May 13, 2025 • 40 mins
Taxes, Voting, Recycling—oh my! After navigating this jungle of grown-up responsibilities together, we're taking a quick summer breather to recharge our adulting batteries. But before we temporarily hang up our responsible pants, join us for this special episode packed with our favorite kernels of wisdom from the season so far AND get an exclusive preview of the fresh adulting adventures awaiting you when Grown-Up Stuff returns in late summer! Think of this episode as your adulting victory lap—complete with confetti and zero paperwork required!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Ruby. Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of
Grown Up Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yes, indeed, welcome back, and welcome to a little bit
of housekeeping.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I love love the inflection there, That's exactly how I
wrote it. So now spring may have sprung, we're already
jonesing for a summer break here at Grownup Stuff, and
we will be taking the next few weeks off to
do just that. But would we leave you high and dry,
fellow grown ups?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
That would be decidedly very un grown up like. We
would not do that.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Ever, I couldn't agree more. It's all about communication, righting.
Grown ups set expectations, they do not defy them.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Okay, So before we bid each other a bon voyage,
we thought we'd take a closer look at our favorite
kernels of wisdom from this season and with repetition, file
them away in our ever expanding grown up minds.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I love that idea. Let's do just that, grown up.
So first, we're actually gonna go chronologically through our season,
and the first episode was Russ Garoffalo, who is the
owner and founder of Brass Taxes, which is a tax
company located in Brooklyn, New York. So Rus really got
(01:14):
his starts in comedy and a very empathetic guy, as
many artists are. But he started working with a mentor
who was a CBA who really like set him off
on this other journey where he found that if he
brought this empathy to the discussion of money in working
with clients directly, that he could make this kind of vulnerable,
scary thing of divulging all of your financials to your
(01:35):
tax guy into a positive experience. And so we learned
a ton from Russ and we'll take listen to those clips.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Now, there's no other time in life where you're like,
am I going to get back four thousand dollars or
am I going to owe ten thousand dollars. It's just
like the crappiest casino in the world with such variability,
and it's like weird that it's normal to us. So
a good way to figure out how you're about to
(02:01):
get paid at a job is if they give you
a W four. So a W four you fill out
and that ends up with you getting a W two later, Okay,
so that means you're an employee officially. If they give
you a W nine, that means they're going to pay
you as a contractor without taxes taken out, so suddenly,
like the roads have diverged. One, you're going to have
(02:23):
all the protections of an employee, minimum wage, unemployment, potentially benefits,
and they're going to take taxes out as you get stuff.
And the other way is that's your responsibility at the
end of the year, and you better save that money.
My mentor, Harvey said, take what you're entitled to, but
don't be greedy, and I've kind of come to agree
(02:45):
with that. I will also point out there's no accreditation
necessary to do taxes. That's why the industry feels kind
of shady. All you have to do is convince someone
to trust you and then you have to go through
the process of being allowed to e file tax not
a high bar. On the other end of that, just
someone having letters after their name does not indicate they
(03:06):
will be good at your taxes. So just because somebody
is a CPA, i'm an enrolled agent, which is an
IRS designation versus CPA is a third party organization, it
doesn't mean I'm gonna be good at your taxes. Just
like you wouldn't hire like a real estate lawyer if
you were on trial for murder. It's like just being
a lawyer does not mean they will be helpful, right,
(03:28):
And so I tell everybody you need to work with
someone who understands your industry and you feel comfortable talking to.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
God listening back to us. I just can't tell you
how much I appreciate this man and taxes are as
he mentioned the world's crappiest casino, and no other point
in life do you know, you know, if you're gonna
have to owe money or whatever, and that can be scary,
And so I think that just kind of admitting it
is a really great place to start. But I also
just love him breaking down the W twown II routes
(04:00):
because I remember the first time that I got handed
at W nine and I was like, yeah, what is this?
Like I was was this is my first, for instance job.
They're like, oh, here you go fill this out. I
was like, oh, yeah, I do this all the time.
And then I'm like calling my dad's dad.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
What is this?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I don't know what this is.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
They gave me a WTF.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I don't know. Yeah, they give yeah W two WTF.
I'm not sure. And I really had no idea that
they were paying me as a contractor and what that meant,
and so.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
You did not save appropriately.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I did not save appropriately. It was really bad, but
broken down simply as Russ said, W two means your
full time employee. W nine means you're a contractor. And
if you are W nine, you should take Russ's advice
and in the episode, what he said is put twenty
percent of the money that you're making that belongs to
the government, put it in a high yield savings account,
which in a cruise about five percent annually. And then
(04:50):
that way, not only are you not touching the money
that you should be saving for taxes, it'll grow a
little bit over the year. You'll have potentially a little
bit more to cover any overages if you need to be,
or put that back in your pocket once you've done
paying your taxes. I thought that that was great. But
also just knowing that you can change your W four,
I think that this is one of the most powerful
things he said that, like just because you claim single
or you claim one or you claim zero or whatever
(05:11):
is you claim, and that relates to leam out, you're
withholding that you can at any point, if you have
a full time job, go back to your HR and
change it. I had no, I and I still haven't
done that. I was going to work here like four
months later, and I sileft. But I'm gonna and I'm
gonna call Russ, yeah yeah, and hire him. And as
Russ said, just because somebody has a bunch of fancy
(05:31):
letters ye at the end of their name, doesn't you
know they're a CPA there or whatever. It doesn't necessarily
mean that they're going to be a good tax person
or good for you. Because there's a business relationship, that's
what is. You're paying them money to do a service.
And if you don't trust them or feel comfortable or
feel like they have a handle on your industry or
your specific needs, then they're not necessarily going to be
the right person for you.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I think we all just went and added to our
summer to do list right under find my signature sunscreen,
contact my HR representative, and change my W four so
that I am getting the money that I want.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, or at least check it out just to see, like,
do you remember what you claimed? I bet you don't,
because I sure don't.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I've only claimed I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It's my only claim. Only claim is I pleading her
inspect in talking about taxes. Yeah, we did two amazing
tax episodes. Amazing. I'm patting myself on the back. We
did two tax episodes this year. It's up to you,
audience if they were amazing. We talked to us for individuals,
but we also talked to Lisa green Lewis from TurboTax
about how to think about doing your taxes as a
business and not necessarily like a full business owner like
(06:31):
you own an entirely gigantic business, but you could be
in business for yourself, right, so if you've got an LLC,
or you're a sole proprietorship or what have you. And
Leah Well, I think the thing.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Was that we enjoyed talking to Rus so much, and
we were so intrigued and so curious when we still
had all these tax questions, and Lisa green Lewis swept
right on in there and answered them all for us.
And guess what, as a small business owner myself, it
was very useful to hear her perspective and her tips
so that you can go into the tax season if
you're also a small business owner feeling so confident, so
(07:05):
prepared and so rich, ready to go.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
A Forbes Steady mentioned that a whapping ninety three percent
of small businesses overpay their taxes and also TurboTax. We
conducted a survey with Talker Research, and seventeen percent of
gen z ers believed that you could write off any
expense as a business expense.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
So it's just.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
Really important to do your taxes right. And also, you
know you're running a business. You want to put your
time and effort into your business. You don't have time
to be thinking about tax laws. All the tax law changes.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Ninety three percent of businesses overpay their taxes.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Well, I like the seventeen percent of gen Z think
you can write off anybody, you know what. Not embarrassing
at all that I like irl At the same time,
I left during the record, So I'm really tickled by
that statistic.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, it's true. I mean, you just you don't know
what you don't know. And so if you find that
right tax person like Russ was talking about previously, you
can talk to them about this stuff, because when you
don't know anything, you're like, I don't know what people
will say. They write stuff off their text all the time.
What can I get away with? And if you listen
to the episode, with Lisa Greenlew We will talk about that,
so go back and listen to it. But yeah, just
wild to hear some of these statistics. And if she
(08:28):
didn't actually talk about Tucker Research, I would say she
was making this all up. Yeah, I don't think so.
All right, So let's see what else Lisa had to
say a lot of.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
People just starting businesses they want to jump into incorporating.
They hear that's the thing to do, but they're not
making any money and they think that you'll get more
deductions or credits by doing that. But self employed do
still get a lot of deductions and credits similar ones
(08:58):
to corporation. So that's just one thing to point out.
You know, if you're starting out and you're not making
any money yet, you might want to consider that because
you're still able to take the same deductions and credits
and it's just a more simple structure.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Do you find that you agree with Lisa? Remind me again,
what how you're set up? Is it a soul pro priortor?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I've an LLC?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, and Elsie yeah, huh.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
And I actually helped a friend because of these episodes.
I don't have taxes. Let's be very clear but a
friend of mine was doing her taxes, went on over
the brass taxes shout out, and they helped her so
much with her deductions that her previous CPA did not
know anything about. So she really had a completely different
(09:46):
tax experience this year than she had previously. I do
think obviously Lisa is correct and that you cannot write
off your wardrobe as you know, enticing as that sounds,
but I think there were so many things that she
really brought to light that we don't always realize or
know where work and life the lines get kind of blurry,
but like you can save a few dollars here and there.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah, And I think to Russ's point right off, what
you can, but don't be greedy. I think that there
are certain categories that are definitely fully on the table,
and there's some things that are kind of a little
bit of a gray area and as long as you're
being reasonable with it there, Yeah, there's plenty of stuff
that you can write of.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Also, just a little tip and trick to everyone listening now,
I think we've gotten probably over the trauma of tax season.
