Afford Anything - Invest Anywhere: I’ve chosen my city…now what?

Episode Date: October 7, 2022

#406: In this two-part episode, we first tackle the data points needed to assess various investment locations within your city of choice. We will cover seven specific neighborhood characteristics to review before diving into deal finding, and three things to look at once you've found a specific deal to evaluate. Then, we interview Kristen Lazure, the producer behind the Netflix movie "Get Smart With Money". The movie follows 4 financial coaches — Tiffany Aliche, Peter Adeney, Ross Mac and myself — as we help four people who are struggling with some aspect of their financial lives. Tune in for behind-the-scenes movie insights and enjoy today's episode! Timing of discussion points as per October 2022: 01: 49: Topic introduction 04:03: Tip on visualizing the data 06:00: Current and future locations of employers 11:55: Impact of the local business landscape and housing prices 13:22: Investments from municipalities 15:02: The importance of school districts 16:28: Adjusting location evaluations based on strategy 18:57: Understanding the crime landscape, flood plains and walk scores 29:28: Introduction to Kristin Lazure and Get Smart With Money discussion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your time, your focus, your energy, your attention, to any limited resource that you need to manage. Saying yes to something implicitly carries trade-offs, and that opens up two questions. First, what matters most?

And second, how do you align your decisions accordingly? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice. And that's what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. We're typically a weekly show. We usually air on Wednesdays. But once a month, on the first Friday of the month, we air a first Friday bonus episode.

And these first Friday bonus episodes are themed as Afford Anything presents, Invest Anywhere, co-hosted with Sunny Rao. Hey, Sunny, what's Invest Anywhere all about? Invest Anywhere is all about helping people figure out how to invest anywhere. in real estate when they might not be able to do it in their own backyard, which is a giant portion of our population. We really want to make real estate investing approachable for everyone, not just the hedge funds on Wall Street. We want to make sure that no matter where you live, you still have that opportunity to invest and to build wealth and to influence your financial

future through real estate so that collectively we can move wealth back into the hands of ordinary people. We really want to level the field when it comes to investing in real estate. Right. Exactly. And the fact that you live in a high cost of living area shouldn't preclude you from being able to become a real estate investor. So on that topic, what are we going to discuss in today's episode? We're going to talk about how to evaluate locations within a city to figure out where you'd like to invest. We have talked about different aspects of the real estate journey with the last one being how to choose a city. And you would think that at that point... In the last Invest Anywhere episode? Yes, yes, in our previous Invest Anywhere episodes.

You would think once you get to the point where you choose your city, it is smooth sailing, right? You funneled down your strategies, you funneled down the different locations. You feel like, okay, I got this. But then when you look at a city and you look at these different deals pop up, you realize there's still a lot of decision points to be made. That is where this episode comes in to help you think through how to figure out what those decision points are, what to look at, where you want to focus, and then you can get to the aspect of evaluating deals. But first, you really want to understand the location at a micro level. So, for example, if you live in San Francisco and you've decided that you're definitely going to invest in Wichita, Kansas,

great, you've got Wichita picked out. Wichita is a big city still. Exactly, right? So Which neighborhood in Wichita? Exactly. Choosing your neighborhood has such a tremendous impact on your life as an investor. It has an impact on your returns. It impacts everything. So this is not something that you can just bypass. Say, I chose Wichita. We're good now. You've made significant progress. That is phenomenal, but there's still a little bit more due diligence to cover. So let's talk about that due diligence. What's the step that people should be embracing when you've picked your city, you know you're going to invest in Wichita or Indianapolis or Cincinnati. What next? This is where I implemented kind of a hack when I started

investing in real estate. When I started investing, I was living in Boston and I had chosen a couple different cities in the Midwest. When I was looking at deals in these cities, a deal would come up and I would not really have a basis to go off of. What is happening in this location? even after I did some location independent research. So my first tip would be to create a map for yourself where you can drop pins for the different location markers that we'll talk about throughout these episodes that indicate what the neighborhood is like. You can create a map going to Google Maps and taking a screenshot and shading in different

areas. So that is really the first thing that I would look at. Find a way to visualize your data. Why is that important? That is important because when you have MLS listings come up or someone sends you a property, you're like, oh, where in the city is this? At least then once you have your map that you've created, you can overlay mentally where on the map the property is and have an instant idea.

