That's all we cook with, Ryan. Fire.
What else is there to cook with, folks? Welcome to another episode of To The Unknown Pod, episode 22.
Can you believe it? Our first episode beyond the mythical, magical 21 that Bitcoiners are obsessed with.
We are glad to have you here. My name is Jordan Bush. I'm the executive director of TGFB Media,
which exists to help Christians understand and use Bitcoin for the glory of God and the good of people everywhere.
I'm Oshawa Hawthorne, director of Brilliance Labs, Christian Social Innovation Lab.
We help start things.
We like working with Bitcoin.
I'm Ryan Finley, entrepreneur, dad of six.
Yeah, big Bitcoin fan.
And I'm representing Tinchak Bakery.
We miss you, Matt.
Matt won't be joining us today.
Matt's got cooler things to do.
So for those of you who this is your first time, we just want to let you know, what in
the world are you getting yourself into?
Well, every week we spend time on Twitter and we basically want to redeem that time.
We want to use it and take just the highlights, the cream that rises to the top.
We want to take those things and bring them here and chat about them with people who love the Lord,
who are experts in their field, and we just want to kind of chew over them.
And yeah, just talk about them and about things that we think would benefit you guys at home,
depending on what your situation is.
So we're going to get off and running this week.
Are we supposed to be experts in our field?
If you're looking for experts, this is probably not the show.
Do you want me to?
Are you fishing for compliments?
Because Asha was literally the leader of the people in the missions world.
So, yes, you are an expert.
No, no, you're getting people's expectations.
R.E.R. is an expert in raising functional children who are actually productive.
Let's see, what else?
Matt's an expert at avoiding being on podcasts.
Let's see, what else?
So anyhow, this week, this episode, we're going to be focusing on basically a problem
that I'm sure many of you have either heard about or are experiencing, depending on where
you find yourself in the generational ladder here.
But basically, this issue of Gen Z and homeownership and or just, you know, even younger millennials in homeownership, we're basically at a point where, yeah, just it's very difficult.
There's lots of people who can't do not own homes and don't have what appears to be a path to homeownership, you know, in the foreseeable future.
And so, Ash, why don't you kind of just outline some of the reasons why we find ourselves in that problem, in that situation, and then we can kind of talk about what we think Bitcoin has to do with the solution.
But maybe just kind of outline that and do your best steel manning that as an actual problem.
Wow.
Well, you have a few different issues.
So real estate has been used as kind of the middle class path to wealth.
And it's easy to leverage.
It's easy to capitalize upon.
So you can do your home equity line of credit.
You could cash out, refinance, and start a business.
You can refinance and get another house and kind of build from there.
House prices have gone up over time.
but there's something called a monetary premium and it's just this idea that the house has a
utility it provides you uh important value that you need to raise a family but also it is an
investable asset and so you have folks and this happened during the the covid period where you
have these unrealistically low interest rates and then a whole ton of money printing and you had
groups like BlackRock buying up a bunch of single family homes. And so you had all these buyers,
you had all this relocation. So people going, working remotely during COVID. And then all of
a sudden they can live anywhere they want because they're allowed to work from their computer.
And so you had people fleeing the cities and going to high desirability kind of places.
and that just led to a huge increase of real estate prices.
And then you have kind of the bottom following out
where the interest rates have gone up to combat inflation,
but the real estate prices are sticky, right?
They're not just going to crash naturally
apart from some big disruptor in the market.
And so you've had elevated prices in houses from the COVID rush, but now you've raised the interest rate. So you have affordability, interest rate plus the price. So your monthly payment is the worst that it's literally ever been.
um and so the older generation saying hey suck it up young ones like we we had 12 interest rate in
the 70s like yeah you could buy a house for the price of a of a an old a 20 year old toyota corolla
like so it's not it's not apples to apples it's entirely different to have these these um
historically average rates with historically absolutely like irrationally high prices.
So there you go. There's a good summary of the issue. Let's further complicate this and further
kind of explain why this has gotten so bad. One of the other exacerbating features that you have
is the fact that we now have so much debt. Like if you're a young person and you're graduating
in high school and you're going into college, the vast majority of them are going to be taking out
loans for college because college, due to also getting the same sort of influx of capital due to
governments throwing grants at students and basically giving them free money,
all it's done is just increase the price of college. And so in order to then adapt and pay
for that elevated price of college, people take out loans, which as we've mentioned in the past,
are incredibly the only type of debt that you can't declare bankruptcy on are student loans,
which is just horribly insane and unjust if you think about it for longer than 30 seconds.
So that's another thing is it's not just that we have record home prices. It's also that you
of record home prices and record runaway student debt. You also have runaway debasement of the
degrees that you're actually getting with your college education. The education has never been
worse in terms of the actual end product. You can find high school exams from 100 years ago
that, I mean, would be like PhD exams today when you compare them to the quality of education. And
so, I mean, obviously this is not absolute at the highest ranges of education, the highest,
you know, echelon, you're going to still find super rigorous education. But in many places,
you know, what you're paying for does not in any way correspond with what you're actually getting,
especially outside of fields like engineering and medical, whether you're a doctor, a nurse,
whatever it is. If you're in those, you can still make decent money. There still are other
consequences that can put pressure on you. But for the average person who's just getting-
10 years of school and-
Yeah, yeah.
$500,000 of debt.
