@WakeUpCall – ‘How to Money’ with Joel Larsgaard

Amy talks with the host of ‘How to Money’ Joel Larsgaard about a cashless society and tariff rollbacks on at the grocery store.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's say good morning now too the host of How
to Money on KFI. It's Joel lars Guard.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Morning, Joel Morning Amy.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Okay, so we've all heard of door dash, but how
about door cash?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I mean the news of the strange and weird, Like,
who thought this was going to be a thing, especially
as we're mind being to being more of a cashless society.
The fact that you can now get cash delivered to
your doorstep is this is the weirdest thing. It was
the news I was not expecting this week. But this
is a Robin Hood initiative, and Robin they just feel

(00:33):
like the kind of company who's throwing noodles against the
wall to see what's going to stick, and maybe this
will be appealing to some of their customers. I don't
understand it necessarily myself why you might want to get
cash delivered to your doorstep. And the thing is, too,
it's going to cost money, like seven dollars to have
money delivered to your doorsteps, So it's think of this

(00:53):
instead of going to the atm, which really I mean
there's like billions of ATMs on every street corner. Instead
of going there, you can just have someone bring that
cash directly to you and you just pay more. Although
I will say ATMs mostly are pretty expensive these days
unless you have a relationship with a bank that eliminates fees,
which I recommend. But yeah, it can be really expensive

(01:14):
to get money from an ATM as well. But the
fact that Robinhood is trying to make this a thing
is surprising.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Well, you know, people spend a lot of money getting
food delivered, so maybe they'll be willing to spend the
money to have cash delivered.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, I mean maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
I know. I agree. I think it sounds ridiculous, but
with people being so used to having everything just dropped
off between Amazon and food and all of that stuff,
maybe it's part of what we're evolving to.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
I think it just points to another notch in the
belt of the convenience culture that we've all become accustomed to.
And I'm not against convenience, and I think some conveniences
are worth paying for it, and they're a lovely part
of living in the year twenty twenty five. But then

(02:08):
you almost this almost feels like convenience jumping the shark,
where it's just you know, we've gone to this next
level and you pay for convenience, and so I think
it's really important for people to pick and choose the
conveniences that matter to them. Like for the longest time,
I was against grocery delivery and I was just like,
I'm not going to pay for that. That's ridiculous. And
then you know, with three kids and stuff, life gets

(02:30):
pretty busy. And I was able to like find some
discounted Instacard gift cards and I'm using same day through Costco,
and I was like, Okay, this feels like it's worth
it for me. But I'm really really reticent to bring
a new service that costs money into my life because
I know what's going to happen is I'm going to
get used to it and I'm gonna get used to
paying for it. And I would prefer to like be

(02:51):
more skeptical of anybody claiming that they're going to like
make my life better convenience that costs me a lot
of money, and just the only take these in sparingly,
like expand your convenience lifestyle sparingly, because it costs.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Money, exactly. We're just talking about that, like with the
streaming services with you and I have talked about before,
and I was just talking to my friend about like,
you get them and then you forget about them, and
so you just keep on paying for them. And isn't
it convenient And isn't it nice to have even though
it's costing a fortune?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yep, yep. And if you need cash regularly, that's cool.
And I think we should probably be using cash more
as a society. I think there's something mentally that helps
us be better about spending when we're actually working over
dollar bills. I mean, there are studies about that, like
what's happening in our brain when we tap a credit
card versus when we hand over cash. So definitely think
about using cash more in your day to day life.

(03:42):
But be with one of my favorite online banks that
has extensive atm networks where you can get your cash
for free, or like Schwab. I'm pretty sure they still
reimburse all the atmpies. They eat it for you on
your behalf. And so there are great banks out there
that don't charge any ATMPs. So at least consider that

(04:03):
if you are someone who likes to use cash.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Okay, and then here's another thing. Did you know that
Ralphs is now charging you for cash back? No?

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, so i'stally charging.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
I can't remember because I don't do it. I did
it once, I was like what and didn't really think
about it. So now I do it at my pavilions,
where I still don't. I don't think they're charging. But yeah,
they started like a year ago. And just kind of went, oh, yeah,
that's like convenience fee or whatever they're calling it. But
there is a female and you get cash back at
the grocery store.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
That's really silly. That's so frustrating because that used to
be the easiest. I had to give a twenty bucks
or something like that when you're buying your groceries. And
if they're going to charge for that, yeah, that's an
annoying that's annoying thing. I can't imagine that's a great
customer service or most people feel great about that.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, And speaking of grocery stores, apparently prices are going
to maybe start coming down.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Boy, I hope so. And I mean this is something
that I was pretty pretty willing to discuss openly before
you know, the Biation day was coming around. The tariffs
are not a good thing that they are essentially attacks
on the American shopper. And yet you know, the President
was really keen on terrafts. He you know, said they
were like the best word in the in the English language.

(05:16):
And what's happened since then is like, you know, we
haven't seen quite the increase in prices that many had predicted,
although I was talking to a friend the other day
who works for a really big water sports company, and
he was saying, well, we've been eating them for now.
We can't do it forever. And I think that's happening
with a lot of companies. There was inventory build up
ahead of the terraffs, and then there was a certain
amount of like taking the punch themselves instead of passing

(05:39):
on to the consumers. Those days are quickly ending, and
so prices all we are seeing prices ratchet up. And
the other thing is at the grocery store in particular,
some of the tariffs that were levied were on items
that we're not going to produce, and we can't really produce,
like coffee, right, We don't grow a lot of coffee
in the United States of America. Bananas pretty hard to

(06:01):
grow bananas in Alaska, right, So we just saw prices
climb significantly on those because of terriff and now the
President is realizing, well, affordability is the thing that Americans
care about, seemingly more than anything else, and it's a
political issue, and so he's quietly rolling back some of
those tariffs. So we might be seeing price rollbacks on

(06:22):
some of those things that we've got used to seeing
massive price increases on.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Well, we'll be watching for it, because that would be
wonderful news. The host of How to Money on KFI
is our very own Joel Larsgar. You can hear him
every Sunday from noon to two right here on CAFI.
You can also follow him at how to Money. Joel.
Thank you, Joel.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
Thanks Amy