Stuff You Should Know - 10 Easy Ways to Save Money

Episode Date: October 17, 2013

Times are still kind of tough, but there are some time-tested and easy ways to get ahead and in this episode Josh and Chuck explore them. Learn about not only how to save, but also how to make your new-found dough grow. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and Charles W. Chuck Bryan is with me, and Jerry's over there. So this is Stuff You Should Know, your legendary podcast. Live version. Yeah, well, it's recorded. Recorded live to tape, not tape. We've done live versions.

Yeah, like with an audience? Yeah, I don't know if you remember. Sure, we've done it. Yeah, sure. Should we set up this a little bit? I'd like to. Oh, yes, go ahead. Well, people, when you listen to Stuff You Should Know,

a lot of times you're regaled with stories of history or stories of science or cool animals or you name it. We like to cover lots of stuff. But occasionally, we like to throw out a little advice. Yes, but the fact that we're doling out advice does not mean that we are professional advisors. No, no, no. But occasionally, we like to talk about things

like green living or health and fitness, or in this case, finance. Just because we know the millennials out there think they're never going to have to worry about anything. But eventually, you're going to be off the teeth of your parents. And you might have to think about this stuff. Either that or the millennials are already more worried than anybody else right now.

And not just millennials, I think anybody could use this advice and put it to pretty good use. Well, yeah, one thing I realize is that you're never too young or you're never too old to start being smart and thinking about money in your future and stuff like that. I don't know. In the last weeks of your life, it's too late then.

It may be too late. So never say never. That's true. But yes, the younger you are, the better off you are. The later you start, the further you have to catch up. But the point is, that's no reason to not try. And what we're talking about is saving money. But it's not just saving money.

Saving money is the basis of basically a conscientious lifestyle. You don't have to be rich. And you don't have to even want to be rich. Basically, all you have to have is the desire to be financially independent or close to financially independent or financially free. And that doesn't mean you have to have gobs of money or endless amount of cash.

Actually, it's pretty easy to sit there and figure out how much money you need and set that as your goal and get to it. And the cool thing is, if you do kind of take this advice, you do kind of start following this path, I guess you could say, it becomes a bit addictive. And you realize that you've just altered your mindset and you're living basically the antithesis of a wasteful consumer culture life and sticking it to the man.

That's right. And you don't have to be a freaking to do it. No. There's a middle ground that's just being smart and frugal where you need to be. And it's like I get into it. It's not like I'm loaded or anything. But I don't think about the money so much as I think about efficiency

and waste that really occupies a lot of my mind. Once you start thinking about everything in those terms, all of a sudden, it becomes very clear. And every little bit counts because you take energy, which we'll get into. If you unplug your toaster every day after you use it, I mean, what's that going to add up to? Like virtually nothing.

Actually, I have a bit on vampire power. We'll talk about it. Good. I'm glad you do. And it's not much, though, right? Well, we'll talk about it. All right, but let's say a toaster is not much. It's just a single toaster.

Right. It's not much. Thank you. But if you take that toaster and pile it in with savings on not buying coffee every day while you're out and thinking about your auto insurance and just all of the stuff that we're going to talk about and think of all of it as what you're throwing into a pot, your savings, then it does count.

It does matter. Totes. Yeah. Good intro. Thanks, man. So the recommended amount that I've seen, I don't remember what investment advisor wrote the article or whatever. But I've seen before that you want to save what amounts to about eight times

your ending salary. No matter what your ending salary, that's the salary you're going to have when you retire is, that is a mind bogglingly daunting number if you think about it. To save, to have that much in the bank by the time you retire? Yeah. Eight times? Yeah. Man, I better get busy.

Supposedly you're supposed to have one time what you estimate your ending salary would be by the time you're 30, three times by the time you're 40, and then so on until by about the time you're 65 you should have eight times your ending salary. That's a lot of money. Yeah, I'm a bit behind. That's a lot of savings. OK, I think pretty much everybody is a bit behind.

Sure. I think that's a very important point, Chuck. I don't feel like anybody, especially somebody who feels daunted by that number, should feel like that they're on the outs and that everybody else is doing well, but at the same time that doesn't mean that just because everybody else is saving that you shouldn't start. Yeah, don't compare yourself to others. Just take care of your business.

