The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Mo Money, Mo Problems

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

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Welcome back to Matterfax podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and 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 Ravelle, Andrew, Nicker on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matterfax podcast. Phil and Nicker here. We might have a surprise guest, but I don't know.

It kind of depends on whether or not he finds his headphones and whether or not he takes a or perhaps. But we're here Raggle Fraggle asked for it So if you have a gripe with spreadsheets and nerd crap And financial crap You can take it up with him He's probably in the comments right now

Yeah, there he is in the comments You can feel free to lodge all your complaints at him He's the complaint department for the night But yeah This is that one time a year Where I indulge in nerdy crap And I actually talk My degree

My education is in business and fine is. So unlike a lot of people in the preparedness community, like I do advocate for things like IRAs and savings accounts and like, you know, we all agree it's monopoly money. But as long as it still spends, it pays to be, it pays to know how the game is played. You know what I mean? Well, you know, and on the off chance that the world continues to exist. Now, I know that is a stretch. It's been stumbling along in spite of itself pretty okay so far. I mean, governments do seem to try very often to antagonize their citizens to the point of destroying themselves. But for whatever reason, I mean, so far retirement's been the safest bet in the U.S.

For like, what was it? 70 years, 80 years? And kind of my perspective is, like, if I've met those people and I don't. I don't begrudge them, but I just frankly disagree. But I've met those people out there who look at talks about finance and retirement or everything as if it's a fool's errand because in their mind like the world is going to collapse. So we should just get ready for that. And I'm like, but what happens to the world doesn't?

You know, I think part of that is, and I've met some of these people too. And the one thing that I've noticed about them is a lot of them have. have been very burned out by life in general as it sits now. Kind of doomers to begin with. They're very bitter about the way life is right now for a number of reasons. Some of them legitimate, some of them their own fault. But they almost want it to happen. They want it all to go away because they seem to think that though they have not succeeded

in this, what I would call very comfortable, remarkably easy society that they think that in a harder, less comfortable society, that they will suddenly become the like top dog.

Yeah. The other group I... It's possible. The other group I've met that I can't seem to get on board with is they're the bunch that like... Have you ever met that person that like their whole,

their whole worldview is built to reinforce a preconceived notion. Yes. I've met quite a few people that like dead end job, no retirement savings, and they get to a certain point where they want it all to go tits up. Because then they're in no worse shape than everybody else is and maybe better depending on how they view their preparedness. but it's like I tell everybody I'm like if you if you don't want to be that guy who was 72 years old working as a Walmart greeter like if you want if you even want a chance of retirement one day it's not I don't think it's prohibitively expensive I don't think it's difficult

I think it's doable I do think that like the best day to start is yesterday and the second best day is today that's the same with the tree planting analogy I mean these things take time and they take diligence. And that's the part that where a lot of people fall short is when things get difficult, it is very easy to see that pile of retirement savings there and go, I could use that right now. And we've talked about doom spending as a phenomena in society these days. Oh, it's extremely common.

I see it more and more now in people that, not people in my social circles, but people in my parasycial circles, you know, people you encounter out in the day-to-day life that you don't really know, but you hear them say these things. Me and my wife were at, we went out for a Valentine's Day dinner, and then we went out to the bar afterwards, and we, to the local distillery, had a couple drinks, listened to some live music, and then went home. And one of the times while I was standing in line, grabbing a drink for us, because it's a little bit of a wait, busy night. The guy in front of me was

talking to his girlfriend and they were discussing the fact that it doesn't matter. We're just going to spend it all because what are we going to do? It's not going to ever get any better. Well, it's not going to get any better if that's your attitude towards it and that's the actions you're taking. You're pretty much guaranteeing yourself no success. Well, and the group that hurts me the worst to watch them indulge in this, honestly, it's people that are young.

Like, any discussion you have about. retirement savings, any discussion you have about long-term financial health, any reasonable discussion about how interest-bearing assets accrue value, the numbers don't lie. The longer you save, the more things compound, the faster you get to an inflection point in that graph where, like, the graph stops doing this and starts doing this. And the earlier you start, the easier it is. Like, you can start saving for retirement in your early 20s when most of us didn't have a pot to piss in when money was hard to come by. But if you start putting away minimal amounts of money, Starbucks money, half of what you spend

taking your girl out for dinner one week. Like, you put a minimum amount away every month and you just sit on it and let it build interest over time. You start that in your 20s? Like, I didn't start serving for retirement until I was 30. And trust me, at 43, I am constantly reminding myself that I'm behind the curve. I'm trying to catch up. but for the guys that start younger, you're ahead of everybody.

When me and my wife sat down with a financial advisor when we started saving for retirement, well, we started saving for retirement before then. Thankfully, she's got a pension from what she does. But I didn't start saving for retirement until I was like 32 because that was when the company started offering a retirement plan. And I was just too focused on we need a house. The house needs to be functional. And so I put all of my assets towards functional place to live because, well, shit, man.

Retirement doesn't do you any good if you don't have a place to live, I guess. Well, and to be fair, I mean, houses are appreciating assets in and of themselves to a degree. I mean, yeah, little dips in the housing market like the one we're about to have any minute now, but over the long term. Yeah, over the long term, it's at least a non-depreciating asset. At least that. You know, it's fairly safe. but we had to talk with our financial advisor, the guy that runs the plan at my work,

so we get a consultation with them every so many months we can have a free consultation. He told me, he said, look, I was 33 or 34 when we sat down and talked to him. He said, you guys are way ahead of the game. He said, I typically do not see people until they're in their mid-40s, and they have zero retirement savings. he said the average person he sees is a 42 to 46 year old person with no to very little retirement savings maybe they hit their employee matching but no more than that is the fact that

you're here before your 40s he said you're you're kind of ahead of the game which I thought was good but it's also kind of that's kind of scary to think think about that a lot of these people are not even considering sitting down with the financial planner until they're in their mid-40s. Yeah, that's, that's frankly alarming. It is because there's a lot of that stuff that, like, you and I were having a conversation before the show about you were attempting to build a spreadsheet to math out some of that stuff.

And it wasn't quite working out right. But they have these tools already built, ready to go. and if your company has a retirement plan, which they pretty much all do. They're all required to if they have more than I think five employees where I live now. So you can probably get access to a financial advisor. I think mine was like 500 bucks to one-time fee, 500 bucks, and you get lifetime consultations through that plan. That's not awful.

Let me go back through and hit a listener. question and then we'll start we'll do admin work and then we'll dig in the topic and um i got a message from our possible surprise surprise guest who said send me a link to join and i had to remind him that he can get into stream yard all of his own volition so he's just got to remember how to do it he should be oh he does unless no no unless when no no he does i i can't spoil the surprise Suffice to say, if he does make it in, I'm going to grouse him because I have intentionally left groundwork so that he can make his way in anytime he wanted. And that amount of forethought and prior planning, you know, is not always typical of this show. But Raggle said the problem with that and the crux of why I asked for this, those investments haven't been keeping up with inflation over the last six years.

