The Best One Yet - 💰 “The (Ex)Finance Bro’s Guide To $$$” — Nick & Jack interviewed on Wild 'Til 9

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

What do I do with my money? And why? And how? And ???????? We hung out with influencer couple Lauren Riihimaki (aka LaurDIY) & Jeremy Lewis to answer those questions. As a couple ex-finance guys turned pop-biz podcasters, we shared everything we know. So while we’re on vacation, we’re playing this interview from the Wild ‘Til 9 podcast.What is a stock? It’s how you can be like a rich person. How to buy your first stock. “How buy, when sell?”What is the S&P 500?Why can’t we just print more money?How much do I need in my emergency fund?Why NIMBY is evilHow Nick and Jack met their wivesGet more from Lauren & Jeremy and Wild Til 9 here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNI7Mllr9sWcRWXMrMQZw6g Lauren on insta: https://www.instagram.com/laurdiy/?hl=en Jeremy on insta: https://www.instagram.com/jeremymichael22/?hl=en Or watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod NEWSLETTER:https://tboypod.com/newsletter OUR 2ND SHOW:Want more business storytelling from us? Check our weekly deepdive show, The Best Idea Yet: The untold origin story of the products you're obsessed with. Listen for free to The Best Idea Yet: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/NEW LISTENERSFill out our 2 minute survey: https://qualtricsxm88y5r986q.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dp1FDYiJgt6lHy6GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Linkedin (Nick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/Linkedin (Jack): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, The Best One Yet is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yeties, Jack and I are nearly wrapped with our two weeks out of the recording studio. For our final vacation drop, we've got an awesome conversation originally published on the Wild Till 9 podcast. Lauren and Jeremy are two of our favorite podcasters and influencers, and we sat down in Los Angeles to chat with them about personal finance, money, investing, making money, not losing money, all that good stuff. We cosplayed as Warren Buffett as best as we could. We also shared our meat cute stories, didn't we, Jack? How I met Alex and how you met Molly. And, dude, it was tough following how I met Alex. Yes, it was.

So, Vesies, enjoy the episode. And we'll be back with you for our usual T-boy pod on Monday. We have something. We know you just got married on April 7th. Oh, boy. But given that, we've been talking about weddings and finances for two days in a row now. We actually have some financial vows we've written for the two of you that we'd like you to exchange. Everyone sit back down.

Yeah, everyone sit back down. We think this is the real wedding, to be honest. Okay. Let's go home. I can't control this. We're talking about the slip and fall, right? And with that, welcome back to Wildall 9. Joining us today is the dynamic duo Nick and Jack from the hit pop biz news podcast, the best one yet, T-boy.

Woo! Do we want to identify our T-boys we've got? This is Nick. This is Jack. Oh, that was so crazy. It's not exactly like. We've done it 1,500 times. No kidding.

Probably more. Okay, wait. I have more. Previously the host of the iconic snacks daily podcast acquired by Robin Hood. They've spread their wings and left the nest and are bringing you three daily news stories that will leave you a little more in the know every single weekday. We've secured our own in-house finance broads for the episode. Not sure about the trust funds.

I think one's got blue eyes. Yeah. One's got blue eyes. Not quite 6-5. Combined together. Way of clearing 6-5 together for sure. And we are big fans nonetheless. Thank you so much, guys.

That was the best. intro yet. We're both 5'10. No way. Our college coach has listed us at 5.11. Wait, they lied to 511? No, I think it was like this, Jack. We're actually 510. We tell people 511. The college coaches heard 6 foot and then they wrote

6'1 on the roster. I actually showed up to, you know, I walked on, I told you. Well, you told everybody. I'm going. Well, I went to my college recruiting trip, which I invited myself to, to be honest. And this is D3. D3. Yeah. I was known as D3 Bowe back then. By the best D.

The bestie. The best team. So I actually put playing cards in both of my shoes to increase my height. Wow. Come on. Come on, Jack.

DIY. But you'd like run in the pod. But you'd like run in the show. No, I didn't have to run. It was just like wintertime. I was visiting. I was checking out the campus. Yeah.

And trying to be taught. It was more of a personality. Like old school lips. Yeah. That's an old school lips. Like before like Amazon, you just order things. Yeah. Because quarterbacks are supposed to not be 510.

How's all are they supposed to be? Brady's 6-4. Okay. Is he really? Yeah. He doesn't get off six four energy. He gives up five, ten energy. Okay, guys, we're starting, we're starting way too bro-y

to have a 90% female audience. Okay, so it's really in bros. Okay, so we, I feel like we can't not talk about the viral TikTok finance bro anthem that's been going around. Yeah. And you'd heard this before, I assume, right? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Trust fund. Fulham. Flee wise. Nailed it. You guys are just finishing sentences. Do you, do you guys still identify as finance bros?

Kind of? Nick? Do not identify as finance bros. No, I would say certainly not. We retired. Yeah. X. We say we're a formed f*** boy for Jeremy.

We don't. Yeah. We don't. We haven't in 10 years. We haven't in 10 years. But sure. For sure. No, but it's really,

that is a really interesting question because I actually think that's something people assume when you're a guy and you work in finance that you're a finance bro. You love spreadsheets. You love hanging out with other bros and you love just grabbing beer. And I think, frankly, Jack and I always felt. different in finance. And like frankly felt like an outlier, even if you look like a classic typical stereotypical finance guy. And you do. And you do. Yeah. Yeah. If you read these books by their covers were finance books. Well, but what I only had was really creative interests that

couldn't be satisfied in finance, like writing and the arts and and being creative. And humor and awareness that you can't do in a finance room that like making profits is not the only thing in the world. What? But did you major in finance and college? Economics. We went to liberal art school. I didn't. History. Sorry. History. And frankly took a lot of creative courses in college, like creative writing and- Hang on. This is my mind-bling. Hang on. Wait, hang on. Back up. Economics and not money? No. Economics is pretty money. No, no. Money. And history. History. Yeah. And Jack and like Colin. And Jack took a lot of courses outside of economics, too. Wow. And frankly, I actually doubled majored. I have German and economics.

Ah, Vader. Father. Got it. Star Wars of references. There you go. There we go. So what were you going to do with that German major, by the way? Well, I ended up working a German investment.

Great answer. Great answer. So you actually applied literally both of your majors. I did, believe it or not. And I actually had some great clients. So Nick and I side hustled our newsletter for five years. Wow. Before we turn it into our full hustle.

And you guys were secretive about it in the beginning. We were anonymous. Yeah. Financial institutions have compliance departments. Right. And they do not like you say. that you're doing anything except working for the company. No, no, no.

To maximize the profits. Just to set the scene here, Jack and I would finish a day of working at an investment bank, and then we would get on the subway and text each other, what stories are recovering today? Lulu Lemon's earnings? Wait, afterward. We got a cool angle.

Afterwards. You work all day and then go right. Sometimes we would even send emails to each other from our company emails, but we would turn the text white. Genius. Genius. Not, but genius. And literally, we would like do this on the,

And then we would write in news that are every day on the subway coming home and get this out. Is it foia? Is that the agency that like goes in? Finra. Finra. Yeah. It goes through it like all the emails. Yeah.

Oh my God. Control after doesn't work. Yeah, they're like hang on. What is this? Dude sending all these blank emails. I tried the exact same thing with turnin.com. Doesn't work. So when Nick left finally, they had a stack of papers this big.

He had a meeting with HR. Yeah. Among my last weeks. They said, Nick, what is markets? Snacks. And that was our startup secretly. But anyway, it all worked out. We didn't get in trouble. We actually grew the audience

anonymously. There was no name attached to the market snack's newsletter. But of course, we told everyone to sign up and like push that hardcore. People around you knew, right? Yeah, people around, close friends at our work. Yeah. But our boss didn't until an advertiser said, hey, can we be your first advertiser?

