Ep. 2008: The Bond Tango

The Bond Tango: Why Rates Matter

SPEAKER_01 1:04

I just thought the tango fit with the bond market for some reason. I'm not sure why. It was a push and pull, that thing, you know, the stocks and bonds and all of that. And today we're going to talk a little bit about bonds because it appears bonds are much on the minds of our listeners. Welcome to Talking Real Money. I am Don McDonald. That was the sound of my chest as I point to myself really, really hard. Over there in the meat locker, Tom Cock with the Frozen Military Aircraft Museum. Model Military Aircraft Museum. It's not real military aircraft.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Who do I talk to about turning on the heat in here anyway, by the way?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

That would be the landlord. Oh, wait, that would be you, Cheapskate. Turn the dang heat on. See, he's saving up for his next vacation. Is it extracting it? Well, there'll be one after that.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

That's true, too, of course. There'll be one after that. Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

And one after that.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

They're experienced people. I am hiding out in my cave, people. That's me. Doing it well, too. That's what I do. I just live here in this little room. Recording stories. Oh, I'm gonna I I'm gonna record another Rita Storis stories for the kids. I haven't recorded one in years, so I'm gonna record one of those today. I felt like a kid story. I'm feeling like a kid again. Today let's talk about bonds, those things that really make you very emotional. You get more emotional about bonds right here. You're getting more emotional than you are about stocks. And that's because stocks are happy right now. We all love stocks. They make us lots of money. Just wait till they don't. Just wait till they don't. But for now, let's talk about bonds, the confusion around bonds, what bonds are doing, why interest rates have been rising, and the good, the bad, and the ugly of all of that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Yeah, and one of the nice things in my life is the fact that my brother moved here recently from the Midwest and now lives oh, like 30 minutes away. So we try to get together once a week for breakfast, which I really enjoy. It's a nice thing. Uh I like seeing him. Do you leave Lawrence out of that? He's somewhere in another universe, spinning around another planet of some kind. So it's I really like it. But money, finance, that's not his thing, right? Music is. In fact, he's working on another gig for uh next spring. But so he was asking me today.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

I he's wait, I'm feeling guilty now because I'm putting him out of business.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Yeah, you already are. Uh he he he put it to me this way. He said, Yeah, I don't understand the bond thing, and I gotta ask you, do we want rates to go up or do we want rates to go down? Like, this is a sporting event? Who should we be cheering for? Go low rates. I thought, wow, that is a pretty interesting question. Because if I'm borrowing money, I would prefer rates to be lower, right? Or if I'm in the real estate business, probably prefer rates to be lower. If I'm running a business that might have to borrow money, probably prefer rates to be lower.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

If I'm someone who's heading into retirement, I'm putting a lot of my money in fixed income. Do I want rates to be higher or lower?

Why Bond Prices Fall When Rates Rise

SPEAKER_02 4:02

Yeah, because what happens when rates go up, right? The price of the bonds.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Let's talk, let's try to be as specific as we can about why we keep trying to do this, but I don't know where everybody seems to have such a hard time grasping this. Why do bonds go down in value when rates rise?

SPEAKER_02 4:19

Because the bond, if if rates go up, right? If a new bond is going to be issued at, let's just say, for sake of argument, five percent. Which they are. Yes, and your bond was issued a year before of a similar maturity at four percent.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Yeah. Your bond, the old one, is now worth 20% less. It has to be because no one's gonna buy it.

unknown 4:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Why would you bought the explanation?

