After a recent quick trip to rock out with Tommy Conwell and The Young Rumblers at the Bottle & Cork in Dewey Beach, Delaware opened his eyes to the incredible growth of the “Lower Shore” of our neighboring “tax-free” state, Nestor asked financial advisor Leonard Raskin why he bought a place in Bethany Beach instead of Ocean City – or anywhere on the Maryland side. The taxes don’t lie…
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Delaware beach, financial planning, property taxes, American Dream, bucket list, Maryland lottery, Baltimore Positive, tax shelters, estate tax, real estate investment, travel advice, AI learning, financial independence, vacation planning, property ownership.
SPEAKERS
Leonard Raskin, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are a W, N, S, T, am 1570 task of Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. This 26 is about to become a 27 we are celebrating our 27th anniversary beginning next week. Our official anniversary is the third of August. That is Sunday, also my maternal mother, Connie’s birthday late my late mother as well as my cat’s birthday. My cat turns eight on so how come? How can Nala be eight? Is it been that long since Wembley? We’re going to have Maryland lottery scratch offs to give away when we kick the thing off at the Beaumont next Thursday, on the seventh, I’ll be eating my 27 favorite things to eat for real. Out on the internet, social media, anywhere you follow me, we’re gonna have some hashtagging there for our 27th anniversary as well next week. All of it brought to you by curio wellness and foreign daughter, as well as our friends at the Maryland lottery. You’re giving me pressure luck and lucky sevens to give away. We’re going to be a Casas. We’re going to be a Coco’s. We’re going to be at slant. We’re moving the show all over in August with lots of great guests. I’m hoping that this guy joins me, probably for crab, but not a crab cake. I haven’t had crabs with this guy yet. This year, Leonard Raskin joins us here from Raskin global. He is our financial Insider, and I gotta say this letter, I thought of you. I thought of you. Sunday night. Okay, so this is new for me. I moved to Towson, Timonium area, lock Raven area, about three and a half years ago. Yep. And I’ve lived in Dundalk, White Marsh and downtown all of my life. And I have taken the Bay Bridge exclusively to the Eastern Shore. I have never, ever I’ve taken route one and 13. My best friend went to college at Wesley College in Dover. So I had been down, up and down that road several times at the Air Force Base. There. I went to Dover back in 1998 on the monster mile and all that. So I’ve been in and around there. I’ve seen all the chicken coops and all the chicken shacks driving the Dewey Beach to chase girls 30 years ago through roads that I didn’t even know before 16 was sort of fleshed out and right. But Tommy Conwell and the young Rumblers, and, you know, I’m still a young Rumbler, played at the bottle and cork, we had a different name for it back in the day, um, but, um, it began with cork. So, um, I drove down Sunday on a whim with my wife. We weren’t going to do it. We were going to do it. I was going to go on vacation, which I’m about to get to, and then I’m not going to go on vacation. I’ve just decided to work through this. I’m learning AI Luke’s over at the ravens, and my wife’s running around. So we got things happening this summer, including me eating a lot of food next month, but I did a, um, just a quick, down and dirty it was it was all the weather was awful. Sunday, it wasn’t going to be a beach day. I need to get back Monday, because I have you and football and all this stuff. And I didn’t feel like a beach day. I drove to Delaware, and I know you own a place in Delaware, and I’m gonna give you a chance to talk tax shelters and all that, but I’m gonna give you the story of going in because my, one of my dear friends in life, owned a house in Millington, Maryland, which is right on the border of Maryland and Delaware on the Maryland side. Wrong for you, I know. And he had a little canoe on a little pond, and I drove there one time in my life and hung out, spent the night with him, and it drove home. But I have never been like Chestertown Rock Hall, all of those things on the eastern shore of around the corner from Cecil County. I really haven’t explored that part of the world and that part of Delaware, even though my cousins live in Middletown, my aunt lived in Newark forever down 896, but I don’t know those roads. I don’t know any of those places. And when I google mapped how to get to Dewey Beach from Towson, it sent me that way.
Leonard Raskin 03:55
That’s the way to go.
Nestor Aparicio 03:56
So do you ever take the Bay Bridge anymore living in Hunt Valley, or do you always go through Elkton?
Leonard Raskin 04:04
So I am the slave to the GPS. Okay? All right, social guy, I smacked that in. Look like you said, we have a beach house in Bethany, and it doesn’t matter day, night, morning, Saturday, Tuesday, I throw in beach house when I pull out of my driveway and I go where she says, Oh, it’s a she. Is a she. It’s a she. My son, the boy, has a British gentleman on his G.
