Matter of Facts: Fiscal Irresponsibility

[00:00:06] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts 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 Ravelet, Andrew, Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. And welcome back to Matter of Facts Podcast. Nick is with me. Andrew is not. Andrew took

[00:00:34] 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, it might be him. Try not to hold against him that he's collecting for the least, well, I was about to 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.

[00:01:04] I mean, I like the no party. But when they actually run a campaign. Just no on everything? No on everything. Should the government do? No. 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. 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.

[00:01:34] 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 it more than words can describe. Merch. The links are in the show description. The money goes to help a small business that's run by a family of pretty nice people as long as you don't get on their bad side. And Cypress Survivalist. We are still doing things.

[00:01:59] Gillian actually sent out the quarterly newsletter, I think, this past week, if 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 Survivalist 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.

[00:02:26] 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 Cypress 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.

[00:02:56] 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 a matter of facts listeners. Unfortunately, for the only the fourth time since the company was started back in 2019, we have to raise prices.

[00:03:23] I don't think I really have to explain why, because, you know, 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, like, try to keep the cost down, we finally got to a break even point where, like, either we raise the prices or, frankly, we go out of business. Like, we can't absorb it any longer. We got to pass some of the pain, unfortunately, to the customers.

[00:03:53] 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. And 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.

[00:04:22] Do not wait until the evening of the 30th because before I go to bed that night, I am going to have to change the prices because I won't be able to do it the morning of the 1st 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 lot of longtime 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.

[00:04:52] I did have to decrease that, unfortunately, just because, again, margins are tightening up. And in an effort to 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 a discount.

[00:05:20] 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 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 it has yielded absolutely zero paychecks for the three of us.

[00:05:48] 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, is like, you know, when the market changes, we have to respond to it. So wanted 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 you can do. Yeah. I mean, honestly, if the listeners found it interesting, like we could do a whole hour long

[00:06:17] 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'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.

[00:06:45] 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 prices in before I go to bed. And I don't want to hang y'all up. But so Nick talked about Nick brought up. Let's talk about fiscal irresponsibility. I didn't bring it up. 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

[00:07:14] about fiscal responsibility for a whole episode. No, I'm pretty sure it got brought up by the guy from Rebel Raiders. No. I'm pretty sure he said 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 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.

[00:07:43] Oh, Raggle. I knew it was somebody from the last show. Raggle Fraggle is taking the heat for this one. Thanks, buddy. Fantastic. I was going to hang it 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. Because nobody likes to hear dad advice from a 42 year old chubby guy about like, you know, protecting your finances and girding your loins.

[00:08:13] 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 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

[00:08:42] do it yourself. Everything, because that's how I was brought up. Just you do it, 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 way back there actually was entirely free. I inherited that one. But everything in that safe behind me, I did not.

[00:09:12] So one of the things I got really big into after college was shooting. At the time, I bought myself a PSA, Grappleware AR to learn. I bought myself a Beretta 92 FS to learn pistols. And I very rapidly ended up building a completely custom Gucci AR.

[00:09:36] I've mentioned on the show before, match Santan receivers, custom forend guys, the everything else capture 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. Mm hmm. 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.

[00:10:06] Yeah, I was about to say 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 3,800 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.

[00:10:36] Yeah. PRS. I'm just like, oh, 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. I think it's MDT. Mm hmm. Yeah. MDT. I think it's an LSS chassis that I then customized.

[00:11:06] Um. So, you know, we can all go a bit overboard now and then. Uh. We really need to drag Eddie on this show sometimes since he 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 an F class. I'm not sure if he's actually shot a competition yet or not.

[00:11:37] Uh, so Raul 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 to 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 to.

[00:12:02] So basically be three cars wide, two cars deep and just have the front two bays for the cars and then a bay in the back, you know, to throw a boat in and then the rest of the three car spots for a machine shop at my house. I mean, because I've got. Yeah, that'd be cool. It's it's it's going to be wildly, wildly expensive, like another house expensive before you even touch machinery.

[00:12:30] 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 four forty three phase back here right now. So. So. So you're talking about several thousand dollars just. No, 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.

[00:12:59] You just have to make money. I mean, I've just. I have to use it for profit instead of just tinkering 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.

