May 20, 2025 • 27 mins
In this episode, I share a jaw-dropping visit to the downtown Orlando library where I discovered a goldmine of free digital services — from ebooks and online courses to pro-level creative studios. I also break down what I earned after driving just four shifts for Uber — the numbers might surprise you. Plus, I talk about a UFO Facebook post that stirred up unexpected reactions, dig into the latest on James Comey, the 86-47 controversy, Moody’s U.S. debt downgrade, and rising mortgage rates. Other hot topics include televangelist Jim Bakker’s financial plea, the Menendez brothers’ new parole status, and Pete Rose’s long-overdue reinstatement. It’s a packed episode full of insight, opinion, and surprises.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Gentlemen, start your engines. A you're talking about mister Garbokoff
teared down. This one the only thing we have to bear.
Spare it so I I'm not a crunk. If you
like your healthcare plan, you'll be able to keep your
(00:27):
healthcare plans. 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,
(00:52):
the editor in chief of Christian money dot Com and
the author of more than thirty books. Jim Paris.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
All right, hellover you, Hey, welcome to the broadcast. Jim
Parris here with you from my Orlando, Florida studio, and
I'm telling you it is hot. It is so hot.
It is over one hundred degrees right now in Orlando today.
This is not the feels like temperature. This is the
(01:20):
actual temperature right outside my studio. It is one hundred
and one degrees. And this is not normal for here.
A lot of people you know, obviously know Florida does
get hot, but we don't get this hot. This is
crazy hot. I mean, lower nineties is typical, maybe creeping
(01:42):
into the mid nineties, but over one hundred not around here.
This is what you might get in Dallas. And with
the humidity added to it that we have in Florida
and one hundred and one degrees, it is brutal to
be outside. In fact, I was outside yesterday. I went
downtown to where my law school is that I'll be attending,
(02:06):
and I needed to do some kind of walking around
errands and I needed to walk. It was literally zero
point nine miles, so like nine tenths of a mile
I had to walk from the law school over to
the city Public Library. And this was crazy. I literally
started getting heat exhaustion, and I knew the signs of
(02:28):
it because my legs started locking up. And I remember
that from back in the day of training so hard
for all of my black belts that I have in Taekwonda.
I remembered the warning signs, and I remembered, you know,
my training, And at that point, I said, hey, you
got to get off the street. So I ducked into
a coffee shop and got a bottle of water and
(02:50):
took a little bit of a break there. But so
much to get into today, but I do want to
talk about so many things are happening with law school,
and I'm getting so many great emails from people congratulating me.
I have a cousin who's an attorney in Chicago, so
he reached out and he's got some great advice for me,
like how to survive the first year, and some books
(03:12):
to read, and so a lot of good things are happening.
But I want to tell you about what I was
doing downtown yesterday because it's such a great way to
save money. What I was doing. So what I was
doing was I was going down to the main Orlando
branch of the Public Library. And this place is huge.
(03:35):
It is huge. I think it's like maybe four maybe
five floors of resources. And if you haven't been to
a library lately, libraries have sort of reinvented themselves. They're
no longer about just lots of books. The books are
still there, but in this case, this library and a
(03:57):
lot of libraries have started thinning out the books and
they're making available more resources to people in different ways
because of the digital revolution. So for example, there's a
whole floor where you can go in and you can
use a computer. They have an area set up a
(04:17):
photography studio that you can use to get pictures to
take pictures, I don't know, headshots for work, whatever you
need those for. They even have an audio an audio
production studio you can check out. They've got meeting rooms,
all kinds of cool stuff. But the best part of
it was all of the digital resources that I became
(04:43):
eligible for. Now I mentioned this maybe three or four
years ago. As far as me joining my library in
Flagler County, Florida, which is a small county, small library system,
this was unbelievable. I got a list with after I
joined the library, which was free. I got a list
of all of the digital resources that I became eligible for.
(05:09):
And it was thousands of books that I could get
online to read, you know, the Kindle version or read
on your computer or whatever. Thousands of audio books. Also,
thousands of movies that I could have access to. Also
a lot of other kind of interesting resources. For example,
(05:31):
there was there's a resource where I can get access
to thousands of different legal templates for Florida. You know
how back in the day, if you needed to do
a lease with a tenant, you'd have to go maybe
up to Staples or home Depot and buy an agreement
and then you'd fill it in. Well, all of that
(05:52):
is now online, but you got to pay money for
all that stuff, all those agreements. Well, there's a portal
that they get you just as a member of the
library that gives you access to all these legal documents.
