March 10, 2021 • 39 mins
Covid, the pandemic, and lockdowns have affected just about every aspect of our lives. Wearing masks, virtual schooling, and social distancing are just a few things we’ve experienced that will likely change how we fundamentally view the world. Here on our show, of course, we’re all about personal finance and so as we approach a 1 year anniversary of the covid pandemic, the big question that we’re wondering is: has covid changed how we handle our money? In what ways have we changed how we earn, spend, save, and invest. And what happened in the past 12 months that can inform our ability to be financially successful in the future? Whether you’re better off now than a year ago or if your finances are in rough shape, there are takeaways that will help us to win with our money.
During this episode we enjoyed an Abraxas by Perennial Artisan Ales. And as we’ve kicked things off with a bang in 2021, we could really use your help to spread the word- let friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to spread the word to get more people doing smart things with their money in these difficult times!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel and I'm Matt.
Today we're discussing how COVID's hard knocks have exposed our
money deficiencies. You know what I like about the fact
(00:28):
that we use the word deficiencies in the title of
this episode because it it makes me think of nutrition, right,
and when we are deficient in something, it means we're
we're not we're not healthy. Yeah, there's a bone deficiency
and my bones aren't getting something that they need, probably
the calcium. That's of calcium and vitamin D. Okay, I
think you need the vitamin D in order. That's why
(00:48):
the ad vitamin D to milk. Did you know that?
I think you need that vitamin in order for your
body to absorb the calcium. There we go. There, the
more you know. But this also makes me think of
this Warm Buffet quote where he talks about out now
when the tide goes out, you get to see who's
swimming naked. And this isn't a weird like perverted joke
on behalf of Mr Buffett, But he's talking about investing
(01:09):
and those who are over leveraged and those who are
doing riskier speculative buys. Right, And so I think the
same can be true when it comes to our money.
There are a lot of behaviors that we can engage in, uh,
and we can kind of be living on the edge
when it comes to our personal finances. And I think
for a lot of Americans, COVID has exposed some of
those deficiencies, some of those shortcomings as it pertains to
(01:29):
our money. So I'm excited to talk about that with
you today. Man. Yeah, COVID has definitely revealed some things. Um,
COVID has revealed a lot in our personal lives, right
in our marriage, maybe, let's say, in our family structure,
family dynamics. COVID has done a number on us as
a whole. And today we're gonna kind of take a
look and see, you know what lessons we can learn
what COVID has revealed about our personal finances, Matt, Before
(01:51):
we get to that real quick, I wanted to mention
I stumbled upon this website baby quip dot com. Have
you heard of it? Is it a website that sells
baby Q tips? I wish that'd be adorable, but no,
this one was specifically a website where you can rent
your baby stuff out to other people and uh, let's
say you're traveling with an infant and you can't take
the crib and the stroller and all that kind of
(02:12):
stuff or it's just like too tough, too difficult to
bring all that stuff along with you. You You can. I
remember seeing people traveling, like you know, in the airport
and they've got like the car seat, and I'm just
like that looks miserable, like I do not like, yeah,
I'm not going to sign up for that, you know,
like there's no way that I am willing to travel
with my kids, at least not at this age. So
instead you can go to baby quip dot com and
(02:35):
you can rent your stuff from a local individual where
you're traveling too. I thought it was cool that one
that you can do that right, Like you can be
Let's say you go down to Florida for a week
for vacation. You don't want to pack all that baby stuff.
You can rent stuff locally from someone who lives there
also too, if you have extra baby stuff, this is
a way in which you could make money. You can
have like a little side houstle going on. Right, It's
(02:56):
kind of like Touro for your car. This is like
tourow for your baby stuff. You'd be like, all right, West,
somebody needs the krypt tonight. You're sleeping on the couch exactly.
This makes me think too. I mean, you and I
were both on our last babies basically at least, you know,
we're not planning on having any more kids. Uh. You
and Emily are done for sure. Kate and I were
on the way to being completely done with with babies
(03:18):
for sure. But it makes me wonder, what is the
number one piece of equipments? You know, this is a
baby quip baby equipment kind of website. Is there something
that you feel like, over the years has paid dividends?
You know? When it comes to being able to raise
the kids. The first thing that comes to my mind
is the that white I kea high chair that it's
I mean, it's it's ubiquitous, you know, it's it's the
one that you see everywhere. It's like twenty dollars. We've
(03:39):
used that for all four of our kids. Yeah, high
chair is clutch and can make it through. For us.
I think it was probably a Jockey con stroller that
was gifted to us. I think it was like it's
seventy five Jock controller. But we've used it for all
three kids and it's stood the test of time and
it's just like it works, it functions, and it's great.
It's it's nothing like it's not one of those fancy ones,
but that's not what we need. You know. We're not
(04:00):
like fancy joggers running marathons or anything anything like that.
So it's it's just like perfect for strolling around the
neighborhood and getting over all the you know, we have
some crumby sidewalks in our neighborhood, all these like tree
roots growing up underneath it. So you actually need a
stroller with like solid wheels, like with good jogging stroller wheels.
And I think that's probably been like the number one
piece of baby equipment that we've like used all the time.
(04:21):
And you've used that for the girls, You've used that
for your new son as well. Uh, this actually makes
me think of as well. Over the years for the
kids rooms, we've used a nest cam, but they now
require a subscription that you pay every single month if
you want to be able to see what happened, you know,
and we like to see what happened because there are
a lot of fights that happened, and not everyone always
tells the truth. But you recently turned us on to
(04:43):
this company called Wise w y z E And that's
all recently that they came up with a new camera
V three. But what's so great about these cameras is
the fact that you can stick a little micro SD
card in there and it'll record footage locally on that
camera and HD and so that's nice. But then of
course you gets you completely eliminate that recurring charge and
so that's a huge freule win man. And the cameras
(05:04):
really cheap too, like some of those Nest cameras are
like upwards. I don't even know what they cost down
like some of the nice ones, but I mean they're
definitely over a hundred bucks. Uh. In this new V
three Wise camp bucks pretty sweet. Man's a huge deal.
And they've got a new security system I saw too
that I think it's seventy bucks a year and that
includes actual monitoring. Yeah, we should put a link to
that in the show notes. But it's one of those
(05:25):
things where, uh, that's something that has drastically come down
in price, is home security, you know, system monitoring. I
remember when yeah, I remember when simply say, launched, it
was fifteen bucks a month for monitoring, and it was like,
oh my gosh, how did they do that? And now
there's people doing it for you know, like six bucks
a month and pennies on the dollar. Yeah, exactly. All right, Well,
let's mention the beer that we're having on the show today.
(05:47):
This one is a Braxis. It's by Perennial Artisan Nails,
and this is a giant stout. So looking forward to
sharing this one with you, my friend on the show today.
But onto the subject at hand. We're talking about how
COVID's hard knox have exposed our money deficiencies. And you know,
because we're essentially a year in from COVID being named
(06:07):
a pandemic by the World Health Organization, let's take a
look back and see kind of what's changed in the
past year, because this event has changed everything about how
we live and really in short order, when you think
about it, uh, mask wearing or double masking, virtual schooling,
potting with your best friends, all of those have had
an impact. And I don't even think we fully understand
(06:28):
all the ways in which COVID has like ravaged and
impacted our lives. It's it's also highlighted some of the
heroism of like frontline healthcare and grocery store workers. It's
changed like how we shop and what we're buying. It's
realigned priorities for us personally and in our financial lives.
And as vaccinations are ramping up, which is good news,
and we kind of start to turn this corner, you know, Matt, you,
(06:51):
you and I don't want to forget these important lessons
I think are worth caring forward. And that's why we
wanted to highlight the important shifts and lessons that we've
learned from OVID and some of those glaring money deficiencies
that have been brought acutely to our attention. Yeah, I think,
I mean down the road when we look back at
it's gonna be one of those years. It's going to
be one of those events where in the moment right now,
(07:11):
I don't think we fully understand the impact that it's
going to have on our lives. You know. It kind
of makes me think back when nine eleven happened, Uh,
Like we didn't truly understand that, you know, the impact
that would have on our country. And so you're mentioning
kind of, yeah, all the different ways that it's affecting
our lives. But here on the show, of course, you know,
we dive into personal finance, and so the big question
that we're wondering is has COVID changed how we handle
(07:31):
our money? You know, we're wondering what kind of impact
the pandemic has had on our ability to earn, spend, save,
and invest and what happened in the past twelve months
that can inform our ability to be financially successful in
the future. You know, That's what we're going to be
discussing today. How it is that we can continue to
apply the financial lessons that we've learned from lockdowns in
(07:52):
the pandemic as we are looking to move forward. Yeah,
and though we're tackling some universal lessons on this episode,
there are also some lessons were a bit of an outlier,
but I think, you know, maybe a couple of them
are worth covering. Uh, let's talk about kind of how
the pandemic has impacted our ability to earn money or
how we think about earning money. Direct stimulus payments were
were one of those things that were unexpected going into
(08:14):
I think if you told me in January, guess what
the government is going to send you know, thousands of
dollars millions, tens of millions of people. I would have
been like, yeah, probably not, that's not gonna happen, um,
But those payments were necessary to help folks who lost
their job, were furloughed, and to also kind of thrust
money directly into a struggling economy to kind of help
facilitate some of that spending that really does make our
(08:36):
economy go. One of the lessons that we learned, I think,
over the past twelve months, is that the federal government
has this the ability to do some pretty extraordinary things
in times of severe need. Other actions that we saw
because of the pandemic were PPP loans for small businesses,
increased unemployment compensation in the federal reserve, buying assets to
(08:56):
keep financial markets functioning. One lesson I know that I learned,
although it's maybe a little less practical, is that the
government has a lot of power to take some real
initiative when our economy starts to sputter, And they definitely
stepped in and did something big time, you know, over
the past year. Right. But that also raises the question too,
how important of a lesson is this one for us
to internalize and to remember because ultimately, like we feel,
(09:19):
it's not as important as many of the others that
we're gonna talk about today because of the you know,
the impact we have as individuals on government action is
pretty limited. Uh. It was nice to see the government
quickly Russian and provide aid with the care Is Act,
but we've also seen a lot of dysfunction uh in
government since then, and so you know, hoping that future
difficulties will sort of release A Night and Shining Armor
(09:41):
isn't something I'm going to count on, and so let's
move on to some of the things that are going
to be more within your control. I feel like if
you'd run for president, that would help. Are you calling
me a night and Shining Army? Yes, I feel like dude,
come on, President, Matt, I'd I jousted you, but I
don't think I can make a good resident, all right.
