What If It Did Work?
What If It Did Work?
Balancing Health, Wealth, and Growth: A Conversation with Bruce Weinstein
What if balancing health, wealth, and personal growth could unlock a more fulfilling life? Join us as we sit down with Bruce Weinstein, the "Plan Man," who shares his remarkable journey of shedding 65 pounds and his dedication to healthier living. We reminisce about our shared experiences growing up in Tennessee and discuss the humorous yet impactful balance between enjoying life's pleasures and maintaining discipline in health. Bruce's insights into longevity, influenced by both lifestyle and genetics, and the lingering effects of secondhand smoke, provide a thought-provoking backdrop to our conversation.
Switching to the economic front, we underscore the significance of proactive financial planning amidst global uncertainties. From the cyclical nature of markets influenced by historical events like the 1987 crash and the 2009 recovery, to the resilient housing market in South Florida, we cover it all. Bruce and I examine the implications of fluctuating corporate tax policies in the U.S., drawing comparisons between the approaches of different administrations and the resulting impact on the stock market and corporate investment.
Finally, we touch on the evolving dynamics of health insurance, the growing extremism in politics, and the intriguing intersection of religion and public life. Through personal anecdotes and our shared love for sports and food, we highlight the importance of personal growth and overcoming mental barriers. Drawing from Bruce's expertise and our personal stories, we aim to inspire you to embrace opportunities, take action, and imagine the possibilities that lie beyond the constraints of our minds. Join us for a blend of insightful conversations, practical advice, and heartfelt moments that promise to leave you inspired.
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I never told no one that my whole life I've been holding back. Every time I load my gun up so I can shoot for the star, I hear a voice like who do you think?
Speaker 2:another dollar? Another one of my favorite podcasts, because it's my own podcast. What if it did work? Season four here I've got my buddy, my buddy I talk about the plan man, bruce weinstein. I've hung out with them.
Speaker 3:I think I've hung out with you before in tennessee then we're an hour away, we don't see each other, but we go to tennessee craziness man, meet the plan man bruce weinstein, problem solver, yankee fan, focusing on the insurance wealth business space.
Speaker 2:he brings his 35 plus years of experience, multi-platform, he's ready to bring a plan to your podcast, dude, you and a podcaster, podcaster, influencer all along, great guy, motiv, motivator. You inspire people. Dude, I'm a Renaissance man, you are man. I know you laughed when I said you look, dude, you look better as you get older because you take care of yourself.
Speaker 3:I've been really trying that man? Yeah, I've been trying I'm. Since you and I have met, I fluctuated a little bit, but I lost 65 pounds on my journey. I posted that, like you shared, a whole year on Facebook. Every Friday I posted my weight loss progress and it's been a couple of years since and I've been bouncing a little bit here and there, but I work out and I cold plunge and I drink a lot of water and I'm 61. I'm not a kid and I'd like to be around a little bit longer, so I've been taking it fairly seriously. I just had a frozen pizza for dinner before the show, so I don't know how serious I'm taking it all the time, but you know a good pizza every now and then In life.
Speaker 2:Right Moderation man, I mean absolutely the old joke, the doctor, the doctor's like you got doctor.
Speaker 3:The doctor's like you got to give up smoking. You got to give up drinking. You got to give up eating steak. You got to this. He goes. Why would I want to do that? He goes, you could live to be a hundred. And the patient says to the doctor goes, if I got to give all that up, I don't want to live to be a hundred. Like, come on, like who that's not living. You got to live well, you're gonna grandfather.
Speaker 2:He turned 100, but he did that through clean living. Can you imagine eating just baked chicken, plain chicken? He never drank a day in his life, really.
Speaker 1:Good for him, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, never partied.
Speaker 3:And then you see the old lady in Long Island who's like three packs a day and drinking a bottle of whiskey and she's 107. So go figure it out.
Speaker 2:Dude, there's no rhyme, or no? No, everybody's like genetics. Yeah, dude, it's dna. I mean yeah, because we can never explain the person that just dropped dead. They had like lung cancer, never smoked a day in their life, never had secondhand smoke. So we can't say they worked as a casino dealer or right right, anything like that, and get my mother was, uh, my mother's gone to uh 39 years.
Speaker 3:My mother was a two to three pack a day or salem lights and I had the world's, you know, biggest secondhand smoke absorption. As, as most kids did in the in the 60s and the 70s, I couldn't condition for football, I couldn't run, I was always in a doghouse, couldn't breathe and, you know, went to college, got away from that and all of a sudden, you know, I could run and I could breathe and my lungs got better. But to this day, all right and, like I said, my mother's gone since 1985. When I walk past somebody smoking a cigarette and I get a whiff, my body literally tingles. It still gets overcome with some chemical reaction of like hello, old friend, like you're drawn to it, like a crack addict or heroin addict and and it's been 40 years, but I'm convinced, know I'll get, you know, some kind of carcinoma, lung cancer at some point down the road because of all the exposure I've got a story for you on on secondhand smoke.
Speaker 2:My, my mom didn't smoke, but her I don't know whether call him stepdad or whatever he smoked. He smoked on me non-stop and uh went away to lsu. All my fraternity brothers smoked. Now, going to a casino, people are smoking. People can smoke for me 24 7 and yes, if a buddy, if you were hanging out with me and you lit one up, it wouldn't bother me. But the moment a stranger or just random being outside, somebody you know lights up and starts smoking a cigarette. Not that I'm gonna tell them to put it out, yeah, but about my eyes start getting watery. I think isn't that weird that, like I'm condition that you, you know if, if it's somebody I like, or if it's I'm in Vegas, I'm doing something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's crazy. No, I would go to a bar again this is years ago and I'd go to light a cigar and I think cigars smell pretty good. But I go to light a cigar in a room. You can't see the wall, it's just nothing but a haze of smoke and they're telling me to put out the cigar because it's offensive and I'm like and I'm breathing all this cigarette smoke and my cigars bothering the crowd, like I have to put it out. It's like I always found that somewhat hypocritical, crazy. But and the casinos too, they they're not always good. They'll let you smoke cigarettes at the tables, but you pull out a cigar. It's like, sir, you can't smoke a cigar here yeah, I, I never understood that.
