248: The 12 Days of Christmas INFLATION ADJUSTED

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Well, what do we have here, everybody? We have a Christmas Eve broadcast for you. Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas to all. And we have something really special. You're going to like it. You're going to like it because we talk a lot about inflation, one of the three major economic maladies. And when we talk about that, we should adjust the 12 days of Christmas for inflation. Yes, the 12 days of Christmas adjusted for inflation. So. So we're not going to go when we talk about turtle doves and five golden rings. We're not going to talk about nominal dollars. We're going to adjust for inflation and consider the 12 days of Christmas in real dollars, the only way anything should ever be considered. So, Merry Christmas to all and let's get into it. But first, I don't know, I need a little more of this tune. It's so catchy.

So what do you think those things all cost adjusted for inflation? What do you think those things cost in today's dollars? Not in the old dollars. Not when the song was written, which, by the way, when was this song written? Such a great song. It's such a catchy tune. Post below, comment below and tell me what your favorite Christmas carols are. Chad says Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Chad. Thanks for joining us. And this, by the way, will be today's podcast episode. So I figured I should do it live because visually there's a lot to show here. So let's get into it. Let's get into the 12 days of Christmas adjusted for inflation. But first, speaking of inflation, the Wall Street Journal yesterday published the average US Home price, not to be confused with the median price. They're usually not that far off, but they could be. You know, median and average are different. There are those who don't know that, which is pretty scary. But the average US home price was 14.6% higher than the price the same time last year.

Yes, people been making a lot of money in real estate. What happened to the crash bros? You know, all of the folks saying the market's going to crash, I suppose they'll be right eventually because, hey, a broken clock is right. Twice a day, isn't it? Yes.

It'S true. They will eventually be correct. Peter Schiff will be correct someday. It may not be in our lifetimes, but someday he will be right. And all the other doom and gloomers will be right, too. So that's the way it goes. But hey, the 12 days of Christmas. Well, before we get into that, we got a contest coming up because I guess Trump vetoed the stimulus bill. I did a whole rant about that on the podcast a couple of days ago, and what a complete epic scam it was. And I tell you, even if you hate Donald Trump, you gotta check your beliefs and your ego on. On the Trump hatred, because that guy has made tremendous personal sacrifice for the country. And now he's going to get tons of hate because he wants you to get $2,000, not $600. So he might stand in the way of you getting $600 next week, but maybe you'll get $2,000 instead, which would be much better. You know, we can send $10 million to Pakistan for gender studies, or we can give the American people 2,000 bucks instead of $600. Well, not exactly, because if you do the math, you get the idea. It's the sentiment that counts. I'm being sentimental. It's Christmas. Okay, well, tomorrow's Christmas. But, yeah, can you believe all of that money going to foreign governments, corrupt foreign governments, instead of to the American taxpayers? Absolutely ridiculous. Ridiculous. But that's the way you have it with what's called pork barrel legislation. No good. And that's why the President should have what Ronald Reagan wanted many years ago, and that is a line item veto. Because then they could send the President 50. How long was this ridiculous bill? It was 5,700 pages or something. The longest bill ever full of pork. Pork barrel legislation. And they could send them that, and then the President could just go through line by line and say, nope, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that, I'm not doing that. And whether the President was a Republican or a hypocrite, I mean a Democrat, they would really be held accountable. The President would. Because they wouldn't be able to have the excuse. Look, you know, we had to negotiate with Congress, and this is the best bill we could get. And, you know, the American people needed the money, and so I just signed it. The President wouldn't be able to get away with that any longer. And thank you, Chad, for posting that. It was 55.

