(Ep. 40)How Inflation Reshaped America’s Cost of Living (1909 vs 2025 Historic Prices Changes)

1966, when I was born, bread was 15 cents a loaf. So it didn't start going up that much. But then it got to 1976 and it was 29 cents, almost doubled.

It's like inflation. This is the thing people don't understand about inflation, right? They always say inflation is going down, but inflation really doesn't go down, right? It just doesn't go up as fast as it did before. Let me tell you, when you go from 15% to 14%, you're not going downhill. You're still going uphill the whole time. And that's like how inflation works. And that's like your point proves this book, right? They just, you know, when, when things get inflated, boy, they're still going up like crazy. Like absolutely insane crazy. Welcome to the Ideas by Mike podcast, where your one-of-a-kind life meets a one-of-a-kind financial plan. Every episode, we provide insights into financial markets, discuss strategies for navigating Wall Street, and explore how to make informed decisions in a constantly evolving financial landscape, all with the goal of helping you. So sit back, relax. This is not your typical money show. We're going to be all in on helping you live a one-of-a-kind life. Well, hey guys, welcome back to the Ideas by Mike podcast. This is your host, uh, Mike Milligan. Today we've got very special guests where we've got like a tag team duo here. Coach Pete and Gary Nolan join us. You obviously know who Gary Nolan is. He's the consumer advocate on the One of a Kind Financial Show that comes out every week with me. You also hear him on the One of a Kind Financial Show Daily podcast, where he and I are often talking about just little segments. But we're also introducing Coach Pete to you today. He's coming to us from his studio down in Apex. Guys, you just co-authored a book called Through the Years, right? Through the Years is, uh, is this journey. Look at it. Coach Pete's holding it up for your YouTube followers right now. It's, it's, it's a journey. There's Gary, and I will have mine here shortly in the mail. Um, but, uh, you guys co-authored this to be able to give a glimpse of, um, of, of what happened. So first of all, how did this come about? Gary, do you want to start and tell us how this whole project came about?

Yeah, sure. It started out as little audio vignettes that used during Coach's show. They were like 2, 2.5-minute vignettes, and we just selected a year that we wanted to focus on. And we talked about things that happened that year of importance. We talked about financial information as well. What was the mortgage rate? What were the interest rates? But we talked about the popular cars that year, the cost of bread, the cost of many different things. And, uh, we started to put it together and then we kept a spreadsheet as well. So once the spreadsheet got filled up with, you know, what were the popular movies that year, what were the popular TV shows, who were the famous people that were born that year, we decided to put it all together and Coach's idea to put it into a book.

So, so, so Coach P, when you, when you wanted to put this book into play, right?

Right.

Uh, you did, this is not your first book by any rodeo. I think this is your 20th book, if I'm not mistaken.

Number 20. Yep.

Number 20. Magic number 20. Hey, hey, by the way, that was my baseball number, right? When I played baseball back in the day, number 20. That's amazing. Uh, so number 20, right? But you started the first year in this is 1909. Why in the heck did you pick 1909 as the starting point?

I think that was, uh, the year the Lincoln penny changed. It changed to Lincoln penny. It was the Indian head penny. And I think 19— I was a coin collector growing up, but I think 1909 was the first Lincoln penny. I don't know why we selected 1909. I was just trying to come up with a— nothing really changed that much between the 18-somethings and 1909, because then the car started appearing on the scene. It was horse and buggy before then. It got a lot more interesting.

Because I mean, like, logically I'm thinking, uh, maybe you start in like 1929 during the Great Depression. Maybe, maybe you start maybe like at the end of World War I, or no, you just 1909 and there you go.

Just picked a, you know, it's almost like throwing a dart at a dartboard there, and sort of like I just opened the book. like, like randomly, and I came up to 1970 now, you know, and what we were doing, Thomas, my radio production supervisor, he's in charge of all the radio shows. And I was told an idea by him one time.

Yes, sir.

I said, you know, we, we do a Brokers Behaving Badly. We do a Celebrity Mistakes. We do celebrity, uh, success stories or just success stories in general. I said, let's start talking about what happened back in the past, cuz we forget how quickly years disappear. I mean, we were talking that same day about how the 1995 was about 30, it's 30 years away and it doesn't seem like 30 years away. So we just wanted to have a barometer so you can look at today's data and compare it down the road into the past about what was really happening. So like, what was it? What was the Dow at in 1970? Well, the Dow was at 839 using— because we have a data sheet that starts every chapter. Then we have the famous actors that died and actresses, uh, that movies and cost of living. Bread was $19 a loaf in 1970. Well, those are the good old days. It probably was a lot better bread. 2 these days.

