Latest / The Capitalizing Your Life Podcast / Breaking Free from Societal Norms: E.B. Tucker on Living Life on Your Own Terms

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Breaking Free from Societal Norms: E.B. Tucker on Living Life on Your Own Terms · The Capitalizing Your Life Podcast

• Glenn Today my guest is EB Tucker from the Tucker Letter. Welcome, EB. Tucker Thanks for having me, Glenn. Glenn Yeah, so EB is a very good friend of mine. He's also a mentor in business and I love having conversations with them and today's podcast will probably not, we'll talk about real estate but I would say it's a little bit more of the economy and where we think things are. Tucker Whatever you want. Ask. Fire away. Glenn Awesome, so if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and go from there. Tucker Well, I write something called The Tucker Letter. You can find it at ebtucker.com and I've done this for many, years in various formats. I know it's hard for people to understand, but you see somebody like me writing this big newsletter and doing all this type of stuff that we're doing and you think, how did that happen? So I sat down and wrote a book last year about how that happened and I explained to people, because it always bothers me that everybody's got this story of like how they grew up poor and they were eating sticks and sleeping outside and they had to like, you know, fight with their siblings for food. And it's just kind of like dumb. I mean, it's like everybody tells that story, right? And then, you know, what's really funny to me is the same people that tell you that story are like living in an opulent house, spoiling their children. Glenn Ha ha ha. Tucker And I'm like, if you grew up so poor, then you're like ruining your kids. should make them grow up Anyway, so what I did is I sat down and wrote a story about how I didn't grow up poor. I grew up like middle, sort of like upper middle class in rural Eastern North Carolina, which essentially would be like very low class New York City, right? I mean, if you did the economics, but you know, we had this like little, you know, dinky golf course and whatever. It was nice. mean, my parents like had enough money to send us to school, know, like the basic stuff. We went to the beach for a week in the summer, but we weren't like under any illusion that there was gonna be this day where we like wouldn't work, it's not like that. So my point is, there's a lot of people that grew up average or the good side of average, but how do you end up doing something dynamic that you love, that you have a huge effect on society, like people that need to... something or finding you like in a big way. And so I explained that in the book, you know. I worked for several years as a salesman, I made money, and then I just got completely derailed around 2008. And it wasn't really because of the financial crisis, it was sort of because of that. But the reality was is that I had pretty poor life habits. Some of them were good, some of them were bad, but I didn't have balance in my life. And I was fairly lost and had been making money doing something I really didn't like, which caused a great deal of discomfort and stress for me. It wasn't like this was an immoral activity. It was just that people kept hiring me to sell things and I sold lots of those and I made money. I mean, like decent money. I don't mean like life changing money, you know, I went from out of college making like $15,000 or $18,000 the first year to then like year two, I got this sales job where my starting pay was like $95 grand. And this is like 2003 or something, which was a lot of money. And then I got like $25,000 of bonuses. So anyway, as you can imagine, like, I mean, my rent at the time was like $750, right? And I lived like near the beach and it was really cool. So, but the thing is that like I had a four, five, six, seven-year stretch of like that where I was like achieving some financial goals at a very modest level. But the reality was I wasn't identifying and using a special unique ability that really everyone has. Like everybody in the whole world has something that they're good at doing. And I think we get caught up in this like, it's got to be this dramatic wealth building activity, but it's really not true. It's like, if you could do something you love and people pay you to do it, what you find is that you actually start making more and more money because you just attract people that recognize excellence into your life. And so that's what happened to me. I started writing because I was unemployed and I had things to say and people got tired of reading these gigantic emails from me and they set up a blog for me and I was like, what is a blog? Glenn Yeah. Tucker This is early days, man. This is like Google blog spot days. And then I started writing on the blog and you know, then I started getting paid like $200 or $300 to write stuff. And then I started meeting people and going to conferences because I would bother the conference for a press credential so that I could write an article about the conference. Really it was for free admission. So, I could like meet people at the cocktail hours and stuff. And then I was learning about things. So instead of being at a job I didn’t like, doing something I didn’t like, okay, I was at a conference. I was like pretty poor. I mean, I was, you know, essentially like having to make a lot of sacrifices. Now this is not like the people that say they were eating rocks or something. It's not, it's what it was for me was it was like, how much do you want the things that you want in your life? And what are you