Speaker 1: It is twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Happy New Year.
Speaker 1: You know, at the top of the year, everybody, I
Speaker 1: feel like, is holding that mirror up and saying, what
Speaker 1: am I going to do different this year?
Speaker 3: Yes, you see all the commercials for gym memberships and
Speaker 3: things like that, because people are trying to get their
Speaker 3: their fitness in order.
Speaker 2: Yes, I need to do that as well.
Speaker 1: I feel like you can always count on a couple
Speaker 1: of things. You can count on people getting gym memberships
Speaker 1: and saying they're working out, people packing that lunch. People
Speaker 1: are saying I'm not gonna eat out as much this year.
Speaker 1: I tweeted that.
Speaker 2: I tweeted that. The other day.
Speaker 3: I was like the mod over twenty twenty is you
Speaker 3: have food at home?
Speaker 2: Eat what you got on your fridge? TT.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I think people are hyper focused on their pockets, definitely,
Speaker 1: And you know that could be for many reasons. I
Speaker 1: think sometimes after the holiday season, after you've purchased all
Speaker 1: those gifts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like I was in a better space
Speaker 3: because I told everybody, no one is getting a gift,
Speaker 3: no one, no one over the age of six.
Speaker 1: That's getting again. I'm behind it.
Speaker 2: I'm TT and I'm Zakiah and from Spotify Studios.
Speaker 4: This is dope laps.
Speaker 1: My timeline has been filled with people talking about cutting
Speaker 1: expenses and generating new lines of income. Sometimes people say,
Speaker 1: I didn't do as much with my money or I
Speaker 1: didn't do as well with my money in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: so in twenty twenty, I'm gonna make some changes. Have
Speaker 1: you seen that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: I've seen some memes that are like, oh, how to
Speaker 3: save you know, a few thousand dollars by the end
Speaker 3: of the year, And it has like a metric where
Speaker 3: it's like, if you save, you know, two dollars every day,
Speaker 3: then you'll be able to get to a certain amount
Speaker 3: of money, or if you save like two dollars and
Speaker 3: four dollars and six dollars.
Speaker 2: And things like that.
Speaker 3: And so people are trying to find all the cheat
Speaker 3: codes to level up with their bank account.
Speaker 1: And I think this puts us in just the right
Speaker 1: position to kind of jump into some of the tools
Speaker 1: people are using to hit these financial.
Speaker 2: Goals, because there are a lot out there.
Speaker 1: So this week we're talking about fintech. Fintech is short
Speaker 1: for financial technology. In order for something to be considered fintech,
Speaker 1: it must be technology that connects you to a financial system.
Speaker 2: So like to your bank or your credit card or
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 1: Right, And you may think you don't know any fintech apps,
Speaker 1: but I guarantee you that you do.
Speaker 3: Yes, fintech apps are basically running our lives, and we
Speaker 3: had no idea.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of different categories, and I won't
Speaker 1: hit all of them, but those that are kind of
Speaker 1: digital banking, so Chime if you've heard of that. Those
Speaker 1: that let you send different payments, so Venmo, Samsung pay
Speaker 1: cash app, business tools, so things that help you if
Speaker 1: you have a business, that help you kind of run
Speaker 1: your business. Retail investing so Acorn if you've heard of
Speaker 1: that one, or Robinhood or Symphony if you use that
Speaker 1: banking system. Crowdfunding, so Kickstarter is a fintech app, go
Speaker 1: fund me, that's right, And Patreon is a fintech app
Speaker 1: as well. Even some new insurance options are actually financial
Speaker 1: technology companies.
Speaker 3: Yes, there's stuff for car insurance, medical insurance.
Speaker 1: If you're already using these or thinking about using one,
Speaker 1: we're here to help you learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about how these apps work and how they can work
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 2: And how you can get yourself situated for twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: So let's get into the recitation.
Speaker 3: Now that we know some examples of what fintech is,
Speaker 3: what questions do we have?
