The Liquidity Event Podcast: Episode 39
Episode 39: Happy Birthday Brooklyn FI
Today is our birthday! This week’s episode is filled with fun jabs at billionaires and financial knowledge that’s mostly useless to you. We’ve got news stories on AriZona iced tea, old ladies, Elon Musk, and Airbnb cleaning fees. And you know it wouldn’t be The Liquidity Event without a rant about the IRS. This one is celebratory.
Read the Full Transcript:
Speaker 1:
This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered tax or investment advice.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to The Liquidity Event. A show about all things personal finance with a laser focus on equity compensation. Hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI. Each episode will take you through the week's news on Fintech, IPOs, SPACs, founder wins and fails, crypto and whatever else these nerds think is interesting. Learn more and subscribe today at brooklynfi.com.
AJ:
Hello, and welcome to The Liquidity Event Podcast. We are your hosts, AJ.
Shane:
And Shane.
AJ:
This is episode 39 being recorded on 4/20/22. Happy 4/20 to those who celebrate. This will air this Friday, April 22nd, which is the first day of 2022 that the Brooklyn FI office for a day of rest after a long and hard tax season where our staff works very hard around the clock so we're all going to take some time off, reset, recharge, do some drugs, read some books, chill out.
Shane:
Who's doing drugs? Who's got the drugs?
AJ:
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. What else is 4/20?
Shane:
4/20 is Brooklyn FI's birthday. So, today is our birthday.
AJ:
Happy birthday.
Shane:
Happy birthday to us.
AJ:
Happy birthday Brooklyn FI.
Shane:
Yeah.
AJ:
Yes, indeed. It was just yesterday that we were blessed by the state of New York to be a registered investment advisor and now we are registered with the SEC. So, we've gone national. Good for us. Happy birthday.
Shane:
It is also the day after my personal birthday for the listeners that are wondering why I sound awesome this morning.
AJ:
Happy birthday to a slightly hungover Shane as well.
Shane:
Tax day's April 18th, my birthday's April 19th and then our birthday's April 20th. It's always a hectic time of the year for your boy.
AJ:
It's a hectic beginning to spring isn't it?
Shane:
I like to think of myself as a phoenix, just a little dusty, a little dirty but I'm cracking out of that egg. I'll be hot boy summer all summer, baby. Here we go. On the other side.
AJ:
Can't wait, can't wait.
Shane:
Yeah, happy birthday to us. It's our fourth birthday, correct?
AJ:
It's our fourth birthday, yeah.
Shane:
On the occasion of our fourth birthday.
AJ:
What have you learned in the past... What's the number one thing you've learned in the past four years? Sorry to put you on the spot like that.
Shane:
I was going to say something really problematic.
AJ:
You can say pass.
Shane:
Yeah. I was going to say something like you can't trust women.
AJ:
Oh, boy.
Shane:
Just something fun. If you put me on the spot like that that's what you get.
AJ:
I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I get your gut reaction to entertain the room.
Shane:
Yeah, you get cocktail party Shane. That's not... Yeah. Actual question or actual most important. What is it, most important thing I've learned over the past four years?
AJ:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Shane:
Most important thing.
AJ:
Okay, I'll go first.
Shane:
Yeah. Well, I have it. I have it.
AJ:
Okay, go ahead.
Shane:
Yeah, if you hire smart people with autonomy and you just give them the tools that they need to get a job done you can trust them to work flexible hours and have integrity but it's hard to find those right people. But when you've got them it's amazing magic that can happen. It's just like sports. Teamwork is... We're all way more than the sum of our parts and it's really tough to get that chemistry to work but this tax season I think it largely worked and it was the smoothest tax season we've ever had and despite the kicking and screaming and hemming and hawing of clients, it's a really tough industry. Deadlines are impossible and human nature is... Deadlines are necessary because human nature is procrastinatory and doesn't understand what goes into difficult complex things such as taxes always. So, yeah. Well, we had a great season because we trusted really smart people. We hire the right people and give them autonomy and you give them the tools as an employer and you give them flexibility to get it done, they'll get it done. That's what I've learned this year.
AJ:
Beautiful. Well said, well said.
Shane:
What do you got?
AJ:
That you can't be everything to everyone. That you can't be all things to all people. I think we've learned that over the past four years. Also to our team members, we can't be managers and teachers and trainers and friends and all those things. And also to clients, I think Brooklyn FI has come a long way. In the beginning we were trying to be all things to all people. Then we figured out that we were really good at one very specific thing, which is equity compensation, and we are now the best solution, I believe. If you have complicated equity compensation we are the best solution for you. And if you own 16 rental properties and you got a bunch of complicated other stuff related to real estate we're not the best firm for you. So, I think the biggest lesson I've learned was to be able to say no, we're not a good fit for you even though you seem like a great client who I would love to work with, I'm going to send you somewhere else.
