00:01:33.520We ended up managing about $3 billion when we sold it at the end of 2019.
00:01:39.640And part of the time, even while I was working, I served in the Texas legislature.
00:01:43.920So I've been very much involved in public service and politics for since, I guess, probably for the last 10, 15, probably 15 years have been been a part of our lives.
00:01:55.000I'm not in the legislature anymore. I still serve on a couple of boards where I've been appointed by the governor of Texas and still engaged.
00:02:04.260I've got several friends that are still elected officials. So I'm very much engaged in that.
00:02:07.880And it's like Allie said, that politics matter because policy matters, because people matter, right?
00:03:12.820And one of the things I want to talk about first is
00:03:15.940Allie Beth has done a couple of these debates
00:03:19.380through an organization called Jubilee,
00:03:22.900which we'll probably put the link in the show notes.
00:03:25.360And she did one a year or two ago that was very,
00:03:28.980she debated 20 different people, which was interesting.
00:03:31.780But this one was a one-on-one debate that she just recently did, and it's got a lot of airplay as well.
00:03:38.440And she was debating what I guess the lady would call herself a progressive Christian,
00:03:45.580although she's gone through basically deconstruction,
00:03:48.780which deconstruction is essentially where people have been believers in the past,
00:03:55.180and then they've deconstructed their faith where they may not even be believers anymore.
00:04:00.240I guess we'd have to ask them individually, but this lady was Monty Mader, and one of the subjects they got into, which you can imagine with Allie, is they got into a debate on pro-life and abortion.
00:04:16.180And the way the format works is that you could not interrupt, Allie could not interrupt the lady when she was talking, there was a timer, and then the lady could not interrupt Allie.
00:04:26.620but this lady's thoughts on abortion they in my opinion they go beyond deconstruction they go
00:04:35.340all the way to just in my opinion satan controlled and here's what she had to say
00:04:42.700about a baby again it comes back to autonomy using someone's organs to keep someone else alive
00:04:49.600and not having the right to make that decision the reality is that everyone should be able to
00:04:53.520make that choice. Christians should be able to affirm abortion, especially in cases of
00:04:57.600an incest. How could a just God force that on a child? They could also say, no, I want doctors
00:05:03.500making that decision because it's going to save more women's lives. Because the reality is
00:05:06.700abortion bans increase maternal and infant mortality rates.
00:05:10.780I mean, I just, I couldn't stand it. I mean, it just, I wanted to scream and I'm sure Allie did
00:05:17.580too. I could tell a little bit by her facial expression about that. But let's just dive into
00:05:24.340it a little bit. You know, she tries to say that we're using the woman's organs for the baby to be
00:05:32.840there, which is true. And her argument is, well, if you're using my organs, then I should be able
00:05:38.900to decide. Well, yeah, you could have decided not to get pregnant. And there are ways not to
00:05:46.460get pregnant for sure. But then she brings up incest, which is a sad scenario. No question
00:05:51.980about it. All right. But it's also a very, very small percentage of pregnancies. But remember
00:05:57.800that the rape or the incest, that's what takes away the autonomy. It's not the baby, not the
00:06:05.500pregnancy, that's due to the sex. But it doesn't mean that because someone has encountered this
00:06:18.540horrible scenario, that a child should die who had no choice in the matter, right? There was no
00:06:26.320choice. The child was formed. We believe that all children are formed in God's image. And so the
00:06:32.760child should not be taken away his right to live. Now, whether or not the mom wants to keep the
00:06:40.420child or put it up for adoption, that's a whole different subject. But the fact of the matter is
00:06:45.300that a child is a human, as Allie talks about, if you listen to the thing, she talks about that
00:06:51.260that baby was born immediately upon conception. And, you know, talks about the, she talks about
00:06:58.340how could a just God, you know, allow this to happen? But it's, there's always evil in our
00:07:04.780world. And when, you know, when something happens, rape or incest or whatever, that's evil and that's
00:07:10.680awful. And nobody likes that. All right. But that's not God's, God didn't cause that to happen.
