Something You Should Know - The Magical Appeal of Bacon & How Your Emotions Cost You Money

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

When you visit a doctor, you assume the diagnosis and treatment will be based entirely on your symptoms and medical history. But there is another factor that can quietly influence what happens in the exam room and the quality of the care you receive. And it has nothing to do with your health. https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/26/1/13 Bacon may be one of the most beloved foods in America. People wrap it around other foods, crumble it onto salads, put it in desserts, and even flavor cocktails with it. What's especially interesting is that bacon's popularity has continued to grow despite years of warnings from health experts about its risks. So what is it about bacon that has captured the American imagination? Why has it become more than just a breakfast food and evolved into a cultural phenomenon? Mark Johnson, who teaches at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, traces bacon's unlikely rise from humble pork product to national obsession. He is author of American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon (https://amzn.to/4odStxo). When you mix money with emotions, all kinds of things can go wrong – and often do. That’s according to Jade Warshaw. She is a personal finance coach and co-host of The Ramsey Show with Dave Ramsey. She and her husband paid off more than $400,000 in debt and transformed their financial lives. Now she is on a mission to help people understand how money works, how your emotions impact what you do with your money and how to get back on track. Her latest book is What No One Tells You About Money: The Real Key to Getting Unstuck from Someone Who's Been There (https://amzn.to/4fMAGv9). Your brain is remarkably good at many things. Holding onto a growing list of errands, appointments, reminders, and unfinished tasks is NOT one of them. In fact, trying to keep everything in your head can increase stress and mental clutter. There is a simple, surprisingly powerful tool for clearing your mind and improving focus—and it requires nothing more sophisticated than a pen and paper. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/zeigarnik-effect Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on something you should know, how well you treat your doctor may matter more than you realize. Then, bacon. It's been called a dangerous food, yet we eat more of it than ever and put it on everything. We put bacon on everything precisely because we've been told not to put it on anything. For most of the 20th century, bacon became public enemy number one. Despite multiple predictions that Bacon Mania was going to come to an end, it just keeps going. Also, the problem with keeping things in your head instead of writing them down,

and understanding money and emotions, and what money does to you. Money simply makes you more of what you already are. If you're a person who is insecure, lack of money, or even tons of money will just magnify that. If you're a person who is very confident, then money will simply make you more of what you already are. All this today on something you should know. This spring, denim gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool.

With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature... Wait, for this price? Moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. Something you should know. fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, something you should know with Mike Carruthers. Imagine that simply having a pen or pencil with you at all times could actually be a big factor in your success.

How? Well, that's what we're going to start with today. I'm Mike Carruthers, and welcome to something you should know. So if you've got something important that you don't want to forget, Don't just tell yourself you'll remember it. Write it down. Research has found that writing information down helps move it from your short-term memory into your long-term memory. But the benefits go beyond remembering. Psychologists have discovered that writing things down, whether it's a to-do list, a goal, or even a worry,

helps organize your thoughts and freeze your brain from having to keep track of everything. In fact, one study found that people who wrote down unfinished tasks were better able to stop thinking about them and focus on other things. Other research has shown that writing by hand engages the brain differently than typing, leading to deeper processing of the information and better recall later. The lesson is that writing isn't just a way to record your thoughts, it's a way to improve them. Sometimes the fastest way to clear your mind,

something important or solve a problem is simply put a pen to paper. And that is something you should know. There are few foods that inspire the devotion that bacon does. People put bacon on burgers, crumble it into salads, wrap it around other foods. There is bacon cotton candy, bacon soda pop, bacon dental floss, and even bacon ice cream. That's pretty remarkable for what is essentially a cured strip of pork. What's even more surprising is that bacon's popularity has survived decades of warnings from health experts. The World Health Organization classifies bacon

and other processed meats as carcinogenic, and yet America's appetite for bacon seems as strong as ever. The smell alone can make people weak in the knees. And attempts to create healthier substitutes from turkey bacon to plant-based bacon have had only limited success. So what is it about bacon? Why has this particular food achieved

an almost mythical status? And how did a simple breakfast side dish become a cultural phenomenon? Well, here to explain is Mark Johnson. Mark earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Alabama and now teaches at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He's author of the book,

American Bacon, the history of a food phenomenon. Hey, Mark, welcome to something you should know. Hey, thanks for having me. So first, I guess we need to understand, because I don't know that I actually know the answer to this, what is bacon? What is it exactly? Well, bacon's something that's changed over time, so maybe that's why it's hard to understand.

