Wealth Formula Podcast

Welcome back to the show everyone. I hope you enjoyed the show. If I were a dentist, I would definitely check this out. Think of it this way. The concierge aspect of the model is valuable in and of itself. If you don't care for cryptocurrency, immediately convert your crypto to dollars. If you want, keep some in crypto and see it potentially 100X in the next few years. Anyway, I like the idea and...

As you know, I have been on a kick to challenge myself to learn more about things that I don't know about and to challenge my personal investing dogmas. Recently, you saw me come out of the proverbial gold closet and proclaim that I don't see the point of owning physical gold. You can hedge the economy with appreciating real estate with leveraged debt and cash flow to boot. Who needs gold? Again....

If I hadn't listened to Peter Schiff, I would have made gobs and gobs of money in the past few years. Now, don't get me wrong. I like listening to Peter Schiff's podcast. He is a very smart guy. In fact, he predicted the financial meltdown of 2008. It would be even more impressive if he had not predicted the financial meltdown of every other year that there was not a financial meltdown, but he did...

Bitcoin and Blockchain are not dead. In fact, if you look at the history of bitcoin itself you see that it seems to have a feline propensity for multiple lives. After being battered and beaten up so many times, why is bitcoin not dead? I am reminded of a movie that I recently watched with my nine year old daughter from the late eighties called The Princess Bride. If you happened to miss this one,...

If I have given you the impression that my life since leaving surgical training has been all ups and no downs, I have unintentionally misled you. The first business I started which was an owner operated medical business did well quickly its true. It allowed me to start investing in real estate. But that first acquisition I did not go well and it turned out to be a $300K lesson in how due diligence...

It's so strange to think of the way our politics have evolved even in my lifetime. The first president I remember (barely) is Jimmy Carter. Most of grade school for me were the Reagan years. After a bumpy start, the 1980s became the roaring 80s. It was a decade remembered for wealth and excess. Remember Wall Street with Michael Douglas and Michael J. Fox as the Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties? The R...

Changing your personal financial belief system is like changing religions. Think about it. Maybe you grew up Christian or Jewish. Whether you practice or not, you have some pretty established beliefs. That's why it's not that common for people to convert from one religion to another. Maybe that's an extreme example but there is a parallel when it comes to changing your personal investment strategy...

Not everyone is that excited about blockchain. Especially these days as the market is about 90 percent down from its January highs. But remember, while the bubble was real, so is the technology. There is something here that will start to permeate our world—even if we have no desire to invest in cryptocurrencies. You see, blockchain and other distributed ledgers create a tremendous amount of effici...

I remember being in medical school thinking that I wanted to be a surgeon. The idea of it appealed to me very much. I certainly had the personality of a surgeon. But there was something about which I felt very insecure. You see, growing up, my dad was about as white collar as they get. I didn't learn anything about cars and never put up any shelves. The only reason to think I was any good with my...

You know it's been a hell of a year in terms of market volatility right? Now, in cryptocurrency, we expect that. It is a speculative asset class with binary outcomes. That's why we only invest money in money that we can lose. In 2018, we definitely lost it (who knows about 2019). But the equity markets are supposed to be where you put your retirement money! Whats up with the volatility? December h...

I'd like to give each and everyone of my listeners a gift this year so I'm going to do that the only way I know how—to give you some unsolicited advice (not to be confused with financial advice). Take it or leave it but these concepts have served me well. So...let us begin! Invest in people, not deals. This is just as true whether you are investing on your own as owner operator or as a passive inv...

People keep asking me the same question these days—Buck, what are you investing in given the relative instability of asset prices and the economy? Now I won't give you financial advice—that is my disclaimer. But I will tell you what I tell everyone else. In times like these, I stick mostly to multifamily real estate and life insurance related products. Why? Well, in the case of multifamily real es...

How was it that some people were able to predict the 2008 financial meltdown? Were they clairvoyant? To be clear, I'm not talking about those who predict a financial meltdown every year. I'm talking about groups like ITR economics who we had on the show a few weeks ago that also accurately predicted periods of financial prosperity as well. Those who best understand how the global economy works at...

When I was a kid growing up in the early eighties, I remember my parents opened up a savings account for me and let me take the interest out as an allowance. That was a pretty good deal for an eight-year-old. I remember riding my bike to the bank every couple of months and showing them my bank passbook. That's all it took to access my account at age eight! For those of you too young to remember, a...

Is it just me or does politics these days resemble a reality television show? It's crazy. Take a step back for a moment. Regardless of your political preference, you have to admit that the last two years have been unprecedented. Remember when having an affair was enough to end a political career? Now, we have the president of the United States paying off porn stars and playboy bunnies! And last we...

Remember ARPANET? There's a good chance you don't. It was a precursor to the internet that essentially allowed researchers to access each other's data. It was actually a revolutionary technology that, as you know, ultimately led to the creation of something that fundamentally changed the world. With the rise of the internet and all the companies built on top of it, a lot of people made a lot of mo...

When I go back to some of my earliest interviews, I am always shocked at how my opinions have changed over just a couple of years. When I first started Wealth Formula Podcast, I was less sophisticated than I am now. I was being overly pessimistic about the economy just like other podcasts in the real estate and alternative investing space and I was interviewing people who were raising capital with...

Most people aren't trying to become ultra-wealthy. They just want to feel safe and to feel some level of freedom from the shackles of the daily grind. You see, the majority of us have one source of income and it's usually being paid by someone else. That is not a recipe for stability. No matter what you were told while you were growing up, there is no such thing as a safe job. The only reason empl...

It's very hard to become an entrepreneur without any life experience. I know it seems like that's the way it works. After all, look at Mark Zuckerberg and the other teenage tech superstars out there who did it shortly after puberty. But in reality, most of the entrepreneurs that I know spent some time working for others after school learning the ropes until, one day, they found an inefficiency in...

Beware of Chicken Little. The financial podcast space is small and we often tend to start believing each other and then spreading those same opinions to our listeners as facts. General sentiment in the alternative investing communities is bearish right now. The problem is, that has been the case for the last 3-4 years. And guess what? Contrary to the opinions of the Chicken Little crowd, people wh...

Never try to convince a fool that he's a fool. He won't believe you anyway. I hate to say it, but that's why I never talk money with people unless they bring it up with me first. That's what's great about being a podcaster. People CHOOSE to listen to you or to be on your email list. In fact, I recently invited people to attend a live webinar on some wealth strategies that I have studied extensivel...

It's amazing how we learn isn't it? I watch my little girls and I realize how much we, as adults, take for granted when it comes to every day things. My three year old does not know how to tie her shoes yet—in fact she puts her shoes on the wrong feet 50 percent of the time. At least she's consistent. Last weekend, my nine year old was blown away by the concept of compounding interest when I asked...

I've learned a lot of stuff in my life—from the principles of neurosurgery to the intricacies of cryptocurrency. Some of this stuff is pretty complicated…at first. But, I'm going to let you in on a little secret if you don't know it already. Just about everything that appears complex at first can be broken down into simple components. If I have any God-given gift, it is the ability to simplify. An...

Leverage in the form of bank debt is a double edge sword. Obviously consumer debt to buy things like televisions and mall junk can only be negative in the financial sense. However, using debt to buy cash flowing assets is perhaps the single most powerful weapon we can use to create wealth and the thing that makes real estate the asset of choice for the ultra-wealthy. The problem is that leverage i...