Matter of Facts: Mo Money, Mo Problems

Welcome back to the Matter of Facts podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping, guns, politics every week on iTunes, Ditcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwefpodcast dot com. On Facebook or Instagram. You can support us be a Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Raveley Andrew Nicker on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter of Facts Podcast, Phil and Nicker. Here we might have a surprise guest, but I don't know. It kind of depends on when I finds his headphones and whether or not takes in the paths. But we're here. Raggle Fraggle asks 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 like I indulge in nerdy crap and I actually talk my degree. My education is in business and finance, so unlike a lot of people in the preparedness community, like I do advocate for things like I raise and savans 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 something 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 US for like, is it seventy years, eighty years? And kind of my perspective is is like if I've met those people, and I don't begrudge them, but I just I just frankly disagree. But I've met those people out there who look at talks about finance and retirement and 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 if 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 been very burned out by life in general as it sits in to begin with that 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 top dog. Yeah, the other group, but it's possible. The other group I've met that I can't seem to get on board with is they're a bunch that like, have you ever met that person that like the 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 our body, I'm like, if you don't want to be that guy who was seventy two years old working as a Walmart reader, Like, if you want, if you 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. Well, yes, 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. Well, and we and we've talked about doom spending as a phenomenon in society these days, like, oh. It's extremely common. It more and more now. And people that. Not people in my social circles, but people in my parasocial 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. Like 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 to the local distillery, had a couple of drinks, listening to 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 gonna do. It's not gonna 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 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 twenties 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 which you spend taking your girl out of how for dinner one week, Like you put a minimum amount of a way every month and you just sit on it and let it build interest over time. You start that in your twenties, Like I didn't start saving for retirement until I was thirty, and trust me, at forty three, 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 thirty two, 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 gips in the house and market like the one we're about to have for any minute now. But over the long. Term, yeah, over the long term, it's at least a non depreciator, as 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 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, he's we were I was thirty three or thirty four when we sat down and talked to him. He said, he said, you guys are way ahead of the game. He said, I typically do not see people until they're in their mid forties and they have zero retirements. He said, The average person he sees is a a forty two to forty six 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 forties. 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 about that a lot of these people are not even considering sitting down with the financial planner until they're in their mid forties. Yeah, that's that's frankly alarming. It is because there's a lot of the stuff that like you and I were having a conversation before the show about you were attempting to build a spreadsheet to map 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 is like five hundred bucks to one time fee five hundred bucks and you get lifetime consultations with through that plan. That's not awful. Let me it's really not. 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 into topic. And I got a message from our possible surprise surprise guests 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 no, unless when no, no, no, he does. 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 Ragle 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 minute time. We're gonna punt till next week, 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, are haranguet us and promoting bad behavior and contribute to our delinquency. But we appreciate them. They keep the show on the road. Code MLF and disaster coffee. I am drinking Disaster coffee and on Monday, I will have fifteen more pounds of bunker beans going on that shelf back there, plus two boxes of our coffee pods because at my workplace, unfortunately it's uh cug machines or do without. Have you seen the reusable kurrig pods. Yes, we bring those with us on vacation and we bring our own coffee. You can try that, so I could, but the problem is that our sinks at work don't have garbagesposal And to minimize mess, what I actually did was Amazon sells sleeves you can buy in bulk of like do it yourself disposable coffee pots. They have a little snaptop lid and a little gasket and like the little membrane on the top that the needle punches through. Yeah, it's a self contained curic Curate compatible because you can't use the trademark but Curate compatible pod. Oh look, who's about to join. I'm just gonna sit here and wait for him to boot himself in. He knows how I think he can click thee Oh god, how's it going? Need the reminder that you still had admin privileges? Huh bud, Well, I just couldn't remember which. Uh the I cann't remember which the host was? All right, So for the audio listeners, Uh, long time, long long? How do I put this? Long time no ce co host Andrew has