Podcasts about negotiate

Waiting for a better deal on your first home? October could give you more room to negotiate. A Redfin analysis identifies 16 major U.S. housing markets where October has historically offered buyers some of the best opportunities to negotiate a home purchase.In this live episode of The Educated HomeBuyer, Jeb Smith and Josh Lewis break down what that means for first-time homebuyers, why some sellers become more willing to negotiate, and how price reductions and seller concessions could help make buying a home more affordable.We discuss how to approach an offer, what to consider before asking a seller to cover closing costs, and how mortgage rates affect your monthly payment and purchasing power. If you're wondering whether now is a good time to buy a house, this conversation will help you understand what to look for in your local housing market and how to make a decision that fits your budget and goals.✅ Already know you're ready? Get 15 minutes of real clarity on what you can actually afford, what it costs to close, and exactly what to do next:Start your homebuying journey here✅ Not sure if you're ready to buy? Take the free 2-minute quiz and find out where you actually stand:Take the first-time homebuyer readiness quizConnect with Jeb Smith

Need more money? You're not alone. But instead of spending another hour talking about how expensive everything has become, let's talk about what we can actually DO about it.In this episode of Raw & Unscripted, Christopher Rausch, the No Excuses Coach, shares 10 practical ways to attack financial pressure from BOTH directions—spending less and creating additional income.We'll explore ways to audit and renegotiate expenses, challenge costly conveniences, rethink major expenses, turn unused possessions into cash, identify skills people may pay you for, create a simple side hustle, monetize resources you already have, and think differently about how you use your time.We'll also go beyond the obvious money-saving advice and explore one bigger question:Are you really out of options—or have you rejected some options because they're uncomfortable or inconvenient?You don't need to use every idea in this episode.You need ONE idea that gets you moving.Then take the challenge:Can you FIND $100 in the next seven days?Save it.Earn it.Negotiate it.Sell something.Or combine all four.It's time to stop focusing exclusively on what you can't control and start asking:What CAN I do about it?Become the ROCKSTAR of YOUR life.No Excuses – Only Results.Connect with Christopher:LinkedIn: Christopher Rausch on LinkedInInstagram: Christopher Rausch on InstagramTikTok: No Excuses Coach on TikTokChristopher's Linktree

Performance coach and professional brand strategist Erica Pearson shares actionable career advice for women seeking more senior, better-paying roles. She explains how to clarify your goals, strengthen your professional brand, use LinkedIn and networking strategically, position yourself effectively in interviews, address career gaps and imposter syndrome, and negotiate compensation with greater confidence. Find out more at ericapearson.com and connect on LinkedIn and YouTube.

⚖️ What Are the Best Ways to Negotiate a Divorce Agreement? | Los Angeles Divorce ⚖️ Negotiating a divorce agreement requires communication, preparation, and a clear understanding of the issues that need to be resolved. When spouses can discuss important topics such as property, finances, support, and parenting arrangements, they may be able to create agreements that reduce unnecessary conflict and help move the California divorce process forward.

What if asking for a pay raise isn't about being “difficult,” asking for a favor, or proving that you deserve more?It's about understanding your value, documenting your impact, and learning how to negotiate strategically.Welcome to Career Tuesday on The Grounded Bag Podcast, where we have honest conversations about careers, compensation, workplace culture, professional growth, and building a career that aligns with your value.In this episode, we're talking about what happens when underpayment becomes normalized, your performance increases but your compensation doesn't, and you find yourself wondering whether loyalty is actually costing you financially.

Join Keith, Terry, and Matthew live for a properties event on September 30th. Sign up here: GetRichEducation.com/MidSouth Keith Weinhold asks why so many people end up competing in the "Grind Olympics" of the traditional day job, and explains why separating income from time is key to building real wealth.  He then counts down the top five ways to give a rental property a raise by increasing its net operating income, and points to the lever investors most often overlook.  Keith also looks at what has happened to home prices during every major stock market crash since 1980, and shows why negotiating better financing terms can beat simply getting a lower purchase price.  He offers practical strategies for building cash flow, creating value and investing with more confidence in any market. Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/625 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text  FAMILY to 66866  Join Mid South Home Buyers' one-time, free live webinar featuring Keith Weinhold on September 30 at GetRichEducation.com/MidSouth to learn how Memphis' economic expansion could create new real estate investment opportunities, and have your questions answered in real time. Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com  Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:01   Welcome to GRE. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Does your day job have you competing in the Grind Olympics? It's something that you never signed up for, and the top five ways to increase your rental property's income. Then, when stocks crash, what happens to real estate? You'll see historically today on Get Rich Education. What if I told you that one of America's strongest cash flow real estate markets is also becoming the new brains and brawn behind AI? That city is Memphis, believe it or not. In September 30th, we're going to show you why the smart money is paying attention now, along with an investing opportunity you won't want to miss. Join me, Terry Kerr and Matthew Van Horn of Mid South Homebuyers, the largest turnkey company in Memphis with more than 6000 homes under management, for a free live webinar the likes of which I've never done before. We're going to look at what billions in new investment could mean for jobs, housing demand, neighborhood appreciation, and your portfolio. Everyone who attends live will also get exclusive access to the best deal terms Mid South has ever offered. Reserve your free seat at getricheducation.com/midsouth again. that september 30. Don't say we didn't tell you. Save your spot at getricheducation.com/midsouth.   Speaker 1  1:34   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.   Keith Weinhold  1:50   Welcome to GRE from Wheeling, West Virginia, to Whiting, Indiana, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to Get Rich Education. Before I get into basically giving your rental property a raise with the top five ways to increase its income, first let's get the context of pulling back and understanding your compelling why for all of this. You may or may not like investment property itself-it's more likely rather that you love what it does for you. That's how it is for me. What do most people do? It's like they're training for the Grind Olympics. Are you doing this too? But you don't remember signing up? I mean, that's kind of what the day job is, society's vortex gradually pulls you into it. The investment property is what gradually tilts you out of it, or it gives you that option. For so many, the day job, it's sort of like this competition that really no one officially announces it yet. Millions enter it. Who can work the longest hours? Who can answer the most emails? Who can miss the most family dinners? Who can delay their life the longest? And at the end of it all, something we call retirement. If you're a winner, not a loser. The winner, you receive a gold-colored watch, lukewarm sheet cake, and a little party at age 65, and that's assuming that the finish line hasn't been moved to 70.   Keith Weinhold  3:40   This is especially bad and prevalent in the United States, where you start out with just two weeks vacation. That's about the worst grind in the developed world. I really myself started questioning this lifestyle when I was a teenager, and this is because my older friends, sort of those that were getting into their late teens, they were relatable to me, and they started going down this path and telling me about it. And suddenly, they couldn't play baseball or tennis with me during the day because they started working during their summers. Now that's not so bad in itself, but stay with me. I also looked at the adults around me and noticed that most traded the majority of their waking hours for work that they didn't even like. Now, my dad was a good worker. He worked 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. faithfully Monday to Friday, and despite being a good worker, he certainly didn't love his job. As a teen, then I found it confounding that so many people were working Monday through Friday, primarily why, primarily to reach the weekend. Wednesday was celebrated as. Day, this sort of strange admission that the work week was something to climb over and survive. You're surrendering 50 weeks to earn two weeks of vacation. You're repeating that very bargain for 40 years and hoping you still have enough money, energy, and health to enjoy retirement. And what puzzled me most was where this was happening. We are not some impoverished nation with paltry resources and limited opportunity. This is the United States, the most powerful and perhaps the most prosperous nation in the world.   Keith Weinhold  5:40   This is the part that I still can't work out in my head. Almost everybody falls into a narrow, rigid groove and grinds. Eventually, the groove becomes a rut. Then the rut gets a job title and a dental plan. Many even form their identity around this. Fear is the number one motivator that gets employees to show up at work. So then, do most people lead fear-based lives? It's almost insane. Sheesh! We have skyscrapers, interstate highways, world-class universities, abundant natural resources, advantageous geography, rule of law. We've got vast capital markets. We've got technology that sent people to the moon before I was born. Endless possibilities, but yet the standard life plan is to spend our most vivacious years doing something that we didn't even want to do. What a paradox! How could a nation create so much wealth while so many people have such little control over their own time? Even then, as a teenager, I remember thinking, "Gosh, there has got to be a better way than this system somehow. I didn't yet know the way, so I started going to college at age 18.   Keith Weinhold  7:16   But this path put me on that same trajectory of get good grades, land a job, max up my 401k, which would reduce my salary, and work for four decades, and then cross my fingers and just somehow hope that promotions, inflation, taxes, a stock market that I couldn't control, and life itself would cooperate. I mean, that plan could kind of work, but your time is still doing most of the work. Your employer rents your time usually one hour at a time, and if you stop supplying the hours, then soon enough your income stops too. Capital compound. labor doesn't. The better path is to gradually separate your income from your time. That's what I began doing when, while I was working full time, I bought my first income-producing rental property a few years later, a few years after college, in fact, doing that on the side, divergent, black sheep. I was stepping out of the groove. Now I own an asset that created leverage and income, whether I'm working, sleeping, camping, climbing a mountain, or spending time with my family. So the goal then it's not to avoid hard work entirely. I mean, meaningful work that can even provide some purpose and achievement and pride. But what provides wealth? What are you going to do for that? Wealth is what happens when you're not working. Wealth is what happens when you're sleeping. Labor produces income. Assets create wealth. Grinding should be a season, even your contribution to society, but not your primarily financial strategy. So the bottom line is that we don't want to win the grind Olympics, income-producing assets help us build a life that we don't have to postpone. The entire conventional life plan, the whole thing, just never felt right to me. Intuitively and rationally, deep down, you know, think to yourself: Doesn't at least some part of you feel that way too? Thank God that I found real estate. I don't love it. I love what it does for me. You've got to love what it does for you.   Keith Weinhold  9:54   One attribute that your income property gives you is control. So. With that in mind, I put together the top five ways to increase your rental property income countdown style from number five to number one. Since you do own an asset that you can control, so we're talking about giving your rental property a raise here, and you know your property does not even need to appreciate in order for you to make it more valuable, your property doesn't need to sit around waiting for the market to appreciate like it's waiting for a promotion from corporate or something, which always takes too long. You can manufacture more income yourself. So net operating income or NOI, it only has two moving parts. It is property income minus operating expenses. Push income up or pull expenses down, and you've effectively given yourself a raise. Better yet, on an income-valued property like a five-plus unit apartment building, every additional dollar of NOI can create far more than $1 of property value. So here are the top five ways to increase your property's income.   Keith Weinhold  11:10   The fifth best way is to add ancillary income, because monthly rent it's not the only asset inside your property. Now, depending on what property type you have and what the local laws are, you can charge for pets, parking, storage, laundry, furnishings. You can charge for internet packages, utility reimbursement, reserved garages, upgraded amenities, or you can even charge in some cases for application, administrative, or lease break fees. The best ancillary income it provides something that the resident genuinely values. We're here to serve and give value to others. Importantly, it should feel like an option for your tenant with these things, not some toll booth placed between the tenant and their front door. We know how annoying it is to have a tip screen swung around and placed in your face. Even an additional 25 or $50 per unit each month that can become meaningful across several properties. The fourth best way is to cut your controllable operating expenses, and you know what most investors do, and it is easy to fall into this, and I certainly have too at times. You know, most investors they carefully negotiate the property's purchase price at the beginning, and then they spend years casually accepting every recurring bill, audit your expenses rather than just accepting last year's cost plus inflation.   Keith Weinhold  12:49   So closely look at your property management fees, landscaping and snow removal, pest control, cleaning, trash service, water consumption, and any leaks that you might have. Common area electricity, repair labor and material markups, service contracts, and preventive maintenance. Gosh, I really lost a lot of money in pest control one time when the pest would just move from one apartment unit to the other, and we just couldn't get it trapped or stopped. Loyalty is admirable in marriage. It is less compelling when your landscaping company raises its price 14% every year. So solicit competing bids, consolidate your vendors where you can, install efficient fixtures where the payback period makes sense and where the break-even math works. But now, don't confuse expense reduction with maintenance neglect.   Keith Weinhold  13:53   That is one danger. So you know, if you delay a $300 repair until it becomes a $3,000 emergency, well, that really doesn't increase your NOI. It merely makes this month's numbers lie. Now, as I tell you about this list, you might think sometimes, "Oh, I've heard of that one before. Okay, but yeah, are you actually doing it? The third best way to increase your property's income is to challenge taxes and shop insurance because property taxes and insurance they are really among your property's largest operating expenses. So therefore, if you get good at this, you can both increase your net income and you will have gained a new skill that you can apply later and elsewhere. Yet you know a lot of owners they treat property tax and insurance sort of like the weather. They complain about them and then they just assume that nothing can be done. Possible moves that you can make are appealing in excessive property tax assessment, correct inaccurate property records. You can compare insurance carriers as often as annually. Adjust your deductibles when it's appropriate. Be sure you remove redundant coverage. Make sure that there's no overlap there. You can add safety or resilience improvements that qualify for insurance discounts, and then at the same time, sometimes that improves your property's value. You can check the property's classification and claims history for any errors there. So you know every legitimate dollar saved that flows directly into your NOI, your net operating income. Remember, mortgage payments though they do not factor into NOI. Neither do major capital expenditures. Refinancing can improve your cash flow, but that does not increase the property's NOI, and that's what we're talking about today. But when it comes to property tax appeals, you remember a while back on the show, perhaps a year ago, I went into detail on just how you can do that.   Keith Weinhold  16:00   Now we're up to number two. The second best way to increase your NOI is to raise rents intelligently, and really this is the most obvious strategy. But it isn't as simple as typing a larger number into your renewal letter and then just sort of hoping that your tenant doesn't notice. Bring rents closer to market without automatically chasing the absolute maximum. That can include gradual increases at renewal, premiums for upgraded units. How about a premium for the unit with the best view? If you have one of those, higher rent for furnished units, appropriate charges for garages or shorter lease terms. I mean, shorter lease terms, like a six month instead of a 12 month, that can get you a bump up in the rent. Be sure to eliminate any unnecessary concessions, like the first month's rent is free. Do you really have to continue to do that? And use better listing photos and copy to support higher rents. It's easy to have AI write some good snappy copy for you today. So the objective here is economic occupancy, not merely the highest advertised rent, because raising the rent $100, if that's going to create an extra month of vacancy that is stepping over dollars to pick up dimes. Know the market, understand the tenant, and make increases that improve NOI rather than merely improving the asking price for the REM. And the top way, the number one way to increase NOI is reduce vacancy and turnover. Yes, you might have heard that before, but it is still the most overlooked NOI lever, even though it's number one. An occupied unit at a sensible rent that often produces more income than an overpriced empty one.   Keith Weinhold  17:58   The way to improve your occupancy is by you starting renewal conversations 60 to 90 days before that lease comes due. Respond quickly to maintenance requests. I mean, few things frustrate a tenant more than a ceiling that is leaked for a month. Pre-market an upcoming vacancy that you have. Start that process early. Complete your turns faster, screen residents carefully, and unless you're in an especially hot market, consider offering renewal incentives when turnover would cost you substantially more than doing that. So there are a bunch of ideas for reducing vacancy and turnover. Another one, more of a modern-day one, is for you to buy and operate new build property because tenants tend to stay in new builds longer. They love that feeling that no one has ever lived there before. Suppose a unit rents for $1,800 a month. All right. Well, then one vacant month costs you $1,800 before cleaning, repairs, utilities, advertising, and leasing expenses. So the true cost of that turnover could easily be three or $4,000. And when you consider that, then giving a good resident a $250 one time renewal incentive that doesn't look generous that looks profitable for you. Keeping a responsible tenant, you know that might be the biggest quote unquote rent increase available. Just simply keeping a responsible tenant because occupied properties produce income, and empty properties produce invoices.   Keith Weinhold  19:48   Now that I've told you about the five ways to increase your property's income, let me give you some more motivation for this. It's about how $250 can become 50. $1,000. Suppose you select just a few of these five improvements, and say that that increases your NOI by just $250 per month. Okay, that's nice. That's cash in your pocket, and if you happen to apply it to a five-plus unit apartment building, since it's also valued on NOI. You take 250 bucks times 12. That is $3,000 a year at a 6% capitalization rate. Take 3000 divided by point 06. That is $50,000. You just created 50k of additional property value from only $250 of monthly NOI creation. Yeah, you are up 50k now, and here's the thing: you did not do anything that substantial. It's not like you added another story to a property, or you discovered oil underneath your parking lot, or you convinced a celebrity to move in. Okay, these are practical things that you can do in control. You simply operated the property better, and this forced appreciation relationship that applies most directly, though, to commercial and larger multifamily properties because those are the types that are valued based upon their income. A single-family rental or a duplex or a fourplex that is generally appraised primarily through comparable sales. So its higher NOI might not immediately produce the same increase in appraised value, but in either case, higher NOI it still means more cash flow for you, a stronger financial cushion, and a better performing investment. The bottom line here is that you can wait for the market to increase your property's value, or you can operate the property better and create value yourself, raise income, control expenses, and keep good residents. That is how you improve NOI without increasing your blood pressure.   Keith Weinhold  22:10   Coming up on the next few shows, we're going to speak with the original co-author of the book Rich Dad Poor Dad. Yes, we had Robert Kiyosaki on here earlier this year, but we're going to talk with the co-author alongside Robert Kiyosaki. A lot of people don't know who that is. That is going to be interesting on another upcoming episode. The man that wrote the book on the 8020 rule called the Pareto principle, he will be here. That's where 80% of the results come from. 20% of the effort. So here on GRE, there's a lot of education, strategy, and mindset coming up straight ahead today. When stocks crash, what happens to real estate? That's next. I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to Get Rich Education. Let me ask you something: If you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals. A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. In full disclosure, I'm an investor myself.   Keith Weinhold  23:27   What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed. But with a track record of consistent, on-time investor payouts-they built real credibility. Go to freedomfamilyinvestments.com to book a clarity call, or text family to 66866. That's family to 66866. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine. You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056. They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge while it's on your mind. Start at ridgelendinggroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com.   Kirsten Tate  24:31   This is author Kristen Tate. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold, and don't quit your daydream.   Keith Weinhold  24:49   Welcome back to Get Rich Education. I'm your host Keith Weinhold, and this is episode 625. AI songs are becoming more popular. Fortunately. AI podcast hosts-they really aren't that much of a thing yet, or else I might not be here. Thank goodness that listeners still want to hear from a real person. When stocks crash, what happens to home prices? Since 1980, there have been 10 or more major stock downturns. Guess how many of those cause national home prices to crash? Exactly zero. Now there was one pretty enormous housing decline, but that one started in housing. And what happens next? It reveals something that every real estate investor should understand a lot like real estate right now. Stocks are hovering near their all-time highs. Okay, both major assets, real estate and stocks, bumping up against all-time highs. There is a predictable rhythm about what happens to real estate when stocks crash. Now, when we look at stocks' seven big downturns that occurred just this century, as measured by the S&P 500, you know, first a lot of people think that stocks are overvalued here in the late 2020s. That is based on measures like the historic P/E ratio, the Shiller cape ratio, and the Buffett indicator. I mean, some investors are just disillusioned by how stocks' movement makes so little sense anymore. For example, when the latest labor number showed that 162,000 jobs were added in a month. That tripled expectations. I mean, people should have been like, "Hey, go USA! This is great. People are employed. All that. Nope. The stock market fell specifically in response to that. Why? Because strong employment increases the chances of higher interest rates, and sure enough, the Fed did then raise rates.   Keith Weinhold  27:09   Oh, geez, what? So a labor market collapse is then bad for America, and that's good for stocks. Yes, that is how it works. That is just stupid. So, with that context in mind, let's see what actually happened to national home prices this century during all the major stock market downturns that were not caused by housing, and then we'll get back to housings. Okay, during the dot-com bust in 9/11, that whole period about 25 years ago, stocks again. This is all per the S and p5 100 crashed 49% Home prices were up 23% during that time. We'll get back to the global financial crisis shortly. During the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, do you even remember that stocks went down 19 percent. Home prices went down just slightly, 1 percent. During the 2018 Fed tightening and trade war sell-off, stocks were down 20 percent, a classic bear market. Home prices were up 1 percent. Then came COVID. In barely a month, stocks plunged a jaw-dropping 34% This was in 2020. It was like a flash crash. What happened to home prices then? They were up 1% just a little. So, are you beginning to see a pattern, or perhaps a lack of one here during 2022's inflation peak and Fed tightening bear market stocks fell 25 percent. Home prices they were up 4% during that time period, and then during the 2025 tariff sell-off, you might remember Trump called that Liberation Day. Stocks were down 19 percent. Home prices. were essentially unchanged.   Keith Weinhold  29:06   All right, so there they were: six major stock market downturns this century, not one housing crash. All right, now let's turn the telescope around because 2008 was different since the crash was real estate induced, and it is the only time in the life of you or I or anyone alive today, even a 90-year-old, where national home prices took a significant fall. In fact, they were down 27 percent, and it took them a few years to fall that much. All right. Well, what did stocks do during this period? They fell even more, down 57% more than twice as much, 57% I mean, just imagine having a million-dollar stock portfolio and seeing its value cave in, down to 430k from a million. Okay, that's what really happened march 6, 2009, when the S and P hit its global financial crisis low, and that happened over a 17 month stock collapse. Okay, so what's really the summary? It is that in the six times that stocks led a price crash this century. Real estate held up, or it rose, and the one time real estate led the crash, stocks fell more than twice as much.   Keith Weinhold  30:31   It was 27 %versus 57%. All right. Well, that is what's happened this century. But you know this cause and effect relationship or lack thereof, that didn't just begin happening in 2000. When we stretch the history back to 1980, which is Jimmy Carter, almost Ronald Reagan era days, stocks had four more big downturns. We had the Volcker Bear Market, the famous 1987 Black Monday stock market crash, the Gulf War sell-off, and the LTCM crisis. During those four stock crashes, home prices also either stayed resilient or they rose. All right. Well, all of this is because homes and stocks, you know, they just aren't connected by some push and pull relationship. Stocks reprice in seconds. Fear spreads. Algorithms sell, and billions of dollars can disappear before lunch. Instead, housing moves more like a cargo ship that you're trying to turn around in the Mississippi River, it can take a long time. Housing transactions take months. Prices depend on local supply and local incomes, and mortgage availability, and whether homeowners are actually forced to sell. Housing provides something that every human actually needs and cannot be easily disrupted by AI. I mean, AI still cannot download a three-bedroom house onto a vacant lot. And of course, during any stock crash, what else happens with real estate? Your rent just keeps coming in as well. So the bottom line here is we're learning from history rather than having a hunch again. Home prices don't react to stock market crashes. Stock crashes and housing downturns are different events.   Keith Weinhold  32:32   A falling stock market it can eventually weaken consumer confidence. In in a severe recession, some of that can trickle in and affect housing, but history shows that a stock crash alone has not caused national home prices to fall. When stocks scream, real estate just kind of shrugs. Now, as we get back to talking about today, with real estate being cash flow challenged, you usually need a deal in order to make the numbers work. And as we know, for more than two years now, it has been wise to buy new build property and have that home builder buy down your mortgage rate rather than getting a property price discount. And do you realize that it actually works out better for you in almost every case for you to get your rate bought down than it is to get a discount. Yeah, it is often substantially better. Let's just think about an example. Say you're putting a 20% down payment on a 300k property at a seven and a half percent mortgage rate. Okay, let's compare your seller discounting the purchase price by 20k versus them instead using 20k to buy down your mortgage rate. All right, in the first scenario, let's call it then a purchase price reduction. The seller reduces it from 300k down to 280k. Your monthly payment would be 1566 $1,566. All right. Well, then your monthly savings from the price discount would be $112. You would also need 4k less for the down payment. Okay, 112 bucks a month is helpful to you.   Keith Weinhold  34:18   That might buy you dinner for two at the Olive Garden or something, at a wildly overpriced airport convenience store. By the way, this is a bottle of water and one almond, 112 bucks. Okay, but now let's compare it with the second option. If instead of a price discount, you pay the full 300k and use the 20k as a seller credit, a credit from the seller, and you use that to permanently buy the mortgage rate from seven and a half down to five and a half percent. In this case, even though it's a larger amount financed, your monthly payment is no longer 1566. It's just 1363, so your monthly savings is no longer 112 bucks. That Olive Garden dinner for two, it is 315 bucks. So therefore, using the seller credit instead of reducing the purchase price that ups your monthly cash flow by about 203 bucks. All right, and this was just an illustration. It's not a universal lender rate sheet carved into a stone tablet. But the larger lesson remains. Okay, terms are often more important than price. Negotiate the financing. That is the lesson. And of course, you can try to use this most anywhere with any seller, but it's been especially popular with American home builders for two plus years now.   Keith Weinhold  35:47   The bottom line is that the best deal isn't always the property with the lowest price; it is the one with the best financing, and it's one of the strategies that Mid South Homebuyers is going to offer on Wednesday night's webinar just two days away, and there's no negotiation needed. They are offering this, and it's where I'm going to be appearing live, and you're invited to join us from the comfort of your home or a coffee shop or wherever you are. So we're talking about properties in Memphis, Little Rock, and North Texas. New build properties for as little as about 200k, and some fully renovated resale properties for as little as 150k, and even less than that. Now, low price isn't reason enough to own an income property, but it's the fact that you get a strong rent in a stable market to support that, and they're offering what they call their triple five terms. They'll buy your mortgage rate down into the fives and provide property management for just a 5% fee for five years. And I just learned that for attendees of Wednesday night's event, they will even announce a promo code there, and you will get triple five terms for life on both financed and cash deals.   Keith Weinhold  37:12   And you know, I've got to say that when I began in real estate investing, I wish that any of this would have existed. Like when I began, I wish there even would have been new build property available. They just didn't even have that for income property when I started out. And the fact that it's managed for you from day one, I didn't know about that when I started out. I thought I had to invest only in my home market and then manage it myself. And here you get investor advantaged geographic markets, and then if that's not enough, you get that rate buy down into the fives and property management costs. It's basically cut in half to help improve your property's cash flow, and you can almost think of this as lifetime cash flow. You get to control a sustainable business model that's resistant to AI disruption, and yeah, it's sustainable. I mean, people will pay you to live there. That has happened for centuries. It's sort of the opposite of a cryptocurrency that will not exist in two years. It happens Wednesday night. You'll get to see me live along with the renowned providers from Mid South Homebuyers and their properties and their generous incentives and all the new AI investment that's acting as a tailwind coming into Memphis. Registration is free at getricheducation.com/midsouth. It's 8p.m. Eastern on Wednesday night. I'll see you there, getricheduceducation.com/midsouth. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.   Speaker 2  38:57   Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal, or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial, or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Get Rich Education LLC exclusively.    Keith Weinhold  39:25   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Getricheduceducation.com  

