Caleb Hammer

Yeah, and I'm honestly not against the driving if you want to or living with more space. I'm not against that at all. I actually like that. The community I'm moving to is kind of like that. It's a hybrid. But what I don't like, dude, I don't know how much you know about zoning in the U.S., but it's crazy.

We're supposed to be like this capitalist bastion of freedom, but we don't let anyone build what they want on their property. So you live in a neighborhood, and in order to get a coffee, you have to drive 10 minutes because no one can build a coffee shop in the neighborhood. Right.

Because we tell people what they have to build instead of letting the people determine the market and the market determining what gets built in places. That's what I want to see, a more freedom-esque living situation where people can build their communities.

Yeah, that's more like HOA, you know, so like I'm OK with like small communities coming together and deciding what's good for their community. But a whole state or a city saying, no, you know, you're 40 minutes from City Hall. You can't build a bakery there. Right. Sorry, a highway has to go there.

So.

There's this crazy concept where Austin, we built housing. You know, we just allowed developers and capitalism to take place. So we built housing. Guess what's been the largest rent decrease in the nation? Austin. Who would have thought?

Yeah, we built so much housing.

Because we just let capitalism happen. But so you're saying that's the bad side of it. Well, it sucks for people, I guess, property values or landlords, but it's also a blessing for people that can live.

Yeah, gentrification is weird because like honestly you kind of go in there. You do get better restaurants. You get better amenities. Things do become nicer and safer. But then there is like that dude who gets pushed out. So there's like – there's positive – gentrification is a bad word, kind of a swear word. Because what is gentrification you mean?

I think I'm British and native. Oh, yeah? So a little conquering, you know, of the United States a little.

It means white people moving in and moving people out? I think it's more just money and development. But people do associate it with that.

Well, you develop new culture, too. But you you you lose like the old culture.

That's where I want more access like homeownership, because if someone owns a home in that area and gentrification happens, you know, they can make a lot of money. So I want the people who are already there to have access to be able to get into the home and buy it. It's the renters that get pushed out like the saxophone guy. He'd be the one that gets pushed out. And that sucks.

Chain, yeah.

Yeah, I think they're called like five by ones, like all the buildings that you see everywhere where they're like five story apartment complexes with the same chains on every floor. This is the cheapest to build. That's usually what the again, the city messes it up by only zoning for that because everything has to be one size fits all.

Oh, if I financially audited your statements, I know you could get a home here.

Yeah. Not too heavy, but... Yeah.

Enough to feel a little tan. Oh, yeah. A little minority. Yeah.

Well, car debt for sure. That's what every American faces.

It's, yeah. Again, you have the car so you can get to work to get the paycheck to pay for the car.

Yes. And I want to like just kind of correct what I said. Like I'm totally for driving anywhere if you want to. Just wish there's more options. It's kind of you're forced to drive. Yeah. So that's pretty much it.

What state is allowing you to scooter on a highway?

That's wild.

No, there's something really interesting happening in our culture right now that I can not define super well. I always mess up with the words, infantile, infantilization is, Infantilization? Infantilization, yes. Okay. Thank you. A lot of people, I don't know. Everyone's like, I'm 19. I'm still a child. There's a lot of that conversations that I'm having on my show.

And honestly, I didn't notice it too much until I started doing my show. And then, you know, being a little active on Reddit or Twitter, it's like everyone's really acting like they're a kid until they're like 25 now. I don't really know.

Yeah. I was so excited to be 18 and have my freedom and just go make money, do what I want, go to college, figure it out. And there's so many learning lessons you get during that time period. But now it's like I'm a child. Not everyone, but it definitely feels like a cultural shift. You know those Predator beating videos online?

Yeah. One thing that I just saw yesterday on Twitter or X that was – Just kind of demonstrating what happens when Gen Z meets with those predator beating videos. They lured someone, you know, as usual, to meet an underage person to beat the crap out of the person.

But the Gen Z people lured a 21-year-old to meet an 18-year-old and beat the shit out of the 21-year-old for meeting an 18-year-old because it's a huge... crazy underage 18 year old who's a child. Right. So we must beat the crap out of the 21. It's really weird.

Yeah. That's who got attached to it. We age range in that like 18 to 35. That's our big group. That's where our metrics are right now.

That's crazy. But no, you're seeing it all over social media right now. But what are you saying about this? I'm saying that they think you're still a child at 18 and 19 and 20.

Yeah. I mean, they're talking about age gaps. If you're dating with someone two years, like over two years, People are freaking out now online. It's crazy. The pearl clutching is wild online right now. Lots of just like over sensationalized.

Everything right now. But I'm seeing that in these conversations where people are like 20 and they think they're still a child. They don't have to. There's no responsibility yet. They can just lean on everyone around them, their family, and they just don't have to take care of anything yet.

It's kind of hard to see, but that case that we just saw is further demonstrating that impacting other parts of the culture as well. We're seeing it across the board. There's also this... On TikTok especially, there's like this victim Olympic stuff going on where people are trying to over-victimize. Like I'm more of a victim than you from this thing.

And it's like it's an always over – just stepping over each other on who's the biggest victim.

I haven't seen parents talk about it, so I don't see them doing it. I'm sure there's always an impact, right? But... I think a lot of the TikTokification of things and I love TikTok. I mean, we got a billion views on TikTok last year, you know, I'm happy. Well, thank you.

But like, even still there's, I've seen videos of examples of people talking about a story from their past and they're just sharing a story about something that was just, you know, slightly inconvenient. And then people go in their comment sections and say, no, actually you're a victim. You're a victim of all this, that, this, that like, There was some TikTok I was watching. I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, since the stuff I talk about is so basic, I was a dumbass enough like back in the day to overcome all that debt.

