Financial Audit - He’s Choosing Eating Out Over A Place To Live

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

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Hi, I'm Chris Seuss. I'm 39 years old, and I'm based in Austin, Texas. This is Financial Audit. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on. So what do you do for a living? Right now, nothing. Wait.

Yeah. I am currently unemployed. I used to work for Facebook. They let me go with the first round of layoffs. Oh, dude, I'm sorry. Yeah, it was a bummer. That was back in November of last year, and I haven't worked since. What was your position? Program manager, but I focused on managing relationships for the payments team. Come on, Zuck. Yeah, yeah.

Well, that sucks. I'm sorry. I know the tech market got hammered with some layoffs. And I'm very curious what that market's going to do because tech stocks have done very well this year so far. I'm curious if they're going to start making up some of those positions again. But a lot of them said they overhired, but whatever, whatever. You've been applying to a bunch of program manager jobs? Not specifically. So I took some time. I struggled with mental health too.

So when I was like, I was actually on a medical leave. So I took some time to kind of try and get back on. top of my mental health and then when I started applying for jobs I've just had I mean it's been probably three or four months of regular applying and I've had zero luck you know you don't have to tell us by any means but if you want to do you want to go into your mental health and what yeah absolutely yeah it's I've struggled with depression and anxiety my entire life since literally single digits um I had a an attempt in high school oh wow um and And then just kind of dealt with it for a long time.

In 2016, it was getting bad again. And I went to see a therapist who told me in order to continue seeing her, I'd need to be dairy-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, drink half my weight and ounces of water every day, walk a mile or two every day. It was preposterous. But it made me feel like I wasn't even good enough for therapy. Like I had to do all this to get there. I didn't.

I was really crushed by that. Yeah, she sounds like, or they sound like a interesting. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I've been to quite a few therapists. I have never experienced that. This was by far the worst I've encountered. And so I spent in the next couple of months just kind of like tolerating it. And then in September of 2016, a confluence of events, just advice from friends and being

tipped off about the whole 30 workout and a bunch of other stuff. I started working out and I lost 100 pounds in the course of like 10 months and found a new, you know, got promoted and things were going great. Ended up dating a girl that I'd been in love with for years and we were together for maybe a year and a half. And then she broke up with me. And that kind of started another spiral. I had already encountering what I call occupational anxiety. I get really anxious when I worry that I'm not going to meet somebody's expectations, whether I'm close to meeting them or not.

And one day I was on my way to work and just had a breakdown, crying, punching the steering wheel, because I was happy. Or I had everything I thought I wanted to be happy, but I didn't feel it. And so I really, I had a breakdown that day and couldn't go back to work after that and was trying to get a YouTube channel going, trying to find whatever was next. And eventually I think she got tired of that. And we separated. And after that, I took all of my savings, my stock money, my retirement money.

And I, because my mental health was in the dumper, said, I'm going to live my next six months. Like they're the last six months of my life. And then I'm going to end it. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. And so I had a blast. I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me. I went on a couple of cruises.

I went to Hawaii. I went to pro wrestling school. I did a bunch of fun stuff, a bunch of things that I thought I would never be able to do. I grew up in the projects in upstate New York. I never thought I would leave the city, let alone be able to travel the country or the world. So it was very cool to be able to do those things. Six months came up. I no longer wanted to not be here.

Good. And had to figure out a way to survive. I didn't have any money left. I didn't have a job. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I started doing Uber Eats. and living in my car. I would park my car at night.

How long ago was this? This was 2019. Okay. I would park my car at night at truck stops, loves, or pilot or flying J. Because you're not going to draw as much attention there. Lots of vehicles parked there overnight. They have showers, food, bathrooms, always clean. So it was like, I made the best of it that I could.

Except for the lizards. There's that. They never bothered me because I was in the car. I think they were sticking to the trucks where people had money. But honestly, I had two neighbors, two other people living in their cars in the same parking lot that I would see regularly. And so, yeah, I'd wake up in the morning. I'd take my shower at the truck stop and go do Uber Eats for 12 hours and then come back to the truck stop. What are you doing with the money?

Putting gas in the car, food, wasn't really making much. And then there's the maintenance. I blew a tire. For a while, I'm a big wrestling fan. And so for a while, the only thing I was doing aside from Uber Eats is I would kind of, kind of pool my money for the week and then go see a wrestling show. Interesting. That week just because it was like I need something to keep me kind of going.