For most of its history, the term bacon or the terms in other languages referred to most of the pork eaten by most of the people, people, and by that it means some combination of smoke salted and cured. I think it's actually easier to define what it's not for most of its history. For most of its history, it's not ham because ham is prized, and it's not fresh because that is also really valuable in the age before refrigeration. And it's not sausage.

something that's distinct. Other than that, people would have used the term bacon to refer to pretty much anything else because pretty much anything else would have been salted, cured, or smoked. And when I go to the grocery store today and buy bacon, what am I buying? What we know of as bacon in our grocery store refers to streaky, fat, and lean pork belly that's been salted, cured, and smoked. And this is a relatively new definition. They would have called that bacon a long time ago, but they would have also called so much else bacon too.

The industrial food system needs a definition that fits everyone everywhere. And it needs to be the same week to week, month to month, so that uniformity and standardization is something that we come to value when we go to the grocery store. So bacon as fat and lean pork belly, salted, cured, and smoked is a relatively recently specific definition.

And that's American bacon. What's Canadian bacon? Yeah. So in the United States, we have the fattest of the kind of three big types of bacon. In the United States, we use pork belly. In the United Kingdom, they use the loin with some of the pork belly. attached to it. And in Canada, they have the leanest variety of bacon with just pork loin. Is there some form of bacon in every culture that eats pork?

Yeah, it's just too useful for millennia before refrigeration. It's just too useful for a society to really give it up completely. So yes, there's a type of bacon, a cured, salted, a combination of lean and fat variety of pork to sustain us through the winter, to help us get us through most of the year to add fat, flavor, salt, to an otherwise humble, meager meal. And what is so interesting that you would sit down and say, you know, I'm going to write a book about bacon because it's so interesting. Well, what's so interesting about it?

It's meat, but there's lots of meat. So what makes this so amazing to you? Yeah, I think what makes it amazing is how amazing everyone thinks it is. For most of its history, bacon has not been that way. Bacon's been mundane. It's been valued, certainly, because it's just too useful in an age before refrigeration. But by the late 20th century, I was surrounded right by the fear of fat kind of doctrine guiding our dietary advice and our conventional wisdom. about how to lose weight and how to stay healthy.

Dietary fat makes people fat, right? That was the wisdom. It seemed that simple. And so to see that in the 1980s and 1990s, that low-fat dieting craze to the 21st century emphasis on putting bacon on everything, I needed to see what happened. And what happened? We got fed up with the low-fat dieting.

dieting craze. We looked around us and noticed that it didn't exactly work, that maybe it wasn't so simple as dietary fat makes us fat. So we kind of just got fed up with that and decided we wanted to live a little. I think what's interesting about the phenomenon that's Bacon Mania is how much we've embraced fat and fatiness as flavors, as tastes in the 21st century, as sort of a rebellion against that century of low-fat dieting. When bacon started to come back onto the scene, it wasn't, you know, low-fat varieties or 99% fat-free varieties of bacon or pre-cooked, very convenient, you know, very lean styles of bacon. But that's not what drove the early instances of bacon mania. Indeed, it was actually referring to bacon by, I think,

by its French name, which could be like Lardon, embracing that fat, embracing the kind of delicacy, the indulgence of it all. Same things happened in fast food with like the Bacon Club Chalupa or the Baconator at Wendy's embracing sort of a hedonistic spirit and a pleasurable indulgence. And so when bacon started to really take off, it wasn't these lean varieties, nor was it the most convenient pre-cooked varieties. People really got excited about the cooking experience, the craft varieties, the bolder flavors, thicker cuts, fattier sections. And that's something that no one really anticipated at the end of the 20th century. Do you have a sense of why it is that bacon, beyond what you just said, why bacon is so popular, because

people don't put, you know, chicken and ice cream and they don't put chicken on, you know, bacon has become so pervasive and because people love it so, but why do people love it so? There are two explanations, at least explored in the book. First, and this is what most chefs would tell you or like restaurant industry insiders. It was a cheap way to add fat and flavor and salt to their meals. They could get pork belly for next to nothing because it had been so maligned. As one person put it, it's kind of like a cheat code for chefs to add fat, flavor, saltiness, things that our body really likes. I think the other part of the explanation is, that we put bacon on everything precisely because we've been told not to put it on anything.