Then they were showing me I have access to something
called linked in training. And so this morning I went
into Starbucks, got a table, and I had a lot
(06:15):
of other work to do. But then I took a
few minutes to log into these different sites. And there's
one site you get all these movies that you can
access just so much, and it's all part of your
membership for free as part of the library. And I
just started thinking, how few people probably know about all
(06:35):
of this, that this is available. My main reason for
going down to the library was, honestly, it is in
the same zone as the law school, and I hadn't
been there in a long time. I have not been
to the downtown Orlando Library, maybe in ten years or longer,
so I kind of wanted to go and check it out.
(06:56):
But I also thought, you know, as a college student
here gear up in Orlando, it wouldn't hurt to have
a library membership. That way, if I need something that
I can't get through other resources that I can go
down to the library. Also, I thought, maybe I want
to go study somewhere, and I don't want to be
necessarily at the school. I don't want to go somewhere else.
(07:18):
There they've got lots of study space at the library,
even rooms that you can reserve to kind of have
your own private room to study or have a study group,
that kind of thing. So that was kind of my
purpose in doing it. I had no idea I would
discover all of these great resources. So the point being
is this, man, especially if you live near a middle
(07:42):
size to a larger size city, you got to check
out your library. I guess check out any library, because
a lot of these resources could be available at any library,
but especially if you're in a mid size to a
large city, and you might think, oh, I'm never going
to go down to the library. It's not in a
convene location, it's not in a safe neighborhood, whatever your
(08:03):
excuse might be. Just get in there and get a
library card and then get the information on all of
these online digital resources. The stuff that you can have
access to. It's pretty darn amazing all the stuff that
you get digital. And I'm just touching on some of it.
I've got like thirty different digital platforms that I get
(08:27):
access to as a member of the library. So there's that,
all right. So I told you guys I was going
to start experimenting a little bit and driving with Uber,
and my experiment did not go well. Let me first
say why was I doing this? A couple of reasons.
I have been interested for a really long time in
(08:47):
how much people make driving for Uber. I am a
very simple guy, a blue collar family. My dad was
an electrician. I am not somebody that's too good to
do any kind of work. I mean, I grew up
working in restaurants, cleaning toilets. So you might be thinking,
why would Jim Parris, author, podcaster, I see him on TV,
(09:10):
why would he drive Uber? A couple of things. Number one,
I just wanted to try it. It's just something I
wanted to try. And I do this with a lot
of things. I just try out different things for my
own experience, maybe to write about it, to talk about
it on the show, maybe to be able to, you know,
advise other people whether they should get into that side
(09:31):
gig or not. And also I was kind of honestly
looking for something that I could do maybe super part
time while I'm in law school. So I'm going to
be in law school for three years, and I thought, well,
maybe if you know, money got tight, because my day's
(09:52):
going to be doing law school all day and I'm
not going to have time as much time to do
a lot of the other things that I do to
make money. So I thought, well, if money got tight,
if I kind of did something like maybe every Sunday
drove for Uber and maybe picked up an extra couple
hundred bucks a week, that would be pretty cool. So
I thought, well, let me just try this out. I
(10:14):
have a little bit of downtime now, I'm all settled
here in Orlando, I've relocated, so I decided to do it,
and I went all in. I watched YouTube videos on
all the strategies to make money, all the different ideas
people have about like when is the best time to drive.
(10:37):
There's also an app that I discovered which is actually
new to the United States. My understanding is it's been
around for a little while in South America, but it's
called gig you. That's gigu, which is this app that
runs side by side with your Uber driver app, and
(10:57):
it instantly tells you whether you should take a ride
or not. That pops up on the screen and you're
able to put in there your own parameters. And so
the long and the short of it is this, and I,
you know, I'm driving a nice car, I'm being super
nice to people, and I really did enjoy talking to people.
That's one of the things about it. I really enjoy
(11:19):
just meeting new people. So that part of it was
really nice. And I don't mind driving, and I have
a great car with great air conditioning, so all of
that was fine. But in the make a long story short,
when you take into account the cost of gas, and
then you also take into account the wear and tear
(11:41):
on your car, most of the articles and experts and YouTubers,
including this app that I use, say that you've got
to make at least a dollar per mile. And the
problem is that the rides that come up from Uber
on the app mostly are for less than a dollar
(12:04):
per mile, So you end up kind of sitting in
a parking lot somewhere waiting for the right ride to
pop up that will pay you more than a dollar
per ride. And yes, there are tips. About one out
of three passengers tipped me some of them were pretty generous.
(12:25):
But to kind of break down the numbers for you,
in a seventeen hour period, I spent about one hundred
dollars on gas. I made about three hundred dollars total,
So that brings it down to two hundred and that's
(12:47):
not accounting for any wear and tear on the vehicle,
and so what that comes out to is maybe around
twelve bucks an hour, which is what minimum wages here
in Florida. Now that's what happened with me. I drove
four different times I did I think fifteen trips altogether.
