June 14, 2024 • 33 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: refurb iPhone fail, public library win?, reverse ATMS, king credit card, the best investment on the planet, mortgage rate disparities, the medical industrial complex, rich restaurants, super-commuters, time is money, teen (e-bike) drivers, and the best high mileage cars.
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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 today we're talking reverse ATMs, rich restaurants and the
best investment on the planet.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
That's right, we're gonna be talking about buying some of
that costc gold, which is kidding that it's not the
best investment in the planet.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
And it's not Nvidia either, promise.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Oh yeah, it's neither of those. But I hey, you
want to should share a quick update on the phone
saga that we're going through. After Kate got her phone wet.
I thought you got this fix. I thought you got
a reform. Okay, so Rick, quick recap Kate her phone
got wet in the ocean. And by the way, just
because it's rated to be underwater at twenty feet for
(00:57):
thirty minutes, it's a sham. Don't buy it. Because the
fact is water damage is not covered under the one
year warranty on an iPhone. So we learned that the
hard way. And so recently we talked about the Amazon
Renewed and specifically we were like, oh yeah, we're gonna
try out the Amazon Renewed Premium, which gives you a
full one year warranty. The battery life is supposed to
(01:17):
be even better. So we got that thing looked really good.
You know, they've got like their own packaging. It was
looking pretty fresh. I was impressed with that. The phone
looked flawless. I was like, all right, this is gonna
be good. Got her phone set up with iCloud, super easy.
It was looking great. But then we started noticing that
when she would get a text, like the tone that
it would make it sounded kind of weird. It was
(01:39):
a little buzzy. It's like, wait, that's kind of hot.
And then we didn't think much of it though, until
Kate actually took a call and she could barely hear
who she was talking to, and she realized that it
wasn't them, No, it was her phone. It was her
new premium Amazon refurbished premium phone or whatever. This looks perfect.
It looked beautiful, but the speakers were trash and like
(02:01):
so much so that it so basically long story short.
We sent it back. Okay, so actually the story gets
longer because we got another one, so we thought, okay,
maybe it was just this one phone we happened to
get the one that wasn't so great, so we ordered
a new one, loaded it and everything something new referb,
a new premium referb. And of course the first thing
(02:22):
I do sent her a text, and then we played
some music on it to make sure the speakers sounded good.
It sounded great. It's play some Nelly. I think we
played some some boney ver I wanted to get some
of those deep. Actually I did play Bonavera, and Kit
was like, this is like the worst music to play
on it because it already sounds kind of radily the
Million the Black Album album. So it's all kind of
(02:43):
distorted sounding anyway. So we thought we were in the clear.
But then her texts weren't going through specifically. She noticed
to Emily like she would, she was sending her a
text or two, and it would the status bar was
going across like it was trying to send it, and
then it was getting getting hung up. And this is
literally something that she dealing with as of today. And
so I checked with her this morning because I wanted
(03:03):
to make sure before we talked about it still a problem, dude.
So all that, all that being said, we're gonna we're
gonna end up sending that one back to you. We're gonna,
I will say what we're gonna do is get Apple referbed.
And I'm doing this all for the listeners out there,
just so they know that you're the guinea pig. I've
purchased so many things referred from Apple, and they've always
been great, and so I pick. I truly picture that
as being like next to new. It comes with a warranty.
(03:26):
They stick a brand new battery in there, so I'm
truly not too concerned with that. But if we do
have any problems, I will continue to report that it's
gonna cost a little more, but it's worth it to
get a phone that works and you're not having to
pay the absolute premium. And I will say that as
of right now, there are thirteen pros, and that's what
Kate was wanting to get was a thirteen pro because
for the longest time, all they had to were like
(03:47):
twelves or something like that. She's like, I don't want
to have to go backwards in time in order to
get to be able to save. But I guess they
got an influx of phones that they that they fixed
and they got those up on the on the website,
So be sure to check that out. If I'm sure
that that's going to be great and so no news
is good news.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Okay, by the way, real quick another follow up audio books.
We talked about that last week and how moving to
the burbs, my audiobook selection sucks and we'll talking to
our friends and also fellow co worker also named Joel,
who works with us and he lives in Los Angeles,
and he was like, you just want my log in?
I was like, that'd be great. I'm like a kid
in a candy store. The Los Angeles Public Library their
(04:26):
audiobook selection is in fuego.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Are you encouraging folks to cheat?
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Is that cheating? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Is that approval or cheat? It feels a little like cheating,
is it?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I feel like this is the kind of thing you do,
but you don't tell other folks about, Joel.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Like bringing your candy or soda into the movie theater. Yeah, okay,
well I did it.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
All the funks out in California are like, hey, how
about you pay some of our taxes that we're paying
into this time.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
I want to say there actually are some library systems
that will allow you, even if you're not a resident,
to pay money to have access to that, which I
would gladly do. For this one because it's a super
it's far better than Atlanta's was.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Are you gonna are you gonna go ahead and look
into that and make sure you're paying your fair share or.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I'm happy to pay. Oh yeah, if I can't pay,
I will pay them. I will pay them loudly because
it's truly it's it's better than some of the well
maybe not better than the paid apps, but it's it's
pretty robust. California is. Feel free to send your angry
emails by way directly the Joel is all right, let's
move on, Matt. Let's get to the topics at hand.
This is our Friday flight. We've got a lot to
cover today, and let's start by talking about cash or credit.
(05:30):
We've talked about this in different ways.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Plastic, right, what do you prefer? Yeah, we have always
prefer nothing. I prefer the cardboard box. That's what you
have to do at all? Actually costco too, right, Yeah,
you like put it all in the box. Yeah, okay,
So paying with credit cards has often come with an
additional fee, So we've always said, like, hey, we like
paying with credit cards, but if someone's trying to charge
you more to be able to do that it's probably
not worth rewards, you might want to switch over to
(05:54):
cash or something else. Well, now the reverse is actually
becoming true. Cash payments are going to call people more
these days then paying with a credit card in many circumstances.
Maybe not at a lot of gas stations still, but
at many smaller retailers and many bigger venues too, like
sporting sporting venues or music venues. That's because a lot
of these places are going digital only, right, and they
(06:16):
would prefer not to touch your green backs at all.
So if you come with no credit card, no Apple pay,
and you only come with like dollar bills, they're gonna
shut you down cold. And so, Matt, a lot of places,
a lot of these places are actually installing reverse ATMs
that they're popping up all over the place. They're proliferating.
They're turning your cash into plastic, but for a fee.
(06:37):
So if you get two undred dollers, you stick the
two hundred bucks into the reverse atm, you get a
piece of plastics spit out that maybe has like I
don't know, one hundred ninety dollars on it or something
like that. Yeah, not all of them do, but a
lot of them yeah, a lot of them.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
If they don't, then the place where you're that houses
the ATM is basically picking up that tab for you, right.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Well, and look out for the fact too. So I've
never heard of these until recently, but dormancy fees and
so if you convert that money into plastic and then
you don't use it for a few months, sometimes you'll
get hit with another fee on top of that, because
they want you to actually use the thing, because interchange
fees and all that, that's also how they make them money.
They don't want you sitting on that money.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, yeah, line, and the cashless approach is it's illegal
in some states, largely because cashless stores impact low income
folks the most. And either way though, cash as a
method of payment is falling out of favor with individuals
and businesses alike. And so it's just important to note
that I don't know, I would make sure I had
some sort of digital payment, I would make sure I
had a credit card on me, and I would make
sure to handle my plastic responsibly because for many retailers,
(07:36):
accepting cash now actually is more onerous, cost them more.
They're gonna want and prefer and incentivize digital payments instead.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, and plus it's pretty dang hard to use cash
in order to buy something on the internet. It is
actually possible if.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
You can just stick it on your monitor, on the screen,
if you had like a.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Little dollar bill sucker upper built into your laptop.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I used to love those things at the banks, like
the you know where it would you put your you
put your check or something the air cameister, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
One of those. But for dollar bills. Yeah. Bottom line,
it's just fascinating to see a dramatic shift from charging
credit card users and instead of seeing cash payers now
getting penalized in order to use that legal tender. Credit
cards they are our preferred method of payment for ourselves,
but for anyone out there listening who handles them, well, right,
for folks who are paying the bill off on time
(08:23):
and in full every single month. They come with additional
federal protections, and of course you can earn rewards for
purchases that you're already making. So because of that, in
our book, credit cards are king. Cash isn't king. Credit
Cards are that is if you have the cash to
back it up. And as our society just becomes I
think more cash averse. Just handling money well within a
(08:45):
digital world is just becoming even more important. And I
want to make sure to plug our credit card tool.