Leonard Raskin 04:34
You know what my I was going to tell you, my wife has you, right? He flew to Australia in 2000 it was 2014 It was February 14. We flew and she was supposed to drive on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road. I was supposed to navigate, because I’m a great navigator in that way. I just never get lost. I read maps Well, I’m right. Right? I’m smart like that. I’m a Mensa guy for real, if you knew me. But you know, so we got there and she was getting cancer, and we didn’t know this. I mean, three weeks later, she was bald, right? But we’re in Australia, and we’re at the airport in Sydney, and we had an Australian friend drop us off at first we knew in Sydney drop us off, and when we were dropped off, Jem was going to drive for 20 days in Australia, and I was going to navigate for 20 right. Jen had a really bad headache. Oh, she didn’t feel good. And we had tickets to see Springsteen that night in a wine field three hours away from here, like, literally, Yep, we got into the carport. The car was rented in her name, and we got into the carport, and she’s like, I can’t drive. I certainly can’t drive on the wrong side of the road, country, on the wrong side of the wrong side of the car. Like, I’m like, I guess I’m driving. So I, I started to drive, and she started to navigate when we went there, and she put the navigation on, and when she put it on and it was new ish, then, right? Sure, years ago, sure, she put it on it, I swear to God, it sounds like Paul Hogan in crocodile, right? So she’s got this Australian guy, and he has all of these grab your tots and tongs and get out. You know? He says all of these really fun things, get out. It’s get on with your day. You’ll just say things like that, yep. So she now has him, so anytime, yes, GPS, I’ve got, I’ve got a huge Aussie, Aussie. There you go.
Leonard Raskin 06:35
So I listen wherever she says I need to go. That’s how I get there. I do that all the time. Saturday, just Saturday, uh past, I had a good friend, client of ours, uh, sponsors, a drag racer, a drag race car. One of those, I don’t know what they’re called, the long car. They have the parachute at the end, yeah, yeah, but, but there’s different ones. You know, there’s a stock looking cars, there’s the truck, whatever, yeah, but this was a little trucks too, really long with the two little wheels in the front, like when we were in Cub Scouts, the pine car, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so So I was at the Cecil Dragway. Cecil drag race, oh, man, Cecil County on Saturday. I’ll have you up with the buck in Pennsylvania soon. Man, we’ll be out there doing demolition derby. I left the house, I put her in, and she took me all kinds of back roads, route one, condo, Wingo dam, and then all kinds of I didn’t know these roads existed, or there was houses up there, anywhere. And then I pull into the raceway, and then I left later that day, and I put it in, and she told me to make a right, and then she don’t make another right, and then show me to get on 95 and come south on 95 so she took me back roads to get there in 95 to get home. And I just listen, I need to trust her more. You know, John Allen, she knows stuff, man, buddy. He always says you gotta get ways, dude. You gotta get lucky. That’s it. Exactly it. So, you know, Kathy. Kathy doesn’t trust the GPS. She likes to know where she’s going. Well, I trust her directions. I trust Kathy and go that way. And that’s what she does. And I say to her, she tells me she’s stuck in traffic or whatever. I said, That’s because you didn’t listen to the girl. When I leave here for the beach, sometimes I go over the bridge, sometimes you go up 95 and down Route one. These days, I really hate taking route one when you get past Rehoboth, because it’s 25 miles an hour for miles all the way through Dewey. Past Dewey, they’ve reduced the speed on route one past Dewey to 35
Nestor Aparicio 08:45
I know I saw that, and Jen’s like, you better slow down. They are way everywhere.
Leonard Raskin 08:50
Give out tickets, tickets
Nestor Aparicio 08:53
on the road there where I got my Philly pretzel, all the way out.
Leonard Raskin 08:57
The thing that I laughs everywhere, the thing I laugh about is I figure if they make enough ticket money, then that keeps my property taxes low. So I like it. Give all the tickets you can to all the people coming in that have no idea what the speed limit is, but I’ve been pulled over, and I hate it. See, I usually have Ray Bachman here, and I would do 30 minutes at two o’clock every day on like what was going on in the real world and life and moving around and funny stories and things. But this is a perfect day to have you on, because I thought of you all day Sunday, because I’m in Rehoboth. I’m walking through Rehoboth. We’re looking for an ice cream cone. I wound up getting a really decent ice cream with these people that help David’s house and the disabilities, and it was wonderful. Then we went to Dewey parked the car and Dewey went to the bottle and cork. I had a beer at the starboard I did all you go. I did all like you were 18. Again. It
Nestor Aparicio 09:49