For most of the 20th century, bacon became public enemy number one. In 1977, the USDA called it the most dangerous food in the supermarket. By the 1990s, one nutritionist quoted in Newsweek said that bacon was not even a food anymore or not even a meat product anymore, that it didn't belong anywhere. in the government's new food pyramid, actually referring to bacon as a fat-laden, nitrite-ridden, carcinogenic thing. I think then that we've turned to bacon

because we've become so frustrated with some of that dietary advice, with some of that science, some of that wisdom about low-fat dieting. So I think part of it is that we are embracing the hedonism of it. we're embracing it as something maybe we know we're not supposed to do. Yeah, see, that's what I find so fascinating is people know that bacon is probably not very good for you, and they seem to ignore the warnings because they love it so, but why?

So let's discuss that next. We are talking bacon with Mark Johnson, who is an historian and author of the book, bacon, the history of a food phenomenon. And so, Mark, people eat bacon. Bacon mania continues to grow. Yet, everybody who eats bacon knows this is not a health food. This is not particularly good for you. You probably shouldn't be eating it or not eating much of it, but people do. It almost seems as if people love bacon so much, they just don't care about the potential consequences. So I don't think that's exactly true that people don't care. You know, I'm not especially equipped to tell you, you know, how much bacon was consumed in what decade, by what demographic. That's not really the kind of a more of a cultural historian.

I'm interested in like rhetoric and symbol. But here's what I will say. You know, in 1977, there's kind of two big attacks on bacon. First is the U.S. Senate dietary guidelines. This was a committee headed by Senator George McGovern. Just calling on people to eat less fat, so bacon doesn't come off very good there. Eat less red meat. So that's another strike.

Eat less salt. So that's yet another strike against it. And then in the same year, the USDA was convening a subcommittee to consider banning bacon because of the presence of nitrites and nitrates, which, when combined at heat with amino acids in the meat, form those carcinogenic chemicals that you've mentioned. Those are called nitrosamines. So what I will say is by the 1980s and 1990s,

pork bellies were so cheap that the U.S. government was giving them away as foreign food aid. And when you look at the industry magazines and trade journals for the hog raising industry put out by the National Pork Board. That's called National Hog Farmer. They're referring to pork bellies as something like a drag on the carcass, meaning it fetches no price when they go to the slaughterhouse. And basically the advice in these is that fat doesn't get any money. And so you've got to cut it out somehow.

You got to raise these really lean hogs for this new marketplace, in which the National Pork Board, in its own literature, is calling it the other white meat, trying to emphasize it as lean as possible, trying to out chicken, chicken, really, when it comes to dietary fat and health and leanness. And so I would say I would point to that absolutely low price of pork bellies that were giving them away as foreign food aid as an indicator that it did change. our habits. And people do talk about it as changing their habits. Oh, I know I'm not supposed to eat it. So I try, you know, maybe a treat on Saturday. Like I said, those moments where we do slow down.

And there are food scientists who tried to make bacon healthier. I mean, some people stopped using the nitrites and nitrates completely. And other people turn to varieties like turkey bacon, creating, people created a salmon bacon. They've created various vegetarian and vegan bacon. And yeah, Iowa State food scientists created, I think, a 99% fat-free bacon. But like you said, none of those really took off. None of these substitutes taste very good. And so if we're going to eat something that's maybe not quite so good for us, we might as well just go for it and get the good stuff. Yeah, well, I mean, that's kind of how I feel.

If, you know, if you're going to have ice cream, have ice cream. Don't have low-fat ice cream. You know, have a little real ice cream and enjoy it rather than, and I think that's how people view bacon, too, is, you know, the other stuff. Although turkey bacon, you do hear about that and see that in restaurants sometimes. And I can't remember if I've ever eaten it. But so that does pop up now and again. But again, it's turkey bacon.

