Speaker 1: Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel, I'm Matt, and
Speaker 1: today we're doing our year end review. You know what, buddy,
Speaker 1: So this is our Friday flight, and typically we cover
Speaker 1: the headlines that we've come across this past week that
Speaker 1: we felt were most important to talk about. And with
Speaker 1: us being the last Friday, not only of the week,
Speaker 1: but of the entire year, how you're gonna say of
Speaker 1: all time? And I was like, what do you know
Speaker 1: that I don't know? The world is coming to now?
Speaker 1: We we did feel that it was on the street
Speaker 1: corner of this this past week of preaching that to everyone,
Speaker 1: we wanted to cover the best, the most important kind
Speaker 1: of like the overarching stories that impacted us the most
Speaker 1: from this past year. And so we're not just talking
Speaker 1: about the headlines from this week. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: headlines of twenty two was in resting year. There was
Speaker 1: a lot that happened, and so I think it's good
Speaker 1: for us to like reflect. We see that every single year, though,
Speaker 1: you know, but but I feel I feel like this
Speaker 1: year was particularly it was different. It was listening and
Speaker 1: especially hopefully it calms down. It deviated a lot from
Speaker 1: what we're happening in recent years in a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of different ways, and there was a whole lot of
Speaker 1: news to follow, Like I feel like our Friday flights,
Speaker 1: like we're it's only gotten more interesting. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: like every single week it felt like there was something
Speaker 1: important to tell the audience. And so hope we're not
Speaker 1: just doing these for our health, right, Uh, we're doing
Speaker 1: it for your financial health though, right exactly, And so yeah,
Speaker 1: we uh, we'll continue Friday flights obviously going on every
Speaker 1: Friday next year, but this we were like, let's do
Speaker 1: one where we're just reflecting on the insanity that was
Speaker 1: and the big takeaways really that we had from this year.
Speaker 1: But but seriously, ever since we started the Friday flight
Speaker 1: with at the beginning of twenty like, it's only gotten
Speaker 1: like Nutty year and NUTI Year. Hopefully no additional pandemics
Speaker 1: in our future, but the news has definitely been worth
Speaker 1: covering for sure. Before we get to our year in review, though,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to quickly mentioned listener Nathan he sent
Speaker 1: us an email last month and who hadn't gotten around
Speaker 1: to talking about it yet, but he mentioned this a
Speaker 1: couple of cool tools, one called simple log In, another
Speaker 1: called and on Addie, and these tools can help you
Speaker 1: create email aliases in order to protect your privacy online,
Speaker 1: making it harder for different companies to track you and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So I thought this was interesting. Man,
Speaker 1: it's not something that's really thought about a whole what's
Speaker 1: the tracking aspect of it? I didn't look into it.
Speaker 1: So so it sounds like basically like if they have
Speaker 1: your direct email address, there's ways in which they know
Speaker 1: have more information about you. But if you're creating alias
Speaker 1: email addresses that are like it's it's harder for them
Speaker 1: to pinpoint who you are as a person, and they
Speaker 1: know less about you if you do that where they're
Speaker 1: creating that dossier on you. I'm not an expert. Nathan
Speaker 1: writes a blog about this stuff. He's the security so
Speaker 1: I will link to his blog post in the show notes.
Speaker 1: And there's certain folks I think who are less comfortable
Speaker 1: putting their email address out there. Personally, I'm not one
Speaker 1: of those guys. Like any time there's a like a
Speaker 1: lot of times there's a side up. It's like hey
Speaker 1: give us your email, you get this free letting United flag,
Speaker 1: or hey give us your email and you get a
Speaker 1: chance to spind the wheel and maybe you'll win a
Speaker 1: free beer. I'm all about that kind of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it. I've got zero fee. That's a trade off.
Speaker 1: Work my email everybody, it's all mixed at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: If you want to hit me up, go for it.
Speaker 1: You're going to life flock route here, you're just announcing
Speaker 1: it to everybody and the Joel's social security is let's
Speaker 1: do that and we'll pause right there. I also don't
Speaker 1: know your social security by heart. Well yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: into that though. In online privacy something that matters to
Speaker 1: you at then email aliases I think are an interesting
Speaker 1: tool to be able to protect your privacy online and
Speaker 1: kind of create individual email addresses without literally creating one
Speaker 1: every single time. You don't want to give a marketer
Speaker 1: or a company your your specific email and some of
Speaker 1: your specific information. But that being said, if your email
Speaker 1: is getting oh there, I mean I would just suggest
Speaker 1: to ruthlessly unsubscribed to stuff for sure. I feel like
Speaker 1: I've been doing a lot more that here towards the
Speaker 1: end of the year, because you know, when you start
Speaker 1: the and you look and you've got like thirty new emails,
Speaker 1: and I don't really want to look at two thirds
Speaker 1: of them. Two thirds of them are trash, their trash,
Speaker 1: and that's what that's when I'm like, Okay, a lot
Speaker 1: of times I just hit the lead because that's the power,
Speaker 1: that's the fast mover. I just bam bam, bam, bam bam.
Speaker 1: He just keep coming later exactly, so I just take
Speaker 1: the slightly longer route and actually unsubscribed. But Joe, yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's been a challenging year for a
Speaker 1: lot of folks, at least from a money perspective. The
Speaker 1: roaring economy of one has led to what feels essentially
Speaker 1: like a slowdown this year here in two. But whether
Speaker 1: or not we are in a recession, I think that
Speaker 1: kind of depends on your definition. It's hard to say.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised to see if very soon they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're in a recession, and we have been for whenever
Speaker 1: the data came out, like maybe six months ago, I
Speaker 1: guess is when the data came out. It's hard to say,
Speaker 1: but we have seen double digit losses in the stock market.