In This Episode Erin and Weer'd discuss: a rabbi suing Maryland for violating his 1st, 2nd, and 14th Amendment rights; the DOJ in a showdown with Wisconsin over their purchase permit system; the DOJ suspending prosecution on pistol buyers 18-20 years old; the gun prohibitionists butthurt that Trump is relaxing restrictions on NFA items; Glock suing Connecticut for banning Glocks; and the Philippines want to search the homes of gun owners to verity their compliance with firearm storage laws. Xander gives us his Independent Thoughts on surviving a convention; and David gives us his 223rd segment to talk about the .223 Remington cartridge. Did you know that we have a Patreon? Join now for the low, low cost of $4/month (that's $1/podcast) and you'll get to listen to our podcast on Friday instead of Mondays, as well as patron-only content like mag dump episodes, our hilarious blooper reels and film tracks. Main Topic Synagogue Scores Early Win Against Maryland County's Gun Restrictions DOJ Gives Minnesota Until Sept. 23 to Negotiate or Face a Federal Suit Over 30-Day Handgun Purchase Waits That Stretch to Nearly 60 Handgun Sales to Adults 18 to 20 Are Constitutional, Says Trump DOJ Trump Tells DOJ to Back Off Case Making Getting the Worst Guns Easier GLOCK Sues Connecticut Over Its "Vague, Ambiguous and Unclear" Convertible Pistol Ban Law Philippine Government Wants to Inspect Gun Owners' Homes Independent Thoughts Walker's Shooting Training Protection 29 DB Omni-Directional Microphone Rope Hearing Enhancer Earbuds Walker's Lightweight Rechargeable Shooting Hunting Razor XV 3.0 Gun Lovers and other Strangers SCHV .222 Remington .222 Remington Magnum .223 Remington 5.56×45mm NATO .223 Wylde Chamber General Curtis LeMay Remington Model 760 Gamemaster SAAMI Again and Again Brena Bock Author Page David Bock Author Page Team And More  

How much do you compare prices or negotiate when buying an airline ticket? - तपाईँ टिकट किन्दा कत्तिको मोलतोल वा ‘प्राइस कम्पेर' गर्नुहुन्छ?The annual World Tourism Day falls on Sunday, 27 September.SBS Nepali recently spoke to Melbourne-based travel agent and tour operator Bhim Neupane about opportunities and challenges facing the tourism industry.Neupane also reflected on his 18-year journey in the travel business, insights into how customers compare and negotiate airfares and the impact of the conflict in the Middle East on the travel sector.Disclaimer: We would like to inform you that the views expressed in this conversation are solely those of the speaker, and SBS neither endorses nor opposes these views. The information provided in this segment is of general nature. This information may not be appropriate for you - please contact your travel agent for accurate advice on your situation.Subscribe to the SBS Nepali podcast here.You can listen to SBS Nepali's live broadcast every Tuesday and Thursday at 2 pm via SBS South Asian on digital radio, on television channel 305, through the SBS Audio app, on SBS On Demand, or via our website.You can also follow SBS Nepali on social media: Facebook, Instagram and X (@SBS Nepali).#sbsaudiopodcast - हरेक वर्ष २७ सेप्टेम्बरलाई विश्व पर्यटन दिवसको रुपमा मनाउने गरिन्छ।यसै अवसरमा, मेलबर्नस्थित एकजना नेपाली पृष्ठभूमिका ट्राभल एजेन्ट तथा टुर अपरेटर भीम न्यौपानेसँग केही समय अगि एसबीएस नेपालीले गरेको कुराकानी सुन्नुहोस्।विश्वभरका मानिसलाई जोड्ने पर्यटन क्षेत्रका अवसर र चुनौती लगायत उनको १८ वर्ष पुगेको यात्रा सम्बन्धी व्यवसाय, ग्राहकहरूले प्लेनको टिकट किन्दा गर्ने मोल-मलाई अनि पछिल्लो समय मध्यपूर्वमा चर्किएको द्वन्द्वले पारेको प्रभावबारे न्यौपानेले बताएका छन्।नोट: हामी तपाईँलाई जानकारी गराउन चाहन्छौँ कि यस कुराकानीमा व्यक्त गरिएका विचारहरू वक्ता स्वयम्‌का हुन् र यी विचारहरू प्रति एसबीएसको समर्थन वा विरोध छैन। साथै, यस शृङ्खलामा व्यक्त गरिएका विचारहरू साधारण प्रकारका रहेका छन्। तपाईँको लागि उक्त जानकारी उपयुक्त नहुन पनि सक्छ - आफ्नो परिस्थितिबारे स्पष्ट सल्लाहको लागि आफ्नो ट्राभल एजेन्टलाई सम्पर्क गर्नुहोस्।हाम्रा थप अडियो प्रस्तुतिहरू पोडकास्टका रूपमा उपलब्ध छन्। यो नि:शुल्क सेवा प्रयोग गर्न तपाईंले आफ्नो नाम दर्ता गर्नु पर्दैन। पोडकास्टमा सामाग्री उपलब्ध हुनासाथ सुन्न यहाँ थिच्नुहोस्।एसबीएस नेपालीको प्रत्यक्ष प्रसारण हरेक मङ्गलवार र बिहीवार दिउँसो २ बजे SBS South Asian मा डिजिटल रेडियोमार्फत, आफ्नो टेलिभिजनको च्यानल ३०५ मा, SBS Audio एपमार्फत, SBS On Demand मा वा हाम्रो वेबसाइटबाट सुन्न सक्नुहुन्छ। साथै हामी सोसल मिडिया प्लेटफर्महरू फेसबुक, इन्स्टाग्राम र एक्स मा पनि रहेका छौं SBS Nepali का नाममा।#sbsaudiopodcast

Twenty years before M&A Science existed, Kison Patel learned how to spot a deal from a real estate developer named Jerry Cedicci. This episode tells Jerry's story: orphaned in France at age 7, he arrived in Chicago in 1981, speaking no English. He would go on to turn a French bakery counter into a real estate portfolio worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Jerry opened his first Café Croissant on Walton Street in Chicago with a baker he'd hired sight unseen. What he lacked in market research, he more than made up for with conviction. The store did $1,500 on day one against a $450 target, then $60,000 in its first month.  He used that cash flow to negotiate an option to buy his landlord's building and, ten years later, closed on it for $10 million. From there, Jerry moved fully into real estate: rehabbing a derelict meatpacking building into condos, buying a struggling nightclub through his accountant, and converting a single-room-occupancy hotel into a five-star property he sold for $24 million.  What you'll learn Build conviction before you have proof. Jerry opened his first bakery with no market research and no baker, just a read on the neighborhood and a willingness to bet on it. Turn early cash flow into structural rights, not just better terms. He used his bakery's daily revenue to negotiate a 10-year option to buy his landlord's building outright, thinking well beyond lower rent. Buy the operator and the asset separately. When Jerry wanted a meatpacking building, he priced the business and the real estate as two separate offers and kept the owner on the payroll for six months to protect the operation while he refinanced. Get a rejected loan explained line by line. After a bank turned him down, Jerry asked exactly why, then rebuilt his pitch for the next lender (and got the loan). Scout a one-mile radius around your best location. He used a one-mile radius around his top-performing bakery to find the derelict building that became his first ground-up development project. Negotiate the deal you want, not the one on offer. A landlord's refusal became a lease with better terms and an option to buy the building for a fraction of its appraised value. --- Turn what you heard into a repeatable M&A practice. Explore the Buyer-Led M&A™ Certification for practical frameworks, tools, and decision-making habits you can apply on your next deal.

Never Settle by Attia Qureshi: Learn practical persuasion and negotiation skills to help you confidently ask for what you want - https://amzn.to/46hLVFN (Amazon affiliate) Asking for a raise can feel uncomfortable, but avoiding the conversation could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars over your career. In this episode, we sit down with negotiation expert and Never Settle author Attia Qureshi to learn how to confidently ask for a raise at work. We discuss why so many of us struggle to talk about money, how to research what we're worth, and why preparation can make us more confident negotiators. Attia also walks us through what to say during the conversation, why we shouldn't negotiate against ourselves, and how to turn "no" into "not yet." Plus, we explore why negotiation isn't about winning at someone else's expense. Done well, it can create more value for everyone involved. RESOURCES: Attia Qureshi – Learn more about Attia, Never Settle, and her negotiation resources. MKM RESOURCES: Own Your Time – Discover 10 financial steps to put your family first and escape the corporate grind. MKM Coaching – Get 1-on-1 support with your family finance journey. Coast FIRE Calculator – Find out when you can slow down or stop investing for retirement. Mortgage Payoff Calculator – See how quickly you could become mortgage free. Marriage Kids and Money on YouTube – Subscribe to watch our latest videos and interviews. CREDITS: Editor: Johnny Sohl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, President Trump has repeated his threats to “annihilate” Iran in a speech at the UN General Assembly. In a very broad speech covered Iran, Cuba, AI and the midterm US elections. And, he again clashed with reporters following a major dispute with US TV networks. Adam unpacks it all with the BBC's chief Washington presenter, Caitríona Perry.And, Ed Davey has told the Lib Dem conference they would cut income tax and rejoin the EU single market if they win the next general election. Ahead of his speech Adam spoke to the deputy leader Daisy Cooper. You can now listen to Newscast on a smart speaker. If you want to listen, just say "Ask BBC Sounds to play Newscast”. It works on most smart speakers. You can join our Newscast online community here: https://bbc.in/newscastdiscordGet in touch with Newscast by emailing newscast@bbc.co.uk or send us a WhatsApp on +44 0330 123 9480.New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bbc.in/4guXgXd Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. The presenter was Adam Fleming. It was made by Jack Maclaren with Shiler Mahmoudi, Cordelia Hemming and Anna Harris. The social producer was. The technical producer was Dafydd Evans. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

I'm back - and I'm officially a married woman! Between wedding planning, I took a little break from the mic. Now I'm hitting record because I'm fired up about one moment that's quietly capping your income, your relationships, and your opportunities, and I can't wait to finally name it for you. In this solo episode, I introduce a concept I've been developing for months and I walk you through how it shows up when you quote a price, ask for a raise, or set a boundary, plus why it has nothing to do with your value, your confidence, or your sales skills. I also get real about why I think leaning on AI chatbots for instant validation is making it harder to hold your own when a real human doesn't respond the way you hoped, and what real confidence actually looks like.  If this episode lit something up for you, enrollment is open for Success Prodigy, my four-month program built on four pillars: mindset, wealth consciousness, communication, and negotiation. You'll get live monthly trainings, live support on your real conversations and real numbers, workbooks, guides, and a community of people doing this work together. The founding rate is $1,000 for the full four months, and it's yours if you join before we start on October 1st. Click here to join Success Prodigy. Have you been feeling called to the world of fashion but aren't sure how to turn that passion into a paycheck, I've created a path just for you. Whether you're at the very beginning and need the fundamentals in Stylist School, ready to build your legal and marketing foundation with Business of Style, or looking for high-level community and up-to-date industry guides in our membership, Stylist Society, there is a place for you here. I'm obsessed with helping you get there bigger and faster than I did, because your art is worthy of massive compensation! To find the right fit for your current business stage and join our community of stylists, visit katetaylorstylist.com to get started.  Before you go, what are your thoughts on this episode? You can send a DM or tag us on Instagram, @katetaylorstylist, or contact us through our podcast website at www.thekatetaylorpodcast.com. We would also be so happy if you left us a review with your thoughts on Apple Podcasts - I read and cherish every single one! What We Cover In This Episode:  Why I've been away (hello, wedding planning!) and the one moment that's capping your income, relationships, and opportunities [1:14] The scenario that makes you negotiate against yourself that you absolutely need to be aware of [5:13] Why this isn't a value problem or a sales problem, it's a "moment problem," and how I define the drop point [7:07] Why the drop point happens internally, before you ever concede, and the reasons that highly successful, capable people still have one [10:10] The difference between knowing your value and holding it when someone doesn't validate you right away, and why I think over-relying on AI chatbots is weakening that skill [14:41] A $15,000 offer example that shows how we assign meaning to silence, and why you should never negotiate against information you don't have [15:40] The simple three-step tool for the next time you feel the urge to concede, plus the reminder that your discomfort is not an emergency [19:11] The exact questions to ask instead of assuming what someone's silence means, and how to make your next move on purpose instead of by reflex [20:43] How to find your own drop point by asking what happened immediately before you gave something away [25:16] Why the drop point isn't just a money problem and how getting what you want is a skill set, not luck [26:21] What real confidence looks like, and why "I know this will go my way" isn't it [35:54] Introducing Success Prodigy and how you can be a part of it for a special founding rate when it starts October 1st  [42:21] Links & Resources:  Enroll in Success Prodigy Now for a Special Founder's Rate (Starts October 1st)  Special Moments From Codi and I's Wedding!  

