Fees are the Worst, and How to Avoid Them #147

all right, but something else. It stinks almost as much as fees. Student loans, all right, let's talk about that. Those are also pretty terrible. It's so bad. And there's this new Ashton Kutcher series, Matt. I don't know if you've seen it or heard about it. I mean, you say Ashton Kulcher. He's not in the show right right now, but he like produced it or helped fund it or whatever. It's part of it. Yeah, he's part He's part of

the creation of this show called Going from Broke. And I was gonna like tease that we were going to have Ashton on the show or something, but I can't even do that with a straight face. I wish that would be kind of cool, but it's not gonna happen. Well with all the movie business in Atlanta, yali Wood as they call it, Ashton Kutcher has actually been in our neighborhood, that's true. Did you get a story about

him at our local ballet studio? I did. All the moms in there, We're taking their daughters and sons to ballet class, were like, what I freaking up in the neighborhod Ballet studio there as a dad, you know, with his kid. Yeah. Yeah. So. But he also has created this show, Going From Broke, and it's about these two financial experts are going in to help people who are just way down with student loans. And so I wanted

to mention too an interesting thing. You can watch the series for free on Sony's Crackle service, which is a service where you can watch stuff freak. So Going from Broke you can watch it without having any sort of paid subscription. And when I heard about this and I saw that there's a new series where these financial experts are going through to help people overwhelmed the student loans,

it kind of surprised me. That that was something that people wanted to watch on TV, but also at the same time it kind of brought to the forefront that Wow, I mean, I know that this is a problem. I know that this is just a huge issue right in our day and age. Like I feel like it's a headline piece constantly about how much there is in student loan debt, specific cases of people being overwhelmed, it being hard to find, uh, student loan forgiveness and so, yeah,

this show is obviously of interest. It's it's of interest to people to see how it's affecting other people, but at the same time, hopefully get some tips and tricks from this show on how to tackle their student loans. Yeah. I mean, and they're not only just talking about student loans and how that is affecting our generation, right, but I mean they're they're broadly speaking to just personal finance in general, how we can often make poor decisions when

it comes to what we do with our money. And it's just really interesting too that just personal finance in general is it's kind of taking the spotlight rights. It's center stage, and people want to see how other people are spending their money and how you know, they're doing poor things with their money. But at the same time, hopefully they are able to watch the shows and learn something, uh, learn something to actually help them in their current situation,

sort of like we do on this show. You know, we're not just two guys talking here. We're hoping to

actually improve your financial life. If this is you right now listening to this podcast, yeah, you're listening because you want your finances to look different, whether you're doing well, and you want like little ways to help you get further and do even better and invest more wisely or cut back on expenses or stop paying needless fees right whatever it is, or you're just kind of on the beginning path and you're kind of figuring out what some of these terms mean, and you want to get started

and just become a little bit better at making decisions to kind of get you started in being decent with personal finances. I mean, I think whatever position you're in while you're listening, we want to to help you wherever you are. And Matt on that no of student loans and that show kind of really tackles that in a big way. Well, I wanted to mention that student loan

refinance rates are super low right now. As the FED has been cutting interest rates, well, guess what's dropped student loan refinancing rates, And so a lot of our listeners might qualify for a lower rate on a student loan. And speaking of our topic today, fees, well, there are no fees associated with refinancing your student loans with reputable lenders,

so it's worth checking out. And we have an article on our site where our student loan expert Megan she wrote about refinancing your student loan and when it makes sense, and so we'll post that in the show notes as well. But I just want to put that on people's radar. If you are burdened by your student loan payments and you're looking to potentially pay them off more quickly at a lower interest rate, well, refinancing in this current low

interest rate environment might make sense for you. Yeah, while it sucks to actually have a ton of student loans, I think it's awesome that you can refinance for free. Unlike refinancing a mortgage on a home, which costs a ton of money, a lot of money, that is not the case for student loans. That's true. And Joel real quick before we launched into talking about fees. Let's introduce our beer for this episode, which is Bourbon Barrel Dark Apparition and this is by Jackie Ohs out of Ohio. Joel,

this is one intimidating label right here. It is. I'm looking forward to sharing this one with you and talking about it at the end of the episode thanks to Art and Mackenzie all the lovely folks up there at that brewery. Yeah man, they sent us some good beers. Really excited to have this one on the show with you. All right, but let's get to the topic of hand for this episode, Matt, fees are the worst, but then we also have to talk about how to avoid them.

Fees are, of course a major pain in our lives. They pop up everywhere, and Matt, we recently talked about saving money on lodging while traveling. We discussed the annoyance that urban fees and resort fees, all these kind of strange and interesting fees that hotels are starting to build into their pricing, that they seem to be popping up all over the place and randomly, and a lot more so recently, what parking fees and WiFi fees abound too.

