November 3, 2025 • 29 mins
Jim talks about the government shutdown now hitting 34 days — one shy of the all-time record — and asks whether artificial intelligence is overhyped or shaping our future. He shares stories from his first mock trial, a throwback Halloween in his mom’s neighborhood, Florida’s hurricane-free year, and a few thoughts on “bio-baiting” and online dating scams. Plus, why mortgage rates are still stuck in the 6s even after another Fed rate cut — and what’s up with his AI HELOC.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Gentlemen, start your engines. All right, you're talking about mister
Garbokoff teared down this one. The only thing we have
to bear. Spare it. I I'm not a crunk. If
you like your healthcare plan, you'll.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Be able to keep your healthcare plans.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Ye sick, f R three wye fire. You're listening to
Jim Paris Live, your source for the latest news on money, politics, prophecy,
and preparedness, and now your host, the editor in chief
(00:53):
of Christian money dot com and the author of more
than thirty books, Jim Paris.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
All right, hello everybody, and welcome to the broadcast. This
episode dropping a little bit later than usual. Normally drop
these on Sunday nights, dropping this one on Monday morning.
I don't know what it is, but when the weather
changes like this, I just get a lot of just
build up where I'm coughing a lot and sneezing a lot.
(01:20):
And we're in a beautiful time of the year, though,
I have to tell you, I love waking up and
going outside and walking the dog. It's like sixty degrees
this morning, and I just I love this time of year.
But it's one of those situations where it's cool and
crisp in the morning, and then it gets up into
(01:40):
the seventies sometimes even the low eighties still this time
of year, and that's where I don't do well, where
it's cold and hot in the same day. But in
any case, it is great to be with you. So
this morning, here recording this on Monday morning, the government
has been shut down for thirty four days. Can you
leave it? We're only one day away from breaking the record.
(02:05):
The longest shutdown I looked it up has in history
is thirty five days. That is our longest shutdown. So
it's starting to really have an effect. I know that
a week or two shutdown doesn't really have much of
an effect, but I'm reading about things like, for example,
people are having their mortgage closings delayed because of the
(02:28):
FAHA and the VA and not being able to get
things final approvals and push throughs for mortgage closings. Not
only that, but you know a lot of people a
lot of work that work for the government and the
you know, once it gets to be about a month
out and you haven't gotten a paycheck, starting to get
to be serious business. So a lot going on, and wow,
(02:52):
I want to start by ask just throwing this question
out about artificial intelligence? Are we jumping the shark with AI?
And if you're too too young to know that phrase,
it comes from an episode of Happy Days where Phonsie
on water skis jumped a shark. You know, he was
(03:14):
a motorcycle guy with a leather jacket, and that is
often referred to as sort of the example or the
metaphor of like just going way too far with something,
jumping the shark, as it's called, have we jumped the
shark with AI? I mean, everybody is talking about AI,
and I think it's a big deal. I really do,
(03:35):
But are we making too big of a deal out
of it? We're talking about I mean, influential people are
coming out and saying, well, look, don't bother becoming a
lawyer because lawyers won't exist in ten years because it'll
all be AI. Those kind of things are being said,
like we're actually telling people, young people to change their
(03:55):
career paths because jobs will be eliminated because of A.
We're being told that in five years all of our
cars will drive themselves because of AI, and they'll be
no longer uber drivers because it'll just be a car
that magically shows up at your driveway and drives you
wherever you want to go, and it'll be a self
(04:18):
driving vehicle. And kind of the ultimate question of did
we jump the shark or are we jumping the shark?
Is Tony Robbins is now hosting an AI summit, and
I think it's actually this week sometime. And I know
Tony Robbins personally, but this isn't really you know, usually
(04:40):
something he gets into. He's more of like the motivational guy.
But now he even has an AI summit that he's doing,
and from what I've seen online, it looks like it's
super popular. So I'm just throwing this out to our listeners.
And if you don't have my email, it is James L.
Peis at Gmail. Would you like me to talk more
(05:03):
about AI on the program? Would you like me to
bring in some experts and talk about AI? Do you
find it interesting or do you think it is mostly hype?
Let me give you one example of how AI is
affecting me in my mortgage practice, which, by the way,
even though I'm in law school, i am still practicing
(05:24):
in the mortgage business. Still have to keep the money
flowing in here. I have one product, which is an
AI home equity line of credit, and it is probably
the most popular thing I have going. And how it
works is all I do is give the client a
link if they go to quick turnheelock dot com h
(05:48):
e l oc, they can put in their information and
everything is done automatically. I literally have no part in
the process, as as the as the loan officer, as
the mortgage broker. I simply find out that they got approved,
and I find out when it closes, and I get
a bay check and it's it's pretty awesome because people
(06:10):
close in five days. There's no appraisal because it's all
done by AI, so the computer determines your home value
and all of that. And it's something that is really popular.
And we even had a recent change to this where
people who are self employed who don't have let's say
a great tax return because they take so many great
(06:33):
tax rate offics and tax deductions can even get approved
just based on their business income. So this is something
affecting my industry. And somebody asked the other day, well,
why do they need you, Like, how are you even
involved in the process. I'm really not, I mean, other
than I'm licensed and there has to be a licensed
loan officer that is like officially part of the transaction.
