October 27, 2023 • 28 mins
Time for a Friday Flight- our little sampling of the week’s financial news and what it means for your personal finances. There are a lot of headlines out there, but we boil them down to specific takeaways that will allow you to kick off the weekend informed and help you to get ahead with your money. In this episode we explain some relevant and helpful stories like: gamifying your thermostat, car loans come calling, a Thanksgiving dinner gameplan, married money mishaps, a great time to buy a house?, rent vs own, big on smaller homes, down payment assistance, IRS tax filing options, a better way to enroll, & expensive IPAs.
Want more How To Money in your life? Here are some additional ways to get ahead with your personal finances:
- Knowing your ‘money gear’ is a crucial part of your personal finance journey. Start here.
- Sign up for the weekly HTM newsletter. It’s fun, free, & practical.
- Join a thriving community of fellow money in the HTM Facebook group.
- Find the best credit card for you with our new credit card tool!
- Massively reduce your cell phone bill each month by switching to a discount provider like Mint Mobile.
And please help us to spread the word by letting friends and family know about How to Money! Hit the share button, subscribe if you’re not already a regular listener, and give us a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Help us to change the conversation around personal finance and get more people doing smart things with their money. Have an awesome weekend!
Best friends out!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Had of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt, and.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Today we're talking married money, mistakes, expensive IPAs.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
And a better way to open enroll. For some reason,
(00:28):
I thought it was going to be married money mishaps,
because we are going to talk about some of the
different mistakes that couples make.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I guess they could be computered mishapssource dot com before
we started.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
No, it just that's what I thought in my mind,
that's what it was. So when you said mistakes, it
cut me off guard. Dude, you enjoyed this weather. This
is like the time of year that I call jeans
and T shirt weather, where it's like you just get
to be comfortable. Also makes me think of that Community
episode where Abed was like the perfect temperature and you
can't even feel your skin. You feel so at one
(01:02):
with the world in the now.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Right now is the time where I treat this like
a game to try to not turn on the heat because,
like I.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Get those utilities down.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, when it gets cold overnight or whatever, but like
you know, warms up during the day and so And
by the way, I don't know whoever out there is listening,
who has an attic fan.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Mine is actually currently broken. I gotta get that thing fixed.
You had one of those.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Attic fans are ideal for this time of year because
then when it does warm up, you need to warm
the house up. You just open a few of the windows,
turn on the attic fan, boom.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
And sucking all that. It's ideal. It's so great. But okay,
while we're talking about weather, this also makes me think
as the air temperature cools down a little bit, so
there's less moisture in the air, and when there's less
moisture in the air, that also means that there's less mold,
and by proxy, there are fewer allergies that you have
to deal with. This is something that I always pay
(01:50):
attention to. Happy. Yeah, I know you're happy. We're really
sensitive to the I think specifically mold in our at
our house, but I think people are dealing with that
so much less these days as the temperatures have cool
down some I freaking love it.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I think I take the what doesn't kill me makes
me stronger things. So I'm like, bring it on, mold,
come on, I guess it makes.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Me stronger, but it also closes my sinuses. Yeah, I
hate that. Yeah, okay, let this also be your quarterly
reminder to go ahead and change your your HVAC filters.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, dude, all right, public services across the board to
start this episode off.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
What it's a helpful advice even if you already decided
to go ahead and tune out. That's right, all right,
We let's move on, Matt. Let's get to the Friday Flight,
the sampling of stories we found interesting this week and
how they pertain to your personal finances. And first up,
Americans are falling behind on their car loans. It's it's
not terribly surprising kind of given what's happened in the
car market recently in the past couple of years. But
(02:43):
this is still really bad news. And so sixty day
late payments have essentially tripled over the past couple of
years from about two percent to six percent of borrowers,
plus repossessions are up like twenty percent year over years. Yeah,
that's not good. Okay. Have you seen there are different
accounts on Instagram that are like repo guys whatever, and
they've got so this was one. Have you seen these? No? Okay,
(03:04):
I'll send you one. Okay, maybe I'll share one of
the show notes. But dude's got like a camera set
up on the back of the truck. He's got one
set up inside the cab. It will blow your mind
how quickly these guys are able to back into a
driveway in the arms. They're like all automated mechanical, so
he doesn't even get out and it just like literally
scows up the car and drives off. It's really impressive.
But I could also not imagine any worse job than
(03:25):
being the repo man, being the deliverer of bad news.
And sometimes folks come out and they're like, yeah, I
had a friend who did that for a while. Really, yeah,
not a great job.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
No, I would not want that, even if I could
stay in the cab with the doors locked.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, exactly. Well, so, okay, so this is.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Just all bad economic news, right, And obviously it was
the massive run up in car prices alongside these much
higher financing costs. Sure that this seems like like the
likely culprits to me, right, people have they've locked themselves
into higher monthly payments. They're having a tough time making
them each month because they've bit off more than they
could chew. And so there was a little bit of
good news that came out this week. Right, we're starting
to see a bit of a pullback in the cost
(04:02):
of used cars.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
We've been seeing that.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Tesla Is has really led a price cut charge in
the EV marketplace, and that's brought down the cost of
new and used evs. But we are still in this
era of overpriced automobiles. So our advice to use to
be careful out there when you're considering buying a new
to you vehicle, whether it's brand new or used. We
(04:24):
want folks to be really conservative on this front because
we don't want you to be in a position, in
a position where one of your other payments gets out
of whack and you've over committed to a big old
car payment and then you can't afford it, because that
results in so many things and losing a car. If
you get a car repossessed or if you're making light
payments on it affects your credit. But also if your
(04:45):
car gets repossessed, you can't get to work either, which
is a big problem.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
It's a big deal, and so the best way to
avoid this is to not take out a car loan
at all. We would recommend for folks to pay cash
for whatever ride that you're getting when that thing is yours,
when you have the time I to that car, that's
not something that they can take away. It's just grand
theft auto when someone tries to take your car. Then,
but we understand that not everyone is in the position
(05:08):
to pay cash, and so at the very least, just
make sure that you have a solid down payment in
order to bring to the table so that you're able
to keep your payments so that you're able to keep
your the length of your loan reasonable. So like a
forty two month loan, those are the longest we want
you to even consider, and we don't even love that. Again,
cash is the total is totally the way to go.
