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00:00:01
The one where Matt. Goes. Off.
45 Plays1 year ago
Matt had some stuff to get off his chest. So much censoring, a keyboard shortcut was created just for adding bleeps. Go Blue.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
You know, I, I wonder if, um, yeah, yeah.
Steve's Home Buying Journey
00:00:03
Speaker
Uh, it was, yeah, it was stressful, but, um, well, and Steve was the first to, first of us to buy a house. So, Oh yeah. Oh, that's true. Uh, that is, that is very true. But I mean, haven't you, you have, don't you have like four or five in your portfolio at this point, man?
00:00:19
Speaker
I'm a bit of a collector. Just the one, just the one. No, I bought and sold a condo and bought
Advice for First-Time Home Buyers
00:00:27
Speaker
a house. That's the only thing I've done. And condo, for listeners who struggle to buy a house, we get it. Condo is a great, great first step in. Great first step in. If we had Chris here, I think we'd have a pretty heated disagreement.
00:00:45
Speaker
I need to hear the story on this. Was it really bad?
Chris's Dual Property Challenge
00:00:50
Speaker
Because he had the one. Yeah. I think he had to, because yeah, he moved back from Denver and then had to, and I'm going to just probably just fill in the blanks where I don't know what happened because Chris isn't here, but it's good enough. But he had to effectively pay for his new place back here and then continue paying for a condo because he was trying to sell a
00:01:11
Speaker
condo in a retirement community because he loves living in retirement communities for some reason and do all that during the pandemic. The way he paints it is like there's not a worse decision you can make than buying a condo. He'll be a renter for life for sure. You go through one or two of those and it's just like, forget it.
00:01:43
Speaker
Well, I mean, also the market is not looking particularly... Yeah, not right
Philadelphia as a Real Estate Option
00:01:47
Speaker
now. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's just... What about you, Grogg? You don't want to scratch that itch? I... 30 years. What's 30 years? That's like a walk in the park.
00:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, that is true. I know. I think I technically if I if I was to buy like Philly is actually a really good place to buy unlike most cities. But, you know, you know, if born born financially irresponsible, die financially irresponsible. Is that really? That's what I always say. I was going to ask because you like there for a while coming out of college, I thought the plan was going to be always go back west. Like that's the
00:02:28
Speaker
That's the end game. I think Davis specifically, right? Didn't you want to... I mean, I would love to live in Davis. It's very inconvenient for anybody that doesn't work at the university, kind of similar to state college in that way. I guess you... Professor Grogg, that's the answer, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm hearing. The likelihood that I get like a career at the university is very low. So that part kind of sucks. But you know, the rest of it, right? Like I keep getting older, they stay the same age, all that stuff.
00:02:57
Speaker
When you boil it down, yeah.
00:02:59
Speaker
That's, uh, I was going to stop yet. Uh, I'm, I'm getting sick of, uh, of working. I was going to say full stop right there. I didn't want to, it's like, uh, once you get a taste of this vacation life retirement, it's like, Oh man, you know, uh, yeah, get it a taste of, um, of, uh, unemployment life. That is, that's where it's like, you know what, were you, what was the, um, what was the, uh, I guess this goes into the, uh, the pandemic episode. Cause that's, that was my experience. That was the only time I was unemployed.
Pandemic Furlough Experience
00:03:29
Speaker
out of college where I had the, like I had- Were you unemployed or were you like furloughed? Yeah, I was furloughed, but I collected unemployment. Like I had medical benefits and I was furloughed, but that whole time they allowed me to collect unemployment during it. But it lasted for, I want to say four weeks, but yeah, that's a crazy experience, yeah. Did you have a medical through COBRA? No.
00:03:58
Speaker
I, uh, it never, it never came to that. Um, only, um, I, I've seen the rates, you know, uh, it's so bad. It's so, so bad. Yeah.
00:04:09
Speaker
But thankfully it never came. It never had to go that way. I was
Unemployment and Financial Management
00:04:13
Speaker
dutifully employed during the pandemic. I was only recently at Stadium Goods. They laid off everybody. And from between Stadium Goods and now Zippy, I think I was unemployed for four months, five months, something like that.
00:04:30
Speaker
And it was kind of awesome. I'm not going to lie. It was definitely, you know, the only part that was less awesome was like miscalculating monthly expenditures. That was an end. And also it was the year of math. So it was like, oh, gosh. Yeah. Hell yeah.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah. That was my favorite year. Not yet. That was a good year. Let this unemployed guy get all these first class tickets. All right. I guess. So good. I guess that checks out. But no, otherwise, yeah, 10 out of 10 would do it again.
