Last week, I saw three headlines that perfectly capture our economic confusion. Number one,

a weak economy is good for military recruiting. Number two, Amazon Prime Day is down by 41%. And number three,

GDP growth beats expectations. So here's the million dollar question, or should I say trillion

question? Are we in a

recession, heading into one, or completely missing the real story?

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen,

and with me as always is my not

receding anytime soon from being my co-host, Scott Trench. I was really hoping at a few more years

before jokes about my hairline made it onto the podcast intro, but I think we're here. Speaking of

receding, we're going to be joined once again by Jay Scott on today's episode to discuss whether

or not we are in a recession

here in the United States. He's going to help us separate economic reality from economic

anxiety, and we're going to dive into what the data actually shows why experts are split

and why not just experts, but the community here at Bigger Pockets' money is actually split.

And most importantly, what this means for your money, your job, and your FI journey.

Jay, thank you so much for being here.

Hey, thanks for having me.

Always thrilled to be here.

Jay Scott is a real estate expert.

He is written, I don't know, 150 books or five books, same thing, about real estate, negotiating

real estate, estimating rehab costs,

etc. But he's also really, really, really into the economy. Jay, what is a recession? Let's define this,

...