(05:29):
But if you absolutely have to take on debt to
make that purchase, look to a credit union to get
your financing, because you're gonna typically get the best terms,
you're gonna get the best rates. But if you have
to stretch out that loan length in order to be
able to afford the payments you need to buy a
more affordable car, this is not the kind of purchase
where we want you to financially sacrifice in order to
(05:50):
get something that's a little bit nicer. Because Oftentimes it
comes down more to what it is that you feel
you want or actually you've convinced yourself to get it
because because it's something that you feel that you need,
and it's more of a consumptive move rather than something
that is necessary. Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
When you look at the numbers, a lot of people say, well,
I need to stretch to get the nicer vehicle because
then I get to stay out of the mechanic's mechanic shock,
because that's going to cost me so much money. But
the truth is, if you get that used car inspected
by a mechanic, you can know kind of what you're
getting into, not fully, but you can be well aware
of the potential problems that you're buying up front. And
if you look at the numbers from site like Consumer Reports,
(06:28):
the average annual costs of even something like a ten
year old car that rates decently on reliability ratings, well,
the annual cost of maintenance on that car is going
to be less than one car payment a brand new
car month's car pay.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So if you actually look at the numbers, they'll maybe
hopefully dissuade you from that belief. And you're like, I
guess all right, I guess I am going with the
older car that's in decent shape as opposed to talking myself,
tricking myself into getting the new one.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
That's not what people remember. What they remember is the
one time they're on the side of the road and
they think, never again do I want to be in
a position like that, and they that to all future
car parts. That's why people say away from real estate messing.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
They're like, I've heard the ten Dorors stories, the calls
at three am, and you're like, it happens once every
eight years, Like it's truly a great way to invest
for a whole lot of folks. But they hear that
one story or they have that one memory and they're like, yeah,
not going in that direction. So don't let that be you.
All right, Matt, I know Halloween is next week, but
let's talk about Thanksgiving for a second, and specifically where
(07:23):
you should shop for groceries in order to save on
Thanksgiving staples and the two places that we would highlight
right now are Walmart and Aldy as some of the
places to go. Yeah, boy, why well, because both of
these grocery discounts, they've announced plans to offer pricing similar
to what they offered last year, despite the reality of inflation,
and so Walmart plans to offer turkey for less than
(07:43):
a dollar a pound. Well, they're slashing other prices too,
and all the has said that they're going to be
slashing prices by up to fifty percent on more than
seventy items. And this special holiday pricing starts November first
at both stores. And it's just it's worth taking a
look at their ads before you venture into the store,
doing some comparison shopping before you actually get out there.
And there's actually an app that helps make that easy.
(08:05):
It's flip dot com fl i pp dot com. But
we've we've always been big fans of oh yeah, Aldi
and they especially when you're talking about ye know, these
these holiday staples. I think you guys are a lot
of folks, a lot of families are going to be
eating a lot of over the next couple of months. Well,
those things are going to be a whole lot cheaper,
those those holiday staples.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah. Plus, it's never too soon to talk about Thanksgiving.
You got to start planning, you start budgeting for because
it's an expensive meal. Yeah, I guarantee most folks November
grocery budget is a good bit larger than other months
of the year. Actually, we had a newsletter section recently
about loss leaders, and the whole point of keeping some
items artificially cheap, maybe even losing money on the sale
(08:44):
of those particular items, is to get folks in the
door and to spend more on other things. Aldi and
Walmart they might even be pricing some of these items
so low that they're just breaking even in order to
attract new customers, because a lot of folks potentially have
been avoiding the stores. But the truth is where it
is that you shot makes a massive difference in your
overall grocery bill. And of course Aldi is one of
(09:05):
our all time faves. If you live near one you
haven't ventured in yet, I think this is a perfect
opportunity to give it a go. In this case, we
would say go ahead and fall for the marketing, because
ultimately it's gonna end up saving you a ton of
money were you to stick around.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Well, the Aldie marketing is based is based on facts.
Ye look at the receipt from from our grocery store
to the other ones, and you're gonna say thirty plus percent.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
So yeah, even when we moved up to here in
a while, by the way, we haven't. Yeah, when we
moved up here, we started shopping at Aldi less because
we were hitting up Costco. And I think we talked
about this a few months in after, like literally maybe
around a year ago. I think we're talking about because
I was complaining about how high our grocery bill had
gotten because we were going to Costco, and I think
that encouraged slightly more consumption. In the past couple of
(09:50):
months we've have've noticed there have been way more Aldi
entries on our monthly budget, bringing the price down. Not surprisingly,
we've seen that price come down, not a full thirty percent,
but I don't make closer to like fifteen to twenty
percent less than previous months as well.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, and it's also important to mention Matt for all
the newbies that they've got the twice as nice guarantee,
so if you end up buying some items that you
don't really love, you can take get your money back.
So that's that's one of the great things about Aldi.
Plus you get in and out so quick. That's another.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
I mean, there's so many great things. Yeah, but give
credit words Duke of course, Costco has an amazing return
policy as well. They stay behind their items. That's true.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, two great places to shop. One one's going to
cost you more than the other, but they also might
provide additional value. All right, let's move on. At the
National Bureau of Economic Research, they just released a study
and it found that married couples are leaving money on
the table when it comes to investing for retirement. This
is specifically talking about married couples and a mistake that
they're making. And I was surprised to see married money mishap.
(10:48):
How many is right? How many people are actually making
this mistake. We talk a lot about making sure that
you get the full company match in your workplace retirement account.
That's obviously a big deal. That's additional dollars that your
employer is saying, Hey, listen, we're going to help subsidize
your future retirements. But you've got to contribute a certain
amount in order to get that those subsidized dollars. And
(11:09):
the only reason to leave money on the table and
not take the full match is if you haven't been
able to cobble together the two and four hundred and
sixty seven dollars E fund first that's the first most
important step in kind of rebuilding your personal finances. But
once you do that, maxing out the match becomes a
top priority. But this study, it found that one quarter
of couples they're not getting the full match they're entitled
(11:30):
to one spouse. Apparently that the reason for this is
because one spouse is contributing to their four oh one
K or four h three B and maybe the other isn't.
And so it's not even the fact that like, these
couples aren't contributing enough total, it's that they've just prioritized
one account over the other for some reason, and because
of that, they're leaving the match from one of the
(11:51):
spouse's employers completely underutilized. They're forsaking that match. Maybe they're
contributing instead of like six percent to one and six
percent to the other, they're contributing twelve percent to one
and zero percent of the other.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And that's a big mistake. Sure, yeah, and this ends
up costing couples a ton of money. It's actually close
to seven hundred dollars a year on average that they're
giving up. That's before we talk about compounding and how
much second become over the years right, yeah, yeah, And
so it's all about allocation of those contributions, Like you're saying,
they're saving too much just in one of those accounts
and pretty much zero dollars in the other. I think
(12:24):
oftentimes different like you enter into a relationship, you've got
a significant other, and something like this I think can
easily happen because you tend to gravitate towards what you're
good at, you've got your specialized roles, and if you
don't have healthy communication regards surrounding your finances, this, I
feel like this is something that could completely fall through
the cracks. But it's a pretty major thing to be
(12:47):
falling through those cracks, and so balancing out those contributions
so that both of you are getting the full match
that you're both entitled to is incredibly crucial. So if
you're married, make sure that you both know what the
matches from your employer at your respective workplaces, and then
just dial back the contributions in one of those accounts
if it means that you're going to be able to
dial them up at the other. The goal there is,
(13:09):
of course, to get the full match at both You
don't want to leave that money on the table, and
that is the easiest way to make sure that you
are contributing enough towards your retirement.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, if you would have asked me to guess what
percentage of couples are doing this, I would have said
ten percent. The fact that one in four twenty five
percent of couples are doing it's just a misallocation of
funds and they're missing out on free matching money because
of it. That's a big problem and that needs to
change quickly. So it's a really good idea to revisit.
