[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:05] You're listening to casual talk radio, where common sense is still the norm, whether you're a new or longtime listener. We appreciate you joining us today. Visit [email protected] and now here's your host. Ler. [00:00:21] Good morning and a very happy Memorial Day for everyone out there. We honor those that fell in service and many people have family that in the past, in your past, if you've not done your ancestry, I do recommend you do so. But chances are you have people in your past that served. And we on this day honor those that fell in service as well as those that serve. [00:00:50] Generally speaking, today, there's a couple of different things I was brought to my attention. I wanted to talk about one of them. [00:01:00] There's a story around it which is the demise of the penny. If you didn't hear the news, they're going to stop minting the penny. [00:01:08] It costs four times as much to mint pennies. So for every one penny they mint, it costs 4 cents. And this is everything. This is the materials, this is the time, the labor. [00:01:21] Any utility costs everything it takes to mint a penny. It costs more money to mint the penny. And because of inflation as well as the price of things as relates to inflation, the penny has kind of gone by the wayside. But I have a funny story about that. [00:01:38] So for those new, welcome, by the way, for those listening long term. I told the story about how my brother passed away in 2023. [00:01:46] And he was and I was trying to wrap my head around the exact timing of these events because I know where I was. [00:01:53] I don't know exactly how old he was. [00:01:56] I'm pretty sure I'm gonna guess 19, 20 ish. [00:02:02] Because I know that I was not yet 18. [00:02:07] So and we had a span of years between us. He's eight years older than me, seven and a half. [00:02:16] So the story is that during this time he would flag down the ice cream truck. Some people don't know what I'm talking about for. Let me tell the story. [00:02:27] In the olden days and still is the case in certain areas, but I don't see it anywhere near like I used to. There used to be a truck that would come by and play jingles and it would sell various candies and ice creams and things. And, you know, kids would get money from their parents and they'd rush out to the ice cream truck, flag them down and get whatever they wanted. [00:02:48] And usually the truck would make rounds in certain neighborhoods where they knew that there were a lot of kids. So they would Target neighborhoods that had predominant schools. Like right now where I'm at, I have four schools right in. I can see one of them. It's right outside my window. And there's four schools in vicinity. There's never been, I think I heard one ice cream truck since I've been here. And I've been here almost exactly a year now, by the way. I closed on my house in May 28th of last year. [00:03:19] So almost a year I've been in the house. Completely different house than when I came here, and a lot to do. But, you know, I've kind of gotten used to the area and the neighborhood and everything. And I. I pretty sure I've heard an ice cream truck one time, which is staggering because there's tons of kids that they're not out in like, the neighborhoods, but there are kids here. And then you got schools and then you got parks. So if I were ever going to create an ice cream truck, this is where I would do it if I were ever going to do it. I thought about it, I thought about setting up an ice cream truck run and because, I mean, geez, you could clean up out here easily because all you do is you buy them in bulk. [00:04:00] You need the truck, you need the refrigerant supplies, you need the, you know, the permits and things. But other than that, you know, you just make the rounds and you don't need to do it all the time. You know, you would do it especially in summer. And my thought was, okay, maybe they're targeting summertime. Well, we're pretty much in summertime now. It's hot. It's actually going to be even hotter this week. And I got a separate story about that after I tell this story. But the reason I went off in a veer on the ice cream truck is so you could understand. For those that didn't know what I meant by ice cream truck. It's a person. Usually it's a guy, but sometimes it's a lady who owns a truck and they have, you know, the refrigerator and they buy bulk supplies usually from like Costco or something, candies and ice creams and all that, sometimes toys, and they'll just ride the neighborhoods. They play a jingle, you know, and the kids would come running out and they, it's all cash, right? Because we love cash and buy this stuff. [00:05:01] So around this time, he would be the one that would almost always flag down the ice cream truck almost to a T. When he would hear the ice cream truck, he's going out there flagging them down and Then he would buy stuff for me. He would sometimes buy stuff for the kids on the street. We had. [00:05:18] Sometimes kids would be selling candy as part of school. So they're doing like fundraisers. And so from their home they would sell like candy bars. [00:05:29] So I remember there was a guy, he lived next door and he had a really interesting accent. It was. I couldn't place the accent of where he came from, but he had a really cool, interesting accent. His kid was. [00:05:46] It was a military family and his kid was doing some sort of fundraiser or something. [00:05:51] And the, the father, the one with the cool accent, the father, he would say, lamar, go down and give me a masba. You know, because the candies were just regular candies. But he would have certain ones that stood out, certain ones that were just better than others, and he would sell it to people. And my brother would be, you know, buy some of these or the ice cream trucks. [00:06:16] So the story after he would do this, and again, it's all cash is the change. [00:06:23] He would. Sometimes the ice cream truck would not round use rounded numbers. And so he'd have to get change. And my brother