The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Financial Preparedness

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

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Welcome back to the Matterfags Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host Phil Raveley. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic and here's your show. So welcome back to Matterfax podcast. I'm Phil Nicks here. Andrew's not here.

Andrew partied a little too hard in Michigan, invaded Canada on someone's insane dare and is currently serving time in a Canadian prison. He forgot rule number two. Is rule number two, the don't get caught. Yes. I thought so. What's rule number one? Uh, don't do something stupid.

Rule number two is if you do don't get caught. See, I always remember the traditional army safety briefing, which is don't subtract from the population. Don't add to the population, deny everything and make counter accusations and if discovered, remember your seer training. That's fair. You know, was a survive, escape, I forget. The point is run like hell and don't get caught by the authorities. But that's rule number one and two, don't subtract from the

population and don't add to the population. Fair enough. Especially because there always seems to be a strip club run, you know, populated by Number one and two, don't subtract from the population and don't add to the population. Fair enough. Especially because there always seems to be a strip club run, you know, populated by toothless women with track marks by every army base. I mean, look, man, you don't set up a hunting blind where there's no deer. Are we talking about the strippers being the hunters and the idiot- Oh, 100% they're the hunters.

They are hunting that private's paycheck, just like the Ford dealership and the idiot. Oh, 100% they're the hunters. They are hunting that privates paycheck. Just like the Ford dealership down the road. AMM BA8H it must be a hell of a drug because many of the strippers retirement plan has been that silly little E1 over there with the Camaro on 22% interest who just

desperately doesn't want to live in the barracks anymore. It's a paycheck that almost never misses funny. You mentioned that So let's do the admin work real quick and then we'll get down to the topic Once again, I'm coming to you once again to remind all of you that we are streaming at 730 on Thursday evenings If you're listening to this in audio and you would like to join in the mayhem Then you should come to our YouTube or our rumble or Facebook. Those links are all in the show description and you can look at me and

Nick's bright smiling, bleary eye, occasionally intoxicated faces while we record this show and for certain things like the SDR episode we did last week, it's really, really helpful to see the video. Otherwise you're just going to be talking about about stuff I'm looking at on a screen, which doesn't help you much. Yeah, talking about what you were pointing to on the screen with your mouse would probably be difficult to manage via audio.

Sorry about that one, guys. We've yet to figure out how to translate pictures to audio. Well, I mean, Elon's working on Neuralink, but y'all let me know how that works. I'm not letting anybody stick computer stuff in my brain. I watched The Matrix. I am young enough not letting anybody stick computer stuff in my brain. I watched the matrix I was I am young enough to remember when it came out in the theaters. I am NOT signing up for the brain implants I really don't think anyone in the audience wants unfiltered our brain

Well, not to mention the last thing I want is unfiltered tick-tock being beamed into my brain stem Doesn't that just sound like a hellscape that sounds like cancer in a in a drink yeah anyway patrons there's a couple of patrons in the chat right now they are probably already figured out what brand of hell to give me about this idiot topic and Stewart is on standby to correct me anytime I say something the least little bit off kilter. Which is very handy. Well, it's entertaining for you. Nothing else. Oh, absolutely. He lives to give me hell. But then again, all of all the patrons do which is it's fine. It's fine. It's fun. It's fine. You started it. started patrons, the patron chat, the podcast itself. Yes,

this is all your fault. All my fault. I am still blaming Mother Nature if she had not decided to throw a hissy fit and flood South Louisiana back in 2016 while I was home on while I was home for a day. This wouldn't have even happened. I would never gotten the wild inclination to just Google how to start a podcast, which we should probably recount seeing how it's been nine years this August. Sure. I should probably recount that whole thing.

By the way, if the for those of you who are patrons, the Random Facts podcast, which is the members only patron that has back episodes going all the way back to episode one. I listened to the first three episodes the other day. It was painful. Audio is not as nice as it is now. Well, thank you to the patrons for that. Yeah, but it wasn't even the audio. It was just like my ability to carry on a conversation, which surprisingly enough has increased slightly after,

you know, almost nine years of doing this practice anyway anyway anyway So merch links are in the description southern gals craft support a small business support the podcast Cyprus survivalist We're actually getting ready to roll out our first quarterly event for Cyprus survivalist we did our first annual event a couple of months ago And it was a huge success for the like for a nonprofit that hadn't even been in existence but for a few months. The website is stood up. It is www.cypressurvivalist.org and I need to put that in the show notes. I will try to remember to put that in the show notes and link it now that it's actually a link that I could link

But uh that website is stood up if you're in the region of like really the gulf coast South, Louisiana, mississippi maybe east texas if you really feel like a drive you want to come in and see what we're about I would encourage y'all to look it up. And if you just want to come and harass me then, you there's always that. Yes Stuart, I started this podcast in 2016 unless I've gotten my years completely and totally crossed up. But 2016 sounds familiar. It was a very very long time ago. Okay now two topic after seven minutes of verbal gesticulation. Financial preparedness. Now, I have promised myself and everyone else that I won't do this topic more than once a year because a lot of people's eyes cross when I start talking about finance and economics

and money and interests and all those things and it usually usually winds into me to winds. It usually ends with turning into me ranting about bankers and the SEC and how bankers should be hung. And the 2008, you know, financial collapse and how everybody that participate that should have been in prison, but none of them were because why would they? But this other, they're the government's biggest donors. Thank you, Nick, for reminding me simultaneously why I detest them and they're not in prison all in that one little nugget Well, look the in my opinion the basis of any preparedness has to start with financial Because if you're not in a safe financial position

You cannot afford to take the extra steps that we all take. You can't afford the extra food, you can't afford the guns, you can't afford the body armor, the ammo, whatever it is. So to Ragel Fraggles' point, we're going to get to the tariffs. Yeah, we're going to get to that. It will be part of this conversation. I think it has to be. And see, like to me, I view this topic through the lens of like, you know, my degree is a Bachelor of the arts in business. That is

what I went to college for. That is what I spent a fair amount of my career working around in some capacity or the other, like in the private sector, I worked as a manager of two different two different aviation stations at a very, very young age. And it was a lot of work, but I was really, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the pace and the challenge. And since I moved into the public sector, I find myself being like, the one weirdo who thinks about things in terms of like, wow, that cost x amount of

dollars to run this program, because that's like so many hours, you know, so many hours of pay period times the salaries and yada yada, and that's the dollar figure that takes to run this. And this is how much it's costing the American public and yada yada yada. It's, it's a different perspective than a lot of people that have been like career public servants, because I look at everything in terms of dollars and cents. But because of that, I also bring this, I also bring

this idea to the table that like, if I can find a way to get my job done, faster less labor, with less manual effort, then it's a net positive for, you know, the taxpayer, which to me should always be the goal is like, how do I get this done in the way that it costs people the least amount of taxes, because I am also footing the bill for those taxes. And I don't like paying taxes any more than y'all do. Just saying. Yeah, no, that makes sense. But you know, a lot of people that are in the public sector that some of them have been in the public sector since they were in high school. Some of them, it was their first job and they've never gone anywhere else. So they've never had to justify

their work or justify their productivity in a way that is financially accounted for. Yeah, I mean, and the funny part of is that I've also been on the opposite end of this where like, the last private sector job I had before I came to public, I was a salaried employee, I was a salary manager, and my boss gave me the speech like, before he hired me of, I don't care if you work eight hours a week, or 80 hours a week, get your job done. Yeah. And I was cool with those rules of engagement is like, if you give me if you give me those parameters, I'm going to figure

out how to get my job done in the least number of hours, period and discussion. And if something would pop off, and it would take me 80 hours a week, like, I think I held the record in that company. I worked 30 hours straight one time. Yeah, I went in one morning and I left the next day at noon. I have been very fortunate to not have to do that. I think the longest day I've ever had was 17 hours. I slept on my desk. Yeah, like, that's not great. No, it wasn't. But again, my boss was like a little freaked out because I worked 30 freaking hours, but I was like, you told me to work until the job was done. You told me eight hours or 80 hours get the job done. Well, I took it to heart. I worked 30 hours straight. I got the job done. I went home and I slept for, you know, half a day and I was okay ish after that. But's the thing of it. Is that like when you when you have that when you have that set of