And then one morning I woke up at the truck stop to an email from Facebook saying, hey, would you like to talk about this opening we have? I was like, of course, you know. I thought it was a scam. I reached out to a couple of friends and was like, This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new Elixir Collection, featuring three perfume intense sense, inspired by a unique orchid accord paired with vanilla, each with its own distinct attitude, each with its own universe, bold elixir, sensual, woody, addictive, magnetic elixir, sweet and

romantic like a lingering touch, solar elixir, a radiant expression of joy, ultra-concentrated for amplified impact and lasting power. Find your euphoria. Discover the euphoria elixir collection by Calvin Klein. Did you put them up to this? Did you mention my name and it was just they found my LinkedIn said, hey, let's talk to him. And I was able to secure that job. I went from being homeless to making $108,000 almost overnight. Yeah. Yeah. It was a blessing. It was amazing. I mean, they flew me down here to Austin for my interview on Halloween 2019. Oh, so at that point, you were in New York. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That was the first time I had spent, you know, the first night I'd spent in a bed in probably two months at that point. And, you know, I didn't tell them that.

I was going to hire a guy who's living in his car. But somehow, you know, I took video interviews from my car and they flew me down. I got the job. They put me up for a month. Things were going well. Found an apartment downtown. Pandemic hits. Everything shuts down.

I've got no friends established. I just moved here. Adult friends are always hard in new locations too. Yeah. And I'm not a big drinker. And like that's what people do to meet people. So I became very isolated. And that's where my mental health struggles kind of led me to over the last couple of years where I don't know anybody here.

So I don't leave home. You know, it's and then I put all the weight back on. And so now I feel, you know, gross and don't want to be seen in public unless I'm with people. So to be clear, you are not gross. Thank you. I appreciate that. Like objectively. Well, and that's the thing with mental health, right?

Is nobody's telling me these things. It's me telling me these things, you know? I've always felt like, oh, people think I'm a piece of shit. nobody's ever said, hey, Chris, you're a piece of shit. That's always me saying, Chris, you're a piece of shit, you know? So I appreciate that. I'm still working on getting it through to myself. I mean, there's always a conversation to be had about, okay, yes, there is like unhealthy, healthy.

We want you to get to a place where you're healthy. I want to get to a place where I am healthy. But, I mean, dude, you got that beard rock in your handsome, dude, come on. I appreciate you. But, of course, there is the conversation of health. And we do, we do want to get health. And that is not a part of the conversation even shameful to acknowledge to say, we want to get to a place where we're healthy and we live a longer life.

And that includes for both of us, you know, eating better and probably being more active and losing some weight. Totally. And well, that's the thing, right? Is it's if I don't want to be here now, why do I want to get healthy to be here then? Well, you know. And also to say, you know, based what happened in 2019, based what's happened recently and based what happened in high school, I am very happy that you're here with all of us right now. Thank you.

Normally this is where I'd plug, subscribing, but if you are dealing with anything mental health at all, and I have a panic disorder, you know, everyone has their different things. 988, it's the emergency hotline

for anyone dealing with anything. So definitely, reach out to 988 if you are just 988. 988. I didn't know that. Yeah, I think it's about a year old almost. That's awesome.

Yeah, so that's the emergency mental health hotline. That's good to know. Yeah. And it actually connects, you with like a regional place based on your own thing too. Wow. So it's not just some person thousands of miles away.

Right. Yeah. Helps. But I am very glad that you're here with all of us today and I'm very glad that, you know, you never went through with anything. That's, you know, very just, yeah, no, I'm happy for that. I appreciate that. How has life been here in Austin, you know, recently?

You said you moved here, had a hard time. Many people have you had a chance over the past few years? No. I, um, just because I had gotten to that point where I wasn't comfortable going out, you know, now the only time I really see people is if I bring friends or family into town. Sure. Where are your friends? New York. Have you considered going back to New York?

I have, especially now. Um, so my lease is up at the end of August. Um, that's quick. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I've got to figure something out. Um, I have talked about going back even just briefly to try and get back on my feet and maybe, um, um, I'm. refresh myself in terms of having that social interaction and maybe gets a little bit of happiness back before coming back and trying to.