willing to do to get them? And so for me, that meant driving a pickup truck. Like when I met you, I was driving a white pickup truck and it was like, I paid $1800 for it. And it was not like some dramatic story about how great I am. It was just like, Hey, I want to be independent. I want to be free to pursue this thing that I love. And if that means not having a respectable car, you know, just like a car that turns on and goes. It’s fine not having something that's very cool. Well, then, yeah, I'm willing to do that. And, you know, I was doing the real estate stuff when I met you, like the low-end real estate stuff. And so I had like t-shirts for my company. I had printed up t-shirts that said the slogan was, “Keeping the hood looking good.” So I wore the t-shirts all the time. So, I mean, I remember I was trying to date at the time and I had this like really, you know, uncomfortable exchange about how like I was always wearing these “keeping the hood looking good” t-shirts with paint on them and stuff. Which like really hurt my feelings because I was thinking like I'm in a “do or die” situation where I'm pursuing something that I'm passionate about and you're trying to send me to Macy's to get like, you know, like a Kenneth Cole button down or something so you could feel respectable. So I was like, you know, was going through all these little silly things in my life and the reason I'm telling you that is because it worked out. It worked out. What happened was a guy found me that, that just so happened to write, publish like huge numbers of financial newsletters. I mean, you know, I met someone that knew him and then we connected and whatever, but he, he like needed somebody like me. And if I hadn't been writing these articles and doing all this stuff – and you know, the reason I did real estate is not because - I actually don't really like real estate. Like the reason I did it was because I saw it as a pathway to freedom, to pursue things that I love. if I hustled, I could create some stability, which is what I did. And it was not an accident. You know, it was the timing. I had done a lot of work on what was going on in the ‘08 situation. Glenn Yeah. Tucker And there's always opportunity, Glenn. There's always like every single, like right now there's opportunity. There's always opportunity. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Like all the time. Okay. Another thing in this new book that I wrote is like one thing that really bothers me is how people talk. Like, like for starters, I have like a huge word fetish where like, I love learning complicated words, and like, words that people don't use. And I make my kids stop. We have like physical dictionaries. We're always looking at words and a lot of people think it's very stupid. But the thing is, is that I believe how you talk about yourself is extremely powerful in setting up where you end up next. Okay. So what that means is like, if you talk about yourself in a loser way, which is what people do, by the way, like all the time they say, “Sure do wish I bought Bitcoin.” I'm like, “What do you mean? You could buy it right now.” “Too late. It's too late. It's it's $98,000.” I'm like, “What if it goes to $250,000?” “Well, that's yeah… I mean, that's nothing, right?” And I'm like, “That's not nothing. That's like a double and then some. That's not nothing.” “Well, you know, I could have bought it at 10.” I'm like, “Yeah, you could have bought it at one or a thousand…” Or like in my newsletter, we bought it at like, I don't know, less than $40 grand or somewhere around that. And I was buying it at like $30,000. And you wouldn't believe how negative people are, and I'm like, OK, so what I'm saying is that you have to be careful how you talk about yourself because your mind, I think your mind listens and then puts you in a position to manifest what it is you believe. So like if you believe in the thing that you're pursuing, I think you end up getting there and people use very, very dangerous and negative language in fact a lot of times they speak about themselves in a way they would not speak about other people they would consider to be rude if they spoke about someone else like that, if that makes sense. And so all this stuff really matters a lot to me. And I tell you what, man, people don't want to hear it. Like they asked me for advice or something like that, which I'll freely give all the time, as you know, and it's like, they don't want that. They don't want it, what they want is a magic code to solve what they perceive as life's problems. But there are no problems. Glenn Yeah. Tucker It's like you're in this like magical journey. And as soon as you realize that, and as soon as you start enjoying it for what it is, I'm telling you man, like they're gonna have to peel you off the ceiling because that's how much fun it is to be alive when you figure that out. Glenn Yeah, so I recall spending some time with you when you were driving in the old F150. And I knew when I rode around with you, I was just like, just getting into “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” and learning how to buy assets, understanding that you don't finance vehicles or whatever the case be. I felt like you were on a whole other level whenever I got in the car with you. I was like, this guy knows things. And, it was just like, you know, even driving the old beat-up truck, you dropped some wisdom to me that changed everything about what I did. Tucker I was constantly learning. You know what I mean? It was like I was constantly learning. And I think the winners, like, you're a winner, right? Because like you were in this spot