A Foolproof Plan to Ditch Debt (Bestie) #924

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, jiel it's still Christmas week, and I think
there might be a lot of folks who are regretting
some of the purchases that they made, Like all of
the swipes on the card have finally, like the card
is cool down a little bit. It was like in
Fuego for a second, and maybe some regret has been
setting in. Maybe folks are realizing that they're gonna have
to face the music of Yeah, maybe all the spending

(00:21):
that they've that they've participated in, and I'm guessing they're
still being left several weeks. They haven't quite come to
grips with that yet, but it's coming.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's coming, and we want you to preemptively get ahead
of that sinking sensation and hopefully I mean to change
your money habits so that this sort of cycle doesn't
perpetuate in the future. But for right now, like let's
be honest, getting out of debt is a good goal
to have and totally Hey, maybe I'll save the mechanics
for like January second or something like that. More power

(00:47):
to you. But this episode, we think it's a besty
episode can kind of help you formulate a.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Plan, start getting your mind wrapped around.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
What it's going to look like to get rid of
that debt that you might have indulge in right the
past weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
And you'll learn whether or not Joel is a debt
snowball or debt avalanche kind of guy. And by the way,
we will have a fresh episode here for y'all come Monday.
But without further ado, here is this Debt Bestie episode.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel and I am
Matt and today we're discussing a full proof plan to
ditch holiday debt.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
You know it, buddy, This this is gonna be a
really wholesome episode for all the folks out there who
may have spent a little bit more than they meant
to over the past couple of months. But we're gonna
talk about, first of all, why it is that having debt,
why having those balances, why it's such a bad thing.
We're gonna talk through how to put together a plan
to eliminate that debt, as well as some other tips

(02:01):
as well. Regardless of the approach that you decide to take,
there are a few things that you can implement, some
different ways of looking at your debt in order to
make sure that you are moving onwards and upwards with
your finances.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, and if people have been listening for any amount
of time, they know we like to be nuanced on
the topic of debt. But we're specifically talking about like
the crummiest forms of consumer debt in this episode, which
is what a lot of people are battling in January. Right,
and the credit card statement comes in your email inbox
and you're like, dang it, I didn't think it was
that bad.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Maybe even today that statement showed up. Maybe you had
a December fifteenth to January fifteenth statement and you are, yeah,
you're maybe you're a little disappointed in yourself.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, but and that's like that happens, right, people are
absolutely but how do you combat those now?

Speaker 1 (02:47):
How do you move forward? That's yeah, we're gonna talk
about the deck exactly. Man. Yeah, but first actually, uh so,
I've got a frugal or cheap for you. But it
is actually, for once, it's not me being cheap. It
is it's up to you to decide whether or not
is being frugal or cheap. Okay, you're white, that's right.
So she was considering getting this face serum. It's this

(03:08):
oil that you if you ever see her do it,
which that'd be weird. I guess if you were if
it's hard doing that night. She does it right before
she gets to bed, but it's like this little.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Glass usually hanging out of that time. No, yeah, yeah,
my wife has some face rum.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
So I got it. I think I was about so
just just she had like this dropper where she squeezes
it into this two glass room and she like squirts
it like across her forehead, over her cheeks. I forget
where normally buys hers from. But I try to convince
her to go with the Costco brand when it was
on clearance. Did she give a shot? She gave. She
gave it a shot, and she's like, it's not it's
not as good. This is garbage. Well dang it. So
maybe Kate felt that same way as well, because the

(03:42):
the stuff that she wanted to buy, I forget the
name of the website, but it's like one hundred bucks.
It's over one hundred bucks for a three ounce bottle,
which is that is not very many ounces? Yeah uh,
and so what she realized that, man, this is too
stinking expensive. But the website for the bottle that she's
wont they list out all the different ingredients. They list
out the oils, and obviously she doesn't know the exact ratios,

(04:05):
and I mean there's a little bit of fragrance thrown
in there as well. But she would have had just
ordered some nice organic versions of those oils and created
her own blend. And so she's able to make a
three ounce bottle, so the equivalent of what you would
pay over one hundred bucks for and she's able to
make that for under ten dollars dang per bottle. It's
like like argone oil or like rose hip, a little

(04:27):
bit of like grape seed, like like all these oils combined.
There's a lot of bottle, a lot of branding that
goes into makeups. But so I'm just like, how's this going?
By the way, She's like, it is going incredibly well,
and so she's super happy with it. But what are
your thoughts? Do you think she was being frugal or cheap?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Sounds frugal as I'll get out to me, Like I
think if I was like, I agree, I am all
for this, it was like destroying her face or something
like that. Well that's the risk, right, Like I guess
if is there a risk that you run by not
getting the proportions exactly right, and you put on your
face and all of a sudden you got you know,
first degree burns. Yeah, if you were putting it in
some potentially face melting acid or something in this concoction,

(05:06):
then it could be seen as cheap. You might need
some sort of expert blender to get exactly right. But
it's it's a bunch of these organic oils to create
a face.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Like. The chances are you can't screw it up that bad, right, Yeah,
And you can always like test it out on your
arm or something before going like straight full board, just
like squirting it on your face. Right, But this sounds
like it's it in an inconspicuous location, sort of like
if you're doing a treatment for laundry. Right y, that's
what they say.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, I'm thinking the next step for her though, could
be to launch a side hustle with this. I start
selling her own serums, oh Kates serums. Yeah, I like it, so,
I don't know, maybe I'll talk her into that next
time I see her.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
First customer will be Emily.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, probably probably Hopefully it's a that'll save us money too,
So no, I like that. I like experimenting in ways
like that. I think that's one of those things that
you don't you don't even think of doing. Let me
just try to make this concoction myself, because wow, they're
charging a lot of money for it. But when it's
when the cost is that insane, maybe it brings you

(06:01):
back to the drawing board and you're like, yeah, maybe
I'm gonna give it a shot and see what happens. Absolutely,
I kind of like the creativity and the ingenuity that
that she's expressing there.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, thinking outside the box a little bit. I will
pass along her the frugal approval, Yeah, by my co
pat on the back for me. Well, let's introduce our
beer this episode. This is Perpetual Composition. This is a
beer by Southern Grist Brewery, who we've had on the
show many times before, but not this particular beer, and
we will share our thoughts at the end of the episode.