rejoined us? Yeah? Random night off. Well, 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 Garret's fod who told you guys at it's Wraggle Fragle's fault. He asked for it. Literally, Hey, yeah, no, it's uh, it's been a busy year, two years or whatever if it's been yeah, yeah, has been. Uh Jeff jag he's alive, Wraggle fragg and Fragles saying welcome back, buddy, you've been misbudded. Mm hmmm, 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. Merchant of the Southern Gals links in the show description by Shirt made Chris happy Now, Andrew, I think we told you before the 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're and they're fun. Okay, But there's fun dumb decisions. Okay, there's like dumb decisions like smacking your significant other on the button, running away, giggling like a schoolgirl. That's a fun dumb decision, true and free. Oh no, you you end up paying for one way or the other, Bud. Some consequences are worth it. 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 ninety six months at twenty percent 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 banter 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 I have to explain to the listeners what currency is. Don't be as smart elegant say it's money, phil because I know that, but that's not the point. So like by the government, Yeah, well yeah, yeah, it is a technical so yes, it is that, but you're not wrong. Current currency in in it like a currency in a in definition form, is a medium of exchange. It's like, you know, the age old the old adage I use is is that if I have goats, and Andrew has chickens and Nick has cows, you know, obviously he's gonna 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 gonna 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 entired cow, or if he doesn't want to sell his entire cow. Now we're in a situation where 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 one dollar and a cow is worth one hundred dollars, now it's one hundred 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, in most countries where like your currency either had precious metal embedded in it, or at a minimum, we had this pressure. We had precious metal set off someplace on the side, and we only made an x number dollars relative to that amount of currents that amount of precious metal. So the dollar bill was backed by something. And then at some point in our nation's history, and 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 worth a dollar, and one hundred of them buys a cow and one buys a chicken, And the next thing you know, Phil's got the Hewlett packards churning them a churning them out because I need to. I want to buy more cows. The minute everybody else gets onto 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 had the legal right to print as much as I want. So we have one hundred dollars in circulation and I print another hundred. What do you think just happened to the value of all those dollars? Because I just double them on. 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 by like the GDP of a country, and if the GDP didn't double but the Dad money spy did, then the assets the currency's worth half what it was before. I'm not making any of this up. This is just basic supplying demand. Its fine. Demand does apply to currency, even though people want us to act like it doesn't. Although I would argue that there is an alternate source of backing that the current US dollar is back by fil Do you know what that is? The threat that we will bomb your country to ask snatch don't. Snatch your dictator in the middle of the night and blow up your country's heroes tombstone. I mean, yeah, it's a little dark, but I can't argue with you, because yeah, that has kind of always been used. 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 was Pakistani terrorists funded by the Saudis and trained by the CIA blew up towers in the US. So we invaded Iraq. Didn't Gadafi also want to get off the dollar, stop using the petro dollar. Gaddafi did, and Hillary Clinton decided that he needed a Saddam. Yeah, yep. Are there any government watch lists? I'm not already on because because I think this might do it if we're missing any Andrew's just gonna sit there quietly and watch me, like, wait, 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 Tamahawk cruise missiles have got some sol and them, don't they. I'm sure they do, probably some goal probably some goal plating on the electrical context too, mm hmm. There you go. But it's round about precious metal backed currency. But 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? Uh, 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 big Poem is going after. In theory, and yeah, but it didn't do it. The inherent problem I have with bigcoin is is pretty much the inher problem I have with like most most non hard assets. Like, we started off by basically saying that, like, you know, this is all monopoly money, it's all fiance 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 everyone 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 gonna 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 rembrands too, but. It's not 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 in 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 publicet 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 out was turning out iPhones yesterday. If the stock losers has 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 has stock value up and down. And I think people like really get that confused with the company's worth based on the stock value. It's they're they're 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 and the stock value is driven by speculation, which quite frankly is what drives gold futures, silver futures, oil futures. It's all driven by speculation. Mm hmm. That's also where bubbles come from. But I'm gonna call out Andrew in a minute if he doesn't start speaking. You guys are talking finance. I don't know nothing. B uh enough, you have done a house at least once I slept in it. The bed was comping. Yep, I slept it. I slept in his bed right next to a like cruiser ready thirteen oh one. It was