You can't make this up, ladies and gentlemen. 5,593 pages. Now, compare that to the health care bill, Obamacare, you know, the one they passed at like 2am on Sunday morning or really Monday morning, Sunday night, whatever you want to call it. That was like 2700 pages. And that's the one where Nancy Pelosi said, we got to pass the bill to read what's in it. You know, you can't make this stuff up, folks, that the fact is better than the fiction. So she said that, and that was ridiculous, of course. And then Dodd Frank came and. Did Dodd Frank come before Obamacare? No, came after Obamacare. And Dodd Frank, the one that really, really made all these ridiculously stringent incomprehensible banking rules and real estate rules and lending rules and all this kind of stuff. That was like 2,200 pages, I believe. So it's all ridiculous. It really is. But enter our contest and you can win 500 bucks. Okay? And I just want to let you in on a little secret here, folks. We are a small business.

There will not be a million entries into this contest. So your chances of winning are actually quite good. Yeah, they are quite good. All you need to do is make a quick, little simple video super easy. Tell us about your real estate and your investing goals for the new year and beyond. And, you know, you can throw in some other goals, health and fitness, professional goals, family goals, travel goals, leisure goals, new hobbies, new skills, whatever. All those goals, any goals you have, you know, throw them into your video just for added flavor or if you don't think there's enough to talk about as far as real estate and investing and, and your financial growth, we help you create wealth here. That's what we've been doing for many, many years. And yeah, just go to Jason hartman.com contest right now. Open another browser tab while you're watching me. Go to Jason hartman.com contest and enter. And you could be one of the two lucky people that win 500 bucks.

And again, I'm going to tell you, your odds are good. There will not be many entries. Okay, so, you know, we. Our reach is limited. We only have like seven listeners to the whole podcast. There's hardly anybody listening. I'm just kidding. We have a lot more listeners than that. We have listeners in 189 countries. So win your 500 bucks. Just go there. Jasonartman.com contest and let's talk about inflation, because we're going to talk about the 12 days of Christmas, adjusted for inflation. All right, so first, and if you followed my work for any length of time you've heard me talk about some of these things, but every time I talk about it, you know, there's a new distinction that you make. So keep on listening. And if you're new, I'm going to tell you where you can get a lot more information, a lot more background on all of this stuff. But to understand inflation, we need to understand the difference between real and nominal, between price and value. They are not the same thing. Nominal means the name of something in name only is the actual definition of nominal. So it's just the name. A dollar bill is called a dollar bill. It was called a dollar bill 30 years ago, but the value of it is lower today than it was 30 years ago. Right. So nominal and real, very different. Inflation is this insidious hidden tax that destroys our pur of anything, including these things.

Four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, or a partridge in a pear tree. See any of those things? Oh, this one. I like this one the best. This is the best one. Five golden rings.

