September 23, 2022 • 29 mins
Time for our Friday Flight! These episodes are a sampling of the week’s financial news and the impact on your personal finances. There are a lot of headlines out there, but we distill it down to specific takeaways that will allow you to kick off the weekend informed and help you to get ahead with your money. In this episode we cover some relevant and helpful stories like: interest rates on the rise, dumb ol gift cards, repair or replace a broken appliance, the easiest way to save time and money in the kitchen, phantom funds in your Venmo and Cash app, sweepstake savings accounts, coffee-drinking spendthrifts, speculation nation, an index fund to avoid, & last but also least- poop music.
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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 am Matt,
and today we're discussing poop music, speculation, nation and coffee
drinking spendthrifts. That's right, Joel. This is our Friday flight
(00:28):
and we are going to talk about our favorite stories
from this week and your favorite subject up. Oh please,
I'm actually looking forward to that conversation. You're juvenile humor.
I think there's a lot of folks are probably thinking
of poop music. What the heck are they going to
talk about? We'll get to it. It'll be in the
second half, but these, like I said, our favorite stories,
and we call it the Friday flight because if you
(00:49):
ever go to a brewery and you get a flight
of beers, it's a small sampling of all the different
beers that they have on top, so you don't have
to commit to an entire sixteen ounces of the beer.
Sometimes you might just want four ounces or six ounces,
whatever sizes they're porn similarly, are going to dabble in
personal finance stories, a bunch of different stories of real
quick I filled up this past week for what Costco
(01:13):
Man They I'm so glad that I used to hate
on Costco but I have and taking advantage of our
affordable gas here in the state of Georgia. Not's a brag.
But like Georgia, do we have the lowest gas? Gas
prices not worth very close. I think Mississippi. They've got
cheaper gas and we do, or historically they do, but
otherwise George has got it going on. The water is
(01:36):
just fine, folks, if you want to come join us.
I think I saw gas prices had fallen for ninety
nine days straight, which, considering where gas prices were, was
a welcome relief. Although the before they broke the streak,
I'm starting to trend back up just a touch. We'll see,
but yeah, I'm glad you're able to fill up for
less than three bucks agallon. That feels like, I mean,
at least mentally, that feels like a relief. Absolutely literally.
Over the summer, when prices are at the peak, it
(01:57):
was costing me close to a hundred dollars to fill
up the van and now it's sixty bucks, forty, forty
difference every time we fill up the van. Well, Matt,
last week we we mentioned, hey, we're gonna do a
sock giveaways. Right, we have the dopist socks in the
podcasting game and we're gonna give give some socks away
to folks who signed up for the fairly new how
the money newsletter, and we had a bunch of folks
(02:18):
sign up and are in thank you contest. Yeah, thank
you to everybody who's signed up who was gunning for
one of those five pairs of socks. We had a
ton of people signed up, which is awesome, and so
we hope you get value from the newsletter to but Matt,
you want to announce the winners. That's right. Yeah, so,
of all the folks who signed up in the last
seven days, we picked five random winners through uh list,
rand randomizer dot org or something like that. I just
(02:39):
want people to know that we're being fair, Um, but
not just picking people with the coolest names exactly. So
these are the top five folks. Jonathan S, abby f
a Israel D, Caitlin B and Jason C. I'm not
gonna say your entire name for Privacy, privacy concerns. Please
please also read their social security number as well. So
we request upon sign up. What if you have that
(03:00):
on the side of floor? Just a spot. Who are
this deal? But we will be reaching out to you five. Oh, actually,
in one more, we randomly picked another person who had
signed up previously, earlier this year, because we felt that
we didn't want to leave all the folks out there
who had previously signed up for exactly so we got
a sixth in their Jenna E. UH. And so we
(03:21):
will reach out to all six of you folks and
we'll be getting a pair of socks to you in
the mail here shortly. Yeah, for sure. And just a reminder,
we do have the best personal finance newsletter out there
right now. In my opinion, it's rocking and rolling. And
it's not an opinion, dude. It's like it's the numbers
show right. Yes, people enjoy it's good vibes, personal funny,
it's good information letter. The most so signed up at
(03:43):
how the money dot com slash newsletter, and maybe you
will win more awesome how the money talks in the future. But, Matt,
let's get onto the subject of hand. The Friday flight.
A quick sampling of stories we found interesting this week.
And Uh, let's talk about rate hikes first. I feel
like that's that's the top story. After what happened on
Wednesday the Fed. They just announced another three quarters of
a percentage of rate hike, continuing their aggressive stance towards
(04:05):
runaway inflation. Seventy five basis points for all the nerds
out there, and and it just inflation has been pretty
sticky like. It hasn't really budgeted very much, despite the
Fed's best efforts, and chairman Powell, he said that there's
no way to escape the pain. That was were like
his literal words, and that makes people freak out a
little bit. And raising interest rates regularly in the way
(04:25):
that they're doing it, it's basically this necessary evil in
order to prevent a nastier outcome, which would be inflation
continuing to start and like we've seen in other countries
around the world, like Venezuela right which has had an
inflation problem for quite some time. But these rate hikes
they're attempting to basically throw some sand in the gears
of the economy. The Fed wants to curb demand for
(04:46):
borrowing and they want to curb consumption and the peskiness
of inflation. And these sustained rate hikes really they could
impact the stock market and the job market even more
as we move forward. So it's even more important to
make sure that you're in a strong position as an
individual when it comes to your personal economic health. These
rain hikes are likely to persist for some time to
come and just as as individual consumers, we have to
(05:10):
be prepared. We have to be able to weather what
looks like potentially darker economics. Guys on the horizon. That's right.
And specifically, what this means for you as an individual
are that borrowing rates are going to continue to rise,
and so that means if you are in some credit
card debt, that is going to become an even worse
foe towards your money. Credit card interest rates. They are
(05:30):
up close to three percent in the last three months alone.
This is according to credit cards DOT COM. That's what
the national averages are rates. They've been rising for the
last six months and all signs are pointing to that
trend continuing. Based on what J PAL is saying, uh,
the average credit card rate right now is at eighteen
percent and I think we could break into mark next year. Uh.
(05:52):
And you know, we were talking about how great using
credit cards for your everyday purchases can be if you
can pay the bill on time and in full. But
if that is not the case, credit card debt is
even more dangerous for you. So if you're in credit
card debt right now, if you've got consumer debt, making
a plan to get out is even more important than usual.
We could recommend for you to check out UNDEBT DOT it.
(06:15):
This is a great free tool to help you to
to to do just that, to get out of debt.
We want you to be careful if you've got any
floating rates on on any debt right now, you're going
to see those those rates, those payments, start to climb. Yeah,
like if you've had a home equity line of credit
because you did some renovation work over the past couple
of years and for and for years it was what
you felt was a smart debt to have around, you're
(06:36):
gonna start seeing the payments on that increase. That's right.
It was at a low interest rate, but that interest
rate is climbing and so maybe what was three and
a half percent is now, you know, creeping up into
the fives, and so you're you're going to want to
be paying more attention to that debt. You might want
to pay it off more quickly than you had otherwise
planned because the rate is likely to continue going up.
