that that pleasure.
So we actually live really close to Gettysburg. I don't know if you know
I went there. When I went to college. I went to college down a satellite campus that was probably 10 minutes away from the Gettysburg Battlefield come on out. So then we went to Gettysburg Battlefield. One how are we Halloween night and it was creepy at
that. Imagine there's a lot of like disturbed spirits here because of just
you believing that stuff. You know, I'm talking about if you don't you probably think we're crazy. Whatever, it's fine, but I'm just telling you like personal experience that Gaisberg on Halloween is not the place to be. Like
I'm not really into the haunted club as much as more than a static thing for me and just like that, I like to see the costumes in the shops and all that stuff. So like Gettysburg is just like a big flat field with some borders chillin and like, if you go down there Well, I mean in comparison to like the places we like to go, but like all they really have is maybe a couple of haunted houses and some of those ghost walks and mainly the ghost swamp tours which
Yeah, but There's ghosts everywhere. We want to go to New Orleans, New Orleans. Because all that
I'm actually really interested about that one
actual historical stuff that actually went on down there. And we're probably
going to go back to Orlando on our own while we have because we we like to go like what normally we'll get like season passes and then spread it out over several weeks because, like we you're really easily overwhelmed with too much especially to him with way too much stimuli. We just can't push people too much.
Like they have every Halloween place uses strobe lights isn't like hey,
well then there there wasn't a scare factor thing was like the real shrill screams and all this stuff. And it's like we were talking about how like they can do some really cool Halloween stuff. By just getting creative and like being more creepy than just like, shrill
yell if you literally could just follow someone around
you real quiet and deli and just like pop up or
what they what they always forget is there's above like rather than jumping out when we walk around a corner they jump out that's like whoa that's not scary at all. But it seems like had someone that had like tethered into the roof and then we just lowered out and like touching on the shoulder. But how was that like from above that would be way creepier than just jumping out from around the corners. Yeah,
I think so too. Especially people who are jumping and I get I'm very jumpy cuz I'm just like I know something's coming out or something coming in. I'm like wound up like a tap and then we'll jump to it. So
we're budgeting for those locations. Like how we're doing is we're putting money away. Every like every every paycheck I put probably 30 to 40% of
the book shares. Yeah, and we definitely budgeted for this Halloween thing, but I'm like I didn't budget for parking because I knew that wasn't going to be a thing and I didn't budget for food there because I knew that wasn't going to be a thing. But
like so the more I'm trying to park is use both chairs to your advantage because it's like they pay between like literally just looked at vs JP is paying 7.4% Right now you can make 7.4% on pretty much. I'm down like $1 Since I started but
that is a significantly higher percent than even a high yield savings account. And I don't know I think we've talked about this before but bullish shares are seriously the bee's knees
that I was wrong. I'll admit that I was wrong. I said October would probably be like like sideways October was oh, we had another diamond down. Everyone was worried about the interest rates. So
our portfolio and damn near down to what we started with when we started investing three years ago, three, four years ago, something like that, or quarters or we started doing the dividend approach.
Yeah, but it keeps going down but we keep doing more shares.
Our share quantities are up. It is surreal seeing the numbers do what they're doing. So I can see why people panic and get out but the cool thing with the dividend investing is that like you, if you look at the right metrics, you actually see that your shares have gone up and your monthly payouts are actually going up. Value one is the actual
stock that I was meant to talk about would be NEP like I'm I did more research in NEP and if you have 1000 or two I put it into it this renewable energy so it's gonna be it's gonna do it's gonna do but like its fundamentals are awesome like Fed's balance sheet is really good it has free cash all the time. It's generating like eight to 12% every year in its cages eight to 12% its current dividend yields like 14% and it's just, it's fine if you have money buy, buy and just sit back and collect report 10% It's a utility, it's renewable energies but it's like it's a newer kind of utility stock.
Is that one of the dividend yield or dividend ex dividend ones for the week? Today, can I okay? So you won't be able to get that today but that means there'll be a price drop right? There'll
be a price drop Yeah. But like even if you pick it up tomorrow or even after the ex dividend date, like it's down like 50%, like the last month, because that was the one we were talking about where they they didn't cut their revenue projection. They didn't cut like anything other than their expected dividend growth is not going to be 12 or 13%. It's going to be like eight 12% And people like panics and all it says it's sell, sell, sell, sell, they oversold it way too much. So I went from like $50 down to $20.