Speaker 1: We've seen a labor market cool off, We've seen the
Speaker 1: housing market essentially grind to a halt because I mean
Speaker 1: multiple things, right, combination of of high prices, rising interest rates.
Speaker 1: But as we learned from many of the How to
Speaker 1: Money listener wins that we shared a few weeks ago
Speaker 1: on our Wednesday episode, despite headwinds, a lot of folks
Speaker 1: out there have crushed it this year and they've been
Speaker 1: able to just make accelerated progress towards their financial goal.
Speaker 1: By the way, we got like double the amount of
Speaker 1: submissions we were able to use. Sadly, like we would
Speaker 1: love to share them all, but we were even just
Speaker 1: get email from people after the fact saying hey, I
Speaker 1: missed it, but let me share with you. And the
Speaker 1: amount of progress that some of our listeners were able
Speaker 1: to make was astounding, which, by the way, we love
Speaker 1: because it's one thing Gmail dot com or I don't
Speaker 1: want to say years, that's what it is. Uh. But
Speaker 1: just the macro environment that we're in, Uh, it can
Speaker 1: certainly help or hurt your personal progress. But there's still
Speaker 1: a lot that we can do to change and advance
Speaker 1: our own goals. In spite of what is happening in
Speaker 1: the economy all around us as a whole, there are
Speaker 1: things that we can do as individuals that is really encouraging,
Speaker 1: but we still do you want to make sure that
Speaker 1: we cover some of the biggest stories that we came
Speaker 1: across from this past year. Yeah, I mean, like some
Speaker 1: people ask us from time to time, like, well, what's
Speaker 1: the impetus behind the Friday flight? Why do you do it?
Speaker 1: Because your advice doesn't necessarily change a whole lot based
Speaker 1: on what's happening. I mean sometimes it's like as interest
Speaker 1: rates go up, it changes the dynamics, let's say, of
Speaker 1: whether or not you should buy a house, Like there
Speaker 1: are things that happen on a micro scale that do
Speaker 1: impact our micro actions, but like our our general advice
Speaker 1: on so many things doesn't change. It doesn't move with
Speaker 1: the whims of the market, right, and so we get
Speaker 1: slightly here and there. For sure, there are ways usually
Speaker 1: if some of these trends continue that it can have
Speaker 1: a longer lasting impact. But it's opposed to the headline
Speaker 1: I know the week, but I like that you noted
Speaker 1: that people may made significant progress no matter what's going on.
Speaker 1: It's like, we're gonna talking about a bunch of things
Speaker 1: that went on this year, but no matter what is
Speaker 1: happening in our economy, there are ways for you to
Speaker 1: not just survive but thrive in almost any environment really
Speaker 1: that comes our way. And so let's talk about the
Speaker 1: big stories of this year, Matt. Inflation and interest rate rises.
Speaker 1: They were I would say, basically the top two stories
Speaker 1: tied together and tied at the connected at the hip.
Speaker 1: So let's discuss those for a minute. Because fraternal twins, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's not identical, not exactly the saying, but man,
Speaker 1: they sure do look similar. Yeah, they same family, exactly
Speaker 1: a lot in common. Well, inflation is something that we've
Speaker 1: all felt acutely this year, and it's a big story,
Speaker 1: largely because we haven't experienced inflation like this in something
Speaker 1: like forty years, right, So it's for most of us
Speaker 1: who are under the age of forty, which is all
Speaker 1: of us except for you now, Matt, who just turned forty. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: we haven't experienced this. You were fresh out of the
Speaker 1: womb in diapers, Matt when you experienced this last And
Speaker 1: although inflation is starting to ease up a little, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a while before it's back where Fed officials wanted,
Speaker 1: back to that like annual two percent sort of range. Um,
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly how long it's gonna take. But
Speaker 1: that's where we're trying to get back to. But car prices,
Speaker 1: energy prices, food prices, all those things shot through the
Speaker 1: roof in a shock to our wallets, and depending on
Speaker 1: what our consumption looked like, it impacted us all in
Speaker 1: different ways. Right, if you're replacing a car, you probably
Speaker 1: paid more than you would otherwise. And if you were
Speaker 1: downsizing your fleet, you made out like a bandit because
Speaker 1: you sold a car that you bought for ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for hundred, because you took advantage of inflation in
Speaker 1: the car market. But in an effort to combat these
Speaker 1: rising prices, the FED of course, has been using the
Speaker 1: only instruments at its disposal really, or one of the
Speaker 1: two instruments that has its disposal. It's been making money
Speaker 1: more expensive by raising interest rates. And it's just fairly
Speaker 1: blunt tool that seems to be doing the job. But
Speaker 1: this is a story that's going to continue to be
Speaker 1: a big one in three but hopefully for all our sakes,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be quite as headlined word of
Speaker 1: the as it's bent. That's right, Yeah, speaking of food prices,
Speaker 1: I was literally recent just yesterday at Aldi purchasing some
Speaker 1: eggs and was shocked to see, of course, aldi because
Speaker 1: they are the most affordable. But dude, I think it
Speaker 1: was still earlier this year, Yes, earlier this year, and
Speaker 1: these are something close. I remember to take prices close
Speaker 1: to be being close to a dollar, and they were
Speaker 1: almost five bucks. I could not believe for a dozen
Speaker 1: regular eggs. Do like, this wasn't the organics, this, This
Speaker 1: wasn't chickens that that are just like walking around laying eggs,
Speaker 1: you know, like these are chickens that are like caged up,
Speaker 1: like the regular eggs that got massages. Everybody, No, no, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, I think a lot of folks have
Speaker 1: been experiencing some of those inflated prices at the grocery store.