(06:30):
For sure. Let's go on to the topic at hand. Though.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
We are talking about creating a full proof plan to
ditch holiday debt, and Matt there are some folks out
there who might think that just a little bit of
debt is no big deal, But it makes me think
about something else that we might not consider to be
all that bad, and that is sitting sitting down. And
it's interesting. I think a lot of new information has

(06:52):
come to light in recent years about how bad sitting
can actually be for us. Like we all sit down,
You and I were sitting down doing this podcast right now,
and we're not heeling over and dying right sure, but
it turns out that sitting on your butt all day
is much worse than we thought. And it's actually been
called the new smoking. You for people say sitting is
a new smoking.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Maybe I have only because I feel like I've heard
you talk about it. But this sort of sounds like
a report that maybe came from Big Tennis Shoe, all
the shoe companies out there, by Nike and Reebok, all
the anti chair trade groups out there who are battling
so many of them, so many of them clearly well
know that when you look at stats from the Heart Foundation,
they found that the people who sit sit a.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Lot are they're at a greater risk for heart disease
and death. They have one hundred and twelve percent increased
risk of diabetes, one hundred and forty seven percent increased
risk of cardiovascular events like heart attack and stroke, and
ninety percent increased risk of death from cardio vascular events
in general, and a forty nine percent increased risk of
death from any costs just because of the amount of

(07:53):
time you're sitting in a day, right and you know, debt,
I don't think that that's not going to lead to
diabetes that I know of. There's no link between the
two that I've seen. But it can cause stress, it
can cause relational insecurity, and it can actually lead to
adverse physical effects like headaches and inability to focus. So
that's why we want it.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Out of your life.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
It's you know, sitting in small amounts isn't the worst thing.
The right kinds of debt in your life aren't the
worst thing. We've talked about using debt strategically. But if
you've racked up the worst kinds of debt, consumer debt,
and you actually have more in your life than you
expected because of what was happening at the end of
last year and what you were spending money on, well,
today's show is all about creating a plan to ditch

(08:31):
it because it's worse than you think it is.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
That's right. Simultaneously, it's not like sitting all day once
is going to kill you, right, Like most of us
probably sit for the majority of our waking hours. You're
probably half of the folks out there might be sitting
right now. Maybe you're going for a walk, though, But
when those weeks turn into years, right, and like when
those years turn into decades, like that is when this
this fairly normal activity, how it can wreck our health.

(08:56):
And we definitely don't want consumer debt to become a
normal fixture in your life. But the truth is that
if you don't have a plan, you are not going
to take action. And so that plan part, like that
is crucial to getting you to where you want to be.
And if not having debt, you know, lingering around is
what you want and it should definitely should be, then
we want to help you to get there. Like you're saying, Joel,

(09:18):
consumer debt, it's it's worse than most people think. It's
not like this, this cute little thing. It's not like
a pet that you want to want to keep around.
It's quite literally keeping you from achieving your bigger financial goals.
It turns out that the average household today has more
than nine thousand dollars in recurring credit card debt. And
that's not even including some of the other crappy debt

(09:39):
products out there, like personal loans or by nopay later. Yeah,
that's literally just credit card debt hanging out in people's lives.
And you know, I think part of the thing that
we need to address here too, is that debt, credit
card debt in particular, is getting worse. Variable interest rate
debt is steadily becoming a bigger train on your finances

(09:59):
because we're in an era of rising interest rates, and
so credit card debt is actually worse right now than
it was a couple of years ago. And it's always bad,
right It sucks no matter what to have credit card debt.
We've never liked it. But when you're talking about interest
rates closing it on twenty percent at this point, which
we're getting pretty close to. I think we're over nineteen
percent on average, and there's a lot of predictions because
the FED is likely going to continue to raise interest

(10:21):
rates that we're going to see twenty percent at some
point this year being the average APR on a credit card,
and so making the minimums, making those minimum payments is
now even worse for you than it was that means
more of each payment is going to pay that interest,
which means your debt lingers even longer. And the reality
is that almost half of folks have no idea what

(10:41):
the interest rate is on the credit card they carry anyway.
So people are like just would prefer to be ignorant
and just got their head in the sand.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, they prefer to keep their eyes closed and not
even think about how bad this debt is. Well, the
truth is it's bad. And if you're clueless about how
bad your debt is, you're likely you're less likely to
prove orities getting rid of it. And we want you
to get rid of it. So we want to tell
you right now upfront, Hey, it's worse than you think.
It sucks really bad, and we want you to be
done with it.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
That's right. Yeah, And while existing credit card rates are
in the sixteen percent range, new offers are at nearly
twenty two percent, So, like you said, it's becoming much
more costly to carry a balance on a credit card
these days. That's terrible, but it's also important to look
at what you are giving up by having to make
these payments. We're talking about the opportunity cost here, so

(11:28):
going back to the nine thousand dollars that the average
household has, So assuming someone is just making minimum payments
with an instraight at around twenty percent, you are looking
at a three hundred and thirty dollars per month payment
that is going to take over three years to fully
pay off. And so that means you're looking at around
twelve thousand dollars that you're giving up plus another one

(11:50):
thousand dollars where you two have invested that money, right,
And so I'm pointing that out because it's not just
that making payments to the bank that sucks, but it's
also what you're not able to achieve because of those
monthly payments. It kind of so going back to the
sitting analogy, right, it's it's not that the act of
sitting on your butt that that in and of itself
is bad for you. I think it's also what you

(12:11):
are not doing when you are sitting down, right, Like
there aren't you're not working out if you're sitting on
your butt. Well, I guess technically you can go. You
can get on that. You can get on a rowing
machine or like a bike or something, right, that's true. Yeah,
I do a rowing machine so I guess I am.
Technically you are. You are sitting, but most of the time,
you know, what they're referring to is a sedentary lifestyle.