Today's top stories, with context, in just 15 minutes.On today's podcast:1) Chinese and US officials discussed artificial intelligence, investment and trade in New York on Monday. The talks focused on delivering on what’s been agreed by the US and Chinese lead negotiators, according to China’s Vice Finance Minister Liao Min. A trade truce extension is possible, with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer saying a three to six-month extension is possible.2) Oil erased earlier gains on a report that Iran could reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the US lifted a blockade of its ports. Japan’s Kyodo News Agency reported that Iran has proposed to reopen Hormuz within seven days if the American blockade is lifted. It said Iran is trying to break a prolonged stalemate in the conflict and that the proposal will be used as the basis for discussions with mediating countries at the United Nations General Assembly. President Trump is set to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York later on Tuesday, and may meet with his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, on the sidelines. Al Jazeera also cited Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as saying it could negotiate to end the war if the country’s national interest required it.3) President Trump is set to sign a security deal with Denmark and Greenland to end a bitter dispute over the Arctic island, expanding Washington’s military role. The deal will leave Greenland under Danish sovereignty, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen saying it's "a good agreement" that benefits all sides. The US plans to reopen one military base in southern Greenland and establish a second site on the country’s east coast, according to people familiar with the matter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Oral Sex, Frequency, Desire, and Other Topics Couples Negotiate in Marriage: An Interview with Dr. Michael Sytsma (Episode 300)   *Today's message is not intended for little ears. We'll be discussing some adult themes, and I want you to be aware before you listen to this message.*   Deuteronomy 30:19 + 20 “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”   *Transcription Below*   Dr. Michael Sytsma has been working with couples in a variety of capacities since 1987. He is a licensed professional counselor in the state of Georgia, a Certified Sex Therapist, and a Certified Professional Counseling Supervisor. He is also an ordained minister with The Wesleyan Church and has served as a staff pastor for churches with attendance from 30 to over 1,000. He is currently appointed to Building Intimate Marriages, Inc. by The Wesleyan Church, where he provides marriage and sex therapy and training to other professionals. Michael also cofounded Sexual Wholeness, Inc., a Christian non-profit dedicated to training, equipping, and certifying professionals in human sexuality.    After earning a Bachelor of Science in Christian Ministry from Indiana Wesleyan University, Michael went on to receive a master's degree in community counseling from Georgia State University and a diploma in Christian counseling from Psychological Studies Institute. He subsequently earned a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in Child and Family Development/Marriage and Family Therapy, where he specialized in marital sexual therapy. His dissertation topic was “Sexual Desire Discrepancy in Married Couples.”    Building Intimate Marriages Secrets of Sex and Marriage   Thank You to Our Sponsor: WinShape Marriage   Questions and Topics We Cover: What habits do you see drawing married couples closer together and also what behaviors or mindsets are pulling them apart? What are the different types of desire discrepancy? Can you share what the Bible says about oral sex and also share research findings?    Previous Savvy Sauce Episodes with Dr Mike: Ten Common Questions About Sex Enjoying a God-honoring, Healthy Sex Life with Your Spouse Remaining Sexually Engaged Through The Years with Dr. Michael Sytsma  Sexual Desire Discrepancy in Marriage Secrets of Sex and Marriage   Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website   Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”   Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”   Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”    Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”    Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”    Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”    John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”    Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”   Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”   Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession- to the praise of his glory.”   Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”   Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“   Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“   Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”   *Transcription*   Music: (0:00 – 0:09)   Laura Dugger: (0:12 - 1:47) Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host, Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.   Today's message is not intended for little ears. We'll be discussing some adult themes, and I want you to be aware before you listen to this message.   I'm thrilled to introduce you to our sponsor, WinShape Marriage. Their weekend marriage retreats will strengthen your marriage while you enjoy the gorgeous setting, delicious food, and quality time with your spouse. To find out more, visit them online at winshapemarriage.org/savvy.   Today, I get to bring back our most repeated guest, Dr. Michael Sytsma. Our show notes are going to have links back to all of his previous episodes on The Savvy Sauce, and you're going to find out why he is invited back so frequently. Dr. Sytsma is a Christian sex therapist, an author, a counseling supervisor, and ordained minister. With a pastoral heart, a gift in teaching, and a passion for helping couples grow in marriage, Dr. Sytsma is the perfect guest for today to discuss these sensitive and sacred topics related to sexual intimacy in marriage. Here's our chat.   Welcome back to The Savvy Sauce, Dr. Mike.   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (1:47 - 1:52) Thank you so much. It's such an honor. It's always a joy to be with you and to talk through this.   Laura Dugger: (1:52 - 2:19) Well, I'm always looking forward to these conversations. And I just want to begin with a broad overview where we can discuss both relationship builders and some of the sneaky relationship retractors. So, what habits do you see drawing married couples closer together? And then also, what are the behaviors and mindsets that are pulling them apart?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (2:21 - 5:57) So, when I sit with couples, obviously the bulk of the couples that I work with are those that are struggling or wanting things to be better. So that may be a bit of a skewed. The couples that come into workshops even are often aware that something's not quite how they want it to be. And so, watching to see what makes a difference, exactly what you're asking. And one of the biggest things I see is just the intentionality of couples that are doing well. I think many times our culture tends to say that if you've picked the right person, if everything is going well, it'll be easy and everything will just flow well. And I find that amusing because it doesn't work in any other area of life. In our finances, we have to be disciplined with them. In parenting, we have to be disciplined with it. In our own health and exercise and what we eat. If we just ate whatever we wanted, I don't think things would be good. If we waited to feel to eat healthy, I don't think we would eat healthy.   And yet couples almost have this idea that you need to desire, you need to feel the urges to do what's healthy in the marriage. And those that wait for it and wait for their spouse to do it, they tend to get irritated and disillusioned and start to see each other negatively and pull apart versus those that sit down and develop a vision. Here's who we want to be as a couple. Here's who I want to be as a husband. Here's who I want to be as a wife. And we begin to lock ourselves into who we're becoming and who we're becoming as a couple and then live intentionally towards that. I see those couples do so much better.   Part of it is, you know, if you say to your husband, here's who I want to be as a wife. And he believes that. He believes that's your heart. Then the day that you get up, and I'm sure this never happens to you, but the day you get up and you're just not in a good mood, you know, the kids kept you awake at night or you didn't eat something that was good for you. You wake up and you're not in a mood. He can extend a ton of grace because he knows you're not satisfied with yourself. He knows that you're not going to like who you are right now and you're not going to tolerate that very long. So, he doesn't have to step in and try to control you, to manipulate you, to make you to be who he wants you to be. He can step back and extend grace knowing that you're probably going to come to him later that day or tomorrow and go, sorry, I wasn't in a good mood yesterday. It was probably tough to live with. And he knows you will reset and the same for him.   If he has a rough day and he doesn't treat you with the cherishing care that you know he wants to be, then you kind of step back and we'll give him a little bit of space. He'll figure it out. And he does. And he resets and he comes back and you make intentional steps towards that vision that you guys have co-created. Those couples tend to do really well. And I see those steps being a little different for different couples because their vision might be slightly different. But the consistent patterns and habits that I see are establishing that vision, locking into it and trusting that you'll do your work and I'm going to do mine. And we're intentional in moving forward with it.   Laura Dugger: (5:58 - 6:20) Okay. So, I'm kind of hearing start with the end in mind, get on the same page with the conversation of what our vision is. And then intentionally, it sounds like pre-deciding before you're waiting for these feelings to come up to even pre-decide practical things of how often do we want to come together? What do we want that to look like? So, am I hearing that right?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (6:20 - 9:28) Yep, very much so. And obviously there's a lot that's wrapped in it. Couples have to be able to communicate effectively, you know, hear and be heard to be able to sit down and sort through who do I want to be? Because usually a few years into marriage, we're starting to ascribe motivation and desire to our spouse that's not fully accurate. And we begin to define them different than they see themselves to be able to hear that, to be able to figure out who do I want to be? How do I work with the personality that I have? Mike works in idiosyncrasies and who's the best person that I can become? And then to be able to share that with each other.   So many couples don't sit down and really talk through. As you know, sex therapy is my primary research and interest area. And so, working a lot with couples that most of the couples I work with have never shared their vision for what they want their sex life to look like. They might've argued about frequency or certain behaviors, but they've never really shared vision. And most when I challenged them to don't have a clue of themselves really how to articulate what they want. So once that vision has been discussed and talked about, then yes, they can start to sort through, well, how do we get there? And can we give ourselves permission for some time?   I told a couple of you yesterday, guys, this is going to take decades to get to where you want to be. And you get to see his face. I said, this doesn't mean that we wait decades till we get there, but you've created a really beautiful vision and nobody can do that overnight. You're going to have to regularly work at it. And you're right. That intentionality of what are we going to do?   I tell couples my recipe is 15 minutes of connect time every day where you're leaning into each other. How are you doing? Really? What's going on? And then a one hour a week, a business meeting, I call it a working date where we sit down, we do the business of marriage. Just being intentional in how do we do this? Well, at least every other week to do a fun date where we are just going and playing together. We're not trying to work on anything. We're not talking about anything difficult. We're playing together. And then once a year, some kind of a continuing ed for their marriage, whether that be some marriage therapy, a retreat, a workshop, going through a sermon series and talking about it, reading a book together, something that gets them to really focus back on how are we doing and how do we make this better? Those are all intentional things that have to be done on a regular basis. Couples who make those, like you say, early decisions and then work to consistently follow through on them. Not perfectly, but consistently following through.   Laura Dugger: (9:30 - 10:08) I love that because the fruit of it is so enjoyable then to be married to one another if you've got this intentional relationship rather than the other option is for it to really overflow into all areas of life and be difficult. But you're clearly a world-leading Christian sex therapist, so I'm very eager to hear your insight on this as well. What would you say is the current trend for trouble areas with sex and intimacy that you're seeing with your clients or people that you meet through traveling the world to speak?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (10:11 - 12:58) Obviously, some of the standards that have been a part of human culture, especially my area of interest, is desire discrepancy. Whether that be husbands and wives who desire different frequencies, who desire different practices, who desire a different tone. I want wild and crazy and you want soft and nurturing. The differing desires are a primary area of conflict for couples. Because if you're not doing what I want, my natural instinct is to lean in and start to make you be that way. And humans don't tend to do well with pressure, so it tends to shut things down and then it spins out. So that's always an ongoing one, but that's also being my primary area of research and focus, one that I see a lot just in looking.   But one that the research seems to be showing that is a bit disturbing, and we've got theories behind what's going on, but we're seeing a decrease in sexual frequency amongst couples, a decrease in couples connecting. Whether that be connecting centrally, nurturing kind of touch, you know, the tender hugs and kisses, caresses, the snuggling together at night, or the more intimate sexual encounters where couples are having intercourse or they're engaging for sexual pleasure, we're seeing a drop in those. We saw it drop. COVID was not friendly to many aspects of marriage, and we saw a lot of it drop towards the end of that. And in many respects, it hasn't recovered, according to some of the research. So that would be an area of concern, because if couples are not connecting, many times they're acting out on their own, because it's easy, I don't have to negotiate you, there's plenty of options and ways to go about doing that. And the experiences, the chemicals that are released when we connect with each other, the associating you with pleasure, all of those things decrease, and they're critical in marriage. So that would be an area that we're kind of keeping an eye on. Is that going to bounce back? What is really going on? Is it a temporary thing, or is it just a glitch in the numbers? And it doesn't seem to be, seems to be what's happening.   Laura Dugger: (13:00 - 13:19) Wow, that is kind of alarming. And since COVID, that is so interesting. You said you have a few theories, and I know you're very scientifically based, so it's too early to report the research findings. But what are your opinions or thoughts on the reasons for that?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (13:21 - 18:05) I think in working with couples, there's a couple of things that I see play out. One is we are in an age of information overload and anxiety overload. We hear so much that is disturbing, and we don't feel like we have any agency in creating change for it. So, the internal stress level just goes up, you know, wars and economy, and things that we dislike that we're out of control with. And we see a general level of stress and anxiety go up for us right now. You know, there's some insecurity in terms of what is the economy really going to do. And all of that, I believe, has an impact on our sexual behavior.   I think, in part, we're wired for that. We think through human history. However long you happen to believe humans have been around, it's a while. For most of that time, we couldn't manage our fertility. So, if a couple engaged in sex, she was going to get pregnant. Well, if I don't have the emotional energy, the bandwidth, the resources to produce a child and to raise them, it makes sense to me that we are wired to not have desire to engage sexually with somebody. We see that especially for women. If stress level goes up, they're not interested. And I think that makes sense. I think it's a wiring in. Why would you want to reproduce if you're living in a stress-filled environment? We need to raise these kids up enough that I have the bandwidth to do another one or we need to have the food resources or whatever is needed. And our brains don't always think through the details of my refrigerator's full. We're fine. It just experiences the stress of what we're in.   Guys are the same way. You tend to have to push guys to a much higher level of stress before it affects their sexual desire. But I watch it almost every day in my office. Guys come in that have lost interest in sex. I look at their lives. I'm like, you're stressed to the max. You're working 60, 70 hours a week. You're not sleeping. You're eating like crap. You're not exercising. Of course you don't have interest. So, living in a culture that has that high level of anxiety and out of control, I think is part of what's going on there. We don't give time to just sit back and relax and realize that we are a blessed people living in a blessed time. We have a lot of resources. We could do this.   I think the other side of it is the impact of, we'll just call it social media, the impact of all of the information we're able to get. And it's curated information. And we only put online the things that we're proud of. So, we put online all of these great images. We look at everybody else's life. And sometimes in the research, we'll talk about monitoring the alternatives. I'm looking at my spouse and I'm looking at them and I'm going, wait, I like what they're doing better than what you're doing. And it creates an overall dissatisfaction that we start to try to make our spouse to be different. And they don't respond well to that. They get defensive and they push back on trying to make us different. And now we've got a power struggle going on and sex doesn't do well in those kinds of settings. Sex doesn't respond well to pressure. Hearts don't respond well to pressure. So, we start to pull away. Then we experience pleasure with you less. And I experience pain and frustration with you more. And when I look over here, it increases that because they're saying this is what it's like for them. That's not what it's like for me. I want that. And I don't know that I can have that with you. So, I want to have sex with you. And it's easier to negotiate pornography. It's easier to negotiate my fantasy stories. It's easier to negotiate something individually than it is to try to negotiate you. And so, the opportunity to experience profound pleasure with our spouse goes down and the frustration goes up and the cycle just continues to spin up. So those would be, they're interrelated, but a couple of ideas that I would have at this point.   Laura Dugger: (18:06 - 20:42) And now a brief message from our sponsor. Friends, I'm excited to share with you today's sponsor, WinShape Marriage. Do you feel like you need a weekend away with your spouse and a chance to grow in your relationship together at the same time? WinShape Marriage is a fantastic ministry that provides weekend marriage retreats to help couples grow closer together in every season and stage of life. 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You will be so grateful you went.   To find an experience that's right for you and your spouse, head to their website, winshapemarriage.org/savvy. That's W-I-N-S-H-A-P-E marriage.org slash savvy, S-A-V-V-Y. Thanks for your sponsorship.   That's so insightful. I have a lot of follow-up questions, so I'll try to organize them because I'm thinking of three categories. First, about just pleasing yourself and not working with your spouse and negotiating. Then also desire discrepancy going further into that and social media. Let's start with the first one. When you see the numbers go down of how often couples engage sexually in marriage, you're seeing those numbers go down. Would you say that automatically means that they are just seeking this out themselves with pornography or doing things in secrecy? Would you like to clarify that?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (20:42 - 23:50) Not necessarily. It is worth asking the question, but I think one of the myths our society has, especially in the church and culture, is that sex is a need. If you're not fulfilling it with me because it's a need, you're getting it someplace. For some people, sex is a strong drive. It's a strong urge. I think it's designed in us that way to draw us to our spouse, to draw us to connecting, but it is not a need. Nobody dies from lack of it. I could line up a whole string of clients that practice sexual fidelity, sexual integrity, and they're not at a place that they can express their sexuality in a way that they believe is honoring, so they don't. Nobody dies. Nobody does poorly, even. Many times, they thrive. The belief that if you're not getting it with me, you're getting it someplace, that may be true, but that's not a foregone assumption.   For some, though, it is. It is something that I want, something that I desire. It meets a lot of my desires. I think sex meets a lot of our needs, a need of acceptance. I do believe that's a need. I think we have a need to be desired, to be pursued. I think those are God-reflective needs in us. God desires those things. I think it's fair to say that those are needs, and we often get those needs met through sex. Even in an altered, hollow way, masturbatory sex can give something towards those needs. It's worth asking, as somebody pursuing that individually. A couple last week, they sat down for the first time and started to talk about that with each other. What do you do? We're only engaging this frequency. What do you do outside of that? They were both surprised at what each other does, and able to step back and say, I'm challenging them to do vision work. What do we want? For one of them, they said, “I don't want this part of my life. I want it to be only you, but that doesn't always work well. What do we need to do so it can be?” The other is not so sure that they want to give up some of what they're enjoying in their individual time. How do we wrap that in? It's interesting to watch them work through the vision and try to figure out who do they want to be as couples. But to go back to your question, no, it's not a foregone that they're going to be acting out. But it's worth asking, and worth asking, is that what you want? Or are you taking that as a second best because you don't see an opportunity to pursue what's really good? If that's true, can we maybe figure out how for both of us to get what we truly desire?   Laura Dugger: (23:51 - 24:19) That's so wise. Then to elaborate also on desire discrepancy, you've shared this is your primary research area. Can you expand a little bit on, I won't hit all of these, but you had talked about it being a desire discrepancy with frequency, with the type of activity, and I feel like there was one other topic. In practices. Can you share more about each of those?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (24:20 - 27:48) Yeah, the primary conflict that comes into my office is often illustrated by frequency. Generally, in most couples, the husband, the male, has a desire for a higher frequency. The female has, her frequency desire tends to be lower. In Secrets of Sex and Marriage, we have all the numbers that play that out. What's interesting is when we test them, they're not as far apart as they believe they are. Actually, in our survey, 22% of couples were wanting the exact same amount. Only 14% or 15% believe that they wanted the same amount, which is a pretty significant difference. Couples are closer together than they think they are. And most of those couples, even when they were different, were only one mark different. She said that she would like to have sex one to two times a week, and he said he would like to have sex two to three times a week. That's one mark different. Most couples were not that different, even when there was one.   Usually what is being expressed there is, I don't know that you desire me as much as I desire you. I desire you in a way that's physically connecting, and you don't seem to. What does that mean about me? What does that mean about am I a desirable person? Would you prefer to have somebody else other than me? Often, underneath that is the fears of, do you choose me? Do you want me? Do you like playing with me? I want a playmate. I want somebody who we can just relax and be together. I want somebody who holds me and nurtures and comforts me, and you don't seem to want to do that. What does that mean about me? The fight about the frequency, but really what's underneath it is a lot of fears.   That comes into the types as well. I want sex that is wild and crazy and spontaneous. I want to be able to walk into the room and you lose your mind. That never happens anymore. I want sex that follows us having long talks where you've cared for my heart and you've nurtured me. We've gone slow and you've really just cherished me. You just want something wild and crazy and to lose your mind. How do we bring those two together? Or practices. I enjoy bringing toys in and playing. You don't like that. You like the one kind that helps you to feel connected. I want to play more. The research on oral sex that we just finished comes into that and how they desire differently around even those practices. So, all of that comes into the office. I'm sure you're hearing at one level it is we're arguing about what I want versus you want. At another level, it's what does that mean? What does it mean to my heart and how do I interpret that you don't want to do this? That comes into play pretty heavily and it's worth couples trying to unpack and figure it out.   Laura Dugger: (27:48 - 28:01) And would you say that to unpack and figure it out is that most beneficial at a neutral time or what kind of conversation starters would be helpful for them?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (28:04 - 29:54) Not to advertise, but Secrets of Sex and Marriage was designed, we wrote it, and my heart desire in it was to have a book that couples could sit down and read out loud to each that would start these conversations. So, if they read through a session or a section that talks about one type of sexual behavior to pause and go, I think this author is stupid. Nobody wants that. And to start the conversation about what do each of them like and what do they want as a couple. I think it often takes something outside of them to help get the conversation started. And we always tell couples don't have these conversations around sex. Don't have it in the bed. Have it at the coffee table the next day. Have it in structured working dates. Have it in times that we're going to talk about this. So, we're doing our best to be our best while we're talking about it. Keep those conversations time limited or you run out of energy. Step at it, work on it a bit, then step back, get a break, rethink. So, all of the stuff that we know how to do with difficult conversations in business, we bring those skills in because heart issues are involved and we're not always aware of the heart issues. If I start to get defensive, we need to step away from it because curiosity is the only thing that's going to work here. So yes, structuring it. Most couples struggle to do that on their own. They struggle to do that on finances and parenting, how to manage your mom, let alone something as intimate as sex. So many times they will need a coach or a therapist or somebody just to hold the space for them so they can have that conversation.   Laura Dugger: (29:55 - 30:08) That's brilliant advice. And I like that kind of step care mentality of getting the book and trying that first. It still is a neutral third party and I think that's a great place to begin.   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (30:09 - 30:26) I love when couples come in and say, well, we read this section and he said, well, that's just stupid. And I look at him like, what do you mean that's stupid? I think that way. And as long as they can stay curious and not critical, those conversations go really well.   Laura Dugger: (30:28 - 30:48) That's good. Staying curious. Okay. So, then you also mentioned social media. So can you speak more to this demand that people are having to, I guess the way that you've worded it in the past is the demand for fantasy that people see in social media and pornography.   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (30:50 - 34:18) Maybe a stupid example. My wife and I are looking at redoing our master bathroom closet. It's been a lot of years. The first person we had come in and take a look at it went, yeah, this has been here a while. Okay. So yeah, maybe it needs to be redone. And so, what do you do? You start jumping online and looking, well, what are people doing today? What do bathrooms look like? And you start looking at them going, wow, I want that. Well, I can't fit that space into my space. So, do I need different space? And all of a sudden, all of these desires that I have and what I fantasize about living in, what if it's not even possible where I'm at? What do I do with the tension in it? Can I look at what I've got and really appreciate it and work on making it maybe better, but not need to swap it out for something else or not stay in a state of discontent with what I got, even after it's been upgraded and redone.   A stupid little example, I think of what goes on in relationship as we watch a couple and their gorgeous pictures of their vacation or their family pictures of, it looks like this big family with all the grands and they're having so much fun together. And every time my kids get together, we have knockdown drag outs, or two of my kids won't even show up, or the grands act out every time that they're around. And my family isn't the ideal family. My spouse isn't the ideal spouse. Here's a picture of him with his arms wrapped around looking so nurturing. And I don't know that my husband ever does that to me. He's always irritated with me. And we go to, I desire to be pursued. I desire to be chosen. I desire to be nurtured. And I see that in all of these images out there, and I'm not experiencing it. And I increase the fantasy of what I could have, what I desire to have. And I look at you and I think, it's not even possible to have that with you. You're not that kind of person. I'm not sure I picked right. And we're creating something that is really destructive in the process.   When we go back a few hundred years ago, and your spouse was chosen for you, or your spouse was one of only a handful of people that were even options. I got the best of those. This is pretty good. And we're working to make it good. And no, it's not perfect. Nobody expected it to be perfect. I love the song in Fiddler on the Roof, Do You Love Me? My father told us that I'd be lucky if in time, we would fall in love with each other, because they didn't marry for love. And then realizing that over the years, they had developed a rich kind of love. That's a very different experience than we have today, where we want the fantasy right up front. And we never want to step out of the fantasy, because it looks like it's all around us. And I don't know that's necessarily good for us, because the real takes work. I don't want to work. I want you to be who I want you to be without me working.   Laura Dugger: (34:20 - 34:39) That's so interesting. And that, I guess, pairing social media and phones, which are relatively recent changes, and then COVID, and there's so much curiosity around why have things changed so much sexually for married couples since COVID? But all of these consequent...   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (34:39 - 35:33) We think in part, it was pushing couples together, because we saw a spike in activity when we first shut things down. I'm blocking on the word that we use for it. But when we first shut things down and lock people up together, we saw an initial spike, and then we saw a drop. And it's that sense of, okay, now you're wearing on me, and I don't know that I want to do this with you. I think some of it was pushing people into the online world. I talk about social media, but it covers all of that online consuming that we do, and the dissatisfaction growing in. So, when you push people together, there's plenty of that talk about that. It doesn't always do real well, unless they're intentional and work at it.   Laura Dugger: (35:34 - 37:26) Okay, that is interesting. As you say, social media, maybe putting it even with phones, even just the amount of time that people you're giving so much attention to your screen, rather than one another. And it does seem like that was from COVID.   By now, I hope you've checked out our updated website, thesavvysauce.com, so that you can have access to all the additional freebies we are offering, including all of our previous articles, and all of our previous episodes, which now include transcriptions. You will be equipped to have your own practical chats for intentional living. When you read all the recommended questions in the articles, or gain insight from expert guests and past episodes as you read through the transcriptions, because many people have shared with us that they want to take notes on previous episodes, or maybe their spouse prefers to read our conversations rather than listen to them or watch them now that we're offering video rather than just audio. So, we heard all of that. And we now have provided transcripts for all our episodes. Just visit thesavvysauce.com. All of this is conveniently located under the tab show notes on our website. Happy reading.   So, this is kind of a big question, but whether it's thinking of wisdom for married couples, or even the way that they train their children so that they can avoid some of these pitfalls later on when they're adults. So, I'm thinking of the engagement and connection in real life face-to-face versus screens. Do you have any other wisdom that may actually impact them sexually someday?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (37:27 - 40:25) There are some foods that we don't eat because they're poisonous to us. There are some things we don't take into our brains because they're toxic to us. Yeah, we do. We learn to stay totally away from those. But yeah, I was thinking more the experiences that I have of even a spouse saying, “you can't have access to anything because I'm so angry at you.” I don't know if that's helpful.   Laura Dugger: (40:26 - 40:56) I see what you're saying. Appreciate the heart behind that, not controlling them and also taking the responsibility of self-discipline. So, there's another topic that many married couples may want to know more about, but they don't know where a safe place is to go and ask. So, this is the topic of oral sex. And so, Dr. Mike, can you share first what the Bible has to say about oral sex, but also share with us some of the research findings?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (40:57 - 52:46) Okay. So, we've got three more hours, right? So, if we tried to collapse it down a little bit, this comes a bit out of just working with it for so many years. We do the couples' workshops. We always do an Ask Dr. Mike. And so, through the entire workshop, today's technology, we used to use three by five cards, but today's technology, they can anonymously send a message in to me. And we take an hour of workshop and just go through those and answer them. And I am always going to get several on the subject. So, it's just been something that we know couples want to know about. Because it is a desire discrepancy, it is of interest to me. And so, we rolled questions about it into our last survey, the Marital Intimacy Project, where we surveyed 501 married couples, and a nationally representative sample. So, these weren't Christian couples, they weren't non-Christian couples, they weren't. The sample represents the 2018 U.S. Census data for the United States. So, in racial mix, racial ethnic mix, and religious mix and age, where they're at in the country. So, this is what these married couples are telling us about. So that's the background that some of this embeds in.   And your first question is, what does scripture say about it? Well, that depends on who you ask. You know, if we go back through most of church history, the purpose for sex was procreation. And anything that wasn't procreative act was considered outside of the boundary of God, because sex was about procreation. And many even teaching that once you got to the age that you weren't trying to have kids any longer, you should stop having sex, because the purpose for sex is procreation. And if you're doing it for pleasure, you're risking sin. If you're doing it for connection, you're risking sin. Well, if sex is about procreation, first, foremost, and sometimes only, oral sex is not acceptable, because it's not a potentially procreative act. That's the language that's often used in some of the church history teaching, that it needs to have the potential for procreation. And if it doesn't, then it's sin, it's outside of God's boundary. So, for hundreds of years, we have teaching that says that oral sex is totally unacceptable because it's not procreative.   If you take a perspective that sex is about connection, or sex is about play, sex is about intimacy, and sex is about pleasure, then all of that is re-evaluated. So, we have those theologians that look at Song of Solomon, where he talks about tasting of her garden. Nobody questions what her garden is in the story, the imagery that's used there. But there are those, or the flip side of that, she talks about drinking of his spring. And many theologians would look at that and say, no, no, no, that's not about oral sex. God would never talk about oral sex because that's unacceptable. It's not a procreative act. He is using imagery there to talk about the intensity of the love and the desire. This is strictly a spiritual story. And then others come in and say, yeah, no, I think it's about the physical. God would talk about that because couples do this, and it's playful, and it's fun, and it's good, and it allows them to connect. And the pleasure is not a bad thing. And when he's talking of tasting of her garden, when she's talking of drinking of his spring, they're talking about oral sex and scripture. And God talks about drink deeply, enjoy. And so, the other side of the argument says, for couples that enjoy this, there's nothing wrong in it.   Now, I think we can make a larger argument. Scripture talks about consent. Scripture talks about honoring one another. Scripture talks about desiring for one another. So anytime we step in and we start using demands, that is not scriptural. You know, Christ was profoundly invitational. He was profoundly inviting in who he was. The language I use for it sometimes shocks people. I say Christ was profoundly seductive. He had the ability to woo, to draw, that he can step up to somebody whose generational career is fishing. This is what their family is about. And he walks up and he says, “Hey, come follow me.” And they drop their nets and leave. I mean, who has the ability to do that? And it wasn't a command, you need to do this, or you're going to burn in hell. No, it was a wooing invitation. He had profound ways to look at somebody and point out their sin. Yeah, I know you've been married to what was it, four men already, and the one that you're living with is not, you're not married to him. He calls out her sin in such a way that she leans into the story. You know, how seductive, how invitational. I want to be a fly on the wall of that well, to experience what it was like to listen to him talk. And how did he draw people so well? That's who we want to be in marriage. We want to be the seductive, the person who draws, not the person who commands. So, if we take any of these principles and we start to demand of our spouse, I think that's not scriptural. So, when you ask, what does scripture say? I think it talks about honoring one another, nurturing one another, inviting, if that's something that's pleasing to you.   So, the question was, well, what do couples do? What do they want? And so, we asked all of these couples to, how often do you perform on your spouse? And what would you like? Do you enjoy it? Do you enjoy performing on your spouse? Do you enjoy having it performed on you? And it was really fascinating. You know, there's a lot of numbers that come into it. But the first thing that we learned is this tends to be couple scoring. If one does, the other one likely does. If we move into desire, that's more individual scoring. But if we move into practice, it tends to be couples. So, the couples where both of them said we never do, couples where both of them said we often do or occasionally do, and couples who said we regularly do or always do, those were clubs. The ones where he said, well, I always do. And she says, “I never do.” Those were rare, which was interesting. And then when we had it broken down into a lot of categories, but when we clumped them all together into the never, rarely, occasionally, sometimes, and often, always, we get almost third, third, and third. And so, couples have said in my office, but everybody does it. Actually, no, they don't. The largest group when we had it all broken down were couples that never do. That was the largest group. And the couples that always do was half of the never do. But if we get the larger categories, it's almost a third, third, and third, which says to me, it's perfectly okay, whatever the couple decides. Let's let them decide their comfort, what they enjoy with it, what it means to them. And that's more important than the behavior of it.   Then when we do get into, and I'm looking over here at my numbers, so I get them kind of right. We did not see a huge difference in age. I expected there to be a difference in practice with age. We didn't see a huge difference. And there was no difference in marital satisfaction or in sexual satisfaction between the couples that did and didn't. The only times we saw a difference was when they were what we would call asymmetrical. And those few couples where she said, “I always do”, and he says, “I never do.” Or the other way around. We got asymmetrical, we saw a decrease in marital and sexual satisfaction. But there was no difference in the couples that say we never do and the couples that say we always do. So, it didn't have an impact on sexual satisfaction. It had a bit of an impact on her orgasmic frequency, which that kind of makes sense. But the biggest difference was in desires and how, whether you like to or not.   So, we asked husbands, do you like to have it performed on you? And we asked wives, does he like when you perform on him? And wives have us figured out. The answer is almost identical to us. When we asked husbands, “does your wife enjoy doing this?” And we asked wives, “do you enjoy performing on him?” Husbands really overestimate how much she enjoys this, which was fascinating. Not a surprise, but fascinating. And there was a big difference between what the husband enjoys and performing on him and what the wife enjoys and performing on him. That was a massive difference. And then in the middle of that is performing on her. And they weren't near as far apart there. But once again, husbands overestimated her enjoyment. Wives underestimated his enjoyment, which was interesting. But there wasn't a huge difference. So, if we take the wife enjoying performing on him, husbands enjoying being performed on, those are quite a bit different. And right in the middle was wives saying that they enjoy it and husbands saying they enjoy performing on her. So that was interesting in looking at what they do and don't like.   Now, I haven't broken it down into some of the categories of couples. Yeah, I did look at it in terms of desire types. And there was some big differences there, which we would expect that an initiating type of a desire is going to want more versus a receptive or resistant, a little less. But I haven't broken down some of it even more detailed. Those initial numbers have been fascinating to see. And I think the takeaway is what we started with. What's your vision? What do you want and why? What does it mean to you? Let's decide what you want in your marriage. And then let's take steps to make it healthy and to be good and to move toward it. And it doesn't have to be tomorrow. We can slowly grow to that.   Laura Dugger: (52:47 - 53:09) That is so interesting. And I'm sure that's so helpful when a majority of people are submitting those kind of questions. Now you have some normative responses. And you also mentioned something in there about the different types of initiation or desire, and one is resistant. So, can you go into all three of those and define that?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (53:10 - 58:20) Yeah. We have the cultural message that desire is being harmed. And it is. That we feel we wake up and I'm interested in sex or you walk by and I'm interested in sex. I want to have sex. We think of it as spontaneous. It's not actually spontaneous, but we think of it as spontaneous. That's an initiating type of desire where we're aware of the desire before arousal. We pursue the sex for arousal is the experience of it. The second, and for that I've shifted to in the book, we talk about a car and being driving neutral and parking, but I've shifted to talking about in terms of boats, you know, that initiating desire is a speedboat, sometimes a really big engine, sometimes not so big of an engine, but it's powered, it's moving forward. Receptive desire requires arousal before the desire shows up. So, it takes an intentional step to move forward. Yeah, we can do that. And I'm enjoying doing this. Oh, my body's enjoying this too. This is good. And then the desire clicks on. So, desire sometimes may not show up till five to 10 minutes into the sex act. Now I want this, please don't stop, you know, please do it this way. Now the desire is there. That's the receptive desire. And I talk about that as kind of like a sailboat. You know, it's not powered by an engine. It needs an external force to kind of get it moving forward. But I also have to have the sails up. And what does it take for me to have the sails up on my sailboat? And what seduces me, what draws me, what helps me to move towards that desire?   And then resistant is the motor's pulled up out of the water, the sails are tied down, and there's two anchors that are, you know, doesn't matter what you do, I'm not moving. I'm not going to allow anything to move me. Or those anchors are there for a good reason, because of trauma, because of wounds, maybe that you have done. Maybe the relationship is not safe. If I get naked, I'm going to be criticized. I don't care to get naked, whether that be emotionally or physically. So, most of the time when I'm working with somebody who's resistant, the resistance is there for a good reason. And we have to figure out what's going on and how do we get rid of the anchors? Or how do we get this engine started again? And it may be physical, it may be emotional, may be relational, may be spiritual. But the resistance is going to be something has got us locked down in our sexuality, or locked down towards you. I'm still interested in sex, just not with you. And so, we have to kind of unpack that.   I do think that generally requires a third party, a therapist who's skilled in this who can work with it. My concern is even most therapists are defining receptive desires, low desire. And so, if somebody comes in and says, well, I have low desire, and they even if they realize they have receptive desire, all of the interventions are designed to increase initiating desire, rather than help somebody to nurture their type of desire, to nurture the receptive type of desire, or to figure out there's a reason you're resistant. Can we step back and create the space for you to drop the guards to figure out why you're resistant? Because he may be resistant and not even know why. He just, I'm not going to go there. And we have to create the space for him to even sit in it and start to figure it out. Or she may be, same thing for her, she may be resistant, and she might have an idea why, but we haven't unpacked it enough to really figure out what's going on. She just feels like she's broken and is being criticized by her husband. So, to step back and figure out which of those three is really going on, and how do we work with it?   So those types, within those, there are different levels, you know, we'll have an initiating desire that has a really big engine. They want sex all the time. Or an initiating desire that has a smaller engine. They don't want it all that often, but when they do, they're going to pursue it. A receptive desire that has really big sales doesn't take an awful lot to get them moving forward, but it doesn't come from within. And those that, you know, it takes a lot of work to get this thing moving forward. Is there a way we can increase the sales a little bit, so it doesn't take quite so much work internally and to the spouse? So, we're looking at types, we're looking at levels. It gets really complex, which is part of the fun of it, but part of what makes it tough for couples, and they default to the, you're broken, you don't want me, you don't like me. They default to simple answers that don't work. Mm.   Laura Dugger: (58:21 - 58:37) Okay. So, it sounds like you're saying the goal isn't to get everybody to have the engine, which is maybe where some therapists could direct them in the wrong way, but to grow in the freedom and releasing and get closer to the vision.   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (58:38 - 59:38) I was teaching this to some therapists and one of them came up on break and she says, “okay, I hear all of this, but you've got to be honest that truly the healthy person, when they've done good work, is going to have initiating desire.” If you walk into the therapy office with that, the receptive desire person, you're always internally thinking you're broken, you're immature, you're something, you're not okay. That's wrong. No receptive desire is a legitimate type. We're not trying to get the receptive person to be initiating. That's probably, I suspect that's not how they're wired. So, asking them to be that different, and they'll say, but there was a time that they were, well, yes, but that was a unique season of life where biology was very different. Now they're kind of, they're normative, so.   Laura Dugger: (59:39 - 1:01:06) That's so great. And that's what I always appreciate. Dr. Mike, you always offer hope for everyone, even the one who's locked down with the anchors. It's a, how can we start to lift those anchors? There's hope that there is change and restoration possible. And I've just loved this conversation. Deuteronomy 30 keeps coming to mind. There are two verses because I feel like you've laid out wisdom for intentionality or the negatives and hazardous results that can come from overindulging, prioritizing, connecting with our phone rather than our spouse. And so, I just want to read these two verses from Deuteronomy 30, it's verses 19 and 20. It says, "This day, I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord, your God, listen to his voice and hold fast to him for the Lord is your life. And he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." So, it's just been such a delight to have this conversation. And I know we could talk all day, but you still have a full day of work to also get back to. So where can we go after this chat to learn more from you?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (1:01:07 - 1:01:38) My primary website is intimatemarriage.org. And there are links through that to even get to like my link page that has some of the professional articles. We're putting together some little teaching videos that grab some of this. All of that can be located through intimatemarriage.org. And of course, secretsofsexandmarriage.com is the book website too. There are a lot of resources there.   Laura Dugger: (1:01:39 - 1:01:59) I highly recommend both of those. So, we'll add the links in the show notes for today's episode. And you're familiar as our most repeated guest that we are called The Savvy Sauce because savvy is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so, my final question for you today, Dr. Mike, what is your savvy sauce?   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (1:01:59 - 1:02:37) I think it would flow from what you were just reading there in Deuteronomy. What does it take to choose life versus choose death? I can choose death by being passive, by waiting for something to happen. If I'm going to choose life, I'm working on it. So, it goes to what we started with, a vision-based intentionality. Is the savvy sauce, who do I want to be? Who do we want to be? And how do I be intentional and consistently and regularly moving toward that? Not perfect in it, but I know what I'm striving toward and I'm being intentional and taking steps that direction.   Laura Dugger: (1:02:38 - 1:03:07) So good. And Dr. Mike, just thank you for being a safe place where we can go for these sensitive and sacred topics. I think it's going to be fascinating someday in heaven to hear all of the people saying, “oh yeah, he helped us with our marriage too. And he helped us.” So we've been so enriched because of your work. So, thank you for your investment in your work that impacts people for eternity. And thank you for being my guest.   Dr. Michael Sytsma: (1:03:08 - 1:03:09) Well, thanks for having me back.   Laura Dugger: (1:03:10 - 1:06:52) One more thing before you go, have you heard the term gospel before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you, but it starts with the bad news.   Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves. This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death, and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved.   We need a savior, but God loved us so much. He made a way for his only son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with him.   That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life. We could never live and died in our place for our sin.   This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished. If we choose to receive what he has done for us, Romans 10:9 says, “that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”   So, you pray with me now. Heavenly father, thank you for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to you.   Will you clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare you as Lord of their life? We trust you to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus name we pray.   Amen. If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring him for me. So, me for him, you get the opportunity to live your life for him.   And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So, you're ready to get started.   First, tell someone, say it out loud, get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes and Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible and I love it.   You can start by reading the book of John. Also get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.   We want to celebrate with you too. So, feel free to leave a comment for us here. If you did make a decision to follow Christ, we also have show notes included where you can read scripture that describes this process.   And finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, “in the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.   And if you've already received this good news, I pray you have someone to share it with. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.

