Roaming Returns

010 - What Everyone Needs To Do First Before They Start Investing

• Tim & Carmela • Episode 10

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It might be exciting to jump right into the stock market, but until you figure out if you actually have money to invest, you need to slow your roll.

The biggest risk of investing comes from putting money into the stock market that you can't afford to lose (value dropping short term).

If you have credit card debt or no savings, you need to start there first. Successful investing comes from having the right foundation so you can play to win the investing game.

 Awareness is key, so you need to track and evaluate your spending  (Mint, EveryDollar, spreadsheets, pen & paper). You can't invest money when you're negative every month. 

Make sure your bills are covered and then intentionally decide where you want to use your discretionary money.  

Investing and seeing your accounts make money is really fun so make sure you have the right foundation set up before putting money in stocks. 

Drop your comments or questions for this episode on one of our posts.   


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Ticker metrics change as markets and companies change, so always do your own research. The content in this podcast is based on personal experience and is for educational purposes, not financial advice. See full disclaimer here.

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Welcome to Roaming Returns, a podcast about generating a passive income through investing so that you don't have to wait till retirement to live your passions. 

In today's episode, Tim and Carmela talk about how everybody can get started with investing. It's not going to be what you think might be a little bit painful, but if you can get past this one thing in the beginning, you're going to be riding the gravy train for life. Tim can do it even with as many addictions as he has. Anybody can you got this? Today is probably not a super fun topic for most people. So most people don't do it. Awful
topic. I don't like it myself. So know that you're not alone.
So I guess the hot button topic is budgeting? Well, no, we're
gonna give the reason why I decided to discuss budgeting like the question that I'm asked all the time. How do I get started? What do I do? Like what you're saying, but what do I do? And honestly you can't get started until you analyze your finances. I mean, you can you can do you can say I'm gonna get started but then if you don't have any money left over after a year, your paycheck then you're not really gonna get started. So the part that they need to address is budgeting.
I think what most people do is they just spend what's in their account. So if you're not preemptively setting money aside for investing, you're essentially failing to plan planning to fail type type thing. And I don't particularly like the word budgeting. From the context of it does seem kind of like a negative connotation and maybe that's why people have such an aversion to it. I personally just like the word tracking expenses and income. Maybe I've weird, I do kind of like spreadsheets a lot
simplistic thing is, you want to have money left over at the end of the month to invest. So how do you get there? Yeah.
But the best, the best place to start is awareness. So treat it like a game treat it like a scavenger hunt. Write down everything that you spend in a month and we actually just started noticing we're having some creep again, because we haven't really been tracking on point because it was really easy when we were in the van because we didn't have all the extra expenses. of living in a house like upper buts. But then once you kind of get stressed out, you kind of fall back into these bad patterns of like indulgences because you're not actually happy so you're spending money on like, for example, the other week we were like, I'm craving sweets. We're like, Oh, we're really close to the grocery store so we rolled over to the grocery store got which ice cream
we ended up buying two quarts two pints whatever they were I think there was
something else because where you bought something else chips Cheetos
probably chips.
Oh was grapes was a grapes. No,
I got grapes. at Aldi. We got the ice cream at Jaya.
So that's just an example. Like we noticed when we were in the van that when we weren't around grocery stores, it was a lot harder to actually go buy stuff on a whim which actually benefited us pretty good.
But So basically here's how I would if I was a new person and I was really really really interested in investing money and doing the the dividend proach that that we've been talking about. I would come up with a realistic X amount. I would look at my financial so I would I would budget not budget but I would track my finances for a month or two or three or five I don't know however long it takes to so you can get a median average of what you have left and then come up with a realistic goal of say you have $100 left each month you can come up with a realistic goal that you want to invest 250 to $300 then you have to go back into your your tracking and see where you can cut out that extra 150 to get get to your goal out
or find other ways to make money and we'll go over those in another podcast episodes because there's a ton of ways to like bring an extra income and there's a ton of ways to cut extra money. But this episode is specifically just on like looking at your and evaluating your income and expenses.