(12:32):
You're talking about folks PLoP down on the couch watching TV,
and not to mention the other behaviors that oftentimes accompany
sitting down, like eating some popcorn, some snacks, drinking a coke,
that kind of thing. And so in the same way,
it's a little bit different, I guess with that because
the thing in and of itself is dangerous, is bad
for you. So it's more like smoking in this in
this way where the actual act of it's not that

(12:54):
you're just not spending money on other healthier products. Actually,
inhaling smoke is bad for your Yeah, but maybe there
is a better analogy overall. But in this case, it
also has to do with the things that you can't
do with the money, the things that you're missing out on,
and we want to make sure that we're highlighting that
as well. Well.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, and I think we just in the same way
that people are spending more hours of the day sitting,
which is impacting their health negatively. People are keeping consumer
or debt around in their lives more than ever before too,
which is just negatively impacting their financials. And so let's
get back to that paying the bill on time and
in full every month. We always say that when we're

(13:33):
talking about taking on credit card debt, we don't mind
people using credit cards, and in fact, we think they're
the best method of payment in many cases, but we
sure don't want people using them if they're not going
to do that basic thing, which is to pay off
the balance every single month. And that's because each and
every month that you don't attack that debt, that you're
not doing that, you start to dig yourself a hole.
And every month you let that credit card debt roll over,

(13:57):
you're digging that hole even deep. And so unfortunately, that's
what a lot of people are doing. According to Bankrate,
forty six percent of credit card holders roll over their
debt each month, meaning that they're not paying off that
balance in full, and so they might not be paying
just the minimum, which is the worst possible scenario that you're, well,
I guess the worst possible scenario is that you're not
even paying that. But if you're just paying the minimum,

(14:20):
it's going to take a really long time for you
to make progress. For you to actually pay off that debt.
But some people might be paying more than that, but
they're still they're paying interest to the credit card company
on at least a portion of that balance, and that's
not good. And so, yeah, for a lot of folks,
we think they can handle credit cards wisely. But we
only want folks to consider using credit cards if they're
going to be able to basically curb rolling over that debt,

(14:43):
if they're only only if they're going to be able
to pay it off on time, in a full every
single month, Because yeah, we want you to refuse to
allow yourself to pay extra for using this method of payment.
That turns something that can be good for your finances
into something that's pretty bad.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Exactly. Yeah, we see it as a tool that you
need to wheeled properly, and it turns out too. More
than one third of folks, according to a wallet hub survey,
said that they overspent during the holidays. I think most
folks it's something like in the thirteen hundred dollars range.
But hopefully just based on you know, just the beginning
of this podcast, you've been alerted to just how bad
keeping credit card debt around can be. How it's actually

(15:20):
getting worse. How it's bad for your health, Like quite literally,
debt is bad for your health. And you also might
want to even consider look into buying a standing desk
as well. After hearing Joel's the sitting stats. I mean,
I'm thinking about it right now. Really, you have mentioned
it multiple times.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
We saw one last time you and I were in
Costco together. We saw one and I was like, Matt,
maybe we should upgrade to these standing desks.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
It feels like just such a commitment, you know what,
let's figure out a way to just elevate our current
desks just to try it out. Like, I guess that's
the thing for me. I guess we can always take
it back to Costco obviously, but it's the commitment of
like getting I mean, they're big and heavy, and a
lot of times they're adjustable, and so it's it's as.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
It's nice because like you know, while sitting oh too
much is bad for you. You also can't stand necessary
for eight or nine hours a day. I don't like
it in perpetuity. You don't want to be hunched over.
You want it to be whatever. Yeah, size properly for you.
But back to debt for the rest of the episode,
we're going to talk about creating an effective plan to
get rid of that debt that we're talking about, and.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
We will get to that right after this.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
All right, Matt, let's keep talking about debt, and let's
do it. Clearly, we don't like consumer debt. We don't
like these high interest credit card debts that people are
keeping around in their lives. And the average person, I
think it's in a recent survey I read, I think
it takes something like five months for them to pay
off the debt they accrued over the holidays. So we're
talking about like we're basically in summer right by the

(16:48):
time are people are done getting rid.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Of that debt.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
We don't want that to be the case. We want
you to pay it off in short order. And the
key to doing that is to create a plan. We
want you to make a plan to pay off your debt.
That's cru to getting rid of it. And so that's
what we're going to discuss now. Because you know that
there are a lot of folks by the way out
there who who are going to tell you I can
help you create a plan. And I'm not talking about us,
but like I'm talking about that's what we're saying. Yes,

(17:11):
what we're saying we actually can. But there are organizations
out there who wants you to pay them money and
then they promised that they're going to take care of.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Your debt issues for you. Right, do not want your money?

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Right, No, don't send us anything, just just listen. But
it might sound nice. There might be people on the internet,
or let's say you're listening to traditional radio or something
like that. There might be companies that say, listen for
a small fee, will help you create a debt plan,
and even if you pay us, we'll take care of
some of that debt on your behalf. And that sounds

(17:40):
really nice because then you're offloading that responsibility to an
expert or a supposed expert. But almost always they end
up making your situation worse. So we'll discuss more on
that in just a minute, but let's start. Let's talk
about taking the DIY route. How you can create your
own plant. We're not going to create it for you,
but we're going to help you create one. How can
you create your own plan to get rid of that debt?

Speaker 1 (18:02):
That's right. Yeah, So the first thing that you'll want
to do is determine how much you owe by listing
out all your debts between multiple credit cards and buy
now pay later companies that are out there, my guess
is that a lot of folks underestimate how much debt
they get into. And I just mentioned by not pay later,
it makes me think about We had a listener actually
recently email us and she's she's an HR manager, she

(18:24):
works for the government. She's talking about someone she's about
to interview, and he had something like eighteen by now
pay later accounts on his name, and she didn't, like
flat out say that she wasn't going to hire this guy.
But it wasn't a good thing. It's definitely not helping
his change. He might not be all that responsible. Yeah, well,
especially when it comes to different government jobs like that,
because there's a security issue. So that's just store that

(18:47):
one away. That's another benefit of making sure that you
aren't carrying around large amounts of consumer debt and that
you're not delinquent on your accounts because they can keep
you from potentially getting a job that you're hoping to land.
And by the way, we're hunting for you just mentioned
that we're probably a people are underestimating how much they
owe on some of the to some of these buy now,
pay later companies. And it reminds me of when we
talked about how much people think they spend in subscription

(19:09):
dollars every single month versus the reality of how much
they spend. And I guarantee you the same thing is
true there. People vastly underestimate how much they spend on
recurring subscriptions, and once they dig into the details, they're like, Oh,
I didn't realize that's how much I was spending. And
I guess that's the problem is because most of the
time folks aren't digging into the details. They haven't sat down,
they haven't done their homework. And that's the whole point
of my not pay later. They want you to forget.