quite a vibe. Yeah, make sure you tell everybody that I was on the couch and Gillian was with you, because you know. I mean I wasn't. I was going to tell her about you and I shared a bed and I was the big spoon. But you ruined that, thanks bud Well. I mean to be expected. I would throw that in just to need just to make Eddie jealous. Mm hmm. All right, So let 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 rants about interest rates and financing and blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blahn. We've done all this before. But this time I had a really stupid idea. I don't know if stupid sid Oh, it's gonna be a stupid idea because we're never gonna do this game because no one's gonna 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 Raggle. So what I did, and as of right now I cannot see what's going on in stream yard 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 war it works out the same that the principles work the same on anything. It's just gonna be longer terms. So see Raggle likes 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 dumped some numbers in fifty thousand dollars principal seven percent interest rate. This is ostensibly like your average New car Loob right now, about fifty grand. Seven percent is about the prime the prime credit score, the prime interest rate. If you have a perfect credit score, it's seven percent. I mean, we could take it down to five and a half 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 thirty six percent. The worst I heard of was twenty nine point nine, 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 card because I have to actually plug this in real time to make the math math so wily this works is that you start out with your fifty thousand dollars in principle, you make your payment this much as interest as much as principle paid, and this is your first month, second month, and third and fourth and so on so forth. So if we drag this out to sixty months, which is a five year auto loan, you can see right there is where the brinsmore Mana drops down like four dollars and thirty cents. And I'm just not pissing around with the pennies to try to make this go to zero because it's not going too perfectly. But anyway, so. Five years, nine hundred ninety dollars, that pays all, that pays your interest, that pays off all your principle. This gets you back down to zero and you own the asset and you paid fifty five hundred dollars fifty five hundred and fourteen dollars and fifty cents over the 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 y'all how catastrophically stupid of an idea it is to stretch this loan, this loaner' payment 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 spreads she goes all the way out to ninety six months. The worst auto loan I've ever heard of was thirty six percent for seven years. Okay, thirty six percent. 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 thirty six percent car loan for seven years. We're going up, so we need what that. Bear with me. I got to put in stupid numbers, make this, oh you do? Okay, Now we're getting somewhere sixteen fifty sixteen forty, sixteen thirty five. Uh, now we're getting closed sixteen thirty six, sixteen thirty seven, sixteen thirty six fifty maybe. Okay, that's probably as close as I'm willing to try to get this. So seven year loan repayment eighty four months fifty thousand do our principal an average use card, not even a really expensive one thirty six percent 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 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 in 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 Readvertise every month. They Readvertize every year. But I'm not effing around with the spreadsheet enough to try to make it do that. So y'all just got 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 principle in month one, it's one hundred and thirty six dollars and fifty cents. And this is less than number two on top of stretching out loan payments is dumb. Your first month, your first payment, this is all you paid towards principle. You paid sixteen hundred dollars in change mortgage money, and you paid one hundred and thirty six to fifty half of my weekly grocery run, less than half my weekly grocery run. And that's all you paid off on the principle. Matter of fact, if we take this out to your first year, you only paid nineteen hundred and thirty seven to twenty against the principle by the end of the first year, and in that amount of time you paid seventeen thousand, seven hundred and eighty dollars seventeen thousand, seven hundred dollars and eighty cents 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 ragal want 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 to do is make it less one. But making it less worse is still a really good idea. Oh it absolutely. Now here's the thing. Let's look at this reasonably same payment seven percent, trying to think what I had. Let's five years, that's a good reasonable rate. I think I had like six hundred and thirty six dollars some change in here. That n six point fifty. 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 See keep gone. 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 nine hundred ninety dollars. That's fifty thousand and seven percent interest rates. So 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 seven percent turn it into nine percent, and now we need to throw how much extra to get this loan back down to zero thousand, forty thousand and thirty thousand, thirty five getting closer one thousand, thirty six. Okay, so on thousand and thirty seven and some change. So we started what nine ninety You got to throw an extra fifty bucks basically at this loan if your interest rate goes up two points, not awful. But now let's take it to nineteen percent. This is subprime, by the way, this is carg repode. You know, can't 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 credit your interest rates at that point are hovering the twenty five to twenty nine percent range, they get catastrophically bad. But at ninet two percent interest at the five year mark, we still have We still owe twenty five We still have to value this vehicle at the five year. Mark, and you're probably looking well like two thousand and fifty something. For payment. Oh, we're getting closed at thirteen. Fifteen, twelve ninety, twelve, ninety five, getting closed twelve ninety six. Twelve ninety seven might put us a hair over. Okay, that's close enough to one thousand, two hundred and ninety seven dollars monthly payment. Will pay off that loan in five years. You're totally interest paid. Though you remember we start off at like fifty five hundred dollars totally interest paid. Now, with a nineteen percent interest rate, that total interest paid has jumped up to just a hair over twelve thousand 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 fifty years, And the minute I heard that, I literally started seething in anger. The only thing that does is increases housing price. 