(06:59):
But people are loving this because they can close in
five days. There's no appraisal. It works on the primary home,
a secondary home, an investment property. There's some unique ways
of calculating income where you can get approved where maybe
you wouldn't normally get approved from a local bank or
a local mortgage company. So it's a pretty neat thing.
And it's a second mortgage, so you keep your great
(07:21):
first mortgage with that low interest rate and you're able
to do this. So if that's something anyone is interested
in checking out or just curious about, quick turn heelock
hgloc dot com. And speaking of mortgages and mortgage rates, yes,
I am still in the industry, and yes there was
a recent FED rate cut. But this is where people
(07:43):
get a little bit confused, and I wanted to just
mention this again. The rate that directly influences mortgages is
the ten year government bond. That is the yield to
follow to look at where rates are and where they're
going with mortgages. It's not the FED funds rate, which
(08:03):
is the super short term rate that the Federal Reserve
loans money like overnight, and banks loan money to each
other overnight. It's not it really at all connected to
mortgage rates. I mean, I guess in a very indirect sense.
It is in the sense that the idea is if
(08:25):
that rate gets low enough, it's kind of like all
boats can resettle at a lower level if the market,
the entire interest rate market kind of goes down. But
other than that very indirect and general effect, it doesn't
directly affect mortgage rates. So where are we at on
(08:47):
mortgage rates? A lot of people are wondering, So we're
in the sixes right now for most people. However, if
you have a creative mortgage loan officer, which I consider
myself to be, I adopted a unique model early on
when I started back in the mortgage industry. What was
(09:07):
it back in twenty twenty two, which is that I
was just going to give all my clients the wholesale
mortgage rate and just charge them a flat fee of
one point nine to five percent to do the loan.
And what made that so unique was that nobody else
was doing that, and most people don't even know how
(09:29):
a mortgage broker gets paid. So when I explained to
them how the industry works, how a mortgage broker gets paid,
and then I tell them, you know what I do.
People find it very attractive my arrangement because most of
the time a mortgage brokerage firm is working off of
(09:49):
a profit of let's say about two point seventy five
to three percent on a mortgage. So let's make up
some numbers. Let's say you're doing a three hundred thousand
dollars mortgage. That means you're looking to make about nine
thousand dollars on that and how that money is normally
made is there is what we call the wholesale interest rate.
(10:10):
That's the rate that the actual lender of the money
is providing to the mortgage broker. And I'll just make
up some numbers. Let's say that is five point seventy
five percent is the wholesale rate. But what I'm going
to do is give you that that mortgage at let's
say six and a half or six and three quarters,
(10:31):
and that difference between the wholesale rate and the rate
that you're going to end up paying produces a commission
a fee to the mortgage broker, which can be close
to three percent So instead of following that more traditional
model where the commission or the fee is built inside
the rate, I just give my clients the wholesale rate.
(10:55):
So in that example, let's say the rate the wholesale
rate is five and three recorders and the bump uprate
that everybody else is giving a six and a half
or six and three quarters. I just give you the
five point seventy five, and then at closing you pay
me one point ninety five percent of the loan just
as a fee as part of your closing costs to me.
(11:18):
Not only is it a discount, because one point ninety
five percent is a lot less than three percent, so
you're getting, you know, better than one percent off of
what the normal fees would be. But you're paying the
fee in a way that makes sense. You're paying the
fee not only for the service of someone putting in
all the work to get your loan packaged and get
(11:39):
it closed and shopping it out to get the best deal,
but you're also walking away with a rate that maybe
you're going to keep for a long time. Because the
thing you got to keep in mind when you get
a mortgage is you don't want to be looking to
refinance in a year or two, because when you look
at the closing costs, it doesn't make sense to refinance.
(12:00):
It's you know, every year or two and just to
look at what the closing costs are, most people have
to wait, you know, quite a few years to be
able to make back what the difference is on the
closing costs to make it make sense to refinance. So
you're better off really finding a mortgage broker like myself
(12:20):
that would work with you in this way, so you
can get a rate that maybe you would keep for
five years that you're not going to be saying, well, look,
i'll do this now, I'll get to six and a
half and then on a year or two I'm going
to need to refinance. Rather than doing that, just get
the lower rate now. And that's one of the advantages
of working with someone like myself. So I am licensed
(12:43):
in a number of states. If I'm not licensed in
your state, I can actually have someone on my team
work with you in this same way, the same arrangement.