Matt let's let's we're talked about credit cards there, but
(06:57):
let's talk about gift cards, because some of them, of
those horrid pieces news items I saw this week was
specifically around gift cards and the fact that people aren't
using the gift cards that they have. To me, that's
a travesty, right. You've you've basically like, uh, taking in
cash and throwing it, throwing it in the fire, because
nearly half of Americans have unused gift cards that are
(07:18):
lingering around to the two of twenty one billion dollars
in total, which is just a ton of money. That's
the big problem. Yeah, like that's a lot of money. Like,
I don't know when you when you say it like
there's yeah, maybe you've got a gift card and you've
got a few bucks on there. Doesn't seem like that
they give a deal. Until you see the combine, like
how much money we're talking about here. I bet some
of our listeners have hundreds of dollars and unused gift
cards hanging around in their drawers, and so there's something
(07:39):
worth paying attention to because you don't want it to
go to waste. And we're not really fans of gift
cards in the first place, because why would you take
something that can be spent literally anywhere and turn it
into an asset that can only be spent at one place?
It's like, let me take a hunter bucks and now
the Hunter Bucks has turned into something I can only
spend a target like turn it into target bucks. Right,
that's a bad idea, right. Uh. The only reason to
(08:01):
do this, if is if you're getting an additional perk
by doing so, maybe some free extra money to spend
at that store or restaurant like, for instance, I think
on on Black Friday or in that in that vicinity,
you can get target gift cards at a ten percent discount.
And if that's the case, if your dollars are going further,
some incentive want to do that, there's a discount there also.
I Bet a lot of folks have. I saw that
(08:21):
this dollar amount has increased on average over the past
few years, and I think it has a lot to
do with the fact that during the pandemic, a lot
of folks, and we even talked about this on the show, right,
but restaurants in particular, they all had to closer doors,
and so it felt almost American to go out to
be a good citizen, the patriotic duty, yeah, to support
your favorite restaurants that you wanted to see make it
(08:42):
through the pandemic. We did that. We talked about this
here on the show, and so if you are in
that boat, make sure you know where those gift cards are, yeah,
and go out and use them now. Because, yeah, regardless,
if you've got gift cards lying around, got put them
all together in one place. You know, organize them. Yeah,
organize them, figure out what you got. You and Emily,
you've got a ziplock bag that you yes, you pull
them out before date. We pull them out for date
night and we're like, cool, do we want to hit
(09:03):
up one of these places tonight? Because let's spend these
suckers down. Start using them regularly for purchases you need
to make and, uh, or social outings. But, yeah, make
sure those things don't stay hidden. Take an assessment, to
do an inventory of the gift cards you've got and
then make a plan to spend them down, because you
don't want to be a part of that gruesome statistic.
(09:23):
That's right. Also, remember that gift cards, that they can't
expire within five years of the date that they're issued,
and this is according to federal law. But beyond that,
some states actually go even further and they allow you
to redeem those cards, or at least a portion of them,
for cash if you have a certain certain balance remaining
on your account. Will Link to a guide where you
(09:44):
can quickly see what your options are based on where
it is that you live. And something else you could do,
if your state doesn't offer that kind of Gift Card protection,
would be to just unload those cars altogether sell those
unwanted gift cards on a site like card cash. Um.
But whatever you do, yeah, don't let them continue to
lie dormant in your drawer. Uh, you've got yours in
a gallon ZIP block bag. I like. We keep ours
(10:05):
wrapped with a nice tidy rubber band. What we need
to do is probably like keep those either in the
van or just somewhere where we where we see them, right,
because when you stash them away at a size to
all your bed, bath and beyond cupons, when they're when
they're out of sight, they're out of mind. My mom
has oh yeah, I goes. I mean that's like the
it's like Jo that's the most quintessential cupon the bed
(10:26):
bathroom on one well, yeah, and you mentioned card cash
and that's a great site to think about selling your
your your gift cards at. And the reality is you're
not going to get return on that if you have
a hundred dollar gift card, depending on the store that
you're selling that Gift Card or you might get seventy
cents on the dollar or eighty cents on the dollar
or maybe, maybe, honestly, could be worse depending on how
popular that store is. But still getting something for that
(10:48):
as opposed to nothing, is smart and don't, don't let
them go to waste. Well, let's talk about home appliances
here for a second mat two, because consumer reports one
of our favorite magazines, one of the only magazines you
and I subscribe to that we pay for. They just
released a really cool new repair or a place calculator
for appliances that lives on their website and as a
landlord with just way too many fridges in my life,
(11:10):
I gotta be honest, I'm gonna get some use out
of this repair or a place calculated it's awesome. Well,
it's a really frequent cool tool that they've got. That's right,
because it's hard. It can be hard to know, hey,
there's things on the Fritz. Should I put a new
compressor in this fridge or do I need to just
unload it for pennies on the dollar and buy a
new one? Do I need to suck it up? Well, man,
(11:32):
the reality is that with the price of parts and
Labor to fix things like dishwashers, washing machines and ovens,
sometimes it really just does make sense to outright replace
your old appliance. But we say don't do it without
running the numbers and don't do it without consulting Youtube,
because you might find that what the appliance repair company
will charge you two or fifty bucks to fix that
(11:53):
you can fix it with a twenty dollar part in
just an hour of your time. So, yeah, the the
appliance repair companies, I will say like they do a
good business, but they charge and quite a bit of
money for their services. And if you can get to
the bottom of what's causing the problem with your appliance
and you just buy the part and fix it yourself,
boy you can find a way to make that appliance
(12:14):
last longer and without spending too much money. But if
you rely on other people to fix those appliances for you,
getting a new one sometimes makes more sense than paying
for the fix. That's true. Yeah, uh. So, while we're
got this appliance talk going on, I want the name
of our side spin off podcast, appliance talk. Appliance talk,
I just want to say that dishwashers are pretty freaking great.
(12:34):
I would have assumed that everybody knew this, but based
on the stats, there are a lot of people who
don't know this. Not only do dishwhers save you boatloads
of time, it turns out they save you a ton
of money as well. Bloomberg, they just read an article
about this. I was shocked to see that one in
five Americans don't actually use their dishwashers at all. Like,
what are they doing? Like, what what do they use
(12:55):
the dishwashers for? And then I remember letters for a winter. Well,
and then I and then I remembered how my um
uses the Dishwasher, which is that she washes all of
her dishes by hand, pulls out the drawer, you know,
opens the Dishwasher, pulls out the racks and she uses
it as a giant drying rack. Yes, my mom is
one of these people. So I just wanna maybe there's
other people like that. Can you convert her to do?
(13:16):
Who Do something similar? But we want you to know
if you're washing dishes by hand thinking that it's going
to save you money, think again. It is not true.
DISHWASHERS use only ten percent of the amount of water
that you would typically use washing them by hand. I
think on average a load of dishes takes the average
person something like like forty something gallons of water, and
(13:36):
it's because the faucet is just running for a lot
of that time, as opposed to something like four gallons,
which is what a dishwasher typically uses. And the electricity
costs are also incredibly minimal as well. And so we
share this because we don't know who you are. Like.