And one of the other really cool things about Salem, you're going in Halloween time. You can actually see humpback whales. You can get on the boat, which was really cool.
Go I was reviewing it, Uncle Bill's Yeah, they're really cool company. Builds like we are we were looking for this hat
for like, I've already found the same type of hat.
And we're in we were in Salem, and we were going to go to our point in time for the whalewatching and we got stopped by a motorcycle procession of the like bypass. It was
like a parade and we were on this dock because we had just done some other like harbor tour. So the where we were parked out we were literally trapped. And the thing with the whalewatching you have to like you had to book it way out. And then there was some weather situation where it was like the only day that we can do it. And we were gonna be late and I'm kept trying to talk to the lady on the phone and I was like in sheer panic mode and typically like checked out because he didn't think we're gonna make it so he was just like, trolled a lot a lot about helping me navigate. And up there. Some of the streets come into like these five point turns and the GPS is telling you to go left and you're like which frickin left are you talking about?
There was one intersection that had six three
we got there they helped but actually have a vote for us, which they said they weren't going to do and like 15 people were giving us think and I was like I don't even care. We ended up coming back right at sunset which actually was really freaking cool so they can shove
it up their pile and that's a really good spot like you're gonna do well. Washington. So that's not as good gotcher
however you pronounce that last year? Sure. I'm pretty sure somebody is going to correct us. I don't understand why they spell things when they're not pronounced the way they're all those letters.
So now the second part of our Hersheypark people watching it, okay, we've covered that it's not a recession that people are waiting for everyone's their money to be come invest in. The second part is more of Carmela wheelhouse and it's going I'm going to write about it.
The patient's your pre pre jumping, I'm
gonna write about it next week. In my weekly email that I send out is the health aspect. That's just the sheer unhealthiness like that's something that people don't think about enough when they think about the future and investing and everything and it doesn't it doesn't seem like they would go hand in hand but like what's the point of investing in your 20s if you're gonna kill yourself with how by the time you're 50 Well, not
only that if you have you're projecting gold monetarily and you completely neglect your health, you're gonna end up meeting like a lot more money because your health is so bad or
probably one of the two biggest increase industries is healthcare. It's only going to get worse this population pages. So if you're not taking care of yourself, it doesn't matter how much you invest because you're you're gonna go you're gonna burn through 1000s of dollars a year for bills and
and I know I know Tim has been reading a lot about like millionaires mindset or like the things that they actually do. And this actually goes in line with the whole Fastpass thing like real millionaires like actual savvy millionaires do not spend like the general public. They don't actually very thrifty
very girl meals, they they do that for the reason they budget. They don't try to cook with what ingredients they want to eat out. You're kind of at the mercy of what they have. Like, for example, where we are like if you go to Taco Bell, Taco Bell has like the worst grade meat ever. But if you go to Chipotle, it's like the best grade and it's the same price. But if you're like what millionaires do is they'll actually go to their local butchers or local shopping centres nearby them if they want that has no no hormones, no
antibiotics happy by half a cow and actually, they'll buy in bulk for stuff that they actually use and they'll
freeze it. They'll have this high quality meat they can then make the same meal that you're getting to talk about or at Chipotle or wherever but they cook themselves
and most of them are not like label conscious, but they don't care about Mercedes. They don't care about BMW, they don't care about other high end alcohol. They don't yeah, the number one car that the millionaire's drive is a Toyota Camry.
You would think that everyone's perception is Niners have like the fancy watches, fancy clothes, fancy cars. And that's not the case like a lot of millionaires have watches and the car they drive is a dependable reliable Toyota that you don't have to put money into that that it's just like a 10 year investment. You just take it in for quality,
low price they're looking for that perfect sweet spot for all this stuff. So that's a complete, like misconception that people have you could read any book about finances, and
they're just, that's one of the biggest misconceptions that the middle class has about the upper classes that request as much fancy stuff that might be true and like a lot of cases there are some cases you know, someone that drives
there's a difference between millionaires and there's a difference between like the filthy rich rich, like we're not talking about the people who like
it, but even then, you know, people that have like have a million dollar, quote, millionaire they'll have a huge house with a Mercedes or a boat.
Yeah, and some people do do the lifestyle but due to, but in general majority of the millionaires like there's literally books written about
what they wanted to do. Like if you look at Seven Habits of millionaires, no matter what list you look at, this goes back to saying they all have exercise at some point. Yes,
that was actually where I was segwaying to. That was one of the things I found out was that they actually prioritize health significantly. And they actually say that it's the essential component of investing.