When we're booking hotels. But fees are prominent across our higher financial lives now, and we have to be aware of how and when we encounter them so we can be vigilant and intentional to avoid these fees whenever possible. Yeah, when we also specifically talked about fees in regards to your retirement accounts, paying a commission to a broker for an actively managed fund and paying sky high fund expenses

that'll eat away at your wealth substantially. If you want to know more about that, you can go back and check out episode ninety one. But today we'll be covering other fees that we encounter around us in our day to day lives. Yeah, fees are prevalent. They're everywhere, right, There's cancelation fees, administrative charges, resort fees. Like we mentioned, fees have all sorts of different lingo ascribed to them in an attempt to lessen their blow, but they're pervasive nonetheless. Right.

Ticketmaster charges up to thirty seven percent of the face value of a ticket in fees. And it's not just one, it's multiple, including fees to print your tickets at home. They charge you money to use your own printer. And I know, I mean I don't think I am gonna have trouble finding other people out there listening that have had a terrible run in with Ticketmaster. Right. Also, don't think Ticketmaster is going to advertise on our podcast. Probably

not so. Yeah, the fees for Ticketmaster are just incredible, and I think Live Nation too. Right, there's these companies out there selling tickets, charging exorbitant fees and just annoying us all to death in the process. In airlines, it turns out Matt last year made seven point eight billion dollars on fees alone. So that's not including the price of airfare, that's not including the other ways they make money.

It's literally just the fees that they charge for getting an assigned seat now or for wanting to be able to sit next to your wife or your family. There are all these fees that were charged now by the airlines, and they're racking up by charging us massive fees all the time. They're not alone, but man, they are definitely one of the major culprits. And these fees they span lots of different industries. They are incredibly prevalent and fees, man,

they are also really sneaky. One of the reasons that fees are becoming more ubiquitous is because our shopping behavior makes us susceptible to them. Right. A study of StubHub fees showed that consumers spent more if they weren't shown the fees until the end of the purchase. Right. Doesn't that sound sort of like the amount that ticket Master or StubHub charges in addition to what the actual ticket costs. Sounds kind of familiar, buddy. Maybe they're like buddies talking

on the phone. Who knows. It's like, hey, you're in a charge this year. But basically we get frustrated and we're at the end of that entire process, and we still click by because we've already kind of committed that time to that purchase, and you probably still want to

go to the concert. You have to use a poker term, your pot committed at that point, Right, You've gone through the whole process, you've got them in the cart, and then you see the fees and you just breathe that angry sigh that you know what they've done it to me again, I guess I'm paying indeed, Man, Yeah, it's that bait and switch. But here's the thing. If it had been price youre upfront on the friend end, before we had committed to that purchase, I think there's a

chance that we would leave immediately. Makes me think of the frog in boiling water analogy, right, Like, if that frog would have gotten in at the very beginning and it was boiling, frog would have hopped out. He's like, hey, no idiot, I'm even I'm not paying for those tickets.

But because we're committed by that point, right, Like, we've already spent five minutes clicking on squares with stop signs in them, and you know, we know we like we can picture ourselves at that concert, or we can picture ourselves like at that soccer match we proved our humanity to the capture robotic machine exactly, Like, I'm not turning back at this point. I'm gonna do it. But that's just another example of us sort of getting worn down

by paying these ridiculous fees. I think when they kind of do the bait and switch like that at the very end, that is just one of the absolute worst ways to experience fees, when different companies pulling over on you like that, right, and when there's not that price transparency. Yeah, Matt, And even as we've become accustomed to seeing more fees

in our lives. Well, there are still ways that we can mount a legitimate opposition to encroaching fees that we see that pop up, and it's your money, it's my money, right, what are we going to do about it? Though? There are actual steps that we can take to lessen the impact of fees in our life and to avoid paying fees. And so we've got some really important steps for you to to implement into your life in order to pay

fewer fees. But first we're gonna talk about some of the most egregious feast and how to combat those right after the break. All right, Joe, we are back from the break. We're here to talk about why fees, why they totally suck man, And let's go ahead now and discuss some the most prominent fees that you'll likely encounter and how you can never pay them. Let's first talk about overdraft fees. This is probably the most egregious fee that's out there. This is when a three dollar coffee

could actually cost you thirty five or forty bucks. Since the average overdraft fee is thirty three dollars and thirty six cents, Americans paid thirty four billion dollars with a B not Yeah, thirty four billion dollars in overdraft fees a couple of years ago. That is just an insane amount of money going to the banks. Man. This is part of the reason why we prefer not to use a debit card at all, and instead we prefer credit cards. But you can avoid these fees by opting out of

your bank overdraft protection service. Just make sure that you are aware that oftentimes they can use tricky language to try to get you to sign up to protect your money. Yeah, they try to make an opt out look like an opt in or vice versa. They try to make it seem like the overdraft protection services is what you want, but that's not what you want. You prefer for your debit card to get declined in a situation where you didn't have the funds to cover the purchase, because that