We know there's some folks out there listening who are like, yeah,
that's me, that there are thousands of people listening right
who just heard to say in there like, wait a second, really,
(13:57):
like maybe it's not one in five, maybe it's not
twenty percent of like I gotta think our listeners are
they're smarter than the average bearer. Maybe it's more like
but even still, that is a lot of folks out
there that we need to convince to not like, don't
feel guilty about using your dishwasher and, by the way,
you're here. You're wasting your time. You're wasting your money
as well. If you are one of those people, I
want to hear why. Let's say there's somebody out there
(14:19):
who says, I hear what you guys are saying, I
still I ain't gonna use my dishwasher. If you've got
a great reason, I would love to hear it, but
the reality is, from our point of view and from
the way the numbers bear out, like dishwashers are pretty
inexpensive machines to save you time, to save hassle, and
that actually save money too. So all right, we got
more to get to on this one, including getting scammed
(14:40):
on the payment APPs like Venmo. We'll talk about that
and more right after this. Alright, we're back from the break.
We've got plenty more stories to get to. By the way,
we didn't get to any of us. I realized we
didn't cover any of our title stories. We didn't talk
about poot music. We didn't talk about coffee drinking spend
(15:03):
thrifts either. Yeah, we'll get to those in just a second,
but first the ludicrous headline of the weekend and this
one comes from the l a times and it reads,
did someone accidentally send you money? On Venmo? You might
be getting scammed. And I don't know about you guys
listeners out there, but Matt, I've been getting some weird
requests on cash APP in particular. Not really as much
on Venmo, but uh, literally, people I don't know saying yeah,
(15:26):
requesting two bucks or a thousand dollars, literally in one case,
and I just block these people, but it's, I don't know,
to me that's a really it's a really weird part
of having these APPs. If actually hit the wrong button,
my money's gone. It's it's it's it's out the window,
it's in somebody else's account. These are these are the
same guys on the airplanes sending pictures to the air drop.
That same creeps right everybody. Well, and don't get me wrong,
(15:49):
the stammers. These APPS, of course, have made it just
super easy to send money to friends and family without
having to pay a fee. It's made transferring money really
simple in a lot of ways. But yeah, these occurrences
made me, like, feel a little differently about these APPs
and and I obviously I turned it down. report those
of spam attempts. But the reality is the article in
the L A times is talking about less obvious attempts
at scams that are making the rounds on these APPs,
(16:11):
and it's important to be aware of these things so
that you don't get taken this right. Yeah, it turns
out folks are sending you money. So the s game
would go, Joel, that somebody would actually send you money,
not make the request for money, which is gonna make
me feel better than just the request coming in an Oh,
you're gonna deposit form like free money, Bestie, but that
person will then ask you to send those funds back,
(16:32):
because obviously they're going to say that they send it
to you by mistake. The reality is they've just sent
you money using a stolen credit card, and then once
that credit card user, like who actually owns the true
credit card, once they realize that they find it and
once they report that fraud, not only will you have
sent the money back to the scam artist, but these
payment platforms will initiate a withdrawal of the same amount
(16:55):
of the actual dollars from your account, meaning that you
just got swindled. Of course you can try to initiate
Um report this fraud to your bank. But turns out
only four of VENMO scams are able to be reversed.
This is according to the better business bureau. And you've
got a kind heart. You don't want some money to
be out, money that they accidentally sent you, and so
(17:16):
you're like well, cool, of course I'll send the money back.
And that's how the scam gets you, because it seems
like you're doing the Nice, right, generous thing, but in
reality you're getting taken advantage of. Those are like Phantom Funds.
Not Show up in your think we should have used
that funds. That is good. That would have been the title,
but that's what's going on. You see that money show
up in you account, you think it's real, you think
you're just sending it back, but in reality that money
(17:36):
isn't real. So don't interact with the person directly. Reach
out to Venmo instead and be like hey, what's up
with this? and Um, most of the time it is
going to be some sort of scam. And if it
is a real person who accidentally sent money, let Venmo
handle this thing right and make the transaction right. That's right. Yeah,
let's talk about some fancy savings accounts. The Journal. They
published an article about prize linked savings accounts, and this
(17:59):
is something you've probably heard us talk about this before.
We've been talking about it for years. It started, as
far as we know, with credit unions up in Michigan.
Instead of just paying you interest to save money, these
credit unions were opting to reward savers with even bigger
cash prizes. Uh. It's it's kind of like gambling, but
like for a good reason. You're not yeah, it's money
(18:20):
that you are sitting aside in your savings account, not
money that you are spending at the local gas station. Uh,
and the more you save, the higher likelihood you could
win a substantial cash prize. Yada, they're actually one of
our favorite of the companies that are out there that
are kind of using the strategy. The payouts. They might
not average the highest rates in the country, like what
Marcus and C I t are are paying, but it
(18:43):
is the perfect behavioral savings in incentive for a lot
of folks. More than one hundred different credit unions out
there around the country are offering something similar, and so
it seems like this is a really cool way to
kind of tappen too, that that sweep stakes mentality, if
that's something that you find and yourself drawn to, and
will link to this safe to win site, uh, so
(19:04):
you can see if you have a local credit union, uh,
that participates in something like this. We'll link to Yada
as well, which is available everywhere, and you might already
be banking with somebody awesome who's paying the top rates
in the country, like C I, t or marcus or ally.
Those are those are awesome banks that we talked about
here a lot on the show. But if you're saying
I need a way, I need some incentive to help
me psychologically be willing to and able to save more money,
(19:27):
a little more spice in my savings account, that's what
I'm looking for. Maybe a little lot of action inside
of that savings platform will be the right motivation to
get you to salk more money away, whereas now you're
like two percent. Cool, two point four percent, I think,
is what C I is offering right now, which is
pretty incredible compared compared to where things have been. But here,
like you listen, I'll take a slightly lower rate that
(19:48):
offers me the potential to earn significantly more with some
sort of a lot of style drawing I think it's
cool and I think it can help a lot of
people up their savings game well. But now let's talk
about the opposite of saving here for a second, because is,
uh yeah, incentivizing yourself to save more is a good thing.
The opposite, the very opposite extreme of that, is basically
impulse buying, right and and that is on the rise
(20:09):
right now. I didn't realize this, but a man like
I was on Instagram the other night and I didn't
know there's like literally a button you can press and
they will just show you stuff that they think you
want to buy. It's amazing shopping feature. Yeah, I'm like,
I guess it was there. I never collect on it
before and then I accidentally clicked it and I was
like Whoa, like they're just trying to sell me like
hats and shorts and stuff like that and things that
they know I would be keen that. You're like, oh, yeah,
(20:31):
I kind of. Oh yeah, with the shop. That is
my style. Right. I knew it was there, but I
also avoid it too. Yeah, well, so it's weird stuff
that they're feeding me right now. It's just so much easier. Oh,
there you go. Well, I mean that is definitely up
your alley. Well, it's just easier than ever to impulse
buy stuff these days, based on the Algorithms and the
way in which we're bombarded with hyp highly tailored ads,
(20:54):
and consumer debt is rocketing back up right now. And
this this might sound random at but it turns out
that drinking caffeine can actually cause you to spend more money.
Odd But true. A new study shows that grabbing an
espresso or a coke before going into a store, or
maybe even before hopping on Instagram, will get you just
wired enough to up your spend amount. And not only
(21:16):
did the average person spend more overall in this study,
they also purchased more items. They would just add more stuff.