Personalities where it's like my job is get this done as efficiently as possible Versus my job is to do whatever my boss tells me for an hour. It's just a different calculus. It's it is Yeah, it's different personality for sure Yeah, but it also requires you to be like, you know, it just it requires a different set of personality. Really is what it bolts down to. But anyway, I always get myself so freaking off topic every time I get on a topic. That's all right, man. So let's address the elephant in the room. To recall what Raggle Fraggle just said, I'm just saying you picked a hell of a time to talk finance. Oh brother you have no freaking idea and

These comments are coming in worst. I have is 52 hours straight Oh, if you don't count one our mandatory catnap I took that does not count And then that's more than two days of working and then Stuart saying I woke up this morning and still haven't recovered Hopefully it's not fatal there Stuart. It must suck to get old. I don't want to Well, it's better than the alternative. Yeah, I guess but anyway, so To lay the land out for everybody what's going on right now in the US economy? Terrorism? Hopefully they know. I would hope so, but I thought we should unpack this like terrorists, global, globalism, trade

war and cost of goods going to the moon. So I don't think anyone would be shocked to hear that my opinion is that like, the United States has been operating in a really weird situation economically, basically for mine, basically for most of my lifetime. I was born 82, which the bones of globalism to my mind really got kicked into high gear about the late 80s. Like you're talking about right about the time that Bush senior lost the election to Clinton. And there are arguments that like Ross Pro pulled a bunch of votes away from because Ross Pro despite being floundering sob was a pretty smart guy, and had some very good points to make about the trade deals that

we were operating under the fact that, you know, we were offshoring all of our manufacturing, we were offshoring all of our manufacturing, we were offshoring all of our good upper middle class jobs, all of our factory jobs, our entire manufacturing sector is getting strip mine and sent mostly to Mexico at that time, and now to China. And now to India. Yeah, now it's Pakistan. But I was listening to something the other day It was actually it was Ross Perot which interesting little for historical footnote Ross Perot was the last time that an independent candidate was part of the presidential debates because they

Changed the rules about how you get into presidential debates after this probably because he pulled votes away from Probably because he made way too much sense. But Ross Perot's point of view was, you know, like if we set up the situation where we take this $12 an hour job and we offshore that work to a place where the guy gets paid $1 an hour, and we have this huge imbalance in the wages,

and not just the raw wage, but the health insurance, the retirement, the, you know, the environmental impact and studies and everything that you don't have to the retirement, the, you know, the, the environmental impact and studies and everything that you don't have to do in four nations. You have to do here. It, we, we ended up in this situation where it was so profitable for these private industries to offshore those jobs that we almost left them no choice. And we didn't, right. We didn't try to write the ship with a protective tear for something to say, Hey, listen, if you take that job and you send to Mexico and then you try to import the product back into the U S to sell it, we're going to smack you with a tariff

to make some of that money back. Cause you are strip mining our country of jobs and we're going to want some of that money back. Now, like, you know, I know tariffs are kind of a really hotly contested issue. There's a lot of people, especially libertarians are really upset about the idea of tariffs. It's like free trade, free trade, free trade, and I get the arguments there. But like, I am a small ill libertarian, because I look at a lot of the libertarian policies.

And my fear is that when they're taken to the extreme, they stop working. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, the selling heroin to kids argument is where they lose me. And the free trade argument, they lose me as well. I mean, in a perfect world. Wait, yeah, a libertarian tried to justify to you selling heroin to kids?

Tried to justify selling narcotics to kids at the Libertarian Convention like four or six years ago. Thank you, Nick. I'm gonna have to stop calling myself Libertarian on the back of that. Please continue. Yeah it's personal responsibility is basically what it came down to but That's what his argument came down to but anyway in a perfect world where every country was a Libertarian country free trade would make sense because you would already be a pretty much unified Ideologically country, but we have other countries that are willing to use

What is pretty much slave labor by our standards? It's not pretty and sometimes actual slave labor. I was getting to the concentration camps In order to artificially destroy and keep wages down in our country to benefit their hundred year plan. You know, look, I'm no financial expert. I'm no expert on global foreign relations or trade, but I can tell you this much.

I work in manufacturing in the US right now. It has been quite slow for the last six months or so, not uncommon with a presidential election cycle and a new administration coming into office. We see this fairly regularly. What we don't see is such a massive boost in demand in a three week period that causes us to be booked out for most of a year and having to turn down work as a direct result of these tariffs. Now is it going to end up being great for us in the end? I have no idea. At the very least, it's got companies looking back to American labor and looking back to American manufacturing instead of overseas. And I hate, I can't see that being a bad thing.

Is it going to cost more? Yes. But there are benefits to that beyond the financial. Like you said, environmental regulations. We know how the environmental regulations are done here. If you find an endangered plant, congratulations you're no longer building your subdivision or your factory. You find an endangered animal, great, we're probably going to have to rip up the parking lots around there because that's clearly important too. And as it should be, that stuff should be important and should be taken care of.

But man, I don't see China or India doing any of that right now. I mean, the vast majority of the Pacific garbage patch comes from China, India, and other developing nations because their people aren't at the point where they have enough that they can start caring about the environment. They're still worried about basic survival. And the hard part about that whole discussion is like let's say hypothetically you take the position that like well we the rest of the world have to impose environmental regulations on them because we're all on this exact same floating

rock together and when what army huh you and what army well that's really what it will come down to hold on before you even get to the functional you and what army which is ultimately what it would take yeah let's have discussion about morality because we had our Industrial Revolution and we polluted these FUCK out of our country during that period of time like think about 1900s plant emissions compared to 2025 plant emissions like the air I had this discussion with a bunch of greenies in

The past and I pointed out to him that modern cars like think about think about the pollution a Model T would emit oh yeah with its four and a half horsepower engine no catalytic converters a single barrel carburetor that thing was basically pissing gasoline out the friggin tailpipe a modern car is so clean that the if you drive one of those things through the smog of Los Angeles, the air coming out the tailpipe is cleaner than the air going in the front. But you don't get to that point, unless you first go through the Industrial Revolution and realize the consequences of it and you start to clean up. So it's one of situations where it's like, it's very convenient for Convenient for industrialized nations to sit from our ivory tower and preach to the gross polluters of the world but we did it too, oh yeah and Yeah, we're just ahead of the curve yeah, yeah it would take an army to enforce that but by what right do we even have? The right to do it this kind well

I think I think we do have a right to try to educate other people and say, hey, look, we made this mistake. Are you sure you want to do the same thing? Unfortunately, for some of these nations, if the penalty for not doing it is economically to be behind the eight ball, they will say to hell with it and push the lever all the way forward. That's the that's the I get it. Anyway, so yeah, I mean, the end result of the tariffs is, in my

opinion, I think like net positive, I think it's going to help to correct, like you alluded to earlier, Nick, like this huge imbalance just in the cost of labor. Like, if if we have to pay a person $15 an hour and another nation can pay $0 an hour because they're whipping them and, you know, making a living squalor if they don't do their jobs. Like, if we... I go back to the argument of like lithium mines. Lithium mines are some of the most toxic places on the face of the earth. Yeah. We, I do not believe it is possible

I don't think the EPA would allow us to use an open an open-air lithium mining pit in the continental US. I Don't yeah, I'm guessing guy, but that's how they do it in most of our countries. And by the way, they do with children Yes, quite a lot of them and cobalt too, which is notoriously bad for you Yes, so kind of my point of view is, is I'm like, OK, we will not allow children to do any almost any work. And we certainly won't allow them to mine lithium and cobalt in an open air mine that pollutes the holy hell of the groundwater for a thousand miles in every direction.