Unless you are a CPA and still diligently working, start
your EXCEL spreadsheet today of your expenses that you are
doing right now, so that next winter when you have
to do your taxes, you can go back and look at,
oh I paid these dues. Oh I paid for these
(10:42):
office supplies. Oh right, I did this so that you're
not like going back through all of your statements for
a whole calendar year. Just keep track as you go
and it's going to help you next year. I've just
made a little another line item on mine, so it's huge.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I just started doing this. So there's this tool, oh
called you need a budget, And look, there's plenty of tools,
like if you're keeping track of expenses, quick books is
another great one to do that with. But like for
my personal budget, I've been using this tool called you
Need a Budget or why NAB and basically it's a
proactive approach. So before you spend anything at the start
of a new month ago, I'm going to sign all
of this money that's in my bank account to different things.
(11:15):
And I've been able to just like I see where
my money is going, I see the categories a percentage,
how much I'm spending on food, how much I'm spending
on subscriptions, And it's been really really great to get
this macro view of how I'm spending my finances, and
I can bet if you're running a business, it's a
great way to like remember and go through all of
your so you're saving yourself money, you're a little bit
more on top of your business expenses. We have done
(11:36):
an episode about budgeting and it might be worth digging
into again because just getting a track of your finances
with a ton of those simple tools that are out
there right now is just a huge way to take
that load off of your plate. And also just the
whole sole proprietorship versus like a larger incorporation like Lisha
was talking about. I was a sole proprietor for a
while and it really was simple. Like I think if
you're starting out your career, you're trying to get some
freelance business going on your own. A lot of these
(11:58):
things can be like a little scary active setting men
ls can cost a little bit of money, and the
sole proprietorship is a lot simpler to kind of dip
your toes into that market and see, I, that's what
you want, and also like who are your clients? Like
who are you doing work for that is paying you
sometimes they can only work with certain kinds of entities,
and so that's something to figure out too, but definitely
a simple way to get into it.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Wishing everyone who's starting their own small business lots of
luck and enjoy it, because that's a great thing to
be a small business owner. And you'll navigate tax season
just like the rest of us. And truly, I think
what we learned from both of those episodes was be
honest with the person doing your taxes. Ask freely. It's
better that you understand.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
So from the new dawn of a new year in
taxes to the new dawn.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Well, let's hope you didn't lose any sleep over your taxes.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
But you did. Thank you, thank you. That is the
segue that I was doing.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yes, we're going to help you with your mourning routine.
I love this one because, as you know, I am
a morning person. Yes, this is like morning time too.
Birds they are singing, the sun is coming up at
the time it's supposed to be coming up, and you know,
it just makes every day feel a little bit better,
more positive, more optimistic, and just like feeling good waking up,
(13:13):
you know, doing one of those like cartoon like stretches
and you're like, let's go day.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And there's nothing that I love more than when we
have the opportunity on the show to speak with someone
who literally wrote the book. And that's what we did
with this morning's episode. We spoke with Laura Vandercamp, who
literally wrote the book called What the Most Successful People
Do Before Breakfast all about revamping your morning routine. Let's
listen to Laura.
Speaker 6 (13:34):
The truth is, good mornings do start the night before.
And sometimes people have this misconception that it's all about
waking up earlier and earlier and you'll somehow magically be
more productive by beating the sun being up before everybody else.
If you haven't gotten enough sleep, you are not going
to be able to do anything. And so in order
(13:56):
to have a good morning routine, you need to get
enough sleep that you are well rested when you begin
the morning routine. And so that is about when you
go to bed the night before. But the good news
is a lot of people who think they aren't mourning people,
it's because they're not going to bed at a reasonable
time the night before. And if you commit to giving
yourself a regular and reasonable bedtime, you will probably be
(14:20):
able to get up and.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Do more things. That's why I'm a morning person, because
I'm an early bedtime person. Oh yeah, oh yeah sounds
yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So, like I said in the episode, I am an
aspiring morning person I have in my whole life, and
it's really because I'm probably more of a night person.
And Laura talked about this how like people have different
circadian rhythms, and some people are find that they're at
their most productive at night. I know plenty of people
like this who will get a late morning, you know,
have lunch, start work, and they'll work until like eleven PM.
That's kind of like when they get their energy. The
(14:51):
mess up thing for me is that I actually I
do get the energy in the morning, but I just
like stay up late, and it's actually just because of
bad things like watching too much TV mainly that. Yeah,
but it's really true, like if you set yourself up
for success, it's easy to have a good morning. And
so I did this last night. I knew that I
was going to come into the office today. I knew
I had a million things to do, and so I
(15:11):
just like put together my entire outfit. I put together
my light, I laid it out, underwear and everything, and
I put together my entire backpack with my laptop, and
I had to run some errands this morning, so I
put my errands in the backpack, and so when I
woke up, I just had to grab my bag and
put on my clothes and I jumped out the door.
Whereas it was a ton of desperate things that I
would have had to grab halphazardly early in the morning,
(15:33):
and I would have been late. And so it's like
this for everything. If you can optimize your environment to
work out for you in the morning, if it's setting
out your workout clothes, if it's setting out your workout space,
if it's literally going to bed in your workout clothes
so you don't even do anything once you wake up,
and just going to bed at a reasonable time every night.
It's that consistency that can really really help out. All Right,
Laura hit us with some more wisdom.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
If you can train yourself to wake up with a
thought of this day is going to be great, that's
a pretty exciting way to wake up. I'd be wonderful
if we can treat every morning like Christmas morning. Now,
I think a lot of us are a little bit
more cynical that we're probably not going to quite get
our heads around that sort of enthusiasm every single morning.
(16:16):
But one thing I would encourage you not to do
is to first look at your email. Yeah, that's where
people go awrive. So it's wonderful if you're to start
your day with positive affirmations, But whether that's happening or not,
don't go the other direction and see what has come
in overnight, what ridiculousness people are expecting you from the day,
(16:37):
because you're going to get right out of that good
mood and into a bad mood before we've even gone anywhere.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
This is a hard one. I really want to make
my positive affirmation that I will not look at my phone,
But I look at my phone.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
It's hard not to. I was reading this book recently
called dopamin Nation, which is all about how basically our
dopamine we needed out of out of whack because we
live in such a dopamine rich environment that all this
good food, it's all this good entertainment. We've got our phones,
everything so amazing. The whole book is talking about if
you push too hard on the pleasure side, our phones
give us tons of pleasure, right, you actually end up
(17:13):
more miserable and tired and with all this pain in
your life. And so actually like pushing on the pain
side or being abstinent is a great way to kind
of reset all of these neural pathways. And I talk
about this an episode, but like, I sleep with my
phone in another room because I'm trying to be more
abstent with my phone. I have this app where I
block apps so I can't access them. I mean, how
many times have you been like, Okay, I need to
(17:34):
do this thing and you pick up your phone to
do that thing, and you see the texts and the
emails and then you read literally one email and you
have no clue what you picked up your phone to do.
And so I think that that's just starting your morning
off a little chaotic, right, And if we're able to
started morning off with that little cartoon stretch, so you
talking about maybe do something a little healthy for ourselves,
make ourselves like a healthy Greek yogurt parfe with a
(17:56):
glass of water that carries through for the rest of
your day. So I really we love that tip for Laura.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
It's maybe the most important one, but the hardest.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
That's true, true, true, all right. I think we got
one work clip from Laura.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
If you have a more elaborate morning routine, it might
also help to have a short version, so there is,
you know, long version of the morning routine for the
mornings when things go as they are supposed to go.
But what is sort of the minimum viable version of
it for a day when that is not the case.
And have that in your mind for mornings when things
are not going as you wish, because then that can
(18:32):
also keep you from saying, oh, this is just terrible,
it's never going to work.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
It's like, well, I just did something.
Speaker 6 (18:37):
It wasn't everything, but it was something, and often something
is absolutely good enough.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Dude, just going through this, I'm like, I took that advice.
I literally do this.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I didn't take that advice.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yes, every morning I have a little moment with my wife,
We make a green juice, we do some exercising, and
I study Ukrainian because my mom is Ukrainian. And basically
like that feels over.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
I just said so many things right, to really like
do a workout like it takes me an hour, and
to really like with the studying the language, it takes
a half hour. And so I've actually been setting myself
up for like massive failure because I only basically have
like two hours in the month. I wake up at
like seven thirty eight and I'm working at ten. And
so by breaking these things down, like, hey, look, I'm
not gonna learn this language overnight, right, but if I
(19:20):
study for fifteen minutes, that's better than nothing, which typically
happens when I feel overwhelmed by the amount that I
always say I'm going to do. Same thing with exercising. Yeah,
an hour long workout would have been great, but you know,
it's better than nothing working out for fifteen minutes. And
so I have done exactly what she said. I've made
a shorter version of all this stuff. And so for
the mornings, especially like this morning where I had to
(19:41):
come into the office at eight o'clock, I did my
little shorter routine. You know, I think it was like
five minutes. But the other great thing about that is
maybe you're not getting the full results, but again, doing
something is better than nothing. But you build up a habit.