Log into those accounts, know what's your work player, what
(13:39):
your employer offers matt with their matches, like you said,
and then adjust accordingly.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
And that's the thing though too. So we talked about
the advantage of auto enrollment and how so many more
millennials are saving more towards their retirement. What that means, though,
is that that we're not looking at our accounts. We're
just letting it ride. And so that unfortunately means that
if you are not set up optimally from the beginning.
I think that honestly means there's less of a chance
of somebody going back making some of those corrections. So
(14:06):
another little PSA log in and make sure that you
are getting that full match. But Joe, we've got additional
stories to get too. We're gonna talk about why IPA's
are getting a little more expensive here as well. We'll
get to shut us here on that one. I know,
we've got more stories here right after.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
The break, all right, Matt, the Friday Flight continues, and
of course we always got to get to our ludicrous
headline of the week at the very beginning of the
second segment of the Friday Flight. This one comes from
Business Insider, and the headline reads, why now is actually
(14:42):
a good time to buy a house? And this one
maybe click. Matt not gonna lie because I was like, huh,
it defies all logic in my brain.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Please tell me should I go out there and buy
another house? Please tell me.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Why all the stats I've seen and everything else I've
read points to the exact opposite conclusion. I was like,
am I missing something? Am I like weve got to
in Zoolander? Am I taking crazy paills? That's kind of
where I felt like reading this article. It seems like
from where I'm sitting, it's the worst time in recent
memory to buy. But Business Insider as saying the opposite,
And so this article, it even admits that the we're
literally at peak on affordability in the home buying market.
(15:16):
And so I guess for them to insinuate that now
is such a great time to buy just seemed really
silly to me. There's certainly a chance this is kind
of what they were hinting at that listings continue to
shrink because of continuing affordability declines. Right, So if we
see fewer homes on the market, then we're going to
see prices continue to increase in that it's actually going
(15:36):
to be harder to buy a home at some point,
is what they're saying. And if rates go down, they say,
we're likely to see more buyers, more competition in the
home buying space. But the truth is, like twenty nine
to twenty twenty one were great times to buy a home.
Twenty twenty three, that was a good time to buy.
That was a great time, yea. So like, yeah, I'm
just surprising we had like twelve years of good years
to buy a home twenty twenty three. It's a lot
(15:57):
dice here. The truth is, you better make sure that
you plan to own a home per minimum of seven
years if you do opt to buy a home right now,
because where the market goes from here it's hard to decipher. Like,
we just don't really know what the market in twenty
twenty four is is going to hold RCT. We're going
to talk to a real estate expert here in a
few weeks and kind of get get to get his
thoughts on that based on the data. But it's you
(16:17):
read a headline like this, and I think is going
to cause a lot of people to say, great, I'll
keep looking, But the reality is murkier than the headline
on this.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
In this case, yeah, you never know what you might
come across. But yeah, I mean, the fact is, unless
home prices decrease significantly because the demand is so low
because interest rates are so high, then like the only
advantage I think is for cash buyers. Yeah, and which,
by the way, there's a surprisingly high number of transactions
that are taking place that are all cash, or something
like thirty percent. Yeah, yeah, and it's not surprisingly a
(16:48):
whole lot of boomers who have that money on hand.
But even though that's thirty percent of sales today, that's
still you're still looking at sixty seventy percent of folks
who are looking to finance their home, and where the
mortgage rate does have a massive impact. But the truth
is there's also never been a worse time to buy
instead of rent a home. That's the case for most
(17:08):
markets around the country. And the gap between what it
is that you'll pay for the mortgage versus what you
pay for rent for a similar spot it's massive right
now in many cities, and that's part of the reason
a significant percentage of home buyers are backing out of
more deals right now than they were twelve to eighteen
months ago. Yeah, like that grat like spiked. Yes, yeah,
why actually go through? Why buy that overpriced house when
(17:30):
you can just keep renting, keep your budget intact. I
think a lot of folks maybe they went, they started
house shopping a couple months ago, and maybe they finally
found a place and they're like, oh sweet, we're gonna
buy it. And then they sit down with their lender. Yeah,
they see where interest rates are, they get the estimated
monthly payment and they're like, wait, what, we can't do that.
It's like five hundred bucks more than I thought it
(17:50):
was gonna go like one thousand dollars more, depending on
when they first started looking. But of course, real estate
is hyper local, and so much of it depends on
your specific market where it is that you live. And
we've always said that whether or not buying a home
makes sense, it's going to be more about your specific
personal finance situation in your timeline. It's going to be
much less about timing the market. Don't assume that prices
(18:11):
are going to continue to soar and that you're just
going to be building tons of equity from day one,
because that may not be the case. It might be
the case, and maybe a year from now we'll look
back and say, oh, man, remember how good the I
don't think we'll say that the market was good October
of twenty twenty three, but rates could be higher and
home prices could be even more expensive. Yeah, you never know.
You really don't. You really don't.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And that's why you and I we tried not to
make predictions. We try not to make predictions ever. Yeah,
but we talked about when everyone was predicting like this
massive decline in home prices, we actually didn't really agree
with that. That hasn't actually been the case. We have
not seen significant price declines in the real estate market,
at least in most of the country. There are some
rare exceptions in a few of those towns that experienced
significant booms, like Austin. But by the way, one answer
(18:55):
to this for folks who really want to buy a
home is that builders are opting to build smaller homes
right now, well, even in the suburbs and in the
excerpts and so sort of the further out you get,
it used to be the bigger the homes would become
the bigger lots that you had to build on. But
still builders are now saying, okay, one way that we
can meet the demand for home buyers is to create
smaller or less expensive homes. And who knew that it
(19:16):
would take an affordability crisis in the housing market to
incentivize the building of smaller homes that we've actually needed
in this country for so many years. I love seeing
this because home sizes have been growing for decades. McMansions
have become kind of normal, and just homes have become
ridiculous in this country in so many ways, and that's
also impacted affordability, and we need more homes, and building
(19:37):
more smaller homes makes sense to me. And then those
smaller homes they cost less typically right, that means you
have to save up less of a down payment. That
means your ongoing monthly mortgage payment is reduced.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
And on that note, by the way, it's more happy people.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
More happy people who actually get into the house they
want to buy in a community that they're thrilled. They're
thrilled to be in because they don't have as much
home to take care of either. And Matt on the
down payment note, by the way, Freddie Mack has rolled
out a down payment assistance tool is called DPA one.