I think another Uh, something that we learned that's actually
(10:02):
more applicable to how we move forward is about industry shifts.
And they're always taking place, they always have been and
they always will be. But oftentimes industry shifts happen slowly
and we fail to kind of recognize and realize what's
happening before our very eyes, because it's not happening as
quickly as it has during COVID. COVID, of course, accelerated
(10:23):
many of the shifts that were already taking place. Some
sectors are still barely alive and haven't really begun their recovery.
Although travel has seen an uptick, travel is still a
sector that is severely hurt because of the pandemic. I
think one of the takeaway lessons is that no specific
job or industry is bulletproof, although some are maybe a
little more teflon like than others, kind of deflect the blows. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(10:46):
And I think that COVID has created some real incentives
for people to think a little more about the future
potential of the industry that they work in, and maybe
whether or not they should be looking to shift and
take the skills that they have and maybe apply them
in a completely different sector altogether. And Matt, my day
job still last year, when the pandemic was kind of
(11:06):
roiling and getting started, was was working in radio and
something happened that people were calling the apocalypse. Uh. During
during those months, radio advertising fall off a cliff um
and it proceeded to come back in large part, but
I do think that those months have accelerated the downturn
of radio. Radio stations are hurting more than ever before,
and we're gonna kind of continue to see it as
a medium in decline. It's one of those things like
(11:28):
I got into radio at a pretty bad time fifteen
years ago, and getting into radio today is like an
even worst decision. So it's just kind of interesting to
see how that, how that happens, and how something like
COVID can accelerate the demise of something that was kind
of already headed in that direction. Does it Does it
feel weird for you to say like that I was
in radio past tense? You know, because like you recently
shared on the show like a few weeks ago, how
(11:48):
you're now officially full time with the podcast, you know,
like we both are. But it's still kind of weird
to say though, right it is. But it's also Yeah,
when you think about making a shift, making a shift
out of an industry that is in decline is a
whole lot eas year to do then to make a
shift away from an industry that's having a stellar time, Right, Yeah,
that's true. Yeah, So I mean for me personally with
wedding photography. I mean, like I feel like my shift,
(12:09):
my personal income shift started about like four years ago.
We started thinking through that, like, you know what, I
don't want to necessarily have my weekends full of other engagements,
you know, like time with the kids was becoming a
little more precious as they were kind of launching into
full time school. Uh, And so that was kind of
something we started thinking about back then. It kind of
not coincidentally, that's also when we start batting around the
(12:30):
idea of the podcast, but even before then, man, Like
back in is when you and I both started getting
into rental real estate, and dude, that was so clutch
for me to be able to have some multiple streams
of income, right because if I was purely dependent on
a single source, specifically wedding photography, I would have been
in a world of hurt. Last year, I mean, the
industry ground to a halt. And granted there's not like
(12:53):
a major shift that took place or that it is
taking place, but I mean basically everything was just put
on hiatus. So that kind of leads us suit to
our next point, which is the that COVID has just
amplified the need, you know, to be working towards having
multiple streams of income. You know, if you're married or
in a long term relationship, having to paychecks, that's just
(13:13):
you know, one great way of doing this. Uh. But
you know, even looking beyond just paychecks that you get
from a single employer, you know, a way to create
more fiscal resiliency is going to be by finding other
ways to generate cash flow every single month. We talk
here on the show how it's important to start with
your day job and then look to ways that you
can easily maximize your your earning potential there first. But
(13:33):
you know, there is inherent risk involved when the vast
majority of your income does come from a single source. Yeah,
for sure, And that was something that a lot of
people recognized specifically during COVID. It's definitely an argument, I think,
to for firing up some entrepreneurial spirit. Maybe it's in
you somewhere and it's kind of been laying dormant, or
maybe it did kind of come out of you during
(13:54):
the pandemic um And for some that means looking to
monetize your passion COVID. For some people to turn be
into a career as their traditional career of the job
where they were working essentially didn't have room for them anymore.
I couldn't they couldn't get a paycheck there, and that's
been kind of interesting to see some of the people
that have had success by striking it on their own
when they didn't really have many other great options. You know, Matt,
(14:16):
you mentioned war big fans of rental real estate to
diverse fire income. That takes time, um and also capital, right,
So it's not easy, but COVID made it apparent. The
multiple streams of income is incredibly nice to have, and
although it's going to take planning and some time to
get there, it's definitely worth pursuing. Yeah, man in the
statistics support this as well. There are nearly eight more
new business applications that were filed last year compared to
(14:38):
ten years ago, back in twenty two, So that's encouraging.
Folks are making that change. People are pivoting and finding
ways to diversify their income. Yes, it's good to see
that people are pivoting based on the circumstances, and that
is certainly uh an important lesson that we've learned from COVID.
You gotta be able to pivot quickly, and lessons that
we can learn from the deficiencies that we can easily see.
(14:59):
We'll get to some more of us right after this break.
All right, we are back, and you know, Joe, basically
we were talking about in that first section there some
of the hard knocks that we took due to COVID
and how that affected our ability to earn money. And
(15:20):
so next let's look at some of the other areas
that have been impacted by COVID. You know, we've certainly
seen spending trends change since COVID started back in April.
The largest drop in consumer spending ever recorded occurred. Uh.
Since then, though, you know, we've seen online shopping. Uh.
It was already a mainstay, but now folks of all
ages are getting more comfortable shopping online. Credit Card debt
levels went down actually last year. And you know, while
(15:42):
that's not what you would expect in the middle of
a you know, rampant job loss and and dire economic predictions,
it certainly goes to show how much flexibility we have
with our money, and too just how often the lack
of positive movement. It's it's more about our lack of implementation,
not a lack of income or or not a lack
(16:03):
of knowing what to do with our money. It's actually
our behavior where we need to make those changes. Yeah,
that's true. And and one of the areas that people
spend a good bit of money is travel. We saw
travel spending, or traditionally people spend money. We saw a
deep dive right in travel spending, obviously much to the
stagrin of hotels, airlines, all sorts of different companies impacted
(16:24):
by the inability to travel or the unwillingness as well
to travel. And yeah, I think there are a couple
things that we learned through this disruption on how we
should think about spending money when it comes to travel.
One of the lessons that we've learned, one of the
things that the pandemic exposed was that we have to
be careful when booking travel through third party sites. Booking
(16:44):
a trip through an online travel agent or third party
discount site can bring down the cost of your trip,
but there are other risks involved when you don't book
directly with an airline or a hotel, and it's important
to know the trade offs. I mean, Matt, I'm still
all about booking a hotel at price line in order
to save money, but you might not get the same
customer service or the same cancelation benefits when you book
(17:05):
a hotel there as opposed to going directly through the
hotel itself. Lots of people found less helpful customer service
and that refunds were hard to come by when they
booked at some of those third party travel sites, and
especially like let's say you booked through an independent travel
insurance company or individual who runs their own travel insurance agency,
sometimes they didn't have the ability to give those refunds.
(17:27):
And so how you book travel matters, and it's important
to know the fine print when you are booking travel
in the future. Yeah, that's right. And and on that note,
to travel insurance is more worthwhile than most people thought.
That's something that we've learned recently. Uh. And you can
purchase a policy on sites like ensure my Trip that
will provide real, actual help in case your trip is canceled.
(17:50):
And so just make sure to read the fine print
of your specific policy. But COVID really drew a big
red circle around the importance of travel insurance, whereas in
the past, I think it's something that we would have
been like, no, that's something that you could absorb, just
absorb the cost of that, but now we're realizing it's
definitely something worth considering. Yeah, and where your book matters
to write. Like when we're talking about the airlines, they
all have different responses in the pandemic. We talked to
(18:11):
Scott Kuys about this, you know, early on, and some
airlines were happy to change your plans or to give
you a refund, whereas some airlines were trying to stick
you with a credit as opposed to giving you cash
back in your hands. Same with some of the cruise lines.
Part of my takeaway from all that was like, man,
I'm so glad that I fly Southwest most of the
time because they pretty much always make it easy to
(18:32):
change your plans. And that's a big park. Yeah, that's
something that we've learned specifically when it comes to travel,
especially travel by airline or by cruise. But you know,
as it pertains to just how we spend our money
in general. With more folks working from home, commuting has
become less of a thing. Uh. And this meant that
a lot of folks were shaving quite a bit of
i'll spend time out of their days, uh, And they
(18:53):
were saving that money as well. Insurers, we're offering partial
refunds on auto policies. Uh, we were spending less money
on ass uh. In some folks, Joel, like you were
ditching a car altogether. COVID just you know, revealed how
businesses and how workers alike continued to do things the
same way that they had always been done, just despite
(19:13):
the potential benefits you know, of shaking things up, uh
and allowing working from home in greater numbers. Uh. In
this instance, covid is is a reminder that it shouldn't
take a pandemic in order for us to make smart
shifts and how we live our lives. Uh. And we
should question the things that we do every single day.