Speaker 1: I want to know how these apps make their money?
Speaker 1: Should I trust them? Are they selling my information?
Speaker 2: Are they ribbing us? And we don't even know what.
Speaker 1: Makes people use these apps? And if I'm trying to
Speaker 1: save more money in twenty twenty, which apps should I use?
Speaker 1: What strategies should I follow?
Speaker 3: Okay, so now that we know the questions that we
Speaker 3: want to ask, let's jump into the dissection.
Speaker 2: Fintech is a major industry.
Speaker 3: By September twenty nineteen, about two thousand, seven hundred fintech
Speaker 3: startup companies raised over one hundred and sixty billion dollars
Speaker 3: of capital.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of money. Lots The various types of
Speaker 1: fintech can be broadly clustered into category is like consumer lending,
Speaker 1: point of sale systems, retail investing, personal finance, money transfer,
Speaker 1: and crowdfunding, just to name a few.
Speaker 3: We're going to walk through some of the different categories,
Speaker 3: highlighting the positives and negatives. Then we'll outline strategies using
Speaker 3: these apps to reach your twenty twenty financial goals, and.
Speaker 1: To help us get into the nitty gritty about all
Speaker 1: things fintech, we called on doctor Bill Mauer.
Speaker 5: My name is Bill Mauer, and I'm an anthropology professor
Speaker 5: at the University of California at Irvine, where I direct
Speaker 5: a research center called the Institute for Money, Technology and
Speaker 5: Financial Inclusion. And basically at that institute, what I study
Speaker 5: is the interaction between new technologies and how those things
Speaker 5: interact with people's existing financial practices, savings behavior, their understandings
Speaker 5: of money and value, their understandings of debt, and so on.
Speaker 1: Fintech is all around this, and it can feel like
Speaker 1: these apps have been around forever, but that's not exactly
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 3: Yes, so our first question for doctor Mauer was when
Speaker 3: did all of this stuff start popping up?
Speaker 5: This really kind of hit the scene in a big
Speaker 5: way in two thousand and eight and two thousand and
Speaker 5: nine with the launch of the iPhone.
Speaker 1: Yes, the iPhone launch in the US in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, but the iPhone three G came on the
Speaker 1: scene in two thousand and eight revolutionary and changed everything.
Speaker 5: All of a sudden, people have this really cool device
Speaker 5: that fits in their pocket and is basically a terrific
Speaker 5: interface into a whole bunch of different applications, our whole
Speaker 5: kind of app Ecology grew up around the iPhone and
Speaker 5: similar devices, and people in Silicon Valley and in the
Speaker 5: banking industry and payments industry started realizing, Hey, this device,
Speaker 5: this suite of devices and apps could really change people's
Speaker 5: relationship to their money into the existing financial and banking infrastructure.
Speaker 1: I love that he describes this as ecology because we've
Speaker 1: talked about ecology on a couple of different episodes. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so ecology is just how different things. Usually in
Speaker 1: biology we say how different organisms interact with one another,
Speaker 1: But now we're saying how these different apps talk to
Speaker 1: each other. How do people want to access their information
Speaker 1: now that they have a smartphone. So it's really cool
Speaker 1: to think about this in the context of more of
Speaker 1: a relationship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so these apps have created their own special environment,
Speaker 3: that's right.
Speaker 1: So the first category we're walking through is personal finance.
Speaker 1: These are apps like Mint, credit, Karma, you need a budget,
Speaker 1: and even your personal banking gap. Generally they help you
Speaker 1: manage your spending and saving.
Speaker 5: These apps basically serve almost as like training wheels. Right,
Speaker 5: So it's like training wheels on a bicycle that teaches
Speaker 5: you a little bit about budgeting and investing or savings.
Speaker 5: It's usually not enough to get you where you need
Speaker 5: to go, but it gives you basic skills in a
Speaker 5: basic vocabulary. So then you can start talking to other people,
Speaker 5: to friends, to your parents, or even walk into your
Speaker 5: credit union or bank and start asking better questions.