Right, you know? And that's what this whole thing's about. Don't worry about the Joneses. So one of the first things you want to do is figure out what that eight time amount is and set that as your goal by the time you're 65. And then start looking around and figuring out ways to get there. And one of the best ways is to stop wasting. Yeah.

Wasting is the opposite of saving. That's right. So if you save, you're not wasting. And if you waste, you're doing the wrong thing. Exactly. So here's some ways you can save. Yeah. You want to get into this?

Let's. Entertainment is a lot of times one of the first things on the list, because a lot of things in the entertainment category are luxuries, meaning they make your life better, which is super valid. Yeah. You just can't do it all, all the time. Unless you're super rich, then go nuts. Good for you.

You're super rich already, then. For instance, maybe you can get the same content online as you're paying for, either with a cable bill or like a magazine subscription or a newspaper or something. You might be able to get all that stuff free online. Save yourself some bucks. Sure. That's one way to do it. You make a good point that entertainment is a luxury,

but it's also in a lot of ways a necessity too. You just have to look around and say, where can I trim some fat? Where am I being wasteful? Is there anything that I'm just not really using that I'm paying for in the entertainment category? And if so, then that means I probably don't really need it, and I should stop just paying for it out of habit. Yeah. Well, the Netflix is one thing.

I dropped finally the DVD delivery in favor of just the online streaming. And would it save me? I think it's like eight bucks a month or something. That adds up when you throw it into a pot. It adds up. If like over the course of the year, that's like, you know, that's a nice meal out or money you could invest in something else. Right, yeah.

Same like you said with magazine subscriptions. If you're getting the magazine and it's just sitting there and you're not really reading it or getting anything from it, cancel your subscription and say, and by the way, I already paid for this, so send me what you owe me still. Yeah. If you love your magazines, then that one wouldn't count. Again, what we're talking about here is trimming the fat. Not living this horribly...

Miserly lifestyle. Yeah, that is no fun whatsoever. No. But like we said, once you start getting into this, you're probably going to find that it's actually fun to look for ways to trim the fat. Yeah, and speaking of trimming the fat, take a look at your gym membership people. How often do you go? And what do you do while you're there?

If it's something you get a lot of benefit out of, then by all means keep going because that's your health. But do you know who pays $75 a month to go running a treadmill? Jerry. A sucker. Because there's streets, there's sidewalks, there's running trails. If you're not utilizing most of the stuff at the gym or going to classes and things, you might want to think about trimming the fat. Or if you really need that ritual for that treadmill and you don't mind paying that money for the treadmill,

that's fine too, but just think about it. Yeah, if you are shameless or you have no self-consciousness whatsoever, you can go use the exercise equipment at the park. Yeah. You know those little things they have going on? Yeah. I just couldn't do that. Or you could work out at the park, you know?

Or you could buy a treadmill and have it tease you and mock you and haunt you for the rest of your life in the spare room, which is what happens sometimes. I think that's the opposite of good advice as far as this one goes. That's true. What about automotive costs? That's a really satisfying way to save money because nobody likes paying for car maintenance and gas. Right. Two things people hate spending money on.

I got some numbers for you. Let's say you drive 80,000 miles over five years. If you bought a car that gets 25 miles to the gallon compared to one that gets 15 miles to the gallon, you're going to be buying 2,000 fewer gallons of gas over that time, average of 350 a gallon. Over five years, you've saved $7,000 in gasoline costs, which is like, I mean, that's super substantial. I mean, you could put that into your 401k or whatever and make that into a lot more money by the time you retire just by 10 miles a gallon difference. By not getting that ginormous SUV, you can't even park, maybe get something more fuel-efficient instead. Sure, you know.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's a seven grand in your pocket that you just wouldn't have had before. Exactly. What else? Your car insurance is another good place to go. Like anything you're currently paying for, that's a good place to start and say, how can I pay less for the same amount? Or do I need the same amount that I have right now? So usually, if you have a decent insurance person, you will find that they will be happy to talk to you and say, yeah, you don't really need this. Or if you raise your deductible a little bit, you'll probably be OK.