Speaker 1: But gas prices that they've been up in the stratosphere
Speaker 1: as well, and then they actually crater back down near
Speaker 1: to where they were at the start of this year.
Speaker 1: Well that's good news for folks who drive a ton.
Speaker 1: And those prices were partly impacted by raging inflation, sure,
Speaker 1: but also because of the war that's happening in Ukraine
Speaker 1: that Russia is perpetrating. But right now gas prices are
Speaker 1: south of three dollars a gallon in much of the country,
Speaker 1: which is awesome. Uh. Definitely here in the state of Georgia,
Speaker 1: I think we've got some of the lowest gas prices,
Speaker 1: but the national average is getting closer to crossing that
Speaker 1: point as well, that three dollar threshold. But that being said, uh,
Speaker 1: gas prices, they definitely have a real impact on our budgets.
Speaker 1: We need to keep in mind that oftentimes we we
Speaker 1: tend to overestimate how much we're spending on gas, even
Speaker 1: when prices are north of five dollars a gallon. And
Speaker 1: a reason for that is because this is literally a
Speaker 1: price that we see everywhere we go, Like you drive
Speaker 1: down the road and it's plastered, you know, on the
Speaker 1: side of the signs, like a giant font tiny billboard
Speaker 1: on every street exactly. Yeah, and so we feel the
Speaker 1: pain more intensively. Uh. And so the tip that we
Speaker 1: would recommend for folks is we want you to perhaps
Speaker 1: focus a little bit less on gas prices and instead
Speaker 1: we want you to focus more on your overall cost
Speaker 1: of transportation, including the depreciation hit that you're taking each
Speaker 1: and every year on the car that you own. We
Speaker 1: want you to focus on not just what it is
Speaker 1: that it costs you to fill up at the pump,
Speaker 1: but how much you're paying for that car, whether or
Speaker 1: not you're buying new or used in particular, cost of maintenance,
Speaker 1: things like that, but definitely the the appreciation that you
Speaker 1: hit that you assume as well. Yeah, if you are
Speaker 1: driving a O six Toyota Corolla and you opted to
Speaker 1: sell it for five thousand dollars and upgrade to a
Speaker 1: Tesla because gas prices were out of this world, but
Speaker 1: you only drive seven thousand miles a year, that was shortsighted, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's not the kind of movie wants you to make.
Speaker 1: And holding onto that Corolla is gonna be much better
Speaker 1: for your finances overall. And so gas prices, they are
Speaker 1: a story of this year, but they're also one we
Speaker 1: want you to ignore more than you pay attention to.
Speaker 1: And hopefully, hopefully for all our sakes, gas prices remain
Speaker 1: low right and remain near where they are right now,
Speaker 1: but staring inflation, I would say had one bright spot, Matt.
Speaker 1: And if you're playing how the money drinking game this year,
Speaker 1: when you're listening to Friday flights, you probably we let's
Speaker 1: say you had to take a shot every time we
Speaker 1: mentioned I bonds, you probably have too much to drink
Speaker 1: a couple of times at least this year, because starting
Speaker 1: at the very beginning of yeah, I bonds became a
Speaker 1: significant story, one that we kept talking about as inflation
Speaker 1: was roaring. It's one of those things where you can
Speaker 1: make out like a bandit I putting some of your
Speaker 1: savings at least into I bonds And by the way,
Speaker 1: don't play drinking games when you listen to our show.
Speaker 1: Come on. But but even the savings rates rose, ibans
Speaker 1: were basically the best refuge for savers as rates were
Speaker 1: close to ten percent. Now they're closer to seven percent.
Speaker 1: But uh, there's there's still a smart medium term savings
Speaker 1: vehicle for lots of folks and runaway inflation. Of course
Speaker 1: it's a bad thing, but that silver lining has been
Speaker 1: kind of the nice run up in options for savers
Speaker 1: who had few to no options for a lot of
Speaker 1: years and then they got a rainy they fund in
Speaker 1: the savings account. Half a percent was about the best
Speaker 1: you could expect to get. But now we're talking about
Speaker 1: four percent or even more on some of these savings vehicles,
Speaker 1: which is just really good to see. So on the
Speaker 1: flip side. Rates on credit cards have been going up
Speaker 1: that is likely to continue. So pay off that debt quickly,
Speaker 1: very short lived silver lining jewel. Yeah, but at least
Speaker 1: there was something to Yeah, inflation mostly bad and rates
Speaker 1: going up mostly bad for a lot of things, but
Speaker 1: there are some bright spots alongside of it. Sure. And
Speaker 1: in addition to the higher interest rates we've seen our
Speaker 1: credit cards, we've seen higher mortgage rates as well, right,
Speaker 1: I mean we kind of touched on that there at
Speaker 1: the beginning about higher mortgage interest rates, quickly rising price
Speaker 1: of houses. Unfortunately, that has left a lot of folks
Speaker 1: who have been hunting for a place, you know, with
Speaker 1: the housing market just with the inability to purchase a home.
Speaker 1: And so for for those folks, yeah, we would recommend
Speaker 1: to hang in there, continue to stock that money away
Speaker 1: in saving his account. And even though overall the housing
Speaker 1: market it's it's in a tight spot, it's not in
Speaker 1: a good good position right now, but even still there
Speaker 1: is the ability to find a deal on an individual level. Yes,
Speaker 1: mortgage rates are high, Yes, the prices of homes have skyrocketed, um,
Speaker 1: but keep your eyes open, right like, look for those
Speaker 1: for sale, those fisbos look, ask around, talk to your neighbors.