Go to how to money dot com for slash credit
card tool, because if you are looking for a card
that is offering you the specific benefits or maybe the
it's a specific airline that you want to be able
to filter by, or you're looking for a business card
or a personal card, or a card that is only
(09:06):
offering cash back specifically welcome offer. Yeah, you can filter
all of that using our tool. Again over at howdomoney
dot com forward slash credit card tool.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Last thing I want to say on this, Matt, is
for small businesses, those merchant processing fees can add up. Yes,
it's onerous to handle cash and go into the bank,
and there's potential there's more risk for loss when you're
handling cash or for theft when you're handling cash. It
might be worth looking into changing your merchant processor because
you might be paying higher fees than you need to be.
(09:34):
One of the places I would look would be Costco.
So Costco has actually a relationship with Elevon, which is
one of the merchant processing companies, and they have some
of the best terms for small businesses. You're going to
pay less per suite, per tap, that kind of stuff.
So if you're with Square, or you're with Clover or
whoever you're with, I would at least look into Costco.
Check out their website page. We'll maybe put a link
(09:56):
to it in the show notes. But the pricing is
a heck of a lot better for many if you
switch to Costco instead of being with one of those
other players.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Nice, all right, let's talk about whether or not real
estate is the absolute best investment on the planet. There's
a new Gallup poll and they find that most Americans
think that buying real estate is the best wealth building
route to take. It leads all other comers, including stocks,
by a pretty wide margin. And so Joel and I
were real estate investors, and you might think we would agree, right,
(10:25):
Not quite.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
We haven't trined with the kopl aid now.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
No real estate it certainly can be a winning investment,
but the current housing market, it just makes it so
difficult to get not only like a great deal, but
even a decent deal these days. And then on top
of that, local dynamics it makes it even harder to
give across the board slam dunk advice and the real
estate market. It's been on fire over the past few years,
largely thanks to shifting post COVID values. What it is
(10:51):
that folks are looking for in housing, It has a
lot to do with low supply. But when you look
at historical returns, stocks outperform real estate on average over
the long haul, so you need to keep that in mind.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think people see rising values over
the past few years, and it's like whatever has gone
up the most is often what people believe that recently moment, Yeah,
whatever's popping. It's like, oh, well, I joked about it
Invidia earlier, but I think people are like, I should
probably put some money in VIDIA. It's popping, and you
might find that you invest at the exact wrong time.
Think about It's exactly what happened with Kathy Wood's ARC fund.
(11:26):
Matt like that. It was this future looking fund investing
in AI and new technologies, and at the point where
it was getting it's apex of attention, a lot of
individuals investors around the country started to put money in
that fund and then they saw a dramatic drop off
in the performance of that fund. So I think lots
of times whatever's hot is drawing the eyeballs, but then
(11:48):
a lot of people find out really quickly investing in
the hottest thing, investing in what's provided the highest recent
returns doesn't always produce the best returns moving forward.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yeah, and that I mean that also assumes that folks
are even aware as to what the recent performance has been.
I think a lot of folks are thinking that real
estate makes a lot of sense to them because it's
just what they're interacting with, and that like on a
day to day basis, right Like, it makes me think
of like the gasoline price per gallon phenomena, Right Like,
we are more sensitive to that because we see it
(12:17):
every day when you drive past the gas station. You
see it every time you pull up to the pump
once a week, as opposed to the stock market. Like
everyone knows what their home has done over the past
three years, sure, but I bet very few people know
what the stock market has done over the past three years.
And so because of that, they think, oh, well, this
is something that I have that I'm invested in, it
must be a good investment. As opposed to what if
you had all of that money also in the stock
(12:40):
market and on average over time, historically speaking, you will
see that real estate does underperform.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, and a lot of those people they see a
house around the corner from them go up for sale,
they're like, oh my gosh, if it's selling for that much,
thinking about how much my house must be worth. And
then it's also like the Zillo rubbernecking. You check out
this estimate, like once a.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Month, people are on Zillo way more than they are
looking at the some P five hundred and what the
stock is doing. And so it's familiarity and what it
is that it just hasn't like an inordinate impacts on
our perceptions.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, and I think the other downside of real estate
We've talked about this before. It's an investment that requires
bigger sums of money and time, and that means it's
not accessible or desirable for everyone. Real estate can provide
additional returns, largely because you're using leverage. You're only putting
a percentage of the price down and you're financing the rest.
But that also increases the risk level of investing in
(13:29):
real estate too. When you invest in the entire stock
market via index funds, it just has it comes with
fewer pitfalls and dollar cost averaging into tax advantage accounts
is just easy. The simplicity, the ubiquity factor has a
lot going for it. So not that real estate doesn't
make sense for any investors out there, just be careful,
especially in today's environment. The best part of this poll, though, Matt,
(13:52):
was that only a tiny minority of folks I think
that crypto is the best investment you can make. Let's
hope it stays that way. I think it was like
it got like three percent in the poll, as like
real estate was like thirty six percent for.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Sure, which again that kind of pours more fuel on
the fire of recency bias, where folks are like, oh, well, yeah,
I don't think crypto is doing as hot as it
used to. You know, I don't know, speaking of fire
stuff like once you get burned, yeah, you're like not
quite as willing to go down that same path. All right.
While we are talking about investing in real estate, let's
talk about mortgages. Specifically, shopping around for a mortgage is
(14:24):
more crucial than ever. There are new stats from lending
Tree that reveal that not shopping around is going to
cost you a significant amount of money. We're talking an
average thirty year savings of seventy six thousand dollars, but
an average of six figures over the life of the
loan in five states, in particular California, Hawaii were a
couple of those, some of them more expensive states. And
(14:46):
so just using that average figure, like we are talking
about savings of more than two hundred dollars a month
by spending a few extra hours of your time on
the front end, shopping around, going with the lender who
offers you superior rates, superior terms. And you might be
wondering how this sort of discrepancy is possible, because, yeah,
that is difficult to stomach, Like, how can there be
(15:06):
such a difference. The truth is different lenders just offer
drastically different rates and terms, and the stakes are even
bigger these days with the higher home prices and given
the sticky high rates, you can make a massive difference
on your month to month payments.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
I think the higher rates are the more dramatic the
split can be between the high and low. And so
you're right, like, the shopping more is going to save
you a lot that I was not surprised that there's
a big gap, but I was shocked at the gap
was this large based on these stats, seventy six thousand
bucks over thirty years. That's a lot of money. It
makes me think of the most recent house purchase I made,
Matt basically two years ago now, and I'm not gonna
(15:40):
lie I didn't run the numbers about how much I
would save, but the rate itself and the terms were
significantly better with a local bank than it was with
a couple of the other mortgage lenders that I checked out.
And it probably was something crazy like this, and probably
it would have cost me a lot more money over
the life and loan, potentially up towards that six figure line. Yeah,
it's just those extra the extra a little bit of
(16:01):
shopping made a big difference.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
And I'll point that you didn't run the numbers over
the life of the loan, most likely because most people
don't stay in their home.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
For thirty years or their mortgage for thirty years.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, exactly. And so it's difficult because on one hand
we say, don't be a payment buyer, but in this case,
I think focusing on the month to month payment like
that is most likely what should be moving the needle
most for you. Like the big number on the front.
You don't want to do that because being a payment
buyer might mean you extend your term out two years.