Yes, so that's just so you guys have to be honest on it. You really have to do this is going to be painful for a lot of people but you have to be honest about your expenditures and be like well that's discretionary. I can get rid of that. Like if you go like I hate to keep bringing it up again. And if you go to Dunkin Donuts, that's discretionary, you can get rid of that and you can actually just make coffee at home and you that then take the savings and you'll have that leftover each month to put into investments. Just little little I mean, they're called hacks, I guess on tick tock, I don't know. But like they're little hacks where you can save money by doing stuff for yourself as opposed to the convenience of someone else doing it for you. Well, so
I was just talking about the whole The reason people overspend is because they're not exactly happy. So I just read a book. I think it's your money or your life. It had a really interesting concept in it since I'm I pretty much hanging out in the behavioral science realm. I thought it was really interesting because they were talking about breaking your budget down into it sounded like I don't think she actually called it this but it sounded like breaking it down into your human needs or your core values basically. So I was doing a little bit of self analyzation myself because what I tend to do is I'll hoard money, and I like put my nose to the grindstone and they get all freaking stressed out and crazy. And then like I impulse spaz out, we're all like, double whole bunch of money into stuff that I really, really didn't actually want. It was like a compulsory like thing that happened. And she's basically talking about when you look at what you're spending normally without really thinking about it, you will start to see what becomes a compulsory expense. And then if you evaluate things you've liked, like for example, I'm really into a aesthetically pleasing thing. So I basically decided to allow myself to like go to art museums once a month, instead of like, tweaking out about because I've actually figured out that some of my food indulgences are actually because I'm not allowing myself to have those indulgent visual stimulation, which sounds really weird. But if you start thinking about your own, like weird behaviors and patterns and stuff, it's it's kind of interesting and then she talks about and I love this idea, but like if you treat it kinda like a game, where you go in and you actually like point allocate into different categories for like you're leveling up stats, you can kind of do the same thing with your expenses. So there's a ton of different apps and things to track your expenses. But to be honest, if you're gonna come up with these really interesting categories, it might be best to create a spreadsheet because I think I've used every dollar I think I've used mint I've used a couple other ones. But I just linking a whole bunch of stuff to me, it's just kind of annoying. I never actually go in and check it
seems like a lot of work for simplistic, but
if this actually gets, but if this actually gets I mean, if you can do it Tim's way and it's like not that hard for you. But I suspect the whole reason that like what are the statistics, I looked up 73% of Americans say they don't have don't regularly follow a budget. The average person over spends $7,400 a year that's 616 ish dollars a month. Guys, that's like, that's a big number. And then I saw another one that said 83% of people overspend even when they have a budget. And then 40% of those people overspend to impress others. So if you really start evaluating some of these things, it gets kind of interesting. And one of the biggest things he was saying it's going to be painful. It doesn't necessarily have to be, I think going to it's going to be painful, being realistic, but really try not to fall into that hole shame thing, because once you end up there, then you actually start stacking like food or whatever your coping mechanism mechanism is on top of that, and it kind of becomes a competent
shame. It should just be like, Oh, I spent 412 guilt. Okay, I can cut I can roll my own cigarettes and I save $200 A month probably
healthier to roll your own cigarettes. Like there's like every habit
that people have. There's a way to actually do it at home.
Like Tim has a grape habit. Like I'm not even kidding. I just went through the fridge to clean it out. We have seven bags of partially grapes on there because he won't eat them once they start getting mushy
or yours. Once they start turning into old man testicles, they're yours. So anyway,
grapes were like gold this year, like absolute
gold. So I didn't buy other stuff from the grocery store. I just bought grapes.
But we also found out that at Aldi, they were way cheaper than everywhere else and then my mom would hit us up with like a sale. What was that one? It was like 898 cents for like up to 10 pounds of grapes. We totally hit that that was insane. But it's just little stuff like that. So however you can make it work if you guys want like, I don't know, maybe we should make a game of this because we actually just started tracking because we're going to show you guys what our expenses look like basically, with us not really paying too much attention. I'm pretty sure we're overspending because I know Tim's Chipotle habit gets a little out of hand to just like Spidey sense from before. So I'm actually tracking everything this month and I'm going to start doing that on a recurring month because we should be doing what we're preaching. And it is better to track I actually enjoyed doing it in the van when I had the
