The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Fiscal Irresponsibility

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcasthttps://www.instagram.com/cypress_survivalist/https://www.facebook.com/CypressSurvivalistSupport the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, Nic Emricson, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*Nic joked about 'fiscal irresponsibility' a couple episodes ago. Now the boys share some thinly veiled humor about completely unnescessary hobbies and purchases they've made, followed with some genuine advice for watching the pennies and saving the dollars. But first, a PSA from Phil about Disaster Coffee to warn the customers prices are headed north.https://www.disastercoffee.com/Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical 

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. And welcome back to MatterFacts Podcast. Nick is with me. Andrew is not, Andrew took a new job.

He's working at a call center in India, collecting donations for the DNC. So if you hear someone call you from an overseas line, but they sound like they might actually speak half decent English. Say hi to Andrew. Yeah. And might be him.

Try not to hold against him that he's collecting for, um, you know, the least, well, so I'd say the least popular political party in the country, but it's a neck and neck race most days. So, you know, yeah. Yeah. I don't think anybody likes any political party. I mean, I like the no party. But when they actually run a just no on everything, no on everything.

So the government do know you do not want zero stars, do not recommend the government do anything. At least nothing. At least try not to do anything proactive because they usually screw it up. That's fair. Anyway, admin work try not to do anything proactive because they usually screw it up. That's fair. Anyway, admin work, always got to do the admin work. Got to thank the patrons. Thank you for keeping the shit show alive and funded.

It is much appreciated. It keeps my wife from asking me where all of our money is going when I have to pay for bandwidth and things like that. And if it keeps, you know, peace and quiet in my household, then I really appreciate more than words can describe Merch the lynch and so description the money goes to help a small business as run by a family of pretty nice people as long as you don't get on their bad side and Cyprus survivalist we are still doing things Gillian actually sent out the

Quarterly newsletter. I think this past week of memory serves me and we are going to be having an event next month, next month's June, no week after next. So right before we do the MOF summer camp, Cypress survivalists will be having a little quarterly get together with the local community, see who's willing to come out, we're going to have lunch, we're going to hang out, might do a class, but that will be a kind of a low-key, less structured, less like, you know, our annual event where we talk to you for eight hours, and more like come and hang out and just get to know each other. Meet the local people. Yes, well, and that has always been like a stated intent of cyber survivalist is

that if we act like the flame that all the moths come together, then you can figure out who's in your local area that you should be making friends with. And disaster coffee. So I don't promote disaster coffee super often on this podcast because, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, it's a business venture that I'm involved in with Andrew and James Walton from PBN. But in this case, I did feel the need because I know that there's quite a few disaster coffee customers amongst the matter of fact listeners. Unfortunately, for the only the fourth time since the company was started back in 2019, we have to raise prices. I don't think I really have to explain why, because the news cycle is a thing. There's tariffs on the horizon. The cost of coffee has just been

doing nothing but escalating in the last couple of years. And after efforts on our behalf and behalf of our supplier to try to keep the cost down, we finally got to a breaking point where either we raise the prices or frankly, we go out of business. We can't absorb it any longer. We got to pass some of the pain, unfortunately, to the customers. But the reason I'm bringing this up is because I am the one who has the ignomious displeasure of actually going in and doing the bulk edit on all the prices. I'm doing that April 30th in the evening because those prices are

effective May 1st. So if you're a disaster coffee customer and you would like to get coffee before the prices go up, I highly encourage you to do it sometime in the next six days. Does that sound reasonable? Do not wait until the evening of the 30th because before I go to bed that night I am gonna have to change the prices Because I won't be able to do it the morning of the first because I'll be at my day job Which is the only reason we managed to sell the coffee as cheap as we do is because we all have day jobs

But so yeah that I want to put that out there a long-time listeners know that there's a promo code out there, MOF. If you're a Matter of Facts listener, you want to save a couple percent on your coffee, that still is valid. I did have to decrease that unfortunately, just because again, margins are tightening up. And in an effort to like keep the business solvent while still trying to not make it hurt any worse than we had to.

We decreased our own personal profit margin on quite a few of those items. So instead of passing 100% of the cost to the customers, we ate some of it. And unfortunately that means I have to decrease what the promo codes are worth as far as discount. It's either that or you fuckers get the coffee for free, which I mean, not free on your behalf, but we take a loss per bag. And I just I can't tolerate that. Unfortunately. Yeah, business can't operate at a loss indefinitely. It's, it's not feasible. And there's no sense in pouring time and effort into it if if it's not going to be at least self sustaining.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, the coffee business has been good to us. It has yielded absolutely zero paychecks for the three of us. It's a passion project as far as I'm concerned. Like if it grows into an actual line of revenue, that's cool, but I enjoy doing it. But the problem is like, you know, when the market changes, we have to respond to it. So one, it's not to mention the inflation for the last few years too. Yeah. And the increase in the coffee prices and the, the crop yields have been down on that stuff. So crop yields have been, you can do. Yeah. I mean, honestly, if the listeners found it interesting, like we could do a whole hour long deep dive into just coffee. They

probably take two hours knowing me, but like we could talk through brewing methods and like the actual crops and how it's You know the yields and I could talk for hours about coffee. I literally do all the time But anyway, so that's admin work that that's fair warning for the disaster coffee customers If you want to buy coffee before the price hikes go in do not wait Go ahead and get it done the next couple of days, definitely get it done before the 30th of April, because at that point, you're going to be flirting with what time I do it before I go to you know, what time I put the cost the prices in before I go

to bed. And I don't want to hang y'all up. So Nick talked about Nick brought up let's talk about fiscal irresponsibility. I didn't bring it oh yes you did yes I will nope I will I will get find the audio you were the one that said we should talk about fiscal irresponsibility because we talked about fiscal responsibility for a whole episode no I'm pretty sure it got brought up by the guy from rebel Raiders no sure he said you talk you talked about that and you should talk about how to be irresponsible or what things you would irresponsibly buy and I said it was a good idea.

I will let the audience decide who deserves the blame for this top. Don't worry Stuart will hit me in the in the Patreon chat three minutes after we cut the show it'll be fine. Yeah. Oh it was Raggle. Oh Raggle. I knew it was somebody from the last show. Raggle Oh, it was raggle. Oh, raggle. I knew it was somebody from the last show. I got a fraggle is taking the heat for this one. Thanks, bud. Fantastic. I was going to hang around. I love it. I was going to hang around Nick's neck. But you know, if you want to step up and take it for him.

So I thought we would start with some fun before we get into the serious. Oh, absolutely. Dad advice. Cause nobody likes to hear dad advice from 42 year old chubby guy about like, you know, protecting your finances and girding your loins. You all want to hear about the fun stuff. So let's start off with examples of fiscal irresponsibility. We've both indulged in and Nick, in this case, I think you might win because. You, you have a lot of very expensive things on that workbench behind you

I have several very expensive things in view behind me. Yes so as far as hobbies go I've always I've always been one to indulge in in both hobbies and Do it yourself everything because that's how I was brought up. Just you do it yourself if you can, when you can, even if it costs you a little bit of money in tools, or in this case, a lot of money in tools based on the number of Milwaukee fuel tools that are sitting over there

on the other side of this wall. That lathe back there actually was entirely free. I inherited that one, but everything in that safe behind me, I did not. So one of the things I got really big into after college was shooting. At the time I bought myself a PSA, CrapAware AR to learn. I bought myself a Beretta 92FS to learn pistols.