Speaker 1: There is still the ability to to find a deal
Speaker 1: wherever it is that you live. Overall, market trends don't
Speaker 1: look good on a personal level. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you can't find a deal. I think you definitely can.
Speaker 1: Let's keep moving. Let's talk about cryptocurrencies, Joel. So essentially
Speaker 1: everyone's calling what we're in right now it's one of
Speaker 1: like the Doe winter, And I'll say it's right now.
Speaker 1: It's got more crypto symperia, it's like the tundra. It's
Speaker 1: got more like Narnia like elements, right like this crypto dip.
Speaker 1: It certainly feels more like an internal winter where Christmas
Speaker 1: it never comes more than it, you know, does a
Speaker 1: short seasonal about of cold weather. Uh. Even before actually
Speaker 1: we knew about Sam Bankman freed, before we knew about
Speaker 1: the ft X fraud insanity, we asked a friend of
Speaker 1: the show, crypto expert Stacy Marie Ishmael. Uh. We talked
Speaker 1: with her back in episode three. But we're curious as
Speaker 1: to whether or not crypto was going extinct, and that
Speaker 1: was a difficult question to answer. But it's certainly feels
Speaker 1: like crypto was in the right place at the right
Speaker 1: time to take advantage of just the massive influx of
Speaker 1: cash in people's pockets while they were simultaneously forced to
Speaker 1: stay home. Right, It's like, hey, normally you're used to
Speaker 1: spending your money in all of these different kinds of ways. Also,
Speaker 1: you're only used to receiving this much money. We're gonna
Speaker 1: give you this much more money. And then crypto was
Speaker 1: able to slide into those d m and said, hey,
Speaker 1: put your money towards me. Certainly fueled a rise in speculation. Gosh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know, we don't know if the block chains
Speaker 1: ever gonna make a difference in our day to day Um,
Speaker 1: will any of these cryptoc poins, will they have a
Speaker 1: use case scenario? We are not sure of the future
Speaker 1: of that. But two has has taught us anything. It's
Speaker 1: just really it's honestly reinforced our belief that's speculating in
Speaker 1: unregulated markets, that it can have devastating effects on your
Speaker 1: personal finances. Yeah, and some folks at the farm, right,
Speaker 1: they've they've got vast amounts of their investable assets on
Speaker 1: this new form of currency, largely because they saw the
Speaker 1: trend and they wanted to follow the trend. They too
Speaker 1: wanted to make money overnight or quickly, right, and that
Speaker 1: was ill advised. But as assets prices were staring, they
Speaker 1: just they wanted to get on the gravy train, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to make sure they weren't left on the
Speaker 1: sidelines while all their friends were getting rich. They bought
Speaker 1: into even some of the hype of high profile athletes
Speaker 1: and actors touting crypto on Super Bowl ads and Instagram
Speaker 1: ads like the Justin Bieber's of This World and the
Speaker 1: Kim Kardashians, not to mention that Tom Brady's. I mean,
Speaker 1: like lots of influential people. All the celebrities were getting
Speaker 1: n f T s and they had laser eyes in
Speaker 1: their Twitter profiles, and so it just made sense that
Speaker 1: we got in on the boom as well. Right at
Speaker 1: stadiums being named after crypto training platforms. There was so
Speaker 1: much like legitimacy being given to a lot of these
Speaker 1: companies as they associated with high profile people and made
Speaker 1: some of these bigger deals. It felt like it had
Speaker 1: gone mainstream. Yeah, I mean, it basically did, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: not only was it in our popular culture, but then
Speaker 1: the fact that institutional investors were also I mean and
Speaker 1: I think that's only increased this year, and so it's
Speaker 1: not that in that sense there's not still a whole
Speaker 1: lot of attention being given to it, but there was
Speaker 1: certainly way too much of that going on in previous years,
Speaker 1: and we've seen that correction. I mean, I wish we
Speaker 1: were we had gone back and actually pulled some clips
Speaker 1: from what you and I had said this year about crypto.
Speaker 1: We talked about how we invested a very very small
Speaker 1: amount of our personal assets in crypto, very small amount,
Speaker 1: and that was what we have. That's always what we've
Speaker 1: said when it comes to single stocks and crypto investing. Matt,
Speaker 1: now you you invested. We both invested enough to where
Speaker 1: if we lost it all a bitcoin went to zero,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't hear like it has. There's no material impact.
Speaker 1: I don't like losing money, right right, That's not that's
Speaker 1: not what we want, and that's what we told everyone.