Four Frenches, hens through turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. What does inflation do? It destroys the purchasing power of everything, including four French hens, two turtle doves, five golden rings, and partridges and pear trees and everything else on the list. So we're going to get to that in a moment. But thankfully, it destroys the value. Well, not thankfully on the first things. It destroys the value of our savings, our stocks, our bonds, and our equity and real estate. But thankfully, it also destroys the value of our debt, and that makes us richer. So it's a good thing. It's a really good thing if you get it working for you instead of against you. It is the most powerful method of wealth redistribution ever. Not taxation, but inflation, but much more powerful way to redistribute wealth. It redistributes wealth from lenders to borrowers because borrowers pay the loans back in cheaper dollars. And it redistributes value or wealth from old people to young people. It's an intergenerational wealth transfer mechanism. All right, so here is an example, because I'm going to fly through this so fast your head will spin. Hey, wouldn't that be cool if I could do like an exorcist movie? Oh, that was a scary movie. Shouldn't talk about scary stuff on Christmas Eve like that. But anyway. And Linda Blair spinning her head around. That was freaky. All right. And I don't want to see that movie again, by the way. I saw it years ago. Don't need to see it again. All right, so say for example, you are a really smart real estate investor. You went to Jason hartman.com you clicked on the properties page, you contacted one of our team members and you purchased 10 properties and those properties cost a whopping $120,000 each because we do have some cheaper properties like that. And you got a million dollars in mortgages against those properties. And then say you waited one year or two years or three years or whatever, you enjoyed your positive cash flow from those properties, you enjoyed your tax benefits from those properties, you enjoyed being a landlord. And you know that this is creating wealth for you. But guess what else? Let's assume that those $1 million in mortgages were interest only mortgages, meaning you paid zero principal. They were not amortized. Oh Sarah says I, I sing like her. Oh Sarah. I'm guessing that's not a compliment, but duly noted because God did not give me the gift of singing, unfortunately, because I actually really do like to sing and I love music. And I'm going to drive to meet some people to get Christmas started here. I got about a three and a half hour drive ahead of me in my semi self driving car, an amazing technological game changer for real estate. I've talked about that a million times on the podcast and if you don't know how that's going to change real estate, it is a game changer, massive game changer. My semi self driving car. But soon they will be fully self driving. I'm going to drive that about three and a half hours or it's going to drive me and I'll see if I can get some music in and do some singing. Hark the Herald angels sing Glory to the newborn king. I like Hark the Herald a lot. That's a really good Christmas carol. But the 12 days of Christmas, that's good too. So we'll get to that. So inflation comes along, you've got these, this million dollars worth of mortgage debt, inflation comes along, you're paying interest only. So you haven't paid the loan down at all or the tenant has it because really the tenant pays the loan off for you. And after that 10% inflation comes along in real dollars, you only owe $900,000, not 1 million. So inflation has paid off $100,000 of that debt. And that is awesome. Yes it is. It's totally awesome. And I demonstrate this example in many podcast episodes where I go over a real life example, not a theory of somebody. And there were millions of people that did this, of course, who bought a house in 1972 for $18,000 in change. They were paying 7.37% on their mortgage. And they lived there for three decades, for 30 years. And guess what happened? They actually got paid to live there because they got paid to borrow that money. And I'm not going to tell you all about that now because we don't have time because we have 12 days of Christmas to cover, folks. And we got to inflation adjust each of these things. And it's going to take a minute. But I have a resource for you if you're new to my incredible work.

Hat on the back here. Yes. Someone's got to say it. Someone's got to say it. Well, actually, you guys say it all the time. And thank you, because that's why we do what we do, because we love hearing that. It impacts lives and it changes lives. But if you are new to our work or you just want to review the fundamentals. And of course, today is episode 1623. 1623. You might be saying to me, jason, I gotta go back and listen to 1622 episodes of your podcast. I've got good news for you folks.

Many people have listened to all of those episodes, even two times or three times they have told me. And the reason they were able to stick with it is because I almost never, almost never on any of those episodes sing. Only today am I singing. And maybe like one or two other times. So it's really quite tolerable. You can just listen. Okay, so if you want a short version, you can go to jason hartman.com start or on any podcast platform. Just look for my Quick Start podcast where we've handpicked some of the sort of fundamental episodes for you. Some of the, the core content, not all of it. Never pick all of it out of so much work. And you can, you can get a little faster orientation to our work there. Of course, if you need us, you can reach out 1-800-hartman if you're in the USA, that's only a US phone number. And. Or Jason hartman.com around the world or even at the International Space Station. It even works there. Astronauts, you listening? Okay, so for 37 years, PNC has been indexing the 12 days of Christmas. And I thought I'd share it with you because I love what they do. You might be a customer of pnc. You know, they're big, a big organization. A friend of mine works for PNC in New York City right there in the Wall street area. And anyway, they've been doing this study for almost four decades now, and they've been indexing the 12 Days of Christmas for inflation. So you can go check out their website, pnc, of course. But I'm gonna give you the abridged version with my sometimes brilliant, sometimes ridiculous, and sometimes hilarious commentary. Snarky, Always. For sure, it's going to be snarky. Okay, so a partridge in a pear tree. Now.