You don't have a healthy mind or a healthy body or a healthy soul or whatever you want to call it, whatever your definition of it is, you're not going to have the right mindset and the right pessimal wherewithal to invest
profit. Well, and I actually am pretty savvy in the whole health health sector and what you eat has a direct correlation on your mood and your clear clarity of thinking and your emotional regulation. So if you struggle with the whole panic, sell, and all that other stuff, like maybe you should evaluate what you're eating.
So if you do the research and you find companies that are good, like columns of the company that is a good company. It's a renewable energy company. I still think camping worlds a good company, even though they hadn't shipped a shit show.
We actually went saw a camping world. These are really good.
Like I think energy is probably one of the best banking stocks like if you do the research, you find these companies that pay dividends and special dividends. You don't need to worry about the National Park. But if you're like you're unhealthy, doesn't you just can't help it. Yeah,
there's definitely a component to it as well above so
I found this quote and it's fantastic. And he said the stock market is a medium to transfer wealth from the impatient, impatient.
I love that too. And I know we talked smack about him being whatever but he does have some gems. It's
so true. If you think of like if you think about what happens in the market, for every stock that you buy, there has to be someone selling and if there's like if there's oversold, oversold means that too many people are selling so there's too many too many shares for sale on the market, which means the price is going to be dirt cheap.
That's a basic supply and demand of economics. But if you think about
it from a from an emotional perspective, for every stock that you buy, you have someone is on the other side selling, if you have no control because you're unhealthy. You're just selling all the time. That's like you're going to lose money. If you sell to him, you're going to lose
and if you're optimistic and impatient, you're going to be buying Tesla at its peak you're going to be buying Amazon at its peak you're having buying all these other stocks at their peak like before, there's a big pullback with Tesla.
So the two learning environment, but I mean, I would rather not buy rather than use the yo max or the Tehsil thing. It's more volatile, obviously, but you get dividend 40% dividend turn straight to cash.
But we'd rather put the money into actual like,
I think one of these podcast episodes will actually pull up our Schwab account, and we'll go through what we're holding. Seems because of the way it sounds like we have a bunch of crazy stuff. And it's not we have a lot of really conservative, a lot a lot of conservative investments. But we we've coupled that with investments that have more risks than conservative ones.
Yeah, you do kind of have a couple the security ones with some fliers because then it balances out.
I don't know if I ever mentioned this in the podcast before but if you do readings about security, there's a great quote by and then it says the white man is the only person that they're going race he knows that is more comfortable with more prisons. What they mean by that is like you buy a house, which is essentially a prison just four walls. It's like a prison. So what's what's one of the things people look for in a house they look for a house with a yard that's that sense. They have another prison that they bought themselves and then they have a job where they go in they have four walls in their job one normally when their cubicle over their cubicle or their or their office and then another person like the white man is the only Gracie knows it's comfortable being in presence behind walls all the time. It's very interesting. I've never fit that mold. So it was super interesting to me and that might be interesting to other people. But yeah, that
was funny too much you latched on to that one. We've actually been reading a lot more Indian wisdom type stuff because they have some really cool because they watch they watch nature and then get Native Americans
whatever politically correct term as it
is more clear, because sometimes it's like Virginia. And they'll be talking about we're talking about the talking
about the ones that we're here for that guy before we get on with smallpox, but like their mentality, like when they kill an animal they actually say a blessing or a prayer over the animal and they use all the animal emojis Well, that's
I actually think that's the other counterpart with the whole Fastpass concept. Like if you constantly have instant gratification, and you pay all this extra money to have constant instant gratification. You really don't appreciate what the value of something and that's always been like a I don't have a lot of moral way Congress
wants her father all the time. He doesn't know what $1 is worth is to him the dollars and something to spend and then if he needs to make more dollars, he just worked 90 hours a week as opposed to 60 He's that type of mentality where like you just work to pay for your bad habits.
And like I swear to God, that man lives to be in debt. But he has no I can pay something off and then he'll take on debt. It doesn't
know what our work is by like, oh, go to Rutgers and buy food which is probably I would imagine when the workplace is the word is be like a Wawa. She does it because it's convenient and it's on the way and they will prefer to do the way he wants
it. Yes, he is 100% convenient convenience. The
Fast Pass and convenience based off it's all a psychological thing that comes from being unhealthy if you're healthy, you don't have that. Like that compulsion to have everything instantly.