Sometimes it's not even about doing the full thing, it's
about showing up. Like sometimes when people are like starting
a routine, it's like some people just drive to the
(20:02):
gym and sit in the barking lot outside the gym.
But it's like the next week you walk in the door,
and if you can build the habit and show consistently,
I mean, that's kind of the way that you change it.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
I love this of having the shorter and the long one.
I think about it at the night time, where if
I get home late from something, I'm like, okay, Walter, ma,
I was going to be a shorter morning routine so
that I know that when I get up and I'm
sort of prepared myself of like, we're not doing the
full walk over. Lea is like, I wish I could
blame it on that, truly, that would be fine. But yeah, no,
(20:31):
she's not getting anything done in the morning, just barely
her short routine. But I like having the two options
because then when you have time to do the longer one,
it feels so luxurious. It feels like an absolute glorious
I am a queen type of mourning.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, and if every morning could be like that, great,
But yeah, if not, you're not like giving up the goals. Yeah,
ye love it.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
And we're back with more grown up stuff. How do
I don't.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
So?
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Coming up. On our fourth episode from this season, we
talked voting with Professor Josh Douglas from University of Kentucky.
He hosts a podcast called Democracy Optimists and just gave
some great advice on how we can all best show
up as citizens and vote for the things that we
care about.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
He's so knowledgeable and I love this topic.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
But he also wrote the book Yeah, the one who
wrote the book.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, And he just opened my eyes to so many
things that we may or may not have learned in
high school, but that are especially important for us to
know today as part of our democratic process.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Let's hear that first clip from Josh.
Speaker 7 (21:50):
States are allowed to clean up their voter rules and
take people off and they'll get information like people have died,
people have moved away. In the states that just en
franchise individuals with a felony conviction if they get notice
of the felony conviction, states are allowed to take your
name off the voter roles. In addition, some states follow
(22:10):
a process where if you don't show up for two
federal elections in a row and then also don't respond
to a postcard that gets mailed to you, then they
can take you off the roles. So what do you
do if that occurs. Well, if you're in a state
with same day voter registration, no problem, you can register
at the polls right then. But if you're not in
(22:32):
a state with same day registration, especially if you're in
a state that has a deadline to register, you actually
are out of luck. With one kind of small caveat there,
if you ever show up to the polls and they
say your name's not on the rolls, you're not allowed
to vote, and you're sure you're in the right place,
(22:52):
don't just leave without casting about. Instead, the poll workers
are required to give you what's called a provisional ballot.
This is a ballot that you vote and then they
set aside and they figured out after the fact, after
election day, whether to count it or not. And this
should dispel one myth about our elections, which is that
all absentee ballots, all provisional ballots that are valid are
(23:17):
counted and so there's no concern about casting that vote,
and the election official results are not official until a
week or two later, when actually all ballots are counted.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Super important to know. I mean, I think that like
the first takeaway is like to register to vote.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Well, I think the very first okay that we're adding
to our summer to do list and sooner rather than later,
is check your voter registration.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Check.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
So let's make sure it's all good. We've got the
right address, we've got the right name, we've got the
right everything. If not, get ready to hear right now.
Because also there are going to be a lot of
local primaries going on this year, next year, every year,
and so you want to make sure that you are
able to vote as part of your party if you
(24:02):
have a primary, or in the election in general when
that comes around in the fall as well.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
But the greatest thing though is I never knew this
about casting about, even if you weren't on the role.
And really this is just a mechanism in place that
if there was a mistake with your voter registration, that
your vote doesn't go uncounted if it deserves to be counted.
And so, just like Josh said, if you were at
the polls and for some reason you're not on it,
but you're in the right place, don't leave without casting about,
(24:28):
because that is something that can get sorted out and
your vote can be counted.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
It's a great part of our process that we're going
to enjoy while we have it.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Let's go to the next clip.
Speaker 7 (24:40):
What does it mean to be a democracy optimist? It's
not that I think everything's going great, that democracy is
perfectly thriving and we don't need to change or fix things.
It's that there's hope for the future. Because if there's
not hope, then what's the alternative wallowing in our despair
and having this fatalistic view that the system is just
(25:01):
doomed and we can't do anything about it, and so
we're going to retreat into our everyday lives and not
try to fix the system. And if we do that,
then yes, the system is doomed. So the first answer
to your question of why should I vote, essentially is well,
why not? Because it's up to all of us, and
people of asking me all the time these days, how
(25:22):
do we save democracy? Ultimately, it's the people, it's we
the people, and so you should be wanting to be
part of that. Even if say you live in a
state where you kind of know who's going to win
the presidential electors in that state, or you live in
a district where, because of gerrymanderin the practice of drawing
skewed lines, you kind of know who's going to win
(25:42):
that district. The second answer is that your vote probably
isn't going to make a difference in the outcome except
for when it does, and you never know when that's
going to be. There are elections every year that come
down to one vote or that are tied. So is
your vote actually going to matter in the presidential election?
Probably not your one vote until it does, until enough
(26:06):
of us decide that we do want to show up.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I just loved talking to Josh. I loved exactly what
he said here, which is just like you take a
look around the country. We're all I don't think anyone's happy.
I think in general, no one's thrilled, both sides, right,
what's going on? And it's so easy to get so
pessimistic about things. I think if we're going to sit
around here and complain, we can sit around here and
do something about it. Yeah, you know, like you hear
(26:31):
that all the time. My vote doesn't matter, it's all
rigged whatever. But like they count the vote. Yeah you
know what I mean, Like, yeah, they count them.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I like knowing I did what I was supposed to
do and what I could do. And so I feel
fine in my heart going to bed every night knowing
I voted, and I voted the way I wanted to
and here we go.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, and there's never going to be the change you
want to see if you don't at least try. Yeah,
because I think that there's probably fifty thousand of you
thinking the same. And if we all just went out
there and vote, suddenly we're changing the system.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Change your thoughts, change the world. Does that how it
comes you? Really?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
It's so true. You do have to change your own
mind before you can change anything else. So change your
mind to go vote. And we've got another clip from Josh.
I wish we had ten of them now. It's hard
to disprove a negative.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Right.
Speaker 7 (27:15):
So when my kids were younger, and they might say,
as I'm tucking him into bed, Daddy, there's a monster
under the bed. And no matter how many times I
looked for the monster and told them there's no monster,
how do you get them to believe me? Right? Yeah,
And that's sort of what this mantra of voter fraud is. Right,
no matter how many times the experts who are looking
at this and understand how the process works, Understand all
(27:37):
of the auditing that happens after election day. They actually
it's not over on election day. There's lots of processes
that happened in the weeks after. No matter how many
times you say it, though, how do you prove a
negative so they're not monsters under the bed? There's also
no massive voter fraud.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
It's so funny how like the third party auditing, everything
that goes on to disprove or of this stuff. The
experts are all saying that there's no massive voter fraud,
and then all it takes is someone and look, just
forget Donald Trump. All it takes is some powerful person
saying loudly into the megaphone or social media, it's all
rigged that we all think it's all rigged. And it's like,
(28:17):
then you're just blowing away all of the work that
all those people have done to ensure that our process
is free and fair. And so Josh is right, it's
very hard to disprove a negative. And so I think
we could all do a little more listening to the
experts like we do on this show.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yes, yes, yes, I mean it's also a great reminder
to just check and make sure there's not a monster
under your bed too. I know you said you wanted
ten more clips of Josh. Did you know there is
a full episode with it. You can't listen to the
full episode Season three, episode four. If you want to
know more about voting, Yeah, get to it.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
And we took a hard pivot from voting to talking
about oil. Yeah, yes, which was fascinating because like if
you dive into it, I mean there's a ton talk
about experts. Oh, there are people out there doing things
that you wouldn't even imagine that they are doing in
every field. And so let's talk to one of them.
Speaker 8 (29:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
His name is Sean Wynn, and he is a shell
lubricant technical specialist with Pens oil as well, and he
knows literally everything there is to know about changing your oil.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Let's listen to it.
Speaker 8 (29:23):
As engine ols get cooked and heated typically can go
up as high as two hundred and sixty degrees, up
at the three hundred degrees and even that the pistons
can go above five hundred degrees. So in a sense
it causes them to age the same way we see
our cooking oil. You know, we use it a couple
of times see it kind of turned dark. And oil
has to be there to keep everything lubricated. Oil has
(29:46):
to come in and cool the engine. It works with
your cooling system, and as you change the temperature, and
as you increase the temperature, you cause that oil to
break down. When you add in contaminants like water, fuel
like air and carbon monoxide, it ages the oil and
degrades the oil. Our whole purpose of oil is a
(30:07):
couple of the major fundamental lubricate protect keep it cool,
and prevent wear.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
It's so easy as a owner of a vehicle to
just be like we're good, we're good, you know, every
time you get the road. But there's so many parts
that work together to make it happen. I mean, there's
your tires, there's your brakes, there's your oil.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
The miracle of modern technology, and we take.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
It for granted. Yeah, And so to Shaun's point, like,
what oil is doing is preserving your engine. And so
if you're going to let it sit and get dirty
and the contaminous mix it, it's not doing its job
and you're actually going to wear out your vehicle faster.