Shane:
Setting boundaries, yeah.
AJ:
Boundaries.
Shane:
That's a huge thing. Boundaries is really hard work but it's better for everyone when there's really good boundaries there. I'm with you there. One of our clients slid into my DMs over the weekend just for work stuff but personal Instagram. I'm like hmm, this isn't healthy already. Another client texted me over the weekend to ask for an extension and just immediately got blocked. Boundaries are tough but necessary.
AJ:
Yeah, especially as a business owner. In the beginning we were pounding the pavement. Sure, we'll work until 10:00 at night handling your issue, we'll meet with you on Sunday because you're too busy to meet during the week. We have since stopped doing that, which I think is actually better for everybody in the long run. I don't think we would've been able to hire the amazing people that we have if we continued to keep up those hours.
Shane:
Yeah, it's like a theme of in your youth whether it's as an individual or as a business is saying yes is very important and you should be saying yes to many things. And then you figure out what you want to say yes to and learning how to say no is a difficult lesson that you need to... Saying no is a skill that takes decades to master.
AJ:
Indeed. Speaking of skills that take decades to master, we have a deep dive this week on an IPO filing.
Shane:
Good. Great transition there, AJ. Stuck the landing.
AJ:
We have Steinway Musical Instruments Holdings, makers of very expensive and some would say the world's best pianos for concert pianists and what do you call them? If you're really good at something? Not a prodigy.
Shane:
Virtuosos.
AJ:
Virtuoso. There we go. That's the word. So, Steinway Musical Instruments, this is not a new company. This is not a start up. Steinway was founded in 1853. So, we have a 167 year old company going public or has filed to go public. This is not their first public offering because they were previously public but then in 2013 they were actually taken private, which is a transaction where someone says hey, I don't want this company on the public markets anymore. I'm going to offer a certain amount of money per share. I'm going to take this company private. I'm going to buy it. This is a theme that we will talk about a little bit later in the episode as well. But yeah, Steinway has filed to go public. We will be watching them. Obviously things have changed. Their market share, I think, has expanded more than they thought they would. They've been seeing an increase in global demand especially from China. A lot of money in China, a lot of money being made. So they thought hey, we need some cash, we need to take this thing a little bit bigger. Maybe they need some injections there to bring the brand to a much wider global scale. So we will be watching Steinway Musical Instruments Holdings and how they perform at their IPO, which should happen in the next couple of weeks.
Shane:
Hmm. Right on. Love a late bloomer like this. I guess they're not a late bloomer. They were already public for a while.
AJ:
They were public, yeah. But it's always interesting when you see... And we see that all the time, right? We see firms jumping back and forth when you're like, wait a second? That company's not public already? And then you read the press release and it's oh, well they were public. Someone took them private and now they're ready to come back and show everyone their dirty laundry, which is what we see on their S1.
Shane:
I love when companies have been around since the 1800s.
AJ:
It's so good.
Shane:
It makes America feel kind of gold. Even like the giant, what happened to the Vanderbilt company? Where are the Vanderbilt... Is that company listed now? Is it SCNF. Is that one of those... Even in the Vanderbilt mansion. It's one of the... Where's Carnegie? Where are those companies?
AJ:
Where are the gilded age companies?
Shane:
Yes. Why are they not still around? What happened to them? For those of you experiencing IPOs at-
AJ:
Aren't a lot of them oil? They're oil right? It's now Texaco and BP. That's all that stuff. Anyway, next week on the pod, what's the step up in basis for the current Vanderbilt heirs on Texaco oil stock?
Shane:
Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm going to hang out with a DuPont tonight actually.
AJ:
Hmm. We have a client who's got some inherited DuPont stock that we've all been scratching our heads for years to try to figure out the basis of that stock because it was gifted and moved around and the stock split and became a different company. Anyway. That's fun. Love hanging out with heirs and heiresses. I need more heirs and heiresses in my life.
Shane:
Yeah. I would like to have one. The hardest thing about gifted stock, it's even harder than inherited stock.
AJ:
You are so tired.
Shane:
All right. Let's do articles. We won't talk about gifted stock.
AJ:
All right, all right, all right. Speaking of gifted stock. I don't have a good segue. Speaking of being tired, what is a-
Shane:
Second chance.