At that point, you can say, I don't want this property or yeah, this makes sense with the indicators I'm looking for for my investment. Now, a couple of things. Number one, you mentioned a screenshot, but I know with Google, and I'm sure probably with other mapping services as well, you can have a live map in which you place and remove digital pins. This is true. Yes, I am anti-tech in many ways. I am like the grandma here. Take a picture with your phone, guys. Maybe actually buy a Rand McNally. No, but to that end, my general contractor had a physical map that he hung on his wall and he had thumbtacks. See, that's what I love. That's

actually what I have done in the past. But again, I think I'm showing an age that doesn't exist for the amount of time I've been on this planet. Now, in terms of what we're pinning, you know, you mentioned pinning some of the most important indicators. Let's talk about what some of those indicators are. So this map, it represents, when you take the map of the city, it represents essentially a blank canvas. It's a map of the city broadly, but it's a blank canvas in terms of the specific indicators that you are identifying. Can we walk through what some of those indicators ought to be? Absolutely. First indicator, employers. Where are the large employers at this given moment? One thing to keep in mind here is that they might not always be in a central hub

downtown. A lot of people, a lot of investors, when they start looking at new cities, they really focus on the same areas because that's easy, right? That's the quick funnel. Of course, there's going to be a lot of employers downtown, but where else are the employer setting up base? Where else are businesses expanding and sending jobs? At the end of the day, you want people who can afford your offering, whether that's offices, whether that's residential housing. And don't be afraid to think outside the box. Core principle of investing, understanding value, where others don't, right? Right. Right. So on that note, what I have found in my own search is that areas that are close to major warehouses or distribution centers, areas that are close to

carpet outlets or lumber outlets, areas that are close to airports, which may be far away from the city itself, those areas in some cities, not all, of course, every city is unique, but those areas often have a large population of people with secure employment who are looking for housing. Exactly. And if you think about it from the business's perspective, the perspective of the business that is expanding, they want probably two things, right? They want a population with proximity, which is also now moving, given that more people are working remotely still. And two, they want to be in a place they can afford. Downtown prices in most cities are expensive. If a business can get into an area where there's proximity to a population that is growing and can provide them the labor that they need at a more efficient price, they will probably move there. So that is also why it is important to not just focus on the metro hub that all the other investors are looking at.

And so what I'm hearing you saying is that it's essential to look not just at where large employers currently are positioned, but also where large employers may be expanding areas of the city where they may be opening new facilities. And you can obtain a lot of that information by reading the local business paper, right? Instead of reading the Kansas City Star, you'll be reading the Kansas City, whatever the name of their local business journal is. Exactly. Beyond employment, what other indicators should you be looking for? where people want to live. How do you find that out? You can find this information through a variety of sources. One of the sources that I personally use, it's at a very macro scale. I looked at Money and Forbes magazine when I started investing. At that time, they had a couple cities around

Indianapolis listed very highly on their ranking system. That gave me an idea of why people like to live there and then I looked for neighborhoods that mirrored some of those amenities that were very close by, but neighborhoods that were also a little bit cheaper because there would be so many eyeballs on these neighborhoods. They were already popular as it was. What would happen when people got priced out because the demand for those neighborhoods continued to increase, especially with this increased exposure? People would want similar. areas, but ones that they could afford. I see. Okay, so what you're saying is, for example, with Indianapolis, a publication like Money Magazine or Forbes magazine would list Carmel

