The High Cost of Crappy Credit (Bestie Ep) #1083

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Out of Money.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Joel and I am Matt, and today we're discussing
the high cost of crappy credit.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
That's right, buddy. We are going to talk about all
of the different ways that crappy credit is going to
cost you if you've got that crappy credit. But obviously
we're gonna get to that. But more important than ever
is the fact that we're back. Baby. It's back to
regularly scheduled programming here. You're back from Florida. You are,
to the chagrin of everyone out there, you are You're

(00:46):
not a Florida man any longer.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
I came close to it, almost morphed into one, and
you I was down there for like a three weeks
of the summer. My family's out for five. I was
kind of back and forth. Crazy. I tell you this,
Florida has some cool stuff, but it is ragingly hot and.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Like no wonder. Florida man is a thing, right that
it's a mean that it exists because you kind of
lose your mind while you're down there, because it's your brain,
does it really? Yeah? You feel like it kind of
addled your brains a little bit. I'm trying to get
adjusted back to normal life. Like they call Atlanta Hotlanta,
but no, No, Florida is a different kind of heat.
And yeah, it's that wet heat. Glad to be back. Well, okay,
so while while you were down in Florida, so one
of the Kate and I we used some of some

(01:28):
of our time off to go up to Asheville. Right.
We Draowler Spot, Oh my gosh, and honestly, even still
it was pretty It's just been so freaking hot lately. Yeah,
no matter where it is that you live. But enough
about the weather. We're gonna go up there. We had
some nice dinners plan of course we're going to hit
up some breweries, but we were also planning to do
some hiking. And oh, by the way, we scored a

(01:50):
last minute airbnb because like it didn't matter for us
to go up there. We're just thinking, oh, it'd be
nice if we do this. It wasn't like a do
or die situation, and we were able to. We got
a screaming deal on an Airbnb. We hadn't done something
like that absolutely last minute. Even yes, it's like either
onun a book really far in advance or like the
absolute last minute. We jumped on the very last minute
thing got an awesome deal. We're right there in the
middle of downtown, which we've we've never done but back

(02:12):
to ashle like, so we're planning to get to go hiking,
and we were we woke up and getting our stuff
ready to go, and I realized I didn't bring my
stink in hiking shoes, my trail runners. I was like,
dang it, I can't believe I forgot to pack those things.
So hopped in the in the van and we went
to an RII because I felt compelled. I was like,

(02:33):
I gotta get another I gotta get a pair of
shoes in order to do some of this intense hiking
that we're planning to do. So I bought another pair
of hiking shoes. They're like a pair of running like
trail runners basically. So I want to ask you what
would Joel have done in that situation, Because on one hand,
I thought, of course I need to do this, But
on the other hand, I was like, who am I this.

(02:53):
I don't just like go into a store without doing
any research and just buy something. Well, you know, I
bet you I'm guaranteed bought the same shoes you have,
just different color or something like that, Right, So I
actually got a different kind of a different pair, like, hokah,
you've seen the whatever. I don't know how you even say,
like got the big old because you're to the Altrias
or whatever. Ultras, Yeah, on multiple pairs of those. But

(03:14):
I decided to kind of go a different direction. But
I think I hear what you're getting at, which is
the fact that if you knew you like them, and
you're gonna yes, yeah, they're expensive shoes. But and I
will say this, I wasn't being held hostage like at
the trailhead where they're like, here's five hundred, they don't
have any shoes, here's you gotta buy this pair for
two hundred fifty bucks.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
And it's it just stinks to drive all that way
and then to not get to hike or whatever. But
did you have another pair of shoes you could have
hiked in?

Speaker 1 (03:37):
I had, I have my my white vans, could use
use I could have, but they're white and they're not made.
I mean, they're like street shoes. They're made like they're
my nicer kind of like I wore them the night
before when Kate and I went out to like a
nice dinner, and so I thought, Okay, if I just
buy another pair of trail runners, I know at some
point I'm gonna like, after a couple hundred more miles
my old trail runners, like, I'm gonna need to buy

(03:59):
another pair. So the way I thought about it and
justified it is I'm just pulling consumption from like Ford,
you know, into the present from the future here and
like expaining your shoe wardrobe. Yes, yeah, if you think
about it linearly, I will get to these shoes at
some point, I would have gotten to this in this pair.
And did you like them? Yeah, they're actually I mean,
so I got the They're like it's so huge, They're

(04:20):
huge shit, And I was like, I want to I
see people wearing these, they're real popular. I want to
try them out. And actually I really dug them. Dude.
It took a second to get used to all the cush,
but uh, I like the cush. I'm all about it.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
So I've got a friend who I was just talking
to the other day and he's into the zero cush
like that. They literally have sandals called zero sandles, huh,
and he likes to trail run of those. So it's
a young man's game, right, everybody's got their thing. So,
I mean I was able to get him on salety,
that's the other thing. But I'm more willing to spend
money on like the proper gear because like younger Matt
would have said, I'm just gonna I'm gonna stick it out.

(04:51):
I'm gonna wear the shoes that I've got and I'll
clean them afterwards. But I thought, you know what, let
me just go ahead and get these things. I'll wear
them to I'll wear literally wear them into the ground
like at some point. But I was curious if you
would have done the same thing or not, or what
path you would have taken. No, I might have done
the same thing. Yeah, yeah, I mean, especially if it's
if it's something like you're there, it's a free activity

(05:11):
to go hiking. Yeah, that's the best thing to do
in Ashville, one of the best things besides drink good beer.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
And so you don't want to miss the same time.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, yeah, but I'm glad we're back together Glaver recording
today and glad we get to talk about credit a
regular Wednesday episode here. Yeah, so let's mention the beer
we're having on this episode, though it's called Rattler. It's
by Halfway Crooks. It's a grapefruit rattler in particular, one
of our favorite beer styles, especially during these hot summer days.
This is like the perfect thirst quenching beer, and it

(05:38):
really does because it's half grapefruit juice, it really does
have thirst quenching qualities. We'll talk about this one at
the end of the episode.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Is it fifty to fifty? Who knows when? We will
explain share our thoughts at the of the episode.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
But first let's talk about the high cost of crappy
credit and that it made me think about, like when
electricity goes out at your house, it sucks, right, all
of us we've become so accustomed to just being able
to flip a switch, and but how quickly we become
annoyed when that modern convenience that we're all accustomed to
goes away and like, and so it's true that it
can be kind of frustrating if you're if your electricity

(06:12):
goes out, Let's say it's out for twenty or thirty minutes,
so it's not it's like no harm, no foul. It's
kind of fun even for a second. We get to
get get out your battery powered flashlights or your candles
or something like that. But like and make it romantic exactly. Yeah,
you can kind of make it make it fun. But
an extended outage would be different, right, It would quickly
turn from something like a minor inconvenience to something more major.

