Welcome to had the Money.
I'm Joel, I am Matt, and today we're talking bad raps, price match murder, and premium points credit cards.
That's right, Joel. Everyone can tell that we're back in the studio, back in the clubhouse. We're back in the saddle here talking about personally very very western saying back in the saddle. Yeah, I guess I was thinking about was think about Rydan Horse. I talked about falling off
the horse and getting back on it again. Zealander quote. Man, we it's just good to be able to kick folks off, right, you know, Like that's one of the things that's so great about Friday Flight episodes is I feel like I get that we get to join our listeners as they kick off their weekend. They're thinking about us as they're like hanging out Friday night doing fun things on Saturday, which Matt and Joel were here. Yeah exactly. It's like we're tagging along with you. We wish we were too.
I'd love to be at your grandma's birthday party or speaking of actually grandma's birthday parties. My next door neighbor.
Is any grandma birthday parties? Recently?
I have so my next door neighbor is actually a great grandma. She just turned one hundred years old this past weekend, so we.
Have your one hundred. You should be like a great great grandma, I know, right, I mean may as well. I don't think she's close to that status. Okay.
So she's just awesome, lovely person. And actually she's got an older sister, which is which is cool. So her geens are incredible. But one of the things that they had displayed at her birthday party that her son put together was this like fake newspaper article and it was hearkening back to simpler times of one hundred years ago when she was born and what things cost back then. And I took a picture and my daughter and I were like looking over it, and she was like, how
did stuff cost that little? Until we were it's really cool. So I figured I would share a couple of things. A new house in nineteen twenty five cost six thousand dollars.
A new car.
Can you guess how much a new car costs Matt in ninety twenty five six hundred dollars three hundred ninety dollars two.
LUs six hundred for the for the premium model, right, yes, which you would have been if you wanted the leather appointed seats with a nice wood. They weren't doing that thing. They weren't doing that back then. That's another reason why things are so expensive now is because everything is so nice. Yeah, as opposed to just being kind of like the point A to point B. This is made of steel. Yeah, yeah, at onone break gotten fancy or bigger, lots more amenities. Okay,
what do you think a loaf of bread cost? Oh a loaf of bread? Was that like ten cents? Spot on? Is it really? Yeah? Well I'm thinking about when it like five cents to go see like a movie? So was it? Was it? What a state cost a steak? Yeah? If a loaf of bread was ten cents the a steak, iman's say seventeen thirty six cents? Oh okay, okay, but here's the kicker. That's the thing. I bet beef. Back then, everything was free range, grass fed, no antibiotics because none
of that stuff existed. That's true to one hundred years ago. What do you think the average income was one hundred years ago? Per year one hundred years ago, I don't know man average income. Okay, So you said a house costs six thousand dollars, So I'm going to say that it would make sense back in the day if you're like I saved up to buy this house for five years, so I'm going to say about a.
Thousand bucks okay, close fourteen hundred Okay, Yeah, so you made pretty good guesses there.
Put me in the hot seat. Well, I didn't like that.
I wanted to know, like, because I think it can be dispiriting at times for people to see like, oh, yeah, my grandma paid like fifteen grand maybe for her house and that would have been an expensive house. Right.
It's important to pay attention to the income side of things too. It's not just the outgoing what were yeah, what were they earning back then?
It is and also much more than that, it's important to pay attention to investment returns. So I was curious, Okay, what if you invested one hundred dollars, which is obviously a lot more than one hundred dollars today, But what if you had invested one hundred dollars and you never invested again for the rest of your life. And it depends obviously on the rate of return, but.
Just a one time I'm lump sum depositive one time deposit. Yeah, yeah, you would have an idea. You know, it depends on like returns and inflation and all that stuff, but you'd have what I do know that as ten percent average, a nearly compounded Yeah, because that's that I am familiar with that we have talked about over the course of the past hundred year. O.