would avoid that pesky overdraft fee. And if you don't even realize that you're doing it, you might purchase four or five six things that day and you could rack up a hundred fifty a hundred and eighty dollars in overdraft fees in just a day or two of not realizing that your balance was low. That's a lot of beer. Yeah, if you're making that many beer purchases, right, Yeah, that's expensive beer too. We like expensive beer, but not expensive

beer in the form where you're paying fees exactly. Another really pesky fee that you're going to encounter that's really prominent are a t M fees. Well, I mean, honestly, how often are we using a t MC these days? I feel like it's something that is far less relevant in our lives. There's more, it's so much easier for us to pay with our credit cards or with even mobile payments. But if you do like to hit up the a t M from time to time, we'll do business with a bank that reimburses a t M fees.

A lot of banks have networks of free machines that you can use online. Banks in particular often have access to like the All point Network of a t M s that are available at most cvous and target stores. And like with Ally, you can use any a t M, but they'll only reimburse up the ten bucks of a t M search charges every month. Yeah, it's limited, right, Joel.

I use Ally, and so if I need some cash, make sure to make it raine hundreds of dollars at once, why not just to avoid that fee, or instead you can go with a Schwab because they reimburse all of your a t M fees, which is fantastic. Yeah, And sometimes, like when you're using an a t M, interestingly enough,

there can be two charges. There can be a charge that your bank imposes on you, and then there can be a third party a t M fee depending on what it Like, if you're at some bar in a hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere, there's in all likelihood gonna be like a six dollar search arge or something on that a t M for you to pull money out, or if you're in Vegas, it

could be like twenty bucks. Yeah, it could be insane, seriously, And and one of the banks that actually kind of started it all with reimbursing those third party search charges as well when it comes to a t M fees is Charles Schwab. So yeah, they're a great bank. If you do a lot of a t M withdrawals kind of all over the place, particularly in Vegas, and you want to say about a lot of money, well, Schwab Bank is definitely a good one for you to consider,

all right, Matt. And another prominent fee that a lot of people pay is monthly account fees for banking. So yeah, these first ones we mentioned all have to do with banks charging you excess fees. And man, they are they become wizards essentially at charging people fees. They're really really good at it, in particularly the big banks. They love to charge fees and that's how they make their money. Well, so what would we say to someone paying monthly account

fees every month? Stop doing business with the bank that stinks and is looking to nickel and dime you every chance they get. Go to a bank that doesn't charge fees for low balances. We think the best place to turn for your banking needs are online banks. We like credit unions a lot, but in particular for banking services and checking and savings accounts. Online banks have the best

offerings for a lot of reasons. And yeah, a few of our favorites, as we mentioned often our discover Ally and c I T. So open up a new account and if you're paying five, seven, twelve dollars a month whatever you're paying to have a checking account with a bank, stop and get a new one somewhere else. Because those fees out up. You're talking about a hundred hundred, thirty hundred and fifty bucks a year just for the privilege of doing business with that bank, and at the same time,

they're paying you nothing on your money. Get rid of that bank and find a new one, a bank that's gonna respect you and not charge you ridiculous fees like that. So Joel, quick little confession. I am actually still doing business with one of those big banks to charge a monthly account maintenance fee, specifically if my average monthly balanced in my business checking account, if it dips below if I founder bucks, it's pretty lame. Huh yeah, man, all right,

can we change that this week? Yeah? Well, here's the thing is that it actually gets even worse because they also charge if my personal checking account dips below hundred dollars, which is a pretty large threshold. That's a total of two thousand dollars that is sitting there that is doing nothing for me. I have to admit I'm a little ashamed.

All right, well you're forgiven, But but I would say, yeah, like just like anybody else listening who is doing business with a bank that is setting up these artificial thresholds, of what you need to make to avoid fees. Honestly, sometimes it's hard to remember, or you spend a little too much out of that account and then you get

charged the fee. It's really frustrating, it's really annoying. So I would just prioritize doing business with a bank that doesn't have those just kind of ridiculous arbitrary numbers of a required minimum balance that you have to meet every month. Just make it easier and just go with a bank

that doesn't charge those stupid pesky fees. Yeah. Man, for me though, Like the reason I've kept that account around is because I've always thought I needed to have a local, convenient bank to be able to make some of those cash deposits that I received from time to time. You know, like sometimes you want to sell something on the neighborhood yard sale site and they don't pay you in via Venmo or cash app. They pay you in actual hard cash.