Correct. So you're still in a difficult place, but there still are mechanisms for you to
make that valuable. You'll have hospitals that will volunteer, you know, not volunteer, but
hospitals that will pay off your debt. Basically, they'll say, hey, work for us for this 90 years
and we'll pay off your debt. And you're like, okay, great. So there's not those same kind of
debt relief mechanisms that exist in many other fields. And so this, all of these things are a
bunch of these factors put together. Anybody else want to add any other factors that are contributing
to this yeah the the zero interest rate policy that was going on uh so you had during covid you
had people that were still getting 2.75 you know to whatever maybe three three and a half percent
mortgages or they were refinancing their mortgages at a time when inflation was like eight or nine
percent so it was literally you know uh the simplest decision in the entire world for millions
and millions of homeowners to refinance their house during that time.
And now it effectively froze millions of people in place.
Because if you sell your house, you lose your low interest rate mortgage
and your housing payment will double if you want to move across the street.
So people aren't moving.
And the effect that that has is it prevents a housing correction from picking up steam.
Like we're starting to go through a housing correction right now.
But if you had the normal number of people just moving, like those houses would have to sell.
And when they went on the market, it would just add more supply.
And supply is still picking up right now.
So it's starting.
But yeah, that actually was incredibly effective of the Fed.
They're a little sneaky in a sense that they froze everyone in place, basically.
Or they rugged them, in a sense.
Um, so right now the houses that are going on the market, a lot of them are like the baby boomers that are moving into retirement homes and they're price insensitive.
So they just, uh, you know, they're going into a high monthly payment, uh, assisted living center and they just sell their house at whatever the market will pay.
Yeah.
Um, and that's picking up.
Um, yeah.
And there's, there's some other issues.
So again, you, so Asha, we talked about the monetary premium.
there's this added value that has nothing to do with the value of the house itself
that is added to the price of a house. So that makes it, you know, raises the value,
which again, if you're a homeowner, you might think, oh, that's good news for me. My house
goes up in value. But the problem is that even for you, like a lot of these, you know, a lot of
these houses as investments in this monetary premium, you're banking on being able to sell
your home for more than you paid for it. This is part of the understood agreement. The problem with
that is, again, interest rates freeze that. But another problem is, okay, so even if interest
rates are high, you get to the point where you're depending on selling this house or downsizing or
whatever, and you have to sell. Let's say you live in the North, you're getting ready to retire,
prices aren't where you wish they were, but you're kind of forced into doing it.
And you're going to, so you sell your house. Well, if normal economic actors, like normal people,
if prices are so elevated relative to the amount of earnings that they're getting
that they're not able to buy, you would assume, well, this would drive some price corrections.
But unfortunately, there are plenty of other actors who aren't anywhere near as affected by
real economic calculation as normal people are. And those would namely be larger corporations,
larger companies, international interests. So as bad as things appear and have been recently
in the United States, it's a hundred times worse for many other countries around the world.
And so many other people who don't have ready access to the dollar, you know, who either they
have horrible national currencies in the country where they're at, and maybe they don't have ready
access to the dollar, they are still buying up real estate in the United States as well, because
it's a way better option than they have in their own countries. They're banking on the fact that
the American economy is strong. Americans are wealthy. Americans can continue to prop up
this game of musical chairs longer and longer. And so that has just added more pressure. I was
just reading an article about this yesterday, which is why it comes to mind. But this is adding
more pressure onto an already stressed real estate situation. And so things are to the point
though, in terms of the correction that we talked about, there's an article that there was a chart
and an article that was written yesterday that basically said, there's a podcast called,
oh, it's going to kill me. It's on the ringer. It's this guy, Derek Thompson. I can't think of
what it's called, but really interesting podcast. This guy basically said, hey, so right now,
home prices are increasing in the Midwest and in the Northeast of the United States.
they're going down broadly speaking in the in the south and if they're in florida the bottom is
absolutely falling out of the real estate market and and so again this is there's a whole host of
reasons for that even there's there's reasons uh for instance one of the things is um that the cost
of of insurance home insurance and you know other forms of insurance because of a recent spate of
hurricanes on top of inflation. It's just getting really, really expensive. You can no longer
fix homes. If there's some sort of problem, you can no longer fix them for the prices
that these insurance contracts were denominated in. So you're just getting to the point where,
and plus these houses are getting older, and there's a whole bunch of factors that are resulting
in people, not a lot of people wanting to move to Florida or at least buy the available homes for
the prices that they're at. And so there's a whole host of reasons, but this is a real problem.
And unless you guys want to add anything else in terms of the problem, the question is,
you know, if you're a younger millennial, if you're a, is there somebody between the
Zoomers and the young millennials? No. Okay. If you're a young person. Sorry, Generation X.
Gen X.
Gen X are older than millennials.
Yeah.
The point is, if you're a young person and you're sitting here, you're looking around
and you're like, what in the world am I supposed to do?
Am I ever going to be able to own a home?
You know, what we want to do with this episode is rather than our, what are, you know, occasional
we've been, you know, maybe some like a little bit doomer-ish and some of those episodes.
What's going on here?
We don't want you to black pill.
We don't think there's, there's warrant for that.
But what we want to do is just like, hey, what, how, what, what kind of path is there
towards homeownership? What kind of path is there to actually being in a position,
putting yourself in a position insofar as it depends on you, to be able to actually own a home
and do something about this? And so that's kind of what this episode is going to be aimed at. So
I let one of you two kind of start this wherever you want to start in kind of unpacking where you would begin Maybe kind of give a brief overview of your situations individually and then kind of how you thought about these things
You want to go first, Ryan?
Sure.
Jordan, you want to pull up that Nick Gurley or Garley?
You know what, Ryan?
