Welcome to The Deal Pen, a podcast that digs into the details of untold stories from crafty real estate investors. And now, here's your host, Avi Rosowski.

Okay, we are live with Ramez Fakhoury, Vice President with the IRA Club. Ramez, how are you doing today? Good, sir. How are you? I'm doing great. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me. We're here on The Deal Pen, and we'll get into a little bit about what people are interested in. It's a very new podcast, and we're excited to have your thoughts and insights. But a lot of our community is really just investing in real estate themselves or lending to active real estate investors. But if you could, we'll just kind of talk through a little bit about our connection point, which was Travis Howard, one of your longtime clients.

Avi Rasowsky

Absolutely. And a good friend and a great friend.

Ramez Fakhoury

Yeah, absolutely. He's a, he's a great guy and he's taught me a ton about investing. And, um, I know he speaks so highly of what you guys do for him and for others at the IRA club. So, uh, maybe what we could do is talk through a little bit about your backstory and, um, kind of how you got into this, uh, into this industry and helping others with their retirement accounts. And then we'll go from there.

Avi Rasowsky

And honestly, let me first start off by saying thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. You know, one of the things that I absolutely love doing is educating. And, you know, you mentioned Travis Howard, and he's actually one of my mentors growing up. And when I say growing up, when I first got in the industry myself, And most people don't know this about me, but I actually come from the hospitality world and shifted over. It's funny how you always do things for a girl. And that's actually the story of how I got in the finance world. But, you know, investing in real estate has always been one of my fortes, only because of my father, my uncles, my family as a whole, heavy heavily invested in real estate in the Midwest region, in particular Chicago, Illinois, where I was born and raised. And that is actually the headquarters of our offices here at the IRA Club. For those of you not familiar or are familiar, better yet, with Millennium Park, we are directly across the street from Millennium Park. But back to Travis, yeah, he was a mentor and taught me these different types of tax strategies. In particular, when I was first dating this girl, I used to go to events way back when. And a funny story is, we were in Vegas, for a Rich Dad Poor Dad legacy event. I will never forget it till the day that I die. I walked in and I just so happened to meet some great presenters. Robert Kawasaki was obviously there, but also Dennis Blitz, who just so happens to be, you know, we talked about him real quickly because you asked me, I'm like, who is Dennis Blitz? And I'm like, he's actually a really big deal in our industry. He's actually the founder and president of IRA Club. Started it 16 years ago. He is the gentleman, for those of you that may have taken or know somebody that is a fiduciary or registered investment advisors that have taken their securities license, for example, a Series 3, 6, or 7. Well, this is the man that wrote the text and the test for the U.S. government. So a really big deal in our industry. Very well respected again. But he I would say very few people that I would consider mentors in my life. Dennis Blitz is definitely one of them. But to the story again is how I shifted over from real estate and hospitality was because of a woman that I went to an event. Her name is Vanessa Neely, who I just so happened to be married to. And she helped start IRA Club. So she is my wife. Yeah. You do not know that either. She is my wife. She, it does work for the company, um, still till this day. And, uh, that is how I got started and, uh, never kind of left it. So I've been traveling with the company, I would say closer to about nine to 10 years, but officially on board sold my last restaurant and in December, uh, 16th, 2019. And then three months later, my friends think I started COVID. No, I'm just kidding. That is an absolute joke. It was like for me, it was like hitting the lottery. If you think about it, it was it was like I was not, you know, nobody knew that I was going to come out of left field, but I literally sold my last restaurant, which is a wine bar in Ravenswood Manor, Chicago, Chicagoland area. And I came on board full time in 2019. So that's how I kind of got started in the industry.

Very nice. Okay. So congrats on selling the restaurant. Did you, you had multiple or was that, that was one, one restaurant?

four, believe it or not, four. And again, most people do not know this about me. Um, I come from the hospitality world and I was a sommelier. So someone who was an expert in wine, not non-practicing to be honest with you, but still enjoy a great Cap, Cap Franck, Love Old World Wines, not that we're going off subject, but that's kind of was my background for the better half of 20 years and for the last 10 years helped IRA club grow and educate individuals across the country about this strategy called self-directed retirement accounts and just how drastically in shambles our retirement is. And it's just going to get worse and worse, to be honest with you. So.

Well, it's interesting you say that. So the typical American will put money in their retirement account because their employer tells them to, is that right?

Correct. So you hit the nail on the head. Think about this strategy when we were growing up, you and I, go to school, get a job once you graduate. make sure you get the 401k, take the employer match if they were offering it. And it's not, I hate to say this, that strategy when our parents and grandparents were growing up no longer works this day and age. A lot of it now, we refer to it in our industry as the hurting method, right? Just because my partner or my friend or my father or my uncle or my grandfather did this, does it make it right? Is this the right strategy today? And I hate to say this, the answer is no. And there's a lot of reasons why, you know, even starting off, you know, talking about the history of retirement accounts. And if you look back, you know, way back when, 1972 is when, you know, the IRA officially came to fruition and it was because of Congress, in particular, the Treasury Department, you know, was basically saying to, again, to Congress, listen to me, hey, we are in trouble. And the reasons why we are in trouble is because less and less companies were offering pensions, even back then, right? So it was really, it was the original concept of the IRA was to offset pensions. What really what we really didn't take into anticipation was government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are also in complete shambles. Let's just take example of the last two years. We have dished out over two point six trillion dollars. Our government has helped dish the you know, and just these are not just sustainable numbers like something's got to have to give. At some point, in particular, we could talk about Social Security because many people are afraid it's not going to be around. In fact, I'm not even sure if you read the article that just came out about a year, I'm sorry, a month and a half ago, where they were talking about how long is Social Security going to last at 100 percent of its value, which is 2034. And by 2035, Americans are going to go from 100 percent down to 80 percent of the net value of what they're going to be receiving. And I don't think that's sustainable again. And in the three proposals that they were offering, the committee was offering, the Treasury Department was also contemplating was, hey, we got Americans are living a lot longer. The average American lives almost until 80. And we have to raise the minimal age from 65 to potentially 70. I don't think that people are going to be too excited about that. Right. The second thing was, right, raising taxes. And they have already, as part of the Secured Act 2.0, have already talked about raising that, especially to the upper middle class or the upper class, anyone that I believe that's going to be in the highest tax bracket. to from 6% to 12%. And people there was a huge uproar on that. And then lastly, you know, is the government going to continue to be bailing us out? And again, I don't think that's going to happen. So I think one of the first two is going to happen eventually by 2033. Which one it is, I don't know.

