The Three Dragons

There are three dragons you have to slay to become financially independent. And Quixote Ventures is the name of my company. Don Quixote was a dragon slayer, if you know much about him. Actually, they were windmills, but he thought they were dragons. But taxes, inflation, greed, those three things we talked about taxes a little bit. If you don't learn the game, you're going to give most of your profit away. It's a lot easier to basically learn the game and keep it and then reinvest it and, you know, catapult yourself. Taxes, inflation. Let me talk about. I call it my Sideways story. Anybody seen the movie Sideways? That movie was filmed in 2005. And the reason I know that is because I went there in March of this year. The same place I went to, the same place they ate at. It's up in Santa Barbara. It's a winery up their wine area. And I ate at the same restaurant, the Hitching Post. I stayed at the same hotel they stayed at, and I went to the same gas stations that they went to. And I watched the movie twice before I went there. Guess how much gas was in 2005 at the exact same gas station. $1.50. Guess how much I paid. $4 and 30 cents. That's inflation. And I don't know what's going to happen next. None of us do. But it's reasonable to think that in seven years, that was just inflation to me. I said, well, this does happen, inflation. So if I created a note for $300 a month for 20 years, I'm thinking, good deal, Gordon. You did good here. Got a good income for $300 a month. But maybe in seven years when I go back to Santa Barbara, that won't even fill my tank up. So inflation is something you need to keep a handle on. Real estate will do that for you. Real estate sometimes, and I think in the future it might appreciates rents go up. Those same rents will go up. When that guy's paying $300 a gallon, excuse me, a tank for gas, his rent might go up also. So you need to deal with inflation, greed, greed, your greed, and the people that you're depending on to manage your money's greed. Let me tell you a quick story here. My sister. I love my sister. My sister is the top female banker in Nevada. But she doesn't have much of a handle on her finances, on her personal finances. So I say, you know what? Let me help you. Let me work on this with you. We should buy some notes with your retirement money. She set up A self directed ira. And basically she said, okay, what should I do? I said, well, I'm going to start sending you things and look at them. So I sent her a note and I said, check out this note. She said, great, let's buy it. And I said, no, no, no. I said, this one's not for sale. She said, why are you sending it to me? And I said, well, I want you to kind of know when a good one comes along, know what we're talking about here. I don't want to do that. I want you to tell me what to do. And I said, okay, but that's really not the best way to do it. And historically what she's done is with her stockbroker or whoever depended on them. In my opinion, you can't depend on them. You got to step up and be the guy and take control of it, you know, because your own greed, you know, it's basically you saying, okay, I want 100% return. Klein Wilson has a great thought about. He says there's three light bulbs. There's a 100 watt light bulb representing 100% return. There's a 50 watt light bulb, half that much and a 10% light bulb. You can touch that 10% light bulb without burning yourself. You touch the 100 percenter, you're getting scarred. Put that into an investment. So we all want the 100%, you know, we need to get rich now. That's not the way it works. It's a long term plan. So that's my rant about taxes, inflation and greed.