(06:33):
Let's say your your fridge or your freezer now doesn't
have electricity for an extended period of time.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Your food could spoil.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Let's say you've got one of your fancy briskets in
the freezer, Like that could be I know you don't
want that is spoiled. That's an expensive piece of meat.
And so yeah, if treacherous weather conditions led to this outage,
like people lose their ability to heat and cool their homes, yeah,
which can have massive consequences too, right, and for the
home itself and to the safety of individuals and family.
So I think bad credit can be so. Right, it

(07:00):
might seem like this, this minor blip. It might seem
like a oh man, it'll be back on in twenty
or thirty minutes, sort of electricity funk. But bad credit
is not a small chink in your personal finance armor.
It's much worse than that. It's akin to your electricity
being out for like an entire weekend or something like that.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Sure, yeah, yeah, And it's not just that bad credit
means that you've got a score that's not quite as
high as that you like, that you wish it would be.
It's not the score per se, like the number itself,
that you should be preoccupied with. It's the fact that
that simple score has an impact on virtually every aspect
of your personal finances, right Like, just like with the
power outage, it's not the quick inconvenience of not being

(07:36):
able to flip on a lamp. It's the wide ranging,
downstream effect of that power outage that is going to
have the most significant impact. And so a bad credit score,
it doesn't just result in minor consequences, as some out
there might lead you to believe. It's not causing a
few bucks to leak out here and there. Bad credit
is very expensive in a bunch of different ways that

(07:58):
were going to highlight today.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, tons, tons of ways that bad credit messes with you.
And so we've got a bunch of different things that
we've got to cover and specifically really hopeful hopefully to
drive home just how impactful in a negative way that
crappy credit can become. Let's give a quick example here,
Matt from the Outset friend of the show Andrew Giancola.
He highlighted recently how bad credit can influence how much

(08:24):
you lose when it comes to buying a home. This
example came with kind of some older statistics, so we
know these interest rates don't necessarily apply right now to
everyone and so like. But let's say you took out
a thirty year mortgage of three hundred grand and you
had a credit score of seven sixty or higher. Maybe
you got qualified for rate of four and a half percent,
but a credit score of six twenty, let's say, might
get your rate of seven percent. So there's a big

(08:46):
gap there, two and a half percent gap, And over
the thirty year period, having that higher interest loan would
cost you around one hundred and seventy one thousand dollars
more than what you would have gotten ahead you had
the four and a half percent loan, right, And so
that's a big chunk of change, right, But it's more
than that. It's more than that. It's it's the monthly
payments are going to be higher. Four hundred and seventy

(09:06):
five dollars to be exact when you compare those two loans.
But even above and beyond that, Matt, it's the opportunity
costs that those extra dollars could have done for you,
the legwork that could have done, all because you had
a bad credit score. So let's say four hundred seventy
five dollars a month, which is the gap in payment,
with a return of ten percent over the course of
thirty years, that would net you nine hundred and seventy

(09:26):
nine thousand dollars, so almost a million dollars less in
your net worth because when you bought a home you
had a bad credit score. That that really drives home
I think, at least partially, how expensive a bad credit
score can be.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, that's the difference between a credit score of seven
to sixty or high, basically if you have excellent credit
versus not so great credit of six twenty or below.
But so another reason that we're talking about this today
is because this is even more of a problem for
the younger generations out there. This probably shouldn't come as
a shock, but Gen X, millennials and Gen Z all
have significantly lower credit scores than boomers and anyone older

(10:02):
than boomers. Okay boomer, yeah, like literally. According to data
from Fiico, the average credit score for gen Z is
six seventy nine. That's what it was I think in
twenty twenty one. That's what it was in twenty twenty two.
It's kind of flat lined. And while this is higher
than the six to twenty example that you just gave,
I still wouldn't want to be towards the bottom end

(10:24):
of what's just considered good enough. And so this raises
the question what is a bad credit score? Well, this
obviously goes on a scale, so you know, you could
be in the dumps where your score is what's it
called fives, like deep prime or deep supprime I think
is the term, or it could just be mildly bad.
Credit score scales also vary between the different bureaus, but

(10:47):
of quote unquote very good FICO score is between seven
forty and seven ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, And so it is important to note that basically
that seven forty for us is the line of demarcation
that seven forty, maybe some lenders might say seven to
sixty is kind of considered the you're in top tier range.
But if you're above seven forty, you're doing great if
you're good shape. If you're below that, we want to
see improvement. If you're below six's eighty, you're in that
range where you need to really make some strides because

(11:16):
it's going to cost you a lot.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
You literally are paying more for everything because of that rate. Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
So, and it is important to mention here too, Matt,
that we're not looking for perfection.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
There's on a lot most credit scoring models, they go
up to eight fifty. And so you might be like,
and I know some how to money listeners who are
just really into their finances, they want to get to
that apex, that that top of Mount Everest to eight
fifty credit score. But it is possible, but it's also
not really worth pursuing. It's kind of a waste of

(11:45):
your tingue. Is it a reasonable goal? No, this really
should not be something that you're that you're focused on,
exactly Yeah. And so experience they found that one point
two percent of all credit holders have this elusive eight
to fifty perusc like literally the one percent the rare,
rarefied air right of credit scores. And but you and
I were nowhere near that. We're still way above seven forty,

(12:06):
which is great, but man, I have a cracked eight
hundred in a long time. I'm like fascinating in between that,
like seven eighty to eight hundred grand basically.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Okay, so of course we had a both, you know.
I'm sure you looked up your credit score again. I did.
I was shocked. I was actually so literally not to
brag my scores eight twelve. Oh look at you, I know,
And I was actually kind of disappointed because I truly
wanted to be kind of like in that seven ninety range,
which I feel like that's typically where I am, the
way I use my credit, the way I utilize my
credit for the things that actually do matter, And I

