November 7, 2025 • 35 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:
- Timeshare rescission periods
- $50k average for new cars
- Shorter car loans please
- Repos on the rise
- $10k new car tax break
- Occupation consternation
- AI labor market anxiety
- Career plan Bs
- $100 work lunch budgets
- Frugal habits going mainstream
- Creepy dumb chore robots
- Ads everywhere
- Avoiding the marketing
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- 11 questions to ask yourself, before quitting your job.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel, I'm Matt. Today
we're talking ridiculous, car refinancing, occupation, consternation, and adds everywhere.
(00:26):
That's right, buddy. This is our Friday flight where we
cover the best headlines, the news that's going to pertain
to your personal finances, only the most, only the best,
only the finest. This is the cream of the crop.
Before we get to all that, though, a quick little
update from I think it was Greg who wrote in,
and he was talking about the recision period that states
allow specifically for time shares. So we recently talked about
(00:49):
how you were like laying whether or not you're going
to go to the timeshare pitch. You said no because
ultimately they said your wife's gotta be there. I was
like for it, and they were like, no, you're not
not unless your wife comes. And I'm like, ah, man,
well she doesn't changes the game, which makes sense. Yeah,
it totally makes sense to me, right because if it's
just one person that's whole that seems like a financial optimizer,
(01:11):
it's that's a divide and conquer kind of move there, right,
Like like you are, You're you're approaching this very strategically,
what are they doing it like that? But you pointed
out if there's two people, is that if you go
alone and then you go back to the room and
your spouse is like, what did you just sign up for? Yeah,
that then those people are more likely the cancels, whereas
if you make the decision together, you're unlikely to cancel.
The time, there's like a commit there's something that happens
(01:33):
from a commitment standpoint where there's two people, right, like
so on, if it was just you, it would have
been like the optimizer. But with two people that spend
that amount of time and energy into it, it feels
like you've you've started something, You've run through the gauntlet. Yeah,
like you've created relationships, you started to dream about what
this scould look like together. Yeah, there's like there's a
sun cost fallacy involved right where it's just like, well,
(01:54):
we spent all that time doing that and you are
you're only looking at that as opposed to thinking about
what this is gonna what this will cost you in
the future, And that's at the core of I think
what they're trying to Yeah, promote Actually, I spent two
hours here and I signed on the dotted line. I
guess we're committed, and probably a lot of people don't
even know about the recision period that exists, depending on
what state you're in. It's somewhere between three and fifteen
(02:17):
days after you've signed on the dotted line for that
time share. So you do have we actually let's link
to that in the show notes, OK, for folks out
there to know that you do have a cooling off period,
or you can say, yeah, I actually don't want to
do that, which is I think really important, especially because
that is such a highly I think it's an emotional
decision that's made emotionally so much of the time, because
(02:39):
you understandably, the human instinct is you kind of want
to please the person who's trying to sell you the
time share. They're spending that much time with you, you don't
want to disappoint them. Right, you're sharing a meal together.
They were probably really nice to you, and so you're like,
all right, yeah, I and we'll get to take some vacations.
Will be great. But time shares for most people don't
make much financial sense. And even if you really want
(02:59):
a timeshare, there are much cheaper ways to get a
timeshare than paying full freight at one of those presentations.
That's right, So Joe, let's kick things off. You want
to talk about affordable vehicles. Those don't exist anymore, man,
I think that's an oxymoron if I've ever heard one.
There are some out there. I get very few, very few. Yeah.
I actually was looking up at the value of our
(03:20):
minivan the other the other day, and I was like, oh,
it's worth like less than six thousand dollars. Now it's affordable.
It's basically hit that fully depreciated mark. I don't know
that's going to go down to value very much. So
there are some cheap cars. You just can't buy mine. Sorry, yeah,
you need that thing. Man, What did you put for
the condition? Because that's I know what I know. Oh,
it's definitely not excellent. Okay, but did you do pretty
(03:41):
good or did you do four? Oh no, probably whatever's
in the middle. Yeah, that's pretty easy. Yeah, it's got
some things in that. At this point, I want to
I want to think that mine's an excellent condition, but
I know it's not. Like in my heart it's an
excellent condition, but there are certain things about it that
I know are excellent. But then I know from an
outsider's perspective, they would see all some of the busted
up thing, some of the spray painted side view mirrors
(04:02):
that creative fathers three on there in order for it
to look slightly better. They might notice that, well, I
think my sc it makes it sound so ratchet, which
I think both of our fans probably are. At this one.
I would say my six four Runner is in mint condition.
I'd put that in excellent, but would be excellent. So
how long will it stay that way? We'll see do
(04:23):
you feel like it's already gone downhill since you've gotten
it a little bit. I'm doing my best, though, But
they kept it in a garage. I don't have space
in a garage for two cars. I have a one
car garage. People, what if you can clear everything out,
squeeze both those suckers in there. I don't think it's possible, really, Yeah, okay,
we can try one day. Okay, so I'll help you
try it this weekend if you want. Let's talk about
expensive cars. Though. We have cheap cars, but the average
(04:45):
American is opting for really really expensive ones. And I'm
over here reticent to spend you know, five figures on
a car. But people are spending fifty k on average
on new cars. That's the we've crossed that threshold now,
it's insane. But because of high costs and high interest rates,
this means people are paying more for cars than ever before,
(05:05):
which means that the vast majority find themselves on like
a debt treadmill for a really long time. And we've
talked about this kind of ad nausea map, but there
was a new there was some new stats that came
out this week from Caribou who they help people refinance
their loan and shop around and get a better deal,
and they said that the most popular choice these days
when people refinance a car loan is an eighty four
(05:26):
month long loan, which I didn't know. I knew you
could get that out on a new car. I didn't
realize you could refinance into an eighty four month long loan.
It's crazy. So let's say you get a new car,
you're in it for a couple of years, and then
you refinance again into another seven year loan. Yeah, maybe
you're able to save some money every month, and maybe
you lowered your interest rate. You've probably done both of
(05:47):
those things, but it means you're going to be in
the loan for even longer. Some of those folks are
going to be in that like a car loan because
they take one out and refinance for something like nine
or ten years. It's crazy hard to really have them. Yeah,
what's so the first thing I think of when I
hear eighty four months? It makes me think of people
who have like an eighteen month old. It's like, no, no, no,
you need to go ahead and switch to my kids
(06:09):
a year and a half. He's two years old. Like
they're trying to obscure the fact of how long of
a period this is, I think by saying something like
eighty four months. But the journal actually had an article
about how repomen are actually busier than ever. They're basically
working around the clock repossessing vehicles where folks aren't making
a payments, a dangerous job. I had a friend who
(06:29):
did that for I think he still doesn't actually, and
I believe it. He has a run ins man Like
people do not like their car being taken out of
their driveway in the middle of the night. But ye,
when the payments aren't being made, this is going to
take it is what happened. That's what you agree to
and delinquencies on car loans are up across all income levels.
But even with lower payments spread out over a longer
(06:50):
period of time, way too many people are out there
and they're unable to afford their ride. So just be
careful when you are buying a car. You do not
have to pay an arm and a leg in order
to get a good one. And in that article as well,
a fascinating stat was that home debt, so they had
like different types of debt, so like obviously auto loan debt,
but then they had home debt, right, so like your
(07:12):
mortgage or home equity loans, they're down significantly. They're down
something like fifty percent when looking at the same period
of time, which is is just fascinating that it seems
like something has changed in how it is that we
view vehicles, which I kind of think is a good
thing it. I guess one way to interpret the data
is that more folks are seeing their vehicles more as
a tool. They're seeing it as a more expendable thing.
(07:35):
And I think some of them might have to do
with the rise of uber and left right, like it's
just a way to get from point A to point B,
as opposed to maybe having your identity so tightly tied
to a possession like that too, to something like a vehicle,
which have just really fascinating. The fact that, yeah, mortgage delinquencies,
home equity loan delinquencies are down about this like fifty percent,
(07:57):
whereas auto loaned delinquencies are up fifty percent over the
past fifteen years. Yeah. Crazy. Well, I mean I think, gosh,
you want to keep a roof over your head stability,
but it seems it's just interesting. Yeah, when you look
at the same period of time, though, I think some
of it also has to do with not to take
it back to the pandemic, but stimmy checks, right, Like,
we found ourselves with a lot more money in our banks.