[00:13:26] At this point in, you know, our timeline, like, you know, I understand that the world goes to hell in a handbasket or we get to go 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 want to go stargazing while we're on camping trips. I mean. And you know what? That's pretty cool. It is. I mean, your wife, I believe she teaches like a science, isn't it? She does. She teaches.

[00:13:56] OK, 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 games workshops miniatures. Yes. Those things are expensive and they are really cool.

[00:14:24] 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 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, Lorcanna, Pokemon, any of that stuff guilty. I mean, it's yeah. Yeah. You know what?

[00:14:51] Realistically, though, Warhammer is probably the cheapest of my hobbies. If you look at it from dollar spent to hours enjoyed, because unlike unlike, say, my hand reloads for my 300 Win Mag or my 30 odd six or which the 30 odd six, I really want to rechamber into like a six mil something like that, probably 6.5 or something or one of the new hot sixes.

[00:15:20] 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. Yeah. Or. What's mag dumping ARs? Well, I was I was going to say, unlike, you know, four grand on a PBS 14 plus a helmet plus a couple of laser boxes, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, plus.

[00:15:50] And it basically just comes out so I can take pictures for Instagram and stargaze, which is fine. But, you know, I mean, I was like, yes, and the whole reason that we're going to 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, is like to raggle fraggles point earlier, like, you know, what's the riskiest investment? Like, I don't do risky investments. I don't do.

[00:16:18] 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 going to friggin pay off eventually. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's all I mean, you did join the army during an active war. Actually, point of order. That's kind of a risky play. Point of order. I enlisted in 2000.

[00:16:48] Oh, OK. So never mind. I enlisted. You were you were playing it safe. I well, 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 to the full send. Yeah.

[00:17:13] My military career is interesting, though, because like I didn't join for college money or because 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.

[00:17:41] That that is the blank check you sign, though. Yeah. You don't get to you don't get to put limitations on it. Put it that way. 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.

[00:18:11] Fun. I get it. The Hoffman super safety. It's fun. I get it. What's AR ammo up to right now? I don't know. I have. 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?

[00:18:40] Jesus, my brain will not do math. Well, I mean, it's 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 round magazines, in which case you should move. Don't quite frankly. 30s. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, you're looking at 90 bucks for combat loadout. 90 to 120. Thank you, Raggle. For being risk averse, joining the military was rather risky. Yes. I know that. I know that now. I was 17.

[00:19:09] 18 year old Phil. Well, no, no, no. I enlisted when I was 17. Oh, good. 17. You're extra ignorant. 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.

[00:19:36] 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.

[00:20:06] I 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 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 pelvic girdle. Oh, for sure. Absolutely. But you know, it's good thing you brought, you know, you bring this up.

[00:20:32] 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. So 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.

[00:20:58] 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, um, 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, to the uninitiated, that will look like you're just spraying lead down range.

[00:21:28] But the other thing I think about is like from, from, so from my perspective, I've always, I've always found that 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 out

[00:21:57] 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 frigging 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?

[00:22:23] Not like, not like not safe, but just, I know that at this point, find your limits. Well, but it was, it was, it's, it was the same way when I was doing low development for that 308, you know, like I went out there with a box of 50 handless. I was just a loaded 308 rounds and laid down on a shooting mat in the prone with a Woodstock rifle bashing me in the frigging collarbone, every single shot sitting on a bipod.

[00:22:53] 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. Unbraked 300 and a hunting and 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

[00:23:19] only pump so many rifle rounds down range of a, of anything above an intermediate caliber cartridge before like just that, the, 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.

[00:23:50] Yeah. Unfortunately, my range does not. Cold, 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? You can, you can do it in the house with that.

[00:24:17] 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 and I'm here by myself, I will literally like strip all the frigging 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.

[00:24:44] 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 going to do this once I'm going to walk away. And then when I come back through, I'm coming back cold again. Yep. It's a great way to, 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, and your muscle memory is going

[00:25:11] to fall apart to your, to your lowest level of mastery every single time, every single time. And if, yeah. And I will say this much, like I've heard every argument against dry fire. I've heard every argument against training aids like Mantis. I will just say that like, I got really deep into shooting, into shooting with Mantis during COVID when the ranges were close, when ammo was hard to get ahold of, I was still here getting my reps in and it was charging.