Verhandeln macht fast allen ein mulmiges Gefühl im Bauch – Carolin Bartlau nimmt es dir. Sie hat über sechs Jahre Erfahrung in Sales, Einkauf und Marketing in der Automotive- und Konsumgüterbranche gesammelt, ist heute Key Account Managerin in einem Energiekonzern und hat mit Time to Negotiate ihre eigene Verhandlungsakademie gegründet. In dieser Folge zeigt sie dir, wie eine Verhandlung wirklich vorbereitet wird, warum Schweigen nach deiner Forderung Gold wert ist und wie du auch bei Gegenwind kooperativ bleibst, ohne dich selbst zu schwächen. Was das mit nushu zu tun hat Verhandeln für sich selbst einzustehen ist genau das, was nushu Frauen mitgeben will: nicht abwarten, sondern aktiv das eigene Weiterkommen in die Hand nehmen – ob beim Gehalt, bei einem neuen Projekt oder in der Zusammenarbeit mit Geschäftspartnern. Du erfährst in dieser Folge... ...warum die beste Vorbereitung auf eine Verhandlung nicht bei dir selbst beginnt, sondern beim Gegenüber – und wie du in wenigen Minuten herausfindest, worauf die andere Seite wirklich Wert legt. ...welchen einen Satz du nach deiner Forderung niemals sagen solltest, obwohl er den meisten sofort über die Lippen geht. ...wie du innerhalb weniger Sekunden erkennst, ob deine Forderung zu niedrig, zu hoch oder genau richtig war – ganz ohne Bauchgefühl.

Handel on the Law. Marginal Legal Advice.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

⚖️ How to Negotiate a Divorce Settlement Without Lawyers? | Los Angeles Divorce

In episode 288 of Heavy Metal Philosophy, Jon Barbas chats with Krimh from Septicflesh about the intricacies and logistics of playing a huge symphonic death metal band. From getting visas and clearance to play in historical sites, to how to play with an orchestra without a click track. Septicflesh are about to embark on the Wrath Across America tour with Arch Enemy, The Black Dahlia Murder, Crypta, and Thrown Into Exile. Get all the details here and let us know what you think in the comments!Tour Details:https://www.metalblade.com/us/news/the-black-dahlia-murder-and-arch-enemy-announce-co-headlining-tour/Septicflesh Website:http://www.septicflesh.com/Get 10% off Hear's Earplugs here:https://www.hears.com/HEAVYMETALPHILOSOPHYGet Heavy Metal Philosophy Merch!https://jonbarbas-shop.fourthwall.com/Heavy Metal Philosophy Contact;https://heavymetalphilosophy.com/YouTube: https://youtube.com/@heavymetalphilosophyhttps://www.spreaker.com/show/heavy-metal-philosophyJonBarbas@heavymetalphilosophy.comhttps://mobile.twitter.com/heaviestdoyenhttps://www.facebook.com/HeaviestDoyenhttps://www.instagram.com/heavy_metal_philosophy/https://www.threads.net/@heavy_metal_philosophyhttps://bsky.app/profile/jonbarbas.bsky.social Substack Articleshttps://substack.com/@jonbarbas#septicflesh #symphonicmetal #deathmetal

Most organizations don't have a brand storytelling problem. They have a negotiation problem. When sales, marketing, and IT each champion their own version of the company story, the result is narrative entropy — the slow fragmentation of your brand message across every channel, every team, and every customer touchpoint. And in the age of AI-powered search, that fragmentation doesn't just confuse your audience. It gets scraped, amplified, and fed back into the market as your brand identity. Attia Qureshi knows how to stop it. A negotiation and influence expert with two decades of experience, Attia has brokered agreements in Fortune 500 boardrooms, university classrooms, and conflict zones around the world — including negotiating with cartel-controlled farmers on behalf of the U.S. State Department in Colombia. She is a former MIT faculty member, adjunct professor at the University of Michigan, founder of Attia Qureshi Consulting, and author of the national bestseller Never Settle: Persuasion and Negotiation Skills to Get What You Want, which Daniel Pink calls a book that will "train you how to move through the world." In this episode of the Business of Story, Park Howell and Attia explore how relational, interest-based negotiation is the missing discipline inside StoryOps — the practice of developing, operationalizing, and governing your brand narrative across every department in your organization. In this episode you will learn: Why sales and marketing fight over brand story — and the negotiation framework that ends it How to map the interests of every internal stakeholder so you can build genuine cross-departmental buy-in around one sovereign brand narrative Why narrative entropy accelerates in the age of AI — and how StoryOps, powered by negotiation, is your best defense Resources mentioned in this episode: Attia Qureshi Consulting: atiaqureshi.com Never Settle by Attia Qureshi and John Richardson — available at all major retailers Free internal influence guide: atiaqureshi.com/story Business of Story Brand Story Genie™: businessofstory.com

Welcome back! We're kicking things off today by going through my list of six dating non-negotiables I keep seeing people negotiate. Next, we get into a question from a listener who is frustrated by her boyfriend's chaotic, rushed energy in the mornings, followed by a listener whose boyfriend is sending secret Instagram messages to his ex.Read my Substack ⁠⁠How To Find Out If Your Values Are Aligned Before You're Too Invested⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠As always, find me on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mostlydating⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. And if you're enjoying the pod, please leave a rating & review! To have your question answered on an upcoming episode, submit it ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or email carleigh@mostly-dating.com. 

CapeTalk’s Sara-Jayne Makwala King is joined on Weekend Breakfast by Advocate Veerash Srikison, a mediator and lecturer in Leadership at Stellenbosch Business School Executive Development. Weekend Breakfast with Sara-Jayne Makwala King is the weekend breakfast show on CapeTalk. This 3-hour morning programme is the perfect (and perky!) way to kickstart your weekend. Author and journalist Sara-Jayne Makwala-King spends 3 hours interviewing a variety of guests about all things cultural and entertaining. The team keeps an eye on weekend news stories, but the focus remains on relaxation and restoration. Favourites include the weekly wellness check-in on Saturdays at 7:35am and heartfelt chats during the Sunday 9am profile interview. Listen live on Primedia+ Saturdays and Sundays between 07:00 and 10:00am (SA Time) to Weekend Breakfast with Sara-Jayne Makwala-King broadcast on CapeTalk https://buff.ly/NnFM3Nk For more from the show go to https://buff.ly/AgPbZi9 or find all the catch-up podcasts here https://buff.ly/j1EhEkZ Subscribe to the CapeTalk Daily and Weekly Newsletters https://buff.ly/sbvVZD5 Follow us on social media: CapeTalk on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@capetalk CapeTalk on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ CapeTalk on X: https://x.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CapeTalk567 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Get AudioBooks for FreeBest Self-improvement MotivationWin-Win Negotiation: How to Negotiate Effectively | Dan LokLearn how to negotiate effectively with Dan Lok's proven win-win strategies to build trust, create value, close better deals, and achieve lasting success.⁠We Need Your Love & Support ❤️⁠⁠Get 3 Audiobooks Free -

⚖️ What Are the Best Ways to Negotiate a Divorce Agreement? | Los Angeles Divorce

P&P Talk About When Is It Too Late To Get A Contract As A Quarterback in The NFL, And Do Baker & CJ Have Something In Common?

Payne & Pendergast Recap Last Nights Astros Victory, But A Weird Encounter With Venmo Takes Place As The Guys Discuss Fantasy Drafts. P&P Talk About When Is It Too Late To Get A Contract As A Quarterback in The NFL, And Do Baker & CJ Have Something In Common? Sean & Seth Talk Headlines around the sports world. Lane Kiffin is going to find a loophole through all of this?