Speaker 3: And these apps are services can be really good for
Speaker 3: helping people make smarter financial decisions. This help comes primarily
Speaker 3: in two ways. The first is by data visualization, or
Speaker 3: giving people charts and graphs show them what they're really
Speaker 3: doing with their money.
Speaker 5: For so many people, money's just coming in and going
Speaker 5: out and they're not really being mindful about it or
Speaker 5: paying any attention to where things are going.
Speaker 1: We all know we're getting more than the basics when
Speaker 1: we go to Target. Yes, you're getting stuff that's not
Speaker 1: on your list.
Speaker 3: You went there for toilet paper. You came out with
Speaker 3: a flat screen TV. The hair supplies that little one
Speaker 3: dollar area in the front, it's a wrap it is.
Speaker 3: I'm in there getting all seasonal decor whatever they have.
Speaker 3: I'm grabbing it like I do need a new toaster.
Speaker 1: I think we would all be shocked if we could
Speaker 1: see just how much we're spending at Target every month.
Speaker 5: What most of these budgeting apps do is they connect
Speaker 5: up to your bank account and your you know, your
Speaker 5: debit card and your credit card, all of your accounts,
Speaker 5: and they're constantly pulling data in from those accounts, so
Speaker 5: they're seeing what you're doing, and then they can represent
Speaker 5: that data to you with cool visuals and graphics to
Speaker 5: help you understand where your money's going and then to
Speaker 5: help you change your behavior, at least in theory.
Speaker 1: Yes, for me, I'm a visual learner, so you know,
Speaker 1: seeing the dollar size of like, yeah, the money's going down, right,
Speaker 1: But when you see that pie chart and it says, hey,
Speaker 1: sixty percent of your shopping was at Target, that's a
Speaker 1: reality check. Yeah.
Speaker 3: For me, I realized that I spend way more money
Speaker 3: on pizza than I do on like toothpaste.
Speaker 1: I hope, so unless you're eating that toothpaste. One of
Speaker 1: the Finzech apps that I used, and I used a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago is Mint.
Speaker 2: Oh, I use that too.
Speaker 1: Really. I like Mint because it will kind of show
Speaker 1: you all these different categories. You can create some new categories,
Speaker 1: and they can say, hey, you're spending more on this
Speaker 1: this month than you did last month or outside of
Speaker 1: your budget. What Mint showed me is that I use
Speaker 1: lift a lot, and so I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: tt sometimes you don't need someone to drive you.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you can drive yourself or walk.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: That's not a part of my New Year's resolution, but
Speaker 2: I ain't working out.
Speaker 1: So for us, these types of visualizations really help us
Speaker 1: understand what some of our spending patterns or trends are.
Speaker 1: But the other way fintech helps people be smarter with
Speaker 1: their money is through gamification.
Speaker 5: And what that means is, you know, there's little points
Speaker 5: that you earn, or little stickers or stars, or there's
Speaker 5: bars that fill up with you know, green or the
Speaker 5: you know the the red circle slowly turns into a
Speaker 5: green circle.
Speaker 1: Even though I don't want to believe that I'm swayed
Speaker 1: by this type of gamification, I know that it's true.
Speaker 1: I want to get all the stars, all the stickers.
Speaker 1: I want to have nine lives, whatever it is. I
Speaker 1: want to get the super plus bonus, right, I want
Speaker 1: all those things.
Speaker 3: You know, when you're driving our ways and you see
Speaker 3: that that little power up thing coming, it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: once you cross this place and you get ten points,
Speaker 3: I'd be so excited.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what those ten points do.
Speaker 5: And then you're just tapping into basic psychology right off,
Speaker 5: Like we get a little reward for doing something, and
Speaker 5: our dopamine goes crazy in our brain and we're like, ooh,
Speaker 5: that felt good, I want more of that.