(08:19):
It wasn't so much money that you went and bought
went on like a home shopping spree, but it was
more than just like going to your local RII and
getting a few new items. You're probably thinking, oh, I
can handle a bigger payment in my life. It seems
like taking on a not alone that you couldn't afford
me have been like the happy medium for a lot
of folks. Yeah, the activity du jure back in the Bay, Yeah, well,
(08:43):
I mean I just yeah, I think when you're refinancing,
the goal is should be not to pay the lowest
amount in your monthly payment. It is to get rid
of that loan as quickly as possible, or it should
be so it's not like how little can I pay
every month to get rid of this car payment? And
who cares how long? It's how much can I pay
in order to get rid of this car debt as
(09:04):
soon as possible? That really should be the thinking. We're
payment buyers in this country, right, and that's not a
good thing. On another nefarious car financing note, Matt More,
car dealers are talking up the ten thousand dollars annual
tax break that you can snag when you buy a
new car finished in the good old US of A.
And this was infused into the Build Back No what
(09:25):
is it called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act? Right?
Build Back Better? That's all these BBB's, right, which just
sounds so enticing when you're buying a new car and
the FNI person is saying, hey, this is such a
great deal, like you're going to get a tax break
of the ten thousand dollars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, tax breaks.
Look how great this is? And they're making it sound
like it's the best thing since sliced bread. Holy callous.
A lot of money, right, But it's kind of like
(09:46):
the homeowner's tax break, right that many people don't actually get.
Something like ten percent of homeowners actually get the tax break,
but many more think they're getting a tax break for
owning a home. And the truth is you're only going
to get the highest annual tax break if you buy
one hundred than fifty thousand dollars car. Finance is seven
percent one hundred and fifty thousand dollars car. So who
do those exist? I'm sure, yeah, of course they do.
(10:07):
But like you're a psycho, if you're like or you're
incredibly rich much you have much more money, yeah than
the two of us. But on a forty thousand dollars
new car purchase at the same interest rate, your tax
savings would be a little over five hundred bucks. So
think about that. Are you going to go buy a
forty thousand dollars new car finance it at seven percent
in order to save five hundred bucks a year? I mean,
that would be foolhardy. You Also, you know, you don't
(10:29):
qualify if you're single making more than one hundred thousand
dollars or if you're married making more than two hundred
thousand dollars, can't imagine buying one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars car if you know that's where you're how much
money you're earning. Also, a lot of makes and models
don't qualify, so you got to check the vin first.
You can do that on the NITSA website. But you know,
while this tax break is better than nothing, I guess
(10:50):
I think it's actually the offering the wrong kind of
incentive to people, Matt to get Hey, yeah, finance that
car so you can get a tax break for it.
And really it's still a drop in the bucket of
the cost of your new cars. So this is just
bad math if you're buying a new car because you
think you're gonna save a little bit of money on taxes.
That's right, man. I wonder if we are now at
a tipping point in the job market, because obviously sound
(11:11):
like there tipping point. It was a popular book. Man.
I'm thinking about like the post pandemic times, right, like
that was a killer period of time for workers. Getting
a new job was just leading to record pay increases
because the demand for employees, it was incredibly steep. The
supply of folks for those jobs was limited, But then
we've seen that level out and unemployment numbers are still
(11:34):
actually good historically, but the job market just feels a
little stagnant, and we've seen more recent reports of just
bigger name companies out there cutting head counts by significantly,
like tens of thousands of employees. I'm specifically thinking of
Ups and Amazon who target maybe too. And at the
same time, worries about artificial intelligence, how that's going to
(11:55):
impact the job market, Those questions abound, and we do
see the signs that it is impacting young folks, specifically
at entry level jobs, and I think it's a problem
that could compound even more as those entry level jobs
lay are typically the gateway into more permanent, more higher
paying jobs. Right. You don't typically take some of those
initial jobs because you think it's just a fantastic job,
(12:17):
but it's the opportunity and it being more of a
stepping stone, and that's that feels like a problem, that's
just kind of that we're speeding towards, still off pretty
far off the distance, but especially as some of these
during workers are trying to just get their foot in
the door and to get into some of these companies
that they want to work. For sure, it's yeah, it's
a little worrisome to see college grads getting a degree
(12:39):
and then coming out in a time where it feels
like some of those starter jobs are harder to come by,
because you're right, those starter jobs lead to careers that
eventually lead lead to moving up and lead to earning more.
And if you can't get the starter job, it's hard
to get on that track. How they get out those
lower percentile income brackets. Yeah, still, I don't think I
would overreact to some of these headlines. I think far
(13:02):
fewer people think that AI is a threat to their
job then think it's going to impact the job market
in general if you look at the statistics, so kind
of like so many other things in this life, it's
less personal pessimism like oh AI is going to mess
me over, and it's more of like a general wariness.
I'm not sure how AI is going to impact the
job the way jobs function in this country overall. And
(13:24):
I'd say the two of us, Matt, we're banking on
the fact that AI is going to make workers more
productive kind of like the computers kind of like Internet,
an internetimistic here, Yeah, and that it's not going to
be an existential threat to labor as a whole, but
they're going to be growing pains, and I think we're
seeing some of those growing pains. They are going to
be layoffs in some sectors, probably specifically in the tech sector,
(13:47):
but I'm pretty sure we're also see companies that let
too many workers go because of AI like rehiring in
the coming years. I think they're going to be like, oh, hey,
it's going to change everything. Let's call the workforce, and
then they're going to realize we hold too much. We
need some of those people back, and I think they're
gonna regret some of the some of the layoffs that
they made. So's it's a little consolation for current job
(14:08):
seekers serving a tough time. But I just don't think
these hiring frees are gonna last forever sure, or the
folks who are getting cut right, because it is it
feels like a tailff two job markets right, because it
depends on it totally depends on the type of job
you have. If it if you are in a more administrative,
more data review or of job that involves a lot
of digital monotony, not monotony, but like digital repetition, Like
(14:30):
these are one hundred percent the types of jobs that
are going to be replaced, and so if you are
in that kind of a field, you probably are thinking no, no, no.
For me, this is totally personal, yeah, as I play paralegals,
like that's a job that's like up for extinction as
opposed to the jobs that are going to be more
difficult to replace, like healthcare or skilled skill trades or
(14:54):
you know, teachers even right, like I could one d
percent see AI being more of like the assistant in
this in a similar way that we can't envision our
life now without the Internet. And that's so much of
it too, man, the fear of the unknown as we
look ahead, Like you mentioned that the Internet being a
good example, Well that's easy now as we look back
and we are able to directly see all the industries
and jobs that have been created because of the Internet.
(15:16):
But we're at the very beginning of this as we're
projecting and looking forward, and it's just for a lot
of people it's scary because we like the creativity and
the clairvoyance to know what's actually going to happen. I
don't know, but there will likely be some of that
creative destruction taking place and brand new sectors of jobs
that we're not even that aren't even on people's radars.
(15:36):
You think about the impact of the Internet, like you
think about the dot com bubble and all of the
companies that we're trying to do something novel because the
Internet now existed, and so many of those companies no
longer exist. Like there is even in particular, as new
technologies are coming into the mainstream, there are a lot
(15:58):
of new startups like vying to be the next successful
company that are gonna that they're gonna they're they're gonna
change right how we all interact with AI. Some of
them are going to be highly successful, and many of
them will fall by the wayside, and that is kind
of part of how the economic cycle of new technology works,
and they're winners and losers in it. But that's like
cool comfort for somebody in the job market who feels
(16:21):
like put out the pasture directly under threat. Yeah, it
feels they're geting the heisman when they're looking for jobs
because the market's tough and because there's a lot of
kind of AI turmoil happening, a lot of these companies
are looking to get leaner. On a related note, did
you see the Business Insider story about folks who are
basically taking like their side gigs and not side gig
as in like driving for Uber or Left or whatever,
(16:43):
but like a side business finding ways to diversify their income,
essentially because they are a little concerned about the prospects
of their future at that company. And this is something
we've talked about it's like for a while. Yeah, essentially,
the reason you and I initially started investing in real
estate was to happen like another stream of income, not
just like building up money in our four oh one k's,
(17:04):
but saying, like, okay, what does it look like that
it makes it easier than to launch out and start
your own small business because you're not fully reliant on
income from your day job exactly, which we felt personally
when we launched the podcasts almost a decade ago at
this point, no, not quite that long. But I do
think it comes down to the individual because it makes
me think about some folks who are more like like
(17:27):
they're more of the renaissance man or a woman, right,
like they're more of a polymath, and if you are
the type of person who can take on different roles,
who can be more adaptive to the changing markets out there,
I think that this is a path that you could
take that could serve you well. But I do think
that there are some folks who are specialists. They're experts
(17:48):
in their given field, and were they to divide their
attention away from their job, you would essentially lose that edge.