But the fact is, like you don't really need to deposit that money, Like you can have that money go towards your groceries that month, or you can you know, take that money to the restaurant. I guess that's what I'm saying at this point is I want to commit to closing that account and by the time this episode airs and I'll be doing smarter things with my money. Yeah. Right now it's kind of being held hostage, but you know what, it leaves a good way to think about it. Yeah,

but at least you're avoiding the fees, right. I think if people know the threshold they have to hit and they want to do business with a certain bank that does charge fees like that, but has these thresholds, it's okay to do business with that bank. If you have a long standing relationship, or if you feel like the benefits that you get for meeting a minimum required balance are worth it, then it's okay to do that, I think.

But just make sure you know what you're doing so that you can avoid those fees, because it's ultimately those fees that you don't want to pay. You don't want to be paying ten, twelve whatever bucks a month for the account for the privilege of doing business When banks all across the country, really really good banks want your business and don't want to make you pay in order to have an account with them. That's what you want

to avoid more than anything else. And Jel not only are they not charging you to do business with them, but they're paying you. Right, all the greats online banks that we are fans of, they are paying substantially more on their high interest savings accounts. It comes out to about two hundred times more every single year. Yeah, that's big money. All right. Let's talk about another prominent fee, pesky fee that you'll encounter that you can avoid, and

that's a foreign transaction fee. And these foreign transaction fees, they've actually become a little bit easier to avoid overtime, not nearly as many credit card issuers charge a three percent fee that kind of used to be the standard. If you go overseas, your credit card issue or was going to charge you roughly three for the privilege of using that card overseas well. Make sure you check the

fine print on your cards. But cards like Capital One's Venture, Chase, Sapphire Preferred and all of Discovers cards, they don't charge that foreign transaction fee. And you can check out what cards are our favorites at how to money dot com. Slash credit cards. But really, if you do a decent bit of international travel, prioritizing a card that doesn't have any sort of foreign transaction fee. Well, that's going to save you a good bit of money over time as

you are traveling overseas and making purchases are jell. Another instance where you might be paying a fee every single month is when it comes to your utilities. Oftentimes you'll be charged three percent or more to pay your water or electric bill online with a credit card. This can be really frustrating to not be able to use a card when otherwise you know that you could be earning

cash back for those payments. You know, I try to put everything on my credit card and then pay them off at the end of the month, of course, but you know in this case you want to opt to pay with your checking account instead to avoid this unnecessary fee altogether. This is an instance where these utility companies are essentially kind of passing that expense that they would incur from the credit card companies by accepting your card to you as the customer. Nestings, Yeah, I mean yeah.

Typically it's built in, like anytime you buy something with a credit card from a merchant, they're essentially instead of charging that fee directly, it's kind of built into the cost of doing business. But when it comes to uh in particular with utility companies, they kind of put it out there as you know what, we're going to charge you for this, and in that case, I would do whatever I could to avoid it. All Right, late fees.

Here's another thing. This one is on us, right when we have a late fee from a credit card company for not even paying at minimum that minimum balance on time. So we would say, set up calendar reminders or automatic payments to avoid paying this fee. Yeah, Juel, And you know, in the history of like me using credit cards, this is a fee that I've and hit with just a

couple of times. And in both instances it was with a new credit card that had been using that had a do date that was different than the other cards I was using, right, and those other cards I'm used to just paying at the beginning of the month, but with the new card it was just on a different cycle,

on a different building cycle. So if you're in a similar boat, one of the things you can do you can actually change the statement end date so that it coincides with your other cards to make it easier for you. This is what I do now now that I've learned my lesson right, and I will say in both instances I was able to reverse those charges. We'll kind of get to that later in the episode. But setting up that automatic payment man, that is the best way to

completely avoid this fee altogether. All right. Another pesky fee that most of us have probably encountered at one point or another is baggage fees. And with the different websites that aggregate and price compare airfare for you, all of us, we've become a lot more price sensitive when it comes to booking airfare, and a lot of airlines will it's kind of this race to the bottom of trying to get their tickets sold for as cheap as possible so that you're kind of in the system and you're flying

on their airline. Well, in order to recoup some of those price cuts, airlines have instituted some of those ridiculous fees. I mentioned that stat at the beginning of the episode, seven point eight billion dollars on fees alone last year from airlines. Boo. I agree, Matt, everyone hates paying check bag fees, but some airlines are charging for things cecilious printing your boarding pass for ten bucks or charging three bucks for water. In both cases, that culprit is spirit

airlines everyone's favorite airlines. Yeah, but they're at least trying to be a little more upfront about their fees and and lets you know, well, hey, this is what you're gonna pay, so that you know ahead of time and you're not just completely blindsided by the fact that you're paying a fee. Instead, consider booking with airlines like Southwest,

who don't charge fees for pretty much anything. And in particular, if you've ever tried to change a ticket you wanted to cancel a reservation, well, guess how most airlines handle that mat Not very well. You pretty much lose the entire amount that you've paid if you're not able to use that ticket. South Ust, well, they don't charge ticket change fees, and they make it a whole lot easier to book another flight if that initial reservation isn't going

to work for you anymore. Another way to avoid those pesky baggage fees is to only take carry on luggage with you and to print your boarding past yourself or just kind of have it on your smartphone. But yeah, I think there are so many ways to avoid these fees by just kind of taking less with you and only taking a carry on bag. It's a quick question for you. What's the difference then between like Spirit Airlines. Do you think in a company that is beloved like Aldi? Right?