I think I was watching a reaction to it. Someone was talking about how they had an awkward hand-holding experience when they were in high school. And people were going through the comments like, no, you were raped. And it's like, fuck me. And they're just, I don't know. It's just this enabling.

It's very interesting. So people – it's kind of this reoccurring thing where just everyone's trying to one-up each other on the victim scale but also trying to tell other people that they're victims. It's really interesting. But we're also starting to see a little bit of a cultural shift in it, I feel like, where like –

Not everyone's like respected immediately who comes out of the gate and just like, you know, tries to act like this big victim all the time, especially other creators that try to come out and be like, I'm a big victim from this other creator who like said something bad about me.

And then you can clearly see when you like look at their social blade and that video they made was their most popular video of all time. I'm like, oh, wonder why they did that.

Yeah, in some ways. I mean, but I think you saw. Go ahead. Little shitty part is that actually just diminishes like real victims.

get control of my spending, learning how to budget, get kind of obsessed with the personal finance space, build a pretty successful net worth before I started YouTube, and just sitting down and talking to the people in the worst of the worst since I was there felt like those are the people I could talk to.

They're calling and swearing.

Well, I mean, we had a prime example. We called the episode, our titles are wild, but someone finally walks off financial audit. I guess that's actually not that.

Walks off financial audit.

And one of her big, like she was a perpetual victim throughout her life. One of her big things is she sat down and we were talking about creating a better income for her. And she said, my therapist told me I can't have a boss. So she can't work ever because she's not able to have any kind of authority around her because it would make her feel too – Triggered or something.

Not talking to the Theo Vons not helping you with your investments, but we're talking about the lady who has tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt, some car she can't afford, and getting repoed left and right.

So she just couldn't have a boss ever. Right. Also, she can't do any physical activity or labor or anything. So has to sit down and do her veterinary stuff from – Her house, but won't get hired. And half of her resume, by the way, was like activist stuff anyway. So like someone who'd be a little afraid of hiring because you don't know what they're going to do to the culture of the company.

So she's not going to get hired, but she also can't have a boss.

It is difficult. Yeah. And she may have had a physical disability with that, but not having not not being able to have a boss like you can't just but then complain about how everything's bad. And let's be honest, there's no way her therapist told her she shouldn't have a boss. Yeah. A therapist wouldn't say that.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean she was lost all over the place, so I'm not surprised. But again, she was also another victim kind of in her relationship. She was dating a dude for eight years. They got married. But – She decided two weeks into her marriage she wants to try titties, you know, just on the other side. Date women, you mean?

Just go over to the other side and hang out a little bit. He didn't want to. So he's a bad person for leaving her because she wanted to, you know, date women two weeks into marriage.

Yeah, or if you don't want to be open, especially, yeah.

So he's the bad guy because... Right, so a lot of blame. Yeah, two weeks into marriage.

Well, I mean, honestly, 60% to 70% of Americans say that they report feeling stress about money. 60% to 65% say they are living paycheck to paycheck. 50% to 60% can't cover a $1,000 emergency. One in four have no retirement savings. Median 401k balance is $30,000. I mean, there's a lot of things that people got to catch up on.

And the big thing that kind of sucks, and this is where I do feel bad for any younger generation, where college is getting more expensive, life gets more expensive. I mean, that's what happens. You need to start saving as early as you can because income is not your biggest wealth building tool, as Dave Ramsey says. I'd say that time is because you need time in the market to let it grow.

We call it Caleb Springer. That's what we call it.

If you put a dollar in at 20, it's worth so much more than a dollar in at 30.

But the more expensive things are and the more we treat you like a child who doesn't have to work and it's okay to take your time after college and it's okay to go into debt and it's okay to do all this stuff, the further you are from not only putting money towards retirement but covering the $1,000 emergency or paying off the debt that's eating 30% interest by year.

Honestly, you don't see too much of that in my world. We've seen people that get like a big sum of money. I just talked to someone the other day. She got almost a quarter million dollars from a passed away relative, but she went into that pile of money without any behavior, knowledge of how to utilize money.

She's only been in debt throughout her entire life, only just blows all her money, more than she makes. So the moment she got that, well, of course, does it get saved or invested or pay off debt? No, it's gone in five years, just blowing it on fun stuff. So- There is I'm OK if someone can prove themselves, you know, that they have the talent to be known. And we all do you have any kids?

I don't have any children. I would like to have some. Yeah. I mean, you probably want the best future for them.

You'd probably be willing to utilize some of your connections to help if you can.

And I'm OK with that, but it should also be based on skill. So give them the opportunity. But if they fuck up the opportunity, you know, OK, like good luck.

College was – I was so dumb in college, man. Just starting to go into it. I was going into a major that wasn't going to make any money. I wanted to go into music. And of course, if you're going to go into music, you have to have like a $50,000 computer or whatever. Some nice, beautiful iMac. So max out a credit card with that. Got to have an electric piano. Yeah. You've got to be cool.

So I'm good with NEPO as long as they're proving it a little. But you got to teach that behavior. Yeah. Teach that behavior so they don't just blow through what you give them.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, we had, this is a couple we just talked about.

Well, people use it as an insult, but it's not. So I just accepted it.

I think as long as people are actually getting help and we connect them with resources and they a million percent know what they're getting into, I think it's just like the most fun thing ever. And then they have fun. Then the audience has fun. And what's crazy is like we could sit down and we could just like do the most boring finance content ever. And 50,000 people watch it or something.