(19:30):
They want you to make it easy installments so that
you don't realize how much you're paying. Yeah, you immediately
forget about it. But if you don't know how much
debt that you are trying to pay, if you're not
sure what the end goal is, well obviously it's going
to be a lot harder to achieve. And it's almost
always going to ensure that you're you know that you're
going to take longer to reach that goal. So what
we would recommend is to log into the back end

(19:50):
of your credit card, log into Klarna or after pay
those different accounts so that you can put eyeballs on
the numbers. We want you to get organized and write
them all down in one place, because knowing the totality
of how much you owe like that is a crucial
first step so that you can make a plan to
get out of the step.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
That's right, So first, looking the numbers in the face,
how much that do I actually have? Not just rounding
it or assuming, but knowing the actual specific amount. That's
going to be a massive help in helping you in
allowing you to formulate this plan. Next, let's talk about
how to come up with how much a payment amount
that you can reliably and realistically handle, because once you

(20:31):
know how much you owe, it's important to figure out
how much you can spare to pay that debt off.
Can you put an extra twenty bucks a month towards
it or an extra two hundred Can you truly only
afford to pay the minimums? Or is there actually more
wiggle room than you thought? Those are good questions to ask,
and you want to be realistic with how much you
can devote to that debt in order to keep yourself

(20:51):
from flaming out after you've only been out it for
a couple of weeks. I keep You're like, listen, I
will reduce my grocery bill from six hundred and fifty
dollars a month to by eating only rice and beans.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
I'm making a thousand dollars. I'm gonna put a thousand
dollars payment every single week. Yeah. Yeah. Fourteen days later
you're like, oh, yeah, I know once those nomine out
of money, no on hunger paying start and you're like,
I that was a bad move.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
I can't actually stick to this and you know, scrap
it all together. That's not a good way to tackle it.
We want, we want you to have financial stamina. And
of course, like a simple budget is going to be
an incredible tool that will help you to calculate a
reasonable payment. So take a look at your overall incoming,
your overall outgoing. That's massively important. It will help you
figure out how much free cash you have left over

(21:33):
after paying all of your other obligations to dedicate towards
debt pay down and making it happen quickly.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
That's right. Yeah, And this past Monday, we talked with
Jesse Meekham, the founder of why Nap. And if you
are looking for and this is it's funny because they
charge you in order to use their software, right, And
so you might be thinking, well, man, Joe, I can't
believe you're gonna recommend going with this program, with the software,
with this app that is going to cost me money. Well,
first of all, free trial and you don't have have

(22:00):
to enter credit card information and to take part in
that free trial. But secondly, if you've never done this before,
you might need some handholding. You might need an app
or a program like that. And by the way, not
everyone needs in order. I think even Jesse would say
that you sure you would say that, I would say
that you don't necessarily need a program. You can do
it without one. But if that's what it takes to
get you making it happen, and that is what it

(22:20):
takes for a lot of people, like why Nap helps
a lot of people, absolutely, and if that's what it takes,
we would it's worth the money, yeah, totally. And when
it comes to so maybe you're you're kind of like
all gung ho about it, right, If that's you It's
important to note that we don't want you to empty
out all of the cash that you have on hand,
like all of the cash out of your your bank account,
in order to pay the debt off.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Right, it take a hammer to your piggy bank and
empty it all right, and then take it in.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, to your credit card. We still want you to
maintain that that cash buffer. We still want you to
maintain at least that bare minimum emergency fund of two thousand,
four hundred and sixty seven dollars as a base amount
in your savings account for just some of those other emergencies,
some of those bumps on the road that could pop up,
because you might be tempted to destroy this debt as
fast as humanly possible by taking that balance straight down

(23:05):
to zero, but that's going to leave you in an
incredibly vulnerable position two four six seven. That should be
your essentially like your low water line that you refuse
to dip below. But then every dollar above that, every
dollar beyond that, should be headed toward that debt demolition. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
So we want you to list out those debts. We
want you to figure out pragmatic payment amounts which should
maintain that cash buffer. Those that you're not dipping below
it and putting yourself in harm's way. And then then
once you know how much you can dedicate to debt
payoff and how much those debts stack up to, we
want you to come up with a timeline to get
rid of that debt. We want you to have a
firm week or month amount that is going to take

(23:44):
you to get rid of it. So, because now you
have those numbers in hand and you should be able
to it's a basic math equation now that will tell
you how long it's going to take to pay it off.
So let's say you owe the average amount of holiday debt,
which I said, it's something like one and forty nine dollars.
And let's say you've got four hundred dollars a month.
You figured out that you can put towards paying off
that debt, Well, you should have it paid off in

(24:06):
four months. And now there's a light at the end
of the tunnel. Your debt elimination date is set. And
that's powerful to know that, Hey, it's not just like this.
I don't know how long it's going to take. I'm
not sure when I'm going to get rid of it,
but I'm trying my best. Now it's like no, no, no,
I know when I'm going to be done with it.
I know when this monkey's going to be off my back,
And so we want you to have that specific date,
do the math and look at your calendar and put

(24:27):
an X mark. And that's such just like an empowering
feeling to have to say, I know when this is
going to be out of my life completely.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah. In that way, it feels more like a program
as opposed to just a slog right, like where your
head's down, you're not even paying attention to the numbers.
That being said, I think for some folks maybe that's
what they need to do. I think different personalities are
going to react differently, but I think for a lot
of folks, having that thing that you're trying to achieve
on a timeline is incredibly helpful. Like it's one thing

(24:54):
to say that you want to pay that debt off
like maybe sometime this year. It's a very different thing
to say that you're going to have the financial capability
to pay off that debt by May, right knowing how
long it will take.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
I think not only March, hopefully March, but May. Your reality,
that's Okay, it happens.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
I think it will just help folks to stick with
that payoff plan and to ensure that this debt payoff
actually happens. We would recommend for you to automate the
plan by setting up recurring payments of the amount that
you want to make on a weekly or bi weekly
or monthly basis. Again going back to once you've determined
your payment amount, you've got your total, divide that out.
You know how many payments you need to make and

(25:31):
at what dollar amount, Well, go ahead and schedule those
ahead of time. Something else you could do consider just
talking about your debt payoff journey with a friend who
might be interested in talking about finances with you, or
if not, is like you join the Facebook group the
how the Money Facebook group, basically just giving someone else
like a peek under the hood. I think that can

(25:52):
provide not only some motivation, but some accountability to make
sure that you're getting it done as well. There's also
like that element of not embarrassing. I guess it's embarrassment
if you kind of put it out there for the
for everyone in the group to know that this is
something you're working towards, and if you I don't know.
If you kind of slink off into the background and
you don't actually achieve achieve that there might be some

