[00:00:05] Speaker A: You're listening to casual talk radio, where common sense is still the norm, whether you're a new or a longtime listener. We appreciate you joining us today. Visit
[email protected] and now here's your host, Leister.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Today's episode may sound a little bit like a rant or a double rant. I've got two different topics that are on my mind, and I want to get them off my chest.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: Casualtalkradio.net.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: My name is Leisteren. Welcome. Welcome back. Two topics. Let me get the first one out of the way, primarily because it's the one that's got me a little bit more on the, on the edge, because.
[00:00:42] Speaker C: I don't understand why it's still a problem.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: I did a write up many, many.
[00:00:46] Speaker C: Years ago on the cesspool that is called LinkedIn. I'm not on LinkedIn because I told.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Them to screw themselves because they're nonsense policies. And I'm trying not to swear, but I did a write up called the director, the director for those new, the short version is that when I was way, my young, you know, so way back, this is 2003, I had an opportunity to apply for a job that I wasn't qualified for. But I took the risk.
After I applied for this job, the.
[00:01:20] Speaker C: Person who would become the boss, and.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: At the time, she was just director of the department.
And she straight asked, well, why did you apply for the position? I said, well, because I wanted to challenge myself, try something different than what I'd been doing, which was call center work. I didn't mind call center work, but I felt like I hit a glass ceiling, felt like I had done everything that there was to do.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: And to be honest, the leader of that department screwed me out of what.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: I should have gotten with a significant raise and significant promotion. Everybody on the floor knew I was the best walking. I was cross trained in everything according to their own spec. I should have been bumped up twice the pay at the top tier.
[00:01:56] Speaker C: They didn't give it to me.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: They gave it to another idiot who was nowhere close on my level. Not even multiple people called it out. When I asked, tell me what it takes to get there, because I've already done what you said it takes, and you didn't do it.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: And they lied and basically said, well.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Just wait, just wait. Just wait. Just wait. Which doesn't work. So I had applied, and that's what I told her is I applied because I wanted to break the glass ceiling. I can do more, and I'm not going to get paid for the hard work I was putting in because I was putting in some hard work, I'm not going to get paid what I deserve.
[00:02:29] Speaker C: Then I'll leave.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: That's what I told the prior boss. Now this again, I was not qualified for this, but I wanted to test myself, push myself, challenge myself, try something new. And she tested me and she would give me hard stuff to do because.
[00:02:44] Speaker C: She was pushing me to be better.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Than what it was and teaching me how to learn, you know, teach me how to speak rather to c levels and executives and understanding how to navigate and predict when somebody is basically pulling your leg. And I've taken those lessons and applied them year over year and I can.
[00:03:02] Speaker C: Easily see where somebody's blowing smoke up my ass.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: So it's easy now. It wasn't easy back then. I didn't realize how much I was getting taken advantage of. I was getting taken advantage of from the moment I walked in to my very first job and they ripped me off.
[00:03:16] Speaker C: And I could have sued if I.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: Knew what was going on and I had a parental level that would have my back. I didn't have this, so I didn't know, so I got screwed. It is what it is. You live and you learn.
[00:03:28] Speaker C: But every other company, every single one.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Of them since screwed me. I worked first at the, what you now know as realtor.com.
that's where I worked. It's a whole different leadership, whole different people. The original, they're all gone. But that's what it was at the time. Screwed, totally screwed. I was screwed out of overtime multiple times. I was screwed out of pay that I didn't get, that I should have gotten everything. You name it. I was probably screwed out of this business.
Next I go work for the local cable.
Got screwed there because of.
[00:04:05] Speaker C: I follow what's in the employee handbook.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: They, they take action even though I follow what's in your employee handbook.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: Long story.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Bunch of nonsense. I work for, briefly for staples. Got screwed. A bunch of people standing or I tell them I want to work in the computer section because that's my aptitude. They stick me in the stock room breaking my back when it wasn't what I wanted to do and everybody else is standing around doing nothing. Wasn't going to work.
I work at the phone company. Phone companies, essentially, they sold it as customer service, but it turns out to be sales.
[00:04:39] Speaker C: You have to sell.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: You have to read a script and.