So, I mean, how much like bacon is it going to be? Yeah, I mean, it is much leaner. And I mean, most people would tell you that it's much less satisfying, precisely to your point, right? A little bit goes so much farther when it's, you know, a fatty product, a really kind of delectable cut of it. And I mean, what people that the people that make some of these really valued bacon,

like your local butcher would make, or some of these companies that use older methods, or some of these companies that make bacon that's prized throughout the country, they would tell you that if you need, you know, five, six, seven strips of it to, like, feel satisfied, you're not eating a high quality enough bacon that one or two slices should suffice that it should have so much, you know, fat, flavor, salt,

and kind of punch to it that you should be done after a slice or two. And so when you look at some of these older varieties that people are really interested in, they're meant to be consumed in small portions. And that's how they would have eaten it when their parents were making it their great-great-grandparents were making it. And that just makes so much more sense. Well, and, you know, it's interesting when the World Health Organization classifies it as a carcinogen. I mean, that sends a message that, you know, it kind of sounds like, well, this is like cigarettes.

But even they say that although there's a lot of evidence about some of the dangers of bacon, it's not equally dangerous as cigarettes by a long shot. It's just there's a lot of evidence that it isn't great for you, but it's not on the same level. It's just known, there are known carcinogens in it. That definitely pops up in the archive over and over again. When I studied the food writing about bacon or people talking about bacon, in almost every food column or quote from somebody about it in a newspaper, magazine, or cookbook, they're almost always starting the sentence with that caveat. I know it's not good for me.

I know I'm not supposed to eat it. And then there's usually another qualifier. So I only eat it on weekends or I only eat a strip or two, you know, with this or that. And so when you think then about the stuff that bacon's ended up on, I think you mentioned something like ice cream, but you could also talk about like a donut or a cock. like a bacon old fashioned or martini or Bloody Mary or something or I think about some of the breakfast sandwiches you end up getting when you're out and about There's actually not that much bacon in any one of these things They really are kind of rediscovering how you can add a tiny bit To almost everything to add fat add flavor add a little bit of cachet and interest and a little bit of cash a interest and

and branding to it, get people a little bit excited. And so I think that's something that's been really interesting about Bacon Mania is we've been finding ways to eat less and less of it, but we've ended up then eating more and more of it than ever. How has all of this controversy and, you know, concern affected consumption? Is bacon consumption up, down, stays the same? What? Yeah, for the 21st century so far, at least as the time of recording, it's been skyrocketing and it keeps going up and up.

Despite, you know, multiple predictions over the last 20 years that Bacon Mania was going to come to an end. It just keeps going. Really? Really? I find that fascinating. But, you know, what you just said a moment ago, something that I hadn't really thought much about. but, you know, bacon, you don't, when you eat bacon, you don't eat bacon like the way you eat a hamburger or, you know, a chicken sandwich. You eat so much less of it because it is. I mean, it's hard to imagine sitting down and eating six, eight slices of bacon. I mean, who would do that? I mean, it doesn't seem, I'm sure some people do, but it just, there's something very satisfying about a little bit of bacon, I think.

Yeah, I think that's kind of. of the way people have changed their perspective on it. Now, yes, you're absolutely right. There are absolutely people who will boast about the number of strips that they want to eat. In fact, when I was in grad school in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, there was a BLT sandwich at one of the off-campus kind of cafes that had the number of strips of bacon on it that, equal the number of football national titles in which at Alabama means something in the 20s. But again, it's marketed as something that's supposed to be like, you know you're like playing, you're living a little dangerously when you eat something like that. And I think that's part

of the interest now in our lives that are like so safe and comfortable sometimes. People have looked for ways to invite a little thrill. And, you know, it's a relative. safe way to add a little thrill to your life compared to some of the other things you can do. Well, there is just, I don't know what it is. There is that allure, that appeal, that, that magic of bacon, and it's triggered simply by smelling someone cooking it that is just so hard to resist. I've been talking with historian Mark Johnson, who is author of the book American Bacon, The History of a Food Phenomenon. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Mark, thanks. This was an interesting journey.

Yeah, thank you. Really enjoyed it. Money affects almost every part of your life. Yet for something so important, most of us were never really taught how it works, or more importantly, how we work when it comes to money. Because financial decisions aren't just about math, they're about emotions, habits, fears, family history, and the stories we tell ourselves. That's why two people with the same income can end up with completely different financial situations.