where you were just like determined to self-educate. And I think when people are like, when people are thinking about this, it's like, what are you doing with your time? You know, I don't have a television. You know, my kids have grown up with no television and I don't care if they watch television when they're somewhere else. We go to hotel, we go to watch a show. I don't care what you do. I really don't care what they do. But the thing is in my home, I don't want the television because I'm trying to say to them, “Hey, this time, like in the morning when you wake up, the first thing you do is really important. You know, are you feeding your mind with like protein that... are you learning something? Are you sitting down to have a quiet time to like write down your goals and think about what you want to do and what's necessary to get there? Or are you turning on like a box that's going to like… You know I'm reading the best book I've ever read in my life called “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace. So funny because everything in life starts to like appear in the book, but they have this show called Mr. Bouncity Bounce, which is basically just like this complete imbecile that like entertains the masses. And just, you back in the day were so focused on learning and you never stopped to say like, “Gosh, I'm learning this basic...” Cause what you know about Kiyosaki is that like, I know Kiyosaki like, I mean, he's like a little wacky, but you know, it's like so rudimentary, right? It's just like, you're barely even on the surface and you devoured all that and realize that you go to the next and to the next and people just, they just won't start. They just won't do it. I mean, they won't start, and you have to get curious about things, right? Like you have to. Like my friend, Tom Morgan has a curiosity like club that I joined, like I had to pay to join the thing. His theory is that like the things that interest you, Glenn, the things that capture your attention are trying to pull you towards like new magical realities in your life. And why not? Like people that are interested in a certain thing that's going on, it's like, just go pursue that. Well, no, I have to go to my job, which is doing something I hate. Actually you don't. You actually could try to arrange your life to where you can quit that job because you're doing that job to get money that you're afraid to spend. And then the whole time you're exhausted from 50 hours at the cubicle, you don't have any time to do anything when you get home. You're totally spent. You gave that cubicle your best hours. And so now you need to spend money on leisure activities because you're so exhausted and you just want a break or something. Glenn Yep. Tucker So why don't you go the other direction and be like, what do I need to do to pursue this thing I'm curious about all the time? And I don't care if it's like some stupid thing or whatever. There's like all kinds of people now in this system that we live in and this like digital economy that we live in that are making all kinds of money doing things that are pretty stupid. So I mean, I know a lady who makes videos- like companies pay her to go to Walmart and buy their product and be like, “You know, here I am, I'm buying the stupid thing or whatever. Now I'm at home assembling it.” So I mean, they pay her to do this. It's unbelievable. It's like she gets paid to shop and like assemble things. It's ridiculous. So people need to see that like, it's not something lucky that happened when you see people that seem to be living like on a nice level. It's not like they accidentally get scratched off a code or something and they did it better than you. Glenn Yeah, I, there's a few things… I'm just like having flashbacks of our first time hanging out. Not the first time, but later we went on like a double date and I couldn't recall one conversation except that we went to the hole in the wall barbecue and, the other thing I mentioned it, I was like gung-ho about my 401k. And I was like trying to tell you how to hack your 401k. And the only line you said was, “I don't put my money into places that plan to be poor later.” And that's what you said to me. And I was just, my mind was like blown. And I was like, what does he even mean by that? And it took me a long time to figure that out, but it always stuck in the back of my mind. I was like this guy…you know, you were writing the newsletter by that point, you're starting to see your success through materials. And that was the one thing that stood out to me and always stuck in my head is I don't plan to be poor in the future. And that's what you would like. And I'm not going to put my money into something that is that's what it's doing. Tucker Like playing for the lowest common denominator outcome. Like I'm gonna have this Ameriprize plan where can make sure I don't run out of canned goods when I'm older or something. Glenn Or to be taxed more in the future. Tucker Yeah, I mean, it gets back to the goal setting, right? It's like one of the things that I've done in the last year or so, cause in this last book I wrote… I'm really fascinated right now by talking about how there's been like E.B., and we're going into EB 6.0, I think maybe 7.0, I don't know, but there's been these iterations and every time there's like a down period, it feels horrible. You know, I mean, like last year was a major down period. I mean, like I launched, you know, an entrepreneur out of a cannon, you know, to then I just completely got like, I don't want to say used because it's not really like that, but ships start out of the port and then they slowly