[00:04:41] Speaker C: You have to close.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: You can't. It's not just optional. You have to sell, but they position as customer service. I made a lot of money there. But the point is it was misrepresented. And then the union sided with the company. When there was an incident where they.
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Had no evidence of anything, the union.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Sided with them because they wanted to cover their ass. Got screwed like it was.
[00:05:00] Speaker C: It was a consistent thing here.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: I worked at a credit agency. I worked at a internationalization, which is translation services company. Both. This is back to back. The translation company started fine. And then when they started growing, they got not bought out, but a larger company, international company, took a majority share of the company. And after this happened, the project cadence started to fail. So I positioned, I built a whole new tool. I did a whole new project tracking mechanism that the sales team liked because they helped them organize how much they would get paid, automatically calculated their returns and the whole nine, put together the packet for them, save them hours of time.
I'm. I'm telling this is what we need to be doing.
[00:05:42] Speaker C: This is pretty easy.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: It's not that hard. We, we get.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: Microsoft is one of the prospective clients.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Microsoft had just bought a third party service. They wanted to test the waters for our company with this smaller company called Stream Search.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: Stream search still exists. I don't think Microsoft is still associated with it.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: But at the time they said, we'll.
[00:06:01] Speaker C: Use this one, we'll see how good.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: You are, and if it works, we'll.
[00:06:04] Speaker C: Expand to our other tools.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: So Microsoft was one of the largest companies. This would have been, you know, billions and billions of dollars if we had pulled it off. This guy that I'm reporting into, director of Ops, he's an idiot.
[00:06:16] Speaker C: He's doing it wrong.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: He's telling us to do it wrong.
[00:06:18] Speaker C: It was a long story.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: The point is I'm warning and I'm warning and I'm warning and you're not listening to me. Then cherry on the cake. I'm the kind of person at the time, I don't do this now, but at the time, you walk in, there's a receptionist, you greet the receptionist, hey, how you doing? Stop by. How's it going? Anything you need.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: You're just being cordial.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: Gets turned into a sexual harassment claim.
But sales guys who are openly flirting with this person, no sexual harassment claim. Now I'm pretty darn sure, simply because of the situation that it was racially driven. I'll leave that right there.
Phone company again.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: The phone company union did not have.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: My back at all with the phone company. I made a lot of money. And the reason I know that it was a hit job, they still paid me every two weeks, all the way through the end of the year, like.
[00:07:14] Speaker C: Three more months worth of payments.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: They still paid me my residuals, even though the claim was that their ill gotten gains was the claim. But yet you paid me. I knew I didn't do anything wrong. The fact that they paid me acknowledged I didn't do anything wrong.
[00:07:30] Speaker C: They just wanted to drop staff because.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: They didn't want to pay people. So I was making too much money. I was the top sales guy on the floor. I'm draining them. I understand they're not closing as many deals. So because they're there, you know how they are now with the phone companies.
[00:07:45] Speaker C: All of them, they're all struggling. They've been struggling since the demise of.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: Copper and they've been trying to find other ways to.
[00:07:51] Speaker C: To thrive. Dsls in the junk.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Like, it's all, it's all come down crashing because I was in the front of it. Fine, I took it and said, look, I'm not going to take what you're trying to do. You can do what you got to do. I'm not taking it. And then they continued to pay me. I knew it was a hit job. Fine, I'll just take and go then. I up at the credit agency. Credit agency, long story. Suffice to say, I was doing more.
[00:08:18] Speaker C: Cues, call cues, than the supervisors.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: The supervisors were training me to take over some of their queues because I was that good.
[00:08:27] Speaker C: I had zero.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Not ready time. Not ready time means if you're off and unable to take a call, you put yourself in. Not ready for why ever that is. You can be going to the restroom or something else, or you need to catch up on notes.
[00:08:39] Speaker C: Mine was zero.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: I was always live, I was always active, always taking calls.
[00:08:43] Speaker C: Higher call volume, higher call quality, and.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Everybody else on the floor.
[00:08:47] Speaker C: One situation that happened, one of the team leads and it all comes crashing down.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: Because that guy, again, it was a hit job.
[00:08:54] Speaker C: And I knew it was a hit job.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: I didn't mind because I wanted to get out of there anyway. When I found the low pay cap on the intranet site of $12.63 an hour is the max you can make in this position. It's when I decided to go to this loan company, loan company.