But typically we're comparing apples to apples thirty year mortgages,
and so the lowest payment is going to have the
(16:32):
best terms attached to it, the best rate. Yeah, I'm
just pointing out the I guess the over the life
of the loan. I think sometimes those numbers can seem
inflated when in reality most people never see that entire
life of the loan.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
That's true, that's true. And so yeah, maybe your savings
actually won't be that significant, but it's still worth shopping
around and getting the best rate because they say you
keep it for ten years. You might be talking about
twenty or thirty thousand dollars in saving and you're still
a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
You definitely can't argue you two hundred dollars a month, right,
that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yep. And so if you're the kind of person who
who uses honey when you're shopping online or camel camel camel,
good for you. Or if you're the kind of person
who drives across the street to save ten cents a
gallon on gas. I'm not hating on that, but the
stakes are so much higher when we're talking about shopping
for a mortgage, right, the savings are potentially much larger.
And so the folks at lending Tree who did the study,
clearly they want you to shop around. They'll benefit by
(17:20):
you doing so on their site. And I'm not throwing shade,
I'm just stating facts. But there's nothing wrong with using
lending Tree to shop around, but there's I would also
consider local credit unions. Talk to a local mortgage broker.
Credit unions math I think we talked about not too
long ago. They typically offer the best rates of any
institution out there when you are shopping for a mortgage.
So if you're gonna buy a house, I would just
say comparison shop almost like your life depended on it,
(17:43):
because there aren't many areas in life where you're gonna
be able to save that much money in one fell swoop.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, and no, oftentimes folks avoid doing that because it's
just it's a hassle. Yeah, right, It's not something that
you do often, but totally worth the money. But Joey
got more to get to. We're gonna talk about super
commuting as well as the cost of eating out.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
We'll get to that more right after this. Right we're
back the Friday flight continues. Supercommuting, Matt is that when
you commute with a cape. We'll find out in just
a second. But first let's get to the ludacrous headline
of the week. This one comes from the Wall Street Journal,
(18:21):
and the headline reads, as hospitals grow, so does your bill.
And the crux of the matter in this article that
it highlighted was that healthcare consolidation is costing us all
more money.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Matt.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I think we talked about this in regards to healthcare
for your pet not too long ago. How vet consolidation
is driving up the cost of bills for your dog,
or your cat, or your emu. I don't know, whatever
kind of animal you have at your house. I actually
had a friend back in the day who had an
emu farm on either one of the really I lived
in like a legit neighborhood, like a normal neighborhood, but
he had EMUs on his property. I think I was
(18:52):
hot back in the day. I don't know why there
is but we all we all of course know that
the healthcare system in this country is not great, and
the shrinking competition leads to higher prices and basically any
industry case in point Ticketmaster, like we talked about last week, well,
regional healthcare companies have been gobbling up smaller competition. They're
(19:13):
buying local private practices, which has driven up healthcare costs
and a higher clip in recent years. And Matt, it
just feels like we're all peons living inside of this
rapidly growing, increasingly expensive medical industrial complex. And there are
some ways that we can push back, but in other
ways we're just getting rolled over like a steamroller.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah. I think this is one of the reasons the
friend of ours is starting his own ophthalmology clinic that
is planning to basically skirt all insurance like he's going
to be a self pay sort of practice. And because
in large part because of the tremendous amounts of bureaucracy
that's involved in running a medical practice like that, you
have to hire.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Like multiple extra people just to deal with the insurance
claims that come through the doors.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
And he's not going to because he's gonna avoid that all.
You don't want to do it, yeah, I mean, there's
nothing the two of us do to fix this system
that's this complex, this cold, this uncaring. Although I know
that actual individual health care providers individuals might certainly care
for their patients, but just the way the system is
set up, it seems to be pretty messed up. Like
it has perceived elements of being a free market system,
(20:17):
but truly, man, it's just like it's a facade. And
I will continue to cumment my position as the resident
anarchist here on the podcast. But this is why I'm
going to continue, like pretty much always continue to argue
for less government involvement, less involvement from the state, because
anytime the government gets involved with something like healthcare or
(20:37):
let's see what other costs have risen dramatically over the
past forty years, oh, higher education? Is that somewhere else
that the government's got involved.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Sure did that coincide with your offering of federal loans?
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I don't know. I don't know what about even housing costs.
When the government just gets involved, you oftentimes see decreased service,
decreased products, and higher prices that we have to pay.
So end of rant. But like it shouldn't take a
more combative approach to fix a messed up bill or
to combat ridiculously high prices that aren't based in reality,
(21:08):
but it sadly does. And we would recommend for folks
to go back and listen to episode six eighty seven.
Listen to episode seven sixteen for more on how it
is that you can fight back against out of control
medical bills. That was Marshall Allen, that was doctor Virgie.
They gave some incredible advice on how it is that
you can pay less because the bottom line that the
(21:29):
system it really sucks. It needs an overhaul and the
way it currently functions. You just got to watch your
own back. And in one of those episodes, I can't remember,
but we talked about the Healthcare blue Book, which is
a website that you can go and visit where it
provides transparency and it allows you to push back on
some of the egregious hospital prices. So we would love
for you to listen back to some previous interviews that
(21:52):
we've had with guests, but if you ain't got the
time for that, at least go check out Healthcare blue Book.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah, exactly, There's so many ways you can fight back
against the system. It's gonna be onerous, right, It's gonna
be burden some It's not fun to have to combat
this unwieldy system, but you have to. That's the only
way you look out for yourself is by sticking up
for yourself and fighting the good fight. Sadly, from a
macro perspective, things aren't looking good, but from a micro perspective,
(22:18):
there are things you can do to kind of punch back.
All right, let's talk about restaurants for a second, Matt.
They are having their biggest year on record, and they're
on pace four one point one trillion dollars in sales
by the end of the year. I saw this, and
I was like, good for the restaurants, and then I
was also like, oh, it's probably not good for us
as individuals.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Like Cowboy spells trouble for individuals.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Yeah, they're budgets awesome for restaurant owners, Awesome for workers,
especially what they dealt with, what they dealt with in
twenty twenty. This is welcome news for them, but not
for us and for our eating out budgets. And so
for the longest time, restaurant and grocery stores the spending
was neck and neck. You can kind of look at
a graph. They tracked each other. They went up consistently
at the same rate, but then after restaurants began to
(22:58):
reopen in twenty twenty one, that number began to diverge dramatically,
And so now eating out costs so much more, vastly
more the onle we spend at the grocery store. We
now spend about eight hundred and sixty trillion dollars on
groceries each and every year. That's a far cry from
now the trillion plus dollars that we spend at restaurants.
We used to spend more on groceries than we spend
(23:19):
at restaurants. Now the opposite is true anymore. If you're
one of those people who found yourself eating out more
frequently eating home less often, you're not alone. But still
that doesn't mean that it's wise. It's a pattern, it's
a habit. A lot of people get into Matt, and
I think, especially post COVID, it felt like you were
doing the right thing in a lot of ways, too,
funneling your money towards businesses you cared about that needed
(23:40):
your support. But now I don't know. It could be
harming your ability to achieve some of those other financial goals.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a correction,
like a pullback as folks are realizing holy cow, like
we are spending so much money eating out, which, like
it kind of makes sense this trend because first sales,
maybe home prices, and then it kind of trickled down
to travel and a lot of folks are traveling a
lot last year travel, yeah, revenge travel. And now it's
just like, well, we can't. That costs a lot of money.
And what's what's another little splurge, like something fun and
(24:09):
special that we can do, oh le's go out to
eat it?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Revenge restaurant.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, there's no catchy name for the money that we're paying. Like,
I'm old school, so I'm just gonna call it a laziness.