So let's do the admin work. And then let's start the topic. I actually had a mini topic. we're going to punt until next week. Sure. Because, you know, we just went right off the rails right from the beginning. But anyway, I get distracted. And then you distract me. All right.

Patrons are in the chat. Patrons are harassing us and haranguing us and promoting bad behavior and contribute to our delinquency, but we appreciate them to keep the show on the road. Code MOF a disaster coffee. I am drinking disaster coffee, and on Monday I will have 15 more power. of bunker beans going on that shelf back there, plus two boxes of our coffee pods. Because at my workplace, unfortunately,

it's curing machines or do without. Have you seen the reusable currig pods? Yes. We bring those with us on vacation, and we bring our own coffee. You could try that. I could, but the problem is that our sinks at work don't have garbage disposals,

And to minimize mess, what I actually did was Amazon sells sleeves. You can buy in bulk of like, do-it-yourself disposable coffee pods. They have a little snap top lid and a little gasket and like the little membrane one on the top that the needle punches through. Yeah. It's a self-contained curate, curate compatible because you can't use the trademark, but cure it compatible. But cure it compatible pod. Oh, look who's about to join. I'm just going to sit here and wait for him to boot himself in.

He knows how. I think he can click the button. Oh, my God. How's it going, man? You need a reminder that you still had admin privileges, huh, bud? Well, I just couldn't remember which the, I couldn't remember which the host was. All right. So for the audio listeners, long time, long, how do I put this?

Long time, no C, co-host Andrew has rejoined us. Yeah, random night off. I mean I'm not mad and you pick the worst time to come back when we're going to talk about finance but it's Garrag's fault We told you guys he was alive It's Raggle Fraggle's fault he asked for it

Literally Hey Raiglebrow Yeah no it's uh It's been a busy Year Two years or whatever it's been Yeah Oh yeah

And that has been Uh Jeff Jagg he's alive Raggle, fraggle saying, welcome back, buddy. You've been missed, bud. Mm-hmm. All right. You caught us right in the middle of admin work, and I got distracted again, which just tends to be, you know, the way things go.

Merch of the Southern Gals and links in the show description. Buy shirt, make Chris happy now. Andrew, I think we told you before this show started, we're talking finance. The title for the episode is Mo Money, Mo Problems. And Garrick originally asked in the vein of like, how do you beat inflation, which of course meant that my autistic finance nerd kicked in. And I was like, well, you beat inflation by not making dumb decisions, first of all. But it's easy to make dumb decisions.

Yeah, but they... And they're fun. Okay, but there's fun, dumb decisions. Okay, there's like dumb decisions like smacking your significant other on the butt and running away giggling like a schoolgirl. That's a fun, dumb decision. True. And free. Oh, no, you end up paying for one way or the other, bud.

Some consequences are worth suffering. But that's why it's a fun, dumb decision, because the consequences are fun. And then there's dumb, dumb decisions, which is like financing a car for like 96 months at 20% interest, which I built a spreadsheet to illustrate why that's a dumb decision. Because y'all asked for it. They did. But before we get into that, we got one banner we got to talk about before we get to discussions about inflation and interest rates and financing on all those sorts of things. So, first of all, I have to explain to the listeners what currency is. Don't be a smart aleck and say, it's money, Phil, because I know that, but that's not the point.

So like... It's probably by the government. Yeah. Well, yeah. It is technically. So, yes, it is that. You're not wrong. Currency in a, like a,

currency in definition form is a medium of exchange. It's like, you know, the old adage I use is that if I have goats and Andrew has chickens and Nick has cows, you know, obviously he's going to want a whole lot more chickens for his cow because it's a whole bunch of meat and the chickens a little bit. you ain't going to trade one for one. So there's got to be an exchange rate of chickens to cows or whatever. And the problem is, if I don't have enough chickens to buy Nick's entire cow, or if he doesn't want to sell his entire cow, now we're in a situation where, like, we can't execute the trade

because we don't have an equivalent means of transitioning that asset. This is where currency comes into play. Once we all get together and agree, a chicken's worth $1 and a cow's worth $100, Now it's 100 chickens to one cow, or we just make these little pieces of paper with dead presidents on them, and we can trade that back and forth for assets. As long as we all agree, gentlemen's agreement, that the piece of paper is worth the same thing, and we don't fool around. This is, by the way, fiat currency. It's currency that's not backed by anything.

See, there was a time in this country, and most countries where, like, your currency either had precious metal embedded in it, or at a minimum we had this price we had precious metal set off someplace on the side and we only made x number dollars relative to that amount of current that amount of precious metal so the the dollar bill was backed by something and then at some point in our nation's history in most nations they got this wild idea to decouple the currency from the assets and then that freed them up to just print all they wanted whenever they had a new bill to pay they just print more this would be like if we all agree that the dollar's worth a dollar and a hundred of them buys a cow and one buys a chicken and the next of you know Phil's got the Hewlett Packards churning them and churning them out because I need to buy more cows. The minute everybody else gets on to the idea that like Phil's got a money tree in his backyard, he's printing dollar bills, all faith in the dollar goes to hell. Or let's say I call myself government, so I have the legal right to print as much as I want. So we have $100 in circulation and I print another $100.

What do you think just happened to the value of all those dollars? Because I just doubled the money supply. All those dollars are worth half what they were before. Why wouldn't they be? The dollar is only a means of exchange that's ostensibly backed it by like the GDP of a country. And if the GDP didn't double but the money supply did, then the assets, the currency is worth half what it was before. I'm not making any of this up. This is just basic supply and demand.

And supply and demand does apply to currency, even though people want to act like it doesn't. Although I would argue that there is an alternate source of backing, that the current U.S. dollar is backed by Phil. Do you know what that is? The threat that we will bomb your country to ask if you don't. Snatch your dictator in the middle of the night and blow up your country's heroes' tombstones. I mean, it's a little dark, but I can't argue with you because, yeah, that has kind of always been. use the dollar or else Saddam was going off the dollar

wanted to go off the petro dollar wanted to start trading oil for gold instead of US dollars guess what? Oh darn, we invaded Iraq because Saudi terrorists from Pakistan, no it was Pakistani terrorists funded by the Saudis and trained by the CIA

blew up towers in the US so we invaded Iraq? Didn't Gaddafi also want to get off the dollar stop using the petro dollar? Gaddafi did and Hillary Clinton decided that he needed us to Dom. Yeah. Are there any

government watch list? I'm not already on. Because I think this might do it if we're missing any. Andrew's just going to sit there quietly and watch me like, wait until the black van, wait until the

black van pulls about front to haul me off. Well, look, backing your currency by force, that is a valid way to back it. I mean, you could argue that it's backed by precious metals. I mean, those Tomahawk cruise missiles have got some silver in them, don't they? I'm sure they do.