And so it's almost a path of Okay, which path
do I want to take? Given the constraints of time, right,
I can't do it. Also, which one am I going
to choose here? And I think a highly personal question.
It's very personal. I think it just takes knowing yourself
what kind of satisfaction you're getting out of your job.
(18:09):
Because I think for some folks to hear to see
the business, because they profiled all these success stories of like, oh, man,
he's making more money now with the side business and
it doesn't really matter that Microsoft let him go. I
think if there's someone who hears that and thinks, well,
that's what I need to do. But maybe for that person, man,
they are so well suited for their role in this
big company. And in fact, if they gave it a
(18:29):
little more attention to a little more effort. They could lead
this entire department. That kind of thing I don't want
to discount. Even though I'm highly entrepreneurial, there are some
folks who aren't. And like you said, I think it
is personal. It's good to know yourself agreed. Yeah, And
even just kind of thinking ahead about well, if you're worried,
if you are in that camp who's a little bit
worried about what's going to happen with AI, specifically in
(18:49):
regards to your job. I think planning ahead for a layoff.
We've got content about that up on the side of
how Tomney dot Com makes a lot of sense, like
financially getting your ducks in a row so that a
layoff doesn't hit you as hard as it otherwise. Would
you want to make hay while the sunshining right? You
want to the calm before the storm is the time
to prepare the ship, Matthew. So I just it's a
(19:10):
good smart to start thinking about that, whether that's streams
of income, whether that's saving more money, all the above.
We got more to get to on this episode, including
lunch is expensive. We'll get through that and more. Right
after this, sorrybody, we are back from the break. It
(19:32):
is now time for the ludicrous headline of the week,
and we have a selection this week from market Watch.
Headline reads, We're spending over one dollars a week on lunch.
How did ordering food at work become a luxury? Which? Man,
this article rubs me so the wrong way. I hate it.
I'm suppose you don't have like a tattoo of leftover
(19:53):
somewhere on everybody because you love leftovers more than anyone.
With my little deli container takeout plastic, yeah, is it
the is it the small, the medium or the large?
Most of my leftovers are in the medium. That would
be a cool tattoo. You should get that, Yeah, somewhere.
That's just way too committed to the whole the leftover game.
And no, this just rubs me the wrong way because
(20:14):
of the like, honestly, the expectation that this should be
something that someone should be able to afford, right, Like,
there's like this lifestyle entitlement that I so highly dislike.
And it's totally fine if you want to go out
there and spend that kind of money all lunch, but
you gotta be okay with it. You got to be
able to afford it. You got to know that you're
not going to be able to funnel those dollars towards
(20:35):
some other financial goal in your life. But to think
that it's this basic human rights so that that someone
should have seems preposterous. I think that's the thing that
hit me with this too, was like, how did ordering
food to work become a luxury? And it's like, eating
out for lunch every day of the week has always
been luxury. Yeah, of course that's a luxury. That's the
very definition of a luxury. Yeah, it's not a coach
(20:56):
handbag or something like that or whatever. It's a fancy
air Maze scarf. But it is totally a luxury to
think that you can eat out every single day and
not feel a massive impact on your budget. And one
hundred bucks a week, yeah, that's you're talking about like
four hundred plus dollars a month on food for lunch.
(21:18):
I can't imagine. I would love to run the numbers
on how much you and I spend on our lunches,
Like it's be hard to factor out because most of
the time it is leftovers from the dinner the night
before or for most folks, unfortunately, they're just like, yeah,
that's not worth keeping, and they just like scrape it
off into the trash can as opposed to sticking it.
It's like, Okay, no, that's a that's a medium deli
container size leftover that plus a couple eggs. You fry
(21:39):
it up. You got a nuke the leftovers, fry up
a couple eggs. I mean, that's like the definition of
decade of eating right there, with a yolk running over
the leftover braced beef that you oh my gosh, Like
I'm getting hungry. We haven't eaten lunch yet. I'm getting
hungry even thinking about that. Yeah, I think leftovers are
the answer here. And I think it's just also potting
(22:00):
yourself in the frame of mind to realize what is
a luxury and what isn't. I think if you and
maybe the only way you could go out to eat
lunch every day, Matt and not break the bank is
to go to the Costco food court. If you're doing that.
If you're doing that, you can probably forford to eat out,
But then you might not be the healthiest. You may
not be Oh my gosh. I was just talking Kate,
And now we're looking at pictures of like us, me
specifically back in the day, like before Kate and I
(22:21):
got married and I was poor man, like I was broke,
and I'm thinking through what did I eat? Because I
could tell from looking at the pictures that I'm my
skin didn't look at I was really skinny, and I
told her I was just like I didn't really cook
at home. I think I was just eating bowls of
cereal and like once a week I might go out
to McDonald's because back then they had like the value menu.
(22:41):
I get a cheeseburger, a side so expensive now I know,
a side salad, and then I'll get a parfait and
those three items, thinking that that was like a well
balanced meal. But in a similar way, you would also
be fooling yourself if you were going to the Costco
food court thinking that you're getting something similar. But any
just that, I think it's a really important thing to
mention though, it's just fast food is so crazy expensive
(23:03):
now too. You think you're going to save money by
going Okay, at least I'm gonna get fast food for
lunch instead. Sorry, no, that's expensive now. A big knac
meal is probably eleven or twelve dollars, and so you can. Yeah,
leftovers are way cheaper than that. By the way, I
didn't crush the numbers. I thought you were going to say,
we should run the numbers on knowing what our lunch costs. Yeah,
I'll tell you what it costs. What is costing you?
(23:23):
Were you to go out to lunch every day at
work instead of taking that one hundred dollars and investing
it over a forty year career, you are looking at
over one million dollars in the bank over a typical
forty year career from that. Oh my gosh, I don't
know what is and that's yeah, it was almost over
a million dollars even with the seven percent return, but
way seven hundred dollars. If one hundred dollars a week,
(23:45):
four hundred a month invested, those returns compounded in forty years,
you're gonna have I forget what the number was. That's crazy.
At eight percent was like one point something, and at
seven it was nine thirty four nine hundred and thirty
four thousand or something like that. So seven and a
half percent got you just over that one mil mark? Dude,
are we too frugal? So impressive. Sometimes I wonder are
we too frugal now because we've got other goals. There's
(24:07):
other things that we want to pursue. And oh, actually
there's an article. Okay, so the frugal Habits article. You
want to one. Yeah, so folks who are like watering
down their dish soap, their toothpaste even I think, right stretch,
I don't. I'm all cutting the toothpaste tube open. I
know our friend Maggie does that. I've never done that.
I've never done that either. I mean to each their own,
(24:29):
you know, like you need to be able to spend
your money where it counts. But I'm all for folks
assessing their spending, figuring out what moves the needle for them,
and in the areas where it's not, to be able
to cut back ruthlessly. Man. And it's hard not to
judge other people spending, But like, I love it when
they profile people because it gives you an insight into
how it is that people are spending their money. And
(24:49):
there's like a they talk about a lady She's like, yeah,
we've had to cut back on our dogs toy subscription.
I know that was the thing, and I'm not going
to hand on the pets. You know, I don't even
know people know that I used to have a great
Dane way back in the day, and that great Dane
ate a lot of food. I'm all for pets, but
a toy subscription where like toys are getting delivered to
(25:12):
this house on the rag for the pet it just
seems so insane. Man. Well, I think this article too.
It was highlighting people who are going like kind of
super hard in the frugal direction, almost to like an
insane degree that most people would not do. And I
feel two ways about that, because in one way, I'm like,
I mean, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not going
to water down my soap that's probably one step too far,
(25:33):
or cut up with my toothpaste tube. But I think
in the other vein, when you're paying that close attention
to the resources that you're using and how much you're
spending on even everyday basics and necessities, you're just going
to make a lot more progress on the money goals
that you have. So I'd be curious to know from
how to money listeners like how far they're willing to
go in the frugal the most extreme things done baffle me,
(25:55):
send us an email how to money pot at gmail
dot com. Let us know how frugal you're getting, because yeah,
I think in some ways, I'm like, yeah, it's a
little weird, it's a little off putting. I'm not one
of those super cupon oter types, but I do think
some people really get into it and they can save
a lot of money, and then, you know what, it
allows them to spend money in the ways that they
care about while they're still able to save and invest.
And the other people out there are just lamenting why
(26:17):
does it cost so much to eat out now? While
they're still eating out every day, they're not really questioning
their choices. Yeah, you got to question that. So while
we're talking about soap, you know, the real way to
save when it comes to closed detergent is to make
your own I have I told you that we do that.