Like learn how to cook food at home. It's so
much more affordable. And dude, isn't it ironic to the
fact that we have nicer kitchens, like the nicest kitchens
in the history of kitchens, But like we cook far
less on average at home than our moms did or
(24:35):
our grandmas did, and their kitchens with for mica lambin
at countertops, right, and it's just it's kind of ironic.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Using their stoves to like store their winter clothing or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
They just don't use them, and it's it's kind of
it's it's baffling, and I know it's nice to have
someone else cook and to clean up. We're not haters, right,
We don't want you to pinch every single penny. Where
you're avoiding the latte, you're avoiding avocado toasting now and again,
what Bees? I haven't been since like, I don't know,
my junior year in high school.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Oh, that's about when I was hanging out there.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, exactly. Do juniors in high school still go to Applebee's.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
That's a good question.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
We didn't talk about Red Lobster. That was one of
was another place, yea that we used to occasionally go
and get.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
I only went there once. Really, Yeah, at.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Least when I was in high school. It was a
hot it was a hot spot.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
I always wanted to go because I always like seafood,
but we never went as a family, So yeah, I
think I missed out for a lot of years, but
it probably wasn't the best seafood, to be honest.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
We don't want to hate on folks again who are
going on to eat Kate and I even though in
mean Kate in particular, she's an amazing chef, but like,
even so we go out to eat, we went out
last night for our date night. We enjoy an awesome
meal that someone else is gonna whip up, but just
make sure that you've budgeted for that expense and that
it's not something that is just getting out of control
(25:50):
this year.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah, and I think you're right not to like call
people out on the carpet, but it, at least in
my own life, it's typically laziness. It's a lack of
planning or it's like I just don't feel like it's
a night. And I think a lot of people find
themselves in that situation, and so yeah, it's sometimes it's
got to be power through or set it up, just
like laying out your running clothes the night before. It
can make it easier having thawed whatever you're going to cook,
(26:13):
or having fought like.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Giving it some amount of thinking, and then it can
just save you so much, that's right.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, Yeah, And it might take a quick run at
the store that day or something, but hey, that's better
than going out to eat that's still going to cost
you money maybe, but it's going to cost you less money,
because I think what the average meal eating out costs
like seventeen or eighteen dollars and the average mellion at
homes like four dollars and twenty five cents or someth.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Pennies on the dollar.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, exactly. All right, let's talk about commuting. New research
from those gosh darn idiots at Stanford finds that commute
times are I'm just kidding, they're really smart. It finds
that commute times are up, and the share of supercommuters,
not people who fly around with capes to their job,
but those driving at least seventy five miles to and
from the office has grown substantially. That's the bad news.
(26:59):
But there's good news to actually in this. People are
commuting to the office less frequently, which is kind of
like a nod.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
We know that, right.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
It's less of a daily grind and more of a
two times a week grind for so many folks these days.
Statistics show that high earners and young people are more
likely to live further from their office, and they're more
willing to stomach I guess those longer treks in yeah,
to their job.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I mean, it makes sense too I guess if you
are going in less often, I would also, I think
what about you? Would you be more willing to extend
the length of your commute if you're going in less
less often? Poutly, We have our we've been fortunate to
design our life to where, you know, we get to walk.
My commute is nine tenths of a mind or bike,
and it's amazing. But given the choice, if I was like, okay,
(27:43):
on one hand, five days a week and it's a
thirty minute commute, or hey, it's gonna be a forty
five minute, maybe forty five minute plus commute, but you
only have to do it twice a week, I think
I would choose that option. I think, I think because
the flexibility that that affords you. Yeah, so I guess
I understand why there's a there's an increase there.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I said too, I don't know if I would have
moved where we moved if I was still working in town, like,
I wouldn't want to do that commute, especially if it
was five days a week, even daily. Yeah, that sounds terrible.
It would have dramatically changed the dynamics of that decision.
Even before we started working for ourselves, even before we
were up to designed this. Well, you were working for
yourself a long time too, and you worked from home.
But even when I worked in midtown and lived in
a different part of Atlanta, it was like, well, I
(28:21):
bit to work a lot of a lot of the time.
And so yeah, I just know, even if you're doing
a supercommute, you're commuting less often, that commute is costing
you time and money, and those are two really important
important things in your life.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Oh okay, so some folks say that time is money,
but we say, actually that that time is more important
than money because it is a non renewable resource. And
there's new stats from and Power and they revealed that
Americans value their time pretty highly. What's surprising here the
average millennial and they say that an hour of their
time is worth more than three hundred and twenty bucks.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
How much is an hour of your time?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Which is I guess three hundred and twenty a millennial.
But that what's crazy, that's more than any other generation.
And so I don't know if this makes me happy,
because it seems that millennials are rightly valuing their time
and they understand that. Oh wow, this is something I've
thought about and they're grasping their understanding and wrapping their
head around the finitude, the finiteness of the time we
(29:19):
have here on earth, or if it's just sort of
like a entitled brat mentality, or they're just like, I
don't want to do that. I'm a little torn because
sometimes I can kind of cop an attitude about stuff,
but then other times I feel like I have a
correctly oriented disposition towards how I want to spend my time.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I think if you value your time at three hundred
twenty bucks an hour, it doesn't mean that anyone else
values your time that highly. So I would imagine most
of the millennials in that survey are not getting paid
nearly that much. And it's okay. I think to value
your time highly, you also have to have a reasonable understanding, though,
of what your hourly rate is, and for most people
it's not that.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Yeah, you just you need It's good to have the
data on hand to be able to make the trade
offs consciously, because yeah, I think it can help you
to figure out safe, for instance, which tasks are are
worth the ying. I think it can just help to
inform your decisions. By the way, it's also fascinating to
see that teenagers aren't nearly as interested in driving as
their parents were. There's an article that we read this
(30:12):
week that found that young adults are asking for e
bikes to get around instead, which I love. Obviously.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Don't mind me the car, buy me the e bike
content please. I hope our kids are also feeling this
way by the time they're they're of age, because this too,
as a parent, you'll then have to add them to
the insurance policy.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
You know how exciting, dude.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
It's like, I'll buy you an e bike any day,
all day.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Not just the cost of the actual vehicle, not just
the cost of fuel, but yeah, insurance as well. Plus
we'll get some exercise and it'll get you to most
local spots that you want to visit. Just make sure
to get them a good helmet as well. But we're
all about e bikes, and of course just traditional bikes
as well, but e bikes make it more accessible, like
I guess in that.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Way proliferating to and teens see their friends on them
and they're like, I want byke.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
We see them all the time, I feel like, often
more often than the bikes that we see going past
those these days. Yeah, e bikes as opposed to traditional bikes.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
I like having both personally, and I like to kind
of split my time evenly. If I'm houling people around,
kids around, then I'm on the e bike, and if
I'm just hauling myself, I'm typically on the road bike.
But for a team, if they say I want a
kne bike and that's how am I to get around
instead of using a car, it's just a.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Little bit more expensive. It's not like it's one thing
when you're talking about like the cost of a vehicle,
which is a ton more expensive. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, And if you do want to get your kid
a car. By the way, Consumer Reports just released a
list of the best high mileage cars Like it was
cars with at least one hundred thousand miles on them,
and a few of the favorite models they mentioned were
the twenty twenty Honda fit love It, the twenty seventeen
Honda a Cord, the twenty sixteen Toyota Ceana. I know
your teenagers probably not going to want to drive a minivan,
(31:47):
but these are still these are just for anybody out there.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Really had a lot of siblings, The ability for a
bunch of kids to pile in. One of my friends
in college he drove an old, stinky dodge. Gosh, what
was it, I don't know, some kind of mind caravan, probably, yeah,
and it was like the worst color, but man, that
thing was. It was awesome because you guys always went
in his idea because we would all just pile in
and he stuck the fake spinners on there. You got
(32:10):
to lean into it, right, Yeah, yeah, Steve, you know,
we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
The twenty sixteen Raft four and at twenty fourteen Toyota Tundra.
We're on that list. So it's always crucial to get
a used car checked out by a mechanic you trust
before completing the purchase. But knowing which makes the models
come with the highest reliability the lowest repair costs, that's
a big help. And it's obviously, Matt, it's no surprise
to us after reading these things for years on end. Honda, Toyota, Mazda,
(32:35):
those are the brands that crush. Those are the ones
that continually get the highest ratings for reliability and price too.
So like when you're combined, hey, this car is gonna
typically hold up over a longer period of time. The
price is just right. I love the idea of buying
a car that's got at least one hundred thousand miles
on it. Take somebody else took the massive depreciation hit,
and you've got a car that's still going to last
for a long time.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Heck yeah? Or is you want to say it even more?
Don't forget about the e bike.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
The family that by together stays together.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
We hope everyone has a fantastic weekend e Bichen, perhaps
a preemptive Happy Father's Day to all the daddy's out there.