So let's, so let's do one. Go to 1957.

Okay.

Look at 1957, Pete.

Here we go.

And, uh, here we go, man. And, and on the top of that should, should say the year Gary Nolan was born.

But it doesn't say that.

Oh, that's Gary's year.

Yeah.

But what, but, but what happened that year?

Well, the Chevrolet, uh, Bel Air was invented. The car that, well, that was the car of the year. The Chevrolet 150-210 Bel Air was the car of the year. Cost of living, the price of a home was $8,500. The average car was $3,600. And Oreo cookies, 11.75-ounce package was 33 cents. You know, you can't even get a little bite-sized one, 2 Oreos these days.

No way.

But then the Dow was at 436. So, you know, and now the Dow's like 40-some thousand. So it's crazy how if we don't write something down, we'll forget it. We won't appreciate it and we won't really appreciate the value of what's happening now. Inflation was 2.9% back then. That's about the standard inflation we've seen over the years. We've had some blips, ups and downs from there. Uh, who was born? Spike Lee was born that year with Gary. And Sid Vicious, you know, Sid Vicious from the Sex Pistols was born.

That's right.

Absolutely. And a dollar back then was worth $11.20 today. See, there you go. That's 11x.

Crazy, isn't it?

That's how— so it's one thing to say inflation was 2.9, 2.9, but we hear these percentages, but until we translate them into what it really means to us in our buying power, we don't really appreciate inflation. That's it. Now we really should. We've been talking about inflation on my show for years, and the Boston Celtics won the world championship that year. I had to put that in because I'm a Celtics fan.

That's a good—

that's a good one. But it was just a lot of fun to go back and pass because I wasn't born then. And, you know, if you're not born, then you really don't pay much attention. You probably studied it in history books, but now you have a history book right here, folks. And we even have a soundtrack where we've built for this. Every decade has its own song that we have written and produced.

And so you wrote You guys wrote the songs?

Thomas is very talented, my producer. So talent— Thomas wrote the songs. Here we go.

Here's one now.

See if you can guess the decade. 1970s.

Holy cow, that is amazing. You guys have your own soundtrack. Is that old Spotify, or is— or are we getting all over the place of that?

Is Thomas— Thomas, is your mic hot?

Yeah, I'm hot.

Yeah. All right, so Thomas, uh, join the conversation. Yes, here you go. Thomas Lipscomb, folks.

Hey guys, so I had a great time writing this, really being spurred off of everything that Gary and Coach had put together. Uh, but we have our CDs coming in right now. We're gonna have— get this, Mike— we're gonna have LPs coming in. You mentioned 8-tracks. We don't have 8-tracks, but we got LPs coming in. But for the modern day, for the modern day But for the modern day, Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, you name it, we're on there.

iTunes.

iTunes. Yes. All of them. Look at that.

Holy freaking cow, guys.

Yep. And how can they find that, Thomas? Tell folks how they can find it.

It's easy. Just Through the Years Coach Pete. Search Through the Years Coach Pete and it'll come right up. It's got a big, beautiful pink, purple, yellow cover. You can't miss it.

So is there a website for that or are we just finding that on Amazon?

Well, we should have a website.

Yes, we should. But we are in such an infancy right now. There will be shortly. There will be shortly. We're still getting the CDs and LPs in. All this is fresh. You're on the cutting edge right here with us.

I love this. Well, we're on the cutting edge, but by the time this actually comes out, when it comes out, we'll put the link on there. Gary, this is the interesting part about this. You hear Coach Pete say 1957 and $11 in $1 today and what bread was and all that. How's that make you feel about your life now?

Old.

Old.

I don't think that's the point of it, right?

I don't think the point of this is to make anybody feel old.

It's just to put some, just to put some reality to the situation.

No, it gives you some perspective. It really, it really does about how, how things have changed over the years. You know, it's just, just amazing. I thumb through the book and I go through the '50s and '60s and go into the '70s. Then you were born in what, '77? Is that what you said?

'76.

Oh, '76. So we could look up 1976 and see what happened that year with you and see what—

That was 1,005, the Dow. So you were over 1,000. Inflation was 4.9 though. We were getting up there, the Jimmy Carter years.