capacity what I actually do like what I didn't say, but what I actually do is when I put money into my bank account, I literally just take $500 and put it into worthy and then whatever I have left is what I have to spend on crap.
How often do you do that? Every time you get a paycheck every time I
have over 500 hours. So pretty much every time I get a paycheck like I've usually I put my investments where they're going before I start
well that's I read the Dave David Bach books way back in the day the Automatic Millionaire that's like his number one strategy is basically paying yourself first. Investing in yourself first doing all that stuff first, making things automatic. I mean, there is definitely some sci fi or I'm
not saying to do that, but that actually works really well for me because then if I want Chipotle, I know I can afford it. So I've already invested. Yeah, it takes all the guesswork out of it. Or
if you are I mean I guess what you could do too is you could come up with the things that like meet those needs are those things that you're looking for every month and like there's going to be certain ones that cost money and then you can put up free alternatives and then if you hit your threshold for the month, just switch over to the free alternative so the month rolls over your next paycheck rolls over. I mean, like I said, it can be really fun. Like I was even thinking about the beauty aspect like if I just get my camera out and go hang out in the woods and try to do some macro photography to me that's fun and free. So I don't know maybe I'm weird. You are can't be weird to the new Mr. I have a grape addiction.
I have an addicted person. Yeah, he's
a very addictive personality. It's not gambling, which I don't even understand.
I don't gamble. I put it in investments. Yeah,
so now investing is his new addiction and bike writings
and addiction. And you're Nom nom nom noms. Yeah, they're in addiction. But that's they're cheaper than smoking vaping and smoking.
So Tim's made a lot of sacrifices even within his own habit problems. It's a great one.
You can still have habits. You just have to have a realistic approach to him like okay, I'm like me, I'm no I'm gonna eat Chipotle. I know I'm going to eat grapes. I know I'm gonna drink bellow. So I just incorporate that into my I invest first and then whatever I have left like oh, I can't afford but Chipotle once this week. Oh, well then only Chipotle once. That's what that's what I do. But we do get paid every week. I know a lot of people get paid every two weeks or like once a month that will be way more difficult and actually probably not. Like if I got paid once a month I just put like a grand and and just be like
I was gonna say I actually think the monthly thing will be easier. It's when you have the random bills coming in. Like we have that billboard income coming in once a year. That's one of the tips that we have like when you're doing your expense or your incomes I if you can swing it. Don't put the incomes that are like sporadic as an actual consistent income because then they can be bonuses to invest, as opposed to expectations like a lot of people do that with your tax returns. I know Tim's really big on harping about that concept.
Yeah, that's my soapbox. Like if you get a tax return, don't use it as like a 27 paycheck. Use it as a oh, I'm an investor this. I think we ran the numbers view if you invested just an average Americans tax return for 10 years and just let it compound you'll have over like a million dollars in 30 years from
just a tax return. That's pretty crazy guys, like seriously right there.
Like that's one way to do it. Okay, one aspect that I actually when it comes to analyzing your finances, the reason that it becomes painful is because you you absolutely have to write it down or type it down or it has to be put down somewhere. You can't just say, Oh, I spent $200 This month you need to document it in whatever way you're going to document it. So that it's there so that you can see it. So
what I just started doing is I made a Google Drive like spreadsheet so that it's really easy to just pop up in my phone when we're out and about and I'll just take the receipt and like right when I'm getting the city either sitting down to eat or I get in the car to go to my next location. I just pop it up and I just literally type it in and then I have a column for like the category and I'm actually making those subcategories because I'm trying to figure out like in our groceries we haven't actually blocked down to how much Tim is spending on grapes because I'm really curious at this point. So we have a food category and then we have subcategories where Chipotle has its own category just because and then Tim has a bread and a chip problem on top of everything else. So I actually have one for that too.
I'm gonna die like 50 The way I eat
I don't know the party