Speaker 1: There you have it. Fintech makes you feel good.
Speaker 3: I love a gold star or you know something filling
Speaker 3: up green or whatever.
Speaker 2: It makes me feel like, go tt go t T.
Speaker 1: While data visualization and gamification might help us make smarter decisions,
Speaker 1: the fintech environment also brought about some new norms that
Speaker 1: make managing your spending a little bit harder. One of
Speaker 1: the things about some of these apps, and I guess
Speaker 1: you could call this a downside, right, is that they
Speaker 1: sometimes send you mixed messages.
Speaker 3: Right, So, you might be spending a lot of money
Speaker 3: on pizza, but then you get an ad.
Speaker 2: That it shows a coupon for a pizza place.
Speaker 5: So why is that some of the budgeting apps, the
Speaker 5: the apps themselves make their money by selling ads to
Speaker 5: you or by you know, kind of making you offers
Speaker 5: that they get a little bit of a return on.
Speaker 1: So now that you know that you can avoid those ads,
Speaker 1: so sorry, TT doesn't mean that you get more pizza.
Speaker 2: Fine.
Speaker 3: Another category is point of sale and shopping. These are
Speaker 3: apps like Venmo, cash App, PayPal, Zel, and Square, and
Speaker 3: we use these apps to purchase products or services. It
Speaker 3: makes paying really easy and avoids some of the hassle
Speaker 3: of cash transactions. It's also a really great tool for
Speaker 3: some small businesses because they can avoid the fees that
Speaker 3: are normally attached to card purchases. And it's good for
Speaker 3: the customer because then we don't have to have a
Speaker 3: minimum amount purchased in order to use these apps like
Speaker 3: we do with a credit card.
Speaker 1: I think initially I was a little skeptical, and some
Speaker 1: of my friends were skeptical about these apps.
Speaker 2: I first definitely was skeptical at first.
Speaker 1: And now it feels like everybody's using them.
Speaker 5: You know, it just became it became so generalized and
Speaker 5: second nature to people over time to just start putting
Speaker 5: their credit card information into everything. Right.
Speaker 1: But what we know, maybe this is based on some
Speaker 1: of my own personal experience, is is that these apps
Speaker 1: make it really easy to spend money because often all
Speaker 1: of your information is already stored or pre populated in
Speaker 1: the app.
Speaker 3: Yes, because the way that smartphones are set up these days,
Speaker 3: everything auto populates your name, your address, your cell phone number,
Speaker 3: your social Security number, your mama's made a name, what
Speaker 3: you ate for breakfast, everything.
Speaker 1: And we talked about how putting credit card information yes
Speaker 1: into your browser, and.
Speaker 2: We talked about that on our end of the year mixtape.
Speaker 5: When you have mobile browsers and even browsers on your
Speaker 5: computer that auto populate your credit card information, right that
Speaker 5: save it and auto populate, you're like, oh, yeah, okay, cool, Yes,
Speaker 5: I will buy all of these things on Amazon right
Speaker 5: now because my card is already there.
Speaker 1: That can lead to a lot of late night shopping.
Speaker 2: I do admit I did buy that cool Aunt sweatshirt.
Speaker 2: I knew it.
Speaker 1: I knew it. The thing here is these various types
Speaker 1: of fintech can make capturing your coins really easy, but
Speaker 1: it also can make giving them away pretty easy too,
Speaker 1: so be careful with that. The next category is consumer lending.
Speaker 1: These include affirm, after Pay, Credify, and bond Street. Are
Speaker 1: these apps not exactly? Not all of these are apps,
Speaker 1: So a firm is something you'll sometimes see on a
Speaker 1: website when you get ready to check out, and it
Speaker 1: may say you can split your payment into you know,
Speaker 1: you can do this with zero percent financing over twelve months.
Speaker 1: Peloton offers a firm I've often seen on like shop
Speaker 1: bopped and some other websites they offer after pay so
Speaker 1: you buy it.