AJ:
What is a classic beverage that you can always rely on the price?
Shane:
Arizona Iced Tea.
AJ:
That is correct Mr. Shane Mason. You are looking at the same spreadsheet I'm looking at right now.
Shane:
I cheated. I cheated.
AJ:
Arizona Iced Tea. Delicious, tall boy can of sweet, juicy, caffeinated beverage still costs 99 cents. Inflation is soaring, aluminum prices are going up, sugar prices are going up, whatever else the hell they put in Arizona Iced Tea. All the prices are going up. Arizona Iced Tea still costs 99 cents. I love stories like this as you know. It's an LA Times article. Yeah, Arizona Iced Tea still owned by the founder and his two sons, which was surprising to me. You would think that a beverage company as ubiquitous as Arizona would be owned by one of the huge beverage conglomerates like Pepsi or Coca-Cola but so cool.
Shane:
Yeah, this is one of those companies that you see around. You go down the grocery store aisle and you see all the drinks available or the gas station or whatever and there's just dozens and dozens and dozens of different choices for you. I just always assumed everything's owned by Coca-Cola or Pepsi or Nestle or whatever.
AJ:
Same, yeah.
Shane:
But I guess this is one of the holdouts and they're still family owned. They've been around... And they do like a billion dollars in revenue every year? Is that what it was?
AJ:
Yeah. It's huge, yeah.
Shane:
So, their personal net worth is supposedly like they have a four x multiple so they're worth four billion dollars, which puts them in the top 1,000 richest people on earth.
AJ:
Right.
Shane:
So, the owner is this old Brooklyn blue collar guy that's like I'm not raising prices. I don't care. I'm already... If you're one of the thousandth richest people on a seven billion dollar planet you can take a lick here and there is essentially what he says in this article, which is amazing.
AJ:
Right. He's like, I've survived other shit. I'm going to survive this. Yeah. It's a great business story. Speaking of great business stories or not great business stories.
Shane:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
AJ:
I'm not really good on the segues today. I apologize, listeners.
Shane:
Okay.
AJ:
You got this article on Airbnb cleaning fees. Why do they cost so much?
Shane:
Yeah.
AJ:
Why do the damn fees cost so much?
Shane:
Yeah. Well, any millennial has either been looking at Airbnbs over the past two years in longing or is probably booking some for this summer if they're getting out after COVID, post COVID Airbnbs. So, it's just funny that the Wall Street Journal wrote an article about cleaning fees. And you read the whole article, it's probably a 10 minute read, and the gist of the article is it sucks when you click on an Airbnb and it says the cleaning fees are separately listed. The whole article is about that. It's like yeah, we know, Wall Street Journal.
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
It's like a clickbait. It sucks.
AJ:
Right.
Shane:
Yeah, there's a great tweet about some guy's Airbnb remains impossible and he's trying to book a $500 Airbnb and the cleaning fee is like $750. It's like what?
AJ:
Yeah. Airbnb fees, it depends on obviously the place. The host can set them. But nothing is worse than Ticketmaster fees.
Shane:
Oh, don't even get me started.
AJ:
Airbnb cleaning fees, I'm like all right fine. I'm bringing six people to your house and I'm staying there for a week and you want to charge me $400 to clean the place. That sounds fair. Maybe there's a bit of a premium. But Ticketmaster, your ticket is $100. By the time you check out your price is tripled. It's insane. It makes me so angry.
Shane:
Nothing makes me want to be an arsonist more than a Ticketmaster fee. I saw the Live Nation building here in LA the other day and I was like I want to commit a crime over here.
AJ:
You spit on it.
Shane:
Yeah. But the other thing about cleaning fees in the article is something that you do, which is clean the entire house before and then pay the cleaning fee and then leave. If I'm paying the cleaning fee, personally, I'm walking out of that bitch like it's a hotel room. But a lot of my friends are like, "No, we got to take the trash out. We have to do all the dishes. We have to rearrange... Take the sheets off the bed." I'm like, guys.
AJ:
Yeah, because it's someone's property and they're one of a quick turnover so they've got a guest coming in at 3:00. I disagree with you. I think it's courteous to clean. I'm not scrubbing the toilets but if there's instructions that ask me to take the sheets off the bed-
Shane:
I paid a cleaning fee to have the house cleaned.
AJ:
Yeah, but they-
Shane:
It's their professional... I'm not... It's not-
AJ:
I'm not dying on this hill.