Indiana because it's technically outside of Indianapolis city limits. And so it would be listed as a different city, even though it is essentially in the greater Indianapolis metro area. Yes. By virtue of reading it on one of those lists, you're technically reading it as a different city because it has different city and corporation. Yes. Since we're using Carmel as an example, once Carmel got even more exposure, demand would go up because now they have national level attention. If people want to be in an area where crime is low, where schools are great, et cetera, where else are they going to go if they want those amenities, but they just can't afford it. So that's when I started looking for other areas that would be similar and in the long run would help with, A, keeping my

places filled because I would have tenants and I was investing in the residential space and continue to have prices, home prices appreciate because of that continued demand. So these types of lists can clue you into where people go when they get priced out of the more densely populated zones, where those overspills are. Yes. And I also drill down a little bit to, it was a little bit more anecdotal, but it's interesting to see what people are saying about the places they live in themselves. So other online forums like Reddit help give you an idea about how people are thinking

about their locations. Right. Facebook groups or neighborhood groups associated with particular. neighborhoods inside of a city? Absolutely. Yelp is also a good resource in that it can show you where new restaurants and cafes are opening. Yeah, there was a Harvard Business Review paper that was published about three years ago where they found that changes in the local business landscape was a leading indicator of housing and price changes. And they used Yelp and census data to come to that conclusion. And they predicted specifically that,

the entry of Starbucks and coffee shops help increase housing prices over time, which is correlative. Yeah, I took a look at the abstract of that paper. It says each additional Starbucks that enters a given zip code is associated with a 0.5% increase in housing prices, which is significant. I mean, if that statement is correct, if four Starbucks enter a zip code, we're talking about a 2% increase in housing prices, that sounds like a lot. I mean, that's a very strong correlation. It's a key indicator. All right. So in terms of data visualization, we're talking right now about what to pin in this map that you're creating of the city. And so far we've talked about indicating on the map the location of large employers, the expansion plans of

large employers, the overspill areas where people who are getting priced out of the higher priced neighborhoods tend to move to, the up-and-coming neighborhoods. We've talked about where new restaurants and cafes are opening, particularly the Starbucks Index. What else should people be looking at? What else should be on this map? It's also important to note where the city is investing in itself. That can indicate where they see future growth and where they want to poise future growth. Cities, townships, counties a lot of time will publish their multi-year plans. And this is definitely a long-term play, but real estate investing is a long-term play. What would be an example of something that's in a long-term plan? What do you mean by a city

investing in itself? Cities will look to improve different parts of their vicinity, right? It can look like updating parks so that there are more use. uses. There are sports arenas within the parks. It can look like updating urban pockets that maybe have been overlooked for some time, installing traffic lights, installing gardening areas for like community gardens that there's more traffic. It can be investment in streets, broadening streets, building shortcuts for better commuting. It's really the long game and you really want to look at, okay, what is being brought to the area as a result of this? And does this fit in with the way I want to invest. With the way you want to invest, really driving the spaces that you're

looking at and what you're pinning to your map. Traffic lights, sidewalks, broadened streets, city parks, community gardens. Those are some examples of places where cities or counties would invest at a municipal level or at a county level. Yes, and it will make the living experience of the residents in the area and in the long run, increase the likelihood of greater demand. What about school districts? How important is that metric? School districts are really important.

Properties in good school districts tend to attract better tenants and be located in better areas. That said, this metric is better for certain types of investments, like evaluating single-family homes. If you are interested in medium-term rentals to traveling professionals or storage, space, a school district might not have as much of an impact on your specific investment, but it's still indicative of a place that will be in demand. That makes sense, right? If you're investing in three-month corporate rentals or if you're investing in Airbnbs or even

multifamily, even for a long-term lease, multifamily units oftentimes in specific locations tend to attract predominantly college students or predominantly grad students or, you know, a population that might not care as much about school districts. So certainly the relevance of school districts would relate to the type of property that you're buying and the strategy that you're using in order to rent it out short term versus long term, for example. Yeah. And looking at this entire conversation from a broader perspective, we're giving several things that can be looked at when you are evaluating an area, but that is not a comprehensive list. And sometimes you have to make adjustments based upon your specific strategy. So we haven't talked about areas like

hospitals, convention centers, concert halls, sporting arenas, but all of those can also be taken to account depending on how you want to invest. How would you take those into account? I mean, certainly those are indicators of people nearby having jobs and therefore having a need for housing. I would look at what brings the type of tenants I want, assuming that I am investing with the strategy that requires people to rent out my space. You know what? You know what I'm thinking of right now is Lucas Oilfield in Indianapolis? Sorry, keep going back to Indianapolis as an example, but it is a city that we both know. And what I'm thinking specifically about is someone that I think you and I both met who has Airbnbs close to, walking to,