Probably some gold plating on the electrical contacts, too. Mm-hmm. There you go. It's roundabout precious metal-backed currency. So mostly it's the high explosive. I'm pretty sure that's backing the currency. Yeah. Anyway.

So does anybody want to talk about currency before I get to the, turbo nerdy part of this show. Cryptocurrency is not currency. It's unregulated securities. And I will not be dissuaded from that. That's it. That's all I got. See.

They're not currencies. They're unregulated securities. I understand what Bitcoin was going after in theory. Yeah, but it didn't do it. The inherent problem I have with Bitcoin is pretty much the inherent problem I have with like most

non-hard assets. Like we started off by basically saying that like you know, this is all monopoly money, it's all fiat currency, it's all ones and zeros in a computer someplace. And if the moon, if the world goes to the moon tomorrow, it's all gone. Bitcoin's just like that. But in the interim, as long as there are one agrees, it has value,

I mean, if you want to put a couple of bucks into it and ride the roller coaster, go for it. I'm just going to ask that you do with Bitcoin like I recommend you do with everything and diversify your portfolio and do not stick all your money in it. Look, you can trade Rembrandts too, but it's not necessarily an agreed upon means of exchange. Look, the reason why I call cryptocurrencies a security instead of a currency is because there is no agreed value of those currencies. There isn't. That's why the price fluctuates so wildly. Yes, the dollar fluctuates in value a little bit compared to other currencies, but percentage-wise, way lower than the fluctuations you get in crypto. Yeah. Well, it's also worth pointing out that, like, the value of crypto and the value of all your stocks, it doesn't go up and down by, like, the value, okay, Apple.

Apple stock price today and tomorrow and the day after is not going up or down based on the value of that company in the moment. It's kind of the tail wagging the dog. It's speculation on the anticipated value of the company driving the stock up and down. And because it's a publicly traded company, the stock going up and down that wildly does influence the valuation of the company. but it's not as if the company that turned it was turned out iPhones yesterday. If the stock loses half its value, it's not like the company lost half of its value. The company was valued at whatever product it can create and sell and whatever profit it can generate. It's the speculation on what the company might do over time that drives its stock value up and down.

And I think people really get that confused with the company's worth based on the stock value. it's their they're linked but it's not it's not the company driving the stock value if that makes sense it's the stock value driving the valuation of the company yes and the stock value of the and the stock value is driven by speculation which quite frankly is is what drives gold futures silver futures oil futures it's all driven by speculation and that's also where bubbles come from but I'm going to call out Andrew and a minute if he doesn't start speaking. You guys are talking finance.

I don't know nothing. You know enough. You have done a house at least once. I slept in it. The bed was comfy. Yep. I slept in his bed

right next to a like cruiser ready 1301. It was quite a vibe. Yeah. So there you go. Make sure you tell everybody that I on the couch and Gillian was with you because, you know.

I mean, I wasn't. I was going to tell everybody you and I shared a bed and I was the big spoon, but you ruined that. Thanks, bud. Well, I mean. That's to be expected. I would throw that in just to make Eddie jealous. Mm-hmm. All right.

So let's get to the part of the show that's going to put everybody to sleep or someone might actually find this interesting. So in the past, like I've gone on my rant about interest rates. and financing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We've done all this before. But this time, I had a really stupid idea. I don't know if stupid's the right word. Oh, it's going to be a stupid idea because we're never going to do this game because no one's

going to find it interesting. Unless somebody does, and, you know, we'll see. We get asked to go over this stuff at least once a year by somebody. Yeah. It just so happened this time it was a ragel. So what I did, and as of right now, I cannot see what's going on in Streamyard because I'm focused on a spreadsheet. What I did was I built out a spreadsheet to kind of like crunch numbers on auto loans.

And this is really tailored towards auto loans, but the math, it works out the same. The principles work the same on anything. It's just going to be longer terms. So. See, Raggle like spreadsheets. Does Raggle like spreadsheets? I can't see what he's saying. He said, ooh, spreadsheets.

Yeah, fair warning for all those involved. I am a gigantic spreadsheet nerd. I have been since before college, and it's not getting any better over time. But anyway, so what I have here is I just dump some numbers in, $50,000 principal, 7% interest rate. This is ostensibly like your average new car loan right now. About 50 grand, 7% is about the prime credit score, the prime interest rate if you have a perfect credit score. It's 7%. I mean, we can take it down to 5.5 if you want.

No, no, no, that's fine. Leave it at seven. I just didn't realize it was that high. Oh, it goes higher. Oh, no, I know. I have heard of up to like 36% car loans. The worst I heard of was 29.9. And we'll do that here in a minute.

But anyway, so these are the numbers that y'all need to pay attention to. This principle, this interest rate, and this is a wild car because I have to actually plug this in real time to make the math math. So the way this works is that you start out with your $50,000 in principle. You make your payment. this much as interest, this much as principal paid, and this is your first month, and second month, and third, and fourth, and so on, so forth. So if we drag this out to 60 months, which is a five-year auto loan,

you can see right there is where the Rinsmore Manit drops down like $4.30, and I'm just not pissing around with the pennies to try to make this go to zero, because it's not going to perfectly. But anyway, so five years, $990, that pays your interest, that pays off all your principal. This gets you back down to zero and you own the asset and you paid $5,500, $5,514 and 50 cents over the life of this loan. Follow me so far, boys? Yep. So now, here's the thing.

There's a couple of numbers we can play with here, and I will let you two tell me how y'all want to play this game. either we jack around with the principal or we jack around with the interest rate and then either one of these means I have to toy with this and we'll keep this at a five-year loan or I can show you all how catastrophically stupid of an idea it is to stretch this loan repayment out further and further and further and what that does to your monthly payment and how much interest you wind up paying over that longer span of time. So how you want to play this game? Responsibly or stupidly?

Oh, stupidly. Stupidly. Okay. So how stupid do you want to get? Because this spreadsheet goes all the way out to 96 months. The worst auto loan I've ever heard of was 36% for seven years. Okay. 36%.

Now, I can't confirm that that's real. But one of the guys at the dealership that I've bought vehicles from has told me he's seen a 36% car loan for seven years. Mm, we're going up. So we need, what is it? Bear with me. I got to put in stupid numbers to make this. Oh, you do. Okay, now we're getting somewhere 1650, 1640, 1635.