And some people learn something. Or we could do this like true real show that is also just also really entertaining. Hundreds of thousands, millions of people watch it. And then we've calculated about 20,000 people at least watching. have just based on comments and things have gotten out of debt, save for an emergency fund.

I've actually changed their life just because of watching this show that has gotten to them that they're interested in.

Well, honestly, like cities like Austin and I, you know, Nashville is kind of similar in Austin. So I wouldn't be surprised if Nashville as well. It's like the richer someone looks, likely the poorer they are because they're really compensating, you know, driving a slightly nicer car, nicer clothes. They're usually in mountains of debt. Where you just have a dude like Zuckerberg.

Well, now he looks a little, you know, he's gone carrot head and everything or broccoli head. But, you know, before he looked like he was like poverty, but he's a billionaire. So, yeah, that's a compensation.

You've got to be like the other music majors. Max out a credit card with that. Why cook when you're tired from school? Go to McDonald's every day. And that's before I was even a fat fuck. I was just able to consume those and still be skinny. But max out a credit card with that. Got to get around. So I maxed out. I got like a $10,000, $11,000 car loan, but I couldn't afford the down payment.

I mean, look at that surfing photo.

Dude has a dump truck, you know? You don't get that not eating. There it is. Look at that thing. Good for him.

That'd be nice. I think I have a bit of tism, but probably not enough tism to get to the three comic club. Yeah.

I mean, do you want them to pull up some shorts even?

I mean, I know we have a couple. Oh, sure. We were just talking to this couple. They're both – Okay, try not to get canceled. I guess lesbian couple.

Yeah. They're obsessed with Disney. Lots of Disney adults are. And they're Gen Z, and they are obsessed with birthday months. I hear birthday months so much with Gen Z and girl math.

That thing? Birthday month. So you have to celebrate. So for their birthday month, they spent $2,000 on Disney exclusive passes and then went to Disney World, spent a lot of money on that. Then they're going to Disney World two times next month and then one time in the summer for different birthdays, different birthday months. And they spent, what did I have?

$21,000 in one month when they make $7,000 a month.

I don't know. They live in Arizona and they drive to LA to just have their little special birthday. This is their birthday. I can go into debt and fuck my life. It's my birthday.

Two Disneys in these last couple months? Two Disneys next month? You guys are literally poor.

You still traveled there, bought a guillion dollars of food.

How are you guys getting there from Mesa?

It's in L.A., so it costs money to get there.

So you're getting places to live. Does it cover the place to live when you're there? Nope. So you're spending money to spend more money.

Do you get the free food while you're in there and free drinks?

Or just stayed off campus and went. I'm okay if they go like once a year. They have like five planned trips already for Disney.

Of course, I didn't know anything about money, so I borrowed money. Like $5,000 from the grandparents just to get a down payment on a car. It's the same stuff we're seeing on the show. So you were just in a bad spot. Bad spot. Private student loans too, man. It was rough. And had you been getting advice from anybody or you were just? No, this was generational.

Yeah. But unlike most lesbians, I think they're going to last forever, though, because they're on the same page. And usually couples that aren't on the same page about money, that's where they divorce. But them, they're on the same page about wanting to ruin their lives for Disney. So it's okay. They'll be fine. Yeah.

Yeah, instead of the monorail, you get a little spray-painted one. It's a little sketchy. Someone tweaking out in there.

We had this dude. Frustrated incel buys women instead of dating was the title. He went into 8,000 hours of credit card debt just so he could go to strip clubs. He sacrificed eating so he had more money. to go to strip clubs. Wow. 2,000 hours a week on strip clubs. And his quote was, I'm a Sigma male. I can just go to the strip club and get some booty that way. I guess it's easier for him.

He was a little disappointed, though, that he couldn't liquor bite them though. That was his one complaint.

I don't know what, that was another one of our guests that got the fluid pass. Wow.

Yeah, he picked it up in the military. I guess that's what they were all doing overseas.

The interest rate on this is 28.64%.

My parents, even though they are better now, I'll give them credit there. we grew up definitely lower middle-class foreclosure notices, that kind of stuff. And at that point when the people who would teach you about that kind of stuff, because our school system really doesn't, at least in Michigan. And I don't think Texas either, uh,

Absolutely. All the time.

Well, first the fund is emergency fund. So he takes out 28%, even though like the best thing you get in a high yield savings is 4% right now, something like that. So you're losing a net. Twenty three percent. But even so, then he just drains it from the emergency fund to learn hair extensions, which invest in yourself, invest in your skills. We like that. Right. At 30 percent. I don't know.

No one would say go get a degree for 30 percent interest. So learning hair extensions of that doesn't make sense. But he wants to move to Thailand to escape it, though. So I think that that's his out. To escape the debt, you mean? To escape capitalism is what he specifically said. Yeah.

Honestly, no. Surprisingly, a lot of people, when they just get overwhelmed by their finances, they really just put their head in the sand and they just forget about it until it all comes and bites them in the ass. And that's usually when they come on our show. They realize they've had too much. And they watch one of our episodes and they're like, oh, shit, I got to apply.

And that's when we usually see them is when they've realized it's too much and they're in the most dire situation. But they haven't fully awakened to why. So they're still defensive on things. I'm sure they're nervous on camera. They're just normal people off the street. But that's why they're still defensive and they're trying to understand like what is going on.

And there's lots of cope talk, lots of cope talk across the table for me.

Yeah, just like I was allowed to do it. It was my birthday month. It's okay.

Yeah. It was okay to go to school for 12 years and take out private student loans to pay for an expensive apartment. I was just trying to survive.