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Let's assume that the bond you bought last year was a two-year bond, it has a year left, and you can get a one-year bond with a five percent return. You're you're not going to buy the four percent bond when you can get a five percent bond for the same exact term and quality. And that's about where we are, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

The 10-year treasury at the beginning of this year, beginning of uh 2026 was at 4.2. It's now that 10-year at 5.3. By the way, for those of you complaining about how high interest rates are, went back and looked. The average 10-year treasury rate going back to 1955. Do you have any idea what it is? The average, average 5.4%. So this is we're all just we're all so loving the zero, et cetera, the you know, and that is such an aberration.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

A zero percent rate is not a sustainable rate. That was a rate that was due to some weird economic conditions, one of which was not even economic, it was health, and that was COVID. But you know, a lot of things went, I mean, remember with during COVID, oil went to negative. Yeah. Negro a barrel now.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

We were doing we're doing a live show where you said we get that tanker right there for like nothing. Well, no, they have to pay us to take it. We shouldn't have done it, right? Because look where we are today.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

That but see, we treat aberrations as if they were the norms. And what happened as rates fell from the 1980s to the 2000s is the value of bonds grew because rates were falling. Those higher yielding bonds were worth more money. But that was aberrant. And bonds shouldn't really much, they shouldn't rise much or fall much, because generally rates don't fluctuate a lot over long periods of time. That's why we have that five percent over our entire lifetime,

Should We Want Rates Up or Down?

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Stop.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

And do we want rates to go up or do we want rates to go down? We haven't answered the question yet.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Oh, because we're old and selfish, we want rates to go, we want rates to go up. That's what exactly what I said. We want rates to go up. I want a 10% bond rate.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Because then you just put it all in that.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

I'm just gonna put it all in bonds. It's 100% safe. I don't have to worry about the market, except for that. Oh, wait, the scourge of inflation.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Yeah, we did have somebody write us and say, wait, so I could put all my money in a 10-year bond, get paid 5%, and that would be that. I was like, Yep, you could do that. Yes, for now, interest, yes, for the moment. Um, so and there's the here's the reason that we've been getting complaining is uh return. So for example, the iShare's 20-year plus bond ETF has lost 6.3% of its value this year. Uh BND, the Vanguard total bond, down about 2% this year. Um, and by the way, the 20-year has a much longer duration. The average duration on the 20 years of 14 and a half.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

So that's why it's really because they've got a lot of newer 20-year bonds.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Exactly. The average duration on the BND is less than six years, which gets to the the bottom line for me with bonds. Um, because uh you're gonna ask me again. I know not you, Don, but I know you when we meet are gonna say, wait, you told me to be in these bonds and they've lost money. Yeah, they're they haven't been that great, frankly, since COVID. Um, where stocks have been, right?

unknown 8:12

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

And the the the stocks, though, are are the more volatile of the two uh securities. The bond, if you look at the returns on the bonds, the negative or the positive, over long periods of time, you're not gonna see a great deal of fluctuation like you do with stocks. With stocks, you can see double-digit increases and double-digit decreases with bonds. There's only been one year where we've ever had a double-digit decrease. And I don't think we've ever had a double-digit increase in the value of bonds. We've had a double-digit increase or double-digit rates,

Bonds as Portfolio Stability

SPEAKER_01 8:49

but not the value.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

Yeah, okay. So, but let's go back to the reason um that you really should own them. And that truly is portfolio stability. Let me give you an example. Uh, many of you can remember 2008. I looked at July 1, 2008 to June 30th, 2009. Pretty volatile time, but not the not the lowest and the highest, et cetera. But if you're all in stocks for that period of time, July of uh 2008 to June of 2009, your your portfolio declined by 25 percent. That's okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

That was six months of or seven months of bad and about four or five five months of good.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Started coming back a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

In twenty two thousand nine, we had a nice comeback.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Yep. But let's just say, and I know this to be the case, your portfolio was closer to sixty percent in stocks, 40% in bonds. That's kind of the every man's balance portfolio, right? You lost 12%. Now, that might not sound like much, but let's assume, for example, that you started your portfolio as a million dollars on July 1st, 2008. If you're all in stocks, you woke up a year later and your portfolio was 700 and basically $750,000. I don't know many of you who could take that.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Right. And if you had the the the 6040, those boring, dull, bad, horrible nasty bonds, well then you would have had 800 and 880,000.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Yeah, you would have got almost 900,000. Yeah, it's it's which wouldn't have felt badly. No, it wouldn't have felt too bad at all. No, and that's why you have and there's no guarantee, by the way, because as you pointed out, Don, in 2022, both stocks and bonds went down, very unusual occurrence. And doesn't mean just because stocks go down, bonds are gonna go up. Uh, but they have provided stability over the long haul.