diverge. And then seven or eight years later, you're on a whole different course and that happens. It's like a marriage. That happens all the time. And so you have to let go and move on. And like just when you move on, you have to start over and sort of, that rough period is a major letting go. And this happens all the time in other cultures. For example, I don't know, this might be too much for people, but if you ever read about shamanism, like the shaman of the Eastern cultures, they like go off in the woods for a year or something, and they just like reappear, know, and people are like, they forgot all about them and they come back and they just like have some spooky knowledge, but it's not really like they have some weird knowledge. What it is, is that like, maybe they had a life, maybe they had a career, maybe they had some sort of position in the local tribe and it was time to be done with that. And so like, instead of hanging on to that identity, they had to like go off and have kind of like a rebirth or something. Glenn It's really breaking away from the herd though. Tucker What I'm fascinated by is why is it that we're so afraid of the down periods? Like, we're so afraid of that. Yet we always say like best thing that ever happened to me, you know what I mean? Or like, you have somebody that had like a cancer scare and they're like, it changed my whole life. And you're like, well, wait a minute. mean, before it was like, you're terrified. So these down periods seem to always like, lead to these like magical new errands. So I started naming them, you know, and so now I got excited about the down period last year where I was like, who knows? I mean, anything could happen. So, I just feel like people should understand that what I did to be able to absorb that is over time, over many years, I started living for that outcome, meaning that I decided that I wanted to set my life up in a way that was not about making more money or leveraging myself for bigger and bigger outcomes. I actually started living with balance. And that means having ways that I don't want to say save, but put money in places that I feel good about, but also it's not like it's going on a cruise or something. But it's also not like going to launch to some higher level and then spending money on things that I that I like. Right. So like now, you know to your point, I have no 401k. I have no pension or like I have no long term plan. OK. So, you know, financial people are like mortified when I come in there. But I own a really cool house, like a really, really cool house that like this morning I had like all this landscape work going on and the guys that run the landscape thing are like, “it's the coolest house we work on.” You're gonna be surprised it's not big. It's like, I don't know, it's two buildings, but like it's pretty small and I mean, I don't wanna say it's not valuable because it's valuable but it's not what you would expect. It doesn't have any columns. It has a one car garage. But it's an oasis. Like the feeling of being there is magical. I mean, you forget where you are. It's that cool. So my point is I have a house, I own the house. You know, I don't have any mortgage or anything like that, whatever. And then I have a place in New York. You know, I love New York City. Like, like I love, love, love New York City. And, and I love certain parts of New York City. So I, bought an apartment there. Complete waste of money, right? However, it's like you set your life up not to make more paper that you're afraid to spend. You set your life up to be able to pursue the things that interest you, that matter to you. And so when people are dreaming of this other life they wish they had, they need to think about what is it that you want? See, for me, I want to write “The Tucker Letter” forever. And I want to play tennis all the time and I want to, you know, like go interesting places and I want to have spaces that I live in have a unique feeling. Like this office that I'm in now is amazing. I mean, it's not like huge. See, it's not all the things you think about luxury are pretty much wrong. Like there's no point to any of this stuff. Like if you're going to buy a watch, buy a watch that you like. Don't worry about the cost. Like if it's $100,000 or if it's $1,000, like make the primary reason you buy it because you like it. Does that make sense? Like I have all these antique rugs. They're really expensive. I love living on the rug, like sitting on the rug, lying down on the rug, walking on the rug, working on the rug, writing books on the rug. I mean, I've done some damage to the rugs… Glenn Yeah. Tucker I mean, there's been like, you know, kids spill things on the rug. So I don't like that, but it's not like I'm not buying the rug to then flip it for more money. Does that make sense? I'm buying the rug. One of the rugs is like 170 years old. And a lot of times I'll lie down on the rug and I'll think to myself, I bet you people have like died on this rug. So old. So some of these things, my point is when you're pursuing, like if you're watching this show, probably you're like of the mind that you want to like do better, but it's like to do better than what? You know what I mean? Like spend some time thinking about why do you want to do better? I mean, what's wrong with what you have now? Can you start living that life now and pursuing because of your interest and not like it's going to be different when you get this thing or whatever. Does that make sense? Because I think you'll end up with more when you do that because the pursuit is pure. Glenn Yeah. So what I get from that is really just