[00:09:10] Speaker C: That department basically screwed me.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: It was another hit job. Later, when I started working with the director, she was the hardest boss I ever worked for. But I can't.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: I can't ignore the fact that without.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: That person, I would not be the person I am and I wouldn't be able to recognize these are just frickin.
[00:09:31] Speaker C: Con artists is what they are.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: And pretty much every company to a.
[00:09:34] Speaker C: T. Like, I struggled to think of.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: One company that I truly enjoyed working.
[00:09:39] Speaker C: At that didn't turn into a fiasco.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: By the time it was done. Even when I left the loan company and I worked at what is now known as sharp business systems, even when I worked there, again, it was just now there. I can't say it was a hit job, per se. It was just incompetent people. You had incompetent people at three different levels, and they had no, there was no integrity at multiple of the levels.
[00:10:02] Speaker C: Fine.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: That's whatever I learned, because I had to learn how to recognize and just settle and accept that going into these companies, they're all just a joke. They're all a joke. Don't go off.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: What they, what they say, it doesn't mean anything.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: It's all fake.
And you have to navigate it and just. You're coming to work to do a job. You're not there to make friends. You're not there to be allies with anybody. You're not there to be cordial. You can be cordial in your communication style, but you're not there to make friends.
I settled this. So now, one thing I do appreciate when I get the opportunity after all this fiasco, and once I recognize the game is mentoring people, I enjoy doing it when I get a chance to do it, because I want to help.
[00:10:48] Speaker C: Other people recognize the scam that is some of these companies or all of.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: These companies, I want them to recognize.
[00:10:54] Speaker C: What it is so that they can thrive and in some cases, be better.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: Than me, because I know I can get them to be better than me. I'm not going to be around that long. So I wanted to get situations where I can mentor, and I've had opportunities to do it, and I enjoy doing it in every case. I have a good eye for the people who have raw potential. Unfortunately, I find trends where companies are nothing on the same page with potential. They don't want to hire somebody with potential. They want somebody who comes in there and is a superstar, but they don't want to pay that person what they're worth. I see that, too. So it's a mixed bag. It is. You have companies that will abuse people.
[00:11:33] Speaker C: Straight up abuse you at work, whether.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: That'S overworking or whether that's the way they talk to you or whether the.
[00:11:37] Speaker C: Way they work you, or whatever it.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Is, then the hiring process is biased. You could be the star candidate of the show.
[00:11:45] Speaker C: You burn 2 hours in multiple interviews only to get bypassed for somebody who's.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Not on your level. And you don't know that, but that's what they do. They choose this person over here simply because they have the technical skills, not they. They can't talk worth a damn. Right?
[00:12:01] Speaker C: They have no communication skill. They have no soft skills. They can't carry a meeting. They can't do documentation.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: They can't do everything else you need. But just because they know tools, they get favored, which is bull. That's what it is. I just went through this with my client, trying to help them hire a couple people. I was on a panel and I'm basically saying I'm happy to give input as long as I see that it's going to, you know, result in some.
[00:12:27] Speaker C: Good people finally coming in here because.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: You got some numb nuts here as it is. And I want to help get good people in here. And so then I see, okay, we.
[00:12:37] Speaker C: Get, we get down to the wire.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: And we're down to some candidates. And there's a young lady, and she's young, but she's smart, she's sharp. I see there's something there.
There's something here, but she needs, she needs guidance.
[00:12:51] Speaker C: She needs to be refined.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: She needs somebody to refine her, but she's not.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: She's got it. She doesn't need technical skills.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: She's got the people skills. She's a very personable person. She's able to understand what we're trying to get. Her biggest flaw that we saw is she just was never taught how to.
[00:13:10] Speaker C: Constrain what she says so that she comes across clear and focuses her message down to the point.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: So if somebody asks you a question.
[00:13:19] Speaker C: Make sure you answer the question first. You don't need to give additional context.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Unless they're confused in hers, she can't help it. She just goes off.
It was the biggest frustration. But that can be trained.
[00:13:31] Speaker C: You can mentor that. You can mentor somebody about how to.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Communicate and how to carry a meeting and how to make sure that your listener is hearing what your message is so that you get credibility. Right.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: Nobody has time to hear a story.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: There are 30 minutes meetings or hour long meetings. We don't have time for you to go off on a tangent, which is.
