Episode four ninety five Insights on credit card debt what you should consider Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and liver your life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking specifically about credit card debt. When we gave you, guys the mega survey that you filled out last month, the number one goal most of
you had was paying off debt. So we definitely do want to touch on different types of debt, and we think that credit card debt is some of the most dangerous and widely harmful, and that's what we're starting with.
So we know that most of us who have debt, yeah, we want it gone. You've already told us that. But there's even more things that we can explore and understand about credit cards and credit card debt that we think will even help to provide more incentive to get this paid off and to not find ourselves specifically in credit card debt again in the future.
Yes, but first, this episode is brought to you by our Fulfilling Finances Frugal Home course that we are potentially going to make. So we also when we surveyed you, we asked you what you were most interested in learning about financially this year, and so many of you had interests across the board. So we wanted to create something digital with videos, walk throughs, templates that you could use
to learn these things. So sinking funds, what you need, how much you need it, invest A lot of you wanted to know more about not just investing for retirement, but also investing outside of retirement, what that looks like. Also five twenty nine's and so just really a general personal finance course with the frugal mentality that we have
always brought to everything we talked about. So if that's something you feel like you need, you need a more holistic, well rounded financial education, but not at not at the expense of things that maybe other influencers just it doesn't jive with you, then pre order this course. If enough of you are interested in it, then we'll make it. If not, then we won't make it. We'll try something else.
Well, we fund you your money.
Yeah, and within like a couple of weeks, So Frugal friendspodcast dot com, slash Frugal Home that is the link to learn a little bit more and pre order the course where we're going to span personal finance across the fire pillars of frugality. So that's your money, your time, physical spaces, natural resources, and food. So we're not going to create a course that doesn't really go into meal planning and meal prepping and cooking and all of that.
So all these things touch finance, and so yeah, that's what it's going to be.
I'm excited for it. Hopefully enough of you want it so correct you it.
We would be excited to make this record the videos, record the walkthroughs, create the templates, the checklists, all of that. All right, So let's get into credit card debt. We're
going to break this up into three parts. We're going to talk a little bit about data, a little bit about things that you may not know, insights you may not know about credit card debt, and then some of the things banks are doing with the money that you pay an interest and what you might be funding that you are unaware of.
So it's really interesting to go into some of these statistics. And we'll just kind of rattle off a couple that we found for like twenty twenty five credit card debt stats and so well, but it needs to look back because it's still the early time. I don't have those debt.
Yeah.
So this one, though, the first one starts in twenty twenty three, where they found that at the end of twenty twenty three, revolving credit was measured at over one point three trillion dollars. So that's the amount of credit card debt that we are carrying over. That's what that kind of.
Revolved that interest is being charged on.
Yeah, and that fifty two percent of female card holders carry a credit card balance month to month, so meaning we're not paying it off every month. Over half of us are carrying that over, meaning you're paying that interest on that debt that you're carrying over. It may only be five hundred one thousand dollars, but at eighteen to twenty four percent, that's a signal amount more money you're paying for whatever it was that you had bought and now you can't pay off.
Yeah, and more of a more than a quarter twenty eight percent. It's just day to day expenses. It's groceries, childcare, utilities, just normal stuff. It is not shopping spreeze. And fifteen percent said it was like emergency and unexpected medical bills. So these are things that are not lavish, right. We sometimes think of credit card debt and we are conditioned to picture the woman holding eight bags coming from the shopping mall, having spent all her money.
And it's all on shoes because she just can't stop herself buying shoes.
It's that narrative is false, right, It is on regular day to day things. But here's the thing. Most households that carry credit card debt month to month are higher income. So fifty seven percent of households earning eighty thousand or more per year have had their revolving credit card debt for over a year. Twenty two percent have had it for five years or more. So we're not necessarily speaking about very low income households.
These are.