Because Aldi, what do they make you do when you go to the store. They make you take a quarter stick it in the stupid cart and then you can push that cart around it but you get your quarter back. But still that is something that Aldi has done to keep costs low, right, Like, this is something that Spirit Airlines has done in order to keep costs low. Like, what's the difference there between a company that is essentially

being frugal or cheap corporate edition? Yeah, I mean, I guess the best thing I can come up with is the way they communicate it to their customers. And I feel like Aldi has done a great job with their signage of notifying people of why they do certain things. For the longest time, they didn't take credit cards in

order to avoid paying those transaction charges. And I guess they just realized over time that a lot of people wanted to pay that way and they were losing out on business on the other side because people had to pay with the debit card and not everyone wanted to pay that way. And when it comes to the quarters, the quarters for a shopping card. They have a sign above those shopping cards that says, a quarter saves you

a dollar. Here's why we're doing this because then we don't have to employ more people to get cards that are strown all across the parking lot. And Spirit for the longest time did a really bad job at communicating why they were charging these fees, and you just kind of get hit with it and you didn't understand why you were being charged, or it didn't just it just

didn't make sense. And now Spirit is doing a much better job, at least on their website with the messaging helping you understand kind of why these fees are being charged, and hopefully you realize that you're paying such a smaller amount to actually fly for the actual ticket that maybe those fees might make sense when you're thinking about the total overall cost. And I think there's also something that has to do with offering something but charging you for

it like extra on top of that. Right, it's not like Aldi when you go into the store, they don't say, hey, we don't have music just because we're trying to save money. But if you want to pump a dollar into the jukebox machine, then you get the shop with music playing. You know, it's not like there's a like a special section of the store only for premium members where it's like, if you pay an extra two dollars you have access

to these groceries. I wonder if the fact that you know these things aren't even offered by Aldi make it so that it's not something that you desire, and then when you don't get it, you're upset that you have to pay more for it. Whereas like, that's just what you expect when it comes to airlines, right, Like you expect to be able to check a bag or you know, even carry on a bag without being charged, which is the case sometimes well also too, that's how it used

to be. It used to be that you could check a bag with no fee, and then ten years ago when these fees kind of started to come into play, and then everyone started to one up each other and make it that much worse for all of us when it came to paying fees for every little thing when we were booking a flight, that just kind of changed our experience and it wasn't something we were used to, and all these kind of changing it in another way, where you might pay a quarter in order to get

the shopping cart, but as you walk through the story, you totally see why that's the case. You totally see how much money you're saving on everything else you're buying. And it's like, Okay, I paid a quarter, but I get it back and let you get it back. That's all. That's really what matters on the shopping car, right, I get the quarterback. But then also it kind of makes sense that the way they're doing it, they're doing it

in this really frugal way. And then again they just communicate it so well, and half of the battle is communication at least half the battle, right when you're trying to let people know why you're doing things the way you are, and ultimately, if you have the customer's best interest at heart, and these fees are going to result in an overall lower cost and better experience for everyone involved,

people are willing to partake in something like that. But typically when we encounter a fee, it feels like it's almost like an assault against us as opposed to someone trying to help us out. Yeah. Yeah, they're trying to be sneaky about it. They're trying to stick it to us instead of showing how we're on the same team together. All right, enough about airlines and Aldi, let's talk about

fees for purchasing sporting and concert tickets. Man, we've already talked about, you know, these fees with Ticketmaster and stud pub. I hate these fees, and sometimes there aren't ways that you can avoid them, right, Like, one of the solutions is that you can just purchase fewer tickets. But another option is that you can check with the venue specifically and see if you can purchase them directly fee free

at the box office. That's something I've done before at one of our local historic theaters downtown, and you can just show up at the box office avoid the fees altogether. Plus it's kind of fun to buy things at the old school window, you know what I'm saying. Oh yeah, it's I think it's a great way. And not all venues offer that. But if a venue does, like call

ahead and ask if they do. If it's a quite a drive away from where you are, But if they do, and you can save that money, you can avoid paying that fee. That's definitely a great way to go. Other fees that are pesky TV fees, oh man, they run the Gamutt regional sports fees, high definition fees, broadcast television fees. All right, well, what's the way that we avoid these fees for watching television? Well, I don't know about you, Matt,

