Money for The Rest of Us

Investment help and financial guidance for the rest of us.

  • Podcast
  • Guides
        • Asset Classes

        • A Complete Guide to Investing in I Bonds and TIPS (2025)
        • A Complete Guide to Equity REIT Investing
        • A Complete Guide to Mortgage REIT Investing
        • A Complete Guide to Investing in Gold
        • A Complete Guide To Investing In Convertible Bonds
        • Investing in Bitcoin, Oil, and Volatility ETFs
        • Carbon Investing and its Effect on Climate Change
        • Farmland Investing
        • The Opportunity and Risk of Frontier Markets
        • Investment Vehicles

        • A Complete Guide to Investment Vehicles
        • How to Invest in Closed-End Funds
        • What Are SPACs and Should You Invest in Them?
        • Money and Economics

        • A Complete Guide to Understanding and Protecting Against Inflation
        • Understanding Web3 Investing
        • Strategy

        • Why You Should Rebalance Your Portfolio
        • What Is Risk vs Uncertainty?
        • Tail Events and Tail Risk
  • Resources
        • General Resources

        • Topic Index
        • Glossary
        • Most Influential Books
        • Member Tools

        • Member - Getting Started Guide
        • Asset Allocation and Portfolio Tools
        • Current Investment Strategy Report
        • All Investment Conditions Reports
        • Strategic and Adaptive Model Portfolios
        • Member Tools and Downloads
        • Member Resources

        • Plus Premium Episodes
        • Submit A Question to the Plus Podcast
        • Member Forums
        • David’s Current Portfolio
        • David's Portfolio Trades
        • Courses

        • Investing in Closed-End Funds
  • Members
  • Join
  • Log In
You are here: Home / Podcast / 115: How To Get Financially Unstuck

115: How To Get Financially Unstuck

July 13, 2016 by David Stein · Updated December 26, 2020

Why we can’t not invest due to fear and uncertainty. Plus how to tell if the stock market is overvalued and what to do about it.

Attachment-1 (27)

In this episode you’ll learn:

  • Why no investment is safe.
  • What are the steps to get financially unstuck.
  • What are the different measures for determining stock valuations.
  • How the U.S. stock market is overvalued and undervalued based on differing measures and what do you do about it.

Show Notes

What the single best stock market predictor is saying now – Mark Hulbert – MarketWatch

Dead Poets Society

Become a Better Investor With Our Investing Checklist

Become a Better Investor With Our Investing Checklist

Master successful investing with our Checklist and get expert weekly insights to help you build your wealth with confidence.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Summary Article

The Powerful Play Goes On

We recently had dinner with some friends who were looking for a new vacuum cleaner. The discussion turned to which were the best brands.

I texted my sisters to see if anyone could remember the name of the canister vacuum cleaner we had growing up.

My older sister replied with a picture of the actual machine. It’s a Compact made by Interstate Engineering Corporation. She still uses it. It is over fifty years old.

The Vacuuming Pig

Interstate Engineering began in 1937 making airplane parts. Howard Hughes approached the company in the early 1940s about designing a vacuum cleaner to clean aircraft.

He needed something compact that would fit between the airplane seat rows and not lose suction when inhaling fine airplane dust.

Interstate designed an all aluminum model that they nicknamed the “pig” due to its shape. The motor was made by Black & Decker.

After the war, Interstate turned to the consumer market to sell vacuum cleaners. They used the independent franchise model where individual sales people went door-to-door selling the machines.

In 1962, one of those sales reps sold my mother the C-5 PB model shortly after she got married. It is a rare three-wheel Compact, turquoise, embossed with the picture of the world on its side and the words, “As new as tomorrow.” It was made in Anaheim, California.

I asked my mom if she remembers buying the vacuum or anything about who sold it to her. She doesn’t. Most of what happened fifty years ago if we were alive back then we don’t remember.

The Hitchhiker

Last night, LaPriel and I were driving home. We were just outside Newdale, Idaho about 25 miles from our farm, when we passed a hitchhiker.

I only caught a glimpse of him as we were driving by at 65 miles per hour. He appeared to be fiftyish, clean shaven and standing with a large hiker’s backpack.