Absolutely. And I was there too. It just takes that moment. It takes that moment for everything. Totally. I haven't hit it for going to the gym or dieting, but it takes that moment for plunging into the deep end. There's usually something. For me, it might be a heart attack. But for my finances, it was, you know, shit, I can't pay this month's rent. I'm continuing the cycle of foreclosure notices.

So they usually find their moment, but they just don't know why things are bad. But that's when they come on. We meet them at the bottom. Usually some need a little further to go. And that sucks to see. That sucks to see. But people that have come on our show, though, the median guest pays off $10,000 in 10 months. Really? So it does work. It works really well.

They just need that wake-up call, a little of that adult moment where it's the first time someone's given them the real shit without just trying to skate around. Yeah.

At that point, you rely on them to teach you, but they didn't know anything. So I was just continuing that cycle. Every time you see people coming from a lower middle class background or poverty background, it's just that endless cycle because you can't learn from anywhere. And you have to get that drive somehow.

Yes. Yes. Yeah.

They see it as a pile of money. Yeah. And that pile of money needs to be spent, of course. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, though, that's still a better mindset than where a lot of people come to. A lot of people will come on the show and they really haven't heard of emergency funds. And they say their credit card is their emergency fund. And that's, I mean, again, he took a high interest loan for it.

So I guess that's pretty similar. But at least he understood he needed an emergency fund. Some people think if anything happens, you put it on a credit card. Now, a lot of people don't have an option. So they do do that. But then, you know, we try to help them pay off the credit card as quick as possible.

No, there's still lots of flexing and lots of cope spending, too. The flexing, I mean, we have people come on with, you know, that outfit I think was a couple thousand bucks.

Yeah, it was very expensive. I didn't think it was. But even he had red sunglasses, too. They were like a few hundred bucks. It was crazy.

You know, even though that person will never remember them 30 seconds from then.

I've had lots of people that I talked to where I try to get them out of a $40,000 car loan when they make $30,000 that they can't afford. And I'm like, let's just try to get you into a $10,000 car. And then they scoff at a $10,000 car. Like I'm going to be seen in a $10,000 car. That mindset is kind of gross, honestly. Right.

Well, you learn the value of it. Oh, yeah. And that's the important part. So many people that can just lean on others and especially those get it. We see so much enablement where they get into a hard time, but then their parents bail them out. There's nothing wrong with the heart of wanting to help someone out, but they never learn their lesson.

And then they never understand the value of a thousand dollars even or just a dollar, just a dollar. But like there's so many instances where I'm talking about three hundred dollars that they're spending on something. And that means nothing to them. Like $300 isn't a lot of money when it could be make or break for these people just making a necessary payment, avoiding a repo.

But then $300 is nothing to them. They just don't understand the value of a dollar because they never had to. Because you had that car. You had to put money into fixing that car probably multiple times or being terrified of it just bottoming out on the street. You understood the value of it. So you're not just like – Being disrespectful with your car purchases going forward, you understand it.

And that kind of goes back to TikTok and YouTube. Yeah, take me to some of that.

Pyramid schemes people are falling into? I had someone go into a ball python pyramid scheme that I just talked to.

So he buys 10 baby ball pythons from his friend. Mm-hmm. But how do you make money off of these ball pythons that are supposed to breed?

Well, how do you make money? What would you do to make money off of baby ball pythons?

Yeah. Now who's buying them? people you know no people that want to buy them so that they can breed them to sell them to people who breed them okay people aren't buying them for pets you go to a pet smart for that no one's buying from these guys right you buy the baby paul pythons hoping they make kids So that you can sell them to others who want to make kids and sell to others.

And he got sucked into that. Tens of thousands of dollars. And his 90 day fiance wife from somewhere in Central America is like freaking out about this. She moved here, sacrificed everything. And this dude's blowing all his money on this. And also like a million other side hustles. He's trying to do the power washing. He's trying to do the car detailing.

Anything that is a TikTok get rich quick thing. type of thing or even just the side hustle things that some people do make work he is just falling into it and the python says this is most recent example but the pythons he bought have gone down 50% in value because apparently you can day trade you can day trade the ball pythons on like a little market app

Yeah. Wow.

What the fuck? What in the fuck is happening, man? That's Hawk Tua's next pump and dump.

Lots of people getting into the knives pyramid schemes. They're buying, you know, I don't even know what they're called. I've never joined them, but they buy knives to sell to other people. So lots of those. Lots of people getting into the day trading life, crypto life. We had some old guy with no retirement. Poor dude. I felt so bad. Actually, he like blew through a million bucks somehow.

I filmed it a couple years ago. And super nice dude. But he fell into this pyramid scheme of... You like buy these nutrients that people can take and then but you hope they come to a storefront to step in a body scanner that tells them how healthy they are. Then they buy your nutrients. But I asked if we could come by into his business like a couple of months after that.

He kind of fell off the face of the earth. I feel like his shop doesn't exist anywhere on Google Maps, so I think that pyramid scheme collapsed. Well, the reality is, though, the reality is in retirement, again, we already talked about 15% to 20% are actually able to – or actually 15% to 20% of people take early withdrawals before even 60%.

Dude, it's crazy. I think it's like a one week subject and the class where they also spend like two weeks showing you birthing videos. Yeah. You know, this is something that passes up real quick.

And at the median 401k balance is 30,000, but it's low and slow. That's all it is. You know, you're cooking a nice piece of meat. It's low and slow. That's what your retirement fund needs to be. You're just hoping it doubles like every seven years or so in the market. It just got to be investing like 20% a year, 20% a year. 20% a year is a lot.