Do you have a connection, Austin? Do you feel anything about this place? Is there any reason for you to stay? Like, I think it feels pretty clear to me, like, go back, but I'm just to play devil's advocate. Is there anything here? I genuinely love it here. Not even really knowing the city. I just, New York sucks.

You're from Michigan, I believe. I read six, seven months of gray, not for me. That was one of the issues I think with the X and I is I always wanted to move south and she was never going to want to. Everyone always asked me what checking account I use and what high-yield savings account I use. Recently, I switched over to SoFi. The reason I did it is because their app is very intuitive and it's super easy to use on your computer as well. But even better than that, their high-yield savings account is all the way up to 4.4% at the time of recording this clip. That is. is so hard to beat and I am taking advantage of that all day.

And not only that, but there's additional bonuses that I took advantage of that you can as well. Set up direct deposit, get a $50 bonus or all the way up to $250. That's free money. That's free money. I took it. You could take it too. So check out my affiliate link in the description below.

It's seriously awesome. I use it each and every day for my banking needs. I think looking out that window is the first time I've seen a cloud in like three months. It's wild. I mean, I send my family. the 100 degree days for 10 in a row. Yeah, that's a bit much. But I'll take that over dark, dirty snow that's been there since October.

But your friends are there. Your friends are there. Support systems. I'm a big country music fan, so I like that about Texas. Big sports fan. NASCAR is 15 minutes away once a year, which is nice. So there's a lot of reasons I'd like to stay here. Plus, I have this nagging feeling of I haven't made a mark here.

Okay. And I kind of want to make a mark here. What's this YouTube thing you're doing? It's in the description. It's the Troilty Pod. It's Troilty Podcast. I started it just over a year ago with my friend Matt from high school. I went to college for radio.

I wanted to be in radio. Really? I wanted to just have people talk about me and enjoy what I'm doing and help people along the way. So we've tried to do that with the podcast. We just goof around a lot. We're friends from high school. He's in New Jersey now. I'm here in Austin, but we're from Troy, New York.

So that's why we call it Troilty. And we just have a blast. We've really, the show has evolved a lot from when it first started. When I first started, I wanted to just be this raw thing. And then I realized, oh, people do want a little production value. They want it to be a little prettier. And so we've tried to tweak on those things and really develop it over time. He's based on New York.

He's New York, New Jersey. Okay. So it's virtual. Yeah, yeah. We connect once or twice, once a week, either Tuesday or Wednesday. We do the Toronto podcast. We also do the Academy Award. which is a movie review show.

All on one channel? All on one channel. Well, how many subscribers do you have? Just hit 300. Oh, nice. Well, dude, those milestones are the hardest ones to hit. So that's worth celebrating. It's very excited.

I mean, we were very stagnant for a while. We were stuck at, you know, 150 to 200. This episode is brought to you by Ultima Replenisher. Health is all about balance, like a salad with fries. So why not have balance in your hydration? With six essential electrolytes and no junk, Ultima provides balanced hydration you can enjoy every day. That means no sugar, calories, or carbs, and it's not loaded with sodium.

Just delicious plant-based flavors you'll actually look forward to drinking. Shop Ultima on Amazon or in store at Target and Whole Foods Market. For a while, and we hit on something recently, and it just kind of took off. And so we were thrilled with that, and hopefully it continues to grow. We just want to have fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no point of doing it if it's not fun. No.

I started this for fun. There's so many shows that. that are just people arguing and yelling at each other. And I don't want to do that. I can yell a bit. Well, yeah. And I probably will once we get into all this. But if that's all you're doing, I think it's easy to tune that stuff out.

So we try to keep it very, keep a good mix of content. And he's a gay man. I'm a straight man. And so there's a lot to play off of there, putting each other in each other's shoes or the fact that I go over the top for pride and he doesn't. Oh, funny. So just trying to find little opportunities to kind of, I guess, stand out and be ourselves. So what have you been doing for getting back to the finance part of things? First of all, I want to give your, we've had it.

This is a great backstory that sets up a lot of context for things to come. What would you give yourself zero to 10? What's your score right now, financially speaking, for where you are? In terms of your overall finances. Two? Two. Okay. And then I'll.