would refuse to. To take pennies. And he would say, I remember the line. [00:06:36] I throw pennies at cars. Now, he was not, I'm pretty sure, actively throwing them at cars. Maybe he was, but I don't think he was. [00:06:45] But the point is that he was not. He didn't care about pennies. Now, let me put in perspective what I'm talking about here. [00:06:53] This whole situation, this whole situation was more than 30 years ago. I don't exactly remember when, but it's a long time ago. My point is that there was even decades ago, pennies were of little value in the big picture. We didn't, you know, if we went to the store, I, you know, you drop it. That's why they have those little change boxes at the gas station. Because most people don't want that change. They'll just toss it in there. [00:07:22] It'll build up, right? And if you're young, you know, you take the pennies, you put it in a piggy bank, and eventually you're going to make a dollar. And that's how you learn how to count change. And perhaps the decline of that practice is why these kids can't count change at the stores when you give them cash. Regardless, point is, he was. Even decades ago, he wasn't a big fan of pennies. Pennies had very little value. [00:07:47] I can't remember in my lifespan a time when pennies were of significant value. I Had a piggy bank, certainly. And I did have points where I was building up pennies. Like even now, you know, I look over at my little table and there's a. Every now and then there's a penny from some change from something where I bought something and there wasn't like a tip jar or something nearby to put it in there. But if I go to the gas station, I'm usually telling them to put it in the little box or something because I just don't want it. I don't want the excess change. But I understood that, you know, when you think about the way currency works, you kind of have to do it because that's just the way it is. Even though other countries have long abandoned the penny, we still held firm. Well, when this announcement was made, I think, I think it's great, except for the fact that stores now have to figure it out for cash transactions, how they're going to end banks, how they're going to round, because you're not going to be able to do down to the penny anymore. [00:08:44] They're going to have to round to the nearest nickel. The nickel still costs money. It costs a little bit more money to mint versus compared to the penny, it's less. But the point is that the nickel is a losing thing too. And the theory is that that's going to go away as well. And he's at the round up to the dime at that point. [00:09:02] Well, that got me thinking. Okay, if the store, if you're giving them money, right, they're just going to round it up to charge you more so they don't have to deal with it. If they're giving you money, they're going to round it down so you're getting less. [00:09:15] Many of the people who are younger, who are used to digital transactions, digital transactions can still be down to the penny, which makes no sense. I understand. What they're thinking is that because you're not dealing with the coins, it doesn't really matter. [00:09:28] But the problem is that when you go to use that card, let's say you go to the store and you want to get cash back. [00:09:36] So you do your debit card, let's say it's a card tied to your cryptocurrency, whatever it is, you do the cash back option, it gives you a couple 20s. You take the 20s because you're trying to buy something to get something to eat, right? And you didn't want to swipe the card because you weren't sure you had enough in there. And I know that sounds Weird. But I saw people do this. It's stupid. [00:09:56] So they get the cash out so they can do. Or maybe you're giving the cash to somebody else. Right. That's a good use case for them to get some food. And then now they're going to get ripped off because it's going to be rounded. That's going to be rounded. Not in your favor. [00:10:08] I still am a fan of it. Even though you get ripped off, I still am a fan of it. Simply because it simplifies the calculation of money. We no longer have that. When things. Things didn't used to be x99, you know, 999 or 399. Things didn't used to be that. They did that just to tell the story, to give you the hint that things were cheaper than they were. So psychologically five bucks is more expensive than 499. So when online, like the, the, the stores and like the QVCs and all these things online were showing prices, they'll say the low, low price of 1999, psychologically it was because that to your brain is cheaper than 20 bucks. [00:10:52] However tax comes in and it throws a wrench at it anyway and so you're still not really saving any money and it didn't do any good. That's where the rise of awareness around the waste of what was pennies came is because of the shifting of prices. That made no sense. Instead of flat pricing, flat pricing then makes it easier to calculate certain things like taxes. [00:11:16] When we threw a wrench in that, it convoluted it. So getting back to some sanity. I'm really excited at the potential, the raw potential. What this means, Russ, big picture. Hopefully it. It also translates back. Back into savings. I don't think it will but hopefully it translates back into savings for all the rest of us. I mentioned I've been here a year and things are different, significantly different. [00:11:40] There are three primary differences that I'll talk about. I was chatting this up with the neighbor the other day. [00:11:48] So my front, my great room. And if you don't know what a great room is, think of a great room as a larger version of a living room. But it's not really. Normally the great room is designed. It's intended to be the most attractive looking room in your entire place. It's almost always larger because of. And it's supposed to be the first thing that people see when they walk into the place. So I have a great room. It was a pretty large great room. When I did the walkthrough I was Shocked at how big it was. [00:12:18] I don't. I'm trying to