And I very rapidly ended up building a completely custom Gucci AR. I've mentioned on the show before, matched Santan receivers, custom forend, Geisse everything else, capture buffer tube, guys, the everything else captured buffer tube, all the all the extra things that you don't really need. They don't make the gun function that much better, but they make it feel a lot better and look a lot better. I

think at the time, I was doing some favors for my local FFL. So I got the thing at dealer cost and it was still like 2k yeah I was about so still still $2,000 even with yeah it was yeah yeah dealer cost it was like 2k which I think it would have been like 3800 bucks or something like that but you know I had the cash I paid for it in cash so it wasn't that bad then I got into a little bit of long range shooting and custom rifle chassis and long range high end optics.

Yeah. The minute you say long range or like, yeah, PRS, I'm just like, oh. I had a coworker that does thousand yard buffalo matches with black powder rifles. I had a coworker that does thousand yard Buffalo matches with black powder rifles. And he also does like PRS shooting and, and bench rest shooting and stuff like that. So he helped me build a custom Remington 700 off of a tuned action and a chassis from MDT or I think it's MDT. Yeah. MDT. I think it's an LSS chassis that I then customized

So, you know we can all go a bit overboard now and then We really need to drag Eddie on this show sometimes since he's we dove into well I mean Eddie is already a prolific black powder shooter, but he recently jumped into PRS. I want to say he is going to be deadly in PRS. I want to say I know at some point he and I were talking he was thinking about getting into F-class I'm not sure if he's actually shot a competition yet or not. So Raegel was actually thinking what's the riskiest thing you drop a bunch of money on? All right. I personally would very much like to tear down my garage. It's a very, it's a fairly nice two, big oversized two car garage right now,

but I want to put up a six car garage and devote, yeah, and devote two of the bays, two, so basically three cars wide, two cars deep, and just have the front two bays for the cars, and then a bay in the back to throw a boat in, and then the rest of the three car spots for a machine shop at my house. I mean, that's-

Because I've got- Yeah. That'd be cool, but- It's gonna be wildly be wildly wildly expensive like another house expensive before you even touch machinery not to mention I'd have to I'd have to get ComEd to upgrade the line that comes into our neighborhood because I can't get 440 three-phase back here right now. So so you're talking about several thousand dollars just no no no no no no you're talking about several thousand dollars, just, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You're talking several tens of thousands of dollars to get the power there. So you do know that there is a way to make this math, math, right? I know I have to make money. You just have to make money. I mean, I have to use it for profit instead of just anchoring in my basement. I mean, listen, all goofing around aside. Why do you think most of my hobbies are like preparedness adjacent? Because it makes it easier for me to justify the money I spent like buying night vision, because it has almost no practical uses or applications

at this point in our timeline. Like, I understand that if the world goes to hell in a handbasket or we get to Katrina 2.0 and I have looters running around the yard, it could come in fairly handy at that point. Oh yeah, but for the most part, like my night vision basically comes out when I wanna go stargazing while we're on camping trips.

I mean, and you know what? That's pretty cool. It is. I mean, you your your wife, she is, I believe she teaches like a science, isn't it? She does. She was she teaches. Okay. So STEM. Excellent. I mean, it's kind of right in her wheelhouse. So it's applicable not just to you, but to her as well. Yeah. You know, the problem with, I've definitely, I've definitely also spent a stupid amount of money on plastic crack. For those of you who don't know what that is,

that is a Games Workshop's miniatures. Yes. Those things are expensive and they are really cool. For those of you that are nerds, I suspect a higher than average proportion of our audience is in fact nerds. And if they are themselves not tabletop gamers, they've done something similar. If they're not tabletop RPG players, if they're not tabletop or gaming players, I guarantee it's Magic the Gathering, Lorcanah, Pokemon, any of that stuff.

Guilty. I mean, it's, yeah, you know what? It's, realistically though, Warhammer's probably the cheapest of my hobbies if you look at it from dollar spent to hours enjoyed. Cause unlike, unlike say my hand reloads for my 300 win mag or my 30.6, which the 30.6 I really want to re-chamber into like a 6 mil, something like that, probably 6.5 or something, or one of the new hot sixes, you know, you buy the model, you paint the model. You can play endlessly, which is great.

Unlike $3 a round, every time you go to the range and you fire 150 rounds. Yeah, or what's? Magdumpin' ARs. Well, I was gonna say, unlike, you know, four grand on a PBS 14 plus a helmet plus a couple of laser boxes plus plus plus plus plus and

It basically just comes out so I can take pictures for Instagram and stargaze which is fine, but you know, I mean Yes, and and the whole reason that we're gonna pivot this towards like a dad advice type episode is just because like I sat down and thought about, okay, what fiscal irresponsibility can I speak to? And the truth of the matter is, it's like to raggle Fraggle's point earlier, like, you know, what's the riskiest investment? Like I don't do risky investments. I don't do, I am so risk averse in so, in so many ways that like, I don't, I don't spend, I don't risk money very

very willingly usually it's one of those things where it's like I put in my 401k and as long as the the economy doesn't completely go to Mad Max it's gonna freaking pay off eventually you know I'm saying like it's all I mean you did join the army during an act of war actually of order, that's kind of a risky play point of order. I enlisted in 2000. Oh, OK. So never mind. I enlisted you were you were playing it safe. I well, I I enlisted in peacetime

and I was actually at advanced training on 9-11 at Norfolk Naval Weapons Station right down the road from Norfolk. Yeah. Fun, fun times, fun times. So you went from the safe and easy free college play to the full send. Yeah. My military career is interesting though, because like I didn't join for college money or cause it was safe. Like I, I did it for really idealistic, like mom and stars and stripes and apple pie type of reasons.

Like I joined because I felt like I had an obligation to my country and to the people of my country and I was going to serve it. And yeah. And then all of a sudden my military career got a whole lot more interesting all of a sudden rapidly. That is the blank check you sign though. Yeah. Rapidly that that is the blank check you sign though. Yeah, you don't get to you don't get to put limitations And Uncle Sam does not give you an out when all hell breaks loose

Yeah, anyway but Speaking of mag dumps mag dumps versus practical training when you brought This is one of the arguments I have against bump stocks. They're fun. I get it. Binary triggers, fun. I get it. The Hoffman super safety.

It's fun. I get it. What's ARMO up to right now? I don't know. I haven't been allowed to have mine. Last I checked, it's a bit over 50 cents around, like for the cheap cheap stuff. Yeah. So, you know, 50 cents around. If you're mag dumping 30 round mags, five or six of those, six mags, 30. What is that? Jesus, my brain will not do math.

Well, I mean, it's 16 or 17 bucks a mag. Yeah. So like, yeah, yeah. Unless you live in a god awful place where you can only have 10 or 15 around magazines, in which case you should move. Don't quite frankly. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, you're looking at 90 bucks for combat loadout. 90 to 120. Thank you, Ragel, for being risk averse.

Join the military was rather risky. Yes, I know that. I know that now I was 17, 18 year old Phil. Well, no, no, no. I enlisted when I was 17. Oh, good. 17 year extra ignorant. So 17 year old Phil was bulletproof and bomb proof. And well, that's why they that's why they prefer 17 and 18 year olds to enlist, not 35 year olds that in the knees.

