December 18, 2025 • 11 mins
Host of ‘How to Money’ Joel Larsgaard joins the show to discuss gambling becoming a massive problem in the United States, home flipping, and more Americans moving overseas to save money.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joel Larsgard, the host of How to Money Sunday twelve.
You have the two pm or right here on KFI.
His address social address at how to Money Joel. His
website is howto Money dot com. And good morning Joel,
Morning Bill. Okay, let's get right to it, because we
have a fair amount to cover. As everyone knows that
(00:23):
gambling has swept the United States. It used to be
most states did not allow it, and it was just
Las Vegas for the most part.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Now everybody does it.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
You can do it online, you do it from your device,
and of course the number of people that are actually
gambling has exploded. At the same time, it's become a
huge problem. And Joel, would you get into that for
a moment.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, So it really is becoming a problem as the
vast majority of states have now legalized sports betting. And
let's be honest, there are ways even around it if
your state says, actually it's not legal. That there are
people be a VPN like partaking and you can't watch
a sporting event without getting inundated with ads for the stuff.
(01:10):
And it's your favorite celebrities and stuff like that, and
it's so normalized and people are just like, oh man,
it's gonna up my enjoyment of the game if I
can bet on not just my favorite team, but if
I can bet on really a lot of interesting like
parlays and prop bets and stuff like that. And so
it's gotten even just more nefarious and integrated with the
(01:30):
sports themselves, and people are finding it. If you look
at the stats, like in states where sports betting was legal,
we're seeing a lot more calls to the National Problem
Gambling Helpline, and so it just looks like addiction is
on the rise and people are betting money that they
can't afford to lose.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, and it's your point when you see these ads
for the websites where you can sports.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Bet, and I mean this has become a huge business.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
You know, at the bottom there's a disclaimer you should
game responsibly and then they give you the odds right
there on the game of the week. Now, I don't
know if you remember Rich Barata used to be on
this show. He was our sports guy. Yeah, and he
now lives in Reno. Every day he goes to the
(02:20):
sports book at the hotel, which is another one the
sports book.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
As you play, you gamble like crazy.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
It used to be just Las Vegas, and people realized, Wow,
there's a real money situation here. So I guess it's
a growth business among psychologists.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Who knows. I mean, if I shrink, that's where I
would go. It's just interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
It's interesting to see just how far this kind of
gamblification of America is going. So Like, not only is
it sports gamely I think that was kind of the
typic spear in Robinhood even just announced that they're launching
NFL parlay and prop bets on their prediction market platform.
But we're starting to see the rise of these prediction
(03:09):
markets too, where you can well, it's not it's not gambling,
you're you're I don't know how they can they can
say that it's not gambling, but you can bet on
essentially what's going to happen in the news. Like there
are just a trillion things that you can bet on
now via like Kalshi and services like that, and it's
just it's kind of interesting. I think people are getting
(03:29):
sucked in and they don't realize it seems like it's
no harm, no foul betting on who's going to win
a certain political race or something like that, and it
is interesting how how correct a lot of these predictions
markets have been, But that doesn't mean that it's not
risky for a lot of people. And even to just
take this further, I heard about this app and website
(03:50):
this week. It's essentially this new credit card that's supposed
to launch in twenty twenty six. It's called Cupboard, and
it's backed by the deepest pockets in silicon And basically
this is the craziest thing they build their services, paying
bills made fun and it's if that's not a red flag,
I don't know what is. Essentially, it's this credit card
(04:11):
that comes with cash back up to one hundred percent,
they say, And that's because you can essentially gamble on
the back end, potentially losing more money in hopes to
have some of those purchases that you made on that
credit card covered by this company. And it's just like
it just feels like it's gambling all the way down
in the United States right now.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
By the way, good word gam gamblification. Ooh that really
impressed me. Oh any thing about gambling, which is so funny.