[00:25:37] And the same argument you made about your plastic crack, you buy it once, paint it, use it forever. Yep. I'm still shooting that original Mantis X-10 that I got. You will be, yeah. And probably for a very long time. 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.

[00:26:07] I can't imagine that it is, but. No, not at their volumes. I'm pretty sure given the, uh, the trade-in program they were running for a while when they were upgrading, um, the, uh, Blackbeard to the Blackbeard 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 dad advice, since we are going to talk about fiscal irresponsibility.

[00:26:35] 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. Know what I mean? Oh yeah. I know exactly what you mean, but I think you picked some good ones here. I think that, uh, this is some stuff that even two or three years ago was not as prevalent. Five years ago was non-existent. Yeah.

[00:27:03] Well, the first thing I want to talk about is actually the thing that I, 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 Ram with a Hemi in it for a reason, Phil. Yeah. Well, I, I bought a Toyota, which means I have the, um, 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.

[00:27:34] 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 the flow tracks. Flow traffic. And yet I noticed I was getting pretty consistently about 17 miles per gallon at 75 miles an hour,

[00:28:02] which is awful fuel economy for V for a four liter V6. 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.

[00:28:33] Start more than once. This is how you become addicted, Phil. Addicted to what? Math. Look, all I'm going to say is like that this has been my nerdy little self since, I don't know, high school, but it excels my wheelhouse. It's 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.

[00:29:01] But what I did was I benchmarked 17, 18 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 this was my cost per trip at those three different fuel economies, which is coming out to like 90 cent different to go from 17 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.

[00:29:27] It doesn't sound like a lot, but the more I thought about it, I started thinking about annualizing that. Excuse me one second while I clear. Okay. Get the frog out. Get back to work. So annualizing that, you're talking about a difference. Again, it's 17, 18 and 19 miles per gallon, which 17 miles per gallon, 75 miles an hour, and 19 is closer to 70.

[00:29:52] 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 bell, just a little bit starts to really add up to dollars at the end of the year.

[00:30:22] But then my brain went another place and I was like, okay, someone's going to make the argument like, oh, you can just go buy the cheap gas and then you can floor 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 going to 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.

[00:30:52] And then I ran these calculations backwards to figure out what cost per gallon I had to get to get my fuel cost annually down 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.

[00:31:21] 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.

[00:31:45] 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. How long does that drive take? And what's your hourly rate at work? Like 40 minutes. Plus, you got to remember, there's a really good ice cream place on the way.

[00:32:15] I guess I'll give you that. My wife likes ice cream. But I will just say that, you know, all these things being what they are, that was kind of the use case I started going around in my head was... Oh, did I do that math wrong? What math? Nick, you're a whole dollar higher for gas. I might have done that math wrong. Your wife is calling you out on your math, bro. Well, I could be wrong. I mean, I bought gas in Woodstock yesterday and it was like 430, I think it was.

[00:32:45] I don't know what it is right now over the border in Wisconsin. I'd have to look. And see, that's kind of the thing of it is like... Unless I flipped those numbers in my head and it was 340. But see, to me, I guess my takeaway is that 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 gas in Wisconsin, you're talking about a not inconsequential cost savings over the year. Oh, you absolutely are.

[00:33:13] 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 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.

[00:33:41] 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 tire is not aired up, it decreases the roll in diameter, which means you have to determine where 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 can. And it really just comes down to like, if you were trying to justify putting off maintenance

[00:34:08] on your vehicle that would decrease your gas mileage, what I'm trying to present to y'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 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 in our lives. Yeah. Two-stroke truck. Yeah. Yeah. I had that farm truck.

[00:34:34] That was a Toyota with a 22 RE and 288,000 miles. And when I sold it, the guy that bought it literally only bought it for the, um, for the bed. That makes sense. Yeah. Well, his bed was rusted out and mine was in damn near perfect shape. But then the funny part is when he came and looked at my truck, he was like, uh, your whole truck is in better shape than the one I was rebuilding.

[00:35:00] So, um, he took my truck, he repaired the front end damage cause I'd hit somebody that pulled out in front of me. And, uh, so he repaired or replaced the bumper, the front grill, the hood and the fender, and then put his engine transmission rear end, basically all at the drive train out of the truck he was rebuilding, put it 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

[00:35:27] to rebuild it, which was not going to be a popular decision living in an apartment complex. Yeah. 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 you're 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 cause new Orleans drivers.