I would say ditch cable. These fees are kind of an example of the way things used to be, the way the business used to run. And if we continue to subscribe to the old model, the old way of getting television in our home, we're gonna be forced to pay these fees. And and stats have shown the fees that pay TV companies are charging are going up at exorbitant rates. People that have cable or satellite television are paying a lot more in fees than they did percentage wise,

just even a few years ago. So the new model is streaming and there are great companies. We talked about this before on the show, but basically, ditching cable is the only way to avoid fees like that. And Buddy, Man, I wanted to talk about car buying fees. This isn't something that we experience often because we like to keep our cars around for a long time, but man, there can be a lot of fees involved in the car

buying process. Be sure that you are looking closely at your purchase documents, make sure that you're pointing them out and try to negotiate each and every one of those fees. If you are not able to negotiate those fees, be willing to walk away. This is one of the reasons I think that car Vonna is just doing such a great job taking the used car industry by storm because they have such a straightforward approach and how they communicate the cost to you as the buyer. Uh, they just

convey that so well. They communicate that, well, the price is the price, like you see the price when you first look at the vehicle, and that it doesn't change because all those costs are built in. People don't necessarily want to have to haggle. You want to see the price, you want to know what it is, and you want

to be able to pay that price. And when there's that sort of upfrontness and that transparency within an industry or even just with a specific company like this, folks are going to be much more prone to not only recommend them to you know, to their friends, but just to use that company in and again, you man location fees or delivery fees, there are all sorts of fees that are built into the car buying process at times, and it's refreshing to do business with a company that

doesn't charge those kind of random fees. And you know what, if you are buying a car, if you're really interested in buying a car, and you see those fees in plain sight, right in front of your face, ask questions about those fees. Ask if they can be waved or a minimum reduced anyway that you can at least ask the question and be upfront about how you feel about

the fees. That is the only way that you're going to have a chance at getting them wave or like you said, walk away from the deal, or find a place that that isn't going to charge fees like that on a used car purchase. And of course there are hard costs for people moving cars around right and and and transporting them across the country or whatever they're doing. And so to a certain extent that means that you have to look at kind of the total cost inclusive

of fees. So we'll get to how you think about that in other ways that you can consistently of wed fees in your life. Right after the break, all right, Joel, we are back from the break and we were talking about fees. Safe to say, nobody likes the staking fees they know. Boy, no, Yeah, we've we've talked about some of the different ways that we get hit with fees all the time in our lives. Now let's talk about

ways that we can combat those fees. The first thing that you want to make sure that you're doing is that you are reviewing your credit card statement every month. You want to make sure to notice if there is anything odd standing out. The reason for this is because you might be paying for services or fees that you even forgot about or potentially didn't even sign up for. The worst fee is the fee that you don't even

know exists. I call that the phantom fee. So step one is to, you know, make sure that you're getting your financial house in order and that you are even aware of all the different fees that you might already be paying. The next step that you need to take in order to reduce fees in your life is to

cut back be okay with produced services. For example, of a cable company is sticking it to you in there and they already are with the regular sticker price of course, will jump ship in order to avoid high charges and

ridiculous fees. In episode one oh seven, Matt, Matt, we talked about cutting the cord, and really that's we just talked about ditching cable in order to avoid fees while going with a streaming service, kind of running with the new age, with more upfront pricing, with more standard pricing, with easier to understand pricing models. That is a way to to ditch fees on the way you watch television,

for sure. Yeah, and je, if you are not willing to cut back on the different services that you are paying for, try to be at least willing to switch be okay changing different providers. You can switch banks, you can switch cell phone service providers. Any time that you can prioritize doing business with a company who avoids fees and prioritizes price transparency and customer service. You should like, that's who you should be giving your money to, not

someone who's secretly nickel and diming you. Oh and by the way, they're not going to tell you until the very last screen before you click purchase. You know, like that's the worst. Yeah, doing business with companies that avoid fees is actually this virtuous cycle whereas we are being a little more intelligent and a little bit more thoughtful

about who we do business with. Those businesses are profiting for doing business the right way, the way that avoids crummy fees, and so as you switch service providers, make sure you're doing your best to avoid providers that charge just ridiculous or stupid or or annoying fees. And I think overall, as we do that, other companies that maybe we're charging stupid fees kind of begin to see that and they're like, oh, wait, wait a second, then that

that fee model is actually annoying people. It's not working out, and it's not attracting new business, and it's not helping

me keep my current customers. And so yeah, if we do that, I think it actually makes not just a big difference in the here and now for the fees that we're paying, but it makes a statement as companies kind of adapt to the way that we want to do business, and the way that I want to do business at least is I want to do business on and kind of an upfront model of knowing how much I'm gonna pay getting into it. I don't want to be charged fees on the back end that I didn't