Personal vs Collaborative Work Preferences
00:05:05
Speaker
Well, I guess it's more like, I think as the older I get, I'm just less and less interested. I have no problem like doing
00:05:11
Speaker
doing work and investing my time in various activities that generate revenue, let's say, but I'm just less and less interested in other people's ideas. It's just like, eh. And I don't even necessarily- Language. Yeah, there we go. I don't even care that much about working with other people anymore. I'm just like, eh. Or even working with Gen Z people, I have a bunch of those. I'm just like, eh.
00:05:38
Speaker
Gen Z people. Just Doug shaking his head and all these TikToks. I think almost all of it, the part that I'm like checked out is like, man, I really wish I did not have to work with people.
00:05:53
Speaker
Because that's that those are all like human things like emotions and like mistaking how other people say things and what their intentions are. I'm like, that all makes sense. I want nothing to do with it. Yeah, for sure. I just I just want to. Is this a new development? Such a waste of energy. People are a waste of energy. Yeah, yes, exactly. I like I'll hear Betty will work from home, so I'll hear her
00:06:20
Speaker
on the tail end of a, of a call. And, uh, if we're fine, it's so crazy that just with the finance calls and like the, the health of, uh, and the liquidity of, uh, of an account, just saying like, um, not much change, just 300 million, uh, it was lost or whatever it would be. And it's so, it just, it's so crazy on my job. It's like people are, uh, people are going to get fired over a couple thousand dollars or whatever it is. It's just like such like world's apart. It's like, does this matter? What, you know, um,
00:06:50
Speaker
I don't know. It's a completely different in industries. But the idea of, yeah, working hard and caring about what you do for the effort. But I try to just, I don't want to bring any of that stress home. I used to, I think, do more of that where I would think about work and let it stress me out. Whether the job was doing well would affect my mood. And I think I've left that all behind a while. I try to really turn that off.
00:07:19
Speaker
if I can. For the most part, I'm able to do that, I think, pretty successful. I would say so. And again, I'll cut all this out, so it doesn't really matter. Oh man, we're going to be cut to shreds here. There's going to be like nothing to go on. Five minute episode. How is this podcast ever going to take off and get financially independent, Doug Raw? Oh yeah, this could be your thing, Doug. Yeah, this is it. This is how you buy that house you've always wanted.
00:07:42
Speaker
But yeah, I found all that stuff enjoyable. I'm also at the point where I liked the idea of, man, I don't know if this is, maybe this is even more affecting me, but like, I used to really enjoy programming and I think having a career in programming has kind of killed some of that.
00:08:02
Speaker
And I've tried to bring it back in a variety of different ways. But like once you start making money off of something that then then effectively every time you do it, you're always just thinking about like, well, how could I monetize this? Oh, right. So instead of side projects, I mean, I could still do side projects for fun because it's just so different than the stuff I do day to day. But I don't know that I could just like.
00:08:22
Speaker
I mean, making the, making the website for our wedding, uh, sometimes got tedious. Um, cause I'm like, I just want this to work. I'm not trying to like invest, you know, a bunch of time into like making this the best possible, you know, wedding website or whatever. So, um, yeah, I can do it for a short period of time, but, um, but I dunno, maybe, maybe it helped that I took a bit of a break from actual writing software while I was working.
00:08:50
Speaker
Um, but, uh, but yeah, I, I feel like every, every time you're on the, on the cast, you're always, you always throw, get a couple shots in. If I can, man, what a bunch of
00:09:04
Speaker
Oh, really? Explicit episode, I guess. Yeah. Oh, God. They they they're now in a down round because. Oh, yeah. The stock is worth like a third of what it was. Unbelievable. I don't think they're going to be able to turn it around.
Company Valuation and Investor Terms
00:09:21
Speaker
What is a down round?
00:09:22
Speaker
So they're like for every company, uh, as you progress, the company is supposed to get more and more valuable. And so, you know, new investors are incentivized to invest money because now it's worth, you know, two, three, five X what it was three years ago or something. Right. So it's just the opportunity gets bigger and bigger. And so that's kind of the momentum, but, uh, made such terrible decisions that now the company is, you know, in year.