So if you want to talk more about that, get
in touch, drop me and email James Elpeis at gmail
dot com, or just find a local mortgage broker and
just say I want the par rate paar par rate,
(13:07):
which is what we call the wholesale rate, and I
would rather just pay you your fee separately and get
the par rate. That's how you would negotiate that deal
with any other mortgage broker that you might pick in
your own local market. Well, Halloween, I know it's controversial,
and I'm going to get some emails about this, but
(13:28):
I actually really enjoyed Halloween this year. And it's mostly
because I'm living with my mother now in Orlando while
I'm in law school. And I got to tell you
something that happened in law school over the weekend. I'll
get to that in a minute. But she lives in
one of these neighborhoods where people still the little kids
(13:49):
still go door to door for the candy. And I
know that's gone away in so many areas and we've
gone to like what is it called trunk or treat
where you just go to your church and they have
a bunch of you know, people where they tailgate. They
have the cars set up and they've got you know,
all the you know, the trunks are open or the
little tables are set up to give kids candy. And
(14:12):
I understand you've got to do what you got to do,
because it's all about safety and protecting your kids. But
this neighborhood where she lives in my mom and I'm
living with her presently in Orlando, is still in a
neighborhood where the little kids come around for candy, and
so we we bought a bag of candy to give out,
and it was so cute to see my mom in
(14:33):
her wheelchair in the driveway. She was giving out candy
to all these you know, little kids coming up with
their you know, little sweet little costumes on, you know,
dressed up as firemen, policemen. You know. It reminded me
of back in the day. I mean, I almost felt
like I was in a time machine to see this
going on. And a lot of people in the neighborhood
(14:55):
put out like special lights and kind of like goofy
scary stuff. So it was real fun. And I put
on my the Amazon box, I put I put it
out by the front door, and I was doing like
monster mash theme from the Monsters, theme from Adam's Family,
that kind of stuff. And we had a great night,
and it was the weather was on real it was
(15:16):
like in the sixties, and it was just a great vibe.
And I know people are gonna people are gonna be
upset with me because I know, like I know, the
script is as a Christian, we're supposed to just hate
Halloween and have nothing to do with it, which I
brought up on the last episode. If that's true, then
why do we have these other sort of alternative events.
And and if you're gonna celebrate it in a wholesome
(15:38):
way in your own driveway like my mom did, I
see nothing wrong with doing so. And and every kid
she gave a piece of candy too, She said, God
loves you, God bless you. So I thought it was
a really neat way of, you know, celebrating, And I
hadn't seen this in so many years, so many years,
(15:59):
even when I lived in Palm Coast, when I was
married and I lived in Palm Coast and we had kids,
no kids ever came to our house. I think one
year we had maybe five kids. That was about it.
And we were surprised because out of the thirteen years
that we were living there, no kids had ever come.
And we always would buy candy every year expect the
(16:20):
kids to come, and then no kids would come. All right,
I had my first mock trial on Saturday, and I
have to tell you this is such a surreal experience
to be in law school. I can remember vividly about
six months ago, maybe seven months ago, taking a tour
(16:41):
of this law school that I now attend, the FAMU
College of Law in Orlando. And I remember, you know,
taking the tour, and the most awesome part of the
tour was the courtroom. They have a full courtroom, I
mean a real courtroom inside the school. It is totally legit.
(17:03):
It is a beautiful courtroom. And I thought to myself, man,
maybe someday I could be like in a student trial
in this courtroom. I remember standing there and having that
thought in my mind, and then there it was. On Saturday.
I was in my first mock trial and I had
a couple of parts in the trial. One was I
(17:26):
was arguing emotion for a verdict of acquittal, which is
kind of a technical thing. I won't get into it.
But I did the closing argument, and I did it
in like how they do it on TV. I was
like pacing back and forth and yelling and talking to
the jury, and man, it was so fun. And my
(17:47):
fellow students thought I did a great job, and we
won our case, and it was exciting because our opponents
were second year law students, so the jury our client
not guilty on the substance of charges. And it was
just a really really great experience on Saturday. And I've
(18:09):
been getting a lot of emails from people just saying,
how's law school going? You know, what's going on with you?
And so that was really exciting and I was able
to have that experience and in just another ten days
I'll be back in that same courtroom again for another
mock trial. And people asked me, what is this about.
(18:31):
Is this a real case. It's not a real case.
We basically use actors to play the roles of the
different people, including the defendant, and then we have a
jury and we have a real trial, and our professor
writes like out a script of like the whole scenario
of like what the charges are, what the police report said,
(18:52):
what happened, YadA, YadA, YadA, the whole thing. We actually
go in and have a full blown trial with a judge,
with a jury, all of that, and man, is it fun.
And we did that on Saturday, and that was just
an incredible, incredible experience. Well speaking, of the weather and
how nice it's been here in Florida. We had no
hurricanes this year, the entire hurricane season, no hurricanes. And
(19:17):
what's interesting to me about that, not to get too political,
as if we are not already political enough on this show,
is when you have something like that, like oh, we
had no hurricanes, like all of a sudden, the global
warming people, the climate crisis people get really quiet because
they're the first ones to come out when there's a
(19:38):
you know, there's a major hurricane, you know that hits
the US to say, you see, that's proof of what's
happening with the climate and all of that. But Florida,
I mean, we had what three or four different hurricanes
that were going to hit Florida and they just turned
away just there was a high pressure system, as it
(19:59):
was explain, that pushed these They made like literally a
right hand turn and just went back out to see.