But if we buy it from another country and it's someone else's kids who are going to die before they're 25 years old, somehow that's morally OK. And I just disagree. So it's those moments in time where I think to myself, okay, there has to be something here to correct this horrible imbalance in the standard of living, the cost of living, the wages and everything else to disincentivize companies from participating in this. Like there has to be there has to be some mechanism. And since I'm gonna sound like such a frickin environmental wacko closet liberal when I say this, but like, you know, given that I accept the fact that the the ultimate purpose of a business is to make money for their shareholders themselves, I get that. That means that there has to be some other mechanism to write this imbalance. That means that there has to be some other mechanism to write this imbalance because we're not going to be able to depend on the good graces and the morality of business because business is not designed to have morality.

It's designed to make money. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. But you know, I think that there is a problem with the I love that Joe Minecraft proves that the children yearn for the mines they do they yearn for the mines and to do heavy construction you ever seen the joy on a child's face when they operate a backhoe for the first time dude the first time I watched my daughter play Minecraft she's like running around she's cutting down trees she's fighting off she's killing animals to eat them she's building a tree house so she has a safe place to exist. I'm like, I think modern civilization screwed up. These kids

are regressing. They want to live like primitive savages again. They're just doing it in a digital world because we haven't gotten to the point of letting society collapse yet. letting society collapse yet. You know you bring up the fiduciary duty of companies to their shareholders. I don't know that that is necessarily a good. Does that make sense? I realize the argument that you're supposed to create value for those shareholders great. But not at any cost. But not at any cost. And you cannot really legislate morality that well. No, but here's the thing.

I agree with you on the principle that if we had a principal person at the helm, then their natural morality would course correct them very slightly from participating in the worst abuses of power in the pursuit of making money. Comma however comma, or however comma, comma however comma, that's how it works. The problem is if that CEO intentionally leaves meat on the bone because he's a good guy and he's trying to embrace morality and the shareholders vote him out because they want more money, then he's, he's, he's literally not only sacrificing his own job. I guess what I'm saying is like that only works that dependence on morality

only works if everyone on morality only works if everyone who's going to take the job is a moral person and if you believe that like a beachfront property in Arizona I'd love to show you whenever you're ready. Democracies require a moral populace to function well. Yeah Stewart's gonna argue about this we do legislate morality. But it doesn't work well, Stuart is the point. It only- Legislating morality doesn't work well. Legislating morality only works if there is broad consensus on what is moral.

Exactly. In other words, like when you let, whether you call it legislating morality or establishing boundaries or determining illegality, whatever term you wanna hang on it, it only works if a majority of the population agrees with it. It's it's like the old adage, the the the government have to consent to be

governed. We had this discussion just the other day when we were talking about why gun control is like kicking and screaming in its death throes right now, because the majority of the gun knowing public all think that the ATF is run by jack booted thugs, and they are, and believes that people should be able to like cash and carry cans out of Walmart, which they should, and that SBRs are cool,

and the fact that you have to pay $200 for tax data's stupid, which it is. And because of all those things, because the gun-owning culture has shifted so radically over the last 20 years. All of the laws around firearms are being ignored to the degree that most people can't ignore them because the people are saying this is dumb. We're not doing this anymore. This is stupid. We're not we're

not playing this game anymore. So it's one of those things where like, if you want to legislate morality, it can only work if a majority agree that that is where the line is. But the minute you get into this situation where like you're legislating something that like broad sections of the population disagree with, like marijuana, for example, you get widespread disobedience. Yep. Widespread disobedience and active attempts to dissolve that that regulation Yeah to Stewart to Stewart's point laws about murder Most but the vast majority of people agree that murder is not a great thing, but but

Table this for another time We most people would have agreed for another time. We most people would have agreed 30, 40 years ago that punching random people on the street was bad, right? Like that was a pretty, pretty broad agreement. But then we got into the it's OK to punch Nazis era.

And now we Nazis was arguably always OK, except for in Germany until we started calling everybody. We disagree with a Nazi and now you're just punching everybody. Right, I mean, but justifiable assault and justifiable homicide have always been a thing. Self-defense has always been a valid justification.

Until you get to the point where words are violence. Well, look, if we wanna argue words are violence, then the left has been doing violence upon me and you for many decades now Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is it's like we're entering in this situation where there's a not insignificant pocket of our civilization That would disagree that murder is always you know that hump that murder not just follow I'm sorry, but that murder is not okay.

They would agree that murder is wrong. Murder is wrong when it happens to a person on their side. Oh, now you're just debating what the definition of psychopathy is. Now, Phil, you have to remember, you have to remember, when you're applying, when you're looking at a person's moral beliefs,

you have to analyze it as though whatever is happening is happening to them, not to someone else. So it's like a burglar is not going to say that stealing from Phil's house is wrong. But the burglar is going to say that Phil stealing from his house is not great. So do you know why this thought exercise always falls flat with me? Sure, because I'm neurodivergent. And yep, I have a hard time applying one-sided standards

It just something in my brain just does not compute them very well. So I think it I think about things rationally Mm-hmm, which is probably why I have such a hard time figuring out leftists Anyway, so on top of the tariffs globalism the trade war the cost of goods going to the moon We also have, I think, very legitimate concerns about at least a US recession, probably a global recession because if the- We're already in a recession as of two years ago.

Yeah, but a lot of people didn't wanna admit it, and now I'm finding more and more people are actually warming up to the idea that yeah, we might actually be in a depression, although just a few months ago, something was going on where people would people did not want to use the R word. I can't imagine what that was. Erection election. That's the one. That's it. It's not erection erections. What happens when you don't have a result building. happens when you don't have a result of building a raggle

fraggle. I've stopped letting y'all disrupt my train of thought. It's already on the glass out of tracks. Is that really neurodivergent? I don't know. I just know that like they're real spicy. Yeah. I hear that's the word people use

nowadays. But look, recessions happen on pretty regular cycle. Yeah. I mean, we've had a number of them in my working lifetime. We've had probably a similar number looking at yours because we're not that far apart in age. No. But there's, there are pretty good things. I mean, there are pretty good ways you can try to recession proof yourself as best as possible, right? Biggest one that everybody's gonna bring up, I know you're gonna love Phil, getting rid of any unsecured debt that you can

as fast as you can. I'm not talking about your mortgage, I'm not talking about your car loan, unless you happen to have that $80,000 car loan at some percentage that starts with a number greater than 4.0. Oh yeah, dude, I've seen people within the 30s on cars. I feel like we talked about this just recently, right?

I was recounting for y'all the absolute unimaginable horror I experienced the first time somebody ever told me what a negative equity trade-in was. Yeah So you you you you have to indulge me in this, bro. I Have a business degree. I understand how interest works like I'm I didn't fall for potato The potato truck certainly didn't hit last night. I get it. I understand how all this works, but I in my

wildest nightmares in But I, in my wildest nightmares, in my most adrenaline-fueled night terrors, I had never even considered the fact that a lending agency would allow you to purchase a new vehicle and roll the existing debt from the prior one into the new one. I had never heard of such psychosis. I didn't know it was possible. I mean, I understand I understand how it works But I never thought they would actually do it and the first time I heard about somebody doing it. I Stopped and I was like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa?

I Understand what equity equity means and I know what negative means put those two words together walking back through this one more time Like what do you mean negative equity trade-in and they were like, yeah Well, you know, it's like when you still owe on the vehicle and you trade in for a new one. So they take which Oh, and the previous one and they add it to your loan. And I'm just stay I'm staring at this person wide eyed, like, there is no way this is possible. There's

no way this happens. This must be like, Uncle Bob happens. It happens a shocking amount. Yeah. Well, you know, and what they do a lot of the times is they extend their term. They extend the term of the loan. Well, that's a lot of times what they do. If I recall correctly, the average car loan right now is pushing,

is it pushing six years? When we bought my wife's car, they offered us a 96 month loan as one of the options. And I just looked at the guy and I laughed and I said, are you serious? That's eight years. Yes. That's an eight year car loan. And I looked at him and I laughed and I said, are you, was that a joke?