bad. So the reason that we put this together is literally because that's what I get asked by 90% of people is what do I do? How do I start? And the way to start is evaluating not actually throwing money into brokerage. It's about because if you say usually like oh, I have $700 My checking out you throw it into the brokerage but then you have to pull it out. It defeats the purpose. So you literally have to come up with a plan of how much you're going to put in each month. Because
the best way to make your investments keep growing is to not have to touch them until you're set gold timeframe, if you like the whole thing with risk comes in when you have to withdraw them earlier than expected at an undesirable price of current value of whatever you're holding. So you can avoid a lot of risk by basically just doing this and actually having specifically allocated money for investing versus like willy nilly and then so
you literally could just write everything and be like, Oh, I can't swing anything but then take your tax return and use that and that would be the same concept. It's the same thing as just saving up for six months and putting that money and so like that's another that's an all
or the other thing you could do to if you get paid weekly, you get 52 paychecks, but per month, there's like two months of the year you get a fifth paycheck. Don't count that in when you're trying to do your estimation stuff. And then those extra paychecks use those as your investing income. You could you could there's so many ways you can do things and what
doesn't need to be reoccurring income to be investing in but you just you have to have a plan in place of what you're going to do. Because if you don't have a plan in place, that's when shit goes sideways because you're good for like a just human nature as you're good for like a week or two or maybe a month and then you start backsliding to not being good. That's just how all humans are built well and
that's why I might be broken but like when I start tracking, I actually get excited. But then again, I like math. So like when I actually start putting them in categories, I can see how much we're spending on which categories and how much we're doing whatever. And then it makes it really easy to to start you're
focused on just the document thing. There's two parts to the equation. Okay, so go to yours. You've Document Document Document, but you still have to say okay, so how much am I going to put into this to get started?
But you don't know that until you evaluate? But
you keep harping on the document document document? Yes, we get it you put everything down? Yes. Oh, it's a game. It's fun. Okay. Yeah. Okay, we awareness is key number one. Oh, my God, the horses dead stop beating on it. Fine. So, once you get done doing what she's brought out for 10 minutes right now. You then have come up with a plan. Okay. I'm going to put $200 in every month. And when you do that you literally like I've mentioned in the podcast before, if you haven't heard it is this is new if you have sorry to repeat myself, but you take 25% of what you're putting into it and you put that into your emergency fund your worthy fund your yieldstreet whatever you're wherever you're putting your emergency cash that where it's making money, and then you take 75% And you put it into your brokerage account. You always want to be contributing to the emergency fund pretty much at the same time that you're contributing to the brokerage investing account. So you
don't think they should have a little bit of an emergency fund built up before they when
they can I mean that like just like the average person doesn't have savings.
Yeah, that goes into why with my problems with the whole budgeting thing to begin with.
Oh my god, the horse’s dead stop it. The reason why like because because what we've just brought up a couple minutes ago, you don't want to actually have to touch your investing account. That's what the emergency counselor that's why you put 25 there and then 75 and
thank you could flex those numbers around a little bit because if you know you're the kind of person that tends to overlook like car breakdowns or things of that nature, unexpected things. I would have a little bit more in the towards the emergency fund in the beginning like maybe a 5050 split instead of a 2575 Whatever
split works for them, you just contribute to the emergency fund as well as investing fund. Otherwise, you're gonna have to pull the money out of the investment
might be less than you put in if you have to do it.
We all discouragement oh my god, my principal is like 10% less than what I put in.
And we will attest to what was it August? I don't know what month it is August. This was an absolute shit show. So
bollocks as the Europeans.
So if we needed to pull money out of our account during the month of August, it would have been worth like, it
would have been like 80 cents on every dollar we put in. Yeah, around there. there abouts. And that's not you don't want to do that. But this is
normal for like market fluctuations throughout time. So however
you can I guess if you really need to pull it out when the markets in the bull market, but that's completely different topic altogether.
But we're just saying to like cover your butt with the emergency fund aspect. So
the premise of this was to pronged document what you're spending where you can make cuts where your discretionary money's gone basically not I'm not talking like okay, I'm going to pay like half the electric bill. No, I want like after you pay your bills and for your cell phone like cell phones, one where you can totally make a cut generally because they're ridiculously overpriced. Most of the time,