00:09:51
Speaker
In year, uh, let's say three, the company was worth whatever call $20 million or something. And, and now after rounds of investment, it's worth less than that. And so now if you ask for an investor for money, they're like, well, it looks like you're, uh, you know, going down the toilet. So I'll only give you money if it's like really, really good terms for me as an investor and terrible terms for you. So yeah, they just.
00:10:19
Speaker
Keep this all this audio in yeah Well, he left right so it doesn't matter We want to make sure this thing is buried I want him dead
00:10:32
Speaker
on his house, burned to the ground. They never did like, they strike me as a company that would do like a, what's, what are those called? A spec IPO or whatever? Like the fake IPO. Oh yeah. The super PACS. Yeah. I forget. I forget. Yeah. S-P-A-C or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We kind of like merge with an existing shell Corp to the,
00:10:54
Speaker
I don't know. They still have a chance, but the leadership just got way off track. Did you buy your, what is that? What do you like? When you leave, you buy your shares or whatever or you just get to keep
Employee Stock Options Explained
00:11:10
Speaker
them? Definitely.
00:11:12
Speaker
They, they were options. So I would have to, I would have to pay for them to get them. So I'm using an outside company who's going to give me the money to buy the shares and they're going to keep 30%. I've heard of this. I was like, when I was like looking at like what I was being offered or whatever I was reading about, it's kind of crazy, but it's also kind of crazy. Like that idea that like, Oh, when you leave, you can either give us a whole bunch of money for these options right now, or, uh, just forfeit them. I was like, damn.
00:11:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's terrible as new employees join.
00:11:46
Speaker
We're taking them through like options, education, saying like, this is how it would work in the future. So you should value these things at zero dollars because it's really hard to get them. And even if you do, you got to take risk if you leave because yeah, there's been a lot of, um, a lot of employees have joined startups thinking that options were a way to get wealthy without understanding it's, you know, similar to what Steve went through in college. Like they just don't have any idea what they're doing.
00:12:14
Speaker
Every once in a while, you get a Steve who actually looks at what the hell is going on. There's no way I'm spending tens of thousands of dollars to buy options from this company within 90 days of innovation. A failing company? Yeah, forget it. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's not for me. Oh my gosh. What would year one prep mat have said to this mat?
00:12:42
Speaker
I trust him with my life. Whatever he says goes. Yeah, that is actually probably. Then I pop some of that Wrigley. It's Winterfresh. Winterfresh. Drug of choice.
00:12:58
Speaker
Oh, that's right. I forgot you had those like pyramids of gum. Yeah. Unbelievable. Was it winter fresh? Better have been that would have been a terrible nickname if it wasn't called a winter fresh Burnett, I think, at the time. Did we? No, there's no you were like the master of nicknames. You're calling you're a sash facti. You're this. You're that. You're a winter fresh. You were like all over the place. Yeah, I don't remember. You know, a Jedi. Oh, yeah. Atray. I remember Atray.
00:13:28
Speaker
I don't. Atray was short for ashtray, but we never said ashtray because that was too mean.
Nickname 'Atray' and Its Origin
00:13:35
Speaker
So we just said atray and then it would always laugh. Yeah. Yeah. You know, her little giggled laugh or whatever. And I don't think we ever told her what would it meant. But yeah, because atray just by itself, that's just like a cool. Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. That's something you give a high five for, but not knowing how horribly mean it is. Just cutting right to her face. Yeah. So she would do a little giggle laugh and then
00:14:02
Speaker
Yeah, definitely keep all this in. This is...
00:14:07
Speaker
You reminded me of when you were talking about you were sitting with the advisors, because I've definitely went through a lot of the same financial strife or whatever while I was at Penn State, but one particular conversation struck out or stuck out, and I still think about on occasion, which was like there was a time I went to go see the director of financial aid and they- It got that bad.
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, so it was that bad because she was always trying to just get me out of there. She was always having conversations of like, come on, man, what are you doing? And then so but I went in there and it was the director of financial aid and it was my like, EE, like electrical engineering advisor at the time, they both like were sitting at a table.
00:14:50
Speaker
And I was like, that's weird. And then the conversation was just initially it was just all about like, you really want to kind of try to play out like how much the money was and how it didn't make sense. And like, you got you got other opportunities elsewhere, right? But then it pivoted, like, eventually, I was like, come on now.
00:15:08
Speaker
sticking around. And then it pivoted to how I could not or spend less money or how I can make it work or whatever. And at one point, they were a thousand percent talking to me about how you can make a peanut butter sandwich go a long way. It's a metaphor. I was like, who's the peanut butter here?