Middle class, upper middle class households that are putting day to day expenses on a credit card. And there's some kind of disconnect there. And obviously, if it's a spending issue that we, you know, maybe we're over spending here and having to put you know, important things on a credit card, that's a different conversation. But it is a conversation about this should technically be something you can pay off.
We're talking to households that technically have the income to be able to afford groceries and save an emergency fund for unexpected expenses and just need guidance on how to get there.
Yeah, and buying everyday expenses on a credit card isn't the issue.
It's the not paying it.
Off at the end of every month and then eventually paying the interest on that and that can just be so overwhelming over many, many years of this revolving credit card debt and just the mounting interest, and it can feel like you're just buried underneath all of it. And so yeah, for that reason, I think it's important to kind of look at spending and understand kind of how credit cards work and operate so that we can make some of these changes, important beneficial changes to the ways
in which we engage with credit. So we want to look at There's this really helpful article from Janes dot com and it's about six things credit card companies don't want you to know. And the first is that your fixed rate isn't set in stone. This is super deceptive because fixed seems to indicate it is not moving, unchanging right, But really, what that means is that the APR or interest rate on the credit card won't change due to
inflation or the prime index. However, that doesn't mean that the interest rate won't change based on other factors, like if you have a history of missing payments or your credit score took a hit for whatever reason. They do have the ability to change the APR the interest rate that you are paying on that credit card debt if you are carrying over a balance month to month.
Yeah, and most people are not delinquent. It's only about three percent are more than thirty days delinquent on their credit card payments. So most of the time you're going to be fixed into this rate. But like you said, if your credit score goes down, or you know, something happens, an emergency comes and you have maxed out your credit card and you can't take out another credit card, then you could be like hit. You know, the cherry on top would be a hit with a higher fixed rate.
But still, credit card rates are super high. They are most of the time at least twenty percent. I have not seen anything under twenty percent unless it's like a zero percent introductory in a very long.
Yeah, it's insane. I don't know what mine is. I thought it was eighteen percent, but yeah, maybe it's changed. But still you're talking high high high, right, and.
So that is mostly fixed, that's not going down. So that is the least amount of interest you will pay. The second thing is that the forty five day notice is misleading. If your APR does go up, the credit card company is required to send you a forty five day notice. However, that doesn't mean that you have forty
five days until the new APR kicks in. It only means you have forty five days to pay the extra interest accrued at the higher interest rate, So and actuality on the fifteenth day after they tell you, then the account starts accruing interest at the new higher interest rate.
And of course this one's obvious, but it's still worth stating. The third thing they profit from your loss. Obviously, if you do not pay off that credit card and you have a balance rolling over to the next month, they are making from you that eighteen to twenty seven percent interest off of you over time, continuing to rack up this amount of money.
And so they.
Reference that credit card companies made one hundred and thirty billion dollars off of consumers in twenty twenty two, and one hundred and five billion of that came from interest alone. So the other amounts of money I'm assuming is from you know, the charges that they give to the vendors to be able to you know, utilize the credit card. But the majority of it, one hundred five billion dollars is just from the interest that we are paying them.
So next is they're sometimes willing to negotiate. So this is a this is a positive thing, more in your favor, and you can ask for a lower APR. I would love to hear if somebody's asked for that and actually gotten it. More so, I hear if you have like any late fees or just a fees. Usually it's a late payment for your if a debit, if you had a debit card, to be like an insufficient fun fee
or fees like that, they'll often take them off. If you have an annual fee on your credit card, if you call to cancel it, it's become I've canceled so many cards over the years because I don't like to pay the annual fees. It is becoming less and less likely that they will comp that card. They'll just cancel it for you. The last time I canceled a card, they did say that they would give me a credit, so I still have to pay the annual fee, but I'd get like a thirty dollars credit, which brought the
one hundred dollars annual fee down to like seventy. But it's yeah, they still would make me pay one hundred.
Because you were canceling after the annual fee.