And then we were like, oh my God, we're going to make money off. Yeah. So that's when we came clean with our bosses and filed it as an outside business activity. Oh, so you actually officially went through the channels. We went through the official channels after about a year. Well, you both had a series seven, right? Yeah. And you can lose that if you don't. Okay, for everyone else, what's a serial seven? Sorry. Don't ask me. What? A series seven is a license that is required to basically work in the finance industry. Yeah. Okay. And, you know, it's not like the bar for becoming a lawyer, but you can get

kicked out kind of of the finance industry. Okay. If you do unethical things or if you're caught engaged in fraud or stuff like that. So we determined that what we were doing was not in conflict at all. Yeah, it wasn't fraud. We determined that we were not. Our compliance department approved it. Jack and I also just had this deep belief

early on that we still believe today that everything around us is actually related to business and we just don't even realize it. Sure. Like we just had a whole conversation about Jeremy's passion for khakis from Abercrombie. Everything we kind of said about that

is reflected in Abercrombie's earnings report that just came out and affected the stock. And so Jack and I've always fault, these are stories that need to be told and how fun it is to tell these stories. But they need to be told by somebody who understands what it takes to pass the Series 7 and doesn't want to use it.

That was us. But otherwise it's just, the perspective is so the importance of the technical information outweighs entertainment. And like, I'm ADHD as hell. If something's not like, like actually engaging, I'm out.

Even if it's on. It's just filler. I think on the opposite side of that too, like I'm not ADHD. Like I'm locked in when I'm listening to a podcast. But if something is going to be like too wordy or feel like a little too educational and it's leaning on that side versus like entertaining, like I'm also out because I'm here for a good time. It's got to be entertainment. It's got to be, it's got to be entertainment. And so I feel like the way that you guys have packaged it and made it, um, digestible for

someone like me who doesn't have any business background. You sneak it in there. You hide it. We do sneak it in there. And then you throw an amazing theme song on it. The jingle. Two times in a row. So the first time we ever encountered Jeremy and Lauren was on Instagram when they posted their dog moose and the two of them dancing to the theme song.

It's so good. And the new theme song, the T-Boy pod theme song, is inspired by Prince of Bel Air, right? Yeah, first Prince of Bella. Yeah. It tells the story of Nick and me meeting 16 years ago. And a great rap duo down. in Texas called Black Alack wrote the song. I was going to tell us.

Yeah. How do you found them? Yeah. Can we play it? Yeah. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dawn. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is a norm.

Jack Nick. That's it. I don't even think you've got to practice. 50%. That's a fat tip. Tea boy city on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more.

So just start the show. Start the show I love it So good The video is cute too I've ever seen the video I only listen Yeah

Yeah Such a bop Yeah and it's like We did a live show In New York the other day And we play that And people were like Dancing in their seats

And then we're kind of crazy Like to hear her like Know the words to a song When I tell you I also don't know The words to anything Like I don't have that little I don't have that thing But also that's I think that's why

That's why There's an unreasonable amount of finance Podcasts out in the world with like two guys talk to each other who think that they know what they're talking about. You guys just found a way to like actually package it and have good information.

But like without the package, nobody cares. Yeah. So Lauren, I love that you listen every day. Thank you so much for listening every day. Most of our audience listens every day. Yeah. We've done 1,500 episodes of this show. Wow.

And we actually don't have the word finance in the title or description of our podcast, even though that's subject. Because that would be misleading. Yep. If you're looking for a finance podcast, we might not be the word. for you. You know? Yeah. We are for people who are interested in finance, economics,

and business, but don't want a podcast that is just that. Right. If I saw the tag finance, I wouldn't even, I glaze over. Yeah. You see a logo. It looks like a fashion logo almost. It's not about, and just the idea of a show being called the best one yet, like the reason why Jack and I said that and why the title of our whole product of our whole podcast is the best one yet is when we started podcasting, Jack and I would say like, hey, that episode we just did. That was like the best one we've done. And then we just kind of kept saying it on the show. And then our audience embraced it and was like, hey, I just had like the best smoothie yet. I just had the best outfit yet. And we realized this was like a mindset people were living. We emailed each other

in white text that it was the best one yet. Again, the decisions that go into these things, not all that deep. So we actually did go deep after we left Robinette, after working there for three years. So we sold the company to Robin Hood in 2018. Three years later, we spun it out. We spun out the podcast and became independent again. But we had months of legal back and forth. We had time to prepare. So we did a brand strategy activity where we asked ourselves, what is the show? And it is not a finance show. And we came up with the term pop biz, which were dedicated to. We'd actually been doing for years. Pop Culture business. articulated it, the intersection of business and pop culture. And we came up with a mission,

which is to make people's day feel brighter. And brighter is the perfect word because it's both becoming smarter because Nick and I pour all of the best insights and takeaways we've ever had in our 20 years of academic and professional life into the show, but also brighter because Nick and I are having a blast every morning. We are best friends who have incredible comfort with each other and chemistry with each other and inside jokes and references to bring into the show. Yeah. So it actually is kind of deep. That was so goddamn wholesome. But you're right. Because if you didn't love what you were doing, this would not be... The audience knows. They can feel that. They can totally feel that. Nick is outrageously funny. I like to say that humor was

invented in New York City, which is where Nick is born and raised. You can tell. He's got like the energy. It does. Yeah, I did. I slipped on the stairs earlier. I think I was just too rambunctious. And the amount of calories that burned. in my life because of laughter during the recording within. The podcast, yeah. Yeah, I'd be 50 pounds. And so what do you bring to the show? Yeah, that's a good question.

Well, actually, there's a jack brought something so funny today to the show. Okay, we did a story this week on how Dr. Pepper just passed Pepsi to become the number two soda. By the way, as it should have. Yeah, Jeremy's been fighting this fight. Lee has been, yeah, he's been out here, fucking the good fight for Dr. Peppy. I'm doing this for you, Jeremy. Jack revealed on the show he'd never had a Dr. Pepper before.

And now he's about to drink a warm one. I know. No, no, no, the one yesterday was also warm. Warm is the only way I've had it. Lauren gave him his first ever Dr. Pepper. Can I get a glass of ice, actually? Is there any way we can take that? Do you think I'm just like a, he looks at me and goes, can I get a glass of ice, big guy?

You know what though? Because of how much I like Dr. Pepper? Yeah. Talk a among gosh. One big guys cube, not the small ones at possible. Yeah, he's like, can I get the, uh, the whiskey on the rock? The whiskey on the rock, Dr. Peppy. We're a big cube, please.

Jack wants to enjoy all 23 flavors. You know what though? You should experience this on ice because it is a different experience because the warm, shaken purse Dr. Peppy that you had from me and then you had a warm butt Dr. Pepeppy from another guy, right, who approached you that it was in his pants. Yeah, now that Jack's told the world he had never had a Dr. Pepper until this week, he's getting inundated with Dr. Peppers. The following day. Yeah.

Two fans, including Lauren, gave me a Dr. Pepper. But I actually do know what I bring to the show. Yes. And I'm going to wait for Germany to get back. But Lauren, are you familiar with Enneagrams? Yeah. We did a whole episode. Yes, we are.

Yeah, what are your enneagram? So I'm a hard anagram one with a four wing. Nick's anagram three. So Nick's best thing that he brings to the table besides his humor is ambition and a demand for excellence. Okay. What I bring to the show is probably like in one word, integrity. Okay. And I am obsessed with the fact checking and make sure that everything that's in our show is correct.

Right. Factual, on point, not missing a major. element or storyline that invalidates our takeaway. No one's going to notice this except for Jack that like we had a line today in the podcast about Lulu Lemon and it was about like quarter over quarter sales and Jack was like no that's annual sales and he caught that fact. Well look I am big on information and accuracy and like there's so much falseness out there totally and misleading headlines and so that is a very important thing that our audience knows that what they're hearing from us is correct and they can tell their friends with confidence knowing that they got it from us.

Do you have like a certain, and you don't have to name it, but like is there a certain source or like do you fact check it a certain amount of times to be like, okay, this is validated in my mind. No, like if Nick drafted a fact, you know, I'll highlight the text, right click it, Google it. Yeah. But I want to go as primary as possible. So the best place to fact check is the company itself, which issues quarterly earnings report. Just direct. Yeah.

And then we are aware of like the high. hierarchy of news agencies. Yeah. And we look for the best news agencies like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Reuters AP. They're all very good. And if they cite it, we can rest assured that it's already been fact checked by them. Okay.

How powerful. And Jeremy, Ron, as Jeremy walks back in with the eyes. Oh, he's got the fancy cups too. Oh, real highball. Wow. Look at this. The doctor has never looked better. Is that too?

My God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Well, when you first started, were you a finance show? Yes. When we first started our newsletter, we were a finance show. And what we were trying to achieve, this was 2011. Right.

We wanted to create a daily email newsletter so that people could go to one place and get everything they needed. Right. Instead of having to juggle a bunch of different news sources. One place, I want three stories. And I don't want to decide what three stories to read. I just want to know this is it. By the way, that's what kept me listening to the show. It allowed me to have something new to talk about every day no matter what.