was almost like I was there for a month, but I was there for an hour like so we drove in from Newark through Millington. We my wife had never been to Chesapeake city. Yeah. And I think there’s a lot of people in my audience that have never been I’m sure Chesapeake city, because it’s awkward and it’s beautiful, and I had a crab cake there three years ago. And the reason I had the crab cake, and it’s a great plug, was that Dan Rodricks on last week, when I was doing the initial crab cake tour three summers ago for our 25th anniversary, I called friends of mine and said, Where’s a crab? Can get somewhere weird. That’s not Baltimore. That’s not cost. This is not Coco, yeah. Like, and Roderick said, Go to Schaefer canal house in Chesapeake city. I’m like, I never heard of Schaefer canal house. I don’t know where Jessica city is Google. And I’m like, oh, it’s kind of like below Elkton, but I’ve never really been below Middletown, because my cousin lives there. That why else would I go there, but in Delaware? So I said to Jen, I’m going to take you through Chesapeake city. So we, we went over the big bridge there. It’s beautiful. We got out. This is lovely. Chesapeake cities love. It’s like Avenue grace. It’s lovely. So we then went south into like Smyrna and these other places. And here’s where I’m going to bring money guy, Leonard Raskin in, because I want you to talk about not just your place in Bethany and the I wanted, I wanted to get into American Dream stuff, because this is sort of my vacation week that I’m not taking. I’m working on AI and making that guy better this week, which is literally, I’m supposed to get on a plane on Wednesday. I’m not. I’m here all week, and I’m good, and Luke’s here, and I’m going to work through it. But the Delaware Maryland thing, and you handle my family’s money, my wife’s and I said to to my wife, when we want a place in Milford, would we really want to be in Lewis? Would we want to be in Rehoboth? Would we want to be in Delaware? Would we want to be an ocean we want to be like, what would we do with the Nestor, you got a million dollars, you got $5 million you got something. You’re 60 years old. I ain’t going to Florida, no offense. I mean, yeah, politically, if we go down that lane, it’s creepy. So for her mother lives there, she hates it, so she’s not going to we’re not buying in Sarasota to do Orioles spring trading. But I don’t know what the rest of my life might be. It might be right here in beautiful Baltimore, Maryland. But you decided when you had a little bit of dough, and you grew up poor, and we’ve been through all of that, and and you had nothing, but when it came time for you to buy a beach house, when you thought your kid would want to use it, you know, he’s over in England, farting around, having a good time, getting smart. And now it’s you and your wife, you got this big house in Bethany. You know, you tell me it’s a tax shelter. This is that maybe you might want to live there forever, in five or 10 years, or start to residence down there 183 days a year. Some friends of mine do who own businesses here, like Delaware. Being close to Maryland is a thing that took Billick from the Eastern Shore Maryland, to go out to Minnesota and Ohio, other people to Florida, other people to wherever they’re going to be taxed at the Cayman Islands. There’s a lot of things there. So one thing very simple, people don’t realize there’s no sales tax Delaware. So I can buy anything that I want to buy, and I save 6% when I went into the Abercrombie and Fitch looking for jeans and the outlet there, I didn’t buy any. But it was in my mind, like, oh, the price is the price. That ain’t normal, right? You don’t have to add 6% to what you buy. The other thing, depending upon how much money you have the federal government. And this was just made, quote, unquote, let’s be very clear, permanent in the new one, big, beautiful bill, the estate tax. If you die, you transfer wealth to your children or others other than a spouse and other than charity. The federal law now says that you can transfer up to $15 million next year, it’ll be 15 million. This year, it’s 13 and change. Next year, $15 million per person before the government comes in and takes roughly half. Okay, as a couple, I can transfer 30 million before the government comes in and takes half. In Maryland, I can transfer 5 million before the state comes in and takes roughly 15% so if I have an estate of means, and I have more than $5 million and that includes your home, your retirement plans, your investment assets, any other real estate, any life insurance, you own, all of that together in excess of 5 million Maryland wants big chunk of that. Delaware takes none of that. Delaware’s property tax is dramatically lower than Maryland, so you need to die a Delaware resident in your mind? Well, if I have any wealth over $5 million and don’t want my son to lose 15% of it for the reason that West take more wants more because they’re trying to lower it actually in Maryland, Maryland’s one of only less than a handful of states in the country that don’t either conform to the federal law or have done away with their Federalist their state estate tax. Well, this isn’t even a Republican thing for guys a little wacky like you on the Republican you’ve got, I. Have Democrats million dollar time and say this is really, really punitive to die in Maryland. Absolutely, it’s dreadful. We are again, one of only a few states that have a state estate tax, and they’re trying to raise the tax by reducing the exemption amount, so it’ll drive more people that have money. And think about it, you know, if you bought a home 20 years ago, and you bought that home for a half a million dollars, it’s a few million dollars today. You add to that a little bit of 401, K money. You add to that, you have some life insurance to take care of your family if something happens to you. You’re at 5 million. That’s not a huge number. And I get that people think we’re arrogant and crazy, but you’re right. This isn’t a deer in our thing. This is a $5 million not that much money, and you have to math, then it really is a math thing. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And you got to plan for that. And if you don’t plan for that, when you pass before your kids get your money, the government’s going to come in, take 14, 15% of it for what? And some people said, Love to have $5 million I don’t have that problem. I get it. You know, if you’re voting Republican on that cause, and I hear that as much as anything, because not many people love Trump’s words, policy, deeds, the pedophilia, none of that. But if you have money, you love money. But if you earn any money, the tax breaks, the the taxes that would have accrued had the one big, beautiful bill, not tax, would have been the largest tax increase in United States history, other than the the input of the income tax. And the fact is that I have, I have people that I work with Nestor are liberal, liberal, conservative, conservative, and everywhere in between. And what’s interesting for me is I have never met anyone who enjoyed paying taxes. I work with people that are in the 10 so so we have tax brackets, right? Every dollar is not we don’t have a flat tax. People don’t understand taxes. We have tax rates that start at 10% then they go to 12, then they go to 20 220-432-3537, so if you make a lot of money, you pay 37 on the amount over a certain threshold, depending on if you’re single or married. Okay, I have people that are in the 10 and 12% tax bracket, as low as you can get, and historically, as low as they’ve ever been in 50 years. And people want to know how they can save taxes 10% because they’re not wealthy, right, correct? And they’re they want to save taxes. Nobody likes paying taxes. I have people that are raging liberals that make 345, 100,000 a year, want to know how to save taxes. I have people that are super conservative Republicans, make three, $400,000 a year. Make $50,000 a year. Want to know how to save taxes. Nobody I’ve ever met in my 38 years of giving advice said to me, Hey, can you give me the plan where I pay more income taxes? So Delaware’s income taxes are cheaper. People go across the state line to buy stuff, because there’s no six precise I want to tell you I forgot to tell you this part. So we’re driving in, and I don’t even know where we came into Delaware, but it was somewhere around Millington in Middletown. We were on a back road. We literally were on a farm road. Yeah, and we’re on the Farm road, and we’re seeing the basic regular houses, you know, regular little brick houses, by the way, the Eastern Shore, when I’m over there, people take care of their land, and all the logs are mowed, and the flowers around escaping is beautiful. People on any road, and this is Western Maryland, wherever I go in this state, in this time of the year, and I’m always crab cakes everywhere. Beautiful. It’s really beautiful to be on any road, except the one that was a little lopsided over there that was pushing the water off the road because my wife, we’re driving, we’re going along like this. We’re like, I hope to help you get off this road soon. So it felt like we were going to fall in the ditch on this on that road. We made a left turn, a right turn, and now we’re crossing from Maryland into Delaware. Yeah, and Leonard, I’m not kidding you, and I don’t know what road this is, and I could go back and look at it, but it wasn’t a main thoroughfare. Yeah? Houses went from regular houses and like, like, trailers. And I always say to my if I could live in that little trailer, just get everything right there. I could live there. Quiet, no problem, little tree line, a little driveway. I grew up in a row house in Dundalk. I can live anywhere, just an apartment in Randallstown, right?
Nestor Aparicio 19:38
Literally, I mean, I I I didn’t think I was poor when I grew up, when I wasn’t rich, and the minute we crossed the border, and I’m Google mapping it right, I’ve got my phone out, my wife’s driving, the houses went like mansions. Like the property taxes are the same. They’re mansions. And on a farm road, not like Bethany beach on Snopes, right nowhere, out in the middle of nowhere. Someone has a house that looks like the house from Dallas, absolutely, you know, like out in the middle of BFE Delaware, in the middle of Smyrna somewhere. And I’m thinking to myself, these are people just getting away, man, like, I don’t they didn’t look like they were farming. They just looked like they had a big house out there, and they decided to put it on the Delaware side, not the Maryland side. It looks like they did it sometime in the 90s, because all these houses look turn of the century. They look 20 years old, modern, new, big, beautiful trees are all grown out. And I’m like, wow, you know this Delaware thing’s been a thing forever. Absolutely, the property taxes are super cheap relative to Maryland. If you’re at the if you’re down at the beach, beach, you can own a place in Fenwick. You can own the exact same place two minutes away in Maryland. And your Fenwick property taxes might be three, four grand a year, and your Maryland property taxes might be 20 for the same house. And you look at that difference, $15,000 lets you buy another million dollars a house. Nobody’s living in these places, and if you are, you get residency, and you go down there and become a beach guy with an adirondack chair. And, like, I get all of that, but like, you’re doing it to rent it, or to have it be a good investment and or because you want to, as a guy who tried that in Vegas and lost his ass 20 years ago, like it. And everybody I know that’s ever rented a place in Ocean City is kind of regretted it at some point the traffic, can I get there? How much am I going to use it? The kids are in college. In college, like I need to get rid of it, whatever the Maryland side of it was onerous, not for rich people, for people that are just trying to rent it out and have it make financial sense. Over five years, I got a place on 38th Street in Ocean City. I’ll rent it out. I’m going to be now. You can’t have it that weekend. We’re going to be there in the fourth but rent it out. Give me, give me 1200 bucks, and you can have it for the week, and at the end of the year, come to you my financial guy. Yeah, but here’s the here’s the thing. If you owned it and you intended that, here’s the beauty