And you'll be paying less per month without losing out on anything, really. Yeah. Another place you can save gas is, and a lot of people don't realize this, but your tires in your car are supposed to be inflated to a certain amount. And if they're lower than that, you're going to be wasting gas. Yeah. In fact, for every two pounds per square inch that you're off, that they're low, your mileage goes down by one percent. And in this article, they judge most cars are about five to ten pounds per square inch low. And that's about five percent less fuel efficient just by putting air in your tires.

Yeah. That's crazy. Plus, even more, there's a lot of gas stations that have free air. Yeah, not as much anymore, but you're right. The trip does. Do they? Oh, yeah. All right.

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All right. You want to talk grocery stores? Always. All right. Uh, first of all, right now would be a terrible time for me to go grocery shopping because I'm very hungry. Yeah. They say to eat first, huh? Yeah.

I mean, it really does work because it makes an enormous difference on like buying stuff that you normally wouldn't buy. Yeah. If you are hungry at the grocery store, like you're just going to buy more to prove in fact. That's right, Josh. And then, uh, going out to lunch at work is a big, big deal. Look, big expense potentially. Yeah. They say in here $6 a day is 800 a year, but $6 a day.

That's super cheap. It is. You know, it's hard to... You probably won't live a year if you're eating $6 lunches every day. Yeah. I mean, let's say that's $12 or if you go out for business lunches, like you're really racking up money. Right. And if it's not just you, but also your spouse or significant other life partner, whatever, also doing the same thing, you can double that amount right there.

Yeah. So I just get around the whole thing by not eating lunch, but you could also pack your own lunch. Yeah. Save a substantial amount. Plus, you know, it's like you're being your own mom, packing your lunch in the morning. Even write yourself a note even. Right. And then Chuck, at the grocery store too, if you take a little time and go online or get your favorite grocery stores app, they have those these days.

Yeah. You can find all sorts of specials, coupons, that kind of thing and say, what can I do with celery and chickpeas? Right. And then you put them together and base your weekly plan on that. You could make hummus and dip the celery in it. Exactly. And you take that list that features chickpea and celery and whatever else it takes to make hummus. Yeah.

And you take it to the store. Yeah. And you stick to that list. Maybe some garlic. Exactly. Pepperica. But the point is, is you've thought about all this before you went to the store, wrote it down on the list and then stuck to the list and then used the coupons that originally got you to think of hummus in the first place. Yeah.

You just saved yourself some money. An incalculable amount, mainly because I don't want to calculate it right now. That's right. Yeah. Keep your eyes peeled at the store for specials. I know you don't want to grab the little flyer when you walk in because it makes you look like you're 80 years old. But that's where you find out the deals. You know, they buy one, get one free on a tub of butter.

Go get the tub of butter and get your second one for free. That's right. Also, I want to apologize to our 80-year-old listeners who like circulars at the grocery store. Yeah, man, my mom was way into coupons. Yeah, well, a lot of people are. Yeah. I read that apparently coupons have gone down in quality because of this coupon craze that's going on right now. So many people are using it that companies are like, we can't afford to put out decent coupons.

Did you just say there's a coupon craze going on? Yeah. Really? Did you not know? No, I didn't. Oh, man. There's whole TV shows dedicated to it. The coupon craze?

Yes. Really? Is the name of the show coupon craze? No, there's like extreme couponing. Really? I think on TLC? I've never heard of that. What?

No, is it just people like? It's people who are so good at couponing. I saw a man on a TV show. He had like a $400 grocery bill. And from his coupons, he brought it down to like $14. I thought you were going to say they paid him $100. It was close to it. It was very close to it.

Yeah, most grocery stores have the little club card. Use those. That's really satisfying to see all that money go away at the end. Yeah, not only that. Some of those cards will get you like extra bucks or points or whatever that will actually deduct money from your additional money on top of coupons from your bill after a while. Like it's not a bad idea to take advantage of loyalty programs.