[00:13:51] Speaker C: Easy to do when you're excited or.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: When you're an extrovert or a maybe you come from different work environments where that's just common. And in her case, it could be that she just comes from those environments. You have to learn the person that you are at work has to be different than the person you are at home, so you don't have to go off like you're talking to a friend. When you're speaking at work, your job is to make sure that you are finite and refined. Straight to the message first. Answer the question first. Not everything needs context. Easy to train to. They bypass her because she doesn't have this other technical skill that I think doesn't even matter because the role is not going to be doing any work on the technical side. That bias that I'm describing is common. It happened here. It happened at an insurance company I worked at. It happened at sharp. It happens everywhere. But the leadership doesn't understand.
[00:14:41] Speaker C: And so the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Expecting a different result. They continually look for people that are the same kind of people they already have, and they're afraid to disrupt. They're afraid to try something that's different and shock it.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: When I applied in the loan company.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: I didn't have the experience going in there. And she knew, well, I want to know why you applied. And she gave me that shot knowing I didn't have the experience, knowing I had to be trained and mentored. But she saw I had the potential and gave me the shot to do it. And I got to the point where I was basically her right hand.
I was running the show in her absence and in her parallel. That opportunity isn't given, and it's rare that you find somebody worthy of it. Don't get me wrong. I'm saying that when it is there, when you do have the right person there, companies are less willing to take a chance on people.
It's fine if you want to get a superstar, but then companies are not willing to pay superstar level money. They're depressing salaries across the board. So when we hear stories about how people are struggling, part of that's, yes, the fact that inflation's out of control. But why is inflation so much out of control? Because companies are refusing to up the pay according to what somebody's worth.
[00:15:56] Speaker C: They're just looking within their own region.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: And saying, well, everybody else is paying crap. So I guess we can pay crap too, instead of, let's look nationwide.
[00:16:05] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Out in Boston, this same role is making one hundred seventy five k a year.
[00:16:10] Speaker C: Why are we paying sixty k a year?
[00:16:12] Speaker B: We can probably come up with one hundred k a year at minimum, so that we can compete at the nationwide scale.
[00:16:17] Speaker C: Then understand if the role even needs.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: To be in an office and if the person can work from home.
[00:16:22] Speaker C: We can pay them somewhat close because.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: We don't have these extra expenses upon us. The reason they don't do it is because nobody challenges that pay the superstars.
They come in and they say, I want that. The company won't even give them a shot. The lesser will take whatever garbage because they're desperate to get money, and the company says, okay, well, I guess that's the going rate of what people want. And they don't understand. The only reason they're accepting the low pay is because they're low skilled. The low skilled have an opportunity to get to be high skilled, but then if that person doesn't have any skill whatsoever, they get bypassed. So it's either you have no skill and you get skipped, you have low skill, you get underpaid, or you're over skilled, and they don't want to even hire you because they don't want to pay you what you're worth, or they want to hire you, but they don't want to pay you what you worth. There's a disconnect between the companies and the people. And this is what I'm genuinely frustrated about. Let me tell you, everybody.
[00:17:19] Speaker C: I had two people on staff.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: This is 2021. I had two people on staff, kids fresh out of college, because I was.
[00:17:27] Speaker C: Trying to help them out.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: It's a pandemic. It's tough. Money was tight, but I wanted to try to help somebody out, give them some working experience. Plus we could work together, create a marketing strategy. One of them, he was a baby faced assassin.
[00:17:40] Speaker C: I saw that I could put him.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Out there, and businesses would love this guy. I knew this was the key. If he wanted it, if he was truly that initiative, and he sold me that, he was okay, I paid. I paid them.
I'm pretty sure I paid them. 40,000. Yeah, 40,000 a year each. No experience.
[00:17:59] Speaker C: They didn't need it.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: It didn't matter because it's an entry level position, but no experience. 40,000 a year, fresh out the gate, simply because I could, because they were worth the shot. They were worth trying. The guy he had, when he would apply himself, his work quality was perfect. He would nail it every time. His issue was he would frequently not apply himself because he smoked weed, he would often oversleep. He wouldn't get engaged.