realize going into the purchase up front. Yeah, reward those companies that are doing good stuff. Yeah, exactly. But Joel, if you do find yourself with an unnecessary fee, remember that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Just like we encourage each other to ask for discount, we are encouraging you to ask for your fee to be waived and specifically, Man, lately, I've been doing this via the chat option, right. I'm a huge fan of the chat now or the live

chat options that banks. A lot of retailers have them now as well. They're including those on the websites. I like it though, because it's easy, and I specifically can multitask while I'm kind of chatting with them waiting for them to respond. I can keep working while they weigh that fee. And of course I could call, right, like, actually pick up the phone, make a phone call, talk

to a human being. But here's the thing, I'm a millennial and I don't want to have to actually talk to somebody, like just typing some words onto my screen. Oh man, you know how weird it feels when someone actually calls, you know, unexpected. It's like, wait, why are you presuming that I was wanting to talk on the phone, Yeah, chat, the chat option, any sort of way that I can interact via text essentially, it just makes it so much simpler. And yeah, I do love talking to people on the phone.

I much prefer it in person. But when someone calls you out of the blue, that's when it feels weird, right, yeah, pretty much. Now I just assumed that something like terrible has happened, agreed. Every time someone calls me, I'm like, all right, who's hurt? Is everything? Okay? What's going on? Do I have to go to the hospital right now? I saw my dad was like, can you call me in the next twenty minutes? And I was just like, I assume something terrible happened if we needed to talk

in the next twenty minutes. No, he just wanted to like talk about dinner next weekend or something like that. But yeah, it's just it's just super funny the way that we interpret a phone call versus people of a different era where phone calls were a little more normal. Yeah, I hear you, man. In another way that you can get kind of fees waved in your life is by using social media effectively. Businesses often have their best customer

service folks assigned to social media. We've talked about this before. They don't want negative attention online. And so if you complain, if you message them, even if you just d M on Twitter or Facebook however, or wherever they have their biggest presence, well you're more than likely to get your issue resolved, your fee waved, much more easily if you kind of take to social media in order to make your request known. Yeah, but Joel, in the end, sometimes

we do get stuck with fees. Uh. Sometimes they are appropriate, and you know, even though we may not like them, they're not incorrect necessarily. But sometimes we are stuck with fees that are just flat out wrong. Sometimes they are straight up illegal. If that is ever the case, make sure to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau or a government agency like your state attorney general or the cfp B, which is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

That's going to be a great way to have not only of your fees resolved, but to ensure that your fellow consumer, your fellow customer, isn't also getting stuck with those fees. Yeah. In fact, on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus website, it says that of consumers receive a timely

response from the company that they're complaining about. So if you have an error, if you have a fee that you've been charged the feel is out of order, that you shouldn't have to pay, well, submitting a complaint there will actually get action taken. And then they also say that every time you submit a complaint it helps others.

You're you're kind of playing a role in this greater narrative of helping of helping the CFPB assess you know, the good and bad players out there that the folks the companies who are are charging erran fees frequently, right, and then they're able to take potentially an even bigger action against a company like that. So the BBB, the CFPB, those are great places to kind of submit a complaint if you feel like you've been charged in egregious fee or if you've been charged in error, that that's a

great place to go. And it's just gotten so much easier for us to make our voices heard about fees we just meant in social media, but even just kind of publicizing it, letting people know that we've had an

issue a run in. Sometimes those complaints, if they're done well if they're done intelligently, can take on a life of their own, can let not only just our friends and family know, but can reach a wider audience and can help other people from avoiding the same pitfall with that company, but also can create kind of a tidal wave that leads to a potential change as well. So I think we do have more power thanks to kind

of social media and the networks that we've developed. That is like one of the good sides of social media, right that we can take to it and actually see real change happen, especially in regards to the pesky fees and companies that aren't using them well Joel. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that you and I and everyone out there that we are looking at the bottom line. If you look at the overall bottom line costs right at the price, paying

certain fees might still score you the best overall deal. Yeah, we talked about spirit just a little bit earlier there. Kind of whole model is on the fact that they charge fees. They charge like just insanely low prices in the beginning for just the fair and there are ways that you can avoid paying those fees. There are hoops you can jump through, no matter how uncomfortable you might

be in doing so. By taking just the smallest piece of luggage, or making sure you print your own ticket at home, whatever it is, there are ways that you can avoid a good many of those fees, and so yeah, I think really considering the overall ultimate cost is kind of like where we should come down. I hate fees at their pesky, For instance, Matt, I'll tell you this. I was buying a purse from my wife for our anniversary,

and I was looking online. I saw the price. It seemed like a decent deal, but there was a shipping fee, and I just didn't want to pay the shipping fee. So I waited, and ultimately I found another coupon code that brought the price down. But even then I was like, man, I still have to pay the shipping. I realized that this company has shipping costs they have to incur, but I've just gotten so used to paying nothing for shipping from so many places around the web that it feels

like a fee. But really, the price was really, really, really good, and so I was happy to buy that purse because I knew she would love it and it was a great deal. So ultimately, just don't be blindsided by the fee to that extent where you're not taking into consideration the total overall cost of doing business with that company or purchasing that item. Yeah, man, and we just touched on this too, But we are not opposed to paying for things that we are receiving the benefit of. Right.