Of course, our thoughts and prayers are still with the
people of Jamaica that were hit by Melissa, which was
a Category five hurricane with wind gusts of over two
hundred miles per hour, and some of the pictures from
(20:21):
Jamaica are just unbelievable. To look at all. Right, Another
thing going on is Facebook had a class action settlement,
and you know, I'll be honest with you, I don't
even remember applying for this money, but I must have
applied for it, because all of a sudden the other day,
I think it was three or four days ago, I
(20:44):
got a deposit of thirty seven dollars into my bank
account from a bank in Canada. So I was like,
what in the world is this. I get a lot
of small deposits, like from book royalties and you know,
different affiliate programs I'm a part of and all that,
you know, over the years, so I get you know,
I get little deposits here and there. And so when
(21:05):
I saw thirty seven dollars deposit, I didn't recognize any
of the bank and I'm like, what is this? So
I searched it and it was my Facebook class action
lawsuits settlement. I'm out. So you may have gotten a
similar little deposit. I don't know how the figure was determined,
but I do remember this settlement some years ago where
(21:29):
supposedly Facebook there was some privacy issue, and I don't
even know all the details of it, if they had
a data exposure or or they may have allowed a
third party company to have access to people's private information.
I don't remember the details of it, but there was
a class action settlement. And this is always the case.
(21:53):
There's like, you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars,
but and I get to check, you know, I'll get
a check for thirty seven bucks. I guess the lawyers
got the rest of it. So yeah, all right, there's
another thing going on. And I'm a single guy, so
this always these kind of stories always kind of catch
(22:13):
my attention. I'm absolutely not looking to date anyone. I'm
not close to it, but I'm really just not looking.
But I guess this is a thing if you're if
you're single, you get onto a lot of these dating
websites and you take pictures, you write up a biography
about yourself. So the biggest scam going is called bio baiting, biobaiting,
(22:39):
b ai ti ng biobating. What is that. Bio is
short for biography biography baiting, and what are we talking about?
Apparently the new thing? And I don't really think this
is so new, but there was a big article about
it that I read this morning about people out out
(23:00):
lying in their biographies or their backstories on these various
dating sites. They even gave one example of people using
AI like to create a fake passport to like show
pictures of their passport to you know, represent like that
they're a world traveler and maybe they've never left their driveway,
(23:24):
but they've got like a fake passport that they use
AI to create to make it look like they're a
world traveler. So we do know that people have been
using different apps to like make their pictures look better.
So I was reading that Facebook has something now called
like verified pictures, where if you're involved with Facebook dating,
(23:46):
that you can get your pictures verified so that they
have some kind of AI that will determine whether your
pictures accurately portray what you look like or whether they're
sort of doctor. We know that's been going on for
a long time, especially people that are struggling with weight.
They might have an app or a filter that makes
(24:08):
them look thinner. That's been going on forever. But now
this is apparently a big thing where people are now
literally out and out lying about their backgrounds and their
education and their life experiences on these dating sites. And
I guess the risk of that is if you're a scammer,
and you use that to meet people, and then you
(24:32):
use that connection to kind of scam people. That's where
it becomes a scam. But I don't know. I have
I have heard from so many people about online dating
and how wonderful it is and how they met their
significant other. But I you know, I have been single
(24:54):
now for how long has it been? At least a
couple of years. And I'm not going to get into
my old story here, but I've just become disenchanted with marriage.
I even posted on my website that I don't think
marriage means anything anymore. I really don't, because not only
(25:14):
was I married thirty six years, but I know so
many people in similar situations that were married for twenty years,
thirty years longer, and just boom, their spouse decides, hey,
I want a divorce and the lifelong commitment till death
do us part for better or worse. The biblical kind
(25:35):
of platform of marriage, being compared to Christ and the Church,
it seems like that's all gone. And I used to be, honestly,
in my mind and in my heart, really judgmental of people,
young people that live together without being married. But when
I see in the church, the divorce rate to be
(25:59):
similar as it is in the secular world. I almost wonder,
you know, I get it, I get it. Why why
in today's world we're no longer let me put it
this way, we're no longer living in a world like
where my parents were, where they got married and stayed
together for decades and decades, and you're seeing, you know,
(26:22):
people that were I have got some dear friends, they
were neighbors of ours in Chicago growing up, and they
just celebrated sixty five years of marriage. I'm not saying
that's completely gone, but it sure seems rare now compared
to what it used to be. And the idea of
(26:44):
dumping your spouse, and it's I'm gonna be honest with you,
it's mostly women when you hear the stories, and you know,
every story is different, so we can't just generalize. But
you know, the twenty plus year marriages that just boom
they're over is happening more and more frequently within the
Christian community. So all of that to say, I don't
(27:04):
even I don't know what you do. Then, you know,
when you're like, I'm a sixty year old man, I mean,
what do I do now? I guess I just live
out my life single and I'm just not interested in
online dating and all of that, so I don't have
to worry about bio baiting or whatever. Boy, the truth is,
(27:24):
probably if most women knew my history and then i
have a podcast and I've written books, and I'm an
on fire conservative Christian and i have opinions on politics,
probably no one would touch me with a ten foot
poll anyway, So it's all good, all right, Thanks so
much for joining us, God Bless. If you have a
(27:45):
topic you would like me to discuss, get in touch
James Elperis at gmail dot com. And also look forward
to some new episodes with guests. We're going to be
getting back to guests soon, and I'm excited about that
some of our great guests over the years, bringing them back.
And also check out our twenty four hour live stream
over at talkstream live dot com. Talkstream live dot com.