Yeah. 42 year old Phil, like my back cracks like a glow stick every morning. So it's just kind of a thing. Not service related. Not service related. Although I should point out mag dumps, while not fiscally responsible are substantially cheaper and sometimes more effective than therapy Sometimes yeah, I mean you hit where you're aiming at I mean Pictures of certain people that aggravate me, but I was told by the range that I was told by the range I couldn't do it anymore because it was making people nervous. No humanoid silhouettes with faces. Yeah

Although cool enough. I have some targets like that are printed up, actually got it given to him by a friend of mine years ago. And I'm just like feeding them into the range every now and then. But they're not it's a silhouette, but it's like a skeleton and organs. So like if you want to see like, what you would actually be aiming at inside the meat sack, those things are all there makes it really fun for practicing on the pelvic girdle, because you can see the Oh, for sure. Absolutely. But you know, it's a good thing you brought, you know, you bring this up. There is a difference when you go to the range between actually taking it seriously and doing practical training and just throwing lead down range

to make some noise and have some fun. Yeah. I try to do a little bit of both when I go to the range because To some extent your practical training needs to be pushing your abilities right to the edge and a little bit past so you can improve yourself and That can get to the point where it seems like you're doing mag dumps Because I you know when I was shooting a lot of pistol competitions for a little while there, my what looked like a mag dump to most of my friends was me doing double taps on six

targets rapidly. Or doing transition drills. I mean, the uninitiated that will look like you're just spraying lead downrange But the other thing I think about is like from from so from my perspective. I've always I've always found it like Usually within a magazine I will get to the point of like my tightest groups my best shooting And then as I continue to shoot fatigue and noise and concussion and everything else builds up to the point where eventually, even if I'm not flinching,

I'm not, I might do my best shooting anymore. But that's why I've always like start off with, do the serious work, do the thing I'm there to practice. And then towards the end of that session, where I'm really just like pushing the envelope as far as like I am tired My ears are ringing. My eyes are sweating from freaking black back blast from whatever I was shooting now I'm just a shooting to get the reps in but I'm also just kind of pushing pushing my own personal

You know limit as far as like how much shooting can I do before my technique completely falls apart? Not like sons not like not safe, but just I know that at this point find your limits Yeah, well, but it was this it was it's this it was the same way when I was doing load development for that 308 you know like I went out there with a box of 50 hand loaded 308 rounds and 50 hand loaded 308 rounds and laid down on a shooting mat in the prone with a wood stock rifle bashing me in the friggin collarbone every single shot sitting on a bipod. So like no give and I was laying on, you know, face down on the ground. So I wasn't moving either. And I'm going to tell you that by the time I got through with all 50 of those rounds,

I was hurting like my, my, yeah, that was low development for my 300. Yeah unbreak 300 and a hunting in a hunting configuration Yep, big old big old bruise right here I mean like I was tired and I'm jokingly saying my eyes were sweating but like you can only pump so many rifle rounds down range of anything above an intermediate caliber cartridge before like just the blast on your face just starts to make it uncomfortable. Yeah. You know, I had a shooting instructor one time that he recommended to me that the first

drill you should do if your range allows you to do holster training and you are having a concealed carry license, first thing when you do, you should do when you get to the range is do from the holster, either a double tap or a triple tap drill. Yeah, unfortunately, my range does not hold no reps, just present pop, pop, back down. Although I will say this much, my range doesn't allow me to draw from the holster, which is dumb, but it's private range. But I don't have a lot of really great options around here other than that public range but this is also why I got a man as X because

I've got targets on this wall right here. You can you can do it in the house with that Yeah It was I have to admit what I what I have done in the past like on day on usually like if I have a day Off I'm here by myself. I will literally like strip all the friggin ammo out of my gun I will stick it in another room. That way. I have no live ammo on me I'll put the man is on and I will literally just like you know in between doing chores or whatever around the house whenever I walk past here just come in square up and Then do a drill and then walk off. But I like to do it like that

because you're cold every single time. It's not like you can game the system by practicing the same thing over and over and over and over until your muscle memory kicks in. It's like, no, no, I'm gonna do this once. I'm gonna walk away. And then when I come back through, I'm coming back cold again.

Yep. It's a great way to build that muscle memory and focus on that form in a low pressure environment. I mean, high pressure environment, your form and your muscle memory is gonna fall apart to your lowest level of mastery. Every single time. Every single time.

And I will say this Moj, I've heard every argument against dry fire, I've heard every argument against training aids. I've heard every argument against training aids like Manus. I will just say that like I got really deep into shooting with Manus during COVID when the ranges were closed, when ammo was hard to get a hold of. I was still here getting my reps in and it was charging in the same argument you made about your plastic crack. You buy it once, paint it, use it forever. I'm still shooting that original Manus X 10 that I got you will be yeah and probably for a very long time It was it replaceable batteries or rechargeable. No, they're they're embedded but

Okay, but they have a pretty good warranty. I'm sure if the battery goes out. They'll probably help you out I'm sure if they don't I will crack that bastard open and figure out how to replace it can't be that hard It's not I doubt it's a proprietary battery. I Can't imagine that it is but not at their volumes. I'm pretty sure Given the the trade-in program they were running for a while when they were upgrading the black beard to the black beard X I'm pretty sure they have some kind of a some kind of a baked in way to like take an old product and change the battery when it won't hold charge anymore. Oh, I'm sure

they do. But anyway, so on to the data advice since we are going to talk about fiscal irresponsibility. And I kind of wanted to I struggle with this because we talk finance every now and then. And I wanted to try to find some things to talk about that weren't the stuff that I always harp on. Mm-hmm. Know what I mean? Oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

But I think you picked some good ones here. I think that this is some stuff that even two or three years ago was not as prevalent. Five years ago was non-existent. Yeah, well the first thing I want to talk about is actually the thing that I ran into very recently and this is a very real-world example. How many of you like the way your engine sounds and that causes you to push the gas pedal down harder than it needs to be? I bought a rim with a

hemi in it for a reason Phil. Yeah well I bought a Toyota which means I have the the fuel mileage of a v8 and the horsepower of a four-cylinder hopefully it lasts long enough that I get tired of telling that joke yeah probably not probably not but anyway so what I discovered through some trial and error is that like around here if you do 70 miles an hour you get run off the road and killed So as a general rule even in the even in the far right lane, I find myself doing 75 sometimes just keep your flow tracks I'll get row traffic. Mm-hmm And yet I noticed I was getting pretty consistently about 17 miles per gallon at 75 miles an hour Which is awful fuel economy for a V for a four liter V six.

And then I noticed that when I dropped my speed down to 70 again, for the whole trip to work, my gas mileage was perking up like 18 and a half, 19 miles per gallon. So this started working in my little nerdy brain about what does one or two miles per gallon really mean? Practically. So I did what I normally do and I built a spreadsheet and started crunching math, start more than once. This is how you become addicted, Phil addicted to what math look, almost say is like that.