(13:12):
And I'm throwing this out for a couple of reasons.
Number One, I know there's probably some of you listening
who probably are great at uber and make a lot
of money. I haven't been able to figure it out.
Maybe that's just me and a lot of the research
I've done online seems to suggest that uber is not
(13:32):
really a money making proposition for drivers. That people don't
take the time to really analyze the wear and tear cost,
the depreciation of their vehicle, the cost of tires, the
cost of oil changes, the cost of major repairs on
top of the cost of gas to really determine like
(13:52):
does this actually make sense? So you have a lot
of people, according to the stuff that I've read, a
lot of people that are just kind of driving around,
you know, thinking they're making money, but in the real
final analysis, they're not. And I think that's what my
experience was. I don't see that I was making money. Now,
(14:16):
this is in Orlando, which is a great market with tourists.
We've got two airports that are busy, and I did
the five am to ten am run, which is supposed
to be prime time. That's when you get the airport
rides and all of that, and that's what happened. So honestly,
(14:39):
at this point, I would consider Uber not a good
deal for as a side gig in Orlando. In my experience.
It could be different in different cities, and I don't
rule that out. And it could be that I have
no idea what I'm doing, even though I did all
my research. I have a great car, I was super
(15:01):
nice to people. I use the app, the gigu app,
to try to optimize selecting the more profitable rides. Just
did not seem to work out for me, all right.
I posted an article on Facebook and a lot of
people are upset about it, maybe not upset, but just
(15:23):
worked up about it. About this incident where a allegedly
a UFO and a government an air force jet collided.
And I guess a lot of people believe it was
just a drone that the jet hit. But I just
(15:44):
posted the article about it. You know, hey, unidentified flying
object collides with air force jet. This is reported in
multiple national news papers and websites multiple but yet people
were really upset about it. One guy even said, yeah,
(16:04):
and this guy who posted this is supposed to be
getting ready to become a lawyer, like you know, now
that is part of the throwing mud at me, Like,
not only am I a terrible guy, he doesn't like
what I boast, but how can anybody believe now that
I'm going to be a lawyer. So that's there. And
I found it interesting because there was a time, maybe
(16:27):
back when I had La Marzoulian a lot when Christians,
in particular conservative Christians, tended to give a little bit
more credence to the idea of UFOs and not be
so dismissive. And I don't know what happened. A lot
of times I will just post a news story just
(16:48):
to get conversation going on the Facebook page. But I
thought that was an interesting story and if you want
to check it out, that is in my timeline. Well,
two products people have asked me for years. One is, Jim,
I want to know about self publishing how do you
do that? And I want to know about podcasting? How
(17:10):
do I get into that? So what I had done
was I incorporated several hours of teaching on self publishing
in my really big Internet business course, and then also
I did the same on podcasting. What I found out
through feedback was people said, we don't want to join
that entire big course. What we want to do is
(17:33):
just get that information a la carte. So if you
check out my Facebook timeline right now, I'm having a
flash sale on my self publishing course. It's a three
hour video course and it's available for less than twenty bucks,
so a great deal. And just you know, I have
(17:54):
been signed by five different traditional publishers, So I did
all that. Now for years I've been doing self publishing.
So in the videos, I talk about the differences between
traditional publishers and self publishing, and then I get into
step by step how to become self published on Amazon
(18:15):
with both print books ebooks and also audible books, the audiobooks,
so that's available. And also if you're interested, I have
a similar course on podcasting, a short course on how
to get started with your own podcast, which is really confusing.
(18:35):
There's a lot of I guess there's a lot to know.
It's not that complicated, honestly, once you get the basic information,
but it's not easy to just go online and figure
out how to get a podcast going and how to
get a distributed worldwide. So that's why I think my
(18:55):
short course on podcasting is so helpful. And if you
want information on either of those courses, you can send
me an email to James Elparis at gmail dot com
and I will gladly get a link to you James
Elparis at gmail dot com. Well, James Comy is in
the middle of a big controversy, so if you didn't
(19:17):
see the story, he posted a picture on his Twitter
account which is now called x I think we still
are going to keep calling it Twitter, and it was
a picture of a shell formation. He said, really cool
shell formation I saw on my walk this morning, and
it was eighty six space and then forty seven eighty six,
(19:42):
forty seven. So most people correctly took that as a
very inappropriate thing to post and maybe somewhat of a
threat against the president. The Secret Service even responded and
went out and interviewed James Comy because a you know
what is the you know what does that mean? Well,
(20:04):
eighty six at least it used to mean back in
the mafia days, take someone eight miles out of town
and put them six foot under eighty six. Eighty six
someone and then forty seven, of course, is the president
of the United States. He's the forty seventh President of
the United States. So I posted, I know i Facebook,
(20:28):
I posted I saw a really cool shell formation on
my beach walk today and I found this really funny.