So why do smart people make bad money decisions? Why is it so hard to change financial habits? And what does it really take to get unstuck when money has become a source of stress? My guest knows the answer to this both professionally and personally. Jade Warshaw is a personal finance coach and co-host of The Ramsey Show with Dave Ramsey. She and her husband paid off more than $400,000 in debt and transformed their financial lives. Her latest book is What No One Tells You About Money, the Real Key to Getting Unstuck from Someone Who's Been There. Hi, Jade, welcome to something you should know.

Hi, thanks for having me, Mike. So why is it that do you think that money is such a big problem for, I mean, I don't know too many people that don't talk about money or worry about money or think about money or wish to they had more money, it seems like a very big problem. Yeah, you know, money touches every area of our life. And so because of that, we do feel it. Money touches. It affects our relationship with our friends and family. It affects our relationship surely with our spouse. Money affects our career and how we work, where we work, our motivation for working. It's connected to our past, you know, how money was talked about, how we saw it growing up.

Obviously, it's connected to our identity. People really value whether they have a high net worth or whether they've been successful. And I'm not saying, you know, for better or for worse, money is tied to every area of life. Therefore, one area suffers and we feel it. And it feels like something that needs to be overcome, something that needs to be dealt with. And it does seem, you know, you don't hear a lot of people talking about what a burden it is to have so much money, that it's always the burden of never having enough money, that that seems to be a very common thread through all of it.

I wish I had more money. It feels that way. I mean, money when you really look at it, it's totally amoral, right? It is, it doesn't have, it's neither good nor bad. It's just a tool. It's just a tool. And I've heard many people say,

and I agree with this, money simply makes you more of what you already are. And so if you're a person who is insecure, lack of money or even tons of money will just magnify that. If you're a person who is very confident, you're confident who you are, you find contentment very easily, then money, whether it's lack of money or lots of money will magnify that. You can find contentment on a low income. You would still be very content on a high income. So it's really, really, really important to remember that. having money will not make you happy.

It will not make you responsible. It will not make you fill in the blank. It will simply make you more of what you already are. Well, that's an interesting way of looking at it. Because I think most of us believe that more money would make us happier because sometimes we've, I think everybody's been in a situation where not having enough money can make you miserable. If you can't pay your bills and a bill collector is calling, well, that's not happiness. That's true. That's a really good point. And I do want to highlight money can give you options. Like money, like I said, money is a tool and one of the greatest tools it serves you with and one of the greatest solutions it can serve you with is options. It can say, well, if you have money, well, now, yes, ideally you could, or theoretically, you could now buy the health insurance that best suits you or now theoretically you could live in a home that best suits you or in the neighborhood and all of these things. But how often,

going back to my original point, which is money makes you more of what you already are, how often do we see examples of this in mainstream or in media, right? An athlete who maybe comes from a low-income background or somebody who wins the lottery, who comes from a low-income background, they're then suddenly they receive high amounts of money, millions and millions of dollars, whether it be for sports or whether it be from the lottery or whether it be from an inheritance. and that money is gone like the wind. Oh, I didn't understand how taxes work.

Oh, I just, you know, now I've got my cousins and my aunties and everybody else I need to take care of them. Or I invested in a business that I thought was a good idea, but I have no background explaining anything of what, you know, determines a great business plan, right? And that money, large sums of money, is gone within a decade. Yeah. So that. I were just remember reading something about the incredibly high, number, high percentage of lottery winners who go bankrupt. And I think, well, you know, I understand what you just said. Like, I need to take care of my sisters. I made a bad investment. I understand

any one of those, but you would have to have a cascade of those to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in a decade. Exactly. But when you really think of it, if you have a lack of basic financial literacy, which a lot of Americans do, there are studies out there that will tell you over 50% of Americans feel like they were never taught to handle money properly, right? So when you frame it up on that, and then you say, okay, not only do you not know basic financial literacy, which is really, you know, budgeting, living on less than you make, understanding taxes, understanding, investing, right? Those basic levels.

Then you pile it on with other things, like we said earlier, money is emotion. So now you're piling it on with, well, I grew up poor, so I have scarcity mentality. So this idea that I finally have money, I can spend, spend, spend, not really understanding the value of that dollar. I have to take care of my family. You know, they're counting on me. So these are all these relational aspects of the money. Then you pile it on with, well, what about business sense? Because when you get that kind of money, you need a business sense if you're going to begin investing it.