Give you a rating at the end, as I always do. How November to now is quite a while ago, what is that, nine months? Ten months almost. How have you been surviving and paying for things? How have you been spending $2,302 in the past month on food, fast food? I spent that much. Because the delivery part can add a lot of money. Yeah.

So Facebook was very generous. when they let us go. And they kept paying us through mid-January. And then we also got a severance package, which I think was around $20,000 for myself. And then I had retirement funds. And I took those out. No.

Again, so this is the second time you've drawn retirement. Okay. So, and sorry, I was wrong. It was about over, it was over a thousand and eating out. And then combining with going grocery stores. shopping. That was 2,000 grocery shopping. And that's a lot to grocery shop, $1,000. I tend to throw a lot of groceries away because I do so much takeout. You throw a lot of, so you do $1,000 in groceries, you throw it all up. Yeah.

Okay. The first time you took out of your retirement account, how much was in there? In 2019? Mm-hmm. Best guess. Doesn't have to be 100%. Okay. Dokey. 30,000. And I'll see, that was 2019. So that would have been just following the general stock market, like 35,000. How much did you just take out recently? That was, I think, 30 as well. Okay.

So of that, you're almost 40. If you retire at 65, 26 years, average stock market, no extra additions. That would have been worth $516,000. You lost $516,000. That's what you just lost, was $516,000 by pulling that out. When would that have been $5,000, $6,000? $65. Counterpoint?

I retired twice already. You have, but you need to go make money now, right? Yeah, yeah. What's in savings? I think it was, what, $2 or $300 at this point. How are you paying for this month? So I paid my rent ahead. Yeah, okay.

I've got a few hundred bucks cash, and I've got some credit. it and so hopefully a job soon. What, have you only applied for the jobs that were like your previous position or have you just been applying to anything and everything? I've been applying, so I started out just applying to tech jobs, things similar to what I've been doing, things that could come close to what I was making. Yeah. I've since opened that window quite a bit.

I've recently applied to Buckees and Enterprise Rwine. car scheduled a phone interview with me on Thursday. So there's some very entry-level jobs out there that I could probably get. And I'm hoping to get if nothing else comes through. I did have an interview at McDonald's that I decided to skip out on just because I've got six years experience. I think I could probably get a McDonald's job pretty easily. And they were scheduling interviews in real time.

But you have like the couple hundred dollars to your name. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't. You're going to need to buy food soon. You're going to need to have a place to live. soon. You probably have other bills.

Well, you definitely have debts. Yeah, yeah. We've even gotten into, do you have to pay or else they'll go into collections? So, like, we accept, we get a McDonald's job right now. And then while we have that, we apply to better jobs. I guess my concern is I don't want to start and stop and then leave them short, but I guess I really don't owe them anything. They are used to it.

They are used to it. You guys, the employment contract between you and them is to say, first of all, they can fire you at will. So you giving them a two-week notice is just being nice. And really, you guys are just agreeing, okay, you work these hours, they pay you this. Yeah. There is no indefinite servitude involved in that. Plus, it's a very high turnover thing, so they're not going to be offended. They're used to it.

Okay. Okay. So now we'll talk about the income situation. 1,541 is on a credit one. Is this one that I have another statement for? Because I can't really. I've got two credit ones. the second one, I think.

Yeah, those are two separate cards for credit one. Is it one of these? This is a credit one. Because I can't see what was like spent or anything. So that's one of the credit ones? This is this one. We'll bleep the last four digits. Okay, so on this one, we have a balance of, oh, dude, yeah, this is why we need to start

making money now. credit one this is $1,541 $16. I think that was paid off last month too. So you just rack that up every month?

I've been, I thought it was good for my credit to use a credit card now this time because it's some Google YouTube videos for like a rental and Uber Eats, Uber Eats Lotto, Uber Eats, Uber Eats, Uber Eats, Amazon music. I don't even know what that is. I need to cancel that. First of all, we're not going to say where you live. I know where you live.

You're surrounded by incredible restaurants that you can walk two seconds to. Yeah. Why are you Uber reading? That whole not feeling comfortable being seen outside. I get it. I get it. Okay. Are you currently in therapy?