So either raising the age to 70 or raising taxes.

Yes. Yes. And it's only because I mean, think about this. The average is $1,500 of what we're getting across the country, and you're gonna get $1,150 to $1,200, and we are living definitely in inflationary times. So we know that inflation only goes in one direction, right? So just like taxes, eventually. So we're gonna have to offset that in some way or another. But didn't mean to go off on a tangent about social security, but retirement as a whole started back in 1970, 1974 because of the Treasury Department basically telling Congress, we need to address this ASAP, but originally because of pensions.

So now, basically, what's happening is there's a lopsided ratio, right? There's not enough workers to retirees. Is that what's going on?

You hit the nail on the head. I mean, if you're looking back at Social Security alone established in 1935, there were, believe it or not, 24 retirees for every one worker. Why? Because the average person lived until 58. Right. Well, fast forward now at the ratio is two to one. And they're actually saying by 2030, it'll be one to one. And that is the reasons why they are implying that there will be a drop-off from 100% to about 80%, so for that reason alone.

So what does this all, because I have a series of questions, but what does this all mean for someone who wants to have a stable future with a retirement account that actually has predictable value, How do you think about that if you're someone who's just, let's just say I'm 41, right? So for someone like me, how do you look at that with regards to what's going on right now with the retirement accounts?

Well, the way that we're currently structured is you will run out of money. Everybody will run out of money. And that's because the numbers are not sustainable, as I mentioned earlier. So if we were just going to take a step back, I'm going to give you a shocking stat. What if I told you that there are 64 million IRA accounts across the country? of which only 1.8 million accounts have a million dollars or more. Let me repeat that again. Okay. 64 million IRA accounts across the country of which only 1.8 million accounts have a million dollars or more. So my question to you, actually, I'm going to reverse this back over to you. What are the 60, 2 million IRA accounts doing wrong that the 1.8 million accounts are doing right. And the answer is real simple. They're just in control of their future, of their retirement. And that kind of puts in the segue of self-directing, right? Self-directed retirement accounts. And the best analogy that I could always give, and I think this is just a marketing term that we use within our industry, self-direction is just all about control. And taking control away from the classical brokerage firms, and what we've been told for the better half of since 1974, from the Fidelities, Vanguard, Schwab, or one of the other 10,000 brokerage firms that are out there, is you got to keep your retirement account within stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and ETFs. Self-direction is all about alternative investments. And when you think of IRA club, I think the best analogy that I always love giving is just think of us like Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab. And you're going to keep, and I don't mean to even sound like a broken record, but you're going to keep hearing Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab within my, you know, as part of my analogies only because They control 70% of the $45 trillion. Let me repeat that again. 70% of the $45 trillion is controlled by these three trust companies, these three custodians. IRA Club, okay, is a full administrator that not only lets you use your retirement account to invest in stocks, bonds, ETFs, and publicly traded REITs, but also alternative investments such as real estate, land, syndications, private equity deals, precious metals, crypto, promissory notes, which is something I know you are very heavily as an investor involved in. So it gives you the best of all worlds here at the IRA Club. I let you do whatever you want with your retirement account, but there is one rule. So what is the differences at the end of the day between IRA Club and the Fidelities, Vanguards, and Schwabs of the world is IRA Club could never, ever choose the investment for the investor. It actually defeats the purpose of what a self-directed retirement account is all about, which is, again, investing in what you know and understand best. And I'm going to ask you a question, if you don't mind. What asset class trumps all other asset classes, in your opinion?

Well, I love single-family real estate. I think the returns are so attractive. I probably will never go away from it.

Numbers don't lie at the end of the day, that is the ultimate truth. You cannot compare the stock market to real estate. If you take a look at the last 20 years, the S&P 500, which is the benchmark, which everybody actually ultimately is always trying to beat, has given you back 326% returns on your money. When you look at real estate as an investment, and we're talking about compounding, let's say a rental property, and if you, whether it's a, forgive me, a multifamily, you said single family homes, commercial, it doesn't matter, collectively as a whole has given you 2100% returns on your money. So I tell people when they think about you know, diversification, don't you think it's just as important to diversify not only your personal portfolio, but your retirement portfolio in the same manner? And that's what the IRA club offers you. The flexibility to diversify into different asset classes, but the icing on the cake for me is the tax-free or tax-deferred growth.

Well, that's yes, that's what got me so interested in it. And I think I told you a little bit. It was so confusing to me at first as I was building my business, just trying to figure it out, just trying to learn how to make it work, make a business run. The tax-free component, it wasn't in my mind. It wasn't front and center. But what I regret now looking back is saying, well, goodness, if I had just thought about it correctly from the get-go, how could you set things up correctly so that you don't have to have such frustrating taxable events and things like that. And that's one of my lookbacks and say, man, if I could help some people think about it correctly from the get-go and set up their investments, specifically in real estate, without having to think about, well, gosh, I wish I would have shielded that from tax growth, or I'm sorry, from profit growth. That would be nice to do. So how do you help clients think through that? Well, let me say it a different way. I think a lot of people like me who get into investing just want to go do their own thing. They get so independent thinking that they forget that there's actually some things in place in the corporate world that are helpful, but how do you help people think through that in using some of the vehicles that are available, but in a self-directed manner?