So this is an effort that was spearheaded not by me,
but by my wife because she was so sick of
because it's really expensive when you buy like this, even
(26:38):
the big ones from Costco's, it costs a lot of
money and you just it's like, what forty cents a
load or thirty I don't know. She felt that we
were ripping through those so like too quickly. So now
I don't know exactly what I'll have to ask her
over the weekend. But like you, it's borax. It's like
washing soda. You put like a drop of whatever essential
oils you want, and we've been doing that for like
(26:59):
months now. Okay, I will ask her and see what
the actual breakdown is per load. But she's like, oh,
we are sitting. According to her, we're saving a ton
of money by making our own clothes detergent. You gotta
share this kind of stuff with the world. That's what
I'm doing. Let us know the recipe. Yeah, we'll post
it or something. Yeah, we'll post it. I speaking of
doing chores, Matt, we're not paying a robot to do
(27:21):
your chores. How would you feel about that? You don't
talking about the neo? Yeah, so this is one is
interesting because it's insane. This is like, I don't know,
I'm not really necessarily interested in having a robot in
my home, but I think it's probably going to become
more common in the coming years, not just because of
the price tag, right, twenty grand how much this robot
cost her? I think you can pay like five or
(27:42):
six hundred bucks a month to lease it. Crazy, yeah,
But it's also the dystopian vibe vibes, like can't you
imagine treating that robot telling you to do all the
chores and then it just being like super pissed that
you treated it like Cinderella choking you out in your
sleep or something like that. That's the That's the image
I have in my head. I'm not worried about it,
but it's just it does feel so far removed that
(28:02):
it just is dumb, yeah, you know, or the current abilities.
The Wall Street Journal tech writer had spent a day
with this robot and it couldn't do anything like it
fumbled every task, so so stupid. This is I don't
get it. It's ridiculous. I couldn't be any less interested
in getting something like that, Like I couldn't. We did
rumba like the little Robot vacuum and even that, and
(28:24):
granted we had an older version of that thing, but
even that struggled at times to do a very specific
task that it was very much created to do. I've
been hoping that the robot lawnmowers would get those Evidently
are they okay, because it seems like that would save
a ton of money in time, Like that seems like
a great spot for a robot. But inside my house
doing my dishes and like I don't know, tending to
(28:45):
my children, just getting in the way, Like no, no, here,
here's the problem. So yes, the fact that it costs
so much money is ridiculous, but the whole equation needs
to be reversed. They like, they need to pay me
to be able to test drive this thing in my
own because I feel like they are now currently in
the game of acquiring and gathering data. This is why
(29:06):
Tesla is so great, right, Not only were they able
to create a successful EV company, but now they've got
these driving robots essentially like all across the country gathering
data for Tesla, and they use that data. I mean,
think about the amount of video data and experience that
they have in their servers and the ability to then
iterate using that data on future products to be able
(29:28):
to make them even more and more seamless. Like that
is the model, not this clunky yeah robot that the
user had asked to crack open a walnut and it
couldn't do it or something like that. Yeah, Well, in
early adopters always pay too much and get an inferior product.
And if you just wait, if you wait a few
years and you really want one of those robots to
(29:50):
do your chores for you, I guarantee you it's going
to cost a heck of a lot less money, and
it's going to be so much better than it currently is.
So maybe just don't not for the first gin totally
agree Jo. Let's talk about averag and this is given
the caveat that our show is of course ad supported,
so you know, we'll discuss the story with that acknowledgment.
But advertisements, ads, they're popping up in places that you
(30:12):
wouldn't have found them in the past. How do you say, so, Ted,
He writes a substack Joya, I believe is it? Joya?
I always always see it's a weird ge I always
want to say Geo because I always read his stuff,
but I never hear his name being said. But all right,
he's got one of the best substacks out there. He's
really smart, really thoughtful. But he he wrote about this recently.
(30:32):
Ads they're popping up on the screen of your car.
This is on jeep specifically. There it's highlighting the extended warranty. Well,
those warranties are thousands and thousands. They're so expensive they're
hardly ever worth it. But also Samsung has these really
expensive fridges now where ads are popping up there, so
you're you're you know, you're dropping thirty five hundred dollars
(30:53):
and then you've got it displaying ads. Yeah to you.
You got a screen on your fridge because you thought
it was cool, and now it's just serving you ads
all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is an
argument for going low tech, writing things down on a
sheet of paper maybe instead of having the I don't know,
the day's agenda projected onto the front of your your
fancy fridge. And this is no, this is not a
knock against Samsung. I think they're a fantastic company. We've
(31:15):
got a lot of Samsung products, but I will not
be myself paying for that really fancy Samsung fridge. And
I think the problem the rub is when you pay
full price for something and it still comes with ads.
I don't mind having the trade off, like the streaming services, right, yeah,
you pay more for something so you don't have to
see the ads, right, And this is like the yeah,
and I love that the opposite. Hey, there's that trade
(31:36):
off and you have to decide for yourself. It makes
me think of you remember when we talked about Telly,
which was this fifty five inch television with like ads
at the bottom. I signed up where they never sent
me one. I don't know what happened to the company
at this point, but that I was willing. That's like
an informed trade offf where you're like, you're giving me
the TV for free, and yes, I'm subjecting myself to
(31:57):
more ads because of it, but I didn't pay. I'd
be really upset if I paid full price for a
nice TV and then they start popping up ads while
I'm not watching something like that would be incredibly frustrating.
But if they're going to give me the TV for
free and say, hey, ads are going to be on
whenever you're not watching your show, I think I would
be far more okay with that. That'd be kosher to me.
(32:18):
You're making that informed decision, yeah right, yeah, And like
we just end up paying with our attention so much
of the time now when these endless ads are served
our way. When it comes to social media, something estimates
show that four and ten posts are now ads, which
makes me question why we still use these services. Man. Well, yeah,
when you're thumbing through scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, yeah,
(32:39):
maybe you see a little bit of like your friend's contents,
but so much of its like influencers you don't actually
care about, or it's ads that you are not thrilled
to see something. It feels like half of the content
isn't the content you actually came there for. I totally agree.
And do you want to know a solution for that
aside from just deleting completely? Oh? Man, I totally saw all.
(33:01):
This is the kind of stuff that's fed to me.
This guy created like this five pound phone case and
it's basically like a weight that you stick your phone
in and this makes it look like the giant Zach
from the Save by the Bell phone essentially except for
your iPhone. So that's one way you can do it.
Another well, specifically on Instagrams, I've basically been off of
it for a solid year, and I think I've been
(33:23):
much happier because of that. But I've been on there
recently helping Kate because she's watching some ceramic arts stuff
on there, and we've been talking more about social media
and I came across the same thing. I was like,
oh my gosh, I'm scrolling through my feed. I'm like,
I don't follow this person. Why is this showing up? Yeah,
here's another ad, here's another sponsor post. You want to
know the secret why this is gonna be great for
(33:44):
everyone out there who is on Instagram. Go to the
top of your app where it says Instagram. Right, it's
like written in the script at the top middle of
your screen. Tap it and it'll drop down and you
can change it to your followers, like who it is
that you are following, I'm sorry you're following, and it'll
change the feed to just those actual folks, no ads,
(34:05):
no suggested posts. Does this seem illegal? And like I
even hasn't seem illegal. I just shocked. Why would that
be there? Yeah, because no one touches that. I guess
I don't know. It's crazy, like it's it's something like
it's either your your start or favorite posts or people
or something like that. But then it's literally just Also,
one of the other options is following, so only the
(34:25):
people that you're following don't serve ads. So I literally
did this last night. That's why I was excited to
share it because I was looking into it because I
was getting so fed up with why I was I'm like,
is there a way to see less of this other crap?
And that's evidently a way that you can do it.
Now that I've like spoken the system, spoken it into
the universe, I'm afraid that it's going to be disappearing soon.
But for all the how to Money listeners out there
(34:46):
for the time being, try it out there you go,
You're welcome. All right, Matt, that's gonna do it. For
this episode of How Too Money Podcast, I think we
should always refer to ourselves a we how too Money Podcast?
Should we say our actual corporation name and how we
file our taxes and in what state were incorporated? All right,
but we hope you found this helpful. You can find
links to some of the stories that we mentioned on
(35:08):
this episode up on our website at howtomoney dot com.