think if there's ever been. Whether I owned it or rented it or otherwise, if there's ever been a room in a house that has been as big as my current great room. [00:12:31] So then I was going down the chart. [00:12:34] Certainly not in. [00:12:37] My parents built a. They turned. There was an unpermitted rear dude. And they tore that down and they built an actual permitted room in the back. [00:12:47] And I'm going to figure this great room is probably. [00:12:51] Yeah, it's probably just a little bit smaller than that. But that was an add on and it was not, you know, had a fireplace in hole nine and rear patio door. And it was in the back so you couldn't see it. It wasn't the first thing you saw. It was just in the rear. [00:13:06] I'm going to think it was if. If not the same size. It's a little bit smaller than that maybe, but it's a stretch. It's hard for me to recollect. It's been a while and they sold that house. So I don't. You know. [00:13:20] Then I went for places I rented. [00:13:24] None of the places that I ever rented had a room this large. The closest would have been Rancho or, excuse me, Bernardo. [00:13:34] Bernardo Center. That one. It was pretty close. [00:13:38] Pretty close, but nowhere near as visually nice that I can think of Washington. The townhome, the regular sitting room was. Yeah, it's smaller. Definitely smaller. Master was smaller. Not even close. No. [00:13:56] The house I bought out there, despite being 2,600 square feet. [00:14:01] The only room that came close was probably the master bedroom. [00:14:06] And it was not as big as this one. It was close, but not quite. It had the same window structure to a degree, but not. No. [00:14:17] When I went to Colorado, I had a townhome out there. [00:14:22] The townhome had an upper loft. It was tiny. The master was tiny. The main room was pretty large. I would say the main room is probably about. Probably about the same as this one. But it had vaulted ceilings. This one does not. [00:14:36] So that was. The town hall was probably the only place I can think of that came close because everything else. Absolutely not the Nevada. The. It was a house and it had the fireplace as a middle wall which I thought was ugly, but it was because it had a little. It wasn't like a standing centerpiece type deal. [00:14:56] It had. It was a weird L shaped wall. Garbage. And then it had another thing. It was horrible. [00:15:04] No, if it didn't have that, then that would have been the largest. But this One beats most everything except townhome. [00:15:12] Point is the, because of the size of it, the sheer size of it, there's three things to worry about. There's echo, which I've controlled with drapes and carpeting. There's lighting and lighting was really bad in this room. There's side windows and then there's a bow. It's called a bow window. [00:15:29] There's four large. These are large windows. They're the size of a regular human in, in height. [00:15:37] So I think they're. Yeah, they're about six feet, just shy over six feet tall. [00:15:43] They're, let's see, probably about two and a half, maybe three feet wide each. And there's four of them and they dominate the front and they were compromised when I got here. Compromised meaning that the window, the manufacturing of the window, the technology of the window, there's seals, there's gas, there's separators, there's all sorts of things that make up a window called the sash part. And then there's the frame, there's, you know, sealants, there's all these things that make it up. [00:16:13] Compromise means that one or more of those has been breached. And so the windows no longer doing anything to, you know, insulate, help insulate the home, help block outside solar energy noise. They weren't doing anything, they were just, you might as well not even have windows there, except for the fact that there was a physical structure in place. So I replaced all those with high end Simonton windows. Simonton is kind of my go to manufacturer for this type of thing. And then the noise control is through the roof. Amazing. [00:16:46] And they've got coatings for solar energy control. And then I put tint. [00:16:51] So solar energy is a non issue and solar energy, for those that don't know the term, when you perceive heat, heat is ambient. So the what you feel in the air, but it's also just the sun itself. So that energy that's hitting you, even if it's cold outside, there's still solar energy that's coming at you. You just don't feel it because the ambient air temperature might be lower than what the sun's hitting you with, but that energy is still there. And it can be damaging to your furniture. It's also damaging to your skin. In some cases it might be damaging to your health depending on the strength of it. And so people will do trees or something else. I didn't want to block the view, I wanted to control the light. So the tint that I've got completely controls like uv. It Controls the fading for furniture because I've got a very unique setup. And then the coating on the glass, plus there's argon gas inside and new als and whole nine. And it blended in. [00:17:52] So once I got this done, I immediately saw an improvement as it got warmer because now the. You can, you can touch the glass. Put your hand up to the rear of the glass. You feel how warm it is, even if it's freezing cold outside. That's the solar energy basically being rejected by the windows when they're doing their job. [00:18:10] So between the window pieces, the other piece then I had to solve is the front door. It was a garbage. Solid wood, terrible solid wood door. And then there was a security door. And if you don't know security doors, it's basically in the olden days, it was just bars. It was just bars and a metal grid and you could see out, but nobody could see in except for different lighting conditions. It was a terrible. My parents had one. Terrible. I couldn't stand the thing. I liked the security of it, but I didn't like the look of it. I think they eventually painted it or something. But this one had one where it was bars and then it had