It's obviously using AI and it's made in shells on
the sand and it says James Comy is going to jail.
It says that you know, spelled out with shells, and
(20:49):
that has gone gangbusters. I mean that is being shared
all over the internet, thousands and thousands of views, and
people are like, wow, Jim Parris, can't believe you had
put something out there like that. But again, it's getting
people talking, so I guess that's what it's all about.
So Moody's, the bond rating service, has downgraded US debt.
(21:15):
This is just a tiny, little downgrade, but it's still
significant because what they're saying is that the US is
not really adequately controlling its debt and the debt is growing,
and we all know that, right, and so this is
really no surprise. The problem though, with downgrading the US
(21:39):
debts is that it creates in the market a little
bit of a bump up in interest rates on government
bonds because they're a higher risk. That's how it works,
and so as a result, mortgage rates have not really
come down, and that's frustrating and disappointing to those of
us in the real estate and mortgage business. Right now,
(22:03):
the ten year government bond is sitting at about four
and a half percent, and we were starting to see
a nice decline in the ten year bond, and that's
what influences mortgage rates. If you're wondering why I'm making
that connection, the thirty year mortgage tracks the rate of
(22:24):
the ten year bond plus a margin. So the ten
year bond is four and a half percent. I'll make
up a number probably around seven and a half percent,
is where like a typical you know general mortgage quote
might be. So people in real estate and mortgage is
really upset because we kind of had this trend starting
(22:47):
towards lower rates and then boom, that's all gone now.
So rates are not as bad as they've been, but
they're certainly not as good as they were made a
couple of months ago. So we're kind of in a
little bit of a flux right now on rates. Just
to let everybody know, I still am doing mortgages. I
(23:10):
still am a loan officer. Even though I'm going to
law school, I will continue to do mortgages on a
part time basis right now. What's been really popular is
the home equity loans that we have, and if you're
interested in finding out what you can do on that.
I love the fact that you can keep your great
(23:32):
first mortgage and that great low interest rate on the
first mortgage that maybe you got a few years ago,
but then you know the equity that's built up over
the years. You can access that with a fixed rate
home equity loan. And what's nice about it is you
can apply online, you can get an answer in five minutes,
(23:54):
there's no appraisal required, and you can close in as
little as five days. So if you want to check
that out, you can apply online. Just go to quick
turn helock dot com. That's the word quick and then
turn and then h e l oc dot com quick
(24:15):
turnheelock dot com to get all the information and my
licensing details and all of that. Or if you want
to just talk about it, you can send me an
email to James L. Paris at gmail dot com and
I'll be happy to get that link to you and
show you what's available. And by the way, it is
it is possible to use it for your primary home,
(24:38):
for a second home, or even on an investment property,
which is really fantastic. And it is a fixed rate
equity line, which I love. So Jim Baker, that Jim Baker,
the one that has the TV ministry, who's kind of
you know, his life has gone up and down with
(24:59):
going to prison and then coming out of prison, and
he's been in Branson, Missouri and back on TV again.
He is now asking his followers for a million dollars
or his ministry may go off the air. He may
be done. And I posted that and there's a lot
(25:20):
of you know, people have a lot of strong feelings
about it. One way or the other. I don't have
anything against Jim Baker. I posted maybe a few months
ago some story came up about Jim Baker, and I said,
you know what, Yes he made mistakes, absolutely, but who
of us has not? And he seems like he's dedicated
his life to ministry. And he did have a bad run,
(25:43):
you know, bad period, but he seems to be sincere.
Maybe I'm wrong. I wish him the best. And if
he runs out of money, he runs out of money.
It's it's tough times right now and a lot of
organizations and ministries in particular are hurting. That's story getting
a lot of traction online. What else here? The Menendez
(26:05):
brothers have been re sentenced. So the Netflix special and
all the discussion about the Menendez brothers who killed their
parents went to prison for decades. They now are officially
eligible for parole. So we'll have to wait and see
what happens on that. And we will close it out
(26:25):
today with just how ridiculous Major League Baseball is. Now
that Pete Rose has passed away, they have reinstated Pete
Rose and he may become eligible. He is eligible for
the Hall of Fame posthumously. Such a shame that they
(26:46):
could not do that for the man while he was living.
