Paul Schuder Jr., CFP®

Founder | Wealth Advisor | Aggie | Eagle Scout | Texan
Posts ≠ Advice

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

Yikes

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

I feel like using VAR to review penalties/fouls is like using instant replay for holding calls in football. Ruins the spirit of penalties/fouls for egregious acts.

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

Why is it ‘cancelled’ in the U.K. but ‘canceled’ in the U.S.?

Because we gave them that L in 1776.

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

Yes

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

Do you believe in miracles?

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

Do you believe in miracles?

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

@FreddyLA7 You should stop by Northwest Arkansas on your way to Toronto. Bentonville, AR is where Walmart is headquartered. Would be happy to show you guys around!

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

Lol, aged like milk.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

Spirit Airlines died tonight at the hands of the socialist crusader, Elizabeth Warren

She must be so proud to add another casket to her achievements.

Tonight at 3am, Spirit turns off the lights. 14,000 jobs gone. 30+ smaller airports lose service.

JetBlue offered $3.8 BILLION in cash to buy Spirit in 2022. Shareholders, flight attendants union, literally everyone voted yes.

The combined company would have held 9% of the US market against a Big 4 that already owned 80%.

For anyone who understands numbers: 9% isn’t a monopoly against 80%.

Warren said no.

She wrote letters. She pressured Buttigieg. Biden’s DOJ sued. A federal judge killed the deal in January 2024.

Her argument: the merger would cost consumers $1 billion a year.

Now look at her collateral damage she dusts under the rug.

510 pilots gone in the months after. 1,800 flight attendants furloughed in December.

14,000 jobs in 2023. 7,500 last week. Zero tonight.

And that’s just the people in Spirit uniforms.

Catering goes. Fuel guys go. Baggage crews, gate agents, airport coffee shops, hotels and rental cars in 70 cities Spirit flew to. Every airline job carries 3 more on its back.

40,000 people out of work because of one woman’s moronic crusade against the market.

And the math ain’t mathing.

Spirit abandoned 90 routes during the death spiral. Fares on those routes are up 14% on average. Oakland to Newark: $135 to $288. Fort Myers to San Juan: $92 to $219. Kansas City to Newark up 66%.

That’s reality. Not some BS number from a “study.”

So @SenWarren tell me how this saves the consumer money?

Cheap carriers in a market drop fares 21% across the board. Southwest did this in the 90s and saved Americans $68 BILLION over 20 years.

Warren killed it. That’s what moronic politicians led by socialism do.

Then with her own blind arrogance, she tweeted Spirit’s collapse is “a Biden win for flyers.”

A win.

14,000 people are reading termination letters tonight.

And she’s taking credit.

This is socialism in 2026.

A senator who’s never made payroll thinks she knows how to run a market better than the people who own and work in the company.

She saved you a billion on imaginary paper.

She cost you ten times that in real life.

She didn’t protect consumers from anything.

14,000+ will go from working to welfare.

She will make sure to blame billionaires, hardworking tax payers, AI, capitalism and whatever monster they will make up tomorrow hiding under your bed.

Higher taxes. Fewer jobs. More expensive everything.

She called it a win. I hope you enjoy winning.

[Viking Rob @VikingRobVWO]

Why don't you just tell people the only reason Chernobyl happened is because the soviets were cheap asses and coated the boron rods with graphite instead of lead so it got stuck trying to reinsert, and that anyone competent can build an extremely efficient reactor without fear of a meltdown? And then let's get busy on driving energy costs down.

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

@averagejoelle @dougboneparth Unused subscriptions.

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

Interesting note on the situation in Iran.

[James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy]

Food for thought.

Iran Is Not Winning. It Is Unraveling.

The prevailing narrative on Iran has it almost perfectly reversed. We are told that Tehran is winning a war of wills in the Gulf and that Donald Trump is gambling recklessly with the world’s most sensitive chokepoint. In reality, Iran is not consolidating strength; it is managing decline. And Trump’s play on the Strait of Hormuz has quietly forced energy markets to reprice security—tilting the balance decisively toward the Americas, and away from Europe, Asia and China.
The Islamic Republic no longer resembles a confident revolutionary project.

With the old clerical core leadership shattered, power has splintered between a camp that recognises a deal with the outside world as the only path to survival and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a class of military dictators with guns, patronage networks and a rational fear that any genuine settlement will ultimately throw them overboard. This is not a unified strategy at work; it’s infighting, paranoia, a fragmented system in late-stage decay, crumbling under pressure.

Into this fragmentation, the White House has introduced a form of calibrated coercion too often caricatured as impulsive.

Around the Strait of Hormuz, Washington has threatened disruption without fully triggering it, forcing shipowners, insurers and policymakers to absorb a hard truth: dependence on vulnerable, seaborne Middle Eastern barrels is not a passing inconvenience but a structural risk. Iran can harass tankers and jolt day-to-day sentiment; it cannot rebuild a broken economy on sporadic shocks to global shipping. And the world must deal with the end of Pax Americana!

The underlying playbook is anything but novel. Sun Tzu’s insistence that “all warfare is based on deception”, Machiavelli’s counsel that a ruler must manipulate appearances and exploit factionalism, and Alfred Thayer Mahan’s argument that sea power and control of chokepoints shape the fate of nations are not museum pieces. They are, in this case, the operating code. Trump’s opaque signalling, deliberate use of disinformation and visible but limited naval posture in and around Hormuz amount to a modern, Mahanian use of sea power as economic statecraft.