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 that 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 I said, 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 for how much principle gets paid. And obviously when you stretch these these loan terms out further and further, you end up with a lot more interest paid initially and a lot less principle. But that has an alternate effect that a lot of people don't think about. See six ninety eight thirty three. Nick. I don't want to dig in your finances too much, but like, do you have consistently an extra seven hundred dollars a month to throw at something where you can make a double principal payment. Yeah? Yeah, but would it makes. Part to why I'm considering buying a boat. But what it makes sense to do that versus putting that same money in your IRA or into your house to pay off that debt. Further, like, is seven hundred dollars extra month a wise investment to pay off a depreciating asset? Or is that better spent putting in some place where it's going to increase in value over time. It'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 below three percent, 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 to like three percent now, so it might be close to inflation. But I think last I checked, my retirement account is doing an annual return of like twelve or thirteen percent, doing really well. So nope, 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 some numbers because I'm trying to get back to. Something I had figured out a while ago. Sure, but you know that 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 gill and 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 three hundred dollars to chuck at this. It got spent on things like you know, feed and free feeding a family. But you don't have to double this three hundred and seventy seven dollars a month car payment. All you have to do is throw an extra fifty or one hundred bucks a month consistently at this. And now, what's fifty dollars on top of three seventy seven And that's like four. Twenty two thing, Yeah, four twenty. Three and four hundred and twenty three an extra fifty dollars and we pay this loan off eight months early. So what I'm trying to illustrate here is like cut the interest to almost in half. Yeah, So here, here's the kicker finance a reasonable amount. I'm not here to tell you buy used. I'm here and not here to tell you buy new. They both have their 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 thirty percent value the minute of sixth attire off the dealership slot. And if you can't afford to put that much down to like cover thirty percent the value of the vehicle, suit's right side up on it the day you'd 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 Chase seen the perfect credit score and credit utilization also her nonsense. If your credit score is like low seven hundreds and up, you're probably doing okay enough to get a decent interest rate. But the secret bill have you ever have you ever tracked your credit score over like six months on a weekly basis. I don't care enough to I did to prove to one of my coworkers 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 fifteenth every month, every single month, without fail. They are all paid. Our credit utilization stays at about the same. You know credit We use credit cards here there, chop online, gas whatever, pay them off pretty much every month. And I have watched my credit score hockey puck five to thirty points inside of a month. Which is exactly the reason why I said I don't care. Just the same exactly. It's like like I said it's witchcraft. The number really doesn't mean anything as long as you try and stay above like seven hundred. 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 units 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 twenty five fifty seventy five bucks a month extra, find the freaking money someplace you. If you financed a vehicle and your financial situation as such that you don't have fifty dollars a month extra to put towards paying it off, you probably finance too much. In your stretch too thin. Like I'm just being really harsh but very realistic with you, Like fifty 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 they'll paying less interest over life alone is really lead. 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, that's that's really what it is. And when you pay a lot of interest, you're literally taking a pile of money, going down in the front yard, setting it on fire, and throwing it up in the air. Yep. Yeah, you you are wasting a certain percentage of your income that way. Yeah. So, well, not wasting, you're giving it away. So since we're talking interest rates and financing, I just got one earthing 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 agree with me that the math wasn't mathing. No, something in my calculations was really screwy, because it was saying that like the I ray that I had like built out in Excel was like increasing value to that's just not mathematically possible. No, it was it was like, what was it going up eleven times in ten years, which, yeah, your money will about double in the stock market in in IRA in every ten years or so. The wacky part of those that like at the one year mark and even at the five year