Here'S the funny thing, folks. The partridge in a pear tree and many of these other things you're going to notice there's no inflation adjustment. Why is that? Well, because the partridge and the pear tree remains unchanged, okay, since 2019. So there's been no inflation in this particular commodity. But some of the things we will discuss as we go through the 12 days of Christmas, some of them you will discover, can't be obtained. We live in a pandemic era, Covid, 1984. You can't even get some of this stuff anymore. So they don't know how to adjust it for inflation. So you're going to see that as we go through all 12 items. All right, so they say, PNC says, well, 2020 was anything but predictable. The partridge sheltered in place, right. A lot of us had to shelter in place, right? As the price for him and his pear tree remains unchanged. Zero inflation. Let's go to the next one. Okay. How about two turtle doves? Well, they got a lot more expensive. The two turtle doves are way up. You're going to pay 50% more. 50% more. Okay, that is just from last year. So turtle doves, expensive. Now, one of the takeaways here is not just about investing, but it's also, you know, it is Christmas Eve, and you might be thinking, wow, you know, I'm in big trouble because I didn't buy a gift for my true love. So, you know, maybe you don't buy 12 things, but if you want to be a smart gift buyer, you want to buy the things that haven't had any inflation, Right. Like a partridge and a pear tree. Because it's the same as last year. And maybe last year you had a different true love, Right? You know, you might have changed your true love year over year, just like inflation changes year over year. And here you've seen no inflation. I don't know. That wouldn't be very thoughtful to buy your true love, this same gift you bought your other true love. Right. That's probably not going to go over well, especially if one of them finds out. Yeah, you're going to be in trouble for that one. Okay, so. So the turtle doves are up 50%. Turtle doves are getting expensive. How about three French hens? Well, they're up a little bit, but not as bad as the turtle doves. Okay, the three French hens are up more than the price of housing. Okay, because we just went over that. And how much was that up? Well, that was up. Let's go back.

There it is. 14.6%. Well, three French hens are going to cost you more than that, aren't they? Yes, they are. Let's go back to the French hens. Oh, There we go. 15.7% increase in price for the three French hens. Okay, how about four calling birds? 0% increase. You can still get those four calling birds for the same price as last year. Now remember, this index does not show you. Well, at the end I'm going to show you a chart that will show you this. But each of these is just year over year, right? It's not going back 37 years to when they started the index for the 12 days of Christmas. But this is just year over year. Okay, all right, how about five golden rings? Way up 14.5%. Now you might be saying, well, Jason, what about gold as an investment? If you follow my work, you've heard me talk to talk about gold and Sarah's saying, talk about silver, precious metals. Overrated, highly overrated. I've told the story many times before, but I'll just sum it up to say this. Look, if you could rent out your gold and it would produce income, if you could mortgage it for three decades at artificially low interest rates, if you could get great favorable tax treatment, then I would be a gold bug. But you can't do any of that stuff. That's why income property is the most historically proven asset class in the entire world because it is a multi dimensional asset class. Gold, silver, platinum, palladium, Bitcoin, ethereum, any other cryptocurrency, any of this precious metals, one dimensional strategy, one dimensional. The whole game is simply buy low, sell high. That's the whole game. Okay? And even if all the theories are right about fiat money and inflation and currency collapse, even if all of that is true, it's a one dimensional asset class. Buy low, sell high income property, on the other hand, you've seen me put up the acronym about ideal, of course, but it's multidimensional. I mean, think of, there are so many ways you earn your return from income property, unlike five golden rings. You don't get it from those things, right? You don't get it from Gold, you don't get it from precious metals. One dimensional asset class income, property. You've got cash flow, appreciation, depreciation, meaning a tax benefit. You know, you've got all of these things. You've got my trademark philosophy, inflation induced debt destruction, which we so quickly touched on in this little quick episode, but it's there. Okay, Inflation induced debt destruction. Go to the podcast, find out more about that. Because it's the hidden wealth creator with income property. Okay, so five golden rings is up. Inflation shows a sign of inflation. We've been printing money like crazy Red. Remember when money is created out of thin air, or currency, the more accurate term. When dollars, yen, euro, whatever are created out of thin air, all that already exists becomes less valuable. Remember two value drivers for anything, scarcity and utility. Scarcity and utility are the two value drivers for anything according to yours truly. Okay, so five golden rings is way up. Now, six geese a laying, that's up more than five golden rings. I mean, this is up 35.7%. All of you gold bugs, you would have been much better off. You would have been much better off buying six geese a laying than five golden rings. You would have been up 35.7%. Now the problem is, of course you can't, you can't finance those six geese a laying over three decades with an artificially low fixed rate mortgage. I don't know if the geese of laying give you any tax deductions. There are some sort of odd farm laws, so they might. Hey, by the way, folks, there's a whole bunch of you watching. I see you. I see you. We've. You're watching on eight different Facebook pages and one YouTube channel. And you got to tell me where you're watching from. Type in the location and type in what you want for Christmas, okay? Or type in any of your goals for the new year. All right? Because that's what our contest is about. And the link for the contest is scrolling across the bottom of your screen to win 500 bucks. And again, I want to say not a lot of people will enter the contest, so your odds are good. There will not be thousands of people entering. We're a small business. You folks listening? Like, if. If all of you watching right now or all of you listening on the podcast entered the contest, you would have a very good chance of winning 500 bucks. So do it. Okay. Six gieseling so far performed pretty well. That was a good asset class to own. Okay, how about seven swans a swimming? Well, no inflation in swans a swimming. Okay, even seven of them. You know, your true love would pay $13,125 to buy them all in 2020, and that was about the same as last year. So 0% inflation in swans of swimming, which, by the way, swans of swimming are surprisingly expensive. I had no idea they were that expensive. Okay, wow. All right, well, how about eight maids of elking?