And that's gonna be it for this episode, buddy, So
until next time, best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,
Welcome to Had of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're talking reverse ATMs, rich restaurants and the
best investment on the planet.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
That's right, we're gonna be talking about buying some of
that costc gold, which is kidding that it's not the
best investment in the planet.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
And it's not Nvidia either, promise.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Oh yeah, it's neither of those. But I hey, you
want to should share a quick update on the phone
saga that we're going through. After Kate got her phone wet.
I thought you got this fix. I thought you got
a reform. Okay, so Rick, quick recap Kate her phone
got wet in the ocean. And by the way, just
because it's rated to be underwater at twenty feet for
(00:57):
thirty minutes, it's a sham. Don't buy it. Because the
fact is water damage is not covered under the one
year warranty on an iPhone. So we learned that the
hard way. And so recently we talked about the Amazon
Renewed and specifically we were like, oh yeah, we're gonna
try out the Amazon Renewed Premium, which gives you a
full one year warranty. The battery life is supposed to
(01:17):
be even better. So we got that thing looked really good.
You know, they've got like their own packaging. It was
looking pretty fresh. I was impressed with that. The phone
looked flawless. I was like, all right, this is gonna
be good. Got her phone set up with iCloud, super easy.
It was looking great. But then we started noticing that
when she would get a text, like the tone that
it would make it sounded kind of weird. It was
(01:39):
a little buzzy. It's like, wait, that's kind of hot.
And then we didn't think much of it though, until
Kate actually took a call and she could barely hear
who she was talking to, and she realized that it
wasn't them, No, it was her phone. It was her
new premium Amazon refurbished premium phone or whatever. This looks perfect.
It looked beautiful, but the speakers were trash and like
(02:01):
so much so that it so basically long story short.
We sent it back. Okay, so actually the story gets
longer because we got another one, so we thought, okay,
maybe it was just this one phone we happened to
get the one that wasn't so great, so we ordered
a new one, loaded it and everything something new referb,
a new premium referb. And of course the first thing
(02:22):
I do sent her a text, and then we played
some music on it to make sure the speakers sounded good.
It sounded great. It's play some Nelly. I think we
played some some boney ver I wanted to get some
of those deep. Actually I did play Bonavera, and Kit
was like, this is like the worst music to play
on it because it already sounds kind of radily the
Million the Black Album album. So it's all kind of
(02:43):
distorted sounding anyway. So we thought we were in the clear.
But then her texts weren't going through specifically. She noticed
to Emily like she would, she was sending her a
text or two, and it would the status bar was
going across like it was trying to send it, and
then it was getting getting hung up. And this is
literally something that she dealing with as of today. And
so I checked with her this morning because I wanted
(03:03):
to make sure before we talked about it still a problem, dude.
So all that, all that being said, we're gonna we're
gonna end up sending that one back to you. We're gonna,
I will say what we're gonna do is get Apple referbed.
And I'm doing this all for the listeners out there,
just so they know that you're the guinea pig. I've
purchased so many things referred from Apple, and they've always
been great, and so I pick. I truly picture that
as being like next to new. It comes with a warranty.
(03:26):
They stick a brand new battery in there, so I'm
truly not too concerned with that. But if we do
have any problems, I will continue to report that it's
gonna cost a little more, but it's worth it to
get a phone that works and you're not having to
pay the absolute premium. And I will say that as
of right now, there are thirteen pros, and that's what
Kate was wanting to get was a thirteen pro because
for the longest time, all they had to were like
(03:47):
twelves or something like that. She's like, I don't want
to have to go backwards in time in order to
get to be able to save. But I guess they
got an influx of phones that they that they fixed
and they got those up on the on the website,
So be sure to check that out. If I'm sure
that that's going to be great and so no news
is good news.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Okay, by the way, real quick another follow up audio books.
We talked about that last week and how moving to
the burbs, my audiobook selection sucks and we'll talking to
our friends and also fellow co worker also named Joel,
who works with us and he lives in Los Angeles,
and he was like, you just want my log in?
I was like, that'd be great. I'm like a kid
in a candy store. The Los Angeles Public Library their
(04:26):
audiobook selection is in fuego.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Are you encouraging folks to cheat?
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Is that cheating? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Is that approval or cheat? It feels a little like cheating,
is it?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I feel like this is the kind of thing you do,
but you don't tell other folks about, Joel.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Like bringing your candy or soda into the movie theater. Yeah, okay,
well I did it.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
All the funks out in California are like, hey, how
about you pay some of our taxes that we're paying
into this time.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
I want to say there actually are some library systems
that will allow you, even if you're not a resident,
to pay money to have access to that, which I
would gladly do. For this one because it's a super
it's far better than Atlanta's was.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Are you gonna are you gonna go ahead and look
into that and make sure you're paying your fair share or.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I'm happy to pay. Oh yeah, if I can't pay,
I will pay them. I will pay them loudly because
it's truly it's it's better than some of the well
maybe not better than the paid apps, but it's it's
pretty robust. California is. Feel free to send your angry
emails by way directly the Joel is all right, let's
move on, Matt. Let's get to the topics at hand.
This is our Friday flight. We've got a lot to
cover today, and let's start by talking about cash or credit.
(05:30):
We've talked about this in different ways.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Plastic, right, what do you prefer? Yeah, we have always
prefer nothing. I prefer the cardboard box. That's what you
have to do at all? Actually costco too, right, Yeah,
you like put it all in the box. Yeah, okay,
So paying with credit cards has often come with an
additional fee, So we've always said, like, hey, we like
paying with credit cards, but if someone's trying to charge
you more to be able to do that it's probably
not worth rewards, you might want to switch over to
(05:54):
cash or something else. Well, now the reverse is actually
becoming true. Cash payments are going to call people more
these days then paying with a credit card in many circumstances.
Maybe not at a lot of gas stations still, but
at many smaller retailers and many bigger venues too, like
sporting sporting venues or music venues. That's because a lot
of these places are going digital only, right, and they
(06:16):
would prefer not to touch your green backs at all.
So if you come with no credit card, no Apple pay,
and you only come with like dollar bills, they're gonna
shut you down cold. And so, Matt, a lot of places,
a lot of these places are actually installing reverse ATMs
that they're popping up all over the place. They're proliferating.
They're turning your cash into plastic, but for a fee.
(06:37):
So if you get two undred dollers, you stick the
two hundred bucks into the reverse atm, you get a
piece of plastics spit out that maybe has like I
don't know, one hundred ninety dollars on it or something
like that. Yeah, not all of them do, but a
lot of them yeah, a lot of them.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
If they don't, then the place where you're that houses
the ATM is basically picking up that tab for you, right.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Well, and look out for the fact too. So I've
never heard of these until recently, but dormancy fees and
so if you convert that money into plastic and then
you don't use it for a few months, sometimes you'll
get hit with another fee on top of that, because
they want you to actually use the thing, because interchange
fees and all that, that's also how they make them money.
They don't want you sitting on that money.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, yeah, line, and the cashless approach is it's illegal
in some states, largely because cashless stores impact low income
folks the most. And either way though, cash as a
method of payment is falling out of favor with individuals
and businesses alike. And so it's just important to note
that I don't know, I would make sure I had
some sort of digital payment, I would make sure I
had a credit card on me, and I would make
sure to handle my plastic responsibly because for many retailers,
(07:36):
accepting cash now actually is more onerous, cost them more.
They're gonna want and prefer and incentivize digital payments instead.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, and plus it's pretty dang hard to use cash
in order to buy something on the internet. It is
actually possible if.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
You can just stick it on your monitor, on the screen,
if you had like a.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Little dollar bill sucker upper built into your laptop.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I used to love those things at the banks, like
the you know where it would you put your you
put your check or something the air cameister, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
One of those. But for dollar bills. Yeah. Bottom line,
it's just fascinating to see a dramatic shift from charging
credit card users and instead of seeing cash payers now
getting penalized in order to use that legal tender. Credit
cards they are our preferred method of payment for ourselves,
but for anyone out there listening who handles them, well, right,
for folks who are paying the bill off on time
(08:23):
and in full every single month. They come with additional
federal protections, and of course you can earn rewards for
purchases that you're already making. So because of that, in
our book, credit cards are king. Cash isn't king. Credit
Cards are that is if you have the cash to
back it up. And as our society just becomes I
think more cash averse. Just handling money well within a
(08:45):
digital world is just becoming even more important. And I
want to make sure to plug our credit card tool.