Speaker 1: We didn't bet the far throughout, although there were a
Speaker 1: lot of people saying this is the future, getting on
Speaker 1: the ground floor, and a lot of people obviously harmed
Speaker 1: this year in the crypto space, and so what is
Speaker 1: the what is going to hold for crypto? I don't
Speaker 1: know I don't have any predictions, but I did think
Speaker 1: it was interesting. And new survey showed that only eight
Speaker 1: percent of Americans have a positive view of cryptocurrencies. Now
Speaker 1: that seems about right, yeah, and I get it. I
Speaker 1: mean I think I'm surprised it's even that high. But
Speaker 1: even if you're still keen on what the cryptocurrency space
Speaker 1: is going to be able to do moving forward, keep
Speaker 1: your exposure small. It's nothing if not volatile. And so
Speaker 1: even if you believe in it, like do the boring
Speaker 1: stuff first, don't go too hard in an unproven space, right,
Speaker 1: continue to eat your fruits and vegetables and meat whatever
Speaker 1: the USDA recommends. Now, I feel like they always changed
Speaker 1: it up. Like a bread, I think that still recommend
Speaker 1: a lot of bread every few years is still surprising
Speaker 1: to me. Uh. But I mean not only in the
Speaker 1: crypto market, but we've seen massive downturn in just the
Speaker 1: regular stock market as well. And I think that's worth
Speaker 1: mentioning because like, I mean, we we saw a significant
Speaker 1: dip back in when the pandemic hit, but that was
Speaker 1: just a flash in the pan, like literally a few
Speaker 1: months later, we're back to normal. Uh. And so like
Speaker 1: if you erase that, which I kind of do in
Speaker 1: my mind, Like, we haven't seen a bear market like this,
Speaker 1: like I mean, earlier this this year in October, we
Speaker 1: were down something like and so this is the first
Speaker 1: seriously down market that a lot of folks, a lot
Speaker 1: of our listeners have ever experienced. We haven't had something
Speaker 1: like this since two thousand and nine. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of individuals feel a little bit nervous because
Speaker 1: they're they're they're for the first time, they're realizing that,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, it doesn't always go up into the
Speaker 1: right and so we don't want you to get freaked
Speaker 1: up about this. We want you to continue investing like
Speaker 1: you always have. You will be wealthier in the future
Speaker 1: as long as you continue to invest now. Buying now
Speaker 1: still a good thing, actually a better thing than it
Speaker 1: was in January, right right, all right, Matt, there's more
Speaker 1: stories that we got to get to in our year
Speaker 1: end review. We're talking about the job market, student loans,
Speaker 1: and kind of a few other things that we thought
Speaker 1: really defined two as a year, at least from a
Speaker 1: personal finance perspective. We'll get to those right after this. Alright, man,
Speaker 1: we are back from the break. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: biggest overarching stories from this year. And normally when we
Speaker 1: come back from the break, we do the ludicrous headline
Speaker 1: of the week, but really pretty much everything we're talking
Speaker 1: about today is it's not a specific headline that's stupid,
Speaker 1: but they are pretty big stories that have had a
Speaker 1: fairly significant impact on the financial sector and then in
Speaker 1: turn our personal finances. But let's talk about sort of
Speaker 1: the job market mania that we've seen this year, because
Speaker 1: I feel like like two words kind of defined the
Speaker 1: job market, Uh, worker leverage. I was thinking about saying
Speaker 1: great resignation. Yeah, but that was last year, right, I
Speaker 1: guess that technically kind of continued into this year. But
Speaker 1: the first half of the year, I mean, we saw
Speaker 1: something close to the hottest job market that we have
Speaker 1: ever seen in recent memory. Um, like the help wanted
Speaker 1: signs they were everywhere right, like uh, sign up bonuses.
Speaker 1: They were also all the rage like truck drivers, fast
Speaker 1: food workers. They were seeing those in abundance. I thinks
Speaker 1: a thousand bucks if you will sign up to flip
Speaker 1: burgers at Wendy's and agree to stick around for three months,
Speaker 1: and it kind of stuff. Interviewers were just getting stood up,
Speaker 1: left and right, I think it was earlier this year
Speaker 1: that Katena run a road trip and right off of
Speaker 1: the exits there is you know, you see the giant
Speaker 1: Starbucks sign. I was like, I need some coffee and
Speaker 1: make sure I stay alert. And it was totally during
Speaker 1: normal business hours and they were closed and they had
Speaker 1: a sign on there and it says it just said,
Speaker 1: we do not have enough staff to stay open. It
Speaker 1: was a crazy time to try to get a coffee
Speaker 1: or some fast food earlier this year. But many of
Speaker 1: our listeners took advantage of this robust job market to
Speaker 1: grow their income in a meaningful way. We shared stats
Speaker 1: about how much more ob jumpers were making than folks
Speaker 1: who stayed put where they were. And you know, depending
Speaker 1: on which study you believe, like the average jobs which
Speaker 1: are made between ten to fifteen percent more than they
Speaker 1: did in their previous position. But there's a I guess
Speaker 1: the downside to this, right because on the flip side,
Speaker 1: because of inflation, the majority of folks who did stay
Speaker 1: put at their at their jobs this past year, they
Speaker 1: actually made less money on in an inflation adjusted scale
Speaker 1: because inflation, like we talked about before the break, was
Speaker 1: so high this year. Yeah, for sure he had. The
Speaker 1: phenomenon was like he was more pronounced than it usually
Speaker 1: is thanks to the massive number of for higher signs
Speaker 1: that were that were out there in the lack of
Speaker 1: workers to fill those roles. But even as the labor
Speaker 1: market normalizes, this is still going to be a smart
Speaker 1: move for lots of folks who want a better position
Speaker 1: with higher pay moving forward. Right, you you might not
Speaker 1: want to make this an annual tradition, Right, You don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to like, uh, get every nine months or
Speaker 1: ten months, like stack your resume out there and try
Speaker 1: to get a different job. That can, we would say,
Speaker 1: over time harm your resume and therefore your ability to
Speaker 1: keep jumping around for a raise. But moving jobs to
Speaker 1: make more money every two to three years, it can
Speaker 1: be a key way to increase your income over time.