Yeah, you know, great question. And I'm going to elaborate a little bit by asking or turning the questions around to why don't people self-direct, right? And let me be very, very clear. I never tell people to, you know, not invest in the stock market with their IRAs or 401ks. I'm never ever gonna say that out loud. It's just part of our vehicle, okay? But the main concerns that we have here at the IRA club, it really falls down to four, okay? Topics that always pop up. Number one, you just said it out loud, you know, clear as day education. The lack of education is first and foremost. I mean, think about this. When you were growing up with your mother, father sitting at the dinner table, did you ever learn about this in school or did your father ever learn about this in school? And think about this. There's no even in College, when you talk like taking an e-comm course, they don't talk about self-directed retirement accounts. It's because the system is designed not to educate people in this specific asset class or strategy. It's built on control, right? Q is, and I'll tell you this, I travel all over the country, 45 to 50 live events, always on stage. And I'm going to give you the funniest scenario that I hear every single time. This just always pops up. I don't know what to self-direct in. I don't know what alternative investment is out there. I don't know what to do next. It all starts with identifying the investment opportunity. And that is a huge challenge for IRA club because we can never choose the investment for the investor. So when they go to, let's say, these live events and there's like 40, 50 vendors out there, they there is an alternative investment right there staring them in the face. Right. But one of the challenges is when we go to these events, these vendors or sponsors or fund managers are only looking for accredited investors. And for those of you that don't know what the difference between accredited and non-accredited, and we should actually state the terminology. Accredited just basically means an individual who makes over $200,000 or as a household income of $300,000 per year, or has a million dollars in assets outside of their primary residence. That constitutes as an accredited investor. And I hate to say this, but the majority of the individuals at these events are non-accredited. I would say if you'd look at a thousand people in a room, maybe 150 are accredited at max. So it falls back down to what do the other 80 850 people at the event, what do they invest in? And that's why they're stuck to the only the stock market option is because they cannot identify the investment opportunity. Whereas there are such thing as such things as reg CFs or reg A's that appeal to non-accredited investors for a lower threshold. And the other thing really is the risk. Two other factors is the risk factor. OK, most people are terrified of risk or don't want to take risk, especially within their retirement accounts, because that money seems to be more personable, more. They're more attached to it because they've worked so hard to put it off to the side. But again, it's still tied into the stock market. And the stock market, if you look at it historically for the last 15, 20 years, has only given you about a six, seven percent return on your money. And I'm always preaching double-digit returns, which you and I were just talking about, which is only going to be done within real estate. Real estate alternative investments is kind of where it's at. And then just one last thing that I really wanted to drive home was fiduciaries and registered investment advisors. Many of you have fiduciaries and registered investment advisors, and let me be very clear, We like fiduciaries and registered investment advisors when they're working in the best interest of their clients. In fact, IRA Club itself has about a thousand registered investment advisors that utilize the alternative investment world because their clients are clearly telling them, hey, get my money out of the stock market. It's way too volatile right now. I want to be looking at alternative investments. But the problem is if you are a fiduciary, let's say, with a Series 6 or Series 7, and let's just say hypothetical scenario with Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab, you're only stuck to those pools of investments, right? If you, for example, you said you like single-family homes, you also like promissory notes, if you were to walk up to a fiduciary at your local brokerage firm and say, hey, I met you at an event, and I found a house, let's say on 123 Green Street, and I wanna use a portion of my retirement account, to buy the house and collect rental income. Well, what do you think the fiduciary is going to say? No way. That isn't part of the investment portfolio. You can't do that. That's a prohibited transaction. And they'll go on and on to do everything they can within their power to keep the money at the brokerage firm. Right. Because that's how the money is made for them. OK. And they're going to try to offset you. Right. To say, OK, you're you're interested in real estate. Well, let's take a look at this REIT. And if you look at it historically, again, numbers don't lie. These are numbers you could go Google yourself. What does a REIT give you? Roughly between three to 4%, okay? If that, and again, you're talking single digit returns. Not hard, tangible assets. And I hate to say this, they do this through something called artificial restrictions. They're supposed to be telling you or giving you the right answers, which is, You can do that, but let's say Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab is not going to let you do that. You're going to have to roll it over to another trust company, a custodian or administrator that specializes in alternative investments. And you will never trigger a taxable event or a penalty because you're moving it over from one trustee to another trustee, one custodian to another custodian. All you're doing is you're moving the money over, it's called an IRA to IRA transfer, or if you have an old employer 401k, it's called a rollover. So you could roll it over to, let's say the IRA club, and we would be the administrator of your IRA, and we'll allow you to invest in anything that you want outside of three things. There's only three things that you can invest in. collectibles like that antique rug, that antique car, you an escort, obviously for the tax purposes, you're already getting all the tax breaks on that and your own life insurance policy. Those are the only three things that the IRS will not let you use your IRA to invest in. Otherwise, everything else is fair game.

So thank you for the breakdown, by the way. The interesting thing about, I think the beginnings of IRA club versus what, or compared to what kind of my world is now is a circle of trusted friends, right? People that get into investing and they learn through experiences, they learn from people that have been down that path for decades before them. It sounds like back in the day when IRA Club was formed, it truly was a club. It was a bunch of friends that helped each other out. They knew that real estate, I don't know if it was real estate or other things, but they knew there were other investments out there. Can you talk a little bit about how that sort of informal network grew into what it is now and why they did what they did?

Absolutely. So Dennis, actually, Dennis Blitz, president of IRA Club, actually was a consultant for a lot of firms, brokerage firms, fiduciaries, trust companies. And what he did was once he sold his publishing company, Dearborn Publishing Company, to the Washington Post, He kind of took a break, right? He thought he was gonna retire for a year or two. And his wife started yelling at him, get the heck out of the house. So, no, I'm just kidding. Dennis, if you're listening to this, I apologize. Or Gail, better yet, his wife. No, but the funny thing was he actually started a club and it was a meetup and it was a group of investors that were in particular more interested in real estate. And Dennis, just like I am, kind of going off on a tangent about, hey, did you guys know that there's this strategy called self-directing? And people kind of like deer caught on headlights. Wait, wait, what? You could use your IRA or 401k to invest in a house or a whatever, private equity. Yes, you could do it. And they're like, no, you can't. My fiduciary said that was a prohibited transaction. No, it's not. You're talking to the gentleman who wrote the text. on behalf of, so Mr. Compliance himself. And it kind of grew. It grew from, you know, 20 people to 50 people to 500 people into the thousands. And Dennis just thought, wait a second. let me start a company. And he literally named it IRA club because he started a club of investors and just kind of transformed it into an actual company. And 16 years later, we have opened and funded over 15,000 accounts. We managed $1.2 billion under administration. Um, and it kind of like really took off, um, just only because, People are starting to see it firsthand. When you talk about your returns on investment, I think what really, really, really catapulted the company was the volatility of the markets, especially back in 2008. I don't know if you remember this, but I know a lot of people.

Yeah, so we bought our first home in 2008, but I didn't know anything. I wasn't investing at the time, so I didn't know really the severity of what was going on. But yeah, I know many friends that had got completely wiped out in 2008.