[00:18:27] Speaker C: He wouldn't do it.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: But when he did, he was on point, which disappointed me because he had all the potential in the world. I still had to take the risk. I had to try.
[00:18:36] Speaker C: The gal.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: She had the killer work ethic.
[00:18:39] Speaker C: Killer work ethic, but her quality wasn't.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: There because she was afraid to take risks. She wouldn't push herself beyond where she was. It was almost like she was afraid.
[00:18:48] Speaker C: To, despite me repeatedly encouraging her to.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: Go and do and show and be. Be more than what you're showing. Because I'm giving you the power to step outside of your boundary. You have no limit here because if you took his quality and her work ethic, you have the perfect worker. I knew this. So I'm saying there are young folks out there that are worth that effort to give them a shot, but you do take the risk that they don't show up. But you at least got to try.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: And as long as they're putting the.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Energy and the work in, you can cultivate that, you can develop that. And companies are afraid to do that. But I'm a one man show and I was willing to do that.
[00:19:28] Speaker C: But yet I know these other companies.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Aren'T trying to do that. I understand it is what it is, but it frustrates me to no end.
[00:19:35] Speaker C: Because there's so much quality out there.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: So it's not just about inflation and the president screw it up. It's also about the businesses, and they're complicit in this. And I don't think the answer is around minimum wage. I don't. I think the answer is around competition. When I say competition to me, I don't think a business should be allowed to restrict their pay ranges to just local regional. If you're going to use what's referred to as compa ratio, which is a range of pay, you are required to.
[00:20:06] Speaker C: Evaluate all positions across the nation.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: You cannot just limit to your own local state.
[00:20:11] Speaker C: Why?
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Because sometimes they don't live in your state.
[00:20:14] Speaker C: Sometimes they do.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: It doesn't matter from a competitive perspective. When we went from local newspaper ads, classified ads for jobs to online, you.
[00:20:25] Speaker C: Opened up the floodgates.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: You said, anybody in the world essentially can look at this job and potentially apply for it. You might require a us based address. If it's a us based address that you require, that means you open it.
[00:20:37] Speaker C: Up to the nation. Even if you require that they relocate.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Which all of them do, they don't limit you just because you live out of state. They just say, you got to relocate.
[00:20:45] Speaker C: That's fine.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: I'm simply saying I would love to see some states say, if you're going to do that ratio, you are required to look nationwide for that job.
[00:20:55] Speaker C: You cannot just limit to your local state.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: Because the whole point, think about it. A state should want more highly skilled people to move in? You can only do that if you.
[00:21:06] Speaker C: Increase the amount of pay you're willing to bring over.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: If you just settle on the same low pay, you're suppressing salaries. If you suppress salaries, you're not going to increase the value of homes. Which goes to my second rant, the value of homes. I bought a house a while ago, ten years ago now. Well, a little bit over ten years ago, as I record this, about 1010 and a half years ago, I bought a house in Washington state. I bought it for $265,000.
That house was.
[00:21:36] Speaker C: Listen, it's a large house, okay?
[00:21:38] Speaker B: 26 30 sqft sitting on 9000 land, okay. It was a large house, two guard garage attached, a five bedroom, pretty sure. And two and a half bath. Pretty sure. That's true. I had the best lawn on the street, just, you know, but it wasn't a great house. It was a, you know, for a.
[00:21:59] Speaker C: Family, it was a decent house, but.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: It wasn't a great house. There was no air conditioning, had an amazing furnace, but no air conditioning. So I was suffering. And there's a train down the hill.
[00:22:09] Speaker C: I had to replace the bedroom windows.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: With laminated just so that I could sleep. Simonton window windows. But I bought it for $265,000.
[00:22:17] Speaker C: This is where I took the scam.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: Program that the state offered, where it was down payment assistance and they were.
[00:22:24] Speaker C: Supposed to give me the tax credit.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: And then they scammed me out of that and all that nonsense. But I went ahead and pulled the trigger because the place I was renting.
[00:22:32] Speaker C: Wanted to raise my rent by like $600 a month.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: And I was like, screw you, bro. That's not going to work, brother.
[00:22:37] Speaker C: So I went ahead and just pulled.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: The trigger on this thing. Okay, so fine, I'm doing all this, and the manager I was reporting into.