Speaker 1: A lot of people found that out this year. Some
Speaker 1: of our listeners man have talked about being able to
Speaker 1: make more by opting to go somewhere else. Right, what
Speaker 1: of our what of our listeners got like a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollar pay raise? Yeah, I mean, like it's it's
Speaker 1: for real. It's a it's a way to use your
Speaker 1: skills and find somebody else wants you more than your
Speaker 1: current employeer lots of times. And by the way, it's
Speaker 1: not all about money. That's not worth saying either, because
Speaker 1: if you love what you do and who you work with,
Speaker 1: it's more than okay to stay put. It just means
Speaker 1: that you'll have a little more work to do when
Speaker 1: it comes to negotiating that raise in the house. It's
Speaker 1: it's not as easy, right, it's not as much of
Speaker 1: a slam dunk. But if you can figure out what
Speaker 1: your value is in the marketplace and then help your
Speaker 1: employer understand that through data or through even another job offer,
Speaker 1: a competitive job offer, that can allow you to stay
Speaker 1: put but get the money that you deserve. Also, it's
Speaker 1: one of the ways that hopefully pay transparency will continue
Speaker 1: to empower and allow employees the ability to negotiate those
Speaker 1: higher salaries. And that was like a smaller story this year,
Speaker 1: but that was anna story pay transparency law is going
Speaker 1: into effect, and how smaller story because of the pay
Speaker 1: ranges that were then put out there, ass Like here's
Speaker 1: a specific because there were a lot of big stories
Speaker 1: exactly like you're you're you're right, Like that's another thing
Speaker 1: that can hopefully will over time help employees, help everyday
Speaker 1: Americans be able to make more money because they're about
Speaker 1: to see publicized salary ranges giving them, yeah, more options
Speaker 1: when it comes to negotiating totally. Let's talk about student loans,
Speaker 1: the lack of student loans, I should say, of those
Speaker 1: payments and then the forgiveness yo yo. That has been
Speaker 1: a top story as well this year. That has had
Speaker 1: massive impacts on a big chunk of our listening audience.
Speaker 1: Not having to make those payments for for what's coming
Speaker 1: up on, like we're getting close to three years now,
Speaker 1: that was a welcome respite for many and a lot
Speaker 1: of folks have been able to use this downtime just
Speaker 1: to accomplish some of the other more significant financial goals
Speaker 1: that they might have right where they're able to accelerate
Speaker 1: their progress and a big way. And you know, we
Speaker 1: thought that these student loans were gonna resume in January,
Speaker 1: but nope, it's not gonna happen because of the President's
Speaker 1: student loan forgiveness declaration that it's it's faced quite a
Speaker 1: few legal hurdles, uh, and he's he's opted to extend
Speaker 1: that payment restart date until there's just some more firm
Speaker 1: information on the forgiveness front, which is now set to
Speaker 1: be heard by the Supreme Court in the spring, and
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens. It's really anyone's guess as to
Speaker 1: what the outcome of that case will be. And like
Speaker 1: we've talked about in the past, it would not be
Speaker 1: a bad idea to practice your payments. Maybe that's just
Speaker 1: taking that payment amount, setting it aside in a little
Speaker 1: bucket off to the side, a sinking fund or a
Speaker 1: savings bucket in your savings account, but just starting to
Speaker 1: get used to that dollar amounts coming out of your
Speaker 1: monthly budget could be extremely helpful. And like, yeah, just
Speaker 1: think about sending it aside now. It will be less
Speaker 1: painful once that finally payment does finally start to resume,
Speaker 1: which we don't know when that's going to be. That
Speaker 1: could be July, that could be August, and I mean,
Speaker 1: we we don't know yet, but we'll keep you, we'll
Speaker 1: keep you up to speed on that. But and then
Speaker 1: you'll have the practice of having done that, And also
Speaker 1: you'll have a chunk on sitting there that you can
Speaker 1: put towards a down payment or lump some payment towards
Speaker 1: those student loans. If that's if that's a better idea
Speaker 1: for you, if you want to pay you down your
Speaker 1: debt more quickly. And student loans record, they've been this
Speaker 1: major topic of conversation thanks to these legal political battles
Speaker 1: with massive stakes for tens of millions of folks, and
Speaker 1: that it's been kind of frustrating to watch Matt in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways because the way this was done
Speaker 1: was kind of more like politically expedient as opposed to
Speaker 1: going through the proper channels in order to make sure
Speaker 1: that it that it's stuck, and it's left a lot
Speaker 1: of people in limbo, but the real herkey jerky Yes,
Speaker 1: and this is going to be continue to be a
Speaker 1: major story in I think if you know you're in
Speaker 1: wrap up at the inter of next year, we're still
Speaker 1: going to be talking about students in a big way.
Speaker 1: I wish it weren't the case, right. I'm a bit
Speaker 1: tired of the whiplash, as I'm sure many of our
Speaker 1: listeners are, but hopefully we'll have a firm resolution. I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in the passenger sea while Joel's those are good days,
Speaker 1: Those are good days. Uh yeah. I sawed out many times,
Speaker 1: even on busy streets, which a little frightening, but that's
Speaker 1: writing installing out on a steep hill. It's not late, well,
Speaker 1: I think another man. Another major story, and one that
Speaker 1: we covered a fair amount this this year on the show,
Speaker 1: was the rise of buy now, pay later, Like I
Speaker 1: feel like we talked about a lot about that in
Speaker 1: our Friday Flight segments as well, Like, think about Amazon
Speaker 1: adopting it as a payment method on their site, and
Speaker 1: I think acquiring a stake in one of those companies
Speaker 1: as well. We've just seen a proliferation of people after pay,
Speaker 1: people being able to buy stuff in installments over time
Speaker 1: as opposed to having to fork over all that money
Speaker 1: at once, and so like, yeah, you can pay for
Speaker 1: virtually anything an easy monthly installments at this point, whether
Speaker 1: it's a pair of shoes or a hat, I mean, Tomagachi,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like whatever, whatever it is, you're buying
Speaker 1: some toys for your kids. And we are, as you
Speaker 1: likely know, not big fans really of these buy now,
Speaker 1: pay later companies. It looked like for a second that
Speaker 1: we were going to see them start reporting the transactions
Speaker 1: of their customers to credit bureaus, which kind of got
Speaker 1: us excited for a second about a low cost way
Speaker 1: for folks with bad credit scores to be able to
Speaker 1: improve their credit scores in a pretty simple, easy way.