mark, like the wheels were still on the bus. It was, it was, it was plausible, it was close. And then when you got when you got to one hundred and twenty months, it was like, Nope, this no longer makes sense. But 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 off talking about investing young and starting young in the fact that this is a marathon, not a sprint race. So what I wanted the ballpark was, let's say you purchase an appreciating asset. It's valued at one hundred dollars to day, and none of this accounts for inflation, and I get that. Just stick with me. It's principal. I'm trying to illustrate. And your rate of return is five percent, given that the stock market tends to outperform that, you know, year after year, with the exception of major downturns. Well, I was gonna say, it's an eight percent considered the all time average. We can do that if you want. Well, no, I was just saying for people's knowledge, I believe eight percent is considered the average up years, down years, all years combined, which is why most people recommend you you never draw more than four percent out of your retirement to count after your retire in a year. Yeah, but 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 one hundred dollars starting value. And this is interest crewing month to month. And as we track this out over a ten 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 y'all, I've heard me talk before about when the graph goes vertical, and this is what I'm referring to. 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 graph starts picking up speed and picking up speed and turning more and more vertical. And this is 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, 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 thirteen years into saving for retirement and it's really only been within the last couple of years that the IRA has really like started to pick up speed, where the interests earned 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 where 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 your creed in the first year, because the principle that you're earning interest on is higher in the last year. Yep. But funny little thing about spreadsheet should get to full with the numbers in real time. So you said eight percent, right, that's about average. I believe if I if I remember correctly what I was told by the financial advisor, you can anticipate about eight percent 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 change that interest for 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 gonna. 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 of real time. So you see here in Midtaly, 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 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 at a certain point and I couldn't justify like why it was doing that. And the weird part is is that I'm really good at spreadsheets, and I've double check my math and the formulas three times, including at seventy twenty one central right before we went on. I still can't figure out, like what I'm overlooking. I floating point error, 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. No, eventually I will, but I don't know. I got this idea like six point thirty to build this because I didn't want to just talk about this again. I wanted to actually be able to put numbers to it and show y'all graphs and like demonstrate for the listeners why this stuff works the way it does instead of just you know, typical Phil talking about nonsense. Usual. I wouldn't call it nosense. 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 used to I still do have this coworker. He actually works for a different agency than I do now, but still in the same department, so like we 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 s F units. The dude can frig in 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 a fire and thrown 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 was kind about it. I was 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 girl, you worked, you and your girlfriend both smoke, Like you go, get you go, 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 it What does a pack of cigarettes cost? Anyway? I think last time I walked into the gas station, they were like twelve dollars. The last time I remember buying cigarettes, I want to say, like five fifty six bucks a pack. I remember when I was in Iraq buying cartons for twenty two bucks a whack for a carton. But that was like Noboro Reds, which is kind of like your basic one is ten bucks. Of Holy Jesus Christ. In my state, Yeah, in in my state, ten bucks a pack for Marlboro Reds. So if you're a pack a day, that's one hundred bucks a week, or no, that's seventy bucks a week. Jesus. Yeah, there's your there's your extra fifty plus some going out money or right there and just your cigarettes and one. With yeah, And I mean, look, I get it if you're a smoker, like, oh, it's an addiction. I have my chemical addictions too. Like, let 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 you have to do things that are not fine, they're not popular, they're not comfortable, but they are necessary because like there, y'all both hold heard like the old story the parable of like the ant 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 my dad told me, very very frankly, he said, look, there's only three ways to get ahead life. You can be born lucky and rabbit ays aren't. You can be bored rich and rabbit ays aren't born rich either. Or you can work twice as hard for twice as long 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 roll. 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 forty three years. It's probably gonna 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, you don't even have. I might even like ask them 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 that would essentially end low interest rate loans. I know that. And by low interest rate, I mean below fifteen percent. 