Speaker 2:Or like, well, I, I know um, park place is the only casino in vegas which is smoke free. Park place is the only casino in vegas which is smoke free. Yeah, he's like, do you really need a smoke-free casino? I mean, it's the land of vices. I mean, who cares? Man like to me, light one up, go go get a massage, do whatever you need to do. Man, go go to plan 13, go go get some edibles, do it yeah I got a patch.
Speaker 3:My buddy who wrote the jingle to my plan man, right, if people haven't heard, we'll plug the ask the plan man podcast. But the opening jingle to my podcast my buddy, ed, wrote. He's a musician and and has a agency that does that kind of work and we go to vegas. That's the only place he'll stay. He doesn't even want to be in a casino that has the casino smoke free, but other areas, like, he doesn't want to walk through any smoke. So we had to stay there for that exact reason, cause he doesn't want to be in in. I mean, you know how vast, large these casinos are, it's not like you're in a 10 by 10 room. But he's like no, we got to stay there and I'm like, dude, it's half the price across the street, like come on, I'll just walk. Or like walk across, no, no, no I've.
Speaker 2:I've stayed there a couple times. It's the old monte carlo. It I for years it took me like, for some odd reason, it was the only casino I never and this was before they outlawed, they banned smoking in there I it just never did anything for me. And I've been there and it's not like I mean I I think MGM just marketed that way have one property, have one property, because it wasn't like their crown jewel or anything, it's just, ah, we just have this casino.
Speaker 3:Well, maybe there's a way to get people to go there that they weren't going to it in general. So make it smoke free and we'll get a different audience, who knows? But it's a good location because the arena is right there. The hockey arena is right across the street, so they got a good market there.
Speaker 2:So, bruce, speaking of podcasts, man, yeah, baby, congratulations, You're still going strong, man, you're still promoting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, finishing is our third year and I just dropped just what's today. Yesterday or today we dropped episode 75, my first year. I did one a week and then we cut it back to every other week, so we're at 75. Bradley was episode 50.
Speaker 2:That's a year ago already and you know what I love about you, I give everybody the carp launch. Hey, you can advertise, you can promote your stuff on my page and if you're like you and only a couple other people, it's like oh, I don't want to impose, imposing, I just gave you a friggin permission promote away, plug away I always appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you feel like you're a little annoying after a while of just constantly dropping stuff. But I look, I'm not.
Speaker 2:I'm not selling candy bars, it was like you, me and someone else, if there was more people, you know if I, literally, if you've been on my show or if you're a friend, promote away, man, everybody has something to sell, everybody has something to promote well, we're just trying to be known, right?
Speaker 3:you're just trying to get your message out. It's not a matter of I have something specific, like you know, today only and 20% off and type of stuff. But you know, you said before we started, like open enrollment's coming around, it's a year end, people are doing their budgets. They got to max out their 401ks. Stock market's at all time highs, interest rates are bouncing around. There's a lot of economic uncertainty. But guess what, 38 years I'm doing this and the 30 years you're in the, it's always something. It's never streamlined and there's always noise and you got to manage around the noise. You got to still do the things you need to do for yourselves and that's what the plan man, the show promotes proactivity and understanding things and being proactive and not being a bystander and a spectator going oh, I didn't know I wasn't insured for that. Oh, I didn't know it was going to drop 30%. Like you're not paying attention.
Speaker 2:Well, here's my question to you. We just celebrated two years. Bull market, big bull, yeah. We have an election coming Donald Trump, kamala. Now odds are, though we haven't hit bear since. Who the W? Since?
Speaker 3:George, yeah Well, I mean we had a little COVID hiccup for a couple of weeks. Market dropped after the flash crash, if you will, january, february, I think you know March when COVID came out, but it didn't last.
Speaker 1:It was like a half an hour.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was nothing, and then soared, soared after that. So, yeah, we haven't. Look, I'm doing this since 86,. The market crashed in 87, right, right around now October 19th of 87. And we came out of the financial crisis in 09, right, the market bottomed in 09 and chopped around in 10 and 11.
Speaker 2:We're literally on a 14-year bull market Now odds are, though, economy stupid, like what they always say. I mean, what comes up must come down. We're due for a correction, wouldn't you say?
Speaker 3:And yesterday we hit an all-time new high right on the Dow. So you know it's yes, yes, I keep saying it, I talk about it on my show. Be prepared, what are you going to do? We haven't had one. Look again. Here's one of my lines. I didn't, I didn't write it and create it. All things end badly, otherwise they wouldn't end that's right.
Speaker 2:from cocktail too, by the way, is it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, flanagan, the guy Tom Cruise. Yeah, is that what it's from?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when he was breaking up with Gina Gershon, oh God, and he gave her that line, dude that's a movie from the 80s too. Dude, I love that, Both of us man I saw that movie in the movie theater.
Speaker 3:But to the point of this is, the stock market doesn't plan its correction. Something triggers, something causes the knee-jerk, panic and then the sell-off. And the question is, who's going to yell fire in the movie theater? Who's going to create it? What's going to create it? And the Middle East tensions, and oil know, and oil prices, and Iran, this and that. So you know that's been getting rumblings and Ukraine's been getting rumblings and the election's getting rumblings right. So there's rumblings but it's the kindling hasn't caught fire. Nothing has happened yet, but something's looming, right, somebody's expecting.
Speaker 3:Now you could look in this country with COVID and the great resignation and the amount of commercial real estate that is still dormant, unoccupied. That's a big strain in certain arenas Residential homes sitting at all-time highs, even with rates going from 3% to 7%. Home prices have softened a little bit, but they haven't come way down or normalized. And, like you said, what goes up comes down. And I say this all the time, omar is if the historical rate of return on something is 10% and you just came out of a window of 100% growth or increase, meaning your home doubled in value.
Speaker 3:But it normally only goes up 7%, 8%, 9%, 10%. At some point it's got to normalize that 100% boom, has to resort back or revert back to the mean, which means your million-dollar house goes to $2 million. It's got to settle back to one and a half or one six or one four. It's not going to sit at 2 million. So we're still sitting here with the house prices, at least for you and me in South Florida. They've softened a little bit, but not a lot, because people are still coming down here.