00:15:27
Speaker
uh yeah yeah and the other thing that you reminded me of is um this is this is actually from just a few days ago like i don't come across and early on like uh i don't like right after college whatever there was a lot of
00:15:43
Speaker
A lot of jobs, a lot of people I spoke to like Penn State stuff would come up and like, oh, I went to Penn State or my kids went to Penn State or whatever that that used to come up all the time. Very rarely now, but I was on a call. We were talking
Sports Missteps and Awkward Moments
00:15:56
Speaker
to some some vendor that sells some like AI services or whatever, and they had their
00:16:02
Speaker
the product manager, and they had a solution architect on there. And the solution architect, when the call started, he's like, he's like, Oh, hey, Doug, I saw you went to Penn State, me as well. And he held up this like, Penn State, like pennant or whatever. He's like,
00:16:17
Speaker
waving it around. And he was like, talking to me about Penn State. And it was so it kind of came out of nowhere. One, I didn't know how he knew my name or knew the Penn State very quickly in my head. I'm like, Oh, he probably just looked me up on LinkedIn or whatever. Yeah. But at the time, I was like, kind of, I almost didn't know what to say. And like, the most basic thing that you can say to another Penn Stater that you run into in the world is just we are right, like we are Penn State.
00:16:40
Speaker
Oh my God. Here's the thing, uh, completely flaked on that. Did not remember any of the like Penn state, uh, whatever metaphor, any of that stuff. So, uh, I was just like, uh, go blue, which is not a Penn state. That's not a thing at all. That's, I think that's a Michigan thing. Actually tigers. If you started with a rendition of a sweet Caroline, would you join in?
00:17:21
Speaker
It's one of those like, you know, one of those like, very trivial, like, whatever things that, since then, I think that was like, Wednesday, I've been thinking about it constantly. Oh, my God, those are huge chills. Yeah, I know. Yeah, you're right. I used to get that all the time, like the whole you relate
00:17:33
Speaker
I said go blue. He just looked at me and then turned his mic off and then we just ended the conference.
00:17:45
Speaker
at the base level, and it's just a college and like more so like when I first got out and it would always be not not the champ, but they would go over into detail like how how the football team is doing. And I'll just be like, let me let me stop you right there. You know, I don't know. I don't follow it. I
00:18:04
Speaker
I have anything like I would go through like I only while I was there, did I go to a few games, but I don't really follow sports. I don't really doing and then it's like such a letdown to go over it. And I don't know the same thing where they're looking at my LinkedIn. They're like,
00:18:18
Speaker
Oh man, so I could talk to him about this and that and whatever it is. And I always immediately just like, you know, everybody's a football fan forward. Oh, let me stop myself right there. I always bring up Sandusky and that usually right. That's pretty crazy, right? All the kids. Yeah, probably not talking about that. Yeah.
00:18:40
Speaker
So how much do you think Jopan knew? I feel like Matt, you very like I don't remember it at the time, but I feel like I didn't know anything. I didn't know anything the whole time. All right. Yes.
00:18:57
Speaker
I met Sandusky once, that's what that photo is. A friend introduced me to him. No, I feel like you're one, you never really had like aggressive Penn State fandom of any sort, but even like, well, okay, for example, when we went to the Rutgers Penn State game, I think you wore Rutgers colors. And like, when did that happen? Or was that always the case? When did I start liking Rutgers? What did you ask before the game?
00:19:27
Speaker
I know, I never really got why people were so mental about all this sports stuff. I don't know. I remember you talking about when you were in Boulder, you went to multiple CU games, right? Well, yeah. Oh, here we go. Oh, cracks. We got some cracks. CU is completely different.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's a different type of team. Have you seen the way they play? Right. Transcends. Transcends. Yeah. I actually, I think it had more to do with being part of the community than sports. You were trying to impress a girl. It's fine. Well, that's true. I'll cut this out. It doesn't matter. Her name is Ralphie. She's the mascot for the
00:20:13
Speaker
You even know the mascot. What's the Penn State mascot's name? That's the Tigers right now. Go Blue Tigers. Right. Go Blue. So it was about joining the community. Okay. So you're saying like you never got that community aspect at
00:20:33
Speaker
I think with all the screaming and shouting and throwing up, it's hard to connect with the community there. These CU sports games are very poorly attended. There's nobody there.
