Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA the Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. I love doing videos like this during the year, kind of mix it up with the trading content. Throw in a few packs for you guys. And this is a question that a lot of people have and a lot of people want to know which of these SBC upgrade packs are the best. So today we're going to be looking at two different types of packs. We're going to be looking at the 81 to 87 upgrade and the 82 plus rated guarantee upgrade. Now, you're thinking, why are you comparing these two packs? Well, they're actually the closest in terms of price and you're getting different things from these packs in terms of what you could get on the higher rated end. Of course in 81 to 87, you're restricted to that range. But I'm basically looking at this in the stance of, will you be able to craft some of these SBCs and use these SBCs to craft cards, to do icon SBCs, to do team of the week upgrades and stuff like that? Because the best of team of the week is going out of packs very soon. But the team of the week upgrades and the icon SBCs are still out for a couple more days. So we're going to take a look. We have 20 of the 81 to 87s and 20 of the 82 plus. So I'm going to go through the 81 to 87s first and then go through the 82 plus at the end or the second set of packs. I'm going to go through those. So bear in mind that I know these 81 to 87s are a lot cheaper, but we're looking for the good value in terms of these packs. Oh boy, do we have a lot of gold raiders in here? Oh, we have to quick sell already. We have to quick sell the first card that we pack today that is unfortunate. But I'm hoping to get, you can get some solid guys from these 81 to 87s. I mean, if you get an 83, 84 or 85, it is a good value from that pack. Here we go. First pack is a board. Our second 81 to 87, it's a Spanish center mid. It is iniesta. All right. So that's an 83 red card, good for SBCs. That's a W, because basically this SBC right now on footbin says that it costs around 2.9K. So we basically just got our money back and he probably didn't even spend 2.9K to do this SBC from scratch because you can just use bronzes from your club and that will reduce the price of this SBC a lot. Maybe you have to go out and buy five non-mira golds, Raphinha 81 rated, not the best, but not the worst. I'm really excited for the 82 plus because those give you the opportunity to get somebody that is higher than 87 rated, not that it's really guaranteed at all, but they do give you that high opportunity. But again, we're just here to compare these packs today because the 81 to 87s are a considerable amount cheaper than the 82 plus, but they are still, we're testing to see if they're good for crafting basically. So we've gotten three 81s and one 83 out of our first few packs, which I would say is not ideal. Man, we're getting a lot of dupes as well. A lot of duplicates on this account. Shout out to one of my good friends, John, for whipping up these packs for us today. Really appreciate him and the work that he is helping me out with. This is pack number five. It is not a board. This is a bit unfortunate, man. I'm probably gonna skip some of the shorter ones. If it's not a board, I'm probably gonna skip it. But we're just kind of testing for good value here today. That's the real big test is are these SBCs good value? Of course, right now, a lot of people are looking at this 81 to 87 SBC and they're thinking this has an opportunity to be good value. It is a board. It is a Dutch center back. Delict? Yo, let's freaking go, 85 rated from the 81 to 87. That's not bad. All right, so we've opened like what, seven packs? We've gotten an 83 and an 85, but that's like a, he's probably 10K, right? 10 or 12K? I don't know what his price is exactly exactly off the top of my head. But that's an 85 rated card. Delict as well. That's gonna be a good link for SBCs and he's actually usable if you wanted to. Let's look at his card price. 10,000 coins right on the head. So that's a 10K card right there. And a man, this pack was worth like two, two and a half thousand coins at the most. So that's a dub for that pack poll right there. But it looks like so far, you're gonna get a few 81s and then you might get that board drop or that higher rated player out of these 81 to 87. So so far, if we had those 81s, basically if you think of it this way, if we do 11 of the 81 to 87s and you're able to do a team of the week upgrade, I would consider that being worth it. That's how I feel about that. That would be basically like worth it. Pretty good for crafting. We're getting a lot of 81s though. That's kind of the downfall to these packs. The 81s are just so common. So if you guys have had good luck with these packs, let me know in the comments down below. I really wanna know if they've been good for you. But I also just kinda wanna do this to show you guys which pack is gonna be better for the crafting and for the grinding. We have another board here. It is not a walkout unfortunately. It's gonna be Spanish. It's gonna be a CDM this time and it's going to be, who is this? Iloramendi, 83 rated. All right, so there's an 83 rated board drop. But basically again, I'm just doing this for you guys to be able to see if you can compare these two packs together. Is it gonna be worth it for you to spend a couple extra thousand coins per pack if you're trying to craft? Or, you know, if you're gonna put your gold rares or your gold non-rares into a certain SBC, that's what I'm really trying to compare for you guys today. Back to back boards, the luck is heating up. Look at this man. Jot and Sancho, 84 rated. There we go. So we've gotten delict. We've gotten 283s and now Jot and Sancho as well. We are well on our way to a team of the week pack. If that was kind of our goal, how many packs have we done so far? Ooh, it's a duplicate. Please tell me it's tradable. It is, GG. All right, so Sancho's another decently valued card. We're through 10 packs and we've gotten five. We're basically, we've gotten five, no, four. We got an 85, the 84 and then the 283. So four out of the 10 packs. Oh, this is the UCL. Four out of the 10 packs. Four boards though is the UCL rare card is Gerud, 82 rated. That's not terrible. Throwing a card like that in your club for potential SBCs down the road is a GG. And I'm glad that a lot of these this guy has in his club are tradable. So that helps us out a lot. All right, eight of these packs to go the 81 to 87. As of right now, I know we've gotten a lot of 81s, but this has actually been decent value. Here we go again with a board drop. Spanish center attacking mid this time. PSG, it's gonna be Sarabia. There we go, an 83 rated with solid links for SBCs. Boys, the 81s to 83s right now, based on what we've packed so far, I'm gonna give them a thumbs up because literally the amount that you're paying per pack is so cheap. And these packs have given out so far, I think pretty well. Apart from the few at the beginning where there was a lot of 81s, we're back to a non-board there. So the luck slowed down for this pack. It's going to be Zahavi. So of course you're gonna get some 81s, but if you can minimize those like we seem to be doing today, this pack does not look too awful, man. I'm gonna be honest. How many more of these do we have? Just a few more. All right, 81 to 87s. We're gonna close out this round. If we can get like two or three more board drops that would be sick. All right, that has some shine on the pack. It is a board down. It's Spanish again.  All right, it's a dupe. It's a first dupe. That's another risk that you run with these. That's a dupe, Illoramendi. You do run the risk of getting a lot of duplicates with this because a lot of the guys like that, Illoramendi, you're gonna pop just because they are the most common guys to pop. But again, you probably would have used that card in an SBC already if you're gonna do these. And that's what I would recommend. If you're doing the 81 to 87s, do like three or four at a time, maybe five at a time, no more than 10. Because if you're doing 20 like this, you might start to get duplicates like we did there with Illoramendi. And that's a good card that we could have used in an SBC, but we had to quick sell it because of already having one untradable in the club. Five more, five more 81 to 87s. And I'm actually kind of tempted to do these right now because I wanna craft an icon pack, man. And I think I'm gonna be able to do it through these packs. Another board down, it's Belgium, B9 Golan, please. It is not 9 Golan. It's going to be company, 83 rated company. Belgium Link, he's not on City anymore, so it's not as usable for linking in SBCs, but he's still in 83 rated, you will take that. Not terrible. And we get to throw the tradable one onto the transfer list, four to go. Four 81 to 87 rated left to go. Come on, EA, can I get like one walk out of these? That would be absolutely sick if we got one walk out. That would be dope. All right, this is a non-board and it is going to be left mid Guerrero, 81 rated. Still not the worst 81 to get though. Byron, not Byron, Dortmund links, still a solid links. And boom, three left, three 81 to 87 rated players left to go or packs, rather. Come on, give me another board drop, EA Sports, please, this is not a board drop. I'm gonna skip it to keep things moving. Especially on the next packs, if we don't get board drops, it's gonna be a big L, Mooslera, Mooslera right there. I lost count of how many board drops we got as well. I think we had six, six board drops with 185 and 184, which I am pretty happy with. We got that 82 rated Giroud, a couple 82s and then of course a plethora of 81s. Pedro, that's not a bad 82 rated car that's perfect for a team of the week upgrade, SBC. We have an untradable, let's throw it up. Got a quick sell, unfortunate. Yeah, so far, if you're looking to craft the lower rated squads, like an 83 rated squad for a team of the week upgrade, this looks pretty solid for you. I know that the best of team of the week is going out of packs, but if you're somebody who wants to stock, maybe a couple of these team of the week upgrades in your club for an upcoming team of the week, because you can save these. You can do these packs, let them sit in your store and wait till we get a sick team of the week and open some of them up. You can definitely do that with these packs. So if you're looking to craft them for possibly a cheaper value, maybe you go for some of those 81 to 87s and if you start hitting those 87s or 86s out of the packs, maybe you can go and do an icon SBC. So that could very help, they're very well helped you out with these. All right, now onto the 82 rated plus. So this is only one player, it's gonna be 82 plus, guaranteed, and these are gonna be, we're trying to hit the big boys from these. And if we don't get boards, I'm skipping them because we should get boards on like 15 out of 20 of these, I would hope, unless the pack luck for these is really bad. So these are gonna cost you around six or seven K per SBC, but these obviously give you the possibility of getting that really high rated player, one of the best up team of the weeks or just somebody above 87. Second pack for the 82 pluses, it is a board down, it is a, is this Trent Alexander Arnold? It is not, it's Kyle Walker, let's go. 84 rated Kyle Walker, get in man. That's a solid pull. See that's not the type of guy you're gonna put in SBC. Let's go man, how much is he going for in the market? 