of it. Over time, real estate doesn’t matter where, most everywhere, most everywhere, not downtown Baltimore, not the real estate, right? But here’s the thing, values will go up if you are owning it to rent. Rents go up, but your mortgage is flat, so your costs stay generally the same. Now, property taxes may go up, insurance may go up, but over time, rent, yeah, exactly. So it’s a question of, what do you buy? Do you buy something where you’re not in control of the costs? Or do you buy something where you are? So as you said at the beach, you can buy an apartment, you can buy a townhouse, you can buy a condo, you can buy a single family home. You could be on the bay, you could be on the ocean. You can be 15 miles away from the beach in there and get it much cheaper, right? Absolutely, absolutely, save. That’s what I’ve seen Delaware like, as a dude who has never driven on route one before. Last night, literally, right? That i i said to Jen, they built the freeway when, when we pulled out of Rehoboth, my back was a little wonky, and I was gonna get out and adjust it, and I’m like, I’m gonna have to pee somewhere. There was a freeway. Next thing you know, I’m in Newark, Delaware. I’m up in Wilmington, making the Christiana, making decisions about how to get the 896, that’s closed. And I, I said to Jen, I’m like, I didn’t know that they free, weighted all out. And they’ve done that in accent, too. If you haven’t been with accent 20 years, like you get the Norfolk. It used to be like farm roads, like old 51 all right, it’s like the movie cars. You know, everybody used to go through the little town of Radiator Springs, until they didn’t they. They bypass shops, homes, neighborhoods I didn’t realize, like the Milford area, all that area down there, not on the front in Rehoboth Beach request like the customer is, I’m talking about just 10, 1215, minutes out from water and from where they are. That area has exploded because of Delaware’s tax situation? That’s certainly a big thing to it. There is no question, a lot of Marylanders, a lot of people. The other thing that you see a lot of are New Yorkers and New Jersey, the Jersey Shore has become so expensive to live, the tax rates are huge. And you know, you have to buy access to the beach. Stone harbor is like a real bougie place, right? Yeah, right. And the costs are huge. So what do you do? You jump on the Lewis ferry, the Cape May Lewis ferry. You end up in Lewis in a half an hour. Or so, and you buy a place there, have you ever taken a ferry? I have not. I have never taken I said to Jen, because we drove to do it, we talked about it, you could be in Wildwood in like an hour, if you and I went to the website and looked at it, because Luke and I, Luke goes to Wildwood always. His family was there. I looked it up a month ago, because we talked about it, and I’m like, something I never think about when I’m in Rehoboth, that like, I’m five minutes from just take a ride if I want to be or take a ride Wildwood, right? That’s right. Well, we have a we have the place in Bethany. We had a friend’s son’s wedding up in stone harbor up there, and so we thought about, you know, go to the beach house, spend the week, take the ferry, go over, do the wedding. But schedule just didn’t work out, so we drove up that seems to like something fun. That’s, that’s, you have to do that. Yeah? It’s, I have to do it’s one of those things. Yeah, I have taken the ferry between London and Ireland, not between London, between England and Ireland. I’ve done that. I took a channel. I’ve done that too, yeah, taking the channel on a train, and I’ve taken the ferry over the water. Beautiful, beautiful rides. Letter raskins Here we sometimes do football, baseball this week. Of course, he handles money in the American Dream, which is what I wrote this down, just in a general like, I want to talk about Delaware, because I went and, like, and the bucket list thing, and that thing that you decided when you had your first 100 grand, 200 grand, whatever it was, you put down, you know, on your house to say, we’re gonna have a beach house in Delaware when your son was little, and now he’s bigger. And I don’t, I don’t know. I mean, you and your wife, like, how much do you use it? Do you rent it? You don’t rent it, you know, do I just like having it? Do I want to live there, all of that, that American Dream that evolves, and that bucket list, and, yeah, this is a good month to even discuss that, because I’m bucket listing. What in my own summer? What? What? Yeah, I want to do. I watched Wimbledon a couple weeks ago. Jen and I were over Cooper, and I was watching it, and I know you’ve been and I’m like, that was on my bucket list 30 years ago. I’ve never been it’s off my bucket list now. I mean, I had an opportunity. Pam Shriver offered me tickets one year, like all of that, and I just It hasn’t happened. I look at it on TV, and I don’t feel like I’ve got to be there, like the Taj Mahal was on my bucket list every time I met um at soaring. And I go over the Taj Mahal and soaring. And I look down and I see the Taj Mahal. And I’m like, I’ve looked it up, it’s really remote. It’s like, Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu. If you look it up, it’s really remote. It’s really like, I went to Australia and thought I was going to go to Ayers Rock, and I saw Steve bugs in his mouth. And you have to have a whole bug kid on to even think about what. And I hate bugs, so I’m like, I’m not going to errors rock. So there’s just some things. Going to Isle of Man. I’m going to the Isle of Man. Have you been there? Where’s that? In between, uh, UK, in between England and Ireland. Ireland, it’s in the Irish Sea. It’s a rock. It’s an island, right? Yeah, Island and the Irish Sea. And this is crazy. I had no idea there is, if you, if you’re a motorcycle fan, you know this, there