(26:13):
additional pressure there for you to actually get it.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
It might be that kind of good pressure though, kind
of like we talked about with Katie Milkman right earlier
in the year.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
It might be like putting good in peer pressure.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, it's like putting a good peer pressure to kind
of help force you in the right direction. So maybe
you listen to this episode, you do some of these
steps here, and you kind of realize, here's how much
I owe, Here's how much I can afford to pay,
here's the timeline now for me, and then you make
that public and how to money Facebook group, you do
a post later this week and you say, hey, guys,
I know you don't know me, but I've just realized, like,

(26:43):
this is how much consumer that I'm in and this
is the date at which I'm not going to have
anymore and.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Just love it.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Hey, you root for me, And that kind of public
statement I think does go a long way, and it's
meaningful and it can help kind of steal your resolve
to keep pushing in the right direction, because hey, you
may public display of your hatred for debt and like
when you're going to be done with it. And even
though those people most of them probably don't know you,
maybe none of them know you in real life, there's

(27:09):
still something powerful about that totally. All right, So Matt,
let's talk about we've kind of got some of those
some of those basics for how to ditch debt and
how to kind of create a payment plan to make
sure you're getting rid of bit out of the way.
But let's talk about maybe like the order of operations
when it comes to debt payoff, like and how you
decide which If you have multiple debts, right, you might

(27:30):
be just using one credit card and boom, it's it's
a little bit easier, But you might also have multiple
credit cards with balances, and it's hard to know which
debt to payoff first. It's you might have some buy now,
pay later debt as well, like you talked about, And
that's a good question. I mean, I think the most
important part of the debt payoff plan is is what
we've just talked about. It's discovering how much you owe
and how much you can dedicate towards paying off those debts,

(27:51):
and then you know, creating that actual timeline. But it's
important to configure in order of operations too, to decide
which debts you're going to attack first. And I think, really,
when it comes down to it, that question is mostly
it mostly comes down to the snowball vers avalanche approach.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
That's right, Yeah, which one should you go with? And
actually we have an article on that up on the website,
so if you want to dive in deep here, we
would recommend for you to check that out. We'll make
sure to link to that article in the show notes
for this episode. But in short, the snowball approach, that's
the method where you are paying off your debts with
the smallest balance first. This method prioritizes the psychological wins,

(28:30):
the psychological satisfaction that you're going to derive from getting
rid of a small debt and then getting you get
that endorphin rush, which will then only embolden your resolve
to pay off that next debt even more quickly. And
then you've got the debt avalanche method, and it prioritizes
not the psychological side of things, but it prioritizes the numbers,

(28:51):
like the cold hard facts. By paying off whichever debt
in your life has the highest interest rate. First, So
this is it's all about the math. It's not psych
cology at all. And so which one is right for you? Well,
I think it depends on your personality, It depends on
a lot of the different things in your specific given circumstance.
It depends on some of the debt that you have

(29:12):
and the balances that you have. But at the end
of the day, we think that something more of a
hybrid approach is that might be the best approach for
many folks.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
The toyota prias of debt payoff methods, you might say,
and I think you're right. I think if you were
put a gun to my head and you'll say.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Which one done, avalanche or debt snowball. First off, don't
do that because that would scare me.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
But debt snowball, I think is something I think early
on in our podcasting days, we would have been.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Like, oh, we totally knocked the snowball. Yeah, we were
Avalanche people, because we're like, it's all about the facts,
it's all about the numbers.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
But the more you learn about personal finance, the more
you learn about the deep psychology that you play, and
the more I'm married to someone who's becoming a you know,
working to become a licensed therapist. It's like psychology, it
impacts is a big role our history are you know,
all so many things going on underneath the surface in
our brains and our bodies, like impact how we tackle things.

(29:59):
And so I do think that that psychological aid of
getting rid of one debt like it can help build
progress for people. Sure, And the fact is, if it
was only about the numbers, well, you wouldn't be in
debt to begin with because you would have seen the
interest rate. You would have known that this is going
to end up costing you way more money down the road,
and you would have said, I'm going to use credit
cards the way that Matt and Joel recommend for me

(30:21):
too write. But the fact is, if that is not
how you naturally think, well, then we need to use
the tools of psychology, those psychological wins, those emotional wins,
to your advantage, as opposed to using them against you.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Well, let's talk about that hybrid approach to a little
bit and maybe give an example here, because when we're
talking about paying off let's say three different credit cards
that all have between an interest rate between sixteen and
nineteen percent, then we're really splitting heres and the snowball
basically the same. The snowball approach is basically slam dunk, yep.
Just pay off the lowest balance first. That's going to
create the momentum boom.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
It's great.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
But if you let's say you toss a car loan
into the mix that you financed a few years ago,
we're not really seeing rates at one point nine percent
these days. But let's say you locked in three years
ago and you got that one point nine percent rate,
that's a different story. Do we still want you to
pay off that car loan, of course, but there's such
a massive disparity in the rates between what you owe
on that car versus what you owe on the credit cards,

(31:15):
and it's just so much worse that we'd rather see
you even if that's the lowest balance that that car loan,
that car notes, we'd rather see you pay off the
credit cards first and just the minimums on your car,
because this is an instance where the specific type of debt,
the specific interest rate matters, and some people might be
tempted to throw their mortgage in in these calculations, and
depending on your interest rate, like, well, consumer debt is

(31:36):
worse than these other kinds of debt. And so that's
why you just have to be careful when you're coming
up with these calculations so that you're not prioritizing the
wrong thing first. And so, yeah, just know that the
higher the interest rate often the more important it is.
And if the interest rates are close enough, then we
would say snowball approach is great. But if they're far
enough apart, that's when I think the hybrid approach makes

(31:59):
the most sense. And if you're looking for a tool
to help you create that payoff plan, if you don't
want to just like sit down with a pen and
paper or create your own Excel spreadsheet, but you want
a software to help you out, undebt dot it. We
will link to it in the show notes. Undebt it
is one of our favorite sites that helps you create
a debt payoff plan if you want, yeah, some software
to kind of have your back and so where you

(32:20):
can kind of track it and see it just helps
you make that plan. That's always one of my favorite
resources that we always help you check out if they're
like on in debt and especially if.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
They have multiple you know, multiple balances with different rates.
It allows you to, yeah, create that hierarchy of which
debts you're gonna attack for it again, just like we
were talking about with why now do you need it? No?
Can you do it yourself manually? Yes?