Oh, yes. This is going to come down to this. Okay. How often are you seeing your therapist? I was seeing her weekly. She's agreed to continue seeing me without, insurance, but I don't feel comfortable seeing her weekly that way. So we're going to move to buy weekly.

How much is it going to cost by weekly? I think she's going to see me for free until I find something. She's incredible. Yeah. Okay. Have you, has it helped? Therapy? Yeah. Yeah. With her and everything? Yeah. She's, she's great. Have you worked on you not being able to leave your place? Like you're here on camera in front of like 200,000 people. This I can do. I can be on camera.

I can do my show every week. This is not an issue because this is I'm performing in a way. You know? I'm in front of the lights. I'm in front of the camera. There's something about, like I could go on stage. I've been on stage in front of 30,000 people before introducing Taylor Swift. Not a problem.

You introduced Taylor Swift? Interesting. She opened for Rascal Flats back in the day. Did you meet the Swift? I did. I did. This is back. before she was anything popular.

One of my employees is very jealous right now. This is tear drops on my guitar, Taylor Swift. Yeah, when it was just her and her mom visiting radio stations in their car, it was very cool. But, yeah, I can do this. So this is going out your place and then among the general pop? Just because the voices. Why did you move on to like the business street in the world?

Because I thought that would be the catalyst for me to get out. I'd be right there in the part of it. And I love the street. I'd love to go out and experience it. I just don't have anybody to experience it with. Yeah. Have you tried, I don't even know if this works, but the Bumble BFF? No, I didn't know that was a thing.

Yeah, you could do like a friend searching thing on there. One of my friends made a friend for a second on there. But it might be something worth considering. Have you? Maybe. Then there's, again, this might deal with the anxiety and stuff like that, but there's also like different groups and stuff. If you try any of those?

I haven't. I've meant to. I meant to, like, look into. overeaters anonymous or whatever, but I haven't. I have no excuse for why I haven't. My therapist is very much encouraging me to get out of the house. And when I'm having the conversation with her, I feel like, yeah, I can do this. There's nothing stopping me.

I can go walk outside right now. But then we hang up and I'm crippled again. Maybe you need to walk outside while on the phone with her. That's a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. That might be something worth considering. Either way, the Uber.

It's not like I want you going down to the restaurant anyway. Like you're getting $1,000 of groceries. I put people on a $300 budget for themselves for groceries. Why are you Uber eating instead of making the food? Too depressed to cook or clean up the dishes from the last time I cooked? I can't combat that or do anything with it because it's just I'm not a mental health expert by any means. I think your situation is already going to start coming down to just. Working with different mental health experts to address the overall situation, then you can address the finances.

But it's hard for you to do that in reverse. Yeah. Because if mental health is the barrier, then it's... In an odd, twisted way, part of me is okay with this because I'm so used to living in chaos and in survival mode. This is like extra, though. I know. Oh, I agree. What happens on September 1st?

That's a great question. I don't know. The plan right now is to, I guess the worst case scenario plan is everything goes into storage. And I drive back to New York and try to find something while there, you know, staying at a friend's house or whatever. I got a little mix up here. We have another credit one. So this is a separate credit one, right? Yeah, I got two credit ones.

This one's not paid off or is it? At the time of the statement, it wasn't $300. bucks. By the way, you're doing with so many fees on these credit ones terrible. Credit one's evil. So it's these monthly fees that's killing you. I mean, you paid $72 in interest this year so far on this card, probably similar on the other card, if not more.

Actually, probably more. And then you paid $73 of fees on this card, and you've probably paid more on that other card as well. His credit one is death, and it's buying weed. Yeah. Is that good for your mental health? That's a good question. It's one I've had several times from and

two mental health. experts. I've had recently mental health experts tell me don't rock the boat. Are you on any medication? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm on, what is it?

Zoloft. I'm on lithium. I previously was doing ketamine treatments. That's pretty popular recently. Yeah, check out our channel if you want to see me freak out during a ketamine session and throw myself to the floor. That's why I have not tried. It was a lot of fun. times and it did help initially.

But over the long run, I just was not agreeing with it and I would have these moments where I would flop out of the chair and do kind of like the curly Three Stooges walk in a circle. Yeah. I'm on Selexa. That's fine. Nice. Can't be a millennial if you don't have an antidepressant. Yeah.