I also think if you're more intentional with your job or not needing to have to work for a job because this is another thing we noticed when we were on our five month road trip was that everybody who's on the highway is in a rush to get someplace to either spend money or make money to spend money or to put stuff on credit cards are the
mentality that I use towards money. And this may help some people may not as if I'm going to buy books I'm going to buy here some form. It's going to cost 1300 off. Well to me $1,300 is two weeks worth of work. Like every every purchase I make I break down into how many hours I have to work for it is so that I can determine if it's worth it.
And I love doing that analogy or that using that as the actual metric because then it's like okay, is this eating out worth that extra hour of work for me? It's really not or yes it is.
Yes and like that that helps you start to get the process rolling like start thinking of money as prime not money as money.
And if you think about time, time is the only thing that you cannot get back and the less healthy you are, the less time you actually have. So you're robbing you're actually robbing to fold from yourself and you're not healthy.
So like the whole the whole when we are people like like the people were all young, they were younger than me and you
could tell they were have like pre joint issues existing the way they were walking the way their hips were sitting
at 47 So I always people are younger than me they like their body like you can tell like they have extra weight on the frame which by the way their skeletal structure was and like the way their joints were, like not working today. Like instead of bending their knees. They were using their hips to walk which is crazy to me. Yeah, just watching it. You can look around and be like, Okay, well that person in their 40s is going to need a hip replacement. So they're going to actually like they're not going to budget for a hip replacement. So they're like that's going to come out of something, that person there that they're going to need probably a heart transplant because they're going to they're way too big for what they got going on their heart probably going to give out so they're going to need a heart transplant which that like 100,000 or $2,000. They're not going to have that budget, no matter how much they invest. What I'm trying to say is they did like even if they were patient and patient investors, they're like they're robbing their their future retirement to pay for health ailments that they could actually address before they get to a point where
you know, they're letting their money compound.
Right? It's crazy. Like it was like there was kids. It was nine o'clock at night and there was kids drinking like 32 ounces of Mountain Dew and shit like that. Like oh my god, man like what? What is going on? Are we in lala land right now.
And one of the biggest things we just watched a documentary about like, I think it was Mountain Dew and your teeth. There's the word and this kid was called was like 17 his entire like all of his teeth were rotted Actually
Actually they actually they don't even refer to it as the carrier anymore like not part of the area's not do with Mountain Dew mouth. Not because every person that drinks Mountain Dew has the same problem with their with their choppers and
in the health realm. One of the biggest keys to your health is your mouth and teeth health. There's like a direct correlation or like upstream thing. People don't know that. But if you go and get a surgery, you have to actually get all of your gingivitis and any teeth decay and any of that other stuff having dealt with before they'll even let you have the surgery because if you have any infections, you're actually slowing up your swelling and contaminating it. So like mouth health, and I probably know this cuz my mom and my uncle actually owned a periodontal,
like it's very difficult to invest when you don't invest in yourself. So like that's why we had the golden rules that we discussed. I probably should have had another one saying you need to take care of yourself. Like if you don't take care of yourself, it doesn't matter. All that other stuff doesn't matter.
Well that's the other thing. I'm wondering if these people are realizing that they're gonna die students. They just say screw it. I'm just gonna indulge in Belgium, Belgium, Belgium dodge.
Like they were like they were like in the 20s like a like, I'm pretty sure like they're gonna like of the of the 1000s of people we saw. Maybe 2% were older than me. They were all in their clients. Somewhere in their teams. It was pretty scary. That was mainly they're like another mid 20s to probably their early 30s. And they were all welling up and I am I'm 47 As I mentioned, so we're talking 15 years younger than me and these people like they look like they're on death's door. It's like holy crap. So these people probably don't have investment accounts. They probably rely on their 401k and their Social Security. Well,
they probably have like a Robin Hood and they just do like IPOs or something.