is the TT motorcycle race around and across the island at 60 miles around the Hawaii and a concert festival the Isle of Wight. Yes, there’s a Isle of Man. Is a man? Oh, I’ve got the wrong place. Okay, yeah, Isle of Man, and this, this race, is just amazing, legendary, world renowned. And it’s like a week long, or two weeks long. It’s a major motorcycle thing, and it takes over the island for weeks at a time, and it’s happening the day after we leave. But I’m going to be over there for a few days just to check it out, because I figure when else am I going to get there? I don’t know. I may not go back over to Ireland and and England, it depends. But right now the boys in Ireland, so we’re going to go over and see him and stop in the Isle of Man for a few days. But do you have a bucket list? I don’t have. I don’t have specific things I would say like John Martin, if I won the lottery, if I gave you a million dollars right now and said, not piss it away, but you could do anything you want, right? Where would you go? What would you do? Nestor, I haven’t seen a lot of this country. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of cities. I’ve been a lot of places, but I haven’t been out west. I haven’t been to South Dakota, North Dakota, I’ve been to Wyoming. I haven’t I’ve been to Texas. I’ve been to places. I’ve been to San Antonio, I’ve been to Houston. But there are places to go like you just said, if you’re in Maryland, there are these towns you just don’t know about
Nestor Aparicio 29:36
my share on my bucket list for 25 years, I don’t know that I’ve ever spoken out loud about it, but I’m about to so and it’s always it’s on every bucket list that I have made. Of course, before I knew my wife, I have my old bucket list to go to see the balloons in Albuquerque. Yeah, sure. It is my birthday week every year. It’s the week you gotta do it Columbus. It’s like if I’m up for. Getting into one of those though? I yeah, I don’t. I think it’s amazing, but I’ve seen some crash stuff, and I did, I did the Goodyear blimp. So that’s I’ve checked it off school. I’ve been in the good school, rode around, did all that. That’s very cool. For that amazing, right? I’m a blessed human. Yeah, I haven’t seen Mount Rushmore. Gotta get in the middle of nowhere too. That’s another one of those. Ones. Gotta be very intentional, right? It’s like Joshua Tree National Park. You gotta figure out Palm Springs, right? Zion. Zion is sort of like near Vegas, near Salt Lake City, but now the great redwoods. Go see the big redwoods. I’ve been Grand Canyon. I’ve flown over the Grand you’ve been to the Grand Canyon a couple times. Love it been to Sedona, which, to me, is even more amazing. I’ve been to the Grand Canyon. Grand Canyon goes down Sedona goes up. Some some magnificent places in this country, and I’ve been, I haven’t been all over the world. I’m not, I’m not the Nestor yet, but, but there are some places in this country that I still absolutely ask me every day when they’re going somewhere. I give more travel advice than most travel agents. I swear the dude knows food well, I’m trying, and that’s what next month’s all about. But this was in Chicago. I was in Chicago, and you gave me the name of a pizza place, Pequots, and I tried to get there, tried to get a reservation. Impossible. Reservation. No. Listen, listen. Well, because, because I was there with a group of people, and we were trying to go out to dinner, and so we wanted to find a place, and the dinner reservations two in the afternoon or 10 at night, that was the only openings they had, and I just didn’t get there. Isn’t enough time, but I will get there. I’ve been to Chicago a couple times. Pequots, pizza in Chicago, always, and that comes from the late great Lonnie Willems, who was my executive producer at Sporting News, who was a cop in Chicago. So yeah, if you, if you’re going somewhere, if you’re listening and you’re going somewhere, hit Nestor up on email. Please do it anyway. So this bucket list thing, this dude knows food, the balloons in Albuquerque. I mean, if anybody’s ever seen this New Mexico, like they show them in Scottsdale, Arizona too. It’s it’s magnificent. In the morning, it’s unbelievable. Well, they do 10 days of it. It’s a festival. It’s the balloon festival. It’s the biggest one in the world. And everyone comes in. Rooms are 400 bucks in Albuquerque. So two weeks ago, McCartney announces a tour, and I know he can’t sing anymore, and like all that, he’s playing in Albuquerque in the middle of this thing. Well, there you go. An excuse. I had a flight that was like, 8000 points or something, and I’m like, I’m going to hold that. And here’s the issue. And this is a big thank you to Chad Steele and Baltimore Ravens and the Orioles for not making the playoffs this year. My birthday is October 14, right? This event always happens the week of or before, like October, 3 through 10th, fifth through 15th, whatever. It’s always that, do it. Do it. I’ve never gone, and I’ve always hoped that the Ravens could route a game in Denver, Arizona, used something made sense, where I could go out and do it and come back. But because of running the radio station having employees, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, can’t. I can’t. I haven’t. This is the year that I actually have held a flight. I McCartney’s playing. I’m thinking to myself, I’m going to drive from Albuquerque, I think Grand Canyon Zion, like, try to do a little bit of the things that I have not done on ground, yeah, while I’m out there. So that’s why I wrote down bucket list earlier this week, and then I went to Delta, and I’m like, I gotta get Raskin on American Dream. See, this is what it’s about. It’s not about it’s not about having a lot of money. It’s not people think it is. It’s not. It’s about those things that you want to do that give you the memories