And I don't know, I'm if you're all like, if
you're all wired, you're just like, just give me honestly,
I can't control myself exactly. And and like, yeah, I
like caffeine on occasion. I drink some sort of caffeine
beverage basically every day, but I had no idea that
(21:37):
caffeine could have a real impact on your shopping behavior.
So what we would suggest? I guess, if you're trying
to curb impulse spending, in your life. You might want
to cut back just a little on your caffeine intake
or maybe, maybe, just don't browse your favorite sites right
after that cup of coffee because, yeah, if scientifically it
might cause you to spend more than you want. Definitely
something to keep in mind, and I wonder as well
(21:57):
if this is why target and starbucks of partnered together,
and you can't not go into a starbucks or into
a target. Man, we were like, we weren't hitting on target,
I guess, earlier, but we're talking a lot about target today.
But yeah, stay away from the starbucks before we start
perusing the aisles at your local Tar j, because it
might help you to save a little bit more money.
If you'RE gonna get one, get it on the way out. Yeah,
(22:17):
there you go, uh, Joel. Let's talk about investing. Uh,
it's we know this, but it's easier. It's cheaper than
ever to invest your money, but it's also easier than
ever to think you're investing when you're really just gambling.
A recent White Paper discussed how folks who are buying
top shots, N F T S, how they love the
lottery features involved those basketball basketball exactly. But there there
(22:40):
was like this lottery feature involved in buying and selling
and that this sort of feeds the sensation seeking behavior
that folks are drawn to. Uh. This unfortunately often resulted
in losing a ton of money. Speculation it's been on
the rise, especially in the aftermath of Covid with with
more time at home, generous steamy check uh and so
(23:01):
it's just something that we want to highlight because we
want you to not speculate and gamble your money, but
we want you to actually invest. And this reminds me
of a quote from an investing genius, Benjamin Graham. He
said that an investor looks for investments that provides safety
and a solid return. A speculator tries to profit off
of market moves like superior investing technology. It's been a
(23:22):
boon for investors who prefer the boring approach, but it's
also a massive problem for many other folks, often leading
them to lose money that they can't afford to part with.
This is money that they should be investing, not only
for I mean years at a time, but for decades
at a time. Folks should be focusing on the retirement
savings accounts and oftentimes there instead messing around with money
(23:44):
that's just sitting there in a non tax advantage brokerage account.
I think you mentioned the term sensation seeking behavior and
that was, I think, the literal term they used in
the paper they wrote that. Yeah, and it's funny because
we were just talking about these gamified savings accounts and
that is using sensation and seeking behavior to your advantage,
like incentivizing you in the right direction. This is the opposite, right.
(24:05):
It's that sensation seeking behavior that really is just akin
to gambling and a lot of people losing their money
that way. So I think there are ways you can
gamify money to to use it to propel you forward
or to hamper your progress, and this is one of
those ways where people are using it to their own harm,
to their own detriment. And I don't know what platform, Matt,
would you say a huge percentage of folks used to
(24:26):
make their speculative traits Robin Hood. Of course, yeah, right,
of course that is. That is the platform Du Jour
for folks who want to day trade. And there's nothing
inherently wrong with Robin Hood's products. Actually it's a really
good product. It's just that people tend to buy and
sell stocks on a whim because of the way the
interface is set up and, like I was just saying,
to brokerage accounts. There are not retirement accounts offered on
(24:49):
Robin's right. It's basically once they do once they do that,
I think we will slightly change our Tum yes, agreed,
but right now you can't even open up a Roth
IRA on that platform, which I think is telling of
what Robin Hood is trying to get people to do.
They're they're almost encouraging us to take action when the
best investors are stocking away money and patiently doing nothing. Right.
There in action is an investor's best friend. And so,
(25:10):
Matt Robin Hood just launched their own version of an
index fund this week. But, and you know, we talked
about index funds a lot. Total stock market funds, SMP funds,
those are great low cost funds, a simple way to
invest that people can understand and that a lot of
folk should choose. But this new Robin Hood One is
not one we'd recommend. Why is that? Well, instead of
(25:32):
investing in a big chunk of the overall market, if
you buy into this Robin Hood Index Fund, you're investing
in the favorite funds of Robin Hood, users of the day,
trader crowd right of the meme stock fellas and so populism,
investing right, right and like. Is this better than willy
nearly choosing individual stocks to invest in? Maybe a little
(25:52):
bit right, but it's still not a fund worth considering.
I think. If you're if you're on Robin Hood, if
that's where your main account is one we would say
it shouldn't be, because they don't have access to the
retirement accounts you need. And too you might see this
fun pop up and say, Matt and Joel Talk About
Index Funds. This is Robin Hood's version of an index fund.
Kind of yeah, but it's still worlds, apart from the
Classic Index Funds that we recommend that allow you to
(26:14):
gain access to basically a ridiculously large slice of American
or worldwide businesses. So yeah, this new Robin Hood Attempt
at creating an index fund not so good. Two thumbs down.
Thumbs down, stay away from it, Joel. Our last story.
Let's talk about poop music, because if you have an
Amazon Echo, there's a good chance your kids are listening
(26:35):
to it. But his parents with school aged kids, they've
they've heard of Perry grip. These are songs about like
cats flushing the toilets, hamsters on pianos. They are catchy, dude,
doesn't it doesn't make them good, though. Yeah, that that
dude has made like real serious money making these dorky
kids songs. Turns out, when your kids yell Poop at Alexa,
it might play a song like poopy stupid, but the
(26:57):
guy that the record of the song, he's making bank.
And so why are we talking about the story? Honestly,
we think it's incredible of all the different ways that
folks were able to make money. We are all for that.
But whether or not you're cool with your kids listening
to poopy stupid, but that's totally up to you. Personally,
personal decision. Personally, I'm not a fan. There's no way
(27:18):
I'm gonna let my kids listen to this crap. UNINTENDED
UH one. But we just came back from Finncon Matt
not too long ago and it's this nerdy financial media
conference and I'm I'm constantly amazed at the ways that
people make money online. The world can be your oyster
and if poop music is your is your method to
financial success and creative fulfillment, go for it. I say
(27:40):
more power to you, but I'm not going to support it.
You don't have to. You don't have to. Yeah, potty humor.
We've had a kindergartener and so if someone like two
it's at the table or something like that. Yeah, we
laugh at it's it's funny, right. But, like, I'm also
not gonna like listen to songs that's just solely about poop.
You know, like there's a difference between like, like what
is music? Like? I want to teach my kids that's
(28:01):
more of like an art form, that is something that
can be beautiful as opposed to like the lowest common denominator,
which is bathroom humor. Still, mad props to the perigrips
of this world and they are using it to their
support that. You know. My kids all listen to everyone.
So the catalush and a toilet song, it's a classic.
It is it's a modern classic. So, all right, it
might not be the Beatles or whatever, but still that's
(28:23):
what I wanted to I mean literally, we listened to
the Beatles or the beach boys. Like lately we've been
playing some like bands that Kate and I have always
been like the decembrist. We're teaching like that's one of
Kate's favorite bands, decembrists. I was playing some Jimmy eat
world for every the other day. But like teaching them
some of the great bands of at least of our history,
of our past. I'm down, I'm down. Yeah, all right,
that's gonna do it for this episode. You, you'd be
(28:44):
the judge on your own in your own in your
own home, not parent podcasts here. But yeah, people would
be in trouble if it was. But all right, that's
gonna do it for it, for this one. And it
will have links to all the stuff we mentioned up
on our site and how to money dot com. And again,
you can always sign up for that how the money newsletter.