Speaker 2:Well, here's my. Here we go, bruce Go babe NVIDIA still coming down here well, here's my, here we go, bruce go big nvidia all time high. Okay, I think it. What a little sell-off people today, today, things today.
Speaker 3:The tech names rolled over today's what tuesday, october 15th right if you're time time stamping, but yesterday, monday, october 15th, right If you're time-stamping.
Speaker 2:But yesterday, monday, nvidia closed at it hit intraday highs, hadn't closed at its high closed at a high, and then today, you know I believe Apple made a new high today.
Speaker 3:Apple did a new high today, right, but they're stretching their normal uh PE ratios, right, like the valuations are stretching and people are questioning and but go ahead what I'm sorry, what's your?
Speaker 2:question. I mean you and I know that. But what about the retail investor, mom and pop, joe bob down in missouri? I mean a lot of people are going to get hurt because they're piling money into wellVIDIA is never going to come down and every stock has to come down. And that's where the old saying buy high and sell low comes from.
Speaker 3:And I'm like this is so rigged but it goes back again, goes back to what we've said. You're in a 14-year bull market with very short intervals of contraction and pullbacks. People have not experienced pain. You take my oldest son is 34. So if he started investing and dabbling in the market at age 20, he's yet to experience a major correction he's yet to experience a major correction.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say he's lived like in this camelot, where right such thing is a market right.
Speaker 3:but then you go back to people who, from 1990 to 2000 that was their big bull market run with some hiccups and corrections along the way until the dot-com bust of you know, 2000, 2001. So you know, when it looks like and gets too easy, it probably is. And there's your warning. And the same happened with real estate in 07, right Like everybody was buying six, seven, eight homes, getting in line for pre-construction, put down 2000 and go sell it to the guy in the back of the line and make 50 grand. Right, like it was just a craze. And then eventually saturation and then kaboom, the bubble burst. So what's good? So the question now is what's the catalyst? What's going to get the stock market to finally throw up? And that's the looming question when and what?
Speaker 2:I think one of the things just baby boomers, just retiring, man collecting you know cash.
Speaker 3:But look I'm. I'm born in 63 and I think the last baby boomer is technically born in 64. Ok, so baby boomers are 20 years older than me, 18 years older than me 1945. So the baby boomers the original baby boomer is 78, going on 79. I would assume they're long retired, right, and my generation, the early sixties, we're not retiring. We were too young and healthy and want to do things, and you know the money to be made out there. We're not retiring. We're too young and healthy and want to do things, and you know the money to be made out there. It's not the same as I worked at the railroad, you know for 40 years and I want to retire, and you know it's. It's different, it's a different world.
Speaker 2:Well, we can't say the Middle East, because the Middle East, east, there's been like, yeah, it's like ishmael and abraham cousins were fighting, you know, thousands of years ago. It's just, oh, no man, I, I just I just feel bad because I know a lot of people are probably, and that's why they need someone like you to rationalize and talk some sense. You don't think a lot of people are like highly leveraged people, for sure.
Speaker 3:Our age 100 in tech when you think it's easy and you're making quick money and you're not getting a lot of headwind, resistance and that margin notice comes in and you want to double down and borrow money. I mean, that's what the hedge funds right, they were putting up five cents on a dollar back when things got ugly with massive leverage. That caused you know the excuse me the 07 crash. So you know you have to be prudent with your risk. You better have some very quick, short tripwires to get out when things and that's the problem is, every time things burped it just went higher after the burp, right. And so you get trained and you get in condition. So you know, nvidia goes to 140 and drops all the way down to 110.
Speaker 3:And you had some Japanese things unwinding over the summer and you had an overnight flash crash going on and you didn't know what was going to happen the next day here. And then in two days it was all over, bro, and everything was back to good. But you're looking at your Nvidia at 100 or at 95, and you're like, ah, and where are you going to get the money to buy more? And now it's back to 140 or 135, right. So you know it's look, I think a lot of people are not stock pickers. I think a lot of people use managed money and managed funds, so now it's a matter of how good are the managers? And when did the managers look? You said the news Warren Buffett dropped 50% of his Apple stock over the summer.
Speaker 3:He reduced his position and Bank of America right. So Apple's hitting all-time new highs post-sale. So that was a very non-event. Bank of America's meandering a little bit, but the questions were why was Warren doing that? And the reality is he made a freaking fortune in those stocks and they're overweighted relative to the risk he wants and the size of the portfolio. So the fact that he sold half of something that, by the way, apples up 28 times its lows from 2009. It has split 28 for one. So if he's buying it back then he's made so much money in it. But he's sitting on $250 billion of cash. He's sitting on a quarter of a trillion dollars of cash right now. After those two sales could buy like 15 major companies with that kind of money. Like it's ridiculous but it becomes a non-event. But that's one person. So let's tie it into the election. Let's tie it into these so-called tax plans that the Democrats. Kamala is proposing, because I've been having debates on my show with it and listeners of my show who obviously are maybe more pro-democratic views is you know where do you think let's rewind the market's at all-time highs? And so the Democratic side says this is all Biden's doing. Give him credit. Look how great the market is.
Speaker 3:Trump left us in shambles with COVID and the markets are hitting at all time highs. And then, of course, I chime in. I'm like you know nothing about economics nor economic history. I said let's go back to Obama, when Obama had corporate tax rates at 39.6% or whatever the math was, and countries like Ireland and England and France were getting headquarters, international headquarters set up by Apple and Google and Amazon and just name the major players and everything sold outside of the United States was kept in Ireland, in Apple's Irish headquarters Everything they sold in Europe, everything they sold in Asia, everything they sold in Africa, all six continents. That money stayed there, did not come into the United States and Apple stock did nothing.
Speaker 3:And what did Trump do? Trump and I remember Hillary's campaign in 16 was like we will tax, we will penalize any company that leaves this country. We're going to charge them an exit tax. And I'm shaking my head, omar going. You don't know what you're doing. You're chasing everybody out. You're taking all that money out of this country and they're going to leave it over there and they're going to do other things with it over there.