It streamlines all of the programs that exist in one place,
which is like hundreds and hundreds apparently. And so we're
(20:10):
going to link to some of the specifics on this
program in the show notes. But you should ask your
lender about this if you are. It's kind of like
a scholarship almost for college. These are local, often local
programs that help people, especially first time home buyers, with
some money for that down payment. There's certain qualifications that
those folks typically have to meet, but this I love
(20:31):
that Usually you have to hunt and peck for it
yourself on the internet and try to find that stuff.
But this new program is going to mean it's going
to be easier to match the buyer with the program.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
That they qualify for. That's right. Okay, So did you
file your file of your taxes when the extension, the
tax filing extension October fifteenth?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, yeah, we filed like early October, so I had
to do the extension. But then we finally got a
tone nice se for tax season to roll around in,
you know, just a few months now.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, it's right around the colt. I mentioned this because
so we mentioned last year that the IRS was considering
launching its own tax software. Well, this is actually something
that is actually happening. It's not vaporware, and so it's
important to note. This goes beyond the free file site
where you can file your federal taxes for free if
you meet certain income thresholds. Yeah. Yeah. This is beyond
(21:20):
the partnerships that they've made with some of the different
companies as well, where you're able to file for free
via those companies. This is a proprietary IRS direct filing
system that's going to be launched in I think thirteen
states at the beginning of next year. And also this
is again only for folks who basically have a really simple,
straightforward tax situation. But for the time being, the service
(21:43):
is only going to cover your federal tax return. It's
not going to cover your states. But I'm curious to
see how well this actually is, how the roll out,
how effective it is, how successful it is, and how
the IRS might be able to improve this moving forward.
I don't have my fingers crossed because even the IRS,
when they like when they launched the the private public partnership,
I think it's like twenty years ago. With the other companies,
(22:04):
they even said themselves that we've seen historically that the
private market essentially is able to provide better results than
what we're able to. But they've changed their tune, I
guess over the past twenty years, and rightly so. They
have seen the hurdles when it comes to folks like
Turbo Tax and some of the other companies out there
basically doing like a bait and switch where they're advertising, hey,
(22:25):
it's going to be free, or maybe they just weren't
being as transparent as to what was going to be free,
and then folks ended up having to pay more on
the back end.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
There's a lot of marketing from some of those private
taxiling software companies that doesn't quite ring true when you.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Get to the checkout. Right for now, it's probably best
for the time being to roll with cash app taxes.
We're huge fans of that, which allows you to file
both state and federal returns for free. You can even
do that. You can go to the IRS free file
site next year. You can even just filt the forms
directly there as well, or if you have a more
complicated tax situations higher pro. This is one of those
(23:01):
situations where we feel that the money that you pay
for a tax professional, given the ever changing landscape of taxes, that.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
It would be worth everything. Yeah, it's money well spent
for most people. The more complicated there's just so many
dollars it could cost you, And so it's cheap not
frugal to avoid paying money to someone who's a pro,
who's like, you know, up to the latest that's almost
going on, and Matt, you and I with rental properties
and all this stuff, it gets more complicated. So I'm
more than happy to pass that off to somebody else
(23:28):
and to pay them money to do my taxes for me.
All right, let's talk about open enrollment for a second.
We're kind of right in prime open enrollment season. Yours
has either already begun or it's about to, and most
folks tend to stick with whatever they've currently got. They
just kind of roll it over to the next year.
They don't really make changes. But we would tell you
to run the numbers and a question whether or not
that's still your best bet, especially as healthcare prices continue
(23:51):
to rise, and particularly if you have any life changes
on the horizon, like you're getting married, having a baby,
you need to think longer and harder about what you're choosing.
And by the way, if you experience one of those
qualifying life events, you're allowed to change your plan, even
if it's not open enrollment season, but you're still gonna
want to plan ahead. Let's say for the berth if
you're like, we're having a kid, we can change it
once the kiddo comes. We still want to plan ahead
(24:12):
because there's a lot of other health care expenses you're
gonna encounter you're gonna incur in advance of the birth.
But one of the biggest money saving questions worth asking
is whether or not a high deductible health care plan
makes sense for you. If you're healthy, it likely is
you're going to need to make sure you can self
ensure though for those potentially higher out of pocket costs
(24:32):
that you might run into, but you'll likely to be
able to save a decent chunk of change on those
monthly premiums if you elect to get the high deductible
health care plan as opposed to one with a lower
deductible but higher premiums. And so our suggestion will be like,
don't let the tail wag the dog here. You always
want to step back and look at the broader picture.
You want to be able to see where are you
at from a healthcare perspective right now? Where do you
(24:54):
think you're likely to be in a year, And you
want to run the numbers to kind of see what
is what's going to most like likely benefits you overall
and math. The beautiful thing about choosing a high deductible
health care plan if you're one of those people who
doesn't frequent the doctor as much, is you have access
to yours in mine. One of our all time favorite
retirement accounts that get such so little.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Publicity, the HSA. Yeah, That's what I'm talking about, that right, Yeah?
And I mean limits pretty much can always go up,
whether it be on I don't I shouldn't say always
go up, but they're definitely going up next year. And
so that's an additional eighty three hundred dollars for a
family that you can put towards retirement. Even though it
is called a health savings account, we look at it
as like an actual retirement account because of the triple
(25:35):
tax advantage and the fact that you can hold off
taking dollars out of that account until you are actually
ready to retire. And we've got an.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Article listing out exactly how hsas work and how you
can invest in one use it to your advantage when
saving for retirement. It's the only account that doesn't where
you'll never get taxed on the money that goes in
or that comes out. So it's a pretty sweet tool
if you use it properly. We'll link to that in
the show notes.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Pretty great, but not least. This is some news that
makes us sadgel but I pas are evidently going to
be getting more expensive. Insider they reported that a warm
I guess a warm summer caused the hop crop and
certain hot varieties to see a reduced yield, which is
going to lead to higher costs for those hops making Obviously,
(26:19):
you know It's a trickle down effect, right, Like if
hot the fewer hops, that's going to increase the demand
for that limited the playoff hops and breweries are going
to be charged more, and they're in turn are often
charging us more money, which means I'm just gonna stop
drinking beer. I doubt. I doubt that's true. But maybe
I'm tired of those those rising prices jewel. I don't
like the fact that it's adding inches to my waistline,
(26:41):
tired of that delicious hot flavor in my mouth, and
I'm done with it.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Well, I know that's not true. I know you're joking,
but I will say, like even you and I, craft
beers are craft beer equivalent. And there are price points
where I have refused to buy beer because it's just
too darn expensive. Like I've seen some pack four packs
that are like thirty bucks a four pack, and I'm like, sorry,
that's too much. I'll spend like twenty two bucks on
a four pack, but I'll spend thirty dollars on a
(27:05):
four pack at least once. Yeah, maybe see how amazing
it is. It's not amazing then, all right, you know, yeah,
but I think this is I'm totally willing this could
this could cause me to drink different styles of beer
if the IPA costs go up, you know more, I'll
still drink some mypas, but maybeck less.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, we found a way to talk about beer even
though it's a Friday flight when you and I don't
normally enjoy one during these episodes. But that's gonna be
it for this episode. We hope everyone has an awesome weekend.