Speaker 2 (32:43):
But like, does it help sometimes to be able to
type some numbers into a piece of software and have
it render everything for you so that you can more
easily see your trajectory and what that payoff plan is
going to look like. Yeah, for a lot of people,
that is a motivating factor and it's gonna, you know,
help them actually stick to a plan. But Matt, we've
got more to get to. We want to talk about

(33:04):
this foolproof plan to ditch holiday debt, and there are
a few things you can actually do to speed up
your progress, and we'll talk about how to do that
and what to do if you're like I came up
with a plan and it said it was going to
be thirty two years before I get out of this
credit card debt. Like, if that's the case, then you
might have to take more drastic measures. We'll talk about
both of those things right after this.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
All right, man, let's continue to help folks on their
way to becoming consumer debt free. We've got a few
other suggestions, some different ways to minimize the impact of
your debt as you try to pay it off. And
the first one is this is I don't know, I
don't want this to seem like the kind of moment,
but make more money when you have a bigger shovel

(33:54):
that is going to allow you to dig yourself out
of that hole even faster. A wallet hub survey found
that fifty eight eight percent of folks would be willing
to work longer hours to get out of debt. And
we like hearing that. We're all about work life balance,
but if you took on too much debt over the holidays,
you might actually want to take this approach. We're actually
going to give a bunch of ideas on how it

(34:14):
is that you can increase your income in twenty twenty
three next week here on the show. But if you
can increase your income, that'll allow you to pay off
crappy debt even faster. And of course, you know, I mean,
the best way to make more money in the long
run is not to trade your time for money by
like driving for Uber or taking online surveys that kind
of thing. But it will quickly add ammunition to eradicate

(34:36):
that debt in the near term, right like temporarily. If
you are in a bind and you have some ridiculous
debt where you're paying a dumb interest rate, then we
are not above you taking some of these more drastic
steps to make sure that you are out of that
debt quickly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Man, it's not often that we tell people to drive
for Uber or to do some of these gig jobs.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Where you're beholden to these giant companies do with you
whatever they want.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, and we'd rather you make less money typically but
build something that could be more sustainable and potentially more
lucrative for you over the years. But if we're talking
about getting rid of some of this high intras debt
and getting rid of it more quickly, I think treating
it like it's a serious problem and signing up for
whatever you can do to make a little extra income

(35:22):
to make that debt payoff happen even more quickly is
worth considering.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah, it's like a tourniquit, like you are just trying
to stop the bleeding. Yeah, exactly. We can worry about
stitches later, but right now, just like whip off that
belt and tighten that sucker around.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
It doesn't have to be for forever, right, Yeah, yeah,
even if it's just two months driving for Uber, so
you can knock this out more quickly.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
That's fine, exactly.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
But let's talk to another thing that you can do
and you should do in all likelihood if you think
this is as big of a problem as Matt and
I do, if you think this consumer debt is just
a financial calamity, is that you should consider cutting your
spending and that there were a lot of folks in
that same survey you just mentioned that said that they
would cut out luxuries or vacations in order to get

(36:01):
rid of their debt faster. Yeah, and I think those
are both great choices. And again I feel like, you know,
we're all about balance here. We don't want people working
eighty hours a week normally, we won't want people skimming
vacations for years on end or never buying anything they
care about. Like we want people to be intentional with
their spending too. But again, consumer debt should be treated
like a real severe problem. And I wouldn't want to

(36:25):
spend personally a couple thousand bucks on a beach vacation
while credit card debt is still lingering in the background.
I wouldn't want to be booking my beach vacation for
July and spending money that I don't have, adding to
the problem. And so you know, dialing back you're spending
on the big stuff until you've eradicated that debt is crucial.
We also say don't forget the small expenses either, right,

(36:47):
There likely some monthly spending categories where you can cut
back at least temporarily in order to grow the gap,
which is going to speed up the process. Again, that
doesn't mean rice and beans right for months on end,
but there are smart ways maybe for a couple months, though,
for a couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, I don't know how long you're to stem that bleeding. Yeah,
I think it can be a good approach. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
It's a real problem. And cutting back on spending, especially
on some of those big things for the time being,
until you've got it under control, until you've gotten rid
of it is I think it is a really important
move to make.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yeah. Well, I mean again, it's temporary, right, and I
think by making some of those more severe cuts, it
can strengthen your resolve to actually stick with the program
to actually not want, you know, for you to say
this sucks and I don't ever want to end up
in this kind of situation again. I think it can
can strengthen your resolve by actually experiencing some true temporary

(37:37):
suffering when it comes to the money that you're spending.
It's not again, like you said, this is not your
new lifestyle, but maybe it is until you are out
of that worst of the worst debt suffering with a purpose,
because it is I think it is doing. It is doing.
It's teaching you a deeper lesson and it's also at
the same time helping you get out of this place
more quickly. Exactly. Yeah. And so another way to make
your debt less egregious and to catalyze the process is

(37:59):
by asking for a lower APR from your current credit
card provider, asking for a lower rate. Obviously, if you
don't ask, you you're certainly not going to receive you're
certainly not going to get one. But seventy percent of
folks who ask, according to recent survey, received some sort
of interest rate reduction. And we're talking about an average
reduction somewhere in the ballpark of seven percent. That is

(38:20):
huge and of course that reduction will mean more of
your dollars are then going to be attacking the debt balance,
which is huge. And one of the reasons that we're
highlighting this is because I'm afraid that we're a generation
that were we're not advocating for ourselves enough. I think
a lot of folks feel like it's personal where they
feel like whoever they're talking to like that they're then

(38:41):
not going to be able to put food on the
table because they might be offering a lower rate. No,
this is just business, and they either have the permission
or they don't have the permission to lower your APR
based on your credit score, maybe your payment history, a
variety of different factors that they have to take into account.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Right, you're not taking food out of the baby's mouth
because some reservice sharpers. If you're talking to you're just
advocating for your for yourself and you are asking, say, hey,
based on my my long standing relationship with you with
a BANG as a customer, based on would you like
to keep me around? Yeah, I'm basically a good customer
for you because I I'm willing to have this conversation. Yeah, yeah,