And I don't know about you, but I pay a
lot of money for mine and I'd like to keep
it working on the way it should. Yeah, as long
as possible. Yeah, talk about the hardest pivot.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
We already reuse that one, so you know what we're
going to do, reduce it to recycling. You went on
a nerdy little field trip, which I do think all
grown ups you should take yourself somewhere where your class
would go as a field trip, because it's so good
to learn a little something new, something you already knew,
(31:13):
something you didn't already know. And this inspired our next episode.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, went to the MURPH which stands for Materials Recovery
Facility out in Brooklyn and learn a ton about recycling
from Kara, so much in fact, we had to have
her on the show. So let's check in with Kara now.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
So, yes, there is the statistic floating around. It actually
pertains to plastics. So there's this statistic that nine percent
of plastic gets recycled. So this was determined by the EPA.
They put out a study the Sustainable Materials Management back
in twenty eighteen. So what they did is they measured
(31:57):
all plastics that had been manufactured in one year. And
I mean, you just have to let that sink in
for a moment, all plastics that had been manufactured in
this country. I believe in a year, it's a lot
of stuff like you know, tables, chairs, shoes, some are bottles,
some are recyclable, some are not, some are durable and
meant to be reused. So they found that out of
(32:20):
all plastic manufactured in a year, United States residents like
you and I put nine percent of that into recycling bins.
So what I think people interpret from that statistic is
they think, oh, of all the plastic I diligently put
in my bin, only nine percent of it is getting recycled,
When that's not what was being measured. It's actually the
percentage that people are putting into their bins, and if
(32:43):
you put more of the correct stuff into your bins,
that percentage will actually go up.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
I'm the victim of seeing this misinformation. I had seen
that statistic that nine percent of plastic gets recycled, and
I flipped it. I thought, was like, that meant nine
percent of literally everything into the bin gets recycled. And
that's the kind of statistic and the misinformation that can
drive people to be like, you know what, I don't
care then whatever, Then what's the whole point of recycling
if only nine percent of it gets recycled, and it's
(33:10):
not true. Actually ninety to ninety five percent of everything
that you recycle and your recycling gets recycled. And I
think that's the message that we have to take away
from here, because that is critically important.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
I think about so much of what Kara said all
the time, literally every day when I put stuff in
the recycling. Yeah, and it just makes me feel happy.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, obviously is Kara said in the episode of like,
reducing what we use is super important, Reusing what we
use is super important, and recycling is kind of like
the smallest piece of it. But again, if we're all
doing it as we should be, then we really can
make a big impact.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
So let's go to the next clip here. Let's go
to plastic bags. And I'm thinking, like the shopping bag plastics, like.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
The single use bags exactly, those are pretty much not
recyclable anywhere in this country, as far as in your
home bin or like in our recycling, right.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
And why is that?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah? Two reasons. So, first of all, it's really hard
for us to sort them. At the Murph. A plastic
bag is what we call.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
A tangler because it tangles in the sorting equipment, so
it's a big pain for us. And then even if
we do manage to sort them, nobody wants to buy them.
Something is recyclable if it has a market, if there's
a company out there that wants to buy it. Plastic bags,
they're pretty flimsy. It's not really a strong material. You
(34:32):
don't get much from it.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
So it's true that plastic bags the single use are
not recyclable, but there are some businesses and this is
not true around the country, so you have to maybe
do some research on your own. But that accept plastic
bags because they are trying to find a way to
reuse them. And I think that, like, if you can
do that, do it, yeah, because otherwise they're just ending
up in the landfill, like we talked about on the episode.
(34:56):
So don't put them in your recycling bin. They're definitely
not going to be put to use there. There is
a grocery store actually not far from and there's actually
a ton of grocery stores. Do this to actually look
up the grocery store in your area because it's possible
that they could be doing this. One of them in
our area accepts plastic bags, Amazon bags, gigantic plastic wrap,
things that come in the mail, Like we collect all
of those and we give them to the grocery store.
(35:17):
And again like maybe they are ending up in a landfill,
but if we can get some use out of them,
go for Yeah, if we.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Can't recycle, we can reduce and reuse them still, and
those are.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Important too, exactly. So loved talking to Kara. If you
haven't done it, go back and listen to the full
episode because there's a ton of wisdom in there. But yeah,
so we're about to go off on a break, right,
We're going to take a couple of weeks off for
the summer. I'm going to Italy. Fancy can't wait. But
we wanted to kind of have a kindid conversation about
the rest of the season and like, you know, how
this show gets made because sometimes we have no idea
(35:47):
what we're going to do. We've got a few ideas
from the audience, we've got a few ideas that we
are personally interested in, but like a peak behind the
curative of making podcasts, you know, although we've got these ideas,
we never really know where the season is going to
take us. We talk about the ideas and a few
of them actually end up coming to Fruition, but some
of them don't. And so we just thought we would
talk a little bit about what we're interested in doing
(36:08):
for the latter half of the season, which I think
will premiere in August. So what are some of the topics? Cleah?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Okay, So there's a lot of topics. And again another
caveat to this is that sometimes life happens and there's
something that in our own personal lives we're like, ooh,
we should learn a lot about that. To a little
topic could pop in at any time, we don't know.
First up, AI AI. Do you know the robots?
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, so we've like brushed by each other. We've had
a few interactions, but I got to know them on
a deeper level. So we're going to talk about AI
and how we can use it in our everyday lives.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And this is the thing that I don't think a
lot of people know about, Like you can actually use
AI to like help you with your grocery list. I
just had AI like put together a whole meal prep
for me for a week, and to put together grocery
it was like so easy. So there's like little things
like that that you may not know about that you
can actually get a ton of use out of. And
so we're talking about AI not for like super fancy
tech startup algorithms, money, whatever, but like literally you and
(37:05):
like what you can do, not fancy, just for you. Yeah,
you are the fanciest you ever know really for us,
for me too, like I'm interested to learn more about
what it can help me do in my daily life
and give you back some more time. But another one
is nutrition.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Right, I'm gonna say, we got to know more about
that grocery list.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
We gotta know more about it, are Yeah, I just
think it's something that people don't really think about on
a day to day basis, Like what we're putting into
our bodies and is it doing us good or harm?
Like we're gonna chat about that.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Oh, speaking of good or harm, we're also gonna be
talking about advocating for yourself at work.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Oh dude, when you're young in your career, like I
feel like you will take any kind of abuse, Like
you're just like pilot on you know, let me be
that receptacle for all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
But you don't have to be.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
We don't have to be you do have worth, and
it's worth advocating for yourself because you never know what
is out there until you actually ask for it. So
we'll be chatting about that. We're also gonna be talking
about jury duty, which is something that I think I'm
confused about. I love you love it.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Yes, I've done it, I've lived it, I've loved it.
So I can't wait to really get even more into
that because it's so important.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
I just don't know the rules.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Okay, well we're going to find them out. But the
main thing to know is that true crime is like
the biggest genre right now. If you like true crime,
you are going to love jury Gonna love it, So
don't try to get out of it. Don't try to
delay of a jewet track.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yes, yeah, do it. Participate, maybe end up on the
big jury. And then where are we moving after that?
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Well, we're moving to the jury of the internet, and
that is how do we quit social media.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Loving all of your transitions today.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I'm a professional, Like I said, I gotta stop looking
at my phone. So we are going to have an
expert come and tell us how we can. If not
cold Turkey, then certainly wean ourselves off of our social
media use, get that screen time down, get out in
the sunshine, not care about what the internet has going on.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, talking a little bit about social media and not
like saying that it's you know, you got to quit
it forever, but like what good is doing? Maybe? What
harm is it doing? And how can we find a
more healthy please for it to exist in your lives? Right.
And then the last one we've got written down here
is meal prep, which I love because, like, if you're
someone who's going to the office every day and you're
just eating whatever is near the office.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Oh, recession indicator. We are not doing those twenty dollars
salads exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
No, no, no, no no. And it has to do
with like we were talking about setting up your environment
for success, Like there's a couple of things you can do.
You know, you can get some containers, you can buy
a bunch of ingredients in bulk, and you can actually
make some healthy, very affordable meals for yourself. But sometimes
it's hard to know where to start, right, And so
that's what we're going to be talking about in that episode.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Also, drink every time we say the word soggy, because
I feel like I have to say that a lot.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yes, Yeah, okay, and look, you know these are just
ideas we've tossed out there. It's maybe a subject to change.
And you know, actually, now that I'm literally going on vacation,
I've been thinking about a lot like traveling is insanely
difficult to do well, and I've been banging my head
against the wall to try to find like an organizational
tool to help me organize our travel. Yes, and I
think I finally found it. And I would love to
(39:58):
have a travel expert on to talk about how the
best way we can plan for prep and get the
most out of our vacations.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Share your ways with us, I will.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
And we'll see if I'm doing it wrong where you are,
which I'm sure we'll find out that I am.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
But we're gonna correct it. We're gonna do it right.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yeah. So anyway, so everyone have a wonderful summer. Ye,
thank you for listening to the show. Yes, and we'll
see you in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yes, And until then, good luck being a grown up.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
This is a production of Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. Our
executive producers are The Palmery.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
And Matt still Oh. This episode was edited and engineered
by Sierra Spreen.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
We want to thank our teammates at Ruby Studio, including
Sarah You, Ethan Fixel, Raciswan Krasnoff, Amber Smith, Deborah Garett,
and Andy Kelly.