Well, I looked it up on a site called official data dot com. Give it to me hundred bucks. Put it in nineteen twenty four and year twenty twenty five in the s and P five hundred, you would have two million, seven hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars.
Oh yeah, so one hundred right, one hundred bucks. So what do you think about that?
I mean, most of us don't have one hundred year investing timeline, right, We've got maybe half that at most because we start spending down that money at some point too. But I just think investing is the way to counteract a higher rising prices. And yeah, I saw a quote or I saw Warren Buffett. Resounds like looking at old warm buffet videos on YouTube because that's what I do in my spare time because I'm weird, and you know,
he was talking about, Yeah, how just saving. Think about how much it's going to cost to go to Disney World next year. That's what he used as an example, And well, the price on that's gonna go up. If you're saving, yeah, maybe your saving straight will keep up, maybe with the price higher price of Disney World tickets. But if you're investing, that's how you grow your money so that you can much more easily afford Disney World tickets in the years to come. And I think that's
just a practical way to think about it. So I looking back at those prices, I think the first initial knee jerk for a lot of people at Miss Betty's party was like, gosh, wouldn't it be nice depression if my state, Yeah, if my state costs thirty six cents, and now it's like eighteen dollars a pound. But you look at the flip side of it, and it's like, oh, man, if you were savvy with your money, actually inflation didn't
toast you like you. If you invested, you would more than keep up with inflation, you would far surpass it.
Indeed, indeed, all right, this is our Friday flight, though we're going to cover a lot of the different stories that we've come across, not just this past week, but we have some lost ground to catch up on, Joel. The Big Beautiful Bill, which it's no longer called that now is now it's the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. So ohbbb OBBBA is what we have to call it. OBA. But that passed about a month ago, which, uh, you know, prioritize the current goals of the current administration over the
long term fiscal responsibilities of our country. But it did cover a lot of ground, including extending the tax cuts and jobs at.
I can say just from like how the sausage gets made. Wouldn't it be nice if we had more bills that were smaller in scope that we can more easily understand how it used to go down, But sadly everything gets shoved into one big the most.
Bill is how it goes down now. Yeah. So, but what we're gonna do, we're gonna do old old school, old school like Congress used to do it. We're gonna break things down. So instead of doing one long, boring, walky episode, we'll cover some of the A lot of the different elements kind of sprinkled throughout the episodes. In the coming weeks the ones that we think are going
to be most impactful to listeners. And so the raising of the salt deductions from ten thousand dollars to forty thousand dollars, that was a quite a contentious part of the bill, but it's going to particularly benefit folks in the most expensive states out there, like New York or California.
That comes to mind, and some people were saying, well, the reason that population they're getting having population drain, especially at the higher end of the income ladder in those states, was because of that salt deduction cap, because it was really costing people in high tax states a lot of money on their taxes by having that in place. So that was kind of part of this.
It felt like they're leaving money on the table basically when they're just like when they're capped at ten thousand dollars and they're saying, I've got plenty more I could itemize here to get deducted off my taxes. So, yeah, that's lifted up to forty thousand dollars. Now. Another group of folks who are going to see their taxes go down are folks who are sixty five and older, which certainly isn't a huge portion of our audience, but it's a
straight up six thousand dollars deduction per person. And this is for couples who are earning less than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This is quite significant. So you're looking at a total of twelve thousand dollars straight up deduction.
And again, we talked about we talked about this like maybe a couple of months ago, about the finitude of this bill, that oh, it's all this stuff that's happening, but really it's only locked in. A lot of the changes are baked in for a few years. So even those the tax cuts, right, the tax cuts and job backed that we're supposed to be made permanent in this well,
even though they're extended for a few more years. So this is going to be another political battle, you know that we can see on the timeline and then not too distant future, we're gonna have a lot more discussions about this, and we're going to have another bill passed.