You know, we should at least ask the question of
our employer, is this something that is an option? You know,
(19:34):
can I work from home? Like? What are the options here? Uh?
You know, transportation costs are huge, and so if there's
a way that we can reduce some of those costs,
we're gonna be for that every single day. Yeah. Is
this immutable? Is this like fixed unchangeable? And those are
good questions to ask because now a lot more things
are changeable and businesses are reacting to what their workforce expects.
(19:55):
They have a new expectation about how they can work,
where they can work um and hours a day in
which they work too. And Matt, I think there's like
speaks to a greater overall shift essentially that's occurred in
so many ways that we spend you know, our family,
We're not going out to restaurants like we used to.
Uh through and definitely ordering more pizza. I saw a
storyc pizza sales are like through the roof and that
(20:18):
it was like pizza is like the perfect pandemic food.
They already had the delivery thing down. They were already
used to people coming by and just picking up a
couple of pizzas on Fridays, which is what you and
our families tend to do every other Friday. We get
everybody together and we have a pizza party, get that
kids together. It's a lot of fun. It's one of
those shifts that was easy to make righte and and
we've also seen that that a lot of expenses in
(20:38):
our lives are are less rigid than we previously thought.
I feel like this is the perfect time for our listeners,
for all of us to remake our budget and consider
cutting expenses in our lives. For instance, you just mentioned
our family, we ditched a car, which lowered our insurance costs,
which lowered our taxes every year. Um on that car.
You know, the set of tires you don't have to
buy every fifty to seventy five thousand miles or whatever exactly.
(21:01):
It's lowering our electricity bill, but I don't know for
like twelve bucks a months, so not that much. Well, yeah,
you have the electric car. Yeah, I'm a little bitter.
I just recently had to replace some tires on the
van and so I'm still feeling that burn. A little
bit expensive. But those are the kind of things I
think that we can we can really start to rethink
and remake our budget because when something's imposed on us.
I think it was former President Obama's chief of staff
raw Mimanuel who said, never let a good crisis go
(21:23):
to waste. And I think there's like some wisdom there too,
not to exploit something, but in essence to be able
to use it for our own benefit, to use it
for our own good and for all of us. You know,
I think it shows we have more control over our life,
our work, and our finances than maybe we previously thought.
Drastic changes that have been imposed on us reveal the
truth that we easily forget that we actually do have
(21:45):
some of that control. We can make changes in our
personal lives and in our finances so that our lives
look a little more like we want them to look,
and less like they're being constantly shaped by the forces
around us, um more like they're being shaped from our
own hopes and desires, shaped from what. Yeah, it's h
I mean, that's what we would encourage our listeners to do.
You know, ask yourself, you know, what shifts have you
(22:06):
made that you can actually keep around? And you know,
maybe that's eating in more often. Maybe it's buying fewer
clothes since you don't have to go into the office,
you feel a little less pressure to have the newest threads.
Maybe it's exercising at home, Joe, that's something you and
Emily have been doing. Right, These are all major things
that have changed for a number of folks, and so
just think about the shifts that you've already made that
can stick around after you're vaccinated, after you know COVID
(22:29):
is no longer part of our zite guys, But also
do you think about the shifts that you can still
consider implementing. Maybe these are changes that you've kind of
stumbled upon, but if you actually step back from it,
you're like, oh, wow, we're we're saving two dollars a
month because we're not doing X like whatever that is
in your life. Uh. Just the ability that we have
to cut back on spending is just incredible, and that's
one of the most immediate ways that we can have
(22:50):
a huge impact when it comes to our personal finances.
I think the number one way that COVID has impacted
our family is that it's just reduced a huge amount
of things that were on the calendar. They were just
kind of taking off the calend are indefinitely and I'm
gonna be way more thoughtful about the things I put
on the calendar in the future. It's easy to let
these things pop on than they never come off. Um,
different activities were involved in different neighborhood things that we
(23:10):
want to be a part of, some of which we
are excited to get back to and others of which
I am glad for the lull and I'm not planning
on getting back to them. And so I think it's
probably similar with the budget. For a lot of people,
it's like, man, I really do miss going to eat out.
But you know what, they didn't have to be a
three line item in my budget. It can be a
hundred fifty dollar line on item in my budget. And
that's another way in which I can save moving forward.
(23:31):
I wouldn't have done that otherwise, but the pandemic has
revealed this deficiency that I was leaning on eating out
as a crutch. And you know what, eating in hasn't
been all that bad, That's right, But let's move on
and talk about saving. And there's still ten million Americans
that are unemployed, um, and that's a hard statistic to see,
and I think that reflects the truth that there's never
been a better time for people to have a fully
(23:52):
funded emergency fund. The economy essentially had been booming for
ten years straight, unemployment wasn't as big of a concern
for most people. And COVID just really drove on the
point that the job that you have, you're not promised
to have that tomorrow, and so you do need to
have your financial act together in order to weather a
potential jobless period in your life. And and I think
(24:13):
this just totally reflects the fact that people need an
emergency fund to whether that storm. It really drives that
point home in a big, big way, right. And so
if you're newer to the show, you know this simply
just means having cash savings in the bank that you
can draw on for any unexpected emergencies that arise. You know, like,
this isn't money that's invested, it's just sitting there waiting
on those storm clouds to come rolling in. Uh. And
(24:35):
as far as how much you should have set aside, UH,
we've talked about this before, but we feel that there
are two levels of a funded emergency fund. First, it
means having two thousand, FO hundred and sixty seven dollars
set aside. This is a basic amount that should be
your top financial priority, and that's actually money gear number one.
We go into depth and detail as to why we
chose that dollar amount. You can go and listen back
to that episode. We will put it in our show notes.
(24:57):
But after that, after you're getting in layer match and
paying off high interest rate in debt, that's when you
want to have that fully loaded emergency fund. That's when
you're gonna want to have three to six months worth
of living expenses set aside. Yeah, And I think one
of the deficiencies that COVID revealed was that most of
us can save more than we thought we could um
and that bore out in the numbers and how people
(25:18):
responded during the height of the crisis. Right, Yes, since
the start of the pandemic, the assets that Americans had
in the bank shot up from seven hundred billion dollars,
it doubled to one point four trillion dollars. And we
saw a credit card debt on the decline, Like people
were paying off credit card debt in the middle of
lots of unemployment and financial uncertainty. People really use that
(25:39):
time to save more, like you said, and then to
pay off debt. And it's it's fascinating though, how in
normal times we say that we can't do it, but
then the crisis hits and we find a way. And
we saw the same thing happened back in oh seven
and oh wait, people paid off their debt and increase
their savings even while the economy was experiencing just a
massive amount of turmoil, the same as through in COVID times.
(26:01):
And it's not I don't think that saving money is easy.
It's always easier to spend than it is to save,
But it takes intentionality in order to to save money well.
But excuses are often a major factor that keeps us
from ramping up our savings. It's not necessarily that we
can't prioritize saving more, it's just that we don't. And
I think that is definitely one of the biggest lessons
(26:21):
we can learn from COVID. One of the biggest deficiencies
that it shows us is our inability to prioritize that.
And this crisis forced us to change what we did
on a dime, and I hope that most of us
can kind of stick with that change, that prioritization of
paying off high interest rate debt and saving more of
our income. That provides a huge mental boost to how
(26:42):
you feel about your money, while at the same time
just providing a bunch more financial security too. That's right,
And so that is how COVID has shown some of
the deficiencies when it comes to our money in some
of these areas. We're gonna talk about one more area
where deficiency was revealed due to COVID, uh, And we're
gonna get to that one right after this break. All right, man,
(27:09):
let's keep talking about this. Let's talk about COVID and
how it's impact that our finances. Obviously, it's had a
major impact in all facets of our life. Some things
we're ready to get back to normal, right, I think
most of us are ready to go back with our family,
to eat at a restaurant and not feel weird about it. Um,
that'll be nice. I think I think we're ready to
see our neighbors, you know, uh, their faces and not
(27:30):
just their master versions. There are so many things I
am ready to get back to normal. Um. But then
there are other things, like we've talked about where I
want to learn a lesson from it, and I want
to change and I want to pivot moving forward. And
I think you know, the same is true with our
personal finances. There are some lessons that we've learned that
we need to take forward and not just forget. And
the seam is true too when it comes to our investing, right,
(27:51):
Like how it is that we invest our money. And
the fact is, like COVID hasn't really changed our approach
to investing, you know, it hasn't changed it all that much.
Although there are some important, albeit subtle lessons from the
past year that are really important to point out. And
the first is the fact that corrections happen. Most folks,
especially younger millennials maybe who had only the foggiest recollection
(28:12):
of what happened back in two thousand seven, two thousand
and eight, uh began to think that the stock market
maybe only goes up, and the you know, the truth
is that when you look at a chart of the
overall market for the past fifty years, you'll see that
it does mostly go up. You know, like that's mostly true,
but human behavior always enters the equation, and quite a
few downturns and recessions should be expected in the lifetime
(28:34):
of any investor. You know, the stock market is not
a long term savings account that just allows for far
higher returns without any risk, without any of those dips.
And we saw the risk full on in full force
in March, right, and a lot of people panicking. We
you know, in retrospect now when we look back, we're like, man,
that dip was extreme, but it was short lived. But
(28:55):
we didn't know that that was going to be the case.
At the time. A lot of people were continuing to
predict that the stock market would fall further and you know,
I'll be honest, I thought that the downturn it would
last a little bit longer than it did. I did
not think it was gonna last three weeks, you know.
But I think a really important question to ask yourself
based on that is how did you respond during the
(29:15):
stock market free fall that happened in March. This is
one of the most helpful questions that you can ask yourself.