Yeah, well, in particular, I'm referring, because we're talking about retirement accounts, like if you were, I know so many people that had like, let's say, you know, approaching retirement at the age of 60, had 500, yeah, had about a half a million dollars, right, sitting inside their retirement account, and literally lost half. But what most people don't understand is when something like that happens, what is the most precious thing that you have in your life? If I was to ask you this, what is the most important thing that you'll never be able to get back? Is time. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Time. So that's, so if somebody is thinking about, retiring at 60, lost $250,000. It took 4.7 years to get back to that breakeven point. So guess what? That individual can't retire anymore at 60. He's got to work another five years of his life that he just gave up when he could have been hanging out with his children, grandchildren, enjoying life. And that's what we educate people on. Not that there's a problem with the stock market, but you got to be looking at alternatives and what better asset class. Cause I tell people what asset classes never lost money. And you know, most people jump in and say real estate. Well, I'll look, respond back to them and say, no, no, no, no. Don't forget 2008. Right. Right. Everybody like you just said it yourself. How much money did you lose in 2008? If you had a, you know, a real estate asset where where it didn't matter that you lost money in real estate or the appreciation dropped by 30, 40, 50, 60% because rental income never dropped. Rental income goes only in one direction. And that's only because there's a shortage of houses, right? So in 30 years, it may have plateaued. It'll never drop. So you all you care about is cash flow and taking that cash flow and applying it to the stock market, knowing that you can't touch it. And the fact that IRA club can offer that to you is a really, really big deal. So kind of just think of it like a hamster wheel. Money makes money. You take from your assets, royalties, rental income, dividends back to your Roth IRA or traditional IRA, or you qualify for a solo 401k. And you just apply that every month to the stock market, which we have are connected to a brokerage firm. So your money is just constantly working.

Yeah, absolutely. And I heard you talk in a, uh, It was a previous webinar within the last couple of years, you talked about how many recessions we've had over the last 50, 60 years, which was 10, 12 recessions at least.

In total, there have been 12 recessions in the last 50 years, okay? However, we don't know what to call this one yet. I don't know what it is yet. If it is a recession, not recession, they're saying it's gonna be a soft landing. Some people say the world's gonna blow up. Who knows what's gonna happen? You can never time it. But with that being said, yeah, the market's got a pattern at the end of the day, okay? But again, numbers, you should go Google yourself. Real estate as a whole, when you're looking at things decade by decade within your retirement account, real estate trumps all other asset classes only because what has everybody been fighting for since the beginning of time? When you're talking about history, land, right?

Yeah, exactly right. And the other fascinating thing, which is sort of a plug for IRA club is if you are investing with a self-directed retirement account, you get to only have to pay a fee per asset and then an annual fee. You're not paying a percentage of what's in there, right?

Yeah, I love that you said that because that just completely went right over my head. And one of the most powerful things about IRA club is we are a flat fee model, not a percentage based model. So what does that exactly mean? The average person across the country, you're talking about all qualified retirement accounts, IRAs, 401Ks, 403Bs, 457s, TSPs, HSAs, are paying roughly about $1,500 per $100,000, okay? So per $100,000, you're probably getting dinged for about 1,500 bucks. So if you have, let's say a hypothetical scenario, $400,000, you're getting dinged for about $6,000 as the national average versus the IRA club. I don't care if you have 10,000, 100,000, a million or 10 million, we charge you a flat fee of $195. So you're going to ask, wait a second, $195. How's IRA club making any money? we make our money per asset, per investment. So a house on 123 Green Street would be $195. A multifamily deal would be $195. A private note or a promissory note would be $195. Crypto would be $195. So it's $195 per asset. Once you get to the fifth asset, it goes to $95, okay? Now, the $195 asset does exclude our trading platform. So we do not charge, just to show you, we don't have a problem with the stock market. We want you to be utilizing your money and your money's always working for you. So we don't charge you $195 to use our trading platform. However, We do have, and we have partnered with a tech company called iFlip. And iFlip is the first institution to launch an AI platform. We refer to them as Smartfolios, AI Smartfolios, where the AI buys, sells, and holds on behalf of your IRA and 401k. Interesting. Okay. Yep. And that's a huge deal because you don't need to move your money back over to Fidelity Vanguard and Schwab anymore because that was the biggest problem we've had for over a decade. is what do I do with the rental income? What do I do with the, you know, the the royalties and dividends that are coming through once they tack up to be about, you know, four or five, six, seven, eight thousand dollars? Well, in the past, our IRA clients, guess what, would shift it back over to the classical brokerage firms. Right. So now there's no reason to do that. You could keep everything in house here at the IRA club. And if you want to use the A.I. Smart Folios, it's seven dollars a month. Okay. And what the ultimate goal of the AI Smart Folios is to protect you against market volatility. I'm sure you've heard the saying, you got to catch the 10 best days in the market, right? In order to get those, you know, seven, eight, 9% returns. Well, what the AI does is it protects you against the 10 worst days in the market. Because remember, it's the perfect fit for the retirement account, because again, the mindset of Americans has always been set it and forget it. So why not have an AI driven portfolio that protects you taking human emotion out of it? And that's the goal that, you know, our job is to help people here at the end of the day.

Very cool. And so when did you guys launch that iFlip Smart Portfolio?

So actually, we were super excited July 1st, 2024. So it's like six months old. Now, the technology is not six months old. iFlip has actually been around since 2016, and they launched their first portfolio back in 2017. So it's been around for about eight years, eight and a half years. So I don't want anybody to think it's brand new. This AI, we refer to them as, it's got over 3,000 algorithms. So it's not a robo-advisor. Let me be very clear. It's not a robo-advisor. Robo-advisor has a single algorithm that resets itself at the end of the day. This has over like 2,000 algorithms. 2500 to 3000 algorithms that buy, sell and hold while the market is live. So it doesn't reset at the end of the day, which is a really big deal. It'll vary anywhere between, you know, 10 to 15 transactions a day to as high as 50 transactions a day. And that's not something any of our IRA club clients are doing. It's the AI that's performing this or executing this on behalf of the IRA or 401k or HSA. So again, we're super, super excited to offer this to our clients. There is no asset fee of $195, but I flipped us charge seven bucks to use it a month.

Okay. All right. Very cool. If you had to think through, just if you talk about the 64 million IRA accounts, only 1.8 million, back to your early comment, only 1.8 million have a million or more, right? What I'm curious about, if you can shed any light on it, is how do the best performing grow the fastest, in your opinion? Have you seen any trends or patterns of IRA investors that are really, really good at building their account quickly?