I just saw my phone's blowing up a little bit.
It sounds like the ladies are planning into date night
for the four of us tomorrow. So looking forward to
grapping dinner with you tomorrow, Fody nice, But that's gonna
(27:41):
be it for this some body until next time. Best
friends are Out, Best Friends Out,
Welcome to Had of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt, and.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Today we're talking married money, mistakes, expensive IPAs.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
And a better way to open enroll. For some reason,
(00:28):
I thought it was going to be married money mishaps,
because we are going to talk about some of the
different mistakes that couples make.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I guess they could be computered mishapssource dot com before
we started.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
No, it just that's what I thought in my mind,
that's what it was. So when you said mistakes, it
cut me off guard. Dude, you enjoyed this weather. This
is like the time of year that I call jeans
and T shirt weather, where it's like you just get
to be comfortable. Also makes me think of that Community
episode where Abed was like the perfect temperature and you
can't even feel your skin. You feel so at one
(01:02):
with the world in the now.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Right now is the time where I treat this like
a game to try to not turn on the heat because,
like I.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Get those utilities down.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, when it gets cold overnight or whatever, but like
you know, warms up during the day and so And
by the way, I don't know whoever out there is listening,
who has an attic fan.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Mine is actually currently broken. I gotta get that thing fixed.
You had one of those.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Attic fans are ideal for this time of year because
then when it does warm up, you need to warm
the house up. You just open a few of the windows,
turn on the attic fan, boom.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
And sucking all that. It's ideal. It's so great. But okay,
while we're talking about weather, this also makes me think
as the air temperature cools down a little bit, so
there's less moisture in the air, and when there's less
moisture in the air, that also means that there's less mold,
and by proxy, there are fewer allergies that you have
to deal with. This is something that I always pay
(01:50):
attention to. Happy. Yeah, I know you're happy. We're really
sensitive to the I think specifically mold in our at
our house, but I think people are dealing with that
so much less these days as the temperatures have cool
down some I freaking love it.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I think I take the what doesn't kill me makes
me stronger things. So I'm like, bring it on, mold,
come on, I guess it makes.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Me stronger, but it also closes my sinuses. Yeah, I
hate that. Yeah, okay, let this also be your quarterly
reminder to go ahead and change your your HVAC filters.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, dude, all right, public services across the board to
start this episode off.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
What it's a helpful advice even if you already decided
to go ahead and tune out. That's right, all right,
We let's move on, Matt. Let's get to the Friday Flight,
the sampling of stories we found interesting this week and
how they pertain to your personal finances. And first up,
Americans are falling behind on their car loans. It's it's
not terribly surprising kind of given what's happened in the
car market recently in the past couple of years. But
(02:43):
this is still really bad news. And so sixty day
late payments have essentially tripled over the past couple of
years from about two percent to six percent of borrowers,
plus repossessions are up like twenty percent year over years. Yeah,
that's not good. Okay. Have you seen there are different
accounts on Instagram that are like repo guys whatever, and
they've got so this was one. Have you seen these? No? Okay,
(03:04):
I'll send you one. Okay, maybe I'll share one of
the show notes. But dude's got like a camera set
up on the back of the truck. He's got one
set up inside the cab. It will blow your mind
how quickly these guys are able to back into a
driveway in the arms. They're like all automated mechanical, so
he doesn't even get out and it just like literally
scows up the car and drives off. It's really impressive.
But I could also not imagine any worse job than
(03:25):
being the repo man, being the deliverer of bad news.
And sometimes folks come out and they're like, yeah, I
had a friend who did that for a while. Really, yeah,
not a great job.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
No, I would not want that, even if I could
stay in the cab with the doors locked.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, exactly. Well, so, okay, so this is.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Just all bad economic news, right, And obviously it was
the massive run up in car prices alongside these much
higher financing costs. Sure that this seems like like the
likely culprits to me, right, people have they've locked themselves
into higher monthly payments. They're having a tough time making
them each month because they've bit off more than they
could chew. And so there was a little bit of
good news that came out this week. Right, we're starting
to see a bit of a pullback in the cost
(04:02):
of used cars.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
We've been seeing that.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Tesla Is has really led a price cut charge in
the EV marketplace, and that's brought down the cost of
new and used evs. But we are still in this
era of overpriced automobiles. So our advice to use to
be careful out there when you're considering buying a new
to you vehicle, whether it's brand new or used. We
(04:24):
want folks to be really conservative on this front because
we don't want you to be in a position, in
a position where one of your other payments gets out
of whack and you've over committed to a big old
car payment and then you can't afford it, because that
results in so many things and losing a car. If
you get a car repossessed or if you're making light
payments on it affects your credit. But also if your
(04:45):
car gets repossessed, you can't get to work either, which
is a big problem.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
It's a big deal, and so the best way to
avoid this is to not take out a car loan
at all. We would recommend for folks to pay cash
for whatever ride that you're getting when that thing is yours,
when you have the time I to that car, that's
not something that they can take away. It's just grand
theft auto when someone tries to take your car. Then,
but we understand that not everyone is in the position
(05:08):
to pay cash, and so at the very least, just
make sure that you have a solid down payment in
order to bring to the table so that you're able
to keep your payments so that you're able to keep
your the length of your loan reasonable. So like a
forty two month loan, those are the longest we want
you to even consider, and we don't even love that. Again,
cash is the total is totally the way to go.
(05:29):
But if you absolutely have to take on debt to
make that purchase, look to a credit union to get
your financing, because you're gonna typically get the best terms,
you're gonna get the best rates. But if you have
to stretch out that loan length in order to be
able to afford the payments you need to buy a
more affordable car, this is not the kind of purchase
where we want you to financially sacrifice in order to
(05:50):
get something that's a little bit nicer. Because Oftentimes it
comes down more to what it is that you feel
you want or actually you've convinced yourself to get it
because because it's something that you feel that you need,
and it's more of a consumptive move rather than something
that is necessary. Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
When you look at the numbers, a lot of people say, well,
I need to stretch to get the nicer vehicle because
then I get to stay out of the mechanic's mechanic shock,
because that's going to cost me so much money. But
the truth is, if you get that used car inspected
by a mechanic, you can know kind of what you're
getting into, not fully, but you can be well aware
of the potential problems that you're buying up front. And
if you look at the numbers from site like Consumer Reports,
(06:28):
the average annual costs of even something like a ten
year old car that rates decently on reliability ratings, well,
the annual cost of maintenance on that car is going
to be less than one car payment a brand new
car month's car pay.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So if you actually look at the numbers, they'll maybe
hopefully dissuade you from that belief. And you're like, I
guess all right, I guess I am going with the
older car that's in decent shape as opposed to talking myself,
tricking myself into getting the new one.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
That's not what people remember. What they remember is the
one time they're on the side of the road and
they think, never again do I want to be in
a position like that, and they that to all future
car parts. That's why people say away from real estate messing.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
They're like, I've heard the ten Dorors stories, the calls
at three am, and you're like, it happens once every
eight years, Like it's truly a great way to invest
for a whole lot of folks. But they hear that
one story or they have that one memory and they're like, yeah,
not going in that direction. So don't let that be you.