If you made changes to your portfolio when the stock
market was tanking, then maybe you weren't invested properly in
the first place. Last year, we all got the chance
to not just assume what we think we would do
given a steep market decline, but to see how we
actually handled it in real life. And that's really informative
(29:37):
moving forward. Right, Like, if you did make some changes,
if you sold some stuff, if you moved your assets
into cash when the stock market was having a tough go,
then your investment plan in general it needs to change, right.
That's right. And that's also too why it's so important
to know like your specific timeline and to have a
written investment plan. The importance of a personal plan was
(29:57):
magnified during the early months of COVID for sure. Uh,
you know, the plan that you can stick to is
gonna be way better than a plan that keeps you
up at night that that causes you a lot of stress.
Joe and I, I mean, you and I were both
invested in stocks, and we are totally okay with that,
since you know, we're in the wealth building phase of
our lives. But make sure that your portfolio is something
that you can stick with through the good and the
(30:19):
tough times. Yeah. So let's put it in perspective to Matt.
If somebody made a change during that time because they
were like, this is it, this is not good, this
is going to be an extended downturn and started freaking out. Yeah,
I can't handle it. Well. If you had made changes
instead of staying invested, uh, because the markets were tanking
and you happen to sell at the exact wrong moment,
you would have missed out on about a seventy five
(30:40):
percent increase that we've seen in the market since then.
That's on the SMPI, not some fancy tech stock or
bitcoin or anything like that, right, Tesla. That's on the
SMP five hunder, which is you know, one of the
more conservative indexes out there. Uh, that's unbelievable and to
think that somebody who pulled out at the wrong time
they would have missed out on all of that. It's
good to remember that the market will bounce back. Uh.
(31:02):
You know, when you look at the past fifty years,
at the rolling fifteen year periods, there's not one single
fifteen year period where you're not going to average a
positive return, and so it's good to remind ourselves of that,
especially when things aren't looking so great. So yeah, I
think so. One of the deficiencies that that we've found
out in COVID times when it comes to our investing
is maybe that we're paying a little too much attention
to the markets to where our investments stand on a
(31:25):
day to day basis. Maybe we should actually take a
step back, develop that investment plan, make changes rarely to
our investment plans, and plan those changes out in advance.
If emotions are making the roles instead of your investment plan,
then that is something that needs to change. That's a
lesson you need to learn from from what's happened in
the past year. That's true, like you would have been
better off right in your bike and then having gotten
hit by a car, getting knocked into a coma for
(31:47):
three months and then having woken up and be like, wait,
what's going on? What happened to the markets? Like you
would have been in a better position. Depends on how
financially speaking, it depends on how big the hospital bill was.
Assume you have insurance. I'm not trying to make light
of if you've ever gotten hit by a car, which
I have, what you have, I'm seezing you a little,
trying to think of it, if it was worth it
or not? What? What? I don't know. It's not fun
(32:09):
to get hit by a car. Yeah, but it's important though.
I mean we're talking about investing, and it's important to
stick with a plan, stick with the decision, and stick
with whatever is going to work for you and not
have your actions swayed by your emotions. And if you
didn't get hurt too badly, like I I didn't have
like a little shoulder messed up. But it can be
a good story to tell a cocktail parties and stuff,
you know, So you're talking about the pain. Actually, I
heard your daughter there. The girls were over at our
(32:29):
house for lunch today and I went up there for lunch,
and I heard your daughter tell a joke, and she goes,
why did the window go to the doctor? And my
girls were like why and she's like because it had
window pane, which I thought was a perfect dad joke.
Was that one that you you told her? No, she
really that one for me, But I almost steal that
one from her. I mean I literally laughed out loud.
I was like, Oh, that one's really good. It's pretty good,
(32:50):
especially coming from a seven year olds not as cute
from a thirty seven year old. It's still good. But uh,
you know, like I feel like what we're pointing out
here is the fact that we have control over our lives.
You know, like we we say that there are financial
goals that we can't attain, but when the you know,
when the crap hits the fan, we actually are able
to make dramatic changes to our personal finance habits. The
(33:11):
pandemic has made that abundantly clear. Back when we were
kind of coasting along in our pre COVID lives, I
know there were many areas where I certainly probably lack
some initiative. Maybe there were you know, maybe some moderate
financial goals that we had set for ourselves, but like
and I weren't fully committed, you know, and so for
many of us, unfortunately, it took something as dramatic and
jarring as the pandemic to kind of snap us out
(33:34):
of our our milk toast. Ways. Yeah, man, this whole
episode two, it makes me think about some of the
emails we've we've received in recent months from from listeners
right and and they have been taking action for years
now based on what they've been hearing on the podcast,
and a lot of them weren't completely unscathed by COVID.
Some of them did lose a job or their partner
(33:54):
lost a job, but they were able to get through
this time with far less anxiety and hardship because of
the steady moves that they made in recent years. Uh,
while they've been listening to the show. They were prepared,
even for something that you can't prepare for, right And.
I think it's our hope too, that some of the
money changes that we've already made due to COVID stick around,
that some of our listeners have been able to implement
(34:15):
in their lives, that those will have a stickiness because
of maybe the traumatic effect that COVID has had on
all of us. Maybe you were listening and you made
some of those changes out of necessity, like you had
to cut back, but you've also found that you've been
able to boost your ability to save and that has
provided real financial security. Despite the difficulty, the changes you've
made are worth keeping for good. Let's make it a
(34:38):
point to actually learn from the past year, not to
just have let it happen to us and then immediately
revert back to the way things were. If we can
take a look at those deficiencies head on and we
can learn from them, take the lessons that they have
to show us, will be more resilient when future events,
hopefully non pandemic and nature arise. Yeah, what's interesting about
the pandemic, man, is the fact that, like, the reason
(34:59):
it was so traumatic for all of us, it was
because we all experienced it at the same time. But
like you said, like there are going to be events
that arise and that come up in our lives that
other people aren't experiencing, right, Like we're we're all going
to have sort of our own personal pandemics. Uh, And
that's why it is so important for us to be prepared,
for us to have learned from this past year. And
that's a part of I mean That's why we love
(35:19):
personal fighting so much. Right Like, like you have agency
over your own life, you have control. There are changes
that you can make on an individual level. And that
truly is why we love personal finance so much, is
that these are changes that you can begin making in
your life right now. I love that. Yeah, a lot
of changes based on what we discussed today, right that
people can have already implemented. And if they haven't learned
(35:39):
from some of these lessons, maybe um mull them over
again in your mind and give some thought to how
you can change. Think again, it is worth truly giving
it a little more thought again. I think sometimes we
react to a stimulus and we don't really realize why
did we react that way? Was that the right way
to react? And it's a good time to do some
thinking about how our lives are structured right now? Absolutely well, Matt,
(36:02):
let's get back to the beer real quick that we
had on the show. This one is called Abraxis. It's
a giant stout with chili, pepper, vanilla, cocoa, nibs, something
else's cinnamon cinnamon as well. Yes, did you pick up?
Did you pick up on some of those notes? I
feel like the cinnamon was the biggest note. Yeah, yeah,
that I that I was getting the cinnamon shine through
the chili peppers, not so much like not a whole
lot of heat. Yeah. I was expecting a little more,
(36:24):
hoping for a little more, because I love beers that
have that kind of chili pepper kick, a little bit
of spice. Yeah. But but that's okay, because this was
a super delicious dessert beer. Even though I would have
loved the chili peppers to be stepped up a little bit.
This was smooth, it was rich, it was delicate. It
was definitely like a beer that you would have truly
like with your dessert or instead of dessert. Isn't really
(36:47):
really good, very true. So I've never have you ever
had Horge Chatta like like out in public? No, I haven't.
The reason my wife has made some at the house
and it's it was it's not bad, so weird. Maybe
our wise we're doing the same thing, or maybe they
shared a recipe something like that. I've had it at home,
but I'm not totally sure how legit. It was, Like
I want to go somewhere where there's somebody's grandma who's
(37:07):
been making horse shot, you know, for decades, Like that's
the kind of horse shot I want to try one
of these days. But I feel like that this reminded
me of that. Like I saw the bottle that said
that it has lactose in it, and I feel like
you can kind of feel some of those milk sugars.
It kind of just makes it real smooth. Uh. And
then like you, I definitely picked up on the cinnamon notes.
But aside from that, when I noticed the most was
the thickness. Holy crap, this stuff, this beard, like the
(37:28):
body of this beer was intense motor oil viscosity. More
than that, dude, it was so thick, so heavy, Like
I mean, as we're pouring it, I didn't even realize
that there were bubbles that were dropping down. And I
mean we almost overfilled the glass because the head was
kind of like bubbling over, like there was there was
so much air in there. To me, that was making
that mistake, But I couldn't even see all the bubbles
(37:50):
that were being created through the thickness of the of
the body of this beer. But it's not often that
we have a beer like this, and it's a lot
of fun. It's a delicious one. Perennial artisan Ales make
some really good beers, and so if you ever had
the chance to try some Abraxis, we would definitely recommend it.
Is the first time it showed up on Atlanta beer
shelves and I was like, I gotta pick up a
bottle of that. I heard things and it was worth it.
(38:12):
So it was very good. All right, Well, that's gonna
do it for this episode. For listeners who want the
show notes for this episode links to some of the
things that we talked about, including that website where you
can rent out your baby stuff and maybe make some sidecash.
We'll put a link to that and more, and that
will be on our website at how to money dot com.
That's right, And if you have been listening to the
show for a while and you found it helpful, we
would love for you to leave us a review over
(38:33):
at Apple Podcasts. Leave us a solid one over there,
And if you have already done that, we would love
it if you just simply shared our podcast with a
friend or a family member, someone who you know would
enjoy hearing us talk on about personal finance and money.
