Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and

Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. Michael Battenick and

Ben Carlson work for Ritt Holt's Wealth Management. All opinions expressed by Michael and

Ben or any podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritt

Holt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for

investment decisions. Clients of Ritthold's wealth management may maintain positions in the

securities discussed in this podcast. Today's show is brought to you by Rockadala. We're going to do

listener questions. Okay, from now on,

we need to timestamp these questions. I need to know when they were asked. It's important.

It's important to the listener. It's important to me. Sean, you got it? Got it.

There we go. You said house cleaning? Yeah. That too. All right, so stick around at the end of our

conversation. We get into some more of the personal finance side that Henry Yoshida, CEO of

Rock a dollar, who happens to be a CFP, helps us answer. All right, Ben, let's get right into

the questions. Really enjoyed Josh's recent post on Bitcoin. See, I don't know when this was. How recent? I have no idea. In addition to crypto, I'm guessing it was old. In addition to crypto, you guys and Ben have talked about several other alternative asset classes, real estate, art, startups to diversify over from the stock market. For a young long-term saver, what do you think is an appropriate percentage of the total long-term investment portfolio to allocate to these non-traditional investments, assuming the rest is in liquid equity and bond mutual funds and index funds?

Thank you for the question.

I would say at first, I don't know where a resting state might be, but at first, you definitely want to start small.

5%. 5%. 5.10? Something like that. See what it feels like. Go a year, maybe two, without liquidity.

See if you get any regrets. So anything else? Ben, what do you think? Yeah, I think keep it small,

kind of like your speculative account. I think size it correctly,

toe in the water. I think start slowly. I don't think there's any specific types of investments. It could depend on just whatever you're interested in and what you think you can handle. But yeah, it's a completely different ballgame. Yeah, I guess in other words, if you think that you want to get to 20% of making that up, I wouldn't start out that way.

And if you end up, you love real estate for whatever reason, it goes above what you originally stated, that's fine, but I would just start small, dip your toes and see how it feels. All right. Next question. This next one is a social security one. I'm going to skip this one and I'm saving this for portfolio because we are not going to be able to give the good answer on this one. So when to take Social Security benefits? 46. All right. Yeah, that's a Bill sweet question. Yeah. My 38-year-old friend has a 2.8% 30-year fixed mortgage with roughly 24 years left and pays an extra $400 each month towards her principal. If she continues to pay $400 a month towards her principal,

she has about 16 years remaining. So pay a little early, take off eight years. Not bad. Her house has enjoyed strong appreciation of the past six years, about 85% of Cordiazillo. I told her,

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