Speaker 3: And Outfitters and a lot of different clothing websites now.
Speaker 1: And there are some technologies like Zel that yes have
Speaker 1: a standalone app, but are also integrated. So Zell is integrated.
Speaker 1: If you have Bank of America, zel is an option.
Speaker 1: If you have Wells Fargo, zell is an option. And
Speaker 1: so now that's why one in two people that have
Speaker 1: a bank account have access to Zel. That's amazing because
Speaker 1: they did. They have the best of both worlds. You
Speaker 1: can download another app, or you don't have to. You
Speaker 1: just use it in your own banking app. It's pretty clever.
Speaker 2: Definitely.
Speaker 3: It gives people the opportunity to make purchases that they
Speaker 3: can't afford all at once and pay it off in
Speaker 3: tiny chunks.
Speaker 1: Let's just take the holidays for example. If I don't
Speaker 1: have cash or credit, I might take a payday loan
Speaker 1: and those things have incredible interest and have all these
Speaker 1: fees attached to them. But something like a firm or
Speaker 1: afterpay allows me to make a purchase and I can
Speaker 1: pay it in small chunks. Now, this still requires you
Speaker 1: to have some type of credit, while offering more payment
Speaker 1: options is really great. Some of these fintech apps use
Speaker 1: something called alternative risk scoring. This is a practice that
Speaker 1: can mine other types of data to determine your credit worthiness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so some consumer lending companies have access to our
Speaker 3: social profiles, our cell phone location information, and browsing histories
Speaker 3: and they're using that to determine our credit worthiness.
Speaker 1: The key thing here is that all of these different
Speaker 1: companies have proprietary algorithms.
Speaker 3: An algorithm is an equation that is used to determine
Speaker 3: a risk or an outcome. What some of them might
Speaker 3: be doing is taking like your browsing history and putting
Speaker 3: that into their algorithm to determine your credit worthiness.
Speaker 1: So the thing to remember is that these algorithms are proprietary.
Speaker 1: That means they belong to those companies and they don't
Speaker 1: have to share what the algorithm actually is. The problem
Speaker 1: with that is that if we don't know what information
Speaker 1: is being collected or used, we can't really tell if
Speaker 1: it's being used correctly or maybe be a misinterpreted.
Speaker 5: One of the really pernicious things here is you'll have
Speaker 5: people in the industry who will say, oh, hey, it's
Speaker 5: an algorithm. It's a computer. This is going to eliminate
Speaker 5: bias because you're not going to have someone sitting in
Speaker 5: a loan office looking at someone across a table from them,
Speaker 5: where implicit or explicit bias can creep in. This is
Speaker 5: totally neutral. It's the computer, but so much depends on
Speaker 5: the data that's fed into it, the histories of how
Speaker 5: those data are collected.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, what if my niece has my phone, she's
Speaker 3: five years old, and let's say she's been on YouTube
Speaker 3: binge watching cartoons, and then the consumer lending company sees that,
Speaker 3: and they may consider YouTube binge watching cartoons a negative
Speaker 3: marker in their algorithm.
Speaker 1: But we have no way of knowing that, right, we don't.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the tricky part about all of this.
Speaker 1: You know, we've talked about bias in the past, but
Speaker 1: this is something to really consider. And this is something
Speaker 1: that the new Apple credit card really recently came under
Speaker 1: fire about. So the Apple credit card, which is paired
Speaker 1: with glob and sacks. There were reports that it may
Speaker 1: have some type of bias against women.
Speaker 5: Women are getting lower credit limits than their husbands, even
Speaker 5: if they have the same household, in the same bank account,
Speaker 5: and that sort of a thing.
Speaker 1: And so there's something in that algorithm that's giving them that.