(28:10):
We're on several nights a week at nine pm Eastern
at talkstream live dot com, and we're on seven nights
a week from twelve at night until six in the morning,
and thousands of people listening to the show over there.
God Bless, have a great week. We'll talk to you
next time. So long, everybody,
Gentlemen, start your engines. All right, you're talking about mister
Garbokoff teared down this one. The only thing we have
to bear. Spare it. I I'm not a crunk. If
you like your healthcare plan, you'll.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Be able to keep your healthcare plans.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Ye sick, f R three wye fire. You're listening to
Jim Paris Live, your source for the latest news on money, politics, prophecy,
and preparedness, and now your host, the editor in chief
(00:53):
of Christian money dot com and the author of more
than thirty books, Jim Paris.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
All right, hello everybody, and welcome to the broadcast. This
episode dropping a little bit later than usual. Normally drop
these on Sunday nights, dropping this one on Monday morning.
I don't know what it is, but when the weather
changes like this, I just get a lot of just
build up where I'm coughing a lot and sneezing a lot.
(01:20):
And we're in a beautiful time of the year, though,
I have to tell you, I love waking up and
going outside and walking the dog. It's like sixty degrees
this morning, and I just I love this time of year.
But it's one of those situations where it's cool and
crisp in the morning, and then it gets up into
(01:40):
the seventies sometimes even the low eighties still this time
of year, and that's where I don't do well, where
it's cold and hot in the same day. But in
any case, it is great to be with you. So
this morning, here recording this on Monday morning, the government
has been shut down for thirty four days. Can you
leave it? We're only one day away from breaking the record.
(02:05):
The longest shutdown I looked it up has in history
is thirty five days. That is our longest shutdown. So
it's starting to really have an effect. I know that
a week or two shutdown doesn't really have much of
an effect, but I'm reading about things like, for example,
people are having their mortgage closings delayed because of the
(02:28):
FAHA and the VA and not being able to get
things final approvals and push throughs for mortgage closings. Not
only that, but you know a lot of people a
lot of work that work for the government and the
you know, once it gets to be about a month
out and you haven't gotten a paycheck, starting to get
to be serious business. So a lot going on, and wow,
(02:52):
I want to start by ask just throwing this question
out about artificial intelligence? Are we jumping the shark with AI?
And if you're too too young to know that phrase,
it comes from an episode of Happy Days where Phonsie
on water skis jumped a shark. You know, he was
(03:14):
a motorcycle guy with a leather jacket, and that is
often referred to as sort of the example or the
metaphor of like just going way too far with something,
jumping the shark, as it's called, have we jumped the
shark with AI? I mean, everybody is talking about AI,
and I think it's a big deal. I really do,
(03:35):
But are we making too big of a deal out
of it? We're talking about I mean, influential people are
coming out and saying, well, look, don't bother becoming a
lawyer because lawyers won't exist in ten years because it'll
all be AI. Those kind of things are being said,
like we're actually telling people, young people to change their
(03:55):
career paths because jobs will be eliminated because of A.
We're being told that in five years all of our
cars will drive themselves because of AI, and they'll be
no longer uber drivers because it'll just be a car
that magically shows up at your driveway and drives you
wherever you want to go, and it'll be a self
(04:18):
driving vehicle. And kind of the ultimate question of did
we jump the shark or are we jumping the shark?
Is Tony Robbins is now hosting an AI summit, and
I think it's actually this week sometime. And I know
Tony Robbins personally, but this isn't really you know, usually
(04:40):
something he gets into. He's more of like the motivational guy.
But now he even has an AI summit that he's doing,
and from what I've seen online, it looks like it's
super popular. So I'm just throwing this out to our listeners.
And if you don't have my email, it is James L.
Peis at Gmail. Would you like me to talk more
(05:03):
about AI on the program? Would you like me to
bring in some experts and talk about AI? Do you
find it interesting or do you think it is mostly hype?
Let me give you one example of how AI is
affecting me in my mortgage practice, which, by the way,
even though I'm in law school, i am still practicing
(05:24):
in the mortgage business. Still have to keep the money
flowing in here. I have one product, which is an
AI home equity line of credit, and it is probably
the most popular thing I have going. And how it
works is all I do is give the client a
link if they go to quick turnheelock dot com h
(05:48):
e l oc, they can put in their information and
everything is done automatically. I literally have no part in
the process, as as the as the loan officer, as
the mortgage broker. I simply find out that they got approved,
and I find out when it closes, and I get
a bay check and it's it's pretty awesome because people
(06:10):
close in five days. There's no appraisal because it's all
done by AI, so the computer determines your home value
and all of that. And it's something that is really popular.
And we even had a recent change to this where
people who are self employed who don't have let's say
a great tax return because they take so many great
(06:33):
tax rate offics and tax deductions can even get approved
just based on their business income. So this is something
affecting my industry. And somebody asked the other day, well,
why do they need you, Like, how are you even
involved in the process. I'm really not, I mean, other
than I'm licensed and there has to be a licensed
loan officer that is like officially part of the transaction.
(06:59):
But people are loving this because they can close in
five days. There's no appraisal. It works on the primary home,
a secondary home, an investment property. There's some unique ways
of calculating income where you can get approved where maybe
you wouldn't normally get approved from a local bank or
a local mortgage company. So it's a pretty neat thing.