[00:35:57] So I got home and ran through a spreadsheet and I was like, Oh, I did not expect that. 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 $200 a year. I think it was 185. Well, to go from 17 miles per gallon. Oh, you're going one step at a time. Yeah.

[00:36:25] To go from 17 to 19 miles per gallon, it's more like $500 a year, which I don't know about the rest of 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. 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 the, this

[00:36:53] next one here, just because this wasn't a problem. The, the, 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, a firm after pay says all whatever the else they're called. I first became aware of this a couple of years ago and I have to admit I was, um, I couldn't

[00:37:23] 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, uh, you see people financing stuff like, uh, takeout fast food stuff on Amazon.

[00:37:46] Um, I've even heard of people after paying their groceries, which that's, that's wild to me. Uh, 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 you, it's a, 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.

[00:38:11] But if you don't, it's credit card, like interest rates, but compounded weekly instead of yearly or monthly. Yes. It's 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

[00:38:37] 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 new products to market. I went through and did a lot of right sizing on the pricing model. Like I did all the business, the nerdy business crap. Cause that's what I'm good at. And one of the things that came up in that discussion was things like Klarna or affirm. Now disaster coffee does allow shop pay, which is one of these installment plans.

[00:39:07] But if I recall correctly, I think that was baked in like with PayPal. Like we had, we have no option. PayPal does have one. 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 microfinancing schemes, I, I like stood on business and told, got told the guys, I'm like, I, I do not like these from a personal standpoint. I think they're exploitive. I do not want to offer these to our customers.

[00:39:35] Like these, these are as predatory as a payday loan. I think they're more predatory to be perfectly honest. Cause 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 down where you might get shanked in the parking lot for your fake Rolex. But these things it's like, it's, it's ubiquitous. It's every freaking online. Payday loans on your phone now. Oh, Jesus Christ in heaven. Yeah. You can get, uh, what is it?

[00:40:04] 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. CERN did it. Okay. So now that my, um, any faith I had left in humanity has been thoroughly expunged now. Thank you for that. Nick, you fulfilled your, you're welcome. You fulfilled your obligation as my cohost yet again, by making me try to crush timeline.

[00:40:34] I listen in, I live in. It keeps your life interesting, Phil. It keeps your life interesting. My, but no, these things, the, I think you, 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, I almost wonder if they're as equivalently insidious to like store credit cards.

[00:41:03] 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 is so much more proof that the, our economy is on his last leg. And I'm just, I think he's right though. Be, you know, Jeff says that just more proof the economy is on his last leg, you know, people

[00:41:33] not having cash on hand for small purchases. That's a problem. I, I question if that's even the, the, the root cause of this symptom though. I, I really, I, 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 fricking programmed from birth to just want shit that they don't need for reasons.

[00:42:03] Just cause 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 sizzle and break up into four installment payments, fricking taco bell for God's sakes.

[00:42:29] Like, yeah, I, I want to study whatever sociopathy convinced somebody they had to finance a fricking 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. Cause somebody will pay it and somebody will pay it late and you can collect a fee on top of it. You know, guy, the comments, you know, I get it.

[00:42:56] Not wanting to carry cash on you by cash on hand. I mean, debit card, checking account, that sort of thing. You have the money to, 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, you've got the liquid assets to get what you need without having to incur that. That's what I'm, 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 token tokens for goods and everything like that.

[00:43:26] 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 it with 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.

[00:43:53] 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. Probably. And like, that is the most, that is the most deadpan. I don't even know what the word is for it. 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.

[00:44:21] 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, a lot of people, Phil, don't see the government that way. They don't.

[00:44:48] 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, you know, they say, oh, no, you just go to jail. Okay, what happens if you don't want to go to jail? Okay, then you get shot. Yeah. But 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.

[00:45:18] I'm like, hey, man, some people, all they're looking for is three hots and a cot. Okay. 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 and 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 prison anymore. Now they have bankruptcy laws. Yep. And you can't get all that stuff expunged. Just saying. Oh, yeah. Some of it. Some of it you definitely can't. Student loans, I think, are on there.