No, that's what it should do. If it makes sense to you. Like there are plenty of people out there that own companies that have come up with loyalty programs that are frankly scams. And you have to be wary of those because you don't want to buy stuff. You wouldn't normally buy just because you're going to save $0.50 on it because it cost you $3.50 that you weren't going to spend anyway. But if you're going to the same store again and again and again,

it's just down the street. They have pretty good prices. You like their coupons. Sign up for their loyalty program and it will pay off in the end. Yeah, I go to a buzz market here. I go to Kroger when I can. And they keep tracking your thing through your little card. And then I get gas or two because, A, it's cheaper already.

But every four or five fill ups, they'll give you credit from your grocery buys on your gas. They'll say, would you like to save $0.10 a gallon because you bought groceries? Is there an actual no button? There's a no because you can save it like give it to your wife or whatever. Or I'm flushed this week if that's how you live. But I always say, heck yeah. Give me the $0.10.

I remember hearing a long time ago that they were trying to outlaw gas discounts. Some of those places sell gas below what they pay for it to attract people into their stores. And it was like driving other gas stations out of business. TS. Yeah, when it comes to saving, baby, it's the survival of the fittest. All right. Let's talk about family expenses. Things like your prescription drugs or maybe your baby formula.

All these things you can get generic versions of that are FDA approved to be just as good as your brand name version. Yeah. You know who buys brand name stuff? Suckers. Brand name drugs? Yeah. Well, it says here in this article that drug companies spend all their money on research

and development and stuff like that. That's not true. No. They get universities to do their R&D for free, but they just have the patent on it for the first few years and can charge whatever they want depending on the country they're in. The point is generics have the exact same thing in it. By law, they don't own the patent and the patent's expired.

So now everybody can sell it for cheap. Buddy, I know one way you save a lot of money in the past few years. What? Smokies. Yes. Not smoking. Yeah. How much are they now?

Last I saw, they were like five bucks a pack in Atlanta. Yeah. They're like $12 a pack or so in New York. That's really funny. $12 a pack. And I remember when they started to go up. Yeah. I smoked at a time when you could get them for like $1.50 a pack.

Sure. And then all of a sudden they were like $3, $4, $5. And there were articles because tobacco is going through the roof. Yeah. And there were articles on what the price point would be where people stop smoking. Yeah. I remember hearing a lot of people say five. And it's just not.

Some people I'm sure quit because they hit five bucks. No. People will still smoke and pay $5 or $12 a pack every day. To shorten their life and incur more medical expenses later on. Right. And the point is if you quit, like that is, it's just like having a higher fuel, fuel efficiency car or it's just money in your pocket that you otherwise would have spent unnecessarily.

And like you said, this is just harmful in your spending money on. So that's a great one right there. Quit smoking. Thousands of dollars a year. Bam. Right in your pocket. Boom. They say quit drinking in this article too, that your addictions are costing you money.

Pretty much anything that you could give up. Yeah. That maybe you should give up. Yeah. That can save you money. That falls into this category. Yeah. Or maybe, you know, if you like your glass of wine with dinner, maybe just get a little,

maybe just pick and choose and cut down and save a little money and improve your health a little bit. Right. By the gigantic box of wine. Yeah. To get a better value. Moderation. It's the key.

Except with smoking. There shouldn't even be moderation there. Yeah. Just don't smoke. Household energy is the one I'm obsessed with pretty much. Really? Yeah. I grew up in a house, you know, teachers as parents, three kids, like we had to use coupons

and turn off the lights when you left a room and not leave the TV going. And we had to do that to get by and to live just a normal lower middle class life. But that's not something you should change because it's just wasteful. Well, yeah. You know. Yeah. Even if you have the dough, like you shouldn't waste energy. There's a, yeah.

That's exactly right. That's a good point, Chuck. One of the things about changing your mindset to like a saving mindset is, you know, not only is it good for you financially, but it also tends to have like positive spillover effects. For example, you're saving money, saving energy, but it's also a lot better for the environment. Yeah.

Anytime you're cutting out waste, there's pretty much no downside to that. So this is a good example of like a good positive spillover effect. Yeah. Do you know what I do is I think about the electronic, the meter on the side of your house spinning. Yeah. And I literally, every time I turn things off and follow Emily around the house, turning things off after she turns them on, I literally think about the meter slowing down and it

makes me like breathe the sigh of relief as the meter breathes a sigh of relief. I know it sounds silly, but I really think about that thing turning down. I mean, just going, oh yeah, that's much more like it. There is an invention out there that is made for you. It's pretty new, but I believe it's on the market. You can plug it into an outlet and what it does is eavesdrops on your electrical use and it can actually sort out what's doing what. Wow.

