Wealth Formula Podcast

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...

I guess by now you've heard—we've got some inflation problems in the United States and globally and Central Banks are going to continue to ratchet up interest rates in attempts to reverse the tide. But wait a second. Why inflation now? Didn't we print billions of dollars over the last 15 years or so? Why didn't we have inflation then? Well, we kind of did actually. We've had historically low inter...

Have you heard of the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement? The movement is defined by extreme frugality and extreme savings and investments in hopes of retiring early and living on small withdrawals of accumulated funds. The general rule of thumb is to live on only 30 percent of your income and invest the rest. So, if you make $300K per year and are in a tax bracket of 40 percent...

First of all, if you have not signed up for the next Wealth Formula Meetup, you should do so NOW. This is going to be a very cool event. We are going to do personal finance talks in the morning like we usually do with lessons on taxes, asset protection and real estate. We are also going to get a big-picture macroeconomics talk from a guy who ran a sovereign wealth fund in the Middle East and an MI...

When I was growing up, the Republican Party stood for small government and free trade. Democrats were apparently on the other side of the table. Maybe it is an incorrect generalization, but one thing is for sure…neither party supports real free trade anymore. Why? Well, I think it stems from an overriding trend towards nationalism. The problem is that free trade is actually very beneficial for eco...

We haven't talked about cryptocurrency much lately. Admittedly, I am like everyone else who gets excited when the markets are going sky-high but quickly loses interest when markets are struggling. However, In times like these, regardless of asset class, it is critically important to stay rational. Let's take bitcoin as an example. As I write this Bitcoin is sitting just under $20K. It could absolu...

It's time for another round of "Ask Buck". This week's episode includes questions on taxes, multifamily real estate investments and the Wealth Accelerator. Listen HERE!

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 will be talking a lot ab...

Investing is hard enough without worrying about all the crooked stuff going on out there. When you add that to the picture, it's a miracle that most of us have actually made money investing. And if you think the nefarious activity is limited to the private space, you would be mistaken. Big money can manipulate public markets just as easily. Take Enron for example. The global financial collapse of...

This week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast is about emotional intelligence. Why would we talk about such things on a personal finance show? Well, let's define emotional intelligence for a moment. We all have emotions. If you want to see emotions in their rawest form, look at a toddler. One minute you might have an angel and the next you might have a complete meltdown and a demon from hell. Adul...

You've probably noticed that my emails have been pretty short the last few weeks. I've been in Europe so I'm letting the podcast speak for themselves for the most part. This week we go back to fundamentals. There's a reason why real estate is the foundation of the Wealth Formula personal finance ethos. There is simply nothing comparable in terms of risk adjusted returns and tax benefits. To reinfo...

When I think about all of what has happened to our economy over the past two decades, it's quite astounding. National debt has gone up by about 5x. Interest rates hovered at nearly zero for multiple years and we went through multiple shocks to the system like the 2008 meltdown and Covid. Again—all in the last two decades! This week's guest on Wealth Formula Podcast has seen a lot more than I have...

There is a fine line between being a "quitter" and a pragmatic individual navigating life. Quitting has a very negative connotation in our culture. It's un-American and is associated with weakness and lack of grit. In reality however, quitting is often the best thing you can do and the sooner that you do it the better off you are. I'm a good example of a guy who has quit quite a few times and is m...

One of the consequences of inflation is increasing wealth disparity. Think about it for a moment. CPI indices only measure a basket of goods and services. But you and I know as investors that inflation helps us out with our investment portfolios as well. Asset inflation is a real thing. If you don't have the money to invest, you only get the downside of inflation. Prices for everyday stuff go up a...

When was the happiest time of your life? I mean like inner-happy type happy? For me, it was definitely as a kid. My childhood was by no means all roses, but the little things in life brought me a ton of joy. I remember riding my bike to friends' houses and knocking on their doors (that's what we did in the 80s), getting together a group of friends for an impromptu baseball game or just riding arou...

There is a major distinction between economists and investors. While most economists classify themselves with schools of thought such as Keynesian or Austrian, successful investors cannot afford to do so. I just spent a significant amount of time reviewing the work of Saifedean Ammous, the author of The Bitcoin Standard which has really become the bible for serious bitcoiners of the world. Ammous...

Big changes in the world seem to sneak up on you. One day you reflect on the way things used to be and wonder how the heck we got here. Anyone who has kids knows what I mean. My 13-year-old daughter is tall and beautiful and writes songs. I can remember the day she was born. How did that happen? I see her every day but I don't see the changes happening in real-time. Technology does this kind of th...