This has been my nerdy little self since I don't know high school, but Excels my wheelhouse is what I'm good at So I started running numbers and what I came up with is first of all I point out to Nick that my round trip commute to and from work is almost exactly a hundred miles, which is super convenient It is makes the math easier Yeah But what I did was I benchmarked 1718 and 19 miles per gallon figured out how many gallons that round trip was going to cost me the current cost of fuel was like 275 a gallon right

down the street from me. And I realized that my this was my cost per trip at those three different fuel economies, which is coming out to like 90 cent different to go from 70 to 18. And if I can get up to 19 miles per gallon, then I'm saving a buck 70 every time I drive to work doesn't sound like a lot but the more I thought about it I started thinking about annualizing that excuse me one second while clear okay get the frog out get back to work so annualizing that you're talking about a difference again it 17, 18, 19 miles per gallon, which 17 miles per gallon, 75 miles an hour, and 19 is closer to 70. You're talking about the difference of it costing $4,800 and some change to drive to work for assuming 30,000 miles a year,

which is, you know, rough commuting averages. And at 18 miles per gallon, that drops down to 45.83, and then to 43.42 when you get up to 19 miles per gallon. So you can see very quickly when you start annualizing these amounts, that little bit of let up off the gas bill, just a little bit starts to really add up to dollars at the end of the year. But then my brain went another place and I was like, okay,

someone's gonna make the argument like, oh, you can just go buy the cheap gas and then you can floor it as much as you want, right? So assume, like I explained to Nick, and for those of you who are listening to this in audio, you're just gonna have to kind of bear with me on this. But what I did was, was I took the same 30,000 miles annual,

for annual commuting. I took the same cost that I got at 17 miles per gallon, which was $4,800. And then I ran these calculations backwards to figure out what cost per gallon I had to get to get my fuel cost annually back down to that $ 4,300 and change. And what I came to was I would have to find fuel, 29 cents a gallon cheaper to make up for that two mile per gallon difference in fuel economy. Which actually very achievable for me. To find fuel 29 cents a gallon cheaper.

Oh yeah, yeah. Right now in my hometown. It is like 436 for gas and if I drive across the border to Wisconsin where they have a lower tax on gas It's like 410 So it's just right about 26 cents So dare I ask how far that drive is to get the 20 cents a gallon cheaper gas? It works out so if I take all my jerry cans and fuel up my wife's car at home and I take my truck it works out to I want to say it's like a $40 savings after factoring in the fuel it takes to get there and back Hmm, how long is that drive take and what's your hourly rate of work like 40 minutes?

Plus you gotta remember there's a really good ice cream place on the way. Yeah, I guess I'll like likes ice cream But I will just say that you know all the all these things being what they are That was kind of the use case. I started going around in my head was I do that math wrong what math Nick you're a whole dollar higher for gas. I might have done that math wrong. You're what your wife is calling you out on your math, bro Well, I could be I could be wrong. I mean I bought gas and woodstock Yesterday and it was like 430 I think it was I don't know what it is right now over the border in Wisconsin I'd have to look yeah, and see that's kind of the thing of it is like yeah

Unless I flip those numbers in my head and it was 340 But see to me like I guess my takeaway is is that in to apply your use case If you would ease up on the gas spell a little bit and get your miles per gallon, one or two miles per gallon higher and get your gallon, your gas in Wisconsin, you're talking about a not inconsequential cost savings over the year. Oh, you absolutely are. I mean, we were talking about this before the show.

I recently got a tonneau cover for my truck and it took my average fuel economy from 17.1 to 19.2, so a 12% increase. And then on on top of that getting the gas cheaper. I mean I still only buy gas about every three to four weeks because my commute is very short and I have an insanely large fuel tank. I buy gas every three days. Yeah I believe that. But the thing of it is is that it's more than just like your driving habits. Although I do think that driving habits is like the single greatest contributor here. It's also like, are your tires aired up?

Because if your tires not aired up, it decreases the roll in diameter, which means you have turmeric or revolutions and so on and so forth. Is your air filter in reasonably good condition? Because if it's clogged up, your engine's not making the gas mileage. It really just comes down to like, if you were trying to justify putting off maintenance on your vehicle that would decrease your gas mileage what i'm trying to present to you all here is don't because that gas mileage over a longer period of time really starts to become super impactful and like i've been there when i had to drive a you know janky

old truck they got horrible gas mileage and it used as much oil as it did gas like we've all had that point our lives Yeah, two-stroke two-stroke truck. Yeah. Yeah, I had that farm truck. That was a Toyota with a 22 RE and 288 thousand miles And when I sold it the guy that bought it literally only bought it for the for the bed That makes sense. Yeah. Well his bed was rusted out and mine was in damn. They're perfect shape But then the funny part is when he came and looked at my truck. He was like Your whole truck is in better shape than the one I was rebuilding. So He took my truck

He repaired the front end damage because I'd hit somebody that pulled out in front of me and so he repaired or replaced the bumper the front grille the hood and the fender and Then put his engine transmission rear end basically all the drivetrain out of the truck. He was rebuilding put into my truck put it back on the road Nice. Yeah, so he got plenty of use out of it. And I didn't have to yank the head off the stupid thing to rebuild it, which was not going to be a popular decision living in an apartment complex. Yeah, they tend to look down upon that. Yeah. So that was that was one thing I just want to point out there. Like these are the stupid things that my brain, my nerd brain does when I have a long commute by myself and I'm just like, my brain starts

running numbers and like, I wonder like what that really adds up to. And I couldn't do the math in my head while I was driving because New Orleans drivers. So I got home and ran through a spreadsheet and I was like, oh, I did not expect. It's almost $200 a year. Yeah. Which I get in the grand scheme of things. That's not a huge amount of money, but it's a case of ammo. Let's go back and look at that again.

I don't think it was just two hundred dollars a year. I think it was one hundred and eighty five. Well, to go from seven. Oh, you're on one step at a time. Yeah. To go from 17 to 19 miles per gallon It's more like five hundred dollars a year, which I don't know about the rest y'all But that's the best part of like a brake job. That's half a set of tires for my truck like that's That's not an inconsequential amount of money

Yeah anyway, so Do you have any particular want on how you tackle these other items? You know, I do think one thing that we should bring, we should probably hit is this next one here, just because this wasn't a problem, the micro financing that we've seen popping up

all over the place. I don't know when this started because personally I try to spend money that I have and not money that I don't. I mean I first Clarna, Affirm, Afterpay, Sezzle, whatever they're called. I first became aware of this a couple of years ago and I have to admit I was I couldn't decide immediately if I was bemused or terrified at the idea of like a person feeling the need to finance such a small amount of money for,

let's call it what it is, like almost exclusively luxury items. They are, you know, you see people financing stuff like takeout, fast food, stuff on Amazon. I've even heard of people after paying their groceries, which that's wild to me. I don't know if you guys have ever looked into this,

but me and Phil were talking about it before the show. And it's, so it's like a four payment system. You make one payment a week. and if you make all those payments, you pay for the cost of the item plus a small fee. But if you don't, it's credit card-like interest rates, but compounded weekly instead of yearly or monthly. Yes. It's shocking.

So, you know, if it takes you twice as long to pay off You're at double ish the cost of whatever it is you bought on after pay Yeah, and I think the so like just just for the sake of like conversation I will say that this was one of those things that like when I got involved with disaster coffee and we started having discussions about like You know the major site overhaul that we did we brought a lot of products to market i went through a lot of right sizing on the pricing model. Like i did all the business the nerdy business crap cuz it's what i'm good at and one of the things that came up in that discussion was things like carna or firm now. like Klarna or a firm. Now, Disaster Coffee does allow shop pay, which is one of these installment plans.