Ruby. Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of
Grown Up Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yes, indeed, welcome back, and welcome to a little bit
of housekeeping.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I love love the inflection there, That's exactly how I
wrote it. So now spring may have sprung, we're already
jonesing for a summer break here at Grownup Stuff, and
we will be taking the next few weeks off to
do just that. But would we leave you high and dry,
fellow grown ups?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
That would be decidedly very un grown up like. We
would not do that.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Ever, I couldn't agree more. It's all about communication, righting.
Grown ups set expectations, they do not defy them.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Okay, So before we bid each other a bon voyage,
we thought we'd take a closer look at our favorite
kernels of wisdom from this season and with repetition, file
them away in our ever expanding grown up minds.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I love that idea. Let's do just that, grown up.
So first, we're actually gonna go chronologically through our season,
and the first episode was Russ Garoffalo, who is the
owner and founder of Brass Taxes, which is a tax
company located in Brooklyn, New York. So Rus really got
(01:14):
his starts in comedy and a very empathetic guy, as
many artists are. But he started working with a mentor
who was a CBA who really like set him off
on this other journey where he found that if he
brought this empathy to the discussion of money in working
with clients directly, that he could make this kind of vulnerable,
scary thing of divulging all of your financials to your
(01:35):
tax guy into a positive experience. And so we learned
a ton from Russ and we'll take listen to those clips.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Now, there's no other time in life where you're like,
am I going to get back four thousand dollars or
am I going to owe ten thousand dollars. It's just
like the crappiest casino in the world with such variability,
and it's like weird that it's normal to us. So
a good way to figure out how you're about to
(02:01):
get paid at a job is if they give you
a W four. So a W four you fill out
and that ends up with you getting a W two later, Okay,
so that means you're an employee officially. If they give
you a W nine, that means they're going to pay
you as a contractor without taxes taken out, so suddenly,
like the roads have diverged. One, you're going to have
(02:23):
all the protections of an employee, minimum wage, unemployment, potentially benefits,
and they're going to take taxes out as you get stuff.
And the other way is that's your responsibility at the
end of the year, and you better save that money.
My mentor, Harvey said, take what you're entitled to, but
don't be greedy, and I've kind of come to agree
(02:45):
with that. I will also point out there's no accreditation
necessary to do taxes. That's why the industry feels kind
of shady. All you have to do is convince someone
to trust you and then you have to go through
the process of being allowed to e file tax not
a high bar. On the other end of that, just
someone having letters after their name does not indicate they
(03:06):
will be good at your taxes. So just because somebody
is a CPA, i'm an enrolled agent, which is an
IRS designation versus CPA is a third party organization, it
doesn't mean I'm gonna be good at your taxes. Just
like you wouldn't hire like a real estate lawyer if
you were on trial for murder. It's like just being
a lawyer does not mean they will be helpful, right,
(03:28):
And so I tell everybody you need to work with
someone who understands your industry and you feel comfortable talking to.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
God listening back to us. I just can't tell you
how much I appreciate this man and taxes are as
he mentioned the world's crappiest casino, and no other point
in life do you know, you know, if you're gonna
have to owe money or whatever, and that can be scary,
And so I think that just kind of admitting it
is a really great place to start. But I also
just love him breaking down the W twown II routes
(04:00):
because I remember the first time that I got handed
at W nine and I was like, yeah, what is this?
Like I was was this is my first, for instance job.
They're like, oh, here you go fill this out. I
was like, oh, yeah, I do this all the time.
And then I'm like calling my dad's dad.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
What is this?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I don't know what this is.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
They gave me a WTF.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I don't know. Yeah, they give yeah W two WTF.
I'm not sure. And I really had no idea that
they were paying me as a contractor and what that meant,
and so.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
You did not save appropriately.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I did not save appropriately. It was really bad, but
broken down simply as Russ said, W two means your
full time employee. W nine means you're a contractor. And
if you are W nine, you should take Russ's advice
and in the episode, what he said is put twenty
percent of the money that you're making that belongs to
the government, put it in a high yield savings account,
which in a cruise about five percent annually. And then
(04:50):
that way, not only are you not touching the money
that you should be saving for taxes, it'll grow a
little bit over the year. You'll have potentially a little
bit more to cover any overages if you need to be,
or put that back in your pocket once you've done
paying your taxes. I thought that that was great. But
also just knowing that you can change your W four,
I think that this is one of the most powerful
things he said that, like just because you claim single
or you claim one or you claim zero or whatever
(05:11):
is you claim, and that relates to leam out, you're
withholding that you can at any point, if you have
a full time job, go back to your HR and
change it. I had no, I and I still haven't
done that. I was going to work here like four
months later, and I sileft. But I'm gonna and I'm
gonna call Russ, yeah yeah, and hire him. And as
Russ said, just because somebody has a bunch of fancy
(05:31):
letters ye at the end of their name, doesn't you
know they're a CPA there or whatever. It doesn't necessarily
mean that they're going to be a good tax person
or good for you. Because there's a business relationship, that's
what is. You're paying them money to do a service.
And if you don't trust them or feel comfortable or
feel like they have a handle on your industry or
your specific needs, then they're not necessarily going to be
the right person for you.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I think we all just went and added to our
summer to do list right under find my signature sunscreen,
contact my HR representative, and change my W four so
that I am getting the money that I want.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, or at least check it out just to see, like,
do you remember what you claimed? I bet you don't,
because I sure don't.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I've only claimed I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It's my only claim. Only claim is I pleading her
inspect in talking about taxes. Yeah, we did two amazing
tax episodes. Amazing. I'm patting myself on the back. We
did two tax episodes this year. It's up to you,
audience if they were amazing. We talked to us for individuals,
but we also talked to Lisa green Lewis from TurboTax
about how to think about doing your taxes as a
business and not necessarily like a full business owner like
(06:31):
you own an entirely gigantic business, but you could be
in business for yourself, right, so if you've got an LLC,
or you're a sole proprietorship or what have you. And
Leah Well, I think the thing.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Was that we enjoyed talking to Rus so much, and
we were so intrigued and so curious when we still
had all these tax questions, and Lisa green Lewis swept
right on in there and answered them all for us.
And guess what, as a small business owner myself, it
was very useful to hear her perspective and her tips
so that you can go into the tax season if
you're also a small business owner feeling so confident, so
(07:05):
prepared and so rich, ready to go.
Speaker 5 (07:08):
A Forbes Steady mentioned that a whapping ninety three percent
of small businesses overpay their taxes and also TurboTax. We
conducted a survey with Talker Research, and seventeen percent of
gen z ers believed that you could write off any
expense as a business expense.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
So it's just.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
Really important to do your taxes right. And also, you
know you're running a business. You want to put your
time and effort into your business. You don't have time
to be thinking about tax laws. All the tax law changes.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Ninety three percent of businesses overpay their taxes.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Well, I like the seventeen percent of gen Z think
you can write off anybody, you know what. Not embarrassing
at all that I like irl At the same time,
I left during the record, So I'm really tickled by
that statistic.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, it's true. I mean, you just you don't know
what you don't know. And so if you find that
right tax person like Russ was talking about previously, you
can talk to them about this stuff, because when you
don't know anything, you're like, I don't know what people
will say. They write stuff off their text all the time.
What can I get away with? And if you listen
to the episode, with Lisa Greenlew We will talk about that,
so go back and listen to it. But yeah, just
wild to hear some of these statistics. And if she
(08:28):
didn't actually talk about Tucker Research, I would say she
was making this all up. Yeah, I don't think so.
All right, So let's see what else Lisa had to
say a lot of.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
People just starting businesses they want to jump into incorporating.
They hear that's the thing to do, but they're not
making any money and they think that you'll get more
deductions or credits by doing that. But self employed do
still get a lot of deductions and credits similar ones
(08:58):
to corporation. So that's just one thing to point out.
You know, if you're starting out and you're not making
any money yet, you might want to consider that because
you're still able to take the same deductions and credits
and it's just a more simple structure.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Do you find that you agree with Lisa? Remind me again,
what how you're set up? Is it a soul pro priortor?
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I've an LLC?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, and Elsie yeah, huh.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
And I actually helped a friend because of these episodes.
I don't have taxes. Let's be very clear but a
friend of mine was doing her taxes, went on over
the brass taxes shout out, and they helped her so
much with her deductions that her previous CPA did not
know anything about. So she really had a completely different
(09:46):
tax experience this year than she had previously. I do
think obviously Lisa is correct and that you cannot write
off your wardrobe as you know, enticing as that sounds,
but I think there were so many things that she
really brought to light that we don't always realize or
know where work and life the lines get kind of blurry,
but like you can save a few dollars here and there.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah, And I think to Russ's point right off, what
you can, but don't be greedy. I think that there
are certain categories that are definitely fully on the table,
and there's some things that are kind of a little
bit of a gray area and as long as you're
being reasonable with it there, Yeah, there's plenty of stuff
that you can write of.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Also, just a little tip and trick to everyone listening now,
I think we've gotten probably over the trauma of tax season.