Don’t Obsess Over Returns

SPEAKER_02 10:40

That's the important thing. That's the thing people should focus on, not the return, which is something I want to talk about because here's one thing we do know about returns in generally. The people who check their returns on a regular basis, I'm talking, there's guys who call me daily all the time or weekly.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Yeah, I was looking at my bond portfolio and it's down nine percent. No, no, no, it's not. You looked at the chart, you didn't look at the yield and the chart.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

By the way, the way we manage bonds, which are primarily short and intermediate term, high quality, our bond portfolio year to date is down 1.3%. So not very dramatic in any fashion. But we know the people that it's it's I think Gene Fomble once said it's like uh soap. The more you use it, the less you have of it. The more you check your portfolio, the more you mess around with things, the more you say this, I really got to do something here, blah dah, dah, the less you end up with. So quit checking. Quit looking.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

And the other thing you need to do is start looking at things in relative terms. When you say, well, bonds are performing terribly, relative to what term? When? When have bonds performed great? I mean, they haven't. They've never been great, they've never been terrible. Stocks, on the other hand, when have they been terrible and how terrible have they been? Yeah, that's what I was trying to give you. An example they can make to keep in mind when you're when you're focusing, you're getting obsessed with the fact that I don't I have these bonds and they're not making me money, and the stocks are making me money. Well, again, that goes back to our our this is the way we all need to start thinking. If all of us would think this way, I think we'd have fewer frustrations with the market. And that is please remember everything is past tense, everything is past tense, nothing is going up, nothing is going down, nothing will be going up or will be going down because you can't know that. All we know is what has gone up and what has gone down, and those markets are already

Rebalancing for the Right Balance

SPEAKER_01 12:39

behind us.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Yeah, and if it makes you feel any better, about four to five months ago, I had a review with my advisor, looked at my portfolio, the stocks, the bonds, and guess what had grown faster over the last few years? The stocks. Uh people. And what did you have to do? Did you sell some stocks and buy some bonds? He doesn't look too smart at this point. Uh, we're gonna have a little chat. No, I'm kidding. The reason that we did that is to have the right balance in the portfolio. That's the only reason you should be messing around with yours, not because of what's happened or may happen, but because you need the right, and in my case, I'm getting closer to that point where I may start pulling some of that money out. Not yet, even for the fancy vacations, but getting closer. Uh, and so you want to have more bonds in there for that balance. So, but it wasn't it wasn't a market timing move, it was simply a strategic reallocation of assets. I'll put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

And remember, this is an audience of people who are primarily older, um, like us, maybe not as old as us, but you're you're older. You should be thrilled with rising rates, with rates that have risen, because it means any new money you invest for things that are coming due, you can invest at higher returns. So it it again, it's all relative.

Rate Questions and Listener Mail

SPEAKER_01 14:02

It's all right.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Okay, so back to the question. I because I will see my brother later in the next couple of days. Yeah. Do we want rates to go up or down? Is he borrowing money? He's not right. He's not borrowing money. He already did.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Then uh buy a house. Then up, up, up.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

And log as long as he doesn't have an adjustable rate mortgage.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Which he does not. I'm still finding very few people actually do. So it has been in the news more lately because rates are higher. So people think, well, I could get one at I don't know. What can you get an adjustable at now? Five and a half, I'm guessing. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

You know, I never look at them. I never ever look.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

Something like that as opposed to seven for a 30-year fix.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

So well, your questions don't have to be as big as Tom's brother's question. Do we want rates to go up or down? Yours, your questions can be very personal. We try to answer as many, well, we try to answer all the questions you send to us at Talking Real Month.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