glass, but it locked from the inside, the key. [00:18:50] So it locked me inside. Meaning that if you had it locked, let's say you key locked it and then you couldn't find the key. If there's a fire, you couldn't get out. You basically. It's like a prison. It was the weirdest. So I just yanked that out of there because I was not doing that. I still have to get the one in the back. And I put a high end door that has the same type of glass structure with tinting and the whole nine. [00:19:12] So now you can see out, but you can't see in. It's got a mirror sheen on the exterior. [00:19:17] Everybody that sees it, it's like this is a really nice door. And it is. It's an amazing looking visual. So the front of my place now is the curb appeal is going through the roof and I have to swap the trees that I've got for slimmer trees. And then I've got accent lighting. By the time I'm done, it's going to be bar none amazing. So I'm still working that. But the point is the door, once I swap the door. So this one has better seals, it has better foam sealant, it has new trim as the whole nine. [00:19:47] That got rid of all the rest of the noise as well as air filtration which was affecting loss of heat in the winter. And when it gets hot or extremely warm, it was overloading the air conditioner. None of that's the case. Now the regular fan is able to keep the place cool, which was amazing once I did that. But I took one step further. I added attic fans to the front. There's two attics, technically three attic spaces. One in the front, one in the back, and one on the steeple part. I added two attic fans. [00:20:21] Used to be, if you went in there and it wasn't even that hot, we're not, we're not even in the core of summer. But going in there and it's a sauna. [00:20:28] Now, those run, they're solar powered, so they run and they, they spin up based on the level of heat that it detects. And you can walk in there. It's still moderately warm, but it's tolerable. It's no, you can breathe, you can navigate. It's nowhere near the sauna that it was. [00:20:45] Between all of these different energy level improvements, all of them, by the way, are eligible for energy credits because you're improving the energy efficiency of the home, which limits your use of your different appliances like your ac, which then minimizes your reliance on the fossil fuels necessary to run these things. So they're eligible for energy credits. I didn't do them for the energy credits. I did them mostly for the energy bill, but also because the visual. I was fixing the visual of the home without removing, you know, it's a Cape Cod and it's a mid century, it's referred to home. And I didn't want to lose the spirit of what makes the home appealing. I wanted to improve what makes the home appealing without losing the basics of why it was built in the first place. So these things, these are my crowning achievements. I'm still not done because I want to take and add these improvements to the rest of the home. There's like 18 more windows I got to do, some of which need to be larger openings. I'm going to add a patio door that's going to get rid of the other garbage security deal on the back. I was even debating doing a, a French door slash deck thing for the master. The reason I hesitated was I was debating doing the upper floor as a master suite. Right now it's two different bedrooms and a bathroom. And I was debating just basically gutting that whole deal, unifying the rear, elevating the rear deck in the back and then turning that into the master suite. Take the bottom, what is currently the master, take that As a regular bedroom. [00:22:17] Renovate the bottom bathroom, you know, for any guests or something. Because like my friend's sister, I told her because she was having a, she was going through some rough times. I said, if you ever need anything, you, you know, you can call me. You've got the number, please, I've got you covered. [00:22:33] So, you know, she might random call and I want to make sure I got a place for her to bed down if she ever needed it. I don't think she will. She's pretty independent. But I, I wanted the door to be open, that kind of thing. I want to renovate this bottom for those situations. [00:22:49] The trip would be a little bit distant for her, but. [00:22:52] And then the upstairs, I was thinking renovate the whole stairwell, which I'm going to do anyway, and then turn that into a master. If I do that, then I would create a rear deck off the back, upper back with the French doors. But I have not committed. Meanwhile, then I renovated yard and again trees and doing these things that are designed to improve the overall energy efficiency of the home as well as its curb appeal. So that's been dominant now that we've gotten to some warmer weather to get all these things done because I realized we don't have very much time to be able to do it before the weather gets jacked up again. [00:23:30] Separate last piece that I'll talk about, those are the big ones. But the last piece that I'll talk about, we've got right now some economic crunches ahead with not just tariffs, but also general economic uncertainty. And people are speculating that the stock market's gonna have some hard times ahead of it for the near term and the good times headed for the long term, especially with the so called big beautiful bill, people think that it's going to actually harm the markets and the short. So if you're in any sort of investments, I'm gonna recommend your investments be ones that are more solid and less volatile. [00:24:07] So you might want to consider taking a look at your portfolio and making sure that whatever you invest in is reasonably solid and is not subject to rampant disruption or crazy whatnots. [00:24:19] Because nobody knows exactly what's going to happen here in the near term with Everybody's portfolio, especially 401ks and pensions and that sort of thing. [00:24:29] I've stabilized mine. You know, I've even gotten into gold and things and I'm just kind of riding it out, seeing what's going to happen because I even, I don't have a clue.