44,000 coins for Kyle Walker's right back card. That's a GG, that is a GG. Now of course, you could have got this guy from the 81 to 87 as well, but we will take that. We will take that two packs into the 82 plus and we're getting ourselves 40,000 coins worth of a card right there. So the value on these packs has been helped out a lot by that second pack that we opened up right there, GG. Pack three, Damir Bey, no good, no bueno.   So of course we have two 82s and then the 84 so far, so not the best. We're hoping for like those 85s and 86s. Dang, another 82 man, are you kidding me? Bro, so three 82s now in two back to back packs as well, bombin'. Interesting, you know boys, the real move here with these upgrade packs, the move might actually be doing maybe like if you do 10 at a time, do seven of the 81 to 87 and then do like three of the 82 plus if you're gonna do 10 packs. That might be the move with these, kind of mix and match them together. From what I'm seeing so far, that actually might be the move because you'll get some players like that Kyle Walker. You have the possibility of packing big boys from the 82 plus, but you've also got the 81 to 87 and that's a lot cheaper that you could still pack some higher rated guys from. This is our second board down. It is not a walk out, it's Argentinian, center back, it's gonna be Odomendi. So 83 rated, a nice little green link to our freshly packed pulled Kyle Walker in form which isn't terrible, or Kyle Walker gold card which isn't terrible and this is, we're gonna send that to the club. So that's only our second board though in six packs. That's only our second board in six packs for the 82 plus that does not look good yet. That's the, that looks like a board. It is, it is not a walk out though. That's something that we can hope for with these packs as a walk out. This is gonna be Kevin Campbell, 83 rated. So that's two boards in a row which is turning up the heat a little bit. We got two 83s in a row with Odomendi and Kevin Campbell, not terrible. But we still like, we hit the delict from the 81 to 87s. We gotta hit somebody like that on these too, like an 87 or an 88 rated card is really who we need to get from one of these to make it worth it and that is another non-board so we're gonna skip because we're expecting boards on every single one of these packs. Giroud, we already got him Champions League. All right, we have a version we can send to the transfer list still. GG, GG. All right, here we go. 82 rare, 82 plus rare player, here we go. Another one. Show me the walk out EA sports. Let me see a walk out, come on. It is not a walk out again, dude. It is gonna be Portuguese. It's gonna be CDM, probably William Carvalho, right? 83 rated. Dang, all right, these packs are, there's something boys. A lot of 83s from these and to be honest, you're probably gonna get a decent amount of 83s from the other packs as well which makes me think that maybe the 81 to 87 is the move just because of the pure craft ability. You can do two of those packs for one of these. So that's another thing to think about as well. Again, it's just hard to judge the cost. You might have just go like judge it on your account as well. Oh, there's a Dorasi, we already packed him. That's a bit of a rip. You might just have to judge it on your account as well. As we have 10 packs left, we've only gotten three board downs. Three boards, that's it from these first 10. That is, that is an L, man. That is an L, another non-board, man. These 82 pluses, it's like 80% of the time you're getting an 82. Dude, that sucks, man.  I feel like I had decent luck from the 81 to 87, more luck than I'm having on these 82s at the moment. I know I'm flying through packs, but I gotta get 40 packs open in this video for you dudes, you know? We finally have a board down, it is not a walkout. I just want one walkout EA, come on.  Striker, Real Batiste, who's this? It is Borja Iglesias, SBC fodder at its finest. But that is a board down, it is an 83, but that should be like the normal from these packs, man. And we've gotten way too many 82s for me to call that normal. I think that is what our fourth board. So we have seven packs to go, or eight packs after this one. All right, it's a shine, let's go, come on, it's slow. It is not a walkout. EA sports, what do I have to do for a freaking walkout? It's at least French, right wing, it's 1,000. Okay, so that's an 83 rated card again. Again, that should be like the normal for these packs. Maybe we're starting to get the luck rolling a little bit. If we can just hit that 87 or 88 rated card though, that's what we really need. And I have to quick sell the 1,000 because he is already duplicate, untradable. Seven packs remaining, come on EA sports. I want to see a walkout from this pack right here. Let's go, let's go. It is going to be slow. That means it's at least a board, it is a walkout UCL. What are we saying? Portuguese, right mid. It's going to be busy. It's going to be 84 rated busy, all right. It's an 84 rated, it is a Champions League rare card, so that could possibly help down the line, especially as we're approaching match day six, possibly team of the group stage. So that right there can definitely help us out. 84 rated though, we'll take that for the very least. Six packs to go. Again, EA, hit me with that walkout. It's at least a slow one, let's go. The pack lock is turning around, baby. It is still just a board. It's going to be Dutch, it's going to be a goalkeeper, probably Silicin. From Valencia, 83 rated, 83. Yeah, boys, so you're getting a lot of 83 rated out of these packs and that's the tough thing because you can go buy an 83 rated card off the market for around 3,000 coins, maybe even a little bit underneath that for some of the 83s and this pack right here costs you about 6K, so of course you're taking a little bit of a risk by opening this pack to get that higher rated player. We do get a board down here, Brazilian CDM, Fabinho. Yo, 85 rated Fabinho, okay? All right, so you definitely have a chance of getting some of the more big boys out of these packs. Fabinho is 20,000 coins, so basically a lot of the money this man just spent, he spent how much was it? It's like five or 6K per pack and he made 20 of them We're already up to 60,000 coins of just between Fabinho and from Kyle Walker right there, so that's honestly not bad. Not sure if he's gonna use that in the team, but that's not a bad card. That is not a bad card. All right, four to go. Can we continue the luck with four to go? Let's go, EA sports, please, come on. All right, it's slow. It's gonna be a board down at least. It's not a walkout, man. I want one walkout, please. Who's this gonna be? Schmeichel, GG. All right, there's an 83 rated. Schmeichel is getting in, 83 rated card. All right, we really turned up the board drops in these last few packs. So I think with the amount of board drops that these packs are gonna get, I'm thinking if you did 20 of them, you might get like maybe 12 board drops and then the rest would be non-boards. We've really turned up our luck here towards the end. Again, another board drop. It's not a walkout, yay, bro. What do I have to do for a walkout? Is it gonna be, oh my gosh, it's Carvalho again. That's a dupe. That is a duplicate, but it is another 83 that you could chalk down on the board drop list. It could be worth it. If you were trying to craft SBCs, that's the whole point for these packs. So let's see if we can get a walkout in these last two. Come on, EA sports. You've given us Fabinho, you've given us Kyle Walker. Let's go, big boy. Dude, not even an inform from these packs yet it either Spanish, center, mid. Napoli, who's this? Fabian, 83 rated Fabian. That's a really good SBC card right there. But still boys, so many 83s from these packs. And if you're doing the 82 pluses, you're really, really hoping for somebody big from these packs. All right, last one. EA sports, hands off the controller. Let's see a walkout here, a board drop. Walkout, come on, EA. Yeah, dude, it's not even a board drop. Unbelievable last pack. They do not end up giving us something good on the last pack. So what's the final verdict, boys? If you're really trying to craft these SBCs, if you're really trying to craft your way up to a team of the week or to an icon, I think it might be, maybe a mix of them are gonna be the best way to go. But in terms of just straight up value, I didn't mean to click on his team. But just in terms of straight up value, from what we got from these packs today, I'm thinking that the 81 to 87 SBC might be more of the shout, just because it's half the price of the 82, it's very easy to do this SBC. You could stack 15 or 20 of them very easily, and you should be able to craft packs from that. Now, if you go really far, if you're talking about icon craft from the core, like you're not spending any coins, you could do bronze pack method 400 coins per pack, and then sell those bronze cards, which then you can buy the gold cards to do the upgrade with, or like rinse them through bronze upgrades and silver upgrades to get the gold upgrades and stuff like that. You know, you can go that route if you really want to, but if you're just looking at one of these two SBCs to try to get some high rated cards from it, to try to get a good look, the 81 to 87 I think would be good for maybe doing like 15 to 20 at a time, and then trying to get an SBC out of it, trying to do a team of the week SBC, and maybe get a few cards you can throw towards an icon swap or a base icon upgrade, and then this 82 plus I would use sparingly if you're just trying to hit a big boy card in these last few moments, but for the best of team of week cards go out of packs, that's what I have to say about those, but you know, we got some solid pulls. We got Kyle Walker, we got Fabinho, we got Delict, we got a couple other 84s, so the man should be semi-happy with this SBC fodder, it should help him do a couple team of the week packs, but I'm guessing the 82 pluses didn't really pay out for me. There was way too many 83s, not enough 84s and 85s. That's why I think the 87, the 81 to 87, this might be the move for most of you guys that are trying to actually craft the SBCs. If you invite, excuse me boys, if you enjoyed the video, smash a thumbs up on it, comment down below if you have any questions, and subscribe to the channel if you are new. It's been Nate, Foot Accountant, catch you guys later. Peace out.