You remember those?

That's right. Oh yeah, that's right.

Yeah, exactly. Rocky was the movie of the year right there. Rocky came out in 1976.

What was the car, Gary?

What was the car that year?

Oldsmobile Cutlass.

The Oldsmobile Cutlass. I had one of those.

Did you?

The Cutlass Supreme. Yes, exactly. Amazing.

Yeah.

That's absolutely, absolutely freaking amazing.

So, uh, Ryan Reynolds was born the same year you were. Ryan Reynolds from Men in Mobile.

Oh, Men in Mobile.

Oh yeah. Reese Witherspoon was born that year too.

Yeah. Legally Blonde.

The big, the big move, the big song was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. That was a huge song. Oh yeah.

It's still, it's still playing right now.

Oh yeah. It's still playing on classic rock stations all over the country. Yeah.

Yeah.

Still.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we could have, we could have started that song at the beginning of this podcast. This podcast may be done by the time that song's done. It's so freaking long.

Hey, bread was, uh, 29 cents a loaf. It, it's starting to go up then, 'cause back when Gary was there, it was a lot cheaper for, for a loaf of bread. It was 14 cents. So it's doubled, uh, in that time. 1966, when I was born, bread was 15 cents a loaf. So it didn't start going up that much. But, uh, then it got to 1976 and it was 29 cents, almost doubled in 10 years of the price of bread.

Well, yeah.

So what we gotta remember, I was born after the, after the oil embargo, the oil crisis, right?

There you go.

Right.

And so like, It's like inflation. This is the thing people don't understand about inflation, right? They always say inflation is going down, but inflation really doesn't go down, right? It just doesn't go up as fast as it did before. I've got this, uh, I go to this gym called Orangetheory. Orangetheory does this workout called, uh, called, uh, Everest, where on the treadmill for 25 minutes, the first 12 minutes you go up 1% incline, right?

Wow.

And then the last 12 minutes you come down, and the coaches will always say there, Hey, we're going down the hill now. But guys, let me tell you, when you go from 15% to 14%, you're not going downhill. You're still going uphill the whole time. And that's like how inflation works. And that's like your point proves this book, right? That just, you know, when things get inflated, boy, they're still going up like crazy. Like absolutely insane crazy.

Yes. And the only way to stop it is to make sure you have money that's growing equal to or greater than what the inflation's growing at.

How in the world do people do that, Coach?

I don't have any clue. I don't know. You got to do tax planning too. Well, so you got to minimize the amount of money you're giving Uncle Sam or take advantage of tax sheltering strategies, and then at the same time save some money. And I know it's not the easiest thing in the world, but if you're not saving and if you're paying full tax and not trying any of the strategies, then you're basically waving that white flag of surrender because you're not going to win that battle. Again, it was a fun project. We, we did it to entertain folks on our radio show. And then I said, gosh, we should just turn this into a book. And so here it is. And then Thomas and I were meeting one day and I said, let's make a soundtrack.

Okay. So let's, so let's play out, because in the book it stops at 2024, right? Let's play out 2025 on here, right? I mean, we don't, we, we, we don't know yet what the Dow's gonna finish at, right? Right. But so we don't finish that one. But like, what is the, what is the car of 2025?

I don't even know what the cars are out there. What are cars out there? I mean, any new cars that I've heard about?

I'm not—

I haven't heard of a new car this year. Has anybody? Thomas, you heard of a new car?

I haven't. No. No.

You know what I'd love? I'd love a brand new, like the new version of an El Camino. I used to always want an El Camino, the little station wagon. I mean, the pickup truck with a, like a station wagon cut size.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They were talking about coming out with a new El Camino. I don't know if they ever did or not, but I haven't heard anything.

Uh, why would you want one of those again?

I just thought it was cool back— I couldn't cut because I couldn't have one back in the day.

There you go.

I want it now. Uh, I'll buy boxes of popsicles and eat them all in one day if I want because I was basically— back in the day I could only have one because I had 2 brothers, we had to share and stuff. So I used to kill some pudding pops back in the day before they stopped making pudding pops.

So obviously people born today, we're not gonna know if they're famous or not for a lot of years, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

But like, but like what, what, what are the other categories in there that you guys have in the book?

Well, price of bread.

Yeah.