Speaker 3:And Trump comes into office and he cuts corporate tax down to the what 20% and all of that Apple money comes back to the United States. All that Amazon, all that, whatever Tesla, whoever they were, all that money got repatriated. They paid their 20% tax and now they're sitting on billions of dollars that they're buying back stock and they're raising or putting dividends in place and they're inventing more R&D. And that's why Apple's up 28 times. Not because anything Biden did, not because anything Obama did. It's because of corporate tax. So now you get the next regime that wants to come back in and raise corporate taxes, tax the billionaires, tax unrealized capital gains, all this other nonsense that they're talking about. Oh, billionaires aren't paying enough.
Speaker 2:Unrealized gains.
Speaker 3:Unrealized capital gains Now oh, it's not for everybody ahead no, think about that.
Speaker 2:Think about that anybody.
Speaker 3:Unrealized gains on your portfolio, unrealized gains on on your home 401k, your home everything it's just just fucking amazing that people but they're saying it's on $100 million net worth, individuals and above. Okay, so that's the top 1% of 1%. Okay, so that's today. That's today. How long until it's not that only person? Because now they get away with it and now they're going to keep lowering it and lowering it.
Speaker 2:And it trickles down to everybody.
Speaker 3:Eventually it's not a hundred million, it's a somebody worth a million. 10 million becomes a million. But let's go backwards because I was tying in the warren buffett. Okay, if warren buffett now has to reassess his gill stock, his Colgate stock, his railroads, all the stocks that he's been sitting on for 20, 30, 40, 50 years in those portfolios and now has to liquidate and pay taxes on all of those unrealized gains in his portfolio, is it individual ownership? Is it mutual funds? Is it hedge funds? Who are they going after and where's the capital gains? What about all the guys with all the real estate properties, the billionaires, multimillionaires that own $100 million of real estate? Now they got to start writing checks. Real estate's not liquid. How are they going to raise $250 million to pay capital gains? I got to sell stocks, so now I got to sell more Berkshire Hathaway stock or Gillette or Coca-Cola or Bright into an environment where everybody knows these a-holes have to sell. To sell.
Speaker 3:It's different than when Warren just is repositioning his own portfolio and the street wants to absorb his stock or take it down a little bit because Apple did drop. You got an opportunity to buy Apple, you know $20 cheaper than where it is now and you know, certainly, bank of America dropped quite a while. But what happens when the whole street has to sell, omar, when everybody has to meet that requirement, who's absorbing all of that stock? It's going to melt down. It'll be a bloodbath because the big money's not going to step in and buy it, because the big money is the one who's selling it. And if it's going to be hedge funds, if it's going to be, you know, the majority of money people don't understand is held by insurance companies. The biggest pension plans, the biggest portfolios, all those trillions of dollars that we pay into insurance, whether it's auto and home and life insurance and whatever. All that money has to sit and be put to work and all the insurance companies do is try and make a spread and they put that money to work. What happens when they got to start liquidating? Who's going to absorb? So if you want to say where's the flash going to come from that could spark a major stock market meltdown, do that. Put that in place, elect her and let her put all those tax changes in place.
Speaker 3:And then I took it beyond that in conversations I've had is, omar, you have a new startup, you're Mark Zuckerberg, you've owned all this privately held stock and if you go public, you now are going to have to reconcile and pay on all that unrealized capital gains. You're not going to go public because there's no value on a non-public stock. Who's going to? You know, there's Johnson Controls family, there's the Koch brothers K-O-C-H, koch, koch, like these guys are privately held, multi-multi-billionaire families. Kohler they're not publicly traded. They're worth billions.
Speaker 3:M&m Mars right, they never came public. Nobody knows their balance sheet, nobody knows their revenue, nobody really knows. So are they going to be told hey, now you got to sell some of that, you got to pay tax on that. To sell some of that, you got to pay tax on that. Yeah, go value it. But if I got apple stock and I've got a you know 300 fold performance and I got to start selling that, it just, it's just bad, right, it's just a bad idea. In my opinion, there's other ways to get people to pay taxes, but that one, oh, most people aren't in the stock market. That's not. Middle class is in the stock market, bro.
Speaker 3:Oh, I hate when people I mean there's poor and there's middle class and there's wealthy, right? So middle class are in the stock market, middle class have 401ks. Middle class have a million dollars. Ok, I don't know what you deem to be poor versus middle class, but you don't live in half the places in this country right now without a home. The average home value is over a half a million dollars. Now what's your net worth if your house alone is that right? What kind of income do you need to make? Are you putting a 401k in it? Like the stock market made people wealthy the last 15 years, you could be an average schmo and made a ton of money the last 15 years you could be an average schmo and made a ton of money.
Speaker 2:So what you're?
Speaker 3:saying is vote for Donald Trump if I cannot confirm nor deny my political affiliation. I'm a fiscal Republican. I'm not ashamed to say it, but yeah, look, I said it to you offline. I'm not a fan of Trump. I didn't like the Apprentice. He screwed my brother-in-law. I've said it on my own show. But I'm not voting for the man and the personality as much as the party and the fiscal policy of the party. And look I I have. My middle son is gay, lives in new york. I'm pro-choice, I'm pro-lgbt, like. I'm not against my own son, but he doesn't understand why we're trump supporters. All they want to do is kill me. I can't come to florida. They're going to lynch me. I'm like. I know plenty of gay friends of mine in florida. They're not being lynched. Last I checked, I texted them yesterday. They're.
Speaker 2:They're still, I believe, um there's. There's homosexuals in all 50 states. Yeah, yeah, so you know, as red as possible, I think there's homosexuals in oklahoma and texas and guess what?
Speaker 3:there's homosexual billionaires there, many sexual millionaires. But my point is that I've tried to explain to him and this is just my point of view. It's my 38 years of being in the financial industry and being a student of the stock market and economics to the best of my abilities. This country has to be run like a business. It cannot be run based upon political agendas. We are an economic machine and as such I have to support the party that is pro-business, pro-growth and not tax and spend, not taking my money and redistributing it randomly to people who don't want to work.
Speaker 2:The democratic party is not the democratic party of, like bill clinton and the party of yore, where it was about middle class, it was about the working class. It was about about the middle class. It was about the working class. It was about they, they've, they've, they've lost that They've, they've completely changed to, to something that I mean. I'll put it to you this way Bill Clinton would have never been elected.