I, I'm gonna, you know, it's so funny you say that, you know, IRA club clients actually dictate how people are investing and I get firsthand view of this. Okay. Um, I was like referring to the Yale model. I don't know if you've ever seen this before with like super high net worth individuals, people that are like in the 1%, if you ever asked to look at their portfolios, it's really just driven into 30% real estate, 30% stocks for the liquidity side of it, and 30% alternatives, such as private equity deals, private funds, multifamily syndications, and 10% is always sitting idly in cash. This we refer to as the yield model. IRA club members is the perfect example of the Yale model. Perfect. It's 30% real estate, 30% syndications, 30% the stock market. However, to your point, that's actually changed quite drastically in the last three years. Why? Because of the pandemic. So most people were much more heavily invested into the stock market pre-pandemic, right, because we went through that 14-year bull ride. And what IRA club clients were doing, as soon as the pandemic subsided and now the volatility was kicking in and people lost about 20, 20, actually, believe it or not, If you look back at 2022, people lost within their 401ks, this is a number that Fidelity actually and CNBC have wrote out, 23%. Was the average within a 401k. IRAs were 20%. 403Bs were 19%. HSAs were 15%. So you lost about 20 to 23% of your retirement account in 2022. Not IRA club clients. Why? Because they were in control of their IRAs and 401ks. So what do you think that they did? All they did was sell off a portion of their retirement, their stock options. And what did they do? Shifted over to either real estate or private equity deals or syndications or multifamily. So at one point, there was an explosion right after the pandemic, if you remember in 2022, into crypto. Crypto exploded in 2022, and we saw a lot of IRA club members shift their money over to crypto. Now, when the interest rates started going up, We started noticing that people were buying less and less homes with their IRAs and 401ks and shifting over to private equity deals or private funds or syndications or multifamily. And that exploded. Now, there has been a little bit of a hiccup or disruption in that in the last six months, seven months, because the interest rates for those individuals, fund managers or sponsors that had, let's say, a hypothetical scenario, a five year arm or seven year arm. Well, guess what? The interest rates are originally at 3, 4, 5% are now at like 6, 7, 8, 9%, depending on the term, right? And now that has subsided in the last six to eight months, right? Those deals. And now everyone's shifting over to lending. So promissory notes have actually exploded in the last six to eight months here at the IRA club. And again, it's a beautiful thing to see because IRA club clients could dictate to me personally what they're most interested in at that specific time. So they're navigating, as savvy investors, they're navigating alternative investments. And we could see it firsthand. So if you were to say the last five years, I will tell you real estate dominates number one. And when I say real estate, this could be a hard, tangible asset like a house on one, two, three green street, uh, uh, private, private placements, syndications, multifamily leading it into as a recently, um, um, uh, promissory notes lending. And I would say the stock market has made a bounce back in the last six months. Um, uh, especially in the first quarter of, of 2024.

Okay, all right, very nice. Yeah, it's very cool to have the ability to control your investments. I think one thing I didn't realize until right before this call, you can actually have multiple IRAs, right? In your own- Yes, yes. I just always assumed your name is one IRA, but so one person can have unlimited or what's the cap there?

So great question. You can have as many IRAs as you want. OK, to be clear, an IRA is a trust. OK, and you could have as many as you want. And the only reason why you would have as many as you want or if you want to have multiple IRAs is because of the the FDIC insurance policy that we have, which is a quarter of a million dollars. OK, let me let me give you an example. Let's just say you have one IRA and it's got four houses in it, which we have a lot of clients that have multiple houses, four plus houses inside their IRAs. So what they tend to do is they'll split off and open up another IRA. just for the insurance policy. So they'll move two houses over from one IRA and to another IRA. So we'll split it. So still a total of four underneath two IRAs. And why do they do that for the insurance policy, which is a quarter of a million and one IRA and a quarter of a million into another IRA. Interesting, okay. And most people always ask, do I need to open up an LLC to protect the assets? And the answer is, No, you necessarily do not need to, because the IRA, which is the trust, is protecting the assets underneath the trust. So you do not have to establish an LLC. And that's the reason why people will open up multiple IRAs for the FDIC insurers. But let me also want to be a little bit clear on this. If you left a quarter of a million dollars here at your IRA, I will shoot you. I will literally find you and shoot. You should never have a quarter of a million dollars sitting inside your retirement account. Your money's got to be working for you all the time. Okay.

You're saying you need to have an in investments that are earning interest.

Yes. Or whatever the case or dividends. It doesn't matter. So the only time that your money's FDIC insured is if it's sitting idly in cash here at the IRA club. But if it's within an asset, then let's say a house on 123 Green Street, then the insurance policy will protect the asset.

Okay, gotcha. That makes sense. Okay. And one other point, I want to pressure test the concept by you to see what your reaction is. Are you okay on time, by the way? Oh, yeah, I'm good. Okay. What I've noticed in, I deal with a lot of distressed real estate that's under undervalued, for some reason or another, either abandoned or someone can't afford it, or we're dealing with oftentimes motivation factors that could be a foreclosure looming or a house that's falling apart. That being said, a lot of the deals that we run across happen to be less than $100,000, or certainly less than $200,000, $300,000. The point I'm making is Banks, if you had a traditional lender or even a hard money lender, they may not be interested in looking at a deal that is 60,000, 40,000, 80,000. It just doesn't make sense for them to do the loan. It costs too much to foreclose. There's not enough for a variety of reasons. What I think happens though, and I've heard this from some of my lenders is there's an opportunity for people that have retirement accounts. to use their money to tap into some deals that the banks aren't really touching or aren't interested in. Are you seeing that as an open playing field?

Every day, 10 times a day. And to be honest with you, because you said banks don't want to be leveraging or lending out for these distressed properties, we get a lot of fix and flips done that way. I will tell you what I see a lot of our clients do is they'll partner with their spouse or their children or somebody else or themselves. So what do I mean when I say partnering? Let's just say hypothetical scenario. You said the property is valued. Let's just use simple math. $100,000 completely distressed. You want to do a fix and flip within the property. And let's just say you have $80,000 inside of your IRA. And okay, wait a second, I need 20 more thousand, okay? You could partner your wife or your spouse or your best friend or whoever it is, right? Is IRA or 401k with yours to buy the asset outright. But remember, because it's not you purchasing it, the distressed property, it's the IRAs that are purchasing the property. So you have to make sure that there's enough capital within the IRA to fix the issues within the asset, to flip it. Otherwise you will trigger a prohibited transaction. But what ends up happening is once somebody flips it, all of that money that comes back to you will either grow tax-free or tax-deferred, depending if it's a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA that's purchasing it. So partnering with another IRA is a possibility, or if you have personal dollars, let's just say, for example, you have 70,000 here at the IRA club and you have 200,000 in your Chase account, well, your personal dollars and your retirement dollars can partner to jump on a deal, okay? If you want to avoid the whole lending aspect of it, which there will be something, which we don't want to talk about right now because it's a whole nother topic discussion, which is called UBIT or UDFI.