Energy markets are already adjusting. Tankers are head to the Gulf of America. In a world where a single strait can a risk to economies is Europe and Asia, without ever being fully closed, assets tied to secure basins and diversified export routes deserve a premium.

The Americas sit in an enviable position: vast, politically stable hydrocarbon resources, multiple pipelines and ports, and no dependence on a distant maritime chokepoint controlled by adversaries. By contrast, Europe, much of Asia and China find themselves downstream of vulnerabilities they do not control and regimes they cannot stabilise, exposed to shipping routes that can be threatened faster than alternative supply can be mobilised.

All of this plays out against a domestic backdrop in Iran that looks less like revolutionary vigour and more like fear. A state that cannot safely keep its internet on, that must rely on public brutality to deter dissent, is not projecting confidence. It is signalling weakness, to its own citizens as much as to its rivals.

Winston Churchill once remarked that “in war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity; in peace, goodwill.” Iran’s leadership offers only defiance, without realistic prospects of victory or peace.

The uncomfortable conclusion for those still insisting that Tehran is “winning” is that what they are observing is not the rise of a regional hegemon, but the protracted, strategically exploited unwinding of a brittle regime at the centre of an overexposed energy system.

[Eric Karl Hontz @eric_hontz]

My “US hosting the World Cup” take is that it would have been much better to host them in smaller college towns that regularly have 100k spectators for football 🏈 games - would have been more “American” and this communities would have gone all out to be spectacular hosts.

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

@Red_Devil1208 @PolymarketSport AND, to clarify. Kyle Field is probably top 5 for college football stadiums.

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

@Red_Devil1208 @PolymarketSport Texas Tech, yes. But Kyle Field is home to Texas A&M. We’ve been ranked regularly throughout 2016-2025. Granted we lose our ranking by the end of the year.

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

@BillAckman @X Good on you to fight it! Hoping your daughter get through this.

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

@JarrodUpton Jarrod, are you referring to the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS? I love the book Traction! Would enjoy hearing more about your approach to this.

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

@ShaneTuttleNCAA That’s a tough quote 🔥

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

Last month, I turned 30 - I ran a 30 miler to celebrate, lol. It was a goal I set on my birthday last year. For my 31st, my goals are to grow my digital presence & increase my squat + bench 5 rep max.

In addition to turning 30, I also launched my own financial planning firm, Crystal Oak Wealth Management.

I hope you'll follow along to help keep me accountable! You may even learn a thing or two about your personal finances.

Current stats:
X followers - 239
LinkedIn connections - 868
LinkedIn business page followers - 19
Facebook business page followers - 39
Instagram business page followers - 14
Bench Max - 145 (5 reps)
Squat Max - 215 (5 reps)

Only up from here!

[Paul Schuder Jr., CFP® @schud3r]

USA Gold in Team Skate. Let’s go!!!

[Danielle DiMartino Booth @DiMartinoBooth]

January 23, 2026

OPEN
LETTER II

Every Hardworking American Who Wakes Up in the
Morning Asking Themselves What Went Wrong

The Federal Open Market Committee
2051 Constitution Avenue
Washington, DC  20418

Dear Distinguished Members of the Federal Open Market Committee,

Ahead of the contentious 2016 presidential election, Highland Park Presbyterian’s late Right Reverend Bryan Dunagan delivered a stern, succinct, secular message. To paraphrase, “If you don’t vote, you renounce the right to find fault for four years.” Deeply missed as he is, taken from the world at the tender age of 44 due to a fluke twist of medicine, Dunagan’s words are nonetheless directed at you this Wednesday.

By law, 18 of you can still occupy your positions at year-end. By law, you are required to elect the chair and vice chair of the Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday, as is the case at the conclusion of every first FOMC meeting of the calendar year. By law, your vote counts. And by golly, if you don’t vote, you renounce the right to find fault with whomever President Trump nominates to a different position, that of chair of the Federal Reserve Board.

While you are more than aware, should President Trump choose to have Stephen Miran return to his post as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors after his abbreviated term ends the last day of this month, the 18 of you who can still occupy your positions at year-end are in full control of your fate. Allow me to repeat myself please. The gentleman or gentlewoman who stands behind the podium at the conclusion of every FOMC meeting to explain, on your behalf, why and how you have made monetary policy is the individual you elect.

Naïve, I am not. I worked inside the Dallas Fed for nine years. I personally bore witness to the deep intransigence against breaking with tradition. My vexation was so acute upon my departure that I wrote a book that immediately branded me persona non grata within the institution that 18 of you lead today. Call me bratty if you must. But two squandered years teaming up with 800 PhDs in economics searching for a better inflation gauge pissed into the wind left me…well, fed up. Why bother with the existential façade of caring for the American people if the solution required to correctly measure price pressures negated the ability to maintain zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and Quantitative Easing (QE)? As such, as you are all highly cognizant, all staff papers concluding that a new inflation metric was needed to prevent a replay of the Great Financial Crisis were burned. So yes…a clinically hyperactive former markets advisor to Richard Fisher was sufficiently miffed to dedicate 2 ½ years of my life, with four kids under the age of 12, to writing a book explaining why the Fed abandoned the “public” officials are dutybound to serve.

But I don’t digress. The 18 of you can come clean on Wednesday. You can vote into power an FOMC chair who honors the Fed’s raison d’être of safeguarding the buying power of the U.S dollar.

At the risk of being political, which I’ve dedicated my career to avoiding, you have a Fed Chair candidate in your circle who can force the hands of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and President Trump.