Real Estate Red Flags You walk into a house and immediately notice a stain on the ceiling. Red flag. The basement smells a little musty. Another red flag. The roof is getting older, the kitchen hasn't been updated in decades, and the floors need refinishing. At what point do you stop seeing a home with a few projects and start seeing a property you should walk away from? That's the question Melissa Wallace and Boston Connect Real Estate agent Tracy Grady tackled on a recent episode of Talk Real Estate Roundtable. The important takeaway? A red flag doesn't automatically mean stop. It means pay attention. As Melissa explained during the show, real estate red flags can often be divided into three categories: Fix it. Negotiate it. Walk away. Understanding the difference can help buyers make decisions based on facts rather than fear. One Buyer's Red Flag May Be Another Buyer's Opportunity Every buyer has a different budget, comfort level, skill set, and vision for a home. A buyer who has experience renovating properties may see worn flooring and an outdated kitchen as an opportunity. Another buyer may want a home where they can unpack their boxes and immediately begin living. Neither buyer is wrong. That's why determining whether something is truly a deal breaker starts with asking yourself a simple question: Is this something I am realistically willing and financially able to take on? During the show, Melissa pointed out that something one buyer considers a major red flag may be completely manageable for another. Before walking away from an otherwise great home, understand what the problem actually is, what it may take to correct it, and whether it fits within your plans. Category One: Fixable Problems Some of the things buyers notice during a showing aren't necessarily serious problems at all. They're projects. Examples discussed during the show included older appliances, worn flooring, interior paint, damaged screens, minor exterior maintenance, and dated kitchens and bathrooms. A kitchen can be outdated and still function perfectly well. A bathroom may not be your preferred style, but that doesn't necessarily make the house unsuitable. Cosmetic items can also give buyers an opportunity to make a house their own. Paint can be changed. Floors can be refinished. Cabinet hardware can be replaced. Appliances can eventually be upgraded. The question is whether you can comfortably live with those items until you're ready to address them. Look Beyond the Cosmetics Buyers should also distinguish between cosmetic condition and the condition of the home's major systems. If you're choosing between a dated kitchen and a failing roof, those two issues shouldn't necessarily carry the same weight. During the show, Sharon McNamara shared that, from a buyer's perspective, she would prefer to see the home's mechanical and maintenance items addressed and deal with the cosmetics herself. She specifically pointed to overall maintenance, pest control and proper attic ventilation as areas homeowners should stay on top of. That is an important distinction. The countertops may not be your favorite. But what condition is the roof in? How old is the heating system? What is the condition of the electrical system? How old is the septic system? Those are the questions that can have a much larger impact on the cost of homeownership. Category Two: Red Flags That May Be Negotiating Opportunities Then there are issues that aren't necessarily reasons to walk away but may be significant enough to become part of the negotiation. The show discussed examples including: A roof approaching the end of its useful life A heating system that may need replacement Electrical concerns or upgrades Plumbing concerns Septic issues Failed components discovered during inspection Significant deferred maintenance These are different from simply disliking a paint color. They may represent real future expenses. For example, an older system can still be functioning today while also being something the buyer needs to budget for in the future. Melissa and Tracy specifically discussed how buyers should consider the age of major mechanical systems and septic systems when deciding how to move forward. That doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't buy the house. It means you need more information. What Happens When the Home Inspection Finds a Problem? This is where due diligence becomes so important. If an inspection identifies a concern, buyers may have options depending on the transaction and their agreement. The conversation could involve asking the seller to address an issue before closing or discussing a financial concession so the buyer can handle the work after purchasing the property. Sometimes sellers would rather make the repair. Sometimes they would rather provide a concession. And sometimes the parties have to work together to find another solution. The bigger question for the buyer is: If the seller doesn't fix it or provide a concession, can I still comfortably own this house? If the answer is yes, the issue may be manageable. If the answer is no, the red flag becomes much more significant. Water Deserves Your Attention One of Tracy's first habits when walking through a property with buyers is simple: Look up. She looks at ceiling corners, seams and other areas for evidence of water staining. She also pays close attention to basements because signs of water intrusion can indicate something that deserves further investigation. But here's an important distinction: A water stain does not automatically mean the house has an active leak. Maybe there was an ice dam several winters ago. Maybe the roof was repaired and the homeowner never repainted the ceiling. Maybe there is an ongoing problem. The stain itself is the clue not the diagnosis. That's why buyers should ask questions and investigate before making assumptions. What About a Musty Basement? A musty smell should also get your attention. Where is it coming from? Is there a dehumidifier? Is there evidence of water? Does the home have a sump pump? How often does it run? Does it have a battery backup? Is the property situated in a way that causes water to flow toward the foundation? Melissa and Tracy discussed how common basement water concerns can be in New England and why the existence of a sump pump isn't necessarily the entire story. Buyers need to understand why it is there and whether they are comfortable maintaining the systems necessary to keep the basement dry. For one buyer, maintaining a sump pump may be completely manageable. For another, it could be the reason to keep looking. Mold: Investigate Before You Panic The word “mold” can understandably make buyers nervous. But the episode emphasized the importance of understanding the extent and source of a mold condition rather than immediately assuming every instance requires walking away. A limited condition that can be professionally evaluated and remediated is very different from a property with severe moisture problems and widespread mold. The goal shouldn't be to scare the buyer. It should be to educate the buyer. Find out what you're dealing with, bring in the appropriate professional when necessary, understand the potential solution, and then decide whether you're comfortable proceeding. Category Three: When Walking Away May Be the Right Decision Some issues deserve a much closer look before a buyer commits to moving forward. The episode identified potential reasons a buyer might decide a property simply isn't the right fit, including significant structural problems, serious environmental concerns, unresolved title or property-use issues, renovations far beyond the buyer's budget, insurance problems, financing complications caused by the property's condition, or a location or property characteristic that the buyer fundamentally cannot change. The last one is especially important. You can change flooring. You can replace a roof. You can remodel a kitchen. You cannot move the house. If the location, lot, neighborhood, traffic, noise, property configuration or another permanent characteristic doesn't work for your lifestyle, no renovation will solve that problem. Structural Problems Deserve Additional Attention Cracks in foundations, dramatically uneven floors and questionable structural components should not simply be ignored. But buyers also shouldn't attempt to diagnose these conditions themselves. As Melissa and Tracy discussed, there can be an enormous difference between ordinary settling and a major structural concern. That's when the appropriate professional may need to become part of the conversation. A structural engineer, contractor or other qualified professional can provide information that helps the buyer understand what they're actually looking at. The same principle applies throughout the home. A crack doesn't automatically mean foundation failure. A ceiling stain doesn't automatically mean the roof needs replacing. A musty basement doesn't automatically mean the basement floods. Notice it. Ask about it. Investigate it. Then make your decision. A Real Example of Knowing When to Walk Away Melissa shared her own experience purchasing a home earlier in her real estate journey. During the home inspection, significant concerns were discovered with a deck that had been built by the seller. The deck lacked proper flashing and footings and wasn't properly attached to the house. There were also other areas of wood rot. Melissa was willing to take on many of the property's issues but not without accounting for the cost. She requested a $9,000 concession. The seller declined. So she walked away. The important part of that story isn't that every buyer should walk away from a problematic deck. It's that Melissa knew where her limit was. She had determined which issues she was willing to accept, calculated that the proposed concession wouldn't even cover everything that needed to be done, and decided that moving forward without assistance from the seller no longer made sense for her. That is exactly how buyers should think about red flags. Your Financing Can Turn a Repair Into a Bigger Issue Sometimes a buyer may be perfectly comfortable with a repair, but the buyer's financing isn't. Tracy shared an example involving a buyer using VA financing where chipping paint on a deck had to be addressed before the loan could move forward—even though the buyers intended to remove the deck. Certain financing programs may have property-condition requirements that need to be satisfied before closing. That's another reason your lender and real estate agent need to be part of the conversation. A property may work for you personally while still presenting a financing obstacle that needs to be resolved. What Should You Look for During Your First Showing? A showing isn't a home inspection, and buyers shouldn't try to turn themselves into inspectors. But you should pay attention. During the episode, Melissa and Tracy discussed several things buyers may want to notice as they tour a home: Water stains on ceilings or walls Musty or unusual odors Cracks in walls or foundations Sloping or uneven floors Doors that don't close properly Standing water in the yard Signs of poor drainage Missing gutters or downspouts Visible exterior deterioration Evidence of pests Older mechanical systems Condition of windows and window sills Roof condition visible from the ground Retaining walls Decks and exterior stairs The purpose isn't to diagnose each item during a 30-minute showing. It's to notice what may require a closer look. Don't Let Emotion Make the Decision for You Buying a home is emotional. By the time an inspection happens, buyers may already be picturing where the furniture will go, where they'll spend the holidays and what their lives will look like in the house. That's why it can be difficult to walk away even when the numbers or condition are telling you something important. On the other hand, a long inspection report can make a perfectly manageable house suddenly feel terrifying. Neither reaction should make the decision for you. The goal is perspective. How serious is the problem? What will it cost? Can it be fixed? Who will fix it? Will the seller participate? Can you afford it if the seller doesn't? Does it affect financing or insurance? And most importantly: Are you comfortable owning the property knowing what you now know? Your Real Estate Agent Should Help You Work Through the Red Flags One of the most valuable parts of having an experienced real estate agent is having someone who can help you slow the process down and put problems into perspective. Your agent shouldn't decide for you whether you should buy a house. Instead, your agent can help you identify questions, coordinate with the appropriate professionals, understand potential negotiating options and evaluate how an issue fits into the bigger picture of the transaction. As Melissa summarized at the end of the show, buyers should have an open conversation with their agent: Is this something you're willing to take on? Do you want to negotiate? Or is it time to walk away? The Bottom Line: A Red Flag Is a Signal to Learn More Very few homes are perfect. Especially here on the South Shore, buyers may encounter older homes, aging mechanical systems, septic systems, basements with moisture concerns, dated finishes and properties that have evolved through decades of different owners. Finding a red flag doesn't automatically make a house a bad house. It means you need more information. At Boston Connect Real Estate, our goal is to help buyers understand what they're purchasing not simply get them to the closing table. We'll help you ask questions, evaluate the information available to you, connect with the right professionals when additional expertise is needed, and determine whether the property fits your goals, lifestyle and budget. Because sometimes the answer is fix it. Sometimes it's negotiate it. And sometimes the smartest decision you can make is walk away. Thinking about buying a home on the South Shore? Contact Boston Connect Real Estate to work with an experienced local agent who can help you navigate the entire home-buying process with confidence. Because every move should be a moving experience. Watch our live video on Youtube!

⚖️ What Are the Best Ways to Negotiate a Divorce Agreement? | Los Angeles Divorce

Buying a house is funny.You walk through the front door and immediately start imagining your life there.You love the kitchen.Megan loves the backyard.You're already figuring out where the furniture goes.And then the home inspector says...‘Can I show you something?'Those may be the five scariest words in real estate.Because virtually every house has problems.The question isn't whether the house is perfect.The question is:Which problems should you accept?Which ones should you use to negotiate?And which ones should make you grab your checkbook, get back in the car and say:NOPE.So I've got Aaron and Dwight here today, and I'm putting them on the spot.I've got ten houses.Each has a problem.And they only get three choices:BUY IT.NEGOTIATE.WALK AWAY.Gentlemen...Let's buy some houses.

A logo on a jersey doesn't cut it anymore. So, how do the best brands decide if a sports sponsorship deal is worth the money? Daniel sits down with a panel that's seen every side of the deal: Sam Kilgore of Sponsor United, Marquise Watts (Who's worked with Under Armor, Adidas, & the Minnesota Timberwolves), Chris Lobono of Athlete Driven Worldwide, and Elliot Christiansen of Cleveland Construction.They get into why "the logo slap" is dying and what's replacing it, how brands move at the speed of culture (see Levi's cutout logo and the Heinz tape at the World Cup), and the real way to measure ROI when only 28% of fans can name a jersey patch. Plus Marquise's rule for every deal he touches: all money ain't good money.If you're a Marketer who wants to make sponsorships actually pay off, this episode is for YOU. Hit follow and leave us a rating if you're into it, it helps more Marketers find the show. Follow Daniel:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@themarketingmillennials/featuredTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/Dmurr68LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing

idk why they paid all these guys this money and have them on all these deals without the season beginning I'm excited though can't wait to see them play

NFL Legends James "Deebo" Harrison and Joe Haden react to Pittsburgh Steelers GM Omar Khan's latest comments on contract negotiations with Joey Porter Jr., and much more! Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/DEEBOJOE and use code DEEBOJOE and get $150 in lineups when you play your first $5 lineup! Timeline:00:00 - Intro05:35 - Steelers won't negotiate with PJ during season (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) #Club #NightcapSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What if the career you want pays less than the job you have? In this episode of When Mommy Grows Up, Becca shares five questions to help you evaluate the complete trade-off, including compensation, flexibility, family finances, future growth, and what the change could make possible. Learn how to tell the difference between a strategic step back and undervaluing yourself so you can make your next career move with clarity and confidence.Resources:Career Clarity Program: careerclarity.beccacarnahan.comEp. 116: How to Pause the Panic and Negotiate with Confidence-----------------------------You are one click away from boosting your career clarity and confidence!Head over to whenmommygrowsup.com where you'll find the free Career Clarity Kickstart. With this free on-the-go guide, we'll walk you through 5 clear action steps you can take to go from confused about next steps to confident about what you want and need from your career.Get started today!

https://journeyhomeinspections.com/Nearly half of buyers use inspection findings to slash their price, but there's a strict clock ticking before that leverage disappears. Do you know how long your option period actually lasts, and what actually convinces a seller to negotiate? Journey Home Inspections City: Fort Worth Address: 12556 Avondale Ridge Dr Website: https://journeyhomeinspections.com Phone: +1 817 296 8443 Email: bryan@journeyhomeinspections.com

During the long months of the 2020 shutdown, I spent a surprising amount of time watching the History Channel series Ancient Aliens. I began as a skeptic, but the sheer variety of evidence presented gradually challenged my assumptions. Many years earlier I had read Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods?, so I was already familiar with the basic outline of ancient alien theory. I had also read Whitley Strieber’s Communion when it was first published, giving me a passing familiarity with the subject of alien abductions. But the evidence presented on Ancient Aliens goes far beyond those early books. At this point, only the most dedicated naysayer could remain completely unmoved by the questions the series raises. For those unfamiliar with the theory, the basic claim is that various extraterrestrial civilizations have been visiting Earth for thousands, perhaps even millions, of years. The stories told around the world of gods descending from the sky and living among ancient peoples are interpreted not as myths, but as historical accounts. According to the theory, these visitors shared knowledge with humanity, particularly technological knowledge, helping advance civilization. Some theorists go even further. They propose that extraterrestrials may have altered human DNA, contributing to the emergence of modern humanity, and that they may continue to influence our evolution through the phenomenon of alien abduction. Others suggest that Earth’s entire ecosystem was seeded from elsewhere (panspermia), including the possibility that our moon was deliberately positioned to stabilize Earth’s axis and create the tides necessary for life. I eventually persuaded my brother Bill to watch the series with me. Over the past several years we have viewed and discussed virtually every episode in its fifteen-season run, some more than once. Yes, many of the stories overlap. The same evidence often appears repeatedly, accompanied by familiar commentary. Yet we found the repetition useful. It allowed us to compare claims, identify recurring themes, and test the internal consistency of the arguments being made. Bill and I pride ourselves on being open-minded, but we also anchor that openness in logic and critical thinking. As you know, we are both PhDs, with backgrounds in philosophy and rhetoric, and we have both taught critical thinking at the university level. So don’t come away with the notion that we accepted every claim hook, line, and sinker. One question in particular has occupied much of our attention. Were the gods of antiquity really gods? Were the fallen angels described in the Book of Enoch truly angels sent from God? Or were these figures actually advanced extraterrestrials whose technology was interpreted as divine power? The Book of Enoch tells of heavenly beings who descended to Earth, mingled with humanity, and even took human wives. Their offspring became known as the Nephilim. The biblical flood is said to have been sent to eradicate these hybrids. But what exactly were the Nephilim? What sort of God would destroy nearly all life on Earth to remove them? And why do angelic beings appear throughout the story warning certain humans to prepare for what was coming? As the theorists on Ancient Aliens frequently point out, such stories can be viewed either as myths or as history. If they are history, however, who are the actors involved? Are we truly dealing with God, angels, and the deities of ancient cultures? Or are these accounts describing advanced off-world intelligences engaged in competing visions of humanity’s destiny, sometimes with catastrophic consequences? These questions have fueled countless discussions between Bill and me. Interestingly, they have unfolded alongside our ongoing exploration of Gnostic theology. As we’ve continued untangling the distinctions between Aeons, Archons, angels, fallen angels, the God Above All Gods, and the god of this world, we’ve gradually arrived at a framework that makes surprising sense of many of these ancient mysteries. Today I’d like to share that framework with you. Where Ancient Alien Theory and Gnosticism Agree After spending several years examining the claims of Ancient Aliens through a Gnostic lens, I’ve found that I agree with more of the theory than I ever expected.Ancient alien theorists question the sufficiency of purely random Darwinian evolution. They argue that the extraordinary complexity of life, consciousness, and civilization suggests purposeful intervention. On this point, I find myself in substantial agreement. As I’ve discussed elsewhere in episodes such as Evolution and Conscious Aeonic Design, I regard evolution not as a blind and accidental process but as a directed unfolding of consciousness through time. Where ancient alien theorists identify extraterrestrial visitors as the guiding intelligence behind this development, I identify the guiding intelligence as the Aeons of the Fullness. I'm putting the link to one of my evolution episodes here in today's transcript. The difference is significant. For many ancient alien theorists, purposeful design implies advanced extraterrestrial engineers. For Gnosticism, purposeful design originates from the Fullness of God itself. The First Category: Aeons To understand the distinction, we must begin with the Aeons.In Valentinian Gnostic cosmology, the Aeons dwell within the Pleroma, or Fullness of God. They are not physical beings in the ordinary sense. Rather, they are divine intelligences, principles, powers, personalities, and attributes through which the intentions of the Father become manifest. If ancient alien theorists are correct that evolution has been guided, then I would attribute that guidance not to flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials but to Aeonic design.The Aeons represent order, purpose, meaning, and realization. Through them, the material cosmos unfolds toward increasingly complex expressions of consciousness. Merely replacing God with extraterrestrials does not solve the fundamental problem of origins. The question remains: where did the order come from in the first place?Randomness cannot account for persistent increase in complexity and meaning. Throwing the components of life into the air an infinite number of times does not explain why they repeatedly organize themselves into functioning systems. The question of purpose remains. The Aeons of the Fullness dream as one of Paradise. All creation is prefigured in the dreams of the Fullness. We 2nd Order Powers manifest aeonic design. Gnosticism answers that purpose precedes manifestation. The Aeons are that purpose. They are manifesting the will of God the Father. The Transpersonal Field Ancient alien theorists frequently point to the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. Again and again throughout history, important discoveries have emerged independently in multiple locations at nearly the same time. Language, architecture, metallurgy, medicine, radio technology, relativity theory, and numerous other innovations seem to appear almost as if humanity accesses a common reservoir of knowledge. The theorists often describe this reservoir as the Akashic Record or as a form of extraterrestrial guidance. I agree that such a field exists. However, I understand it differently. I regard the transpersonal field as an aspect of the Metaversal Unit of Consciousness itself: a repository of all that was, is, and will be. Human beings access this field continuously, though usually unconsciously. Inventors, artists, philosophers, and visionaries often reach into it through contemplation, dreaming, intuition, and insight. In my view, we do not need extraterrestrial programmers to explain this phenomenon. Consciousness itself provides the explanation. The Second Category: Archons Now we come to a category frequently overlooked in ancient alien discussions.The Archons. According to Gnostic cosmology, Archons are not Aeons, and they are not angels.They are the inverted shadows of divine order. Where the Aeons move toward realization, Archons move toward distortion. Where Aeons foster truth, Archons foster confusion. They are entropic forces generated through the deficiency associated with the Demiurge. Unlike living creatures, Archons possess no souls. They have no consciousness, no personal identity. They are demiurgic puppets. They are not products of the Fullness. They are products of separation from the Fullness. This distinction becomes particularly useful when discussing technology. Many ancient alien theorists interpret technological advancement as evidence of benevolent extraterrestrial influence. Yet technology itself is neutral. It can illuminate or enslave. It can connect humanity or divide it. The internet provides a perfect example. One of humanity’s greatest achievements has simultaneously become one of its greatest engines of distraction, manipulation, and division. When technological innovation amplifies vanity, domination, deception, and dependency, I suspect Archonic influence rather than Aeonic influence. The Archons thrive through confusion, distraction, fragmentation, and conflict.That is their signature. The Third Category: Angels Throughout scripture angels appear as beings capable of moving between dimensions of existence. Sometimes they appear fully physical. Sometimes they appear as luminous forms. They interact directly with humanity while simultaneously transcending ordinary physical limitations. In Gnostic thought, angels appear to function as allies of humanity in our ongoing struggle against Archonic forces. Where the Archons seek bondage, angels seek liberation. Where Archons cultivate deception, angels encourage truth. This distinction becomes particularly interesting when considering reports of mysterious interventions involving advanced technology. Ancient alien researchers often cite accounts of unexplained interference with nuclear weapons systems. Some reports describe luminous objects disabling missiles without causing harm. If such accounts are accurate, I would not automatically classify the intervention as extraterrestrial. Such actions are equally consistent with angelic activity: protective interventions intended to prevent catastrophe. Not every luminous being belongs in the extraterrestrial category. The Fourth Category: Aliens And now we arrive at the category that fascinates most viewers of Ancient Aliens.Actual extraterrestrials. Do they exist? I believe their existence is as likely as not. Yet I do not believe every unusual phenomenon should automatically be attributed to them. Carving on sarcophagus lid of Mayan ruler Pascal, 683 AD, bears striking resemblance to a man piloting a rocketship. Or is it simply a king riding his throne downward into the land of the dead? When all other categories have been properly separated, a remarkable amount of evidence still appears to point toward genuine non-human civilizations. Accounts from around the world describe beings descending from the heavens, sharing knowledge, establishing settlements, constructing monumental architecture, and sometimes interacting intimately with human populations. The Book of Enoch preserves one such tradition. It describes non-human beings who descended to Earth, taught forbidden arts, and produced offspring with human women. Whether one interprets these stories literally or symbolically, they differ significantly from descriptions of angels and differ even more from descriptions of Archons.These beings behave like a civilization. They arrive. They teach. They build. They intervene. They pursue agendas. In other words, they behave much like humans would behave if we possessed interstellar technology. From a Gnostic perspective, extraterrestrials would simply be another form of what the Tripartite Tractate calls Second Order Powers: living creatures participating in creation. They would possess souls just as we do. They would struggle with ego, ambition, cooperation, conflict, wisdom, and folly just as we do. Their civilizations may be older than ours. Their technology may surpass ours. But they remain participants in the same cosmic drama. The Ultimate Extraterrestrial Which finally brings us to the question of God. Who is the ultimate extraterrestrial? The answer depends upon which God we are discussing. The Father described in Gnostic cosmology is not a being among beings. The Father is not an old man seated upon a throne somewhere beyond the stars.The Father is the Infinite Consciousness underlying all reality. The Father does not belong to creation. Creation belongs to the Father. The Demiurge, by contrast, is much closer to the deity portrayed throughout much of the Old Testament. The Demiurge speaks. Commands. Negotiates. Punishes. Rewards. Chooses sides. The Demiurge is the angry god depicted in classical art This distinction remains one of the most controversial teachings within Gnosticism.Yet it provides a powerful framework for interpreting stories that otherwise seem contradictory. The God who sends floods, plagues, and catastrophic judgments appears very different from the Father proclaimed by Jesus. For Gnostics, that difference is not accidental. It is foundational. Conclusion So where have Bill and I landed after years of discussing these questions? We have concluded that ancient alien theorists correctly identify many genuine mysteries. Where I differ is in the tendency to place every non-human intelligence into a single category. Gnosticism offers a richer vocabulary. Some encounters may involve Aeons. Some may involve Archons. Some may involve angels. Some may involve extraterrestrials. And above them all stands the Father, the Infinite Consciousness from which all reality ultimately emerges—what we Gnostics call the God Above All Gods. The challenge is not deciding whether non-human intelligences exist. The challenge is learning how to tell them apart. That, perhaps, is the most important question of all. Where do you stand on these distinctions? What is your opinion? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Until next week, onward and upward. And God Bless Us All. If you’ve ever benefited from an episode of Gnostic Insights, I want to ask for your help. Everything you see here is created by one person. I write, record, edit, publish, transcribe, and promote every episode myself. There is no production team behind the scenes. To make this possible, I also operate a bed and breakfast in Southern Oregon. The income from cleaning rooms and making beds is what keeps this podcast alive. Your support gives me the time and resources to continue producing thoughtful, accessible content for spiritual seekers around the world. Even a small contribution makes a meaningful difference. If you believe this work matters, please consider supporting it today. Every gift helps keep the light on and the message flowing. Thank you for being part of this community. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *FirstLastEmail *Stripe Credit Card *Choose your item *Item A - $10.00Item B - $25.00Item C - $50.00Total$0.00Submit