Okay. And then we have a capital one. You did pay it off, but now the balance is all the way up again. But you don't have the money to pay this off anymore. Correct. Uber. Uber. Mm-hmm.

Eats, Eats. Papa Johns. Uber Eats. Papa Johns. Puppet Johns. Puppetjohns. Amazon. Uber Eats.

Uber Eats. Uber eats. Oh, geez. Your T-Mobile bill is expensive, by the way. Yeah. Financing a phone? I am. Uber Eats.

Uber Eats. Regal Cinemas. It was fine. What did I do? That was to go see the new Indiana Jones movie so we could review it. How'd you feel comfortable? There was a purpose. Yeah.

I was okay with it. Okay. Yeah, that's a good one. You went to some comedy, but you're, you know, you're around a lot of people.

That's the thing. I didn't go to that comedy show. I do this too. I buy, and the day comes and I can't move. It's really bad. Two more Regal Cinemas. And Netflix,

Uber, breeds, Amazon. Uber eats. Amazon Uber eats, Uber eats, Peacock, Peacock. Streamyard. Stream yard. Yeah. That's the program we used to do our show.

Wow. Tequitos. What an absolute meme of a mug to drink from. And you can too. As long as it fits in your 50, 30, 20, and you're not in any bad debt. Shop.com. Or in the description below. There's other things.

Well, okay, I'm just trying to think. there's not uh to be completely honest there's not much i can do here this is this stems from a mental health thing if we don't feel confident or good enough to get out to do this to do that if we're being held bound by depression and anxiety which is all extremely reasonable and is a big part of life and self-image issues that is not my thing yeah i can't do anything about that i can i mean okay very clearly, we go get any job we can when we look for the better jobs. And we do that three months ago,

four months ago, five months ago, six months ago. So you wouldn't have gone to WrestleMania? I would not have gone to WrestleMania. We pay off the balances. We don't use credit cards because now you're maxed out to credit cards and, well, you're not maxing them out, but you're putting a lot on them and you're not able to pay it off. I'm probably getting a cheaper rent

starting next month if we're not going back home. Maybe we do go back home. And I have an emergency fund of which you have drained and I don't pull out retirement accounts. There's a lot of things. But none of that, and I would cut back and I would only be cooking at about $300, $400, $400 a month. Yeah. None of that matters if you literally, mentally cannot do that.

And that is between you and your therapist. It's not an excuse. It's not a justification. It is just the reality of the situation. And I don't know what I can do. Yeah. I think, you know, I guess part of me is hopeful that just being in this situation. will be enough to kind of, like I said, the survival mode kicks in and maybe I get out of that.

I can look past the fear. You want some survival mode. I'll tell you this. At this point, you're dying, stocking shelves on the Walmart floor in your 80s. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's also that whole, you say that, the doomsday aspect where I just assume I'll never live that long. Well, there is this, this is beyond my qualifications, but I know for myself, there is the health aspect.

I will only speak for myself. I need to get to a healthier place if I am going to live longer. Yeah. And so that is a big part of it as well. And I know that if I don't get to a healthier place, especially as I get older, not only will I not live longer, I won't be able to be as productive. And I might not be able to participate in those activities that I might need to bring in income. Yeah.

Choice hotels get you more of what you value. Comfort in. It's calling your name. Wave on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Book direct at storeshiltails.com. So that is a thing, and that's a reality. I'm not an expert, and I will not talk on the health part of it at all,

but I'm just speaking of that from myself. So whatever we decide to do, you know, this is the personal choices around that. Again, I know there's a mental health barrier, and I don't know what works best for you. Well, in the way you mentioned, you know, wanting to be here longer. When I think about that, I go, oh, the only reason I would want to be here longer is for my friends and family. And that just kind of falls into another, that's another item in the box for maybe go back home for a bit. Yeah. I agree with that.

Okay. Well, yes, let's make a Mark in Austin. But let's make it Mark and Austin by going back home for a little bit, maybe taking control of our health, taking control of our mental health, physical health, our budget, our financial health, all aspects of the district. different, you know, pillars of health, which I'm sure is the thing somewhere. And if we can take care of that, including just our health and our relationships and stuff like that, then maybe you can come back down more ready than ever to just take on the world and just win. Part of me is hopeful that I'll find a job that forces me to be in person here.