It's a lot, but if you accurately budget, it can be relatively decent. The I mean, $5 a week is a great amount. Yeah. Starting anywhere is great. Starting anywhere. I mean, that's why you focus on getting out of debt first so that you have more to invest. Right. You know, out of the high interest debt.

But what a lot of people suggest is 50, 30, 20, 50% on needs, 30% on wants because you want to be able to live. What's the point of being here if we're not having fun? And then 20% to investing. So it's still the smallest percentage.

Well, a couple of qualifications. Like what would you say the interest rate of the debt is and what is the debt?

Yeah, absolutely. Debt immediately. Because one, it's probably not even an asset. Like at least a car is an asset even if it's a depreciating one. But let's just say it's a credit card or a private student loan. That's not going to benefit anything at that point. Got it. So pay that off. And then the other question is there's also the third category. Do you have an emergency fund?

If you don't have an emergency fund, then at that point we're still funding the emergency fund over investing because you need to protect yourself in case of the rainy day. And the rainy day always comes.

Real bad. And how did you get on bad off? I just started becoming obsessed with, well, I was always interested in the world of real estate. So, like, HGTV, I ate that shit up. I don't know why. This is that weird kid who loved HGTV. So, you know, all the different home shows. I was interested in real estate. And that's kind of just a decent connection and segue over to personal finances.

Best thing you're going to get if you're just buying into the overall U.S. stock market is an 8% return averaged out. Because that's what it's been all up years, down years since the beginning. It's been 8%. So if you have 15% debt, you're just not making the difference.

Yeah, it can be college. People just do college in a really stupid way, though. People go to the dream school that has the sports team they want for the major that doesn't make money. So it's not that college is the bad thing. You can do it the right way. Get your gen eds out of the way at a community college. Something, you know, ACC here is super cheap.

You can go for a couple hundred bucks a semester and get some credits.

And larger class sizes as well. So there's a benefit instead of a big hall that you get in university. So you get more one on one time with professors at community college. It's actually usually just kind of better education. Just also statistically, the people that are going to community college are also more likely to drop out. So that's why some of the metrics are a little bit.

But then you don't have to go out of state. You don't have to go to the private college. You don't have to go to the college that has your favorite sports team that's going to go in the – going to win a national championship in football. You don't need that. And then also when you're going to college, is it going to have a return on the investment for the degree you're actually trying to get to?

And if you don't know what you want to do, there's nothing wrong with taking a year off between high school and college to figure some things out. Maybe do a trade. Look at a trade. See if you're interested in that. Take a career quiz.

Yeah. Just look and see if that's something you're interested in. And then you can go to trade school in a smart and dumb way as well. There's expensive ones out there and there's just average ones. And I don't want you to focus all your money and time on something you don't even want to do just because like a plumber, they make great money these days.

You know, the medians, whatever it is, but it's like pretty good. If you don't have any interest in getting on your hands and knees and doing that shit, you know, maybe we're not doing that.

I mean, you have to remember people that go to college, 40 percent, 40 percent drop out. So this is not a guaranteed thing. People think just because they're going to go to college, okay, my life is set now. 40% who take out student loans drop out of college. Wow. I was one of them. I dropped out $40,000 of federal student loans and $12,000 private.

So, eventually, once I started realizing, yo, can't afford rent, I started just Googling some things and I found some other creators, some other...

Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with dropping some McFries, you know, just to try to pay the bills. People look down on that. There's nothing wrong with these extra, you know, for the fast food jobs even, just while you're trying to pay your way through school. I mean, Summer Moon, coffee shop, I like, you know, their moon milk creamer. I basically lactate that shit.

Yeah. But they were hiring just a barista. The manager was talking to me. He was like, dude, get someone on your show to come work for me. I need to hire people. 18 bucks an hour. You know, that's not bad. Austin's pretty expensive, but 18 bucks an hour is not bad. And that's a great place to just start. Get your foot in the door. There's nothing wrong with the side hustles either.

Kind of like the power washing. A lot of people view that as like a side hustle, hopefully turning into a full hustle at some point. What I caution a lot of people though, is a lot of people go into that and they're like, okay, now I need the pressure washer. Oh,

podcasts like bigger pockets podcast is really good um i think i started bigger pockets it's called yeah it's really good those in real estate now do you know graham stefan finance youtuber uh let's see a picture of him yeah a little little short dude graham stefan

nice pressure washer oh wait I need the truck to be able to move it around that was the guy that we just the ball python guy he had to buy a truck so that he could move his pressure washer around so that's yeah I don't want to show up with 10 snakes in a fucking um ford festiva and a dodge neon right you know yeah like these snakes deserve a classy automobile it's like what the fuck are you talking about dude yeah people get more excited about the the actual job the journey the entrepreneurship more than the actual grind oh yeah yeah

Yeah. And there's nothing with just get into a bank as well. Get into a bank, work as a teller, sit down and just talk different loans to people as well. I mean, there's lots of jobs that don't necessarily require a degree that you can get into. Oh, yeah.

Okay, yeah.

We used to have an on-the-street audit show that we did just back in the day when I was testing things out. And I met this dude who— Like, take me to that on-the-street audit show.

I'd just walk up to people, you know, those kind of camera-in-the-face things. But I would just ask them money questions about their finances and then just kind of get my thoughts on it. But we met this dude who—you know Rover? Yeah.

No, so it's the dog walking that you were mentioning. So you can hire dog watchers, walkers, or anything off of Rover. Oh, wow. Beautiful animals on there. Is that a corgi? He's making $175,000 a year doing that.

House sitting dogs. But because it's just house sitting, he can also work his full-time tech job from the house that he's sitting. So he's making like $300,000 a year. Wow. Yeah. Right. There's a lot you could do. No degree required for that. Sit in someone's house, feed their dog, take them out.