that, you know, we as human beings, we always herd towards something. Like in my scenario, it was like, I worked in corporate America. You follow the corporate crowd, but then I started to invest outside of work and put all my money in there and act as if I worked at Red Lobster for the rest of my life. But I would say now, it’s like, we're at 650 units and the herd would say, you need to be at 1500 units or 1200 units. And it's like, who, who's telling you that? And like it's really just the circles that I'm starting to put myself in. And it's like, the reality is that I don't have to do that. I can easily do very well on 650 units is what it comes down. Tucker There's always a herd, okay? So why is this the case? The reason is because as biological creatures, even at a cellular level, we're programmed to survive, okay? So like even the cells in your fingernails are trying to keep living. So what we do is we have this natural, it starts out very early and it's programmed into us as creatures. And the programming is that we feel safe in this herd because if you're alone, you might not be able to fend off danger or whatever the case may be. And so we take it to an extreme because what happens is, that we're also feeling creatures, which makes us like very different. And so when people at an early age, when they say… Like my son, for example, we go and get pedicures because I'm personally not going to give myself foot care, okay? So we pile in there and I got all these chairs and you know, get whatever. So my son's like, they always say to me, “You want your nails painted, right?” I say, “Probably not, you know, maybe, you know, whatever.” I'm like, you got to kind of be nice to these ladies. My son goes, “I want my nails painted.” I go, “Okay, no problem, go ahead.” Then it's like some kid is giving him a hard time about his nails being painted. You see how it goes? So my son gets this message that, I'm not going to be able to sit at the lunch table if I come back with nail paint. Do you see? So from an early level, we start getting this message that you will be shunned by the group which reads danger. Right? So this goes all the way in life. Like I've met probably 35 billionaires. Okay. The reason I know that is because like I worked for this stupid newsletter publisher that wanted to advertise that I met like 20 billionaires at the time, whatever. I gotta be 35, it could be 40. So I can tell you that the same herd mentality happens there because the dirty secret is that we want also to be seen as in the herd but have a slight advantage against the herd. And it's the whole thing is nonsense. The whole thing is nonsense. If you switch it around to my being my son to say, I wanted to get blue nails because I thought it would be fun. It's very hard to do that. But if you can do that, there's magic in that because what you're doing is you're independent of other people's feelings about you. And then you say to yourself, we have 650 units because we enjoy taking care of 650 and we're pretty good at it. You see how it goes? That's a different answer. That's not, we decided we ran a model and 650 is the exact amount. See, you just say, we felt like it was a good fit for us. People will shun you because they'll feel uncomfortable. They'll say things about you, but then secretly they wish they could have that much courage. Glenn Yeah. And I think there's once in a while you hear podcasts of guys that they have five units that are making a hundred thousand dollars a month. And you're like, well, what the heck has happened? What am I doing wrong? Tucker Yeah, it's all relative. It's all relative. I mean, it's like, I was making a pretty substantial ROI on the money I had in rentals and I made an impulsive decision to sell all of them in the end of February of 2022. And now everyone says, “Wow, that was like amazing timing.” Which it was. “How did you make that decision? Did you run a financial model?” I said, “No, I'll tell you exactly what happened. I didn't trust what was going on with the Russian war was starting. Something was up. I know a lot about that situation. Like I've been to Ukraine a bunch of times. I'm very keyed in on some of these things. I didn't trust it. I thought there were things happening that we would have to get into. Then I was watching the gold market. It was kind of like validating what was seeking. Then I had a big resentment against the property manager at the time. I mean, I love him, but it's not like a problem. I was totally sick of like he was running this other business and I felt like my business wasn't important to him and I was completely tired of it. And I called this realtor and was like, put one of these on the market. And then like 48 hours later, I called her and said, put them all on the market. So, you know, we sold all but one and whatever.” But now when you look back, I don't think there's any way I could have gotten more out of these places. And people act like you must have a financial... No, it's not like that. Like, yes, I have a massive amount of financial acumen. Okay. But most of the decisions I make, I go off my impulses because if I set my goals, if I program my mind for success, if I treat my brain and what I do, like it's a supercomputer. So I'm not going to put malware and spam into my supercomputer. I'm gonna put like, you know, first rate software in there all the time. And then I spend my time, you know, learning, like looking at my mind as a big machine that I'm just gonna put as much stuff in as possible. And I don't waste any time thinking about what someone might think of me. Then what happens is those impulses are my