Speaker 3:He would have been seen as like some far right racist redneck. Yeah, I've heard this before. You know, in today's world, kennedy would be a Republican and Richard Nixon would be a Democrat. Like the parties have just rolled in such vastly different directions, but their views in the 60s, you know, when they were both in office, you know, is way different 60 years later. And well, the problem is there's extremism. There's no middle road anymore. It's too extreme because they, they.
Speaker 2:It's like if it bleeds, it leads. You know. It's like if, if you're vanilla on either side, either party, you're not going to get people to donate. You're not going to get people rah, rah, rah, let's go vote. That's why it's one extreme to the other and what's sad is, the majority of people in this country are smack in the middle.
Speaker 3:Yeah, With nowhere to go, with nowhere to vote, with no power. No, I'm 61. I talked to friends and they're like I'm what you are. That party doesn't exist, that candidate doesn't exist. And then they have to decide and people look at it with total disdain for Trump as a person and I watched the debates and I watched. There's times when he's on the money, there's times when he could go for the jugular and he just becomes an idiot. I'm like he had her on the ropes. He had things to say. I got things to say. She opened her mouth and said things. I'm like dude, jump on that, because that's a lie. That's not accurate. She wants to talk about.
Speaker 3:She's behind private health insurance and the debates two weeks after they shut down and took away the Democratic Party access to private health insurance. I was screaming about it all summer and now you're forced on Obamacare. If you don't have group insurance, you have very little options, very small options. You are forced on Obamacare. If you make too much money, you get no subsidies. You are grossly overpaying. We had private options for clients that were 50% less than Obamacare. Shut down, Gone September 1st. Can't get it to you, Elmar, Sorry, You're back on Obamacare.
Speaker 3:So you talk about socialized health reform. You know how much free health insurance we give away. We meaning just my wife and I in our practice, with a couple hundred clients we have on Obamacare you make within a certain amount of money your health insurance is free, F-R-E-E free. Who's paying for that? The guy who's not getting a subsidy and he's paying $2,500 for his family. And the other guy he's getting free health insurance. So the haves and the have-nots have been defined based upon levels of income and what health insurance you get them. And by the health insurance you still got a $9,000 max out of pocket deductible. You're not getting a free ride. You're paying $2,500 a month and you're going to have $10,000 out of pocket before insurance pays for much. So what are we getting? And it's just-.
Speaker 2:I agree because until very recent I was paying, just for myself, 650 bucks a month and people would probably be like, oh, he's in the Mac daddy, you know, he's in the PPO, he, you know the they. They roll out the red carpet for me.
Speaker 3:No PPO. You can't get a PPO on Obamacare, they're HMOs. And then you can't our clients call I can't get a PPO on Obamacare, they're HMOs. And then you can't our clients call I can't get a doctor. I got to wait three months. They're not taking new patients, it's a chronic, and that's just, you know, a small sampling of what's going on. And where's it going to go? Because the HMOs don't want to pay the doctors. So if the doctors don't get paid or don't make a certain amount of money, then they're not going to take new patients, and then everybody's moving to concierge medicine, right? Or I'm going to Canada. I'm like it's just again another rabbit hole to get into, but it's not what people think. So if you don't have a group, look if you've got a group plan, that's going to be the ace of spades at the moment to run with. But when you don't have problems, if you make a decent living, you recommend your everyday joe to have a health savings account and just say sure yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:so I mean, if your listener doesn't understand what the health savings account, based upon the type of plan that you have, usually a higher deductible plan you could put away, give or take. Take the dollar amount it's going to change. It's a little over like $4,300, $4,400, depending on your age, there's a little catch up, but it goes in pre-tax. So why is this important? Can I give the lesson Is if you have a health insurance plan with a $5,000 deductible and a $5,000 max out of pocket deductible and a $5,000 max out of pocket, when you go to pay those bills, on that first $5,000 without a health spending account, you're paying an after-tax dollars. There's no tax deduction for that $5,000 because you have a donut hole or I'm not a tax pro. But when you go to do your taxes in order to claim medical expenses, it's somewhere around two or 3% of your AGI goes to the black hole. So if you make a hundred grand and it's a 3% donut hole the first $3,000, you can't deduct anything above the 3000 you can. So now you take a married couple making 200 grand a year. They're not going to fill that 5,000. It's going to go to a black hole. They don't deduct it.
Speaker 3:However, you fund an HSA health spending account. You can do it at Fidelity, you could do it at Bank of America, you could do it at certain places and you can invest the money. You could buy Nvidia stock if you find the right place. You could be in a mutual fund, buy the S&P 500 as an ETF. Like you can invest that money. It goes in pre-tax. You get a card. You get a debit card. When you're at the doctor and they want their $25 copay, they swipe your card. It comes out of your health spending account. But if you don't use it, it sits there and it grows and it grows and it grows. So it goes in tax-free, it's tax deductible and it comes out tax-free. So it's almost like a Roth IRA but for medical expenses, Whereas you can't deduct those medical expenses outside of most people's tax returns. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Crystal, so then you would definitely recommend somebody to open one up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but you have to have a plan that qualifies for it. You can't just open one up. So if you go on Obamacare, there's not a lot of HSA options for Obamacare. When you go to a group plan, there could be, and usually are, options for an HSA that you can enroll in. And then when we had private health options, they also offered an HSA option. So if the client was in the right financial situation all day long, just like, why wouldn't you want to do a Roth? If you qualify Now, a Roth doesn't go in tax-free, right, Pre-tax, Roth goes in after-tax.
Speaker 3:So I maybe confused people there a minute ago. So Roth goes in after-tax, grows tax-free, comes out tax-free. Hsa is a tax deduction. Tax-free. Hsa is a tax deduction. Rose, tax-free comes out for medical uses, medications, devices, hospital stay, whatever medical-related you know. Nursing homes for later and that's where I had a lot of clients do it back in the 90s is it was another way to save some money for long-term care, nursing home things Medicare may not pay for or other needs as they got older. So it's not you and I in our 50s and 60s as much as you and I in our 70s and 80s Like oh, you can have $200,000 built up in an HSA after some time, if you do it right. So it becomes formidable money that comes out tax-free. Oh no, by the way, you could leave to your kids, right.