And then hopefully that helps on the social aspect. I don't know. Give me the finances, et cetera. What if you get too anxious about you just don't show up and then you just lose your job? Like, that's the thing. There's potential for that. There's things I should do for my job that I don't do because I have my anxiety thing. Like, if there are certain situations that would be like, yes, I wish I could be forced to do this in order to do this.

But then when I get to the moment, I'd probably just choose the easy brain part of it out of just. Well, I think similar to coming here, there'd be a purpose for me to go to work. Okay. You know what I mean? Well, you know you. It's not, if I'm capable, if I'm. if I know I'm capable of doing the work, I'm not as worried about being there.

That's when I start to doubt myself. So I guess if I got the job, I'd hope that I'd feel like I belong, saying that I do realize that. Is that what you would choose to do? Would you rather get a job in person here? Would you rather go home for a bit? There's jobs up there.

Oh, I know. I would rather get a job here in person and try to stay. If that's what you know you want, then that should be our goal then. We try to do that. We get our job. We take control of our budget. You're finding a cheaper place to live.

You have a car. You have a car. I got a car. So it's likely going to be in more suburbia. Not as fun. Not as pleasant. Not as good as a view. I assume you have a good view.

Nah, not really. I'm midway through the building and everything's shot up around there. Everything has shot up. So, okay, fine. It'll be in boring, suburbia, car-dependent death. And it's fine. I'm fine with that. That's what it would be back home.

oh there you go okay so that's perfect so maybe we shoot for that we need to take control the budget and you know just as an overall thing because i i'm not going to lay out some stuff here because again this just is going to come down to your mental health and there's even more documents and i don't know if it makes sense to go over them there was some more gambling and you know some just spending on uber eats and a lot of other stuff that i would definitely cut back on any there are addictive tendencies. I know when it comes to glogging down some McNugs and stuff like that, like that stuff.

That triggers just happiness is in the brain. And I get it. And I assume the same thing with the different gambling things and stuff like that. So those are things we need to work on as well. Gambling? Well, it says lotto. Is that not gambling? Well, it is.

lotto.com. I think that's only like once in the last month or two. Okay. I thought I started a couple times. Okay. Very hard to get out of. So maybe we do some group things. Maybe we, I'm not going to lay out a whole thing.

I'm not going to go through the rest because this is going to come down to mental health. But what I would do for you right now is take care of the mental health thing. We shoot for a job. We get a cheaper place further from town. We take control of our budget. And this is the budget. I'm not going to give you specific numbers. But add up everything for when you're working.

You might work two jobs, by the way. 50% of your take-home pay. or less goes to needs. Rent, utilities, car, debts, whatever it is, all that is added up at no more than 50%. So that sets your guidelines. The rest goes to paying off all the debt until you have no bad debt. And then once you are, I want to take a brief moment to thank today's video sponsor,

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And it's either that or $10,000, whatever one's the most. And I do $10,000 at a minimum just case anything happens to a car or medical. Yeah. It at least helps. So once you have a fully funded emergency fund, all the bad debts are gone. 50% of your income and no more goes to needs. You need to start investing at least 30% of your income. income, maybe more, but at least 30% of your income on a monthly basis, then you can have the

other 20% to fund. Whether that be eating out, doing group activities, starting some new hobbies, that's it. One thing I'm going to prescribe you is just because I know it's good for mental health and it's good for life longevity and it's because you've brought it up specifically or I wouldn't have brought it up. Let's go to the gym. Yeah. Let's start doing some gym things.

It's a gym in my building. Well, yeah, maybe what you need that's even better is going to a gym, going to a specific gym, like down the street. Maybe we're joining a fitness program. Maybe we're getting a personal trainer even, you know, like once a month. So it's not like crazy out of your budget by any means. That's something I would start considering because that can help with the social part and that can help with the physical part. Again, that's outside of my knowledge. Cooking at home would be productive on the budget front.

The health front and the mental health front. Yeah. So I get it. I get it. And trust me, on those days when I can, I do. I push and I get what I can done. It's just those days when you can't and they start to snowball. I mean, you get it.

Yeah. No, I do. So that's right now work with your mental health expert. Take her up on the weekly. Maybe. I know you said you feel weird about it, but that might be something worth happening. maybe join some group things. Yeah.