So even if you're even even if you do the lazy approach, which is you put your money into an index fund you make 10% So you take your you take your 50,000 you could probably give that up if that their age could probably get $400,000 or something like that. So that they said so say they're doing everything right and they get they invest early in the compound index. It won't matter because when they hit my age, they're gonna have to take out half of their retirement to pay for surgery. So that's really bad. So then they're going to have 15 years to get back like $500,000 Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Otherwise, they're not gonna be able to retire. So these are the people that probably do everything right there, but then they're gonna have a health problem that's going to take at least half of their money out to fix their health problem, and they're going to have to work until they're 80 to afford something that they got fixed in their 40s because they didn't take care of themselves in their flames. I
think one of the things with people in debt, one of the bigger ones is health, health pay off for health costs, until
it's like I can't stress it enough that I mean, I don't want to rant about it. But if you're not taking care of yourself and don't invest in doesn't matter, because what's my
favorite goes couple a couple of like, financial health is a financial health and physical health. They go hand in hand if you have a bad mentality in one place, you probably transfer that same mentality over
everything right, and still be left because you didn't do the physical part, right?
Well, because you're Yeah, you're exponentially growing your need for money in future. But
another aspect that I could just tell by the way they dress and stuff is they could tell they approve a bunch of stuff like they like with their phone and their earphones and
souvenirs, they have
the fancy shoes bags, back with a craft shop and and everything. So I could tell that even if even if they hypothetically invested everything properly. They're not going to have enough money because there's their spending habits and their health. They're going to be out of money by the time they're fit.
And there's where it goes back to that budget and that intentional, everything like that really is the bottom crux.
I mean, maybe other people out there like me, people watching like wow, but if you actually take a moment and look at what the general public does, don't be like that. Well, I can tell you one
of the best places to go to watch that in like blatant portrait. Go sit in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot. And just watch
or or McDonald's or Burger King or Wendy's parking lot or even a grocery store. You see people come out with like, they drive the two sports cars to come out with like $1,000 worth of groceries. And I don't know because most people don't in the Northeast anyways, I know you out in the west when you go shopping you shop for the month because you don't want to have to drive 50 miles to go back
to the st how far whether grocery stores are out there but here like
there's grocery stores on every block. So you can pretty much go once a week, once every 10 days, something like that. So if you're buying that much groceries you have a healthy eating problem which is bad. And I mean I can tell you from personal experience, I have not always been one to take care of myself. I weighed probably 230 by like two years ago and I was my knees hurt my head a lot of inflammation. And I just read a report today that inflammation is the number one health problem and that was places deeper a shocker. On rivers that he's like a natural health. I
think it's Deepak Chopra or something like that. Yeah, I know what you're trying to say and I just can't. It
said the number one ailment that affects humans is inflammation. Inflammation comes from
Well, shit it comes from what you eat. It definitely comes from what you eat and inflammation
leads to everything you have inflammation. Autoimmune is literally inflammation with emotion in your hand. What's going to happen is you're not going to correct that it's going to spread to your arm and then spread to your other hand and your other arm and before you know it your whole body's inflamed and you are sorry about the language but you are like once inflammation spreads to all your joints you're sure
well you can turn it around but you need some serious like going
back to my personal story I wanted to probably closer to 40 but like we'll say 235 So I feel better about when you look like you weighed 250 and basically cut out sugar. Like that was probably the first thing to go with sugar. And then I cut out gluten and dairy. I was literally just eating what my ancestors ate, which was vegetables, plants and meat. That's all I was eating and I dropped so much weight and I dropped weight in the areas that normally I would drop weight and like you always say that the hardest place is I usually the last ago when I was dropping weight in my stomach and my my love handles pretty much instantaneously.
Everybody's a little different where they're probably like I
dropped so much weight I like I am at 176 right now. I still have probably like 10 also
put on muscle because he wasn't exercising.
I ride my bike like at least once a week. So he does have a lot of muscles. So
if you weren't
working where we work, we probably walk like 100 120 miles a week. We walk so much.
Yeah, but we'd be hiking anywhere when we're in the van. So actually, that was
like when I was trying to get out like I remember us going on these trips to say Sleepy Hollow and Salem and I was not taking care of myself. So a it wasn't as enjoyable because I couldn't do the hike and I wanted to like I've got a breath just walking up the street. So like it was not as enjoyable as it could have been. And B it probably costs more because I was eating more like I eat one meal a day now and it's not very big. And like our food bill, I'm pretty sure like we could look at it. It's been going down we've been keeping track of I'm pretty sure if we had our records from when I was larger, I guess a fact is that when I was larger, your status was larger. I'm sure our food bill was probably $6,700 a month and right now it's maybe 400 that we cut our food bill in half. Oh, there
were some months where it was 900 with all the eating out. I remember. We
still eat out like Chipotle brought in once a week and we do this in Indian place on the way that's pretty good. We go there once a month. We're
rockin taco truck.