All right, Matt, I know Halloween is next week, but
let's talk about Thanksgiving for a second, and specifically where
(07:23):
you should shop for groceries in order to save on
Thanksgiving staples and the two places that we would highlight
right now are Walmart and Aldy as some of the
places to go. Yeah, boy, why well, because both of
these grocery discounts, they've announced plans to offer pricing similar
to what they offered last year, despite the reality of inflation,
and so Walmart plans to offer turkey for less than
(07:43):
a dollar a pound. Well, they're slashing other prices too,
and all the has said that they're going to be
slashing prices by up to fifty percent on more than
seventy items. And this special holiday pricing starts November first
at both stores. And it's just it's worth taking a
look at their ads before you venture into the store,
doing some comparison shopping before you actually get out there.
And there's actually an app that helps make that easy.
(08:05):
It's flip dot com fl i pp dot com. But
we've we've always been big fans of oh yeah, Aldi
and they especially when you're talking about ye know, these
these holiday staples. I think you guys are a lot
of folks, a lot of families are going to be
eating a lot of over the next couple of months. Well,
those things are going to be a whole lot cheaper,
those those holiday staples.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah. Plus, it's never too soon to talk about Thanksgiving.
You got to start planning, you start budgeting for because
it's an expensive meal. Yeah, I guarantee most folks November
grocery budget is a good bit larger than other months
of the year. Actually, we had a newsletter section recently
about loss leaders, and the whole point of keeping some
items artificially cheap, maybe even losing money on the sale
(08:44):
of those particular items, is to get folks in the
door and to spend more on other things. Aldi and
Walmart they might even be pricing some of these items
so low that they're just breaking even in order to
attract new customers, because a lot of folks potentially have
been avoiding the stores. But the truth is where it
is that you shot makes a massive difference in your
overall grocery bill. And of course Aldi is one of
(09:05):
our all time faves. If you live near one you
haven't ventured in yet, I think this is a perfect
opportunity to give it a go. In this case, we
would say go ahead and fall for the marketing, because
ultimately it's gonna end up saving you a ton of
money were you to stick around.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Well, the Aldie marketing is based is based on facts.
Ye look at the receipt from from our grocery store
to the other ones, and you're gonna say thirty plus percent.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
So yeah, even when we moved up to here in
a while, by the way, we haven't. Yeah, when we
moved up here, we started shopping at Aldi less because
we were hitting up Costco. And I think we talked
about this a few months in after, like literally maybe
around a year ago. I think we're talking about because
I was complaining about how high our grocery bill had
gotten because we were going to Costco, and I think
that encouraged slightly more consumption. In the past couple of
(09:50):
months we've have've noticed there have been way more Aldi
entries on our monthly budget, bringing the price down. Not surprisingly,
we've seen that price come down, not a full thirty percent,
but I don't make closer to like fifteen to twenty
percent less than previous months as well.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, and it's also important to mention Matt for all
the newbies that they've got the twice as nice guarantee,
so if you end up buying some items that you
don't really love, you can take get your money back.
So that's that's one of the great things about Aldi.
Plus you get in and out so quick. That's another.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
I mean, there's so many great things. Yeah, but give
credit words Duke of course, Costco has an amazing return
policy as well. They stay behind their items. That's true.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, two great places to shop. One one's going to
cost you more than the other, but they also might
provide additional value. All right, let's move on. At the
National Bureau of Economic Research, they just released a study
and it found that married couples are leaving money on
the table when it comes to investing for retirement. This
is specifically talking about married couples and a mistake that
they're making. And I was surprised to see married money mishap.
(10:48):
How many is right? How many people are actually making
this mistake. We talk a lot about making sure that
you get the full company match in your workplace retirement account.
That's obviously a big deal. That's additional dollars that your
employer is saying, Hey, listen, we're going to help subsidize
your future retirements. But you've got to contribute a certain
amount in order to get that those subsidized dollars. And
(11:09):
the only reason to leave money on the table and
not take the full match is if you haven't been
able to cobble together the two and four hundred and
sixty seven dollars E fund first that's the first most
important step in kind of rebuilding your personal finances. But
once you do that, maxing out the match becomes a
top priority. But this study, it found that one quarter
of couples they're not getting the full match they're entitled
(11:30):
to one spouse. Apparently that the reason for this is
because one spouse is contributing to their four oh one
K or four h three B and maybe the other isn't.
And so it's not even the fact that like, these
couples aren't contributing enough total, it's that they've just prioritized
one account over the other for some reason, and because
of that, they're leaving the match from one of the
(11:51):
spouse's employers completely underutilized. They're forsaking that match. Maybe they're
contributing instead of like six percent to one and six
percent to the other, they're contributing twelve percent to one
and zero percent of the other.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And that's a big mistake. Sure, yeah, and this ends
up costing couples a ton of money. It's actually close
to seven hundred dollars a year on average that they're
giving up. That's before we talk about compounding and how
much second become over the years right, yeah, yeah, And
so it's all about allocation of those contributions, Like you're saying,
they're saving too much just in one of those accounts
and pretty much zero dollars in the other. I think
(12:24):
oftentimes different like you enter into a relationship, you've got
a significant other, and something like this I think can
easily happen because you tend to gravitate towards what you're
good at, you've got your specialized roles, and if you
don't have healthy communication regards surrounding your finances, this, I
feel like this is something that could completely fall through
the cracks. But it's a pretty major thing to be
(12:47):
falling through those cracks, and so balancing out those contributions
so that both of you are getting the full match
that you're both entitled to is incredibly crucial. So if
you're married, make sure that you both know what the
matches from your employer at your respective workplaces, and then
just dial back the contributions in one of those accounts
if it means that you're going to be able to
dial them up at the other. The goal there is,
(13:09):
of course, to get the full match at both You
don't want to leave that money on the table, and
that is the easiest way to make sure that you
are contributing enough towards your retirement.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, if you would have asked me to guess what
percentage of couples are doing this, I would have said
ten percent. The fact that one in four twenty five
percent of couples are doing it's just a misallocation of
funds and they're missing out on free matching money because
of it. That's a big problem and that needs to
change quickly. So it's a really good idea to revisit.