instincts telling me what I should do and like I gotta tell you man, they're pretty much like, they do all right. So it's like, nobody will teach you that. Glenn Yeah. So currently you have a Bloomberg terminal behind you. What do you do with that? Tucker Yeah. So, okay. So, the way this works is, there's two keyboards here. One's for typing. One's got all these colorful buttons. It's kind of like buried with stuff, but, Mike Bloomberg, the little guy has this like lock on software. It's basically a software system and, and, it's expensive like there's no way to get a discount. I mean, I don't know, if you have like a hundred employees, maybe, whatever, but it's like, you have to pay for every person that's going to be on here. So I have to use my fingerprint to log on. There's like a fingerprint thing just to give you some ideas. Biometric, Right. So, if I gave you the password, it's useless because it would then ask you for your fingerprint. Or if you were traveling, it would say, “Oh, we noticed you're traveling. Now we're going to face your phone for facial recognition and then we're going to send you a unique code which then disables this.” So if I go like to the bank and I want to check on a trade, then I come back and this is off.” Does that make sense? Glenn Yeah. Wow. Tucker So anyway, okay, it's kind of too much detail. But the thing is that this is a portal for news, data, connections with other finance professionals like, you all these things. I've had this for maybe 13 years or something, 14 years or something. And it becomes like very difficult to operate without it because like, for example, this week I'm writing for next week about egg prices. I'm writing about a bunch of stuff, but like, I don't know if you know this, but from two years ago, the wholesale price of eggs is up seven fold. Glenn Yeah. Yep. Tucker So like Bloomberg had egg data, you know, like price chart of eggs. I mean, where am going to get that? You know, I mean, I could get it from the United States Egg Producing Association, whatever, but by the time I do all this stuff, it's total waste. So I watch all these things and then this over here. All these screens mean something. So this screen is all the crypto markets, which I'm basically only interested in Bitcoin, but I am interested in staying on top of all the other markets. See, this tells me right now that the Bitcoin market cap is 1.95 trillion. It has them all ranked by market cap, and I can watch them all 24-7. And then this is the precious metals market. As you know, I'm like kind of an authority in the gold markets, and I've written a book about that. So I'm watching that all the time. That trades 23 and a half hours a day. And then this is like a massive array of stock watch lists. Glenn Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tucker So maybe I'm gonna be watching the cybersecurity companies and I'm gonna have like a dozen companies and I'm gonna watch them for like a year. And so I have them on a watch list with all these different things. So I have tons of this and then, you know, then I'm looking at individual companies and overall news and treasury marketing. So that's what this is. That's how I use it. And then, you know, when I'm writing the letter, it's like, I need to be accurate because a lot of people read the newsletter. And if I say something that's bunk, I get a lot of negative attack and so it's a lot of pressure. So you really need to be sure that you're right about it. Glenn There's definitely, yeah, I've definitely, they'll let you know. I've read the comments. Tucker Yeah, I mean, I can't just say something about, you know, like if I say the egg prices are up because corn prices are $7 a bushel or whatever. And it's actually $5, you know, it's a problem, believe it or not. I mean it kind of is a problem. You know, so you try to be accurate. And we have a portfolio, by the way, like there's a, there's a free section of the newsletter, there's a paywall, and then there's a portfolio, which is like a portfolio I manage on behalf of a trust. And I put the trades in there 24 hours, 24 business hours ahead of when I make them. So if I'm gonna buy ABC stock for the trust, I tell the readers that after a 24 hour waiting period, I'm gonna buy this stock for the trust, you can act before me so that I'm not benefiting from the wave of people that might take that advice. Glenn Yeah. So this is on a totally different subject, but along with the economy, I feel like every day I'm like watching the news. This isn't - I don't think it's political. It's just like what's happening in the news. And it just seems like it's constantly like very surprising. And I think it's a typical Donald Trump thing to do to keep people watching. But, how do you feel about, you know, these tariffs and also just where interest rates are going because of the tariffs. Tucker So, okay, so the tariffs, so first of all, this drives people crazy, but I actually don't think anything is good or bad. I mean, it's like, it makes it impossible to be in a relationship, because I'm always like, I think everything's interesting, you know, and you're supposed to have all these like dogmatic beliefs, remember. I don't think the tariffs are bad, and I also don't think that they're good, because the way I see it is the world, we made a decision after perestroika. Okay. So like we had this like 40 or 50 year kind of like Cold War thing going on. That was like our big narrative. And then that was finished. We needed a new narrative. And part of that narrative was we globalized business. You know, we came up with this like unipolar structure where the