Re visit it, which I've heard arguments for that for this sort of natural sunsetting of some of these provisions, and there's arguments for it, there's also arguments against it, of course, because it's like, oh, this is the short term kind of let's make the people happy. But I think it's also from a fiscal again responsibility standpoint, it can be helpful to be like, hey, this is going to come back on the table and we're going to
talk about it again. Don't assume that this is going to stick around, yeah, forever.
I think it's more of a political feet to the fire thing though, and it's like, well, you're not for so that's where that's this. We're going to how we're going to run against you, and that's what the ads are going to say. Another random part of this bill is the car loan interest deduction up to ten thousand dollars a year that people can take if they buy a US assembled car and they have a loan on that car. Right, Matt, what do we think of this?
Are?
We are we fans? This is like one of my least favorite parts random things thrown into this bill because I think it's going to help some people rationalize taking out a loan on a new car when car loans are pretty much always a bad idea. The average person, like think about, you know, cars are more expensive. Interest rates have gone up on cars, and this feels like throwing a bone into people. Hey, you bought that expensive new car and you got this nine percent interest rate.
You're probably paying something like two twenty five hundred dollars a year in interest on that car. So we'll at least allow you to save taxes on that. The average person new car buyer is going to save something like four hundred dollars a year in taxes because of this thing included in the bill. And yeah, I'm just not a fan because I think people will be able to rationalize and say, now I get the tax incentive, I
might as well keep that loan around. When car loans are a bad idea, dig into the details about your income because of income over a certain threshold, you won't qualify. And also what car make and model qualifies, because you need to know that before buying it. And even still, don't let that sway you into buying a new car and taking out a sick loan that's going to cost you a lot of money every month on the car. Note too, ev tax credits on both new and used vehicles.
They are going away because of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act September thirtieth thirtieth is the last day you're going to be able to get that tax incentive for buying an electric vehicle. So the effective price of EV's is going to go up significantly. I think it's going to make it less enticing to switch. I mean, I told you that I canceled my.
No, I'm just gonna be out here driving my Slate truck, my slate, my cool little Lego truck, all by myself. I thought we're gonna have I know, sorry, man, I guess it's just gonna be me.
And they're they're adorable and we would have looked good riding next to each other in those trucks. But part of the appeal was not just its low price point, but low price price point with EV tax credit. And I actually just bought a new used car we should talk about on the show, a twenty year old car, not not anything close to new. But that's why I canceled my order. It is because oh I got this new used car that's gonna last me, I think a long time. Also, the Slate card.
Is not it's not gonna be as cheap as I thought it was going to be. If they take away the tax credits, seventy five hundred dollars tax or a price bomp as we're straight up, I mean, that's a big deal. It's it's crazy that some folks that was like real money, right Like, I mean, that was an instance to where it's not this it's not a deduction of your income that's going to then reduce your tax bill.
This is a tax that was a tax credit. Yeah, so dollar for dollar is how the price of those evs was reduced, which is quite significant.
Well on that, on that front, we should just mention they didn't. This bill didn't only pull back ev tax credits. It's also pulling back energy efficient home repair tax credits because yeah, that was supposed to have a long way I think long runway. I think it was supposed to expire in like twenty thirty two something like that, but they're going away at the end of this year. So if you have upgrades you're planning on making to your home,
well then get them done in a timely manner. If you're planning on doing it next year, you probably want to do it in just you know, November December something like that of this year. So you may all have to tax credit. But after this year they're going away.
Something else I saw. So while we're talking about cars though, before we leave that, another reason to avoid buying new cars, whether we're talking about electric vehicles or traditional internal combustion engine cars, and that's because of a one thousand dollars monthly car payment that is no longer the anomaly. I saw that one in five buyers are signing up for one of these. This is according to Edmunds. And not even for thirty six months, not for three years. This
is often for over six years, which is insane. Man. The risk of just blowing your budget and being underwater in that loan for a long time is serious. And I just crunch them numbers because I'm like, one thousand dollars is so much money, man, So I can't fathom were you to take that thousand dollars and invest it in the market. Two thousand dollars a month agay, which is a lot of money. I mean, if you're paying
that to I don't know. Some folks are like, well, I gotta have a car, but you don't need to have a brand new car, as Joel just mentioned to you're twenty years old, you've got you got.