Speaker 1: And it may not even be explicitly if you're a
Speaker 1: woman lower, if you're a man higher, But it could
Speaker 1: be something else around patterns or trends that we don't
Speaker 1: even realize. But we don't know that algorithm, so we
Speaker 1: can't say right right now, New York state regulators are
Speaker 1: investigating whether Apple credit cards algorithm is sexist. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we'll talk about how you can make smarter
Speaker 1: financial decisions in twenty twenty and how to evaluate what
Speaker 1: fintech to try. We're back, so how can we make
Speaker 1: smart financial choices in twenty twenty? Is there a way
Speaker 1: to use fintech for our good? According to doctor Mauer,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't rely entirely on technology to get your finances
Speaker 1: back on track. Instead, you should use it as a
Speaker 1: tool part of your larger strategy, and the first step
Speaker 1: of that strategy shouldn't be to download a nap it
Speaker 1: should be to set.
Speaker 5: A goal set for yourself, a realistic goal. And a
Speaker 5: realistic goal might be something like, I'm going to pay
Speaker 5: off twenty percent of my credit card debt this year, right,
Speaker 5: not fifty, not seventy five, not all of it. It's
Speaker 5: gonna pay a twenty percent of it, and then you
Speaker 5: can use those apps to track how you're getting toward
Speaker 5: that goal.
Speaker 3: Having a realistic goal is important because otherwise you can
Speaker 3: get frustrated and just give book. The second step of
Speaker 3: your strategy should be a debt assessment. Pull together all
Speaker 3: of your loans, credit card balances, car loans, student loans,
Speaker 3: all that stuff, and compare their interest rates.
Speaker 5: And start really focusing on those highest interest debts, the
Speaker 5: highest interest credit cards. Pay those off first, right, and
Speaker 5: then work your way down. Don't waste your time going
Speaker 5: all like investing in bitcoin or whatever while you're trying
Speaker 5: to pay off your debt. Right, you're focusing on paying
Speaker 5: off your debt.
Speaker 1: Yes, you have to crawl before you ball, focus on
Speaker 1: your debts before you start investing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, invest in yourself before you're investing in other things.
Speaker 1: So we have a strategy for debt, how should we
Speaker 1: manage the rest of our budgets.
Speaker 5: There's the fifty to thirty twenty budget rule, and this
Speaker 5: is a thing that Elizabeth Warren and her daughter came
Speaker 5: up with, and basically they're like, you should allow yourself
Speaker 5: fifty percent on your actual needs and that's like your rent,
Speaker 5: your mortgage, your food, medicine stuff, that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: And then they say thirty percent on your wants, on
Speaker 5: your desires, and then twenty percent to your savings and
Speaker 5: or paying off your debts. I think that's a pretty
Speaker 5: good rule. The only thing I might do is like
Speaker 5: flip it, flip those last two so that you're allowing yourself,
Speaker 5: you know, twenty percent on your wants and then thirty
Speaker 5: percent on your debts and your savings.
Speaker 3: Even though fintech is about making transactions easier and more
Speaker 3: convenient to help keep our spending under control, doctor Maer
Speaker 3: suggests that we make things harder for ourselves. So don't
Speaker 3: have it so that your information, your credit card information
Speaker 3: auto populates in Amazon or anything like that. Make it
Speaker 3: so that you have to physically put it in every
Speaker 3: single time.
Speaker 5: And that's going to create a tiny little mental speed
Speaker 5: bump so that you think about it just for like
Speaker 5: ten more seconds. Anything you can do to slow yourself
Speaker 5: down is going to help.
Speaker 1: So now, if my information doesn't auto populate on my
Speaker 1: iPhone when I'm searching in the night, I'm going to
Speaker 1: have to message you and say, hey, here's this link.
Speaker 1: Can you buy this for me? I'll venmo you tomorrow.
Speaker 3: We're like, okay, sure, my stuff is still stored, you're
Speaker 3: not gonna take it out.
Speaker 2: Doctor Marra actually said that that's a good idea.