United States was like a world police cop or whatever. And facilitated this modern day globalized network of conducting business, which allowed China to be the factory and subsequently then other Asian countries like Southeast Asian countries, all these things to be the factories. So we found cheaper sources of labor, which made products cheaper. The net effect of bringing China into the fold, you know, joining the WTO, which wasn't right away, but like bringing them into the fold, making companies invest in port infrastructure and rail infrastructure. And, you know, just kind of like building this framework was all under the guise of like trade barriers coming down. Okay. So that was good for the political elite in the United States because what happened is that you didn't feel like you felt wealthy. So you switch from local hardware to Walmart for hardware or something. Shovels are cheaper. I mean, it's like, yeah. So you kind of got by on the same, like, let's just say the real effect of price rising would be 10%. And your salary goes up at 2% and your price of things goes up at 1% because the cost of the thing went lower. Okay. And it went lower really because of globalized trade because of barriers coming down. Now you're going to put barriers up. So what's going to happen is that you're going to have this narrative of like, you know, we're going to make the tires in Ohio again at the Firestone plant. Okay, it's fine. But, you know, now you're going to put that barrier up. So, you know, you're going to have a capital investment to make this thing go and it's quite expensive. And you got to have like, you know, handicapped bathrooms and everything. So whatever. So you make this whole thing go and then the tires are like, you know, double the price and, and then, you know, you come up with other arbitrary schemes to, to like account for that like maybe there's a federal tax credit for buying the US tire, whatever, whatever.... But the net effect at the end of the day is that the cost is higher. And I think the gamble right now - there's two things going on… One, gamble is, is that the worker won't care because like I went to a Buc-ee’s gas station with my kids, and did you know that they make $20 an hour to clean restrooms there? It's pretty good. So if you think about it, you need a 40 hour week, it's $40,000 dollars a year plus benefits. It's not that bad to clean urinals. And so the gamble is, that like that Buc-ee's person is like, “Hey, if I play my cards right, I could be the car wash manager.” Which, by the way, makes $120,000 a year to be the car wash manager. That's a lot of money, so they won't care about paying a tiny bit more for this or that, you know, from the trade barrier. Now the president is using the tariff as a negotiating tool because he's saying your country is going to be screwed worse if we don't buy the tires from you. I'll take care of these people in the heartland. They'll work with me, but you guys are going to be in real trouble because you're going to have like a serious revolution on your hands if I put this barrier up. And so that's a negotiating tactic to get other things, many different things, like difficult to even know what all those things are. There could be things behind the scenes going on, you know, like secretive things that we don't always know about. You know, some person in a secret prison that they want to trade or something. It's hard to know. So that's what's going on. And so the answer is really, it's not good or bad. It depends on how you look at it, because the same people that say it's bad, they also gripe about how there “ain't no businesses around here anymore.” You know what I mean? Which one do you want? Because, you know, if you went back to having the local town where you had to have all those different things, like a blacksmith making the shovel. It's a lot of money. And you've spent all the money, like you've wasted 40 years of like hollowing out your system. You've financialized your system… By the way before we leave the subject, one of the conclusions is that I’m fascinated by the fact that people don't buy gold because the gold price should be a bit higher than it is. That's why it's going up so much. It's almost $2,900. So like it's going to $3,000 and people say, “Well, that's not very much.” Okay, fine. But the issue is, is that the gold price has been kept down because there is a futures market that's like a paper trading in gold that has nothing to do with real gold that sets the price. And it's always fascinated me for 20 years that I could take cash like paper, or a check, or whatever, and buy metal that came out of the ground. Because I would watch the price and it was not tied to reality. So if you're able to like launch higher with paper and take that paper and buy real stuff, to me that's fascinating. And I think that's something you should do. It doesn't have to be gold. mean, it can be, you know, whatever. The thing is you run out of things to buy. Real estate is kind of doomed because you've financialized it to the point where you've hollowed it out as an asset class. So you have to buy junk now. When I say junk, I don't mean dodgy warzone junk. I mean, for example, if you buy a house to rent to someone, you buy basically an aluminum and cardboard house. That's not gonna really last that long. It might not even last its full depreciation life. And then you rent it for like 3%. It doesn't work. Whereas if you bought a house that's concrete or something, right? It has a longer lifespan. It's a more durable asset. You can like flood it and rebuild it or something. It's got more substance to