I slowed and asked LaPriel if we should pick him up. She didn’t say no.

I rarely pick up hitchhikers. More often in Mexico than in the U.S.

My son and I had once stood hitchhiking with our backpacks outside Gardiner, Montana after finishing a three-day hike through Yellowstone National Park. I had wrongly assumed there would be a taxi or shuttle service in Gardiner at the conclusion of our hike.

Fortunately, a guy from Cincinnati stopped and drove us back to our car. He had recognized the Cincinnati Reds jacket my son was wearing and decided he should help.

Perhaps it was that memory that prompted me to pick up this hitchhiker. I slowed and turned our car around and drove past the man with the backpack. We decided he looked safe so we turned around again and picked him up.

Twenty Years On the Road

His name is Tim Shey. He said he has been hitchhiking full time for twenty years. He earns money working side jobs: landscaping, construction, working on farms.

When he is close to running out of money, he buys a loaf of bread and starts looking for work. No peanut butter. Just bread. He said he is sick of peanut butter.

Tim doesn’t have a tent. Just two sleeping bags. He sleeps in places where he won’t be bothered. He said he travels full time so he can share his Christian faith.

I asked him what has changed about hitchhiking in the past twenty years. “For me, nothing,” he said, “but, there are less people doing it.”

“How long does it take to get a ride?” I asked.

“It depends,” he said. “Sometimes five minutes. Sometimes and hour. If no one has stopped in an hour, I start walking.”

He said when you are in your twenties, there is no better way to figure out what you want to do with your life then by hitchhiking across the country. Especially because of the random people you meet, and you see what they are doing for a living and how they like it.

We dropped Tim at the gas station in Tetonia. He planned to stay at the city park and hitchhike to Jackson, Wyoming the next day.

What Has Happened In Twenty Years

Twenty years is a long time to be on the road with a backpack. I am old enough that I can remember some of what happened twenty years ago. Our two sons were young. Our daughter wasn’t born yet. I was just starting my career in investing.

Two decade ago, Tim Duncan, who just announced his retirement, began playing professional basketball with the San Antonio Spurs.

Two decades ago, Satoshi Tajiri created the Pokémon video game for the Nintendo Gameboy in which humans catch and train fictional creatures called pokémon.

Two decades later, humans are running around with their iPhones catching fictional pokémon creatures based on GPS coordinates.

For two decades, my friend Michael has lived in a high security prison in Alabama serving a life without parole sentence.

And for two decades, Tim Shey has crisscrossed the country hitchhiking, mostly sleeping on the ground.

A Manageable Block of Time

We don’t usually contemplate fifty year blocks of time. Or even twenty years for that matter. We don’t remember much of what happened decades ago.

Conversely, most of us do a decent job of looking ahead six months to a year and anticipating what we will be doing.

That is the temporal perspective that seems manageable. The question we have to constantly answer is what choices and decisions will we make over the next year that will impact us twenty or fifty years from now. Decisions about our finances, our priorities, our time. Whether to exercise or wear sunscreen.

Contributing

One of my favorite movies is “Dead Poets Society.” In the film, Robin Williams plays the character of John Keating, a literature teacher at a private boarding school who tries to get his students to broaden their temporal perspective.

He walks them down the school hall and has them look into the faces of former student athletes whose team photographs sit next to school trophies.

Keating says, “They’re not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they’re destined for great things, just like many of you. Their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils.”

Later Keating quotes from Walt Whitman’s poem “Oh Me! Oh Life!” in which the poet questions our purpose.

His answer?

“That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.”

Ready to get serious about your investing?

Access professional-grade portfolio tools, training, and a community to help you stay on track, tune out the noise, and grow your wealth with confidence.

Learn How

Filed Under: Podcast

Contact | Team | Topic Index


Darby Creek Advisors LLC
P.O. Box 68544 • Tucson, AZ • 85737

Copyright © 2025 • Disclosures, Privacy Policy, and Cookie Policy • Site by Tempora

Manage Cookie Consent

We use cookies to optimize our website, marketing, and services. 

Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}
Manage Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimize our website, marketing, and services. We never sell users' data.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}