[00:45:47] Medical debt cannot be expunged. 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.

[00:46:08] And by the way, if you are over the age of 18 and you have more assets than $100 in your wallet, you should look into your state's bankruptcy laws and laws regarding 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 into details.

[00:46:31] Like, 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, however, strip whatever assets they would have had to pass on to their next of kin. I have made the case to my wife, like, don't expect anything for inheritance. Just make peace with it now.

[00:46:59] Well, 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 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? Something like that.

[00:47:26] 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 insert the conspiracy theory about how the rates of need 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.

[00:47:54] 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 to ashes than be inconvenienced for a brief moment.

[00:48:22] 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 murked. No, probably. But once the signal's out, what are you going to 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 entirety of the internet is really nothing. Don't look at it.

[00:48:49] 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 genetics. No offense to anybody that falls into those groups.

[00:49:09] 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 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.

[00:49:37] They don't tend to get thrown out. Same with politics. So a guy that comments just said one trillion. I don't have a concept of something that big. Thirty six trillion going to turn 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.

[00:50:06] So the rate at which the thing increases, the rate itself increases. So it's in other words, like if you're if the increase was steady, that'd be a straight line on a graph. And that's a 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 it's a parabola. It's a it's a curve. And at some point it goes vertical. And the same thing goes for wealth building.

[00:50:35] It does go for wealth building. Unfortunately, I'm talking about slower curve. Unfortunately, I'm talking about the national debt. And yeah, that's an aggressive curve. I'm just going to tell you that when when our net, when the when the debt, when the interest on our national debt hits a certain amount, that curve is going to go vertical.

[00:50:56] 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. But 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. No, we've gone to war over far sillier things than made up numbers.

[00:51:25] 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 student shot a politically relatively unimportant politician. An anarchist. Yeah.

[00:51:54] Shot a relatively unimportant politician. And then it turned into I'm going to bring my buddies to the fight and I'm going to bring my buddies to the fight. And that continued until the entire world was at war. So, you know, anyway, so we've already kind of talked about payday loans. Payday loans are freaking like disgusting because like to me, the part that's frustrating about them is they prey upon, in my opinion, like a pretty vulnerable population.

[00:52:18] 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 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.

[00:52:45] Very often, at least in my experience, and this might sound really crappy and I don't care if it sounds crappy as 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 want to 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 sophisticated enough to understand that this is, you are playing craps and the casino never loses.

[00:53:16] Like 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 like you had to roll that another paycheck, you'll be paying that off for months and months if you ever pay it off. Like it's an amount of debt that is crippling.

[00:53:41] 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 afterpays and the Klarnos, except for they, like you said earlier, you know, they're slightly more easily available and to younger people. Yeah. I don't, man, I don't know if there's a minimum age to start doing these afterpay things.

[00:54:10] 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.

[00:54:24] 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 hauls, if you were, if someone under the age of 18, if a 17 year old with a debit card tried to pull one of these and then told Karna or Cezal 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.

[00:54:48] 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 legally an adult, therefore contracts are enforceable.

[00:55:01] But that being said, I, I, I feel like because of the amounts of money that these microfinancing schemes are, you know, going after and handling, it's one of those things where like 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 like the numbers add up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm sure it does for them. I'm sure that they're not, they're not losing money doing it.

[00:55:26] 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.

[00:55:53] They have said night vision is the one thing because of the capability it 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.

[00:56:17] If you don't have three or four G's to whoop out of a savings account and drop on it and pay it off right now in cash, you cannot afford it. Period. End discussion. So I just did quick mental math about $6,000. You think night vision for the final. So for let's call it PVS 14 plus late light and laser. And helmet. You know what? There, there, there's a much simpler way to get to that answer. Oh yeah.

[00:56:47] Those, those boys that we had on the show, they had, they had a whole kit. Tell me what that kit 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 a paycheck to get yourself a set of night vision goggles? A hundred 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.

[00:57:12] I'm betting Phil comes back at me with a number probably in the 4,700 to 50, 5,100. We're talking about a turnkey. So a monocle, a helmet and a laser box, right? Yep. Laser box. Yep. Uh, on sale right now. Wow. So let me, um, pop this. Let's go with the full price. Don't look at the discount. Give me the full price. Oh, I'll give it to you both ways. All right.