Right, when you're in a new room. Oh, totally. That's every episode we think like, will this story and this insight help you become a more interesting person in the world? Yeah, yeah. Will this intro we just did about dinosaur bones as investments? That's something you're going to want to share on a Saturday. Yeah. Actually, can I get the pronunciation of your dinosaur choice again one more time?

Velociraptor? Velocerapter. Ah, exactly what I said. Veloceraptor. Velasah. You dropped on the end of it and I was like, I'm sorry. I am. Don't ask him the name of Luigi's brother.

Go ahead. Veloceraptor. Maria? Don't say Mario. You're sorry. That's why. That's not New York. That's why.

Mario. Which is like with a population as Italian as they are. Yeah, you know, it's just that we did. Okay. Yeah. So Jeremy, speaking of like wanting to tell people things. read in your newsletter. Yes.

That is why we created it at the very beginning. Because we were applying for jobs while seniors in college. And we were not caught up on the news because, like I said, our mailboxes were stuffed with Wall Street journals. And it was overwhelming. So we wanted like a one-stop place every day you could go to be informed and to impress people and job interviews. One thing, Jack and I say is...

That's how we started. In a world where there is so much news everywhere and we're all getting push notifications. Yeah, content is king. Right. But we like to say curation is queen. Curation is a huge value that we provide. You guys actually taught me a very, very valuable lesson, which is that being in the routine business is a much better and more like longevity

perspective to these things because like you don't need any one piece of content to outperform. You just need someone to go, I'm going to have a drive every day. Yeah. Yeah. I need something to do. Yeah. Isn't that the joy of podcasting that you guys find with your listeners too? Is that podcasting is a jack-in-law, Jack always says it's a multitasking media.

It is. Yeah, totally is. listeners right now. Your listeners are right now, they are right now cooking a meal, they are on the way to work and they're on a treadmill. I find it weird if someone was sitting there going, that's like David Puddy. Remember in the Seinfeld episode? He's on an airplane. That was the you guys thing. Well, Elaine is dating this dufous

and he's sitting next to him. He's sitting next to Elaine on the airplane. And it's a long flight. And Elaine is about to like go to sleep. And she's like, you're going to take a nap? And he goes, no. You're going to read a book? He goes, no. He's just sitting there looking at the back. Rock dog in the flying. And that sort of way he realizes, she has to break up with them. But that's it.

Is that the original ick? I mean, maybe. But also, like, if you can just be in your mind for that long, like, I would challenge that person, come over here. Get in here. Yeah, get in here. Let's see if you like it. Yeah, yeah.

You don't want a fucking distraction too. I totally agree. No, I feel like between you guys, my two daily shows are you guys and the Philip DeFranco show. I don't know if you guys were watching this stuff. But he does a great job of like bringing together my two worlds of like pop culture, newsish, but also like influencer creator space too. Well, you guys actually allowed me, like when I tell you that when I first, well, first I,

I gave her the theme song first. And just listen to this. Start with the theme song. But when she was listening to snacks without me, I felt a moment of like a little bit of jealousy, but also on top of it was like a, wow. Someone found a way to talk secretly about some business things and Lauren's interested. This is, this is fascinating. He makes me sound like all I want to like look at are pink sparkly things.

I don't know how you find the time by consuming all of TikTok every day. Yeah, I do consume all of TikTok. Still finding 20 minutes for you guys. I do consume all of TikTok. No, that means a lot. Sorry, that's my point. Cuss somebody off at that point.

So who's your demographic? Because obviously, like, we are able to be so two different people who typically consume such a different media but fall in the same like Venn diagram. You're the crack. You guys are the crack and we're so happy to be here. I'll hit you with the numbers

and Nick will hit you with the anecdote. Yes. I love you guys. So our, About 40% of our audience is between the age of 27 and 35. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense.

45% female, 55% male. Really? Yeah. Yeah, that's shocking. Love that. Well, it's actually, it's actually, the female proportion has grown over time. Because like I said, we started explicitly financed 10 years ago. And over time, we realized that's not what we are.

Yeah. And so our audience, most of our new listeners are, are women, which is fantastic. That's, that, if you can find a stat for that, that's, that's, that, that's, fucking cool. Like, that's amazing. How many guys can say that? Like, you guys, the type of content you make, and I know it's not fine, it's, but how many people can say, like, we're actually growing our female audience, like, as much as you are? We're really proud of it, and we also just are having fun because it's who we are. Like, we're doing stories that resonate for us, and they resonate for audience. And, you know, the audience comes with

us for this entire journey, which has been fun. That's cool. Yeah. We call our audience the yeties and the besties. But share some anecdotes about, like, the types of listeners who have reached out to us. Oh, like who specifically pings us and is like, hey. Well, a lot of parents drive with their kids on the way to school. Totally. And we love that. So we avoid swearing, knowing there's a lot of kids in the backseat. That was the first question I asked. I was like, do you have children

listeners? So where do we sit on cursing? So at the end of our show, this fun detail is Jack and I do shoutouts for our listeners. I love that. Yeah. And when Jack are doing the shoutouts, it's like, yeah, Jack and I are a couple guys in our 30s. And we're speaking to this ambitious millennial audience, but the shoutouts are for like Greg turning seven. Yeah. He's got a bar mitzvah. And like that's who Johnny has a tech today.

He's going to crush it. Yeah. And you know what? It's wholesome as hell. Yeah, but there's something about like it feels like a family then. Yeah. But you guys must have a wide range of listeners too. And this gets to a core point about both our shows is laughter and humor just transcends all.

You can reach anyone if someone is laughing. It doesn't matter who they are or where they are. Totally agree. And that's an exciting thing. Totally agree. I think for us, the biggest mind fuck that we always encounter is that because we, like, I don't know. I feel like the things that we talk about are, you know, not, we're a lifestyle podcast.

We're an education podcast. And so when we have someone who's like in med school, we're like, oh, my God, you're using your gray matter right now listening to an hour of us. Yeah. What a compliment. It concerns me about the future. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, oh, we're shaping a part of your day.

That's a little terrifying for your future patient. And once I'll say the message, like, when I need to like turn my brain off, I turn you guys on, I go, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, but you know what? You guys, I don't think you're doing this enough justice on this because you're dealing with universal challenges sometimes.

Oh my God. For example, the wedding shows are incredible. The Colin shows where you're actually answering these challenges. And then also with the wedding stuff, I mean, I wish this was around when Jack and I had gotten metting, when Jack and I had gotten married, because like when Jeremy,

when you guys were talking about wedding bingo and how you, after the show, had prepared bingo for what, happened during the wedding. What a fun way to look back on your wedding. And also something that should be almost part of everyone's wedding process. Well, if nothing else in exercise and things are going to go wrong. Yeah. And it's okay. Humility. It gives you humility. Agreed. Agreed. So, you know, most people who know about finance learn it from their parents or their like

uncle who works in finance. That's how most finance people learned their finance. But most people don't have parents or an uncle who work in finance. Okay, this is, you're literally teaming us up for like... Are you segwaying us? Yeah. And so, for example, us being an education podcast, is that I read a segue as Segu at some point, and it's been a fun inside joke from a whole audience.

I called it Vagana. When I was in sixth grade, I was like, what's a Vagana? I was looking for Fagina. Fagina? Yeah, I'm talking about sex education in six grade. Oh, got it, got it, got it. It's one of those words that I'd only read from her. I never said it out loud.

Excuse me. It was a segue from your segue. Yeah, so we sagu. So this is a great sagu into our next segment. Because we pulled the tillies and asked them essentially for like, some just some basic. Like if you had the opportunity to chat with like a finance bro, like what would you ask them? And you guys are going to be their uncles today.

And you're going to be the nice, friendly finance uncle. We can play this. It's just like so wild how little everyone knows. And like myself included. Like my parents are both like, would say medium educated. My mom has an MBA. and like, I don't know that medium educated. No, no, but my dad, my dad just graduated high school and then started working.

You know, mean average? What? Just the average. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Cool. So it's like, like, my mom had an MBA. Former. Great head show, great ed show.