But the readout shows you how much electricity you're using and I think you can convert it to like a dollar amount to or something. And the whole point is if you see how much you're using, you'll want to decrease it. So you would love this thing because it would show a decreased amount every time you turned off a lighter and plug something. I would be stressed about that being plugged in though. You know? Yeah.

We talked about vampire energy earlier. That's the things that you leave on standby power overnight or pretty much all the time. The average house uses $100 to power devices that are turned off each year, $100 to power things that aren't even on. That's money that you can use on. And like your little smartphone plug, even if your phone's not plugged into it, it's sucking energy. Well, plus it's a bad idea also to charge your phone overnight because it's bad for

your battery typically to overcharge it. Oh yeah. That's a good idea. And annually in the U.S., vampire power costs $10 billion all over the U.S. each year. So that's pretty substantial if you pull everyone together. Sure. If you divide by 300 million, that's a lot of money in your pocket. So what do you do?

Set up a charging station, which is what I have at my house. Put that all on a power strip and turn that power strip off and unplug it even better. And then just shoot it with a gun. Shoot it with a gun. Like the TV on at night, I hate all those lights anyway. Like I like to sleep in darkness. Yeah. And if you look in your room, you probably have like three or four lights that are just

on like your cable box. They're probably affecting your brain in some way. At the very least, they're affecting my wallet. So household energy, that was pretty good stuff. Yeah, by energy star. Yeah. There's a lot of rebates out there right now. The government has put like a huge push behind getting people to have more energy-efficient

stuff. Yeah. Just got one 50 bucks. Yeah. So did you? Yeah. You can definitely just look for the energy star thing when you're buying an appliance or something and then go online before you buy it and see if there's a rebate.

Because basically it's just like, if you got it on sale, this is an extra 50 bucks, 100 bucks, whatever, that you'll get back in six, eight weeks just for mailing in a copy of your receipt. Why would you not do that? That's right. Now, I think it's a good time for a break because after this, it's the home stretch, which includes health insurance, money-saving tips, and then a few tips from your older buddies here about what you can do with that money you're saving for your future.

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like a dummy in my mid-20s when I didn't have anything other than waiting tables, jobs, I skipped on insurance because I didn't want to pay a couple hundred dollars a month. So I got to thinking today, here's an older dude, how much it costs to stay in a hospital. The average cost of a hospital stay in the U.S. is about $1,600. The average hospital, the median hospital stay in the U.S. is three times more than other industrialized countries, which is a whole different thing. But $18,000 is the average median stay in a hospital. The Obamacare is coming out next month, and I think the average mid-tier insurance policy

will be about $325. So you would have to pay on that insurance policy, 55 months, four and a half years to equal out one hospital stay, one bout of something, one bad car wreck. Like the point is you're not doing yourself any favors if you think you're saving by not paying insurance. I don't know when you're 23 and 25, you don't think anything is going to happen to you, but you are screwed if it does. So just be smart, get insurance, and you're covered.

Yeah. Unless you're Ned Flanders and then you consider a form of gambling. So insurance, that's a good one. And like I said, if you don't have insurance, I agree with you, Chuck. Health insurance is a good way to go. If you already have insurance, car insurance, any kind of insurance, check out. If you have a svelte coverage and then try to save some money without shooting yourself in the foot over time.

But yes, going without insurance is not a good way to save money. A good way to save money is to possibly look at your cell phone bill and say, do I need the plan that I have? Yeah. Do I need all those unlimited texts or see how many texts you send a month on average? You might be able to cut it back a little bit. Yeah. That's another good point.