Shane:
99% of Airbnbs are professional Airbnbs at this point.
AJ:
You do you. I will do me.
Shane:
If I'm at someone's like, we're going to Mexico for a month so please stay at our house and they don't have a professional, yeah sure. But in that case they also don't have someone coming immediately. I don't know. All right.
AJ:
Anyways.
Shane:
Well, someone please call in or email us and give us your thoughts on the cleaning fees. We're going to do a poll. Do you actually clean the house even though you paid a cleaning fee because you're terrified of your social credit score or whatever?
AJ:
It's not my social credit score. It's just because I'm a nice person.
Shane:
Oh my God.
AJ:
And if it was my house I would want... I don't know. Anyways. Cleaning people are people too. Anyways.
Shane:
I always imagine them showing up to the place that you've just cleaned and they're like oh, I don't have to do anything and they just leave and keep the money. Like there's nothing to do. They wipe the counters down. I don't know. All right. All right. We don't agree on everything, dear listener.
AJ:
We do not. We do not. All right, you pick the next one and give me a fantastic segue.
Shane:
This is your article about the... I don't even understand why you put this in here. This is about the old lady, the Bank of England.
AJ:
Oh.
Shane:
What am I... I don't even know what this is.
AJ:
This is not an article. I just thought this was funny that the British call-
Shane:
Speaking of old ladies.
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
[inaudible 00:16:38].
AJ:
Yeah, the British call the Bank of England old lady. So, we call ours the fed, which is such an American, macho thing to do. And the British are like, it's a slang for... You will see Financial Times articles that will just refer to old lady and that just means Bank of England. I just thought that was funny. No article, no point whatsoever. I just wanted to highlight it for our listeners who are probably listening to this podcast to learn things about the way the world of money and finance works. I'm sorry.
Shane:
Yeah, the more you know.
AJ:
The world of money and finance works if we are talking about old lady.
Shane:
Yeah, there you go. Yeah.
AJ:
Speaking of the world of finance, you've got something in here about Australian finfluencers are no more. They're getting cracked down on. What's going on here?
Shane:
Yeah. Anyone on TikTok has seen somebody giving money advice, right? Like this is how you create an S-corporation and put your car in it and reduce your taxes and so much trash. It drives me nuts because then I have to tell our clients all that stuff is not real or if it is real it doesn't apply to you because you're not a hyper specific thing. And apparently Australia does not fuck around when it comes to regulation of their markets. It's really awesome how fee only they are focused there and how well managed their 401k system is, the superannuation. Essentially they have social security that can be invested in the market, which is dope. It's going to grow a lot better, it's probably going to have a lot less funding issue because imagine if our social security trust fund was able to benefit from the shares of corporate profits in America, the most wealth creating thing ever created, the American corporation.
AJ:
Right.
Shane:
Fortunately we have to just dump money in there as part of wages. Anyway, so Australia's really great about their financial regulation and their markets there and there was a bunch of TikTok influencers not just talking about investing or even just talking about how to save money, which I feel like is the coolest thing. Like here's tips on how to budget and all that but actually recommending investments and having links to products that you could buy.
AJ:
Boo. Yeah, I can't do that.
Shane:
And they would get commissions on them. So, essentially they're financial advisors and Australia's like, nah.
AJ:
Nah, you can't do that.
Shane:
These people have quit their jobs to be full-time finfluencers. Yeah, so now they have to get licensed. If you want to give financial product recommendations you got to get licensed and there's all this boohooing and hemming and hawing. I wonder if they're smart enough to get licensed.
AJ:
Anyways.
Shane:
I don't know how hard. I don't know. I guess that's a stigma that if you're an influencer you're not smart. That can't be true. That's not true.
AJ:
No, that's not true.
Shane:
[crosstalk 00:19:26] I made that up.
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
But I wonder how many of them will convert to a licensed advisor.
AJ:
I don't know. We shall see, I suppose. I think the harmful financial advice is tidbits or TikToks of information, I sound like an old lady there. It's really harmful especially for us as advisors because clients come in with that bias of well, why aren't you doing this strategy for me? Why aren't you recommending this? You don't know what you're talking about because I heard this from somebody else and they presented in a really, and a credit to the finfluencers, a really easy to understand entertaining way. It's like infotainment. It's cool. Yeah, they're going to do a much better job than me sitting on a webinar explaining how the AMT credit works. That's boring AF. But maybe I should become a finfluencer.
Shane:
You've always wanted to be a finfluencer, AJ.
AJ:
It's true. I have.