Speaker 1: But last that's not really happening in a meaningful way.
Speaker 1: And so by now pay later, we would say, remains
Speaker 1: a method of payment that we'd rather see you avoid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's not necessarily anything nefarious about by now
Speaker 1: pay later from it, like from an interest rate or
Speaker 1: from a feed perspective. They're not as bad as painting
Speaker 1: loans or something like that, right right, Yeah, So if
Speaker 1: you pay your installments off in full and on time,
Speaker 1: you like, you basically just pay the same amount as
Speaker 1: you otherwise would have. And so why has this been
Speaker 1: a topic that we've dedicated so much energy too, Well,
Speaker 1: it's because that by now pay later is creating a
Speaker 1: psychological effect that's driving folks to buy more than the
Speaker 1: otherwise would which is putting them in, you know, an
Speaker 1: uncomfortable financial position. The average cart size of a binow
Speaker 1: pay later order it's quite a bit bigger than it
Speaker 1: is for other orders, which leads us to believe that
Speaker 1: this payment method is fueling consumption. This is one of
Speaker 1: the selling points of these I Now pay Later companies
Speaker 1: to allow these different retailers to let them be an
Speaker 1: option as consumers are checking out, and so it sounds
Speaker 1: nice to buy something over time instead of all at once,
Speaker 1: but way too many folks have found that the ability
Speaker 1: to pay in convenient installments has just contributed to more
Speaker 1: stuff and less than ideal savings on hand. And so
Speaker 1: you might hear us say that and think, well, how
Speaker 1: is this any different though, than than credit cards, because
Speaker 1: if you're essentially using this payment method instead of using cash,
Speaker 1: and I think what we'd say is that you are
Speaker 1: missing out on a lot of the different credit card
Speaker 1: benefits that these companies offer you by using your credit card, right,
Speaker 1: like purchase protection UH, sign up bonuses, UH, just ongoing
Speaker 1: cash back. And obviously NPL is offering none of those incentives,
Speaker 1: none of that stuff exactly. And so obviously we don't
Speaker 1: want you to use a credit card if you don't
Speaker 1: have that cash on hand to immediately pay it off
Speaker 1: at the very least by the end of the month.
Speaker 1: But that's one of the reasons that we're such big
Speaker 1: fans of of using credit cards. And then on top
Speaker 1: of that too, I guess if you think about it
Speaker 1: this way, when you use a singular credit card, or
Speaker 1: maybe even two credit cards. It's a lot easier to
Speaker 1: manage those cards and look in those two spending summaries, right,
Speaker 1: or you look at your statement and it's you're able
Speaker 1: to manage it fairly easily, whereas with a binal pay later.
Speaker 1: Essentially it's like each one of those purchases is like
Speaker 1: its own credit card, and so you know, and so
Speaker 1: like it becomes easier to let it run amuck and
Speaker 1: cause you to spend more than you are planning on,
Speaker 1: And so I get. I get that credit cards have
Speaker 1: some of that ability as well. That's one of the
Speaker 1: things that people criticize credit cards over right, is that
Speaker 1: it causes people to think less about the money they're spending,
Speaker 1: whereas it feels more difficult apart from the cash that
Speaker 1: you have in your pocket, or at least that's historically
Speaker 1: been the case, like we've talked about recently, I would
Speaker 1: be interested to see some new studies to see whether
Speaker 1: or not that's still the case, because I do think
Speaker 1: young people have a different attachment to cash than twenty
Speaker 1: years ago than people twenty years ago. But yeah, we
Speaker 1: think credit cards are a very different method, a very
Speaker 1: different way of spending, and there's more ways to be
Speaker 1: discipline in your credit card spending, and there's more ways
Speaker 1: to rep rewards from it as well. And totally by
Speaker 1: the way, something else that was new this year on
Speaker 1: the How the Money front is the credit card tool
Speaker 1: that we just launched. You can find that at how
Speaker 1: the Money dot com slash credit Cards. If you're looking
Speaker 1: for a better credit card, if you're looking to maximize
Speaker 1: the rewards that you get based on the spending that
Speaker 1: you do. That's right, It's much better than going to
Speaker 1: the B n p L route. But let's offer a
Speaker 1: few takeaways, Matt from this year. We covered kind of
Speaker 1: some of the big stories that we felt like we're
Speaker 1: integral to, kind of what happened in our country, in
Speaker 1: the world over this over this past year, inflation run
Speaker 1: them buck crazy job market leading to lots of people
Speaker 1: being able to crush it. But um yeah, let's offer
Speaker 1: a few just takeaways that we learned from this year
Speaker 1: or or things that have at least been driven home
Speaker 1: a little more deeply. The first thing that sticks out
Speaker 1: in my mind is the need for humility. There are
Speaker 1: always it's always in short supply. Yes, yes, there's not
Speaker 1: not a lot of that, especially in this space, is
Speaker 1: in in the financial space, there's a lot of predictions.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of hubris. There's a lot of telling
Speaker 1: people this is what's going to happen or this is
Speaker 1: how you should act. And I guess like talking heads
Speaker 1: gotta talk like that's their job and that's what they
Speaker 1: get paid for, and so they have to make blustery
Speaker 1: predictions into the TV screen that we are you know,
Speaker 1: that's seven or whatever. And so as Matt and I
Speaker 1: give advice moving forward, like that's the goal of ours
Speaker 1: is too, is to offer effective personal finance advice that
Speaker 1: you can implement into your life without being too dogmatic.