That's way up. Even Walmart bread's about $2 a loaf now.

Mm-hmm.

Walmart. Coach P, do you even know what the cost of a loaf of bread is?

Well, see, I shop for bread because my wife gets this kind of bread that I don't like, the no carb stuff. And it's nasty. I like, I like the real good, I like the traditional bread. So yeah, I get that. We get that in the office.

In, in, in Puerto Rico, a loaf of bread's like $9, $9.50. Whoa.

Whoa.

It better be good.

I mean, it's, it's like that Nature's Own whole wheat stuff, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's $9.50. I mean, you want to, you really want to talk about inflation? You guys come see me down in Puerto Rico.

Do they not have any way to have their own flour? I guess bread is basically flour, milk, and, uh, yeast.

They, they do, but they don't have, they don't have like the Wonder Bread that we can get like off the, off the shelves in the factories.

I think cheaper to make your own bread there, man. How much is a, has 5-pound bag of flour, pretty reasonable.

100%. It's cheaper to make your own bread.

I, I have one of those bread-making machines that's in the closet now buried behind things. But you know, when you get it, you use it like 20 times. Yeah. And you can make really good loaves of bread. At the beginning it was a, it was like a skyscraper loaf and it didn't look like a bread loaf. Now they're making 'em where it, where it traditionally makes a traditional kind of loaf-looking bread. So, uh, I'm out.

Coach, you met my wife. Coach, you met my wife. Do you think she's making bread at home?

Uh, well, she doesn't have to. All you do is throw the ingredients in, press a button, and there, there's the bread.

Just comes out.

Awesome. I got fat when I had the bread maker. I had to, had to hide in the back of the closet or I was gonna gain more weight.

I'm getting in trouble for that one.

Oh man. Hey, you know what I use a bread— what I used to use a bread maker for a lot is to make the dough. 'Cause I don't like to knead the dough. You know, keep rolling it over your hands and doing all the things for about a half hour.

Yeah.

But it'll do, it's got its own kneading cycle. So I used to make my famous Cinnabons, imitation Cinnabons.

Oh.

Uh, Christmas Eve. And I would use the bread maker. I wouldn't tell the family, like the extended family were all proud of me. They thought I was up all night with my little chef's hat on pounding away with the— pound that dough. No, the machine would do that. I would just roll it out, put the cinnamon and sugar and butter, and roll it up, and then cut them and put them on the cookie sheet. And I made Cinnabons that way.

So, wow, the things you learn about Coach Pete. I had no idea.

Coach, Coach likes to find the legitimate shortcuts, and the legitimate shortcut to retirement, Mike, is to have some of the money that you've got devoted to retirement, peel it away from the market and put in a place where you have that lifetime income account. My book number 21 I'm writing right now is The Glide Path to Retirement. You want to glide in. You want to glide in like on Happy Gilmore. It's all in the hips. Happy, it's all in the glide here. So we got to glide into retirement. That's what we do. We'll show you how to glide into retirement on your own.

I did not have, I did not have Happy Gilmore on this podcast bingo card.

You had the bingo card?

I did not have that on the card and I did not have glide path, right? I didn't have that one on here.

Well, you know why I thought of— well, just a minute before you finish your thought. The reason why I said Happy Gilmore is 1966. I got the book turned to 1966. It's got famous people born. Adam Sandler was there. So I started thinking about it. He was on my mind. See, that's how I developed the Happy Gilmore thought.

Look at that. How are people going to use this book? Like, I mean, practically, right? Go out and buy on Amazon. How are they going to use this book?

It's a fun book, man. It's really— I mean, I've had a lot of fun going through it. Gary did a lot of good research on that. And so every single page, every single chapter of every single year starts with an info page that has the same information on it from year to year. So you can compare it easy. What the Dow was, a loaf of bread, cars. That kind of thing. So now it's inflation, how much a dollar is worth today. It's good to have it all in one place instead of having to thumb through the chapter and try to find the information. It's all on an info sheet. So we made it like— I like those info sheets online, the infographics are called. And this is like an infographic to start each chapter. And each decade is in different font that is in colors that are famous for that decade. Like the '70s looks like the '70s and the '60s and all that, because you'll just have to see it to believe it. You got yours on the way, Mike. You'll get that in a couple days.

Yep.

But folks, it is a really good book. And then the soundtrack is free. You just go, Thomas, tell folks how they can listen to it again.