Would no, no, no, no, I just called the cancel and one of their incentives to try to get me to not cancel was giving me the credit. So they can give you a discount. That is a risk. And honestly, even if you want to keep the card, I would still call and try to cancel it. And if they're not going to give you a discount or and you can just say it's because of the annual fee, and they might say like, okay, we can waive that for you,
and say like it's because of the annual fee. If you were able to wave it for me this year, I would keep the card, YadA, YadA. So then they may give that to you, and if they don't, they might give you a discount, and then you can decide whether it's worth it or not, or you can just be like, you know what, I change my mind. If they're just going to let you cancel, they'll double check with you a couple times before you actually cancel, and then you can just say like, no, never mind, Actually
I'm going to keep it. I'll pay the annual fees. So it's always worth making that call to see if you can get a discount because those are the places those fees are where we see the most opportunity for negotiation, I think more so than the APR. But I actually have never tried to negotiate an APR because I pay off in full every month, right.
Yeah, yeah, there'd be no reason to do that if you're paying it in full, all right. Number five is credit card companies like to sneak in fees, and if we're not really paying attention, we may not even realize all the fees that we can incur. So the first is annual fees. You mentioned that one already. Jen for a lot of credit cards, particularly your travel rewards credit cards, you're going to have an annual fee, and it's kind of one.
Of the ways of.
Paying for the perks that you eventually get back. In other ways, for some people it's worth it for other people it's not, but really being aware of what is the annual fee on the credit card, when does that annual fee get charged, making sure that you are canceling the card before that annual fee gets charged. If you don't want the credit card anymore, you want to switch to a different one, So that's a big one to
be aware of. The next is balance transfer fees. So this can happen when you choose to transfer the balance of one credit card to another, oftentimes to get a lower interest rate. So that is a strategy that you could consider, but you will pay a balance transfer fee. Not totally sure exactly how much this would be, but any amount of money to do this is not something that.
I want to be spending.
Of course, you've got late payment fees. When you don't pay your credit card bill buy the due date, even at least the minimum payment, you're usually going to be hit with a fee. They mentioned back in twenty twenty two how the average fee for late payments was about thirty two dollars, and US consumers paid in that year a total of fourteen point five billion dollars in late payment fees. So even just not paying the minimum can
get you really hit with some awful unexpected charges. And finally, is or in transaction fees, So if you are traveling in another country and you're paying in a different currency with that credit card, the fee is meant to kind of cover the costs associated with converting the currency and
processing the payment. So certainly, if you are a person who loves to travel, a travel rewards credit card might be better for you where you don't have those foreign transaction fees, but something to look into before you do travel. But again, we are always going to recommend that if you're using a credit card, you are able to pay it off in full. We are not going to recommend that you're putting luxuries and travel on a credit card and using that as a loan.
And again, the fees are the easiest thing to negotiate, so if you are hit with one of these one hundred percent of the time you should call and try to get it taken off. And then last is not necessarily directly hitting consumers, but it kind of peripherally does is merchant processing fees. So in addition to user fees, credit card companies collect money from businesses merchants who accept credit cards. These are usually like a flat fee per
transaction plus two point nine percent. Want, I want to say it's twenty five cents, but that feels very high, so don't quote me on that. But it is the flat fee plus two point nine percent. And while this doesn't hit you directly, but sometimes there will be a higher price or a minimum if you pay with a
credit card, especially at local places. These retailers build that price into their the prices that they sell you things, So sometimes prices increase not at just the rate of inflation, but because of also these credit card processing fees if they're getting too much, especially for small businesses. When we are looking at small businesses and we're wondering why is why are these, you know, things, the same things more expensive at a small business, part of it is merchant
processing fees. They have to account for those because and they want to because it kind of it's a netwash for them because when you pay with a credit card, you buy more. So it's not necessarily good for anyone. So if you are shopping local and you can carry cash, for local businesses do it. It's just it helps them just a smidge more.
So those are all of the ways that credit cards and their systems around how they charge you, how they work impact you individually.
But there's also some.