Speaker 2:Can't beat that. Do you see Obamacare sticking around?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I do. Look, they brought this up in the debate a little bit. She kind of goaded him and I don't think he responded properly to it. But as I saw it and being in the industry, when Obama created Obamacare, he had penalties for those who didn't enroll. So it was basically look, you're going to pay us one way or the other. You're either going to play in the plan, you're going to pay for the insurance. If you opt out and don't have it and you make a certain amount of money, we're penalizing you. And I think it was like 600, up to 600 or $700 a month. So if you're going to pay a penalty, you might as well have insurance for the same dollar amount, right? So, as much as the Trump election and you know 16 and all this stuff and dismantling Obamacare and yada yada, all Trump did was take away the penalty. That's all he did. He didn't get rid of it, he didn't change it, he didn't tweak it, it stayed as is.
Speaker 3:And I'm not saying it's a bad or it's a wrong plan. I think conceptually it's there the problems I have, and again, I've said this before the Democratic Party will allow a woman the right to choose what she does with her body right, roe versus Wade, abortions, everything else, whatever that is. So the party that wants freedom of choice for what a woman does with her body is the same party that has now removed freedom of choice of where you get your health insurance. Like WTF. You can do what you want with your body, but you can't pick your health. You can't pick from different health insurance options. This is all we're going to give you for health insurance. So like, because the mandate with Obamacare is it. It's a path to socialized health reform because the haves are going to pay for the have, nots that socialism.
Speaker 3:So what happened September 1st? The red states is where I could place. They call them short-term medical plans, stms, and there's other plans out there. There's indemnity plans and others. But we did I've done a lot of business using short-term medical and the only difference is one day of coverage 365 versus 364. But it's for people without preexisting conditions. So if you were healthy and you were wealthy, a short-term medical plan was literally 50% less than Obamacare. The blue states don't offer it, omar. You can't get those plans in the blue states. They were available.
Speaker 3:They're available in all the red states New York, new Jersey, connecticut, massachusetts, colorado, california. These short-term medical plans were not available Florida, georgia, alabama our clients in all the red states have at it. So because, again, it's the reverse of Roe versus Wade. It's, you know it. It they took it out of the federal level and Trump pushed it back to the states to let the states decide. And in the health insurance, biden did the exact opposite. The states were dictating. The red states allowed for capitalism and free enterprise and other players for health insurance in the state of Florida, in the red states.
Speaker 3:And Biden decided that wasn't good and so, federally, he mandated September 1st 2024, you can no longer have access to short-term medical plans more than three months. So the year plan, the two-year plan, the three-year plan, the plans that I had, my healthy clients, my higher income clients, to avoid being pushed onto Obamacare oh, by the way which are HMOs and the private stuff, were PPOs and way less expensive. I can no longer offer those products to my clients in any state, let alone the red states. It became federal. So you know it. It the seesaw of which party does what over what things and why. It's like it was okay for Trump to kick it back to the States, but it's not okay you know Biden to take it away from the States and make it federal. Like, why is the federal government? You know it. Just this is what frustrates me federal government.
Speaker 2:You know it. Just this is what frustrates me. You're speaking to the choir man. Like I said, I I haven't been able to relate to either party for for some time, man, and I think a lot of people are, and it's it's. It's sad man, because at the end of the day, I do believe this is what most people want. They want the freedom, the freedom of everything, just like the. Don't tread on me, but not the extreme.
Speaker 3:Dude, I'm all about live and let live. If you don't spit in my coffee, I'll lift you up, I'll shake your hand, but the second you stab me in the back we're going to have a problem, right.
Speaker 2:So this agenda nonsense is just why impose you know, it's like, it's like that saying and you're going to laugh, like when evangelicals like, oh, we need the Bible back in school and we need prayer back in school. And I'm like, oh, that's awesome. So you know, being a catholic, so can we pray to mary and what? No, no, we don't. You know, it's happy new year, right. Like like they don't understand.
Speaker 3:There's other religions too right, I go to events and there's a pastor or somebody running, you know, running the event, and I'm respectful. They're like can we bow our heads before we start? And I look around the room, half the room are Jews from Boca. All right, we'll bow our heads, but, you know, say your prayer and you know, in the Lord's name and all that stuff, and I'm respectful of it. I have no reason, but it's like they're not the only player in the room, like you said, and so how does society? And then, of course, you know, the majority is the one that gets the biggest voice right and gets dictated to, and the big stick.
Speaker 2:If you want prayer in school, there's Posnack. If you're Jewish, there's Catholic. There's Baptist schoolsolic, there's baptist schools, there's methodist and send it there and you know what everybody else. Yeah, it's called moment of silence. You can do whatever you want, pray to whoever you want. You can think of your fantasy football team. You can think of the line. You can think of whatever you football team you can think of the line. You can think of whatever you want, but don't impose. Well, we need to have the Old Testament and we need to do this, we need to do that. And you know they revisionist too, because most of our founding fathers were frigging atheists. Yeah, they weren't holy rollers heard.
Speaker 3:I heard a commercial the day. You know, ron ronald reagan jr is big on the atheism and I was listening to cnbc in the car and they came out with a big commercial and I'm like he's still around touting it. You know, we just take religion out of it and how are things truly? You know, religion killed a lot of people. You know the crusades on. You know, religion's always a combative, combative combustible. You know, and it's just like dude, if, if you want to pray to the water bottle, and I'm going to pray to the bell, like how about?
Speaker 2:it, but don't infringe on me. Well, that's why I say don't tread on me, man. You know, make abortion I, I could care less about the abortion, I'm, I'm, I'm pro, pro choice, because yeah, I, I don't have the plumbing and you know it's not no, but you got two daughters, you.
Speaker 2:You got two teenage daughters be able to to choose on their own. I wouldn't want, just because some evangelical their belief yeah well, everybody's pro-life until their kid gets knocked up. I want people to hear that one more time you are pro-life until your kid gets knocked up, your teenage kid, yeah then then. Then what are the options? Okay?
Speaker 3:yeah, no 100. What's the difference between depression recession and depression Recession is your neighbor's out of work.
Speaker 2:Depression's when you're out of work.