00:07:17.320All right. The fallen world is what caused that to happen. And then talking about letting doctors
00:07:24.000decide, well, what are the doctors going to decide? Yeah, if the mother's life is in danger,
00:07:31.660which is a very rare case, and we're talking about the mom's going to die if she has the baby. You
00:07:36.800got to make a choice, all right? Like Solomon's choice. He talks about between the mom and the
00:07:42.220two moms and the baby. But that's very rare. That's not going to happen very often. So
00:07:48.680there's been a lot of negative comments. The liberals have trolled Allie on this video a lot.
00:07:55.840I would encourage you to listen to the video and put some positive comments on social media. Don't
00:08:02.520let the liberals and the abortionists, you know, take all the air out of the room. Go in there and
00:08:08.820support what Allie's talking about in the areas. And it's not just about abortion. There are other
00:08:13.660subjects as well. But go in there and post on social media and get your friends to listen.
00:08:18.680to it and post on social media. Because, you know, these are important issues. It's a fight
00:08:25.160for the soul, not of America, just but of the world as well. So I would encourage you to listen
00:08:31.040to that. Allie does a great job. I'm so proud of her for the work that she does on that. It's
00:08:37.240pretty cool. And it is very hard for me to not lash out myself when I see people treating
00:08:43.620Allie as hateful as they do sometimes. So she needs all our support, and I'd encourage you to
00:08:49.700join me in doing that. Now let's move on a little bit about the economy. You know, being in the
00:08:55.140investment business, one of the things that I've followed and have always followed, I guess, since
00:08:59.200I got to be an adult, was economic issues. As a dad and a father and the leader of my house,
00:09:06.980I had to be concerned in a micro scenario about our own finances and then how in a macro standpoint, how the country, the state, the city, the country that I lived in, how that affected what was going on in my household.
00:09:24.600And a lot of people are really concerned about affordability.
00:09:30.660I'm not here to tell you that's not a legitimate concern because it is a legitimate concern.
00:09:34.480In fact, one of the questions that we have is, what about interest rates and housing prices being unaffordable?
00:09:40.960Let's break this down for just a few minutes, OK?
00:09:44.540And it is true that it is less affordable than it has been in the past.
00:09:50.340But what's happened is not something that was caused by the Trump administration.
00:09:56.860All of this occurred, because when Trump left office the last time, interest rates were just under 3%, okay, for mortgages.
00:10:08.580But what happened when President Biden came in, and yes, we were still going through COVID and the stimulus packages.
00:10:18.500I mean, Trump put in a stimulus package when COVID was kind of getting going good.
00:10:25.840But by the time Biden got in, it was waning off, but he still put another stimulus package in there, and that always causes prices to increase.
00:10:36.080When there's more money available, people are willing to pay more for things, and that's one of the reasons that inflation occurs.
00:10:44.840But the number one failure, in my opinion, of the Biden administration that has caused especially the housing issue was the allowing of millions and millions of illegal aliens to enter our country.
00:11:01.980That is the number one, because when they come in to the country, they have got to eat.
00:11:07.100OK, so there's more people demanding, making demand for food and other services, and they've got to have somewhere to live.
00:11:13.640And so, therefore, there's a greater demand for housing, and the supply did not meet the demand.
00:11:23.360In fact, it's still struggling to meet the demand, even though I think the numbers now is close to 3 million people that were here illegally are no longer here.
00:11:33.780They've been sent back to their own country, either through self-deportation or the government deporting them because they had a criminal record or had committed crimes here.
00:11:45.400So that's the number one issue, in my opinion.
00:11:48.740But the issue that's going on is very similar to what it was when President Reagan went into office in the early 80s.
00:11:58.760In fact, he entered office in January of 81.
00:12:01.580It's just so interesting because Lisa and I were about where a lot of you are then. We were just
00:12:05.820kind of getting going in our adult life. We'd only been married a very short period of time,
00:12:10.140and so we were looking at the same things that you were looking at. And it had come out of a,
00:12:16.060on the backs of Reagan was elected right after Jimmy Carter had been president for four years.