Hey, now we're getting close. 1636, 1637, 1636, 1637, 1636, 50 maybe. Yeah. Okay, that's probably about as close as I'm, to try to get this. So seven-year loan repayment, 84 months, $50,000 dollar principal, an average use card, not even a really expensive one, 36% interest, which is higher than I've ever heard of. Like I said, no proof that that was real, but I don't think the guy had a reason to lie about it. Yes. Well, your total interest paid more than the vehicle was worth. Now understand how this is

working. So we start out way over here back at month one. And the way this works is that basically you have this monthly payment, which it then has to calculate interest based on, which is based on your remaining principle. And technically most of these loans don't reamortize every month. They reamortize every year, but I'm not effing around with the spreadsheet enough to try to make it do that. So you're just going to have to live with this as an example. But based on the amount of interest calculated at that interest rate off of this principle, this is all that you're paying against the principal in month one is $136.50. And this is lesson number two. On top of stretching out loan payments is dumb. Your first month, your first payment, this is all you paid towards

principal. You paid $1,600 in change, mortgage money, and you paid $136.50. Half of my weekly grocery run, less than half my weekly grocery run. And that's all you paid off on the principal. Matter of fact, if we take this out to your first year, you only paid $1,3720 against the principal by the end of the first year. And in that amount of time, you paid $17,780.17,700 and $80 in interest by the end of the first year. Are you starting to understand why we're having a discussion about interest rates and financing because Raggle wanted to ask about how you beat inflation? You beat inflation by not doing this. Well, I would argue that you can't beat inflation. What you can just do is make it less worse.

But making it less worse is still a really good idea. Oh, it absolutely is. Now, here's the thing. Let's look at this reasonably. Same payment, 7%. trying to think what I had. Let's five years.

That's a good reasonable rate. I think I had like $636 as some change in here. Something like that. 650. See, I had this all set up and then I lost my place. I should have had this sitting off on the side.

Okay. Now I have screwed something up. Oh no, we broke it Yeah We broke something Yeah, we broke something Control Z Keep going

I don't know how many iterations back It'll go I mean, it'll go quite a few Okay, here's where we started There you go $990, that's $50,0007% of interest rates This is where we started Now, what I wanted to point out was

this is so we can pay off in five years. Let's look at the effect of having a really crappy credit score. So let's take that 7% turn it into 9%. And now we need to throw how much extra to get this loan back down to zero. $140,035. Getting closer. 1036. Okay.

So 1,000, 37 and some change. So we started at what, 990? You got to throw an extra 50 bucks, basically, at this loan if your interest rate goes up two points. Not awful. But now let's take it to 19%. This is subprime, by the way. This is car got repoed, you know, can't keep a job, can't keep the lights turned on. This is not as catastrophic as I've seen because the minute you get one or two repos,

Like, your, your interest rates at that point are hovering in the 25 to 29% range. They get catastrophically bad. But at 92% interest, at the five-year mark, we still have, we still owe 25. We still owe half the value this vehicle at the five-year mark. And so you're probably looking at, well, like, 2050 something for payment? Oh, we're getting close. 13. 15.

1290. 1295. Getting closed. 1296. 1297 might put us a hair over. Okay. That's close enough. $2,297 monthly payment will pay off that loan in five years.

Your total interest paid, though, you remember we start off at like $5,500 total interest paid? Now with a 19% interest rate, that total interest paid has jumped up to just a hair over $12,000. dollars. But it's still not going as ballistic as it did with a much better interest rate when you stretch this out to eight years. This is the lesson I'm trying to drive home because I know that you know, chunky orange Republican recently got this brilliant idea that we should stretch out mortgages to 50 years. And the minute I heard that, I literally started seething in anger. The only thing that does is increases housing crisis. It increases housing. prices. It increases the amount of, I mean, we've proven this mathematically. It increases the amount of

the total interest will pay over the lifetime of a mortgage astronomically. It all but guarantees that you will basically be a renter for life. Yeah, pretty much. Well, because the only people that are going to be buying houses then are going to be people that already have equity and properties and can roll that equity either into a new house or can roll that equity into a second, third, fourth home. Yeah. But like you said, when, especially, if you can turn it into an income property. Yeah. Anyway, the only other thing I want to illustrate and then we're going to hop off of this

for a second was, you know, when we first started off talking, we were talking about how much interest gets paid versus how much principal gets paid. And obviously, when you stretch these loan terms out further and further, you end up with a lot more interest paid initially and a lot less principal. But that has an alternate effect that a lot of people don't think about. 69833. Nick, I don't want to dig in your finances too much, but like, do you have consistently an extra $700 a month to throw with something where you can make a double principal payment? Yeah.

Yeah. But would it make... Part of why I'm considering buying a boat, but... But would it make sense to do that versus putting that same money in your IRA or into your house to pay off that debt further? Like, is $700 extra a month a wise investment to pay off? off a depreciating asset, or is that better spent putting in someplace where it's going to increase in value over time? That's a math. Well, it is a math problem. And here's what I'll say to that. Me and my wife were very fortunate and we bought our house when interest rates were

phenomenally low. I don't remember what our exact mortgage rate is. It's below 3%. So we got a screaming deal on that money. It will never make sense to pay a dime more than we have to for the minimum on that mortgage because it is well below inflation. Well, not anymore. I think there's said inflation's down like 3% now. So it might be close to inflation. But I think last I checked my retirement account is doing an annual return of like 12 or 13%. It's doing really well. So no. Car loan is doing worse. The interest rate on the car loan is significantly lower than the rate of return I'm getting on retirement investments. So, you know, no, it doesn't.

Now, that said, if you have that money and you can get that debt gone sooner, that's less interest you're going to pay. So that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it just, if you can get more return somewhere else, the money, in my opinion, is better placed there. I'm playing with some numbers because I'm not. trying to get back to something I had figured out a while ago. Sure.

But, you know, there's a, there's a lot to be said, and maybe Andrew can chime in on this for having the lack of stress from not having that debt hanging over your head. There is something to be said for that, but what I'm trying to illustrate here is that this is rough numbers and not to the penny, not by any means. But this is rough numbers. What I financed for the truck I have now. and this is what I'm trying to get at here. I didn't have, especially because, you know, when I bought this, Gillian bought her Jeep, money wasn't super tight, but, you know, we were trying to build a savings and everything else and putting into retirement.

I didn't always necessarily have an extra $300 to chuck at this. It got spent on things like, you know, feeding a family. But you don't have to double this $377 a month car payment. And all you have to do is throw an extra 50 or 100 bucks a month consistently at this. And now, what's $50 on top of 377? That's like $4.22, I think. Yeah, $423. And $423, an extra $50.

And we pay this loan off eight months early. So what I'm trying to illustrate here is like, cut the interest almost in half. Yeah. So here's the kicker. Finance a reasonable amount. I'm not here to tell you buy used. I'm not here to tell you buy new. They both have their ups and downs.