Can You Fully Finance an Investment Property? Can you buy an investment property without bringing your own down payment? Sometimes. But there is a big difference between what is technically possible and what is actually smart. In today's episode of the Canadian Real Estate Investing Morning Show, Wayne and Gabby answer a listener question about borrowing the down payment for an investment property, using home equity, private lenders and seller financing. The biggest takeaway is simple: You can sometimes borrow the money — but the source of that money, the cost of that money and the risk you are taking matter enormously.

Adam and Adir are joined by negotiation expert Vicki Medvec to discuss how to negotiate better deals, use anchoring, understand BATNA, manage emotion, create multiple offers, avoid losing value at the finish line and solve the other side’s problem. Vicki also explains bucket issues, storytelling issues, negotiation power, cross-cultural differences and why the best negotiators focus less on themselves and more on what the other side really needs. Join us on Substack for articles, news and more: https://www.thecontrarianspod.com/ Buy Vicki's Book: https://www.amazon.com.au/Negotiate-without-Fear-Strategies-Maximize/dp/1119719097

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and three-time NAACP Image Award-winning television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Zach Shefska. Co-founder of CarEdge, a consumer-focused automotive platform he launched with his father in 2019. CarEdge was created to bring greater transparency, fairness, and efficiency to the car-buying experience through pricing data, negotiation tools, consumer education, and AI-powered resources. The conversation explores the current automotive market, rising vehicle prices, strategies for buying and selling cars, the role of AI in negotiations, and practical advice for consumers seeking to avoid costly mistakes. Purpose of the Interview 1. Educate Consumers About Car Buying Zach's primary objective was to help consumers become smarter car buyers by understanding vehicle pricing, trade-ins, inspections, warranties, financing, and negotiation tactics. 2. Promote Transparency in the Automotive Industry CarEdge was founded to level the playing field between dealerships and consumers by providing tools and information that reduce confusion and increase buyer confidence. 3. Showcase the Power of AI and Technology Zach discussed how AI is being used to assist consumers with vehicle negotiations and purchasing decisions, making the process more accessible and less intimidating. 4. Share an Entrepreneurial Success Story The interview highlights how Zach and his father transformed a simple YouTube channel into a nationally recognized platform that helps hundreds of thousands of consumers each year. Key Takeaways 1. Car Prices Have Reached Historic Levels One of the most eye-opening parts of the discussion was Zach's explanation of today's automotive market. Average new vehicle prices exceed $50,000. Average used vehicle prices exceed $28,000. Affordable entry-level vehicle options have become increasingly rare. Lesson: Consumers need to carefully budget and research before making a vehicle purchase. 2. Never Skip a Pre-Purchase Inspection Zach repeatedly emphasized that a pre-purchase inspection is the most important step when buying a used vehicle. An independent mechanic can uncover issues that may not appear on vehicle history reports. Lesson: Spending a small amount upfront on an inspection can prevent major repair expenses later. 3. Do Most of Your Homework Before Going to a Dealership Today's buyers can complete much of the purchasing process online. Consumers should: Research prices Compare vehicles Review financing options Understand ownership costs The dealership visit should mainly be for the test drive and final inspection. Lesson: Preparation creates leverage and confidence. 4. Think Beyond the Monthly Payment Many consumers focus only on monthly payments when evaluating vehicles. Zach recommends considering: Depreciation Insurance Fuel expenses Maintenance Repairs Financing costs Lesson: The true cost of ownership extends far beyond the monthly note. 5. Extended Warranties Can Be Negotiated Many consumers assume warranty packages and protection plans are fixed-price products. Zach explains that buyers should: Ask for the total cost Understand what is covered Negotiate the price if interested Lesson: Everything in the finance office is part of the negotiation process. 6. Separate Trade-Ins from Vehicle Purchases A major strategy discussed was treating a trade-in as a separate transaction. Before visiting a dealership: Obtain offers from CarMax Obtain offers from Carvana Use those offers as leverage Lesson: Negotiating the purchase and trade separately helps maximize value. 7. Reliability Matters More Than Ever When discussing dependable vehicle brands, Zach highlighted: Toyota Honda Mazda He noted that reliability should be a major factor in purchasing decisions because maintenance and repair costs significantly impact long-term ownership expenses. Lesson: A lower-maintenance vehicle often provides better long-term value. 8. Driving Cars Longer Is a Smart Financial Strategy Rather than frequently upgrading, Zach recommends keeping vehicles longer and extracting maximum value from them. Lesson: Reducing depreciation is one of the easiest ways to save money over time. Notable Quotes On Entrepreneurship "Being an entrepreneur is scary. Putting your name associated with something, there's a lot of responsibility associated with that." On Car Shopping "Do your wants versus needs analysis." On Used-Car Purchases "Get a pre-purchase inspection." On Ownership Costs "The cost of a car is not just your monthly payment." On Extended Warranties "Ask them what the actual price is of the coverage." On Trade-Ins "Treat buying a car and selling a car as two separate transactions." On Affordability "Don't be spending more than 20% of your gross take-home income on your car." On Long-Term Ownership "Drive your car into the ground." On Reliability "Toyota, Honda, Mazda." The CarEdge Value Proposition CarEdge is built around four core principles: Transparency Providing real-time pricing insights and market data. Consumer Empowerment Giving buyers the information and negotiating tools needed to make informed decisions. AI-Powered Assistance Using technology to simplify vehicle buying and negotiation. Consumer Education Helping people avoid common mistakes that cost buyers time and money. Overall Assessment This interview serves as both a practical consumer guide and an entrepreneurial case study. Zach Shefska explains how CarEdge is helping consumers navigate an increasingly expensive and complex automotive marketplace while using technology to make the car-buying process more transparent. The central message is simple: informed buyers make better decisions. Whether purchasing a new vehicle, shopping for a used car, negotiating a warranty, or evaluating a trade-in, success comes from research, preparation, and understanding the full cost of ownership before signing on the dotted line. #SHMS #STRAW #BEST Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. Business Podcast Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Growth Financial Literacy Wealth Building Black Entrepreneurs Minority Business Leadership Executive Leadership Business Funding Marketing Strategies Personal Development Startup Advice Sales Training CEO Interviews Founder Stories Professional Development Economic Empowerment Business Success Networking Brand Building Innovation How to start a business Small business funding Entrepreneur success stories Business leadership podcast Wealth building strategies Black entrepreneur podcast Minority business development Marketing for small businesses Business growth strategies Startup funding opportunities Executive leadership training Financial literacy education Success mindset podcastSupport the show: https://www.steveharveyfm.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and three-time NAACP Image Award-winning television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Zach Shefska. Co-founder of CarEdge, a consumer-focused automotive platform he launched with his father in 2019. CarEdge was created to bring greater transparency, fairness, and efficiency to the car-buying experience through pricing data, negotiation tools, consumer education, and AI-powered resources. The conversation explores the current automotive market, rising vehicle prices, strategies for buying and selling cars, the role of AI in negotiations, and practical advice for consumers seeking to avoid costly mistakes. Purpose of the Interview 1. Educate Consumers About Car Buying Zach's primary objective was to help consumers become smarter car buyers by understanding vehicle pricing, trade-ins, inspections, warranties, financing, and negotiation tactics. 2. Promote Transparency in the Automotive Industry CarEdge was founded to level the playing field between dealerships and consumers by providing tools and information that reduce confusion and increase buyer confidence. 3. Showcase the Power of AI and Technology Zach discussed how AI is being used to assist consumers with vehicle negotiations and purchasing decisions, making the process more accessible and less intimidating. 4. Share an Entrepreneurial Success Story The interview highlights how Zach and his father transformed a simple YouTube channel into a nationally recognized platform that helps hundreds of thousands of consumers each year. Key Takeaways 1. Car Prices Have Reached Historic Levels One of the most eye-opening parts of the discussion was Zach's explanation of today's automotive market. Average new vehicle prices exceed $50,000. Average used vehicle prices exceed $28,000. Affordable entry-level vehicle options have become increasingly rare. Lesson: Consumers need to carefully budget and research before making a vehicle purchase. 2. Never Skip a Pre-Purchase Inspection Zach repeatedly emphasized that a pre-purchase inspection is the most important step when buying a used vehicle. An independent mechanic can uncover issues that may not appear on vehicle history reports. Lesson: Spending a small amount upfront on an inspection can prevent major repair expenses later. 3. Do Most of Your Homework Before Going to a Dealership Today's buyers can complete much of the purchasing process online. Consumers should: Research prices Compare vehicles Review financing options Understand ownership costs The dealership visit should mainly be for the test drive and final inspection. Lesson: Preparation creates leverage and confidence. 4. Think Beyond the Monthly Payment Many consumers focus only on monthly payments when evaluating vehicles. Zach recommends considering: Depreciation Insurance Fuel expenses Maintenance Repairs Financing costs Lesson: The true cost of ownership extends far beyond the monthly note. 5. Extended Warranties Can Be Negotiated Many consumers assume warranty packages and protection plans are fixed-price products. Zach explains that buyers should: Ask for the total cost Understand what is covered Negotiate the price if interested Lesson: Everything in the finance office is part of the negotiation process. 6. Separate Trade-Ins from Vehicle Purchases A major strategy discussed was treating a trade-in as a separate transaction. Before visiting a dealership: Obtain offers from CarMax Obtain offers from Carvana Use those offers as leverage Lesson: Negotiating the purchase and trade separately helps maximize value. 7. Reliability Matters More Than Ever When discussing dependable vehicle brands, Zach highlighted: Toyota Honda Mazda He noted that reliability should be a major factor in purchasing decisions because maintenance and repair costs significantly impact long-term ownership expenses. Lesson: A lower-maintenance vehicle often provides better long-term value. 8. Driving Cars Longer Is a Smart Financial Strategy Rather than frequently upgrading, Zach recommends keeping vehicles longer and extracting maximum value from them. Lesson: Reducing depreciation is one of the easiest ways to save money over time. Notable Quotes On Entrepreneurship "Being an entrepreneur is scary. Putting your name associated with something, there's a lot of responsibility associated with that." On Car Shopping "Do your wants versus needs analysis." On Used-Car Purchases "Get a pre-purchase inspection." On Ownership Costs "The cost of a car is not just your monthly payment." On Extended Warranties "Ask them what the actual price is of the coverage." On Trade-Ins "Treat buying a car and selling a car as two separate transactions." On Affordability "Don't be spending more than 20% of your gross take-home income on your car." On Long-Term Ownership "Drive your car into the ground." On Reliability "Toyota, Honda, Mazda." The CarEdge Value Proposition CarEdge is built around four core principles: Transparency Providing real-time pricing insights and market data. Consumer Empowerment Giving buyers the information and negotiating tools needed to make informed decisions. AI-Powered Assistance Using technology to simplify vehicle buying and negotiation. Consumer Education Helping people avoid common mistakes that cost buyers time and money. Overall Assessment This interview serves as both a practical consumer guide and an entrepreneurial case study. Zach Shefska explains how CarEdge is helping consumers navigate an increasingly expensive and complex automotive marketplace while using technology to make the car-buying process more transparent. The central message is simple: informed buyers make better decisions. Whether purchasing a new vehicle, shopping for a used car, negotiating a warranty, or evaluating a trade-in, success comes from research, preparation, and understanding the full cost of ownership before signing on the dotted line. #SHMS #STRAW #BEST Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. Business Podcast Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Growth Financial Literacy Wealth Building Black Entrepreneurs Minority Business Leadership Executive Leadership Business Funding Marketing Strategies Personal Development Startup Advice Sales Training CEO Interviews Founder Stories Professional Development Economic Empowerment Business Success Networking Brand Building Innovation How to start a business Small business funding Entrepreneur success stories Business leadership podcast Wealth building strategies Black entrepreneur podcast Minority business development Marketing for small businesses Business growth strategies Startup funding opportunities Executive leadership training Financial literacy education Success mindset podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and three-time NAACP Image Award-winning television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Zach Shefska. Co-founder of CarEdge, a consumer-focused automotive platform he launched with his father in 2019. CarEdge was created to bring greater transparency, fairness, and efficiency to the car-buying experience through pricing data, negotiation tools, consumer education, and AI-powered resources. The conversation explores the current automotive market, rising vehicle prices, strategies for buying and selling cars, the role of AI in negotiations, and practical advice for consumers seeking to avoid costly mistakes. Purpose of the Interview 1. Educate Consumers About Car Buying Zach's primary objective was to help consumers become smarter car buyers by understanding vehicle pricing, trade-ins, inspections, warranties, financing, and negotiation tactics. 2. Promote Transparency in the Automotive Industry CarEdge was founded to level the playing field between dealerships and consumers by providing tools and information that reduce confusion and increase buyer confidence. 3. Showcase the Power of AI and Technology Zach discussed how AI is being used to assist consumers with vehicle negotiations and purchasing decisions, making the process more accessible and less intimidating. 4. Share an Entrepreneurial Success Story The interview highlights how Zach and his father transformed a simple YouTube channel into a nationally recognized platform that helps hundreds of thousands of consumers each year. Key Takeaways 1. Car Prices Have Reached Historic Levels One of the most eye-opening parts of the discussion was Zach's explanation of today's automotive market. Average new vehicle prices exceed $50,000. Average used vehicle prices exceed $28,000. Affordable entry-level vehicle options have become increasingly rare. Lesson: Consumers need to carefully budget and research before making a vehicle purchase. 2. Never Skip a Pre-Purchase Inspection Zach repeatedly emphasized that a pre-purchase inspection is the most important step when buying a used vehicle. An independent mechanic can uncover issues that may not appear on vehicle history reports. Lesson: Spending a small amount upfront on an inspection can prevent major repair expenses later. 3. Do Most of Your Homework Before Going to a Dealership Today's buyers can complete much of the purchasing process online. Consumers should: Research prices Compare vehicles Review financing options Understand ownership costs The dealership visit should mainly be for the test drive and final inspection. Lesson: Preparation creates leverage and confidence. 4. Think Beyond the Monthly Payment Many consumers focus only on monthly payments when evaluating vehicles. Zach recommends considering: Depreciation Insurance Fuel expenses Maintenance Repairs Financing costs Lesson: The true cost of ownership extends far beyond the monthly note. 5. Extended Warranties Can Be Negotiated Many consumers assume warranty packages and protection plans are fixed-price products. Zach explains that buyers should: Ask for the total cost Understand what is covered Negotiate the price if interested Lesson: Everything in the finance office is part of the negotiation process. 6. Separate Trade-Ins from Vehicle Purchases A major strategy discussed was treating a trade-in as a separate transaction. Before visiting a dealership: Obtain offers from CarMax Obtain offers from Carvana Use those offers as leverage Lesson: Negotiating the purchase and trade separately helps maximize value. 7. Reliability Matters More Than Ever When discussing dependable vehicle brands, Zach highlighted: Toyota Honda Mazda He noted that reliability should be a major factor in purchasing decisions because maintenance and repair costs significantly impact long-term ownership expenses. Lesson: A lower-maintenance vehicle often provides better long-term value. 8. Driving Cars Longer Is a Smart Financial Strategy Rather than frequently upgrading, Zach recommends keeping vehicles longer and extracting maximum value from them. Lesson: Reducing depreciation is one of the easiest ways to save money over time. Notable Quotes On Entrepreneurship "Being an entrepreneur is scary. Putting your name associated with something, there's a lot of responsibility associated with that." On Car Shopping "Do your wants versus needs analysis." On Used-Car Purchases "Get a pre-purchase inspection." On Ownership Costs "The cost of a car is not just your monthly payment." On Extended Warranties "Ask them what the actual price is of the coverage." On Trade-Ins "Treat buying a car and selling a car as two separate transactions." On Affordability "Don't be spending more than 20% of your gross take-home income on your car." On Long-Term Ownership "Drive your car into the ground." On Reliability "Toyota, Honda, Mazda." The CarEdge Value Proposition CarEdge is built around four core principles: Transparency Providing real-time pricing insights and market data. Consumer Empowerment Giving buyers the information and negotiating tools needed to make informed decisions. AI-Powered Assistance Using technology to simplify vehicle buying and negotiation. Consumer Education Helping people avoid common mistakes that cost buyers time and money. Overall Assessment This interview serves as both a practical consumer guide and an entrepreneurial case study. Zach Shefska explains how CarEdge is helping consumers navigate an increasingly expensive and complex automotive marketplace while using technology to make the car-buying process more transparent. The central message is simple: informed buyers make better decisions. Whether purchasing a new vehicle, shopping for a used car, negotiating a warranty, or evaluating a trade-in, success comes from research, preparation, and understanding the full cost of ownership before signing on the dotted line. #SHMS #STRAW #BEST Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. Business Podcast Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Growth Financial Literacy Wealth Building Black Entrepreneurs Minority Business Leadership Executive Leadership Business Funding Marketing Strategies Personal Development Startup Advice Sales Training CEO Interviews Founder Stories Professional Development Economic Empowerment Business Success Networking Brand Building Innovation How to start a business Small business funding Entrepreneur success stories Business leadership podcast Wealth building strategies Black entrepreneur podcast Minority business development Marketing for small businesses Business growth strategies Startup funding opportunities Executive leadership training Financial literacy education Success mindset podcastSteve Harvey Morning Show Online: http://www.steveharveyfm.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join our upcoming live event at GREwebinars.com. It's called "The Seven Figure Solution" on August 27th at 8 PM Eastern. After listening to me for 12 years, learn how to finally put it all together for a coordinated, tax-efficient retirement and wealth plan.  Keith debunks alarmist predictions of an 80–95% housing crash and explains why inflation, constrained supply, and strong demand continue to put upward pressure on home prices.  He breaks down key trends in renter mobility, highlights how the AI boom is driving record-breaking rents in San Francisco, and contrasts "dopamine culture" and money maxing with GRE's philosophy of growing one's means through income property and leverage.  Keith also discusses how the Seven-Figure Solution framework helps real estate investors more effectively integrate properties, taxes, insurance, and retirement planning.  Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/620 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text  FAMILY to 66866  Join Mid South Home Buyers' one-time, free live webinar featuring Keith Weinhold on September 30 at GetRichEducation.com/MidSouth to learn how Memphis' economic expansion could create new real estate investment opportunities, and have your questions answered in real time. Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com  Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:01   Welcome to GRE. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. An alarmist calls for a housing price crash of 80 to 95 percent. We'll listen to it. This city's rents are up 26 percent annually. The rise of dopamine culture and money maxing has made its way into personal finance. Then an invitation to join us for a special event today on Get Rich Education.   Keith Weinhold  0:29   What if I told you that one of America's strongest cash flow real estate markets is also becoming the new brains and brawn behind AI? That city is Memphis, believe it or not. In September 30th, we're going to show you why the smart money is paying attention now, along with an investing opportunity you won't want to miss. Join me, Terry Kerr and Matthew Van Horn of Mid South Homebuyers, the largest turnkey company in Memphis with more than 6,000 homes under management, for a free live webinar, the likes of which I've never done before. We're going to look at what billions in new investment could mean for jobs, housing demand, neighborhood appreciation, and your portfolio. Everyone who attends live will also get exclusive access to the best deal terms MidSeal has ever offered. Reserve your free seat at getricheducation.com/midsouth. Again, that september 30. Don't say we didn't tell you. Save your spot at getricheducation.com/midsouth.   Speaker 1  1:35   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.   Keith Weinhold  1:51   Welcome to GRE from Naples, Italy, to Naples, Florida, and across 188 nations worldwide. You're listening to one of America's longest-running and most listened-to shows in the real estate world. This is Get Rich Education, and I'm Keith Weinhold. Yes, the very founder of this snaggle-toothed operation right here. I'm a longtime real estate investor myself, erstwhile writer for both Forbes and the Rich Dad Advisors, serving on the Forbes Real Estate Council, you can also see my work in the USA Today and Business Insider. I'm the creator of Real Estate Pays Five Ways and the Inflation Triple Crown. Oh, after all that, really, I'm just a shaved mammal with slack jaw, a highly leveraged hominid of the landed gentry, right before I discuss the housing price crash of 80 to 95% you know, keep in mind that most people think that if you're in real estate, then you've got to be either a realtor or a landlord. I am neither a realtor nor a landlord. People also think that it takes tons of money. It does not. Now you could pursue no money down strategies, but that takes some time to learn and skill to develop. Now I was a landlord in the early years of my real estate investing, but after about six years of that, I hired a property manager and never looked back. Therefore, keeping this mostly passive, a 20 to 25 percent down payment on a carefully selected residential rental property includes ones that today can still have purchase prices below 200k. That's purchased in a geographically investor advantaged market. Okay, that is the center of what we do here because when you own property this way, now you've got the margin where you can pay a property manager to enjoy the five ways that you're paid mostly passively. Be a savvy borrower.   Keith Weinhold  4:02   Now, when you're between deals and accumulating capital to add the next piece of property to your rental portfolio, that's where you can flip and do the opposite in the short term and be a real estate lender for perhaps an eight to 10% stable return. That's what I do, rather than getting three and a half percent, which is the going rate today in a high yield savings account. So be a lender between deals in the short term, or you're a savvy borrower long term. Now the late analyst at Housing Wire, and he was also a past guest here on the show, Logan Modashami, he brought this 80 to 95% housing price crash media piece to my attention. It's in the form of a meta reel that got a lot of attention. Let's play it. I mean, this type of nonsense circulates out. It's not founded on anything substantive, and this just absolutely does not serve anybody. You've got to take this type of thing as entertainment, but it's being presented in a serious, informative way, and just listen to the basis for the claim.    Hayden Weston  5:19   The United States housing market is about to collapse 80 to 95 percent, which means that homes that were worth 1.5 million are going to be worth 300,000. The reason is simple: the U.S. housing market has reached its most unaffordable level in history. People cannot afford to buy homes, and if people cannot buy homes, the market must correct. The question is how hard the market is going to crash, not if it will. According to CPI and price history data, this is predicted to be worse than the 2008 housing bubble. We are going to see prices drop 80 to 95 percent.   Keith Weinhold  6:02   A housing price collapse of 80 to 95 percent. This is from a platform called Hayden Trades. It has got to be the worst example of trying to steal attention rather than serving people. Gosh, don't even make 20% or 50% crash predictions anymore go for far higher, I guess. He says it is according to the CPI and price history data. This doesn't even make sense. Now the low affordability mentioned that part is true, and this is what's slowed home price appreciation. But here in the late 2020s, there was more upward pressure on home prices, not downward inflationary pressure, which is rampant. That is poised to raise replacement cost because a home is a bundle of land, labor, lumber, concrete, copper, and energy. America's best job markets face land and regulatory constraints that pressures prices upward, and regulations are not easily repealed either. There's a large reservoir of sideline buyers that still want to own, and single-family home construction is woefully insufficient, keeping the supply down. Indeed, there is more upward pressure on home prices, not downward. This coming inflation wave, that's exacerbated by war, is unfortunately, or fortunately, if you're positioned, it's poised to widen the K-shaped economy where winners win bigger and losers lose more. The boat is leaving the dock. Are you on it?   Keith Weinhold  7:54   The distance between the boat and the dock just keeps increasing, and eventually you won't be able to make the leap, the jump from the boat to the dock. Now, in the near term, because we're approaching the fall season, when you hear stats about median home prices, note that prices are lower in autumn and winter than they are in spring and summer. It happens pretty much every year. Now, why is this? Well, one reason is that a lot of people don't think about is simply the fact that smaller houses get sold in the winter compared to the summer. And why would this be? This is because families with school-age children who need larger homes get their deals done in summer months before school starts. That is one reason why median home prices are higher in the summer than they are in the winter. When you look at a long-term price chart of homes, this is why you see peaks each summer and dips each winter. Now, investors like us. Now we're not buying so much for school-age children considerations, but this phenomenon affects the median prices that you see quoted in most any market. That is how that works, and why homes present better in the summer too. Green lawns, Leaves, flowers, and natural light improve curb appeal. Some say buy when the snow is flying, sell when the flowers are blooming.   