You're raising all these awesome points that deserve elaborating. But the first step to all of this is to write down your monthly expenses. Track them for a little while and you'll see where your money's going. Just right out of the gate, a lot of stuff will become obvious where you can trim the fact. Oh, they totally will. Right. But the second step to that is to look at all the things you're currently paying for

that you're like, okay, I need all this and figure out ways to trim them individually. So whether it's car insurance, whether it's your cell phone bill, there's always a way to cut it down a little bit. That's right. Living debt-free is something we believe in now. After incurring credit card debt for a number of years, we got rid of it all and haven't used credit cards in like eight years. Oh, yeah.

Yep. If we can't afford it that month, we don't get it. Do you use the credit card to get it and then pay it off, though, just to keep your credit score up? We run everything through our American Express, which we pay off each month. Well, this article makes a really good point. If you are having to pay interest on your credit card, that means you're buying things that you can't afford.

You pay interest on your credit card when you buy something and you can't pay it off at the end of the month, then it sounds like you have a very good policy going there. It's a good policy because when we looked at what we were spending on finance chargers, it was ridiculously wasteful. It makes you angry when you really stop and look at it because, you know, you work hard for money, you get taxed a lot anyway. The last thing you want to do is start throwing the man more money just because he said, oh, I've got a little piece of plastic and go hog wild for a little while.

Right. You don't have to wait for this. Yeah. Just get it now. That's another good point that this article made. One of the things you can institute is a one month waiting period for all purchases, all major purchases, any purchase you're excited about. You write it down instead of buying it, you just write down what you want and then after

a month you go back to it and say, do I still want this? Probably more often than not, you're going to be like, I don't even remember why I wanted that. Yeah. Or wait for good. We do a lot of the financing deals. Like I wanted a sound bar for the TV and I waited like a year to get it. I waited till the right deal came along and a certain store had a 24 month no interest

deal. Yeah. You can have 20 bucks a month for it or something. But you've got to be really careful. If you're bad about paying your bills, you can get jacked around on the finance charts. Because at the end of 24 months it's 500% interest. Yeah. Or if you miss a month or something, it's pretty ridiculous.

I recommend financing deals, but you just have to be really vigilant with your bills on time. Right. Another good reason to stop and wait a month, a week, whatever, if you just basically put a moratorium on any immediate spending, it'll cause you to go poke around the internet. Like you said, see if you can find a better financing deal. Maybe somebody else has it for less if you do use your credit cards. Some credit cards have deals with certain merchants to where you'll actually get some

cash back, which is basically just like money off, additional money off. There's a lot of reasons to stop and then figure out how you can get that thing you want for the least amount of money, which makes it even sweeter when you do get it. All right, dude. So we've given a lot of good little tips on how to save money. Yeah. You're saving some dough, even if you're a millennial, pride yourself on saving a little money and not being wasteful.

Yeah. I mean, like you save what you can. Yeah. So what you want to think about next is, all right, I have a little extra change here. Now what do I do? Do I want to put in a piggy bank or under the mattress or start investing in stocks or gambling on football? What should I do?

Well, the first thing you want to do is to create a fund, basically an emergency fund. The rule of thumb is you have three to six months worth of expenses tucked away in a savings account that you can get to, but you don't touch. Just in case if you're laid off, something terrible happens. You have a significant amount of money that you can live on no matter what. You're not going to get kicked out of your home. You're not going to go hungry. That's right.

Right? That's pretty much the first thing you want to do when you're saving money. Like as you're saving all this money and you're putting it away, that's the pot that you want it to go into. After that, you have a little more leeway to do things with. Like you want to maybe pay off debt is a good second step. Yeah, because if you're in debt, then you're wasting money and it's no fun to pay debt down, but it's super satisfying once you have.

It is. It can be fun to pay debt down, especially if you're watching it climb down and get closer and closer to zero. When you write that last check, you're just like, I'll see you in hell. You're done. From that point on, you've got an emergency fund. You're debt-free. And now you can do some fun stuff with your money.

Yeah, you're on the right track at this point. Right. Hopefully by now you've got a budget that'll work for you. The key with your budget is to do something that's reasonable for you that you can stick to. It's sort of like when I was reading about this. It's sort of like dieting. Mm-hmm.

Like if you set yourself up for some stupid diet that you're not going to follow. Right. I'm only going to have an apple and a can of tuna like Christian Bale and the machinist. Yeah, chances are you're not going to be successful. So it's really like dieting. It's more like a lifestyle change and finding whatever financial lifestyle works for you where you're able to save some and still give yourself some things and have a little fun. Right.