Got it, got it, got it, got it. We've been, I mean, we're obsessed with the finance pro lately, and so we had to bring him in. Yeah, Jeremy has played every remix ever of the finance pro song. But anyway, all to say is that I feel like everyone, especially like a female, the female demographic is so intimidated. They feel like they know nothing. They feel like they don't have a resource that they can trust. And they're paralyzed in not knowing what to do, so they do nothing. Yeah. Well, I'll weave so much to share. And with that, let's go into our first question.

And let's be clear. The very first thing to know is that obviously you should go watch the show or listen to the show. However, this is a good start and a good idea. If you can get through this segment, I think you're going to enjoy the show. Great. And also, I want to be like to tee this up. The, one of the number one questions that I feel like encapsulates all of this. That's a fun way to say that. Encapsulates. It's like Pulitzer Prize. The old Pulitzer.

Is that one of the questions that someone submitted was so great and it was just, what do? Yeah, right. What do? What do? That's the question. So anyway, investing. What's the best way to start? What do?

First, maybe stocks are ownership in a company. And if you buy a stock, you own part of a company. So Nick and I are the 50-50 owners of Nick and Jack Studios. That's the company that we operate our show under. Has it been the same company since day one or is that like Robin Hood now? Since post-Robinette. Yeah. Prior to that, it was something else.

We've reincorporated. So we have two shares in the company and we each own one. Oh, that's cool. Nike has 10 million shares. You can own one of them and own one 10 millionth of the company. So when Nick and I make profits at the end of the year, we each take home 50% of the profits. That's cool.

When Nike makes profits, they split it up into one 10 millionth each. And each share is entitled to 1.10 millionth of the Nike profits. So that's the really cool thing about stocks is you literally become an owner. It's great to make money through working and through a W2 and through a salary. But you can, what do rich people have? They own things. Right. Rich people own things.

And the stock market is the easiest, most accessible way at a low cost to begin owning things. Buying a house is great. But those costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Buying a stock can be $1. And when it comes to buying a stock, Jack and I kind of approach it and we think people should approach it, just like you do when you're dating someone serious, when you get serious about dating.

You don't just pick a random company out of nowhere. And you don't just pick a random company because then someone told you about it. Dating a stock. Yeah, you think the first stock. The first stock you ever invest in should be a company you friggin' love. You know, you feel it. You wear it maybe. You've gotten used to it. You can walk into

a store and say, I think things are going in the right direction or the wrong direction, because I know how populated is in Isle 6. Crispy cream was mine. Crispy cream. There you go. You know why? Mom, I like donuts. Yeah. And that's universal. By the way, this is Jack. I own stock of Krispy Kreme too. There you go. Wow. Really? This is Nick.

I consume Krispy Kree. This is Lauren. I also postmate an abnormal amount of Krispy Kreme. We're so far away from finance. We don't actually have to make a disclosures. He didn't say he owned. He just said he ate it. Here's the best way to start is to buy stock in a company you love. I don't know how much it is. Maybe you're about to buy a $200 pair of Nikes.

Maybe the next time you're about to buy Nikes, instead of buying Nikes, you buy Nike stock. That can be the first way. You are now an owner, a part owner of Nike. Arguably, you're going to get more value than you would have out of the shoes and you're buying an amount that you know you can afford. Now, chances are over time, your stock is going to grow in value by 10% per year. Oh, is that the, okay, that's the stock market historical average of the last 100 years. Not guaranteed, but more likely than not.

So I'm hearing guaranteed money, all you have to do. This is how to get rich quick. And this is Jack's advice. Is it guaranteed 10% of compound interest on this? It's going to be amazing. That's the thing. There's none of that get rich quick. And if someone's offering you that, turn away.

Because there's no such thing. Because it's not real. There's no such thing. As you're dating that stock, just like you would, anyone who you're dating, you check in on it. You are going to every quarter. get their earnings report, you can check it out and see how the company's financially doing, get to know them, share the idea with friends,

soft launch it and hard launch. In five years, it's going to double in value. You're going to sell it at a 100% gain and use the proceeds to not just buy yourself those Nikes that you passed on five years ago, but to buy the person, you're actually dating Nikes too. Wow. And then you'll realize the glory of stock ownership,

which is that you get richer. It's incredible. Or less poor. That's how I feel. Sure. Now a quick word from our sponsor. I've got two questions on behalf of all of the uneducated finance names. One, how, how buy, how do, and then two, how long, how long buy.

Okay. How long hold by? How long hold. When sell. How buy? Well, the first answer to your second question is you only want to invest money that you're open to losing. If you can't afford to lose that money, it should not be getting invested.

And therefore, that means you hold the money until you need that money. So the answer to how long depends on your money needs. But if you didn't need it to begin with, unless you wouldn't have invested it, how do you know? Because things change. Maybe five years later you need to buy a house and then you may need that money. Well, that's an opportunity to then pull. The best early investment I ever had, I sold it right after my wedding because we came up $10,000 short. And I needed to pay for the open bar.

And you pay for the open bar. With my Roku proceeds. Roku. Roku. Oh, very nice. How buy? You open up a brokerage account. Okay.

You're going to have to give your social security number. We worked at Robin Hood for three years. Yeah. I do most of my investing through Robinette. Oh, okay. That's cool. You're going to have to give your social security number. That's totally normal.

Open the account. Link your bank account. Fund it with some money. And then push by on the, on the Nike. stock. And then buy. Yeah. Okay, great.

And they just wait. But Jack and I also think, like right now we've talked about individual stocks, but the real opportunity that we think makes the most sense for people, especially beginner stage, is not an individual stock, but the smoothie of stocks. And what is that, Jack? The smoothie is an ETF. So an ETF is a smoothie of stocks. So instead of it being just one company that you're becoming a part owner in, if you buy an

ETF, you are buying into a bunch of companies. What does ETF stand? Exchange traded fund. Yeah, ETF's better. It's the financial equivalent of the Haley Bieber Erewan smoothie

is what we're saying. This is how you get to my demographic right here. This is our language. Keep going. The ingredients are okay, but what it makes together is fantastic. How many ingredients are in a Haley Bieber smoothie?

Like 50. Like 50. Our favorite ETF has 500 ingredients and it's the 500 biggest publicly traded companies in the U.S. What's that called? It's called the, there's two different ones. There's one from Vanguard, the S&P 500 ETF.

And there's another one from Spider, the S&P 500 ETF. Got it. Okay. Anyway, Nick and I invest basically the money we have left over at the end of the year from our income and our costs. We invest it in the S&P 500. It's a smoothie of the top 500 stocks in America. Just at a high level.

Hold, what's the S&P 500? It is a stock market index. Okay. What does that mean? Um, and index is a mathematical thing. Break it down for me like I'm five. No, by the way, like, none of this has ever taught. It's like, this was so gritty.

Like, if you're listening to this and you don't know what's being said. Yeah. Great. Nobody else, no one else says that. Trivia. Trivia. Oh God. What is the most valuable company in the United States right now?

War! No, wait. That had the most, that had the highest revenue. Revenue. I know the highest. But it's not the most valuable. All right. Fastest growing would be Nvidia. Invita.

is the second most valuable company in the United States. So they make the chips for Apple? Apple. Apple is number three. No longer. Microsoft is number one. No, because AI is crushing right now. So the S&P 500 is if we went beyond one, two, and three like we just did, all the way down to 500. Okay, great. That's a great

visualization, I feel like to... And that's based on what figure? That's based on their value by market capitalization, which is valuing the company by taking the stock price, multiplied by the number of shares available to the public, and that's what gives a company its value. So we said earlier that Nike has 10 million shares.

If the price of those shares are $1, then market cap for Nike is 10 million shares times $1. Nike's market cap is $10 million. Amazing. I'm with you. And I assume that because it's a constant, like a dynamic, someone's worth more, do people go on and off the S&P 500 every day? Yeah.

Not every day. There's a company that's in, charge of like inductees and they kick some companies out. What companies are that? Actually, I don't know that. It's called standard and porous, which is S&P. But this smoothie and the reason why actually a funny thing Jack and I should share is we've bought a lot of stocks. We've done complicated transactions. We've done options. However, the best performing asset we've ever had was the one we thought about the least,

which was simply buying an ETF and exchange traded fund of the S&P 500. Are you Vanguard guys or Spider-Gus? I'm a Vanguard guy. Okay, yeah, yes. Last year, the S&P 500 gained 23% in value. This year, it's already up 15%. And combine the two, that's like 40% higher than the beginning of 20%. In fact, in inflation, you're only down 60%.