Actually, I do.
Let me pull that up first.
I do want to pull it up.
All right, here we go. Nick, boom. There we go.
Can you see that?
Awesome. Yep. Yeah. So I'll just go through it. Home prices in the U.S. are 16.5% overvalued in
2025. This is the higher level of overvaluation than we saw at the height of the 2006 bubble.
After that last bubble, prices became undervalued in the period from 2008 to 2019 was a great time
to buy a house. However, today's market has become too expensive with home prices outpacing wage
growth. The result is an overvalued and unaffordable market. This is the main reason why homebuyer
demand is so low in 2025. Fix the overvaluation, fix the homebuyer demand problem. So yeah, I think
it's really wise to, whenever you're analyzing a current problem, remember that it's nothing
this is we're not experiencing these things for the first time like this has happened before
as the chart shows you know we had a housing crash in 2008 um and houses were yeah houses
were unaffordable and overvalued back then i remember because my wife and i were trying to
get into our first house back then leading up to it and i just remember like man dude like this is
this is insane i don't understand how my peers were able to get into houses at this point because
they were just compared to like wages back then it was very i mean it's worse now but even but even
back then it was just like dude how and and we've you know come to find out that there was lots of
shenanigans going on like you could just lie on your mortgage application as long as you had a
pulse you could get insane financing uh they were just trying to pump that pump that bubble to the
to the outer space um things are different like and that's what when you talk to people now like
oh it's not the same you know they're way more strict than they are uh but houses are still
very overvalued today um i think the second did he the second part of that tweet yeah uh
sharing right now the nick early yeah yeah yeah let's go back to it i just want to point out
something else if you scroll down oh yeah there it is so uh if you go down to number two um
yeah the median household in the u.s runs around 83 000 uh the annual mortgage payments to buy a
house 33 000 with the resulting payment income ratio closer to 40 that's simply too expensive
um i think the let's see where does he talk about it um just second chart here yeah i actually i
think it's another one of the things anyways uh one another interesting point that nick makes is
that um right well like if trump just forces out powell and we get uh interest rates to plummet
he basically points out that even if you drop interest rates an entire percentage point or
100 basis points, you only save about $200 on the monthly payment. And so for perspective,
somebody who is trying to buy a house in like 2020 versus today, their mortgage payment is
basically, it would be double what it would have been in 2020. So shaving off 200 bucks off that,
that's not going to move the needle at all. So anyone getting their hopes up that these huge
crash and interest rates are going to actually bring a whole bunch of buyers back to the market,
it's not happening. I mean, I'll just tell you straight up, people aren't just a couple hundred
dollars on their mortgage payment away from buying houses. So it's going to probably end up being both
interest rates. I mean, the biggest thing, the easiest thing to give is going to be house prices.
Everyone's like, oh, they can just pull levers and drop interest rates way back down. There's
huge consequences there's a reason why they jacked them up fastest rate in history inflation was
literally raging out of control and it's still super high what are we at like three point we
at three six now three point six it's such or whatever the state it is yeah yeah it's the only
way i heard that but yeah sure yeah stated yeah ground beef keeps going up 10 a year
just keep your eye on ground beef
yeah so
all that to say
can you pull up my last
I have one last one that I shared
it's the bar chart one down there
let's see
I'm going to skip straight to this one
because I just think it's
it's on that same thread
yeah
I can
bar chart this one
yeah that's the black one
okay let's see here and as jordan grabs that so darth powell posted a fox news segment like a
business segment where they were claiming a 30 over overpricing on real estate so that's like in
this one right i'll post it in the oh studio chat oh okay gotcha is it this one yeah so 30
Keep going, Ash.
30% overpriced.
They're saying real estate is 30% overpriced.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
That's not good.
So we can do this one.
Is this what you're looking at?
I got it.
Yeah.
This one?
Oh, right.
No.
This is here.
So I'll do this, and then Jordan, you show the other one.
Basically, Darth Powell is saying only 27% of households can afford a median home.
And then 80% of households earning $140,000 already own.
So you have 50% of the housing market is chasing 5.4% of the homebuyers
that can afford a home that they don't already own.
Oof.
Yeah.
All right, let's pull this one up, Ryan.
This one, right? Bar chart?
Yeah.
Yeah. So I think I encourage people not to over fixate on what popped the bubble back in 08.
It was insane. Like they were just letting anybody a whole bunch of shenanigans with the quality of loans being given out.
Anyways, at the end of the day, they over-financialized the housing market to unsustainable levels.
And once it pops, it pops.
It's going to go back down.
You see, and it returned back to somewhat sanity.
And even then, it would have gone a lot lower, but the government stepped in.
And there was millions of foreclosed on houses back then that they refused to let go out on the market.
and they trickled them out like a little stream.
So this would have gone way lower and it should have
because it would have been healthy.
We needed to return back to health,
but they pumped the bubble back up as fast as they could.
So you can see it just this huge crash back
towards it being affordable.
And I think both Osh and I bought houses at that time.
And then now we're back up to 2025.
five well here's the thing like you can guess what's going to happen next yeah whenever houses
whenever whenever housing is extremely unaffordable it will always return back one way or another and
it's just it's just gravity um yeah unless unless human nature changes because at the end of the
day you can't if you make it impossible for all young people in a nation to get into housing
like pitchforks will come out and Sybil unrest follows.
So like, yeah, you can just,
and we're already getting,
we're already getting a fair amount of like, you know,
pitting, pitting of the,
like for in order to gain political power,
pitting of the generations against each other.