But that's major League Baseball for you. And Pete Rose
may end up in the Hall of Fame. Looks like
he will. Will think it's a travesty that he wasn't
in the Hall of Fame. Well, he was living, So
there's that all right. Guys, thanks so much for joining me.
(27:10):
Stay in touch. The email that goes directly to my
phone is James Elpeis at gmail dot com. God bless
we'll talk to you next time. So long, everybody,
Gentlemen, start your engines. A you're talking about mister Garbokoff
teared down. This one the only thing we have to bear.
Spare it so I I'm not a crunk. If you
like your healthcare plan, you'll be able to keep your
(00:27):
healthcare plans. 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,
(00:52):
the editor in chief of Christian money dot Com and
the author of more than thirty books. Jim Paris.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
All right, hellover you, Hey, welcome to the broadcast. Jim
Parris here with you from my Orlando, Florida studio, and
I'm telling you it is hot. It is so hot.
It is over one hundred degrees right now in Orlando today.
This is not the feels like temperature. This is the
(01:20):
actual temperature right outside my studio. It is one hundred
and one degrees. And this is not normal for here.
A lot of people you know, obviously know Florida does
get hot, but we don't get this hot. This is
crazy hot. I mean, lower nineties is typical, maybe creeping
(01:42):
into the mid nineties, but over one hundred not around here.
This is what you might get in Dallas. And with
the humidity added to it that we have in Florida
and one hundred and one degrees, it is brutal to
be outside. In fact, I was outside yesterday. I went
downtown to where my law school is that I'll be attending,
(02:06):
and I needed to do some kind of walking around
errands and I needed to walk. It was literally zero
point nine miles, so like nine tenths of a mile
I had to walk from the law school over to
the city Public Library. And this was crazy. I literally
started getting heat exhaustion, and I knew the signs of
(02:28):
it because my legs started locking up. And I remember
that from back in the day of training so hard
for all of my black belts that I have in Taekwonda.
I remembered the warning signs, and I remembered, you know,
my training, And at that point, I said, hey, you
got to get off the street. So I ducked into
a coffee shop and got a bottle of water and
(02:50):
took a little bit of a break there. But so
much to get into today, but I do want to
talk about so many things are happening with law school,
and I'm getting so many great emails from people congratulating me.
I have a cousin who's an attorney in Chicago, so
he reached out and he's got some great advice for me,
like how to survive the first year, and some books
(03:12):
to read, and so a lot of good things are happening.
But I want to tell you about what I was
doing downtown yesterday because it's such a great way to
save money. What I was doing. So what I was
doing was I was going down to the main Orlando
branch of the Public Library. And this place is huge.
(03:35):
It is huge. I think it's like maybe four maybe
five floors of resources. And if you haven't been to
a library lately, libraries have sort of reinvented themselves. They're
no longer about just lots of books. The books are
still there, but in this case, this library and a
(03:57):
lot of libraries have started thinning out the books and
they're making available more resources to people in different ways
because of the digital revolution. So for example, there's a
whole floor where you can go in and you can
use a computer. They have an area set up a
(04:17):
photography studio that you can use to get pictures to
take pictures, I don't know, headshots for work, whatever you
need those for. They even have an audio an audio
production studio you can check out. They've got meeting rooms,
all kinds of cool stuff. But the best part of
it was all of the digital resources that I became
(04:43):
eligible for. Now I mentioned this maybe three or four
years ago. As far as me joining my library in
Flagler County, Florida, which is a small county, small library system,
this was unbelievable. I got a list with after I
joined the library, which was free. I got a list
of all of the digital resources that I became eligible for.
(05:09):
And it was thousands of books that I could get
online to read, you know, the Kindle version or read
on your computer or whatever. Thousands of audio books. Also,
thousands of movies that I could have access to. Also
a lot of other kind of interesting resources. For example,
(05:31):
there was there's a resource where I can get access
to thousands of different legal templates for Florida. You know
how back in the day, if you needed to do
a lease with a tenant, you'd have to go maybe
up to Staples or home Depot and buy an agreement
and then you'd fill it in. Well, all of that
(05:52):
is now online, but you got to pay money for
all that stuff, all those agreements. Well, there's a portal
that they get you just as a member of the
library that gives you access to all these legal documents.
Then they were showing me I have access to something
called linked in training. And so this morning I went
into Starbucks, got a table, and I had a lot
(06:15):
of other work to do. But then I took a
few minutes to log into these different sites. And there's
one site you get all these movies that you can
access just so much, and it's all part of your
membership for free as part of the library. And I
just started thinking, how few people probably know about all
(06:35):
of this, that this is available. My main reason for
going down to the library was, honestly, it is in
the same zone as the law school, and I hadn't
been there in a long time. I have not been
to the downtown Orlando Library, maybe in ten years or longer,
so I kind of wanted to go and check it out.