Well, if you don't have that information. And so in that way, it does create an avalanche of, Not to be, you know, rude, but kind of an avalanche of ignorance that can take place of I just didn't know. I didn't know. And now millions of dollars turns into not only nothing, but I actually owe. I owe money. What you said about, I mean, everything you just said sounds right on the money. And this thing about financial literacy is something I've always wondered about because for the longest time, I mean, I've been doing this for a long time and talking to people.

And I can't tell you how many years ago I first heard someone say, kids need to be taught in school about how to balance a checkbook, how to pay bills, how to do. And that kind of financial literacy should be taught in schools. And people have said it and said it and said it for years. My son went through school recently. He's 21 now. He was never taught anything. I taught him about that.

People talk about it. But there's nothing more fundamental in life than financial literacy. And it's still not taught in schools, not like it, I don't think like it should be. Yeah, I agree with you wholeheartedly. That's one of the reasons here at Ramsey we created foundations and personal finance. It's a curriculum. And at this point, it is in most states, in different schools throughout the states, but it's in most states at this point.

Because we do believe that. And when you really look at the fact, Mike, that that money really incorporates three ideas, right? There's the numbers, the dollars and cents, which is part of basic financial literacy. You know, what you make goes on paper and then you subtract all of your expenses, basic budgeting, the ideas that you should live on less than you make. And just kind of those dollars and cents sides of it. And then we know the other side of it, the second part I'll call, is behavior. So it's not just understanding dollars and cents. It's what are the behaviors that I must have in order to manage my money well.

Okay, well, I have to be a person like we said before that lives on less than they make. I have to be a person who practices certain habits like saving or investing, right? So there's the dollars and cents. I understand math. I understand basic economics. And then I understand the behaviors that go around it. So, yeah, those first two things, we're lacking that majorly. But even as we become adults and we go into the world and we kind of start to say,

ah, I'm missing that part. And you kind of start to dig in, whether you listen to your favorite influencer on the internet or you listen to a show like the Ramsey show that I host to get those first two pieces and kind of start to understand them better. Then there's this third part that now kind of hits a lot of us on the head who felt like we were just starting to get going. And that's the emotional side of money that I have spent a lot of time this past year talking about.

And that's the part that no one tells you about money. Well, so tell me about the emotional side of money. The emotional side is if you want to get out of debt, you need to spend less than you make. Your brain goes, okay, I understand that. That's very logical. And then, okay, well, what are some things that I can do to spend less than I make? Well, stop going out to eat. Something that simple, Mike.

Stop going out to eat, eat more meals at home. Well, it depends on the person who hears that. I could hear that message with the way that I'm. I grew up. I grew up with a mom who cooks three meals. She cooks breakfast, lunch, and dinner from scratch. I go, okay, that's very familiar to me. That makes sense. I can save money that way. I saw that economically growing up. Great. You could have another person who hears that message, and they come from an extremely scarcity mentality when they were kids. They never had anything. Food was something that, you know, it was every man for himself and maybe you grew up in a food

desert, all of these things. So now as an adult, the first thing you can't wait to spend your money on is meals. That's a way that you assert your freedom in life. So when you hear somebody like me say, hey, stop going out to eat, pull back on that food budget, it's like life and death. It becomes survival mode for you. Oh, I would never do that. How could this person ask me to do that? And suddenly there's a lot of emotion around a very simple piece of advice. And those are the things that get people caught up because they go, oh, I'm just not going to do that. But they don't stop to examine the greater reason why. That's such a great point because, and I don't even think people think about, they react,

they do that, but they don't think about what you said about, well, it's because they grew up in this food desert and now they're, in other words, they're exhibiting the behavior, but they don't know why. Yeah, it's because it's quick. I mean, you think about the amount of thoughts that, you know, go through our minds all day long. And the way I explain it, it's like a ticker tape. You know, if you ever watch a major news outlet, there's the broadcaster who's telling you information, but then there's a little ticker tape at the bottom that's giving even more information or even a little bit more of the headline down below.