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, I will, 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 do need in stupid ways. Don't do any of that, because that's just wasting money. And your money's 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 you can save half as much per month and start ten 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 gonna take care of ourselves, We're gonna be good to our bodies, we're gonna be in good health, we're gonna 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 your mid fifties when you were planning on work into sixty seven or sixty eight, let's say best case scenario, you end up on SI ss ID like disability, but you still don't didn't have those extra ten years to plan for a 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 costs though that you do need to acknowledge. I think, because look, I'm gonna. Be realistic here. I was able to buy a house as young as I did because I was not saving for retirement. But I also bought a sixty thousand dollars house. But you also have to acknowledge the fact that I consider home ownership to be an investment in and of itself. Oh, oh, it absolutely is. It is an investment in and of itself. But there are opportunity costs and you need to way those because you're gonna 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 homewer's assurance, plus your flood insurance if you have that, so on and so forth, whatever that gap is, that amount of money needs. Going to your retirement. You are not going to live should you are not going to have a fully paid off house to retire into because you're not going that route. But that money, that extra money you were 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 yes, 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 forty years and it's doable. But you damn sure better plan ahead because I tell you what, if you think of it as well, I'm saving myself five hundred dollars a month by not buying, not being a homeowner, by renting. That's play money. You're going to be playing a lot when you're you know, sixty five 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 do not loan themselves well, to home ownership. There really are, and you know, quite frankly, there's also people that, like I don't want to say their lifestyle there 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 a 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 minute. I'd have been better off in a one bedroom apartment, pay and 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 made no it would make no sense. And now that's not even getting 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 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. Prizes with a fifty year mortgage. A fifty 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. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no no no, 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 y'all out there, regardless of who you voted, for in this past election. Don't do that shit. Do not get a fifty year mortgage. I don't care. Thirty your mortgages are insane as thirty of your mortgages are tolerable. Tolerable, Okay, they're tolerable because you were born and raised with Also, they were far more tolerable and when the interest rates were much lower. Yeah, but now that the interest rates someone like me with a three percent rate, sure, yeah, I mean, you know, if that's a situation. But I would also say that, like I hear what you're saying about, like, you know, ten year mortgages, but a ten year mortgage is also a lot more palpable when the house isn't like two hundred fifty thousand dollars start. Do you know why the houses are more now? Fell multiple reasons, But I'm assuming you're going to mention the thirty year mortgage. Thirty year mortgage. You look at the year thirty 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 value almost absolutely. Insane increase in home values. Why do you think baby boomers went from living in a twenty five thousand dollars or a ten thousand dollar 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 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're never They've never written an eighty thousand dollars check for an F one fifty lightning. They write a twelve hundred dollars check for the F one fifty lightning once a month. Its gnaws and a lot of people's sell though they do. It is it is especially when I look at my pick up up that I bought in twenty fifteen and it was like twenty six thousand dollars brand new, brand new, that exact same truck on the on the lot today. Is I think fifty two thousand dollars 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. Ah, it's too late to fix it. That's okay. So my entire premise was goofed up. I was looking at interest calculating on the value on the principle, but that's not actually how Iras worked that the interest the the interest accrues on the value of the share, and it's the number of shares you purchase. So yes, like if you won't like if a share is one thousand dollars, then you get interest on one thousand dollars. You don't get No, that still doesn't explain it. It's gonna bug me until I've figure it out. And you will figure it. I'm smart, and you will share it in the Patriot. Yeah, and I'm convinced that when I finally do figure it out, I'm gonna be really pissed in myself for not being able to put it together like on the fly, because I know this, I should know this. See Raggel. One of the reasons why you've never thought about mortgage loans being directly related to price is because most of us alive today that are in the house buying time of our lives have never known anything other than thirty year mortgages. When my grandfather signed the loan for his first house, it was a five year loan and it was eleven thousand dollars. He sold that house in two thousand and eight for four hundred and seventy thousand dollars. YEP. I will also point he added a garage, He added an outbuilding was what was changed. I will also point this out not just Raggle, 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 Nandrew update, But like I. Would just say that the same lesson that I applied to paying off my car or my truck early applies to mortgages. And it applies to mortgages even more 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 the way Okay, I