Speaker 5: Even that I think is better. Right if you do
Speaker 5: a thing of like, you know, hey, T T, can
Speaker 5: you buy me this thing? I'll venmo you, and then
Speaker 5: you're spending all that time texting, and then TT is
Speaker 5: like what does Seqi really need that? And then maybe
Speaker 5: TT's like do you really need that? And Seki is
Speaker 5: like yes, Like shut up, give me the thing that
Speaker 5: I need and I'll venmo you. You're putting more space, right,
Speaker 5: You're putting more time and more thought and hopefully a
Speaker 5: tiny bit more intentionality into that purchase before you make it.
Speaker 5: And you've also done another thing right, You've built in
Speaker 5: some accountability because now your friend knows the stupid things
Speaker 5: that you're buying with your money.
Speaker 1: I think I'll make really great purchases. So if TT
Speaker 1: says it's stupid, I'm gonna say, you're not thinking about
Speaker 1: this in the right way. Let me add some perspective and.
Speaker 3: Then I'll have a long conversation and maybe by the
Speaker 3: end of that you won't want it anymore. So, when
Speaker 3: you're ready to use fintech as a tool in your
Speaker 3: financial strategy, how do you evaluate which one to go with?
Speaker 3: There are two big things to consider. One is fees.
Speaker 3: Some apps make a profit by charging you to use
Speaker 3: their services, and those fees can add up, so read
Speaker 3: the terms and conditions carefully. The other thing to research
Speaker 3: closely is the company's customer service.
Speaker 5: If there's no easy way to communicate with an app,
Speaker 5: or you have a question and you can't get it answered,
Speaker 5: that's a big red flag, right If you can't pick
Speaker 5: up the phone and call someone, or you can't get
Speaker 5: into a little you know, in a chat box and
Speaker 5: talk to someone, or there's no way to email them,
Speaker 5: then I'd be a little bit concerned.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, fintech is supposed to work for you, and if
Speaker 1: it's not, you can always go old school. There's no
Speaker 1: shame in ditching the tech.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it's actually easier for people to save with cash.
Speaker 5: Have that material cash in a drawer, lock it up,
Speaker 5: don't go in there, don't look at it, only think
Speaker 5: about it, you know, on Paige. And then when there's
Speaker 5: a big chunk of it and it's making making you
Speaker 5: nervous or making you twitch, just take it to the bank.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things is to use cash. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that looks like anymore. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you don't. It is all digital.
Speaker 3: I don't care cash I don't have. I don't have
Speaker 3: a quarter, I don't have a nickel, I don't got
Speaker 3: none of it.
Speaker 1: I'm always a friend that has some cash, you know.
Speaker 1: I like to start out and say, this is how
Speaker 1: much cash I have for just ridiculous purchases. This is
Speaker 1: my cash for whole foods, for coffee, for a soft drink, like,
Speaker 1: this is my cash for that. And when that's done,
Speaker 1: that's it. There's no more.
Speaker 3: I would run into issues because I once it runs out,
Speaker 3: then my brain will be like, you need it now,
Speaker 3: now you really need that coke and exactly, and I'd
Speaker 3: be like, well, I need a Coca Cola.
Speaker 2: I know I'm out of my cash, but I have
Speaker 2: this card.
Speaker 1: Well, then my strategy wouldn't work for you. And that's okay.
Speaker 1: That's the thing to remember. Everything ain't for everybody. That's
Speaker 1: a good conclusion for this episode. Yes, do what works
Speaker 1: for you, and for some of y'all, in order to
Speaker 1: find out what works for you, you might have to
Speaker 1: spend a little time looking in the mirror. You have
Speaker 1: to say, what is my weak spot? Is it wingstop
Speaker 1: on Fridays for limon pepper wings?
Speaker 2: Those are delicious?
Speaker 3: Is it a double impossible whopper tt? Yes? And all
Speaker 3: of my weaknesses our food I'm finding. But guess what
Speaker 3: twenty twenty we eat and what we have at home.