Tuesday morning is when the next one comes out. Sign
up now to get that one in your inbox. But, Matt,
(29:05):
until next time, best friends out, best friends out,
Welcome to how the money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're discussing poop music, speculation, nation and coffee
drinking spendthrifts. That's right, Joel. This is our Friday flight
(00:28):
and we are going to talk about our favorite stories
from this week and your favorite subject up. Oh please,
I'm actually looking forward to that conversation. You're juvenile humor.
I think there's a lot of folks are probably thinking
of poop music. What the heck are they going to
talk about? We'll get to it. It'll be in the
second half, but these, like I said, our favorite stories,
and we call it the Friday flight because if you
(00:49):
ever go to a brewery and you get a flight
of beers, it's a small sampling of all the different
beers that they have on top, so you don't have
to commit to an entire sixteen ounces of the beer.
Sometimes you might just want four ounces or six ounces,
whatever sizes they're porn similarly, are going to dabble in
personal finance stories, a bunch of different stories of real
quick I filled up this past week for what Costco
(01:13):
Man They I'm so glad that I used to hate
on Costco but I have and taking advantage of our
affordable gas here in the state of Georgia. Not's a brag.
But like Georgia, do we have the lowest gas? Gas
prices not worth very close. I think Mississippi. They've got
cheaper gas and we do, or historically they do, but
otherwise George has got it going on. The water is
(01:36):
just fine, folks, if you want to come join us.
I think I saw gas prices had fallen for ninety
nine days straight, which, considering where gas prices were, was
a welcome relief. Although the before they broke the streak,
I'm starting to trend back up just a touch. We'll see,
but yeah, I'm glad you're able to fill up for
less than three bucks agallon. That feels like, I mean,
at least mentally, that feels like a relief. Absolutely literally.
Over the summer, when prices are at the peak, it
(01:57):
was costing me close to a hundred dollars to fill
up the van and now it's sixty bucks, forty, forty
difference every time we fill up the van. Well, Matt,
last week we we mentioned, hey, we're gonna do a
sock giveaways. Right, we have the dopist socks in the
podcasting game and we're gonna give give some socks away
to folks who signed up for the fairly new how
the money newsletter, and we had a bunch of folks
(02:18):
sign up and are in thank you contest. Yeah, thank
you to everybody who's signed up who was gunning for
one of those five pairs of socks. We had a
ton of people signed up, which is awesome, and so
we hope you get value from the newsletter to but Matt,
you want to announce the winners. That's right. Yeah, so,
of all the folks who signed up in the last
seven days, we picked five random winners through uh list,
rand randomizer dot org or something like that. I just
(02:39):
want people to know that we're being fair, Um, but
not just picking people with the coolest names exactly. So
these are the top five folks. Jonathan S, abby f
a Israel D, Caitlin B and Jason C. I'm not
gonna say your entire name for Privacy, privacy concerns. Please
please also read their social security number as well. So
we request upon sign up. What if you have that
(03:00):
on the side of floor? Just a spot. Who are
this deal? But we will be reaching out to you five. Oh, actually,
in one more, we randomly picked another person who had
signed up previously, earlier this year, because we felt that
we didn't want to leave all the folks out there
who had previously signed up for exactly so we got
a sixth in their Jenna E. UH. And so we
(03:21):
will reach out to all six of you folks and
we'll be getting a pair of socks to you in
the mail here shortly. Yeah, for sure. And just a reminder,
we do have the best personal finance newsletter out there
right now. In my opinion, it's rocking and rolling. And
it's not an opinion, dude. It's like it's the numbers
show right. Yes, people enjoy it's good vibes, personal funny,
it's good information letter. The most so signed up at
(03:43):
how the money dot com slash newsletter, and maybe you
will win more awesome how the money talks in the future. But, Matt,
let's get onto the subject of hand. The Friday flight.
A quick sampling of stories we found interesting this week.
And Uh, let's talk about rate hikes first. I feel
like that's that's the top story. After what happened on
Wednesday the Fed. They just announced another three quarters of
a percentage of rate hike, continuing their aggressive stance towards
(04:05):
runaway inflation. Seventy five basis points for all the nerds
out there, and and it just inflation has been pretty
sticky like. It hasn't really budgeted very much, despite the
Fed's best efforts, and chairman Powell, he said that there's
no way to escape the pain. That was were like
his literal words, and that makes people freak out a
little bit. And raising interest rates regularly in the way
(04:25):
that they're doing it, it's basically this necessary evil in
order to prevent a nastier outcome, which would be inflation
continuing to start and like we've seen in other countries
around the world, like Venezuela right which has had an
inflation problem for quite some time. But these rate hikes
they're attempting to basically throw some sand in the gears
of the economy. The Fed wants to curb demand for
(04:46):
borrowing and they want to curb consumption and the peskiness
of inflation. And these sustained rate hikes really they could
impact the stock market and the job market even more
as we move forward. So it's even more important to
make sure that you're in a strong position as an
individual when it comes to your personal economic health. These
rain hikes are likely to persist for some time to
come and just as as individual consumers, we have to
(05:10):
be prepared. We have to be able to weather what
looks like potentially darker economics. Guys on the horizon. That's right.
And specifically, what this means for you as an individual
are that borrowing rates are going to continue to rise,
and so that means if you are in some credit
card debt, that is going to become an even worse
foe towards your money. Credit card interest rates. They are
(05:30):
up close to three percent in the last three months alone.
This is according to credit cards DOT COM. That's what
the national averages are rates. They've been rising for the
last six months and all signs are pointing to that
trend continuing. Based on what J PAL is saying, uh,
the average credit card rate right now is at eighteen
percent and I think we could break into mark next year. Uh.
(05:52):
And you know, we were talking about how great using
credit cards for your everyday purchases can be if you
can pay the bill on time and in full. But
if that is not the case, credit card debt is
even more dangerous for you. So if you're in credit
card debt right now, if you've got consumer debt, making
a plan to get out is even more important than usual.
We could recommend for you to check out UNDEBT DOT it.
(06:15):
This is a great free tool to help you to
to to do just that, to get out of debt.
We want you to be careful if you've got any
floating rates on on any debt right now, you're going
to see those those rates, those payments, start to climb. Yeah,
like if you've had a home equity line of credit
because you did some renovation work over the past couple
of years and for and for years it was what
you felt was a smart debt to have around, you're
(06:36):
gonna start seeing the payments on that increase. That's right.
It was at a low interest rate, but that interest
rate is climbing and so maybe what was three and
a half percent is now, you know, creeping up into
the fives, and so you're you're going to want to
be paying more attention to that debt. You might want
to pay it off more quickly than you had otherwise
planned because the rate is likely to continue going up.