Speaker 1: That's right, man. Another encouragement we want to provide folks
Speaker 1: is to accept uncertainty. We make plans, God laughs, That's
Speaker 1: the how the saying goes. And so we say that
Speaker 1: because it's not that we shouldn't make plans, right, but
Speaker 1: we think that holding our plans a little more loosely
Speaker 1: that that is wise. It's darn near impossible to predict
Speaker 1: these macro events, the things that we could not have foreseen,
Speaker 1: like pandemics and wars. Even polls for likely political outcomes
Speaker 1: are often oftentimes dismally wrong, like the red wave to
Speaker 1: the red trenchle right exactly. Yeah, And going back to
Speaker 1: the financial markets, the stock market, it's a lot easier
Speaker 1: to predict across decades than it is over over specific months.
Speaker 1: Makes me think of like we had Alison Schreeger on
Speaker 1: the show earlier this year. Front of the show, she
Speaker 1: calls them uh known unknowns. I think Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary
Speaker 1: of Defense, he also said this uh popularity. I think
Speaker 1: she kind of got up from him more recently on
Speaker 1: my mind though, from Schreeger. But the more comfortable that
Speaker 1: we can become not knowing the future and then worrying
Speaker 1: less about it in general, I think the more successful
Speaker 1: that we're likely to be, the less anxiety written to. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we want to encourage folks to focus on like their
Speaker 1: locus of control or also known as your sphere of influence, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we certainly want to pay attention to the news, and
Speaker 1: that's the entire point of our Friday flights is to
Speaker 1: be able to interpret that news and to determine how
Speaker 1: it is that it's going to affect us as individuals.
Speaker 1: But we want the vast majority of our effort in
Speaker 1: our time and our energy to be focused on the
Speaker 1: things that we have direct impact over as opposed to
Speaker 1: the things that we have virtually no control over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so all right, last last big takeaway I would say
Speaker 1: from this year that we had was to be flexible.
Speaker 1: And we just did a whole episode on this Matt
Speaker 1: episode because we still we feel so uh strongly the
Speaker 1: people incorporate more flexibility into their financial lives and into
Speaker 1: their personal lives because there is more uncertainty. Exactly, it
Speaker 1: pays to be flexible, for sure, and the greater levels
Speaker 1: levels of flexibility that you can attain from a personal
Speaker 1: and financial perspective will allow you to weather whatever storms
Speaker 1: come along right with like I said, less anxiety, you
Speaker 1: might even you might be able to take unpredictable events
Speaker 1: and turn them into something glorious, like turning lemons into lemonade.
Speaker 1: Like our friend who took her stimulus money to launch
Speaker 1: an online business that eventually allowed her to quit her
Speaker 1: day job. That's one of those unexpected uh sums of
Speaker 1: money to land in your lap, and then you turn
Speaker 1: turn that into something meaningful. Other people they bought crypto
Speaker 1: and more take out, right, And so I think if
Speaker 1: you're flexible, they probably wish they would have bought more
Speaker 1: Chinese food. But the hand that stuck it in that
Speaker 1: one stupid coin. Right. But if you're flexible and opportunistic
Speaker 1: in that way, opportunities are going to come along, but
Speaker 1: you have to be able to pounce and you have
Speaker 1: to have the flexibility to take advantage of what comes along.
Speaker 1: So stay flexible, be on the lookout for opportunity, and
Speaker 1: you're more likely to find it. So yeah, be humble,
Speaker 1: except uncertainty, be flexible. Those are three main takeaways from
Speaker 1: this year. That's right. And there's a good reason too
Speaker 1: why we're not making big predictions for next year because
Speaker 1: for the most part they don't really matter. It matters
Speaker 1: less like what happens, what actions are taken against you,
Speaker 1: and it matters more I think on how it is
Speaker 1: that you respond to those actions. And again, so we
Speaker 1: just want to make sure that you are seeing yourself
Speaker 1: as the one behind the wheel of your life. There
Speaker 1: are changes, there are actions that you can take as
Speaker 1: an individual regardless of what it is that's going on
Speaker 1: around us. And hopefully, as we are going into an
Speaker 1: uncertain year, who the heck knows what's going to happen,
Speaker 1: that that is a note of encouragement for you. And
Speaker 1: there are still ways that we're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: I think, take the headlines, take the financial news, make
Speaker 1: tweaks to our personal finance live so that we can
Speaker 1: make more progress over time, Like so you can take
Speaker 1: advantage of something like I bonds in the face of
Speaker 1: roaring inflation, so that you can something we talked about
Speaker 1: in twenty Yeah, all sorts of little tweaks that you
Speaker 1: can make along the way. It's important to to keep
Speaker 1: growing in your personal finance knowledge. That is what Matt
Speaker 1: and I that's what we're here to do. We're here
Speaker 1: to to serve you and to offer you the best
Speaker 1: information that we have so that we can all continue
Speaker 1: to make progress when it comes to our money decisions.
Speaker 1: And we look forward to delivering more of that money
Speaker 1: saving info moving into next year and three. Baby Monday
Speaker 1: is gonna be a really fun episode with one of
Speaker 1: our favorite economists actually, who has a lot of wisdom
Speaker 1: when it comes to how to make your goals actually
Speaker 1: more sticky so you can accomplish the things you're trying
Speaker 1: to accomplish. So we hope to see back here on
Speaker 1: Monday for that interview episode that's right man, So we
Speaker 1: wish everyone out there a happy new year. In Joel,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be it, buddy, Until next time, best friends out,
Speaker 1: best friends out,