Now, of course, there's no guarantee that buying basically one purchase of the whole stock market will always go up. But what Jack and I think is so interesting about this example is that everyone talks about individual stocks. You know, you got to buy shares of Apple at this price. You got to buy shares of Nvidia at this price. This is semiconductor stock. The S&P 500 is considered the most boring out of all those investments. And yet it's been the most stable and reliable in our entire portfolio. So here's the secret.

Finance bros who boast about the stocks they invest in. Crypto bros who invest about the crypto they invest in, they do worse than those who simply put their money in an S&P 500 ETF. They actually learn that in finance classes in college. The data shows it. But men do not believe it. I heard a stat that women actually outperform men in finance. That is correct. Across the board. That is correct.

Let's go. Men think that they can outperform the rest of the market. Nick and I have tried. We felt that urge to. Full disclosure, we're former finance bros. We tried to outperform the S&P founders. It doesn't work. We failed.

Well, 23% is pretty damn good. I know. Yeah. But every year, this is going to be my year. You know what the mistake a lot of people make is, is they think that investing is like video games. They think it's like Nintendo, where your goal is to get a level higher,

a level higher, a level higher, a level higher, more and more complex. The reality is you don't have to win the game of investing by getting to level 10. You can win on level one by doing the simplest investing of all. So get the Haley-Beaver smoothie. Yeah.

And anyone can open a Vanguard account, correct? Vanguard is not an account that you open. So Vanguard is not a brokerage. Because you, what, interact with Vanguard? through a brokerage? Yes. Got it. So Vanguard creates ETFs, which are like stocks that you can buy through a brokerage account. And you can buy that in Robin Hood, correct? Yes. And you know, there's E-Trade, there's Schwab. There's a bunch of different brokerages. I think we're Schwab people. I think those three I just

mentioned are great places for people to start. They're free. Anyone can do it. There's no commissions on any of them. So it's all good. Wow, that's great advice. I feel like I learned more right now than I did every time I've sat down with my own money person and been like, can you break this down for me? Because I just feel like it's so hard to have a professional and an expert break it down because they don't know what I don't know. Well, out of curiosity, has there ever been a extended period, call it five, ten years since the beginning of the S&P where people lost money by investing into it? Yeah, people have lost money during recessions and depressions. Okay. In 2008, when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and we had the financial crisis. The S&P 500 fell by 37%.

Okay. Okay. So if all your money was in the S&P 500, and you didn't have cash on the side as an emergency fund. By the way, for audio listeners, Jack's pointing to himself when he says cash. He said cash on the side and like held himself really, really highly. Sorry, go ahead. I don't know why I did that.

But that's a conversation for another time. That's actually for a few of your therapist, but keep going. And then when the pandemic hit, it fell by 33%. Wow. So like Nick said, only invest money that you are prepared and you won't be. destroyed if you lose. And that's why Jack and I like to say when it comes to investing, FOMO can become no-mo. Like when you buy stock because, and you think in your head, I am doing this partially because other people are doing it. Game stop, game stop, game stop. That's typically because

the price of it has gotten really high. That means you're investing with FOMO. You're afraid of missing out. And what we found generally in the stock market, if everyone is investing at the same time and everyone is FOMO, that tends to drop because that's not a real value driving the stock price. And your FOMO investment becomes no-mo. Right. So if you are only investing because of FOMO, you are probably too late. Yeah. And you're one of the final people getting in.

And then the bubble's going to pop and you will lose money. And you'll have happen so many times. You have to say no-mo. You need balance in the universe. Yeah, go ahead. FOMO becomes no-mo. There we go. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. So next question, please. Ooh. So a lot of questions about credit cards and building credit. So this is kind of like a multi-parter here. Thoughts on co-signing on credit with friends or family? Like a credit card? Yeah.

Don't think it's necessary. Save that ask for when you're buying a car or buying a house. Why? Okay. I didn't have a credit card until I was 22 after college. I was able to apply with no credit and get a basic beginner credit card. And over time, I built up credit. I got a platinum credit card at some point.

and eventually I bought a house. That was perfectly a fine way to do it. Yeah. I think you can save that guarantor or co-signer ass. That favor. For something that's harder to get like a house. Credit cards, if you don't have a credit rating, you can get a beginner credit card.

Canadian. So I got here to America and was like, hello, I would like your most beginner America credit card, please. Yeah. As a Canadian, here's my visa. Yeah, exactly. And they were like, give us money and that becomes your credit limit. So I could, there was no limit on how much money I would give them.

But they would literally hold that and be like, if I give them $1,000, they're like, here's a car with a thousand dollar limit. And so I had to play that game after building all this credit in Canada for so many years and start all over again. Wow. Well, actually, this reminds me of a story we just did. Jack and I just did a story on how the biggest generational divide between millennials and Gen Z, credit cards. Wait, how so?

When we were in our 20s, so like a decade ago, us millennials, us millennials, only 60% or so of our generation at the time had credit cards. But for Gen Zers right now at that same age

and they're at 20, 80 some percent have credit cards. I'm the Eniogram one. Let me just precise that. Get me the exact number. 81% of Gen Zers between 22 and 24 right now have a credit card.

Wow. So people between 22 and 24. But if you had to do over again... 10 years ago, the millennials, at the same age was 61%. Wow. That's a massive shift.

We actually think the reason for that is that millennials got scarred by the financial crisis that we were just talking about. We heard debt, debt, debt, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Debt almost destroyed the country. We had Occupy Wall Street. We had home foreclosures.

It was awful. Unemployment was like 11%. Three times higher than we have today. Mm-hmm. So debt was a bad thing in our minds when we graduated from college. Genzy doesn't have that trauma. No baggage.

They see afterpay and they're like, let me split this into four different payments on my credit card. I'll take two. No, no, no, no. Don't worry about today. Don't even worry about today. But Carolina is my boyfriend. But so like if you had it over again, you would still not get a credit card earlier. No.

In fact, if I had a credit card in college, I would have spent money I didn't have and came with my tail between my legs to my parents and asked for a bailout. Got it. And if they had given me that bail out, it would have taught me a bad lesson. Right. Right or right or right. I actually think that my like fiscal responsibility is because I did not have a credit card in college. And I only spent what I had. See, I don't have enough money to buy stuff.

So I had to get a credit card in college. Yeah. And then I didn't even bother. Did you pay it back? Well, I did. Yeah. If I had asked my mom for bail out, she would have said, you're funny. You're funny.

By the way, could I get that degree now? Oh, no degree? Oh, no bailout. So, Jeremy, I think it's great that that worked for you. I guess you got yours like three years younger than I got one. I got actually, my mom signed on him when I was 15. Mine too. I was 16, I think, when my mom was like,

had on over to President's Choice, which is like a... Show, what would President's Choice be comparable to in America? You don't even have a president. Yeah, I know, but that's a brand name. I know, I know. It's like, it's like R.C. Cola. What? Wait, what, you're talking about...

So, I had a President's Choice credit card. Oh. Huh? Which was, basically, President's Choice was like the top level no-name brand maker in Canada. And so they also have... had this like financial sector. It sounds like

Sam's Choice. Sam's Choice of Walmart. Similar, similar. Yeah. Because like Walmart does Costco maybe. Like they have financial products. Similar.

Yeah, similar. Well, I think it's funny. Like all these companies that are essentially just turning their business model into we have a credit card. And we also kind of have a product

but mostly just like like Oh my God. Everybody buys something at home goods. They're like a home goods credit card. I'm like way. Jack and I say airlines are basically credit card companies. They have a little side hustle

transporting people in the air. Right. It is a grocery company. Yeah, it's a grocery company, yeah, exactly. Sam's choice category. It was funny. Mine was a BP credit card for gas. Oh.

Yeah. Different need. And then if I used it for not gas? Bad. It was bad. It was bad. Well, a big question when you have a credit card. From whom?

Mom. Yeah. Mom, I needed. Whatever the fuck that was. Right before the show, Jack and I were actually chatting about best practices for credit cards. And we were saying... We wonder why you're so late. Keep on.

Let me see your statement. When you first got your credit card, did you check your statement every month? I don't think I've ever checked a statement ever. Really? Yeah, not because... By the way, not because I... Yeah, what a flex. Damn.

Not must be nice. No, no, no. Only because I have bad habits and... Yeah, yeah. That's... I'm being facetious. I didn't do a good job early. And I think I've now fallen back into that.