It's just a really dangerous
and unfortunate thing that's happening.
The other thing that I would want to mention here too,
is this, this like dynamic of like whip sawing.
I mean, this, this obviously, let's see,
You know, this is 2006, 2025.
So you're talking 19 years.
Again, for some of us, 2008 seems like yesterday.
Like, it's insane that it's been 19 years.
But like one of the things, this is not the first time this has happened either.
Like if you look at other situations that, again, aren't necessarily, you know, that
we're not in Weimar, Germany.
Like I'm not stating that we're there.
But like one of the things that you see during that time is that the price of gold and the
value of the local currency, it whipsawed back and forth like this. And so this is evidence that
this is an unhealthy situation. And so there likely will be a buying opportunity that prices
will be significantly lower than they are right now for homes. But even then, I mean, even if you
just look at this chart, if you just try to follow where's the trend line, it still is such
a tough thing. So there's a lot of people who are out there and, you know, in our lifetimes,
if you're, if you're 40 and younger, uh, owning a home, it's just been like an obvious thing.
Like, well, of course you're going to buy your house. Um, and yet I think for a lot of people
and, you know, Ryan and I can, can speak to this, uh, you know, like we're both of us are renting,
uh, you know, Ryan, you're, you're choosing to. And, uh, and then in my case, like I'm just not
in a position where it makes sense to put as much money into a house as would be required
because of what it would cost me in Bitcoin.
So maybe, anyway, is there other charts that you guys want to lay out here and share just
to kind of continue to elucidate the problem or do we want to start talking about?
Well, so before we get into the solution, let's just chat a little bit about the social
consequences of this and the moral consequences.
So you guys kind of hinted at this.
There was this video with Peter Thiel, I think it was him, that made the rounds a few weeks ago, where he's essentially predicting the younger generation all going socialist and Marxist.
And the point he makes is, he says, when they get priced out of the ownership of any assets and a participation in the economy, they're necessarily going to disbelieve in the free market.
And so capitalists become socialists when they have no chance of ownership.
And so that's what this kind of upstream of the housing issues, right, is the broken currency and the fiat money printing.
But then downstream of not being able to purchase a home is saying, well, let the whole thing burn anyway.
Then let me entirely opt out.
why should I contribute to this system if the system is broken and isn't never going to work
for me? And so you had during COVID the whole kind of like Wall Street bets movement. And I would
say some of the adoption of Bitcoin and the kind of the retail involvement during COVID was some of
that, like, let's opt into another system. And I think some of the wokeness and all the protests
on campus and the BLM, that was all saying the system is not working for me for various reasons,
right? They're identifying, they're feeling the effect of the problem, but they're like
shooting at other issues. Attributing blame to- Blame the police for why I'm poor and everything's
broken. No, no, it's not like it's upstream, go higher. There's deeper issues in our society that
are moral and systemic financial, right? And so downstream of this, we're getting all the dirty
water, we're dealing with these issues, and now people are going to opt out of the current system.
And I think the question for us, first, if you're a Christian, well, historically, for millennia,
Christians have built parallel systems and parallel ways of living that go against the stream,
that find ways to build communities where we can help one another prosper,
even while Rome burns, right?
And as it says in Jeremiah 29, I mean, seek the welfare of the city.
So it's not a, let's care for one another at the city's expense,
at the world's expense, but it's realizing that the best way
to be salt and light in a failing society, in a failed state, is to have a healthy marriage,
to love and raise your kids, to provide for your family, to love your neighbors, right? To serve
in your church. And if you start in the areas that you have most responsibility and stewardship
and you're faithful there, God will bless you.
He will make you fruitful.
And by God's grace, we may be in,
Ecclesiastes talks about this.
I don't remember what chapter about the godly man
who saves the city.
Or another parallel story is Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah.
And the whole point is God's,
like if there's one righteous man, right?
He still has a purpose for that city.
and and so we we get to be salt and light in sodom and gomorrah uh and and so there is hope
and the issue of real estate is like okay you got to go upstream you got to see the problems
you got to opt out of the the current system the financial system the moral system the educational
system uh and and then rebuild in community uh with with like-minded people and you know what
we will both have a Noah's Ark.
We will be able to survive.
I mean, one of the posts that I saw this week
that I really appreciated was the dude,
he's a believer, the Bitcoin well guy.
Adam O'Brien.
Yeah, yeah.
So Adam used the Noah's Ark analogy
for both the gospel and for Bitcoin And I think that fair And I just share that really quick and then I end my little rant
And he just says,
Noah built a boat and everyone mocked him.
He didn't care.
He knew something that nobody else believed.
God blessed him with knowledge.
He wasn't building for praise.
He was building to be obedient to God
and protect his family.
The world laughed at him until it rained.
You are incredibly blessed with the foresight of what is going to happen to the current system.
You know the action you need to take.
Get on the boat.
Stack sats for your last name.
Goosebumps.
Goodness gracious.
And so Adam is taking this, I mean, this biblical story, and this is a reality.
If you gain Bitcoin and lose your soul, if you gain Bitcoin and stack sats but lose your children, okay, it's all worthless.
But if you can live faithfully, be faithful in your marriage, be faithful in raising your kids well, and your kids have a last name they're proud of, you get that figured out?