of a lifetime and and the experience of a lifetime. And it all starts by understanding your cash flow. It all starts by putting away a little bit if you don’t, and a little more if you do. And then it comes around to using it appropriately. People, I hear people all the time, Nestor, I have clients that say to me, I’m gonna I’m saving for my retirement. I say for what? Then I’m gonna travel. Well, guess what? You’re not gonna go do these things when you’re 70, you’re not a couple grand out now and go somewhere. Go do it. Take that trip before you need the walker. Take that trip before you’re on a wheelchair. Take that trip before you take more medicine with you than candy. You know. Come on. These are things. And if you have kids, my God, take the kids before. You know it. The kids don’t want to go with you anymore. My worst dad turns 80 next month, and he’s healthier than I am, and I’m like, take him to Italy. Go to Lake Como, get out of here, right? Do it, right? Do something. Absolutely those people out there. Let me give a little advice, because I’ve lost all my parents, right? I still have one stepmother. Her alive in America. She’s Venezuelan, and your guys trying to throw her out. So, like, That’s ridiculous. It is ridiculous. They let the little league team in the play because they’re Venezuelans. So the Venezuelans have become the enemy. So I’m taking that role long because I’ve, I’ve had a long, long, hard march with being the bad guy here. So the bad guy. I’ve lost, you know, three fathers, three mothers. You know, stepmother, stepfathers. I’ve had all of that. Adoptive parents, all my crazy uncles, from John Steadman and Phil Jackman, have left me. You know what? I mean. I’ve, yeah, I’ve been burying more friends. We buried Ozzy Osbourne last week, yes, crazy, yeah. So I am with you to say, like, do it? Do if you think you should, you must, and especially if you have parents who are alive and healthy enough to do whatever makes them happy, whatever, if it’s an ice cream cone, make them happy. Do it? Do it. I wish, I said to my wife, I wish I could do one thing with my father, anything, let alone my God, he’s healthy, and you can go hug him and go run around and go watch him smile and enjoy him, right? One day, answer, yeah, one day, one day you become an orphan, and that’s a bad day. That’s right, still getting over that. So, yeah, so, so do those things. That’s what the American dream is about. And the the purpose of money is so you can do those things. You know, you gotta, you gotta have it to do the things that matter. And people think I’m going to do them later. I always hear I’m going to do them later. I say, Yeah, later. And then you’re diagnosed with some horrible something, and then later becomes laser, crystal clear, and then you’re too unhealthy to go. We went to Tahiti on our 10th Anniversary in the summer 13, and then four months later, Springsteen was touring in Australia, and I’m like, and we got a really cheap flight. I mean, like a $600 flight to Australia. I’m like, Okay, let’s go. It takes a day and a half to get there. And it’s, you know, it’s three weeks all you know, it’s, you go to Australia, you’re going to be there a couple weeks. And we did it, and we came back, and she’s in the hospital ball, fighting for life right later. And the basement trip came in 15 I’m on the 10th anniversary of that, and literally in the middle of it. And we did all of that, we got back, and five weeks later, she had cancer again, was fighting for life. So like we try to live without regret, and I don’t regret that I haven’t been right then, if I still wanted to go, I go. If I really need to get to the Taj Mahal, get to Thailand, or get the food cat, I get there. Um, but at this point, I mean, again, I had a flight this week and a vacation and Leonard, this speaks to where I am in my life. I’m an old man. Has an old man. Am radio station. No one listens to the show, except everybody listens. And the weirdest part is the AI thing. And as it’s coming in, and I spoke to Dan Rodricks with SIG and Cal Kevin colliger, who was deposed by the Smith folks at the Baltimore Sun, I talked to them about AI, and they gave me their old man face. And these are artists and creators. They’re some of the smartest people I know. Calendar went to Harvard. I mean, we’re smart people, and they all looked at me and my kids like, you know, same thing for AI, actually ethical. Stop, stop. And I this summer, I have stopped everything, and I am learning AI, and it’s what I’m doing in the middle of the night when the Orioles are sucking and treating me like garbage, and with Chad steals locking me out, and the screaming kids are screaming out there, and hardball is going down and buddying up with Trump, like all of that’s going on. I’m AI ing because my next bucket list thing I want to do. It needs me to be to have my company be as strong as it can be, and that’s part of how you get money and how you grow. But it’s it’s also, what am I going to do with it when I get it? Why am I doing this now? I’m doing all this for wife, children, family, house, security, so I can go to Alaska on a boat when I’m old. I don’t know, you know, but like, I’m weighing all of that. But the AI thing is where I am, and I’m glad we had this conversation, because the Delaware thing and seeing the trailers become big houses and the whole tax thing, and even when you’re in shopping, you’re like, oh, it’s tax free, you know, it the whole time you’re more aware of your money, is what I was trying you usually, that’s right, that’s right. And government has a way of making you aware of that. I mean, think about property taxes. We can wrap on this. Think about property taxes. Just for a minute. You bought your house, you bought your land, but you don’t own your land. You technically rent it from the government forever.