Speaker 3:And it basically means like nobody gives a crap. When it happens to somebody else, we're in a recession. My neighbor's out of work this one, I see the car line, I'm fine, just a recession. But when it happens to me now it's more critical. Now it's a recession. My neighbor's out of work, this one, I see the car line, I'm fine, just a recession. But when it happens to me now it's more critical. Now it's a depression, but it was a depression for that guy who lost his job six months before I did Right. So it's the relativity of it.
Speaker 3:And it's until it happens to you, we're all apathetic. And that's the reality that we are very apathy. I talk to people all the time. People say why don't people do the things they need to do? What are my biggest struggles? At 38 years of being a financial advisor, I said apathy is one of the biggest reasons. And omnipotence it's not going to happen to me and I don't care. And it's hard to combat somebody who has that point of view about themselves is it's not going to happen to me. Oh, you're never going to get disabled. You're never going to die. You're not going to get divorced. Your kid's not going to get knocked up Like just go down the list. Like the market's never going to crash, like stuff happens, you know again another line I have life, no one gets out alive. Like shit happens.
Speaker 2:You're like a Jewish Tim Morrison there man.
Speaker 3:Riders on the storm.
Speaker 2:Bruce, I love you. Dude, I'm going to go up to Delray. We need to have that pizza.
Speaker 3:Pizza baby.
Speaker 2:I got a couple places to take you and some new ones opened well, I I need to do it because I'm thinking of doing the 75 hard again, because you know I'm gonna go back you gotta binge and then go back you did good on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but dude, that's my life, man, because you know I call people. I've never told people not not to eat the cake. The problem is I love the cake. When people ask me, do I watch what I eat, I'm just like, fuck, yeah, I love watching what I eat from the plate to my mouth.
Speaker 3:That's how I watch exactly there's not.
Speaker 2:It's not a problem with me watching what I eat. Dude, I, no, I'm, I'm not saying that because you know I, I'm, you know I, I need to go up there. I love the area, I love Palm Beach.
Speaker 3:There's so many great places here that didn't blow away in the hurricane last week.
Speaker 2:Anthony Robbins lives in Palm Beach. Our president, president Trump, our former President Trump.
Speaker 3:Our former president With the hole in his fence around his golf course for the sniper hey so here's my question to you.
Speaker 2:We're going to wind down because bruce and I know the yankees, because priorities.
Speaker 1:What do you have? What words?
Speaker 2:of wisdom do you have? What words of wisdom do you have, bruce, to the person that's like oh, I, I, I know what I'm doing, I don't, I don't need help, I don't need financial help, I don't need help with retirement I, I, I have it all under control. The person has everything on the CD, or the opposite I, I leverage playing with options, because Joe Bob told me options were cool, high tech, et cetera. No, I, you're the plan man. What words would you have to tell this person?
Speaker 3:The plan man saith and the plan man cometh is. I'm doing this 38 years. Folks and I've spoken, counseled, my seminars, webinars, some high net worth, some highly sophisticated and obviously everything in between. There are so many. I'll rewind. I'll go back for a second. I studied and passed the Certified Financial Planners exam. I studied and passed the certified financial planners exam. Took me many years to finally buckle down and in 2011, I passed the final exam. And I say that because the certified financial planner training had 82 subtopics, Not just investments, so there were six chapters. There were six sections tax, retirement insurance, investments planning. There were 82 subtopics.
Speaker 3:Now, 82 things may not apply to everyone in every situation, but the fact that I had to learn, train and be knowledgeable enough on 82 different areas bodes the question how many of those do most people ignore or don't even know about? And so I'm going to be relaunching. I got to get my act together. Maybe, after open enrollment, start doing my webinars again, which were my old seminars and how I attracted clients for 25 years. I talked about enough areas of pain and issues that, no matter who sat in the room, somebody there had to say done that, done that, nope, didn't do that, nope, don't have that. Did that, did that and just pick. If there were six different topics I talked about, I guarantee you nobody ever had a perfect score that they addressed all six period. End of statement. Never happened.
Speaker 3:So there's something out there somebody's just not doing aware of or taking care of and unfortunately, we'll find out the hard way when something hits the fan against them that they had a blind spot on. That could be underinsured homeowners, which is a big problem right now. That could be not enough life insurance, not having disability insurance, being over leveraged on their stock portfolio, not having enough money in their retirement account. Right, I mean again, and I'm saying things I've said numerous times over the years you tell me when you're going to die and I'll give you the perfect financial plan. When should I take social security? Where should I retire to? Where should I live? What kind of budget? How many people actually have a budget, omar? How many of your listeners? God bless you. Half a million plus, right, you've had over half a million. You cracked that a while ago. Half a million people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sounds mainly me going to Best Buy in Circuit City and hitting the play hey, hit, play, hit, play, hit play.
Speaker 3:But how many people actually have lived by a structured budget day in and day out and don't stray from it? And that's the core. I knew a certified financial planner. He worked with people $10 million and up only. He was up in North Jersey, had a lot of players, the football sports and athletes in Northern New Jersey the Jets, the Giants, the Rangers, knicks and all that Mets and Yankees. So he was in those circles and his clients were a minimum were $10 million and above. And he said to me he was one of our instructors, actually in my class. He said I will not take on a client until they give me a budget.
Speaker 3:And you figure, somebody making $10 million a year worth $10 million a year. Like what do they need a budget? They got plenty of money Because the person who makes $100 million will piss away $100 million as easily as a person who makes $100,000. Away $100 million as easily as a person who makes $100,000. It's just a bigger spend. It's Bugattis and it's Patek Philippe's versus whatever you and I do. So bigger budget, bigger money. You still need a budget because how many lottery winners have gone broke or gone busted because they just got paid and they spent it and they never replicated it and they can't maintain the lifestyle. How many pro athletes you hear about go bankrupt after retirement? Not everybody gets a. How much did Brady get for his Fox? You know? $600 million to sit in a booth.
Speaker 2:There's not many Drew Brees, there's not many golden parachutes out there, right, and you know it's very, very rare.