(12:34):
almost thought about not sharing it because I wanted to
be able to identify more with the common working man
and woman out there, because I don't want anyone to
think that this is something that I'm like really working on.
It truly does not matter. I would be perfectly happy,
Like you said, anything above seven to sixty's great territory.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
We're going to give tips later on about exactly how
to get into the solid range that we want you
to be in and kind of how you can go
about that. But you're Yeah, you're sitting pretty over there
at eight twelve.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
You more pretty than I need to be. Yeah, exactly,
Like what am I doing? Like spending all my extra
time like polishing that thing? Right, that's what it's seems with.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Daway lenders, ce you and I would be the exact same,
even though you're twenty twenty five points higher than I am.
R exactly, and so yeah, basically it's important to mention
that we just don't care about having a perfect credit score.
It's a worthless pursuit. But we're also going to speak
out of both sides of our mouse here to emphasize
that working to boost a bad credit score is a
worthwhile goal.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Right.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
We don't love the fact that so much of our
personal finances revolve around this singular number.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
And I guess what I think.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
The fight CO score was instituted back in nineteen eighty nine,
so it's still a relatively modern phenomenon, the credit score,
But over those decades it's taken on an increasingly important
role in our financial lives, and so I wish that
weren't the case, but it is. And it's important to
point out that the credit bureaus sometimes they have the
wrong information. Some people would say a quarter of the

(13:51):
information on credit reports is wrong, which is pathetic and
messed up, and it harms a lot of us. And yeah,
sometimes they do a crappy job of keeping our personal
information secure. So I kind of wish that the whole
system was upended in some way, form or fashion. But
at the same time, pretending that credit scores don't exist
is going to end up harming our finances as individuals, right,

(14:13):
And so you can disparage the credit score score, you
can call it. And I love debt score like some
people do, but it's also while it's frustrating, it's still
an unfortunate necessity that we need to take care.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
Of, yes, right, And actually, well you mentioned you mentioned
I love debt score, which makes me think of somebody
else because while we're clarifying you know some of these
money principles and what it is that we believe, and
we're also not absolutists when it comes to borrowing money
and taking out loans because like, on one hand, yes,
from a principal standpoint, anytime you are increasing your debt

(14:44):
load and anytime you take out a loan, you are
paying interest. But an important question to ask is what
are the alternatives. So take mortgages for instance, right like rates,
they're comparable honestly to where they were in their early
two thousands, and relatively speaking, they are much lower the
further back you look. So if you look back to
the nineties, that the eighties rates, mortgage rates were much

(15:06):
much higher. And so instead of paying off a fifteen
or a thirty year mortgage as fast as humanly possible,
we think that investing that money into the market that's
historically returned over seven percent with inflation, mind you, that
this is the best path forward. The vast majority of
homeowners have low mortgage rates. Nearly I saw that nearly
ninety two percent of folks have a rate that's locked

(15:28):
in under six percent, and sixty two percent of homeowners
are below four percent. So do we love the fundamental
principle of paying any interest to a lender, to a bank. No,
But the reality is that we don't live in a bubble,
right like, everything needs to be considered. You can't make
decisions based on principles alone. You got to face the

(15:50):
actual reality.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
And the reality is in the modern age, we all
need a credit score, and we all need a healthy
credit score. But we also all need debt at sometimes
or one time or other. Right, typically that is to
finance the purchase of a home, or is to pursue
higher education, get a degree or something like that. And
that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's also something
that needs to be done in moderation.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Yeah, we have to take just a whole You gotta
look at the entire picture. Basically, you need to fully
understand how it is that the decisions you make with
your money, how that's going to impact your overall financial picture.
But you also need to fully understand the high cost
of bad credit. You need to know and understand the
different ways that it's going to impact you. And we're
going to get into some of those different ways right

(16:31):
after the break, all right, Matt.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
We mentioned one big example before the break. We talked
about how much just two and a half percent increase
in interest rate on a mortgage could cost you. And
the truth is it can be really expensive, especially when
you factor in that opportunity cost. We're gonna get to
actually a bunch of different ways people might not be
aware of at all, might not even be on their radar, like, hey, yeah,

(17:03):
I know my bad credit scores costs me maybe over here,
maybe a little bit over here, but you might not
realize the full extent. Especially let's say you're saying, well,
I don't plan on owning at home, so ha ha,
jokes on you.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
I don't care. Well, there's still a lot even for
renters out there pay attention as well. Yeah, a lot
of ways it impacts them. Okay, So before we go,
I just thought of another example. We kind of you
mentioned the electricity example. How that can impact lots of
different things. Like we try to avoid like health examples
because I oftentimes they're overdone, but I can't get past.
I was thinking about how credit score, like a crappy

(17:34):
credit score, is like having too much stress in your life,
because just this one thing, too much stress, it can
impact how much you're able to sleep, which is going
to impact your physical health, which is then going to
impact your relationships. How does it treat other people? Because
you've got so much going on, it can have an
impact maybe on like the quality of work that you're doing.
So again, think about your credit score in this one

(17:56):
small thing that's going to affect just countless things that
you probably had no idea that there are all the again,
all of these sort of downstream effects that we do
need to pay attention to.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Im Sure, some of our listeners know that how much
anxiety can affect even, yeah, their physical health. We know
this in our family from personal experience and just how
it seemed like there were a lot of physical issues
going on with Emily back in the day and then
well it turns out anxiety was at the root of it.
But it's hard to know that in the moment, right, Yeah,
and you just you think it must be all these
other things, but but no, it's actually anxiety run them up.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah. I like how you said that, because it's not
that stress or anxiety, like I think small amounts of
that causes you to do things, right, like it's what
gets you up out of bed. But when it's unhealthy, right,
just like with your credit score, when it's in an
unhealthy place and things turn sour, like, that's when it
kind of has those negative downstream effects. Because it's not
necessarily that we're trying to eliminate all stress from life. Sure,
it's just that.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Having you don't want to be like Peter and office
space like you get zero words, right, Well, it makes
me I think we did an episode back in the
day about using financial stress to your advantage.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
How, Yeah, there's a way that rings a bell. Yeah,
where like little bits here and there, it can actually
be the pressure point that gets us to do the
thing that needs to be done.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
And if we're feeling yeah, zero stress about it, then
we're likely to leave it undone. And so I think
it is important to feel some of that, but go
overboard with it, and man, it can completely upset the
apple car absolutely well.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, we'll look that one up. Linked to that one
in the show notes, because it's not that stress in
and of itself is the bad thing that you're trying
to eliminate. It's the other things. It's the negative consequences
that are occurring because of that overload. Yeah, exactly, all right,
So let's keep talking about credit scores, Matt. And the
first thing is people got to know where they stand,
because if you don't know where you stand, you don't
really know how you stack up and what needs improve it.