What is up, you guys? Welcome back to another one. If you're new to the channel, I am Goldpony. I do new car truck SUV reviews on YouTube. And today we are in the brand new 2022 Lexus UX250 hybrid courtesy of Bobby Ray Hall, Lexus and Mechanicsburg PA. For more information on their inventory, please feel free to check out the link in the description box below. And so we are in this one today because I have never reviewed this car ever in the history of my channel. So that makes me pretty excited to go ahead and check this one out. Only that you get over 40 miles per gallon in this thing. So if you have a long commute to work, this is certainly an option that you may want to consider. And there's actually a couple of new colors for the 2022 model year as well. So ultimately in this video, we will be testing out and going over everything about this one from acceleration to braking, steering feel, ride quality, sound system exhaust clip, all that fun stuff. So having said all of that, what do you guys say? Let's just go ahead and jump right into it. And as always, let's start with pricing it. So as you can imagine, there are a few different trim levels for the UX. First one is essentially the base trim starting at $36,425. Then you have the F-Sport starting at $38,765. And lastly, the luxury starting at $41,465. But regardless of trim level that you go with, the power plant on the UX is going to be the same. Powering the Little Beast is a two liter naturally aspirated inline four cylinder plus two electric motors as well. Of course with this being a hybrid, putting out a combined 181 horsepower at 6,000 RPM, 221 pound feet of torque coming in at 3,000 RPM. Power sent to all four wheels. Yes, this is an all wheel drive configuration only and a hybrid that's pretty darn cool. Power sent to the ground through a CVT, zero to 60, approximately 8.6 seconds. We're going to test that out in a little bit here. Top speed 110 miles per hour with MPG numbers. Get ready for this you guys. 41 in the city, 38 on the highway. Taking regular unleaded fuel. That's good on all parts right there. But anyways, before we do any kind of fun acceleration tests here in our UX250 hybrid, do want to mention you guys the drive modes. And so with typical Lexus fashion, that drive mode selector or stock, I guess you could say is located kind of just in the upper right hand corner of the gauges above the gauges there. That's going to include different drive modes like Eco, Normal, Sport and EV mode where it's pure electric driving as long as the battery is fully charged. That is pretty darn cool driving mode there especially for city streets. Adjusting things like the throttle response, steering sensitivity and all wheel drive system engagement as well. So now, having got all of that out of the way, what do you guys say? Let's go ahead and find a straight away because quite honestly, zero to 16, 8.6 seconds isn't the quickest number in the world. So let's go ahead and put this thing to the test and let's see how quickly we can get our new UX250 hybrid here up to speed. But before we do that, we have a little turning radius test here as I quite often do whenever I am in Mechanicsburg. Let's see how well we do. Cut the wheel. One of the best I have ever tested quite honestly. I figured it would be that way because this is a smaller vehicle but turning radius on this thing is amazing. So if you're going to be using the UX and city streets, this thing is definitely where you're going to want to be at. That was literally out of the past 600 plus cars I've tested, one of the best turning radiuses. But anyways, let's get back to that acceleration. I'm going to find that straight away. Let's put this thing to the test. All right you guys, from a standstill in three, two, one, go. Sport mode by the way. But it's not that bad. You shouldn't have any issues emerging onto the highway. It didn't feel like it did 60 and 8.6. I felt a little quicker than that. So you shouldn't have any issues there. Definitely not the quickest thing in the world having said that, but still plenty of an acceleration emerging onto the highway. But anyways, to go along with that acceleration as always, braking is equally important. So upfront you will find 12 inch ventilated front disc in the back, 11.1 inch solid rear disc. As far as that 60-zero stopping distance goes, it comes in an extremely impressive 117 feet. And by the way, braking feel is brilliant in this thing. You typically don't find that in hybrids. You definitely don't find that in electric vehicles for the most part. So I was kind of hesitant. I was kind of curious how the braking feel was going to feel. And the number kind of speaks for itself. 117 feet is great. Typically with SUVs and even sedans, you get upper 120s, you can. SUVs typically 130s, but 170 feet, that's really, really good. And braking feel is excellent. It's definitely on the firmer side of things, instantly bringing you to a stop. Anyways, then touching on suspension and handling, upfront you're going to get an independent McPherson strut front suspension. In the back, same exact thing. Independent McPherson strut suspension, gas pressurized shock absorbers. As far as ride quality goes, it's actually soaking up the road and perfection is quite nicely. But I will say so far at least, McKennaxberg's roads are pretty darn good. But I will say ride quality is plenty fine as expected, we're in a Lexus. It doesn't even have an adaptive suspension or anything fancy, but ride quality is still plenty fine. As far as steering feel goes, it is a noticeable difference depending upon which drive mode that you put it in. I just put it back in sport driving mode. It is a much heavier feel to the steering. And then if I were to turn this back to eco mode, instantly loosens up. Still not that bad though, quite honestly. I expected it a little bit looser feel than that, but either way, steering feels pretty nice. As far as cabin noise goes, what I did notice, you guys aren't going to hear it because I'm now coming up on a stop sign right now, but at higher speeds, maybe 50 plus miles per hour, there is a little bit of wind noise. I think it's coming from the moonroof here. So it's not bad. It's definitely not something that would bother me. And maybe it's because the rest of the vehicle so dang quiet, you do hear a little bit of wind noise. That's all I'm saying there. And touching on visibility, this is definitely a smaller vehicle. So you're absolutely not going to have any issues with rear visibility there whatsoever. Also wanted to mention though, there is a head up display available that goes for $500. So if you wanted that, you can get it. We don't have it today, but it is available. Rain-sensing windshield wiper stand are going to be part of a premium package that goes for $975. Kind of assisting with visibility there as well. Essentially what that is, is whenever the UX detects any kind of mist or rainfall, it's going to automatically turn on this windshield wipers for you. It's kind of like automatic headlights. Just one less thing you got to worry about there. But that pretty much rounds out the performance segment of this review, guys. Let's now go ahead and take a look at the exterior of our brand new 2022 Lexus UX250 Hybrid. All right, so here she is, you guys. The new 2022 Lexus UX250 Hybrid finished in one of the new colors for 2022 being cloudburst gray. If you were curious what that color looked like, you are looking at it right now. The other new color for 2022 is going to be Grayson water, which is going to be a blue hue. In case you were curious, you can always check that out on the website if you wanted to. But let's go ahead and start up front on the UX here. Lexus spindle front grille, of course, coming standard. And then take a look in the middle of it, though. There is a blue Lexus logo to signify, of course, that that is a hybrid. That is what Toyota and Lexus does after all. So I think that's pretty cool. Front air curtains to the side, helping direct air around the wheel and tire combination, of course. Take a look at the headlights. They are by LED headlights. They come with LED daytime running lights. They come with the automatic feature. And they actually also come with automatic high beams. I love that. That's something you don't always get even on luxury vehicles. So essentially if you got your high beams on the senses of vehicle coming in the opposite direction, it's gonna automatically dim that back to low beams. Then when that vehicle is gone, it's automatically gonna bump it back up to high beams for you. So one last thing you gotta worry about there. But, didn't wanna mention, there are premium triple beam headlights available for right around $1,600 if you wanted to go that route. It's just a little added illumination at night. We don't have them today, but still, LED headlights are absolutely amazing. But there pretty much runs out the front end of this one. Let's now go ahead and make our way to the side of the UX. All right, so now since we are around to the side. Very nice looking side silhouette. I gotta say now that I'm around here. Aluminum roof rails do come standard. Chrome window surrounds also coming standard. Power adjustable body colored side mirrors. They will be heated coming standard with LED integrated turd signals as well. Just about everything you could possibly want on those side mirrors. You do have some hybrid badging found on the rear doors there towards the bottom. I think you guys can see that there. F-sport badging at least if you were to go with the F-sport trim level of course. Taking a look down at the wheel setup. 18 inch split five spoke alloys essentially coming standard across the board for all trim levels. However, if you were to go with the F-sport trim they will be a unique design. Otherwise, there's other two trim levels are gonna look the same, which essentially is what you guys are looking at right now of course. But pretty much runs out the side silhouette here. Again, very nice looking side profile. But let's now go ahead and make our way to the back of this one. All right, so now as I am climbing out behind the pine trees, body colored shark fin antenna all the way to the top. Rear spoiler with an integrated brake light just below that rear window wiper of course. LED tail lights coming standard across the board. You gotta love that. Once again, the blue Lexus logo. And just below it all, you will find a single exhaust outlet kind of tucked away down there. But having said that, I'm gonna give this a shot. I typically do an exhaust clip at this point. I think it's going to maybe start up for me but I don't think I'm gonna be able to rev it. That's typically how Lexus and Toyota does their hybrids. But we're gonna give it a shot. As always here is that exhaust clip. All right, so now since we are around to the back of the UX, when it comes to opening that rear hatch, it is a power rear hatch or power lift gate. There's a button on the key fob. There's also a button on the rear hatch itself as well, of course, but once opened up, cargo capacity comes in at 21.7 cubic feet behind that second row at least. If that was not enough space, there is a 60-40 splint, meaning those rear seats do fall down for quite a bit of extra space then if you needed it. Also wanted to mention in the cargo area, you will find a first aid kit in typical Lexus fashion. They always do that. I always find that pretty cool. Cargo lighting and not just that, LED cargo lighting coming standard. You don't always get that. Typically you find halogens in the cargo area of just about all other vehicles out there. Plenty of grocery bag hooks back there. I thought that was pretty cool. And if you were to lift up underneath of that cargo floor, you're actually going to find some in-floor storage. I believe two levels of in-floor storage. So that was definitely quite nice as well. There's a first level, which is a flat level. And then if you lift up underneath of that, there's like a compartmentalized level, which is pretty cool. But anyways, pretty much rounds out the cargo area. Let's now go ahead and take a look at the rear leg room here. The rear leg room is going to come in at 33.1 inches. So for reference, I mean even six feet tall. This is how much space I had in those rear seats. Rear ventilation does come standard. There is a rear center armrest with cup holders as well. And if you were to look just below that rear ventilation, you're actually going to find two phone charging ports back there then as well. Then make your way to the front seats. Eight-way power adjustable front seats do come standard, meaning both driver and passenger seats are power adjustable. It's pretty nice. Two-way power lumbar, however, just for the driver, Nulex upholstery coming standard, heated and ventilated front seats coming with the premium package that goes for $1,515. And that, of course, comes with more than just the heated and ventilated seats, of course. My favorite seats still to this date of any other manufacturer are going to be the F-sport seats. Of course, they're just gonna come with the F-sport trim level. We don't have the F-sport trim level. Having said that, these seats are plenty comfortable. This just F-sport seats are the most comfortable seats in existence. That is all I'm saying there. So