Matt let's let's we're talked about credit cards there, but
(06:57):
let's talk about gift cards, because some of them, of
those horrid pieces news items I saw this week was
specifically around gift cards and the fact that people aren't
using the gift cards that they have. To me, that's
a travesty, right. You've you've basically like, uh, taking in
cash and throwing it, throwing it in the fire, because
nearly half of Americans have unused gift cards that are
(07:18):
lingering around to the two of twenty one billion dollars
in total, which is just a ton of money. That's
the big problem. Yeah, like that's a lot of money. Like,
I don't know when you when you say it like
there's yeah, maybe you've got a gift card and you've
got a few bucks on there. Doesn't seem like that
they give a deal. Until you see the combine, like
how much money we're talking about here. I bet some
of our listeners have hundreds of dollars and unused gift
cards hanging around in their drawers, and so there's something
(07:39):
worth paying attention to because you don't want it to
go to waste. And we're not really fans of gift
cards in the first place, because why would you take
something that can be spent literally anywhere and turn it
into an asset that can only be spent at one place?
It's like, let me take a hunter bucks and now
the Hunter Bucks has turned into something I can only
spend a target like turn it into target bucks. Right,
that's a bad idea, right. Uh. The only reason to
(08:01):
do this, if is if you're getting an additional perk
by doing so, maybe some free extra money to spend
at that store or restaurant like, for instance, I think
on on Black Friday or in that in that vicinity,
you can get target gift cards at a ten percent discount.
And if that's the case, if your dollars are going further,
some incentive want to do that, there's a discount there also.
I Bet a lot of folks have. I saw that
(08:21):
this dollar amount has increased on average over the past
few years, and I think it has a lot to
do with the fact that during the pandemic, a lot
of folks, and we even talked about this on the show, right,
but restaurants in particular, they all had to closer doors,
and so it felt almost American to go out to
be a good citizen, the patriotic duty, yeah, to support
your favorite restaurants that you wanted to see make it
(08:42):
through the pandemic. We did that. We talked about this
here on the show, and so if you are in
that boat, make sure you know where those gift cards are, yeah,
and go out and use them now. Because, yeah, regardless,
if you've got gift cards lying around, got put them
all together in one place. You know, organize them. Yeah,
organize them, figure out what you got. You and Emily,
you've got a ziplock bag that you yes, you pull
them out before date. We pull them out for date
night and we're like, cool, do we want to hit
(09:03):
up one of these places tonight? Because let's spend these
suckers down. Start using them regularly for purchases you need
to make and, uh, or social outings. But, yeah, make
sure those things don't stay hidden. Take an assessment, to
do an inventory of the gift cards you've got and
then make a plan to spend them down, because you
don't want to be a part of that gruesome statistic.
(09:23):
That's right. Also, remember that gift cards, that they can't
expire within five years of the date that they're issued,
and this is according to federal law. But beyond that,
some states actually go even further and they allow you
to redeem those cards, or at least a portion of them,
for cash if you have a certain certain balance remaining
on your account. Will Link to a guide where you
(09:44):
can quickly see what your options are based on where
it is that you live. And something else you could do,
if your state doesn't offer that kind of Gift Card protection,
would be to just unload those cars altogether sell those
unwanted gift cards on a site like card cash. Um.
But whatever you do, yeah, don't let them continue to
lie dormant in your drawer. Uh, you've got yours in
a gallon ZIP block bag. I like. We keep ours
(10:05):
wrapped with a nice tidy rubber band. What we need
to do is probably like keep those either in the
van or just somewhere where we where we see them, right,
because when you stash them away at a size to
all your bed, bath and beyond cupons, when they're when
they're out of sight, they're out of mind. My mom
has oh yeah, I goes. I mean that's like the
it's like Jo that's the most quintessential cupon the bed
(10:26):
bathroom on one well, yeah, and you mentioned card cash
and that's a great site to think about selling your
your your gift cards at. And the reality is you're
not going to get return on that if you have
a hundred dollar gift card, depending on the store that
you're selling that Gift Card or you might get seventy
cents on the dollar or eighty cents on the dollar
or maybe, maybe, honestly, could be worse depending on how
popular that store is. But still getting something for that
(10:48):
as opposed to nothing, is smart and don't, don't let
them go to waste. Well, let's talk about home appliances
here for a second mat two, because consumer reports one
of our favorite magazines, one of the only magazines you
and I subscribe to that we pay for. They just
released a really cool new repair or a place calculator
for appliances that lives on their website and as a
landlord with just way too many fridges in my life,
(11:10):
I gotta be honest, I'm gonna get some use out
of this repair or a place calculated it's awesome. Well,
it's a really frequent cool tool that they've got. That's right,
because it's hard. It can be hard to know, hey,
there's things on the Fritz. Should I put a new
compressor in this fridge or do I need to just
unload it for pennies on the dollar and buy a
new one? Do I need to suck it up? Well, man,
(11:32):
the reality is that with the price of parts and
Labor to fix things like dishwashers, washing machines and ovens,
sometimes it really just does make sense to outright replace
your old appliance. But we say don't do it without
running the numbers and don't do it without consulting Youtube,
because you might find that what the appliance repair company
will charge you two or fifty bucks to fix that
(11:53):
you can fix it with a twenty dollar part in
just an hour of your time. So, yeah, the the
appliance repair companies, I will say like they do a
good business, but they charge and quite a bit of
money for their services. And if you can get to
the bottom of what's causing the problem with your appliance
and you just buy the part and fix it yourself,
boy you can find a way to make that appliance
(12:14):
last longer and without spending too much money. But if
you rely on other people to fix those appliances for you,
getting a new one sometimes makes more sense than paying
for the fix. That's true. Yeah, uh. So, while we're
got this appliance talk going on, I want the name
of our side spin off podcast, appliance talk. Appliance talk,
I just want to say that dishwashers are pretty freaking great.
(12:34):
I would have assumed that everybody knew this, but based
on the stats, there are a lot of people who
don't know this. Not only do dishwhers save you boatloads
of time, it turns out they save you a ton
of money as well. Bloomberg, they just read an article
about this. I was shocked to see that one in
five Americans don't actually use their dishwashers at all. Like,
what are they doing? Like, what what do they use
(12:55):
the dishwashers for? And then I remember letters for a winter. Well,
and then I and then I remembered how my um
uses the Dishwasher, which is that she washes all of
her dishes by hand, pulls out the drawer, you know,
opens the Dishwasher, pulls out the racks and she uses
it as a giant drying rack. Yes, my mom is
one of these people. So I just wanna maybe there's
other people like that. Can you convert her to do?
(13:16):
Who Do something similar? But we want you to know
if you're washing dishes by hand thinking that it's going
to save you money, think again. It is not true.
DISHWASHERS use only ten percent of the amount of water
that you would typically use washing them by hand. I
think on average a load of dishes takes the average
person something like like forty something gallons of water, and
(13:36):
it's because the faucet is just running for a lot
of that time, as opposed to something like four gallons,
which is what a dishwasher typically uses. And the electricity
costs are also incredibly minimal as well. And so we
share this because we don't know who you are. Like.
We know there's some folks out there listening who are like, yeah,
that's me, that there are thousands of people listening right
who just heard to say in there like, wait a second, really,
(13:57):
like maybe it's not one in five, maybe it's not
twenty percent of like I gotta think our listeners are
they're smarter than the average bearer. Maybe it's more like
but even still, that is a lot of folks out
there that we need to convince to not like, don't
feel guilty about using your dishwasher and, by the way,
you're here. You're wasting your time. You're wasting your money
as well. If you are one of those people, I
want to hear why. Let's say there's somebody out there
(14:19):
who says, I hear what you guys are saying, I
still I ain't gonna use my dishwasher. If you've got
a great reason, I would love to hear it, but
the reality is, from our point of view and from
the way the numbers bear out, like dishwashers are pretty
inexpensive machines to save you time, to save hassle, and
that actually save money too. So all right, we got
more to get to on this one, including getting scammed
(14:40):
on the payment APPs like Venmo. We'll talk about that
and more right after this. Alright, we're back from the break.