He said, no, that's, you know, people take them. Like, so I would pay almost three times the value of the car for the car. No No Five years and I'm gonna pay that bitch off ahead of time because compound interest is a motherfucker Yeah, so this is to your point about like if you have interest bearing debt get it get rid of as fast as possible Like what I if you if you have especially if you have unsecured interest bearing debt, so credit cards, personal loans. Anything that depreciates, in other words.

Anything that depreciates, you know, cars, I can see the argument for why you would take loans off on cars, they're expensive, you keep them for a while. I've had my truck for, it's a 2015, so it's gonna be 10 years old now. So that thing has been paid off for seven years probably. And it owes me nothing as far as I'm concerned. Now, if you do have a car loan

and the car loan is less than the value of the vehicle, so you could sell the vehicle to get out from under that loan, that's not bad. But you can't sell the crap you bought on your credit card to get out from under your credit card debt more than likely. Well, and the bigger issue with cars is that like certain types of vehicles, they will lose value, but if you pay them off aggressively enough, you can stay under that magic line where like the vehicle is more residual value than you owe, which is always a more comfortable place to be. It is because then worse comes to worse if you have to, you can get out from under that debt.

If we are in a recession and say you lose your job. Why do I feel like there's a story here? There is. So hold on for the audio for the audio listeners. Nick's wife just dimed out some of her father and said, You keep cars unless you're my dad. He that man has I think in the first five years, my wife and I were together, he had four different traverses due to a variety of occasions.

I mean, he did hit a lot of animals with those cars. And one I think one of them got killed by a hailstorm. That was after we got married. The man went through cars like some people go through pants, man. It was it was shockingly fast. That's nauseating. It was and but you know, it was, it wasn't normally that he just traded it in. It was normally that he hit something. Or something ran out in front of him. That's just bad luck. You shouldn't stand too close to him if you can help it.

He doesn't have great luck with vehicles. They went on a family vacation in a brand new car and it got totaled by a hailstorm or damn near totaled. It's just, it's just, it's just, eh. But yeah, he, he went through a lot of cars. He still does go through a lot of cars, but I would hope he's never done a negative equity trade. If he has, I'm going to yell at him when I see him if I find out because he is he is smarter than that for sure. See my my what saved me when I bought Tacoma and when you buy a Toyota you pay Toyota tax it's just the thing if you don't want to buy if you don't want to pay Toyota tax don't get Toyotas I don't know any any way around that but when I bought that truck that truck. First of all, I bought it four and a half years old, traded in, used 70,000 miles,

got a, I thought a pretty screaming deal on it. I think I paid 20 grand for it. When a comparable brand new Tacoma was well into the mid thirties, I considered that an immediate plus to me. And then I got a five-year loan on it and I had it paid off in four years and two months, I think. Yeah. And I mean, literally, I tell I tell everybody making extra payments on a vehicle, you can do the same thing on the house, but it already works. It is debatable works better on a house or a car, but you should do both. But it's really simple. If you look at your loan paperwork, and this is really easy on a house, because a house is broken down like principal, interest, and escrow, yada, yada, yada. But you can find it on a car loan. But it will tell you how much of your payment is principal and how much is interest.

And over the life of the loan, those numbers start to flip around until most of what you're paying is is principle because you've paid off most of the interest. You paid off. Well, you've paid the principal down. So you're generating less interest. So the trick here is that you don't have to make a huge extra payment to have a huge impact on the speed at which you're paying off the principal when you consider the fact that like my

$320 a month truck payment. I want to say at one point only like at the very beginning. I think it was only like 32 or 31 or 32 bucks was going to principal everything else was interest So do the math when I paid an extra? $25 a month, which is a pittance, it's these days, I mean, like, it's basically Starbucks for two people. Yeah. But that was enough to almost double the amount of principal I was paying off at the beginning of the loan. And yeah, doing that, that that $50 a month extra consistently throughout the life alone knocked 10 full months off the backside of the loan. But even in spite of the fact that I paid that big that I

bought a used vehicle, I got a four and a half percentage straight, I paid it off early. That $20,000 truck cost me $25,000. That is the cost of interest. That's what interest does you it is a tax you're paying to have your stuff now and you can make the argument for a car house it's worth it. But it's still you're paying to have your stuff now and you can make the argument for a car or house, it's worth it, but it's still, you're paying extra. Yeah, absolutely. Now, to be fair, when you're talking about interest rates, there are certain interest rates that you can get that it does not benefit you to pay it off early.

Those of us that locked into the mid COVID interest rates of the two and a half, two and three quarter, three percent interest rates, there is no reason at all to pay a dime more than your minimum mortgage payment if you can take that same money and put it in some kind of interest generating account, whether it's a retirement account, a high yield savings account, anything like that,

because you're going to be getting back a higher return on that money than you are spending on the interest on a home loan at two and a half, two and three quarter, three percent. Especially if we're watching the situation we have recently where the entire stock market has taken a nice little dive. Nick and I were talking about this before the show started. Fantastic buying opportunity. Well, not today, but a couple of days ago. Yeah, well, I mean, and like I've

talked to the patrons about this, but like over the course since January the first I've watched my 401k go from 92 grand like what I was I was charging headfirst at my first hundred grand and I was really excited because like once that's the way 401k's work is that once you hit certain milestones, then the growth starts to kind of like really starts to accelerate. Yeah. And 100 grand is like kind of that that first big milestone. Like once you hit that thing start to really first 100 grand is a

pretty big accelerator first million is a massive accelerator. So I've watched that 401k go from about 92 grand on January 1st. It got down as low as 75 about a week ago. Now while that is a little disheartening to me, it's not that disheartening because the banner that's up right now says buy the dip. So in city and this isn't just the stock market, this isn't just 401ks, this is also if you're in the if you are the person who says I'm holding out for the right moment to buy a car, you wait until the market is flooded.

And, you know, like you wait till interest rates get nice and low. There's a lot of nice cars on the on the market. And that's when you pounce. If you're looking to buy a house and you're smart and you're in the gun market, you wait until the housing market is flush with houses and interest rates are nice and low and you pounce, you buy the dip, you wait until the market is in the position you want it to be in. And then you jump. That only works in two circumstances. First of all, you have to have expendable money on standby so that you can hit it when it's hot. And second of all, you have to be in a position to wait.

Like if your car blows up on the way to work tomorrow, it almost doesn't matter how crappy the market is, you have to replace your wheels so you can get to work that may influence doesn't mean you have to buy an $80,000 F F 250. You true. That doesn't mean you make the worst decision you could. It just means you may not be able to make the best decision you would like to. But in this situation right now, like I have watched, especially on Reddit, Reddit is my favorite place to watch.