We do actually answer all of them. I don't know. I'm pretty sure we do.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

And sometimes we answer them twice. I found a couple we answered twice where you read them, and I also they they spoke them too.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

And we didn't we didn't align our questioning, so it I apologize for that. No, no, no. It's I blame the listeners for typing it and speaking it. Don't confuse us by typing it and speaking it. Tom gets the typed ones, I get the spoken ones, and we don't talk to each other.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

If if we can avoid it, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

If we can avoid it, we we just don't. We just life is better. We're we're like uh we're like who are the uh Troy Aikman and and who's Joe Buck.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

We we're in the same booth, but we're gonna be. I guess they're not speaking to each other. Third and ten, Don. Uh that's great, Tom. Um anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Anyway, uh we're gonna take your questions now that you've sent in to us and Tom printed, and then he reads like this.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Yeah, the good news in our relationship is there's 3,500 miles between us. So I think if it was that way with them, they'd probably be at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

What was there is an adage about uh distance makes the heart grow fonder.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Something like that.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

I also feel like I feel like we kind of have a James Spader Bill Shatner relationship.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Which thank you for reviving. That's my workout show now, and I'm loving Boston Legal because every third word is what? Daddy Crane.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Uh all right, let's go to the question. If you don't mind extreme sexism and misogyny, it's just horrible. It's off the charts.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

How old is that? Is that like 25 years?

SPEAKER_01 16:25

The last season, funny thing, the last season was uh the fall of 2008. Okay. In fact, they even allude to the market

Money Markets, Bonds, and Ladders

SPEAKER_01 16:34

crash almost 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

All right, uh, from Bristol, Wisconsin, Don writes, you commonly espouse there's a big word, uh, that fixed income, i.e. bond, should be in a portfolio for stability, not growth. What does this tie in nicely to today's topic? Additionally, you don't recommend reaching for additional yield in assets like corporate bonds or high yield bonds and others, because the little increase in yield isn't worth the additional risk and volatility.

SPEAKER_05 17:03

Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

Don, you've really been listening. Not that, Don, you Don. Why? Why then do you recommend BND, that's the Vanguard Total Bond, over money markets? Money markets are much more stable. Isn't that the objective?

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yes. But that's where we the question from Tom's brother comes in. Do we want rates to rise or fall? Well, if rates are rising, uh you're not locking in higher yields with your money market. And then if rates fall in the future, the money market rate will immediately fall, whereas your BND rate might hold up. It's just sort of a you should have them all.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

You really actually should have diversification things.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

You should have money market. Yep. You should have something like a BND where you're going to get higher yields, or the it in you could substitute a bond or a CD ladder for that. As long as you have a means by which to get the higher yields should they rise in the future, and to lock those in should they fall in the future.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Because if you're locked into the money market and rates do go up, then you're not getting any of those higher rates.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

You will, you get the higher rate almost immediately. But if rates go down, that's what I meant to say. Your higher rate will vanish instantly. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

And that will be that. So having some bonds five, six years, intermediate term in nature, maybe even a little longer than that, is going to help you avoid that circumstances.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

And here's the this is why the bond ladder or the CD ladder is so attractive to me. Because it allows you to enter into a mindset, a state of zen about the bond market, as long as you are committed to never selling a bond before it or a CD before it matures. If you hold all your bonds and they're high quality U.S. government type securities or triple-A rated corporates, and you buy them and you hold them to maturity, there is no volatility. Yeah, I know. There's no volatility if you don't look and just let it mature.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

And it is latter season because the holidays here, too.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

It's a difficult, difficult emotional hurdle to clear, but if you can do it, then the safety