And it's a second mortgage, so you keep your great
(07:21):
first mortgage with that low interest rate and you're able
to do this. So if that's something anyone is interested
in checking out or just curious about, quick turn heelock
hgloc dot com. And speaking of mortgages and mortgage rates, yes,
I am still in the industry, and yes there was
a recent FED rate cut. But this is where people
(07:43):
get a little bit confused, and I wanted to just
mention this again. The rate that directly influences mortgages is
the ten year government bond. That is the yield to
follow to look at where rates are and where they're
going with mortgages. It's not the FED funds rate, which
(08:03):
is the super short term rate that the Federal Reserve
loans money like overnight, and banks loan money to each
other overnight. It's not it really at all connected to
mortgage rates. I mean, I guess in a very indirect sense.
It is in the sense that the idea is if
(08:25):
that rate gets low enough, it's kind of like all
boats can resettle at a lower level if the market,
the entire interest rate market kind of goes down. But
other than that very indirect and general effect, it doesn't
directly affect mortgage rates. So where are we at on
(08:47):
mortgage rates? A lot of people are wondering, So we're
in the sixes right now for most people. However, if
you have a creative mortgage loan officer, which I consider
myself to be, I adopted a unique model early on
when I started back in the mortgage industry. What was
(09:07):
it back in twenty twenty two, which is that I
was just going to give all my clients the wholesale
mortgage rate and just charge them a flat fee of
one point nine to five percent to do the loan.
And what made that so unique was that nobody else
was doing that, and most people don't even know how
(09:29):
a mortgage broker gets paid. So when I explained to
them how the industry works, how a mortgage broker gets paid,
and then I tell them, you know what I do.
People find it very attractive my arrangement because most of
the time a mortgage brokerage firm is working off of
(09:49):
a profit of let's say about two point seventy five
to three percent on a mortgage. So let's make up
some numbers. Let's say you're doing a three hundred thousand
dollars mortgage. That means you're looking to make about nine
thousand dollars on that and how that money is normally
made is there is what we call the wholesale interest rate.
(10:10):
That's the rate that the actual lender of the money
is providing to the mortgage broker. And I'll just make
up some numbers. Let's say that is five point seventy
five percent is the wholesale rate. But what I'm going
to do is give you that that mortgage at let's
say six and a half or six and three quarters,
(10:31):
and that difference between the wholesale rate and the rate
that you're going to end up paying produces a commission
a fee to the mortgage broker, which can be close
to three percent So instead of following that more traditional
model where the commission or the fee is built inside
the rate, I just give my clients the wholesale rate.
(10:55):
So in that example, let's say the rate the wholesale
rate is five and three recorders and the bump uprate
that everybody else is giving a six and a half
or six and three quarters. I just give you the
five point seventy five, and then at closing you pay
me one point ninety five percent of the loan just
as a fee as part of your closing costs to me.
(11:18):
Not only is it a discount, because one point ninety
five percent is a lot less than three percent, so
you're getting, you know, better than one percent off of
what the normal fees would be. But you're paying the
fee in a way that makes sense. You're paying the
fee not only for the service of someone putting in
all the work to get your loan packaged and get
(11:39):
it closed and shopping it out to get the best deal,
but you're also walking away with a rate that maybe
you're going to keep for a long time. Because the
thing you got to keep in mind when you get
a mortgage is you don't want to be looking to
refinance in a year or two, because when you look
at the closing costs, it doesn't make sense to refinance.
(12:00):
It's you know, every year or two and just to
look at what the closing costs are, most people have
to wait, you know, quite a few years to be
able to make back what the difference is on the
closing costs to make it make sense to refinance. So
you're better off really finding a mortgage broker like myself
(12:20):
that would work with you in this way, so you
can get a rate that maybe you would keep for
five years that you're not going to be saying, well, look,
i'll do this now, I'll get to six and a
half and then on a year or two I'm going
to need to refinance. Rather than doing that, just get
the lower rate now. And that's one of the advantages
of working with someone like myself. So I am licensed
(12:43):
in a number of states. If I'm not licensed in
your state, I can actually have someone on my team
work with you in this same way, the same arrangement.