And these emotions for us, they're like ticker tapes in the background. We're hearing all these big messages all day long and we're processing them. But the ticker tape in our mind is how we grew up and what our relationships look like and what our traumas are and da-da-da-da-da-da. And we're filtering it through that and very, very, not often enough do we stop

and read the ticker tape and go, oh, my ticker tape is telling me, I'm not safe. Remember what your ex-husband did? Remember what that last guy? You know, right? And all of that is feeding into how we manage our money

and how we receive advice about managing our money. Yeah. Well, if you don't know what you don't know, I mean, if you can't access that information, then how do you deal with this? How do you put this in front of you and go, oh, now I see it's because I grew up that way.

And like if you don't know how to get there. So a long time ago, I heard the phrase, understanding that there's a problem is half of solving the problem, right? It's just this idea that once light is shed on it, that really is 50% of the battle. So for a lot of people just hearing me say, hey guys money is emotional they stop and go oh no one no one ever said that they they told me they were giving me decimal points and percentages so just that initial unlock is enough to make you go huh

well i wonder and then in the book what no one tells you about money i start to walk through all of these different examples and all of these um examples of emotions that we see playing out in money. So when I say things like, hey, guys, frustration is a real battle with money, that emotion of feeling like you're doing a lot of effort, but you're just not getting the return on it. Hey, that's a real thing. And now once I say that, they go, well, let me think. Have I experienced, I am experiencing that. So I'm almost just saying, hey, you're not crazy. And I'm giving people words for what they've been feeling. So talk about frustration, because I have felt it about money, and I'm sure most people have,

what do you do about it? How do you deal with that? You know, there is some small bit of frustration that is par for the course all of the time, right? It's just the struggle. There's always going to be friction in life. But there is a level of frustration that it gets to the point where we say,

I'm ready to throw the towel in. And that's when it's time to take a closer look. And so in the book, I talk about, okay, we really need to stop and do an audit of our behavior with money, because there's something that's causing that frustration. And I know for my husband and I, you know, we went through a seven and a half year journey of paying off almost $460,000 of debt. And so there were many points where we had to stop along the journey and say, for some reason, we're not making a lot of progress.

This is very frustrating what's going on. And when you stop and take a magnifying glass and go through your actions, very often there is an incongruence in what you say you're going to do and what you're actually. doing. And because life moves so fast, a lot of times we don't even realize, oh my gosh, hold on. Didn't I say that I was going to save $1,000 first so that I had a little bit of a cushion here before I started paying off all this day? And then you look up, you're like, oh, no wonder I'm overdrawing all the time. I don't even have a thousand dollars saved. I don't have a cushion in my account. All these things I said I was going to do as a fail safe before I paid off the debt. Over time, those monies have dwindled. And that's why I'm overdrawing so much, right?

So it's just taking the time to stop, re-audit your behavior, re-align your behavior, make sure you're actually doing what you said you were going to do, and then keep going from there. I would imagine that a lot of what drives people's use of money and thinking about money is, you know, watching rich people on TV what they do with their money and thinking, well, you know, I want that. I don't want to listen to her and listen, how I should cut back. on this and not go out for meals and, you know, I want to live my life, baby. And, you know, we'll suffer the consequences later, I guess. But I don't want to live a life of deprivation. No one does, right? But here's the thing.

If that were true, we wouldn't have a radio show where we have 10 million listeners and folks that call in every day who are in pain because they tried that kind of Yolo way of life or I'll get to a. it later, I'll get to it later, because inevitably life hits, right? Most people will experience some sort of job loss. The statistics around the amount of folks who will actually go on short-term disability because of an accident or an illness are very, very high, right? So it's not me being a fatalist. It's just the reality that there will be a hard time. And it doesn't have to be something outrageous like COVID or, you know, September 11th to really drop an atom bomb on your

finances. It could be something simple like I got laid off or something simple like my wife got a diagnosis and it just caused us to go down to being a one-income family. And so when you realize how close you are to a financial tipping point, it really does make you go, okay, I need to make my foundation on a lot firmer than what it is because these are just. normal things that happen in life. Right. Well, it's like your car. Like, you don't know what's going to go wrong with your car, but something's going to go wrong someday. Something will, the brakes will go, the engine's going to fall out.

I mean, something's going to happen. You just don't know what it is, but just because you don't know what it is doesn't mean it isn't going to happen. Right. And I actually, it's funny, you said that, Mike, because I use that example in the book. I talk about the check engine light. And, you know, you know, like I do, when we see that light, It is just like, oh, no, this is not the time, not the day. You know, we're already creating a situation in our head where whatever is going on is going to cost us thousands of dollars. And so most of us, Mike, we kind of ignore the check engine light. We're hoping it was a fluke.