But the key here is to pay yourself first. Like you cannot. If you're saving, the first thing you do is save. Yeah. When you get paid, the first thing, the first check you write, the first transfer you make, the first payment you make is to yourself and you take whatever you budgeted for savings and take it from your checking account and put it in your savings account. Yeah, act like it doesn't exist.

Exactly. Yeah. That's the other aspect to it. Once you do that, that money does not exist. It's in your savings. Yeah. It's not for you to play around with. It's not for you to be like, well, I went a little over on my credit cards.

I'm going to use my savings. You went a little over on your credit card. That means you're going to have to pay interest on it that month because that money in savings does not exist. Yeah. It will wrap your knuckles. It will come around your home. I will.

I'm getting very excited right now that the idea of going into your savings to pay off a credit card, you screwed up. That is true. So if you do have your budget working, you've got your emergency fund going, you're paying yourself every month, you're saving money, then you can start thinking about investments, things like maybe a CD, a certificate of deposit, it's nice. Low risk way to start if you're young. It is.

It's such a paltry amount right now, but it's still, I mean, you do get money back. Dip your toe in the water if you're reticent and a CD is a good way to do it. So a CD is basically like you loan money to a bank and it's for a set amount of time, three months, a year, 10 years, whatever. And basically the bank says, thanks for the money. At the end of the term, they give you back that money and then some interest for borrowing. So like they put it in this article, your money goes away and then when it comes back, it brings more money with it.

It's pretty simple. Yeah. What if you're out there? All right, Josh, I'm a millennial. I just got through watching girls. I'm drinking a PIMS cup on my sofa and I say, Josh and Chuck, this is great, but I've done one of these things, I don't make much money, I'm an artist and crafter of fine goods. I've only got $20 a week extra.

There's actually a lot you can do with $20 a week. No, there's not. There is, especially if you look at that $20 is part of a stream of $20 that you'll eventually have that you say want to invest. All right. What can you do with $20? Well, there's this cool thing called a drip. It's a dividend reinvestment plan.

You can also look into direct stock purchase plans, but basically, you are going to a company that you believe in. You say, I have $20 and I want one share of your $20 stock. Right. And they say, okay, here you go. It's basically like a counter where you go and buy a stock from the company directly, which saves you on brokerage fees. So what you're saying is you can just invest a little bit at a time and directly into these

companies, which all adds up and before you know it, you've got a couple of grand invested in this company. Right. Or there's supposedly about 1,000 companies in the United States that sell stock directly. You don't have to go to an online brokerage. You don't have to go to your brick and mortar brokerage. The company's like, we're not going to charge you any fees because you're giving us money for our stock.

We're happy to sell it to you. And you are just kind of billing up a portfolio on your own. It's a good investment if you're just going to sit on something. If you're day trading, that's the worst idea ever. I don't think you could do it like that. But if you just wanted to build up stock, if you say, I really believe in this company's future and I want to have this stock 50 years from now, why just say it's only $20? Instead take that $20 and buy one share of stock.

That's one thing you could do. If you've got a few hundred bucks maybe, you could consider something called an index fund. Traditionally, an index that tracks the S&P 500 is going to return about 10% a year. That's pretty good. Not bad money. No. And you don't have to invest like 10 grand to do so. The other thing about an index fund is if you're buying compared to a mutual fund, it's

an unmanaged fund. There are 500 stocks that you own a percentage of in shares. And that's the S&P 500 companies. And basically what you're doing is investing in the market itself. So it's unmanaged, which means that the fees associated with it are next to nothing. If you have a mutual fund, that's managed. They don't typically pay off as well. And you're paying a lot more in management fees.

There's a really good, I think, frontline episode on index funds that came out this year that's definitely worth watching. I'll bet you can get it for free online. If you have a little bit more, let's say you got $500, what that's going to do is just open up your options a little bit. You're going to have a pick from different companies, some of which might require a minimum of, let's say, $500. So it just opens your investment options a little bit.