Maybe a little bit of craft beer sprinkled in there,
Maybe talking about some baby gadgets and gear that we've
enjoyed over the years. All sounds like what we do,
(38:54):
all sorts of stuff. Man, but Joel, that's gonna be
it for this episode, Buddy, until next time. Best friends out,
best friend hands out,
Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel and I'm Matt.
Today we're discussing how COVID's hard knocks have exposed our
money deficiencies. You know what I like about the fact
(00:28):
that we use the word deficiencies in the title of
this episode because it it makes me think of nutrition, right,
and when we are deficient in something, it means we're
we're not we're not healthy. Yeah, there's a bone deficiency
and my bones aren't getting something that they need, probably
the calcium. That's of calcium and vitamin D. Okay, I
think you need the vitamin D in order. That's why
(00:48):
the ad vitamin D to milk. Did you know that?
I think you need that vitamin in order for your
body to absorb the calcium. There we go. There, the
more you know. But this also makes me think of
this Warm Buffet quote where he talks about out now
when the tide goes out, you get to see who's
swimming naked. And this isn't a weird like perverted joke
on behalf of Mr Buffett, But he's talking about investing
(01:09):
and those who are over leveraged and those who are
doing riskier speculative buys. Right, And so I think the
same can be true when it comes to our money.
There are a lot of behaviors that we can engage in, uh,
and we can kind of be living on the edge
when it comes to our personal finances. And I think
for a lot of Americans, COVID has exposed some of
those deficiencies, some of those shortcomings as it pertains to
(01:29):
our money. So I'm excited to talk about that with
you today. Man. Yeah, COVID has definitely revealed some things. Um,
COVID has revealed a lot in our personal lives, right
in our marriage, maybe, let's say, in our family structure,
family dynamics. COVID has done a number on us as
a whole. And today we're gonna kind of take a
look and see, you know what lessons we can learn
what COVID has revealed about our personal finances, Matt, Before
(01:51):
we get to that real quick, I wanted to mention
I stumbled upon this website baby quip dot com. Have
you heard of it? Is it a website that sells
baby Q tips? I wish that'd be adorable, but no,
this one was specifically a website where you can rent
your baby stuff out to other people and uh, let's
say you're traveling with an infant and you can't take
the crib and the stroller and all that kind of
(02:12):
stuff or it's just like too tough, too difficult to
bring all that stuff along with you. You You can. I
remember seeing people traveling, like you know, in the airport
and they've got like the car seat, and I'm just
like that looks miserable, like I do not like, yeah,
I'm not going to sign up for that, you know,
like there's no way that I am willing to travel
with my kids, at least not at this age. So
instead you can go to baby quip dot com and
(02:35):
you can rent your stuff from a local individual where
you're traveling too. I thought it was cool that one
that you can do that right, Like you can be
Let's say you go down to Florida for a week
for vacation. You don't want to pack all that baby stuff.
You can rent stuff locally from someone who lives there
also too, if you have extra baby stuff, this is
a way in which you could make money. You can
have like a little side houstle going on. Right, It's
(02:56):
kind of like Touro for your car. This is like
tourow for your baby stuff. You'd be like, all right, West,
somebody needs the krypt tonight. You're sleeping on the couch exactly.
This makes me think too. I mean, you and I
were both on our last babies basically at least, you know,
we're not planning on having any more kids. Uh. You
and Emily are done for sure. Kate and I were
on the way to being completely done with with babies
(03:18):
for sure. But it makes me wonder, what is the
number one piece of equipments? You know, this is a
baby quip baby equipment kind of website. Is there something
that you feel like, over the years has paid dividends?
You know? When it comes to being able to raise
the kids. The first thing that comes to my mind
is the that white I kea high chair that it's
I mean, it's it's ubiquitous, you know, it's it's the
one that you see everywhere. It's like twenty dollars. We've
(03:39):
used that for all four of our kids. Yeah, high
chair is clutch and can make it through. For us.
I think it was probably a Jockey con stroller that
was gifted to us. I think it was like it's
seventy five Jock controller. But we've used it for all
three kids and it's stood the test of time and
it's just like it works, it functions, and it's great.
It's it's nothing like it's not one of those fancy ones,
but that's not what we need. You know. We're not
(04:00):
like fancy joggers running marathons or anything anything like that.
So it's it's just like perfect for strolling around the
neighborhood and getting over all the you know, we have
some crumby sidewalks in our neighborhood, all these like tree
roots growing up underneath it. So you actually need a
stroller with like solid wheels, like with good jogging stroller wheels.
And I think that's probably been like the number one
piece of baby equipment that we've like used all the time.
(04:21):
And you've used that for the girls, You've used that
for your new son as well. Uh, this actually makes
me think of as well. Over the years for the
kids rooms, we've used a nest cam, but they now
require a subscription that you pay every single month if
you want to be able to see what happened, you know,
and we like to see what happened because there are
a lot of fights that happened, and not everyone always
tells the truth. But you recently turned us on to
(04:43):
this company called Wise w y z E And that's
all recently that they came up with a new camera
V three. But what's so great about these cameras is
the fact that you can stick a little micro SD
card in there and it'll record footage locally on that
camera and HD and so that's nice. But then of
course you gets you completely eliminate that recurring charge and
so that's a huge freule win man. And the cameras
(05:04):
really cheap too, like some of those Nest cameras are
like upwards. I don't even know what they cost down
like some of the nice ones, but I mean they're
definitely over a hundred bucks. Uh. In this new V
three Wise camp bucks pretty sweet. Man's a huge deal.
And they've got a new security system I saw too
that I think it's seventy bucks a year and that
includes actual monitoring. Yeah, we should put a link to
that in the show notes. But it's one of those
(05:25):
things where, uh, that's something that has drastically come down
in price, is home security, you know, system monitoring. I
remember when yeah, I remember when simply say, launched, it
was fifteen bucks a month for monitoring, and it was like,
oh my gosh, how did they do that? And now
there's people doing it for you know, like six bucks
a month and pennies on the dollar. Yeah, exactly. All right, Well,
let's mention the beer that we're having on the show today.
(05:47):
This one is a Braxis. It's by Perennial Artisan Nails,
and this is a giant stout. So looking forward to
sharing this one with you, my friend on the show today.
But onto the subject at hand. We're talking about how
COVID's hard knox have exposed our money deficiencies. And you know,
because we're essentially a year in from COVID being named
(06:07):
a pandemic by the World Health Organization, let's take a
look back and see kind of what's changed in the
past year, because this event has changed everything about how
we live and really in short order, when you think
about it, uh, mask wearing or double masking, virtual schooling,
potting with your best friends, all of those have had
an impact. And I don't even think we fully understand
(06:28):
all the ways in which COVID has like ravaged and
impacted our lives. It's it's also highlighted some of the
heroism of like frontline healthcare and grocery store workers. It's
changed like how we shop and what we're buying. It's
realigned priorities for us personally and in our financial lives.
And as vaccinations are ramping up, which is good news,
and we kind of start to turn this corner, you know, Matt, you,
(06:51):
you and I don't want to forget these important lessons
I think are worth caring forward. And that's why we
wanted to highlight the important shifts and lessons that we've
learned from OVID and some of those glaring money deficiencies
that have been brought acutely to our attention. Yeah, I think,
I mean down the road when we look back at
it's gonna be one of those years. It's going to
be one of those events where in the moment right now,
(07:11):
I don't think we fully understand the impact that it's
going to have on our lives. You know. It kind
of makes me think back when nine eleven happened, Uh,
Like we didn't truly understand that, you know, the impact
that would have on our country. And so you're mentioning
kind of, yeah, all the different ways that it's affecting
our lives. But here on the show, of course, you know,
we dive into personal finance, and so the big question
that we're wondering is has COVID changed how we handle
(07:31):
our money? You know, we're wondering what kind of impact
the pandemic has had on our ability to earn, spend, save,
and invest and what happened in the past twelve months
that can inform our ability to be financially successful in
the future. You know, That's what we're going to be
discussing today. How it is that we can continue to
apply the financial lessons that we've learned from lockdowns in
(07:52):
the pandemic as we are looking to move forward. Yeah,
and though we're tackling some universal lessons on this episode,
there are also some lessons were a bit of an outlier,
but I think, you know, maybe a couple of them
are worth covering. Uh, let's talk about kind of how
the pandemic has impacted our ability to earn money or
how we think about earning money. Direct stimulus payments were
were one of those things that were unexpected going into
(08:14):
I think if you told me in January, guess what
the government is going to send you know, thousands of
dollars millions, tens of millions of people. I would have
been like, yeah, probably not, that's not gonna happen, um,
But those payments were necessary to help folks who lost
their job, were furloughed, and to also kind of thrust
money directly into a struggling economy to kind of help
facilitate some of that spending that really does make our
(08:36):
economy go. One of the lessons that we learned, I think,
over the past twelve months, is that the federal government
has this the ability to do some pretty extraordinary things
in times of severe need. Other actions that we saw
because of the pandemic were PPP loans for small businesses,
increased unemployment compensation in the federal reserve, buying assets to
(08:56):
keep financial markets functioning. One lesson I know that I learned,
although it's maybe a little less practical, is that the
government has a lot of power to take some real
initiative when our economy starts to sputter, And they definitely
stepped in and did something big time, you know, over
the past year. Right. But that also raises the question too,
how important of a lesson is this one for us
to internalize and to remember because ultimately, like we feel,
(09:19):
it's not as important as many of the others that
we're gonna talk about today because of the you know,
the impact we have as individuals on government action is
pretty limited. Uh. It was nice to see the government
quickly Russian and provide aid with the care Is Act,
but we've also seen a lot of dysfunction uh in
government since then, and so you know, hoping that future
difficulties will sort of release A Night and Shining Armor
(09:41):
isn't something I'm going to count on, and so let's
move on to some of the things that are going
to be more within your control. I feel like if
you'd run for president, that would help. Are you calling
me a night and Shining Army? Yes, I feel like dude,
come on, President, Matt, I'd I jousted you, but I
don't think I can make a good resident, all right.