Bitcoin is that financial piece that you now give them a way to build a future.
yeah it's it's a it's a pretty strong analogy i mean just being in the space since 17 18 you know
like pretty much non-stop especially in those early years it was just totally just being made
fun of for being a bitcoiner and and it's not just being made like it's not just that
being a bitcoiner you were made fun of back then like the problem like the reasons we were
Bitcoiners, like understanding the problem, like it was just, it was completely dismissed. Like,
oh, like currency disbasement or, you know, debasement, not a big issue, uh, broken fiat
system, you know, and, and all the downstream effects from that on literally everything in
our culture just completely dis, you know, dismissed. And, um, yeah, I was, this is an
interesting. I wasn't planning on talking about this, but there's, um, it brings to mind, there's
a, there's a comedian. His name is Dan Soder. He's a comedian. I can't remember if he's based
that originally, but I think, I think I want to say Colorado or something like that, but he is
like best friends with this guy, Mike McDaniel, who's the coach of the Miami dolphins. And so
they grew up together and they were talking about this on a podcast where Dan, his, his parents were
divorced. He never knew his dad. Uh, and, and like his, so he just didn't have a good home life.
He's, he had like a stepdad. We, he wasn't a big fan of. And so he would go over to his friend,
Mike's house on the weekends and he would spend there like from Friday after school until Sunday
afternoon, after all the NFL playoff games or NFL, uh, games were over with. And then his mom would
come pick him up. And so this family became like a refuge to him. And so by virtue of him having
this family be a refuge to him who was far healthier than his home situation was. He was
able to reap the benefits that he wouldn't have had if he didn't have this little, you know,
this bastion of health. And so there's a real situ, I mean, there's a real analog to that in
terms of like, if you're sitting here, you know, in, you know, Zoomers and you're finding stuff
or younger millennials and you're sitting here, you're like, I am in an unhealthy situation.
like you need to hit your wagon to like, you need to get access to some healthier situation.
And so whether that's, you know, finding, you know, finding mentors, whether that's finding,
you know, finding older people who do have businesses, who do have resources and, and
asking them, you know, like just going on and becoming friends with them and just hearing
their situation and maybe asking them like, Hey, is there, are there things that I can
do to add value to you because I'm in a situation where, you know, I need help. Like there are people
like one of the, one of the biggest opportunities that somebody shout to the friend, Bobby Shell,
he talks about all the time. He basically is like, he's building his entire life around,
in terms of money-making part of his life around Bitcoin and small businesses,
because he's just saying, Hey, there are so many baby boomers who are on the verge of retiring.
and many of them are retiring from businesses that they don't have kids who are going to be
taking them. And so they're going to be all of these businesses that you can pick up for,
I mean, relatively cheap that then you can turn around and make money with them. They're profitable
businesses. And so just, you know, looking at this problem that you have and going out and
talking about the problem, you know, just being able, rather than just facing the temptation and
giving into the temptation, just give up and feel hopeless or just complain and, you know,
do radically dumb things. Um, you know, just basically looking for people who, who are in a
better situation and putting yourself next to them and, and trying to listen to them and, uh,
you know, have conversations with them. And, and again, just there, a lot of these people have,
a lot of these people have expertise that they're willing to share and that they want to share.
one of my favorite things
my granddad went to be with the Lord
probably
probably no
four or five, six years ago
something like that
and one of the things that was just incredible
with my granddad
is that he just always wanted
he just wanted to talk to me
and he wanted to tell me stories
about his life
and when I find older people
I just ask them questions
and it is incredible
how frequently they just start talking
they'll just start talking
And I'll just ask them, I'll prime them with a couple of questions and they'll just go.
And they'll talk about, oh, I, you know, I had this experience.
I, you know, I worked in this field and I have this going on.
Like there's, there's so many people who, again, what, what they don't have, they have
material stuff, they've got resources, but they don't have younger people who are necessarily
interested in, in kind of interested in them and interested in hearing kind of their stories.
And so I think that there's just a lot of opportunities for something that's, if you are a scarce type person who's interested in other people and willing to dedicate time to trying to actually provide something that they're lacking, I think there actually are tons more opportunities than the average person is just thinking about.
So, Jordan, I don't know if you saw this in the public chat, but you were basically perfectly answering this question.
In the public chat, a young man asked, what's your best advice for a 21-year-old young man who is discouraged?
So, I think you've just been answering that question.
I want to, Ryan, if you'd add anything else to Jordan's advice.
Yeah, I mean, no, that's huge.
yeah uh i think i might i mean if we're going to continue to go with solutions
yeah don't give up uh reach out to the older generation they're a massive wealth of knowledge
um learn about bitcoin and save even small amounts outside the system so
like our the whole fiat system is like a giant carnival uh don't get tempted into playing the
fiat carnival games like like like for example uh like our i would say huge amount of the young
people in our country are just being tempted into like different gambling meme coins sports gambling
um penny stocks just like uh messing around with leverage um the same like even saving small
amounts and five bucks a day, 10 bucks a day, 20 bucks a day. Like, it doesn't seem like anything.
It's like, it's never going to place a dent, but like, it's, that's never the truth. Even back when
I remember when I was coming out of the high school, I hardly had anything. I was making
hardly anything and investing in companies back then. I was like, what's the point? Like,
what's the point in 50 bucks or a hundred bucks? It's like, that's literally nothing, right?
Well, like just for perspective, just to hammer home the point, I want you to know that like the
companies that i would have invested in and i and i was a little bit were apple and and amazon
and and companies like that and like ryan was even killing tesla on facebook for years
and it performed pretty well
i was buying apple stock when steve jobs came back to apple um but so here's the thing but even then
It was inexperienced, immature, undisciplined Ryan.
And if I could do it over again and listen to my own advice, it's like, you know, don't underestimate the small beginnings.