(19:39):
And so that means the first step is to look
up your credit score, and there are fortunately now freeways
to do that that did not used to be the case.
I still remember when Washington Mutual existed. That was my
bank of choice for a while. They had the best
interest rates. But not only did they have the best
interest rates, they were the only bank that I knew
of that allowed you to peek at your credit score
every single month for free. And so, me being the

(20:02):
curious money nerd that I was in my early twenties,
I was stoked to have this bank letting me see
my credit score every month. But now everybody does that.
It's pretty much ubiquitous, right. You can go whatever credit
card you have, they probably offer you access to your
credit score for free. If not, if you're with one
of the random issuers that doesn't do this, it doesn't

(20:22):
have like a back end in their system that allows
you to kind of take a peek at your score. Well.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Credit Karma is a great site that offers a lot
of information, a lot of insight about your credit score
and your credit standing. We would say sign up for
an account there so you can not only see what
your score is currently, but also so that you can
see what you can do to improve. I love in
Credit Karma mat in the back end, the score detail
section is enlightening and it kind of gives you a
window into what's hurting you and what you can improve,

(20:49):
which is just really important if we're talking about like
ditching that crappy credit score and building it up so
that we can get better terms and not get screwed
over by the system.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
Totally, yeah, and honestly, like there are more credit scores
out there, like actual systems and models than you might think.
So first off, there are the three major credit bureus
who keep a file on you, but FIGHTO and Vantage
three point zero they are the most popular to credit
score numbers that you'll actually see floating out there. But
those bureaus, they might actually have dozens of different scores

(21:21):
that they use for different reasons. And we just want
to mention that so that you know that that exists.
You don't necessarily need to know all the details or
even how the sausage is made, but the scores that
you get from credit Karma or from your credit card company,
they're going to shed enough light on the situation. You know,
you might not have access to the same exact score
that lenders do, but we do think that the free

(21:41):
scores are, you know, good enough. I do wish that
the credit scored models were a little less muddled that
they were a little less confusing. But this is an
instance where having all the details and knowing exactly what
it is that you should be going after, it's not
necessarily going to further you along towards the goal of
financial freedom, right, Like it could get you closer to

(22:03):
having the perfect credit score, but again that should not
be the goal. It's the way, just like with a
stress or the electricity, it's not that well, yeah we
should have electricity. Well no, it's about what the electricity
can do for you. It's about what having less stress
in your life, the downstream impacts of that. Yeah, I
think you could obsess about this way too much. And
again it's one of these opaque systems, and I wish

(22:24):
there was more insight, and I wish there was like
even federal law probably that required the credit bureaus to
share more information about how they compile our scores and
what our scores are for free. We have federal.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Required access to our credit reports every single year, and
in fact they're available every single week for free right
now at annual credit report dot com. If you want
to get your credit report, that is the best place
to go to check up and see kind of like, well,
what is thinging me on my credit You're going to
want to go there. That's Annual Credit Report dot Com.
So we'll link to that in the show.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
It's been a minute since we've mentioned that, but that
was something that they switched to doing free weekly during
the pandemic the pandemic, and we're way past that, so
I'm actually I wouldn't be surprised if that goes away, Yeah,
sometime this year.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Take advantage of it now so you can kind of
get the behind the scenes look at what's happening on
your credit report. What's on there directly impacts your credit score. Right,
But okay, where's it going to cost you? We said
that crappy credit is going to cost you the high
cost of crappy credit, that's right, what we're talking about.
Let's outline the specific ways in which is going to
do that. And the first is higher interest rates on
basically everything. And you might say, no, duh, I get it,

(23:27):
and this is I would say, common knowledge, but just
how much it can cost you isn't terribly well understood.
And it's not just the home loan where you might
add a few points of interest costing you tens of
thousands of dollars or more likely we discussed earlier over
the life of your loan, even though I think I
said that was a three hundred thousand dollars loan, which
really a lot of people taking out much higher loans
than that. This could be catastrophic if you for over

(23:49):
the course of ten, fifteen, twenty thirty years, if you
have a higher interest rate on that mortgage. But in
addition to that, right, if you don't pay cash for
a car and you get financing for that, the rate
on that loan is going to be sky high if
your score sucks as well. We're talking credit card rates,
credit card level rates on a car loan. You're gonna
get financing in the low to mid twenties potentially if

(24:12):
you have got a bad credit score, and that is
going to impact not only your payment, but the overall
amount that you pay for that car. Thousands and thousands
and thousands of dollars more you're going to pay for
that vehicle than if you'd had a good credit score
to begin with.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
That's right, and so you kind of hinted at this
at the beginning. But the one example we gave before
the break had to do with the amount of money
that you're paying an interest on a mortgage. But if
you are a renter, this is going to really impact
you as well, because you could potentially not get the
home or the apartment that you're trying to rent. Because
your credit score is instrumental in a landlord's decision to

(24:46):
run a place to you or not. You're essentially in
competition with other potential renters and your credit score is
one of the major deciding factors. You might even find
that you're able to rent this place with a bad
credit score, but only if you put down a larger
security positive, something I've done personally with with with Tennis before.
That's the only way the landlord can kind of it's
how it's how you cover their butty. Yeah, you are

(25:08):
able to hedge some of that risk by doing that,
but this means more of your money is tied up
just because that three digit number is not up to snuff.
So it's important to mention that renters aren't able to
just skate by supporting a crappy score without any consequences.
You are impacted as well. It's not just those out
there shopping for mortgages.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Might you might not get the apartment at all, you
might be forced to come up with a much bigger,
you know, security deposit, and you might not have that
money on hand. There's a lot of downsides for renters
when it comes to low credit scores as well. So
I'm glad you mentioned that math. That's really important. But
let's talk about credit card APR. That's something else that's
going to happen. The the interest you're going to pay
on credit cards if you have poor credit. Like, we