I think another Uh, something that we learned that's actually
(10:02):
more applicable to how we move forward is about industry shifts.
And they're always taking place, they always have been and
they always will be. But oftentimes industry shifts happen slowly
and we fail to kind of recognize and realize what's
happening before our very eyes, because it's not happening as
quickly as it has during COVID. COVID, of course, accelerated
(10:23):
many of the shifts that were already taking place. Some
sectors are still barely alive and haven't really begun their recovery.
Although travel has seen an uptick, travel is still a
sector that is severely hurt because of the pandemic. I
think one of the takeaway lessons is that no specific
job or industry is bulletproof, although some are maybe a
little more teflon like than others, kind of deflect the blows. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(10:46):
And I think that COVID has created some real incentives
for people to think a little more about the future
potential of the industry that they work in, and maybe
whether or not they should be looking to shift and
take the skills that they have and maybe apply them
in a completely different sector altogether. And Matt, my day
job still last year, when the pandemic was kind of
(11:06):
roiling and getting started, was was working in radio and
something happened that people were calling the apocalypse. Uh. During
during those months, radio advertising fall off a cliff um
and it proceeded to come back in large part, but
I do think that those months have accelerated the downturn
of radio. Radio stations are hurting more than ever before,
and we're gonna kind of continue to see it as
a medium in decline. It's one of those things like
(11:28):
I got into radio at a pretty bad time fifteen
years ago, and getting into radio today is like an
even worst decision. So it's just kind of interesting to
see how that, how that happens, and how something like
COVID can accelerate the demise of something that was kind
of already headed in that direction. Does it Does it
feel weird for you to say like that I was
in radio past tense? You know, because like you recently
shared on the show like a few weeks ago, how
(11:48):
you're now officially full time with the podcast, you know,
like we both are. But it's still kind of weird
to say though, right it is. But it's also Yeah,
when you think about making a shift, making a shift
out of an industry that is in decline is a
whole lot eas year to do then to make a
shift away from an industry that's having a stellar time, Right, Yeah,
that's true. Yeah, So I mean for me personally with
wedding photography. I mean, like I feel like my shift,
(12:09):
my personal income shift started about like four years ago.
We started thinking through that, like, you know what, I
don't want to necessarily have my weekends full of other engagements,
you know, like time with the kids was becoming a
little more precious as they were kind of launching into
full time school. Uh, And so that was kind of
something we started thinking about back then. It kind of
not coincidentally, that's also when we start batting around the
(12:30):
idea of the podcast, but even before then, man, Like
back in is when you and I both started getting
into rental real estate, and dude, that was so clutch
for me to be able to have some multiple streams
of income, right because if I was purely dependent on
a single source, specifically wedding photography, I would have been
in a world of hurt. Last year, I mean, the
industry ground to a halt. And granted there's not like
(12:53):
a major shift that took place or that it is
taking place, but I mean basically everything was just put
on hiatus. So that kind of leads us suit to
our next point, which is the that COVID has just
amplified the need, you know, to be working towards having
multiple streams of income. You know, if you're married or
in a long term relationship, having to paychecks, that's just
(13:13):
you know, one great way of doing this. Uh. But
you know, even looking beyond just paychecks that you get
from a single employer, you know, a way to create
more fiscal resiliency is going to be by finding other
ways to generate cash flow every single month. We talk
here on the show how it's important to start with
your day job and then look to ways that you
can easily maximize your your earning potential there first. But
(13:33):
you know, there is inherent risk involved when the vast
majority of your income does come from a single source. Yeah,
for sure, And that was something that a lot of
people recognized specifically during COVID. It's definitely an argument, I think,
to for firing up some entrepreneurial spirit. Maybe it's in
you somewhere and it's kind of been laying dormant, or
maybe it did kind of come out of you during
(13:54):
the pandemic um And for some that means looking to
monetize your passion COVID. For some people to turn be
into a career as their traditional career of the job
where they were working essentially didn't have room for them anymore.
I couldn't they couldn't get a paycheck there, and that's
been kind of interesting to see some of the people
that have had success by striking it on their own
when they didn't really have many other great options. You know, Matt,
(14:16):
you mentioned war big fans of rental real estate to
diverse fire income. That takes time, um and also capital, right,
So it's not easy, but COVID made it apparent. The
multiple streams of income is incredibly nice to have, and
although it's going to take planning and some time to
get there, it's definitely worth pursuing. Yeah, man in the
statistics support this as well. There are nearly eight more
new business applications that were filed last year compared to
(14:38):
ten years ago, back in twenty two, So that's encouraging.
Folks are making that change. People are pivoting and finding
ways to diversify their income. Yes, it's good to see
that people are pivoting based on the circumstances, and that
is certainly uh an important lesson that we've learned from COVID.
You gotta be able to pivot quickly, and lessons that
we can learn from the deficiencies that we can easily see.
(14:59):
We'll get to some more of us right after this break.
All right, we are back, and you know, Joe, basically
we were talking about in that first section there some
of the hard knocks that we took due to COVID
and how that affected our ability to earn money. And
(15:20):
so next let's look at some of the other areas
that have been impacted by COVID. You know, we've certainly
seen spending trends change since COVID started back in April.
The largest drop in consumer spending ever recorded occurred. Uh.
Since then, though, you know, we've seen online shopping. Uh.
It was already a mainstay, but now folks of all
ages are getting more comfortable shopping online. Credit Card debt
levels went down actually last year. And you know, while
(15:42):
that's not what you would expect in the middle of
a you know, rampant job loss and and dire economic predictions,
it certainly goes to show how much flexibility we have
with our money, and too just how often the lack
of positive movement. It's it's more about our lack of implementation,
not a lack of income or or not a lack
(16:03):
of knowing what to do with our money. It's actually
our behavior where we need to make those changes. Yeah,
that's true. And and one of the areas that people
spend a good bit of money is travel. We saw
travel spending, or traditionally people spend money. We saw a
deep dive right in travel spending, obviously much to the
stagrin of hotels, airlines, all sorts of different companies impacted
(16:24):
by the inability to travel or the unwillingness as well
to travel. And yeah, I think there are a couple
things that we learned through this disruption on how we
should think about spending money when it comes to travel.
One of the lessons that we've learned, one of the
things that the pandemic exposed was that we have to
be careful when booking travel through third party sites. Booking
(16:44):
a trip through an online travel agent or third party
discount site can bring down the cost of your trip,
but there are other risks involved when you don't book
directly with an airline or a hotel, and it's important
to know the trade offs. I mean, Matt, I'm still
all about booking a hotel at price line in order
to save money, but you might not get the same
customer service or the same cancelation benefits when you book
(17:05):
a hotel there as opposed to going directly through the
hotel itself. Lots of people found less helpful customer service
and that refunds were hard to come by when they
booked at some of those third party travel sites, and
especially like let's say you booked through an independent travel
insurance company or individual who runs their own travel insurance agency,
sometimes they didn't have the ability to give those refunds.
(17:27):
And so how you book travel matters, and it's important
to know the fine print when you are booking travel
in the future. Yeah, that's right. And and on that note,
to travel insurance is more worthwhile than most people thought.
That's something that we've learned recently. Uh. And you can
purchase a policy on sites like ensure my Trip that
will provide real, actual help in case your trip is canceled.
(17:50):
And so just make sure to read the fine print
of your specific policy. But COVID really drew a big
red circle around the importance of travel insurance, whereas in
the past, I think it's something that we would have
been like, no, that's something that you could absorb, just
absorb the cost of that, but now we're realizing it's
definitely something worth considering. Yeah, and where your book matters
to write. Like when we're talking about the airlines, they
all have different responses in the pandemic. We talked to
(18:11):
Scott Kuys about this, you know, early on, and some
airlines were happy to change your plans or to give
you a refund, whereas some airlines were trying to stick
you with a credit as opposed to giving you cash
back in your hands. Same with some of the cruise lines.
Part of my takeaway from all that was like, man,
I'm so glad that I fly Southwest most of the
time because they pretty much always make it easy to
(18:32):
change your plans. And that's a big park. Yeah, that's
something that we've learned specifically when it comes to travel,
especially travel by airline or by cruise. But you know,
as it pertains to just how we spend our money
in general. With more folks working from home, commuting has
become less of a thing. Uh. And this meant that
a lot of folks were shaving quite a bit of
i'll spend time out of their days, uh, And they
(18:53):
were saving that money as well. Insurers, we're offering partial
refunds on auto policies. Uh, we were spending less money
on ass uh. In some folks, Joel, like you were
ditching a car altogether. COVID just you know, revealed how
businesses and how workers alike continued to do things the
same way that they had always been done, just despite
(19:13):
the potential benefits you know, of shaking things up, uh
and allowing working from home in greater numbers. Uh. In
this instance, covid is is a reminder that it shouldn't
take a pandemic in order for us to make smart
shifts and how we live our lives. Uh. And we
should question the things that we do every single day.
You know, we should at least ask the question of
our employer, is this something that is an option? You know,
(19:34):
can I work from home? Like? What are the options here? Uh?
You know, transportation costs are huge, and so if there's
a way that we can reduce some of those costs,
we're gonna be for that every single day. Yeah. Is
this immutable? Is this like fixed unchangeable? And those are
good questions to ask because now a lot more things
are changeable and businesses are reacting to what their workforce expects.