00:12:22.620And again, a single-term president like Biden was a single-term president. And the mid-70s was
00:12:29.980pretty much a disaster economically. We had gas prices. We had gas shortages, actually. We had
00:12:37.360to be in gas lines. In fact, the energy shortage was such that President Carter would come on in
00:12:44.140his cardigan sweater and tell everybody to turn their thermostats down during the winter and just
00:12:50.320put on extra clothing and turn them up in the summertime, which it's okay if you want to do
00:12:56.820that. But to be kind of fatalist mentality for that, rather than saying, hey, let's go see if
00:13:05.020we can find, you know, more energy. How do we produce more energy? I remember in the early
00:13:09.98070s that people were predicting that we would be out of oil around the world in like 19 years from
00:13:17.440then. Of course, it's been much longer than that. And we have more oil and those types of supplies
00:17:58.860So talk about a couple of other financial things.
00:18:01.700A young man asked the question, how do you generate wealth for the average young man?
00:18:06.080Well, just remember, there's only two ways you can generate wealth, and I'm not talking
00:18:10.380about inheritance, okay, that you generate them.
00:18:12.800And one is that you you are able to have income like through your job or whatever it is that you're doing to create income and you live off of the income less than what you live, less than what you make and you invest the rest.
00:18:29.840All right. And there are plenty of good occupations that you can do that.
00:18:33.960And I've got a really good friend that's an insurance agent, and he really can't sell his agency when he gets ready to retire because all the value is based in him and his relationships.
00:18:47.400But what he's been able to do, he and his wife have lived off less than what they've made.
00:18:52.020And so with the extra portion, they've invested that over their career, and he has done very, very well.
00:18:59.780And they'll be able to have that huge asset number when he's ready to retire or slow down or maybe participate in something else that he'll be able to use that.
00:19:12.100The second way, first way is income, live off less than what you make, invest the rest.
00:19:17.060The second way is, which we should always live off less than what we make.
00:19:20.760But the second way is to have a business that you're either the owner of or a part owner of that can be sold down the road.
00:19:28.720That's the avenue that Lisa and I took. I own this wealth management company with a few other partners. And over time, because that wealth management company could continue after I was gone, I made sure that's why I never put my name on the company. Never want to have your own name on the company. That is a mistake because then it's all dependent on you and you're tied to that.
00:19:51.240And so, but when we sold our company, we had sold a business that was generating
00:19:55.96020 to $30 million worth of revenue, and there are other firms that would pay for that, right?
00:20:02.880Rather than having to go start it and build it themselves, they would pay for that.
00:20:05.480So they paid us a handsome sum, and that's how we created our so-called nest egg.
00:20:10.060Now, we invested our extra money during our lifetime as well, during my career as well,
00:20:14.740but our big nest egg came from the asset that we had built.
00:20:18.600So it's either income or asset. All right. All right. Now, last thing for today, we talk a little bit about parenting.
00:20:24.060Always get questions on that. One of them was, which I touched on earlier, is how do you handle and walk through seeing the vitriol and hate of your daughter?
00:20:33.840It's very, very difficult. And we just have to pray about it.
00:20:36.880I have to make sure that I'm always encouraging her because even though she doesn't, you know, follow the trolls, it does have an effect on you gets discouraging.
00:20:45.640The second question was parenting advice in the age of perfect parents on social media.
00:20:50.820You have to make sure that you have your children around other normal people and normal families.
00:20:58.920And you have to just, again, remind yourself and remind them that life is not perfect and that every family has its own issues and that we have to work through those as a family.
00:21:10.880nothing that we see out there on social media about how everything perfect is, is true. And so
00:21:17.580we just have to, I think, having, first of all, limiting social media for all of us, but then also
00:21:22.960making sure that you have your family around other families that are what we would call normal.
00:21:29.880Anyway, thank you for your time today. It's been a good one. We'll look forward to see you in a
00:21:33.460couple of weeks. Don't forget, if you're interested in my book, Life Lessons from the
00:21:37.140Little Red Wagon or Allie's bestseller, Toxic Empathy. You can buy those anywhere you buy books.