A Listener’s Question About a Risky Fund

SPEAKER_01 19:22

factor is high.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Yeah, very, very high. Uh, we go to Hawaii for this question from Amon. I hope I'm saying that name right. He says, Aloha Tom and Don. I'd like to give a shout out to Sean, who is our advisor. He's awesome. More importantly, my wife likes him.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Yeah, that is more important. Yeah, it probably is. In addition, does Sean get to travel to Hawaii to meet with him? Absolutely. You never been.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

I still think it's I have never been to Hawaii.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

I have had two trips. Two, get this. I have had two trips actually planned to Hawaii where we had paid for tickets, I had booked a hotel room, I I booked the Hyatt Grand Regency Kauai. I I I was doing my radio show from there, so it was basically free. And we're just paying for airfare and and um in one case the dog got kidnapped and hit by a train.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

That's right. Yeah, that was a weird thing.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

And in the second, I got fired by Business Radio Network.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

Well, that should have freed you up to spend more time in Hawaii, now.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

No, I had to get back on the radio very quickly.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Okay. Um, anyway, so for all of those who feel sorry for the fact that Don's never been to Hawaii, there's your reasons why. Um, in addition to Sean's direct support, I do a certain amount of self-management. It's reassuring that Sean will be available to help my wife with continuing our plan in the event that something happens to me. In any case, here's the question. My mom, age 85, has a long-term relationship with a local advisor affiliated with America Prize. Super nice folks, of course. Oh, of course. She has $400,000 in brokerage cash that's being set aside for a major project, but that has been put on hold. These funds are not needed for living expenses. So guess what? The pitch is on. The advisor is suggesting she put $100K of that in the Ares A-R-E-S Core Infrastructure Fund. There is a minimum investment period. They're telling her a 9% rate of return. Cue the red flags. I asked her to provide me info. She sent me a bunch of marketing material. Could you give me your take and point me to the right resources, right sources of the true nature of this product? Mahalo.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Okay. Wow. What was the name of it again? It was the Aries What? Core Infrastructure Fund. Core Infrastructure Fund Class I. So this must be a fee-based advisor, I'm guessing. Uh, because this is not a loaded product, so they must be paying a fee. And if it's a MeraPrize, they're probably paying a fee in the one would guess one plus two in their that category somewhere. Um, I don't even know what's in this fund. I have to just find it. Aries.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

Core infrastructure fund. It sounds something like private equity or something to me or private real estate because I.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

It's it's a private debt fund. It is private. Okay. I kind of figured something like that. Yeah, it's all private equity. Uh it's I don't even know what's in it. It's so imp it's impossible.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Well, that's should that give you exactly what you need to know.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

We wouldn't recommend it then.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Hold on. I want to get I really want to get more information on this because this thing, I want to know what its and its fees aren't showing up, which makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

I could not find it on Morningstar for example.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

I found it on Morningstar. Okay. I got it. I did. I did find it on Morningstar. What? Why can I not find its fees? Let's see. Um it has it hasn't been around very long. It started in 2025, and they claim extraordinary growth.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Well, he's they're saying that he said a nine percent return. Yeah. Which always makes me quite nervous, actually.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

So Yeah. Um just where's the fee structure? I mean, maybe it's here. Okay, here we go. Holy moly! Holy moly mackerel. Yes? Their reported total expense ratio. Drum roll, please. Good lord.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

Six and a half percent?

SPEAKER_01 24:07

And so they're paying nine? So that means their internal rate of return needs to be fifteen? We could say sixteen if you want to round it, yeah. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Wow. It's a okay, it's a brand new non-traded business development company holding mostly private valued infrastructure investments like power generation and data centers. Oh, it's it's AI. Of course. They also have a 12.5% incentive fee, uh, 12.5% capital gains incentive fee. Um wow. They borrow money. Uh they have okay, they have five billion, as of their latest reports at the end of June, they had five billion in assets according to the SEC, and two and a third billion of debt. So they're highly leveraged. Yeah. Their distributions so far have been return of principal, return of capital. Um, so it's kind of like they're giving you your money back. Liquidity is horrible. No. This is a hard, absolute this person needs to be fired. No. This is a terrible, terrible piece of advice. One of the worst I've seen in a long time. Well, how much are they gonna make selling it to that person? Is the question. Don't there's no commission. No commission, but but but um I wonder if there's let me look and see if there's any hidden to let's see if there's anything being I'm just trying to find a prospectus to see if I can find the if there's anything that's going back to the uh to the salespeople. It may be that they they're they're selling it. It says no sales commission, no brokerage commission, so this must be a fee-based advisor. Uh so it's yeah, it's an ad yes, it's advisor recommended. So you they're they're not getting anything from the fund, no.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