It's called French tacos but it has Morocco seasoning. The dudes really cool and they get all their all their all their food is like locally sourced from like local guard like local farms and in their meats like hormone free from local butchers. And it is shibang a hamburger is the best hamburger I've ever had. Yeah,
so suddenly we deprive everything but we just we just more intentional with what we spend money on.
So like when I go there I'm like was this hamburger worth like an hour's worth of work you and I might go back and write this hamburger so good.
Even gave him the phone number so you can call him to pick up at the food truck because we're there so much
when like when I'm saying like back when that's when I first started learning the dividend investing is my way probably the second most I waited my entire life I didn't have the right mentality to do it. Because I was not there mentally like my brain was like a probably an eight year old person. I didn't have the the attention span or the attention to detail I couldn't think of beyond like oh I'm so hungry or I need I need a coke or I need this.
Yeah, he literally was like a mnemonic. We'd go on hikes and he literally had a wall and he'd be like dying. And I'm like Jesus Christ. 1000 watts. So I
can't imagine how much I wouldn't wear it every night that I had the lifestyle that we have because I had a 300 plus easily. How do you not move me if we didn't do the hike in and like all Americans should we did like it probably would have been over 300 would have been a different Oh yeah.
I will attest to the fact that he's way more mentally clear, and cognitive and everything that
sort of there like I mean, we're not gonna get into much detail but like what kick started my mental clarity was when I started taking amino acids like I don't take them now because what like they Kickstarter? Yeah, got him
over the hump to like go the
right the right rewired my brain, my brain. Neurotransmitters this doesn't make sense to be this unhealthy if I want to live. She's 10 years younger than me. So I plan on
living and I'm like an energizer bunny. I'm planning on living as long as possible. I'm not going
to like what I was doing I was gonna live to be maybe 60 And then I would have been in the same boat always people I thought share that So like I've been there. I know the the, the difficulties, it is literally just a change of thought. Really. Okay, I'm tired and fat well, maybe it was for me. I don't know about
other people and those cravings, those cravings are actually nutrient deficiencies or cravings. I still have
like, I like I used to drink Coke every day. I cope, I get Bobelo. Now, hydrogen, but
you also have stopped the amino acids I'd be curious to see if that
has like all your vitamins. It's like literally like drinking a vitamin shot but it doesn't have any caffeine or sugar. It's awesome. Natural Energy was awesome. And I still I do ons now instead of vaping I vape back then, and they think it's horrible for your lungs. Oh my God. Have you ever had that that was for your lungs. Like I still have lung problems from vaping and I begged for like five years
ago he was making pretty pet brother called him a driver. So like
I do ons now which are like they're just this natural tobacco so it doesn't like gums up like chewing does
he mean natural nicotine National Tobacco there's white.
So like it's natural. So you still like if you have me I have addiction problem. Weapons nicotine But nicotine Carolyn's Victoria. I don't know.
We're not gonna help figure it out. It's
good for you. So if you smoke get off but like I've replaced the stuff that was really bad with stuff that's comparable. That's not bad. They're not gonna say healthy, healthier. It's not that every baby
step you take in the right direction you build up over time.
And now I can't like I look at pictures like it's depressing. My guy was just so I wouldn't have been able to get to this point with like the income investing and the patience. I had no patients because I was in the same boat as the people that I want my coat now I need my coat. Now. I think that's sugar, but that's a completely different topic. I'm pretty sure sugar, you're addicted to sugar. You have no problem and you can't have no impulse control.
I literally think it's short circuit. Like instinct. Once I
got rid of sugar like my everything changed. So but okay, I guess we're gonna
wrap up configure gotten on the health thing a little much as we're done here. Now. I want to make this too long. Okay, so next week, we're gonna probably get back on whatever we're missing was the types of investments. We've got to do a
mutual fund versus closing the fund versus the second fusing. That might be a while for that one. That's so confusing. I dislike the yields. But anyway, happy Halloween awesome holiday and if you're an adult, that sort of treat if there
needs to be an adult trick or treat night by
me that could even make it sound like here's a little bottle of scotch or whatever.
I mean, I don't think they do with booze or something or some symbol like you're never too old. I would totally hand out parish VDF on the block.
I know but you mustn't. Does he know that I'm not like I'm 47 but I might take a dress up. Have fun. Yes, having fun is definitely the most important part don't have been an expense of everything else. There's a balancing act.
right. We'll see you next time.