Like just people watch alarmists because I'm watching people left, right. And center screaming about pulling all their money out of their 401ks. And you know, the stock market's going to zero and it just makes me chuckle because I am not, dude, I am not touching a dime that is going to my 401k. If I had the expendable income and it wasn't about to have to bite off 10 grand a year in private school tuition for my daughter to go to high school, I'd be throwing more money into it because the cheaper the

stock gets, the more my money stretches to buy more. So, apparently I was way off on the price F two fifties. Apparently you can see some of them that are 115. Yeah. I bought my first house for $70,000. I am not paying more than that for a vehicle fuck you very much bro Ford is like way too proud of their trucks damn right they are Jesus fucking Christ I can still buy a house for 115 around me hard no one day I'm gonna have

to meet somebody who paid 115 grand for a truck and asked them like if their parents are cousins. I might get punched in the nose, but it'd be worth it. I have to ask. I have to ask my brother-in-law's buddy what he paid for his truck because it's a very expensive truck. I might be able to introduce you. Oh, Jesus. But anyway, yeah, I mean, the first bit of advice I have is just buy the dip. And when the when the market goes to end, by the way, like everybody's heard that there are certain ways of rich people get rich and stay rich. This is one of the ways they wait until the market goes to hell,

which it invariably does eventually if you wait it out long enough, it's cyclical. And they sit there and they sit on their mountain of cash. And when the market goes to hell, they friggin jump in with both hands and both feet and like full commit buy everything because they're buying it cheap. And then they're when the market rebounds, which it almost always does, then they they walk away giggling. And like I told Nick, like the only scenario where that doesn't work is if the market never recovers and the

market never recovers, we market never recovers we have so many more problems to worry about than what's in my 401k i don't even care at that point like it's monopoly money at that point it's it's deusch yes i mean but even then even then on a long enough time scale that market recovered yeah we we've never never so far had a market never recovered. And never is an awful long time. Like I understand it if you're like one of our patrons here, Stuart, he's in his 60s, you know, he's closing in on retirement age. Like my parents, they're closing in on retirement age. Phil's parents are retired already. Doesn't look great right now for the people that are closing in on retirement.

But if you're my age, if you're in your mid-30s, you've got another 25, 30 years ahead of you before you can really even rationally consider retirement just because of how much money you would have to have to retire in your 30s. I mean, hey man, if you can do it, all power to you. Wish you the best. But our accounts are going to have so much time to recover. I mean, look at the value of stocks 30 years ago compared to today, the ones that

are still around. It's ridiculous. I mean, oh it is. It's a logarithmic growth curve at that point, almost. But, you know, every time we have a new administration, especially when it's a shift in political parties, the market has wild over-corrections. It'll stabilize out sometime around the midterms and then it'll go back to doing what it normally does for a while until we have another election cycle.

Yeah. Now granted, we are still dealing with fallout from the COVID pandemic and the decisions that were made worldwide that I argued at the time was going to cause a recession. And I have been arguing for years that we have been in a recession or at least a stagnant economy. Something about shutting down

like our entire job market and then printing, what was it, 25 to 30% of the entire U.S. money supply over the course of a year. I can't imagine that was ever going to end well. Right. I mean, law of supply and demand at the very most basic level tells you that that is going to crush the value of whatever it is you're making. And you do understand, because a lot of people fight me on this, which is hilarious to me because, like, you know, I studied economics, but like you do understand that there is the loss of supply and demand also also apply to fiat currency. Yes, it applies to everything. A lot of people, a lot of people don't want to accept that. If you want to have

that conversation, like you can look me up, we can discuss it left, right and center, but like, fiat currency, and I'm fiat currency, even hard currency, gold, silver, gold silver everything like if I could wave a magic wand tomorrow and double the amount of gold in existence it would happen that's the way it worked. Look at the inflation that happened in Elizabeth I think it was not Elizabeth in England when Francis Drake took all of that Spanish silver and gold from the New World and brought it back to England there was a massive inflationary spiral when he brought all that back. Largest treasure hoard ever recovered. And the better question is like...

Crushed part of the English economy. Who thought it wouldn't result in that? Right. I mean well I don't know if they actually had discussed at the time whether or not it would result in that but that's what happened. Yeah. So so I do have two things in here I want to make sure we hit because we're closing in on 50 minutes go for like given these times and by the way this is not these are two things that like I espouse I'm pretty sure Nick espouses them because damn it I know he and I've talked enough to know that he does both of these things and so do I and these are not by

The way. Oh the orange man is in power and the economy is melting down. Y'all should start doing these now These are y'all should have been doing these all Long because if you wait to if you wait until the house is on fire before you go by our fire sandwich You're you're doing this whole preparedness thing completely backwards. But the two things that I always really try to push people on when we start talking about financial preparedness, like to me, okay, the three, the three benchmark, the three steps, the three pillars for financial preparedness. One is have a home budget. Yep, that's

not rocket surgery. That is friggin like Dave Ramsey 101. That is the most basic financial advice. That is every dollar you make, I say should be spent before you make it. In other words, every dollar should go someplace like this much goes to retirement, this much goes to bills, this much goes to this, this much goes to this, this much goes to savings. Every dollar in my paycheck is spent before I earn it so that the minute I get it, I know where all the money's going to go. Including savings. Yes.

Treat savings like a freaking bill. It is not a if I have money left over because you never will. But if you have a budget and you stick to it, and the amount of neuroticism you attribute to this is up to you. I know people like I used to do this with a spreadsheet where I would literally like track every dollar that went in and out until I managed to get myself into some spending habits that now I don't really have to watch my money like a hawk. I just I don't spend money on stuff that's not budgeted. Well, it's like you said, you have ingrained a quality, helpful habit in yourself.

Yeah, I mean, I did the same thing. I have an Excel doc actually that I use right now that has all of our bill expenses going back to when I first bought my original house. I can tell you exactly what I spent on groceries for the two of us the year I bought our house Now do I need that probably not but the data is in there and I'm a data hoarder hard drives are cheap Budget first step agreed hundred percent Phil because if you don't know where the money's going How can you figure out where you can make adjustments?

Andrew said the hippie household he's in does not pay him. I'm pretty sure you get payment, it's just not monetary payment. It's true. Turnips are a form of economic exchange. I don't think we're talking about turnips either unless turnip means something that I'm not familiar with. All the emojis have a secondary meaning, Phil. You should know this, you have a teenage daughter. Okay, I know peach and and I know eggplant I'm gonna have to look up turnip look up turnip and let me know cuz that one I don't know either if I had if I asked my 12 year old and she knows then we're gonna have to have a whole different conversation fantastic I'm glad I have introduced family bonding.

So like I said, having a budget I think is key. I think that's a really important first step to have for everybody. I mean, quite frankly, even when I monetize this podcast and we started having like real podcast bills, like hundreds of dollars at certain times of the year have to go to certain subscriptions to keep the lights on in this frickin

You know this nuthouse and I have all that in a spreadsheet I have I know that you know based on X amounts coming in from patreon every month I'm gonna have X amount in my account It's gonna clear against these expenses like I literally have a podcast money planning document That I update every year in December for the next 12 months. And that is strictly to keep for me to keep track of the money coming in, the money going out and to see when I have that slack, like, oh, I need a new microphone for a new cohost or I need this or I need that so that I

know the money is still going to be in the account. So it doesn't have to come out of my checking account where other things have to come out of the very next thing. Nick already said savings account, emergency fund. Like I've, I've heard, I've heard the benchmark stated like you should have enough for six months of your income in an emergency fund. I don't think that's a bad number, but to me, I don't put a number on it. Like it's the same conversation you and I've had about like, you know, like food

and about every, every other faster preparedness. It's not I get here and then I can stop. It's I get here and then what's the next thing to do. You know, I actually had this conversation with my financial advisor and, and, and look, I really do think everybody should if they have a Retirement account sit down with the financial advisor that's tied to that account because a lot of the times it's extremely discounted or free for them to go through all your finances and help you out with this stuff and And his recommendation to us to me and my wife now. This is a two-person household with a house

was six months or $25,000, whichever is greater. Now, I don't know where that number comes from. As far as I knew prior to talking to him, it was six months or $10,000, whichever was greater inflation, of expenses. Now, not of income income of your expenses. So if you live a very frugal life, that six month number is probably lower, but we all know medical stuff gets wildly expensive. Yeah.