I will just say that if you buy something new, just make peace with the fact that it's going to lose 30% of its value, the minute it's six to tire off the dealership's lot. And if you can't afford to put that much down to like cover 30% the value of the vehicle so it's your right side up on it the day you put one mile on it, you probably are not in the market to buy new cars. You probably should be looking to use. Keep your credit score as high as possible within reason.

Don't get caught up in the juju of like chasing the perfect credit score and credit utilization. All of a certain nonsense. If your credit score is like low 700s and up, you're probably doing okay enough to get a decent interest rate. But the secret- Phil, have you ever tracked your credit score over like, months on a weekly basis. I don't care enough to. I did to prove to one of my co-workers

that it's witchcraft. I have seen my credit score. Now, I pay my bills twice a month. They are paid on the first and the 15th every month. Every single month, without fail, they are all paid. Our credit utilization stays at about the same. We use credit cards here, there, shop online, gas, whatever. Pay them off pretty much every month. and I have watched my credit score hockey puck 25 to 30 points inside of a month. Which is exactly the reason why I said, I don't care. Just insane. Exactly.

It's like, like is it, it's witchcraft. The number really doesn't mean anything as long as you try and stay above like 700. Yeah. But the point I'm trying to drive home is, is like if you finance a reasonable amount, if you keep your interest rate as low as possible. And by the way, credit unions are usually a good place to go looking for low interest rates. And you make a little bit of an extra effort to pay the vehicle off early. Just $25, $50, $75 a month extra.

Find the freaking money someplace. If you financed a vehicle in your financial situation such that you don't have $50 a month extra to put towards paying it off, you probably finance too much and you're stretched too thin. Like, I'm just being really harsh but very realistic with you. Like, 50 bucks a month should be doable. And it cuts the interest rate so quick. And it, like, the eight months that it pays it off sooner is cool, but the paying less interest over life alone is really the secret sauce. This is one of my little secrets about how you beat inflation is just smarter financial decisions.

You make your money stretch further. Yeah. Because when you pay a lot of... That's really what it is. when you pay a lot of interest, you're literally taking a pile of money, going down the front yard, setting it on fire and throwing it up in the air. Yep. Yeah, you are wasting a certain percentage of your income that way. Yeah.

So. Well, not wasting. You're giving it away. Mm-hmm. So, since we're talking interest rates and financing, I just got one or a thing to throw in here. Now, I thought I was going to be really smart, and I actually had a third tab to the spreadsheet prepared. But right before we went on, I couldn't convince myself that the math was mathing.

And Nick agreed with me that the math wasn't mathing. No. Something in my calculations was really screwy because it was saying that, like, the IRA that I had, like, built out in Excel was, like, increasing value at a rate that's just not mathematically possible. No. It was, it, it was, like, what was it? Going up 11 times in 10 years, which, no. Yeah, the way. Your money will about double in the stock market or in an IRA in every 10 years or so.

The wacky part of those at like at the one year mark and even at the five year mark, like the wheels were still on the bus. It was possible. It was close. And then when you got to 120 months, it was like, nope, this no longer makes sense. Yeah. I built this tab out and this is a really stupid simple thing with a pretty graph at the end. This just illustrate a point because we started all talking about investing young and starting young. and the fact that this is a marathon, not a sprint race.

So what I wanted to ballpark was, let's say you purchase an appreciating asset, it's valued at $100 today, and none of this accounts for inflation, and I get that. Just stick with me. It's a principle I'm trying to illustrate. And your rate of return is 5%.

Given that the stock market tends to outperform that, you know, year after year, with the exception of major downturns. I was going to say, Isn't 8% considered the all-time average? We can do that if you want. Well, no, I was just saying for people's knowledge, I believe 8% is considered the average,

up years, down, years, all years combined, which is why most people recommend you never draw more than 4% out of your retirement account after you retire in a year. Yeah. Because then you still have growth to keep up with inflation. But here's what we're looking at. Month one, month two, month three, $100 starting. value and this is interest accruing month to month. And as we track this out over a 10-year period,

that asset has appreciated pretty precipitously in value, but this is the part, this is the graph, this is the thing I want to drive home. So, you know, I've heard me talk before about when the graph goes vertical. And this is what I'm referring to. Do you see that first, this is about your five-year mark right in here. And you see that the graph is really just, it's a slight increase. It's nice and easy. And then we get to a certain point here where that grab starts picking up speed and picking up speed and turning more and more vertical. And this is the miracle of compounding interest. You earn interest on the principle. The interest combines with the principle. And the next time you earn interest, you earn more interest. And it combines and combines and goes up and up and

up. And this is why I say things like start early, start young. Because this point, right here in the graph where like things start to really pick up speed. This is not a set age. This is the age of the investment. You have to reach a certain point before that investment really starts to take off and become a vertical line. And this is true of stocks. This is true of gold. This is true of IRAs. This is true of any asset that appreciates over time. This is true of housing values. The earlier you buy in, the cheaper you buy in, the longer you hold, the longer you hold, the quicker you reach this point where the graph starts to pick up speed. If you look at a traditional or Roth IRA and you track value over time and you put in any goofy numbers you want,

you see this inflection point where the graph stops doing this and starts doing this. I've seen it myself. I'm 13 years into saving for retirement. And it's really only been within the last couple of years that the IRA has really like start. like started to pick up speed where the interests earn month over month is becoming like a meaningful amount. It's, it's a, newsflash, I'm not retiring, not yet, and certainly not on the back of this podcast or that tiny little IRA. But the point is, I'm beginning to see that the inflection point is starting to develop or things are starting to escalate. But really, like,

the amount that you accrue in your last year saved for retirement will be a noticeable amount more than what you accrued in the first year because the principle that you're earning interest on is higher in the last year. Yeah. But funny little thing about spreadsheet, you get to full with the numbers in real time. So you said 8% right. That's about average. I believe if I remember correctly what I was told by the financial advisor, you can anticipate about 8% annual growth averaged out throughout your lifetime. All right.

Now, did you see what happened to this graph? Ignore the numbers. Just did you see what happened to this graph as we changed that interest rate? The hockey stick gets much steeper. Yes. Now, part of that is because if we stretch this out, matter of fact, I'm going to do this. And I'm probably going to hate myself for it. Yes, I hate myself for it.

But for y'all... You've done the graph. Yeah. But for y'all, I will monkey around with this a whole bunch in real time. So you see here. admittedly, like this is kind of goofy at this point because like we're trying to model a very large graph in a fairly small window. I think your math got wonky again. Yeah, I think it got wonky too.