More nefarious things to look at in the ways that credit cards impact us on a more global kind of macro level scale that it's important to realize and be aware of and possibly even help us to make some of these more beneficial decisions not just for ourselves but for our community and world at large.
Yeah, when I was thinking about credit card debt and like what this episode should be, we wanted it to have a piece that motivated you to get out of credit card debt quicker. And for me, knowing the fees and the APR can change and all that, it's good to know, but it doesn't necessarily motivate me more because it only affects me like it's not affecting other people.
What really really motivates me more is when my decisions impact other people, and being in credit card debt actually does impact other people negatively because your money is going to the bank that holds your credit card a lot
of the times, that's Chase, Bank of America City. These are some of the top credit card companies, and those companies aren't just funding like mortgages and car loans and small business loans, right, those are actually for the most part a small like not a huge Well, I guess it's dependent on percentages. But that's not all that they are doing with your money. They are also funding some
things that you may not morally agree with. Again, in our mega survey last month, a ton of you said you wanted to know more about how to be frugal without sacrificing sustainability. And just like the cultural just being a good citizen of the world and getting out of credit card debt is one way that you can do it. So we looked at where, like where your where the biggest banks, biggest credit card companies are investing your money. This is the money you are paying them in interest.
And so think about this, like if you had five thousand dollars in credit card debt and it had like eighteen percent interest, because maybe you've had it for a while, it's an older credit card, and you're looking to pay it off. You're gonna pay it off in maybe two and a half years, you'renna pay two hundred dollars a month. Then that's over thirteen hundred dollars in interest. So essentially, instead of maybe investing thirteen hundred dollars in your own
retirement and your own personal growth. You have invested thirteen hundred dollars in whatever Chase or Bank of America or Wells Fargo wants to invest it, and here are some of the places where they are investing in. So the world's sixty biggest banks committed six point nine trillion over the last eight years to the fossil fuel industry. If you're not, if you're not one hundred percent familiar with fosil fuels, I don't blame you. I actually had to
google it as well. Fossil fuels power the machinery and that produced plastics for fast fashion and inevitably all those microplastics everywhere, and a bunch of other like big stuff that maybe like I don't care about as much, But you could watch documentaries on fossil fuels, right, we're not going to go into that. So the three banks that invest the most into the fossil fuel industry are Chase, City Group which is City CI, and Bank of America.
Wells Fargo I think was number four or five. Also for Canadian listeners, the Royal Bank of Canada actually was number one in twenty twenty four, I think, but I couldn't figure out how much they invested in fossil fuels. But in twenty twenty two they invested forty two point one billion dollars, four point eight of that was for tarsans and seven point four billion into fracking. So it's not just American banks, it's also banks in Canada, banks in Japan, all over the world.
We've also founded that last year. So in twenty twenty four, banks, some of these bigger banks lobbied against regulations that would cut funding for legal programs that help people like veterans, domestic violence victims and families facing eviction, that would limit payday loans, and laws that would give or require more
oversight for banks. And so these are the types of things that big banks are lobbying against, you know, where we are kind of using them to our benefit as an individual, but then they are working against us on
a larger scale. And so to be aware that when we're paying interest, that one hundred five billion dollars of the total one hundred and thirty billion dollars that they earn in revenue annually is going to some of these efforts that we would probably not choose to be putting our money towards, so all the more reason to find ourselves in a position where we are not paying interest on our credit card debt.
Yeah, and then last one back in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, so banks used to be big funders of gun manufacturing companies, so like military assault firearm stuff and private prison groups. And in about twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, there was so much advocacy against both of those industries that literally all of the major banks pulled out, and so that felt
like a major win. You knew if you were putting your money in Chase, putting your money in Bank of America, you knew they wouldn't be investing in companies that manufactured assault weapons and were you know, there was so much news about how private prisons were just creating so many human rights violations in their private prisons, So you knew
your money wasn't going there. Actually, last year, Bank of America backed off its blanket ban on lending to companies that manufacture what it has labeled as military style firearms, and so knowing so now you can't you know, put your money with Bank of America and know that it's not going there. And if Bank of America can do it, then other smaller banks feel safe for doing it, And if they can do it at firearms, then who's to say they're not also going to back off with private prisons.