And geez, I had a surgery a few years back and it was like seven grand out of pocket after my insurance paid out everything. And maybe that's why they're now recommending 25. And let's also consider that like, if you lose your job and your job is one that had the health insurance tied to it, now you might be in a really bad situation where you're having to come out of pocket

for a health plan and pay the whole thing. Yeah, and if you're not familiar with what your health plan costs, consult your pay stub on how much your employer is contributing to that weekly. I can tell you that my employer kicks in last I checked, which it was a couple of years ago, but my employer was kicking in just shy of a thousand dollars a month. I would not be surprised if that has doubled. I don't think it's doubled just because of the size of the,

it's, you're talking about group health plans. Yeah. It's a lot of people in the group. Well, yeah, cause you're in the federal group. So it probably has not doubled. I know mine has almost doubled. It has gone up, no debating that, but I don't think it's doubled.

But the point, the point still remains is that like any decent size, any decent size corporation is going to be like, there's a reason why they really like it when they can pay Chinese and Mexican people to friggin do their manufacturing for them because then they don't have to pay for health benefits. True. That's an enormous cost. It is. Yeah. I mean, it's really, you know, this is one thing that I've, I've had to that I've had to walk my friends through

a couple of times when they were looking for new jobs is you need to include in your compensation numbers when you're talking to new employers the total sum of your benefits. That's your health care that they're covering. That's your any 401k or IRA additional that that they're dropping in your vacation time your sick time Because that's all comp time That's that's that's all part of your wage So many many years ago when I just dipped into the private into the public sector from the private sector And in the process of doing so I took

Almost a 25% pay cut. Okay. A lot of the infinite, like I didn't have any benefits with the other, with, you know, in the private sector, it was just straight pay, but took a 25% pay cut. Yeah. I got an opportunity to, because a friend of my work for British patrolling at the time, he was trying to get me on like started rough necking oil rigs. And he told me he said, he said, Yeah, dude, it's a, it's a six month contract. And you started about 60k a year. And I very quickly sat down and did some math and was like I'm cutting my throat. He was like what I'm like, dude

I'm like I am make I am Basing at like 33 five right now in pay but then when you add in the health insurance and the amount that the go you know that the Agency's kicking in on my behalf and then what they're matching me on my TSP and they're what they're throwing in for my retirement Do we I'm like I sat there and did exactly what they're throwing in for my retirement annuity. I'm like, I sat there and did exactly what you said. And I added all those numbers up and I was like, 60k year and in six months, I might be laid off again, and I might have to go find a contract to jump on it.

No, these numbers, this math does not math. No, but that is, but that is a very, that is a very common way that people that are not accustomed to having benefits get screwed is that they think to themselves, well, it's more money. And it's like, yeah, but you lose if you lose somewhere else. But then again, I mean, things like retirement and health benefits matter a lot more to some people. Like, you know, when, when you have a, when you have a family or when you have a

spouse, those things become really, really, really important. Oh, absolutely. You're when you're young and your entire you have a spouse, those things become really, really, really important. Oh, absolutely. When you're young and your entire life is going to work and party with your friends, then that's just nerd stuff. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, no, no 20 year old is really thinking about what's going to happen when they're 75. It's so far in their future that they can't conceptualize it.

And fair enough. But we all hopefully get there eventually. Funny thing is that because of the nature of this podcast, I think our average listener age is like right around 45 or 50. Interesting. Well, I mean, you think about it, you have some outliers that are like closer to retirement age and you have some outliers that are like, you know, early 30s, late 20s, but the majority tend to be right about that age where people with families, people with families, people responsibilities, people that are thinking about the future. Like that's just how things

kind of like, you know, start to marry. Makes sense. But the last thing after an emergency fund, and this is where like the old beans, bolts and band-aids really starts to come in handy. Stacking now means less purchases later. So like one of the things that mean less purchases later can if you do it appropriately, but like this has kind of been one of my thoughts was, you know, like as because during COVID that was when my wife and I really started focusing really heavily on bulking up our pantry. We did, I mean, we, you know, we bought a chest freezer. We started really ramping up the amount of like butter and eggs and meat that we were putting away in a way that we never had before.

Cause we just couldn't fit that much in a, in a standard upright fridge and freezer setup. And in addition to that, we started putting away lots and lots and lots of non-perishable dried goods because it doesn't require refrigeration. Like if the power grid goes down for a week and I lose everything in my chest freezer, that's annoying. I'll have an awesome cookout for my neighbors before it all spoils. We'll eat like cans for a couple of days.

And we'll salt the hell out of whatever we think we can. But like the non-perishable dried goods was always the weapon of last resort to stave off starvation. Well, if you have a substantial enough pantry, and not just pantry, but pantry, toiletries, feminine products, paper goods, if you have enough of this stuff set aside,

then when you're stretching pennies because you're between jobs, or when you know the cost of goods goes to the moon, you can start making decisions like I don't really need toilet paper right now like it's the first two weeks of COVID. Everyone people are getting into fist fights in the grocery stores over toilet paper. Guess who didn't have to go get into fist fights with people for toilet paper in the grocery store?

The guy that had two cases sitting on the shelf. And it's not that big of a deal. Like, oh, that's nuts. Those people are fist fighting each other over toilet paper. I'm not gonna go down that aisle right now. But you can't make those decisions if you don't have the stuff stocked. You have to have it.

Well, you know, I don't keep a year's worth of food around the house. Me and my wife feel fairly comfortable with three-ish months of stuff around the house. But if I had to be looking for a job, I mean, what's groceries for two people right now anymore like $500, $600 a month? So that's $600 a month that you don't have to come up with. Yeah. And especially if you're looking to cut costs. I mean, I feel like you and I had a discussion

where you recently bought like most of a cow or was it most of a pig? I bought a quarter of beef. I was going to buy half a pig, but the price was really high for some reason. But yeah, I've got a quarter, most of a quarter of a cow in my freezer right now. And it's substantially cheaper than buying it like piecemeal from your local butcher. I'm assuming. A dollar and a half to two and a half dollars a pound cheaper. I mean, unless you're talking premium cuts like filet mignon and stuff like that, then it's like, it's like wildly cheaper.

But the trick there is that I know, because in addition to like having everything that's stocked up in the freezer, I'm still buying me. Yeah, pretty much anytime I can think I need it. Like, sure. My my viewpoint on food is really simple. It's like there's a lot of places I would try to pinch pennies. I will wear pants until they have holes in them. I will wear underwear until they have holes in them. I will wear underwear until they have holes in them I will wear socks until my toes are poking out the end. I am hell on clothing and shoes I wear them to destruction

It is just good is just the way I am wired I I do not replace things like toothbrushes until the bristles are falling out my daughter threw one of my teeth to my one of My toothbrushes away because it was so raggedy and she was so just like, you have to replace your toothbrush. And I'm like, it still works. Well, there is, to be fair, at a point where you're getting diminished effectiveness from a product for sure. Now you're starting to sound like my child. But anyway. Well, no. I mean, it's like anything you look at. Like there are things like there are jackets that you've had for so long that they're no longer warm enough anymore in the same weather conditions.

They're fine. They're fine. Because the insulation is completely shot out of them. So if you wear three sweatshirts, they're still good. I live in a subtropical environment. It doesn't get that cold down here most of the time. I believe that except for this year. But the point remains, I will pinch pennies in a variety of places. I am not pinching pennies on food. I am not buying crappy food and carbohydrates

and repackaged junk because it's cheap. If the cost benefit analysis I have to run in my head is, it makes the grocery bill higher, but we're eating eggs and we're cooking with real butter and we're eating real meat and we're cooking from home, then I'm okay. I'm emotionally at peace with that. Like that is a fair trade thing. Well, the health consequences are even more expensive than the savings on money for eating crappy food.