definitely no issues with the seat comfort though. But then taking a look at the steering wheel, it is tilt and telescoping. It is leather wrapped and heated for an additional $150 if you wanted to go that route. But we do have that package today and I've been loving the seated steering wheel because it is kind of chilly out today. So definitely quite nice. Then making our way to the startup. Let me first start by showing you guys the key here. You do have your Lexus logo and it is highlighted in blue on one side. Then when you flip it over lock, unlock, and of course that button to pop the rear house. But it is essentially all keyless entry when they push button start. So all I'm going to do here is simply put my front of the brake and press that bright blue engine start button located just to the left of the climate control buttons. And so then once started up, when it comes to the gauges, F-sport is gonna get its own gauge cluster. It's gonna be inspired by the LFA Supercar of course, but for the other gauge clusters, it's gonna be currently what we are looking at right now, which is pretty darn nice as well. It gives you essentially everything you could possibly need to know. It gives you how many miles you'll have left until you hit empty, which is 444 miles right now. It gives you a digital speedometer readout. It gives you what gear you're in. Gives you battery life charging at any given time so you know when you can actually drive in EV mode on the city streets. That's pretty cool. And of course everything else outside temperature I could go on and on, but you can adjust what is on the digital portion of those gauges by using the steering wheel mounting controls found on the left side of the steering wheel. But now let's go ahead and make our way to overall interior quality. There is a Power Mooner that goes for $1,100 if you wanted that. Home Link controls with an auto dimming rear view mirror. We have that as well. That goes for $325. Wireless phone charger, we have that as well. That goes for $75. So a couple of options here I guess you could say, but dual zone climate control does come standard. But one of my favorite parts about the interior quality is this washi material found just below the infotainment screen. It continues on just above the passenger side glove box, but that is the coolest material and it's specific kind of to the Japan heritage of this car. This is 100% JDM or Japanese domestic market, including the door handles which imitate a samurai sword. So I love that about Japan. You know, if you got a rich heritage, if you got a rich culture, embrace it. And that's certainly what Lexus does here and I absolutely personally love it. Anyways, but so now making our way to the tech here, seven inch display screen coming standard for all trim levels and that is not a touch screen. However, there is an optional 10.3 inch color touchscreen display with navigation that is available for an additional $2,200 if you wanted that. However, you don't really need it unless you just want the bigger screen because either way you get Bluetooth and audio streaming, either way you get Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, that's why I say that as long as you have a smartphone, you just hook it up to the vehicle and you got Google Maps up there on that screen anyway so it doesn't matter. You can actually check out your radio information up there of course as well. And by the way, when it comes to the sound system, six speakers is going to come standard. However, eight speakers is going to be optional but having said that, we do have the six speaker sound system with us here today. So what do you guys say? Let's go ahead and turn on the radio, see what we got playing today and let's test out the clarity of this one. And I'm not. All right, let me tell you guys, that was, it was decent actually. For a six speaker sound system it's really not all that bad. And quite honestly, because of the size of the UX, six speakers may be appropriate for this thing. Eight speakers is going to be a little bit better but because this isn't such a large vehicle you really don't need a whole lot more speakers than that. Being honest, but another thing I kind of had to get used to is typically there's a volume knob up above the climate control settings or whatever but it's actually behind the touch pad controller and you just scroll your finger which is kind of easy. Quite honestly it might be better because you're just resting your arm there anyway. So I kind of like the positioning of the volume knob quite honestly, in my personal opinion. But anyways, last thing I wanted to mention to you guys on the infotainment screen at least is when you do put the UX in reverse you will find a rear view camera with a couple of different views as well letting you know who or what is behind you which is always is going to lead us into safety. And so to start, IIHS top safety pick which is excellent, front side, side current airbags do come standard but also driver and passenger knee airbags then as well. In the back you're going to have latch aka lower anchors to tethers for children for the rear car seats, rear child door locks, time pressure monitoring system but also coming standard will include a pre-collision system with pedestrian detection, lane tracing assist, lane departure alert with steering assist, road sign assist, dynamic radar cruise control and a blind spot monitoring system with rear cross traffic alert then as well. And so overall when it comes to my final thoughts here of the UX250 hybrid incredible miles per gallon. 41 miles per gallon and really any vehicle is absolutely wonderful these days. Most comfortable seats ever if you go with the F Sport. Like I said these seats are bad there's certainly plenty comfortable but the F Sport seats are just on a whole nother level mainly because of the bolstering and you just sink so far into them it's wonderful. Great interior quality on this thing specifically I love the Japanese heritage in the UX including the washi dashboard as well as the samurai designed door handles as well that's pretty cool stellar reliability and typical Lexus fashion of course this thing is going to last 200,000 plus miles so you gotta love that. Source room for improvement goes it's certainly not the quickest thing in the world it should be enough to merge you onto the highway but it's kind of slow and not a ton of space inside of this thing. I mean of course Lexus does have other options if you need more space but still having said that not a whole lot of space but anyways let me know what you guys think of the UX250 hybrid in the comment section below that is about it for this one you guys thank you so much for watching for free to follow me on social media at the bottom of the screen if you wanted to see what's coming next on the channel before it actually gets to YouTube be sure to hit the subscribe and the bell notification button if you're into new car reviews that is what we do here on this channel after all do appreciate you guys watching more than you know and I will see you guys all in the next video stay gold.


So, after talking about this concentration inequality, we return back to the stochastic bandwidth setting, we define what is the regret would be interested in the stochastic bandwidth setting and then defined the pseudo regret, which we want to take it as a performance measure and we wanted to performance guarantee on that. And we concluded by giving the last class a regret decomposition result. Now, we will move on and try to see what is the best bound or what kind of bounds we can give on the pseudo regret ok. So, we know that we let us say we have a bandit instance, we have this set of k distributions, assign to each of the arms. And we said that the sample when you are going to play an arm a, the samples are drawn the random variable x that corresponds to the sample that are drawn from arm a that will be distributed according to distribution a right. And we said that expected value of x in this case, let us say we denote it as mu a ok, where this guy x is drawn according to this distribution mu a. Now, our goal is to basically our goal boils down if you want to minimize the regret, our goal is boils down to what identify an arm which has the largest value of this mean value right. And what would we say in the last time? Through our discussion of concentration inequality, we said that if we have many samples from a particular arm, how to estimate this parameter mu a. And we said that if we are going to use sample mean as my estimator, how far the estimated mean will be from the true mean after a certain number of rounds. We gave a bound on that right. We specifically focused on the cases, the case where this mu a's are all sub Gaussian distributed and for that we gave this concentration bounds ok. Now, let us start thinking about how to estimate this means, but our goal is to not just estimate this, but to quickly estimate this. So, that I do not incur regret after some time. Now, what could be our strategy? Now, we are inter squared into comma with the policies for this right. So, what are the policies? Policies are the algorithm. So, any thoughts on how we will go about this? Let us say you have been asked to you have been given n rounds and you have been your goal is to comma with the policy pi such that you want to write this which in the last class we discussed that this can be given also as 1 to the power k arms. So, this is nothing, but expected value of right way we defined as di equals to ok. And also we said the last time suppose some other arm is optimal. So, throughout we will assume without loss of generality that my arm 1 is optimal that is the mean which has the highest value is the one with arm 1 ok. So, we know this, but we the algorithm does not know this ok. So, this is just for our analysis point of view. So, because of this if arm 1 is the optimal one delta 1 is going to be 0 and delta 2 will be positive and delta 3 will be positive. And also we will assume for time being that the optimal arm is the unique right. So, if mu 1 is is the highest mean all the other means mu 2 and all mu 2 all others are going to be strictly smaller than the mean of arm 1 that is why the r 1 is the optimal arm. So, we know that this delta 1 is going to be 0, but this delta 2 and all are going to be positive. So, if I want to minimize my regret I need to ensure that the expected number of place of my arm 2 and others should be as small as possible or I want to keep them low ok. So, now I am going to use the terminology that arm 1 since it has the highest mean I am going to call it as optimal arm and all other arms are suboptimal arms ok. Any thought on how to do this? Just like some random ideas ok. So, first we will start with something called this explorant commit algorithm. So, one obvious thing is you sample each of these arms for certain number of rounds and then find the means of sample means of each of these arms and then maybe after that you just play the one which has the highest mean ok. But here the question is how much time I should sample each one of them so, that I get the good estimates all of them. If I can if I get a once I am sufficiently confident these estimates are good maybe then I do not need to explore any more further then just play the one which has the highest mean after that words right. So, let us that one natural policy let us we explore and commit. Now, how the algorithm looks in this case? So, for this algorithm we need to tell how many rounds it need to explore. So, explore let us say we have to tell the algorithm sample each of these arms this many times that has to go as an input to this algorithm right. So, let us say input is that number m and of course, and k k is the number of arms and then what this algorithm does?  So, there are k arms in the first k m number of rounds it will sample each of the arms m m number of rounds. After that it finds the estimates of all of them and commits to the one with the highest mean I am just going to write that. So, all of you understand what is this? This is t mod k ok and till the first m k number of rounds what it is going to do? It is going to do t mod k. So, suppose let us say t equals to 1 it is going to be what? 1 mod k 1. So, what it is going to play?  