A two thousand and six Toyota. I think it's gonna last me another decade.
Four hundred baby, Yeah, yeah, awesome, But it would take you twenty seven years before that one thousand dollars a month turns into one million dollars. Yeah, one million, Like and I know you were just talking about inflation and one hundred years ago, one million isn't what it used to be, right, It's still still one million dollars is a lot of money. And the reason part of why we talk about these kind of things here on the
show is we want people to make informed decisions. They just think they have to sign up for these things to make these payments. And some folks are gonna be like, yeah, it's a million dollars, but that's in twenty seven years, guys, and they're gonna choose to go with a nice new car. But there's gonna be other folks who say, wait, a million dollar dollars. I didn't realize that. That's okay, I'm gonna say no to the car, sign me up for a million bucks. We want folks to make informed decisions.
Speaking of home energy things, it makes me think of like the yellow energy you stickers. It's like what is the cost of this to me over the long haul, and essentially that's what you're giving up.
Yeah, you know, selling my other used car, the accurate that so well, the guy, the guy that came over and he ended up buying it. Yesterday we were talking about that. He was like, the whole point nice of me buying this car is so that I don't have to have a car payment. And I'm like, I'm with you, man, and so we can all for you. You'll have solidarity on that point.
That's that's why you do it. Man.
I was like proud of him, man as a young kid getting started, and I'm like, this thing's going to treat you well. And I hope, I mean, I think you can treat me well. So I hope that this allows you to avoid having a car payment for many.
Don't make a promise like that where you've got zero there's nothing you can do about.
Hey, this is treating you well. Yeah, it's a depress I think you know, I'm like couching it. I'm not telling him that this thing's like gold and going to run forever.
Oh yeah, you're right. I can't promise that.
Let's talk about student loans for a second, like, something thing else that changed? Can we say, Bigley, is that a is that a President trump ism? That's up to you. Okay, so I said, I try not to adopt trump isms. Yeah, personally.
Okay.
Well, something else that changed in a big way because of this new bill is student loans. Gone are the days of past payments and generous repayment plans. The safe plan is gone for good and there's something new in its place, the Repayment Assistance Plan or RAP. That's that's the new thing in town. So if you borrow money, does it sound more hip to you because it's rap? Yeah?
I think so. Let's rap kids, right, Hello, fellow children. I forget what Steve Amy says. Oh yeah, what is that in? What's that? Happy to go more? I don't even know. It's been a while. Yeah.
If you if you borrow money though from the federal student loan program after July first, and we are past that date, this is the repayment program you'll be under. Our friends at Student Loan Planner. We had Travis hornsbyond a few months ago.
Uh.
They they are advising extreme caution right now for people when they're considering my especially people who already have have student loans from the federal government under their belt. They're even telling folks, they are telling those folks to consider private student loans to avoid having all of your loans, because if you already have existing student loans and you take out more, they'll all be put onto the rap plan, which isn't as generous as the plans you might already
be on, So be wary for that. We'll link to a blog post from them on that, detailing kind of some of the intricacies. Also, student loans are accruing interest. Again, the average borrower is going to pay more than like
thirty five hundred dollars a year in interest alone. And at the headlines and the details of what's happening to student loan borrowers in this country, there's just there's a lot of people wringing their hands because they're nervous about what this is going to mean and how they're going to be able to handle these increased payments back in their lives.
Yeah, I will say moving forward, I don't know. Maybe maybe it's because I never had student loans with the different income based for payment plans. I feel like I could never fully get my head around it. It's like just the complexity involved with all the different places.
All the alphabet soup, and the tiny sliver detailed differences in between them.