But if I recall correctly, I think that was baked in like with PayPal. Like we had, we have no option. Yeah, PayPal does have one baked in. So we have no option to not allow that unless we get rid of PayPal, which is a very common thing for a lot of our customers. So I tolerated it.

But every other one of these micro financing schemes, I like stood on business and told the guys, I'm like, I do not like these from a personal standpoint. I think they're exploitive. I do not want to offer these to our customers. Like these are as predatory as a payday loan. I think they're more predatory to be perfectly honest. Because like at least with a, okay, so hear me out. At least with a payday loan, you have to like go to the sketchy part of town where you might get shanked in the parking lot

for your fake Rolex. But these things, it's like, it's ubiquitous. It's every freaking online. Payday loans on your phone now. Oh, Jesus Christ in heaven. Yeah, you can get, what is it? Pre-pay or early pay so you can get your paycheck advances on an app now

Can I get out of this timeline nope, I don't want to be here anymore certain did it Okay, so now that my Any faith I had left in humanity has been thoroughly expunged now, thank you for that Nick. You fulfilled your obligation. You're welcome. You fulfilled your obligation as my co-host yet again by making me hate the timeline I live in.

I try to crush your dreams. It keeps your life interesting, Phil. It keeps your life interesting. But no, these things, I think you might be right in that they may be more predatory and that they are more accessible than payday loans used to be, though payday loans have started coming into phones and apps now. But I almost wonder if they're as equivalently insidious to like store credit cards. I mean, that's a hell of a race to try to win or even judge.

I guess what frustrates me the worst about this is like what frustrates me the worst about this specific. Oh Jeff, there's so much more proof that the our economy is on his last leg. I'm judged. I think he's right though. Jeff says that just more proof the economy is on its last leg. People not having cash on hand for small purchases.

That's a problem. I question if that's even the root cause of this symptom though. I really, I personally, everyone's free to disagree with me. I really think the root cause here is two things. I think first of all that this is like late stage, rampant consumerism rearing its ugly head because people are just so freaking programmed from birth to just want shit that they don't need for reasons,

just because it gives you a Three millisecond dopamine hit to have new stuff and I also think that this is the end result of like two generations of Just put it on the credit card pay it off later. It is the it is the ultimate expression of instant gratification When I found out you can sezzle and break up into four installment payments, fricking Taco Bell for God's sakes. Like, yeah, I want to study whatever sociopathy convinced somebody they had to finance a freaking burrito. I

want to study that. I want I can't I can't figure it out. Like, why? I mean, I can figure out why some finance bro thought it was a good idea to offer it because you know fooling his money because somebody will pay it and somebody will pay it late and you can collect a fee on top of it well guy the comments you know I get it not wanted to carry cash on you by cash on hand I mean debit card checking account that sort of thing you have the capital that yes correct you have the money to- Liquid capital that- Yes. Correct.

You have the money to pay for the thing without financing it. That is the key. I don't care if you're trading chickens for it. You've got the liquid assets to get what you need without having to incur that. That's what I meant. Yeah, even though if you keep me on the subject too long,

I'll start referring to fiat currency and tokens for goods and everything like that. But well, it's it's yeah. But the point remains, at least you're not borrowing made up money to buy things you don't need. Well, you know, I do think that is one of the reasons why a lot of people don't see a problem with this. I've run into some people that I have gone to school with and I've worked with that that say that Well, if the money's all worthless and made up. What does the debt number matter? I've encountered one of these in my life, you know my response was Because Somewhere out there is a government official willing to shoot you if you don't pay back that imaginary money

out there as a government official willing to shoot you if you don't pay back that imaginary money Probably and like that is the most That is the most deadpan. I don't know what the word is for if it's nihilistic or whatever But like that is the most realistic I can possibly be is yes, the money is all made up It is all monopoly money, but have no fear some government official will shoot you for not paying it back but have no fear some government official will shoot you for not paying it back. So if for no other reason than basic self-preservation and not wanting to lose your life and liberty, that's why the debt number matters. And if that sounds like the most incredibly pessimistic answer, it probably is. But it's a real one. I think that the problem is though, but it's a real one. I think that the problem is though a lot of people Phil don't see the government that way. They don't see it as a direct line like you and I do from unpaid debt could

lead to you being shot in the head. But they say, oh no you just go to jail. Okay what happens if you don't want to go to? Okay, then you get shot. Yeah, so there's- They don't see those intermediary steps as a direct causal link. Well, but there's a hell of a great argument is, oh, well, you won't get killed, you'll just lose your freedom for the rest of your life.

I'm like- Hey man, some people all they're looking for is three hots in the cot. Okay, if there's someone out there in listener land- I have heard that argument. Okay, if if there's someone out there in that argument so many times, if there's someone out there in listener land that just wants three hots in a cot, go ahead and live it up as long as it lasts until you wind up in jail. Just remember that they don't have debtors present anymore. Now they have

bankruptcy laws. Yep. And you can't get all that stuff expunged. Just saying. Yeah, some of it some of it you definitely can't student loans I think are on their medical debt cannot stuff expunged, just saying. Yeah, some of it you definitely can't. Student loans I think are on there. Medical debt cannot be expunged. I'm pretty sure the only way to get rid of medical debt is death. And even then if you're married,

I think your spouse can inherit your medical debt. That is so freaking twisted. I believe they can. I might be wrong on that. That might be on a state by state basis though. It very well could be and probably is. Yeah. And by the way, if you are, if you are over the age of 18 and you have more assets than a hundred dollars in your wallet, you should look into your state's bankruptcy laws and, um, laws regarding like how, whether or not debt

from certain family members can be attributed to you because like this was something I had to look into with my wife was without going in details like can can someone else's fiscal irresponsibility and carrying tons of credit card debt if they pass away fall to her, which I'm thankful to say it doesn't in this state thank Christ. It will it will however strip whatever assets they would have had. Oh, yeah. To pass on to the next of kin. I have I have made the case to my wife, like,

don't don't expect anything for inheritance. Just just make peace with it. Well, I now I think that pretty much your generation and mine are due to the rising cost of end of life care and the cost of medical care for the elderly, no one is going to be getting anything unless your parents are parents or grandparents are multi-multi-millionaires. Just because I think, how is it? Last I heard a memory care facility was like $3,500 a month. like them and you might need to be in a memory care facility for anywhere from a few months to several years and Is this where I get to answer the conspiracy theory about how?

the rates of need from for memory care has Skyrocketed over the last several years because something about low fat, low cholesterol diets and lots of statins and things and the fact that your brain kind of needs cholesterol because it's an important thing for brain cells. I think that at some point we are going to find out why there is so much dementia now and when that does come out, I think there's going to be a series of very angry people If they are still alive and coherent you have far more faith in the world than I do Because I think that the people who would stand to lose anything from that realization