So, like that when t equals to 2 it is going to play arm 3 when t equals to 4 sorry t equals to 3 it is going to play and when t becomes k it becomes 0 and it is going to play arm 1 and it continues right. So, it is going to play the arms in a round robin fashion it starts with actually 2 3 4 5 up to k and then with comes with 1 2 3 4 5 like that and till that is it is going to do m k number of rounds and for t greater than m k. So, what is mu hat k here? So, we are going to define mu i hat at time t that means the notation here is the estimates of arm i I have at round t and this is going to be. So, this is the number of samples averaged till time t right. So, what is the numerator doing? It is so, first focus on this denominator it is counting on the number of place of arm i till round t and what is numerator doing? Numerator is taking the sum of all the samples that comes from arm i till round t right. So, this notation is saying that whenever i is in the S round if it is equals to i then only this term is retained. So, it is retaining only those samples that you have collected from arm i till round t which one this has to be i s S. So, once you have hit m k number of rounds what you will do? You will add that round you will see which arm has the highest mean and after that that is it you keep on playing the same arm which are the highest mean you are not going to change the estimates after that. Now, the so, that is why we are saying that we have explored till the first m k rounds and after m k round we are just committing ourselves to the one which have which has the highest empirical mean in that till that round ok. Now, if I am doing going to do like this what is the performance I am going to get? So, now, let us try to bound this ok. Now, let us count t i. So, how many rounds I have played arm i till n rounds right. You know that for the first m rounds you have played arm i that has been guaranteed by this first part right ok and then for S equals to m k onwards you do not know whether which arm is played that depends on which one has the highest mean. So, let us ok and now from this round m k plus 1 and n whether you have played arm i or not depending on in the m k th after the m k th round whether the arm i thumb happened to be the best one or not right. So, let us try to do this. So, what is this is going to be that this is going to be going to be. So, this depends whether I am going to play or not only depends whether on the m k th round I happened to be the best or not. So, that is going to be m minus m k times indicator. So, I am saying that. So, now after this m k plus 1 to n rounds I will be playing arm i only if mu i hat of k this guy happens to be larger than the other arms right all computed at m k th round. So, at the end of this m k th round I have computed the empirical means of all of them and I know that after for t is going to be greater than m k I am going to play arm i only if its empirical mean happens to be larger than others right fine ok. Now, so this is a constant that has been given to me as an input to the algorithm. So, n is also let us assume that is given to me the number of rounds for a given number of rounds. So, what will be the expected number of place of t i n. So, this is going to be m plus n minus m k and now if I take the expected value of this indicator it is going to be probability of right. So, now, the problem boils down to if how can I bound this probability. What is the probability that at the end of m k rounds my i the ham happens to be the one with the highest mean highest empirical mean ok. So, now, let us try to focus on this term. So, now, for time being let us assume that this I am interested in this arm i which is other than the optimal arm that is i is not equals to 1 ok. Now, I am interested in a bad event right like I am I want to basically see that I have assumed my arm 1 is optimal, but what is the probability that I will end up some arm i to be empirically best right. So, if that happens if the arm i which is not 1 happens to have a highest empirical mean compared to the arm 1 then that is a bad thing for me right that is going to cause regret for me. So, let us consider that event and see how if we can capture that. So, what we want is in this I want the when this happens to be larger than mu 1 hat of k that is the mean empirical mean of the i the ham happen to be greater than or equals to the empirical arm of the arm 1 that is the best one right. So, so here I was looking at max over all the arms here I am just trying to replace it by the one with arm 1. So, what can I say the relation between this and this? So, this is basically saying mu 1 hat is greater than maximum of several terms and mu 1 is one of the terms here in the max ok. So, if I am just going to retain one of the terms here. So, what is the relation between this probability and this probability? So, which is going to be larger? This one is going to be larger or this is going to be larger first one is going to be larger right and anyway left hand side is the same. So, now, I am saying that mu 1 being greater than equals to some larger quantity. Now, I am asking mu 1 to be greater than somewhat smaller quantity which which which event implies which event. So, if this happens this automatically happens right. So, which one should have a large probability? If this A implies B first one will have larger probability. So, A implies B. So, A is this event if whenever A happens they are saying that B happens right. So, it should be correct yes of course, this is larger yeah this one is going to be more stringent right. And, this is happening this is automatically implied. So, no upper one is most stringent. So, because of that you can check that if this is most stringent this probability should be smaller than the other one right or like maybe like we are basically saying that if this means basically you are saying otherwise this we are saying that A is contained in ok. So, this is just like this guy is asking it to be larger than some quantity and now you want it to smaller than it this quantity to be larger than somewhat smaller quantity. So, this is all automatically implied. But, the other way is not true right like suppose mu 1 hat is greater than let us say mu 1 hat that does not mean that mu 1 hat is going to be greater than or equals to max over all of this or is that automatically implied actually we should think it like this. Suppose let us say mu 1 hat is going to be greater than or equals to mu 1 hat and now I am looking at max in this max mu 1 hat is already contained ok. So, now, this quantity is going to be larger than this quantity right. So, you are basically asking this to be most stringent you want more than what is already guaranteed in this. So, that also implies that this quantity has to be less than or equals to this quantity ok. Now, we have this let us manipulate this what I will do is I want to ok this I will just take both sides mu i is less than mu i minus I am taking this quantity on the other side and now I have added minus mu i here and plus mu i this is going to be what sorry mu 1 here this is going to be what mu 1 minus mu i it is correct I have just done a manipulation here I have just taken this on the other side and there is minus mu i minus minus plus mu 1 here and I have added the same thing over here. So, now, continuing this line of inequality mu 1 hat of mu k mu greater than or equals to mu 1. So, this is our max over j naught equals to i mu k of hat ok. So, now, this is going to be greater than or equals to probability that and by definition what is this mu 1 minus mu i for us delta i that we have defined as delta i. So, this is what we have ok. Now, recall what are these quantities? This mu hat mu i hat is nothing, but average of m samples that are obtained from i term right. So, that is how you have computed it it is when it did it we are taking it t equals to m k it is looking at all the samples that are drawn from arm i till m k throughout till m k throughout we have exactly m samples right and this is going to be m because m the arm i has been played m number of rounds ok. So, this is nothing, but this quantity is nothing, but average of m samples that has been drawn from arm i and we know that arm i these samples are i i d further the mean of arm i is mu i. Now, we argued last time if all my arms distributions are sub Gaussian what this quantity is going to be sub Gaussian sub Gaussian with what parameter? Suppose assume that all my distributions are one sub Gaussian 1 by m why is that? So, there are. So, if you simplify this it is 0 sub Gaussian under root of sigma 1 square minus 1 square right yes. So, what happens? So, in our case we said sigma 1 is 1 and sigma 2 is 2 also 1 it is, but there is also like ok. Now, let us rewrite it. So, I know that for m k the denominator becomes what it becomes m right. So, this is m and what is this numerator is like this is basically summation of this is going to be the summation of i samples which has drawn from arm i only. That is what it is saying right this is x i s s is the sample you are going to observe in the sth round, but I am interested in only those samples where i s equals to i right. So, because of if you just ignore all the places where my i s is not equals to i if you only written those where i s equals to i I have exactly m samples in the numerator right. So, if I just took that it is basically going to be what x i and so, this is basically going to be just i right where i is s 1 to m. So, these are all the samples of the i d 1 do not need to write this ok s this all the samples are coming from i term and all the samples are one sub question. So, now, we have this and now we have also mu i here right. Let us take this mu i here this is a whole of this quantity divided by mu i. We have already discussed this the s equals to 1 to m x i s times mu i this whole divided by again. So, there is some small mistake we made we we did not say that these samples are coming from one sub question. We said that these samples when you subtract from mu the mean we said that this is one sub question that is what we said in the last class right that the distributions are such that if the if you center this distribution that is if you subtract the mean from these samples those samples are one sub question. So, that is why when you write simplify this. So, I have to also note this I am taking this entire thing here this is going to be like this and we know that this quantity is one sub question ok. Now, if this is one sub question and if you go into some this what is this this is going to be 1 by 1 by 1 by root term why is that. So, we already said that you said that it is going to be like sigma 1 square sigma 2 square like this right we have m quantities here and first each one is like 1 by m square right. So, 1 by m square plus 1 by m square all the way to 1 by m square there are m quantities like that and if you just going to m by m square it becomes under square root. So, it is going to be 1 by m square. So, this entire quantity here is 1 by square root m sub question and what about this quantity this is mu 1 here we are just saying that all the distributions are all we know is one sub question right even though they have different the centering value that all the center distributions are one sub question. So, even even for the optimal arm when you center it that is going to be also this sub question with the same parameter ok. So, now, what about this? So, I know that this guy is one sub question 1 by m sub question this entire thing and this another guy is also 1 by square root m sub question what about there is difference ok before difference this entire thing is 1 by square root m sub question what happens with the minus sign with the minus sign is what is this why is that. So, right we have said that even if you scale it by some constant c whether positive negative it does not matter it is going to be the same 1 by square root m with that constant and that one that constant is 1 here ok. Now, this is 1 by square root m sub question this quantity is also 1 by square root m sub question and think of these are we are adding two sub question random variables and are they independent here? They are independent right when what would we say when I am going to draw a sample from an arm it is going to be independent of the past of pulls from that arm and also independent from the pulls of other arms ok. So, it has to be these two are independent and now what is the what is this then then it is going to be under root 2 by m right because then it is like square root of. So, now, this entire thing here is under root 2 by m sub question. So, if this entire thing is under root square root 2 by m sub question now I already know a result which we showed last time which we written as one of the lemma right can I apply that and find a bound for this what is this probability. So, recall that we said that probability that x is greater than or equals to epsilon when x is a sigma sub question what would we say this is upper bounded by exponentially exponential minus right to what are sigma here this sigma is the sub cautionary parameter of this x. Now, this x is nothing, but this entire quantity right and so replace this sigma by square root by 2 by m. Now, what you are going to get if you do that and your epsilon is now delta i now this x is this entire quantity. So, if you just apply that this probability is going to be upper bounded by epsilon minus epsilon is delta i square 2 times 2 times this sigma is going to be square root 2 by m. And if you are going to put it we are going to get after squaring 2 by m and this is going to be 2 times m right. So, this is nothing, but minus delta i square m by 4.  And this whole quantity we have just argued that this is upper bounded by exponential equals to this ok. Now, once we have our bound on this expected pulse of an arm i right.  So, what is that then my pseudo regret is it is given by expected value of k i of n. So, just substitute this and this quantity is upper bounded by like this. So, this is going to be what first term is going to be m k times so, if I substitute this I am going to get m times summation plus equals to i into k delta i u x p. Is this correct? I have just substituted bound on the expected number of poles in this expression here.