So once stuff is out of the news and once there's less pressure, like banks will take you know, we'll do these things for optics and once they're out of the media, they can back off on them. And so there's just so much to think of when you are a putting your money in these places. We definitely recommend credit unions for that reason. You can go to a website called mightydeposits dot com and you can actually see
your bank. You can put your bank in and see how much money of your money stays in the community, what it's doing, what it's investing in, and see what
grade your bank gets. And so we you know, fully support local banks and credit unions for that reason, but we often don't talk a lot about your credit card interest and the money, the thousands of dollars potentially over your lifetime that you will pay to these banks, what they're going to do, and what you could have done alternatively with those thousands of dollars where would you have put it.
In a time when it feels like what do I even have within my power, within my control to make any type of change, and where I think a lot of people just go to just vote, right, Okay, that's like one day every four years on the bigger voting stuff. But this, what we do with our money on a daily basis does matter. It matters mostly when we can kind of be a part of a community and in aggregate make these decisions and choices. But what you choose
individually still does matter. Where we choose to shop and purchase from, how we choose to use our singular dollars, and whether or not we are carrying credit card debt and paying interest to some of these larger banks and financial institutions that matters. And so when we can make the decisions to spend better reduce our debt on high interest types of loans, then we are able to make a pretty significant difference and hopefully feel even better and
confident about the spending decisions that you are making. I think it helps us feel less guilt and shame around our money decisions when we can feel really confident about where we're spending, even if we are spending a little more then maybe we might have spent on Amazon to
buy the thing. So yeah, this is hopefully inspiration for you to keep doing the good work that you are doing, to refine your spending, align it with your values, and get rid of this high interest debt because it matters for more than just your individual wallets.
And you know, when you pay off your credit card debt, we want to hear about it. And you know where you can tell us the bill of the week.
That's right, it's time for the best minute of yours your week.
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Stuff bills, bffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week.
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Oh my gosh, Stephanie, Well, this is out in March, and so you see, I love it whenever we have a Bill of the week, that shows how behind we are in Bill of the Week, but also that we play every single one. So thank you so much, Stephanie. I hope you have gotten started on the book and that you have been enjoying it.
I am.
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Yeah.
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The lighting round.
Okay, what do you use your credit card for? And when will you pay cash? I will also add, okay, so we use our credit card for all spending unless you cannot so like utilities, term life insurance like stuff like that that gets taken out of it. But literally everything else is credit card.
We will use.
Cash for Facebook marketplace purchases, but sometimes more often we're using like Venmo or something. I don't pay interest, but I will occasionally pay an annual fee. The Hyatt credit card is the one that I pay an annual fee on. I did pay an annual fee for two Ink business I can. There's so there's so many types of Chase Ink business like cards, but this is the one where you could transfer out to partners, not just like purchase
travel through the portal. And I like to transfer out and book on book flights and hotels and all that directly on those sites. So and it actually ends up being a better redemption value too, So it's kind of a wash. But I canceled one of those cards, and the other one I will cancel before the annual fee comes up.
So so yeah, you churn credit cards.
A lot more than I do.
I churn them I get the welcome bonus, I keep them for a year, and then I cut them off and I wait until i'm eligible for the bonus again, and then I'll get it. And I'll pay an annual fee to get that welcome bonus. But I won't necessarily pay an annual fee again if I don't have the incentive of a bonus.
Yeah, I love my travel credit cards too much.
There's not enough good ones to be able to churn them too quickly.
But yeah, for me, really similar.