distance to Lucas Oil Stadium, he rents out those Airbnbs. And whenever there's a game, you know, he gets very strong demand. Absolutely. That's one way to look at it. There's also, if you think about convention centers, the low-hanging fruit is the short-term rental, people who are coming to attend the convention or the conference. But what about all the people setting it up who need to come in a week ahead of time, stay through it, and stay a week after? That is one form of corporate rental that could be longer than your two or three nights day. That could be several weeks to a month or more. You want to look at the different kinds of business that these locations are bringing in and whether your real estate investment can be aligned with the different kinds of business and provide them a service. All right. So far, in terms of what indicators we pin on this map, we've talked about school districts, we've talked about hospitals, convention centers, concert halls, the Starbucks index. We've discussed areas of municipal investment like traffic lights, broadened streets, other city projects. We've discussed the location of large employers, the expansion plans of large employers. We've talked about the scuttlebutt of finding out which areas, the the local residents are talking about on online forums?

What else should be on this map? What else should we be pinning or shading in? Here are three more data sets. One, you want to understand what the crime trends are in your area. And you can get an idea of that from the local police department. They typically have crime maps where they aggregate data so that you can understand what kind of crime is happening in your area and how often. regardless of your investing strategy, even if you are just lending, like on notes, if you're a private lender, this is something that you want to know about in your area because higher incidences of crime make the investment more risky.

If you have an office space or a dental office in an area where there's crime, that's going to make it harder for the tenant or the person leasing the space to stay in business. if their clients don't feel safe coming to the area. Generally speaking, for a safe investment, you want to be in an area where cars aren't getting stolen, where there aren't violent crimes happening on the regular, et cetera. Another data set, floodplanes. This is important because even if your investment doesn't get flooded or isn't in an area that gets flooded regularly,

If it is in a flood plane, that means that your expenses are higher because you typically have to buy flood insurance if you are financing the investment, which then means that your returns are probably lower or the returns of the person you're lending money to are probably lower. So it's added overhead? Correct. The third and last dataset is WalkScore. This can be found at WalkScore.com. and the importance of this can really be dependent upon how you decide to invest.

This shows the walkability of an area, whether people are able to get to amenities easily without a car. So if you are investing in a residential niche to people who may not have a vehicle in the area, you can assess how attractive your investment would be to those specific individuals as you were looking to work with. And I can see that working for both Class A and Class C properties. If you're investing in Class C properties, you may have tenants who don't have reliable access to a car.

If you're investing in Class A, you may be renting to hipsters who want to live in a densely populated area where everything, all the trendy bars and the doggie daycares and the yoga studios are all in walking distance. Exactly. You may need proximity to a bus line. if you have tenants that need to get to work. Looking at the different aspects of the neighborhood that would service those who don't find having a vehicle is the best option for them.

Right. And certainly if you're Airbnb being a place, for example, and you know you're going to be serving a lot of out-of-town guests by definition, a high walk score, all else being equal is an attractive feature. So far, we've talked about dropping pins or shading. in indicators of places where you do want to be. What about the contra to that? What about the places that you don't want to be? It's also important to understand which establishments are in the areas you might not want to invest. Areas you might not want to invest can include places where, for example, the rents aren't sufficiently high enough to justify the investment. Like if you are looking at single family homes in areas where there are Whole Foods or Trader Joe's. Because in

those areas, the property values will be much higher, typically. Right. I refer to those as the panareas. They're the Panera areas. I also sometimes call them the Pan neighborhoods. I love that. But yeah, you're right. If there's a Lulu Lemon nearby, it's probably expensive. It's probably so expensive that you're not going to get good returns. Probably not going to to get good cash returns. It's the inverse Lulu Lemon Index. And so in addition to shading in all of the places that you want to invest in, you also want to demarcate the areas that you're eliminating. Exactly. Well, Suni, thank you. Well, Sonny, thank you for that. Thank you for having me. Okay, so am I allowed to talk about what's really happening right now?