That's right, tons of other resources up there for you
as well. But until next time, Buddy, best friends are
best friends out? No ads, dude, that's crazy Boom. I
(35:31):
just went through my whole feed from the past twenty
four hours. It's amazing. It's not that bad. Then it
is a workaround because you have to do a couple
additional steps. But I'm guessing. I'm guessing that most people
aren't taking those additional steps to avoid it, right, And
I think there's going to be more widely known though
I don't know. I've never heard anybody talk about it. Yeah,
but it's amazing
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel, I'm Matt. Today
we're talking ridiculous, car refinancing, occupation, consternation, and adds everywhere.
(00:26):
That's right, buddy. This is our Friday flight where we
cover the best headlines, the news that's going to pertain
to your personal finances, only the most, only the best,
only the finest. This is the cream of the crop.
Before we get to all that, though, a quick little
update from I think it was Greg who wrote in,
and he was talking about the recision period that states
allow specifically for time shares. So we recently talked about
(00:49):
how you were like laying whether or not you're going
to go to the timeshare pitch. You said no because
ultimately they said your wife's gotta be there. I was
like for it, and they were like, no, you're not
not unless your wife comes. And I'm like, ah, man,
well she doesn't changes the game, which makes sense. Yeah,
it totally makes sense to me, right because if it's
just one person that's whole that seems like a financial optimizer,
(01:11):
it's that's a divide and conquer kind of move there, right,
Like like you are, You're you're approaching this very strategically,
what are they doing it like that? But you pointed
out if there's two people, is that if you go
alone and then you go back to the room and
your spouse is like, what did you just sign up for? Yeah,
that then those people are more likely the cancels, whereas
if you make the decision together, you're unlikely to cancel.
The time, there's like a commit there's something that happens
(01:33):
from a commitment standpoint where there's two people, right, like
so on, if it was just you, it would have
been like the optimizer. But with two people that spend
that amount of time and energy into it, it feels
like you've you've started something, You've run through the gauntlet. Yeah,
like you've created relationships, you started to dream about what
this scould look like together. Yeah, there's like there's a
sun cost fallacy involved right where it's just like, well,
(01:54):
we spent all that time doing that and you are
you're only looking at that as opposed to thinking about
what this is gonna what this will cost you in
the future, And that's at the core of I think
what they're trying to Yeah, promote Actually, I spent two
hours here and I signed on the dotted line. I
guess we're committed, and probably a lot of people don't
even know about the recision period that exists, depending on
what state you're in. It's somewhere between three and fifteen
(02:17):
days after you've signed on the dotted line for that
time share. So you do have we actually let's link
to that in the show notes, OK, for folks out
there to know that you do have a cooling off period,
or you can say, yeah, I actually don't want to
do that, which is I think really important, especially because
that is such a highly I think it's an emotional
decision that's made emotionally so much of the time, because
(02:39):
you understandably, the human instinct is you kind of want
to please the person who's trying to sell you the
time share. They're spending that much time with you, you don't
want to disappoint them. Right, you're sharing a meal together.
They were probably really nice to you, and so you're like,
all right, yeah, I and we'll get to take some vacations.
Will be great. But time shares for most people don't
make much financial sense. And even if you really want
(02:59):
a timeshare, there are much cheaper ways to get a
timeshare than paying full freight at one of those presentations.
That's right, So Joe, let's kick things off. You want
to talk about affordable vehicles. Those don't exist anymore, man,
I think that's an oxymoron if I've ever heard one.
There are some out there. I get very few, very few. Yeah.
I actually was looking up at the value of our
(03:20):
minivan the other the other day, and I was like, oh,
it's worth like less than six thousand dollars. Now it's affordable.
It's basically hit that fully depreciated mark. I don't know
that's going to go down to value very much. So
there are some cheap cars. You just can't buy mine. Sorry, yeah,
you need that thing. Man, What did you put for
the condition? Because that's I know what I know. Oh,
it's definitely not excellent. Okay, but did you do pretty
(03:41):
good or did you do four? Oh no, probably whatever's
in the middle. Yeah, that's pretty easy. Yeah, it's got
some things in that. At this point, I want to
I want to think that mine's an excellent condition, but
I know it's not. Like in my heart it's an
excellent condition, but there are certain things about it that
I know are excellent. But then I know from an
outsider's perspective, they would see all some of the busted
up thing, some of the spray painted side view mirrors
(04:02):
that creative fathers three on there in order for it
to look slightly better. They might notice that, well, I
think my sc it makes it sound so ratchet, which
I think both of our fans probably are. At this one.
I would say my six four Runner is in mint condition.
I'd put that in excellent, but would be excellent. So
how long will it stay that way? We'll see do
(04:23):
you feel like it's already gone downhill since you've gotten
it a little bit. I'm doing my best, though, But
they kept it in a garage. I don't have space
in a garage for two cars. I have a one
car garage. People, what if you can clear everything out,
squeeze both those suckers in there. I don't think it's possible, really, Yeah, okay,
we can try one day. Okay, so I'll help you
try it this weekend if you want. Let's talk about
expensive cars. Though. We have cheap cars, but the average
(04:45):
American is opting for really really expensive ones. And I'm
over here reticent to spend you know, five figures on
a car. But people are spending fifty k on average
on new cars. That's the we've crossed that threshold now,
it's insane. But because of high costs and high interest rates,
this means people are paying more for cars than ever before,
(05:05):
which means that the vast majority find themselves on like
a debt treadmill for a really long time. And we've
talked about this kind of ad nausea map, but there
was a new there was some new stats that came
out this week from Caribou who they help people refinance
their loan and shop around and get a better deal,
and they said that the most popular choice these days
when people refinance a car loan is an eighty four
(05:26):
month long loan, which I didn't know. I knew you
could get that out on a new car. I didn't
realize you could refinance into an eighty four month long loan.
It's crazy. So let's say you get a new car,
you're in it for a couple of years, and then
you refinance again into another seven year loan. Yeah, maybe
you're able to save some money every month, and maybe
you lowered your interest rate. You've probably done both of
(05:47):
those things, but it means you're going to be in
the loan for even longer. Some of those folks are
going to be in that like a car loan because
they take one out and refinance for something like nine
or ten years. It's crazy hard to really have them. Yeah,
what's so the first thing I think of when I
hear eighty four months? It makes me think of people
who have like an eighteen month old. It's like, no, no, no,
you need to go ahead and switch to my kids
(06:09):
a year and a half. He's two years old. Like
they're trying to obscure the fact of how long of
a period this is, I think by saying something like
eighty four months. But the journal actually had an article
about how repomen are actually busier than ever. They're basically
working around the clock repossessing vehicles where folks aren't making
a payments, a dangerous job. I had a friend who
(06:29):
did that for I think he still doesn't actually, and
I believe it. He has a run ins man Like
people do not like their car being taken out of
their driveway in the middle of the night. But ye,
when the payments aren't being made, this is going to
take it is what happened. That's what you agree to
and delinquencies on car loans are up across all income levels.
But even with lower payments spread out over a longer
(06:50):
period of time, way too many people are out there
and they're unable to afford their ride. So just be
careful when you are buying a car. You do not
have to pay an arm and a leg in order
to get a good one. And in that article as well,
a fascinating stat was that home debt, so they had
like different types of debt, so like obviously auto loan debt,
but then they had home debt, right, so like your
(07:12):
mortgage or home equity loans, they're down significantly. They're down
something like fifty percent when looking at the same period
of time, which is is just fascinating that it seems
like something has changed in how it is that we
view vehicles, which I kind of think is a good
thing it. I guess one way to interpret the data
is that more folks are seeing their vehicles more as
a tool. They're seeing it as a more expendable thing.
(07:35):
And I think some of them might have to do
with the rise of uber and left right, like it's
just a way to get from point A to point B,
as opposed to maybe having your identity so tightly tied
to a possession like that too, to something like a vehicle,
which have just really fascinating. The fact that, yeah, mortgage delinquencies,
home equity loan delinquencies are down about this like fifty percent,
(07:57):
whereas auto loaned delinquencies are up fifty percent over the
past fifteen years. Yeah. Crazy. Well, I mean I think, gosh,
you want to keep a roof over your head stability,
but it seems it's just interesting. Yeah, when you look
at the same period of time, though, I think some
of it also has to do with not to take
it back to the pandemic, but stimmy checks, right, Like,
we found ourselves with a lot more money in our banks.