(25:46):
hardly ever talk about this actually because our approach to
using credit cards is we want people to pay off
the balance on time and in full every single month.
That is how you and I use and handle credit cards.
That's how we advise how to money listeners. It's like
credit cards are not the devil or a tool that
you can use and guess what, if you pay them
off on time and in full every month, it doesn't
even matter what the credit card APR is in the

(26:07):
terms and conditions that you signed. It's it's irrelevant, right basically, yeah,
because it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
But hardly ever talk about that or think about that
because like in our minds, well, that's just a non negotiable,
like you just don't do that but that's not right.
That's not what most folks do.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Unfortunately, when you look at the numbers, it's something like
fifty close to fifty percent, or maybe a little more
than fifty percent of people don't pay off their balance
on time and in full every single month. And so
when they carry efty two percent yea of like slightly
the majority, it makes me shutter to think that there's
that many people who who don't pay off that balance
on time and full because of how damaging that can
be to their finances. And there's a reason that the
banks continue to offer points and cash back and all

(26:44):
the other perks that you and I that we like
to take advantage of, and that a lot of how
to Money listeners like to take advantage of. And that's
because the banks are still making money, and they're making money,
specifically on the backs of the people charging them exorbitant
interest rates. And that's happening when they don't pay their
balance off on time and in full. And so if
you're applying for a credit card, you might be denied
completely or they just might say, hey, listen, your your

(27:06):
rate's gonna be a little bit higher because you're a
bigger risk to us. And again, if you're handling credit
cards the way Matt and I talk about, not that
big of a deal. But if you're not, and you're
forced to put money and put money on and charge
up those credit cards, it is a big deal.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, it is a big for you. Yeah. I mean
the difference between someone who's got crapic credit, Like it's
somewhere like eight to ten percent difference between somebody who
is carrying a balance that has poor credit versus somebody
who is that has an excellent credit score.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
And you might not be eligible for some of those
balanced transfer opportunities which will help you pay off that
credit card debt more quickly and pay less an interest
as well. So it's it's important when we're talking about
the credit card side of things.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah. Well, and not only like the transfer cards, but
just some of the cards that offer the best benefits
because you may not have access to those either. You
won't even be able to get the best credit card
offers out there because your score is in the dumps.
To get the cards that come with the best rewards,
you're gonna need a solid or even just a very
good excellent credit score. You're gonna be stuck with far
less rewarding pieces of plastic. If your score is pathetic

(28:06):
or honestly, you might even be turned down for credit altogether.
You won't have access to that card. But if you're
looking to up your credit card game and some of
the different rewards and benefits that you're able to score
from these credit cards and what it is that they're offering,
you got to turn that credit score around.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah, Matt, when we talk about some of our favorite
credit cards on the show, and we've got an article
about it on the website or whatever, But like when
we mention some of those, many of those, most of
the great ones are only available to people with great
credit scores. Okay, how else is that crappy credit score
going to cost you? Well, it's gonna lead to higher
insurance rates. This is one more place you're going to

(28:43):
feel the negative effects of a rough credit score. And
there are, yes, a handful of states, a very very
small amount of states that don't let insurance companies factor
in your credit score to determine rates. California is the
biggest state. I believe Massachusetts is another one. There might
be one more, but I think there's only three states
that really take that approach, but in most states, in
all the others, your credit score is going to have

(29:05):
a direct impact on what you're being charged and the
quotes that you receive when you're shopping around. So depending
on which stats you trust, bad credit could cost you
between seventy five and one hundred and ten percent more.
On the insurance front, that's a lot more yikes. Yes,
So instead of like, you know, a thousand bucks a
year to ensure that car, you're forking over two thousand
dollars a year, and which is a significant jump. That's

(29:27):
so much more money. In bank Rate found that homeowners
insurance will cost on average sixty three percent more for
folks with bad credit as well. That's another big jump.
So we're talking about let's say you own a home
and a car and your credit goes from six seventy
to seven sixty. You're going to be saving in all
likelihood a few thousand dollars every single year just because
you tweak your credit score. You bumped it up, and

(29:49):
that jump is going to be lead to significant savings.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Right, yeah, just on homeowners and auto insurance, but you
also might be denied a job. Most folks, they've got
no idea that an employer can pull your credit and
opt to not hire you in most states if you
have bad credit. Honestly, many employers won't do this, like
they don't actually care, and many won't even pull credit
scores at all, but some of them do, especially for
more senior positions. So you know, well, will you be

(30:14):
denied you a job because your score is six 't eighty,
Well probably not, but if you are closer to like
five hundred, well that I might raise some flags. Be like, wow,
this person, like what's going on? Like I feel like
a subject conversation is gonna be warranted because then you're, like,
you've seem great in all the areas of your life,
why is it that your credits so terrible?

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Because that means that you probably didn't follow through on
some really important things when it come came to payments
and stuff like that. You might be able to explain
it away and still get the job, but you're right, Matt,
it's probably gonna raise some big red flags. And yeah,
cause a conversation if not just an outright to a
denial of getting that opportunity.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yeah, it would suck to just do so well on
all the other fronts you interview. Well, you've got a
great resume, you got great references, but in the end
you're like, oh, yeah, I didn't get that job because
of my credit score.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
And again that's like a by state thing. I think
there's ten or eleven states that don't allow for potential
employers to pull a credit score, but in a bunch
of other states this is fair game. And so yeah,
how widely is it used, how pervasive is it? Well,
I mean that depends on the specific company typically, but
it's worth noting that your credit score could impact your

(31:19):
career and something else. Matt like that the high cost
of crappy credit, well, in all likelihood for a whole
lot of people, will lead to delayed retirement. And people
might say, well, how in the world is that, Like,
how am I not going to get to retire as
early because my credit sucks? Well, again, going back to
kind of the numbers and the opportunity cost and how
much extra you're going to be paying for higher interest
rates and stuff like that. If all that extra money

(31:41):
is going to higher rates and bigger insurance premiums, larger
security deposits, all that kind of stuff, you've got less
money to throw into those tax advantage retirement accounts, and
this will in all likelihood delay your ability to quit
working or like we talked about earlier, this month, you're
going to move along that financial independent spectrum more slowly.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
And I don't know about you, I just kind of
hate being inefficient. I hate fees.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
I hate more money leaking out of my account than
needs needs to be going out of my account. And
this is one of those things where bad credit, you're
just gonna at every turn everything is going to cost
you more than it would for somebody who has a
better credit score. And so it's a little de moralizing
but it's also a little self defeating at the same time.
And so totally, I think a lot of people are

