Ben Mallah On The 2024 Housing Bubble, Getting Rich, & Going Broke

**Ben Mallah** (0:00)
You may not become a big shot, you may not have a half a billion dollars worth of real estate to worry about like I do, but everybody needs to be in real estate in some aspect of their life.
Everybody. Times are not good in real estate, that's just a fact. But once it starts bleeding, that's when it starts gushing. You know, my life's gonna be over, I already used up at least 75% of my life. You know what the real scary part is? A lot of your friends start getting seriously ill, and they start passing away.

**Jack Selby** (0:39)
Have you noticed any benefits of cigarette smoking?
Like nicotine being in your system? Because there are some studies that show nicotine increases mental acuity, it increases energy levels, focus, et cetera. Or is it just negative?

**Ben Mallah** (0:53)
It's highly addictive.
That's number one. You know, that's just a known fact. Listen, I've been smoking for, I'm embarrassed to say 45 years.
My lungs are clear, I have everything checked. I don't know, in fact, I know people that don't smoke get lung cancer. Figure that out. It's crazy. I got a poor manager, and she's dying right now with throat cancer, and she didn't smoke.

**Graham Stephan** (1:17)
Do they know what caused throat cancer?

**Ben Mallah** (1:19)
Cancer is a weird thing, you know? But I can tell you this.
I enjoy it somehow, call it like an addiction. Maybe it's the addiction that makes me think I'm enjoying it, but in the morning, I can't get rockin and rollin without coffee and a cigarette or two. It's just something that I'm not ready to give up. You know, I don't know. Maybe it's just the addictive, being addicted to nicotine, I don't know. But it has a lot of bad things I know, you know, that it does to you.
Like, you know, maybe shortness of breath, things like that. But I think overweight does too. But the point is, it's part of my lifestyle. It may not work for you, and that's fine, you know. But, you know, I don't know.

**Graham Stephan** (2:06)
What does it feel like, though, to smoke a cigarette?

**Ben Mallah** (2:08)
It gives you some sort of high. But not like a weird high like the drugs you do.
You know, it gives you some kind of, I don't know. If you can live without it, it's probably a lot better for you to live without it. But I grew up on it, and...

**Graham Stephan** (2:23)
It seems like you're cutting back, though, right? Like, I've noticed you're losing weight and you're smoking less.

**Ben Mallah** (2:28)
All right, definitely cutting back. Go on getting old, you know. You start thinking about, oh, my life's going to be over. I already used up at least 75% of my life, you know. So I'm not going to be here. There's going to be a lot of years that you're going to be here, and I'm not. You know, you start thinking about that. When you start approaching, I'm 58, I just turned 58
You start approaching that 60 mark, you start thinking, you need to know what the real scary part is. A lot of your friends start getting seriously ill, and they start passing away.
And that scares the shit out of you, because you're going to be one of them.

**Graham Stephan** (3:04)
Yeah, have you had an instance that really changed your mindset?

**Ben Mallah** (3:08)
Like I said, you know, I've been seeing a lot of friends having health issues, and it's really got me thinking, you know, none of us are going to be here forever. We all know that. I mean, you know, best case scenario, you're going to drop dead between 70 and 100
Okay, so can I prolong that? And then who wants to be old and all broken down, and you know, what a bunch of stuff, what kind of quality of life is that? So, you know, when you start becoming, hitting that 60 mark, you really start thinking about the quality of your life and the longevity of your life. I mean, it's just, it's life.
You know, we're all only gonna be here for a little while, you know, and then after you're gone, let's face it, you're gone. I mean, even the most famous people in the world, they're gone. All right, you know, you have some memories of you and things like that, and depending on how famous you were, Michael Jackson, people remember him forever, Elvis Presley, things like that, but you're dead, all right, it's over.

**Graham Stephan** (4:04)
This might sound morbid, are you afraid of death?