Right. Yeah. There's a series of rabbit holes we could go down, I'm sure.

Oh, I'm sure. We could keep going about this strategy for like six, seven hours, but that's definitely a way that, and it's a powerful strategy that we see a lot of our clients do.

Okay, very cool. I guess another thing just on my mind is what is it that is keeping people so blindfolded, I guess, by the big players in the space that do have these artificial restrictions on investments? Why do people not look into IRAs and self-directed more often?

I know that nobody could see this, but I'm shrugging my shoulder internally. OK, I have no idea for the life of me. And I think I keep going back to the lack of knowledge. It is not difficult. Let me let me let me if you were to. I think it goes back to the same four concerns that I brought up to you earlier, but there's a fear factor. And because they don't understand the rules and regulations when it comes to investing, they don't want to move forward. If you don't understand a process, you're more hesitant not to do it. And that's the problem we face. And one of the reasons why I love IRA club and I come from the hospitality world is what we have here is an actual true white glove service. We literally, literally handhold you through this process to the point where you do it once, do it twice. You'll never call me again. You won't even need us anymore. But when you do call, we're not a call center. You get a receptionist. You ask to speak to your client care representative and you could just simply say, I don't know what to do. I don't know what form to fill out. Am I causing a prohibited transaction? What are the next steps? And we will literally guide you through the process, okay? And then once you do it, and once you understand it, you will teach it to somebody else. So first and foremost, it's education. Risk tolerance is another one, okay? And lastly, identifying investment opportunities, okay? And that's why we host so many podcasts and webinars, as you well know, and live events, is to just get the word out. I'm never going to choose the investment for you, but we will teach you the strategy. And if you decide to move forward, just like you and you're teaching your students, your investors, you're always more than welcome to visit IRAclub.com and schedule a call. with any one of our client care representatives. Mandy has an entire team who you know personally and have met in the past and have done an interview with. We'll literally handhold you and ensure that we are opening up the right type of retirement account. Make sure that you qualify, because we have so many individuals that call us that have a current 401k. And let me be clear, if you have a current 401k, unfortunately, you can't touch it. Okay. Until you leave your employer. And usually it's a 30 day grace period. Otherwise I get so many people like, oh my God, how do I get started? And then they call us up and they're like, um, oh, I'm currently employed with a 401k. Well, that's what I'm trying to teach you. The name of the game is control. They're in control of your money. Not you. And that's the reasons why we really don't like employer 401ks, because until you leave your employer, then you could officially touch those retirement dollars. And the problem is when you're dealing with volatility as we are right now, and something that God forbid that happens back in 2008, you're stuck. And there's nothing more that you could do.

Thank you for clarifying that. I think it's important too to, I'm sure you've seen it way more than I have just because you see much more volume, but how do you talk to people about watching out for the very real risks of bad actors in the space? People that may say, oh yeah, let me borrow this money to buy a house and it's not secured properly.

Great, great, great question. There's a lot of tools that I personally use as part of my podcasts or webinars that I do try to train people on, okay? And there is a due diligence process that everybody should go through, okay? Let's just use the example of a private equity deal. Let's say a 506C, okay? The first thing that you want to do is make sure that it is filed with the SEC by looking it up through the EGDR. website, SCC website. It's literally eggerscc.com and you're going to see the company name and you're just going to search the company name or there could be an EIN number that's associated with the company that you could input and you will see the actual filings of their current funds that are available and pass funds that are available. That should be step number one. And if you don't see that on the EGDR SCC website, don't even think about it. Yeah. Okay. That's step one. That means that has been filed with the SCC. Step number two is ask for the subscription agreement, the BBM, the operating agreements, anything that is involved with the actual investment itself. And I would even sometimes, if it's a large sum of money, I would ask to do a background check on the principal partners. And a tool that I recommend is called Thomas Reuters. which if you if they are willing to give you their their driver's license, you don't need your social security number, but their driver's license. You can search and get a detailed, thorough background check on the principal partners, see if they file for bankruptcy in the last seven years. Do they pay back their investors? Anything that's going to cause a red flag? Are they on the just for excuse my for shits and giggles on the terrorist most watch list? Like like you got to you got to like what is what are you What do you consider to be risk worthy towards you and the investment opportunity? And one of the things I hate to say this out loud is listen to your heart. Listen to your gut. If something's rubbing you off the wrong way, don't do it. I promise you there are hundreds of investment opportunities that are out there. But doing some sort of due diligence is unbelievably important. Remember, these are your retirement dollars. They're the most precious dollars to you because they grow tax free and tax deferred. You want to ensure, but you are going to have to take some sort of risk in your in your retirement at some point. But you want it to be an educated, calculated risk.

Yeah, I think I've seen so many people that get into wanting to lend with their eyes wide open, but the savvy lenders that I had the pleasure to work with that really know what they're doing, they've done it for some of them for many, many years, they really take control of the deal and they know I'm not sending this until I get X, Y, Z. I just, as an example, a single family house deal, they need to see the contract, they need to see the pictures, condition, they wanna have a security instrument that secures the loan to the property. They wanna get lenders title insurance. It's all of these checklist items that unfortunately, and like I said, I'm sure you've seen it, but there's people that don't have things in place and they lose it because once you wire that money and that lender buys the house and they don't pay you back, that is unfortunately too common a situation. So.

One of the things that I would say is, do they have skin in the game? Are they in there with you on the deals? Because they have as much to lose as you do. And if somebody's got skin in the game, well, guess what? They don't want to lose their money either. So I think, you know, those to your point, there there are checklists that are out there and I'm sure you have them and you just mentioned a bunch of them. But I'm just going off like birds, bird's eye view, high level, like these are the bare minimum things that you need to be doing bare minimum.

Right, absolutely. I've heard some investors say, look, tell your lender straight up if you're the investor. If you're the active investor buying the house and you're borrowing from a lender, if the lender doesn't want that house, don't do the deal. If they want to buy the house at 50, 60 cents on the dollar, run away from the deal. You don't want to be over leveraged, that's for sure. Yes, absolutely.