I mean. That's what I'm saying. But I guess my whole point is like stacking now means potentially less purchases later means Or at least if being able to defer the purchase for long enough that you can find another job Yeah and deferring deferring that cost sometimes winds up being the thing like If I if if during the time I still had the job I prioritized having extra things on the shelf, instead of spending it on crap. Then that means that those things are still there when all of a

sudden money becomes more of a premium. Like, you know, like, I'm sure most people in the audience have had this experience, like I got I was laid off at one point, I was three months between jobs, I drew my last paycheck in all in October. And I didn't start working again until almost the end of January. So it was almost four months before I saw a paycheck. And in the course of that time, we never missed a bill. The mortgage got paid, the things got taken care of. Christmas was taken care of for

my daughter who was a year old. We did a very low key birthday for my wife, because we were really stretching things by that point. But everything got done that had to get done. We didn't, we had that emergency fund put aside. And as soon as I got back to work, even though I had to take that pay cut, we were rapidly shoving money into the mattress

to try to get that emergency fund bill back up. I'm happy to say that now, after years of work and incremental raises and working my way into a better position, we've got a very healthy emergency fund. So if me or my wife lost our jobs tomorrow, it would be upsetting. I'd mope about it for probably a day because you know, most people will mope a little bit when they get laid off or fired. It's just it's a thing you got

to kind of lick your wounds emotionally. But time to process it. But I wouldn't feel the panic of Oh, Jesus, the rent is due at the end of the month. What am I going to do? It's like, I'm going to mope. I'm going to suck it up. And I've got a pretty good span of time to go find her a job. And if that job doesn't fully replace that income, then this is where, even though I don't have a banner for this,

this is where things like when you're doing your budget planning and you live well within your means, that then means that when if your paycheck has to shrink a little bit, it's not the end of the world because you already have slack, you're spending money somewhere that doesn't have to be spent. You know, it's either on nerd stuff, or it's on vacations, or it's usually on nerd stuff. But the point is, is that there's something there that you can curtail to make the money get back into balance with your bills.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the normal rule of thumb is what is it? 30, 30, 30, 10, 30% on your house or apartment, 30% on needs, 30% on wants, 10% on, I think savings or retirement, something like that. The only problem is that- I mean, those percentage, obviously those percentages have to float,

but general rule of thumb, don't go over 30% on your housing, don't go over 30% on your necessary bills outside of that. I'm not gonna lie. And maybe one day we can get a financial planner to come on and tell me why I'm so bad at this. But like, I completely askew that advice because I tried to add that up one time looking at my paycheck and my numbers don't make any sense, like, really. OK, so.

It's worth pointing out that, like, I spend. A greater amount than. is the typical recommendation for housing because in this area, housing costs, I mean, the cost of living where I live is very high compared to like, if we drove even like 15 or 20 miles, then the cost of living would be less but then the commute would be even more hell for me to get to work and the schools would be even worse. So it's just one of those things where it's like, there's pluses to live in where we do. But the con is that the cost of living is higher, the

cost of housing is higher. Well, that's like any any general advice that you get, it's always going to be wrong on a specific individual. But I was gonna say the one thing that made my my little analysis balance was the fact that when I put a pin to like, once I didn't have any. Like, okay, you would think, especially given some of the things we talked about on the show that are cripplingly financially, he you know, implausible at times. But like, that is like a once a year, I'll

splurge and like check a big box on my preparedness nerd list. But I don't spend money on stuff like the you don't have a crippling plastic crack addiction like I do. No, the greatest advice I have are pipe tobacco and cigars and coffee. Like I just I don't spend money on stuff. I don't want stuff. I usually spend my time goofing off with my wife and daughter and that

doesn't cost much of anything as long as I can keep the two of them away from the beach that gets expensive very quickly. Yeah, but the point remains like, I don't know. I have tried to follow that advice, the 30 30 3010 rule and I it just makes me laugh because I'm like I this doesn't this math doesn't math for me at least I think it's meant to be like a General hey, this is a very achievable Like as in like financially secure Position to be in if you're kind of close to that

position to be in if you're kind of close to that That's good, I guess Yeah, ragel whiskey is in the budget. Yeah, it should be I mean if you if you enjoy whiskey if you enjoy coffee It should be accounted for so I will simply say that like especially me being somewhat of a social drinker, like There are times when i'll get a bottle of whiskey and it will literally take me a year or more to drink through it because I just But that that being said like if I have the right company over I can smash half a bottle in an afternoon Oh, absolutely. Yeah, but it's not one of those joke with my wife One of those i'm gonna walk i'm gonna like grab it off off shelf every time I walk by and I don't have that personality.

Yeah, I joke with my wife that I'm a terrible alcoholic and that I'm so bad that I forget to go buy another bottle of whiskey. I gotta be like, oh, you know, we're all out of whiskey. I'd like a glass, you know, Friday when I get home from work, Sunday comes around. Did I ever go buy more whiskey? Basement? Nope, all right Alrighty, then maybe next Friday.

But here's the thing Rag was saying, I enjoy all those things. I enjoy all those things too. But here's here's the trick. And this is this is probably a good thing to end on because this is this is the advice I gave I used that won my wife over to my way of like thinking about money and budgeting and everything else. And it is the only advice I give couples who are arguing about money. The hardest part about getting my wife to commit to a budget was that she saw

living on a budget in turn it, she heard that and her two things, no fun. And we have to live like rapport. That was, that was, that was, but again, this is, this is what she had been taught in childhood was that people that have to say, I can't afford that are poor. And she didn't want to live like she was poor. So, but then the inverse, it makes you poor, which is I just spend whatever I want with no regard for whether I have it or not. That's what creates poverty, in my opinion. So what I explained to my wife and men, women, if you're having this argument with your spouse, write this down. I don't know, I can't take credit for this

genius, because I'm not that smart, but it works. What I explained to her was, you put fun in the budget. Yep. At the time, at this time, like my wife and I are in our mid to late 20s, no child, she likes to go out with her friends. I was I was working going to college I didn't have friends and I didn't have time but You know her thing at that time was she liked to get her hair done every so often she likes to get her nails done and she still does go get her nails done and

I don't know if y'all are aware of, but like ladies haircuts are cripplingly expensive, like bad enough to make night vision look like a pretty free and frugal purchase sometimes. Yeah, over the year, they definitely do get that to that point. So what I explained to my wife was I'm like, how much help like you you need to get your nails done so many times a month, what does that cost? And we put it we put a line on him in the budget for getting her nails done

with a little bit extra to cover the tip. Absolutely. And then why explain to my wife was I'm like, now you can spend it because it's budgeted, no questions asked. It's as long as you spend within that amount. It's a lot item in the budget. Spend that money getting your nails done. And she's like, what if I don't spend it again?

My nails done. I'm like, well, then you can spend it on something else or it can go into savings, like, but it's budgeted. So you can that's that money is we have both agreed that money is for getting nails done, spend it, do what you want. And at the time, I didn't have a lot of hobbies, because I was still a college student. And that's just the way it works when you're working full time going to school. But at the time, I was now we're gonna put this in the budget this in the budget this in the budget We had in the budget to go out to eat together. I think Once a week literally one meal one meal a week date night

Well, and because because of the way our schedules lined up like we literally didn't see each other Sure for six days straight like by the time she would get home from work, I was already in bed. By the time I woke up in the morning, she was still asleep. Like we passed generally two ships in the night for six days and we were awake and together and off work one day a week. So that makes it count. Had to, I mean, especially as newlyweds. Absolutely.

You know, you absolutely do. You and budgeting doesn't have to just be money You also have to budget your time because you have limitations on both But there lies the thing by budgeting time by budgeting fun, whether that's time money or both You can sell your your I'm not I don't want to use the word recalcitrant I'm not, I don't want to use the word recalcitrant. You can sell your spouse the idea that as long as it's budgeted, then you can use it or spend it debt, you know, guilt free because yeah, budget.

Absolutely. And if, if there's too many things on this side, not enough things on this side, then obviously you have an imbalance and you have to be mature adults and say, well, something over here has got to give, or this has to give. But once you establish that budget and there's fun in the budget and it's an amount of fun you agree to, then you can spend it and not worry about it because the money's there. The time is there. That is how I convinced my wife to like buy into this idea of living on a budget.

