The Brightest Minds Return to Naples

The Imagine Solutions conference brings innovators from all across the country to Naples, Florida, including George Barbee. Mr. Barbee is an author, a businessman and economics expert. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's great to be here. Why was it important for you to attend this conference in Naples? Tell me about your your interest in your background. I think, I teach, innovation, thought innovation for 20 years at the University of Virginia. And this conference in Naples is one of the countries, if not internationally, one of the best collections of innovative ideas. It's like 20 tedtalks condensed into one day, and it's just fabulous across a number of industries. Now, you saw it. You saw 20 presentations in science and tech. What are some of the highlights of those presentations that you saw? Yeah, I'd say three that stick in my mind. One is artificial intelligence. And the application in medicine. Secondly is advances in artificial intelligence with respect to visuals and with respect to photography, it's looking more and more real, even though it's artificial. And I guess the third that hits me is, the population is aging in the country and people are now living upwards of 90. And so how they continuously learn and stay curious is very important. And I think that's a draw for the very diverse crowd. Now, you told me you have been working in business and economics for over 50 years and take me back. You were, influential in helping to expand the 401 K. Yeah, the 400 and K was created for basically business and employees of business. And we became a major, communicator and expander of that with corporate employees back in the mid 80s. So that actually echoed nicely in this conference, because in today's market, in today's environment, some of the best money in town is the match of a 401 K. So for, people who don't understand how the 401 K works, can you give us a summary of that? Well, let's take, you can invest up to $24,000 of your income. But let's take what is really the power connector in 401 KS is the company match. So let's say you, are making $100,000 as a family. 10% of that, or let's take 6%. That's easier. 6% is $6,000. And if a company matches you $3,000, you've got now $9,000. But the important thing to think about is that 3000 over the 6000, you have a 50% return. Day one. This is the most popular retirement account for working Americans. Studies say. I believe it's 1 in 3 working Americans have a 401 K. Why is it so popular and so important to retirement? Well, two things. One is to immediate return on your money, which is powerful. And the other is it gets you thinking about your own responsibility and investing. Portfolio management. And I'll give you an example. If you take $10,000 a year, that's that 6003 thousand, let's add another 1000 to make it easy. If you invest that for 30 years and you make 8%, people can make 6 to 10% over the long run. But that $10,000 a year will be worth over $1 million if it earned 7% over the long haul. So essentially, essentially, it's an opportunity for people to become a millionaire if they have the discipline of taking something around 10% out of their income. How young is too young to start, contributing to something like this? Well, it's never too young, right? In college or just after college. You can start to look at the market and make up an artificial portfolio. But when you, let's say late 20s, 30s, it's once married, you have two incomes. That's when you start accumulating. And hopefully one of those spouses has a 401 K in the company that they're working for. Now, we were also discussing the fact that more people are working later in life, retiring later, if at all. How does that impact their savings for retirement? Well, you have to plan on a leaky bucket in retirement. So many people do extend their working career. But the other thing people are living, I think of this statistic is if you're if you reach 60, you have a 75% chance of getting to 90. So the other reason for working or staying curious and even exploring artificial intelligence, which will bring us back to this conference. Keep your brain cells going so that you can continue to learn. And continual learning was a part of the artificial intelligence. In this conference, you were explaining to me what you learned that, stuck with you most about AI. Tell me, what was the most important thing that you took away from this conference? I took three of the 20 away. First of all was artificial intelligence. And the impact that has in medicine. It was the conference was located or Arthrex, which is an innovator in, orthopedic, noninvasive technology. So the place where you were at 650 people was sensational. But, the three would be, the impact of artificial intelligence on medicine. There was a second area of artificial intelligence and the impact on visuals and photography where they're talking about, citizen scientists. Come back to that, maybe, if you like. And then the third was what's happening as the population ages. And how do you stay curious and how do you get involved with artificial intelligence on a personal level? What is advice you would give to, let's say, your younger self to younger people out there? What piece of advice would you give coming from your background in economics and business? Well, I it today the big change. Give you an example of how fast it's happening. In my in the 80s, when, computing went from central IBM computers to distributed, your personal computer took about 12 to 15 years. Then comes the internet, late 80s, 90s. And it took about six years for it to become really popularized. Today, it's going to be two years at the most. That artificial intelligence is in our veins. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience about, this wonderful conference that you attended? I'd say the real takeaway for us all is experiment every day with artificial intelligence, you can get on chat, GPT or Gemini and just find something. You have a question about and spend a half an hour or an hour a day. Otherwise, the wave may pass you by. And we always need to be learning and growing. Always, no matter our age. That's absolutely right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure and hopefully we'll have you back in the future. Thank you Brian. Thank you so much.