(39:18):
will Will you now give me a little bit of
a break. And I think they're willing to do that
too because it engenders them to you. They want now
now they they you're going to think of them as
a company you want to continue to do business totally
because they were generous to you in a moment of pain.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Absolutely. Yeah. And so there's there's sort of like that
element of it where it's just like, well, who am
I to be asking? Like why? Why? Why can't you know?
Why wouldn't they just say no? So I feel like
there's that side of it. Why wouldn't they proactively reach
out in the normal I rate? That's that's not how
it works, that's not how business works. But there's also
sort of like the social norms and like mora's associated
with like asking for something, which we just actually published

(39:53):
an article on our side about asking for a discount.
Well link to that in the show is because there
are so many ways, and there's there are tips I
think to help you do it the right way so
you're more likely to get the answer being of yes
and said no no. Yeah. I think a lot of
times folks they're just too afraid of like rocking the boat.
They're afraid of like offending whoever they're talking to, as

(40:13):
opposed to just starting a conversation. There's a way that
you can go about this in a friendly way. You
mentioned Costco earlier with the staying desk. That same trip,
we're at Costco. We were grabbing pizzas for our families
for a Friday night pizza movie night kind of thing.
And we're staying there, getting ready to pick them up,
and I was holding a bag of Meyer Lemons and
there's a lady there and we got to talking to
her and she's like, oh, man, Meyer Lemons. I did

(40:34):
We've always been wanting to try those. And I was like,
you want one, which isn't a normal thing that you
do with standing there in a grocery store, is like
giving somebody some of your grocery. But it's like a
huge Obviously it's Costco. So there's like fifty of eighty
two myer levels. There's a bunch of them in there.
And she was like, well yeah, but and so obviously
I was like, yeah, sure, totally have one, and you

(40:55):
autographed the too. No, but had she asked, I would
have also been like, well, of course. I mean, granted,
we were nice and kind of offered or one. But
I think there's a way that you can go about
asking for something in a way where you're building sort
of good will, like be cheeky about it, right, Like
you're being a little irreverent about what you're asking for.
But if you can do it in kind of a

(41:15):
funny way, if you can kind of do it in
a kind way, I think a lot of times the
answer that you're going to hear is yes.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
I might just call up the credit card company, the
one eight hundred number, and I might be like, hey,
I'm sure you're getting this call. A lot a lot
of people spent too much money at the end of
last year. I'm one of them, Like yeah, yeah, guilty
is charged, and then started the coming.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Eighteen nineteen percent. But I was really hoping to get
that down to one and a half. What do you think, right?
And they're like, no, you're crazy.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
We get you twelve or thirteen right, Yeah, And that
at least is going to ensure that more of your
payments are going to the principle and that you that
your payment timeline is going to be shortened. So I
think that's a really important one. Asking for a lower
rate from your current issuer. Also, what about zero percent
balance transfer cards, Matt, that's another way that you can
take something that is pretty dang bad and turn it

(42:01):
into something less awful. And that's another way to just
move your consumer debt around to make it less nasty
and to make sure you can make more progress more quickly.
And of course, like some debts are worse than others,
like a three percent mortgage shouldn't be a top priority
for you when you've got credit card debt lingering around.
But what if you could take a debt that looks
really bad, it looks like a financial black eye, and

(42:23):
you can just like, I don't do one of those
killer makeup jobs with it, and nobody knows that you
got punched in the eye. Well, that's kind of what
transferring to a zero percent interest credit card can do
for you. And by the way, Matt, you wrote an
article about the best balance transfer credit cards. You can
go to how toomoney dot com slash balance transfer and
you can read that list and you can find one

(42:43):
if you're like, man, I've got ten thousand dollars worth
a credit card debt and I'm in nineteen percent. But
if I can get it down to zero percent for
twelve months, I can be rid of it without paying
any interest, and I can do it much more quickly. Well,
then this can be one of those methods to minimizing
the impact of that debt as you're paying it off
more quickly.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Yeah, getting one means that you're going to need to
have a solid credit score, but it'll also mean that
you'll need to have the personal resolve to pay this
debt off right, because you know, transferring that debt to
another piece of plastic and just continuing to spend them
like you've been doing like that is only going to
dig the hole deeper. It's possible to use this technique
just to make your situation worse. You don't want to

(43:20):
be shifting the chairs around on the deck of the Titanic.
You want to prevent it from sinking. If you deploy
the strategy before you're actually ready to make some permanent changess,
going toa end up making things worse for you for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Some people think like, oh, if I just get the
lower interest rate, that's going to solve my problems, and
it's just not true. The plan is the biggest thing
that having the plan, Knowing the numbers and realizing how
long it's going to take you to pay it off,
Like these are just like cherries on top of a Sunday.
The sunday is the plan that you're going to be
able to create. And so, yeah, if you can lessen
the pain of the debt, if you can make it

(43:53):
less egregious, and if you can lower the interest rate
on it, that's good because it's going to benefit you
and it's going to allow you to pay it off
more quickly. There's also ways that you can screw that up,
and so we don't want you to, yeah, take out
other credit cards and then add more consumer debt on
to the pilots you already have. That you're making the
situation worse at that point. But yeah, let's talk about too.
Matt I mentioned a minute ago about how somebody might

(44:16):
have just so much debt and they are overwhelmed when
they look at it that it's just that bad, right,
that their consumer debt situation. And maybe it didn't happen
just over the holidays. In all likelihood, if it's that bad,
it's been happening over the course of years and years
and years, and you have built up to the point
where you're like, listen, I created one of these debt
payoff plans that you talked about, and it just seemed insurmountable.