Yeah, totally. So I actually get this question a lot. My full name is Sunitha, but my friends, everyone who knows me, they refer to me by different nicknames. And you, Paula, do the same thing, like one minute to the next. And so you just called me Sunni and then had to stop yourself, go back, call me Sonny. And now I don't know what to say anymore. And we're just sitting here laughing because I don't even know my own name sometimes apparently. The behind the scenes here, we did, we had a conversation when we rolled out the Invest Anywhere series.

We're like, well, should we introduce you to the public as SUNY or as sunny? And I was just like, I don't care. And so it's behind the scenes as we're recording, it's hard for me to have consistency in the name that I call you. I mean, I should probably have conviction in the name that I would like people to call me. I don't think that's your problem, Paul. I think that's mine. Well, Suni, Sunny, thank you for this detailed explanation of how to create a map, a data visualization map that helps someone understand the neighborhoods within a city that they want to invest in, even if that city is thousands of miles away. So for anyone who's listening who lives in New York, D.C., L.A., San Francisco, you live in a high cost of living area.

you know that it's not viable to invest in rental properties in your own backyard. You want to invest in Wichita or Kansas City or Omaha. But once you pick that city, you don't know how to go deeper and understand the neighborhoods. I hope that this deep dive into what indicators to look for and how to map that out. I hope that this is something actionable that you can take home and do right now. I'd advise that you would. It helped me a lot. It really, really did in figuring out that funnel and not spending more time.

When I realized a property data didn't fit what I wanted. Thank you so much, Sunny. Well, we're going to take a break for a word from our sponsors. And when we come back, we're going to completely switch gears. And Steve, can you give them a little preview of what we might be talking about? That's right. We have an interview coming up with the producer. of Get Smart with Money, a new documentary on Netflix.

That is awesome. Yes. Yes, a new documentary on Netflix, that is awesome. You're welcome. This is why you keep me around, Paula. All right. So that interview is coming up right after this word from our sponsors. Stay tuned.

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It's great to talk to you again. I know. I've missed you. I know. I've missed you so much. We're not on set anymore. Kristen, can you describe for everyone who's listening? What is your role in this film in Get Smart with Money?

So I'm the producer of Get Smart with Money. money and people always ask me what that means because they don't necessarily know what a producer does and it's basically everything. So it's all the planning, the story, the booking, the research, the, you know, finding locations. So it's basically everything from the beginning to the end to get a film to where it needs to be. Why get smart with money? Why a film about money when you could have been shooting a film about anything? We have a track record of taking on these really giant topics and making them 90 minutes, which is like completely impossible sometimes.

And so Netflix actually came to us. And they said, we're really wanting to do something in the personal finance space. We were immediately drawn to the topic because of A, everything that was happening in the world, right? it felt very timely. Like inflation was crazy. We were coming out of COVID. And so we really felt like it was something that people needed, but also, like, we don't

talk about money. Like, it's not polite to ask people how much money they make. It's you never say like, oh, hey, you know, when you're at a dinner party, like, I have $40,000 in credit card debt. Like, it's just, it's sort of this taboo topic in this era where we talk about everything. Like we have like verbal diarrhea. We talk about everything. And yet talking about your money is still sort of taboo.

So we really like this idea of just putting it all out there. I mean, you know, asking for people to put it all out there, right? Like, tell us everything. And we're going to put the fancy graphics on the screen that show all of your financial stats and hopefully make it a little less taboo. So how did you pick? So for the people who are listening to this who have not seen the movie yet, there are four storylines in the movie. Can you give a quick synopsis of the way that those four narrative lines play out? And then talk to us about why did you choose these four different types of storylines?

Well, so there's so many directions you could go in, right? So that was a little daunting because when you have this blank slate where it's like tell four people's financial stories, I don't know, it can get really overwhelming. So we basically started with you. Like we started by finding the four coaches that we wanted to work with. And then from there, we sort of paired people. We tried to find people that had, like, there were similarities to what they were trying to accomplish, to what you had already accomplished or to what, you know, the budget ista had already accomplished, to what Pete had already accomplished.