It did because it suddenly is up to a million dollars and that's not right. No, it's not right. But the trend, the trend is not wrong. No, the trend is not wrong, but there's something screwing going on with your math. Yeah, by the way, this is exactly what happened with, the other tab was that it just the numbers just went berserk in a certain point and I could justify like why it was doing that and the weird part is that I'm really good at spreadsheets and I've double-checked my math and the formulas three times including at 729 Central right

before we went on and I still can't figure out like what I'm what I'm overlooking I floating point error um because I know that's the thing you get in spreadsheets every once in a while with maths. I'll be honest with you, bud, I suspect about five minutes after we hang up, I will probably look at and be like, oh, Phil, you're a moron, but, you know. Oh, well, you know, at least you'll figure it out eventually. Oh, eventually I will, but I don't know. I got this idea at like 630 to build this because I didn't want to just talk about this again.

I wanted to actually, like, be able to put numbers to it and show y'all graphs and, like, demonstrate for the listeners why this. This stuff works the way it does instead of just, you know, typical Phil talking about nonsense like usual. I wouldn't call it nonsense. I mean, you're kind. I would call it nonsense. Andrew would definitely call it nonsense. Andrew, every time I'd make him sit through this every year, he would fall asleep on camera.

That's okay. He's working on it. A proper nap is a skill. But, you know, it just, it illustrates the point, fill, of how important emergency funds are. Yeah. And I bring this up a lot on the podcast. We live in a capitalist society. The vast majority of our problems and emergencies can be solved with money.

And if you don't have to pay interest on that money, it's even cheaper. So, you know, story time. I still do have this coworker. He actually works for a different agency than I do now, but still in the, the same department. So like, we'd still bump into each other. But years and years ago, his financial, I want to be kind. His financial literacy is not what mine is.

He's not an unintelligent guy at all. Very, very smart. He is to IT what I am to finance. Like, this dude used to run satcoms for Air Force FS units, the SF units. The dude can friggin, like, set up comms in the middle of a war. zone, blindfolded, under fire. But that being said, at the time he was in a situation where every time an emergency would come up that I would just emergency fund, he would go get the credit card and they have to pay the

credit card back. And I pointed out to him, I'm like, dude, like, every time you swipe the credit card, you're paying interest and that interest is just eating a hole in you. Like, you're taking money, lighting on fire and throw it up in the air. Like, every single time there's an emergency. And he was like, yeah, but I don't have, I can't build savings. And I, I was kind about it. I was my version of kind about it, which probably means I was being an ass. But I did point out to him like, dude, like you and your girlfriend, you weren't wrong. You and your girlfriend both smoke.

Like, you go get, you go to the barbershop, get your hair done every week. Like, you spend money on things. You could curtail and you would have an emergency fund within, I think my estimate was like five weeks. He could have a whole paycheck put aside from some pretty basic cuts. I mean, what does a pack of cigarettes cost anymore? I think last time I walked into the gas station, they were like $12. The last time I remember buying cigarettes, I want to say like $5.50, $6 a pack. I remember when I was in Iraq buying cartons for $22 a whack for a carton.

But that was like no tax, no debt. Marlboro Reds, which is kind of like your basic one is $10 bucks a pack. Holy Jesus Christ. In my state. Yeah. In my state, $10 bucks a pack for Marlboro. So if you're a pack a day, that's $100 a week, or no, that's $70 a week. Jesus.

Yeah. There's your, there's your extra 50 plus some going out money for your car payment right there and just your cigarettes in one week. Yeah. And I mean, look, I get it. If you're a smoker, like, I, oh, it's an addiction. I have my chemical addictions, too. Like, let's be realistic here. I'm just saying that like, you know, the ugly truth is that sometimes to better your financial health, it means you have to make sacrifices.

You have to do things that are not fun. They're not popular. They're not comfortable. But they are necessary because, like, they're, you all both heard, like, the old story, the parable of, like, the aunt and the grasshopper. Everybody has. Very well-known children's story. there is no beating the math here of you suffer today you profit tomorrow or you have fun today you pay for it tomorrow there's no beating that math i remember being a very young man and my dad told me very frankly he said look there's only three ways to get ahead life you can be born lucky and rabelais aren't you can be born rich and rabelais aren't born rich either or you can work twice as hard for twice as long you'll you'll outwork everyone else

So from a young age, like, I remember having this impressed upon me that like your work ethic, your ability to sacrifice, your ability to bust your butt, your ability to do without for a time to have more tomorrow. Like, that's how you win the game. And if you do the opposite, that's how you wind up getting rolled. Because back to what started this whole thing, like inflation is what it is. It's been a feature of the economy as long as I've been alive for 43 years. It's probably going to be around plenty longer than I'm around. I can't see the governments of the world deciding that hard currency is a thing again because it would eliminate their ability to spend as recklessly as they...

Oh, bro, you don't even have... I might even like asking for hard currency. I'm just asking them to turn the money printer off. That's all I want. Well, they can't either because that would essentially end low-interest. rate loans. I know that. And by low interest rate, I mean below 15%. Yes. I know that, you know that. I'm just saying. I think I have reasonable, I think I have reasonable expectations that inflation will be around forever, which means, yeah, well, which means if we accept the fact

that inflation is going to be here forever, then the way you beat it is, A, you don't do things that cost you more money needlessly, like financing nonsense you'll need or financing things. You'll need. or financing things you do need in stupid ways. Don't do any of that because that's just wasting money. And your money is already going to be worth less tomorrow than it is today. So don't make the situation worse by burning it in the front yard to make the bankers happy. Two, you better start young and start planning for your retirement and start putting money away in something that's going to appreciate over time. And even though my math is wonky and I can't figure out why and I'm pissed about that, the trends don't lie.

interest bearing accounts do escalate in value towards the back end of their lifespan. The earlier you start, the faster you get to that inflection point. You can save half as much per month and start 10 years earlier and you still beat the math by the end of it. Like, the math maths, the earlier you start, the better off you are. And the other thing is, and like, you know, to be really frank, like, none of us knows how many working years we have. We all would like to think we're going to take care of ourselves. We're going to be good to our bodies.

We're going to be good health. We're going to have lots and lots of ambulatory years ahead of us. But none of us knows. And that being said, if, God forbid, you end up getting taken out of the working world and say you're mid-50s when you were planning on working to 67 or 68, let's say best-case scenario, you end up on like SSI, SSID, like disability, But you still don't, didn't have those extra 10 years to plan for retirement to build that nest deck. The sooner you start, the less screw you are.