Go to how to money dot com for slash credit
card tool, because if you are looking for a card
that is offering you the specific benefits or maybe the
it's a specific airline that you want to be able
to filter by, or you're looking for a business card
or a personal card, or a card that is only
(09:06):
offering cash back specifically welcome offer. Yeah, you can filter
all of that using our tool. Again over at howdomoney
dot com forward slash credit card tool.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Last thing I want to say on this, Matt, is
for small businesses, those merchant processing fees can add up. Yes,
it's onerous to handle cash and go into the bank,
and there's potential there's more risk for loss when you're
handling cash or for theft when you're handling cash. It
might be worth looking into changing your merchant processor because
you might be paying higher fees than you need to be.
(09:34):
One of the places I would look would be Costco.
So Costco has actually a relationship with Elevon, which is
one of the merchant processing companies, and they have some
of the best terms for small businesses. You're going to
pay less per suite, per tap, that kind of stuff.
So if you're with Square, or you're with Clover or
whoever you're with, I would at least look into Costco.
Check out their website page. We'll maybe put a link
(09:56):
to it in the show notes. But the pricing is
a heck of a lot better for many if you
switch to Costco instead of being with one of those
other players.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Nice, all right, let's talk about whether or not real
estate is the absolute best investment on the planet. There's
a new Gallup poll and they find that most Americans
think that buying real estate is the best wealth building
route to take. It leads all other comers, including stocks,
by a pretty wide margin. And so Joel and I
were real estate investors, and you might think we would agree, right,
(10:25):
Not quite.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
We haven't trined with the kopl aid now.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
No real estate it certainly can be a winning investment,
but the current housing market, it just makes it so
difficult to get not only like a great deal, but
even a decent deal these days. And then on top
of that, local dynamics it makes it even harder to
give across the board slam dunk advice and the real
estate market. It's been on fire over the past few years,
largely thanks to shifting post COVID values. What it is
(10:51):
that folks are looking for in housing, It has a
lot to do with low supply. But when you look
at historical returns, stocks outperform real estate on average over
the long haul, so you need to keep that in mind.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think people see rising values over
the past few years, and it's like whatever has gone
up the most is often what people believe that recently moment, Yeah,
whatever's popping. It's like, oh, well, I joked about it
Invidia earlier, but I think people are like, I should
probably put some money in VIDIA. It's popping, and you
might find that you invest at the exact wrong time.
Think about It's exactly what happened with Kathy Wood's ARC fund.
(11:26):
Matt like that. It was this future looking fund investing
in AI and new technologies, and at the point where
it was getting it's apex of attention, a lot of
individuals investors around the country started to put money in
that fund and then they saw a dramatic drop off
in the performance of that fund. So I think lots
of times whatever's hot is drawing the eyeballs, but then
(11:48):
a lot of people find out really quickly investing in
the hottest thing, investing in what's provided the highest recent
returns doesn't always produce the best returns moving forward.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yeah, and that I mean that also assumes that folks
are even aware as to what the recent performance has been.
I think a lot of folks are thinking that real
estate makes a lot of sense to them because it's
just what they're interacting with, and that like on a
day to day basis, right Like, it makes me think
of like the gasoline price per gallon phenomena, Right Like,
we are more sensitive to that because we see it
(12:17):
every day when you drive past the gas station. You
see it every time you pull up to the pump
once a week, as opposed to the stock market. Like
everyone knows what their home has done over the past
three years, sure, but I bet very few people know
what the stock market has done over the past three years.
And so because of that, they think, oh, well, this
is something that I have that I'm invested in, it
must be a good investment. As opposed to what if
you had all of that money also in the stock
(12:40):
market and on average over time, historically speaking, you will
see that real estate does underperform.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah, and a lot of those people they see a
house around the corner from them go up for sale,
they're like, oh my gosh, if it's selling for that much,
thinking about how much my house must be worth. And
then it's also like the Zillo rubbernecking. You check out
this estimate, like once a.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Month, people are on Zillo way more than they are
looking at the some P five hundred and what the
stock is doing. And so it's familiarity and what it
is that it just hasn't like an inordinate impacts on
our perceptions.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, and I think the other downside of real estate
We've talked about this before. It's an investment that requires
bigger sums of money and time, and that means it's
not accessible or desirable for everyone. Real estate can provide
additional returns, largely because you're using leverage. You're only putting
a percentage of the price down and you're financing the rest.
But that also increases the risk level of investing in
(13:29):
real estate too. When you invest in the entire stock
market via index funds, it just has it comes with
fewer pitfalls and dollar cost averaging into tax advantage accounts
is just easy. The simplicity, the ubiquity factor has a
lot going for it. So not that real estate doesn't
make sense for any investors out there, just be careful,
especially in today's environment. The best part of this poll, though, Matt,
(13:52):
was that only a tiny minority of folks I think
that crypto is the best investment you can make. Let's
hope it stays that way. I think it was like
it got like three percent in the poll, as like
real estate was like thirty six percent for.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Sure, which again that kind of pours more fuel on
the fire of recency bias, where folks are like, oh, well, yeah,
I don't think crypto is doing as hot as it
used to. You know, I don't know, speaking of fire
stuff like once you get burned, yeah, you're like not
quite as willing to go down that same path. All right.
While we are talking about investing in real estate, let's
talk about mortgages. Specifically, shopping around for a mortgage is
(14:24):
more crucial than ever. There are new stats from lending
Tree that reveal that not shopping around is going to
cost you a significant amount of money. We're talking an
average thirty year savings of seventy six thousand dollars, but
an average of six figures over the life of the
loan in five states, in particular California, Hawaii were a
couple of those, some of them more expensive states. And
(14:46):
so just using that average figure, like we are talking
about savings of more than two hundred dollars a month
by spending a few extra hours of your time on
the front end, shopping around, going with the lender who
offers you superior rates, superior terms. And you might be
wondering how this sort of discrepancy is possible, because, yeah,
that is difficult to stomach, Like, how can there be
(15:06):
such a difference. The truth is different lenders just offer
drastically different rates and terms, and the stakes are even
bigger these days with the higher home prices and given
the sticky high rates, you can make a massive difference
on your month to month payments.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
I think the higher rates are the more dramatic the
split can be between the high and low. And so
you're right, like, the shopping more is going to save
you a lot that I was not surprised that there's
a big gap, but I was shocked at the gap
was this large based on these stats, seventy six thousand
bucks over thirty years. That's a lot of money. It
makes me think of the most recent house purchase I made,
Matt basically two years ago now, and I'm not gonna
(15:40):
lie I didn't run the numbers about how much I
would save, but the rate itself and the terms were
significantly better with a local bank than it was with
a couple of the other mortgage lenders that I checked out.
And it probably was something crazy like this, and probably
it would have cost me a lot more money over
the life and loan, potentially up towards that six figure line. Yeah,
it's just those extra the extra a little bit of
(16:01):
shopping made a big difference.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
And I'll point that you didn't run the numbers over
the life of the loan, most likely because most people
don't stay in their home.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
For thirty years or their mortgage for thirty years.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, exactly. And so it's difficult because on one hand
we say, don't be a payment buyer, but in this case,
I think focusing on the month to month payment like
that is most likely what should be moving the needle
most for you. Like the big number on the front.
You don't want to do that because being a payment
buyer might mean you extend your term out two years.