This one's funny. So as the federal minimum wage remained unchanged, so does the cost for the eight maids of milking holding steady at $58 this year. These lady laborers are happy to oblige, assuming social distancing practices are in place and face masks are aplenty this holiday season, folks. Oh, they're entertaining. I mean, these guys, they've done a really good job of creating this index and making it. Making it timely and entertaining. Okay, so. So your eight maids of milking, I guess you're only buying them for an hour, right? So. Yeah, what is that? 58. 8 times 8? Is that what they're doing there or something like that? Or what's. What's the federal minimum wage now? 825 maybe or something. I don't know. Anyway, do the math. So there you go. I guess they're saying they're hiring for. To milk for an hour. Okay. But, you know, really, you do have to have some cows for them to milk, some equipment. And I would argue that probably all of that went up in price. So there's probably some hidden inflation there in the index that you're not being told about. Okay, so Ramit is in Edinburgh, Scotland. Oh, I love it. I love that accent from Scotland. So, Ramit, that's awesome. You know, I have been to England, but I got to go to Scotland. I've been to 87 countries and have not been to Scotland. Now, some would argue that Scotland is not a separate country, I guess. Guess that was a referendum you had recently. But we'll see what happens with it. I think that has to happen in California. The socialist Republic of California needs to split up into three states. Three states. That would be better, because then maybe you'd see some rationality and some competition for governance. Okay. And Sarah is in Maryland. Cha Ching. Yes, Sarah. Cha Ching. And Jill is in Buffalo. Or I think you're in Buffalo. You're asking me about the Buffalo real estate market? I don't think it's great in Buffalo. You know, I used to live in Rochester as a little kid, and, you know, I've been to Buffalo many times. My grandparents are from upstate New York. You know, that's just not where the action is, you know, in those cold, cold, bitter cold climates. You want to be down further, you know, changes in latitude, changes in attitude. Be in the South. That's where all the Southeast, that's where all the business friendly markets are. Go to jasonartman.com properties by the way, we've added a whole bunch of new markets to the website@jason hartman.com properties. So check those out. Bunch of new markets there and more being added over the next week. All right, so key to lifestyle is in Raleigh, North Carolina. That's a great place. I love Raleigh, North Carolina. Omar is in Bend, Oregon. That's a beautiful place. Bend is very, very nice place. Very popular. And boy, you've had some good run up in your real estate prices there too. So that's good, good stuff. Scotland is merely a nation within the uk. You should visit. It's beautiful. Yeah, I know. I agree. It's definitely beautiful. I got to get there. We got to get traveling back. Traveling has to come back. Okay, so we went over the eight maids of milking. Let's move on. Now here is the problem. Nine ladies dancing not available in 2020. You can't even buy it, right, because there's all these restrictions due to Covid 1984. 1984. It's not 19. It's like George Orwell 1984, which, you know, if you have time, read the book, watch the movie over the holiday, watch. There's several movies about George Orwell 1984 that you must see because we are living through it. Maybe you don't need to see it because we're living through it. Okay, all right. So as COVID 19 has caused the curtain to drop on most live performances, the nine ladies dancing will not have to dash through the snow to entertain in person. Advocates for the arts are not out of options for the performance lover on their guest list, as virtual performances provide a pandemic proof alternative for audiences. So you can't adjust the nine ladies dancing for inflation because it's just not available. All right, how about 10 lords a leaping? Not available. Not available.