So if you want to talk more about that, get
in touch, drop me and email James Elpeis at gmail
dot com, or just find a local mortgage broker and
just say I want the par rate paar par rate,
(13:07):
which is what we call the wholesale rate, and I
would rather just pay you your fee separately and get
the par rate. That's how you would negotiate that deal
with any other mortgage broker that you might pick in
your own local market. Well, Halloween, I know it's controversial,
and I'm going to get some emails about this, but
(13:28):
I actually really enjoyed Halloween this year. And it's mostly
because I'm living with my mother now in Orlando while
I'm in law school. And I got to tell you
something that happened in law school over the weekend. I'll
get to that in a minute. But she lives in
one of these neighborhoods where people still the little kids
(13:49):
still go door to door for the candy. And I
know that's gone away in so many areas and we've
gone to like what is it called trunk or treat
where you just go to your church and they have
a bunch of you know, people where they tailgate. They
have the cars set up and they've got you know,
all the you know, the trunks are open or the
little tables are set up to give kids candy. And
(14:12):
I understand you've got to do what you got to do,
because it's all about safety and protecting your kids. But
this neighborhood where she lives in my mom and I'm
living with her presently in Orlando, is still in a
neighborhood where the little kids come around for candy, and
so we we bought a bag of candy to give out,
and it was so cute to see my mom in
(14:33):
her wheelchair in the driveway. She was giving out candy
to all these you know, little kids coming up with
their you know, little sweet little costumes on, you know,
dressed up as firemen, policemen. You know. It reminded me
of back in the day. I mean, I almost felt
like I was in a time machine to see this
going on. And a lot of people in the neighborhood
(14:55):
put out like special lights and kind of like goofy
scary stuff. So it was real fun. And I put
on my the Amazon box, I put I put it
out by the front door, and I was doing like
monster mash theme from the Monsters, theme from Adam's Family,
that kind of stuff. And we had a great night,
and it was the weather was on real it was
(15:16):
like in the sixties, and it was just a great vibe.
And I know people are gonna people are gonna be
upset with me because I know, like I know, the
script is as a Christian, we're supposed to just hate
Halloween and have nothing to do with it, which I
brought up on the last episode. If that's true, then
why do we have these other sort of alternative events.
And and if you're gonna celebrate it in a wholesome
(15:38):
way in your own driveway like my mom did, I
see nothing wrong with doing so. And and every kid
she gave a piece of candy too, She said, God
loves you, God bless you. So I thought it was
a really neat way of, you know, celebrating, And I
hadn't seen this in so many years, so many years,
(15:59):
even when I lived in Palm Coast, when I was
married and I lived in Palm Coast and we had kids,
no kids ever came to our house. I think one
year we had maybe five kids. That was about it.
And we were surprised because out of the thirteen years
that we were living there, no kids had ever come.
And we always would buy candy every year expect the
(16:20):
kids to come, and then no kids would come. All right,
I had my first mock trial on Saturday, and I
have to tell you this is such a surreal experience
to be in law school. I can remember vividly about
six months ago, maybe seven months ago, taking a tour
(16:41):
of this law school that I now attend, the FAMU
College of Law in Orlando. And I remember, you know,
taking the tour, and the most awesome part of the
tour was the courtroom. They have a full courtroom, I
mean a real courtroom inside the school. It is totally legit.
(17:03):
It is a beautiful courtroom. And I thought to myself, man,
maybe someday I could be like in a student trial
in this courtroom. I remember standing there and having that
thought in my mind, and then there it was. On Saturday.
I was in my first mock trial and I had
a couple of parts in the trial. One was I
(17:26):
was arguing emotion for a verdict of acquittal, which is
kind of a technical thing. I won't get into it.
But I did the closing argument, and I did it
in like how they do it on TV. I was
like pacing back and forth and yelling and talking to
the jury, and man, it was so fun. And my
(17:47):
fellow students thought I did a great job, and we
won our case, and it was exciting because our opponents
were second year law students, so the jury our client
not guilty on the substance of charges. And it was
just a really really great experience on Saturday. And I've
(18:09):
been getting a lot of emails from people just saying,
how's law school going? You know, what's going on with you?
And so that was really exciting and I was able
to have that experience and in just another ten days
I'll be back in that same courtroom again for another
mock trial. And people asked me, what is this about.
(18:31):
Is this a real case. It's not a real case.
We basically use actors to play the roles of the
different people, including the defendant, and then we have a
jury and we have a real trial, and our professor
writes like out a script of like the whole scenario
of like what the charges are, what the police report said,
(18:52):
what happened, YadA, YadA, YadA, the whole thing. We actually
go in and have a full blown trial with a judge,
with a jury, all of that, and man, is it fun.
And we did that on Saturday, and that was just
an incredible, incredible experience. Well speaking, of the weather and
how nice it's been here in Florida. We had no
hurricanes this year, the entire hurricane season, no hurricanes. And
(19:17):
what's interesting to me about that, not to get too political,
as if we are not already political enough on this show,
is when you have something like that, like oh, we
had no hurricanes, like all of a sudden, the global
warming people, the climate crisis people get really quiet because
they're the first ones to come out when there's a
(19:38):
you know, there's a major hurricane, you know that hits
the US to say, you see, that's proof of what's
happening with the climate and all of that. But Florida,
I mean, we had what three or four different hurricanes
that were going to hit Florida and they just turned
away just there was a high pressure system, as it
(19:59):
was explain, that pushed these They made like literally a
right hand turn and just went back out to see.
Of course, our thoughts and prayers are still with the
people of Jamaica that were hit by Melissa, which was
a Category five hurricane with wind gusts of over two
hundred miles per hour, and some of the pictures from
(20:21):
Jamaica are just unbelievable. To look at all. Right, Another
thing going on is Facebook had a class action settlement,
and you know, I'll be honest with you, I don't
even remember applying for this money, but I must have
applied for it, because all of a sudden the other day,
I think it was three or four days ago, I
(20:44):
got a deposit of thirty seven dollars into my bank
account from a bank in Canada. So I was like,
what in the world is this. I get a lot
of small deposits, like from book royalties and you know,
different affiliate programs I'm a part of and all that,
you know, over the years, so I get you know,
I get little deposits here and there. And so when
(21:05):
I saw thirty seven dollars deposit, I didn't recognize any
of the bank and I'm like, what is this? So
I searched it and it was my Facebook class action
lawsuits settlement. I'm out. So you may have gotten a
similar little deposit. I don't know how the figure was determined,
but I do remember this settlement some years ago where
(21:29):
supposedly Facebook there was some privacy issue, and I don't
even know all the details of it, if they had
a data exposure or or they may have allowed a
third party company to have access to people's private information.