(06:56):
But I also thought, you know, as a college student
here gear up in Orlando, it wouldn't hurt to have
a library membership. That way, if I need something that
I can't get through other resources that I can go
down to the library. Also, I thought, maybe I want
to go study somewhere, and I don't want to be
necessarily at the school. I don't want to go somewhere else.
(07:18):
There they've got lots of study space at the library,
even rooms that you can reserve to kind of have
your own private room to study or have a study group,
that kind of thing. So that was kind of my
purpose in doing it. I had no idea I would
discover all of these great resources. So the point being
is this, man, especially if you live near a middle
(07:42):
size to a larger size city, you got to check
out your library. I guess check out any library, because
a lot of these resources could be available at any library,
but especially if you're in a mid size to a
large city, and you might think, oh, I'm never going
to go down to the library. It's not in a
convene location, it's not in a safe neighborhood, whatever your
(08:03):
excuse might be. Just get in there and get a
library card and then get the information on all of
these online digital resources. The stuff that you can have
access to. It's pretty darn amazing all the stuff that
you get digital. And I'm just touching on some of it.
I've got like thirty different digital platforms that I get
(08:27):
access to as a member of the library. So there's that,
all right. So I told you guys I was going
to start experimenting a little bit and driving with Uber,
and my experiment did not go well. Let me first
say why was I doing this? A couple of reasons.
I have been interested for a really long time in
(08:47):
how much people make driving for Uber. I am a
very simple guy, a blue collar family. My dad was
an electrician. I am not somebody that's too good to
do any kind of work. I mean, I grew up
working in restaurants, cleaning toilets. So you might be thinking,
why would Jim Parris, author, podcaster, I see him on TV,
(09:10):
why would he drive Uber? A couple of things. Number one,
I just wanted to try it. It's just something I
wanted to try. And I do this with a lot
of things. I just try out different things for my
own experience, maybe to write about it, to talk about
it on the show, maybe to be able to, you know,
advise other people whether they should get into that side
(09:31):
gig or not. And also I was kind of honestly
looking for something that I could do maybe super part
time while I'm in law school. So I'm going to
be in law school for three years, and I thought, well,
maybe if you know, money got tight, because my day's
(09:52):
going to be doing law school all day and I'm
not going to have time as much time to do
a lot of the other things that I do to
make money. So I thought, well, if money got tight,
if I kind of did something like maybe every Sunday
drove for Uber and maybe picked up an extra couple
hundred bucks a week, that would be pretty cool. So
I thought, well, let me just try this out. I
(10:14):
have a little bit of downtime now, I'm all settled
here in Orlando, I've relocated, so I decided to do it,
and I went all in. I watched YouTube videos on
all the strategies to make money, all the different ideas
people have about like when is the best time to drive.
(10:37):
There's also an app that I discovered which is actually
new to the United States. My understanding is it's been
around for a little while in South America, but it's
called gig you. That's gigu, which is this app that
runs side by side with your Uber driver app, and
(10:57):
it instantly tells you whether you should take a ride
or not. That pops up on the screen and you're
able to put in there your own parameters. And so
the long and the short of it is this, and I,
you know, I'm driving a nice car, I'm being super
nice to people, and I really did enjoy talking to people.
That's one of the things about it. I really enjoy
(11:19):
just meeting new people. So that part of it was
really nice. And I don't mind driving, and I have
a great car with great air conditioning, so all of
that was fine. But in the make a long story short,
when you take into account the cost of gas, and
then you also take into account the wear and tear
(11:41):
on your car, most of the articles and experts and YouTubers,
including this app that I use, say that you've got
to make at least a dollar per mile. And the
problem is that the rides that come up from Uber
on the app mostly are for less than a dollar
(12:04):
per mile, So you end up kind of sitting in
a parking lot somewhere waiting for the right ride to
pop up that will pay you more than a dollar
per ride. And yes, there are tips. About one out
of three passengers tipped me some of them were pretty generous.
(12:25):
But to kind of break down the numbers for you,
in a seventeen hour period, I spent about one hundred
dollars on gas. I made about three hundred dollars total,
So that brings it down to two hundred and that's
(12:47):
not accounting for any wear and tear on the vehicle,
and so what that comes out to is maybe around
twelve bucks an hour, which is what minimum wages here
in Florida. Now that's what happened with me. I drove
four different times I did I think fifteen trips altogether.
(13:12):
And I'm throwing this out for a couple of reasons.
Number One, I know there's probably some of you listening
who probably are great at uber and make a lot
of money. I haven't been able to figure it out.