we'll do an episode about how to actually cut your expenses down because there's a lot of things you can actually reduce even if they aren't necessities.
Like insurance, you can just go buy a beater hoopty car and just put that on like a multicar that
has been one of our funnest ways to like get around paying for like GAP Insurance dude,
so it's insane. We'd like we put a van on the insurance and the insurance only went up like $10 just
just wait just This is so funny. So buy insurance dude, because he's ridiculous. I'm always like, what if I do this? Why don't we do that? We
have a guy. Yeah,
it's awesome. He's just like, well, he's like, hypothetically, I'm like, okay, so I want to do it that way. He's like, I didn't tell you this but yes, he's awesome. So when I when we added the van onto our insurance plan it well we actually had him separate initially. And then we did some jostling because I actually used to have seven cars at one point where I was just like, I hated having like a flat tire or like, My battery died in the morning. I was just like, You know what, whatever. And then toped is everywhere. Everywhere. It was like a fleet of beaters. It was ridiculous. I mean, my mom was driving one of my two brothers are driving each one's and then it was just I had like a truck, a car, a sports car. It was hilarious, but like the cheapest one I had was like a $200 car that I bought off my friend that it needed like maybe $800 for the work. It didn't have second gear so it just like hesitate to shift up but it was amazing because you could never go over the speed limit you kind of just like, like hung out right at the speed. So it was perfect. And people thought it was the ugliest freaking car in the world. And then at one point the honeycomb for the catalytic converter actually like dislodged from the outer shell. So it was like to work when he used to work at the term point.
I told this guy this guy had like he had I believe it was I don't know if it was a Volvo or BMW but it was like cherry it was pristine. And he pulled him behind me when we got to work. I worked overnight. And he was working with me pull them behind me. I was like, you probably don't want to park there and he's like, Oh, fuck you. What do you know? Because you know he's entitled he's been there. 30 years I've only been there two years.
It's cool that you were warming it up.
I was like, Alright, dude, I warned you. And then the next morning I started that car up and like it just shot shit all over his car. And it was just echoing around like the because I was parked next to the building so sound like a machine gun was going off. He came out he's like what the fuck man was there should all my cars like I told you not to park there? Don't give me crap. He's like well you could have said something I was like I did didn't you gave me this attitude how you're like mister entitled I've been here 30 years I don't have to listen to you. So now you have that should all your car Good luck clean that off. It was so funny. I didn't even speed away I was like to get you to like drove away like two miles an hour because all the faster when that's all the faster took off.
I got that car was so much fun. Seriously 200 bucks cash.
The best part about beaters is people will go out of their way to avoid you at the event is
the best like nobody hits you the literally drive around you because they're scared of you hitting them. It is it's amazing
point of having a beater. Is it like lowering our insurance? Yeah, so
like, although the insurance guy did tell me that once they're past a certain year now they become more of a risk because of safety or something I'm maybe able to tuck them in to call me on here to actually give him the deets on like how you can finagle some stuff but what was so cool when we had the van on we ended up putting Tim on my insurance policy and we sold his car to my brother. We're basically down to just my motorcycle, a car, the van I think it's just those three now. But when we added the van on, he's like it's gonna be at $3 and I was like okay, a month he's like no for the year. Like oh, that's fantastic. So I don't like we don't usually buy vehicles with enough worth to even really have full coverage or like Australasian,
tough one because we had to insure everything and we
did actually go a little bit higher with a van but so much for like the car and stuff. I mean, I got rear ended and I just kind of like pulled out the deadlift that sit and just said whatever with it. Because it was like, all right, but
that's a way to save money that most people overlook. You have a very nice car like a Volvo go out and buy just a shitty $200 tempo or escort or civic or something and I put that on your insurance and your insurance should go down with the multicam actually goes
down your insurance will actually go down having a second car on it. It's it's kind of ridiculous. If you're a safe driver.
I've never had a problem. Somehow I
haven't either because I don't drive fast enough. I drive like Miss Daisy, you are so full of crap, Miss Daisy. So that's, that's that's a hack and then you set a shop and that Safeways are giant or whatever shop at Aldi or Lidl, whichever ones around you. They have basically the same foods and if you're a health nut like Aldi has really good vegetables really good meat that's like hormone free, they