(19:55):
They have a new expectation about how they can work,
where they can work um and hours a day in
which they work too. And Matt, I think there's like
speaks to a greater overall shift essentially that's occurred in
so many ways that we spend you know, our family,
We're not going out to restaurants like we used to.
Uh through and definitely ordering more pizza. I saw a
storyc pizza sales are like through the roof and that
(20:18):
it was like pizza is like the perfect pandemic food.
They already had the delivery thing down. They were already
used to people coming by and just picking up a
couple of pizzas on Fridays, which is what you and
our families tend to do every other Friday. We get
everybody together and we have a pizza party, get that
kids together. It's a lot of fun. It's one of
those shifts that was easy to make righte and and
we've also seen that that a lot of expenses in
(20:38):
our lives are are less rigid than we previously thought.
I feel like this is the perfect time for our listeners,
for all of us to remake our budget and consider
cutting expenses in our lives. For instance, you just mentioned
our family, we ditched a car, which lowered our insurance costs,
which lowered our taxes every year. Um on that car.
You know, the set of tires you don't have to
buy every fifty to seventy five thousand miles or whatever exactly.
(21:01):
It's lowering our electricity bill, but I don't know for
like twelve bucks a months, so not that much. Well, yeah,
you have the electric car. Yeah, I'm a little bitter.
I just recently had to replace some tires on the
van and so I'm still feeling that burn. A little
bit expensive. But those are the kind of things I
think that we can we can really start to rethink
and remake our budget because when something's imposed on us.
I think it was former President Obama's chief of staff
raw Mimanuel who said, never let a good crisis go
(21:23):
to waste. And I think there's like some wisdom there too,
not to exploit something, but in essence to be able
to use it for our own benefit, to use it
for our own good and for all of us. You know,
I think it shows we have more control over our life,
our work, and our finances than maybe we previously thought.
Drastic changes that have been imposed on us reveal the
truth that we easily forget that we actually do have
(21:45):
some of that control. We can make changes in our
personal lives and in our finances so that our lives
look a little more like we want them to look,
and less like they're being constantly shaped by the forces
around us, um more like they're being shaped from our
own hopes and desires, shaped from what. Yeah, it's h
I mean, that's what we would encourage our listeners to do.
You know, ask yourself, you know, what shifts have you
(22:06):
made that you can actually keep around? And you know,
maybe that's eating in more often. Maybe it's buying fewer
clothes since you don't have to go into the office,
you feel a little less pressure to have the newest threads.
Maybe it's exercising at home, Joe, that's something you and
Emily have been doing. Right, These are all major things
that have changed for a number of folks, and so
just think about the shifts that you've already made that
can stick around after you're vaccinated, after you know COVID
(22:29):
is no longer part of our zite guys, But also
do you think about the shifts that you can still
consider implementing. Maybe these are changes that you've kind of
stumbled upon, but if you actually step back from it,
you're like, oh, wow, we're we're saving two dollars a
month because we're not doing X like whatever that is
in your life. Uh. Just the ability that we have
to cut back on spending is just incredible, and that's
one of the most immediate ways that we can have
(22:50):
a huge impact when it comes to our personal finances.
I think the number one way that COVID has impacted
our family is that it's just reduced a huge amount
of things that were on the calendar. They were just
kind of taking off the calend are indefinitely and I'm
gonna be way more thoughtful about the things I put
on the calendar in the future. It's easy to let
these things pop on than they never come off. Um,
different activities were involved in different neighborhood things that we
(23:10):
want to be a part of, some of which we
are excited to get back to and others of which
I am glad for the lull and I'm not planning
on getting back to them. And so I think it's
probably similar with the budget. For a lot of people,
it's like, man, I really do miss going to eat out.
But you know what, they didn't have to be a
three line item in my budget. It can be a
hundred fifty dollar line on item in my budget. And
that's another way in which I can save moving forward.
(23:31):
I wouldn't have done that otherwise, but the pandemic has
revealed this deficiency that I was leaning on eating out
as a crutch. And you know what, eating in hasn't
been all that bad, That's right, But let's move on
and talk about saving. And there's still ten million Americans
that are unemployed, um, and that's a hard statistic to see,
and I think that reflects the truth that there's never
been a better time for people to have a fully
(23:52):
funded emergency fund. The economy essentially had been booming for
ten years straight, unemployment wasn't as big of a concern
for most people. And COVID just really drove on the
point that the job that you have, you're not promised
to have that tomorrow, and so you do need to
have your financial act together in order to weather a
potential jobless period in your life. And and I think
(24:13):
this just totally reflects the fact that people need an
emergency fund to whether that storm. It really drives that
point home in a big, big way, right. And so
if you're newer to the show, you know this simply
just means having cash savings in the bank that you
can draw on for any unexpected emergencies that arise. You know, like,
this isn't money that's invested, it's just sitting there waiting
on those storm clouds to come rolling in. Uh. And
(24:35):
as far as how much you should have set aside, UH,
we've talked about this before, but we feel that there
are two levels of a funded emergency fund. First, it
means having two thousand, FO hundred and sixty seven dollars
set aside. This is a basic amount that should be
your top financial priority, and that's actually money gear number one.
We go into depth and detail as to why we
chose that dollar amount. You can go and listen back
to that episode. We will put it in our show notes.
(24:57):
But after that, after you're getting in layer match and
paying off high interest rate in debt, that's when you
want to have that fully loaded emergency fund. That's when
you're gonna want to have three to six months worth
of living expenses set aside. Yeah, And I think one
of the deficiencies that COVID revealed was that most of
us can save more than we thought we could um
and that bore out in the numbers and how people
(25:18):
responded during the height of the crisis. Right, Yes, since
the start of the pandemic, the assets that Americans had
in the bank shot up from seven hundred billion dollars,
it doubled to one point four trillion dollars. And we
saw a credit card debt on the decline, Like people
were paying off credit card debt in the middle of
lots of unemployment and financial uncertainty. People really use that
(25:39):
time to save more, like you said, and then to
pay off debt. And it's it's fascinating though, how in
normal times we say that we can't do it, but
then the crisis hits and we find a way. And
we saw the same thing happened back in oh seven
and oh wait, people paid off their debt and increase
their savings even while the economy was experiencing just a
massive amount of turmoil, the same as through in COVID times.
(26:01):
And it's not I don't think that saving money is easy.
It's always easier to spend than it is to save,
But it takes intentionality in order to to save money well.
But excuses are often a major factor that keeps us
from ramping up our savings. It's not necessarily that we
can't prioritize saving more, it's just that we don't. And
I think that is definitely one of the biggest lessons
(26:21):
we can learn from COVID. One of the biggest deficiencies
that it shows us is our inability to prioritize that.
And this crisis forced us to change what we did
on a dime, and I hope that most of us
can kind of stick with that change, that prioritization of
paying off high interest rate debt and saving more of
our income. That provides a huge mental boost to how
(26:42):
you feel about your money, while at the same time
just providing a bunch more financial security too. That's right,
And so that is how COVID has shown some of
the deficiencies when it comes to our money in some
of these areas. We're gonna talk about one more area
where deficiency was revealed due to COVID, uh, And we're
gonna get to that one right after this break. All right, man,
(27:09):
let's keep talking about this. Let's talk about COVID and
how it's impact that our finances. Obviously, it's had a
major impact in all facets of our life. Some things
we're ready to get back to normal, right, I think
most of us are ready to go back with our family,
to eat at a restaurant and not feel weird about it. Um,
that'll be nice. I think I think we're ready to
see our neighbors, you know, uh, their faces and not
(27:30):
just their master versions. There are so many things I
am ready to get back to normal. Um. But then
there are other things, like we've talked about where I
want to learn a lesson from it, and I want
to change and I want to pivot moving forward. And
I think you know, the same is true with our
personal finances. There are some lessons that we've learned that
we need to take forward and not just forget. And
the seam is true too when it comes to our investing, right,
(27:51):
Like how it is that we invest our money. And
the fact is, like COVID hasn't really changed our approach
to investing, you know, it hasn't changed it all that much.
Although there are some important, albeit subtle lessons from the
past year that are really important to point out. And
the first is the fact that corrections happen. Most folks,
especially younger millennials maybe who had only the foggiest recollection
(28:12):
of what happened back in two thousand seven, two thousand
and eight, uh began to think that the stock market
maybe only goes up, and the you know, the truth
is that when you look at a chart of the
overall market for the past fifty years, you'll see that
it does mostly go up. You know, like that's mostly true,
but human behavior always enters the equation, and quite a
few downturns and recessions should be expected in the lifetime
(28:34):
of any investor. You know, the stock market is not
a long term savings account that just allows for far
higher returns without any risk, without any of those dips.
And we saw the risk full on in full force
in March, right, and a lot of people panicking. We
you know, in retrospect now when we look back, we're like, man,
that dip was extreme, but it was short lived. But
(28:55):
we didn't know that that was going to be the case.
At the time. A lot of people were continuing to
predict that the stock market would fall further and you know,
I'll be honest, I thought that the downturn it would
last a little bit longer than it did. I did
not think it was gonna last three weeks, you know.
But I think a really important question to ask yourself
based on that is how did you respond during the
(29:15):
stock market free fall that happened in March. This is
one of the most helpful questions that you can ask yourself.
If you made changes to your portfolio when the stock
market was tanking, then maybe you weren't invested properly in
the first place. Last year, we all got the chance
to not just assume what we think we would do
given a steep market decline, but to see how we
actually handled it in real life. And that's really informative
(29:37):
moving forward. Right, Like, if you did make some changes,
if you sold some stuff, if you moved your assets
into cash when the stock market was having a tough go,
then your investment plan in general it needs to change, right.