Welcome back everybody to the 50 day property challenge. Again today, we have Matt Al from Metro FM and Janet Ricketts, singer, songwriter and all round fantastic artist with us. They will talk today about this week, what they've learned in the 50 day property challenge. We've just gone through five days of learning and they have already started their property journey. So you will remember last week, we interviewed them to understand what it is they were looking for, what they wanted to do and how the EDPF property academy and private property could assist them in building their own property portfolios. So this week we learned quite a bit but I will leave it up to the two Janet and Matt Al to tell us all about what they learned this week and then I'll ask them some questions about why they're doing this and how they're gonna do it, et cetera. So Janet, let's start with you. Give us an idea of what you learned. We spoke about a few things, your why, your how, we spoke about property as an investment opportunity and we also spoke with Ben at private property. What did you learn this week that would be of value to you and help you in your journey with this 50 day property challenge? So for me, what I learned firstly is there's a big difference between investing in a property that you want to live in versus a property that's going to make financial sense for you in the future. I think one of the biggest things for me was also understanding that as someone who is renting out a property, there's a lot on your shoulders to take into consideration whether it's the contract that you develop to the maintenance of the property and keeping that relationship with whoever is renting with you, because obviously you want people to rent for a long time. That for me was to stand out things that I learned and I think for me it was very important to understand why I wanna build my property portfolio and how I wanna go about doing so. And I'm still researching, still checking what's gonna make sense for me, but the last few days have made it a lot clearer for me in understanding how I wanna go about doing everything. All right, excellent. Thank you for that, Jared. Matau, I'm gonna ask you the same thing. What did you learn this week about why you wanna do this about property as an investment and what you learned from Ben? Cool, thank you so much, Nigel. Yeah, I think it all starts with understanding the why. I think that was the key core of the week, actually fully understanding and defining that for myself why it is I actually wanna do this, being a creative in a space where many can be fickle, sometimes many comes in floods, but then how do you actually put that money into something that will be for long term, not just for my gain, but also for the next generation. I think also the how to go about this because one thing for me that was a key stand out for the week was the fact that a lot of people buy the property they live in as an investment, but I think the main thing I learned this week is how to buy property to be cash flow positive from the minute you making the purchase because then it's an investment. Otherwise it still becomes a liability for many, many years. So that was a key stand out for me. The other thing like Jared spoke about is really just how to manage the space because once you've got the property, there's still a lot of work that goes into it. You still need to maintain good relationships with your tenants. You need to vet your tenants. You need to make sure you're getting the right tenants. Make sure your contracts are also right. There's just so many underlying or like hidden aspects that you also need to be a part of the journey, especially if you want to be a good landlord because in essence that's what you become when you're a property investor. And then the other thing that stood out for me was I guess the private property app which we learned about just the other day, how to actually navigate the app, how to use it and how to be able to spot what's a good deal. I think I noticed the fact that standard banks example, there's like repossess properties that might be a better deal, but it's also important to make sure you actually go view the place because I've seen with some of the images it's quite limited. So I think that's the one part that I'm really looking forward to next is from the app actually going into the spaces to see the property. But yeah, overall it's been a very fruitful week. Learned a lot. That's absolutely awesome. I'm glad that you guys learned a lot from this week. We don't often have time, a lot of time together. You guys are both busy, I'm also busy, but this week was a very fruitful week in my opinion. So since you brought it up, Matt, I think maybe let's talk about your why. Normally when you get into anything, especially in business, and if you don't have that driving force, the thing that drives you to do what you do, then very often you'll fail because without a why, you have no reason to wake up in the morning. A very close friend of mine, TJ, the other day posted on Facebook and he said if you don't have a reason to get up in the morning, you better find something to do because at the end of the day, you need to have a motivation to wake up. So let's talk about your why. Matt, tell us why it is you felt that property investment was important for you to do number one, and what is that thing that drives you and keeps you going? Thank you so much for the question, Nigel. I think my why is really simple. It's the fact that in life, life is really uncertain, let's be honest. And I think the lockdown was a big reality check for a lot of people in the sense that we live in a day and age where you really cannot live on one source of income anymore. You need to find ways of having multiple sources of income. You also need to find ways in which you put your money in things that will be fruitful, not only short term, but also for the long term. So short term wise, my why is for me, the benefit of me being able to one, have an asset that I know is gonna be giving me income every single month if it's cash for a positive right. It'll be paying off the mortgage. It'll be paying off the levies and hopefully we still got some change. And then long term, it's obviously considering the fact that we're trying to build generational wealth as well. I think property has been a very, it's not a big discussion and I'll be honest, especially around a lot of black tables. Like we don't sit at the dinner table and we discuss property, or even just out on the weekend, we don't sit and discuss property. I wanna get to a space where having property conversations is a normal thing. It's something that we do as people. And I think also because of the fact that I'm in the entertainment space, money is gonna flood in, but that money can flow out as quickly as it floods in. So wanting to put it in something that I know for sure long term, I'll still be able to look back and say, my money is invested in something that is solid, that is secure, but obviously that all goes with getting the right education behind it. And if I must also make it a bit personal, one of the other reasons I'm so, so passionate about this is the fact that when I was in corporate, I did have the opportunity of buying two properties in that time. Still wasn't sure if it was the right way to go about it, but I think with the learning that I'm getting now, I will be able to apply that in the properties I currently have. But the reality check was the lockdown where as an entertainer, I had no gigs.  And one of the things that kept me afloat was the fact that I had rental income. And I think from a legacy perspective, if that is a knowledge, I can impart or share with other people ways in which you can also still maintain or still have cash flow coming in. I definitely believe that property is one of the best ways in which to do that. So that is my biggest why, that property conversations must become normal and it should be a place where I actually saw stats that I think in the country, I will verify this that recently the most properties were bought by young black females. So it's slowly evolving, but I think we can get it to a point where it's more inclusive for us as a whole nation. So that's definitely part of my why. Absolutely amazing. Wow, that is a great story. And I think we all resonate or your story resonates with all of us. And you don't need to check the stats. I can confirm that it is definitely true. So 100% spot on. Thank you very much for sharing with us. Jared, same question to you. What is your why? Why are you doing this? For me, a big part of this why is the fact that people that come from the community that I come from, the Cape Flash, don't have a seat at the table when it comes to these conversations, not because they don't want to. It's just ignorance of not doing enough research to understand how property can work for you. As Matt Al said, for a lot of people, property has become a liability because there wasn't a lot of thinking that came into play when deciding on the kind of property that was invested in. And I think for a lot of people in my community, I would say people of color, it was just about investing in that one property that you're going to live in and that you leave behind if it's paid off for the next generation to inherit. And here is an opportunity where we can not only educate people in South Africa, especially our youth as we hear the stats are changing, which is great. But it's also an opportunity to, yes, to educate yourself, but to leave that legacy that is empowered. That it's not just about waiting on the inheritance, it's about having that buying power and adding to that and allowing the finances to work for you in a way that you could set your children, their children's children up to be able to really be part of this changing landscape of property ownership. It's a big thing for me. And I'm excited that I'm learning, that I am gaining this knowledge and that we're sharing with the public. So thanks to EDPFA and private property. I think people don't realize how huge this is. It's really a shift and a change for us as a people. And so it's exciting times and enlightenment. And I think we know better, we can do better. And so I'm really, really excited to be a part of this conversation that we are changing the way property ownership works in our country. I agree with you fully there, Jared. And as you know, and we spoke about in your original interview, I also come from Atlanta, Bridgetown to be specific. And you're right. We never spoke about these things around our table, you know, and so on. And people need to be educated. People need to understand and know that they actually can purchase property, that they can be investors in property. And that waiting for that inheritance shouldn't be the be all and end all of property.  Because you can't all live in the one house. So 100% correct date. We need to look at property as an investment vehicle and not just the place to live. I think in the, it's about thinking about retirement. I know as youth, we're thinking about the now, we're thinking about living the most now and doing the most now. But I think it's all about sitting yourself up. We forget that we're gonna get older. When there's gonna be a time where we have to retire. And what that looks like is really defined by the choices you make now. And so that's a big drive for me as well, is to know that as a musician, I won't always be the artist of choice as I get older. And so at least I know that the money that I'm getting now, I can put to good use and plant that seed so that I can reap the fruits at a later stage. Absolutely. And on that note, we'll take a bit of a break and play the pipe. So we'd like to thank you guys for joining us thus far for this first part of our wrap up for the week. Keep tuned and we'll talk further about the why, the how and also how to use the private property app in order for you to become a property investor as well. So thank you for joining us so far and we'll see you after the break. Welcome back everybody to the 50 day property challenge. This is the second part of our second session with private property. Come and join us every Friday at 8.30 on the private property Facebook page, as well as on YouTube, where you will learn about property investment within 50 days from our special guests, Janet Ricketts and Matt Owl from Metro again. So guys, in the earlier session, we spoke a little bit about your why. Now I'd like to talk about the how. How are you actually going to do this? What is it that you learned this week about how to go about purchasing your first property within 50 days? And then we'll talk about the private property app a little bit. Since we started with Matt Owl first before, Janet, I will ask you to go and tell us all about how you believe you are going to start your property journey in these 50 days. For me, it's all about searching, searching, searching, understanding what's out there and what's gonna work for me. And I think I have an