Keith Weinhold  9:32   Shortly, I want to tell you about the city with rents that are up 26% year over year, and there's no end in sight to those rent increases, either. But first, there's a significant national real estate trend. Now, a lot of times, the discussion about the rental market centers around the level of rents or the vacancy rate, and those metrics sure do matter. But what about tenant retention? That is. Renter mobility rate. How long do residents stay? Well, renter mobility is down, down, down. They are not moving around. That's the big trend. Tenants are staying longer. Renters are waiting longer to buy homes than prior generations did. I mean a lot of people are beginning to wonder if their starter home will arrive before their first social security check does? The share of renters planning to move within three years that has plunged since 2019 from 57% then down to just 37% now. This is according to a national survey from the New York Fed. 57 down to 37% that plan to move within three years. Yes, this means that even after the pandemic waned, renters plan to stay in place longer. Everyone is staying put longer, and what exactly is keeping all of those moving boxes in storage? You guessed it. Buying their own home is more difficult to afford. It's kind of like an obstacle course where the down payment is waiting at the finish line, which is a long ways away. It's like an ultra marathon. This decline in renter mobility. This is obviously good news for income property owners and landlords because vacancy and turnover are our greatest expenses. People are paying more.   Keith Weinhold  11:39   You know, it's interesting that many are staying and put because a lot of renters often pay three to 5% annual renewal increases, especially in single-family rentals. Among apartment dwellers, there are currently more move-ups than move downs. People willing to spend a little more, and part of this is because a lot of people have just simply given up, completely given up on buying a home, choosing instead to fritter away their money on DraftKings parlays, couchie predictions, meme coins, burritos whose delivery fees cost more than the burrito, and a dozen forgotten subscriptions quietly feeding on their checking account. Yeah, a lot of people have just given in. Besides falling renter mobility, there is also falling homeowner mobility. One reason it has fallen is due to the well-documented mortgage rate lock-in effect. But mobility is down among both groups, among renters and homeowners, for a few different reasons. Like I've mentioned in previous shows, America is aging, and older people move less. Remote work means people don't have to move for a job, and housing inventory remains limited. This means that there are few attractive alternatives to move into, whether you're a homeowner or a renter. Those are some reasons as to why mobility is down for both groups. And the New York Fed analysis shows that renter mobility it is especially weak among that subgroup that believes that they will never own a home. I mean, this group of people really isn't moving. They are staying in place even longer. This group that believes that they will never own a home, and this is a skew toward lower income renters for sure, but even upper income renters are staying longer. You know, I own a lot of single family rental homes myself, and I'm just thinking now, I can't even remember the last time someone's moved out. It might be over a year since anyone has moved. The average renter's perceived chance of ever owning a home that has fallen, and this is significant for investors. Okay, that percent of renters that ever hope to own a home has fallen from 52% back in 2015 down to just 35% last year. 52% down to 35% The amount of renters that think they'll ever own a home. Both single-family rental and apartment renters are staying longer. This is both types, and it's not because these renters stop wanting homes. About two-thirds say that they would prefer to own if they had the money to do so. This is substantial. The drop in American mobility rate. I mean, that part is actually decades long, and this seems to catch people off guard. A lot of people falsely believe that people are moving more often, and that's something I've touched on before. This deeply hurts.   Keith Weinhold  15:00   Certain industries like moving companies, furniture stores, and yes, real estate agents—all these groups of people have got to be wondering where did everybody go? The answer is nowhere. Apparently, they are not going anywhere. So the bottom line here, with this lack of mobility, is that renters feel locked out, owners feel locked in, and landlords feel locked up with their tenants staying longer. Although this is good news for landlords and investment property owners, you know there is one thing to be careful of amidst these longer tenant stays, and that is, well, say you buy a rental property with an existing tenant in place that's been there for a while, it's more likely then that that tenant is paying below market rent, and why would that be? Well, because generally, the longer a tenant stays, the more likely it is that the previous landlord gave them a break on the rent. Now, why does that happen? Well, landlords can get lazy about bumping up the rent, and see what's really going on is that the previous landlord, perhaps the person you bought the property from, they themselves bought the property at a much lower price years ago than you did today, and therefore their mortgage payment is lower, and therefore the lower rent was able to cover their mortgage payment. So they weren't too worried about it. But if you're buying at today's prices, well, then you cannot stand for yesterday's rent amount, and that's why it's more likely that you need to bump up the rent to market rent. Although national rent growth is pretty flat, San Francisco continues to rewrite its record book per Zumper's national rent report.San Francisco's one-bedroom rent is up 23% year-over-year to 4,180 bucks, and two-bedroom rent is up 26% to over 6K, 6,020 dollars for the median rent in a two-bedroom San Francisco apartment-the first time they've ever topped 6K there. Yes, the city continues to lead the nation in annual rent growth, and even ahead of New York City for two bedrooms. That's because this is where the growth of the AI industry has collided with a supply-constrained housing market, high demand over low supply. I mean, you might remember that San Francisco was hit especially hard by the pandemic, but its bounce back has been amazing. Even beleaguered San Francisco office buildings are filling up again amidst the AI boom. Now, the Bay Area's previous tech boom back a while ago that was led by tech giants like Facebook, Apple, and Google. All right, that boom was largely concentrated in these sprawling suburban office parks in Silicon Valley. Now Silicon Valley is not in San Francisco. It is depending on just where you're going, perhaps 60 minutes south of San Francisco proper. But see, this time the city limits San Francisco finds itself as the epicenter because a lot of the newest, biggest names in tech like Anthropic and OpenAI, they are headquartered in the very same city neighborhoods that were struggling with occupancy just a few years ago, and see a big part of what's going on, and there's a lesson in this for you as when a lot of other cities built like Phoenix and Austin did, San Francisco did not, and what's interesting is that the publication, the San Francisco Standard, it reported that get this last November a two-bedroom apartment overlooking Alamo Square was advertised for $5,000 per month. That was already 30% above San Fran's median two-bedroom rent at the time, but despite that fact, so many people attended the open house that the property manager had to divide them into two touring groups. Qualified applicants were then emailed and told to submit their best offer of rent. Okay, basically an invitation to a bidding war here. One tech worker and her roommate bid $5,100. Management responded that they had reached the second round and invited them to increase their bid again, and they declined to increase their bid and they lost the apartment. Those. Same article reported that an even more extreme marina neighborhood example, the winning renter offered substantially above asking price, six months upfront rent, and twice monthly professional cleaning. What kind of prospective tenant offers their landlord professional cleaning? I've surely never had it happen. That and bidding wars are now taking place for San Francisco rentals. Could an AI surge and a lack of supply make anything like that happen in your rental market? That remains to be seen, and probably not to that extent. I've got more for you straight ahead, including the trend of money maxing. I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to episode 620 of Get Rich Education. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056. They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Chaley Ridge while it's on your mind. Start at RidgeLendingGroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com. Let me ask you something: If you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. In full disclosure, I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed. But with a track record of consistent, on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility. Go to freedomfamilyinvestments.com to book a clarity call, or text family to 66866. That's family 266866.   Keith Weinhold  17:22   Although national rent growth is pretty flat, San Francisco continues to rewrite its record book per Zumper's national rent report. San Francisco's one-bedroom rent is up 23% year-over-year to 4,180 bucks, and two-bedroom rent is up 26% to over 6K, $6,020 for the median rent in a two-bedroom San Francisco apartment-the first time they've ever topped 6K there. Yes, the city continues to lead the nation in annual rent growth, and even ahead of New York City for two bedrooms. That's because this is where the growth of the AI industry has collided with a supply-constrained housing market, high demand over low supply. I mean, you might remember that San Francisco was hit especially hard by the pandemic, but its bounce back has been amazing. Even beleaguered San Francisco office buildings are filling up again amidst the AI boom. Now, the Bay Area's previous tech boom back a while ago that was led by tech giants like Facebook, Apple, and Google. All right, that boom was largely concentrated in these sprawling suburban office parks in Silicon Valley. Now Silicon Valley is not in San Francisco. It is depending on just where you're going, perhaps 60 minutes south of San Francisco proper. But see, this time the city limits San Francisco finds itself as the epicenter because a lot of the newest, biggest names in tech like Anthropic and OpenAI, they are headquartered in the very same city neighborhoods that were struggling with occupancy just a few years ago, and see a big part of what's going on, and there's a lesson in this for you as when a lot of other cities built like Phoenix and Austin did, San Francisco did not, and what's interesting is that the publication, the San Francisco Standard, it reported that get this last November a two-bedroom apartment overlooking Alamo Square was advertised for $5,000 per month. That was already 30% above San Fran's median two-bedroom rent at the time, but despite that fact, so many people attended the open house that the property manager had to divide them into two touring groups. Qualified applicants were then emailed and told to submit their best offer of rent. Okay, basically an invitation to a bidding war here. One tech worker and her roommate bid $5,100. Management responded that they had reached the second round and invited them to increase their bid again, and they declined to increase their bid and they lost the apartment. Those. Same article reported that an even more extreme marina neighborhood example, the winning renter offered substantially above asking price, six months upfront rent, and twice monthly professional cleaning. What kind of prospective tenant offers their landlord professional cleaning? I've surely never had it happen. That and bidding wars are now taking place for San Francisco rentals. Could an AI surge and a lack of supply make anything like that happen in your rental market? That remains to be seen, and probably not to that extent. I've got more for you straight ahead, including the trend of money maxing.   Keith Weinhold  20:46   I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to episode 620 of Get Rich Education. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056. They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge while it's on your mind. Start at ridgelendinggroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com.   Keith Weinhold  21:23   Let me ask you something: If you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. In full disclosure, I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed. But with a track record of consistent, on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility. Go to freedomfamilyinvestments.com to book a clarity call, or text family to 66866. That's family 266866.   Robert Kiyosaki  22:26   This is our rich dad, poor dad author Robert Kiyosaki. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold, and there is I respect Keith. He's a very strong, smart, bright young man.   Keith Weinhold  22:47   Welcome back to Get Rich Education. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. The rise of quick hit dopamine culture has definitely hit the personal finance world, and this is not a good trend for a lot of Gen Zers, who are those age 14 to 29, sports gambling is increasingly a part of what they think is financial planning. A recent survey from the wealth management platform Betterment shows that 26% of Gen Zers, more than one in four, then consider sports gambling as part of a deliberate long-term financial strategy. If you think that's bad, more than half of Gen Zers, 52% say they've rerouted funds from investment over to sports betting in the past year, and that's versus just 24% of all Americans. Yes, the rapid legalization of sports gambling means it's never been easier to bet your whole paycheck that the Mets are going to lose 100 games this season. When a prediction market or a sports book starts to feel like a retirement strategy, we have a problem, and this is congruent with the rise of dopamine culture across all of society, where we've gone from playing sports, then to watching sports, and now to gambling on sports. In the kitchen, it's where we've gone from home cooking to leaving and getting fast food, to ordering Uber Eats, it's where media has gone from film and TV to streaming shows, and now with dopamine culture, it is watching reels. It's how shopping has gone from first high street shopping, then to Amazon and now to the TikTok shop. It's how communicating with people. It's gone from handwritten letters to sending emails to Snapchats. It's how we've gone from newspapers to breaking news to rage bait. As far as what we listen to for music, this rise of dopamine culture-it used to be vinyl records, and then Spotify playlists, and now it's trending sounds.   Keith Weinhold  25:11   It's gone from finding love to casual dating to infinite swiping. How about the way we look at and share photos? It's gone from photo albums to camera rolls to Instagram stories, and how about the way we access information with this rise of dopamine culture? It's gone from libraries to Google to Chat GPT, and that brings us to money maxing. Okay, yes, here in our finance world, the rise of dopamine culture has led to this. Yes, that is apparently a word now. Money maxing-it's all one word with 2x's. It sounds like something invented by a 22-year-old who's got three credit cards, three hoodies, and one fork. Okay, but money maxing-that is one of the newest personal finance trends spreading across social media. Now, the maxing stuff in that whole suffix that first became popular through terms like looks maxing, which means trying to maximize your physical appearance, whether you're male or female, and now people are sleep maxing, health maxing, career maxing, and I guess it was just inevitable until they were money maxing. And what it really means is optimizing your financial life so that every dollar works harder for you. That could include using a high yield savings account, earning credit card points and rewards, automating your investments, negotiating bills, and eliminating wasteful spending-eh, in other words, it's just another internet reinvention of financial responsibility. I mean, your grandparents just called it being sensible.   Keith Weinhold  26:58   Now, I do like the fact that young people are talking about money. I mean, as we've covered before, financial education is desperately needed. Schools will teach you about the parts of a biological cell, but surely not how to read a mortgage statement. So you can graduate knowing that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell, while believing that a tax refund is free money from the government. So you know, directionally, money maxing is good, but see, it usually only focuses on one side of the equation. That's the problem with money maxing. It only focuses on spending less. And here at GRE we take a different approach. The old financial advice is live below your means, and GRE's philosophy is grow your means. You should only live below your means earlier in your financial life when you sort of have to and you need to form capital for investments. But grow your means so that you can have the means to do things. I mean, that is the point of financial betterment.   Keith Weinhold  28:09   Long term, financial betterment is certainly not sustainable by saving money by getting a haircut at home, only watching men's fast pitch softball at the Moose Lodge because it's free instead of going to a Major League Baseball game, saving $120 on air tickets by adding an extra layover on your trip itinerary, or a buy one get one free deal on Hillshire Farm Bacon. Now, of course, you shouldn't waste money if you're paying for six streaming services and you're only watching one. Well, cancel the others. If you carry a credit card balance at 24% surely extinguish that financial dumpster fire. But you cannot shrink your way to an extraordinary life. There is a floor beneath how little you can spend, there is no ceiling above how much value you can create for others. You can cancel your coffee, you can stop eating out, you can turn down the thermostat until your living room feels like a meat locker, but eventually there is nothing meaningful left to cut. That is the weakness in traditional money advice. It treats personal finance like a sinking ship, and it just hands you a bucket. Growing your means is building a bigger ship. The most powerful form of money maxing is not squeezing another 2% off your grocery bill. It is increasing your income. It is acquiring productive assets and creating systems that pay you repeatedly. I mean, saving 20 bucks is fine. Creating another income stream can continue for. Years. This is the difference between subtraction and multiplication. Most money-maxing advice really isn't different than that conventional advice. It's living in the world of subtraction. Cut this. Cancel that. Buy the generic cereal. Drive across town to save 12 cents per gallon. Hey, congratulations! You just spent 40 minutes of your finite life to save $2.80. Real wealth is built through multiplication. Multiply your income, multiply your skills, multiply your relationships, learn a new system, multiply the number of people you serve with rental property, and then multiply your money through productive assets. Now, this does not mean to spend recklessly. Growing means is not permission to inflate your lifestyle every single time your income rises, but it means directing more attention toward expansion than deprivation.   Keith Weinhold  30:59   Ask yourself a better question. Instead of asking how can I save another $100 this month, ask how can I create another $1,000 of monthly income. That very question activates a completely different part of your brain. Now maybe you develop a valuable skill. Maybe you negotiate your compensation. Maybe you start a business. Maybe you acquire an income property. Maybe you turn knowledge, intellectual property, or an audience into a recurring revenue stream. You start looking for leverage rather than looking for coupons and leverage, that is the real engine of what money maxing ought to be. Leverage means accomplishing more with less of your personal effort, and there sure are a lot of forms you can leverage other people's time. You can leverage systems and technology. We're going to talk about a system later here. You can leverage media where one message reaches 1000s or millions of people, and in real estate, you can leverage other people's money. You can scale. A few weeks ago, here I discussed four different types of scale. Real estate investors can get them all at the same time. If you remember, they are financial leverage, like with the five ways. There's operational leverage, there's geographic leverage, and finally replication. You use a relatively small down payment to control a much larger asset while your tenant pays you rent, that income helps cover the property's expenses and mortgage, and over time, inflation tends to lift rents and property values. While your fixed rate debt becomes easier to repay with diminished dollars, I mean that is real money maxing right there. In fact, GRE's real estate pays five ways framework might be the ultimate money maxing system. One property can produce cash flow; it can appreciate. Your tenant can gradually amortize your loan for you. You get the tax benefits, and inflation can transfer wealth from the lender to you through your fixed rate debt, five simultaneous financial benefits attached to one asset. Oh, and we're going to take that and compare that with saving 50 cents on toothpaste. Now, both things technically do improve your finances, but they don't even belong in the same zip code.   Keith Weinhold  33:41   Now, none of this means that every leveraged property is a good investment. In fact, leverage amplifies outcomes. A well-selected, properly financed property is going to accelerate your wealth creation. But a bad deal with thin reserves-hey, that can accelerate your introduction to an attorney. Money maxing still requires judgment. You want durable income, adequate liquidity, responsible underwriting, and you want to have enough reserves to withstand the inevitable surprise. Because every rental property eventually introduces you to something that is leaking, squeaking, or perhaps refusing to pay. The goal is not to optimize every dollar so aggressively that your financial life becomes fragile. And really, that is an important warning about all forms of maxing. Optimization can go too far. Someone might transfer money among five banks to chase these tiny promotional yields, and open 12 credit cards for bonus points, and then monitor every purchase with the intensity of airport security. Okay, I mean technically they're optimization. Their money, but they're also turning their life into like an unpaid accounting internship. Your money should create freedom, not become another demanding employer. Effective money maxing focuses on the big levers first. Get some big wins. Increase your earned income. Own those productive assets. Use good debt prudently. Reduce taxes legally. Protect yourself against catastrophic losses. Maintain liquidity, and then optimize the smaller expenses. Do not spend three hours clipping coupons while ignoring a poorly structured $400,000 mortgage. You do not congratulate yourself on saving $9 on lunch while leaving 50k idle in an account that earns almost nothing. So we don't obsess over credit card points while carrying a balance because paying 24% interest to earn 2% cash back is not money maxing. That is like arithmetic getting mugged in an alley. And there's also an important difference between looking rich and becoming wealthy. Social media rewards visible consumption on things like cars, watches, first-class seats, rooftop dinners, actual wealth-that's something that's often invisible. It is the rental property quietly producing income. It is the ownership stake compounding in the background. It is the tax strategy that's never going to appear in a photograph, and it is the growing gap between what you earn and what you need to live.   Keith Weinhold  36:46   The person displaying the most wealth can have the least. The person saying very little might own the building. So yes, embrace money maxing. Know where your money goes. Eliminate the waste. Negotiate recurring expenses, automate your good decisions, and make your dollar purposeful. Each dollar, but don't stop with living below your means because that is only financial defense. Growing your means is financial offense. Saving money can make you more secure. Owning productive assets-that's what can make you free. The highest form of money maxing is not becoming the world's most efficient consumer. It is making the transition from consumer to owner. Own businesses, own equities, own real estate, own assets that produce value while you sleep, travel, or spend time with the people that matter to you. Because your time is limited, and yet your appetite for generic cereal is also limited. But your ability to create value, acquire assets, and grow your means. That is far less limited. Live below your means if you must, but don't stay there. Grow your means. That is true money maxing. And the number one reason that people don't acquire wealth. Do you know what it is? It's that it simply does not occur to them that they can.    Keith Weinhold  38:24   That is what Brian Tracy said. That is so incredibly simple, and it's true. If you want a money max, you need to have a great system. Let me tell you about a system called the Seven Figure Solution. Now you've been listening to me weekly for almost 12 years here, which I'm immensely grateful for. You've been earning money, investing well, and here with the seven-figure solution, you're going to be able to finally see how it all goes together. It's about making sure that your real estate and other assets appropriately fund your retirement in a way that gives you protection against market downturns, a tax advantage pool of liquidity, the death benefit of a life insurance policy, and actually introduces you to a new form of leverage all at the same time, the liquidity is key because this is where a 401(k) or IRA limit you. Those vehicles have taxes and penalties if you want to use those funds early, and this does not.   Keith Weinhold  39:34   But the seven-figure solution-it's not just for retirees. In fact, our own in-house investment coach here, Naresh uses something like this, and he's in his 30s. It also gives you a significant tailwind during your investing career. Integrate the seven-figure solution the GRE way, where we have a conscientiousness about leverage in cash flow, and in this case, part of it is how to prove. Leverage a life insurance policy. When it's time to tap that policy's cash value, you take what is a policy loan, not a withdrawal, because you're borrowing against your cash value, and therefore you're using the funds in more than one place. That's the leverage, and then the IRS does not tax loan proceeds, and this reminds me of a billionaire borrowing against the value of their stock rather than having to sell any of those assets. And yet, this can be done tax-free. It's similar to what you can do with the seven-figure solution, even for non-billionaires, it is buy, borrow, die. This leverages an indexed universal life policy, and there is the right way to do this and the wrong way to do it. Part of the seven-figure solution is that your cash value can have an upside ceiling and loss protection on the downside. That's really something that you only care about more as you're closer to retirement. And there are some mistakes to avoid here. You don't just want to set up the seven-figure solution off of a website, and it's based on products that you might have heard of from companies like Nationwide and mass mutual. I strongly encourage you to learn more, see how it all goes together, and learn how the seven-figure solution compares to other vehicles like a Roth IRA, 401k, and even a 721 and 1031 exchange. This is very much about you being able to picture your future, you've been building your real estate portfolio either from your investment coach or on your own. This is how the puzzle pieces finally are all going to go together. I am cordially inviting you to join us for a special live event, the Seven Figure Solution. It is co-hosted by our own GRE investment coach Naresh and Haven Bridges Jared, who you heard from on the show with me last week. By attending live from the comfort of your own home or from anywhere, you can have your questions answered in real time. It is this Thursday, the 27th, at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific.   Keith Weinhold  42:23   Most people spend decades building wealth, and then they lose far too much of it because the retirement pieces were never designed to work with each other. So you're going to see how real estate, taxes, insurance, and retirement income can fit into one coordinated strategy, helping you grow and protect your wealth, access capital without immediately selling your assets, and potentially avoid losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to taxes unnecessarily. So it's not just another collection of disconnected financial tips. Really, it's your opportunity to finally see the entire retirement picture and understand what might be missing from yours. It's complimentary to attend. The longer you wait, the fewer options you could have. Decisions made today can affect your wealth for decades. Don't wait until retirement day to discover that your plan had expensive holes in it. There are some moving pieces here, so it's especially helpful that you attend this one live, and that way you can have any questions answered in real time, so that you really understand. And you might have been one of thousands of listeners that have attended our property webinars before, and they are important to building your portfolio. But this one could very well be more important in seeing your big picture, seeing your retirement, and seeing that your heirs aren't left with a giant tax bill too. You can reserve your seat now for the seven-figure solution at grewebinars.com again. That's grewebinars.com. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.   Speaker 2  44:14   Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal, or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial, or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Get Rich Education LLC exclusively.   Keith Weinhold  44:42   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. getricheducation.com.