I will use my credit card for all spending, pay it off in full every month. I actually make pay it like, I pay it off multiple times a month, just so I don't see the bill get too high. Except I won't use a credit card if I can get a discount by paying cash. So there are plenty of vendors who might either say it's less money or they're going to tack on a fee if you're using
a credit card, So in those situations I won't. There was a time where I calculated it to see, okay, would it be worth it though, even though they're going to charge me an extra two percent to use my credit card or the bonus points that I would get on this transaction, and it did come out to be like a wash that the amount that the points were worth and what they could get me was like the same amount as the extra money that I was spending. So I say that just to say, don't assume that.
Oh you know what, though, it doesn't matter. Let me just use my credit card because I'll get, you know, the rewards for it or whatever. Usually it's a wash or is not good in your favor. So still better to pay cash than to be getting those those rewards.
Yeah, I think so. Some of our listeners have like issues, and I know you've talked about this, Jill, Like when you carry cash, you kind of just spend it because it doesn't feel like real money anymore. But I think I hope maybe we can get into a little bit more cash, at least maybe at local places, like if you're going to a farmer's market and you know you're gonna spend money there, maybe doing cash. But some of these smaller vendors are no longer taking cash, some of
them are only doing cards. So it is an interesting world that we live in right now. So do what feels right to you. But if you're the kind of person who's like, I need to get cash too often. I can't use a credit or I can't use a credit union. I would say I take out cash every month for different things, and I use a credit union.
And you can always even if you can't use a credit union if it's just really not feasible for you, like I can get money out at publixes, so like the credit union has a partnership with public so I don't have to go to a bank or a credit union like atm from a cash I can just go to any publics. But if it's really that inconvenient for you, do go to Mighty Deposits dot com and see what banks in your area would be more more convenient for you and not as detrimental to the things that you care about.
Thank you all so so much for listening. It's been lovely hanging out with you. We hope that this has been helpful, inspiring, informative. We also are so grateful for the kinder reviews that you're leaving for us about our book, like this one from Dora, who talked about buy what you love without going broke, giving it five stars, saying inspiring and about money. I've heard great things about Jen Smith's and Jill Siriani's podcast Frugal Friends. However, I tend
to prefer reading books over listening to podcasts. Fortunately, they recently published a book titled By What You Love Without Going Broke. This allows me to review their ideas, highlight what resonates with me, and revisit their most important points. I highly recommend this book. The central theme focuses on values based spending, which means spending based on what truly
matters to you. Illustrate this concept with personal stories, making it relatable and providing a perspective that really hits home. As I continued to read and reflect on their ideas, I found myself changing my spending and saving habits. These changes have left me feeling positive in our attestament to the power of values based spending, which aligns with my values and priorities rather than those of society or advertisers.
I'm excited to read their newsletter and subscribe to their YouTube channel What to keep this inspiration going.
We are WU Girls. We try to say that we're not, but we are WU Girls. Thank you so much, Dora. We love reading your reviews. If you haven't reviewed the show yet, please on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Please leave a rating review comment if you like this episode on Spotify, and if you have read the book, then please give it a review on Amazon, Goodreads wherever you purchased it. We would love to see those, and it also helps
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Grugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.
It's so many things that I wanted to say to you, and we're all out the dome.
Oh my gosh, I had nothing from start to finish.
Okay, here's something. Oh yeah, I was doing our transaction inventory. It's just like basically what I do every's that's how I do my spending plan.
Some people are jills and some people are gens.
Yeah.
So I was looking back at kind of all of the spending that I've done and kind of where where do my transactions go. I have like a really good pulse on it. But for January and February, it was quite interesting to recognize that Eric and I spend on food, activities and travel are not buying things just like things products, tangible stuff other than the food is not coming through.
Our door step. But nobody are.
We spending on activities? Travel? Food?
Yeah?
What would you do if you didn't spend on activities and travel?
You know?
I do think that. Okay, you said activities and travel or one just pick what if I want to say about food, I feel like I don't even I'm not even gonna I'm not changing travel and activities.
It's not happen.