And if if that if your advisor is recommending this, I recommend you find a new advisor.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Bad advisor. Yeah. I'm I'm telling you, this is really bad. This is good. This is high. I don't care if they I don't care if they never need the money. You you don't put your money at this kind of risk. You just don't.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Um, not to mention that uh you said liquidity's poor, the client is 85 years old. Wow, I don't I don't think this is appropriate. This is a terrible investment.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Now it says here that their recent expenses, they're eating some of their they're eating about 1%. So they're only charging the client five and a half right now.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

Oh, okay. Well, that's a nice break there. Wow. Very kind to them. So

Celebrating 2,000 Episodes

SPEAKER_02 27:02

uh no, would be the short answer there. And thank you for your question, your kind comment. Uh before we get away, I got something to mention here. Now, we don't do we're not very big on celebrating milestones. You know, you know, we're kind of those guys that just go on doing their thing every day, like Troy.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

You know, whatever happened to the good old milestones, too. Do you know what a milestone is, don't you?

SPEAKER_02 27:22

I don't, actually.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Oh, you were in on the on the original roads that were built, to know how far you'd gone, they put up monuments like little headstones. Makes sense. Rocks with the mileage carved in them. There you go. Instead of the little metal signs, they were milestones, literally stones that would tell you how many miles you'd gone along the road.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

Well, I'm gonna tell you, we've traveled a few, my friend. Um okay, so here's a couple of numbers for you.

unknown 27:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

There are somewhere around four million, they claim, registered, which I don't even know what that means, podcasts. What is registered podcasts? I don't know. This is from AI, by the way. This is from you know your friends.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

This is from AI. Oh, you're trusting it.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

You are very trusting, which I've been trying to do. 90% they say, 90% say those really smart computers. 90% may have three or less podcasts. They don't make it past their third. 90%.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

That's pretty bad. That doesn't surprise me because it hard podcasting looks like it's a lot of fun. I know.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

We're gonna get to that in a minute.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

We're gonna get to that in a minute.

SPEAKER_02 28:26

Okay, um, of the 10%, of the 10%, 90% of those don't get past 20 episodes.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

Oh, okay. Wow, so that's 1% now. You're getting pretty small that get past 20.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

I asked chat how many podcasts have done 2,000 episodes, which is something we just accomplished recently. And it cogitated for a moment and then said, quote unquote, extremely small fraction of the 1% of all podcasts. Well, they didn't give you a number? They didn't give me a number. You're smarter with all that than I am. Maybe you can find a number. I don't know. So the purpose of all this is to say congratulations, not just uh to us, but primarily, and this is what people don't know, to you, because you're the the guy, you're the man, you're the you know, guy bombing. You're talking to me.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

I thought you were talking to the listeners. You're talking about me.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

Oh, I think I thank them too, but I thank you because you're the guy you you you do all the editing, you do all the music, you do all the heavy. I just show up and you know show my pretty face from time to time. That's it. Uh yours is the all the work, and this is what you've accomplished. It's truly remarkable. 2,000 podcasts, the number of people that download this every day, the number of people that have become sort of pals of ours, and the number of people become clients, all of those things is well beyond anything I would have ever imagined, frankly. So uh congratulations, sir. It's it's quite an accomplishment. I'll put it on the right.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Yeah, there are 4.4 million valid podcast feeds. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

That's probably better than registered, kind of what registered.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