(32:24):
going to find a way to oh man, I'm paying
extra for this, an extra for that, and more for this.
And because of that, across the board's costing you more money.
You got like money into and dest less money to
sock away in the IRA and the foural one K
and yeah, that's going to have an impact on your
ability to retire.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Totally. Yeah, we are all about you having options. It's
not that we want you to have that perfect credit score.
It's that we want you to have options, and we
want you to have the ability to live life on
your own terms, to make the decisions that you want
to in life, because those are things that you desire,
not because you have to, not because you've subjected yourself
to additional payments and you haven't eliminated the balance and
you're making it trus payments. And in order to pursue

(33:02):
the things that you want to pursue, you need to
have a degree of freedom, financial freedom, and you're only
going to be able to do that if you take
those extra dollars and instead of giving them to the
bank and the form of interest, you're able to take
that money and invest it for future you future you
will definitely appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, I mean rather have
that money going to you than to the banks lending institutions.

(33:22):
And again, just because like we said that, the credit
scoring model not our favorite. We don't love that it
exists in the form and fashion that it does. We
don't love how opake then it is, and how difficult
it is to ascertain even what your credit score is
or you know, how many credit scores you have behind
the scenes on you. But still it's the game. It's
important to play if you want to be as efficient
as optimized with your finances as possible, and you don't

(33:43):
want to delay big milestones along the way along your
the financial independence path that you're trotting. But Matt, we've
got more to get to. Let's talk about in a
second mitigating the downsides of a bad credit score and
then how you can actually improve your score meaningfully. There's
a lot of potential pitfall some people need to avoid
when they're doing that. We'll discuss We'll get into that

(34:03):
right after this. All right, we are back and we're
talking about the high cost of having crappy credit. And
you know what we're not gonna do here is now
talk through what makes up your FICO score. Like basically,

(34:24):
I think a lot of folks have seen the pie chart,
you know, like you can google it what composed or
like what makes up a great credit score? And you
can see the different percentages right like on time payments,
making sure you don't utilize all of the credit that's
available to you. I think that's like sixty sixty five
percent of what consists those two factors commind yeah, yeah,
what consists of of a good credit score? But bottom line,

(34:46):
I feel like, like the basics of having healthy credit
and using a credit card well can be summed up.
And make sure you got a credit card, right, so
most folks out there already have one, but if you
don't get one, because that's going to ensure a longer
length of credit history. It'll make sure that you get
this ball. Use it a little bit, don't overuse it, right,
so you want to keep that utilization right low, but
then make sure you pay that stupid bill all time

(35:08):
and then full every single month. Like if you just
do those like follow those simple steps like that will
ensure that you are again getting the vast majority of
the way there without over complicating things. Yeah, and if
you are one of those people out there listening and
you're like, but my credit stinks, and you just said
I probably can't get some of those credit cards that
you say are great, Well, we'll actually in just a
few minutes to give our thoughts on like where you

(35:29):
should turn in order to get a decent credit card
or you know, just basically tools that will help you
build your credit apart from having to get a credit card.
We'll kind of talk about both, but first let's talk
about mitigating the downsides, because you know, repairing your credit score,
getting it up to stuff. It's actually easier than a
lot of people think, just because the system is shrouded
in mystery and it's hard to know you're there's so

(35:51):
many numbers swirling around out there. When it comes to
your credit score, well, it's easy to think that it
must take some professional right to help you get your
credit score back in shape if you're in the five
or six hundreds. No, not necessarily. Just like it took
a while though to get your credit into disrepair, it's
gonna take a little while to clean up. There is
no easy button, although a lot of people will actually

(36:12):
try to make it sound like there is, specifically people
who work for different credit repair companies. That is an
industry which has attracted billions of dollars from Americans every
year that they spend on credit repair. Crazy.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
It's crazy, and it's sad because a lot of that
money is poorly spent and a lot of those credit
repair firms are preying on people who have bad credit.

Speaker 1 (36:34):
And yeah, the folks who are in the most vulnerable position. Yeah,
like I think I saw it. Like the estimates are
that that industry raked in something like over four billion dollars,
which is crazy, Like, just think if all of that
money and let's just say that that's an estimate that's
off by two billion, imagine two billion dollars, which is
still a ton of money that was instead going to

(36:54):
actual balances rather than quick fixes, which is essentially what
folks are.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yeah, well, and a lot of those credit repair firms
and this should be a blinking red light that'll lasts
for payment upfront, and they'll say listen, yeah, for four
hundred dollars or nine hundred dollars, we we can start
to work on fixing your credit score. And the lost
thing plain that they can get negative stuff removed from
your credit file, which is not true. And you know,
if there is inaccurate information on your credit report, by
the way, which we said, you can get an annual

(37:21):
credit report dot com for free. You can dispute those
items yourself for free. You do not need to pay
anyone to do this on your behalf. And so yeah,
it's also important to mention Matt, you actually have more
power because debt collectors can ignore letters from companies, but
they can't ignore a letter written by you according to
federal law. And So this is another thing where you

(37:42):
have more power in your own hands than these credit
repair firms have or can wheeld on your behalf. But
let's kind of discuss some of those next steps to
mitigate the downsides of erect score and to improve your
score without getting scammed by one of these companies that
sucks a big one.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Yeah, I mean yeah, basically you've got to see, yeah,
you're in the position where you have a bad credit score,
but you're trying to still figure out, like what is
it that you can do in order to pay the
least amount of money. Well, when you are looking for
a loan, shopping around really matters. It's not just your
credit score that determines the different loan terms out there.

(38:17):
Where it is you borrow from is going to have
a huge impact. Credit unions are the best place to
go for borrowing most of the time, and that's especially
true if your credit score isn't great. I know there
are some folks might write and be like, well, no,
actually I was able to get a better rate from
a bank or actually right straight from the dealership. Then
there might be some cases of that, but credit unions,

(38:38):
because of the way that they're set up. They are
often the best place for borrowers to turn. But on
top of including credit unions in your search, just make
sure that you get multiple quotes. Don't just get a
quote and be like, all right, did my homework. No
time to sign on the dotted line. And because that's
what I'm excited about, I'm excited about that that new ride,
or I'm excited about getting this house, get multiple quotes.