Maybe that's just me and a lot of the research
I've done online seems to suggest that uber is not
(13:32):
really a money making proposition for drivers. That people don't
take the time to really analyze the wear and tear cost,
the depreciation of their vehicle, the cost of tires, the
cost of oil changes, the cost of major repairs on
top of the cost of gas to really determine like
(13:52):
does this actually make sense? So you have a lot
of people, according to the stuff that I've read, a
lot of people that are just kind of driving around,
you know, thinking they're making money, but in the real
final analysis, they're not. And I think that's what my
experience was. I don't see that I was making money. Now,
(14:16):
this is in Orlando, which is a great market with tourists.
We've got two airports that are busy, and I did
the five am to ten am run, which is supposed
to be prime time. That's when you get the airport
rides and all of that, and that's what happened. So honestly,
(14:39):
at this point, I would consider Uber not a good
deal for as a side gig in Orlando. In my experience.
It could be different in different cities, and I don't
rule that out. And it could be that I have
no idea what I'm doing, even though I did all
my research. I have a great car, I was super
(15:01):
nice to people. I use the app, the gigu app,
to try to optimize selecting the more profitable rides. Just
did not seem to work out for me, all right.
I posted an article on Facebook and a lot of
people are upset about it, maybe not upset, but just
(15:23):
worked up about it. About this incident where a allegedly
a UFO and a government an air force jet collided.
And I guess a lot of people believe it was
just a drone that the jet hit. But I just
(15:44):
posted the article about it. You know, hey, unidentified flying
object collides with air force jet. This is reported in
multiple national news papers and websites multiple but yet people
were really upset about it. One guy even said, yeah,
(16:04):
and this guy who posted this is supposed to be
getting ready to become a lawyer, like you know, now
that is part of the throwing mud at me, Like,
not only am I a terrible guy, he doesn't like
what I boast, but how can anybody believe now that
I'm going to be a lawyer. So that's there. And
I found it interesting because there was a time, maybe
(16:27):
back when I had La Marzoulian a lot when Christians,
in particular conservative Christians, tended to give a little bit
more credence to the idea of UFOs and not be
so dismissive. And I don't know what happened. A lot
of times I will just post a news story just
(16:48):
to get conversation going on the Facebook page. But I
thought that was an interesting story and if you want
to check it out, that is in my timeline. Well,
two products people have asked me for years. One is, Jim,
I want to know about self publishing how do you
do that? And I want to know about podcasting? How
(17:10):
do I get into that? So what I had done
was I incorporated several hours of teaching on self publishing
in my really big Internet business course, and then also
I did the same on podcasting. What I found out
through feedback was people said, we don't want to join
that entire big course. What we want to do is
(17:33):
just get that information a la carte. So if you
check out my Facebook timeline right now, I'm having a
flash sale on my self publishing course. It's a three
hour video course and it's available for less than twenty bucks,
so a great deal. And just you know, I have
(17:54):
been signed by five different traditional publishers, So I did
all that. Now for years I've been doing self publishing.
So in the videos, I talk about the differences between
traditional publishers and self publishing, and then I get into
step by step how to become self published on Amazon
(18:15):
with both print books ebooks and also audible books, the audiobooks,
so that's available. And also if you're interested, I have
a similar course on podcasting, a short course on how
to get started with your own podcast, which is really confusing.
(18:35):
There's a lot of I guess there's a lot to know.
It's not that complicated, honestly, once you get the basic information,
but it's not easy to just go online and figure
out how to get a podcast going and how to
get a distributed worldwide. So that's why I think my
(18:55):
short course on podcasting is so helpful. And if you
want information on either of those courses, you can send
me an email to James Elparis at gmail dot com
and I will gladly get a link to you James
Elparis at gmail dot com. Well, James Comy is in
the middle of a big controversy, so if you didn't
(19:17):
see the story, he posted a picture on his Twitter
account which is now called x I think we still
are going to keep calling it Twitter, and it was
a picture of a shell formation. He said, really cool
shell formation I saw on my walk this morning, and
it was eighty six space and then forty seven eighty six,
(19:42):
forty seven. So most people correctly took that as a
very inappropriate thing to post and maybe somewhat of a
threat against the president. The Secret Service even responded and
went out and interviewed James Comy because a you know
what is the you know what does that mean? Well,
(20:04):
eighty six at least it used to mean back in
the mafia days, take someone eight miles out of town
and put them six foot under eighty six. Eighty six
someone and then forty seven, of course, is the president
of the United States. He's the forty seventh President of
the United States. So I posted, I know i Facebook,
(20:28):
I posted I saw a really cool shell formation on
my beach walk today and I found this really funny.