If you go to any police department and you go
to their vice squad and they're the ones that go
after illegal gambling. Try going there in New Year's Day
and see how many or in early February and see
(04:50):
how many of people in the squad bet on the
super Bowl. That's just something every bit has. We have
a pool here, don't we, Amy, Do you have a
football pool around or kno, we used to have football pool.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I wish well, and I think you start.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
There's like a little bit of a difference right between
the friendly office bet on the NCAA bracket or who's
going to win the Super Bowl or so somebody in
the office usually buys right, like a bunch of lottery
tickets and their moon chips in a little bit that
that seems harmless compared to instant access to all sorts
of various betting types in our pockets at one hundred
(05:30):
percent of the time. That to me is where people
are getting in trouble and they don't know how to
stop themselves. And when we're incentivizing it, and when states
are making money off of it, I think this is
only gonna be going to become more of a problem.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
All right, Joel.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
People moving out of the United States, and I know
people that have moved out not because of money, but
because of the political climate, that's a real thing going on.
But a lot of people moving over because saving money.
So let's talk about that. How much money do you
save And is it worth the hassle moving overseas, because
(06:04):
that's no small deal.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
No it's not.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And yeah, whether you save money, how much money you
save depends on where you go, depends on whether you're
still able to make an income from that new place
that you're moving. Can you still retain Like we had
a listener reaching out recently and he's like going back
to India to take care of his parents if he's
able to continue to keep his job that's over here
in the United States. It's like in the tech sector, man,
(06:29):
he's going to crush because the cost of living is
so much more affordable in India. And that's kind of
an extreme case and one that's going back to take
care of family. But there's been just a surge of people,
especially middle class people, deciding that they want to move
overseas because they think it's going to save the money.
It's just the concept is called geographic arbitrage, and it's true,
(06:50):
like if you're able to keep your same income or
even let's say you've built up enough if you're getting
close to retirement age. I had a neighbor a few
years ago moved down to Panama because she was like, Hey,
I've saved decently well, but guess what, My retirement's going
to be a whole lot more plush down in Panama
than it is if I stay here in the United States.
And that's just because the cost of living is something
like thirty percent cheaper. So there's a lot of options
(07:11):
for people to move other places if they're so inclined
to search the dollar further.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, retired people, it's an easy PC thing to do.
For example, down in Baja and I think near Rosa, Rita,
or near maybe Yeah, I don't know the name of
the community, but it's like fifty thousand Americans there, and
you can live like a king on twelve hundred dollars
a month, and twelve hundred dollars a month here is nothing,
(07:39):
And so people move. But how those places got You know,
everybody knows that at this point that when I retire,
I'm definitely gonna live part of my time in Italy
because I just happened to be in love with Italy.
But then I'm not working, so other than a remote
work you can do, you're kind of out of luck
because you can't work overseas unless you're citizen.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So how do you do it? Yeah? How do you
put that together?
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Right? And that's that is the thing that people struggle
with the most if they aren't able to keep some
sort of if they have their own business, small business,
let's say, then you can kind of often do that,
let's say, from anywhere, depending on what your business is,
if it's like an online business. So you see that,
especially with Puerto Rico, right, there are significant tax benefits
(08:28):
for moving to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has this thing
called Acts sixty, which allows people who establish residency there
to pay a whole lot less in tax just by
living on that island. And really for Puerto Rico, it's
an incentive to get people to build businesses down there,
for people who are investors to move down there, so
that to build up the Puerto Rican economy. And so
(08:49):
that's another angle that people take when they're thinking about
moving abroad. Oh well, hey, if taxes are one of
my main problems that I face, and I'm trying to
reduce my tax burden, Puerto ric Go. Sure looks good.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, And so really.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
People kind of come with all these different ways.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Man.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Maybe it's just like, hey, I don't need as much money.