We're hoping the next time we get in the car that it won't light up. And, you know, we kind of put it off and put it off. And it's the same thing with our money. For most of us, there are, because the check engine light, what is it? It's a signal. It is a warning that says, hey, there's something going on. You need to take a look under the hood. It's the same thing with our money.

There are blinking signs in our money every single day that we experience that are telling us, hey, you need to take a closer look. You need to go under the hood and see what's going on with this. But we ignore it because something deep down inside knows, I'm going to have to sacrifice something to fix this. And you feel it's, man, I keep overdrawing my checking account. What does that mean? that is a blinking light. Man, I keep avoiding these conversations with my spouse about getting on a budget, da-da-da-da-da. That is a blinking light.

Don't ignore that. One of the big problems that a lot of people find themselves in today is credit card debt because the interest rates are so high that getting out of that debt is so hard. It takes forever, if ever. And what is the advice there? So the first advice I would give anybody dealing with. with debt, specifically credit card debt, is remember this. You cannot solve a problem while simultaneously creating it. So the very, very first thing, before you pay a dime on the balance,

the first thing that you have to do is decide in your mind, I am not borrowing money anymore. I am not borrowing money on credit cards anymore. Because if you are continuing to do that action, you cannot solve that action, right? So that's the hard part because how many people pay off a credit card and then they're right back in it. So that is thing number one. I have to become a person who is not engaging with debt any longer or I will be a rat in a wheel. And that will lead to the things we talked about earlier. It will lead to the frustration and the fatigue cycle, which is horrible.

So that's thing one. And then after that, we've said, okay, I don't borrow money. Now let's get about the bill. Now we can get to the dollars and cents part, which is what do I do? Well, I'm listing all of the debt from smallest to largest. So if I had several credit cards, I'm listing them by balance, smallest to largest, and I'm going to go ahead and pay minimum payments on everything. But now I'm going to take any extra margin that I can find,

and I'm going to hammer it at the smallest debt directly to the principal. That is the only way to pay off credit card debt, because many times the minimum payment alone is barely enough to satisfy the interest. And I tell people all the time, anybody struggling with debt, going back to the numbers, it really is. There are two things that you can do to get out of debt, and you can do them individually or you can do them simultaneously. First one is you've got to cut back on spending. And I know emotionally that means different things for different people. And thing number two is increasing income.

Those are the two things. You do them together. It is a match made in heaven. I'm cutting back on what I spend, so my outgo is less. but now I'm increasing my income in multiple ways. So my ingo is my income is more. And so that is, it is in its simplest form, that is how you get out of debt. It sounds a lot simpler said than done.

Well, I appreciate you sharing your personal story. I mean, paying off over $400,000 in debt is pretty commendable. But also explaining all of this in an easy to understand way. I think it's beneficial for a lot of people. I've been talking to Jade Warshaw, who is co-host of The Ramsey Show with Dave Ramsey, and she is a personal finance coach and author of the book, What No One Tells You About Money, the real key to getting unstuck from someone who's been there. And there's a link to her book in the show notes.

Jade, I appreciate you coming by. Ah, great. Thank you, Mike. This was a good conversation. Most of us assume that medical care is based solely on symptoms, tests, and science. But doctors are human beings, and research suggests that the way patients interact with them can sometimes influence medical outcomes. In one widely discussed study, physicians reviewing complex cases made significantly more diagnostic errors when patients were rude, demanding, or disruptive.

Researchers conclude that the difficult interaction consumed mental resources that otherwise would have been devoted to solving the medical problem. That doesn't mean patients should never ask questions or challenge a doctor's opinion. In fact, speaking up and advocating for yourself is important, but it does suggest that hostility and conflict can get in the way of clear communication and potentially interfere with good medical care. The takeaway is be an active participant in your health care, but remember that respect and cooperation can help both,

you and your doctor focus on what matters most, getting the diagnosis right. And that is something you should know. And if after listening to this episode you have feelings and thoughts you'd like to share, we invite you to post a rating and review on whatever platform you're listening on, it helps us and expresses your opinion, and we do read those reviews. So we would appreciate it. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

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