Shane:
Maybe this year is the year. I think you'd be great at it.
AJ:
This is the year.
Shane:
The only reason if you weren't a great finfluencer is because you actually know the rules so you have to provide all these caveats and I can't see you being like, "This is how you create a loan out corporation and write that off, girl." But really keep the receipts.
AJ:
I would not be that type of...
Shane:
Here's how you should use Receipt Bank.
AJ:
But really you will mostly get audited.
Shane:
Yeah. You're going to need to download this app to track your whereabouts.
AJ:
You're going to get audited. Oh, boy.
Shane:
Speaking of old ladies.
AJ:
That's just the transition.
Shane:
Wait, wait. Speaking of royalty and young women or...
AJ:
Oh.
Shane:
Hmm. Speaking of royalty and finance we have Mako, the princess of Japan, who we spoke-
AJ:
Former princess.
Shane:
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to use her dead title.
AJ:
Former princess of Japan who swore off her title to marry her true love and high school sweetheart and move to America.
Shane:
We have a reverse Meghan Markle situation here.
AJ:
Yes, a reverse Meghan Markle situation. I guess.
Shane:
All the royals are moving to America to live in the West Village.
AJ:
Yeah. This Princess Mako, or former Princess Mako, who she has a last name now because she married this guy. She's interning. She's a fine arts intern. She's interning at a museum in the curation department.
Shane:
My hot take-
AJ:
Just like all the girls that I went to college with.
Shane:
For sure. The DuPonts. My hot take on this is that AOC's boyfriend is the version of this. AOC is our American royalty and he's the boy that got lucky and bagged royalty. Also, Bezos' ex-wife is married to the sixth grade teacher-
AJ:
MacKenzie, a school teacher, yeah.
Shane:
Yeah. Another American royalty is political and billionaire.
AJ:
Love it.
Shane:
That's my take. Anyway. Yeah, so Mako's-
AJ:
Speaking of billionaires.
Shane:
Ooh. There you go. Yeah, Elon's twitter stuff. You want to talk about this? Where we're at with this. This was an older article. This thing is moving very fast, right? His hostile takeover of Twitter, which I find very interesting. First of all, why do you think he's doing this? What's your take on why he wants to buy Twitter?
AJ:
My take on everything Elon Musk does is that he thinks he's the smartest person in the world, which he might be, and that he thinks that he has a vision of the future and he wants it enacted as quickly as possible and the best way to do that is to garner as much attention and respect and drama and news articles written about you is my take. So he, I think-
Shane:
So, you think it's an insincere effort to hostile takeover-
AJ:
I don't think it's insincere at all. I think he wants to be in people's minds all the time and he wants to be seen as a leader and a thinker and a futurist who is going to solve the world's problems in his vision, which I don't agree with all of it. I agree with some of his ideas. So, I think that this is a... All of his actions are basically just like how can I get the most attention, how can I reach this new group of people who will see me as the person that they trust with their future as the world changes very quickly. The world is going to change. Every decade feels longer and longer because it's such a different place year over year. We had the '60s and the '70s. Now we have... 2018 was a very different world than the world in 2022, drastically because of technology. And I think Elon Musk is going to have a big part to play in that.
Shane:
Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't listening but my take on it is is that he... No, I think-
AJ:
You're such a dick.
Shane:
I love it. So, my take sincerely though is that Twitter... He saw what happened with Trump and he doesn't want it to happen to him and he thinks that Twitter is very durable in terms of getting messages out and communicating. You can have Twitter on a flip phone and he can speak to billions of people and will always be able to say what he wants... He wants to always be able to say what he wants to say and not get kicked off. I guess 50 billion dollars is pretty damn expensive for that right. I think the Washington Post that Bezos purchased, not even a billion for, I don't know. I don't know what that deal was but probably not even close to 50 billion. And in the Washington Post there's journalistic integrity getting in the way of just steamrolling people or influencing things. I'm sure influencing happens but if he owns Twitter he can't get kicked off and he'll be fine. I think it's interesting that there's all these other companies bandwagoning it. This platform is cheap so Apollo Global and all these other investment firms that manage hundreds of billions of dollars. It's also funny that they have to get involved because Elon is cash poor. All of his wealth-
AJ:
He can't... Yeah, this is-
Shane:
He's worth 250 billion but it's not like...