We've got plenty more stories to get to. By the way,
we didn't get to any of us. I realized we
didn't cover any of our title stories. We didn't talk
about poot music. We didn't talk about coffee drinking spend
(15:03):
thrifts either. Yeah, we'll get to those in just a second,
but first the ludicrous headline of the weekend and this
one comes from the l a times and it reads,
did someone accidentally send you money? On Venmo? You might
be getting scammed. And I don't know about you guys
listeners out there, but Matt, I've been getting some weird
requests on cash APP in particular. Not really as much
on Venmo, but uh, literally, people I don't know saying yeah,
(15:26):
requesting two bucks or a thousand dollars, literally in one case,
and I just block these people, but it's, I don't know,
to me that's a really it's a really weird part
of having these APPs. If actually hit the wrong button,
my money's gone. It's it's it's it's out the window,
it's in somebody else's account. These are these are the
same guys on the airplanes sending pictures to the air drop.
That same creeps right everybody. Well, and don't get me wrong,
(15:49):
the stammers. These APPS, of course, have made it just
super easy to send money to friends and family without
having to pay a fee. It's made transferring money really
simple in a lot of ways. But yeah, these occurrences
made me, like, feel a little differently about these APPs
and and I obviously I turned it down. report those
of spam attempts. But the reality is the article in
the L A times is talking about less obvious attempts
at scams that are making the rounds on these APPs,
(16:11):
and it's important to be aware of these things so
that you don't get taken this right. Yeah, it turns
out folks are sending you money. So the s game
would go, Joel, that somebody would actually send you money,
not make the request for money, which is gonna make
me feel better than just the request coming in an Oh,
you're gonna deposit form like free money, Bestie, but that
person will then ask you to send those funds back,
(16:32):
because obviously they're going to say that they send it
to you by mistake. The reality is they've just sent
you money using a stolen credit card, and then once
that credit card user, like who actually owns the true
credit card, once they realize that they find it and
once they report that fraud, not only will you have
sent the money back to the scam artist, but these
payment platforms will initiate a withdrawal of the same amount
(16:55):
of the actual dollars from your account, meaning that you
just got swindled. Of course you can try to initiate
Um report this fraud to your bank. But turns out
only four of VENMO scams are able to be reversed.
This is according to the better business bureau. And you've
got a kind heart. You don't want some money to
be out, money that they accidentally sent you, and so
(17:16):
you're like well, cool, of course I'll send the money back.
And that's how the scam gets you, because it seems
like you're doing the Nice, right, generous thing, but in
reality you're getting taken advantage of. Those are like Phantom Funds.
Not Show up in your think we should have used
that funds. That is good. That would have been the title,
but that's what's going on. You see that money show
up in you account, you think it's real, you think
you're just sending it back, but in reality that money
(17:36):
isn't real. So don't interact with the person directly. Reach
out to Venmo instead and be like hey, what's up
with this? and Um, most of the time it is
going to be some sort of scam. And if it
is a real person who accidentally sent money, let Venmo
handle this thing right and make the transaction right. That's right. Yeah,
let's talk about some fancy savings accounts. The Journal. They
published an article about prize linked savings accounts, and this
(17:59):
is something you've probably heard us talk about this before.
We've been talking about it for years. It started, as
far as we know, with credit unions up in Michigan.
Instead of just paying you interest to save money, these
credit unions were opting to reward savers with even bigger
cash prizes. Uh. It's it's kind of like gambling, but
like for a good reason. You're not yeah, it's money
(18:20):
that you are sitting aside in your savings account, not
money that you are spending at the local gas station. Uh,
and the more you save, the higher likelihood you could
win a substantial cash prize. Yada, they're actually one of
our favorite of the companies that are out there that
are kind of using the strategy. The payouts. They might
not average the highest rates in the country, like what
Marcus and C I t are are paying, but it
(18:43):
is the perfect behavioral savings in incentive for a lot
of folks. More than one hundred different credit unions out
there around the country are offering something similar, and so
it seems like this is a really cool way to
kind of tappen too, that that sweep stakes mentality, if
that's something that you find and yourself drawn to, and
will link to this safe to win site, uh, so
(19:04):
you can see if you have a local credit union, uh,
that participates in something like this. We'll link to Yada
as well, which is available everywhere, and you might already
be banking with somebody awesome who's paying the top rates
in the country, like C I, t or marcus or ally.
Those are those are awesome banks that we talked about
here a lot on the show. But if you're saying
I need a way, I need some incentive to help
me psychologically be willing to and able to save more money,
(19:27):
a little more spice in my savings account, that's what
I'm looking for. Maybe a little lot of action inside
of that savings platform will be the right motivation to
get you to salk more money away, whereas now you're
like two percent. Cool, two point four percent, I think,
is what C I is offering right now, which is
pretty incredible compared compared to where things have been. But here,
like you listen, I'll take a slightly lower rate that
(19:48):
offers me the potential to earn significantly more with some
sort of a lot of style drawing I think it's
cool and I think it can help a lot of
people up their savings game well. But now let's talk
about the opposite of saving here for a second, because is,
uh yeah, incentivizing yourself to save more is a good thing.
The opposite, the very opposite extreme of that, is basically
impulse buying, right and and that is on the rise
(20:09):
right now. I didn't realize this, but a man like
I was on Instagram the other night and I didn't
know there's like literally a button you can press and
they will just show you stuff that they think you
want to buy. It's amazing shopping feature. Yeah, I'm like,
I guess it was there. I never collect on it
before and then I accidentally clicked it and I was
like Whoa, like they're just trying to sell me like
hats and shorts and stuff like that and things that
they know I would be keen that. You're like, oh, yeah,
(20:31):
I kind of. Oh yeah, with the shop. That is
my style. Right. I knew it was there, but I
also avoid it too. Yeah, well, so it's weird stuff
that they're feeding me right now. It's just so much easier. Oh,
there you go. Well, I mean that is definitely up
your alley. Well, it's just easier than ever to impulse
buy stuff these days, based on the Algorithms and the
way in which we're bombarded with hyp highly tailored ads,
(20:54):
and consumer debt is rocketing back up right now. And
this this might sound random at but it turns out
that drinking caffeine can actually cause you to spend more money.
Odd But true. A new study shows that grabbing an
espresso or a coke before going into a store, or
maybe even before hopping on Instagram, will get you just
wired enough to up your spend amount. And not only
(21:16):
did the average person spend more overall in this study,
they also purchased more items. They would just add more stuff.
And I don't know, I'm if you're all like, if
you're all wired, you're just like, just give me honestly,
I can't control myself exactly. And and like, yeah, I
like caffeine on occasion. I drink some sort of caffeine
beverage basically every day, but I had no idea that
(21:37):
caffeine could have a real impact on your shopping behavior.