Group things in terms of like, you mentioned something, an overeaters Anonymous. Is that real? Yeah. Oh yeah, that's a thing. That might be something worth considered joining.

Yeah. Thought about that. I thought about marijuana anonymous. Yeah. And you might actually meet some good people who you form relationships with there as well. For sure. Which would be really cool.

I got lucky by finding a good group of friends down here. That honestly is kind of rare in adult life in terms of going to a completely new place and making a new friend. So going to these different groups could be good places for that as well. Definitely. And I know we're pretty far from the finances aspect of things. That's because all this is, that all is going to stem from you taking control of just your overall life

because you're not anything without your mind. I mean, your mind is you. Yeah. So just better taking care of yourself regarding that. And then just know that you matter. You really do matter. especially to these credit card companies up. Yeah.

You matter. Take care of yourself in every way possible. And you can get to the other side. And we can talk about the budgetary stuff once you get to the point where you can. Right now I need you to take care of yourself. Yeah. I appreciate that. Do you have any final thoughts or anything you wanted to talk about?

No, I appreciate the time. You know, this was very helpful. I think coming from the projects and, I mean, raised on welfare, I have zero financial knowledge, you know, in terms of, you mentioned investing. I have no idea. Do you mean just throwing money in my savings account that will pay yourself first? Are you talking stocks? Like, I know about these things.

I just don't know how to do these things. And, you know, having pulled $30,000 out and then $20,000 from my severance, I was like, how can I make this work for me? And I just couldn't think of anything other than funding my show, my podcast. How much you've put it into that? I purchased three laptops, some monitors. We had a, I bought it one cheap laptop, which fried out. So I replaced that.

Some shore microphones. Yeah, put a little bit of money into it. Yeah. I wouldn't have gone that route, but. Yeah, I, start cheap. Definitely. I struggle with that. I wanted to come out of the box.

This is going to be perfect, obviously. All this might look nice. right now, but we haven't even had all this stuff for like more than a month. Oh, wow. Yeah. And then even before that, yeah, it was nice. But we had that. We didn't have any of the last set for the first five months.

You know, I started with a couple of cheap rental things. I edited everything myself. Yeah. That's where I'm at. I'm doing all the editing, all the producing. But just know you don't need to keep putting money into it, especially when you don't have money. Oh, I've definitely stopped. Last year, because like I said, I want to.

do good things too. I want to be charitable. So like we took our Patreon funds and I just donated them for the whole year. They give them to you to, okay. It was only a hundred bucks. It wasn't like we got a ton of money, but I donated that hundred. My own hundred and then my co-host also donated a hundred. So a nice little charity thing. We did a contest for back to school to give people some money to spend on back to school stuff. And just, you know, that's the kind of stuff I want to do. Be goofy and irreverent, but also help people. Know that you can help people more and give more once you take care of yourself first and get to a better position. When you're in a better position, you have more to give. So it's an investment to give eventually in the future by taking care of yourself now.

I'm sorry, I cut you off, though. Do you have any final thoughts? No, that's, I think that's it. I think that covers it. For Chris, it's definitely very hard to overcome a lot of mental health things. I get that. And that's what he has to address first before we can start hitting some of the financial things, because it is behavior first when it comes to, you know, certain people's finances,

and that's definitely his, and a lot of that sounds from the mental health. So for his Hammer Financial score, he gave himself a two out of ten. Spending within a budget zero or a ten, spending that much on Uber Eats, when not making any income, can't be higher than a zero. Debt one out of ten, not collections, not IRS debt. So it's not going to be a zero, but I can't give him higher than a one going into that credit card debt and some other debts what you even talk about because there's no purpose, honestly. And then retirement.

zero out of ten pulled everything i'd give a negative number if i could emergency fund there's nothing zero out of ten rounded hammer financial score zero out of ten make sure to check out all the resources linked in description below i have some paid affiliate links there there are resources that i either use or would use in specific situations like a very high yield savings account good investment accounts where you get free money when you sign up like acorns five dollars for five dollars and don't forget to follow my instagram and twitter thanks also whoever has the most viewed ticot or youtube short using a clip from this video, I'll send you $100. Post however many times you want, but you must tag my YouTube slash TikTok at.

And put YouTube Caleb Hammer in the title slash description.