Like even buying small amounts and just continuing to faithfully work hard and save.
Today, I would just say, be simple, buy Bitcoin and work hard.
Back then, Bitcoin didn't exist.
And so you literally, you had to play a little bit more of the game, which I think it feels like a whole other world.
But yeah.
And just know that the same, like, oh, what's it going to do?
What's, you know, what's 50 bucks going to do?
I mean, we, my thesis, and I think Austin Jordan probably agree somewhat.
like i you know if you can if you can save a thousand dollars like in the next you know
i think we're at 10x in five five years potentially uh maybe 100x within 10 years so depending on how
old you are um just know that like it could be worth 10 whatever you're able to squirrel away
in bitcoin right now it could be worth 10 times as much in five years yeah um so don't don't get
discouraged. Um, yeah. Yeah. I, I would, I mean, first of all, I mean, the first thing I would say
before I give advice to Salome, I think is how you pronounce it. Uh, but like the first thing I
would say is like, you're, you're not alone, you know, just like you're, you're not alone. Like
there's, there's lots of people who are, you know, in similar situations, uh, and who are,
you know, who are just, you know, just frustrated the way that you are. There's also a lot of people
who are in worse situations, you know, than we are. You know, like I'm somebody who I had never
owned a home. Like I've never been able to own a home. Like we were, I went and was, we were
missionaries in Uruguay, like right at the prime years where if we had like a normal job, we could
have been, you know, socking away money and, you know, and doing stuff like that. And we just,
we just didn't have the, you know, the resources to make that happen. And so like, I look at around
it, you know, some people who are my same age and like, they've all got, you know, seven years on me
in terms of, you know, financially,
in terms of like homes and, you know,
all these different things.
And, you know, there are moments where I catch myself
where I'm like, oh man, I'm, you know, I'm jealous
or, you know, whatever it is.
And I mean, just the reality is just like,
hey, you know what?
Like, it's just one of these situations where,
yeah, I don't have that situation.
I'm not in their situation, but the Lord knows.
And so again, I don't know if Salome is a believer or not,
but I do think that's one of these things where,
you know, like pour your heart out to the Lord and just basically just, you know, bring your
things to him. He cares for you. Uh, the scriptures tell us that, you know, cast your cares on the
Lord because he cares for you. Uh, you know, we don't have to sit here and try to care about our
problems all by ourselves. Like God actually is there and he does care about your problems and,
and he loves to provide for his kids. Uh, you know, even if, you know, even if you're somebody
who you're like my dad, you know, this is not my story, but like, if you're somebody who had a dad
who wasn't there for you.
God loves to be a father to the fatherless.
This is one of the things that he loves to do.
And so the other thing that I would say is
don't underestimate,
like leverage the resources that you have.
So if you're 21 years old and you're single,
the resource that you have that other people don't have
is you have your flexibility.
You have flexibility and you have time.
And so I met this, I had this young guy,
one of our pastors just basically encouraged the younger men in the church to reach out to older men
in the church and just basically try to get advice about, you know, just start to hear from where
they're coming from, kind of exactly what I was describing before. And so this guy, I think he's
21 or 23 years old, just came and just basically asked if we could get breakfast. And so we did.
And he just started asking me questions. And I just started asking him kind of where he was at.
Like I didn't want to just start talking, I didn't want to just start talking, giving him
advice without knowing his situation. And so he just proceeded to tell me that he's a young guy.
He's living at home, but he's paying rent. So he's got to pay for a car and he's got to pay for rent
and then obviously food and stuff like that. So what he's doing is he's working two jobs.
He's working one 40 hours a week working at a restaurant. It's not glamorous. He's trying to
move up and move up into management and get, which will result in a raise. And then on top of that,
when he gets off off work from that job, he goes over and works another job at a bar that's right
next door. And so he is basically looking at the situation. He's basically saying, hey, what I have
right now is free time. And so I'm going to maximize my free time. I'm going to do the really
hard thing that's not fun right now so that I'm in a better situation so that I can basically earn
money and then I can invest it. And so he's he's already me saving a good I think at least he's
saving a good chunk of the money that he's earning. And so he's, you know, investing in the stock
market and he's doing well there. And then he's also in bought Bitcoin and is doing great relative
to, you know, when relative to when he got in, how much he's been buying. So I would, you know,
just say, you know, coming up with a plan and then just having people go, like going to find people
who can just be an encouragement to you to just stick to the plan. Cause that's one of the things,
whether you're starting a business or whether you're, you know, just starting your life,
you know, it is just so easy to get discouraged when you don't have, you know, people who are,
you know, you're talking to every day, people who are reminding you of what's real and what's true
and, you know, what's good and people talking about horrible failures that they've had
that set them back financially, set them back in all kinds of ways. Like everyone has these stories.
It's real easy just to look at even these baby boomers and look at them like, oh, they've got
so much money in the easiest time in the history of mankind. All they had to do is basically be
monkeys and throw money at, at the stock market, S and P 500. And they're just millionaires. Uh,
it's like, there is some truth to that. And yet in many other cases, they, they weren't disciplined
enough and they had problems that, that kept them from doing stuff like that. So, um, you know,
even within a lot of the the good situations that people have they had horrible setbacks as well And so I just would encourage people on that front
Yeah. I want to piggyback on that and also the advice to the 21-year-old man.