Speaker 3:Rare If there's 500, there's 52 players right On 30 plus teams. That's 1500 NFL players that go through a year. You know the numbers. Average life shelf three years, yada, yada, yada, right. So what's that 25 year old who just busted out of the NFL, maybe made a million, $2 million, for a couple of years? Now what's he going to do at 25? And and had that lifestyle for a few years? Or the guy who made it for 10 years or 15 years but didn't put money away or had bad financial advisors. So you know, bigger money, bigger problems, but it's.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not. Everybody has Daniel Jones money. You know like it, everybody thinks every player has like. You know that, like what you said, your average player couple mil.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean what you get Dak making 60 million and Daniel Jones, and you know these guys are making 40, 50 million. The NBA salaries are insane. Chris Paul, well, he just got like $80 million or something like that. Like, these numbers are nuts, but look, he, he, not Chris Paul. What's his face On the goal of the Warriors? Oh, From Davidson. What's his name? Curry, Steph Curry, Steph, not Chris. I said Chris Paul. Steph Curry just got like $80 million or something to re-sign for a year, right? So look, those are few and far between the LeBron with 20 year careers and proper management. You know Michael Jordan's worth over a billion dollars, but you know what's Scottie Pippen worth, what's Dennis Rodman worth? What's Horace Grant worth? What's? You know down the list of the guys on those teams that weren't the megastar Bill Wellington, right, Like so what did they do? What did they become? How much did they put away? Um, the kid jefferson on your lsu boy jefferson on the vikings well yeah, he lives very modestly.
Speaker 3:He enjoys a little bit of jewelry, but he lives in some townhouse. He's not in a big fancy got rocks mansion. He drives you know relatively modest car, like he's not blowing all that money, uh, as some other people do. You know, uh, what did? What? Did tyreek get pulled over in a couple weeks ago and arrested? Wasn't it a brigatti or something, or mclaren?
Speaker 1:it was something expensive he's like don't, don't touch my windows you're arrested oh, he's gonna blow through his money.
Speaker 2:Before you know it he's going to have like 20 kids.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a whole other topic, and on that folks.
Speaker 2:Well, bruce, I know how to find you. How do people find you, how do people hire you? More importantly, and how do people listen to your podcast, which is, I I'd say it's in my list of podcasts to listen to. Out of the three million that are there, only listen to 10, and not because I was a guest, but yeah, no look, whatever they say is uh, you know, the average podcast doesn't make it beyond so many episodes.
Speaker 3:So our show is called Ask the Plan man A-S-K. Ask the Plan man no commercials, no advertisements, no product pushes. Everything is education. We break down all different aspects of insurance, finance and more. We have estate planning, we've got special needs, trust, we got how your credit scores are derived, homeowners insurance, auto insurance, obamacare, private health, medicare, life insurance, annuities, so anything you can think of. We keep putting shows out there to help educate people at their own pace. Taking my 38 years, so you can go to asktheplanmancom. You can give me a call at 1-844-PLANMAN.
Speaker 3:But we implement everything in the world of insurance. So life, health, medicare, disability, long-term care, annuities. And then we do we're duly licensed so we do auto, home and commercials. So there's nothing we can't. At least point you in the right direction if we can't help you directly. But I'm always open to conversation, questions. People can hit me up, email me, call me. Happy to come on other shows if there are any people out there that have shows like yours, omar, that want us. But look, I'm just trying to promote financial literacy and proactivity and one of the things I sent to you is called Someday Aisle, one of my talking points, and if you go to my homepage on our website I've got my five-minute story of origin. My mother lived on Someday Isle. We started this beginning about smoking.
Speaker 3:My mother died at the age of 45 from cancer in 1985. She would have been 85 years old this month. I'm doing the breast cancer walk on the 26th, which is her birthday. We're raising money for that, for breast cancer awareness. If you don't know what the BRCA gene is, brca is a gene that has been triggered or found in families. It's hereditary. It causes ovarian, it causes breast, it causes prostate cancers. So my brother's been tested as negative. I'm negative, but my cousins on my mother's side of the family have been tested differently, and that is information that you didn't have years ago. But my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, my great-aunts, every female in my mother's line has died from breast cancer that I knew or knew of, and you know shit happens, and so what motivated me at 22 and 23 years of age was to get people living on someday aisle.
Speaker 3:My point is my mother lived on someday aisle. Someday I'll do this and someday I'll do that. Omar, you were raised by a single mother. I was raised by a single mother. My folks divorced when I was eight and all I kept hearing from my mother is someday I'll do this and someday I'll do that. Like, once I get you kids out of college and take care of the immediacy, I'll go do things for myself, and someday I'll never came. She died, and so that impacted me when I got into the financial services at 23. I came with that message Dude, nothing's guaranteed. Like, the sooner you could retire, wouldn't you want to? Well, what do you need to do to be in place? What are you waiting for? Someday I'll You're going to wait for someday I'll do something. Someday I'm going to take that cruise, that river cruise, to Europe. Like, why aren't you doing things now? How do you figure out to plan for your future but enjoy some immediacy? The problem in today's generation, it's all about immediacy, isn't it? Oh, the newhone's out.
Speaker 2:Thousand bucks, 1500 bucks yeah, it is out the new ai.
Speaker 3:I'm just fucking. But thank you, omar. Thanks again for having me on. I've been a while since I was on the show and I appreciate it right back I'll.
Speaker 2:I'll text you um, you know, before thanksgiving well, let's, I'll come down to you too. You don't have to come up here. You know all the hot. I'm a sucker for pizza man. Oh, I got a few.
Speaker 3:All right, come hungry. We'll go to two or three places. We'll make Dude.
Speaker 2:I'm a power eater. Bruce, I love you. I know we've got a game to go watch.
Speaker 3:Let's go Yanks, we'll see you in the Subway Series. What do you think? Mets-yankers? Definitely, I think so. I think there's a shot.
Speaker 2:The Dodgers. They're takeable. They're starting pitchings for the Dodgers. Padres should have beaten them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was kind of last Subway Series in 2000. I got to go to Shea and to Yankee Stadium and experience it. It was pretty wild back then. So 24 years later, it'd be nice to see another one.
Speaker 1:Go Yankees and started living inside of your purpose. What if it did work? Right now you can make the choice to never listen to that negative voice no more. The hardest prison to escape is our own mind. I was trapped inside that prison all for a long time. To make it happen, you gotta take action. Just imagine what if it did work.