Unless you are a CPA and still diligently working, start
your EXCEL spreadsheet today of your expenses that you are
doing right now, so that next winter when you have
to do your taxes, you can go back and look at,
oh I paid these dues. Oh I paid for these
(10:42):
office supplies. Oh right, I did this so that you're
not like going back through all of your statements for
a whole calendar year. Just keep track as you go
and it's going to help you next year. I've just
made a little another line item on mine, so it's huge.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I just started doing this. So there's this tool, oh
called you need a budget, And look, there's plenty of tools,
like if you're keeping track of expenses, quick books is
another great one to do that with. But like for
my personal budget, I've been using this tool called you
Need a Budget or why NAB and basically it's a
proactive approach. So before you spend anything at the start
of a new month ago, I'm going to sign all
of this money that's in my bank account to different things.
(11:15):
And I've been able to just like I see where
my money is going, I see the categories a percentage,
how much I'm spending on food, how much I'm spending
on subscriptions, And it's been really really great to get
this macro view of how I'm spending my finances, and
I can bet if you're running a business, it's a
great way to like remember and go through all of
your so you're saving yourself money, you're a little bit
more on top of your business expenses. We have done
(11:36):
an episode about budgeting and it might be worth digging
into again because just getting a track of your finances
with a ton of those simple tools that are out
there right now is just a huge way to take
that load off of your plate. And also just the
whole sole proprietorship versus like a larger incorporation like Lisha
was talking about. I was a sole proprietor for a
while and it really was simple. Like I think if
you're starting out your career, you're trying to get some
freelance business going on your own. A lot of these
(11:58):
things can be like a little scary active setting men
ls can cost a little bit of money, and the
sole proprietorship is a lot simpler to kind of dip
your toes into that market and see, I, that's what
you want, and also like who are your clients? Like
who are you doing work for that is paying you
sometimes they can only work with certain kinds of entities,
and so that's something to figure out too, but definitely
a simple way to get into it.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Wishing everyone who's starting their own small business lots of
luck and enjoy it, because that's a great thing to
be a small business owner. And you'll navigate tax season
just like the rest of us. And truly, I think
what we learned from both of those episodes was be
honest with the person doing your taxes. Ask freely. It's
better that you understand.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
So from the new dawn of a new year in
taxes to the new dawn.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Well, let's hope you didn't lose any sleep over your taxes.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
But you did. Thank you, thank you. That is the
segue that I was doing.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yes, we're going to help you with your mourning routine.
I love this one because, as you know, I am
a morning person. Yes, this is like morning time too.
Birds they are singing, the sun is coming up at
the time it's supposed to be coming up, and you know,
it just makes every day feel a little bit better,
more positive, more optimistic, and just like feeling good waking up,
(13:13):
you know, doing one of those like cartoon like stretches
and you're like, let's go day.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And there's nothing that I love more than when we
have the opportunity on the show to speak with someone
who literally wrote the book. And that's what we did
with this morning's episode. We spoke with Laura Vandercamp, who
literally wrote the book called What the Most Successful People
Do Before Breakfast all about revamping your morning routine. Let's
listen to Laura.
Speaker 6 (13:34):
The truth is, good mornings do start the night before.
And sometimes people have this misconception that it's all about
waking up earlier and earlier and you'll somehow magically be
more productive by beating the sun being up before everybody else.
If you haven't gotten enough sleep, you are not going
to be able to do anything. And so in order
(13:56):
to have a good morning routine, you need to get
enough sleep that you are well rested when you begin
the morning routine. And so that is about when you
go to bed the night before. But the good news
is a lot of people who think they aren't mourning people,
it's because they're not going to bed at a reasonable
time the night before. And if you commit to giving
yourself a regular and reasonable bedtime, you will probably be
(14:20):
able to get up and.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Do more things. That's why I'm a morning person, because
I'm an early bedtime person. Oh yeah, oh yeah sounds
yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So, like I said in the episode, I am an
aspiring morning person I have in my whole life, and
it's really because I'm probably more of a night person.
And Laura talked about this how like people have different
circadian rhythms, and some people are find that they're at
their most productive at night. I know plenty of people
like this who will get a late morning, you know,
have lunch, start work, and they'll work until like eleven PM.
That's kind of like when they get their energy. The
(14:51):
mess up thing for me is that I actually I
do get the energy in the morning, but I just
like stay up late, and it's actually just because of
bad things like watching too much TV mainly that. Yeah,
but it's really true, like if you set yourself up
for success, it's easy to have a good morning. And
so I did this last night. I knew that I
was going to come into the office today. I knew
I had a million things to do, and so I
(15:11):
just like put together my entire outfit. I put together
my light, I laid it out, underwear and everything, and
I put together my entire backpack with my laptop, and
I had to run some errands this morning, so I
put my errands in the backpack, and so when I
woke up, I just had to grab my bag and
put on my clothes and I jumped out the door.
Whereas it was a ton of desperate things that I
would have had to grab halphazardly early in the morning,
(15:33):
and I would have been late. And so it's like
this for everything. If you can optimize your environment to
work out for you in the morning, if it's setting
out your workout clothes, if it's setting out your workout space,
if it's literally going to bed in your workout clothes
so you don't even do anything once you wake up,
and just going to bed at a reasonable time every night.
It's that consistency that can really really help out. All Right,
Laura hit us with some more wisdom.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
If you can train yourself to wake up with a
thought of this day is going to be great, that's
a pretty exciting way to wake up. I'd be wonderful
if we can treat every morning like Christmas morning. Now,
I think a lot of us are a little bit
more cynical that we're probably not going to quite get
our heads around that sort of enthusiasm every single morning.
(16:16):
But one thing I would encourage you not to do
is to first look at your email. Yeah, that's where
people go awrive. So it's wonderful if you're to start
your day with positive affirmations, But whether that's happening or not,
don't go the other direction and see what has come
in overnight, what ridiculousness people are expecting you from the day,
(16:37):
because you're going to get right out of that good
mood and into a bad mood before we've even gone anywhere.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
This is a hard one. I really want to make
my positive affirmation that I will not look at my phone,
But I look at my phone.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
It's hard not to. I was reading this book recently
called dopamin Nation, which is all about how basically our
dopamine we needed out of out of whack because we
live in such a dopamine rich environment that all this
good food, it's all this good entertainment. We've got our phones,
everything so amazing. The whole book is talking about if
you push too hard on the pleasure side, our phones
give us tons of pleasure, right, you actually end up
(17:13):
more miserable and tired and with all this pain in
your life. And so actually like pushing on the pain
side or being abstinent is a great way to kind
of reset all of these neural pathways. And I talk
about this an episode, but like, I sleep with my
phone in another room because I'm trying to be more
abstent with my phone. I have this app where I
block apps so I can't access them. I mean, how
many times have you been like, Okay, I need to
(17:34):
do this thing and you pick up your phone to
do that thing, and you see the texts and the
emails and then you read literally one email and you
have no clue what you picked up your phone to do.
And so I think that that's just starting your morning
off a little chaotic, right, And if we're able to
started morning off with that little cartoon stretch, so you
talking about maybe do something a little healthy for ourselves,
make ourselves like a healthy Greek yogurt parfe with a
(17:56):
glass of water that carries through for the rest of
your day. So I really we love that tip for Laura.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
It's maybe the most important one, but the hardest.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
That's true, true, true, all right. I think we got
one work clip from Laura.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
If you have a more elaborate morning routine, it might
also help to have a short version, so there is,
you know, long version of the morning routine for the
mornings when things go as they are supposed to go.
But what is sort of the minimum viable version of
it for a day when that is not the case.
And have that in your mind for mornings when things
are not going as you wish, because then that can
(18:32):
also keep you from saying, oh, this is just terrible,
it's never going to work.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
It's like, well, I just did something.
Speaker 6 (18:37):
It wasn't everything, but it was something, and often something
is absolutely good enough.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Dude, just going through this, I'm like, I took that advice.
I literally do this.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I didn't take that advice.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yes, every morning I have a little moment with my wife,
We make a green juice, we do some exercising, and
I study Ukrainian because my mom is Ukrainian. And basically
like that feels over.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
That's a lot.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
I just said so many things right, to really like
do a workout like it takes me an hour, and
to really like with the studying the language, it takes
a half hour. And so I've actually been setting myself
up for like massive failure because I only basically have
like two hours in the month. I wake up at
like seven thirty eight and I'm working at ten. And
so by breaking these things down, like, hey, look, I'm
not gonna learn this language overnight, right, but if I
(19:20):
study for fifteen minutes, that's better than nothing, which typically
happens when I feel overwhelmed by the amount that I
always say I'm going to do. Same thing with exercising. Yeah,
an hour long workout would have been great, but you know,
it's better than nothing working out for fifteen minutes. And
so I have done exactly what she said. I've made
a shorter version of all this stuff. And so for
the mornings, especially like this morning where I had to
(19:41):
come into the office at eight o'clock, I did my
little shorter routine. You know, I think it was like
five minutes. But the other great thing about that is
maybe you're not getting the full results, but again, doing
something is better than nothing. But you build up a habit.
Sometimes it's not even about doing the full thing, it's
about showing up. Like sometimes when people are like starting
a routine, it's like some people just drive to the
(20:02):
gym and sit in the barking lot outside the gym.