You're out of luck there too. So you can't adjust those for inflation either. 11 pipers piping. Definitely not available because out of their pipe will come droplets. You know, now we've all learned about this stuff and, you know, even when this whole pandemic ends, do you think we might be kind of like grossed out in germaphobes? I think everybody's become a germaphobe now. Right. Which, by the way, probably we could use a little germaphobia. I think so. A little more germaphobia. Maybe not more than now, but more than before is appropriate. But, yeah. No, no Piper's piping. Because of their piping, all kinds of droplets are coming out of their. Their horn, their pipe. And hey, no live performances, so you can't even get it. So no inflation adjustment on Piper's piping. And drummers drumming. You can't even get 12 drummers drumming, because now you could get one drummer alone drumming, I suppose, and watch them on Zoom. But yeah, so you're out of luck there, too. It's going to be really hard to do the index this year and adjust things for inflation on the 12 days of Christmas. Okay, so here is the true cost of Christmas in a song. But remember, a lot of the stuff you're not going to be spending any money on because you just can't buy it at any price. It's actually down 38%. $105,561.80 is the total cost of the gifts for your true love when you count each repetition of the song. Now, see there, that's interesting, by the way. That's like government math. It's got a multiplier effect. Okay? It's like. Now, the thing I want to say is it's more like fractional reserve banking or fractional reserve lending, because it has that multiplier effect, right? So every time they lend out $100,000, there's a multiplier because remember something, and this is very hard to comprehend. It took me really years to kind of get this. Now, you understand there's a difference between, like, sort of getting it intellectually and getting it, like, viscerally, right? I guess that's not visceral. A little lower is visceral, right? You know, getting it in your gut, right? Where you really kind of like, have a deeper understanding of it. So money is lent into existence. That's the way our system works. Money is lent into existence. For more on that, listen to the Creating wealth podcast, wherever you get your podcast. And we talk about that extensively, and you'll really learn some new stuff. So anyway, that's the deal on the index, but this is what I really want to show you. I want to show you the chart, okay? And again, this is from pnc. This is the Christmas index through the years. Sorry, this is a little bit blurry, but it starts at 1984. We've been talking about George Orwell in 1984, okay? And it goes, you know, here we Got some inflation. The index started, it was about $20,000 to buy everything in the index. And remember, that's including all the repetitions of saying it over and over. Right, because in the song they repeat all of them before each time they do a new one. Okay, so then you saw we had definitely some inflation here and it was about $25,000. And then it came down. And then I just want to make sure I've got the years right there. That's why I was looking at the screen. See my screen I'm looking at is over there. You could probably tell. Is that the right way? No, it's that way. Oh, See, I don't know. It's not the same for you as it is for me. It's too complicated for my dyslexia. Okay, so here we see it go down and things got cheaper and then inflation hit again and then there was another little dip. But then we went on this rampant inflation craze. Remember, here is sort of the end of the Alan Greenspan era. We go into the Bernanke era. These are who was the chairperson of the Federal Reserve. We have the Janet Yellen era. And then of course we have our rich uncle, Jerome Powell. Right.