(08:19):
It wasn't so much money that you went and bought
went on like a home shopping spree, but it was
more than just like going to your local RII and
getting a few new items. You're probably thinking, oh, I
can handle a bigger payment in my life. It seems
like taking on a not alone that you couldn't afford
me have been like the happy medium for a lot
of folks. Yeah, the activity du jure back in the Bay, Yeah, well,
(08:43):
I mean I just yeah, I think when you're refinancing,
the goal is should be not to pay the lowest
amount in your monthly payment. It is to get rid
of that loan as quickly as possible, or it should
be so it's not like how little can I pay
every month to get rid of this car payment? And
who cares how long? It's how much can I pay
in order to get rid of this car debt as
(09:04):
soon as possible? That really should be the thinking. We're
payment buyers in this country, right, and that's not a
good thing. On another nefarious car financing note, Matt More,
car dealers are talking up the ten thousand dollars annual
tax break that you can snag when you buy a
new car finished in the good old US of A.
And this was infused into the Build Back No what
(09:25):
is it called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act? Right?
Build Back Better? That's all these BBB's, right, which just
sounds so enticing when you're buying a new car and
the FNI person is saying, hey, this is such a
great deal, like you're going to get a tax break
of the ten thousand dollars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, tax breaks.
Look how great this is? And they're making it sound
like it's the best thing since sliced bread. Holy callous.
A lot of money, right, But it's kind of like
(09:46):
the homeowner's tax break, right that many people don't actually get.
Something like ten percent of homeowners actually get the tax break,
but many more think they're getting a tax break for
owning a home. And the truth is you're only going
to get the highest annual tax break if you buy
one hundred than fifty thousand dollars car. Finance is seven
percent one hundred and fifty thousand dollars car. So who
do those exist? I'm sure, yeah, of course they do.
(10:07):
But like you're a psycho, if you're like or you're
incredibly rich much you have much more money, yeah than
the two of us. But on a forty thousand dollars
new car purchase at the same interest rate, your tax
savings would be a little over five hundred bucks. So
think about that. Are you going to go buy a
forty thousand dollars new car finance it at seven percent
in order to save five hundred bucks a year? I mean,
that would be foolhardy. You Also, you know, you don't
(10:29):
qualify if you're single making more than one hundred thousand
dollars or if you're married making more than two hundred
thousand dollars, can't imagine buying one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars car if you know that's where you're how much
money you're earning. Also, a lot of makes and models
don't qualify, so you got to check the vin first.
You can do that on the NITSA website. But you know,
while this tax break is better than nothing, I guess
(10:50):
I think it's actually the offering the wrong kind of
incentive to people, Matt to get Hey, yeah, finance that
car so you can get a tax break for it.
And really it's still a drop in the bucket of
the cost of your new cars. So this is just
bad math if you're buying a new car because you
think you're gonna save a little bit of money on taxes.
That's right, man. I wonder if we are now at
a tipping point in the job market, because obviously sound
(11:11):
like there tipping point. It was a popular book. Man.
I'm thinking about like the post pandemic times, right, like
that was a killer period of time for workers. Getting
a new job was just leading to record pay increases
because the demand for employees, it was incredibly steep. The
supply of folks for those jobs was limited, But then
we've seen that level out and unemployment numbers are still
(11:34):
actually good historically, but the job market just feels a
little stagnant, and we've seen more recent reports of just
bigger name companies out there cutting head counts by significantly,
like tens of thousands of employees. I'm specifically thinking of
Ups and Amazon who target maybe too. And at the
same time, worries about artificial intelligence, how that's going to
(11:55):
impact the job market, Those questions abound, and we do
see the signs that it is impacting young folks, specifically
at entry level jobs, and I think it's a problem
that could compound even more as those entry level jobs
lay are typically the gateway into more permanent, more higher
paying jobs. Right. You don't typically take some of those
initial jobs because you think it's just a fantastic job,
(12:17):
but it's the opportunity and it being more of a
stepping stone, and that's that feels like a problem, that's
just kind of that we're speeding towards, still off pretty
far off the distance, but especially as some of these
during workers are trying to just get their foot in
the door and to get into some of these companies
that they want to work. For sure, it's yeah, it's
a little worrisome to see college grads getting a degree
(12:39):
and then coming out in a time where it feels
like some of those starter jobs are harder to come by,
because you're right, those starter jobs lead to careers that
eventually lead lead to moving up and lead to earning more.
And if you can't get the starter job, it's hard
to get on that track. How they get out those
lower percentile income brackets. Yeah, still, I don't think I
would overreact to some of these headlines. I think far
(13:02):
fewer people think that AI is a threat to their
job then think it's going to impact the job market
in general if you look at the statistics, so kind
of like so many other things in this life, it's
less personal pessimism like oh AI is going to mess
me over, and it's more of like a general wariness.
I'm not sure how AI is going to impact the
job the way jobs function in this country overall. And
(13:24):
I'd say the two of us, Matt, we're banking on
the fact that AI is going to make workers more
productive kind of like the computers kind of like Internet,
an internetimistic here, Yeah, and that it's not going to
be an existential threat to labor as a whole, but
they're going to be growing pains, and I think we're
seeing some of those growing pains. They are going to
be layoffs in some sectors, probably specifically in the tech sector,
(13:47):
but I'm pretty sure we're also see companies that let
too many workers go because of AI like rehiring in
the coming years. I think they're going to be like, oh, hey,
it's going to change everything. Let's call the workforce, and
then they're going to realize we hold too much. We
need some of those people back, and I think they're
gonna regret some of the some of the layoffs that
they made. So's it's a little consolation for current job
(14:08):
seekers serving a tough time. But I just don't think
these hiring frees are gonna last forever sure, or the
folks who are getting cut right, because it is it
feels like a tailff two job markets right, because it
depends on it totally depends on the type of job
you have. If it if you are in a more administrative,
more data review or of job that involves a lot
of digital monotony, not monotony, but like digital repetition, Like
(14:30):
these are one hundred percent the types of jobs that
are going to be replaced, and so if you are
in that kind of a field, you probably are thinking no, no, no.
For me, this is totally personal, yeah, as I play paralegals,
like that's a job that's like up for extinction as
opposed to the jobs that are going to be more
difficult to replace, like healthcare or skilled skill trades or
(14:54):
you know, teachers even right, like I could one d
percent see AI being more of like the assistant in
this in a similar way that we can't envision our
life now without the Internet. And that's so much of
it too, man, the fear of the unknown as we
look ahead, Like you mentioned that the Internet being a
good example, Well that's easy now as we look back
and we are able to directly see all the industries
and jobs that have been created because of the Internet.
(15:16):
But we're at the very beginning of this as we're
projecting and looking forward, and it's just for a lot
of people it's scary because we like the creativity and
the clairvoyance to know what's actually going to happen. I
don't know, but there will likely be some of that
creative destruction taking place and brand new sectors of jobs
that we're not even that aren't even on people's radars.
(15:36):
You think about the impact of the Internet, like you
think about the dot com bubble and all of the
companies that we're trying to do something novel because the
Internet now existed, and so many of those companies no
longer exist. Like there is even in particular, as new
technologies are coming into the mainstream, there are a lot
(15:58):
of new startups like vying to be the next successful
company that are gonna that they're gonna they're they're gonna
change right how we all interact with AI. Some of
them are going to be highly successful, and many of
them will fall by the wayside, and that is kind
of part of how the economic cycle of new technology works,
and they're winners and losers in it. But that's like
cool comfort for somebody in the job market who feels
(16:21):
like put out the pasture directly under threat. Yeah, it
feels they're geting the heisman when they're looking for jobs
because the market's tough and because there's a lot of
kind of AI turmoil happening, a lot of these companies
are looking to get leaner. On a related note, did
you see the Business Insider story about folks who are
basically taking like their side gigs and not side gig
as in like driving for Uber or Left or whatever,
(16:43):
but like a side business finding ways to diversify their income,
essentially because they are a little concerned about the prospects
of their future at that company. And this is something
we've talked about it's like for a while. Yeah, essentially,
the reason you and I initially started investing in real
estate was to happen like another stream of income, not
just like building up money in our four oh one k's,
(17:04):
but saying, like, okay, what does it look like that
it makes it easier than to launch out and start
your own small business because you're not fully reliant on
income from your day job exactly, which we felt personally
when we launched the podcasts almost a decade ago at
this point, no, not quite that long. But I do
think it comes down to the individual because it makes
me think about some folks who are more like like
(17:27):
they're more of the renaissance man or a woman, right,
like they're more of a polymath, and if you are
the type of person who can take on different roles,
who can be more adaptive to the changing markets out there,
I think that this is a path that you could
take that could serve you well. But I do think
that there are some folks who are specialists. They're experts
(17:48):
in their given field, and were they to divide their
attention away from their job, you would essentially lose that edge.
And so it's almost a path of Okay, which path
do I want to take? Given the constraints of time, right,
I can't do it. Also, which one am I going
to choose here? And I think a highly personal question.
It's very personal. I think it just takes knowing yourself
what kind of satisfaction you're getting out of your job.