So that's sort of where we started with it. And then, you know, you just have to find. people that are going to be really open. Because again, you're asking people to, like, let us, like, put a fancy graphic with their debt, their monthly spending, you know, it's like they really had to open their, their finances to us. So first of all, are the people you find going to be willing to do that? And also, like, is the audience going to root for these people?

Because you don't want it to come from, you don't want people to judge them. You don't want people to just not be able to relate to them at all. We have the four characters that we have is Lindsay, who you were paired with. She was a struggling waitress. She's not struggling as much anymore because of the work she did with you on the film. She had two jobs, living paycheck to paycheck, but also had this dream in her heart, right, of doing something totally different, totally unconventional. So that was one character. And then we had Jay Lynn, who's a tease, who's a football player.

And this was sort of a tricky one because we were like, is anybody going to empathize with the dude who, got like a $1.6 million check, but he's so lovable. And honestly, his story is so, it's really heart wrenching because you see how hard these guys work and how high the stakes are for him. You know, like he doesn't have a fallback career. Like he's been playing football since he was eight. So he got this big check and spent a lot of money and then got cut. And then it was like hustling to make the team again. But simultaneously wanting to not just have money sitting in the bank. And so he was. works with somebody to start investing. And so I think that was a, you know, a storyline that was

also super relatable because he was afraid to start investing. And so many people feel that way. They know they should be doing it, but they don't want to. And then we had Ariana who had almost $150,000 in student loan debt and credit card debt. And then lastly, we had Kim and John, who were a couple in Boulder, who were dabbling in the fire movement. But, you know, for them, it was just sort of like they had started to make a lot of money and they were wondering what the hustle was all about because they weren't spending enough time with their kids. So they wanted to figure out a different path forward financially. What has the reception been? So at the time that we're recording this, the movie's been out for a week now. What type of feedback have you been

hearing in terms of the relatability of the characters? You know, it's all anecdotal, really, or just like through social media, but everybody seems to be relating to all of them. You know, like I had a friend who texted me two nights ago and told me he watched the film and that he loved everybody. And, you know, it just, I feel like, not to like pat myself on the back, but I feel like we did a great job with these people. And they all, you know, their storylines all paid off. They all did the work.

I mean, that was another thing. We had to find people that were going to put in the time and put in the effort. And one of the last people that we were considering casting for your storyline. So instead of Lindsay, we were like talking to some other woman like right until the final hour. And we just had a lot of doubts about her commitment. And Lindsay was so committed. You know, she says to you at the beginning of the film, like, I have the passion. I have the drive.

I just don't know how to do it. And so that's exactly what we needed. But, you know, we were trending on Netflix last night. So that's super exciting. Nice. Wow. Yeah. So I think it's resonating.

And again, it's super timely. And you and the other three coaches did such a good job, too, because somebody said to me the other night, this really could have gone in another direction. It could have been like, you know, those, I don't even know what they're called, but like the nanny reality shows where they're yelling at people and they're really trying to whip them into shape. But this was all, like all of the coaching and all. of the financial guidance came from a place of respect and like just like kind of I've been there.

I've been where you are and there's a path forward and maybe you've made mistakes in the past, but it doesn't have to define you. Right. Exactly. You mentioned that you started with choosing who you wanted the coaches to be, you know, myself, Tiffany the Budget Nista, Pete, Mr. Money Mustache and Ross Mack, who's got a huge presence on YouTube. why was it that you chose us rather than, let's say, certified financial planners or somebody

with an MBA from Harvard? It's funny you mention that because I always say, my line is always, well, we didn't want the Columbia MBA. And then my husband gets really pissed at me because he's a Columbia MBA. But no offense to the Columbia MBAs. But, I mean, again, it goes back to just sort of the relatability of the coaches. We wanted people who weren't going to be judgy and it wasn't going to feel still. but it was going to feel like, hey, I was in your shoes however many years ago.