And we've seen massive, massive money creation during this time that we've seen all this inflation. No surprise there. The more money they create of thin air, the more inflation we're going to have. But now we have actually seen a lot of inflation, but we saw a decline in the index. Why is that? Well, it's because some things just can't be purchased. So they're not counted because you can't buy them at all. Reviewing what you can't buy, you're not going to buy 12 drummers drumming, they're not available. Or 11 pipers piping or 10 lords of leaping or nine ladies dancing. But you can get your eight maids of milking. And I think there was one other thing you couldn't even buy anymore. Right. So there you go. Okay, so that is the whole 12 days of Christmas for you. We just wanted to share that because I thought it was really interesting. And let me see, there's a question here. Okay, Pamela, I'm thinking of selling my primary home in Vallejo, California, near Oakland and buy properties around the country. Is that a good idea? Well, as long as you buy the right properties around the country and you get this fantastic 3 decade long fixed rate debt, Pamela, I think that is an excellent decision. And I don't know what the price of your home in Vallejo Is, but it's in California, so I'm sure it's kind of expensive, as everything in California is expensive and Oakland is certainly expensive. So you could rent. If you have to stay in the socialist republic of California, you could rent a house for a much better rate than you can own a house there. Because remember, the higher the price of the home, no matter where it's located, the more favorable the RV ratio or the rent to value ratio is for the tenant. Okay, so that's why you want to do what I call double arbitrage. Okay. You want to basically rent an expensive home for yourself. Now, you know, the question is, compared to what? What does expensive mean? Now, that varies by market, but I can tell you this for sure, Pamela, that if the house is over 350 or $400,000, it really, really becomes a better deal to rent it than own it. Because the rent to value ratio starts to really fall off the cliff in favor of the tenant and not in favor of the landlord when you get to about $300,000. Now, that number used to be lower. It changes over time. Because if you would have asked me that question 10 years ago, I would have said 250,000. But I'm adjusting for inflation, just like the 12 days of Christmas indexes. Okay? So, yeah, keep that in mind. But generally speaking, you're going to be much better off having a lot of inexpensive rental properties that other people rent from you at a favorable RV ratio or rent to value ratio for you, Pamela. And an unfavorable RV ratio for the tenant. Okay. You know, those less expensive homes just have much better economics and they're much less risky. And you're going to be diversifying your risk. And remember something else. This is a good question that Pamela asked because you got to always remember another thing. Your home is never, ever, ever an investment. Now, does that mean nobody ever makes money on the home they live in? Of course not. They get lucky, their house goes up in value, they make money great. But you can usually do better on the low price rental properties. Remember, in order, my definition of an investment is that it produces income. If it does not produce income, it's not an investment. And of course your home does not produce income, so it can never be really considered an investment. It always has to be considered an expense. Okay. Your home always has to be considered an expense. So you always have to consider your home an expense and not an investment. Okay. Okay, so I've got another one from Boot Hill Ranch, Idaho. Let me get back to that one. I just Put the contest link in the chat. So that ought to. Depending on what platform you're watching, that should appear so. Boothill Ranch, Idaho says we are in a deflationary environment, not inflationary debt to gdp. Studies show that the higher debt loads are massively deflationary. Money supply does not create inflation. We need velocity. Also, I agree with you that we need velocity, but I disagree with you about inflation or deflation. If you. And look, I'm not going to have time to go into this now, but I have studied this extensively for almost 20 years and we talk about this ad nauseam on the podcast. I interview tons of experts. I know what the Consumer Price Index says and I know they manipulate the Consumer Price index in three major ways. Weighting, substitution and hedonic indexing. And all of those things artificially suppress the cpi, okay, to make it inaccurate. And there's a very big incentive for the government to manipulate the Consumer Price Index and make inflation seem lower than it really is. Why is that? Well, because of course, all the government entitlements and the government salaries are indexed to inflation. So it costs the government more money. And also, generally speaking, it makes the populace upset. Right. The voters don't want to hear that there's a lot of inflation. Right? That's not good for their standard of living. And then if you look at asset inflation versus