Speaker 3: That's what I said I would do, and that's what
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: So I'm going heavy veggie. I mean, you know I
Speaker 1: eat a lot of support.
Speaker 3: Yes, my friend she loves an herb, she loves lentils,
Speaker 3: and she loves a green leafy greens are the way
Speaker 3: to go. And so I know that my.
Speaker 1: Weak spots are clothes and food. And it's not even
Speaker 1: food like grocery store food. It's like going out to eat.
Speaker 1: If you say at seven forty five, can you meet
Speaker 1: me at eight thirty four? Oysters Yes I can every time,
Speaker 1: whether I had it on, whether whether it was my
Speaker 1: plan or not. Yes I can. And so I want
Speaker 1: to think a little bit more. I want to be
Speaker 1: able to put a road bump or a speed bump
Speaker 1: between me and old abbit.
Speaker 2: I always fall victim to ads on social media. Really
Speaker 2: they are so good, they really know me.
Speaker 3: So what I've been doing is when I see an AD,
Speaker 3: I'll say no, I'll say remove this ad. It is
Speaker 3: not relevant. And so I won't see it over and
Speaker 3: over and over again, because that's another thing that gets me.
Speaker 3: If I see an AD three or four times, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: well I needed. Then one of my strategies that's been
Speaker 3: working for me for shopping is I will put all
Speaker 3: this stuff in my shopping cart.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I like this. I'm going to get it
Speaker 1: down to an even number. I need to get it
Speaker 1: down to under this amount. Right, If it's three hundred
Speaker 1: dollars in my shopping cart, I need to get it
Speaker 1: down to two hundred, always one hundred lower, which is
Speaker 1: already the wrong scale to be shopping on. And then
Speaker 1: the next thing I do is just leave it in
Speaker 1: the car. I can't buy it that day, leave it
Speaker 1: I opened a new tab on top of it, and
Speaker 1: at the rate that I open tabs, sometimes I'm thirty
Speaker 1: tabs deep and I forget about that stuff.
Speaker 3: And if I forgot about it, I didn't need it exactly,
Speaker 3: I didn't need it. Yeah, sometimes you just need a
Speaker 3: good night sleep in between putting it in your cart
Speaker 3: and hitting complete purchase.
Speaker 1: And that saved me so many times. I logged in
Speaker 1: the other day on anthropology. Do you know how many
Speaker 1: campbells popped up in that shop of part? All Right,
Speaker 1: that's it for Lab twenty one. Don't forget to check
Speaker 1: out our website for a cheat sheet on today's episode.
Speaker 1: You can find it and sign up for our newsletter
Speaker 1: at Dope Labs podcast dot com.
Speaker 3: Also, we love hearing from you. What do you think
Speaker 3: about today's lab? What are your ideas for future labs?
Speaker 3: Our number is two O two five six seven seven
Speaker 3: zero two eight Call us.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Dope Labs Podcasts, tt is on Twitter at dr Underscore
Speaker 1: t Sho.
Speaker 2: And you can find Zakia at z Said So.
Speaker 1: Follow us on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to our guest doctor Bill Mauer. We'll link
Speaker 1: to his website in our show notes. This episode of
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is produced by Jenny Ratlet Mass of Wave
Speaker 1: Runner Studios and Elizabeth Nikano. Mixing and sound designed by
Speaker 1: Hannis Brown, Special thanks to roy Hurst.
Speaker 3: The original theme music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
Speaker 3: Sugi Eurra, with additional music by Elijah Alex Harvey.
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is a production of Spotify Studios and Mega
Speaker 1: Owned Media Group, and it's executive produced by us T. T.
Speaker 1: Shadia and Zakiah Wattley. My favorite exercise is dinner parties.
Speaker 1: I like to shuffle things around. Chop yes, pick a
Speaker 1: pull down the oven, pull out?
Speaker 2: You want to do that exercise today?
Speaker 1: If you have the food, I'm happy to