Log into those accounts, know what's your work player, what
(13:39):
your employer offers matt with their matches, like you said,
and then adjust accordingly.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
And that's the thing though too. So we talked about
the advantage of auto enrollment and how so many more
millennials are saving more towards their retirement. What that means, though,
is that that we're not looking at our accounts. We're
just letting it ride. And so that unfortunately means that
if you are not set up optimally from the beginning.
I think that honestly means there's less of a chance
of somebody going back making some of those corrections. So
(14:06):
another little PSA log in and make sure that you
are getting that full match. But Joe, we've got additional
stories to get too. We're gonna talk about why IPA's
are getting a little more expensive here as well. We'll
get to shut us here on that one. I know,
we've got more stories here right after.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
The break, all right, Matt, the Friday Flight continues, and
of course we always got to get to our ludicrous
headline of the week at the very beginning of the
second segment of the Friday Flight. This one comes from
Business Insider, and the headline reads, why now is actually
(14:42):
a good time to buy a house? And this one
maybe click. Matt not gonna lie because I was like, huh,
it defies all logic in my brain.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Please tell me should I go out there and buy
another house? Please tell me.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Why all the stats I've seen and everything else I've
read points to the exact opposite conclusion. I was like,
am I missing something? Am I like weve got to
in Zoolander? Am I taking crazy paills? That's kind of
where I felt like reading this article. It seems like
from where I'm sitting, it's the worst time in recent
memory to buy. But Business Insider as saying the opposite,
And so this article, it even admits that the we're
literally at peak on affordability in the home buying market.
(15:16):
And so I guess for them to insinuate that now
is such a great time to buy just seemed really
silly to me. There's certainly a chance this is kind
of what they were hinting at that listings continue to
shrink because of continuing affordability declines. Right, So if we
see fewer homes on the market, then we're going to
see prices continue to increase in that it's actually going
(15:36):
to be harder to buy a home at some point,
is what they're saying. And if rates go down, they say,
we're likely to see more buyers, more competition in the
home buying space. But the truth is, like twenty nine
to twenty twenty one were great times to buy a home.
Twenty twenty three, that was a good time to buy.
That was a great time, yea. So like, yeah, I'm
just surprising we had like twelve years of good years
to buy a home twenty twenty three. It's a lot
(15:57):
dice here. The truth is, you better make sure that
you plan to own a home per minimum of seven
years if you do opt to buy a home right now,
because where the market goes from here it's hard to decipher. Like,
we just don't really know what the market in twenty
twenty four is is going to hold RCT. We're going
to talk to a real estate expert here in a
few weeks and kind of get get to get his
thoughts on that based on the data. But it's you
(16:17):
read a headline like this, and I think is going
to cause a lot of people to say, great, I'll
keep looking, But the reality is murkier than the headline
on this.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
In this case, yeah, you never know what you might
come across. But yeah, I mean, the fact is, unless
home prices decrease significantly because the demand is so low
because interest rates are so high, then like the only
advantage I think is for cash buyers. Yeah, and which,
by the way, there's a surprisingly high number of transactions
that are taking place that are all cash, or something
like thirty percent. Yeah, yeah, and it's not surprisingly a
(16:48):
whole lot of boomers who have that money on hand.
But even though that's thirty percent of sales today, that's
still you're still looking at sixty seventy percent of folks
who are looking to finance their home, and where the
mortgage rate does have a massive impact. But the truth
is there's also never been a worse time to buy
instead of rent a home. That's the case for most
(17:08):
markets around the country. And the gap between what it
is that you'll pay for the mortgage versus what you
pay for rent for a similar spot it's massive right
now in many cities, and that's part of the reason
a significant percentage of home buyers are backing out of
more deals right now than they were twelve to eighteen
months ago. Yeah, like that grat like spiked. Yes, yeah,
why actually go through? Why buy that overpriced house when
(17:30):
you can just keep renting, keep your budget intact. I
think a lot of folks maybe they went, they started
house shopping a couple months ago, and maybe they finally
found a place and they're like, oh sweet, we're gonna
buy it. And then they sit down with their lender. Yeah,
they see where interest rates are, they get the estimated
monthly payment and they're like, wait, what, we can't do that.
It's like five hundred bucks more than I thought it
(17:50):
was gonna go like one thousand dollars more, depending on
when they first started looking. But of course, real estate
is hyper local, and so much of it depends on
your specific market where it is that you live. And
we've always said that whether or not buying a home
makes sense, it's going to be more about your specific
personal finance situation in your timeline. It's going to be
much less about timing the market. Don't assume that prices
(18:11):
are going to continue to soar and that you're just
going to be building tons of equity from day one,
because that may not be the case. It might be
the case, and maybe a year from now we'll look
back and say, oh, man, remember how good the I
don't think we'll say that the market was good October
of twenty twenty three, but rates could be higher and
home prices could be even more expensive. Yeah, you never know.
You really don't. You really don't.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And that's why you and I we tried not to
make predictions. We try not to make predictions ever. Yeah,
but we talked about when everyone was predicting like this
massive decline in home prices, we actually didn't really agree
with that. That hasn't actually been the case. We have
not seen significant price declines in the real estate market,
at least in most of the country. There are some
rare exceptions in a few of those towns that experienced
significant booms, like Austin. But by the way, one answer
(18:55):
to this for folks who really want to buy a
home is that builders are opting to build smaller homes
right now, well, even in the suburbs and in the
excerpts and so sort of the further out you get,
it used to be the bigger the homes would become
the bigger lots that you had to build on. But
still builders are now saying, okay, one way that we
can meet the demand for home buyers is to create
smaller or less expensive homes. And who knew that it
(19:16):
would take an affordability crisis in the housing market to
incentivize the building of smaller homes that we've actually needed
in this country for so many years. I love seeing
this because home sizes have been growing for decades. McMansions
have become kind of normal, and just homes have become
ridiculous in this country in so many ways, and that's
also impacted affordability, and we need more homes, and building
(19:37):
more smaller homes makes sense to me. And then those
smaller homes they cost less typically right, that means you
have to save up less of a down payment. That
means your ongoing monthly mortgage payment is reduced.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
And on that note, by the way, it's more happy people.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
More happy people who actually get into the house they
want to buy in a community that they're thrilled. They're
thrilled to be in because they don't have as much
home to take care of either. And Matt on the
down payment note, by the way, Freddie Mack has rolled
out a down payment assistance tool is called DPA one.
It streamlines all of the programs that exist in one place,
which is like hundreds and hundreds apparently. And so we're
(20:10):
going to link to some of the specifics on this
program in the show notes. But you should ask your
lender about this if you are. It's kind of like
a scholarship almost for college. These are local, often local
programs that help people, especially first time home buyers, with
some money for that down payment. There's certain qualifications that
those folks typically have to meet, but this I love
(20:31):
that Usually you have to hunt and peck for it
yourself on the internet and try to find that stuff.