It's obviously using AI and it's made in shells on
the sand and it says James Comy is going to jail.
It says that you know, spelled out with shells, and
(20:49):
that has gone gangbusters. I mean that is being shared
all over the internet, thousands and thousands of views, and
people are like, wow, Jim Parris, can't believe you had
put something out there like that. But again, it's getting
people talking, so I guess that's what it's all about.
So Moody's, the bond rating service, has downgraded US debt.
(21:15):
This is just a tiny, little downgrade, but it's still
significant because what they're saying is that the US is
not really adequately controlling its debt and the debt is growing,
and we all know that, right, and so this is
really no surprise. The problem though, with downgrading the US
(21:39):
debts is that it creates in the market a little
bit of a bump up in interest rates on government
bonds because they're a higher risk. That's how it works,
and so as a result, mortgage rates have not really
come down, and that's frustrating and disappointing to those of
us in the real estate and mortgage business. Right now,
(22:03):
the ten year government bond is sitting at about four
and a half percent, and we were starting to see
a nice decline in the ten year bond, and that's
what influences mortgage rates. If you're wondering why I'm making
that connection, the thirty year mortgage tracks the rate of
(22:24):
the ten year bond plus a margin. So the ten
year bond is four and a half percent. I'll make
up a number probably around seven and a half percent,
is where like a typical you know general mortgage quote
might be. So people in real estate and mortgage is
really upset because we kind of had this trend starting
(22:47):
towards lower rates and then boom, that's all gone now.
So rates are not as bad as they've been, but
they're certainly not as good as they were made a
couple of months ago. So we're kind of in a
little bit of a flux right now on rates. Just
to let everybody know, I still am doing mortgages. I
(23:10):
still am a loan officer. Even though I'm going to
law school, I will continue to do mortgages on a
part time basis right now. What's been really popular is
the home equity loans that we have, and if you're
interested in finding out what you can do on that.
I love the fact that you can keep your great
(23:32):
first mortgage and that great low interest rate on the
first mortgage that maybe you got a few years ago,
but then you know the equity that's built up over
the years. You can access that with a fixed rate
home equity loan. And what's nice about it is you
can apply online, you can get an answer in five minutes,
(23:54):
there's no appraisal required, and you can close in as
little as five days. So if you want to check
that out, you can apply online. Just go to quick
turn helock dot com. That's the word quick and then
turn and then h e l oc dot com quick
(24:15):
turnheelock dot com to get all the information and my
licensing details and all of that. Or if you want
to just talk about it, you can send me an
email to James L. Paris at gmail dot com and
I'll be happy to get that link to you and
show you what's available. And by the way, it is
it is possible to use it for your primary home,
(24:38):
for a second home, or even on an investment property,
which is really fantastic. And it is a fixed rate
equity line, which I love. So Jim Baker, that Jim Baker,
the one that has the TV ministry, who's kind of
you know, his life has gone up and down with
(24:59):
going to prison and then coming out of prison, and
he's been in Branson, Missouri and back on TV again.
He is now asking his followers for a million dollars
or his ministry may go off the air. He may
be done. And I posted that and there's a lot
(25:20):
of you know, people have a lot of strong feelings
about it. One way or the other. I don't have
anything against Jim Baker. I posted maybe a few months
ago some story came up about Jim Baker, and I said,
you know what, Yes he made mistakes, absolutely, but who
of us has not? And he seems like he's dedicated
his life to ministry. And he did have a bad run,
(25:43):
you know, bad period, but he seems to be sincere.
Maybe I'm wrong. I wish him the best. And if
he runs out of money, he runs out of money.
It's it's tough times right now and a lot of
organizations and ministries in particular are hurting. That's story getting
a lot of traction online. What else here? The Menendez
(26:05):
brothers have been re sentenced. So the Netflix special and
all the discussion about the Menendez brothers who killed their
parents went to prison for decades. They now are officially
eligible for parole. So we'll have to wait and see
what happens on that. And we will close it out
(26:25):
today with just how ridiculous Major League Baseball is. Now
that Pete Rose has passed away, they have reinstated Pete
Rose and he may become eligible. He is eligible for
the Hall of Fame posthumously. Such a shame that they
(26:46):
could not do that for the man while he was living.
But that's major League Baseball for you. And Pete Rose
may end up in the Hall of Fame. Looks like
he will. Will think it's a travesty that he wasn't
in the Hall of Fame. Well, he was living, So
there's that all right. Guys, thanks so much for joining me.
(27:10):
Stay in touch. The email that goes directly to my
phone is James Elpeis at gmail dot com. God bless
we'll talk to you next time. So long, everybody,
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