He's one of the OG finance YouTubers, and I think I started watching him when he was up and coming. I was like, wow, I can't believe how absolutely stupid I am with finances. I didn't even know there was this other world. And to accomplish the things I dream of accomplishing, it's going to take actually marking the goals I want to get to and the different steps that are required to get there.

hard as you think a lot of times it's just you don't know it until you start yeah one of the first full-time editors that i hired dude was making the math worked out to almost like six bucks an hour working for a youtuber but his editing was great and with the different incentives and everything i uh give just based on skill he was making six bucks an hour to now a hundred thousand a year yeah so like if you can prove it right

Yeah. So, I mean, that's my small business or that's what the small business my dad owns is, is just, you know, a little power washing, window cleaning, carpet cleaning. Wow. And that's what took him from, you know, being a cashier at a gas station when we were poor when I was born to now they're doing really well because you can grow that. You can scale that. They opened a second branch.

They're doing well. There's a lot of opportunities there. And then in like the video editing world, just if you're just asking yourself, what can I do to make that person's life easier? They'll give you money. Yeah.

I mean, honestly, just any way to get into a building, a business, and just getting to know management there and working with them and just asking what do they need and being able to fulfill those tasks, you'll move up.

And that's where I started to actually focus on building the income, not just the hobby stuff. I was doing music composition, and I was making like $30,000 a year off of that.

And are you going to do that your whole life? No, but sometimes just getting into the companies.

But in the conversations, what I see are people looking down on shops like that. Right. They're not willing to, even though they're not paying their bill.

It's like, at that point, everyone's just looking down upon them. I mean, the car company is about to repo them. The bank is looking down on them. They can work that job. They can work the McDonald's. Whatever it is, just to make ends meet.

And you saw them going down a road and you're like... That old guy I was telling you about, he did pump like about a million bucks into this whole thing. Really, his entire life savings, everything he's worked for into his 60s, 70s, wherever he was. And again, the machine, whatever this body scanning machine is, I'm not in that world, so I don't know.

But I know it was like 50,000 or something crazy. The storefront that he was investing in, again, just a quarter later...

in college and dropped out of college but um from there i just knew i had to go get stronger income actually build myself a budget and that's when i started you know looking to move in different areas and i got a connection down in austin and that's when like i actually started putting the focus and pointing my money in the right direction building a budget for the first time

Well, no. He used the results to try to sell people to get nutrients.

And that was the pyramid scheme he was a part of.

We see people get into the makeup one a lot.

Yeah, and this is where you buy makeup from someone else and you sell that to other people and you try to recruit people to sell makeup. Well, there's like Donna, what's that Donna? What's that? Mary Kay? Mary Kay. We get lots of Mary Kays.

They figured out the game.

So it's kind of. Yeah. I mean, again, people don't want to do the low and slow. They want to get rich now. Right. They're not willing to just invest and hopefully hit that 59 and a half. That's when you can withdraw from your retirement tax advantage retirement accounts without a penalty.

Yeah.

Absolutely, because they see other people that have a proven success rate to actually do it. So it's just a quick way to get to wealthiness. And 60 seems so far to a 20-year-old. So far.

And it's been, it's been good since then.

I want to see that. How do you fit eight people in that?

Right, right.

OK, it's going to sound like the most arrogant country thing ever. And but like I was actually making more on my music compositions than my own professors did on their own composition. So I was like, why am I spending more money to go in school? So that's when I dropped out.

They hung it from a window.

It's a little outswitsy.

This is the first cold plunge.

The first part of just like fixing finances is the budget because you got to know what's going in and out. And a lot of people overcomplicate it. They get a spreadsheet that they can't manage or they download an app like you need a budget, which is another really good one.

But it's like so complicated and the learning curve is huge and it has all these qualifications for so many things that you just don't need. People that are in bad finances literally just need one place where they can just connect their accounts, tells them where money's going, and you can figure out where to actually stop spending money or close a credit card.

Or we even were tracking different accounts where you can see your investments as well. So you can see if you're on track and whatnot. So just that simple stuff. And what a lot of people struggle with, even if they create a simple budget on a spreadsheet, they don't come back to it the next month.

So they make the budget, but then they don't actively budget because budgeting is not just making a budget. You got to stick to it. You got to follow it. So this helps you by setting alerts and whatever you need and continued education. And the premium version, we have these classes with financial professionals that you can join live and ask them questions and they help mentor you.

Kind of. I mean, I like the lessons and stuff, but then I still had to go to all these other classes that don't matter. And I had to spend money on that. Right. Or at least things that were going for the degree. But at that point, I still knew nothing about personal finances. Once I moved to Austin, I wanted to get a job that focused on me being my own business, essentially.

Yeah. Well, these are financial professionals, you know, certified financial planners and people with budgeting experience. Again, the thing we talked about at the beginning, that was just teaching how to day trade. So that's right.

Budget. Proven things that like the most every licensed financial professional would talk about. So keeping people on track, people just need those extra motivations. A lot of people watch our show that are on track to budget and pay off debt, but they keep coming back because it helps them stay motivated throughout the week.

Yeah, Grant Cardone... One thing... One message that I kind of know about him is he... He's okay with going into a lot of debt and risking everything in order to get property or start a business. He's like, if you're not making six figures, 21, you're a failure, I think. Hopefully I'm not putting words into his mouth because I don't follow a lot of his stuff.

But I know it's a little too risky for my taste. It's a little too risky. A little too flexing of wealth. Him with his private jet there. I get the aspirational part. That's great. Maybe you'll get there someday. But let's just be realistic for the average American. Low and slow, invest, try to get to retirement.