But this new program is going to mean it's going
to be easier to match the buyer with the program.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
That they qualify for. That's right. Okay, So did you
file your file of your taxes when the extension, the
tax filing extension October fifteenth?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, yeah, we filed like early October, so I had
to do the extension. But then we finally got a
tone nice se for tax season to roll around in,
you know, just a few months now.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, it's right around the colt. I mentioned this because
so we mentioned last year that the IRS was considering
launching its own tax software. Well, this is actually something
that is actually happening. It's not vaporware, and so it's
important to note. This goes beyond the free file site
where you can file your federal taxes for free if
you meet certain income thresholds. Yeah. Yeah. This is beyond
(21:20):
the partnerships that they've made with some of the different
companies as well, where you're able to file for free
via those companies. This is a proprietary IRS direct filing
system that's going to be launched in I think thirteen
states at the beginning of next year. And also this
is again only for folks who basically have a really simple,
straightforward tax situation. But for the time being, the service
(21:43):
is only going to cover your federal tax return. It's
not going to cover your states. But I'm curious to
see how well this actually is, how the roll out,
how effective it is, how successful it is, and how
the IRS might be able to improve this moving forward.
I don't have my fingers crossed because even the IRS,
when they like when they launched the the private public partnership,
I think it's like twenty years ago. With the other companies,
(22:04):
they even said themselves that we've seen historically that the
private market essentially is able to provide better results than
what we're able to. But they've changed their tune, I
guess over the past twenty years, and rightly so. They
have seen the hurdles when it comes to folks like
Turbo Tax and some of the other companies out there
basically doing like a bait and switch where they're advertising, hey,
(22:25):
it's going to be free, or maybe they just weren't
being as transparent as to what was going to be free,
and then folks ended up having to pay more on
the back end.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
There's a lot of marketing from some of those private
taxiling software companies that doesn't quite ring true when you.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Get to the checkout. Right for now, it's probably best
for the time being to roll with cash app taxes.
We're huge fans of that, which allows you to file
both state and federal returns for free. You can even
do that. You can go to the IRS free file
site next year. You can even just filt the forms
directly there as well, or if you have a more
complicated tax situations higher pro. This is one of those
(23:01):
situations where we feel that the money that you pay
for a tax professional, given the ever changing landscape of taxes, that.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
It would be worth everything. Yeah, it's money well spent
for most people. The more complicated there's just so many
dollars it could cost you, And so it's cheap not
frugal to avoid paying money to someone who's a pro,
who's like, you know, up to the latest that's almost
going on, and Matt, you and I with rental properties
and all this stuff, it gets more complicated. So I'm
more than happy to pass that off to somebody else
(23:28):
and to pay them money to do my taxes for me.
All right, let's talk about open enrollment for a second.
We're kind of right in prime open enrollment season. Yours
has either already begun or it's about to, and most
folks tend to stick with whatever they've currently got. They
just kind of roll it over to the next year.
They don't really make changes. But we would tell you
to run the numbers and a question whether or not
that's still your best bet, especially as healthcare prices continue
(23:51):
to rise, and particularly if you have any life changes
on the horizon, like you're getting married, having a baby,
you need to think longer and harder about what you're choosing.
And by the way, if you experience one of those
qualifying life events, you're allowed to change your plan, even
if it's not open enrollment season, but you're still gonna
want to plan ahead. Let's say for the berth if
you're like, we're having a kid, we can change it
once the kiddo comes. We still want to plan ahead
(24:12):
because there's a lot of other health care expenses you're
gonna encounter you're gonna incur in advance of the birth.
But one of the biggest money saving questions worth asking
is whether or not a high deductible health care plan
makes sense for you. If you're healthy, it likely is
you're going to need to make sure you can self
ensure though for those potentially higher out of pocket costs
(24:32):
that you might run into, but you'll likely to be
able to save a decent chunk of change on those
monthly premiums if you elect to get the high deductible
health care plan as opposed to one with a lower
deductible but higher premiums. And so our suggestion will be like,
don't let the tail wag the dog here. You always
want to step back and look at the broader picture.
You want to be able to see where are you
at from a healthcare perspective right now? Where do you
(24:54):
think you're likely to be in a year, And you
want to run the numbers to kind of see what
is what's going to most like likely benefits you overall
and math. The beautiful thing about choosing a high deductible
health care plan if you're one of those people who
doesn't frequent the doctor as much, is you have access
to yours in mine. One of our all time favorite
retirement accounts that get such so little.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Publicity, the HSA. Yeah, That's what I'm talking about, that right, Yeah?
And I mean limits pretty much can always go up,
whether it be on I don't I shouldn't say always
go up, but they're definitely going up next year. And
so that's an additional eighty three hundred dollars for a
family that you can put towards retirement. Even though it
is called a health savings account, we look at it
as like an actual retirement account because of the triple
(25:35):
tax advantage and the fact that you can hold off
taking dollars out of that account until you are actually
ready to retire. And we've got an.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Article listing out exactly how hsas work and how you
can invest in one use it to your advantage when
saving for retirement. It's the only account that doesn't where
you'll never get taxed on the money that goes in
or that comes out. So it's a pretty sweet tool
if you use it properly. We'll link to that in
the show notes.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Pretty great, but not least. This is some news that
makes us sadgel but I pas are evidently going to
be getting more expensive. Insider they reported that a warm
I guess a warm summer caused the hop crop and
certain hot varieties to see a reduced yield, which is
going to lead to higher costs for those hops making Obviously,
(26:19):
you know It's a trickle down effect, right, Like if
hot the fewer hops, that's going to increase the demand
for that limited the playoff hops and breweries are going
to be charged more, and they're in turn are often
charging us more money, which means I'm just gonna stop
drinking beer. I doubt. I doubt that's true. But maybe
I'm tired of those those rising prices jewel. I don't
like the fact that it's adding inches to my waistline,
(26:41):
tired of that delicious hot flavor in my mouth, and
I'm done with it.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Well, I know that's not true. I know you're joking,
but I will say, like even you and I, craft
beers are craft beer equivalent. And there are price points
where I have refused to buy beer because it's just
too darn expensive. Like I've seen some pack four packs
that are like thirty bucks a four pack, and I'm like, sorry,
that's too much. I'll spend like twenty two bucks on
a four pack, but I'll spend thirty dollars on a
(27:05):
four pack at least once. Yeah, maybe see how amazing
it is. It's not amazing then, all right, you know, yeah,
but I think this is I'm totally willing this could
this could cause me to drink different styles of beer
if the IPA costs go up, you know more, I'll
still drink some mypas, but maybeck less.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, we found a way to talk about beer even
though it's a Friday flight when you and I don't
normally enjoy one during these episodes. But that's gonna be
it for this episode. We hope everyone has an awesome weekend.
I just saw my phone's blowing up a little bit.
It sounds like the ladies are planning into date night
for the four of us tomorrow. So looking forward to
grapping dinner with you tomorrow, Fody nice, But that's gonna
(27:41):
be it for this some body until next time. Best
friends are Out, Best Friends Out,
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!