That's right. And that's also too why it's so important
to know like your specific timeline and to have a
written investment plan. The importance of a personal plan was
(29:57):
magnified during the early months of COVID for sure. Uh,
you know, the plan that you can stick to is
gonna be way better than a plan that keeps you
up at night that that causes you a lot of stress.
Joe and I, I mean, you and I were both
invested in stocks, and we are totally okay with that,
since you know, we're in the wealth building phase of
our lives. But make sure that your portfolio is something
that you can stick with through the good and the
(30:19):
tough times. Yeah. So let's put it in perspective to Matt.
If somebody made a change during that time because they
were like, this is it, this is not good, this
is going to be an extended downturn and started freaking out. Yeah,
I can't handle it. Well. If you had made changes
instead of staying invested, uh, because the markets were tanking
and you happen to sell at the exact wrong moment,
you would have missed out on about a seventy five
(30:40):
percent increase that we've seen in the market since then.
That's on the SMPI, not some fancy tech stock or
bitcoin or anything like that, right, Tesla. That's on the
SMP five hunder, which is you know, one of the
more conservative indexes out there. Uh, that's unbelievable and to
think that somebody who pulled out at the wrong time
they would have missed out on all of that. It's
good to remember that the market will bounce back. Uh.
(31:02):
You know, when you look at the past fifty years,
at the rolling fifteen year periods, there's not one single
fifteen year period where you're not going to average a
positive return, and so it's good to remind ourselves of that,
especially when things aren't looking so great. So yeah, I
think so. One of the deficiencies that that we've found
out in COVID times when it comes to our investing
is maybe that we're paying a little too much attention
to the markets to where our investments stand on a
(31:25):
day to day basis. Maybe we should actually take a
step back, develop that investment plan, make changes rarely to
our investment plans, and plan those changes out in advance.
If emotions are making the roles instead of your investment plan,
then that is something that needs to change. That's a
lesson you need to learn from from what's happened in
the past year. That's true, like you would have been
better off right in your bike and then having gotten
hit by a car, getting knocked into a coma for
(31:47):
three months and then having woken up and be like, wait,
what's going on? What happened to the markets? Like you
would have been in a better position. Depends on how
financially speaking, it depends on how big the hospital bill was.
Assume you have insurance. I'm not trying to make light
of if you've ever gotten hit by a car, which
I have, what you have, I'm seezing you a little,
trying to think of it, if it was worth it
or not? What? What? I don't know. It's not fun
(32:09):
to get hit by a car. Yeah, but it's important though.
I mean we're talking about investing, and it's important to
stick with a plan, stick with the decision, and stick
with whatever is going to work for you and not
have your actions swayed by your emotions. And if you
didn't get hurt too badly, like I I didn't have
like a little shoulder messed up. But it can be
a good story to tell a cocktail parties and stuff,
you know, So you're talking about the pain. Actually, I
heard your daughter there. The girls were over at our
(32:29):
house for lunch today and I went up there for lunch,
and I heard your daughter tell a joke, and she goes,
why did the window go to the doctor? And my
girls were like why and she's like because it had
window pane, which I thought was a perfect dad joke.
Was that one that you you told her? No, she
really that one for me, But I almost steal that
one from her. I mean I literally laughed out loud.
I was like, Oh, that one's really good. It's pretty good,
(32:50):
especially coming from a seven year olds not as cute
from a thirty seven year old. It's still good. But uh,
you know, like I feel like what we're pointing out
here is the fact that we have control over our lives.
You know, like we we say that there are financial
goals that we can't attain, but when the you know,
when the crap hits the fan, we actually are able
to make dramatic changes to our personal finance habits. The
(33:11):
pandemic has made that abundantly clear. Back when we were
kind of coasting along in our pre COVID lives, I
know there were many areas where I certainly probably lack
some initiative. Maybe there were you know, maybe some moderate
financial goals that we had set for ourselves, but like
and I weren't fully committed, you know, and so for
many of us, unfortunately, it took something as dramatic and
jarring as the pandemic to kind of snap us out
(33:34):
of our our milk toast. Ways. Yeah, man, this whole
episode two, it makes me think about some of the
emails we've we've received in recent months from from listeners
right and and they have been taking action for years
now based on what they've been hearing on the podcast,
and a lot of them weren't completely unscathed by COVID.
Some of them did lose a job or their partner
(33:54):
lost a job, but they were able to get through
this time with far less anxiety and hardship because of
the steady moves that they made in recent years. Uh,
while they've been listening to the show. They were prepared,
even for something that you can't prepare for, right And.
I think it's our hope too, that some of the
money changes that we've already made due to COVID stick around,
that some of our listeners have been able to implement
(34:15):
in their lives, that those will have a stickiness because
of maybe the traumatic effect that COVID has had on
all of us. Maybe you were listening and you made
some of those changes out of necessity, like you had
to cut back, but you've also found that you've been
able to boost your ability to save and that has
provided real financial security. Despite the difficulty, the changes you've
made are worth keeping for good. Let's make it a
(34:38):
point to actually learn from the past year, not to
just have let it happen to us and then immediately
revert back to the way things were. If we can
take a look at those deficiencies head on and we
can learn from them, take the lessons that they have
to show us, will be more resilient when future events,
hopefully non pandemic and nature arise. Yeah, what's interesting about
the pandemic, man, is the fact that, like, the reason
(34:59):
it was so traumatic for all of us, it was
because we all experienced it at the same time. But
like you said, like there are going to be events
that arise and that come up in our lives that
other people aren't experiencing, right, Like we're we're all going
to have sort of our own personal pandemics. Uh, And
that's why it is so important for us to be prepared,
for us to have learned from this past year. And
that's a part of I mean That's why we love
(35:19):
personal fighting so much. Right Like, like you have agency
over your own life, you have control. There are changes
that you can make on an individual level. And that
truly is why we love personal finance so much, is
that these are changes that you can begin making in
your life right now. I love that. Yeah, a lot
of changes based on what we discussed today, right that
people can have already implemented. And if they haven't learned
(35:39):
from some of these lessons, maybe um mull them over
again in your mind and give some thought to how
you can change. Think again, it is worth truly giving
it a little more thought again. I think sometimes we
react to a stimulus and we don't really realize why
did we react that way? Was that the right way
to react? And it's a good time to do some
thinking about how our lives are structured right now? Absolutely well, Matt,
(36:02):
let's get back to the beer real quick that we
had on the show. This one is called Abraxis. It's
a giant stout with chili, pepper, vanilla, cocoa, nibs, something
else's cinnamon cinnamon as well. Yes, did you pick up?
Did you pick up on some of those notes? I
feel like the cinnamon was the biggest note. Yeah, yeah,
that I that I was getting the cinnamon shine through
the chili peppers, not so much like not a whole
lot of heat. Yeah. I was expecting a little more,
(36:24):
hoping for a little more, because I love beers that
have that kind of chili pepper kick, a little bit
of spice. Yeah. But but that's okay, because this was
a super delicious dessert beer. Even though I would have
loved the chili peppers to be stepped up a little bit.
This was smooth, it was rich, it was delicate. It
was definitely like a beer that you would have truly
like with your dessert or instead of dessert. Isn't really
(36:47):
really good, very true. So I've never have you ever
had Horge Chatta like like out in public? No, I haven't.
The reason my wife has made some at the house
and it's it was it's not bad, so weird. Maybe
our wise we're doing the same thing, or maybe they
shared a recipe something like that. I've had it at home,
but I'm not totally sure how legit. It was, Like
I want to go somewhere where there's somebody's grandma who's
(37:07):
been making horse shot, you know, for decades, Like that's
the kind of horse shot I want to try one
of these days. But I feel like that this reminded
me of that. Like I saw the bottle that said
that it has lactose in it, and I feel like
you can kind of feel some of those milk sugars.
It kind of just makes it real smooth. Uh. And
then like you, I definitely picked up on the cinnamon notes.
But aside from that, when I noticed the most was
the thickness. Holy crap, this stuff, this beard, like the
(37:28):
body of this beer was intense motor oil viscosity. More
than that, dude, it was so thick, so heavy, Like
I mean, as we're pouring it, I didn't even realize
that there were bubbles that were dropping down. And I
mean we almost overfilled the glass because the head was
kind of like bubbling over, like there was there was
so much air in there. To me, that was making
that mistake, But I couldn't even see all the bubbles
(37:50):
that were being created through the thickness of the of
the body of this beer. But it's not often that
we have a beer like this, and it's a lot
of fun. It's a delicious one. Perennial artisan Ales make
some really good beers, and so if you ever had
the chance to try some Abraxis, we would definitely recommend it.
Is the first time it showed up on Atlanta beer
shelves and I was like, I gotta pick up a
bottle of that. I heard things and it was worth it.
(38:12):
So it was very good. All right, Well, that's gonna
do it for this episode. For listeners who want the
show notes for this episode links to some of the
things that we talked about, including that website where you
can rent out your baby stuff and maybe make some sidecash.
We'll put a link to that and more, and that
will be on our website at how to money dot com.
That's right, And if you have been listening to the
show for a while and you found it helpful, we
would love for you to leave us a review over
(38:33):
at Apple Podcasts. Leave us a solid one over there,
And if you have already done that, we would love
it if you just simply shared our podcast with a
friend or a family member, someone who you know would
enjoy hearing us talk on about personal finance and money.
Maybe a little bit of craft beer sprinkled in there,
Maybe talking about some baby gadgets and gear that we've
enjoyed over the years. All sounds like what we do,
(38:54):
all sorts of stuff. Man, but Joel, that's gonna be
it for this episode, Buddy, until next time. Best friends out,
best friend hands out,
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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