[00:57:41] Oh, so, um, show and tell. Okay. So 52 95 full price, but on sale right now for a 44 95 from us night vision. Y'all are welcome for the free plug. The, uh, so let's, let's say you're, you're shooting like, okay, this is the night vision. I want to get Duncan. That boy's always on there. Hang on a second. He will answer you while he's on the show being interviewed by us.

[00:58:10] Cause I was messaging him on there while we were talking. So, uh, say 52,00 52 95. So that is a year and one week of throwing a hundred bucks aside every paycheck every, every week. Yeah. So just for, you can put that on a credit card at 27% interest. Yeah. Low end.

[00:58:40] So, um, just, just for the audience, that was not AI. That was literally Duncan. The, um, who works for us night vision. And, um, 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. Um, like don't, don't jerk his chain too hard. Just tell him we sent you over there. But he's a cool dude. He knows a ton about night vision. Yeah, he absolutely does. And he doesn't sleep. If you were to, yeah, if you were to put that on a credit card, 27% interest, that's

[00:59:09] another $1,400. Just napkin math. Yeah. And another $1,400 would upgrade you into, would upgrade you from the laser box. Well, here's the thing. Another $1,400. So that turnkey package was like a very entry-level helmet with nothing on it, no accessories. Yeah. A mount, a PBS-14 and a laser box that would have, um, I think it was the DIR-1.

[00:59:38] So it's just the IR laser. $1,400 would either kit out that helmet fairly nice. It lets you put, um, 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. Uh, it would let you upgrade that DIR-1 into the DIR-V so that you would actually have visible laser and the, um, and the IR laser and the IR illuminator, which is a much nicer setup than that. Much nicer.

[01:00:08] 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's 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 $1,400 you would have to

[01:00:36] 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 know, you said it earlier, like that's the, 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...

[01:01:03] Well, 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. But I personally don't think you should put any tactical gear on debt.

[01:01:35] Convenience tax? That's another good way to call it. Jeff Paul. 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,

[01:02:02] I always go back to this idea that like, look, you can achieve 90% of your preparedness goals. Call it 80% fairly reasonably. You don't need 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 in. You can do most of these things fairly reasonably priced to start and then build on it over time.

[01:02:32] 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 if you can't, like I said before, if you can't drop four or five G's, 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 the financial position. Do it right now. Absolutely.

[01:03:03] But, you know, 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 obligations, everything was South Carolina. Yeah. Closest one to me is MDFI. Yeah.

[01:03:31] 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. Getting through Texas. You could drive for 24 hours and still be in Texas once you get there. So it's really one of those things.

[01:03:52] 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 in my head and just walked around in the dark. Sure. Because, which is a perfectly acceptable way to train yourself. But the point I was getting to with that is, Phil, if you're going to get into night vision for a hobby, find out if there's night vision shooting classes near you first before you buy them.

[01:04:20] 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 once did were we actually because we weren't combat arms. Sure.

[01:04:43] We never once learned like running around playing Call of Duty, you know, shooting under night vision with laser boxes on our rifles. I wasn't. No, you drove under night vision. We drove, we did sentry duty, we patrolled, we did all kinds of things. And that's kind of where I always go when night vision comes up in the conversations. I'm like, you know, shooting with night vision is fun, but it's like 20% of what you can do with night vision.

[01:05:04] There's a lot of administrative crap you can do with night vision that you can practice in your backyard or in the woods next to your house. 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.

[01:05:34] Yeah. For the and they tell you that when they buy it like, oh, yeah, you know, I'm going to 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.

[01:06:04] 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, 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. That's the longest I've heard. Jesus Christ in heaven.

[01:06:31] 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, 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.

[01:07:00] The further out you finance it. It's because the further out you finance it, you're 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, 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.

[01:07:29] I just found one online. I did not believe him. No. Who? Who? Yes. What company? What? Like, it was, uh, let 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.

[01:07:58] And I'm going to say that like, I, I am upset enough by that, that I think I would, I would rubber stamp the government stepping in and say 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 10 years. At least not with the same driver. But then again, the other part of this is my truck is 10 years old, long auto financing and negative. Well, dude, my, my Toyota is 10 years old. Yeah, that's fair.