idea, but it may change over time, depending on price range and how I want the property to work for me. But I think a lot of research and definitely through learning that you have to go and actually see the property. Don't go just rely on pictures, because they can be deceiving. Some people are trying to just sell properties quickly. So they put old pictures up and then when you get there, somebody thought it was. And just research for me is key and understanding how I wanna invest. But I'm just really open to anything right now because this is a new conversation for me, you know? And sort of identifying all these things like the how and the wise have all been a new conversation for me to have. And so, I mean, during the process of learning, but definitely that's the first point of course for me is just doing my research and understanding in terms of price range, what kind of property owner I wanna be and how I want to arrange it out and how I see this working for me into the future. Yeah, so one of the things that we spoke about in your initial interview was about having a little bit of money put aside because you're an artist and you don't always know when the gigs are gonna come. So you have to put some money aside and you start to prepare. So that's already you one up on most people because most people don't prepare that way. Most people just hope that they can fall into something great like an inheritance like we spoke about earlier and then hope that they'll have a good one from me. Definitely and I think it's important for people to understand that it's been years of saving, you know? It wasn't just, okay, years of money. It's been a couple of years. I mean, probably a decade of me saying I eventually wanna buy property. So I need to start putting money away whether it was a 500 grand, whether it was a 1000 grand, whether it was even a 200 grand, just putting it aside and knowing that over time it's gonna become this deposit that you can use. And I think for me, that was the important thing I'm also learning is that when you've got a great deposit it solidifies the deal quicker and it just sets you in good stead with actually just acquiring the property faster so. So that was also a big lesson. And I'm excited that I did that nine. I urge everybody out there to start, you know and give yourself a time frame and understand X amounts of money from your salary put it away because it might sound like a bit of money but at the end of the day in five years time or in two years time or in fact next year there's a bit of a deposit that you can put down. Fantastic. Yeah, look at the end of the day also it's a property as we always say is a long-term investment. It's not a quick scheme. So you need to have that mindset that things are going to take time. So like building up a deposit, you know for some of us we want to do it quicker. So we get into things like, you know being able to do sourcing deals and basically what that means and we'll speak about this later in the first few days if you don't have your own money then you go out to source deals and you on sell those deals to potential investors and you make a commission on being able to source and package that deal. And in so doing you'll be able to build up some deposit and then eventually you'll be able to purchase your own property. What you've done over an entire decade that is so impressive, the patience it must have taken to not use that money over 10 years when emergencies came up. Yes, I mean as in Dublin you said before I mean when the pandemic hit it was quite a struggle for a lot of us artists. So you look at that pot and you kind of go maybe I can use it now maybe I should just not do this. But it's something to be said about just saying focus on that goal and understanding that it's not about now it's not about satisfying what even needed is now it's about thinking about when I'm 60, when I'm 70 knowing that I've set this portfolio out for myself that I can retire comfortably that's exciting to me. And as I said before I urge everybody to think that way too. Yeah, awesome. All right, Dublin, Matt Elke tell us about your you already purchased two properties and we spoke about that again in your interview. So you really at the stage where you want to build on your portfolio and not start something new. So tell us how you are going to go about building on to your existing portfolio. Okay, so I think it starts with first setting a realistic price range. I think that's also the key starting point of this is the amounts that I'm looking for. I think the how is also what type of property is first also understanding that do I want to rent out to maybe potential in a student area in a, you know, is it like holiday residential? It's also just being able to define that for yourself. Like actually how am I really, really thinking about this? So first answering those questions for yourself. I think also something else that I learned in the past week was Jared was very fortunate years to, you know, have saved up money for so long, but the truth of the matter and the reality of a lot of South Africans is not everybody has that money to, you know, had been saving for 10 years. So I think some of the how I also took from the past week is which I know we're still going to touch on further is how do I actually secure funding for property investment with someone else's money? You know, not necessarily my own number two, it's what is some of the admin and the documents that I personally in my life need to have in place? I know we touched on certain documents.  You're going to need a good credit score. Like those are also long-term things you need to plan for because you might be sitting in a position where right now your credit score is not doing great maybe because of the pandemic. Now that's the plan you need to set out for yourself that, okay, over the next three months, I'm getting back to, you know, solidifying my credit score so that I'm in good standing for creditors to potentially want to allow me to, you know, get money if I'm using the financial institution route. I think the other how that really stuck out for me was like Jared mentioned, it's not just about looking at pictures. It's me also physically being active, sitting out a day in my calendar to say, okay, I've viewed X amount of properties, I've contacted so many agents, but I need to go see them. I need to be sure that what I'm seeing on the pictures is what's really happening because there's a lot of things pictures won't tell you. Like, you need to go press that light switch to check if all the lights are working. You don't know if the geysers work, you don't know if the stove is working. And those are costs that you might find yourself being trapped in having bought this property because you literally just went on pictures. So I think those are some of the main house for me. Yeah, just sitting out a clear price range for myself. So I know what I'm doing, defining what type of property investment I want to go for. For me, I'm definitely looking at like maybe student accommodation. The area of focus, you know, South Africa is large, but where do I actually want to invest? You know, that's also important. And familiarizing yourself with the area in which you want to invest in, it doesn't help that I'm in Pretoria or Johannesburg, but I'm buying a property in Durban. How do I even, you know, so it's also just making sure that I'm very well, like versed in the understanding of that area, especially if it's going to be a first time investment. So for me, because I'm building, I'm trying to build this portfolio, it's first rectifying any mistakes that I've made in buying the first two, make sure that I'm managing them correctly, which I have been, but now, you know, we just tightening the screws a little bit more. And then, yeah, I guess going forward, making sure that I as a landlord know how to, because currently I've been allowing someone else to manage for me, but I think with one of the clauses, I realize that actually I can save a bit of money if I manage it myself, but I didn't know how to. So a lot of that information also helped me, yeah. So I think, yeah, that's a lot of my how, yeah. Wow, okay, so in fact, those few things that we spoke about, we really just spoke about them briefly during this week. And as the weeks go by, we're going to talk more in depth about things like doing a due diligence on your property and understanding all the things you just said now about the electrical wiring, the plumbing, the roof, et cetera, et cetera. How often have we not gotten ourselves into situations exactly as you described, where you buy the house, you move in, and then you find out that the plugs don't work because the electrical compliance certificate you received was actually done by some friend of a friend of the estate agent or the owner, and actually the compliance certificate is meaningless. So you have to do your own due diligence. And we'll talk about all of those things. We'll talk about feasibility studies, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that's enough for now, except for the fact that we also spoke about the private property app and how to use the app to research property. So Jared, what did you learn from that? And Matt, I believe there was a property that you were quite interested in. I think it was a repossessed property that you saw that possibly we could do as a deal together. So Jared, your thoughts on the private property app? I think it's really cool. I think the interface is quite user-friendly. For me, it was quite interesting to see that you could really define that search to the kind of property where it's a flat or a house to how many rooms, how many bathrooms. And it was quite exciting because you really get a scope of the entire country of what's available, just by typing in the name. And for me, it really opened my mind up to going, oh, I'm not just limited to Cape Town. I can actually now think about, is it inter-provincial? Am I gonna go to Joberg and check out a property? Am I gonna invest in something in Durban? And I love it because obviously, all the information is there on the property. The agent's information is there. And so with the easy click of a button, I was connecting with various agents to try and solidify some viewings. Very exciting. And so I really enjoyed the experience. Fantastic. Dabbling, tell us about that deal that was on the private property app that we're looking at. Yes, so there was a property there. It was definitely repossessed because it was by Stanford Bank number one. But also what made it sound like such a gem, which when I view it, we'll see if it really is a gem, is the fact that, am I still, yeah, it's the fact that the price, right? I think it was a three-bedroom, right? It was a three-bedroom, square meters, quite spacious, but the asking price for it was quite competitive. Because the private property app, nice thing about it is that you actually get to see if you, like Jared said, you get to zone in on an area. So if I'm looking at Pretoria and I zone in, maybe Arcadia or I zone in Hatfield, I also get to see the average price range of properties within that area for a one-bedroom or two-bedroom or three-bedroom, just so that you know realistically what is the going rate. So the interesting thing about this one was the fact that it was a three-bedroom, but it was almost priced like a one-bedroom deal. I think it was like 300,000 or something. Yes, I was like 300,000 for a two-bedroom apartment, two parking bays, bathroom, kitchen. So yeah, I guess it's also just understanding why is the bank, why is it that little? Is the bank just trying to recover the money outstanding or is there something wrong? I need to go check it out. But it sounds like a really good deal. Back to your due diligence requirement. So guys, thank you very much for this week. It's been an exciting week of learning. And we thank everybody that was involved in teaching us about our why and our how and about the app itself. And guys, out there, the public that's watching us and listening to this podcast, whatever they call it nowadays, thank you for joining us. Thank you for allowing us into your homes and for allowing us to not just educate Matt, Al and Jared, but also you the public about property and how you too can invest in property within a 50-day period. So keep following us, keep watching us, keep watching us on YouTube, keep watching us on our website, edpfpropertyacademy.com and search us on YouTube and you'll be able to find us there, subscribe to our channel. And every day we will post what we have done on that particular day and you will be able to follow this journey with the edpfpropertyacademy, Private Property and our two special guests, Jared, Ricketts and Matt Al as they have started their journey towards building their own property portfolio. And we hope that you also will be able to do that. So guys, thank you very much for joining us. Join us again on Monday as we continue this journey of the 50-day Property Challenge. Why?