(18:09):
Because I think for some folks to hear to see
the business, because they profiled all these success stories of like, oh, man,
he's making more money now with the side business and
it doesn't really matter that Microsoft let him go. I
think if there's someone who hears that and thinks, well,
that's what I need to do. But maybe for that person, man,
they are so well suited for their role in this
big company. And in fact, if they gave it a
(18:29):
little more attention to a little more effort. They could lead
this entire department. That kind of thing I don't want
to discount. Even though I'm highly entrepreneurial, there are some
folks who aren't. And like you said, I think it
is personal. It's good to know yourself agreed. Yeah, And
even just kind of thinking ahead about well, if you're worried,
if you are in that camp who's a little bit
worried about what's going to happen with AI, specifically in
(18:49):
regards to your job. I think planning ahead for a layoff.
We've got content about that up on the side of
how Tomney dot Com makes a lot of sense, like
financially getting your ducks in a row so that a
layoff doesn't hit you as hard as it otherwise. Would
you want to make hay while the sunshining right? You
want to the calm before the storm is the time
to prepare the ship, Matthew. So I just it's a
(19:10):
good smart to start thinking about that, whether that's streams
of income, whether that's saving more money, all the above.
We got more to get to on this episode, including
lunch is expensive. We'll get through that and more. Right
after this, sorrybody, we are back from the break. It
(19:32):
is now time for the ludicrous headline of the week,
and we have a selection this week from market Watch.
Headline reads, We're spending over one dollars a week on lunch.
How did ordering food at work become a luxury? Which? Man,
this article rubs me so the wrong way. I hate it.
I'm suppose you don't have like a tattoo of leftover
(19:53):
somewhere on everybody because you love leftovers more than anyone.
With my little deli container takeout plastic, yeah, is it
the is it the small, the medium or the large?
Most of my leftovers are in the medium. That would
be a cool tattoo. You should get that, Yeah, somewhere.
That's just way too committed to the whole the leftover game.
And no, this just rubs me the wrong way because
(20:14):
of the like, honestly, the expectation that this should be
something that someone should be able to afford, right, Like,
there's like this lifestyle entitlement that I so highly dislike.
And it's totally fine if you want to go out
there and spend that kind of money all lunch, but
you gotta be okay with it. You got to be
able to afford it. You got to know that you're
not going to be able to funnel those dollars towards
(20:35):
some other financial goal in your life. But to think
that it's this basic human rights so that that someone
should have seems preposterous. I think that's the thing that
hit me with this too, was like, how did ordering
food to work become a luxury? And it's like, eating
out for lunch every day of the week has always
been luxury. Yeah, of course that's a luxury. That's the
very definition of a luxury. Yeah, it's not a coach
(20:56):
handbag or something like that or whatever. It's a fancy
air Maze scarf. But it is totally a luxury to
think that you can eat out every single day and
not feel a massive impact on your budget. And one
hundred bucks a week, yeah, that's you're talking about like
four hundred plus dollars a month on food for lunch.
(21:18):
I can't imagine. I would love to run the numbers
on how much you and I spend on our lunches,
Like it's be hard to factor out because most of
the time it is leftovers from the dinner the night
before or for most folks, unfortunately, they're just like, yeah,
that's not worth keeping, and they just like scrape it
off into the trash can as opposed to sticking it.
It's like, Okay, no, that's a that's a medium deli
container size leftover that plus a couple eggs. You fry
(21:39):
it up. You got a nuke the leftovers, fry up
a couple eggs. I mean, that's like the definition of
decade of eating right there, with a yolk running over
the leftover braced beef that you oh my gosh, Like
I'm getting hungry. We haven't eaten lunch yet. I'm getting
hungry even thinking about that. Yeah, I think leftovers are
the answer here. And I think it's just also potting
(22:00):
yourself in the frame of mind to realize what is
a luxury and what isn't. I think if you and
maybe the only way you could go out to eat
lunch every day, Matt and not break the bank is
to go to the Costco food court. If you're doing that.
If you're doing that, you can probably forford to eat out,
But then you might not be the healthiest. You may
not be Oh my gosh. I was just talking Kate,
And now we're looking at pictures of like us, me
specifically back in the day, like before Kate and I
(22:21):
got married and I was poor man, like I was broke,
and I'm thinking through what did I eat? Because I
could tell from looking at the pictures that I'm my
skin didn't look at I was really skinny, and I
told her I was just like I didn't really cook
at home. I think I was just eating bowls of
cereal and like once a week I might go out
to McDonald's because back then they had like the value menu.
(22:41):
I get a cheeseburger, a side so expensive now I know,
a side salad, and then I'll get a parfait and
those three items, thinking that that was like a well
balanced meal. But in a similar way, you would also
be fooling yourself if you were going to the Costco
food court thinking that you're getting something similar. But any
just that, I think it's a really important thing to
mention though, it's just fast food is so crazy expensive
(23:03):
now too. You think you're going to save money by
going Okay, at least I'm gonna get fast food for
lunch instead. Sorry, no, that's expensive now. A big knac
meal is probably eleven or twelve dollars, and so you can. Yeah,
leftovers are way cheaper than that. By the way, I
didn't crush the numbers. I thought you were going to say,
we should run the numbers on knowing what our lunch costs. Yeah,
I'll tell you what it costs. What is costing you?
(23:23):
Were you to go out to lunch every day at
work instead of taking that one hundred dollars and investing
it over a forty year career, you are looking at
over one million dollars in the bank over a typical
forty year career from that. Oh my gosh, I don't
know what is and that's yeah, it was almost over
a million dollars even with the seven percent return, but
way seven hundred dollars. If one hundred dollars a week,
(23:45):
four hundred a month invested, those returns compounded in forty years,
you're gonna have I forget what the number was. That's crazy.
At eight percent was like one point something, and at
seven it was nine thirty four nine hundred and thirty
four thousand or something like that. So seven and a
half percent got you just over that one mil mark? Dude,
are we too frugal? So impressive. Sometimes I wonder are
we too frugal now because we've got other goals. There's
(24:07):
other things that we want to pursue. And oh, actually
there's an article. Okay, so the frugal Habits article. You
want to one. Yeah, so folks who are like watering
down their dish soap, their toothpaste even I think, right stretch,
I don't. I'm all cutting the toothpaste tube open. I
know our friend Maggie does that. I've never done that.
I've never done that either. I mean to each their own,
(24:29):
you know, like you need to be able to spend
your money where it counts. But I'm all for folks
assessing their spending, figuring out what moves the needle for them,
and in the areas where it's not, to be able
to cut back ruthlessly. Man. And it's hard not to
judge other people spending, But like, I love it when
they profile people because it gives you an insight into
how it is that people are spending their money. And
(24:49):
there's like a they talk about a lady She's like, yeah,
we've had to cut back on our dogs toy subscription.
I know that was the thing, and I'm not going
to hand on the pets. You know, I don't even
know people know that I used to have a great
Dane way back in the day, and that great Dane
ate a lot of food. I'm all for pets, but
a toy subscription where like toys are getting delivered to
(25:12):
this house on the rag for the pet it just
seems so insane. Man. Well, I think this article too.
It was highlighting people who are going like kind of
super hard in the frugal direction, almost to like an
insane degree that most people would not do. And I
feel two ways about that, because in one way, I'm like,
I mean, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not going
to water down my soap that's probably one step too far,
(25:33):
or cut up with my toothpaste tube. But I think
in the other vein, when you're paying that close attention
to the resources that you're using and how much you're
spending on even everyday basics and necessities, you're just going
to make a lot more progress on the money goals
that you have. So I'd be curious to know from
how to money listeners like how far they're willing to
go in the frugal the most extreme things done baffle me,
(25:55):
send us an email how to money pot at gmail
dot com. Let us know how frugal you're getting, because yeah,
I think in some ways, I'm like, yeah, it's a
little weird, it's a little off putting. I'm not one
of those super cupon oter types, but I do think
some people really get into it and they can save
a lot of money, and then, you know what, it
allows them to spend money in the ways that they
care about while they're still able to save and invest.
And the other people out there are just lamenting why
(26:17):
does it cost so much to eat out now? While
they're still eating out every day, they're not really questioning
their choices. Yeah, you got to question that. So while
we're talking about soap, you know, the real way to
save when it comes to closed detergent is to make
your own I have I told you that we do that.