Nestor Aparicio 39:37
You must pay property taxes every year on your property, Brown for what? That’s exactly right, you’re paying the Overlord. And if you don’t pay the Overlord, what happens? They can take your house and sell it for the taxes due. It’s pathetic. You own that property, but you don’t. You own the house, but you don’t own the value. Get out when my kid had to pay the taxes for my parents house that they bought in 1953 so, yeah, yep, in order to stay and she’s dead, right, right? And so it’s insane, but that’s what goes on. So if you want to live a place where there’s little or no property tax, you’ve amassed wealth your whole life. You’ve worked like a slave. You’ve gotten paid. They took income taxes, you bought stuff. They took sales taxes, you bought stuff. They took cigarette and liquor taxes across the bridge. They took six bucks, you paid tolls, and then you die. And they take 1520, 50% of that, because you amassed wealth. Well, for that, we get to live in the great, free state, in the greatest country in the world. Amen. Amen. I agree 100% and there are privileges, and these are first world problems, but I hope people solve those. That’s the game plan. How do we make this work so that we don’t let the government take things that we don’t want them to take, and one of the ways is to enjoy it. If you spend it before you go, they can’t take it because you ain’t got it. So you remember when the Northern Lights were my bucket list thing? Yes, happened. It just happened ridiculously, right? You know, nine months ago, and so that’s good. And I actually had a long conversation with friend of mine in Seattle who saw him in all their glory last year. Yeah, you know, up in that area. So I’m in Iceland. Jen and I are coming out of your homeland of Delaware, after Tommy combo. We left the Tommy common concert about 1055 and we got on, you know, 25 miles an hour. We saw the cars right, right as we came out of the congested area, and sort of made the hook turn north and there’s darkness, and that whole bay area going up toward Milford, my wife and I are driving. She’s literally fighting with the Google Maps person about where we’re going to 896 or how we’re going to get we’re not going all the way up to Wilmington by the bridge, right? So we, we were driving along, and we just hit the part where it gets dark and you can see the Rehoboth in your rear view mirror. Darkness in front of you, and out of the right side of the snow, a giant sphere of silver light came through the windshield from the right to the left, to the ground, and it looked like a rocket. Like, fast, yep. And I said to Jay, do you see that? I saw shooting star. Saw shooting star and go. I saw a shooting star in Delaware, 11 Sunday night. Like, coming, supposed to be, supposed to be a huge meteor shower next week. I saw one of them last night. Like, for real, and I’ve only seen shooting stars. My wife and I did a very romantic thing. You talk about places you should go, I’m gonna give you a bucket list. We went out to Montana to see Pearl Jam. You and I knew 2007 Yeah, sure, sure, right after she got better the second time, Yep, yeah. We did yell because it was on her bucket list, and she almost died twice. I’m like whatever you want to do. I don’t like bears, I don’t like the woods go. Let’s go prismatic springs. Let’s go Old Faithful. Let’s go Wyoming. Let’s do it. I bucket list. I gotta get it on my I gotta check it off anyway. So we went and did it. And when we were there was this time of year, it was like second week of August. It was the per side at P, E, R, S, e, i, d, per side meter shower. That happens every year. Yep, and we knew it was going on. And I said to Jen, dude, we’re going to be in Montana during this meteor shower. We’re going to find the night, the biggest night, right? We’re going to find the darkest place. We drove 40 minutes from Missoula into a ditch, into nowhere, and we sat on the hood of the car, and it was, like, 48 degrees. It was freaking cold. And we’re out at four in the morning on the hood of the car watch, and they were shooting everywhere. It’s unbelievable. And we got not bored with it. We were just cold, right? It was like, seen enough. We saw dozens of them, yep, yep. And we were like, all right, this was cool. And we got a story to tell on the hood of the car. We’re getting warm, put the put the heat back on, go back in the missoul and see Pearl Jam. And we did, but we had a night where we actually did it and saw them the only other shooting stars I’ve ever seen in my life. I was driving from county stadium to Wrigley Field in the summer of 89 with my buddy letra, we drove across country for baseball, and in the middle of the night, we went up to county stadium and we drank beer in the parking lot to honor Bob Euchre county stadium. And we were driving southbound out of Chicago, and I saw shooting stars that night. But I mean, in my life, I’ve only it’s a really hard thing to do, unless it is you’ve got to catch one. If you catch one, it’s amazing. Well, maybe it’s my lucky month seeing the shooting star. It’s a sign he is a literate don’t wish. Follow your American dream. Get some good advice. Leonard Raskin is here. He is there at Raskin global.com, and, of course, at the front of Baltimore positive. We’ll do football and baseball. Next week. Okay, you got it perfect, beautiful. Have some new baby birds by next week. Who knows? I don’t know who’s going to pitch once they deal all the pictures away. That’s what I’m worried about. Or who’s going to play anywhere? Well, you’re not going to deal. Gunner Henderson, I am Nestor. We are wnst. Am 15 70,000 Baltimore discussing your American dream and tax savings. We’re Baltimore positive. Stay with us. You.