Um, God's design for us is to be mentored and discipled by our own fathers. And I think that
that extends to, uh, career paths, skills, training, things like that. Not necessarily
that our dads should have like, uh, taught us every little skill that we end up using in our,
in whatever career we end up in. Um, but he's, our dad should kind of, they should have been like
the coach, the encourager, the mentor. And a lot of, a lot of us didn't have that. Like I had,
my dad was awesome, but he was, uh, he was not very entrepreneurial. And so I was a little bit
on my own when it came to like, just developing the skills that, that I needed to succeed. And,
And I was that super discouraged mid 20 something year old guy, literally, and I didn't have a vision.
I think that's a lot of another thing that parents aren't doing a very good job of in the last couple of decades is helping their like giving a vision for their kids and working with them to like encourage their, you know, their different skills and strengths.
And so a lot of times kids are coming out of high school with just literally no idea what in the world they're going to do with their life.
And I just want to encourage anyone out listening right now, just like find older, wiser guys in your church, especially those that are in somewhat similar situations that you might want to be in.
So, for example, if you're interested in business, for example, just any guy in your church.
And the other thing is the Lord can use anyone.
So just pray that God provides somebody that has the skills that you need and to reach out to them and see if they're up for getting coffee.
That's literally exactly what I did.
And God massively blessed that.
There was a guy, Chris Taylor, up in Portland.
He was a huge, huge blessing to me, him and another guy in our church.
I just started meeting with him and they were just kind of mentoring me.
And the other thing is, at that age, there's still so much immaturity and foolishness bound up in our hearts.
You need older guys just to be like, just to tell you no.
No, that's a bad idea.
No, just focus, focus, focus.
Just keep doing whatever.
Ryan, would you share your story of how much money you had in your bank account when you went and met with Chris and started doing your Craigslist hustle?
that's such a great story
dude like i don't know it's like 75 bucks or something like that
it was i was it was pretty it was a pretty wife and what three or four kids
it was yeah it was probably a couple kids at least
yeah it could have been three but yeah it was like
it was yeah it was it was a tough situation and i'd always wanted to go into business
and never had any training.
I went through public school,
so there was no training,
like business training or anything like that.
And so literally, unless you had a dad
or a friend who was a business person,
like how in the world were you supposed to learn
how to do anything with business?
And I remember meeting with them
and they're like, well, what do you want to do?
And I'm like, I have no idea.
Like, I just want to, I've always wanted,
I've been interested in business,
buying and selling things.
And they're like, well, what?
What do you want to buy and sell?
And I'm like, I don't know.
and uh craigslist had just uh become a thing and we were living in portland at the time
and i was like well i i i could buy and sell things on craigslist and and earn money from
it like okay well how are you going to do that and i'm like well i'll find good deals they're
like okay well how much do you need to make a day just to like the bare minimum just to pay
your bills i'm like well probably a hundred dollars a day and so these two guys chris and
what's his name?
Is it Paul?
No, it was Orth.
Oh, Jason.
Jason.
Yeah, yeah.
Chris and Jason.
They're like, okay.
All right.
Well, you buy and sell things every day
and email us at the end of the day
and tell us what you bought and sold
and how much you made.
And it was just like
just a little bit of accountability.
I had to tell him like
and at the end of the day
if I didn't make enough
they're like, dude, work harder.
Or like, work longer.
Like, and
And I just, dude, I was just hustling all day long, trying to, like, literally, I'd, like, buy a drill and then go sell it.
And anyways, that went on.
And then all of a sudden, I was like, I'd make $100.
Then $150, too.
And it kept going up.
And I started, like, specializing in things.
And I eventually got into used appliances.
And then it was, like, $300 and $400 and $500 and $600.
Like, I started making, like, really good money.
and and then i ended up like accidentally stumbling my way into a whole trade which is
learning how to fix appliances and then sell them and um yeah but it was just like the most
simple conversation and i can i can still picture it to this day like and it was the most profound
thing but yet it was just so simple there's okay then just do it just do that thing and then we're
gonna hold you accountable and so i sent them emails every day for six months and um and at the
end of it, like if you, like you can literally do anything. Like you can literally go out,
anybody listening right now, you're like just buy a weed eater and go out and spend all day
trying to get landscaping jobs. And I promise you after six months, you'll be doing very well.
Like it doesn't matter. Just work hard at whatever you do. Be consistent with it.
Trust the results of the Lord. And yeah, that, that, that accountability piece though is huge.
uh i just think like yeah it really is just such a big thing i mean because what was happening over
that six months is you were becoming a different person like you were you know you were being
disciplined in order to just think about these things like my my similar story is i when i was
in college uh my cousin was selling we were uh my cousin was my roommate in college or i think it was
my junior year and he is just he's one of my favorite people in the entire world he's one of
these guys where he just has always had a knack for business, always had a knack for investing.
Everything he touches just turns to Bitcoin. He's just one of these guys where he just has a mind
for him. And the other thing about him is that he literally brings everything to the Lord in prayer.
And so as it relates to investing, this is what he's just always done. He just prays about
everything. He's like, should I get this or not? And something that a lot of people would just be
like, Oh, God doesn't care about that. He just, you know, in this case he does, he does. And so
he was selling, uh, used books. Amazon was, you know, this is 2005 or something. So Amazon, uh,
was, was around. And so we, he just kind of told me what he was doing and he's like, Hey, if you
want to do this, like you're, you're more than welcome to do this. I didn't know anything about
business. I didn't know anything about, you know, starting my own business, whatever, but we just
started going out and buying books together. We had like a little scanner and we had, you know,
used our phones. And so we just would, you know, buy and sell these things. And again,
most of them were like, all right, you're going to make four or five bucks on this one,
or this one you're going to make 10, 12. But then you'd find one where you just would find a good
deal and you're like, oh my gosh, this textbook, I'm going to sell this and quadruple my money
off it. Holy cow. And so I did that, you know, graduated. And then when we first got married,
I did that within the first six months of being married.