Oh, yeah. I think he's really good in, like, the motivational part. You know, I don't know a lot about his own financial advice, but in terms of, you know, really being motivated for your entrepreneurial mindset, that's been really good. And honestly, I've watched a couple of his videos when I was dealing with a couple –

That's what I was doing with music composition. And one of the best jobs that just like you and I could go get today if we wanted to, where your own business is sales. You are your business. You're out there building the client base. And that's what I ended up doing. And with that, I reached the top of the sales team immediately. Selling? Yeah.

you know, issues while we were scaling our business and just like, you know, what does this guy do? He built like a multimillion, a hundred million dollar business. And, you know, obviously that's if someone's done it, maybe listen to them. So I've listened to a couple of things that have been beneficial from him.

I think this is the guy that kind of put a bad taste in everyone's mouth about buying courses online, which kind of sucks. Yeah. Because I think you can – we've put a lot of time and value and resources in producing educational content that people can pay for that helps guide them a little more handheld. And we've seen like –

one of the lowest refund rates, even though we offer free refunds, like no matter what. And we've seen like the lowest refund rate in the industry, but so many people immediately, they see the class and like, Oh, it's a scam. It's a scam. You have to pay for it. It's a scam. Right. And it kind of started with this dude selling a course on a million different things. Uh,

But again, it was also the Grant Cardone like wealth flexing thing. All his videos were like, you know, behind a Lamborghini in a garage. And that's not where the average person is going to be. And that's OK. It's OK to be. Poor, it's fun. Well, it's okay to be settled with just a good content retirement. Not everyone needs to risk everything to go crazy and go into a lot of debt on a big risk.

Not that that's what he advocates for, but...

Well, there's some purpose. People find purpose in jobs. For sure. Some people are purposeless after retirement. People do. You know FIRE. Do you know FIRE? Do I know FIRE? FIRE? The independence movement where you stack up as much money as possible, invest it all like crazy so you can retire at like 45.

A lot of people did that and no one's really doing it anymore because everyone retired at 45 with a few million bucks and they're bored and they have no purpose and there's nothing because they don't have a job. They have a family maybe, but they don't have the purpose.

Oh, sure.

Selling, it was trading education, like stock trading and some memberships and stuff like that.

Did he sell his winery?

No, I was selling classes that taught people how to become – Day traders and stuff.

Oh, man. I just want people to realize that they're in a better place than they think they are. That's kind of one thing we didn't really talk about. I don't want to just glug on America.

Yeah. There's a lot more opportunity that people aren't willing to accept. We're in a very doom and gloom right now where everyone, again, we talked about the victim thing earlier, and everyone's like, it's impossible to get ahead. Why do anything? Because everything's so hard right now. And obviously inflation was brutal, especially when it was nearing that 9%.

But we just had yesterday, yesterday, before we filmed this, 256,000 jobs added in the last month when they expected 155,000. Like unemployment rate at 4.1%. Here we have a GDP $25 trillion, where in the UK, Germany, Japan, we're looking at $3 to $5 trillion. GDP per capita here is $70,000 to $80,000. UK, $47,000. You know, there's a lot of opportunity here.

Really bad products, I'll be honest. But. Really? You know, I just had to, you know, I was taking the job that would hire.

I don't want people to just really always beat themselves down. And I know, like my shows, it is on the negative side because their finances are really bad. But I want people to know they do have more opportunity out there if they're willing to take a little bit of risk.

It was fine. Just people shouldn't be day traders. That's the thing. Oh, I see. It's like 90% lose money. It's not that the people that were teaching it were bad or the education itself was bad. It's just like, that's probably too risky for your average person to get into.

Yeah, I like that mentality. There's a lot of shame in certain jobs right now.

Yeah. I delivered Jimmy John's for like six years.

What are you, a number nine guy? I'm a number nine guy.

I love it.

You're going to have to explain that one to me.

Yeah. Dude, betting is getting kind of out of control.

These betting companies want to sponsor us like every day. We have to tell them to fuck off so much. It's crazy. It's like any kind of drug, any kind of drinking, any kind of whatever. You know, betting can be fun. It can be good. If it gets addictive, that's where it's bad. $10, if you have $10 to your name, that's all you have left.

I mean, people probably shit on me for saying this, but it's probably not going to make the biggest difference. We're just being real world about it. No, for sure. But behavior, there is the behavior conversation. If you are going to throw it towards the bet, that is demonstrating maybe why you got there in the first place. Yeah.

So that could be a good step to correct your behavior for the first time, even if the $10 is going to be make or break for whether or not your mortgage is going to be paid. No. Yeah. But it's a good behavior fix.

Risky to get into, but luckily the people I was selling to, they were people with too much money, too much time. Oh, they were? Yeah, it wasn't. You weren't selling it to children or whatever? No. Okay. Especially since, I mean, I think you have to be 18 to open a brokerage, or at least to open those kind of accounts, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm mixed your real estate and like just S and P 500.

I got my personal residence, but then up in Michigan where I'm from in Kalamazoo, I have some rental properties there that were like essentially almost like burned down pieces of shit that like no one would live in. And I'm like, all right, I'll buy it, fix it up. And now it's, you know, students are able to live there and stuff. So

There's, you know, it kind of matches with my morals a little bit instead of just buying up desperately needed housing. But also it's making money, which is good.

Well, you know, the crazy thing. Can you look up what Gen Z thinks they need to live? Have you seen this? This shit's crazy. And I'm kind of Gen Z. I'm like in that middle. So I can talk both sides. Well, that wasn't the report that came out, but Google AI is telling us something. There we go. See, Yahoo right there. They think they need $500,000 a year to be successful.