It's very easy over on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, you name it. Just search for Through the Years Coach Pete.

And we'll gotta put an audiobook together and it'll feature mostly Gary's voice. I love that. And we'll use his audio segments already and put 'em together in chronological order for you guys.

That's right.

Thomas is probably already working on it.

So what you're saying is every doctor's office in America needs a couple of these books. Every accountant's office, Steve.

Oh yeah.

You know, we kill a lot of time with these things, these phones, but what if we could have something to really learn with? And this is really good to— it's a really good reference manual. Plus it's entertaining. It's not just an info sheet. It's a couple of pages in each chapter telling you about famous things that happen, famous events, bad and good, that happened that year. So it really is a reference manual without having to— I think it's easier than Google.

Wow.

Wow.

Going old school, bringing paper back. That's what Coach Pete's doing.

That's right. I was a paperboy, so I've always liked to deliver paper. Here's my Here's my newest delivery right here.

See?

Yeah, exactly.

Yep.

Delivered to Warburg Exchange with, uh, Gary, did you know he's a, he was a paperboy?

Yeah, I've heard that before and Coach told me about that. So I, that I did know that about Coach Pete today. I did learn about the breadmaking thing. I didn't know about that, but that, yeah.

So we went to— this is my autobiography. So Thomas, remind me about to talk about the breadmaker when we film our next segment in my autobiography.

Oh, I love that.

The breadmaker.

Guys, we always, we, we always talk about being one of a kind around here. Right? Being one of a kind. And there's no doubt, right, that this book is one of a kind. It is unique, right? There's nothing else out there like on the market here, but like it's all about just to get the conversation started about finances, right?

Yes.

About life and about legacy. When you guys read this book, just imagine the legacy conversations that could be had on this, right? You know, the conversations, mom or dad, you're old, grandma or grandpa, I can't believe you lived through this. But like, how does this, how does this book help people financially? Like, what, what's the, what, what's the point of that?

Well, you see how things get more and more expensive every single year. I mean, or every single decade at least. And so it should help you know that just because you think everything's fine doesn't mean you might be fine. And it is important to have income in retirement every single year so you could do a lot of the fun things we talk about here in the book. So if you, if you don't have income, you can't go see the new famous actress or famous movie or buy the new car. So we want to make sure, Buy a loaf of bread. Even if you go to— there's a store called Whole Paycheck around here. It takes— it costs a whole paycheck to go in there. So, uh, you know, you have to have money if you want to shop at Whole Paycheck. You have to have enough money to go into Whole Paycheck. So, uh, just make sure you have money that you don't have to ask permission for and you don't feel bad spending. Because if you spend money, if you have a real plan put together, a real total retirement plan, you get to retirement, you spend money now, you never feel bad because you know a new check is coming next year for you. So you never run outta money. It's always perpetually refilling itself. Sort of like that bird. I don't know if you ever saw that little bird thing. It had a glass of water and, and if you got it started, it was— nose would go in the water and swing back and keep going in the water. If you took the water away, the bird would stop. The water never disappears. You'd never run out of your income water or retirement. The bird's always moving around. And so you can move around all over the world if you have the right retirement plan instead of sitting at home watching the Beverly Hillbillies all day long cuz you can't afford to go outta the house.

You, you never run out of analogies or stories or ways to compare things, do you?

Well, I mean, it's just, it free flows to my mind, but I mean, it really makes sense. I, you know, the financial world's a complex place, as you know, Mike. So we try to just dumb it down and that's not a bad thing. We try to make it easy to understand because it's not that complex. And a lot of times the financial world is made complex by people that are trying to get you confused so you stay where you are.

Well, that's something you shouldn't do. Well, that, that, that's the interesting part about like our industry, right? Is our industry is all about keeping people financially illiterate.

Yep.

And right, if you don't know about simple risk out there, like inflation and market and taxes and longevity and mortality, right? If you don't know those risks, right? It's because your advisor just says you're on the right track, or, you know, we got you. And what they really got is they really got, they got you as a lifetime client to do the things they want in their life and charge the fees they want to. They don't have you from a standpoint of your hopes and your dreams in mind. They're just talking about themselves when they do that. I mean, that's what we talk about.