You can shop around some. You might want to open what's called a discount brokerage account. Yeah, it's just basically like an online stock trading platform. And they're very cheap because they don't trade in microseconds or anything like that. It's just like this is where you buy stock for as cheap as it comes. Pretty easy. Yeah. If you've got a grand land around, then buddy, you are in the cat bird seat.

If you start with $1,000 and invest an additional thousand each year, you earn about 10% annually and when you retire, that money is going to turn into over half a million dollars. And that's just a pretty standard like IRA. Right. Yes. Speaking of IRAs, if you work for a company and they match, if they do 401K matching, you want to do that because what that is is your company giving you free money. There's no other way to put it.

It's free money. Whatever you contribute, they'll match like say 100% up to a certain amount that you contribute. That is literally your company saying, here's some extra money for your retirement. It's what companies came up with to replace the old retirement plans that they used to have in the heydays of the unions. This is what we have today. So if you're not taking advantage of that, you should. And there's another reason to take advantage of a 401K and to max it out, frankly, because

it's deducted pre-tax. It actually lowers your adjusted gross income, which means you'll pay less taxes the more you contribute to your 401K over the year. Boom. Yeah. You should be a financial planner. I am. For yourself.

No, I've been doing it on the side. Oh, really? Yeah. There's this alley that I set up on a couple of garbage cans. People drop 10 cents in the car. I am fascinated by the stuff. Once you start to really get into it and think about it and look around at ways to save, it's addictive.

Well, I can say this, Warren Buffett didn't become Warren Buffett by being disinterested in finance. He probably thought it was pretty neat early on. Sure. And look at him now. Maybe it's where you're headed. I don't know about that. That's not my primary interest.

I just find it fascinating. What else, Chuck? You got anything else? I have something else, actually. This is just a total overview, just some starter ideas. That was definitely not a full rundown of 401Ks and tax savings and that kind of stuff. Whatever perked your ears up, go look into it. Go do a little research.

There's so much information online about this stuff that it's just basically a never-ending supply. This free financial information probably rivals cute kitten videos and just the sheer volume of stuff on the Internet. Yeah. Sounds good to me. Yeah. Get into it, people.

You'll thank us later. Okay. That's it for this one? Yeah. All right. If you want to learn more ways to save money, you can type in 10 easy ways to save money in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com and we wish you the best of luck in becoming financially free and sticking it to the man.

Yeah. Since I said search bar, it's time for Listener Man. That's right. I'm going to call this one of our better emails about our death podcast, dying podcast. We heard from a lot of people that really got a lot out of this one and it was very rewarding for us. This is from one of them. Hey guys, my mom passed away two years ago and was moved to Hospice for the last two

weeks. It was a very painful time for me and I was nervous about listening to this podcast. In fact, I was in two minds about skipping it. However, I'm glad I did not skip it. My mom went through each stage as you described. This was the first time I had experienced anything like this and it was horrible to watch. I thought she had died in a lot of pain, struggling to breathe, and having to fight every step of the way.

I now realized she was going through the normal steps and I really wish I would have known this at the time. I can confirm that sound is the last thing that goes. About half an hour before she died, me and my sisters asked the nurse if there was anything we could do to help her as she looked like she was struggling to breathe. The nurse suggested putting on some of her favorite music. Not only did this seem to calm her down, but after a while we noticed that her breathing noises started to match the rhythm of the music.

Was she trying to sing along? We think so. This is one of the good memories I have of her last week, so I'm glad we did it. I thought I would email to say thank you for doing the show. Even after two years it still distressed me how my mom died and now I feel like I finally understand it. It's a big weight off my mind that she didn't feel as much pain as she looked like she was in.

Wow. So that is from Philippa Griggs in Norwich, England. Thank you very much for sending that in, that is very, that's something else. Yeah, or maybe it's pronounced NORCH. Nor, nor, nor WIC, sometimes CH is a K sound. I think it's Norwich. NURCH. Norwich, England.

Thanks, Philippa. That's a cool name too. Yeah. Thank you very much for sending that in. Thanks to all of you who wrote in about our dying podcast, we really appreciate it. If you want to let us know something we taught you that meant a lot to you, we always like to hear that. You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast.

You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com and you can come hang out with us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less.

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