Coming out would rather burn the world ashes then be inconvenienced for a brief moment I think it's inevitable that we get a scientist that figures it out, that has some kind of moral compass. And doesn't wind up merked. No, probably, but once the signal's out, what are you gonna do? Okay, great, you killed the guy. Now the guy died from three self-inflicted gunshot wounds

and a hammer blow to the side of his own head. Oh, I guess that data he put out there last month to the whole, the entirety of the internet is really nothing. Don't look at it. Yeah. But in order for that to pan out, you would first have to completely destroy the mainstream media's hold on reality. And I don't think that's going to happen until maybe the last of the Baby Boomers have skipped

off this mortal coil and about half of Gen X. No offense to anybody that falls into those groups. I'm just saying like the more I look at the world around me, the more I'm realizing that there are this, this Venn diagram of people of certain generations and people that implicitly trust the media and the talking heads is, is like concentric. Well, science advances one funeral at a time. You know, until the person that is defending their scientific breakthroughs dies and there's no one left to defend those breakthroughs, they don't tend to get thrown out. Same with politics. So,

guy that comments just said, one trillion, I don't have a concept of something that big 36 trillion gun turned into 40 real quick so the only thing I can tell you is that like in the same way that For anybody with even a cursory understanding of like trigonometry debt accumulation for interest-bearing anything is logarithmic. So the rate at which the thing increases, the rate itself increases. So it's, in other words, like if the increase was steady, that'd be a straight line on a graph. And that's a steady increase, like go up x and over y, or up y and over X, but a logarithmic increase, the increase increases. So it's a parabola. It's a curve and at some point it goes vertical. Well, the same thing goes for wealth building.

It does go for wealth building. Unfortunately, I'm talking about the- It's a slower curve. Unfortunately, I'm talking about the national debt and- Yeah, that's an aggressive curve. I'm just gonna tell you that when when our now when the when the debt when the interest on our national debt hits a certain amount that Curve is going to go vertical and the moment it does We will either have a worldwide depression that will last generation or we'll have a world war or maybe probably both probably both. I mean that's historically both that is definitely within the realm of possibility.

I'm just saying that like you know for anybody that says oh it's all monopoly money the numbers made up I'm like yeah but countries will go to war over that made up number so I want to pay a little bit of attention. Oh we've gone to war over far sillier things and made up numbers. We went to war over a made up responsibility for a couple of buildings falling down. We went to war over. We went to war over a telegram. Well, I was going to say over

the entire world was plunged into war because some some friggin whack job local students shot a politics a relatively unimportant politician An anarchist yeah shot a relatively unimportant politician and then it turned into I'm gonna bring my buddies to the fight and I'm gonna bring my buddies to the fight and that continued until the entire world was at war So, you know, anyway, um, so we've already kind of talked about payday loans, petty loans are freaking like disgusting because like, to me, the part that's frustrating about them is they prey upon, in my opinion, likes a pretty vulnerable

population. Like if you go to a payday loan place, you are either catastrophically stupid or inhumanely desperate. Yeah. Or both or both. I mean, both is certainly a possibility, but I don't like the fact that they are ain't like they are always found in like the worst parts of town. They, their clientele is some of the most vulnerable economic populations in every major metro area, very often,

at least in my experience, and this might sound really crappy and I don't care if it sounds crappy is the way I see it. Like the people that I have known to use payday loans don't really understand the mechanisms in place. Like they're not, I don't wanna say they're not smart enough because that sounds pejorative, but like they're not- No, they weren't taught. They're not, yeah, they don't have the financial background. They're not smart enough because that sounds pejorative, but like they're not taught. They're not. Yeah. They don't have the financial background. They're not sophisticated enough to understand

that this is you are, you are playing craps and the casino never loses. Like this is, this whole system is built to screw you, to lock you in where you almost need another payday loan to pay off the first one kind of situation. And for anybody that's ever been in a situation where you had to roll that another paycheck, you'll be paying that off for months and months if you ever pay it off. It's an amount of debt that is crippling. Well, the rates at which they're compounded is what's really the crippling thing about it. And I think that's the same problem I have with like the after-pays and the clarinets,

except for they, like you said earlier, they're slightly more easily available and to younger people. Yeah. Because I don't, man, I don't know if there's a minimum age to start doing these after pay things. I think as long as you have a debit or credit card that they, an electronic payment that they can hit,

I'm fairly certain there's no minimum age. So here's the thing about that. Legally speaking, I am fairly confident that if someone under the age of 18 tried to pull this and like if you were going to hoss, if you were, if someone under the age of eight, if a 17 year old with a debit card tried to pull one of these and then told Karna or Cecil or whoever to buzz off, I don't think they could really come after them for anything because under the age of 18, you're not technically a legal adult. Now that being said, I am almost

positive somewhere in the small print it says like you must be over the you must be 18 or over because if not you're not sure you're an adult therefore contracts are enforceable. But that being said, I feel like because of the amounts of money that these microfinancing schemes are going after and handling, it's one of those things where if we have to write one of these off every now and then, we're making so much interest on the rest of them that the numbers add up. The math maths.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure it does for them. I'm sure that they're not they're not losing money doing it Otherwise, we wouldn't see these exploding all over the place and dividing up into smaller and smaller ones But you know when I was first looking into night vision was the first time I came across one of these Yeah, and I just had to pay and I just have to say like Do not do that Jesus Christ So I will be the first to admit like I I know some people in the preparedness community that like I respect and I care About and I think they're good people

They have said night vision is the one thing because of the capability provides. It's the one thing they would finance on a credit card Like not another firearm not another case of ammo, but like night vision. I don't subscribe to that. And as a matter of fact, like every time I've seen this come up in any kind of a forum, I have stood on business and said, please do not finance night vision. If you don't have three or four G's to whoop out of the savings account and drop on it and pay it off right now in cash You cannot afford it period in discussion So I just did quick mental math

About six thousand dollars you think night vision for? Bino so for that's called pvs 14 plus late light and laser and Helmet You know what there there's a much simpler way to get to that answer Oh, yeah, those those boys that we had on the show. They had they had a whole kit Tell me what that kid is while you talk. I'll look it up So basically what my thought was is how long would it take you if you set aside a hundred bucks of paycheck to get yourself? a set of night-vision goggles

hundred bucks a paycheck 52, you know if of night vision goggles. 100 bucks a paycheck, 52, you know, if you did that for a year, that's 5,200 bucks. 52 weeks in a year, pretty easy math. I'm betting Phil comes back at me with a number probably in the 4,700 to 5,100 range. We're talking about a turnkey, so a monocle, a helmet and a laser box right yep laser box yep on sale right now, so let me

Pop this go with the full price don't look at the discount give me the full price. I'll give it to you both ways All right, oh So show and tell okay, so 5295 full price but on sale right now for 4495 from us night vision y'all are welcome for the free plug The so let's let's say you're you're shooting like, okay. This is the night vision. I want to get The boys always on there. Hang on a second. He will answer you while he's on the show being interviewed by us because I was messaging him on there while we were talking. So say 5295. So that is a year and one week of throwing a hundred bucks aside every paycheck every every week

Yeah, so right just or you can put that on a credit card at 27% interest Yeah, low end So just for the audience that was not AI that was literally Duncan the who works for us night vision and If you if you happen to be perusing their website and you see him pop up be kind it's not AI It's not a computer program like don't don't jerk his chain too hard. Just tell him we sent you over there He's a cool dude. He knows a ton about night vision Yeah, he absolutely does and he doesn't sleep. Yeah, if you were to put that on a credit card, 27% interest, that's another