I just started doing that on the side and ended up, again, making a couple grand a month
to where we had a young family.
We were able to live off of it.
Again, it wasn't glamorous.
There was no sure thing.
I look back on it now as somebody who's got a job and almost five kids, and I'm just like,
what was I thinking?
What in the world?
But the Lord used it and just used it to develop the right skills to just basically not be
afraid of the future, the present, whatever. I think that's a big part of it is like God is alive,
he's in the world, and he loves building us up. He loves developing character in us
and demonstrating to us that he's a kind father whose every idea that's ever been had,
that's turned into money, has its source in him. And so I think that's another thing,
is just like having the confidence to just go to the Lord earnestly in prayer and say,
Lord, I know every single good idea exists with you.
You could literally give me a trillion dollar idea and I could be,
I could find a check for a million dollars tomorrow.
Like there's a whole, I mean, there's so many absurd ways in which people have gotten,
you know, have gotten to a point, you know, where they have an idea
or they have businesses or whatever.
There's just so many ways.
And so just, you know, not being afraid.
I think that's one thing that I would be encouraging.
Just like take your fear to the Lord and just entrust it to him and he will honor that.
Amen.
So since we're sharing God's stories, so my quick God's story and provision.
And it's so funny hearing Ryan talk about how he needed to make $100 a day to pay his bills.
Oh, the simpler times.
It sounds like inflation adjusted today.
So probably 25 cents and the loaf of bread was a dime, right?
so we aren't as old we're not really that old right brian doesn't look old particularly i'm
i'm i'm look i look my age but um so when we bought our house in 2013 i was bringing in
$2,700 a month okay so we bought this house and and at the time it felt like a lot of money but
I won't even say how much it was.
It was very little bit compared to what this house would be now.
But I remember that first summer thinking, okay, I don't think I can pay all my bills and my mortgage.
They gave me this loan for this house, but money is so tight.
And my prayer had been, okay, God, and I'm serving as a missionary.
I want to be a witness for him.
And I just said, God, provide the house and whoever our neighbors are, I'll reach them.
and love them for Jesus.
And then within a couple months of being at our house,
I noticed these two Arabic guys across the street.
And I meet them.
They invite us over for a meal.
And next thing you know, they're saying to me,
and they're from the Arab world.
They're Muslims.
They're here to study English and go to university.
And they say to me,
we would love to have a Christian family to live with.
and I'm like, hmm, that's interesting.
Well, I know some Christian families with houses.
I'll see who I can talk to.
Kind of the Samaritan's man walk around the other side of the street.
Dude, it's the dumb and dumber scene.
You go down the road, there's a Christian living down the street.
You might find a cartoon somewhere else.
Who could use some extra income?
Yeah, and who has extra room in their house, right?
Who just bought a house.
and anyway so that I get I totally miss it I get home and I I talk to my wife I'm like
these guys they said the craziest thing they're like hey we want a Christian family to live with
isn't that weird that these like Arab Muslims is this post 9-11 Ash uh yeah actually okay that's
another funny story my first night with them it's like 2 a.m and we're drinking cokes uh and talking
and they asked me in their broken English,
I have a question for you.
What do you think about Osama bin Laden?
So they asked me that.
And I'm like, what?
I'm like, I should be asking you that question.
And they're like, oh, yes, he's very bad.
Very bad man.
We do not like this guy.
He gives Muslim a bad name.
So anyway, after my meeting, I go talk to my wife and I said, craziest thing.
They want a Christian family to live with.
And she goes, oh, we have room.
God bless my godly wife.
Of course, I had to move all my books out of my library in my office and move into the little furnace room.
But so within a month of me saying, I don't know how I want to pay my bills.
literally the Saudi government is paying me a thousand dollars a month to host two students in
my home and to share God's love with them yeah um so and they basically paid my mortgage for
like a few years yeah it's that's one of those situations where again yeah you never could have
seen it coming and but you know you were you just were able to you know just respond to the to the
opportunity and again there's a risk there like again like who are these guys what do they want
like you're you know but just the the lord provided an opportunity to just walk through yeah
well i mean don't take that as don't take that advice for every situation correct anyone who
listen i mean be very discerning here's what i said to them like i i said okay you can move in
for a week, if at the end of the week
I still like you and you still like me,
you can stay for a month.
If at the end of the month
I still like you and you still like me, you can
stay as long as you want. See, that's a great plan right there.
Yeah. And they
stayed a few years. And then they invited their
friends. And then their friends and the uncles and the
cousins. And yeah.
Well, that's awesome. Well, again, so
there's three stories we could
we'll probably share more in the future. But yeah,
that would be just the encouragement. It would just be, you know,
you're not alone. God
God knows, God understands, God sees the injustice of the situation that you're in. And he is jealous
and able to do things about it. We are coming up in the end of the episode here. We are super
grateful for you guys. End of episode 22. We're continuing just plugging along here. If you've
benefited from this episode, feel free, go like, subscribe on YouTube, leave us a review on Apple.
We're actually, I think we're up to like 25 reviews, maybe something.
I was encouraged by how many we had over there, maybe even more, 40, something.
But that's by far the best way to continue to spread the word about the podcast.
Ryan, Ash, appreciate you guys.
And we'll see you all in the next episode of To The Unknown Pod.
Thank you.