Mm. Who... So you just pay it without checking? Every month. It's, in fact, auto pay. Wow. I hope for the best. Well, one of Jackson and my, like, best practices

we always share with people with relationships, too, is around this transparency and the routine of creating habits around checking your credit card statement and turning it into kind of a fun moment, like making it a kind of budget brunch conversation once a month. Like what's your day of the month, Jack, where you always check your credit card? The 15th. Mine's the third. On the third of the month, I sit down, go through the credit card. But if you're in a relationship, it's actually a great opportunity to get on the same page together. Wow. A lot of couples who merge their finances, like I have with my wife,

kind of one person's in charge of the finances. Sure. but we highly recommend that the other person be aware and kind of participate in that 15th of the month for me, third of the month for Nick, because that is a form of communication that's really important. The statistics show that finances are a major driver of the divorces that happen in this country. Is it the top reason?

Yeah, like over infidelity, correct? That sounds right, Jim. Yeah, I'll say it really confidently. I believe in America. One more time, over time. We've got three white guys in this room. If we just say it really boldly, You can get away.

Yeah, yeah. Usually you're not in this room. But we usually make decisions and then you have to deal with the consequences. And that in such as life. Next question. I mean, honestly, treating that credit card statement moment like a date.

You know, treating it with the same kind of fun that you would have at a date. All the interest in finance pros just fell off. Seriously, having that fun, you know, of being like, and having, instead of having building, you talked on your show actually the other day about how resentment gets built

in relationships. One way to avoid resentment getting built, is not just like you said, communicating, but having the conversation together and going through the statement and not having resentment, hey, why did you buy that thing and never discuss it until you have an argument?

Discuss it there. Like, oh my God, we spent $58 bucks on that thing? I don't know if we can do that anymore. You almost don't feel the pain until you see it on the statement. Because in person, it's like it's attached to like the little dope. Oh, that's fake money.

Yeah, yeah. Apple pay, fake money. Wild statistic we learned when we're working at Robin Hood. This is crazy. There's a correlation between opening your mail and having good financial outcomes.

Oh, boy. If you don't check your mail, that is associated with having debt problems and bad financial outcomes. There are exceptions to every rule. Of course. We understand the anxiety one could have when you get a bunch of mail

and you don't think anything's good. Is it going to be in there? It's not. It's never good. It's never good. And honestly, reading your credit card statement can feel never good too.

But the solution is not bearing your head in the sand. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to finance. I think I had audio issues in this last second. Any single, any piece of mail that shows up on our house, I immediately am like, scary mail, scary mail, it's scary mail. Into the shredder, it goes. Here's the nice thing, though. On the 15th of the month, I actually look forward to it because I have a spreadsheet that has 120 columns because I've been doing this for 10 years.

Oh, my God. So every month for the last 10 years, I have paid my bills on the 15th and check to see how the family's entire finances are. With the very bottom number being the net worth. And that has grown over time. And it is very satisfying. Some months it's down. And sometimes it's down several months in a row.

And I'll be like, Alex, we really got to stop. And honestly, it's like a financial diary. Like there's a notes tab in ours. And I'll put notes. And when I go back and to see compared to last year, like, oh yeah, this was because that like amazing trip that we took to Santa Barbara. That was an expensive month.

But it was worth it. We didn't take any trips and we didn't make any large purchases and we had higher net worth than the months prior because we paid off a little bit of debt and our investments did well in the stock market and it feels really good. But the common denominator here is like

allowing that conversation to exist in your own mind and then sharing it. With your partner. Yeah, that's cool. Absolutely. It's communication, which is a cornerstone of every good relationship. Yeah.

Amazing. Now a quick word from our sponsor. I stand by this one, early. Why can't we just print more money? Oh, pizza. Let's talk pizza. Can we talk pizza, Jack? I'd love to talk a pizza pie. Let's talk pizza. I love it. So a pizza is cut into eight slices. Yes. Okay. We could cut it into 16 slices. Okay. The equivalent of printing more money. Okay. Why? Because there is only a finite amount of value in this world. Okay. If we took every dollar in the United States right now and printed another dollar for it. We've done that

couple times. All that would happen is that the value of each dollar gets cut in half. It would be the equivalent of taking a pie of pizza and cutting it up into more slices so that there'd be more slices available to everyone. But why? Why in simple terms? Because I understand what you're saying. I do. But why for the average person to understand like if I get $2, I now have two. If I get $4, I have four, why does it matter if everybody doesn't get more? That's a really good question. I think it's best explained this way. If everyone becomes twice as rich, like because, we printed a dollar for every dollar, then everyone's going to feel rich and try to go out and buy. Right.

And the people who are selling are going to suddenly see more buyers and they're going to raise the price. And they're going to keep doing that until the price is double because then things will be back to an equilibrium from before. So it's a lot about like the relation of your money to somebody else's money. So like if we take that pizza pie, cut it up from eight slices into 16, yes, you'll have more slices, but those will be smaller slices, less valuable slices. nothing fundamental has changed if we just push the printer on.

Right. The economy is the pizza and turning on the printer does not change the economy. So why do we keep printing money? To loosen financial conditions during crises. Yeah. And that's the quick answer. Right. And when the pandemic hit, that was a financial crisis.

And like we needed banks to chill out. Okay. Sometimes printing money calms the banks down, which can prevent something much worse. So when we hear money is being printed. Yeah. We should think what? Dilution. Let's try another word.

We should think... Okay. Losing value. We should think we're simply taking a pizza and cutting it into smaller slices. So whatever amount of pizza people have, they have technically the same amount at, you know, what it looks like, but it's worth less, correct? You'll have more slices, but they're smaller.

Got it. And if you do cut the pizza from eight to 12 slices, everything's just going to be twice as expensive. Got it's like, oh, everything's back to the same. Here's the sad and scary thing about inflation is that when those prices go up, like let's say you are going to use your money and now you have more money to buy something at the grocery store. And now everyone can buy bananas at the grocery store and now they notice everyone can buy more bananas.

So they raise the price of bananas. Yes, the banana seller at the grocery store is making more money. But then he has less buying power because when he goes to buy something somewhere else, the same thing will happen to him. His dollar will go less far. The key is that the pizza has not changed. All that's happened is the slices have changed. That's why the best economic policies are ones that grow the size of the pizza.

And the way that we do that is we got to, oh, we got to grow pizza. Got it. Just grow the pizza. The answer is pizza tree. Pizza tree. So we need like confidence for people to go out and spend money. Because when people spend money, someone is selling them a product and then they make another product.

Like we need more products to be made and sold and bought and produce. And that's just like, honestly, at the end of the day, it's confidence, believe it or not. Confidence is the most important thing for a growing economy. Well, I asked you why do people, why do we print money to make the banks chill out? It's really just like, hey, hey, chill. It's going to be fine. Yeah. But just chill, please.

Fear is the worst thing for an economy. Confidence is the best thing for an economy. Wow. Interesting. Great takeaway. Okay. Pizza tree, here we come. Next question.

Good question. How much should you have in your savings? Or in your emergency savings? Your emergency funds. Because I feel like savings can fluctuate so. much for different people, but like for an emergency savings. Like how should people think about that? There's a standard answer on this and when it comes to your emergency savings, it's three

months worth of cash to get through your daily three month needs. Got it, got it. So if you couldn't make money starting today and 90 days, you're not starving. Standard three months. 91 maybe, but 90 you're good. Three months of your living costs. Wow, that's so straightforward. I love when there's a straight, like the pizza, the pizza tree, that one still makes my brain

hurt a little bit, but this answer is so nice. and just like a nice little bow on it. And if you've gone through your finances the 15th of every month, you know how much a month of your life costs, multiply by three. That's the cash that you need on the side. Don't put that in the stock market. Do not put that in crypto,

because those are volatile. What is a doge for? There's actually a question that isn't in the slideshow that someone asked that I was curious about because I feel like... You can just go and ask you your question. Somebody asked me this question. I'm going to ask you.

No, no, no, no. Because I will, so anyways, because Jack, I feel like you've just got numbers running through your head. Is there an average? percentage that people should be spending on their rent that pertains to their income. Good question. Yes, but unfortunately, let me explain.

So 30% is like the maximum that you should spend on your rent. Why is that? It's the amount that economists say, basically like economists have figured out how much food costs, how much heating costs, how much medicine costs, how much schooling costs. where your core needs are. And those are like at least 70% to do the bare minimum. So you need to survive a typical person's income. On that money.