Yeah. And I'm sure you do the same thing we do. We've become your financial gardener almost. We keep weeding the garden out, making sure that there's no bad weeds eating away all the nutrients here and letting your crops survive and thrive and get the biggest tomatoes ever because they're not competing with all the other junk there. The financial termites, we call them. Risk, fees, commissions that are built into your plan. You might not even see them, just like termites in the house. So as a financial gardener, You know, if you ever had a garden, Mike, I had a garden growing up, and if you left it alone for a week, the weeds would take over.

Right.

And so the weeds, I always said, if you could invent a, like, and we have a lot of, uh, NC State here, we have a lot of gene kind of people that work on splicing genes. I said, if you could splice a weed gene with a grass gene, that in other words, grass would grow even if it didn't rain, then, uh, and it would grow like crazy no matter what you did, it would keep growing. Then they would have the best grass ever, cuz that's what weeds do. It was one year we had a drought, 1997. I remember we were told by the county not to water our lawns, so I didn't. I was obeying the county. I didn't like watering anyway. I didn't like the water bill to begin with. But I figured out if I mowed the lawn every— mowed the lawn, I'm calling it the lawn. If I mowed the weeds every 5 days, they were nice and green. So it looked like a freshly cut lawn. So I just kept mowing the weeds. But I mean, it's just amazing how many weeds pop up in your retirement plan you don't even see. And you might— there's some weeds that look like real plants, just like there's the imitation ladybug out there. We saw them come into our office a couple years ago. We got invaded by the imitation ladybug. Ladybugs are friendly. Those imitation ones have big mouths and they bite all the, they bite all the good ladybugs and kill them. So again, you don't know what you have on your plant a lot of times because you don't recognize things like we do. We've, like you, Mike, we've been in this financial arena. I've been here for 33 years. You've been here a long time too.

Yep.

We start to see things and recognize things. It's like going to a doctor who just started in medical, medical. He just got outta medical school, so he just started practicing medicine. Or you go to a doc that's been there 20-some years who recognizes your symptoms without even having to get the book out or Google something. Which doctor would you want to go to? And then look at the financial world. We're the same kind of comparison.

Well, when you talk about weeds too, Coach Pete, weeds are persistent, and if you don't get 'em under control, they'll just take over everything.

They will.

And like in the financial world, by taking over everything, that means the possibility you running outta money. The possibility of not leaving something to your kids, the possibility that long-term care costs are gonna override everything you have. Weeds are, you know, if I could be any type of grass as a person, right? I'd want to be a weed, right? Because I can grow anywhere. But like, no, no, we don't want those weeds like out in, like in your portfolio, in your retirement plan and all that. We want to take care of all that stuff. Okay.

If you could come back as a plant in your next life, what would it be?

Uh, I mean, like an oak tree sounds pretty cool, right? They get To live 150, 150 stable, right? You know, the weather comes, that'd be pretty cool, right? But I, I don't know, man. One of those, one of those, what is those, those, those flying or those, uh, what, what, what are the ones that eat the anteaters or the, uh, Venus flytrap? Venus flytrap.

Venus flytrap.

Yeah. That'd be cool.

I had one of those, uh, I had a pet one back in the day. You could buy them in stores.

Those, uh, those Venus flytraps are like in, uh, in pretty exotic places too. So they, that would be kind of cool.

Yep. I think I'd be—

what would you be, Pete?

I would like to be kudzu. Kudzu just takes over everything. It's a Japanese vine that was brought back here to America back, uh, I don't know, back in the '30s or '40s, probably after World War II, so the '40s. And they said it could control erosion because it was great. It would— it had really good root system and it would keep, uh, like they planted on the side of roads to keep the, uh, the dirt from coming into the road. It would stop erosion. But what they didn't know Is it like to travel like Thomas does? Thomas likes to travel, but it would take over trees. And what it does, it climbs over tree because it was trying to get the sunlight, and then the tree didn't get any sunlight and it dies. So they—it's a predator, but it's also a friendly predator because it's stopping erosion.

Imagine imagine a vine that can grow six feet a day. That's crazy, isn't it?

Like wow, fast! Like Jack and the Beanstalk kind of stuff here. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So it's big down in Georgia.

Yeah, yeah. So we want to make sure that we have a good plan, folks. And yeah, and Thomas, you want you want your plan to be. Taking over everything, not dwindling and shrinking. So we always want to expand our horizons, not decrease them. The oak tree would be fun. The only thing, it'd just get boring standing there for 150 years.