But it's like the next week you walk in the door,
and if you can build the habit and show consistently,
I mean, that's kind of the way that you change it.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
I love this of having the shorter and the long one.
I think about it at the night time, where if
I get home late from something, I'm like, okay, Walter, ma,
I was going to be a shorter morning routine so
that I know that when I get up and I'm
sort of prepared myself of like, we're not doing the
full walk over. Lea is like, I wish I could
blame it on that, truly, that would be fine. But yeah, no,
(20:31):
she's not getting anything done in the morning, just barely
her short routine. But I like having the two options
because then when you have time to do the longer one,
it feels so luxurious. It feels like an absolute glorious
I am a queen type of mourning.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, and if every morning could be like that, great,
But yeah, if not, you're not like giving up the goals. Yeah,
ye love it.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
And we're back with more grown up stuff. How do
I don't.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
So?
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Coming up. On our fourth episode from this season, we
talked voting with Professor Josh Douglas from University of Kentucky.
He hosts a podcast called Democracy Optimists and just gave
some great advice on how we can all best show
up as citizens and vote for the things that we
care about.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
He's so knowledgeable and I love this topic.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
But he also wrote the book Yeah, the one who
wrote the book.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, And he just opened my eyes to so many
things that we may or may not have learned in
high school, but that are especially important for us to
know today as part of our democratic process.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Let's hear that first clip from Josh.
Speaker 7 (21:50):
States are allowed to clean up their voter rules and
take people off and they'll get information like people have died,
people have moved away. In the states that just en
franchise individuals with a felony conviction if they get notice
of the felony conviction, states are allowed to take your
name off the voter roles. In addition, some states follow
(22:10):
a process where if you don't show up for two
federal elections in a row and then also don't respond
to a postcard that gets mailed to you, then they
can take you off the roles. So what do you
do if that occurs. Well, if you're in a state
with same day voter registration, no problem, you can register
at the polls right then. But if you're not in
(22:32):
a state with same day registration, especially if you're in
a state that has a deadline to register, you actually
are out of luck. With one kind of small caveat there,
if you ever show up to the polls and they
say your name's not on the rolls, you're not allowed
to vote, and you're sure you're in the right place,
(22:52):
don't just leave without casting about. Instead, the poll workers
are required to give you what's called a provisional ballot.
This is a ballot that you vote and then they
set aside and they figured out after the fact, after
election day, whether to count it or not. And this
should dispel one myth about our elections, which is that
all absentee ballots, all provisional ballots that are valid are
(23:17):
counted and so there's no concern about casting that vote,
and the election official results are not official until a
week or two later, when actually all ballots are counted.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Super important to know. I mean, I think that like
the first takeaway is like to register to vote.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Well, I think the very first okay that we're adding
to our summer to do list and sooner rather than later,
is check your voter registration.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Check.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
So let's make sure it's all good. We've got the
right address, we've got the right name, we've got the
right everything. If not, get ready to hear right now.
Because also there are going to be a lot of
local primaries going on this year, next year, every year,
and so you want to make sure that you are
able to vote as part of your party if you
(24:02):
have a primary, or in the election in general when
that comes around in the fall as well.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
But the greatest thing though is I never knew this
about casting about, even if you weren't on the role.
And really this is just a mechanism in place that
if there was a mistake with your voter registration, that
your vote doesn't go uncounted if it deserves to be counted.
And so, just like Josh said, if you were at
the polls and for some reason you're not on it,
but you're in the right place, don't leave without casting about,
(24:28):
because that is something that can get sorted out and
your vote can be counted.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
It's a great part of our process that we're going
to enjoy while we have it.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Let's go to the next clip.
Speaker 7 (24:40):
What does it mean to be a democracy optimist? It's
not that I think everything's going great, that democracy is
perfectly thriving and we don't need to change or fix things.
It's that there's hope for the future. Because if there's
not hope, then what's the alternative wallowing in our despair
and having this fatalistic view that the system is just
(25:01):
doomed and we can't do anything about it, and so
we're going to retreat into our everyday lives and not
try to fix the system. And if we do that,
then yes, the system is doomed. So the first answer
to your question of why should I vote, essentially is well,
why not? Because it's up to all of us, and
people of asking me all the time these days, how
(25:22):
do we save democracy? Ultimately, it's the people, it's we
the people, and so you should be wanting to be
part of that. Even if say you live in a
state where you kind of know who's going to win
the presidential electors in that state, or you live in
a district where, because of gerrymanderin the practice of drawing
skewed lines, you kind of know who's going to win
(25:42):
that district. The second answer is that your vote probably
isn't going to make a difference in the outcome except
for when it does, and you never know when that's
going to be. There are elections every year that come
down to one vote or that are tied. So is
your vote actually going to matter in the presidential election?
Probably not your one vote until it does, until enough
(26:06):
of us decide that we do want to show up.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I just loved talking to Josh. I loved exactly what
he said here, which is just like you take a
look around the country. We're all I don't think anyone's happy.
I think in general, no one's thrilled, both sides, right,
what's going on? And it's so easy to get so
pessimistic about things. I think if we're going to sit
around here and complain, we can sit around here and
do something about it. Yeah, you know, like you hear
(26:31):
that all the time. My vote doesn't matter, it's all
rigged whatever. But like they count the vote. Yeah you
know what I mean, Like, yeah, they count them.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I like knowing I did what I was supposed to
do and what I could do. And so I feel
fine in my heart going to bed every night knowing
I voted, and I voted the way I wanted to
and here we go.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, and there's never going to be the change you
want to see if you don't at least try. Yeah,
because I think that there's probably fifty thousand of you
thinking the same. And if we all just went out
there and vote, suddenly we're changing the system.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Change your thoughts, change the world. Does that how it
comes you? Really?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
It's so true. You do have to change your own
mind before you can change anything else. So change your
mind to go vote. And we've got another clip from Josh.
I wish we had ten of them now. It's hard
to disprove a negative.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Right.
Speaker 7 (27:15):
So when my kids were younger, and they might say,
as I'm tucking him into bed, Daddy, there's a monster
under the bed. And no matter how many times I
looked for the monster and told them there's no monster,
how do you get them to believe me? Right? Yeah,
And that's sort of what this mantra of voter fraud is. Right,
no matter how many times the experts who are looking
at this and understand how the process works, Understand all
(27:37):
of the auditing that happens after election day. They actually
it's not over on election day. There's lots of processes
that happened in the weeks after. No matter how many
times you say it, though, how do you prove a
negative so they're not monsters under the bed? There's also
no massive voter fraud.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
It's so funny how like the third party auditing, everything
that goes on to disprove or of this stuff. The
experts are all saying that there's no massive voter fraud,
and then all it takes is someone and look, just
forget Donald Trump. All it takes is some powerful person
saying loudly into the megaphone or social media, it's all
rigged that we all think it's all rigged. And it's like,
(28:17):
then you're just blowing away all of the work that
all those people have done to ensure that our process
is free and fair. And so Josh is right, it's
very hard to disprove a negative. And so I think
we could all do a little more listening to the
experts like we do on this show.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yes, yes, yes, I mean it's also a great reminder
to just check and make sure there's not a monster
under your bed too. I know you said you wanted
ten more clips of Josh. Did you know there is
a full episode with it. You can't listen to the
full episode Season three, episode four. If you want to
know more about voting, Yeah, get to it.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
And we took a hard pivot from voting to talking
about oil. Yeah, yes, which was fascinating because like if
you dive into it, I mean there's a ton talk
about experts. Oh, there are people out there doing things
that you wouldn't even imagine that they are doing in
every field. And so let's talk to one of them.
Speaker 8 (29:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
His name is Sean Wynn, and he is a shell
lubricant technical specialist with Pens oil as well, and he
knows literally everything there is to know about changing your oil.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Let's listen to it.
Speaker 8 (29:23):
As engine ols get cooked and heated typically can go
up as high as two hundred and sixty degrees, up
at the three hundred degrees and even that the pistons
can go above five hundred degrees. So in a sense
it causes them to age the same way we see
our cooking oil. You know, we use it a couple
of times see it kind of turned dark. And oil
has to be there to keep everything lubricated. Oil has
(29:46):
to come in and cool the engine. It works with
your cooling system, and as you change the temperature, and
as you increase the temperature, you cause that oil to
break down. When you add in contaminants like water, fuel
like air and carbon monoxide, it ages the oil and
degrades the oil. Our whole purpose of oil is a
(30:07):
couple of the major fundamental lubricate protect keep it cool,
and prevent wear.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
It's so easy as a owner of a vehicle to
just be like we're good, we're good, you know, every
time you get the road. But there's so many parts
that work together to make it happen. I mean, there's
your tires, there's your brakes, there's your oil.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
The miracle of modern technology, and we take.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
It for granted. Yeah, And so to Shaun's point, like,
what oil is doing is preserving your engine. And so
if you're going to let it sit and get dirty
and the contaminous mix it, it's not doing its job
and you're actually going to wear out your vehicle faster.