(39:00):
Stats show that specifically on home loans, individuals who get
at least three quotes save thousands of dollars more than
the folks who just go directly to a single lender.
I think this is one of the instances where the
means to an end. In this case, the credit score
is the means. The end is life. The things that
you are able to do in life actually supplants the

(39:22):
true end and becomes this false end in and of itself, right,
And folks are just so preoccupied, like they've been on
this path of rehabilitating their score and it's the precious
and that was a terrible gollum voice, but they're afraid
to actually put it to use, and they're afraid to
get ulip quotes because they're like, well, I don't want
to every time I get a quote, it's going to
dig my score, my precious score. Well, first of all,

(39:44):
that's not true because usually there's a two week window.
Yeah yeah, and if you do it within a short
period of time, it doesn't count as multiple inquiries. But secondly,
even if you wait, there's some stats out there too
that say as long as you do it within a
thirty day window. Let's say you wait sixty days before
you get another quote. First of all, that's a long
time that you you're shopping. You can probably tighten that
up a little bit. But even if you are waiting

(40:04):
a really long time and it does ding your score,
the whole point of getting your credit score to where
it was was in order to pay less money. And
so make sure that you are not skipping this really
important step that is going to actually allow you to
pay less money, even if it does ding your score
just a little bit for a short duration. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
So, even if your score is not where you want
it to be, not where it ideally should be, it
doesn't mean that you just have to take it on
the chin always in forever, you can shop around and
get better terms. Even if your credit score isn't above
that seven forty level where we'd like to see it.
The same thing goes with we talked about higher insurance rates, Matt.
You should shop with multiple different insurance companies no matter

(40:40):
what your credit score is, and even though on average
you're going to pay more, you might find that some
insurance companies are more lenient, don't care at don't factor
that credit score into their models nearly as much as
some of the other ones. So it's important to shop
around on all levels if your credit score is in
the dumps. But let's talk about something else. Map that
people can do with bad credit scores. They and save
more cash for any purchase that they're planning to make. Right,

(41:03):
being able to put down a bigger down payment on
a home that's going to lead to better terms and
often a better interest rate as well. Like your credit
score matters, but it's not the only thing that matters.
Do you have and it matters even less if you're
buying a car and you choose to buy a cheaper
car because you got the cash to cover that payment,
whereas you have to finance the newer one that costs
more money or even better, you just have enough cash

(41:24):
to actually buy the newer one. Yeah, yeah, without having
to finance it at all.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Right, exactly, that is like more cash means that your
credit score matters less. It's just true.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
And so if you have the combo of bad credit
and no cash, that becomes an even more precarious situation
to begin. And something else I think that matters as
well is looking towards to get shorter term loans, because
lenders are going to assume that you're less likely to
default when you're looking at a forty eight month loan
versus one that you plan to pay off over like

(41:54):
ninety six months, right, So having more money to put
down but also choosing a shorter timeline, yeah, going to
make your payments higher, but it'll get you that lower rate,
allowing you to pay less in interest over the life
and a loan, and it's going to ensure that you're
out of debt more quickly. Don't bite off more than
you can chew, and borrowing less. In general, paying cash
for a car, like we just said, for instances is

(42:14):
the best way to go in order to avoid financing altogether.
But if you do have to finance things, shorter term
loans are going to be offer you better interest rates.
Even if your credit score is you know, let's say
six't eighty six ninety seven hundred, it's not where you
want it to be. But the longer loan you choose,
the more you're going to pay an interest overall, and

(42:34):
the higher that interest rate's going to be.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Totally yeah, this is one of those instances, like everyone
has heard the term like cash is king, and that's
totally true when it comes to getting a deal, because
nothing beats the actual cash, whether it's somebody who's looking
to sell and they have the slam duck decision of
knowing that finance is going to come through because oh,
there it is. There's the actual cash, or whether it's
your ability to pay you as a consumer to pay

(42:58):
less in interest. But again, and don't take this to
the far extreme and think, okay, well why don't I
just pay cash for my house? Again, look at the
whole picture and what are some of the alternatives. What
else can you do with that money instead of saving
it up for I don't know, twenty years or however
long it would take you to pay cash for an
actual home. But basically, at the end of the day,
we just want you to have a healthy credit score.

(43:20):
We want you to be doing the right things. We
want you to take a healthy approach to just generally
boosting your credit score. We don't want you to have
to rely on some of these different strategies constantly, like, yes,
they are important to implement, but ultimately just have a good,
healthy credit score. And so we kind of touched on
this second again when we're kind of talking about some
of the basics of what go into making up a
credit score. But by increasing the amounts of credit that

(43:43):
you have available to you that and not utilizing it,
of course, that's going to drastically increase your credit score. Basically,
you want to increase the number of positive tradelines. That's
what the different bureaus call it. They want you to
have access to a bunch of these different lines of
credit while using them and basically minimally, and it reflects
well on your score to have a few different credit cards, right,

(44:05):
to have a loan or two, and to make sure
that you're paying everything on time and in full. But
specifically on those revolving lines of credit, we want you
to use those sparingly. So for instance, if you've got
a card that's got a limit, of twenty thousand dollars
only spending up to something like two thousand dollars. That
is a great approach where you're not basically overleveraged, where

(44:25):
you don't have too much outstanding debt or.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
I think typically if you're using less than thirty percent
of your available credit, that's the thing you want to
shoot for. But even less can help.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Less is even better.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Even more, and you want to pay specific attention to
your utilization rate, the number of lines of credit that
you have, especially if your credit score is not doing
so hot, well, you might need to overtime. And we'll
talk about this. How do you increase the number and
the variety of debt that you have in order to
improve your credit score without taking on more debt than

(44:54):
you need to. That can be a difficult proposition, and
so one way to do that is through a company
called self dot Inc. It used to be called self Lender,
and they've got this really really cool sort of business
model where you're actually making a loan to yourself, but
you're doing it through self which is just it's hard
to I don't know what their name being that.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
It's even talking about it like an idiot.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Yes, yeah, that's why the name self lender like it
made it. It made it easier to talk about it irea.
But so, yeah, basically, you're you're giving self cash and
then and then what happens is you're making payments towards
this debt that you've taken on that making payments to
self right on your behalf. And so it's a bit confusing.