$1,400 Just napkin math. Yeah and another $1,400 bucks would upgrade you into, would upgrade you from the laser box. Well, would upgrade you from the laser box. Why phosphorus? Well, here's the thing. Another 1400, so that turnkey package was like a very entry level helmet with nothing on it, no accessories. A mount, a PBS-14, and a laser box that would have, I think it was the DIR-1,

so it's just the IR laser. 1400 bucks would either kit out that helmet fairly nice. It lets you put, you know, some Peltor mounts, you could drop like some walkers or some Howard lights onto it. So you actually have hearing protection like mounted to the helmet, which is highly underrated. It would let you upgrade that dir one into the dir V so that you would actually have visible laser and the in the IR laser and the IR illuminator

Which is a much nicer setup than that It would let it would let you upgrade into a higher quality PBS 14 that you probably wouldn't outgrow anytime soon Like I will say that for the cost of what I bought from Andrew like it's one of the best PBS 14s anybody's ever put their eye up against that seen it and they're all like, yeah, I would never get rid of that. And Andrew has actually told me that he doesn't want to look through it again because he's going to want it back. But it's just one of those things where it's like, you know, that $1400 you would have

to spend literally just lighting it on fire in the front yard because it just burns up an interest you could use to upgrade the thing you're buying to something nicer. But you said it earlier, that's... It's an opportunity cost. That wasn't the word you used, what you called it was much uglier, but... I remember what I said.

Idiot tax. I say things. Oh, idiot tax, yeah. I mean, look, if the balloon's going up tomorrow, I don't have night vision, Phil does. Okay, I see pretty okay at night, better than most people. In fact, I didn't really realize why everybody was always walking with flashlights at night, camping in Boy Scouts, because I could see just fine.

Maybe you're not like me, maybe night vision is a higher priority for you and you're willing to put that on debt. I personally don't think you should put any taxable gear on debt. Convenience tax, that's another good way to call it. I mean, am I inconvenienced by not having night vision? No.

Well, but the term convenience tax really is more referencing like the convenience of having the thing right now instead of having it in six months or a year whenever you save the money for it. But I guess my point of view is like, you know, whenever we get into these conversations about preparedness and we start adding up the dollars required to do some of this stuff, I always go back to this idea that like, look, you can, you can achieve 90% of your preparedness goals called 80% fairly reasonably. You don't need, you don't need a buck, you know, 20 buckets of mountain house. You don't need a safe full of guns. You don't need 20,000 rounds of ammo. You don't need night vision. You just need enough to be better prepared than what you are now. And you can get into, you can do most of these things, fairly reasonably priced

to start and then build on it over time. And that's kind of where I go. When we start talking about financing night vision specifically is I'm like, before you even purchase night vision, there's a whole bunch of other things you better have taken care of. And if you're buying it just for the cool factor or as a hobby or whatever, that's fine. But like I said before, if you can't drop four or five Gs, just drop the money and not feel bad about it or wonder how you're going to pay bills at the end of the month, you're not in a financial position. Do it right now.

Absolutely. You talk about having it for a hobby, having it for fun. Phil, have you taken a night shooting class with those night vision yet? I haven't because I haven't found one within... Where was the closest one I found? Closest one I found so far and I didn't go obviously because you know work, family outgages everything was South Carolina. Yeah, closest one to me is MDFI. Yeah, they do run some in Texas, but I'm not sure if you are aware of this Texas is a freaking massive state and it is big. I mean it only takes me like four and a half five hours to get to Texas But then you could drive for 24 hours taxes

You could drive for 24 hours and still be in Texas once you get there So it's really one of those things now the only thing I have done as an ode to like trying to get my head around using night vision In any kind of a reasonable situation is just the fact that like I've strapped it on my head and just walked around in the dark because which is perfectly acceptable way to train yourself, but is just the fact that like I've strapped it on my head and just walked around in the dark because Which is perfectly acceptable way to train yourself But the point I was getting to with that is Phil if you're gonna get into night vision for a hobby Find out if there's night vision shooting classes near you first before you buy them Because otherwise that's just more cost on top of it having to travel out of state to get to a class that has night shooting

Yeah, or you can also take the point of view I do which was you know, I in the time I was enlisted I played with night vision on a handful of occasions and Never a once did were we actually because we weren't combat arms sure We never once learned like running around playing Call of Duty, you know, shooting a night vision with laser boxes on our rifles. I wasn't you drove under night vision. We drove we did sentry duty, we patrol we did all kinds of things. And that's kind of where I always go when when night vision comes up in the conversation is I'm like, you know, shooting with night vision is fun,

but it's like 20% of what you can do with night vision There's a lot of administrative crap you can do with night vision that So you can practice in your backyard or in the woods next to your house the But the difference is there is yeah, you can do all that stuff with it But that's not why people say they buy it They don't buy it for taking their dog for a walk in the woods at night. But you should. You should because it's actually pretty cool. They buy it for the tactical aspect. Yeah, for the and they tell you that when they

buy it, they're like, Oh, yeah, you know, I'm gonna rule the night. Okay. That implies you're intending to do shooting actively at night in a two-way range. Great. How are you going to get reps in on that? Not many public ranges will let you shoot under nods at night. None that I'm aware of. Sneak in. Very few private ranges will let you do that.

I mean, yeah, you can try and sneak in at night. Then you're trespassing with firearms and shooting. What could go wrong? So few things. So few things. Let's hit this last banner before we totally run ourselves out of gas. And this should not come, this would be quick and dirty

because we talked about this before. If you finance your vehicle for like eight years or whatever the hell the longest term is right now I think I heard eight years and my heart skipped a beat 96 months. Yeah Anyway If you finance your vehicle for a very long time understand that the same thing we talked about earlier where I said like, you know The rate at which things increase increases

logarithmically well if you notice your monthly payment if you fight if you if you finance the same amount of money and you finance it for like One year and three years and five years and seven years The the rate at which that monthly payment decreases it doesn't decrease as much though further out you finance it It's because the further out you finance it you're paying paying more interest. And eventually, if you could finance a car for like infinity, eventually the monthly payment will, it will first of all, a flat line, and then it'll actually start going up

because you're accumulating so much more debt or so much more interest. Like it just, it makes the curve do this and then this. It's weird. But anyway. Oh, oh, good God. Regal is right. You can get a 10 year car loan. No. Yes. No. I

just found one online. I did not believe him. No. Who? Who? Yes. What company? What? Like, it was me look it back up. I just closed the window. It was one of those. It was one of those small online only loan places. Any any lending institution that will finance a car for 10 years should be burned to the ground by angry villagers. I will stand on business on that statement. Yeah, I'm as libertarian as the next person. And I'm going to say that like, I am upset enough by that, that I think I would I

would rubber stamp the government stepping and saying no to that It's that is it's an aggressively Depreciating asset that's probably not likely to even be on the road at ten years At least not with the same driver But then again the other part of this is truck is ten years old long auto financing and negative well, dude My Toyota is 10 years old. Yeah, that's fair. Maybe it would still be on the road, but something

that I can do with the same driver more than likely. OK, but now is the kind of people that would take out a 10 year car loan. It depends, though, because here's the problem. Let's say you buy a brand new vehicle. You finance it for 10 years. Let's say you're a hyper miler. You you stack 30,000 miles a year commuting back for its work. You're going to have three hundred thousand miles on the son of a bitch by

the time you're done paying it off. How many vehicles out there do you trust to go 300,000 miles without an engine overhaul a transmission falling out a rear end blowing up or some or for God's sakes, if you live in the rust belt, the frickin frame might dissolve out from underneath you in 300,000 miles. I did have an exhaust mount fall off my truck yesterday on my way home from work. I started my truck and I heard some rattling go. Roll under there.