consumer price inflation, those are dramatically different. Dramatically, dramatically different. So asset prices have skyrocketed. There is massive, massive inflation in assets. One of the things I've talked about, that's my own theory that I've talked about many times on the podcast, is that there is a huge knock on effect to asset price inflation. And that knock on effect comes in the form of an entire generation or two generations. And I'm talking about millennials and Gen Z's that are to some extent left out of the investor class due to high asset price inflation. Okay, now I get it. That electronics become cheaper. You know, this is called progress. And it's all hedonically indexed to make it seem less expensive. And there is some logic behind that. But when they hedonically index inflation, what they're saying is we are not entitled to progress. You know, think about it. If they had the Consumer Price index back in the day when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and the light bulb changed the world and it changed so many people's lives. What if they had hedonically indexed candles versus light bulbs? Or hedonically indexed those old lanterns with kerosene in them, the kind in the Western movie That always gets thrown into the hay and the fire starts. If they had hedonically indexed candles or kerosene lanterns versus the light bulb, light bulbs would be free. In fact, you would be getting paid to take a light bulb. Right, but that's just not reality. So, you know, I understand that inflation is moderate. If you're not talking about certain things like food and asset prices and energy is artificially, artificially cheap right now, there's a lot more inflation in the system. And, you know, we can agree to disagree on this, of course, like you said in your comment. So thank you for that and that's fine. This stuff is very nuanced and it's very complex, as we both know. You know, if you'd like to come on the podcast and you're knowledgeable about this stuff, it seems like you are from your great comments. I'd love to talk to you about it because, you know, these are, these are just fun topics to talk about. It's, it's like my hobby. I love this stuff. I love it. I love it. Let's see what else here as we wrap up. We're going to wrap this up. RR says, what if the home is the duplex and the tenants are paying your mortgage and utilities? Well, yeah, but the question is, RR is what is the opportunity cost on the half of the duplex you live in and you're not receiving income from? So you have to consider that an opportunity cost. So there's always an expense. It will always cost money to live somewhere. And, you know, you've got to just get that home you want at the lowest possible cost and it might be half the duplex. I don't like the idea of living next door to my tenant, that's for sure. I definitely don't like that idea. But, you know, if you're okay with that, then, you know, just understand the rent you're not getting is your cost of, of that home. Okay. Jerry says, merry Christmas, Jason and team, or at al. Are you a lawyer? That's the way lawyers, right? Always enjoy Your podcast and YouTube and your live cast. Hey, thanks, Jerry. Appreciate it. And Merry Christmas to you too. And Jill says, what do you think? Does technology going to change the market in the coming future, the housing market? Well, every technology influences the housing market. I mean, just, you know, the means of builders and developers and property managers managing their supply chain and realtors managing their supply chain and better data and software. You know, it was said that software is eating the world, right? And it's true. It is. And it's amazing, no question. So, yes, there are impacts everywhere, but the one impact they really haven't been able to disrupt is construction. It's still, it keeps getting more and more expensive. And, you know, for all this talk about 3D printed homes and all these new technologies, I have yet to see any of them actually come to market. I've been hearing about them for 15 plus years and still we're seeing much higher construction costs and very little technological innovation in home construction. On one of my podcast interviews, I remember the guest that I was interviewing, he said, the biggest disruptive technology in home building is. You ready for this? Ready for this? I'm going to get a sound effect for you. Here it is. The big disruptive technology in home building. The nail gun.

Wow. So you don't have to use a hammer. You got a nail gun, right? Oh, wow. Big, big, big technological disruption. Right, folks? Not so much. Not so much. Okay, with that, I will leave you with the twelve Days of Christmas song on the way out and just want to wish all of you, if you don't celebrate Christmas, happy holidays, whatever you celebrate. But since it is Christmas Eve, this is appropriate. And there is the index of the twelve days of Christmas. Hope you enjoyed it and wishing you all the best and happy investing.

Six. Five golden rings.

Four green birds three French hens Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

Okay, bye everybody. Merry Christmas.

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