[01:08:26] Maybe it would still be on the road, but definitely not going to be with the same driver more than likely. Okay. But now it's 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 forth work. You're going to have 300,000 miles on the son of a bitch. By the time you're done paying it off.

[01:08:49] 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 fricking 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 going. Roll under there. Yeah. It was just, it was just one of those exhaust U bolts that sits underneath there.

[01:09:19] It's just rattling around on the exhaust pipe. You're not wrong, man. Up here, you get rust. I had Dodge had a problem with their, with where they punched out their frame rail for their gas tank mount on their, uh, what was it? 2014 through 2018, uh, 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. Oh, Jesus Christ. All the time.

[01:09:49] I was going down, I was going down the road the one day and I felt something shift. Like, huh, I don't have any cargo in the bed. Get to work. Look under there. Oh, that's not good. Gas tank's about five inches off the ground. The front strap, 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, that was all I wanted to do is throw this at the very end.

[01:10:18] And I, 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 yet. 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 frigging do favors for him in the parking lot.

[01:10:45] If you have to, to get the car fixed so that you could drive to and from work, you are going to pay that son of a 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 don't. You just end up putting yourself so far behind the eight ball that you're never going to get away from it again.

[01:11:12] Well, when you consider the fact that like a new car is worth 80% 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 keating initiative the first time, you were already in the negative because you were already like 120, 130, 140% MSRP in debt. Yep. Yep.

[01:11:39] Which means the minutes drive it off a lot, you now owe twice as much as the vehicle is worth with one mile on it. Ironically, 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 their vehicle wrecked the second they leave the dealership. I feel like that's a lot of Mustangs and Hellcats. No, man.

[01:12:02] There's a, so there's a dealership in town where I grew up that has a, 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. Yeah. So I, I have, I have personally watched it happen while my truck was getting an oil change.

[01:12:25] Guy pulls out in a brand new F2 or a Ram 2,500 or 3,500, 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. But is insurance going to pay for your negative equity, Phil? Uh, no. Nope. Not at all.

[01:12:53] In fact, you're going to get probably 80% of what you paid for that vehicle. I was going to 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, up to the full purchase price of your vehicle. Which does not include any rolled in negative equity.

[01:13:19] 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 hole 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.

[01:13:48] 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. Yeah. This was something I was, I was thinking about like right before the show started. Oh Christ, I lost it that fast. 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.

[01:14:17] Wasn't 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, you know, debt at 28% interest, then y'all are just beyond hell. 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.

[01:14:48] 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. Throw it on Instagram. Yeah. I guess to me, like at the end of the day, like anytime we get in discussions about finances, especially about stupid financial decisions.

[01:15:17] I always go back to this idea that like, I have known perilously few people who have gotten royally 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 them. I've known a couple who had some horrible financial luck. But I see what we were talking about earlier. The Venn diagram becomes a little concentric. There's a Venn diagram here.

[01:15:47] 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 definitely not. But I would also say that like, you know, this is the discussion I get into with people whenever they talk. Like we had a discussion with Rebel last week about the economy and the recession and inflation and how hard things were. And I was like, yes. But in every system you have choices.

[01:16:15] And those choices can make the worst system a little better and the best system a little worse. Oh, absolutely. It can 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 and raving about.

[01:16:43] Like, please, for the love of Christ, stop doing this 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. If you can live without it and you cannot pay cash for it, you should abstain. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Okay.

[01:17:13] Anything else to chuck in here? That's all I got, man. All right. I'm going to kick myself because I know as soon as we sign out, I'm going to 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 until Saturday morning. So if you think about it on the commute into work, stick a memo as an addendum on the end of the show. But now that you've given me that out, it is completely gone. It's just lost. That's fine.

[01:17:41] We'll find out later if Phil remembered tomorrow morning. I wouldn't hold y'all's breath. All right. Matter of fact, it's going to go out the door for your Disaster Coffee customer. Promo code MOF. Contrary to what Stuart 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 tell me it does work. So promo code MOF will save you a couple percent off your coffee order. Disastercoffee.com.

[01:18:08] 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 SOBs for coffee. But I'm going to be a kind-hearted prepper this one time and try to warn y'all. Get your order in. Don't wait until the last minute. And stop financing stupid stuff y'all can't afford anyway. Good night, everybody. Good night.