(45:39):
But here's the thing with most people who go through
self dot ink, you know, and make themselves alone in
this way, and then self reports to the credit bureaus
on your behalf, they see a credit score bump of
something like thirty two points, which is meaningful. If you're
at six ninety and you just went up to seven
twenty two, that's a big old bump. And so that
is one important thing to try. Secure credit cards can

(46:00):
be a massive help to and you can typically get
them via your credit union. You can get them other
places too. Those are basically another type of installment loan,
where a secure card is where you say, listen, give
me a credit card with an eight hundred dollars limit.
I'll give you the bank or the credit union eight
hundred bucks. And then after seven or eight months of
on time payments, you get a full you get upgraded
to a full fledged credit card, and so after using

(46:23):
that credit card responsibly, now you've improved your credit score too.
There's also something called the pedal card, which will link
to in the show notes that can be helpful for
people with bad credit to boost their credit score. That
doesn't they don't rely on your credit score in order
to give you a line of credit. But the rise
in secured credit cards and the use of companies like
self doing this self generated lending essentially are all in

(46:46):
response to the problem of credit repair services that we
talked about earlier, just people trying to scam you out
of money in order to improve your credit score. Usually
they run away with the cash without doing much or
anything to help you improve your score. These are legit, intimate,
in expensive ways for you to increase your credit score
through tried and true methods.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah they are legit, like they will actually increase your
credit score. But the goal is to never have to
use these companies to begin with. The goal like the
response like, the reason these secured cards exist is because
you have someone out there has made poor decisions when
it comes to how it is at they handle credit.
But especially if you are listening and maybe you don't
even have a credit card and it's just sitting there.

(47:25):
It's pristine. It's like freshly fallen snow, and no one
has walked out there, and it's perfect, not perfect from
you've got a perfect score standpoint, but perfect, and that
it's just blank, untrammeled. You have the ability to from
day one right now, to start handling credit in a
responsible way and to slowly increase the credit that's available
to you and to boost that score because it's going

(47:46):
to have these long lasting impacts. And let's be honest.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
You mentioned the average credit score for gen Z millennials
is six seventy nine. Those people in our likelihood, if
you're right at that point, you're not going to need
to turn to a secured credit card. You just need
to start doing those basics better.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Right. It's very unsexyah for most people. What it is
that they need to do.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
These services are really for people who are down in
the dumps with credit and they need a big leg
up and they need more drastic measures and so these
this is one way to do that, right, is to
turn to somebody like self, or to turn to a
secure credit card. But for most people out there, it's
just doing those basic things of never not paying anything
on time and to reduce your utilization, and to make

(48:25):
sure that you're tending to your credit score and you're
watching it go up month after month over time, not
seeing perfection. Of course, like we said, and basically like
your credit as we've discussed on this episode, is going
to impact you in a bunch of ways. Good credit
is going to give you a leg up in the
personal finance world. Bad credit will make life a whole
lot harder. And we know it's a little bit confusing,

(48:46):
but your credit score matters in a lot of ways
in the real world.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
So tend to it.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Tend to it like you would like a garden. You
got to pull the weeds and all that kind of
stuff right, ensure that your credit score is not hampering
your ability to make the financial progress you want to make.
And by the way, if you have credit questions about
credit scores, feel free to holler at us on we
can take your questions on an upcoming As Kind of
Money episode. We know there's a lot of confusion and
a lot of specific questions that people are probably gonna
have in light of this episode, So reach out to us,

(49:13):
send us your voice memo, and hopefully we can take
it on the show soon.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
That's right, man, All right, let's get to the beer
quickly here that you and I enjoyed today, the refreshing
beer that we both enjoyed, which was a great fruit
rattler by Halfway Crooks beer. And by the way, I
want to mention real quick, We've said this before on
the show, but Halfway Crooks they have the absolute best merch.
And while I was up in North Carolina at a

(49:36):
different brewery, there was a guy there and he had
a Halfway Crooks sure on and I was like, oh,
which is our I mean, we moved, but that was
our local neighborhood brewery. Yeah. And I don't know, they're
the best. They're marketing team or I don't know. I
think it's just a couple guys, but they do such
an awesome job. And I'm glad though that you and
I got to enjoy this actual beer. What were your

(49:58):
thoughts on it?

Speaker 2 (49:59):
So it was the delicious and I love me a
good rattler, grapefruit rattler in particular, and this one is
because it's a craft instead of like a mass produced
one it had.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
It just tastes more like grapefruit. Maaste more real. Yeah,
as much as we love it, it tastes more real
than Stegel, I do.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
I do, Like I love Stegel's sweet, but it was
way less sweet and more grapefruit tasting.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
Yes, those bitter notes, yes, exactly, that's what it's got
going on with it, whereas the Stegel is just it
Literally it's like a minute made. It's almost as if
you get that beer in a carton. Yeah, in the
court carton where you unscrew the little screw and pour
the beer. Like that's how sweet it reminds me like
I don't. I don't, by the way, know if I
can enjoy that beer because it's so sweet, I would

(50:41):
love to compare it side by side with halfway Crooks.
That'd be fun, And we talked about it in the past,
but not on this episode.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
How rattlers are essentially half juice and half are typically
right or half beer, and so yeah this I think
they were originally created for cyclists in Germany to stop
get something like thirst quenching. But also you know, you
don't want a little beer to drink too much, though
like if it was full beer, It's like, well, how
is that gonna lend cause me to be a better bicyclist?

Speaker 1 (51:10):
Right?

Speaker 2 (51:10):
So these are typically somewhere between two and four percent
in abb which is which cool, and they're just delightful, delightful.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
We're gonna get some of these before we get to
the beach, that's for sure. But this is absolutely the
kind of beer that you enjoy on the beach. If
you've never tried a rattler before and you like something
that's juicy, but also you're a big fan of beer,
make sure to check out a rattler for sure. All Right, Matt,
that's gonna do it for this episode. Folks can find
show notes links to some of the stuff we mentioned
up on the website at howtomoney dot com. That's right,
that's gonna be it for this one, buddy. Until next time,

(51:39):
Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.

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Joel Larsgaard

Matthew Altmix

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The High Cost of Crappy Credit (Bestie Ep) #1083