Okay, But food, I do feel like we ebb and flow in just spending too much. What I feel is But sometimes I'm like, what is enough?
Who knows? Seasons change? Guests come in town, there's birthdays.
I think it's easier to spend less on activities and travel than it is to spend less on food.
Maybe, but I for me, I feel like that is a thing that I can go in and out of within my rhythms.
There's so many options for free activities and like lower cost travel.
And maybe I'm making it sound like this is insane, but I will say about once a quarter we are buying tickets to like a concert or a comedy show. Otherwise we are doing all of the free activities, but like as something comes up that just seems like, oh, yeah, that'd be so fun. Like, for instance, in April, we're gonna go see Fred Armison live in at like the Tampa Theater.
I bought that back.
In January, like knowing come April this would be something really fun to do that weekend. We also recently bought tickets for a concert that's like a couple months away, So there's it's that kind of a thing. And then when it comes to travel, I have family in Ohio and both of us have family in Pennsylvania, and so we try to get to both places. Pennsylvania at least two to three times a year, Ohio once a quarter.
So it's not like recreation. It's not like in I would say recreational travel.
Yeah, like tourists y yeah whatever.
Now those trips do happen, I'd say, you know, we take like one big vacation a year and probably like two smaller long weekend trips a year. But I budget for like, I plan for that. I feel like I know myself so well.
It doesn't sound like you're spending a lot on either. How are those the things that you are spending most of.
It's just I mean, it's it is the most amount of money. Because I just bought tickets to go to Ohio in a couple of weeks and for both Eric and I to go. I want to say it was like two hundred and forty dollars, So not insane, but it's just like when you look at my spending, it's like, Okay, I made three transactions, but they all tally up to
like seven or eight hundred dollars. But it's to do these things that But that's the thing, Like it looks like you're spending a lot of money on this, but I also know that I know that these are the things that are important to me what they get me, and I just I don't want to like budge on them, like I've really come to understand like what I want right.
Now, I feel like you're in a good spot, Like you don't need to over efficient seies. I don't know that's not a word, right, you don't need to like overdo it if you are in a good spot and you're like, these are the amounts that feel good to you. And I told you this before we started recording, but
I'll say it on the show. We're reading new books with Kai, and one of them is about spending the money Bunny series and one of the shows, she's like trying to decide what she wants to spend her money on, and she's like, Oh, there's a toy or a pogo stick, and it's the carrots. Carrots are money in bunny Land. That's in the first page book, So like a toy
for two carrots or pogostick for three carrots. And Mom's like, oh, you loved that bouncy castle and she's like, I love it, and she's Mom's like, the bouncy castle is a hundred carrots. She's like, that's ridiculous. And Mom's like, it's not ridiculous if you have one hundred carrots and nothing else to spend them on. And the Bunny's like, still ridiculous, forget the bouncy castle.
So like, I feel like, I love your voices. You read.
You gotta do the voices, So like, I feel like, it's, yeah, eight hundred dollars, but it's not ridiculous if you have eight hundred dollars and nothing else you want to spend it on, or value spending it on.
I think that's my biggest thing is like optimizing and investing for retirement, Like and that's where I think food would be the big the easiest, low hanging fruit to like rein in at different points that if my spending on food is what's keeping me from being able to max out my wrath IRA, then.
That's the go Yeah.
No, yeah, I would. I would say that's probably your biggest area for improvement. But you're doing very good.
Yeah, it is nuts.
I know this is becoming whole other episode and we're going to have to do our own spending interventions. But I we eat at home most days of the week, but then the weekend comes and we're just doing a whole lot more activities and I'm not cooking like these big meals. Or we have friends come in town, and it's easier to just go out than have pre prepared all of the food that we're going to feed them for you know, the four days that they're in town. So it's it's a tough one to solve for.
Yeah, I still think that people who stay with you need to like buy you food. That's always going to be because you have so many people and they come back so many times. Like the people that stay with you. They come back several times every year. Yeah, so I'm a stammuch.
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