(44:36):
Even at that point, it felt like I wasn't going
to be able to make progress in any sort of
timely manner. And sometimes you are so mired in debt
that it becomes too hard to go it alone, and
so maybe you are actually in too deep. And the
truth is that this mountain of debt that you've acrued,
it didn't happen overnight, like I said, and the fix
isn't going to happen in a week or two either.
So it's important to know that. I think sometimes Matt

(44:57):
people get into a situation over the course of number
of years and they want it to be remedied really quickly,
but that's just not how.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
It happens when it fixed overnight.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
And hopefully you can fix it quicker than how long
it took you to get into the mess in the
first place. But it's just important to note that that
you know, it typically takes time to get out of
this problem too. But if after running the numbers, it's
going to take you a lot of years to pay
that debt off, and it feels hopeless. We would say
it's time to bring in the big guns and reach
out to the not for profit folks at the NFCC

(45:28):
or Money Management International, Unlike those for profit services that
I talked about, who might You might hear advertised and
they say, hey, pay us some money up front. You
might see them on social media. You know they're saying
that they can they can help you get out of
this debt, but for a small fee, or sometimes a
large fee. Oftentimes they're going to make it worse. Almost

(45:48):
always are going to make it worse. Well, the NFCC
or Money Management International, those not for profit companies, they
can help you put together a debt management plan that
actually works, and they can even negotiate with creditors on
your behalf. So we would say go see a credit
counselor they can help you figure out the best way forward.
If you run those numbers and you're like it's worse
than I even thought, that's when you're gonna want to

(46:09):
like reach out to one of those companies. And typically
it's one hundred percent free. Sometimes they'll charge very very
modest amounts of money. I'm talking like sixty seventy dollars
in order to see a debt counselor. But that's probably
where you gonna want to go. We will put links
to both those organizations in the show notes.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
That's right, man. And one other thing that we would
recommend is for you to celebrate some of the small
victories along the way to paying down your debt. We
would recommend for you to just treat yourself a little bit,
not like Parks and Rex style treat yourself, but just
find some different ways to mark your accomplishments, to mark
the occasion. And it doesn't have to be and likely
shouldn't be an expensive reward because obviously that I'll slow

(46:47):
down your payoff progress. But it's amazing how something that
just that costs very little that or maybe something you
already have on hand, or something that costs you nothing,
how that can provide some additional motivation. It could just
be a board game night with friends. You'd be like,
that's my ruward, yeah, or like I'm thinking of like
a creative it's not even creative, but just like having
a picnic in a like in your favorite park. But

(47:08):
you might be paying off your first card here in
a couple of months, once the weather warms up a
little bit, invite some friends over, take a meal that
you would have already eaten at home. Maybe you can
like show us some two buck chuck, you know, like
that's very affordable. That's the kind of wine. If you're
into wine, you should be drinking cheap wine while you're
paying off your debt. But take something like that to
a park, because that is going to help you to
mark the occasion. Not only that, but you're also doing

(47:30):
it with friends. That's something that they're gonna remember. They're
gonna maybe even ask you about, like why are we
doing this? Or you know, what's what's the special occasion?
Which is really cool too because then it'll get you
and your friends talking about money, and before you know it,
you're all gonna be getting richer, getting wealthier together. That's
the kind of thing that we want to see you doing.
We want you to pat yourself on the back a
little bit here for making some smart choices and it'll

(47:51):
make this journey a bit more enjoyable and less of
a slog. It's not that we want we don't want
you to intentionally make your life miserable miserable, but we
do want you to make decisions that is going to
leave more money in your bank account so that you
can attack this debt and be done with it once
and for all. Yeah, And we just don't want this
debt lingering over you anymore. We want you to be
rid of it once and for all, and we want

(48:12):
you to look in ahead to like the bigger and brighter,
better things that you do want to achieve life. Paying
off this kind of debt often means you're looking kind
of in the rear view mirror instead of through a
windshield right of your life exactly, And so we want
you to like, you know, you always need a mirror
when you're driving a car, but we want you at
least when it comes to your life, we want you
to kind of be able to act that off. We

(48:33):
want you to be done with the spending, paying for
the spending you did over the past year, and we
want you to be thinking about what you can save
up for and invest for so that you can think
about building wealth and think about those bigger possibilities, right,
creating more margin. And you can't even get to that
point when you've still got that debt lingering around. That's
first priority.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
So absolutely hopefully we've given you enough tips to create
an effective plan to get rid of it in hopefully
not too much time. But Matt, let's get back to
the beer that we had on this episode. This one
is called Perpetual Composition. It's by Southern Gris who I
believe they're out of Nashville, Is that correct?

Speaker 1 (49:07):
I think? So I can take a look here on
the bottle yeap Nashville, Tennessee. And this is Perpetual Composition
blend number two. So maybe we'll have additional blends here
on the show. But what your thoughts on this one?
If I can get some additional blends of this one,
I'll take it. I'm all about it.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
It's delicious, love it. You were just mentioning wine. This
one has a lot of white wine uys. Actually for sure,
it's the sea.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
So it's a celera style food beer aged for six
months in a French Bordeaux fooder.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, guess what.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
We're also not in debt, so we can afford to
splurge a little bit. Exactly.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Yeah, well this one definitely so. My dad he always
gets this white wine called gervertz remeanor but when we
have Thanksgiving and uh, he has always called it Goosemeister
for some reason, Goose. It's pretty goofy, but it's it's
kind of a it's like more of like a dessert
white wine. And I really don't drink wine very much,
but I always look forward to it on Thanksgiving, even

(50:03):
though I don't know anything about white wine, but this
one has some of those elements. It's a little bit sweeter,
kind of like one of those dessert white wines, but
it's like golden sour. It's got more nuanced though, and
I think part of that is the oak barrel aging.
But I like everything I've had from Southern Grist and
this is one of the better ones.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
It's so good. Yeah. When we poured it, it just had
like a beautiful I mean, the sun was kind of
shining through It's it's been like a sun out sudden
hidden sun out, sun hidden kind of day, and like
the rays hit it perfect. Oh yeah, yeah, Like right
when I cracked this thing up and poured it, like
the beams of light shot through the sun. It was
just like sparkling. So it had this beautiful golden color.
It was really carbonated initially. It's almost like champagne. Yeah,

(50:41):
or like a lot of effervescens coming up. But I
think I feel like it was a nice balance of
acidity and sweetness. It wasn't too over the top sweet
for me. It had that, yeah, that nice kind of
tart acid profile as well, that combined with that depth
that you get with the oak if in particular, Yeah,
if you like white wine, this is apps, look up
golden sours just in general, Yeah, because that is a

(51:03):
style that you will would likely find yourself gravitate towards.
But if you know your beer and you are looking
for an oak age sour, would definitely recommend this perpetual
composition by Southern Christ out of Tennessee mostep.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
All right, that's going to do it, Matt for this episode.
And if you want, yeah, some of the links that
we mentioned on this episode, you can find them up
on our site at how to money dot com. There
are also other helpful resources there too. We've got a
lot of new money content that we're writing about that
we're putting out on a weekly basis, And you can
also sign up for our newsletter at how tomoney dot
com slash newsletter. But Matt, that's going to do it.

(51:37):
Until next time. Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,

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Matthew Altmix

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}A Foolproof Plan to Ditch Debt (Bestie) #924