00:20:53
Speaker
Um, but, uh, but you know, the people that are there, you know, they're excited and cheering people on and, and, and stuff like that. But it's, it's like, uh, they do the parades through downtown and stuff like that.
CU Sports Community Feel
00:21:05
Speaker
It's, I think it, it, it really had to do more with, with like an under, like an underdog. Oh yeah. And like.
00:21:10
Speaker
tickets are like 25 bucks or something. It became too much of a thing, I think, at Penn State. I don't know. It was weird. That is true. Well, maybe to get away from the football specifically, sorry, Horna, but I don't think I've ever seen you wear a Penn State shirt or hoodie. Something that's not about the football team specifically, it's just about-
00:21:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I've never purchased a what is it? There's because there's two logos, right? There's the sports logo, which is that stupid lion. And then there's the Penn State University logo. Oh, I'll buy that stuff. Stupid Nittany lion. First off. So you do. So you're saying you do have like Penn State University stuff? Not anymore, but I used to. Yeah. But I never had any sports stuff. How many how many see you things do you have in your closet? Right now I have
00:22:07
Speaker
0 Penn State, 2 CU things, and a whole bunch of Rutgers stuff. All right, yeah, the rest is Rutgers. Scarlet Knights. That's unbelievable. Yeah, I don't even know. It's probably because I hated all the kids.
00:22:27
Speaker
uh who i felt made like all the you know this the the football stuff feels so dangerous like people standing on cars trying to start riots and stuff sure yeah just yeah i don't know it's it's uh throwing throwing up in hotels watching maids as they clean it up all that stuff makes it uh troublemakers they're not they're not even they're not even there from the sports
00:22:52
Speaker
No. Why are they there? Bandwagoners. Yeah. They're probably like a whole different team. There's 30,000 people parked on cow pastures. I don't know. It just gets a little extreme, I think. I would love to go to one Talladega NASCAR race, right? Because you could be in it. I think you brought this up before. Right?
00:23:16
Speaker
crazy like the epicenter of like what's going on. I don't want to do that every week because it just becomes I don't know. It's it's not it's just like too much. It's too much. Have you enjoyed the tailgates that you've gone to since graduating like the Penn State tailgates?
Reflecting on Tailgate Culture
00:23:32
Speaker
I enjoy hanging out with you guys no matter what we're doing. But if it were up to me, we wouldn't do a tailgate. I'll add another winking noise there. But well, you know, of the of the times
00:23:46
Speaker
Of the times we've gone to these tailgates, I can't remember how many of the games we went to. I don't think we've ever gone to the game, or I haven't anyway. You've never gone to the game? No, I did. I had tickets the one year, but I think that was really it. The tailgate, it was more about hanging out and being with my friends than really any kind of love for this four team.
00:24:13
Speaker
I got a bunch of Penn State shirts. Yeah, you do. Yeah, agreed, agreed. And I guess I definitely get the idea of, I mean, while we were there, I absolutely enjoyed going to the tailgates with some frequency. It usually wasn't like every week or whatever, it was like every other week or something. But at this point today, that sounds like a nightmare. Like every weekend having to do that, that's just like, what?
00:24:42
Speaker
Uh, I, I can't, I can't, I mean, I've like, I remember that drive home from Rutgers. Uh, you know, one thinking about Matt laid up in that hospital and then two, just about how, uh, I've been like, I don't ever want to do this again. This is. I thought we were doing it this fall. Probably, probably. You know, I never miss a Rutgers game. Uh, yes, they will be playing Rutgers at Rutgers this fall or probably, probably November is my guess.
00:25:14
Speaker
If you call ahead, they can get your hospital room set up. That way you don't... Well, now that I know what to ask for, it'd be a lot cheaper. Don't die for no speed. Don't send the doctors in. Just give me the IV. I'll even bring my own mix. They're like, I wonder what could be going on on this football weekend. That's ridiculous. They didn't give you the cup of charcoal or whatever?
00:25:40
Speaker
Activated charcoal. Active. No, I think it's like a little bit like a. It's like, yeah, well, at least they did this when we were at Penn State. They would give people like a slushy thing that was had a bunch of charcoal and it effectively made you throw up like everything. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. I assume this would have happened to you, Steve. You don't you don't remember that night. So it doesn't. And I was that year I was blacking out here. I don't remember any.
00:26:08
Speaker
Just waking up to mail in those loan checks and then back to bed.