Yeah, it would. That's why I pinned it. That's why I went to Venus flytrap, right?

No.

Because I want to be somewhere exotic. I want to see some things.

I know, but back in grade school, little kids started crying. I still remember this at Covington Street School in Laurinburg. We were under one of those big trees. I think it was an oak tree and a kid got hit with a— it might've been a pecan tree. Anyway, a kid got hit with a nut. The tree decided to drop a nut on him. So that would be the fun thing as a tree, you know, just drop a nut on people every now and then. They get the wrong one stuck. Nothing else to do. Let's drop some nuts on somebody. Right. The tree was fun.

Shout out, shout out to Lauren Berg on the Ideas by Mike podcast too. Hey. Hi, Mom. I just want to say hi.

Oh, love Lauren Berg. Love Lauren Berg. Yeah. I used to love to, dad would take us, we'd load up the car. This was how we did Christmas presents back in the day. We were poor. We'd get in the car, drive out to the country. Who knows where we're going? And, and there was no internet back then, so you couldn't find out what would, what would happen to people that did this. many, many times. Dad would just drive around till he saw a big piece of land on a farm or something with a bunch of pecan trees. We'd get out with our bags and fill 'em up like it was, uh, like we were looking for Easter eggs. And then Mom and Dad would package them up and give 'em as gifts on Christmas. 'Cause, uh, people up north where most of our family is didn't really— we have walnut walnuts up in Boston, but not pecans. So they loved the pecans. We had to tell 'em not to eat that red stuff though. You know, the red stuff inside the, the nut? Yeah. It was horrible, but I don't know what that, that was just a tangent, but that's what you do. You do what you gotta do to survive. And you don't have to do those kind of things when you get to retirement. If you have the right plan put together, you don't have to be like my parents and I were doing, scrambling around to find Christmas presents under a pecan tree. We could have been chased by a farmer with a shotgun. Didn't realize that.

Or, or, or like my family did, like we had collard sandwiches as the—

Oh, collards. Yep.

Oh yeah. That was our, and, and, and the reason we had collard sandwiches and that became the family business Was because of the, uh, because at the end of the day, right, cornmeal was cheap and collards grew in the ground freely.

Yes. Yes. Yep. You know, I, I grew asparagus when I had my garden, and a lot of people don't realize asparagus keeps coming. It just keeps coming. You, you cut 'em, the, the vines keep coming. And when you go to some restaurants, they give you these big thick pieces of asparagus. It's the worst kind. You want the real thin ones. Those are the real tender ones. So just a, a Coach Pete asparagus advice.

That's great. Thanks, Coach Pete.

They charge you a lot for asparagus. I think it's that good cheese sauce they put on, hollandaise sauce.

That's so good. That's right. So good.

Well, guys, anyway, it's a fun book, Mike. We started in 1909 and went all the way. We're gonna, we're gonna update it to 2025, maybe down the road. That's the beauty of being able to self-publish, is we can make the book bigger as we go along. So I can see it going to 2030, 2040, but it's always going to be 1909. We're not going to go any further back than that, man.

I could see this book in stockings across America this year, right? People like giving them across. I could see them, and I, I'm gonna walk into my doctor's next time and there's going to be a book there. I mean, I appreciate you guys coming on here. So how do we, uh, so I, I, the, the, the last topic I just wanna cover, right? Obviously Gary helps me, uh, with the radio show, but the team at Broadcast Experts help 'em all. And we, I have a lot of advisors who watch my podcast also. How do they, how do they get involved with you guys if they wanted to produce a radio show?

Yeah, all they have to do is go to broadcastingexperts.com, broadcastingexperts.com, or go to coachpete.com and then you can find my contact information there and I'll get into, uh, get you in touch with the production team. We do shows for about 100 advisors nationwide right now. We have room for another 100. We've got a gigantic building here, 27,000 square feet, and we've got tremendous studio space. And I recommend every advisor that we work with, and a lot of them take advantage of this, is welcome to come here and copy everything we have here. You can take pictures all you want and see how we run our business. But it's 3 stories and it's, uh, we call it Coach Pete Land. So come visit us at Coach Pete Land.

If you're lucky, if you're lucky, you may even get to visit Coach Pete's office and see all of the amazing crap— I mean, stuff he's actually accumulated.

Hey, I got new Breaking Bad guy here. Uh, uh, what's his name? Walter White. Bob White. Yeah. Walter White. That's the newest thing.