didn't graph it. I probably should have. It would have made for a really interesting graph. But like, let let's 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 principle. So your very first payment is like way, wait, wait, mostly way way way up here, because most of your payment is interest, comparably small amount is principle. And it's not a 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. The you turn this from a diagonal line into a parabola by making extra principal payments so that you break down the principal remaining, which means you break down the interest accrude, and you get there faster. You get to the point where more of your money's going to principle. You get there faster by making extra principal payments every month and not big money fifty bucks better yet, simple math and anybody should be able to do this. Whatever your monthly payment is on your mortgage. I'm going to simplyle the math, round it up to the nearest hundred and add one hundred. Yep, that's all it is. If you pay like it'll pay it off five years. If you pay, let's say it's eleven eighty five, twelve hundred added up, thirteen hundred, thirteen hundreds, your print your new payment. Make sure when you increase that payment that however you pay the loan, that they apply the extra amount to principle, not to ascrow, because those smart asses will try to apply to askcrow and that doesn't do you any good. Make sure it goes to principle. 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 hundred, add one hundred. I've been doing that for years, and every time the mortge goes up and down a little bit because the escrow amount changes, I apply the same formula, round up to the nearest hundred, add another one hundred. 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 get the best interest rate 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 Ragel has a good point. Whether a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars house was a ten year or a thirty year, he wouldn't offer seven hundred and fifty k just because he could do a thirty year. But Ragel, I will say this, it's not offering seven hundred and fifty k or two hundred and fifty k. It's you and your wife are bidding on a house against another couple in their wife, and well, what's an extra. Five thousand dollars 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 fifty years. Now, that's what it is. It's that extra four or five or three. Thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars or the extra twenty thousand dollars 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 it's the opportunity cost. What is the interest? What is the interest you are potentially saving over the lifetime of a ten or thirty or fifteen or thirty year mortgage. How much more money could that same money make if you stuck it in the stock market. It's stuck it in an IRA and led it a crew interest for the same ten, fifteen, thirty years. That's the opportunity cost of do I spend this money now, or do 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 one hundred dollars, Do I put an extra hundred to pay off my car? Do I use an extra hundred to pay more? Principle in the house, do I put this in 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 consequences, it's all opportunity costs, it's all interest earned versus interest paid. It all boils down to that, Like, the principles hold true, but 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, mo, 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 hmmm. 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 nine. Yeah, be here next episode ten 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. 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 the house, excellent sold the house. Paid off student loans. You want to talk about a pardiatory loan, we can. Yeah, we got problems with student loans. Yeah, so uh no paid student loans off? Yeah no, I mean yeah, no, things are going good. A lot of tractor nice. I'm not an official farmer like win, but uh it does what I needed to do. So, hey man, all tractor is good tractor. I mean I've got a tiny little garden tractor, and that thing puts in were. Right, but yeah, no, next time. Next time I get a Thursday off, which the only reason I'm off. On this Thursdays. Guy, I was supposed to be very far south, but I just didn't pan out, so kept the week off. I've been working on the bathroom the house, kind of remodels some stuff, and uh, yeah, it's been busy, so I don't know. In another I don't have to look at my schedule, but probably another like a 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. 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 mesh tastic is just giving away your location to anyone that can scan. Yeah, I know a bunch of people playing with. Huh, so it's not into that right now? Keep it, keep you guys on ask no. Never, I refuse to. Stay on task, and 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 ten minutes, just to keep you guys on task. Yes, yes, that is correct. No, I figured out Thursday, so I wanted to stop it and say hi. So no, dude, I man, that's good to see it. It is good to see you. We could have if we'd known you were coming, we could have picked a more engaging topic than you going to sleep watching spreadsheets all night. But you know it's Garret's fault. He's the complaint department tonight. Truth all right, Well, we. Won't belabor the point. I've talked her, buy's ears off. Everybody's falling asleep. It's an hour twenty minutes. Don't finance stupid shit, don't finanswer it at stupid rates, don't find answer for stupid period's time, don't do stupid things financially. And you just might not have to be a Walmart reader until you're eighty five years old. But podcast, you're not gonna build a dot. You can't die with your money, So I spend it and be stupid about it. Yeah, but lost. Sensibly you should die like the day you run out of money, and not like ten years after. You run out of money. It's okay anyway, matter of fact's going to go out the door and night. Everybody tune in next week. I 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, chill, good night. Bye, run un