So this is an effort that was spearheaded not by me,
but by my wife because she was so sick of
because it's really expensive when you buy like this, even
(26:38):
the big ones from Costco's, it costs a lot of
money and you just it's like, what forty cents a
load or thirty I don't know. She felt that we
were ripping through those so like too quickly. So now
I don't know exactly what I'll have to ask her
over the weekend. But like you, it's borax. It's like
washing soda. You put like a drop of whatever essential
oils you want, and we've been doing that for like
(26:59):
months now. Okay, I will ask her and see what
the actual breakdown is per load. But she's like, oh,
we are sitting. According to her, we're saving a ton
of money by making our own clothes detergent. You gotta
share this kind of stuff with the world. That's what
I'm doing. Let us know the recipe. Yeah, we'll post
it or something. Yeah, we'll post it. I speaking of
doing chores, Matt, we're not paying a robot to do
(27:21):
your chores. How would you feel about that? You don't
talking about the neo? Yeah, so this is one is
interesting because it's insane. This is like, I don't know,
I'm not really necessarily interested in having a robot in
my home, but I think it's probably going to become
more common in the coming years, not just because of
the price tag, right, twenty grand how much this robot
cost her? I think you can pay like five or
(27:42):
six hundred bucks a month to lease it. Crazy, yeah,
But it's also the dystopian vibe vibes, like can't you
imagine treating that robot telling you to do all the
chores and then it just being like super pissed that
you treated it like Cinderella choking you out in your
sleep or something like that. That's the That's the image
I have in my head. I'm not worried about it,
but it's just it does feel so far removed that
(28:02):
it just is dumb, yeah, you know, or the current abilities.
The Wall Street Journal tech writer had spent a day
with this robot and it couldn't do anything like it
fumbled every task, so so stupid. This is I don't
get it. It's ridiculous. I couldn't be any less interested
in getting something like that, Like I couldn't. We did
rumba like the little Robot vacuum and even that, and
(28:24):
granted we had an older version of that thing, but
even that struggled at times to do a very specific
task that it was very much created to do. I've
been hoping that the robot lawnmowers would get those Evidently
are they okay, because it seems like that would save
a ton of money in time, Like that seems like
a great spot for a robot. But inside my house
doing my dishes and like I don't know, tending to
(28:45):
my children, just getting in the way, Like no, no, here,
here's the problem. So yes, the fact that it costs
so much money is ridiculous, but the whole equation needs
to be reversed. They like, they need to pay me
to be able to test drive this thing in my
own because I feel like they are now currently in
the game of acquiring and gathering data. This is why
(29:06):
Tesla is so great, right, Not only were they able
to create a successful EV company, but now they've got
these driving robots essentially like all across the country gathering
data for Tesla, and they use that data. I mean,
think about the amount of video data and experience that
they have in their servers and the ability to then
iterate using that data on future products to be able
(29:28):
to make them even more and more seamless. Like that
is the model, not this clunky yeah robot that the
user had asked to crack open a walnut and it
couldn't do it or something like that. Yeah, Well, in
early adopters always pay too much and get an inferior product.
And if you just wait, if you wait a few
years and you really want one of those robots to
(29:50):
do your chores for you, I guarantee you it's going
to cost a heck of a lot less money, and
it's going to be so much better than it currently is.
So maybe just don't not for the first gin totally
agree Jo. Let's talk about averag and this is given
the caveat that our show is of course ad supported,
so you know, we'll discuss the story with that acknowledgment.
But advertisements, ads, they're popping up in places that you
(30:12):
wouldn't have found them in the past. How do you say, so, Ted,
He writes a substack Joya, I believe is it? Joya?
I always always see it's a weird ge I always
want to say Geo because I always read his stuff,
but I never hear his name being said. But all right,
he's got one of the best substacks out there. He's
really smart, really thoughtful. But he he wrote about this recently.
(30:32):
Ads they're popping up on the screen of your car.
This is on jeep specifically. There it's highlighting the extended warranty. Well,
those warranties are thousands and thousands. They're so expensive they're
hardly ever worth it. But also Samsung has these really
expensive fridges now where ads are popping up there, so
you're you're you know, you're dropping thirty five hundred dollars
(30:53):
and then you've got it displaying ads. Yeah to you.
You got a screen on your fridge because you thought
it was cool, and now it's just serving you ads
all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is an
argument for going low tech, writing things down on a
sheet of paper maybe instead of having the I don't know,
the day's agenda projected onto the front of your your
fancy fridge. And this is no, this is not a
knock against Samsung. I think they're a fantastic company. We've
(31:15):
got a lot of Samsung products, but I will not
be myself paying for that really fancy Samsung fridge. And
I think the problem the rub is when you pay
full price for something and it still comes with ads.
I don't mind having the trade off, like the streaming services, right, yeah,
you pay more for something so you don't have to
see the ads, right, And this is like the yeah,
and I love that the opposite. Hey, there's that trade
(31:36):
off and you have to decide for yourself. It makes
me think of you remember when we talked about Telly,
which was this fifty five inch television with like ads
at the bottom. I signed up where they never sent
me one. I don't know what happened to the company
at this point, but that I was willing. That's like
an informed trade offf where you're like, you're giving me
the TV for free, and yes, I'm subjecting myself to
(31:57):
more ads because of it, but I didn't pay. I'd
be really upset if I paid full price for a
nice TV and then they start popping up ads while
I'm not watching something like that would be incredibly frustrating.
But if they're going to give me the TV for
free and say, hey, ads are going to be on
whenever you're not watching your show, I think I would
be far more okay with that. That'd be kosher to me.
(32:18):
You're making that informed decision, yeah right, yeah, And like
we just end up paying with our attention so much
of the time now when these endless ads are served
our way. When it comes to social media, something estimates
show that four and ten posts are now ads, which
makes me question why we still use these services. Man. Well, yeah,
when you're thumbing through scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, yeah,
(32:39):
maybe you see a little bit of like your friend's contents,
but so much of its like influencers you don't actually
care about, or it's ads that you are not thrilled
to see something. It feels like half of the content
isn't the content you actually came there for. I totally agree.
And do you want to know a solution for that
aside from just deleting completely? Oh? Man, I totally saw all.
(33:01):
This is the kind of stuff that's fed to me.
This guy created like this five pound phone case and
it's basically like a weight that you stick your phone
in and this makes it look like the giant Zach
from the Save by the Bell phone essentially except for
your iPhone. So that's one way you can do it.
Another well, specifically on Instagrams, I've basically been off of
it for a solid year, and I think I've been
(33:23):
much happier because of that. But I've been on there
recently helping Kate because she's watching some ceramic arts stuff
on there, and we've been talking more about social media
and I came across the same thing. I was like,
oh my gosh, I'm scrolling through my feed. I'm like,
I don't follow this person. Why is this showing up? Yeah,
here's another ad, here's another sponsor post. You want to
know the secret why this is gonna be great for
(33:44):
everyone out there who is on Instagram. Go to the
top of your app where it says Instagram. Right, it's
like written in the script at the top middle of
your screen. Tap it and it'll drop down and you
can change it to your followers, like who it is
that you are following, I'm sorry you're following, and it'll
change the feed to just those actual folks, no ads,
(34:05):
no suggested posts. Does this seem illegal? And like I
even hasn't seem illegal. I just shocked. Why would that
be there? Yeah, because no one touches that. I guess
I don't know. It's crazy, like it's it's something like
it's either your your start or favorite posts or people
or something like that. But then it's literally just Also,
one of the other options is following, so only the
(34:25):
people that you're following don't serve ads. So I literally
did this last night. That's why I was excited to
share it because I was looking into it because I
was getting so fed up with why I was I'm like,
is there a way to see less of this other crap?
And that's evidently a way that you can do it.
Now that I've like spoken the system, spoken it into
the universe, I'm afraid that it's going to be disappearing soon.
But for all the how to Money listeners out there
(34:46):
for the time being, try it out there you go,
You're welcome. All right, Matt, that's gonna do it. For
this episode of How Too Money Podcast, I think we
should always refer to ourselves a we how too Money Podcast?
Should we say our actual corporation name and how we
file our taxes and in what state were incorporated? All right,
but we hope you found this helpful. You can find
links to some of the stories that we mentioned on
(35:08):
this episode up on our website at howtomoney dot com.
That's right, tons of other resources up there for you
as well. But until next time, Buddy, best friends are
best friends out? No ads, dude, that's crazy Boom. I
(35:31):
just went through my whole feed from the past twenty
four hours. It's amazing. It's not that bad. Then it
is a workaround because you have to do a couple
additional steps. But I'm guessing. I'm guessing that most people
aren't taking those additional steps to avoid it, right, And
I think there's going to be more widely known though
I don't know. I've never heard anybody talk about it. Yeah,
but it's amazing
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com