Walter White bobblehead. Was that, was that in your, uh, McDonald's Happy Meal that you got the other day?

No, but I've always liked, I've always liked looking at him. And, uh, you know, of course I always got my bourbons here too.

Oh, always.

You're into bourbon.

All right. The Dominator.

That's right. The Dominator.

The Dominator. Dominator. Only, only available at Coach Pete Land.

That's right. Come, come have a, come have a swig with me.

Well, guys, this is going to be one of our last podcasts of 2025. And we thought we wanted to do this year, right? First of all, I wanted to say on my podcast, thanks to Gary. Gary is just a pro. And he is doing an amazing job on the One of a Kind Financial Show with me. So, Gary, we appreciate you, man. And there's a lot of people I'm saying thank you to for a great 2025, but you're one of those people. And I—

Thank you. That's very kind of you. I appreciate working with you. You're a lot of fun to work with. I enjoy our shows each week.

Yeah. And we've started getting a little more creative at toward the end of the year, haven't we, Gary?

We have. We got some great segments. We've done some really fun segments the last couple of weeks.

Yeah, that's right. We did the, we've done the Beatles segment. We did the Kmart Blue Light Special segment.

We did push that around. I used to push the blue light cart. It was funny. People would follow me around and I'd have to divert 'em over here. And then I, I would just walk around the store until they announced it. I knew where I was going to women's underwear, but I was over in sporting goods on purpose.

Coach Pete, Coach Pete, you'd love that segment because we compared the blue light specials to like the fake financial advisors on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Oh, right. Everywhere too, aren't they? Everywhere. Oh yeah. Get someone you can trust, folks. Get someone you depend on. Get someone that you just feel like they're gonna help you. And that's the most important thing. There's too many phonies out there, but get the people that are, that are really standing behind what they do. And that's Mike. We do a good job here as well.

That's right. They do a great job down there, guys. And that, that's the great thing about this too, right? They are a full-service financial services firm, just like One Oak Financial is, right? And yet here we are on the same podcast as friends, right? Giving great value to our listeners. So until next time, guys, thanks for, for being on the show. For those that wanna again connect with, uh, with my team, go to oneoakfinancial.com. That's the number one, oakfinancial.com. If you want to see more about what Coach Pete's doing, just go to coachpete.com. We don't have enough time left in this podcast to say everything that Pete is doing. So guys, thank you. Thank you so much for your time.

Take care, brother.

Always good to talk to you, Mike.

That's all, Mike. Great to talk to you.

Yeah. Thank you for joining us today on the Ideas by Mike podcast. This has been Mike Milligan, your host. Where I look to bring real-world conversations with you of people changing the game in the financial planning, investment, and retirement income space. If you want to reach out to our firm to learn more, you can go to oneoakfinancial.com. That's the number one oak financial dot com. One Oak Financial is a nationwide firm here to help you build a one-of-a-kind financial plan for your one-of-a-kind life. CFP Board owns the marks CFP, Certified Financial Planner, and CFP in the United States. As a reminder, Mike Milligan, Certified Financial Planner, is an investment advisor representative of Advisory Alpha LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisory firm. All opinions expressed by me or our guests are solely our own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Advisory Alpha. This recording is for informational purposes only. It should not be relied on for investment, tax, or legal decisions, and it's in no way intended to communicate or guarantee specific performance or suitability of any security instrument or product as we may have discussed. Investment advisory and financial planning services offered through Advisory Alpha LLC, a registered investment advisor. Insurance is offered through Ideas by Mike, a Virginia-based LLC. Here to serve you in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Ideas by Mike is a separate and unaffiliated entity of Advisory Alpha LLC. While tax and legal issues may be discussed in the general course of financial and investment planning, Advisory Alpha does not provide tax or legal services. Please consult with your tax or legal professional prior to making a decision relative to those decisions. Any and all statements of purported or observed general practices of non-affiliated firms and advisors. or conditions of the broad financial services industry are solely the opinions of Mike and are not intended to be offered as factual. The validity of these statements has not been verified, and as such, no representation of their validity are made. An annuity is a long-term financial product designed largely for asset accumulation and retirement needs. All guarantees are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Mike Milligan. Thank you again for joining us today. We'll see you on the next podcast. In your one of a kind mind.

Be one of a kind.

Take the flight. Ooh. Mike's the guide, you'll shine bright.