There is no, there's no downside to starting earlier. No, I mean, there is some opportunity cost, though, that you do need to acknowledge, I think. Because look, I'm going to be realistic here. I was able to buy a house as young as I did because I was not saving for retirement. retirement. But I also bought a $60,000 house. But you also have to acknowledge the fact that I consider homeownership to be an investment in it of itself. Oh, it absolutely is. It is an investment in itself. But there are opportunity costs and you need to weigh those because you're going to need a place to live. You can either pay into your equity or you can pay a landlord. Yeah. Those are really

your two options. Although I would even say for the people that don't want to be homeowners, like I don't think it's an immediate like game over, lose your turn if you don't become a homeowner. I would just say that. It's a deliberate choice, though. But if you make that deliberate choice, then the gap between whatever your rent is and what your mortgage would have been, plus your homeowner's insurance, plus your flood insurance if you have that, so on and so forth. Just maintenance or repair. Whatever that gap is, that amount of money needs to go into your retirement. You are not going to live.

It should. You are not going to have a fully paid off house to retire. to retire into because you're not going that route. But that money, that extra money you are saving versus if I'd gotten a mortgage, I'd had to pay all these extra fees, that money better be going into retirement. Because your only game at this point is to have enough residual income to pay rent all the way through your retired years until you don't have them anymore. And that's doable. Which could be 40 years. And it's doable, but you damn sure better plan ahead because I'll tell you what? If you think of it as, well, I'm saving myself $500 a month by not being a homeowner

by renting, that's play money. You're going to be playing a lot when you're, you know, 65 years old as a Walmart reader because you didn't plan for your retirement because now you can't stop working because you've got to make rent. I'm not saying there's a right or wrong here. It's just decisions and consequences at the end of the day. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there are people whose lifestyles do not loan themselves well to homeownership. There really are. And you know, quite frankly, there's also people that like,

I don't even want to say their lifestyle. They're, like, there are people that, like, some people, your career doesn't lend itself to homeownership. Like, for the person who travels a lot or wants to travel a lot, like, the career I had before I'm in, I am where I am now, I lived out of a suitcase six months at the year. If I weren't married, it would have made no sense to me to be a homeowner. Oh, God.

I'd have been better off. You wouldn't have been there to know if something went wrong at the minimum. I'd have been better off in a one-bedroom apartment, paying rent, put the extra way in an account someplace, you know, like minimum bills. I'd have been better off in that way because six months out of the year, I was living out of a suitcase. I was all over the country. It would make no sense. And that's not even getting it. into the part of like having pets or having this or that or something that depends on you all

the time like that's just too much baggage for me to not be able to carry around with me you better be able to compartmentalize your whole life into a bag and take it with you but you know that frankly that's one of the reasons i'm in the career i am now because i have a wife and a daughter i'd like to be home every night yeah oh some of these comments that i couldn't see earlier are going to beg going back to that's fine you covered some of these Jeff Jaggs sounds like Phil is not excited about

Trump's attempt to save housing prices with a 50 year mortgage a 50 year mortgage is not an attempt to save housing prices it's a stupid idea thought of by a man who ought to know better ought to know better oh no no no no no he he does know better and he's banking on that increasing property

values to benefit him and his other friends that are large owners of lots of property. Is this the part where you tell me that this is a feature, not a flaw? No, it's absolutely a feature. Okay. The feature is higher prices and better values for shareholders. Okay. Well, not for the individual homeowner. Well, for all you out there, regardless of who you voted for in this past election, don't do that shit.

Do not, do not get a 50-year mortgage. I don't care. 30-year mortgages are insane. 30-year mortgages are tolerable. Tolerable. Okay. They're tolerable because you were born and raised with them. Also, they were far more tolerable when the interest rates were much lower.

Yeah. But now that the interest rates are high. Someone like me with a 3% rate, sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, if that's a situation or in, but I would also say that, like, I hear what you're saying about like, you know, 10-year mortgages. But a 10-year mortgage is also a lot more palpable when. and the house isn't like $250,000 start. Do you know why the houses are more now, Phil?

Multiple reasons, but I'm assuming you're going to mention the 30-year mortgage. The 30-year mortgage. You look at the year 30-year mortgages were brought about, and you watch the housing prices for the next five years after that. That wasn't inflation. That was the fact that people could bid higher because their monthly payment was lower. That drove a massive increase in home values. Almost.

Absolutely insane increase in home values. Why do you think baby boomers went from living in a $25,000 or a $10,000 house to a half million dollar house and did nothing? I was about to say, like, I wonder if this is the reason why car prices have like basically doubled as, um, it's one of the reasons. As the average car loan has stretched out from five years to seven years to about to be eight years. It is, it is absolutely one of the reasons because the consumers. See, not to shit on most people, but the price that they care about is how much do they have to spend every month? Which is. Because they've never written an $80,000 check for an F150 Lightning.

They write a $1,200 check for the F150 Lightning once a month. That's nauseating. And a lot of people. They do. It is. It is. especially when I look at my pickup that I bought in 2015 and it was like $26,000 brand new.

Brand new. That exact same truck on the lot today is I think $52,000. Do that same make model and package. I just figured out. Granted, there's more features. I just figured out what was screwed up on my IRA spreadsheet math. it's too late to fix it that's fine but what did you do?

Okay so my entire premise was goofed up I was looking at interest calculating on the value on the principal but that's not actually how IRAs work that the interest the interest accrues on the value of the share and it's the number of shares you purchase so

yes like if you own like if a share is $1,000 then you get interest on a thousand dollars you don't get oh no that still doesn't explain it it's gonna bug me until i figure it out and i'm smart and you will figure it i'm smart and you will share it in the paycheck yeah and i'm i'm convinced that when i finally do figure it out i'm really pissed at myself for not being able to put it together and like on the fly because i know this i should know this see ragel one of the reasons why you've never thought about mortgage loans being directly related to prices because most of us alive today that are in the house buying

time of our lives have never known anything other than 30-year mortgages. When my grandfather signed the loan for his first house, it was a five-year loan and it was $11,000. He sold that house in 2008 for $470,000. Yep. I will also point. He added a garage. He added an outbuilding. That was what was changed. I will also point this out, not just ragel,

but for whoever the other person is watching because the listenership has fallen off, which means it's almost time to dovetail this to a completion after we ask Andrew, where the hell he's been for all this time. We do need an Andrew update. But, like, I would just say that the same lesson that I apply to paying off my car or my truck early applies to mortgages, and it applies to mortgages even more. because because the loan term of a mortgage is stretched out so much more, it takes a comparatively small additional principal payment to cut years off the backside of the mortgage.

And by cutting years off the backside of the mortgage, bear in mind, okay, I didn't graph it. I probably should have. It would have made for a really interesting graph. But like, let's take this as an X, Y axis. And on the Y axis is the amount of interest each payment is. and on the x-axis is the amount of principal. So your very first payment is like, way, wait, wait. It's mostly interest.

It's way, way, way up here because most of your payment is interest, comparably small amount is principal. And it's not as straight, but it's almost a straight vertical or diagonal line down to the other side where your last payment is almost all principal and virtually no interest. You turn this from a diagonal line into a parabola by making extra principal payment. so that you break down the principal remaining, which means you break down the interest accrued, and you get there faster. You get to the point where more of your money is going to principal. You get there faster by making extra principal payments every month, and not big money. $50.