it. But guess what? You can't buy that because you can't build it. Glenn Yeah. It’s expensive. Tucker It's too expensive. Correct. So people just need to see this framework. You know, and gold for me was a was one of the ways that I saw that was that, you know, I can buy these stocks like we have stocks in the newsletter that are tied to the AI boom. Okay. It's kind of a unique take on it. Some of them are up dramatically and people are like, what do we do? And it's like, well, I mean, I'm going to keep riding it, you know, and it keeps going. And there's a bit of fascination with me about how it like loops higher. The buying begets more buying, okay? So now it's just like, it's just elevating itself. And you can take that money and take it and buy something real. It's completely fascinating to me. Do you see what I mean? It's like value is arbitrary. And so, and so when you see all this stuff going on, just remember like it creates distortions. There's distortion effects in the system. And that can work to your advantage. Like, I think gold is going to get to the point where it's going to be something that is completely unattainable to the average person. They're going to say, I can't believe this was $600 an ounce in like, you know, the 2000s. I can't believe it. Then Bitcoin, let's say that Bitcoin goes to a quarter million dollars, like there's a finite supply of Bitcoin. So like, you know, I think probably chills out there and then it goes even higher because the reality is there's too much money chasing too few assets. So, people, once you see that, I don't think you can't unsee that. Glenn Yeah, so the question I always ask myself and it'll be my last question for you is how do you think this affords this this affects mobile home parks? Tucker Well, I hope favorably because I happen to have an interest in mobile home parks. Okay. So, I would say that the one major advantage to mobile home parks - the one like central, you want your thesis to have like one lightning rod type thing to it, right? - That kind of drives it is that there's not enough housing. And it's expensive and we've made it expensive because of this financialization we've talked about. We've made the home something that like the millennial is like, “I'll never be able to buy a house.” So mobile homes are this kind of like tertiary segment, you know, that's like at the bottom of the housing stack. Does it mean that it's like crappy? By the way, I used to live in California in Venice Beach and there was a really expensive mobile home park that just went up in flames. One of my friends almost bought a mobile home there 10 years ago for a million dollars. I saw it. It was really cool, man. I mean, it was like, you know, you could have done an architectural digest photo shoot in there. It was that cool. So don't think always mobile home is not… There's not just one-size-fits all, but I think, if run properly, the mobile home becomes, you know, like an entry point, a starting point… Or maybe people are living mobile now. Some people are using the pad. And so, I think we've like really manipulated housing because Ben Bernanke, who was the chairman of the fed ages ago, said in an essay, it's an unbelievable essay way back when they had done just before quantitative easing too, if you remember that. When government was much smaller. He said basically he had this theory and the theory was that if your 401k balance and your housing, your house price slowly levitate, you'll be really well behaved because you'll feel rich. And that's what's happened. And so, and so the side effect of that is that like right now, imagine if housing prices went down 20%. People would freak out. I mean they would freak out. Yeah. And so you would have this huge distortion. Like we need you to believe check on Zillow. Good news. Your house went up 1 % this month. Yay. We're rich. The last thing we're going to do is move. Glenn They would just sell it short anyways. Tucker So you want that, it creates stability. I think it lowers crime. It makes people feel like everything is gonna be okay. The side effect is that you have people that can't do it. They need somewhere to live. And I think that's why mobile homes are interesting. And I think you forget about all the other things people attribute to the asset class. So when you get into it right now, you say, I want to provide like the best entry level housing possible because I'm going to attract people that can and will pay more than people expect. Like I'm buying the park from an out of state slumlord. I'm turning the park into a place that actually is like not really that bad. You know, the person that moves in here is going to be like, you know, this is kind of like, okay, and I can afford it. And if you do that, think the numbers all of a sudden just work. Glenn Awesome. Well, thank you very much, E.B., for being on the show. Where can people find you? Tucker Couple things, number one, ebtucker.com. “The Tucker Letter” is must read information. It's bi-weekly, so every other Thursday at 9 a.m. We actually don't bother you at all. There's no advertising on the platform. I'm very picky about that, so it's literally just a letter from me that you should absolutely read. Second thing is, on Amazon, I've got two books. I'd like you to read the second book, “Not For Sale.” I think it's better. The first book was like wildly successful. It's about gold. It's like the gold book. But E.B. Tucker on Amazon, you can buy any these books and let's keep in touch. I'd love to catch back up with you and see how things look in a year. Glenn All right, thanks for being on the show. Tucker Okay.