[00:22:44] Speaker C: Who was a really cool dude, looks.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Like Dick Cavett retired suddenly.
[00:22:48] Speaker C: Well, he was the only compelling reason.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: For me to stay. I didn't want to stay anywhere at that company, and I ended up leaving because it's a screw job again, more screw job.
And leadership is incompetent.
[00:23:00] Speaker C: Fine.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: So I leave. But now I got this house and I got to deal with it. So I end up moving to what became what was eventually Colorado to work there. Well, I was checking online the house that I.
[00:23:13] Speaker C: The house.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: That house worth 760 something thousand dollars now, because that area, western Washington, is people starting to cram up in there again.
And then there's some areas, like in the south and everywhere, people started to cram up in there again, which gave me shadows of what we had 2008, you know, a housing bubble.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: And people are predicting another housing bubble.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Coming upon us, especially if rates are.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: Cut, because more people would buy and buy and buy.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: But you also have, as people buy, prices go up. As prices go up, people start using.
[00:23:46] Speaker C: Their homes as atm machines, and they're.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Doing flips and all this garbage where we can hit another bubble. Well, I just bought a house, right? And so I have to think, it's not that I regret buying the house, but I have to start being considerate of whether or not we're.
[00:24:01] Speaker C: Another bubble is upon us.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: So I actually was considering using. Cause I have so much equity in that. Just for clarity, my house is already a third paid for. You're like, what? Didn't you just buy it? Yeah, but it's already a third paid for. Because I wasn't playing games this time. I was like, look, if I'm gonna do this, we're not doing it short.
[00:24:21] Speaker C: We're not doing it upside down.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: We're not doing it in the red. I want to be ahead of the game. I want to make sure it's equity straight out the jump, even if I don't use it. Point is, I want it straight off the jump. That way, if something does happen, I can kind of, you know, play the deal here. So that was the whole point is, let me just get settled. So I bought it. They're already a third paid off.
I just checked the bill. It's already a third paid off, which is kicking.
But I also have to have a contingency plan. But now I got to be mindful of whether I even want to live where I'm at, because I'm not sure that I do, simply because I'm not a foodie. But I do appreciate access to things. I like access to good shopping, access to quality. I like people that care about their job. I like cordiality.
[00:25:06] Speaker C: And none of that's here.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: And so, you know, good contract. It's just not here. So with the housing bubble potentially upon us, one, two, lack of quality shopping, it's got me thinking, okay, maybe I need to be smart about it. Maybe I need to leverage the.
[00:25:23] Speaker C: The equity itself.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Basically a cash out, refi. Leverage that excess, get something, you know, like a little small condo or something else in a different place, different state.
[00:25:34] Speaker C: Have it there, rent it out if.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: And unless I choose to, you know, live in it, but, you know, rent it out for the short term. I consider doing this as. As weird as that sounds, simply because I don't know what's going to happen. And I think the housing market might start sucking, might be good in the short term pumps, but I think it's going to suck in the long term. And that's part of the reason I was so motivated to try to pay off the house quick because I didn't want to deal with a situation where there's, again, some bubble purse, you know, and people are just screwed and scrambling and that it's harder to sell the home. And I wasn't, I wasn't interested in this, but I sense it coming.
I'm not sure, but I think. I don't know. There's a weird feeling.
[00:26:19] Speaker C: Economy, there's a weird feeling.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: And the housing market seems like it's getting the worst of it. Where there's an uncertainty as people are trying to get the rates to go down so they can buy, and then.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: People are sitting on low rates, they.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Don'T want to sell. Or maybe their house is paid off so they don't want to sell, which is causing constraints. Constraints should lead to a run, but the run might exacerbate the bubble situation that I'm sensing. I'm not really sure. So that's my other piece that I'm really pissed off about. I don't really know what's going to happen. Hopefully everything turns out okay. That's my hope. But I am considering the whole equity cash out, you know, refi approach. Hopefully somebody talks me off the ledge on that one because I really don't want to do it. But I'm not sure this area is going to last very long. Feels like we're going to have something bad happen in the place that I'm at.
[00:27:05] Speaker C: Maybe I'm tinfoil.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: I just. I tend to be tinfoil. Maybe that's what it is. Time will tell and I'll watch and wait and hopefully everything turns out all right in the end.