We know that products and services they do cost money. But it's just when those products and services get stuck to us at the very end without us knowing it, or if it's something that they're trying to hide, where they're trying to slide into the total cost of something, when those fees, when those costs are hidden, when it feels like they're being sneaky about it, where they're trying to not be spotted, That to me is the worst. Like that's when the fees feel completely terrible. It's like

a personal affront to my character when that happens. Yeah, I'm thinking to myself, you think you're gonna get that past me? Like you think I wasn't going to see that fee. Of course I want to see that fee. Who do you think I am? Right? Yeah? Man, I'm vigilant too, and so if I am getting a fee. If I'm seeing a fee that I don't reckon guies or that I wasn't expecting, then you know what, I'm gonna speak up about it. And I think that's what

we should all do. We should all become a little more accustomed to speaking up for ourselves, to push back on fees that are ridiculous that we find in our lives. And I think the more we do that, the more we'll start to see them get waived, the more we'll

start to see companies change their patterns. But more than anything, there are also these fees that we talked about that we can avoid in our lives just by kind of handling our finances a little bit more intelligently and being a little bit smarter about the companies that we do business with on a on a day to day or month to month basis. Yeah, that's right, buddy. Tell me this, what if there is a fee associated with buying craft beer? Would you still do it? Oh? Man? How dare you

throw me the most impossible question in the world. Well, yeah, I mean, if they're upfront about it and we knew about that cost on the front end, I would gladly take that into account when I'm considering my beer offerings. Yeah, but I look for a beer shop that was fee free, you know, like they found a way to kind of not charge a ridiculous fee. So, speaking of beer, our beer for this episode was, like we mentioned earlier, Bourbon

Barrel Dark Apparition, this is by Jackie Ohs. And so I did a little bit of looking up because I thought Jackie Oh's was a very unique name for a brewery. My assumption is that the name is based on John F. Kennedy's wife, Jacqueline O Nassis Kennedy, and I am I right, ran very close it was. It was named after a female. So art right, he's the founder of of the brewery.

He named it after his mom. Oh cool. Yeah, So he took over the brew pub that became Jackie O's Brewery and he just named the place after his mom, which to me is such a like strong Midwestern thing to do. It's like, yeah, but what you're gonna name the brewery? I'm gonna name it after my mom. What a cool guy man. I saw got such a good vibe from him emailing back and forth, So no wonder, he's a cool dude. He named his brewery after his mom. Yeah, it sounds like he was raised. Well, yeah, what were

your thoughts on the beer? Yeah, so this was a stout that was aged in bourbon barrels, and man, the first thing I noticed was that on the nose it had a pretty noticeable bourbon aroma, and along with that, it almost had like sort of this warm apple cidery sweetness to it. With it being cooler out these days, I was really drawn to that. It was really a kind of warm and comforting before he even took my first sip. But man, as far as the flavor goes,

it was a big multi beer. It had a lot of those flavors on the tongue, but those flavors they didn't really sit heavy on the tongue, right, Like, I tasted all those flavors, but then they kind of quickly moved on and then on the finish, I feel like it kind of ended with more that sort of bourbon kick, which I appreciate because I'm a fan of bourbon myself. Yeah. I thought this was a really interesting stout, very unique. It actually had a little bit of of hot presence,

which is rare in a stout. It's not kind of something that you normally get and so it had these like kind of floral hops I thought, booming out, like bursting forth a little bit inside of this midnight black bourbon barrel aged out. So it kind of lent itself to being this really unique, special and delicious stout that also had kind of like some fig equalities, like qualities

of like a Belgian style quad. So yeah, I was just really fascinating kind of concoction beer that man, I really enjoyed, and I agree it's it's nice for especially a cold winter night, like a dark stout like this with kind of all these interesting flavor profile things going on inside of it. Yeah, it was very unique and

very tasty. Yeah, with you on the Belgian quad, because it's got the sweetness that you find in quads a lot of times, because often with a big stout like this, they have some more of those bitter like dark chocolate notes or like a roasted coffee kind of profile to it. So I hear you, dude, all right, Matt, that's gonna do it for this episode. And we'll have show notes up for the episode on our website at how to money dot com. Also there on the website if you

think we can make some improvements to the show. You can go to how do money dot com slash do Better and you can let us know they're how we can make the show more informative and more helpful. All buddy, that's gonna be it for this episode until next time. The Best Friends Asked Friends Out m