cut all their unnecessary expenses out so they can actually pass the discount on in the in the product. Oh,
like when we were spending $220 every week or two weeks I forget at giant we now are spending like $40 at ally so like
I think I think when we do a full blown grocery shop it's only about like 110 When we come out of between volume what we end up getting at Wegmans because temesta have his seltzer water yet another addiction seltzer water
and peanuts. Peanuts so yeah, you should see when I come home from work I like oh my god such a shitty day so then I'll like Papa seltzer water. I'll have some grapes and peanuts. Oh, all my goodies. Outer control. I don't have my chair anymore, but so I sit on whatever that is how you start saving money. Shop at like Dollar General and outtie and get a second car and your insurance and trade your cell phone plan to I guess what the hell's Ryan rails mint? Mobile's like $15 a month.
That's another one that's on the Verizon network I want to look into because it's like I think we're overpaying especially you because like you never know
that half the time I just have it in case of emergency
call me I call it's like off like Well, that's fantast not
off. battery's dead. Generally same thing, because I haven't used it like two weeks. I don't know where the battery works. Ask your
fuses upgrade. He still has an original droid. Why
would I upgrade that's extra money. And I like the phone I have
I know but it is deficient. Like it won't even like download certain apps on it because it's too old.
It has no memory. It has like one gig or something like It's ridiculous how well little memory that thing has. Okay, off topic. Sorry. That's what we do. I
think that's what makes it fun. Because investing is super boring. Otherwise,
it is but it will become fun once you actually go through the steps that I'm recommending where you analyze your current expenditures. Build up more discretionary income per month, use that discretionary income to put it in investments money that you're not really using anyways, and then when your investment account starts growing by like 100 $100 A week or $100 every two weeks. By the end of the year. You're like oh my god, I didn't even I didn't even miss those things. Or that money or whatever I was buying with that money. I didn't miss it at all. And now look how much money I have. That's growing like eight to 10 to 12%. I was
gonna say and then as soon as you start seeing the compounds and the dividends come in, you're gonna be like, holy crap.
There's a method to the madness that I described to people and once they actually like after, at first they're really resistant because I mean, humans don't like change.
They don't like things taken away from them. They don't like the perceived the perceived thought of things taken away from them.
Well, like the people that have actually stayed the course with what I recommended and they follow that they're actually Oh my god, I can't believe we're making that much money per month. Yeah, it's like dude, I mean, I told you guys this but you didn't want to you didn't want to hear it or you didn't believe it. It's, it's possible for anybody. You just have to follow the steps.
And budgeting is I guess, a real simple first step. Yeah, definitely step one. Even though if you skip it, you're not maximizing what you could be actually investing. And then basically, you're setting yourself up to work probably a lot, maybe even twice as long as you would unless you
like your job. If you like your job then by all means. That
means you can go slower at it, which is fine, but you should still be building something up because they don't have pensions anymore. You should still be putting stuff in a retirement account, or even in like a regular investing account. We'll talk about that. In another episode. We were
thinking about trying to get a financial advisor on so that I could have a back and forth in depth conversation with a financial advisor as to why they feel they're pertinent. And why I feel they're a waste.
You know, anybody that will be up for that argument that would be really hilarious to listen to, because I every thought he'd be better off with an ex financial adviser, everything that I read
from financial advisors like dude, you guys are like four months behind everything that I've been thinking or I put into plan put into action already, like with the bonds with the preferred shares with the CDs or with the tips with the eye bonds. It's like dude, you guys are so far behind. How are you getting paid for this? I don't even make money yet. My people start paying me so I can say I make money doing this. Alright, that's it for that topic. Alright, so
we're done for the day done with this guys. We're gonna wrap it up. I think what we're gonna do, we were discussing this in the car today. I'm gonna actually put a link down in the show notes going forward. I'm going to create a page on our website for people we'd like to interview or types of people we'd like to interview and we're going to actually ask for help from you guys as the audience to potentially stick us in, llink us to people you think might be good qualifiers, people you know or even other influencers and stuff because we want to start getting like parallel viewpoints. 