Kind of I'm semi financially independent. But guess what, I
am financially independent. If I move to Portugal or I've
got a tax problem, Puerto Rico is going to help
me solve that. There's just it's so much depends on
the particular situation and where somebody's wanting to move.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
You know, I know of two people who have moved
to Puerto Rico. And these are high net worth people
who are still working and make buckets of money, and
they've moved to Puerto Rico where taxes are Keep in mind,
here in California, it's fifty percent taxes if you're making
like over a million dollars a year, and these people
(09:42):
make way north of a million dollars a year. Taxes
in Puerto Rico are between seven and eight percent. If
you look at all the programs, I mean, there's only
one downside by the way to moving to Puerto Rico,
and it's moving to Puerto Rico.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Well that's the thing. Some people do it for a
few years in an effort to like, you know, be
able to unload some stocks and avoid some capital gains
taxes and stuff like that, or build a business and
avoid you know, tax for a little while, but then
they end up moving back or there are some big
XPAC communities there though where and I just this is
not one of those things where most people are going
(10:20):
to think about this or decide to act on it.
But it's also just one of those interesting kind of
I mean, even just moving from one place to another
inside of the United States. As Americans, we've done that
less and less, but just moving from a high cost
of living place to a lower cost of living place.
It's fascinating to see how and a lot of people
are doing that, especially during COVID, saying I'll move them
(10:40):
out to the excerbs and and buying a house. I
got more property and guess what, I've reduced my living expenses.
At the same time, there are a lot of ways
to skin the cat of reducing how much money you
pay in tax, of reducing your overall living expenses, and
thinking outside the box can be helpful.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, one of the things. And then we're gonna bail
out and we'll do the home flipping story probably next week,
is that Americans, as unpopular as they are in many cases,
in general, they are really unpopular in areas like Portugal
and the Czech Republic because they come in and start
buying or start renting, and then the prices, the housing
(11:19):
prices go through the roof and the locals, well, they're
not very happy about it. So that's the other side
of the coin, all right, Joel, we think about culture. Yeah,
that's true unless those of us who have absolutely no
culture don't care. Okay, Joel.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
This Sunday twelve to two pm, and it's how to Money.
You have a good one. Take care, Joel. Catch over
the weekend.
Joel Larsgard, the host of How to Money Sunday twelve.
You have the two pm or right here on KFI.
His address social address at how to Money Joel. His
website is howto Money dot com. And good morning Joel,
Morning Bill. Okay, let's get right to it, because we
have a fair amount to cover. As everyone knows that
(00:23):
gambling has swept the United States. It used to be
most states did not allow it, and it was just
Las Vegas for the most part.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Now everybody does it.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
You can do it online, you do it from your device,
and of course the number of people that are actually
gambling has exploded. At the same time, it's become a
huge problem. And Joel, would you get into that for
a moment.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, So it really is becoming a problem as the
vast majority of states have now legalized sports betting. And
let's be honest, there are ways even around it if
your state says, actually it's not legal. That there are
people be a VPN like partaking and you can't watch
a sporting event without getting inundated with ads for the stuff.
(01:10):
And it's your favorite celebrities and stuff like that, and
it's so normalized and people are just like, oh man,
it's gonna up my enjoyment of the game if I
can bet on not just my favorite team, but if
I can bet on really a lot of interesting like
parlays and prop bets and stuff like that. And so
it's gotten even just more nefarious and integrated with the
(01:30):
sports themselves, and people are finding it. If you look
at the stats, like in states where sports betting was legal,
we're seeing a lot more calls to the National Problem
Gambling Helpline, and so it just looks like addiction is
on the rise and people are betting money that they
can't afford to lose.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, and it's your point when you see these ads
for the websites where you can sports.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Bet, and I mean this has become a huge business.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
You know, at the bottom there's a disclaimer you should
game responsibly and then they give you the odds right
there on the game of the week. Now, I don't
know if you remember Rich Barata used to be on
this show. He was our sports guy. Yeah, and he
now lives in Reno. Every day he goes to the
(02:20):
sports book at the hotel, which is another one the
sports book.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
As you play, you gamble like crazy.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
It used to be just Las Vegas, and people realized, Wow,
there's a real money situation here. So I guess it's
a growth business among psychologists.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Who knows. I mean, if I shrink, that's where I
would go. It's just interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
It's interesting to see just how far this kind of
gamblification of America is going. So Like, not only is
it sports gamely I think that was kind of the
typic spear in Robinhood even just announced that they're launching
NFL parlay and prop bets on their prediction market platform.