But typically we're comparing apples to apples thirty year mortgages,
and so the lowest payment is going to have the
(16:32):
best terms attached to it, the best rate. Yeah, I'm
just pointing out the I guess the over the life
of the loan. I think sometimes those numbers can seem
inflated when in reality most people never see that entire
life of the loan.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
That's true, that's true. And so yeah, maybe your savings
actually won't be that significant, but it's still worth shopping
around and getting the best rate because they say you
keep it for ten years. You might be talking about
twenty or thirty thousand dollars in saving and you're still
a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
You definitely can't argue you two hundred dollars a month, right,
that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Yep. And so if you're the kind of person who
who uses honey when you're shopping online or camel camel camel,
good for you. Or if you're the kind of person
who drives across the street to save ten cents a
gallon on gas. I'm not hating on that, but the
stakes are so much higher when we're talking about shopping
for a mortgage, right, the savings are potentially much larger.
And so the folks at lending Tree who did the study,
clearly they want you to shop around. They'll benefit by
(17:20):
you doing so on their site. And I'm not throwing shade,
I'm just stating facts. But there's nothing wrong with using
lending Tree to shop around, but there's I would also
consider local credit unions. Talk to a local mortgage broker.
Credit unions math I think we talked about not too
long ago. They typically offer the best rates of any
institution out there when you are shopping for a mortgage.
So if you're gonna buy a house, I would just
say comparison shop almost like your life depended on it,
(17:43):
because there aren't many areas in life where you're gonna
be able to save that much money in one fell swoop.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, and no, oftentimes folks avoid doing that because it's
just it's a hassle. Yeah, right, It's not something that
you do often, but totally worth the money. But Joey
got more to get to. We're gonna talk about super
commuting as well as the cost of eating out.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
We'll get to that more right after this. Right we're
back the Friday flight continues. Supercommuting, Matt is that when
you commute with a cape. We'll find out in just
a second. But first let's get to the ludacrous headline
of the week. This one comes from the Wall Street Journal,
(18:21):
and the headline reads, as hospitals grow, so does your bill.
And the crux of the matter in this article that
it highlighted was that healthcare consolidation is costing us all
more money.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Matt.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I think we talked about this in regards to healthcare
for your pet not too long ago. How vet consolidation
is driving up the cost of bills for your dog,
or your cat, or your emu. I don't know, whatever
kind of animal you have at your house. I actually
had a friend back in the day who had an
emu farm on either one of the really I lived
in like a legit neighborhood, like a normal neighborhood, but
he had EMUs on his property. I think I was
(18:52):
hot back in the day. I don't know why there
is but we all we all of course know that
the healthcare system in this country is not great, and
the shrinking competition leads to higher prices and basically any
industry case in point Ticketmaster, like we talked about last week, well,
regional healthcare companies have been gobbling up smaller competition. They're
(19:13):
buying local private practices, which has driven up healthcare costs
and a higher clip in recent years. And Matt, it
just feels like we're all peons living inside of this
rapidly growing, increasingly expensive medical industrial complex. And there are
some ways that we can push back, but in other
ways we're just getting rolled over like a steamroller.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah. I think this is one of the reasons the
friend of ours is starting his own ophthalmology clinic that
is planning to basically skirt all insurance like he's going
to be a self pay sort of practice. And because
in large part because of the tremendous amounts of bureaucracy
that's involved in running a medical practice like that, you
have to hire.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Like multiple extra people just to deal with the insurance
claims that come through the doors.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
And he's not going to because he's gonna avoid that all.
You don't want to do it, yeah, I mean, there's
nothing the two of us do to fix this system
that's this complex, this cold, this uncaring. Although I know
that actual individual health care providers individuals might certainly care
for their patients, but just the way the system is
set up, it seems to be pretty messed up. Like
it has perceived elements of being a free market system,
(20:17):
but truly, man, it's just like it's a facade. And
I will continue to cumment my position as the resident
anarchist here on the podcast. But this is why I'm
going to continue, like pretty much always continue to argue
for less government involvement, less involvement from the state, because
anytime the government gets involved with something like healthcare or
(20:37):
let's see what other costs have risen dramatically over the
past forty years, oh, higher education? Is that somewhere else
that the government's got involved.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Sure did that coincide with your offering of federal loans?
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I don't know. I don't know what about even housing costs.
When the government just gets involved, you oftentimes see decreased service,
decreased products, and higher prices that we have to pay.
So end of rant. But like it shouldn't take a
more combative approach to fix a messed up bill or
to combat ridiculously high prices that aren't based in reality,
(21:08):
but it sadly does. And we would recommend for folks
to go back and listen to episode six eighty seven.
Listen to episode seven sixteen for more on how it
is that you can fight back against out of control
medical bills. That was Marshall Allen, that was doctor Virgie.
They gave some incredible advice on how it is that
you can pay less because the bottom line that the
(21:29):
system it really sucks. It needs an overhaul and the
way it currently functions. You just got to watch your
own back. And in one of those episodes, I can't remember,
but we talked about the Healthcare blue Book, which is
a website that you can go and visit where it
provides transparency and it allows you to push back on
some of the egregious hospital prices. So we would love
for you to listen back to some previous interviews that
(21:52):
we've had with guests, but if you ain't got the
time for that, at least go check out Healthcare blue Book.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah, exactly, There's so many ways you can fight back
against the system. It's gonna be onerous, right, It's gonna
be burden some It's not fun to have to combat
this unwieldy system, but you have to. That's the only
way you look out for yourself is by sticking up
for yourself and fighting the good fight. Sadly, from a
macro perspective, things aren't looking good, but from a micro perspective,
(22:18):
there are things you can do to kind of punch back.
All right, let's talk about restaurants for a second, Matt.
They are having their biggest year on record, and they're
on pace four one point one trillion dollars in sales
by the end of the year. I saw this, and
I was like, good for the restaurants, and then I
was also like, oh, it's probably not good for us
as individuals.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Like Cowboy spells trouble for individuals.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Yeah, they're budgets awesome for restaurant owners, Awesome for workers,
especially what they dealt with, what they dealt with in
twenty twenty. This is welcome news for them, but not
for us and for our eating out budgets. And so
for the longest time, restaurant and grocery stores the spending
was neck and neck. You can kind of look at
a graph. They tracked each other. They went up consistently
at the same rate, but then after restaurants began to
(22:58):
reopen in twenty twenty one, that number began to diverge dramatically,
And so now eating out costs so much more, vastly
more the onle we spend at the grocery store. We
now spend about eight hundred and sixty trillion dollars on
groceries each and every year. That's a far cry from
now the trillion plus dollars that we spend at restaurants.
We used to spend more on groceries than we spend
(23:19):
at restaurants. Now the opposite is true anymore. If you're
one of those people who found yourself eating out more
frequently eating home less often, you're not alone. But still
that doesn't mean that it's wise. It's a pattern, it's
a habit. A lot of people get into Matt, and
I think, especially post COVID, it felt like you were
doing the right thing in a lot of ways, too,
funneling your money towards businesses you cared about that needed
(23:40):
your support. But now I don't know. It could be
harming your ability to achieve some of those other financial goals.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a correction,
like a pullback as folks are realizing holy cow, like
we are spending so much money eating out, which, like
it kind of makes sense this trend because first sales,
maybe home prices, and then it kind of trickled down
to travel and a lot of folks are traveling a
lot last year travel, yeah, revenge travel. And now it's
just like, well, we can't. That costs a lot of money.
And what's what's another little splurge, like something fun and
(24:09):
special that we can do, oh le's go out to
eat it?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Revenge restaurant.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, there's no catchy name for the money that we're paying. Like,
I'm old school, so I'm just gonna call it a laziness.