I'm always open to data like I'm not opposed to people that have different points of view because it's more data that I've probably just knowing me I have overlooked
yeah and to me finances and investing overlaps pretty much all areas of investing.
There's no like, one way like My way is literally like five different things that I've researched and used over the years and that's how I created my way, my way. I think it's five, five different publications that I put together and that's what I use. And I think any good investing plan should have multiple factors. from different points of view. And yeah, I agree. I do that with the way I do like growth investing, you're missing out on a lot of stuff that's missing out on stuff like growth investing is really good during bull markets. But then if you have a sideways market growth, investing is not really that good side market, you probably want dividends because dividends will keep growing and your principal won't go down. If you're in a recessionary market well growth, investing stupid, and you should be in defensive stuff like consumers consumer staples, like diapers and milk and stuff like that. And then like utilities and gold and silver, you have to have it's fluid. It's always fluid. It's always moving and you have to have more than one strategy.
And you definitely want dividends when stuffs going down too because those dividends you do but like to to
keep your principal intuitively, where it's at you want to have like utilities and gold and silver and eggs and milk and stuff that everyone's gonna buy and apparently use credit cards because everyone uses credit cards now. I
use them for cashback food, like
the credit like the end, like in the beginning a year later there was nobody used their credit cards and now there was like a trillion dollars a month on credit cards like holy crap people. And if interest rates keep going, you're one of those people. That's actually step one. Step two is going to step one is going to be documenting where you can save money and step two is going to be paying off credit cards that you're paying 24% on
I can't even get over the rates that are out right now. It's insane. Like if you're trying to invest a 10% But you're paying 20 credit card you need to hit those offers. Everybody's
like going to have a different plan like it's what the steps step one is all the same for everybody. They have to document and evaluate to see what what they're spending where they can save money but then like if you have debt, you have to pay the debt off. Unless it's a house, screw it. You don't have to pay the house off
you. Most people have an interest rate that's so low on that that it's better
to actually invest money rather than paying off your unless you just bought it with a 7% interest and then you probably want to start paying double payments so that you're
gonna say and you haven't put any you don't have any equity and then you're paying like out the nose interest heavy in the front end.
We were just discussing HELOC the other day. Dude, seriously everybody. I use the word genius that came up with that idea that hey,
how can we rate them after they've already bought a house? I have a brilliant idea. They're like 27 years into a 30 year mortgage. How about we do this? We'll give you a brand new 30 year mortgage and we'll give you a check for the value of your house. People are like oh my God, that sounds brilliant. That's a reverse mortgage. No, that's what a HELOC is. Basically they give you a bunch of money for your equity and then you have to basically pay a new mortgage off the way you said that maybe made it sound like reverse reverse mortgage makes sense for older people.
It does like
crazy tricky. Most the kids want the house or something like that. But like, but yeah, someone came up said Hey, dude, I'll give you 5000 a year until you die and then when you die, I get your house I'd be like, sold 5000 a year, whatever it is, I don't know. 5000 a year. I don't know how they were like what the what the numbers are,
it should be like a mortgage payment and reverse. Thanks. I need to look more into that or we need to find a reverse mortgage specialist. So
that's someone that we're looking for.
It'll be interesting to have that topic covered.
I find them beneficial for older people unless the kids want to house so unless there's like
contingencies we don't aren't aware of because I could see them having hidden crap in the contract that would totally screw you. They
probably do they probably do. Every contract has fine printed for that call what they what they call fine print is bang in the ass. Like open up
here calm spotted me over
like that in the pooper All right. All right, I rambled enough. Hopefully you got the point of all this document where you're spending stuff come up with how much you whatever is easy to track it missionary income, you can actually
figure out what's essential. What then adds a little bit. We'll
do another episode that will follow. Once you've actually got a discretionary amount in mind then we'll do one where you can actually start then looking at brokerage accounts and investing and all that fun. And
if you guys are okay with publishing it get on our Instagram and comment about how much money you're either a I don't know I just know overspending or under
my habits run about $40 a week. I
call bullshit on that one.
Oh my grapes are only like we're gonna find out because I am track $10 Chipotle is 20 or 30 or maybe $50 weeks I go three times.
And I've actually stopped eating there just because it's like, just
the best. It's the best because Chipotle is 12 hours and she doesn't actually
sit there and just watch him eat but I come home and eat something else because we've been getting a lot of free stuff out of the garden. And Tim's so weird leftovers
is when the vegetable start getting right like rawhide.
You're so strange. Thank you. You're welcome. See you in the next episode.