And here was the path forward for me. Tiffany always says the position she was in was so much worse than where Ariana was, right? Like Tiffany's debt was higher. She was in a much less stable position financially to pay it off. So when people hear Tiffany's backstory, they're like, oh, whoa, completely disarmed, right? Because it's like, well, if she could do it, then there's something. hope for me after all. And so we liked this idea of sort of being coached by your peer rather than being coached by a teacher, if that makes sense. Yeah. I feel like you had such a, you know,

a natural connection with Lindsay. Yeah, yeah. From the moment that I met her, we got along so well. And we text all the time. I know you and I were talking about this the other day. When I watched the movie, I was texting her like live throughout the movie. The whole, way through. And a lot of it was like, I love your hair in this scene. Or there's one scene where she's wearing these zebra pajamas. And I checked all caps. I was like, zebra jammies. So we have that kind of relationship. She did the art for a few billboards that just went up in Austin. So she sent me photos of that. She's going to her 10 year high school reunion soon. And she's like, I'm going to be like the greatest star of my reunion. Because who walks into their 10 years?

your high school reunion and is like, I was just in a Netflix movie. You know, so. They should totally screen it at the reunion. Put it on the big screen. Major star. Yeah. So I think we were able, obviously before we found the people, as you know, like, you never met Lindsay before.

We were just like, this is going to be the person. So we had to do a lot of behind the scenes sort of like getting to know you, getting to know her and just make sort of an educated guess that you guys were going to to jive. And so we had to do that with all four people. And I think it worked out. Why four storylines? Why not? You know, I feel like in at least a lot of 30-minute television sitcoms that I watch, there are typically three storylines that sort of intersect. That seem, odd numbers seem to be favored often. So, so why four? Is that true? Is that true? I don't know. I feel like we always do four. I feel like we, yeah, all of our films that, that are character led,

it's always four because it gives you you more of an opportunity for the audience to see themselves and people and that's what's really important because I don't you know there's so much content out there as you know there's a ton of content so what's going to get somebody to click on this and watch it through to the end it would be you know somebody somebody's story would have to resonate for them or multiple stories would have to resonate for them so just by having four people And it kept it moving, too. Yeah. The film is like super fast pace.

Like, there's not a lot of time to get bored when you're watching. Yeah, exactly. Why not five then or six? Would that just be too much? It would be too much to manage. 90 minutes, though, is sort of like that magic number for a feature film. And so cramming one more person's story in there and following them over the course of a year probably would have been too much. But I think we should do a sequel.

So that's where we can have four new people. Mm. Get smarter. with money. Get smarter with money. Exactly. Were there any details that ended up on the cutting room floor that in a perfect world, if the movie could have gone on for infinite

time, you would have loved to have put in. Oh my God. That's a good question. Yes. So, I mean, one thing that sort of jumps out at me is that there was this whole other angle for T's where he was exploring a side hustle because it was like, if I don't

make the team and I don't have this income coming in. And Ross always used to say to him, one source of income is just not enough. You need more than that. So him and Chelsea, his girlfriend, spent a lot of time working with Ross to sort of find a viable side hustle that would work with their lives. I mean, Tease is obviously playing football for the bulk of the year. So they got some of that up and running towards the end. And it wasn't an earlier cut. We just couldn't fit it in. Ari also had a second job. And that was in there at some point. Those two things were sort of big moments. What about you?

What did we film with Lindsay that you were like, wait, why wasn't that in there? There wasn't anything huge that I thought from Lindsay's storyline that got left out, but there was, she got sued by her couch, as I like to say. So she had this couch that she got from a rent-to-own furniture company, and then she stopped paying the bill and then they sued her, which seems ridiculous to me. Like, why didn't they just repo the couch? Like, why not, you know? But of course, that was a huge source of stress for Lindsay because imagine being 27 years old. You don't have a bunch of money. You know, you don't have the money to hire a lawyer.