Yeah, it was just one of those exhaust U bolts that sits underneath there. Just rattling around on the exhaust pipe. You're not wrong, man. Up here, you get rust. I had Dodge had a problem with where they punched out their frame rail for their gas tank mount on their, oh, is it 2014s through 2018 half ton pickups. You know the gap between the cab and the bed?

They put the punch out for the gas tank mount right in between the two. So even in the summer, it's constantly wet all the time I was going down I was going on the road the one day and I felt something shift like I don't have any cargo in the bed get to work look here oh that's not good you get five inches off the ground. The front strap broke and it was sitting like that. That's moderately concerning.

That was a warranty issue. That was a known problem. But yeah, I mean, that was all I wanted to do is throw this in at the very end. And I harp on it every time we talk financing, but please, for the sake of Christ, don't ever do, if you ever hear somebody use the words negative equity or better Yeah If the dealer says oh we can make a deal because you still owe on the previous loan No, you cannot make a deal

you can go home with the same piece of crap that you're driving and you can like Figure life out you can find it You can find a mechanic and you could for for again, do favors for him in the parking lot if you have to to get the car fixed so that you can drive to and from work. You are going to pay that son of a gun off one way or the other. You shall not, Phil says, you shall not pass. You will not go to the dealership while still owing on a car loan and negative equity trade into another one. Don't do that. You know, please. I agree.

I'm just you just end up putting yourself so far behind the eight ball that you're never going to get away from it again. Well, when you consider the fact that like a new car is worth 80 percent of its of its MSRP within the first like 20 miles. And when you do a negative equity trade, you were already even before you put the key in the initial the first like 20 miles and When you do a negative equity trade you were already Even before you put the key the initial the first time you are already in the negative because you're already like 120 130 140% MSRP in debt Yep, which means the minutes drive it off a lot

You now owe twice as much as the vehicle is worth drive it off a lot, you now owe twice as much as the vehicle is worth with one mile. Right. You could. Yeah, it's I don't know. That's assuming you get to drive it for any length of time. Some people get get their vehicle wrecked the second they leave the dealership. I feel like that's a lot of Mustangs and Hellcats. No, man. There's a so so there's a dealership in town where I grew up that has, it's pretty notorious for people pulling out of the dealership

in their brand new car and getting rear-ended because there's a stoplight right after they pull out. Holy moly. Yeah. So I have personally watched it happen while my truck was getting an oil change. Guy pulls out in a brand new Ram 2500 or 3500, one of the big heavy duty Rams, stops the stoplight, bam, van hits his rear end, totals his truck.

So if you, great, you've got insurance on that brand new truck, hopefully, probably because you have a loan on it, You had to have insurance on it. Is insurance going to pay for your negative equity, Phil? Uh, no. Nope. Not at all. In fact, you're gonna get probably 80% of what you paid for that vehicle.

I was gonna say, like, I know down here, like, I've always gotten gap insurance. Yeah. Only because it's so daggum cheap, you know? It is. But I don't think gap insurance- Especially if you have a brand new vehicle. But I don't think gap insurance

covers the negative equity portion. I think that's- No, it covers the full per- up to the full purchase price of your vehicle, which does not include any rolled in negative equity. So if you had say 10, 15 grand of negative equity that you're rolling in on top of a 50, let's call it a $50,000 car

because that's what a lot of them are now. So you're at $65,000 and you get into an accident immediately outside of the dealership, you now are in the whole 15 grand plus interest. Probably plus some additional interest from that other 50 you borrowed because they don't give you anything for the interest. So there is one thing I didn't put a banner up for and I wanted to make sure we slip it

in here at the very end. This was something I was thinking about like right before the show started. Oh Christ, I lost it that fast. This is why I put banners. Banners. This is why this is why I put banners banners Otherwise my brain starts chasing the squirrel and this is what happens. I know that feeling It wasn't car related. It wasn't negative equity related One credit cards wasn't credit cards because if I have to tell y'all by now not to

Rack up a ton of credit card in true, you, debt at 28% interest, then y'all are just beyond help. 28% is getting it easy. You mean there's a higher interest rate on credit cards than 28%? I've seen up to 39. Oh, look, I made Phil's brain hurt. He might have had a mini stroke. No, not a mini stroke, but I think I died a little inside of that. Don't worry, I'll get the rest of you eventually. I knew I could count on you, Nick.

I don't know. Whatever it was, I will try to make a point of like sticking on social media or whatever. It was something really good, but I mean, throwing on Instagram. Yeah. I guess to me, like at the end of the day, like any time we get in discussions about finances, especially about stupid financial decisions, I always go back to this idea that like.

I have known perilously few people people who have gotten really financially screwed up. Because they did everything right and everything was perfect and they saved money and they live within their means and bad luck just got I've known a couple who had some horrible financial luck. But I see the what we were talking about earlier the Venn diagram becomes a little concentric There's a Venn diagram here and one circle is people that make horrible financial decisions And the other one is people that are screwed financially and they're almost perfectly concentric and I don't think that's a coincidence No, it's it's definitely not but I would also say that like, you know This is the discussion I get into with people whenever they talk We're like we had this discussion with rebel last week About the economy and reset the recession and inflation and how hard things were and I was like yes

But in every system you have choices and those choices can make the worst system a little better and the best system a little worse So, oh, absolutely even though a little worse. So, Oh, absolutely. Even though make it a lot worse. Yeah. So even though like we're in the situation we are economy wise, you can still make good decisions and have a good impact on yourself and your family. You can make bad decisions. And then you could end up on like a day for the Dave Ramsey show or Caleb hammer or you could be one of the people I'm ranting raving about like police for the love of Christ stop doing the stupid stuff

Stop unsecured credit card debt at 39% interest stop taking out 10-year car loans stop stop Financing burritos from Taco Bell just stop all that. Mm-hmm If you if if you can live without it and you cannot pay cash for it, you should abstain Thank you for coming to my TED talk live without it and you cannot pay cash for it, you should abstain. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Okay, anything else to chuck in here? That's all I got, man. All right, I'm gonna kick myself because I know as soon as we sign out,

I'm gonna remember what it is I was trying to remember. You know, the beautiful thing about this is you don't have to have this out till Saturday morning. So if you think about it on the commute into work, stick a stick of memo as an addendum on the end of the show. But now that you've given me that out, I will, it is completely gone. It's just lost.

That's fine. We're both find out later. If Phil remembered tomorrow morning, I wouldn't hold y'all's breath All right. Matter of fact is gonna go out the door if your disaster coffee customer promo code mof contrary to what Stewart says it does work because I have confirmed and I have looked in the back end and confirmed it's There and I've had a few people telling me it does work So promo code mof will save you a couple percent off your coffee order Disaster coffee comm do not wait until April 30th to order stuff because I'm going to change the prices that evening

That is the only warning you get after this. It is just rampant and unrepentant capitalism I'm going to gouge the hell out of you you sob's for coffee I'm going to gouge the hell out of you you sob's for coffee But I'm gonna be a kind-hearted prepper this one time and try to warn y' bit of a pain in the ass. I'm going to go ahead and get started. you