Unfortunately, rents have risen so crazy high. Right. You can't, like if you have to pay more than 30%, you have to pay more than 30%. Right. For somewhere to live. It's also city dependent. Actually, recently.

That's recently. The United States, on average, renters are paying 30% of their incomes. On average. We're at the max. The average. So like what we really freaking need in this country is more apartments, more buildings and more houses.

That would be the pie getting bigger. And for some reason, people keep on, like, stopping housing developments from getting built. It's a major problem. Yeah. Got it. I mean, a great answer. Great answer. So when you hear housing development in your city, say yes?

Yeah, you should really say yes. Absolutely. And don't you dare be pro housing, but not in my backyard. Yeah. That's called the NIMBY. That's called the what? NIMBY. NIMBY.

It's like a type of hypocrisy where you want. You want something to happen because it'll be good for the world. As long as it's not going to affect me personally. Very anti-finance pro-view. Very anti-finance pro-view. What he just said put him in a category that some people are going to love or hate. I love it. But it's true.

I think we're so protective of what's ours and we don't want anything to mess it up, which I think is natural. However, I think we also need to realize that if there's not enough space for people and people are pushed to the limit, you're not going to care whether or not there people are close to you. This can be doing your part in making the pizza picture. Also, the economy is wildly interconnected. And Jack and I have just noticed that if you've to pick one issue that may have the biggest impact on so many other elements of our lives, it could simply be the construction of more

houses. It could simply be that simple. I read this basic book of philosophy recently. Okay. And there's one way to think about right and wrong. Excuse me, on my anagram one horse for a second. There's one way to think of right and wrong, which is if everyone did it the, did it the way that I do it, would society be okay?

Yeah. So when it comes to NIMBY, if everyone said, yes, let's do it, but not in my backyard, we'd be f***ed. Then we would get no new construction. NIMBY is my friend's cat's nickname, so I'm having trouble getting on board with NIMBY. But outside of that, I'm so on board. My mom's analogy for this one is that if you make a decision, if it was put on the front page of the newspaper, would you feel good about it?

Love that. And wow, have I done plenty of things that I would rather not be on. A lot of these housing decisions are made in a private vote where that's not public. Yes, and it's a non-ins. So it's a good thing to think about when you're going. But there are very few things that are almost like a universe. Like it is true. Apply it to it and it will be true.

And like that, I don't know if that one breaks anywhere. Maybe it does, but I can't think about where it would. So don't be a nimbie unless you're my friend's cat named Nimbus. Next question. Go ahead. What's your advice on combining finances after marriage? We have a lot of, I feel, newlyweds or engaged couples, pod listeners. Jack did this and I did this.

We both did this in our marriages right after getting married, is combining finances. And when is it not a good idea, though? It's not necessarily something you have to do, but Jack and I have found that in our relationships with the couples that we've also spoken with, that level of transparency just leads to an understanding of the other person that frankly makes you maybe understand them in a new and different way,

like how they spend. That's another side of their personality. Right. But also it sets you up to make bigger financial decisions down the road. You don't want to be a surprise when you're bidding on your first house

a few years later and then realize maybe the credit ratings are a little different than you expect. Sure. Well, if someone wanted to get started but didn't want to go all the way in,

where's a good place? For combining finances. Yeah, let's say you're already in a relationship. Start a business together? No, have a joint account. Sure. What's that look like? A joint checking account.

Nick, tell, how about your a little mini test, which is a trip. Oh, yeah, the trip test. So a great way to actually figure out what you're like combining finances as a couple without the long-term commitment of it. You can do this before you even get married is a trip. A flame. A flame.

You go on vacation with someone because that's kind of a microcosm of a whole relationship. Create a budget for that trip. Together. Create a little account where you put the money in with that budget. Okay. If you go through the exercise, actually going to grab an account together at a bank. Yeah. Set up an account just for a

sub-accounts too. Yeah. Even a Venmo account. So, great. I love that you said that. Because if for some reason someone didn't, because I don't know what's Social Security

get linked together if you were to start a bank account with somebody else, correct? Both share your Social Security numbers, typically. Okay. You'd have to trust each other with that. But let's say you're on...

But not with them all, right? You don't even have to leave the country. Let's say you go on a trip from Los Angeles to Charleston, South Carolina. You have a great time in Charleston. It's a four-day trip, long weekend adventure.

Right. You're going to say, we're going to budget this much on food and beverage, $1,000. We're going to budget $1,500 on the hotel for the four nights. And we're going to budget this much in airfare. We're going to pull from our accounts, put it in this. And then when you go on the trip, that's when you get tested in real time. That's we're going to see, oh, how much did we spend on food?

How do we deal with, wait, this may be over budget. Should we do this extra meal or should we not get those oysters? And that's a great way to really kind of check in and test for a future long-term candidate. And to your point, if you cannot get through a fun weekend with somebody, doing something a little bit different, probably an indicator. Yeah. Not necessarily, but like I can totally see where a younger version of me, like having to plan something with a girl that I was dating at a time,

going very poorly. It would have illuminated some, like, you know what? Maybe this isn't forever. Yeah. Yeah. A single trip test. I like it. I love it.

I mean, you guys really do have like a story to apply to everything. It's wild. Yeah, it's like you guys are like 600 years old. Yeah. Seriously. I know. Oh, do you have been more questions? Past lives.

Next question. More questions. Oh my God. When I tell you this was 50% of the questions that we got about why do finance bros love Vests so much. I think because it gets really windy sometimes right straight at you. You want to be really prepared. Yeah, Nick,

thanks about these vertical columns of wind that just hit your torso. Yeah, you got to be prepared for that. Yeah. For all those times, this is hot and this is like, you got like, no, this is hot and this is cold. Like, what, like, did the best, it was the best theory true in the finance? institutions that you worked out first off. So it is. I wore them too.

You did. You're a former vestware. A former vestware. Well, finance bros live in cities and they have to get in the subway. And the subway is hot, but then above ground is cold. Oh, the amount of hot flashes that I've had. Every finance building turns on the AC way too cold. Yep. And so the vest is perfect.

But nobody falls in someone's cold. So it's for survival. They want to freeze, like, you got to keep people up. Keep people awake. There's actually, we should disclose this because not everyone listening is in finance, but there are some insider things that we are aware of, Jack. Yes. For example, when you're working on spreadsheets,

there tends to be a movement of the arms that results in perspiration and unhealthy smell. So one thing finance bros are too afraid to share, but Jack and I will do so on this podcast. Okay. Is that when doing spreadsheets, the vest is a way. Crunching spreadsheets. Thank you, Jack, for checking me. Thank you, thank you.

When doing spreadsheets, crunching them, the vest allows for a perspiration. Airflow. It's an athletic choice. No, no, this sounds like survival to me. Yes, yes, yes. This is survival. I don't think I ever realized the trials and tribulations. No, I didn't.

No, I didn't. And another question that we had someone submit was, she was like, I work on Wall Street, but not in finance. She was like, why does everyone get so dressed up to go sit in a cubicle? Great question. You know how there's like, sometimes people say girls dress up for girls? Yes. Guys dress up for guys and we should just say that. That's so fair.

We don't talk about that. We never talk about that. Yeah. In fact, we might have to edit that out. You're looking at those pleaded pants. Yeah, like, Hmm. Yeah.

Man, this guy's butt looks great in these Lulu lemon cargo. Yeah. What comes out of your mouth? It's up. Right. Right. That's the exchange.

Yeah. Right. Okay. Okay. I think that's a totally fair question. Because, yeah, girls, I dressed for, I dressed for the girl to be like, no, love you so much, babe.

Just get on them. dressed for the girl who was like, wow, I love that outfit. That is so cute. Yeah. I actually see girls say that like the more that their significant other doesn't like their outfit, the more fashionable it is. Wow. That's again, love you. Babe. Last question. Where can I meet and marry a finance bro? And so essentially this is, I guess, how did you meet your wives? Yeah, I want to share. How did you guys meet? I met my wife. I was at a bachelor party with my buddy Mike in Vermont at a beer festival. Okay. Oh my God. And Alex was there too. Struck up a conversation.

Who approached? Yeah, who approached. So, dude, she was actually supposed to meet up with somebody on Tinder at the Bruefast. Really? But she saw him across the way and he looked like a creep. And so her friend kind of pulled her over to my buddy and me. Huge move by the friend. I know.

Wow. Game changer. Lexi and my buddy Mike who invited me to this bachelor party. Amazing. They're the reasons Alex and I are together. No way. Hit it up. She was from Long Island, but skied in New York.