You're young. And then all of a sudden you're getting like a lawsuit sent to you from some major corporation for a freaking couch. So, yeah, that was, I know, a huge source of stress for Lindsay. But, I mean, I don't think it was important to put it in, you know, in the film. No, but there is that great moment where you sort of talked her through what she would say when she reached out to them because you're right. She was so anxious just about how do I approach this? What conversation do I have with them? So yeah, that was a great scene. And also, I'm sure you remember, Lindsay came into this initially thinking that what she was going to do is save for a wedding. That's right. And so all of this money that she was working so hard to save, she was then going to put into a wedding.

And, you know, I'm sure Lindsay and Carrie will get married at some point. But it seemed to me like the story was so much bigger than that. Her story evolved so much. Like from the time that we met her, her goal was to save money for this wedding and to stop being paycheck to paycheck. And then I think it just became like creating this whole separate, viable entity and feeling more confident with her money and feeling like she had ownership over it. And so it felt so much bigger than a wedding. And so that ended up being something we didn't include in the film. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I also remember a conversation that I had with her where I asked her what her financial goals were. And one of the first financial goals she talked about was that she wanted to improve her credit score. And I was like, wait a minute, why? Of all things that you could have chosen, why that? You don't need an improved credit score. You're nowhere close. to buying a home. But I mean, there's really no other reason for you to be focusing on that right now.

When there are so many other things you could focus on like building an emergency fund, starting a side hustle that ultimately will lead to a career, you know, the type of career that you want to be in forever, opening up your first retirement account. Like there are all of these other goals that are more important than your credit score. Yeah, getting off of that takeout, which I love. Yeah, exactly. I did have a friend say to me, but that's so, obvious. And I said, but is it because so many people spend a ton of money on takeout? And they know they shouldn't, right? But when you see it and when there's that moment in the film where you scroll through all of her spending and the takeout number really pops out at you. And I think once

she was able to really get that under control, it was a small change. And maybe to some, an obvious change, it paid dividends for her. That's really what I liked about the film, too. We wanted the takeaways to be simple because finance can be so overwhelming. It's like, how can we keep this really simple but really impactful and show people that they can make small changes that have big results? Exactly, exactly. And I love what Lindsay said when, you know, she said, look, Carrie and I, her fiancé, we work in the service industry. You know, he works in a kitchen all day. I'm a server and a bartender.

After working restaurant jobs all day long, the last thing that we want to do is go home and cook and be in the kitchen again. And I thought that was a really powerful line because it highlights why they were spending so much money on Uber Eats and DoorDash, right? It wasn't laziness. It was the opposite. They're working two restaurant jobs. And coming home from that, you know, how can they be expected to. be in the kitchen after that. But once they made the commitment to do that, once they made the commitment to bulk cook on, you know, once a week, it created so much more space in their budget

that it reduced stress in all of these other elements of their life. Yeah. I mean, it worked. And you see at the end, you know, it just, when she says, like, we just have a lot more space now, a lot more wiggle room. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. you know, moving forward, what is your ideal outcome in terms of the release of this movie? Like how, what to you is a benchmark that this will have been a successful project? Oh my gosh, that's such a hard question because it's just always so anecdotal, all of our films that we put out there. I think when you still hear from people years later about the impact it had on them, I mean, we still hear from people, you know, we went to high school with who will come out of the woodwork and say, oh my God, you know, I, you know, I watched The Devil we know, like a film that we did about Teflon.

It's like, I threw out all my Teflon pans. And you're like, ah, okay. Like you just, you want people to watch and you want people to be moved by it. And you want people, you want it to stay with people once they watch it. And, you know, Netflix is obviously a huge platform. It's funny because people have been texting us like screen grabs from other countries of the film, you know. And it's so amazing to see. And in, you know, Switzerland, they're calling it the home edit for finding.

right on the on the platform. And so documentary film is sort of a small way to make an impact, but it's a fun one for sure. Ah, that's wonderful. Well, Kristen, thank you for spending this time with us. Are there any final messages that you want to leave with the audience? No, I just want everybody to watch the film. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out on Netflix. And let's do the sequel. Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, thank you, Kristen. on. Well, thank you to everyone who's tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. Number one, share this episode with a friend or a family member. That's the single most important thing that you can do. Number two, open up whatever app you're using to listen to this show and hit the follow button so that you don't miss any of our awesome upcoming episodes.

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