Better yet, simple math, and anybody should be able to do this. Whatever your monthly payment is on your mortgage, I'm going to simplify all the math. Sure. Round it up to the nearest $100 and add $100. Yep. That's all it is. If you pay like... Oh, it'll pay it off five years soon. If you pay, let's say it's 1185, $1,200,

added up $1,300, $1,300 is your new payment. Make sure when you increase that payment that however you pay the loan, that they apply the extra amount to principal, not to escrow. Because those smart asses will try to apply to escrow, and that doesn't do you any good. Make sure it goes to principal. Now, the trick here, I did the math personally. on my own mortgage. And by making that extra principal payment,

which I don't really want to disclose because I don't remember it off the top of my head, but I do the same thing. Round it up to the nearest 100, add 100. I've been doing that for years. And every time the mortgage goes up or down a little bit because the escrow amount changes, I apply the same formula.

Round up to the nearest 100, add another 100. I will pay this mortgage off if we just ride it out and stay the course seven years early. It is so doable. It is so simple. Finance the minimum you have to.

You get the best interest rates you can and make extra principal payments. And that will make all the math around interest paid over the lifetime of a loan math a lot better. So, Raggle has a good point. Whether a $250,000 house was a 10-year or a 30-year, he wouldn't offer 750K just because he could do a third year. but, Ragel, I will say this. It's not offering $750K or $250K. It's you and your wife are bidding on a house against another couple in their wife. And, well, what's an extra $5,000 on the price of the house to get the house that your wife wants in the school district you guys want to put your kids in?

but every single couple is willing to do that over the course of 50 years now. That's what it is. It's that extra four or five or $3,000 or $10,000 or the extra $20,000 if you're in New York or California, that each person's willing to pay over each of those little transactions that slowly drives that price up. And you still get that asymptotic curve. And this is also the point where I point out that like, let's say hypothetically, you had just a check and you could drop it and pay the house off in full. That's reasonable.

But going back to the concept that Nick talked about earlier, we didn't really get into this a lot in this discussion, but like it's the opportunity cost. What is the interest you are potentially saving over the lifetime of a 10 or 30 or 15 or 30 year mortgage? How much more money could that same money make if you stuck it in the stock market? it has stuck it in an IRA and let it accrue interest for the same 10, 15, 30 years. That's the opportunity cost of, do I spend this money now, or do I put the money here, or do I put the money here? And this is the exact same calculation, by the way, you have to do when you have a

discussion about, I've got an extra $100. Do I put an extra $100 to pay off my car? Do I use an extra $100 to pay more principal in the house? Do I put this in my IRA? A financial advisor, if you're in that boat can help you out with a lot of these decisions, and I am not one, and I encourage you to go find one if you think you need one. I would just say that, like, go into the discussion with the understanding that there is no universal, do this, profit, right answer. It is all, it's all decisions and consequences. It's all opportunity cost.

It's all interest earned versus interest paid. It all boils down to that. Like the principles hold true, but the, the particulars are down to your individual situation. And I am not going to give anybody specific advice. No, we can't. Unfortunately, there are way too many particulars to anybody's situation to give specific advice. But the general trend of advice is usually fairly safe.

Yeah. No money, no problems. Don't make dumbed financial decisions. That's going to put you a lot further down the road of beating inflation than getting rolled by it. Mm-hmm. So now, Andrew, we need an Andrew update. How was South America? Next episode, this has been going on too long.

What? Nonsense. We're usually here till 9. Are you going to be here next episode? It is 10 o'clock. Bullshit, it isn't. This is central time. Yeah.

Two versus one. I'll be here in another, I don't know, another two or three months, maybe a year. I don't know, oh, no. God damn it, Andrew. We need an Andrew update that's not South American dictator overthrowing. I mean, I'm not in a hippie compound. Hair's too short. Okay.

Hold on a second. I do believe there were farm animals involved, though. Yeah. I live on a small farm. Good. Sold house. Good. Excellent.

Sold the house, paid off student loans. You want to talk about a predatory loan. Yeah, we got problems with student loans. Yeah, so, no, paid student loans off. Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, no, things are going good. Bought a tractor. Nice. I'm not an official farmer, like, win, but it does what I needed to do.

So, hey, man, all trackers. is good tractor. I mean, I've got a tiny little garden tractor and that thing puts in work. But yeah, no, next time I get a Thursday off, which the only reason I'm off on this Thursday is, I was supposed to be very far south, but it just didn't pan out. So if you kept the week off, I've been working on the bathroom in the house, kind of remodels and stuff. And yeah, it's been busy. So I don't know. In another, I don't have to look at my schedule, but probably in another like month or two. I should have another Thursday off.

Yeah. Well, when you find out, let us know and we will schedule a specific Andrew themed episode. A more exciting topic than finance that I slept through. I only do this once a year, man. Come on. We've kept into radios once a year and finance once a year. Yes. Or when viewers ask a specific question.

I mean, I do have a topic to spend a whole episode talking about radios and satellite dishes and SDR and downlinking satellite data and weather data and everything. And why MeshTastic is just giving away your location to anyone that can scan. Yeah. I know a bunch of people playing with Mesh Tastic. Huh? So it's not getting to that right now. Keep you. We could.

Keep you guys on. Ask. No, never. I refuse to stay on task. Andrew, Nick has taken up the mantle of, you used to keep me on task. He gets me off task on purpose. Yes. Off the schedule in an hour and 10 minutes just to keep you guys on task.

Yes, that is correct. No, I figured I had a Thursday, so I wanted to stop it and say hi. No, dude, I mean, that's good to see you. It is good to see you. We could have, if we'd known you were coming, we could have picked a more engaging topic, then you'd go into sleep watching spreadsheets all night. But, you know, it's Garrick's fault. He's the complaint department tonight. Truth.

All right. Well, we won't belabor the point. I've talked to everybody's ears off. Everybody's falling asleep. It's an hour or 20 minutes. Don't finance it at stupid shit. Don't finance it at stupid rates. Don't finance it for stupid periods of time.

don't do stupid things financially, and you just might not have to be a Walmart reader until you're 85 years old. But Matter of Fax, Podkin. You're not going to bail a die. You can't die with your money, so I spend it and be stupid about it. Yeah, but ostensibly you should die,

like, the day you run out of money and not, like, 10 years after you run out of money. It's okay. Anyway, Matterfax is going to go out the door. Good night, everybody. Tune in next week. We have a. topic. I just can't for the life of me remember what on earth it was going to be.

I'll remind you. I'm sure we'll figure it out. All right. Good night, y'all. Good night. Bye.