That part's crazy.

But actually being able to build that personal business, personal brand, and getting to the top of the sales team, eventually getting to the place, bringing in six figures, grinding for a couple years, I focused on paying off The my grandparents first because it was family debt. It's a little emotional. That's probably not what I would necessarily suggest today to people that I'm talking to.

Very comfortable. It would be very comfortable.

Yeah, that's fair. But like the median household income in the United States is like $60,000, you know? Right. 60, 75, something like that.

Interesting. One thing I think that tells me specifically, though, Zillennial, like I'm a Zillennial, you know, in between that era. I didn't have a job during the Great Recession. I didn't need to. I was a kid. What that tells me, thinking they need $500,000 a year, is that there's about to be a big awakening when my generation and the people around me go through our actual first recession.

And you realize that... OK, maybe living isn't about being able to get, you know, five cups of coffee a day. That isn't the requirement for life. I want you to do it. Yes. But for them, that is full comfort where, you know, throughout most of human civilization, we're just trying to survive.

And we are very comfortable right now. Yeah.

Like a demonstration of this, I was dating someone from Venezuela for a little bit. Oh, wow.

I know, exotic. And one thing she was telling me about our culture, I was asking what's different about this culture versus the different cultures she lived in all over the world when she was escaping Venezuela. And she says, you know things are good in America because of how much we focus on the minor little social issue for everything. When you have the luxury to focus on –

Tray and stuff or not just that, like, OK, so Zuckerberg, right? Yesterday, he announced that tampons are leaving men's bathroom or whatever. Like, I don't care either way, whatever.

But the fact that that is able to be such a major thing that we're freaking out about when you have that in a culture, that's how you know everything else is pretty damn OK, because we're allowed to focus our energy on that and not just making sure that half the country isn't starving.

Play this one, dude. We built $75,000 of student loan debt.

But that's what felt right in that moment. And then the credit is what paying off your grandparents.

I was really hoping for a more, you knew what you were going to do with this much school and student loans.

I was in the College of Arts School of Music.

Yeah. You know what that is? That is another major thing that is happening a lot throughout. It's the continuous college because they don't want to leave college. So they go for the master's degree, the doctorate degree. And that's more and more. We're seeing so many more people doing the endless college. Get the other degree. Because once you leave college, it's a scary world. You're on your own.

Doctor in Shakespeare. Yeah.

Well, she wants to be a teacher. That's what they do. You go to school to teach other people –

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. A little wake up call.

Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

Exactly. Exactly. And they were nice enough to give me that money in a hard time. I got to be nice enough to prioritize paying it back.

And then the 30%, couple 30% credit cards I had from there, about $10,000 total in credit card debt. And then Sallie Mae. You know that bitch?

Oh, yeah. No, she's not. She's not great. So I had some like 12% interest, private student loan debt, maybe 15%. It just kept ballooning.

I still do. Cause I'm not going to pay them off because they're only 4%. And I actually might've like 3%. So I'd rather invest instead.

So I'm just doing my minimum monthlies there, but yeah. Yeah. So because Sally and her 15 percent were just so crappy, I focused on paying those off next. And then eventually my car debt as well, because that was also like 11 percent for a Nissan Altima 2013. I don't know if you're a Nissan Altima girly, but their transmissions, they all die immediately.

Yeah, it was like 60,000 miles and the transmission was dying. So and I already owe debt on it.

Yeah. Big life choices, moving across the country, packing up the sedan, you know, going from Michigan to Texas. I guess it's not across the country, but it was a big move for me and focus on paying off that debt. And that's once I got my emergency fund, which is what we prioritize after paying off high interest debt.

That's where I was like, I can finally start accomplishing the dreams I wanted to. And I was putting 10 percent down on a house here in Austin.

And that was my big goal.

Yes. Yes. I was still doing sales and I started moving in the world of like product management and the tech world. But what does that mean? So it was kind of like fake product manager. I'll be honest for all those that know product management out there. But I was like overseeing memberships at that company that I was talking about and trying to improve their products.

And I was kind of overseeing that working with different teams. But I was transitioning to that world because, again, I just like. I like running some things. That's why I like building out the company that we have now and having management over products and just making a better experience for the clients.

Yeah, because what we're doing now, like our simpler budget app, like that is an app that people can use and actually follow a budget, hit the goals that they're trying to do. It's things that actually help people instead of like, hey, there's a 10% chance you might be successful in this field. Good luck. Right. That was kind of the products back then.

But yeah, so people can actually, you know, finally take control over their destiny.

In America, cars, man. cars everything's drivable infrastructure here so you have no choice but to get a car you need a car to get a job to pay for the car right they kind of locked us into that huh yeah what's that is there a theory that they that they did that on purpose that a lot of that's done on purpose you think

Well, I know in the 1950s, right, that's where they start passing like the highway infrastructure bill. And that, it's a lot of it for intercontinental connection, especially for military safety, being able to move things back and forth across cities. But with that, they came into the cities like Dallas and Houston and L.A. and they bulldozed massive communities and just built highways throughout.

Then he had white flight from the cities to the suburbs. And then in order to get to the city where the jobs are, got to drive on the highway and it's a cycle from there.

And cities went to shit after that, too. It really did.

Whether it's funding or just the job opportunities like they went to shit like New York in the 80s was a shithole. Right. So that's that. Yeah.

People are giving up their car. And in my age range, you know, in the audience's age range, they want to live in those more walkable communities. I move into a walkable community. I love to not have to drive. Oh, yeah.