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
I find this very funny is that people... You know I had a conversation with a friend at one point recently where they were like... People think that if you're worth 250 billion dollars that you just have 250 billion dollars in a checking account that you can just do whatever you want with. That's not how it works. You own shares in a company-
AJ:
Right. So, basically Elon would have to give up control of SpaceX and Tesla to then have control of Twitter to actually make the... If he had to come up with the cash himself, right? He would have to sell his shares in these companies, which he is not allowed to do in the quantities that we're talking about. The markets are regulated where you can't just make massive stock sales like that. So it would actually be impossible. He does need help and that's what all the articles that I read about this were he can't do this on his own. Here are the people who are going to come in and help him out.
Shane:
Man, what a fun meeting to be like a 32 year old investment banker and you're sitting with Elon and your partner and Elon's laying out his tactics for buying-
AJ:
His master plan.
Shane:
Yeah.
AJ:
I know you weren't listening to me but we basically said the same thing, which is that he just wants to make a lot of noise and he doesn't want to lose the attention of the world and every move is a calculation towards that.
Shane:
No, no. No, of course I was listening but I think his companies are probably running on their own at this point and he's the president of them and he's just trying to do new stuff. He has access to all this capital and I don't think he has to be in all the engineering meetings anymore. So, that leads to him doing silly stuff like having the time to tweet insane things.
AJ:
What are you going to do when we are able to step away a little more from Brooklyn FI? What is the insane, silly stuff you're going to do in your-
Shane:
You won't hear from me if I have a liquidity event.
AJ:
Okay, goodbye.
Shane:
I will be on a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
AJ:
All right. All right, all right.
Shane:
Or maybe not. No, I don't know what it would be but who knows.
AJ:
Speaking of Twitter. I just wanted to read my favorite tweet of tax season.
Shane:
Yeah, this is a great one.
AJ:
Accountants are hilarious, guys. #taxtwitter. Highly recommend a follow. And this is accountants being snarky with their clients, which we're so exhausted and overworked and sick of things by the time April rolls around that we do get snarky and all we want from our clients is for them to provide their documents. So, this tweet from Simon Phillip CPA was, "My new favorite response to what tax documents do you need? Everything you got in the mail that said important tax documents and everything in your email that said the same thing." Obviously I would never say that to a client but it is kind of true. It's like, what do you need from me? It's like, what do you think we need from you? The things that report the tax things that happen, which would be your income or sales of stock or interest earned or anything else or anything that you bought for your business. End of story. Tax season.
Shane:
Yeah.
AJ:
Yeah. IRS is on the struggle bus. Continues to be on the struggle bus. New York Times threw up an article on tax day that the Internal Revenue Service started its tax season burdening a backlog of more than 20 million tax returns from prior years. We've talked about that endlessly on this podcast. The IRS is trying. They've been holding job fairs. They're trying to hire 10,000 people by the end of this year but they need money to do that and they need Congress to throw them a bone. And the Biden administration has called for more money, has called for IRS funding but it should be-
Shane:
The 80 billion.
AJ:
It should be no surprise that republicans have staunchly opposed providing the IRS with any more funding.
Shane:
I don't understand the, I guess small government. Yeah, okay. That's like Republican 101. But I don't know how many times I've said on the podcast every dollar you give to the IRS you get six dollars back because they crack down on tax cheats. It's a win-win everybody. We have less people cheating, more money in the treasury to drive down the deficit or to fund healthcare. I don't know.
AJ:
Yeah. It's depressing.
Shane:
If I was president, AJ, the first thing-
AJ:
Oh boy, here we go.
Shane:
What else you got?
AJ:
That's a wrap. That's a wrap.
Shane:
You good?
AJ:
I have this long article that I want to talk about next week because it's actually great and I want to dig in.
Shane:
Stress laxation.
AJ:
Stress laxation.
Shane:
Okay. And the Metaverse stuff.
AJ:
So, I'm going to save that one. I'm going to save those.
Shane:
Okay.
AJ:
Because I don't want to talk about them with you. I want to talk about them with John who will be guest hosting with me next week.
Shane:
Oh, I'm out. These are so fun though.
AJ:
Goodbye, Shane.
Shane:
Oh, I'm going to be in Mexico City. Oh.
AJ:
Thanks for listening to the Liquidity Event. You've been an excellent audience even though I can't see you. This has been episode 39. You can find us at brooklynfi.com/episode39. Leave us a review. That would be cool. See you next week.
Shane:
Aloha.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to the Liquidity Event, hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI. Head on over to brooklynfi.com where you can subscribe to the podcast or YouTube channel. Or if you want to learn about their full service financial planning, tax and investment firm specializing in tech professionals and creatives on the path to financial independence. We'll see you next time on the Liquidity Event.