So what we would suggest? I guess, if you're trying
to curb impulse spending, in your life. You might want
to cut back just a little on your caffeine intake
or maybe, maybe, just don't browse your favorite sites right
after that cup of coffee because, yeah, if scientifically it
might cause you to spend more than you want. Definitely
something to keep in mind, and I wonder as well
(21:57):
if this is why target and starbucks of partnered together,
and you can't not go into a starbucks or into
a target. Man, we were like, we weren't hitting on target,
I guess, earlier, but we're talking a lot about target today.
But yeah, stay away from the starbucks before we start
perusing the aisles at your local Tar j, because it
might help you to save a little bit more money.
If you'RE gonna get one, get it on the way out. Yeah,
(22:17):
there you go, uh, Joel. Let's talk about investing. Uh,
it's we know this, but it's easier. It's cheaper than
ever to invest your money, but it's also easier than
ever to think you're investing when you're really just gambling.
A recent White Paper discussed how folks who are buying
top shots, N F T S, how they love the
lottery features involved those basketball basketball exactly. But there there
(22:40):
was like this lottery feature involved in buying and selling
and that this sort of feeds the sensation seeking behavior
that folks are drawn to. Uh. This unfortunately often resulted
in losing a ton of money. Speculation it's been on
the rise, especially in the aftermath of Covid with with
more time at home, generous steamy check uh and so
(23:01):
it's just something that we want to highlight because we
want you to not speculate and gamble your money, but
we want you to actually invest. And this reminds me
of a quote from an investing genius, Benjamin Graham. He
said that an investor looks for investments that provides safety
and a solid return. A speculator tries to profit off
of market moves like superior investing technology. It's been a
(23:22):
boon for investors who prefer the boring approach, but it's
also a massive problem for many other folks, often leading
them to lose money that they can't afford to part with.
This is money that they should be investing, not only
for I mean years at a time, but for decades
at a time. Folks should be focusing on the retirement
savings accounts and oftentimes there instead messing around with money
(23:44):
that's just sitting there in a non tax advantage brokerage account.
I think you mentioned the term sensation seeking behavior and
that was, I think, the literal term they used in
the paper they wrote that. Yeah, and it's funny because
we were just talking about these gamified savings accounts and
that is using sensation and seeking behavior to your advantage,
like incentivizing you in the right direction. This is the opposite, right.
(24:05):
It's that sensation seeking behavior that really is just akin
to gambling and a lot of people losing their money
that way. So I think there are ways you can
gamify money to to use it to propel you forward
or to hamper your progress, and this is one of
those ways where people are using it to their own harm,
to their own detriment. And I don't know what platform, Matt,
would you say a huge percentage of folks used to
(24:26):
make their speculative traits Robin Hood. Of course, yeah, right,
of course that is. That is the platform Du Jour
for folks who want to day trade. And there's nothing
inherently wrong with Robin Hood's products. Actually it's a really
good product. It's just that people tend to buy and
sell stocks on a whim because of the way the
interface is set up and, like I was just saying,
to brokerage accounts. There are not retirement accounts offered on
(24:49):
Robin's right. It's basically once they do once they do that,
I think we will slightly change our Tum yes, agreed,
but right now you can't even open up a Roth
IRA on that platform, which I think is telling of
what Robin Hood is trying to get people to do.
They're they're almost encouraging us to take action when the
best investors are stocking away money and patiently doing nothing. Right.
There in action is an investor's best friend. And so,
(25:10):
Matt Robin Hood just launched their own version of an
index fund this week. But, and you know, we talked
about index funds a lot. Total stock market funds, SMP funds,
those are great low cost funds, a simple way to
invest that people can understand and that a lot of
folk should choose. But this new Robin Hood One is
not one we'd recommend. Why is that? Well, instead of
(25:32):
investing in a big chunk of the overall market, if
you buy into this Robin Hood Index Fund, you're investing
in the favorite funds of Robin Hood, users of the day,
trader crowd right of the meme stock fellas and so populism,
investing right, right and like. Is this better than willy
nearly choosing individual stocks to invest in? Maybe a little
(25:52):
bit right, but it's still not a fund worth considering.
I think. If you're if you're on Robin Hood, if
that's where your main account is one we would say
it shouldn't be, because they don't have access to the
retirement accounts you need. And too you might see this
fun pop up and say, Matt and Joel Talk About
Index Funds. This is Robin Hood's version of an index fund.
Kind of yeah, but it's still worlds, apart from the
Classic Index Funds that we recommend that allow you to
(26:14):
gain access to basically a ridiculously large slice of American
or worldwide businesses. So yeah, this new Robin Hood Attempt
at creating an index fund not so good. Two thumbs down.
Thumbs down, stay away from it, Joel. Our last story.
Let's talk about poop music, because if you have an
Amazon Echo, there's a good chance your kids are listening
(26:35):
to it. But his parents with school aged kids, they've
they've heard of Perry grip. These are songs about like
cats flushing the toilets, hamsters on pianos. They are catchy, dude,
doesn't it doesn't make them good, though. Yeah, that that
dude has made like real serious money making these dorky
kids songs. Turns out, when your kids yell Poop at Alexa,
it might play a song like poopy stupid, but the
(26:57):
guy that the record of the song, he's making bank.
And so why are we talking about the story? Honestly,
we think it's incredible of all the different ways that
folks were able to make money. We are all for that.
But whether or not you're cool with your kids listening
to poopy stupid, but that's totally up to you. Personally,
personal decision. Personally, I'm not a fan. There's no way
(27:18):
I'm gonna let my kids listen to this crap. UNINTENDED
UH one. But we just came back from Finncon Matt
not too long ago and it's this nerdy financial media
conference and I'm I'm constantly amazed at the ways that
people make money online. The world can be your oyster
and if poop music is your is your method to
financial success and creative fulfillment, go for it. I say
(27:40):
more power to you, but I'm not going to support it.
You don't have to. You don't have to. Yeah, potty humor.
We've had a kindergartener and so if someone like two
it's at the table or something like that. Yeah, we
laugh at it's it's funny, right. But, like, I'm also
not gonna like listen to songs that's just solely about poop.
You know, like there's a difference between like, like what
is music? Like? I want to teach my kids that's
(28:01):
more of like an art form, that is something that
can be beautiful as opposed to like the lowest common denominator,
which is bathroom humor. Still, mad props to the perigrips
of this world and they are using it to their
support that. You know. My kids all listen to everyone.
So the catalush and a toilet song, it's a classic.
It is it's a modern classic. So, all right, it
might not be the Beatles or whatever, but still that's
(28:23):
what I wanted to I mean literally, we listened to
the Beatles or the beach boys. Like lately we've been
playing some like bands that Kate and I have always
been like the decembrist. We're teaching like that's one of
Kate's favorite bands, decembrists. I was playing some Jimmy eat
world for every the other day. But like teaching them
some of the great bands of at least of our history,
of our past. I'm down, I'm down. Yeah, all right,
that's gonna do it for this episode. You, you'd be
(28:44):
the judge on your own in your own in your
own home, not parent podcasts here. But yeah, people would
be in trouble if it was. But all right, that's
gonna do it for it, for this one. And it
will have links to all the stuff we mentioned up
on our site and how to money dot com. And again,
you can always sign up for that how the money newsletter.
Tuesday morning is when the next one comes out. Sign
up now to get that one in your inbox. But, Matt,
(29:05):
until next time, best friends out, best friends out,
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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