And I don't know about you, but I pay a
lot of money for mine and I'd like to keep
it working on the way it should. Yeah, as long
as possible. Yeah, talk about the hardest pivot.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
We already reuse that one, so you know what we're
going to do, reduce it to recycling. You went on
a nerdy little field trip, which I do think all
grown ups you should take yourself somewhere where your class
would go as a field trip, because it's so good
to learn a little something new, something you already knew,
(31:13):
something you didn't already know. And this inspired our next episode.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, went to the MURPH which stands for Materials Recovery
Facility out in Brooklyn and learn a ton about recycling
from Kara, so much in fact, we had to have
her on the show. So let's check in with Kara now.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
So, yes, there is the statistic floating around. It actually
pertains to plastics. So there's this statistic that nine percent
of plastic gets recycled. So this was determined by the EPA.
They put out a study the Sustainable Materials Management back
in twenty eighteen. So what they did is they measured
(31:57):
all plastics that had been manufactured in one year. And
I mean, you just have to let that sink in
for a moment, all plastics that had been manufactured in
this country. I believe in a year, it's a lot
of stuff like you know, tables, chairs, shoes, some are bottles,
some are recyclable, some are not, some are durable and
meant to be reused. So they found that out of
(32:20):
all plastic manufactured in a year, United States residents like
you and I put nine percent of that into recycling bins.
So what I think people interpret from that statistic is
they think, oh, of all the plastic I diligently put
in my bin, only nine percent of it is getting recycled,
When that's not what was being measured. It's actually the
percentage that people are putting into their bins, and if
(32:43):
you put more of the correct stuff into your bins,
that percentage will actually go up.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
I'm the victim of seeing this misinformation. I had seen
that statistic that nine percent of plastic gets recycled, and
I flipped it. I thought, was like, that meant nine
percent of literally everything into the bin gets recycled. And
that's the kind of statistic and the misinformation that can
drive people to be like, you know what, I don't
care then whatever, Then what's the whole point of recycling
if only nine percent of it gets recycled, and it's
(33:10):
not true. Actually ninety to ninety five percent of everything
that you recycle and your recycling gets recycled. And I
think that's the message that we have to take away
from here, because that is critically important.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
I think about so much of what Kara said all
the time, literally every day when I put stuff in
the recycling. Yeah, and it just makes me feel happy.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, obviously is Kara said in the episode of like,
reducing what we use is super important, Reusing what we
use is super important, and recycling is kind of like
the smallest piece of it. But again, if we're all
doing it as we should be, then we really can
make a big impact.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
So let's go to the next clip here. Let's go
to plastic bags. And I'm thinking, like the shopping bag plastics, like.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
The single use bags exactly, those are pretty much not
recyclable anywhere in this country, as far as in your
home bin or like in our recycling, right.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
And why is that?
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah? Two reasons. So, first of all, it's really hard
for us to sort them. At the Murph. A plastic
bag is what we call.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
A tangler because it tangles in the sorting equipment, so
it's a big pain for us. And then even if
we do manage to sort them, nobody wants to buy them.
Something is recyclable if it has a market, if there's
a company out there that wants to buy it. Plastic bags,
they're pretty flimsy. It's not really a strong material. You
(34:32):
don't get much from it.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
So it's true that plastic bags the single use are
not recyclable, but there are some businesses and this is
not true around the country, so you have to maybe
do some research on your own. But that accept plastic
bags because they are trying to find a way to
reuse them. And I think that, like, if you can
do that, do it, yeah, because otherwise they're just ending
up in the landfill, like we talked about on the episode.
(34:56):
So don't put them in your recycling bin. They're definitely
not going to be put to use there. There is
a grocery store actually not far from and there's actually
a ton of grocery stores. Do this to actually look
up the grocery store in your area because it's possible
that they could be doing this. One of them in
our area accepts plastic bags, Amazon bags, gigantic plastic wrap,
things that come in the mail, Like we collect all
of those and we give them to the grocery store.
(35:17):
And again like maybe they are ending up in a landfill,
but if we can get some use out of them,
go for Yeah, if we.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Can't recycle, we can reduce and reuse them still, and
those are.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Important too, exactly. So loved talking to Kara. If you
haven't done it, go back and listen to the full
episode because there's a ton of wisdom in there. But yeah,
so we're about to go off on a break, right,
We're going to take a couple of weeks off for
the summer. I'm going to Italy. Fancy can't wait. But
we wanted to kind of have a kindid conversation about
the rest of the season and like, you know, how
this show gets made because sometimes we have no idea
(35:47):
what we're going to do. We've got a few ideas
from the audience, we've got a few ideas that we
are personally interested in, but like a peak behind the
curative of making podcasts, you know, although we've got these ideas,
we never really know where the season is going to
take us. We talk about the ideas and a few
of them actually end up coming to Fruition, but some
of them don't. And so we just thought we would
talk a little bit about what we're interested in doing
(36:08):
for the latter half of the season, which I think
will premiere in August. So what are some of the topics? Cleah?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Okay, So there's a lot of topics. And again another
caveat to this is that sometimes life happens and there's
something that in our own personal lives we're like, ooh,
we should learn a lot about that. To a little
topic could pop in at any time, we don't know.
First up, AI AI. Do you know the robots?
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, so we've like brushed by each other. We've had
a few interactions, but I got to know them on
a deeper level. So we're going to talk about AI
and how we can use it in our everyday lives.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And this is the thing that I don't think a
lot of people know about, Like you can actually use
AI to like help you with your grocery list. I
just had AI like put together a whole meal prep
for me for a week, and to put together grocery
it was like so easy. So there's like little things
like that that you may not know about that you
can actually get a ton of use out of. And
so we're talking about AI not for like super fancy
tech startup algorithms, money, whatever, but like literally you and
(37:05):
like what you can do, not fancy, just for you. Yeah,
you are the fanciest you ever know really for us,
for me too, like I'm interested to learn more about
what it can help me do in my daily life
and give you back some more time. But another one
is nutrition.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Right, I'm gonna say, we got to know more about
that grocery list.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
We gotta know more about it, are Yeah, I just
think it's something that people don't really think about on
a day to day basis, Like what we're putting into
our bodies and is it doing us good or harm?
Like we're gonna chat about that.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Oh, speaking of good or harm, we're also gonna be
talking about advocating for yourself at work.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Oh dude, when you're young in your career, like I
feel like you will take any kind of abuse, Like
you're just like pilot on you know, let me be
that receptacle for all that stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
But you don't have to be.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
We don't have to be you do have worth, and
it's worth advocating for yourself because you never know what
is out there until you actually ask for it. So
we'll be chatting about that. We're also gonna be talking
about jury duty, which is something that I think I'm
confused about. I love you love it.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Yes, I've done it, I've lived it, I've loved it.
So I can't wait to really get even more into
that because it's so important.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
I just don't know the rules.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Okay, well we're going to find them out. But the
main thing to know is that true crime is like
the biggest genre right now. If you like true crime,
you are going to love jury Gonna love it, So
don't try to get out of it. Don't try to
delay of a jewet track.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yes, yeah, do it. Participate, maybe end up on the
big jury. And then where are we moving after that?
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Well, we're moving to the jury of the internet, and
that is how do we quit social media.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Loving all of your transitions today.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
I'm a professional, Like I said, I gotta stop looking
at my phone. So we are going to have an
expert come and tell us how we can. If not
cold Turkey, then certainly wean ourselves off of our social
media use, get that screen time down, get out in
the sunshine, not care about what the internet has going on.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, talking a little bit about social media and not
like saying that it's you know, you got to quit
it forever, but like what good is doing? Maybe? What
harm is it doing? And how can we find a
more healthy please for it to exist in your lives? Right.
And then the last one we've got written down here
is meal prep, which I love because, like, if you're
someone who's going to the office every day and you're
just eating whatever is near the office.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Oh, recession indicator. We are not doing those twenty dollars
salads exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
No, no, no, no no. And it has to do
with like we were talking about setting up your environment
for success, Like there's a couple of things you can do.
You know, you can get some containers, you can buy
a bunch of ingredients in bulk, and you can actually
make some healthy, very affordable meals for yourself. But sometimes
it's hard to know where to start, right, And so
that's what we're going to be talking about in that episode.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Also, drink every time we say the word soggy, because
I feel like I have to say that a lot.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yes, Yeah, okay, and look, you know these are just
ideas we've tossed out there. It's maybe a subject to change.
And you know, actually, now that I'm literally going on vacation,
I've been thinking about a lot like traveling is insanely
difficult to do well, and I've been banging my head
against the wall to try to find like an organizational
tool to help me organize our travel. Yes, and I
think I finally found it. And I would love to
(39:58):
have a travel expert on to talk about how the
best way we can plan for prep and get the
most out of our vacations.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Share your ways with us, I will.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
And we'll see if I'm doing it wrong where you are,
which I'm sure we'll find out that I am.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
But we're gonna correct it. We're gonna do it right.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yeah. So anyway, so everyone have a wonderful summer. Ye,
thank you for listening to the show. Yes, and we'll
see you in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yes, And until then, good luck being a grown up.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
This is a production of Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. Our
executive producers are The Palmery.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
And Matt still Oh. This episode was edited and engineered
by Sierra Spreen.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
We want to thank our teammates at Ruby Studio, including
Sarah You, Ethan Fixel, Raciswan Krasnoff, Amber Smith, Deborah Garett,
and Andy Kelly.
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