Wealth Formula Podcast

I am going to keep this brief because I have a cold and I don't want to subject you to Sudafed altered commentary. This week's Wealth Formula Podcast features an interview with Jay Parsons who is Chief Economist at RealPage. He is an authority on topics affecting multifamily apartments which, of course, is of significant interest to us all. The picture that he presents is one of transition. The sh...

The Fed just raised rates another 25 basis points despite global banking instability and investor angst. This wasn't a surprise. Curtailing inflation continues to be their primary motivation. How long will the Fed continue to raise rates? Well, inflation has to be clearly under control and/or there must be something else that happens that threatens the global economy. Isolated bank failures remedi...

Oh what a mess this economy is! Helicopter money during Covid and supply chain issues brought on inflation like we haven't seen in decades. To respond to this self-inflicted predicament, the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates at an alarming pace. Never have we seen interest rates rise at this steep of a slope—even in good old Paul Volker's days. Inflation has been going down for several...

If you want to build wealth quickly, you have to learn as much about tax mitigation as you can. Most of these mitigation opportunities are in the world of real estate and business. However, there are creative (and legal) ways to mitigate taxes for W2 employees as well—just not that many. And sometimes it's not obvious that, despite a very attractive tax benefit, you should probably stay away. I le...

Why is decentralized finance advantageous? Let's ask artificial intelligence. As you may recall from last week's episode, ChatGPT is widely accessible to anyone right now. Here's the explanation on the value of decentralized finance from the ChatGPT software itself: "Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is advantageous for several reasons: Accessibility: DeFi allows anyone with an internet connection t...

Ok, I know you keep hearing about how the world is going to look radically different soon. I have too. But what is that radical change and when is it going to happen? I'm no expert in technology but it is clear that the radical changes we are expecting are coming from two emerging technologies: blockchain and artificial intelligence. Blockchain really defines this thing that people call Web 3. We'...

The two most common mistakes I've seen people make in personal finance is to not think about asset protection and to not think about estate planning. Not thinking about estate planning is sort of understandable. Death is a topic that many try to avoid. Some are even superstitious in that if they set up an estate plan, it could trigger their demise. The topic this week is not estate planning but we...

When you are in the alternate investment space like me, everyone assumes you are a gold guy. I used to be. The idea of gold holding its value over time is very real. An ounce of gold in the times Christ would buy you a nice toga and sandals. Now, an ounce of gold will buy you a nice suit and shoes. Admittedly, that is a pretty darn good track record. So does gold belong in your portfolio? Well, fo...

I've never spent much time on the concept of short-term rentals (Vacation Rentals) before because it didn't sound particularly appealing to me. But after interviewing Tim Hubbard for this week's podcast, I may have changed my mind. Here's the deal. Unless you are a limited partner in a syndication, there is no such thing as truly passive income in real estate. If you want your asset to succeed, yo...

Digital currency is not dead. But it was wounded pretty badly over the past few months. Paradoxically, the undoing of the decentralized world happened from centralized companies and individuals like Do Kwon of Terra Luna and Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX. Ultimately, the greed of both these individuals and the flawed platforms that they ran resulted in billions of dollars being lost in the market. No o...

What is all this wealth stuff for anyway? I have spent the last 15 years trying to accumulate wealth. It wasn't until about two years ago that I decided to start spending it. Why? Well, there were some major changes in my life and it made me think about mortality. Don't worry…my health is great. But everyone has to die someday right? Before this realization, I was doing what pretty much all respon...

If you read business or entrepreneurial books you are probably sick of people telling you that you have to take risks and get uncomfortable. I get it. But what are you doing to take risks and to get uncomfortable? After all, it's really the only way to grow in your career or in your life. These concepts apply to everything. Think about all the things you didn't do in life but would like to. Maybe...

We are in a unique period of time with the economy. We know something is going to declare itself soon enough but have no idea when or what it will look like. This time it's not just the contrarians. Everyone is predicting some kind of trouble in the coming months ranging from a mild recession (Biden) to an all out zombie apocalypse. Even the big brain contrarians differ on what lies ahead. Jim Ric...

The new year makes me think about how things keep changing so rapidly (including my age). For those of us who went to high school in the era of pay phones, it is a truly remarkable trajectory and it makes me wonder what the next few decades will unfold. There are so many technological advances in Science and Technology that have already laid the foundation for a completely different world. As a fo...

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! As we head into the last week of the year there is much to reflect upon. The last few years have been absolutely bonkers. If someone had told me in mid-2019 that a global pandemic would happen, and the world would be practically paralyzed for the next two years I would never have believed it. Oddly, during 2020-2021, the stock and real estate markets did g...

The cryptocurrency markets have been crushed and don't be surprised if they go even lower once the full extent of the FTX meltdown is realized. However, it's clear to me that this in no way is the end of cryptocurrency. Believe me, I've been around crypto long enough to have seen it declared dead several times over. It won't happen. The reason for this is that behind cryptocurrency is a technology...

It's cold outside…even in Santa Barbara. The real estate markets are especially frozen now and will continue to be at least for the next couple of months into the new year. Why is this happening? Real estate, more than any other investment, is highly dependent on interest rates. Right now, there is simply too much volatility for reasonable underwriting. To be clear, it's not HIGH interest rates th...

Happy Holidays everyone. I'm very thankful for you Wealth Formula Nation! It is a great pleasure for me to serve you as clarifier-in-chief at Wealth Formula. Listen in to this week's edition of Ask Buck. We talk about real estate depreciation issues, asset protection and more! Don't miss it!

It's been a while but this week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast is the latest "Ask Buck" episode. As you know, most of the time I interview other people so I don't get a chance to talk to you directly. These episodes are great for learning. In fact, go back and listen to the last 10 "Ask Buck" shows and you will know as much as I do about personal finance! This week we have questions about mul...

Warren Buffet talks about being greedy when others are fearful. I think it's fair to say that there is a great deal of fear in the financial system right now with interest rates climbing as quickly as they are. Eventually, this will lead to distress in all financial markets. The stock market is already down—especially tech stocks. The Real Estate market is frozen. There is very little trading. Tha...

As we get closer to the end of the year, I know a number of you are trying to figure out how to deploy capital. We will have some opportunities that are not real estate oriented. I also believe that it is a surprisingly good time to consider various life insurance strategies that we have discussed before. I have included the email sent to me on this topic by Rod and Christian and they will be my g...

What makes for a highly successful entrepreneur or investor? It is the appetite for calculated risk. As Bruce Arians, coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers famously says, "No risk it, no biscuit". In entrepreneurship this might be more obvious. You probably know entrepreneurs who took risks by leaving their day job and pursuing a business that they KNEW was going to be successful. I'm one of those guy...

The last 15 years have been a game of chicken between the Federal Reserve and the financial markets. Think about the old movies where the kids would speed in their cars towards each other until someone decided to quickly turn out of the way and avoid collision and certain death. Similarly, the financial markets and the Federal Reserve have been trying to figure out who would chicken out first for...

If you made it out to our event last weekend I want to thank your for taking the time to prioritize our meetup. And if you were there, I'm guessing you were not disappointed. We had a few familiar faces in the morning talking about taxes and asset protection and some great presentations around asset allocation, the economy and bitcoin mining. But what I think really blew people's minds were the ta...

Boring is Good when it comes to investing. I've started hearing others echo that sentiment lately. I'm not sure if I had something to do with it but I'm glad that message is spreading in the podcast ecosystem. A decade ago, I used to be perhaps the busiest cosmetic surgeon in Chicago. I worked hard and got great results. And you know what…when the economy was good, I was crushing it. It's how I ma...