And it has solved so much of our issues with money. When we were at that age where we were young and stupid and most people get themselves eyeballs, eyeballs deep in debt. I mean like, okay. So Gillian and I bought our house in 20, 2011. So I was 29 years old when I became a homeowner. She was 28. That I don't know how most of y'all feel, but that felt very young to me to become a homeowner. I think I was 24.

I was wondering when people were going to say that it was a joke that they gave me a mortgage. I remember having this conversation with a buddy of mine. I picked him up on my way home from the closing because we were gonna demo a wall in the kitchen the day of the closing I picked him up and we sat down on the on the floor of the living room zero furniture and two sledgehammers and a six-pack of beer going They gave me the money for a house That don't seem right

Yeah, but by the time by the time I became a homeowner, I was already a combat veteran. And, you know, you're proven you're a responsible adult. As responsible as any army vet can be labeled. If Nathan were in the chat, I'm sure he would disagree with you that any, any combat veteran can be labeled responsible because we did some pretty irresponsible things in our day. Oh, well, yeah. But we survived them. So that's important. The government said you were fine. Yeah, they're a great judge of character. Thanks, Nick.

True. That's very fair. All right. So is there anything else to punt into this this topic? I mean, I feel like, I feel like we've talked financial preparedness over the years. And for those of you who've been around for a while, you've probably remember us talking about this, like, this is the thing that comes up every now and then with me, because I look at it in the guise of you prepare your household budget,

you prepare your finances, like you prepare everything else. It's all the same principle. It is I sacrificed for today. So I have more tomorrow it's deferred gratification and It's just learning some of the ins and outs. Oh I forgot Jeff Jag. He's also a army vet. I don't remember if he's a combat vet or not but Anyway But it's just it's it's all part of that same thing.

You know, it's like to me when we start talking about like tariffs and we start talking about the possibility of goods increasing in cost, we start talking about the possibility of job loss and recession. Like those are all opportunities for a person to look at the lay of the land financially, as well as they do everything in their home and say, am I prepared to weather a bad time? Because we have never been one of those shows that indulges in like the zombie apocalypse side of preparedness. Like we want to focus on things that I think are not probable. They're gonna happen on a long enough timeline. Yeah.

Look, you work long enough, you're gonna be unemployed or laid off. It's going to happen. It is just going to happen. I've been very fortunate, it's only happened to me once for a very short period of time. So, you know, I've been very,

like I said, I've been very fortunate in that. And like I said earlier in the show, you cannot do the rest of preparedness if you're not financially looking out for yourself first, because you won't have the extra funds to be able to buy the quarter of beef that's in my freezer right now, or to buy the two cases of ammo Phil bought

when he bought his new shotgun. That way he made sure that he was stocked up on three cases. But still, the point stands. If you don't have the money there, yes. Can you run it all up on credit card debt and hope that the balloon goes off before you have to declare bankruptcy? Sure. I don't know that I recommend that. It's a long shot bet, but you can do it. Maybe you'll be right You'll be the first person to see the apocalypse coming and be actually right about it I would just like an opportunity to borrow somebody's time machine so I can go back, you know go back in time like

Five months and I can laugh hysterically in my own face when I said I'm gonna get an a 300 instead of a 1301 in my own face when I said I'm gonna get an a300 instead of a 1301 because it'll save me money. It did though because you would have still bought three cases of ammo alongside the 1301 and you know it. And a Scalar Works mount and a red dot and yeah things. But anyway point is I have easily spent the difference between those two shotguns in other stuff. Oh, Raggles got a good point here. Oh, Jesus Christ. If you're going to be fiscally irresponsible, what should you get? Why do I feel like this is just going to turn into a trip through Phil's armory? I mean, I mean.

That that bag on that bag on that back shelf is is a bag of fiscal irresponsibility. That's the price of a fairly cheap used car. Yeah, but there again, is it fiscally irresponsible if you had the money in savings, if you didn't have to take out debt for it, and if it didn't ding your emergency fund? Yes, it was financially responsible.

I did eat into the emergency fund just a little bit, but I put it back in almost immediately. Right, so really, I mean, let's in a, in a, in a, say like a quarter, a quarter of a year time scale, did it really impact your emergency fund at all? No, but I will, I will admit to, I will admit to being like so, so neurotic that, um, I,

I didn't rest easy until I had that emergency fund plumped back up to what it was pre night vision levels. Well, I, I think as a homeowner you kind of have to be because let's be honest here, just about anything breaks on your house is a $5,000 bill. Yeah especially when you consider that over the last two years I've had to replace the washer the clothes, the dishwasher, the clothes washer and the fridge and that's four years since we had to replace the entire HVAC system. Yeah and HVAC would have to be at least seven or ten. Ten and a half.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, had to replace the HVAC system and the gas furnace. Oh, yeah, that sucks. At least when you do them both at once, you kind of get a discount. I'm sure. They gave me a little bit of a lube at the reach round. Well, it's just because you're not paying for him to come out twice is really all You're not paying the travel the travel fee twice

That's that's what my that's what my guy told me it's really not a discount You're just not paying me to drive here three times. Yeah. All right, bud I I think the only traveling they got done was in my colon on that deal. But, you know, can't live without air conditioning down here in the Gulf on the Gulf Coast. Good God, no. You would literally die. Well, my wife would have killed me. But anyway. OK, so I still dead either way.

So I guess that might be that might be the topic for next week is financial irresponsibility. Thank you, Raggle Fraggle. We can do that. Unless I circle back around to that guest that I have kicking around and we can make it next week, then we might bring him on. That can be fun. But if not, we'll talk about financial irresponsibility, which will devolve into.

I don't know, Nick, you, you you can you can bring all your warhammer stuff out because I can promise you that it would not be warhammer related for fiscal irresponsibility I can be far more irresponsible than that oh this is gonna turn into a competition I have a phone number for a CNC machine salesman for a CNC machine salesman. Jesus Christ. You want to see fiscally responsibility. There's a million dollar five axis machine for sale right now.

Rachel, if you need me for an intervention, just just give me a holler. She might. All right. Matter Fakes podcast going out the door. We might see a guest next week. We might talk about fiscal irresponsibility. If y'all would like to participate in the discussion, Dumbass Texas Redneck.

So I will tease this I'll tell the patrons who it is So y'all can check out his content and come come to the show prepared But the rest of you freeloading bastards that don't contribute to the bottom line he is a manufacturer of Nylon tactical goods. It's a good way to put it and he showed up on my radar specifically because he's a best I can tell small one man operation. I love small business. I love promoting small businesses. And also because he did something that

was like freaking really stand up. He had a little bit of an issue with I think it was USPS lost a bunch of his customers orders, and then told him to eat crap. And instead of you know, like making them wait and everything else, he cleared out all the rest of his stock to fulfill those orders immediately. So the people that spent their money got the goods. Absolutely stand up guy. It's Yeah, it as soon as I like I was kind of interested in

having a mom before that. but once I saw that move I was like, okay I want this guy on I want to talk about his product line and I want to talk about his ideas behind how it came out but I also want to get to know him because that level of like Just no BS. Nice guy energy is so rare in the world today that I like to give it a platform Is so rare in the world today that I like to give it a platform Anyway matter of facts podcast gonna go out the door Rachel if you need me for an intervention holla at your boy and We will take Nick's debit card away from him and zip ties hands and feet behind his back So he doesn't buy a CNC machine unless

Unless he's going to move it across the border out of Illinois and start a business making things that thread onto the ends of other things. Because if he's going to do that, then he might just need a business partner instead. It is bigger than my garage. So you'll have to you. I would have to find a manufacturing space. That would be a requirement. I mean, if you could talk Rachel and move into Louisiana

I'm pretty sure we can make something happen That is far too warm for her no good air conditioning is north perhaps south probably not We'll discuss later Alright matter of fact going out the door. Bye y'all. So Thanks for watching!