But we're starting to see the rise of these prediction
(03:09):
markets too, where you can well, it's not it's not gambling,
you're you're I don't know how they can they can
say that it's not gambling, but you can bet on
essentially what's going to happen in the news. Like there
are just a trillion things that you can bet on
now via like Kalshi and services like that, and it's
just it's kind of interesting. I think people are getting
(03:29):
sucked in and they don't realize it seems like it's
no harm, no foul betting on who's going to win
a certain political race or something like that, and it
is interesting how how correct a lot of these predictions
markets have been, But that doesn't mean that it's not
risky for a lot of people. And even to just
take this further, I heard about this app and website
(03:50):
this week. It's essentially this new credit card that's supposed
to launch in twenty twenty six. It's called Cupboard, and
it's backed by the deepest pockets in silicon And basically
this is the craziest thing they build their services, paying
bills made fun and it's if that's not a red flag,
I don't know what is. Essentially, it's this credit card
(04:11):
that comes with cash back up to one hundred percent,
they say, And that's because you can essentially gamble on
the back end, potentially losing more money in hopes to
have some of those purchases that you made on that
credit card covered by this company. And it's just like
it just feels like it's gambling all the way down
in the United States right now.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
By the way, good word gam gamblification. Ooh that really
impressed me. Oh any thing about gambling, which is so funny.
If you go to any police department and you go
to their vice squad and they're the ones that go
after illegal gambling. Try going there in New Year's Day
and see how many or in early February and see
(04:50):
how many of people in the squad bet on the
super Bowl. That's just something every bit has. We have
a pool here, don't we, Amy, Do you have a
football pool around or kno, we used to have football pool.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I wish well, and I think you start.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
There's like a little bit of a difference right between
the friendly office bet on the NCAA bracket or who's
going to win the Super Bowl or so somebody in
the office usually buys right, like a bunch of lottery
tickets and their moon chips in a little bit that
that seems harmless compared to instant access to all sorts
of various betting types in our pockets at one hundred
(05:30):
percent of the time. That to me is where people
are getting in trouble and they don't know how to
stop themselves. And when we're incentivizing it, and when states
are making money off of it, I think this is
only gonna be going to become more of a problem.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
All right, Joel.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
People moving out of the United States, and I know
people that have moved out not because of money, but
because of the political climate, that's a real thing going on.
But a lot of people moving over because saving money.
So let's talk about that. How much money do you
save And is it worth the hassle moving overseas, because
(06:04):
that's no small deal.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
No it's not.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
And yeah, whether you save money, how much money you
save depends on where you go, depends on whether you're
still able to make an income from that new place
that you're moving. Can you still retain Like we had
a listener reaching out recently and he's like going back
to India to take care of his parents if he's
able to continue to keep his job that's over here
in the United States. It's like in the tech sector, man,
(06:29):
he's going to crush because the cost of living is
so much more affordable in India. And that's kind of
an extreme case and one that's going back to take
care of family. But there's been just a surge of people,
especially middle class people, deciding that they want to move
overseas because they think it's going to save the money.
It's just the concept is called geographic arbitrage, and it's true,
(06:50):
like if you're able to keep your same income or
even let's say you've built up enough if you're getting
close to retirement age. I had a neighbor a few
years ago moved down to Panama because she was like, Hey,
I've saved decently well, but guess what, My retirement's going
to be a whole lot more plush down in Panama
than it is if I stay here in the United States.