No, no, I was just implying, I was just agreeing with you, to be honest with you. But yeah, to your point, there's a lot of, and that's the other thing is, you know, it leaves sometimes a bad taste in the industry's mouth when you don't do your due diligence. And, you know, that person tells that person, but, you know, I got burned, you know, on this type of deal. And I'm going to be honest with you, I, I hate to say this shit happens. And, and, and I, I, I will say every investment's got risk. It doesn't matter what it is. Um, even the stock market, let me be very clear. So, right. If you just, for example, the gentleman that I told you that lost, $250,000, is that risk? Well, and it takes a while to get it back. So just like a house on 123 Green Street, let's just say you have a tenant and that tenant decides to break three of your windows, right? And guess what? That's gonna affect your ROI for the year. So all of that is a risk factor or how long, maybe I don't have a tenant for two months. That is a risk factor. So all of these things pay, but what you do have that the stock market doesn't have is insurance within the IRA, I'm so sorry, within the property, right? So let's just say the house burns, right? What's protecting your IRA? The insurance policy that will pay you back in 90 days, not three years or four years or two years. So I try to put that into or shed some light on that aspect. And I hate to say this to those individuals that are going to be listening to this, that have a current 401k, And we're dealing with the volatility of the market right now. Well, don't forget like, you know, 2022, right? You lost 20%, as I said, according to Fidelity and CNBC. Well, there's a whole year of your life that's wasted 2023. There was a bounce back year and people made, well, guess what? 20, uh, 20 to 14% back on their money. but you're still down six to 8%. So to me, that is a loss. So now you lost 2022, you lost 2023 and 2024 is definitely volatile. So let's just say you break out. Even that's three years of your life that you gave up within your 401k account, that you could have be looking at an alternative investment. That's going to be paying you some sort of dividend.

Yeah, it's very eye-opening. And for me, the biggest lesson so far in the last couple of years has been just think about in advance, the best tax planning is to do it before you ever pay for the deal, figure out how much you want to put into your Travis, go back to Travis Howard. He said, look, set yourself rules. Say, do X amount of deals, every other deal or every X number of deals in your retirement account. I've started to do as much as I can, even just percentage deals in retirement accounts so that I can have something there. And it's a very cool path. I mean, it's a It's an amazing ability to be able to grow tax-free.

I'm telling you, partnering is the way to go with that. Whatever that percentage is, if you want to use me as the example, I have eight partnering spots in my Roth IRA, and I don't own all eight outright. I have partnered my daughter by the way, who is three years old and owns two parking spots with me. Okay. So my daughter's partnered on two of my deals. My wife is partnered on two deals with me. Okay.

Um, I have a house, actual parking spots, like you said, a parking space in parking spot and, and.

And to your point, I think I mentioned this to you before we jumped onto the podcast. You know, we I live across the street from Millennium Park because you're familiar with Chicago. Yeah. And what and for those of you that don't know where Millennium Park is in Chicago, just think of it like Central Park to New York City. And what don't we have around Central Park or Millennium Park is parking spots. They don't exist. So I actually live across the street from Millennium Park and parking spots are a hot commodity. And I love them for two reasons. Number one, it's a slab of concrete. There's nothing to fix. It's just two lines that you got to paint. It's deeded to the IRA. And typically the tenant will pay outright for the whole year up front. So it's beautiful. And it grows tax free. But then what we do with that rental income is I throw it inside the AI smart folios that we have here at the IRA club. So the money is just constantly working for you as it's coming in. So that's kind of what we believe in. And there are obviously syndications and private equity deals that I have in a house in northwest Indiana. But all of these things are paying back my Roth IRA tax free and just applying it back into the stock market.

No, that's very cool. Well, I really appreciate it. Back to your earlier comment, I really appreciate you providing the education. And I think that's such a critical thing is to just continue to learn. That's why I'm doing this podcast, to learn myself and to share the learnings with others. about all of these different strategies. And look, from a personal standpoint, it's been incredibly simple and amazingly friendly to get set up with your team at IRA Club. They're so helpful with every question that I ask. I really do have a team looking after my process. So it's really cool. And I appreciate you guys for doing that.

Yeah, and I will promise anybody who is listening to this, it is not hard. It is not a hard process. And even if you just want to set up a call just to say, what are my options? You know, like, what can I do? What can't I do? What type of alternatives are out there? What is this AI component? That's what we're here to do is we're just talking strategy at the end of the day. And there are so many different tax advantage strategies that are out there. And I just kind of tell people, if you don't take advantage of this, because taxes will literally eat away at half, half of your growth. And you have to use these strategies. Otherwise you are working for the rest of your life.

That's it. Yeah, that's it. What's the best way? I mean, obviously, we know there's iraclub.com, but what's the best way for someone to just sort of dig on their own? I know you have a ton of resources on your website.

Yeah, honestly, that is one of the best ways is if you go to iraclub.com on the top right side, it says schedule a call and you will see a list of like Mandy and Jill. There's a whole bunch of people on our website where you could literally just set up a time. Our telephone number's clear as day on there, 312-795-0988. We are a bank and operate as one. So Meridian is our bank. And from Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. in the morning until 5 p.m., So once the banks close, we close, there's nothing more that we could do as far as transactions. But even if you send us an email, we will respond back in a quarterly fashion, typically on the same business day or next business day. But pick up the phone, call or schedule a call is the easiest way to do it. And even me, I don't hide anything. My information's out there. You could go to the button and literally pick a time with me if you feel most comfortable with me. I will tell you I'm on the road 130 days out of the year, so my calendar gets full pretty quickly. But that's what we're here to do, is just talk strategy, See what's out there. What are you thinking to do? Do I qualify for any of these retirement accounts? Do you qualify better yet for a solo 401k versus an IRA? Okay. And if you do, I'm going to tell you from right now, I'm always going to put you inside a solo 401k over an IRA. The problem is less than 9% of Americans qualify for it. And just to be clear, you have to be the sole proprietor of an LLC, C Corp or S Corp, which means you can't have any W-2 employees outside of your spouse. And as of January 1st, 2024, we also now offer for small businesses with W2 employees, Safe Harbor 401ks, where you as the employer and your employees could do alternative investments. And we could put you inside our AI smart folios will protect your IRAs and 401ks, which also should also imply that we have something called payroll deduction IRAs. So a payroll deduction IRAs or Safe Harbor 401ks self-directed. True. Let me say the word again. True self-directing. Because many of the Fidelities, Vanguards, and Schwabs of the world are now adopting this word self-directing. They're basically saying, you could self-direct with us. Why do you need to go open up an account with IRA club or one of the other There's only 15 companies that actually do what we do, but they're basically stealing away our thunder. And I just want to make it very clear to you that are listening, when your fiduciaries or registered investment advisors, if you walk into a brokerage firm, a traditional brokerage firm, and they say, well, you could self-direct with us. What they're telling you is you could choose your own investments within our strategy, meaning stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and in particular, they're always going to push you inside a mutual fund. Let me be very clear. Why? Because that is their definition of diversification, which is large, mid, small, international stocks and bonds. That is not our definition of diversification, which is alternative investments, the stock market, lending anything your heart desires. So be very clear when you talk to your, you know, your fiduciary registered investment advisors, and they say, you could self-direct with us. They're just going to put you inside a mutual fund and mutual funds have the highest fee-based structures across the country within an employer's 401k. The national average is 4.2% within the first five years. Yeah. 4.2%, Google it, okay? And it's actually, if you look at it long-term, I'm sorry, forgive me, not long-term, within the first two years, three years, it's actually 5%, like a little over 5%. So the longer you stay with that company, the percentages will start to come down. But when you're looking at a national average for the first five years, it's 4.2%, and the average American will shift to a different job four times within their lifetime. So that's literally eating away everything that you guys are contributing to your 401k.