I don't remember the details of it, but there was
a class action settlement. And this is always the case.
(21:53):
There's like, you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars,
but and I get to check, you know, I'll get
a check for thirty seven bucks. I guess the lawyers
got the rest of it. So yeah, all right, there's
another thing going on. And I'm a single guy, so
this always these kind of stories always kind of catch
(22:13):
my attention. I'm absolutely not looking to date anyone. I'm
not close to it, but I'm really just not looking.
But I guess this is a thing if you're if
you're single, you get onto a lot of these dating
websites and you take pictures, you write up a biography
about yourself. So the biggest scam going is called bio baiting, biobaiting,
(22:39):
b ai ti ng biobating. What is that. Bio is
short for biography biography baiting, and what are we talking about?
Apparently the new thing? And I don't really think this
is so new, but there was a big article about
it that I read this morning about people out out
(23:00):
lying in their biographies or their backstories on these various
dating sites. They even gave one example of people using
AI like to create a fake passport to like show
pictures of their passport to you know, represent like that
they're a world traveler and maybe they've never left their driveway,
(23:24):
but they've got like a fake passport that they use
AI to create to make it look like they're a
world traveler. So we do know that people have been
using different apps to like make their pictures look better.
So I was reading that Facebook has something now called
like verified pictures, where if you're involved with Facebook dating,
(23:46):
that you can get your pictures verified so that they
have some kind of AI that will determine whether your
pictures accurately portray what you look like or whether they're
sort of doctor. We know that's been going on for
a long time, especially people that are struggling with weight.
They might have an app or a filter that makes
(24:08):
them look thinner. That's been going on forever. But now
this is apparently a big thing where people are now
literally out and out lying about their backgrounds and their
education and their life experiences on these dating sites. And
I guess the risk of that is if you're a scammer,
and you use that to meet people, and then you
(24:32):
use that connection to kind of scam people. That's where
it becomes a scam. But I don't know. I have
I have heard from so many people about online dating
and how wonderful it is and how they met their
significant other. But I you know, I have been single
(24:54):
now for how long has it been? At least a
couple of years. And I'm not going to get into
my old story here, but I've just become disenchanted with marriage.
I even posted on my website that I don't think
marriage means anything anymore. I really don't, because not only
(25:14):
was I married thirty six years, but I know so
many people in similar situations that were married for twenty years,
thirty years longer, and just boom, their spouse decides, hey,
I want a divorce and the lifelong commitment till death
do us part for better or worse. The biblical kind
(25:35):
of platform of marriage, being compared to Christ and the Church,
it seems like that's all gone. And I used to be, honestly,
in my mind and in my heart, really judgmental of people,
young people that live together without being married. But when
I see in the church, the divorce rate to be
(25:59):
similar as it is in the secular world. I almost wonder,
you know, I get it, I get it. Why why
in today's world we're no longer let me put it
this way, we're no longer living in a world like
where my parents were, where they got married and stayed
together for decades and decades, and you're seeing, you know,
(26:22):
people that were I have got some dear friends, they
were neighbors of ours in Chicago growing up, and they
just celebrated sixty five years of marriage. I'm not saying
that's completely gone, but it sure seems rare now compared
to what it used to be. And the idea of
(26:44):
dumping your spouse, and it's I'm gonna be honest with you,
it's mostly women when you hear the stories, and you know,
every story is different, so we can't just generalize. But
you know, the twenty plus year marriages that just boom
they're over is happening more and more frequently within the
Christian community. So all of that to say, I don't
(27:04):
even I don't know what you do. Then, you know,
when you're like, I'm a sixty year old man, I mean,
what do I do now? I guess I just live
out my life single and I'm just not interested in
online dating and all of that, so I don't have
to worry about bio baiting or whatever. Boy, the truth is,
(27:24):
probably if most women knew my history and then i
have a podcast and I've written books, and I'm an
on fire conservative Christian and i have opinions on politics,
probably no one would touch me with a ten foot
poll anyway, So it's all good, all right, Thanks so
much for joining us, God Bless. If you have a
(27:45):
topic you would like me to discuss, get in touch
James Elperis at gmail dot com. And also look forward
to some new episodes with guests. We're going to be
getting back to guests soon, and I'm excited about that
some of our great guests over the years, bringing them back.
And also check out our twenty four hour live stream
over at talkstream live dot com. Talkstream live dot com.
(28:10):
We're on several nights a week at nine pm Eastern
at talkstream live dot com, and we're on seven nights
a week from twelve at night until six in the morning,
and thousands of people listening to the show over there.
God Bless, have a great week. We'll talk to you
next time. So long, everybody,
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