And that's just because the cost of living is something
like thirty percent cheaper. So there's a lot of options
(07:11):
for people to move other places if they're so inclined
to search the dollar further.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, retired people, it's an easy PC thing to do.
For example, down in Baja and I think near Rosa, Rita,
or near maybe Yeah, I don't know the name of
the community, but it's like fifty thousand Americans there, and
you can live like a king on twelve hundred dollars
a month, and twelve hundred dollars a month here is nothing,
(07:39):
And so people move. But how those places got You know,
everybody knows that at this point that when I retire,
I'm definitely gonna live part of my time in Italy
because I just happened to be in love with Italy.
But then I'm not working, so other than a remote
work you can do, you're kind of out of luck
because you can't work overseas unless you're citizen.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So how do you do it? Yeah? How do you
put that together?
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Right? And that's that is the thing that people struggle
with the most if they aren't able to keep some
sort of if they have their own business, small business,
let's say, then you can kind of often do that,
let's say, from anywhere, depending on what your business is,
if it's like an online business. So you see that,
especially with Puerto Rico, right, there are significant tax benefits
(08:28):
for moving to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has this thing
called Acts sixty, which allows people who establish residency there
to pay a whole lot less in tax just by
living on that island. And really for Puerto Rico, it's
an incentive to get people to build businesses down there,
for people who are investors to move down there, so
that to build up the Puerto Rican economy. And so
(08:49):
that's another angle that people take when they're thinking about
moving abroad. Oh well, hey, if taxes are one of
my main problems that I face, and I'm trying to
reduce my tax burden, Puerto ric Go. Sure looks good.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, And so really.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
People kind of come with all these different ways.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Man.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Maybe it's just like, hey, I don't need as much money.
Kind of I'm semi financially independent. But guess what, I
am financially independent. If I move to Portugal or I've
got a tax problem, Puerto Rico is going to help
me solve that. There's just it's so much depends on
the particular situation and where somebody's wanting to move.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
You know, I know of two people who have moved
to Puerto Rico. And these are high net worth people
who are still working and make buckets of money, and
they've moved to Puerto Rico where taxes are Keep in mind,
here in California, it's fifty percent taxes if you're making
like over a million dollars a year, and these people
(09:42):
make way north of a million dollars a year. Taxes
in Puerto Rico are between seven and eight percent. If
you look at all the programs, I mean, there's only
one downside by the way to moving to Puerto Rico,
and it's moving to Puerto Rico.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Well that's the thing. Some people do it for a
few years in an effort to like, you know, be
able to unload some stocks and avoid some capital gains
taxes and stuff like that, or build a business and
avoid you know, tax for a little while, but then
they end up moving back or there are some big
XPAC communities there though where and I just this is
not one of those things where most people are going
(10:20):
to think about this or decide to act on it.
But it's also just one of those interesting kind of
I mean, even just moving from one place to another
inside of the United States. As Americans, we've done that
less and less, but just moving from a high cost
of living place to a lower cost of living place.
It's fascinating to see how and a lot of people
are doing that, especially during COVID, saying I'll move them
(10:40):
out to the excerbs and and buying a house. I
got more property and guess what, I've reduced my living expenses.
At the same time, there are a lot of ways
to skin the cat of reducing how much money you
pay in tax, of reducing your overall living expenses, and
thinking outside the box can be helpful.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, one of the things. And then we're gonna bail
out and we'll do the home flipping story probably next week,
is that Americans, as unpopular as they are in many cases,
in general, they are really unpopular in areas like Portugal
and the Czech Republic because they come in and start
buying or start renting, and then the prices, the housing
(11:19):
prices go through the roof and the locals, well, they're
not very happy about it. So that's the other side
of the coin, all right, Joel, we think about culture. Yeah,
that's true unless those of us who have absolutely no
culture don't care. Okay, Joel.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
This Sunday twelve to two pm, and it's how to Money.
You have a good one. Take care, Joel. Catch over
the weekend.
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