That's crazy. Oh my gosh. Okay. So it's funny. They're taking the buzzword of self-directed and using it for their own marketing because probably a lot of, because of the popularity of, of self-directed actual true self-directed accounts like you guys have.

Yeah, and we see so many, I actually went to an event, the name of the event was, it was in Dearborn, Michigan. It was called White Glove. It was tailored to registered investment advisors and fiduciaries. I had no idea that it was tailored to these fiduciaries and registered investment advisors. The owner of White Glove asked me to get up and speak on stage on this specific strategy. not knowing what I was getting myself into. I thought it was just a group of investors. And I went in and gave like, but he said, I want you to tailor it to small business owners. And that's exactly what I did. And I was the very first speaker that actually went up on stage because I told him I had another event to go to. That Friday, I got up on stage and I educated these individuals on self-directed retirement accounts. And the fiduciaries and registered investment advisors, if looks could kill, like throw a knife instead of throwing tomatoes, or like if they could throw knives at me, they would have thrown knives at me because I was teaching small business owners on this actual true concept of self-directing. When an actual registered investment advisor from Merrill Lynch got up on stage, well, like you could self-direct with us. And I said, oh, really? So you're trying to tell that everybody in this room that you could buy a house on 123 Green Street inside their IRA or 401k with Merrill Lynch. He's like, you can't do that. I go, yes, you can. We do it every day, all day, 10 times a day. Yes. Where in the IRS code does it say that you cannot buy a house inside your IRA or 401k? because that's where IRAs got hijacked back in 1978 by the Fidelities, Vanguards, and Schwabs of the world, Fidelity being the king, starting off with it. And what they did was they just hired a bunch of lawyers to say, to the small businesses and business owners. Hey, I understand you're busy. You don't want to be dealing with this. Let's work out an incentive for your clients to offset because you don't want to do pensions anymore. We're going to set up these 401k for you. You don't have to deal with it out of sight, out of mind. We're going to take care of this for you. Back in 1978. And all they did was take the code from the IRA and apply it to the 401k. If you ever look at the rules and regulations within a 401k, it's 200 pages. If you look at an IRA, nine pages worth of rules and regulations, because all they're doing within these pages is they're just packing it with nonsense and fees. And that's the thing that you have to understand is these hidden fees that are incorporated, that you guys have no idea, 12B1 fees, transactional fees, upfront load fees, backend It doesn't matter, you could go find these and you should ask your HR department, where do I find these fees and how much do they tack up to be? And I refer to them as termites. They just nitpick at your retirement.

Yep, eating away at it, my goodness. Actually, I was gonna ask you too, when you're traveling to all these different events and presentations, what is your main focus? Who are you getting in front of?

It's all tailored on who's throwing the event. So we have over me personally, an IRA club, we have a whole division, a department that deals with sponsors and fund managers, just like yourself, anybody who's looking to raise capital or, and or educate their students, their investors, their mentor, if they're a mentor. And, um, You know, if it's like a multifamily event, I'm going to tailor the conversation thrown by one of my sponsors or fund managers. They're going to actually host the event. They asked me to come speak and educate their students and their investors on this strategy. And sometimes it's just an event for a small business conference. Another one could be, I mean, they vary all over the place. A tax and asset protection like we do sometimes when another group of ours, you know, Anderson Group, there's so many that are out there. It just depends on what the event is actually about.

Okay, perfect. Well, thank you for doing this. Is there anything else that we didn't cover that you want to make sure to get in before we wrap up this episode?

No, at the end of the day, I just I want people to be aware of it, that it is available. It is a strategy. It's something that you need to learn. There is a major crisis within the retirement world. They're saying by 2030 that you need to have at least one point nine million dollars to two million dollars. you know, how it's coming in, whether it's cashflow, if it's saved, you're looking at the 4% rule, you need to be aware of this. And, and if not, I don't want anybody, I want people basically to be enjoying their lives and teaching their kids and grandkids. We need to break the wheel at the end of the day, this concept of, of set it and forget it no longer works. And I just want people to be, to know their options.

Just like what's- And that you really can get double digit returns, right?

It's you can't, numbers don't lie. They literally do not lie. These are things that you should be looking at graphs and charts. And like what your returns are within a 401k, if you were apply that towards real estate or an alternative or, you know, multifamily deal or lending, but you gotta be thinking double digit returns and stop thinking, 5, 6, 7%, because even if you're making, let's say 8% or 9% and inflation's at 3%, inflation works against you within the stock market, but works in your favor if you have real estate as part of the portfolio. It reverses, okay, the flow of money. It works in your favor because of appreciation. So again, it just, we like the stock market, let me be very clear. But we like brick and mortar better. We like lending. We like alternatives because that's where real money is made long-term.

Yep. Yep. Amen. Well, very cool. Thank you again, Ramez, for doing this. Absolutely.

Thank you for having me.

Of course. And anyone who listens to this will be just eating up all of the details and the content that you were able to share with us. So I really, really appreciate it. And until the next time.

Absolutely, sir. Take care.

All right. Thank you.

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