And out of those, 14,000 have hit a thousand episodes.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Wow. That's more than I would have thought, actually.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

14,000 out of 4.4 million have hit have hit a thousand. Yeah, have hit a thousand. So I we're talking probably Well, I can only find one other investing podcast.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

Two tenths of one percent, somewhere around. Pretty easy for him to do it too, because he has a daily television show. His name is Jim Kramer. So he's gonna probably Dave Ramsey too, because he has a daily show and they pop it up there too, so he probably has that many. But there aren't very many that have that number.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

So and and and I messed up and didn't make a big deal out of 2000, so I made a big deal out of 2001. Boom. Because you just like the movie so much. That's I do love the movie. Oh, it's a weird show.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

Oh, you know, you are one day you're gonna have to sit down over a half a beer and explain. You are joking. I think you're right. Uh well, it's what you get from a referee, right? That's what you're gonna get is literary. Very, very literal. Anyway, so I before we're we're you're poo-pooing this and you shouldn't be. Congratulations on uh 2,000. That's remarkable. Remarkable.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Uh Clark Howard has oh, Clark Howard has over 2,000. Yeah, he would he would have that too, because he does one.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

I think he does, does he do five a week? I think he does four three three or four a week. Yeah, he's quite a bit. So anyway, and he's been doing it for a long time. And thank you, Clark, by the way, because I think he does three a week. Clark's hit podcast has helped more people find us. So we appreciate that too. So good stuff. Anyway, that's all I got,

Podcasts, Stories, and Listener Support

SPEAKER_02 31:43

man. Well done, sir.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

And and wait, in addition to doing this podcast, I always I'll also do lit reading. That's true, you do New Tales Told, Rita Stories, yeah, Frightly, which is very appropriate in October. Oh boy, is it ever. Um, and oh, by the way, okay, you can do me a favor, Tom. I I'm gonna ask you on here to do me a favor. No, no, no, no, no, no. For some reason, Frightly got featured by Apple, and um horror podcasts are a whole gen genre that they they call some of them creepy pasta. I don't even know what that means. But younger listeners like the really, really ridiculously violently scary stories.

SPEAKER_02 32:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

And Frightly is like classic scary stories. The scariest stuff is like Edgar Allan Poe. You know, that kind of stuff. And so recently I got like a lot of one-star reviews, I think, by the kids. No, a lot, a ton. Wow. And there were only eight eight ratings, only eight.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

But you got some one stars in there.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

Those one stars really hurt. So go go on your podcast on the Apple Podcast app. Just click a five-star. You like the story. Listen to a story, make sure you actually legitimately like it. And then click, click five. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

And then on this podcast, we need you to follow us.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Oh, please follow, follow, follow, follow, follow.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Into the lake wherever it takes.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Yeah. Um, because when you follow, you always get the latest podcast. That's handy. And when you follow, for some reason, Apple thinks more of follows than they do of listeners. I'm not sure why, but they do. It's part of their algorithm. So follow, follow, follow, follow. We're doing it to try to build the program up. We're not doing it because we're egoists. We're doing it literally to try to build the programs up. I mean, you know, the more people who listen, the better for all of us. You and us.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

And we could sell it to Roxy then at some point, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Well, are we going to sell it to her or just give it to her? Kidding.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

Kidding.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

No joke. So I got to teach Tori how to do this since she does the lovely. She does the lovely uh disclaimer. Anyone who can do a disclaimer can do anything.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

Lawyers

Closing Notes and Disclosures

SPEAKER_02 33:54

get richer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Thanks so much for listening. Please send in your questions at talkingrealmoney.com. And uh if you love what you hear, rate us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, follow us, and you know, listen to my other podcasts too. They're they're kind of fun if you like stories. They're shortstoryverses.com. Check them out. Thanks for listening. Take good care of yourselves. I'm Don.

SPEAKER_04 34:16

That's Tom, and we're TalkingReal Money.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

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