Join the free aligned business bookclubTHE 8 WEEK BRAND SYSTEMRepurpose Ai: Streamline your content creation and repurpose effortlessly with ⁠Repurpose Ai⁠.Later Content Scheduling: Simplify your social media strategy with ⁠Later⁠.Flodesk: Elevate your email marketing with Flodesk – get 50% off your first year using ⁠this link⁠.Other Resources:Submit a question to be featured on the podcast and receive live coaching! Send a voice note or fill out the⁠ question form⁠.Where To Find Us:Instagram:⁠ @sigma.wmn⁠TikTok:⁠ @sigma.wmn⁠Newsletter:⁠ Subscribe here⁠Threads:⁠ @sigma.wmn⁠Your business education does not always need to come from another course, mastermind or strategy session. Sometimes, the thing that changes how you lead, create, sell and make decisions is the right book at the right time. In this episode, we explore why reading can become one of the most valuable tools for women business owners who want to think more deeply and build more considered businesses.Clara shares the books that have shaped her business this year, the ideas that have influenced the way she approaches growth, and the lessons that have changed how she leads and makes decisions. This is not about consuming more information for the sake of it. It is about choosing resources that expand your thinking, challenge your assumptions and help you see your business from a new perspective.This episode is also an invitation to join the free Aligned Business Book Club, a community of more than 200 women business owners committed to learning, growing and thinking beyond surface-level business advice. If you want to strengthen your business mindset, develop sharper decision-making skills and connect with women who value thoughtful, sustainable growth, this conversation is for you.Tune in to hear:The books that have shaped Clara's business this year.Why reading can make you a stronger and more strategic business owner.How the right book can influence the way you lead, sell and make decisions.How to join a free community of more than 200 women business owners.Find the Complete Show Notes Here → ⁠https://sigmawmn.com/podcast⁠In This Episode, You'll Learn:Why your business education does not need to rely on courses and masterminds.How reading helps you develop stronger judgement and deeper business insight.Why thoughtful learning can support more intentional and sustainable growth.How books can challenge old patterns and expand the way you approach business.What to expect when you join the free Aligned Business Book Club.Themes & Time Stamps:0:00 – Intro: Why you need a personal business owner curriculum1:10 – What the free business book club is4:21 – This year's book club picks4:38 – Say What They Can't Unhear – communication & change7:02 – The 80/20 Principle – doing less, better10:05 – Negotiate, Influence and Persuade12:34 – Success Curious – redefining what success means13:53 – How to join the book club14:25 – Outro & call to action

A buyer asks, "Can you do any better on the price?" Most artists feel their stomach drop — like they just lost something. I don't accept that premise. Want to join Patrick for a live webinar? He hosts one every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Register here: asf.today/webinar It's my strongly held belief that more art gets sold at a discount than at full price — especially at higher price points, especially in person. Once you know that, everything changes. You can prepare for negotiation, and you can negotiate on your terms. Last episode we covered the maths of pricing your art for Q4. This one is what happens after the price is on the wall: the rules, the tradecraft, and why the buyer who negotiates is the best thing that ever happened to you. In this episode: The premise I refuse to accept: that entering a negotiation means you're the one losing How I learned to reject a premise — the story of why I haven't been offended in decades A car dealer, a real estate agent, and Thomas Crown — why negotiating an art sale is different from every negotiation you've seen The one metric (new customers acquired per year) and the long game: you're not playing a one-shot game, and that changes everything Sun Tzu was right — the battle is won before it starts Your three rules: know your floor, have a range of pricing, and never give something up without getting something in return Why negotiation is the greatest thing that's ever happened: it signals intent My Craigslist career — over a million dollars of cars, boats, and gear, and what the "$7,500 cash, I'll pick it up today" guy taught me The serious buyer drives over to look at the car — for an artist, that's the phone call or the Zoom Get out of the DMs: every step from message to email to call to in-person gets more real The asks list: what to trade for instead of dropping your price Q4 is coming — which means sales are coming, which means negotiations are coming This week's homework: write your asks list before Q4. Know your floor on every piece and be comfortable with it. And decide right now what you'll ask for the next time someone asks you to come down. Related episodes: How to Price Your Art for Q4 — the maths this episode builds on Advanced Pricing Strategies for Artists and Photographers — the pricing opus, including the original negotiation rule Discounting Your Art or Photography. Should You? Why Your Website Will Still Be Working in 2055 — the long game

It's one of the most feared moments in anyone's career – finding out you've just lost your job. After a layoff or an unexpected career transition, it can be hard to know where to start when it comes to finding your next opportunity, especially in the age of AI tracking systems and applicant pools of hundreds or even thousands of job candidates. So what can you do to stand out from the crowd? On the inaugural episode of Owl Have You Know's “Field Notes,” Marie Bergeron, director of career development for experienced hires and alumni at Rice Business, shares her top tips for landing a new job. Step by step, she walks co-host Brian Jackson '21 through the processing, planning and networking stages of the job hunt. Episode Guide:00:00 Layoff Survival Roadmap01:14 First 24 Hours02:02 Use Benefits and Severance04:05 Build a Targeted Plan06:37 Polish LinkedIn and Resume07:50 First Month Networking Wins11:20 Reaching Out the Right Way13:44 Avoid Panic Mistakes15:06 Compartmentalize the Emotions20:07 Spotting Desperation Signals23:24 Explaining the Layoff in Interviews29:31 Negotiate the Offer Confidently33:46 The Critical Role of NetworkingThe Owl Have You Know Podcast is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:The biggest mistake job seekers make20:14: [Brian Jackson] How can you pretty quickly tell that someone's doing their search from a place of panic rather than purpose? 20:34: [Marie: Here's the killer, "I'll take anything." This is not helpful. This is not helpful. If you're networking and telling somebody, "I'll take any job," they have no idea how to help you. You have to say, "I think I want to go into supply chain or perhaps procurement." You know? And that way the people's minds can go to who do they know in those areas.How to recover after a layoff16:13: In the old days, losing your job was a shame, you know? You did something wrong because people were employed for life, so to speak. But in today's world of private equity takeovers and quarterly reports of profitability and whatnot, companies reorg constantly to make their financial outcomes align with what the market wants, right? And so it happens so regularly now that it really shouldn't be as big an emotional outcome as it is, you know? And we do have to compartmentalize and say, "That's just business." Even though you think, "No, my boss hated me," or, "This one was talking about me and that's why it happened." It happened, and you have to put that in one box, and the other box is executing on my plan to get to where I want to be.Looking for a job can be fun22:33: You know, this is going to sound odd, but looking for a job can be fun. You reconnect with people you haven't talked to in a long time. You learn about opportunities you never thought that you might fit into. You, you feel kind of smart about the market. And if you like people, you're having coffee with people, you're having lunch with people, instead of sitting in your office in front of a computer screen, and it literally can be fun. And I realize there's a financial thing kinda sitting on your shoulder. But it's something that you can actually enjoy if you're doing it right.Show Links: Rice Business' Career Development OfficeTranscriptGuest Profile:Marie Bergeron | Rice BusinessMarie Bergeron | LinkedIn

Send us Fan MailKelly Edmondson is a nurse, bereaved mother, and grief counselor who is redefining what compassionate support looks like after loss. As the founder of Timely Presence, a year-long grief support service, she helps grieving families feel remembered through meaningful, heirloom-quality gifts intentionally delivered on emotionally significant days. Drawing from her clinical background in trauma nursing and her personal journey through loss, Kelly brings a rare blend of emotional intelligence, professional experience, and lived understanding to the grief space. Her work centers on presence, remembrance, and the belief that no one should navigate the first year after loss alone."I do this work because I've seen what happens when grief outlasts support.As a nurse and healthcare executive, I spent years caring for families during some of the hardest moments of their lives. But after losing my son, Darius, in 2023, grief became deeply personal. I experienced firsthand how people show up immediately after a loss, then slowly disappear while the griever is still trying to survive it.I wanted to build something that helps people keep showing up after the funeral ends. Not just with sympathy, but with sustained, intentional presence. More than a gesture of support.  A commitment."Timely Presence | thetimelypresence.com | kelly@thetimelypresence.com | 321-204-1125Sign up for one of our negotiation courses at ShikinaNegotiationAcademy.comThanks for listening to Negotiation with Alice! Please subscribe and connect with us on LinkedIn and Instagram!

Grab the King Closer Blueprint: My Step by Step Sales Process for closing over 2,000 deals (Only $27): https://www.titaniumu.com/blueprintWant to work directly with me to close more deals? Go Here: https://www.titaniumu.comWant the Closer's Formula sales process I've used to close 2,000+ deals (FREE) Go Here: https://www.kingclosersformula.com/closeIf you're new to my channel my name is RJ Bates III. Myself and my partner Cassi DeHaas are the founders of Titanium Investments.We are nationwide virtual wholesalers and on this channel we share EVERYTHING that we do inside our business. So if you're looking to close more deals - at higher assignments - anywhere in the country… You're in the right place.Who is Titanium Investments and What Have We Accomplished?Over 10 years in the real estate investing businessClosed deals in all 50 states​Owned rentals in 12 states​Flipped houses in 11 states​Closed on over 2,000 properties​125 contracts in 50 days (all live on YouTube)​Back to back Closers Olympics ChampionTrained thousands of wholesalers to close more deals_________________________________With over 4,000 Videos, this is the #1 channel on YouTube for all things Virtual Wholesaling. SUBSCRIBE NOW!    https://www.youtube.com/@RJBatesIII_________________________________RESOURCES FOR YOU:If you want my team and I to walk you through how to build or scale your virtual wholesaling business from A to Z, click here to learn more about Titanium University: https://www.titaniumu.com(FREE) If you want to learn how to close deals just like me, The King Closer, then download the free King Closer Formula PDF: https://www.kingclosersformula.com/closeGrab Titanium Profits: Our exact system we use to comp and underwrite deals in only 4 minutes. (Only $99) https://www.kingclosersformula.com/titaniumprofitsSupport the show

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Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and three-time NAACP Image Award-winning television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Zach Shefska. Co-founder of CarEdge, a consumer-focused automotive platform he launched with his father in 2019. CarEdge was created to bring greater transparency, fairness, and efficiency to the car-buying experience through pricing data, negotiation tools, consumer education, and AI-powered resources. The conversation explores the current automotive market, rising vehicle prices, strategies for buying and selling cars, the role of AI in negotiations, and practical advice for consumers seeking to avoid costly mistakes. Purpose of the Interview 1. Educate Consumers About Car Buying Zach's primary objective was to help consumers become smarter car buyers by understanding vehicle pricing, trade-ins, inspections, warranties, financing, and negotiation tactics. 2. Promote Transparency in the Automotive Industry CarEdge was founded to level the playing field between dealerships and consumers by providing tools and information that reduce confusion and increase buyer confidence. 3. Showcase the Power of AI and Technology Zach discussed how AI is being used to assist consumers with vehicle negotiations and purchasing decisions, making the process more accessible and less intimidating. 4. Share an Entrepreneurial Success Story The interview highlights how Zach and his father transformed a simple YouTube channel into a nationally recognized platform that helps hundreds of thousands of consumers each year. Key Takeaways 1. Car Prices Have Reached Historic Levels One of the most eye-opening parts of the discussion was Zach's explanation of today's automotive market. Average new vehicle prices exceed $50,000. Average used vehicle prices exceed $28,000. Affordable entry-level vehicle options have become increasingly rare. Lesson: Consumers need to carefully budget and research before making a vehicle purchase. 2. Never Skip a Pre-Purchase Inspection Zach repeatedly emphasized that a pre-purchase inspection is the most important step when buying a used vehicle. An independent mechanic can uncover issues that may not appear on vehicle history reports. Lesson: Spending a small amount upfront on an inspection can prevent major repair expenses later. 3. Do Most of Your Homework Before Going to a Dealership Today's buyers can complete much of the purchasing process online. Consumers should: Research prices Compare vehicles Review financing options Understand ownership costs The dealership visit should mainly be for the test drive and final inspection. Lesson: Preparation creates leverage and confidence. 4. Think Beyond the Monthly Payment Many consumers focus only on monthly payments when evaluating vehicles. Zach recommends considering: Depreciation Insurance Fuel expenses Maintenance Repairs Financing costs Lesson: The true cost of ownership extends far beyond the monthly note. 5. Extended Warranties Can Be Negotiated Many consumers assume warranty packages and protection plans are fixed-price products. Zach explains that buyers should: Ask for the total cost Understand what is covered Negotiate the price if interested Lesson: Everything in the finance office is part of the negotiation process. 6. Separate Trade-Ins from Vehicle Purchases A major strategy discussed was treating a trade-in as a separate transaction. Before visiting a dealership: Obtain offers from CarMax Obtain offers from Carvana Use those offers as leverage Lesson: Negotiating the purchase and trade separately helps maximize value. 7. Reliability Matters More Than Ever When discussing dependable vehicle brands, Zach highlighted: Toyota Honda Mazda He noted that reliability should be a major factor in purchasing decisions because maintenance and repair costs significantly impact long-term ownership expenses. Lesson: A lower-maintenance vehicle often provides better long-term value. 8. Driving Cars Longer Is a Smart Financial Strategy Rather than frequently upgrading, Zach recommends keeping vehicles longer and extracting maximum value from them. Lesson: Reducing depreciation is one of the easiest ways to save money over time. Notable Quotes On Entrepreneurship "Being an entrepreneur is scary. Putting your name associated with something, there's a lot of responsibility associated with that." On Car Shopping "Do your wants versus needs analysis." On Used-Car Purchases "Get a pre-purchase inspection." On Ownership Costs "The cost of a car is not just your monthly payment." On Extended Warranties "Ask them what the actual price is of the coverage." On Trade-Ins "Treat buying a car and selling a car as two separate transactions." On Affordability "Don't be spending more than 20% of your gross take-home income on your car." On Long-Term Ownership "Drive your car into the ground." On Reliability "Toyota, Honda, Mazda." The CarEdge Value Proposition CarEdge is built around four core principles: Transparency Providing real-time pricing insights and market data. Consumer Empowerment Giving buyers the information and negotiating tools needed to make informed decisions. AI-Powered Assistance Using technology to simplify vehicle buying and negotiation. Consumer Education Helping people avoid common mistakes that cost buyers time and money. Overall Assessment This interview serves as both a practical consumer guide and an entrepreneurial case study. Zach Shefska explains how CarEdge is helping consumers navigate an increasingly expensive and complex automotive marketplace while using technology to make the car-buying process more transparent. The central message is simple: informed buyers make better decisions. Whether purchasing a new vehicle, shopping for a used car, negotiating a warranty, or evaluating a trade-in, success comes from research, preparation, and understanding the full cost of ownership before signing on the dotted line. #SHMS #STRAW #BEST Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. 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OA1285 - This week on Rapid Response Friday: regulators, mount up! We take a closer look at the actual documents provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche which convinced John Cornyn and Thom Tillis to change their votes, how deregulation caused a national cyclospora outbreak (and the legal response to it), and state efforts to stop the “prediction market” racket which the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been all too happy to ignore. And in today's footnote: three very different cases which prove why prediction markets shouldn't be a thing at all. Documents provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche on August 2, 2026 “Cyclospora is easy for doctors to miss. The US made it even harder to spot,” Dr. Robert B. Shipner, The Guardian (7/16/2026) Complaint in Null v. Taylor Farms, filed 7/21/206 Complaint in New York v. Kalshiex LLC, filed 7/31/2026 Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do! Listen ad-free and support the show at patreon.com/law.

That offer your seller finds insulting may be the only offer capable of becoming a closed transaction. Before rejecting it, ask what the market is actually trying to tell you. In this episode, Tim and Julie Harris explain the difference between a true lowball offer and an aggressive offer supported by market evidence. They break down how listing agents can prepare sellers before offers arrive, how buyer agents should determine an offer price, and why both sides must communicate before emotion destroys the negotiation. You'll learn why active listings need an updated CMA every two to four weeks, why a buyer who submits an offer deserves respect, and why the first offer may be the seller's best or only offer. Tim and Julie also explain how possession dates, leasebacks, closing costs, inspection terms, contingencies, earnest money, and convenience can save a transaction when the original price does not work. The biggest lesson is simple: never let a deal die in your court. Keep asking questions, identify what matters to each party, and explore every reasonable contract term before allowing the transaction to fall apart. For agents who want stronger negotiation scripts, better listing skills, and a serious long-term career path, explore Premier Coaching and Libertas at eXp Realty. Free training: HarrisRealEstateDaily.com Coaching: PremierCoaching.com Join eXp + Libertas: WhyLibertas.com/Harris Text Tim Direct: 512-758-0206 Opinions are my own and not the views of eXp Realty.