Like learn how to cook food at home. It's so
much more affordable. And dude, isn't it ironic to the
fact that we have nicer kitchens, like the nicest kitchens
in the history of kitchens, But like we cook far
less on average at home than our moms did or
(24:35):
our grandmas did, and their kitchens with for mica lambin
at countertops, right, and it's just it's kind of ironic.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Using their stoves to like store their winter clothing or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
They just don't use them, and it's it's kind of
it's it's baffling, and I know it's nice to have
someone else cook and to clean up. We're not haters, right,
We don't want you to pinch every single penny. Where
you're avoiding the latte, you're avoiding avocado toasting now and again,
what Bees? I haven't been since like, I don't know,
my junior year in high school.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Oh, that's about when I was hanging out there.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, exactly. Do juniors in high school still go to Applebee's.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
That's a good question.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
We didn't talk about Red Lobster. That was one of
was another place, yea that we used to occasionally go
and get.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
I only went there once. Really, Yeah, at.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Least when I was in high school. It was a
hot it was a hot spot.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
I always wanted to go because I always like seafood,
but we never went as a family, So yeah, I
think I missed out for a lot of years, but
it probably wasn't the best seafood, to be honest.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
We don't want to hate on folks again who are
going on to eat Kate and I even though in
mean Kate in particular, she's an amazing chef, but like,
even so we go out to eat, we went out
last night for our date night. We enjoy an awesome
meal that someone else is gonna whip up, but just
make sure that you've budgeted for that expense and that
it's not something that is just getting out of control
(25:50):
this year.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah, and I think you're right not to like call
people out on the carpet, but it, at least in
my own life, it's typically laziness. It's a lack of
planning or it's like I just don't feel like it's
a night. And I think a lot of people find
themselves in that situation, and so yeah, it's sometimes it's
got to be power through or set it up, just
like laying out your running clothes the night before. It
can make it easier having thawed whatever you're going to cook,
(26:13):
or having fought like.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Giving it some amount of thinking, and then it can
just save you so much, that's right.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, Yeah, And it might take a quick run at
the store that day or something, but hey, that's better
than going out to eat that's still going to cost
you money maybe, but it's going to cost you less money,
because I think what the average meal eating out costs
like seventeen or eighteen dollars and the average mellion at
homes like four dollars and twenty five cents or someth.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Pennies on the dollar.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Yeah, exactly. All right, let's talk about commuting. New research
from those gosh darn idiots at Stanford finds that commute
times are I'm just kidding, they're really smart. It finds
that commute times are up, and the share of supercommuters,
not people who fly around with capes to their job,
but those driving at least seventy five miles to and
from the office has grown substantially. That's the bad news.
(26:59):
But there's good news to actually in this. People are
commuting to the office less frequently, which is kind of
like a nod.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
We know that, right.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
It's less of a daily grind and more of a
two times a week grind for so many folks these days.
Statistics show that high earners and young people are more
likely to live further from their office, and they're more
willing to stomach I guess those longer treks in yeah,
to their job.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
I mean, it makes sense too I guess if you
are going in less often, I would also, I think
what about you? Would you be more willing to extend
the length of your commute if you're going in less
less often? Poutly, We have our we've been fortunate to
design our life to where, you know, we get to walk.
My commute is nine tenths of a mind or bike,
and it's amazing. But given the choice, if I was like, okay,
(27:43):
on one hand, five days a week and it's a
thirty minute commute, or hey, it's gonna be a forty
five minute, maybe forty five minute plus commute, but you
only have to do it twice a week, I think
I would choose that option. I think, I think because
the flexibility that that affords you. Yeah, so I guess
I understand why there's a there's an increase there.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I said too, I don't know if I would have
moved where we moved if I was still working in town, like,
I wouldn't want to do that commute, especially if it
was five days a week, even daily. Yeah, that sounds terrible.
It would have dramatically changed the dynamics of that decision.
Even before we started working for ourselves, even before we
were up to designed this. Well, you were working for
yourself a long time too, and you worked from home.
But even when I worked in midtown and lived in
a different part of Atlanta, it was like, well, I
(28:21):
bit to work a lot of a lot of the time.
And so yeah, I just know, even if you're doing
a supercommute, you're commuting less often, that commute is costing
you time and money, and those are two really important
important things in your life.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Oh okay, so some folks say that time is money,
but we say, actually that that time is more important
than money because it is a non renewable resource. And
there's new stats from and Power and they revealed that
Americans value their time pretty highly. What's surprising here the
average millennial and they say that an hour of their
time is worth more than three hundred and twenty bucks.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
How much is an hour of your time?
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Which is I guess three hundred and twenty a millennial.
But that what's crazy, that's more than any other generation.
And so I don't know if this makes me happy,
because it seems that millennials are rightly valuing their time
and they understand that. Oh wow, this is something I've
thought about and they're grasping their understanding and wrapping their
head around the finitude, the finiteness of the time we
(29:19):
have here on earth, or if it's just sort of
like a entitled brat mentality, or they're just like, I
don't want to do that. I'm a little torn because
sometimes I can kind of cop an attitude about stuff,
but then other times I feel like I have a
correctly oriented disposition towards how I want to spend my time.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
I think if you value your time at three hundred
twenty bucks an hour, it doesn't mean that anyone else
values your time that highly. So I would imagine most
of the millennials in that survey are not getting paid
nearly that much. And it's okay. I think to value
your time highly, you also have to have a reasonable understanding, though,
of what your hourly rate is, and for most people
it's not that.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Yeah, you just you need It's good to have the
data on hand to be able to make the trade
offs consciously, because yeah, I think it can help you
to figure out safe, for instance, which tasks are are
worth the ying. I think it can just help to
inform your decisions. By the way, it's also fascinating to
see that teenagers aren't nearly as interested in driving as
their parents were. There's an article that we read this
(30:12):
week that found that young adults are asking for e
bikes to get around instead, which I love. Obviously.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Don't mind me the car, buy me the e bike
content please. I hope our kids are also feeling this
way by the time they're they're of age, because this too,
as a parent, you'll then have to add them to
the insurance policy.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
You know how exciting, dude.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
It's like, I'll buy you an e bike any day,
all day.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Not just the cost of the actual vehicle, not just
the cost of fuel, but yeah, insurance as well. Plus
we'll get some exercise and it'll get you to most
local spots that you want to visit. Just make sure
to get them a good helmet as well. But we're
all about e bikes, and of course just traditional bikes
as well, but e bikes make it more accessible, like
I guess in that.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Way proliferating to and teens see their friends on them
and they're like, I want byke.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
We see them all the time, I feel like, often
more often than the bikes that we see going past
those these days. Yeah, e bikes as opposed to traditional bikes.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
I like having both personally, and I like to kind
of split my time evenly. If I'm houling people around,
kids around, then I'm on the e bike, and if
I'm just hauling myself, I'm typically on the road bike.
But for a team, if they say I want a
kne bike and that's how am I to get around
instead of using a car, it's just a.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Little bit more expensive. It's not like it's one thing
when you're talking about like the cost of a vehicle,
which is a ton more expensive. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, And if you do want to get your kid
a car. By the way, Consumer Reports just released a
list of the best high mileage cars Like it was
cars with at least one hundred thousand miles on them,
and a few of the favorite models they mentioned were
the twenty twenty Honda fit love It, the twenty seventeen
Honda a Cord, the twenty sixteen Toyota Ceana. I know
your teenagers probably not going to want to drive a minivan,
(31:47):
but these are still these are just for anybody out there.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Really had a lot of siblings, The ability for a
bunch of kids to pile in. One of my friends
in college he drove an old, stinky dodge. Gosh, what
was it, I don't know, some kind of mind caravan, probably, yeah,
and it was like the worst color, but man, that
thing was. It was awesome because you guys always went
in his idea because we would all just pile in
and he stuck the fake spinners on there. You got
(32:10):
to lean into it, right, Yeah, yeah, Steve, you know,
we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
The twenty sixteen Raft four and at twenty fourteen Toyota Tundra.
We're on that list. So it's always crucial to get
a used car checked out by a mechanic you trust
before completing the purchase. But knowing which makes the models
come with the highest reliability the lowest repair costs, that's
a big help. And it's obviously, Matt, it's no surprise
to us after reading these things for years on end. Honda, Toyota, Mazda,
(32:35):
those are the brands that crush. Those are the ones
that continually get the highest ratings for reliability and price too.
So like when you're combined, hey, this car is gonna
typically hold up over a longer period of time. The
price is just right. I love the idea of buying
a car that's got at least one hundred thousand miles
on it. Take somebody else took the massive depreciation hit,
and you've got a car that's still going to last
for a long time.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Heck yeah? Or is you want to say it even more?
Don't forget about the e bike.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
The family that by together stays together.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
We hope everyone has a fantastic weekend e Bichen, perhaps
a preemptive Happy Father's Day to all the daddy's out there.
And that's gonna be it for this episode, buddy, So
until next time, best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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