Hello and welcome back to our special 2016 year in review. It was another big year for the RBA. 2016 saw two interest rate cuts as the central bank tried to balance the forces of low inflation and rising house prices. Carson Scott takes a look at the year that was for the Reserve Bank of Australia. Continuity through volatility. That has been the Reserve Bank in 2016. A change of Governor from Stevens to Lowe. Two cuts to the cash rate to negotiate in May and August. And as usual, those offshore headwinds. Brexit. Trump. Always China. And now the ratings agency is telling the government it's time to act.  From the left, Shane Oliver, A&P Capital. David Bassanese. Beta Shares. Mark Bailey. Fig. Coming together as they did through 2016 to comment, to give insight and to chart a way forward on what the central bank will be likely doing next. We end 2016 having ridden through turbulent months and indeed final days of this year. Markets look to have grown up though, since all the worries from yesteryear. Is that an encouragement for the Reserve Bank or are there things that we're not paying heed to and even they might be underestimating into 2017? What's top of their list? I think it's true that when you look globally, a lot of fear at the start of 2016 and then all those worries about Brexit, about Trump, about Italy and of course what happened on each of those things, markets actually rally. We still have the promise and it only remains a promise of pump priming by the world's largest economy.  Why believe them now? Bonds are really going a bit, hey wire, are they not in the year like that? Yeah absolutely. I mean they're pricing in for this inflation that may or may not come through. I'm not sure where you're going to see inflation. I'm not sure whether that bond market route and let's not forget it's just government bonds, not really corporate bonds which are different and I think a lot of investors are getting caught up in that equities versus bonds story. What is going to be the smoking gun to get this bank into further action? Is it going to be a realization that actually the ratings agencies are breathing down our neck and that any potential for further spending looks awfully heroic when you've got a divided set and I mean this is not just to sort of order it up and it'll come like China. Look I think basically the RBA will be driven by inflation. The next two CPI results we see that underlying inflation is still traveling below 2% plus growth probably closer to two and a half rather than three. Speaking of growth, we get February even before those quarterly numbers, we get a February assessment on the outlook. Will they downgrade Shane and is that if anything you're rash enough to ease on a downgrade rather than ease and stand still? I think the reality is that the Reserve Bank will have to downgrade their circa 3% growth forecast. That in turn must mean they're going to have to delay the rise in inflation back towards their target which ultimately I think will be the reason why we'll get another rate cut sometime in the next few months.


Hello and welcome to CMC Markets on Friday the 1st of December and this quick preview of the week beginning the 4th of December is quite a busy week. We've got an EU summit, we've got non-farm payrolls and we've got services PMIs as well as a couple of central bank rate decisions from the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Bank of Canada but before we get on to that we're having a quick look at US equity markets which have continued to go from strength to strength the Dow Jones above 24,000 we've also got the S&P 500 above 2,600 and the Nasdaq has also made new record highs and it's largely down to an expectation that we will get some form of tax reform over the coming days if we haven't already that's likely to be confirmed in the coming days at the moment US policymakers are struggling to come to an agreement on reducing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20% so that's really driving expectations with respect to the US stock market so I think if there is some disappointment there then we could see a little bit of a sell-off there's also the thorny issue of the debt ceiling which has as yet is as yet unresolved and we've also got the Federal Reserve rate meeting later this month which is expected to push US interest rates up once more by 25 basis points we do know who the new head of the Fed is we've also heard announcements for new Fed policymakers Marvin Goodfrent will be joining the Fed board to take one of the vacant slots there so we should also get some clarity as well on his stance on US interest rates going forward because at the moment we've seen a little bit of a sell-off in the US dollar on an expectation that US rate rises next year may not be as many as the markets are pricing in that big said US 10 year yields around about 2.4% but short-term rates particularly two-year rates are heading up so the US yield curve is flattening out and I think that's why you're seeing the dollar come under pressure so let's have a quick look at this week because we've got some important rate decisions from the RBA and the Bank of Canada and what has been notable despite the fact that US markets have continued to be very very bullish is that commodity currencies have come under a significant amount of pressure so if we look at the dollar Canada for example despite a rising oil price Canada has been weakening and it's pushing against a very important resistance level as well as the 200 day moving average around about 120 to 130 so it'll be very interesting in the coming week what the Bank of Canada says with respect to its view on the Canadian economy particularly the housing market as well given the fact that we just had two rate rises this year from the Bank of Canada and the fact that the oil price is now around $60 a barrel which should be Canada positive but as far as been anything but so keep an eye on the dollar cat that's going to be very very interesting over the course of the next couple of days and the Aussie dollar as well because the Aussie dollar has also been on a slow downward decline and here again we're approaching some very very key support levels on the Aussie dollar if we look at a weekly chart we can see that the trend line from the 2016 lows comes in around about 75 cents so around about 80 points above that at the moment if we then change that to a daily chart we can also see that we we've got the November lows around about 75 30 75 20 so around about that 75 level very very key again very dependent on what the RBA's view of the Australian economy is what we have seen I think what is a little bit worrying is that some of the Chinese PMI that we've seen over the past few days has been a little bit on the weak side so maybe there's a few concerns about softening in the Chinese economy as we head into year-end also worth keeping on the pound this week we've had a two-month high against the dollar testing that 13650 area that we saw earlier this year I think what's particularly interesting about this particular chart is how resilient the pound has been particularly against the dollar but also I think against the euro now if we look back over a slightly longer time frame what I've done is I've taken the 2014 peaks of 170 190 seems a long time ago now but there it is and I've calculated some retracement from the lows around about 190 80 190 50 really depends on where you take your low from but ultimately I think if we look at the 38.2 percent retracement level we're looking at around about 138 40 between 1 and 139 50 so there's some very very key resistance levels starting to come into play over the course of the next few days and much will depend on the EU summit which is due on the 4th which is due to start on the 4th of December Theresa May we'll be looking to convince European leaders to give the green lights at the beginning of trade talks there has been some talk that there is an agreement on the divorce bill the thorny issue of the Irish border is the next issue to be resolved and it and it is proven to be a little bit more complicated than at first envisaged however at the moment I think there is an expectation that common sense will prevail and some form of compromise will be put together and the market is currently pricing that in if however we don't get that then expect the power to drop sharply back to this trend line support from the lows that we saw in March this year which currently comes in around about the low 131 132 also have non-farm payrolls this week again a very important number but less so now I think given the fact that we're expecting a rate rise later this month pay particular attention to wages because they were slightly disappointing in the October numbers dropped back to 2.4 percent we're expecting a move back to 2.7 percent if we do get a move back to 2.7 percent obviously that will be dollar positive and we could see a rebound in the dollar which has been on the decline over the course of the past two or three weeks expecting a number of around about 210,000 slightly lower from the October 261 we've also got global services PMIs later this week pretty much from all over the globe that has been one of the more positive areas for growth certainly in the European economy but also in the UK we've got construction PMI services PMI industrial production so very data heavy week this week but ultimately I think the main focus for me this week is likely to be on those rate decisions of the RBA in the Bank of Canada but also the EU summit and the US employment report and of course whether or not we get any form of tax reform now in that context the pound has actually been weighing on the FTSE 100 very very important level around about seventy two eighty that's a very key support level was the June lows the July lows the August lows we did dip below that briefly in September so if we do break below that then 7200 is a very very very important level but ultimately we're still in a range still likely to be within a range as we head towards Christmas I think the big question at the moment is one of the big questions of many is will we get a Santa Claus rally well given how far we've come this year you have to ask yourself the question whether or not that's feasible with the DAX we're in a bit of a channel range 13250 on the topside 12870 on the downside I think we will stay within that range I don't expect to see any new highs this year the same time I don't really expect markets to fall off a cliff either so that's it for this week thank you very much for listening Michael Houston talking to you from CMC markets