My dad's from Long Island, and I'm from Vermont. Excuse me, sorry. We both had Vermont and New York connections. Okay. Got her number. I was living in New York City at the time. So I went back to New York after the Bachelor Party. And she came down to New York to go to a Mets game with her cousin, because she's from

Long Island. And I had her number. I was texting her, and she was at the Mets game, and I'm like, I'm going to go see her. So I took the subway to the city. Field in Queens. Didn't have a ticket. Not on the way. No way.

It was an hour long subway ride. Ladies, if he wanted to, he will. He will. Fucking what? That's right. In seventh inning of the game, I figured I could scalp tickets.

Something I'd never actually done outside of a stadium. For love. Scalting for love. Seventh inning. But the scalpers had gone home because it was the seventh inning. No rational person is buying tickets. So I went into the ticket office

and said, I pulled a Goodwill Hunter. I'm here about a girl. Stop. He says it's a just you? I said it's just me. He turns his head and slides a ticket across the county. Jack, you're kidding. That guy should have been at the wedding. That tick he should have. We got to find this. That ticket happened to be in the section next to her. No. I show up and she

screams. Couldn't believe I had laughed. Oh my God. Think about what that means to somebody. It's like they didn't know where your intentions. It's like, no, no, no. This guy just showed up in a way that's like. Did you give her context where you like, I'm going to try and get there? I texted her that I was coming. But she must have not believed it because she'd only seen. seeing me at the brew fest. Sure. Right. But like an hour.

So by the perfect example of like the things you're willing to go through in the beginning of relationship if you like somebody, they should be very clear. That is out of a book. Yeah, that's beautiful. It was beautiful. You can sell this story for sure. It was beautiful. We spent the entire summer together.

I took the summer off from work because I was about to go to grad school. Because you were in love. She took the summer off because she was a teacher. We spent the entire summer together. Oh my God. And then we started our relationship long distance because I went to Michigan for grad school. And after a couple years, she was going to, moved to Michigan with me. But then we sold our company

to Robin Hood and we moved to California. But I proposed to her right before she had to tell her work that she was going to California. Yeah. So that you could tell her work. To be like my fiance. And now fast forward, house? Yeah. Kid? Child? Two kids. Two kids. Child, children. And river. And river.

The pop. All right. The poppy. The pop. All right, Nick. The most wonderful dog. I think you should have gone first. I'm so sorry. It was a a Yankees game. And I was pitching. Okay. Uh-huh. Keep going. I'm involved in New York. I met Jack my first year in college as my freshman year roommate.

And Jack and I walked in together, like we said, Seinfeld DVDs. And a few minutes later is when I met my now wife, Molly. No way. Because we hosted the first party of the year. Yes, we did. In our incredibly tiny dorm room. Absolutely. Same size as this room.

What? 25 people in that room. Molly was one of them. We had pictures of it. And Jack and I both met Molly and her friends, but I remember turning to Jack and we both just like, wow, great girl. And we both just said she's a great girl. That's the nicest. She was dating somebody. Sure. But she happened to be nice. For the next couple of years, actually. Oh, you put in work. He put in work. That's a long game, long game. Long game and long distance because I ended up transferring schools and Molly wrote my recommendation letter to transfer colleges. How's that word? Because she was someone who I thought could. write an interesting angle on me. And so Molly actually was part of my leaving story.

Right after you left. Yeah. And then we ended up getting together and having a long distance relationship after I changed schools. We went from being 30 feet apart. No way. Not dating. To 300 miles apart and dating.

Wow. And how long did you guys do long distance for? We did long distance for a year and a half. And it's a wonderful test of long distance in Jackson long distance too before. And it's, it's challenge. Jack and I were in kind of long distance. distance relationships sometimes too. Yeah, but I feel like in all of these,

it's like it's the foundation that you build beforehand. It's like you guys have the foundation of friendship, you had the foundation of that summer and you guys have both together as, you know, work husbands have had the foundation. Well, Lauren and I were doing distance when I lived in Beverly Hills, yeah, it was really hard.

Beverly Hills to where we are now was basically long distance in in LA. I can get up to 45. If he lived on the west side, we probably wouldn't have gone on a first date. No. You gotta have a boundary. You gotta have a boundaries.

I mean, everyone should know where the line is and that's where it is. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Wait. So where does one go to find a finance?

Where do we find them? Where do they go? She's listening right now and she goes, I think I'd like to at least try. Where does she go? Well, first, she may not need that finance, bro. He probably needs her more than she needs him.

You're so right. And that's all the time we have this week on the episode. There's nothing. Nothing you can say. That's better than that. Where do you guys check you out? Where do they see you? How do they listen to you?

What's the best and easiest way to see if this is something they're interested in doing every day? The best one yet is the name of the podcast. Okay. You can find us anywhere. Newapod. Apple, Spotify, Amazon music, YouTube. The best one yet, we publish Monday through Friday

every morning. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. The intersection of business news and pop culture. This is the only news that you need. We look at the world through a business lens instead of a political lens. And it will make you feel brighter every day. Jack and I call it

T-boy for short. The best one yet. Every episode really is the best one we've ever done. And we're really proud of it. And there's nothing more fun. than me getting to do this with Jack every day. Nicholas. Nothing more fun than me. Stop.

I think we have chemistry? I think you guys actually love each other more than a week. No, yeah, absolutely. We do love it. I think if I could just get what you guys have. I mean, that'd be beautiful. Well, it's Dr. Pepper. It's Dr. Pepper.

It's so right. Thank you so much for coming all the way out up here. We appreciate you guys. Yeah, over and down. Mm-hmm. Over down? Yeah, over and down. Yeah, over and down here.

Yeah, exactly. And this was so great. You guys have entertained me from afar. You've now entertained me from the same room. I appreciate you both. Thank you very much, both of you. Everybody else? See next week.

Oh, we go. We actually have one more thing. A little surprise for you guys. We have something. We know you just got married on April 7th. Oh, boy. But given that we've been talking about weddings and finances for two days in a row now, we actually have some financial vows we've written for the two of you that we'd like you to

exchange. Everyone sit back down. We think this is the real wedding, to be honest. Go ahead. Should we hold hands? Come here. You must hold. We will give you a script.

Oh, right, we have to, yes, yes, yes. Lauren, you're first. Okay, I'm first. Oh, thank God. Oh, no, I don't know some of these words. Yeah, you do. No, no, 4-1K, what is that? Oh.

I think we have one together. I'm kidding. Okay, ready? Are you ready? Your financial allows. Give me your hand. Lauren and Jeremy. Give me your hand.

Yes. The floor, the podium, is yours. We have gathered here today. Thank you so much. I, Lauren, take you, Jeremy, for my lawfully wedded, financial beneficiary. Hell yeah.

For richer or poorer, I vow to never pay the restaurant tab without double checking, which I so do. It actually makes him uncomfortable that I check the tab. It's so weird. It makes it so uncomfortable

what I look. Always comparison shop to make sure we're getting a good deal. I'm half Asian. I love a deal. And maximize contributions to my 401K. Somebody else takes care of that for you,

but yeah, I think you're doing that. And love you, Rachel. Until death, do us part. Or if you cut off a finger, because we talked about that. Yeah. I'm Jeremy. Hi. I, Jeremy, take you Lauren for my lawfully wedded sugar mama. For rich or poor, I vow to never miss an amex payment. Never miss an amex payment. You wouldn't. That's stupid. No. Always optimized deductions on our gross income, not to mention my health savings account. And before renting any movie,

we'll first check to see if it's available on one of the streamers who we already pay for. You guys nailed these truly. Until death, do us part. Lord and Jeremy, in the name of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, we take and wear this ring as a sign of your love, faithfulness, and eternally balanced budgets by the power vested in us. By the New York Stock Exchange, we now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now co-sign this 1040 tax form.

Wow. I don't think I know what a 1040 is. You are now financially wet. That's even more serious than the real day. This is way more serious. I didn't know we had like wordsmiths in front of us. This is beautiful. Wow.

And with that, Lafia, we will see you guys next week. Goodbye. Bye guys. Bye. Yeties, you look fantastic over there. Jack, I can't wait to see on Monday, man. We're back to the usual show. This is going to be huge.

It is going to be huge. What a vacation. Hope you enjoyed all these bonus episodes, besties. And Jack and I can't wait to see him one next.