I will say the simplicity of Wrap it took me five minutes of kind of like reading some of the details to fully understand at least I think as to what it offers, which I appreciate the simplicity. Yeah, the simplicity is great, and it's because it's got this flat fee regardless of how much you make. So like basically, if you make ten thousand dollars or less, you're still going to pay ten bucks. But then beyond that, for every thousand dollars, every ten thousand dollars of income, you
just pay one percent more of your income. So basically, if you make thirty seven thousand dollars, you're paying three percent, If you make seventy seven thousand dollars, you're paying seven percent. If you make one hundred and twenty thousand, well, you're still your capped at that ten percent. It doesn't go above that ten percent. That's not something I could say with the previous plans.
Yes, at the very least, that's why we had to have experts on to talk about all the details, like the people who eat, breathe, and sleep sudent longs. Yeah, so that's one thing I can appreciate about RAP. But generally speaking, this this means that student in bars aren't doing so well with interest accruing. Again, in particular, many are feeling the financial pinch, and I think for others it's just going to feel like a full on chainsaw
to their budgets. And as we've mentioned before the government has the ability to dock your pay and they seem likely to pursue payment by garnishing wages. So we feel for you if you are impacted by this jarring pie change when it comes to student loan policy. I like the current the way things are looking now moving forward if we can just stick with that, But I don't like how things to be. Things seem to be whipping back and forth perhaps.
Every four years.
Yeah, I think that's that's the tough part in the stomach, is like the promises that seem sure that don't get kept, and then the next person's like, we're going to do the exact opposite, and you're like, I don't they actually get accomplished their goals and they this time around.
It's it's tough. Know that not paying making these payments. This isn't a great option, like we don't want you to not put food on the table or anything like that. But just know that the FEDS are serious about collecting on that student loan debt. The government. They even have the ability to dock Social Security payments from older Americans who have student loan debt. I can't imagine there's too
many of those folks. There's more than a think really, yeah, that's the folks who have taken out student loans made for their press rand kids.
Depressing to think, but there are people collecting SoCal Security owe money on students.
That being said, that has been paused at least for a now. Yeah.
Also watch out for student loan advice on TikTok. We've talked about just financial advice in general and social media. Some of it's great, but there's a lot of like crummy stuff too and just flat out lies. At the same time, there are people out there saying, oh, no, there's an easy path to student loan forgiveness, but it's wrong. They basically say, hey, dispute your student loan debt with
the credit bureaus. It's going to get removed from your credit report whil your student loans are gone from your life, and that sounds nice and that.
Yeah, it might.
Actually get removed from your credit report for a hot minute, but it could just be temporary and it does nothing to eliminate the debt or pause the need for you to make payments. So I don't know, maybe stick to TikTok dance videos. If people still doing that, I don't know. I'm sure they are relationship advice. That's probably you think that's good on TikTok, Matt, of course, Okay, yeah, everything's
right on TikTok except for the financial advice. So yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I don't I wouldn't know because I literally I have never been on there.
So all right, but we've got plenty more to get to. We're gonna talk about one of the bigger retailers out there, Amazon, among others. We'll get to all of that and more right after the break. Right, we're back in just a minute.
We're going to talk about some new credit card products that come with really high annual fees. Oftentimes the perks are sick on those cards. But are these new ones worth it. We'll talk about that, but Matt first, let's get to the ludicrous headline of the week. This one comes from the Wall Street Journal and the title is the origin of the eighty dollars popcorn Bucket.
Too rich for my blood?
Yeah, man, I mean, I spend on things you love, but if you love eighty dollar popcorn buckets, I got questions for you.
So this is a phenomena that all started with Dune, Yes, with the Dune Bugget, which just going back, I saw they I think they included pictures of that because it's just so insane.
It's tough to fathom reaching your hand in that bucket to get the popcorn out.
He's going to do that. It's kind of creepy.
But you know, the movies are back. I think I'm curious if the f one movie performed. Well, I kind of wanted to see that in theaters, but also, I can't tell you the last time I saw a movie in theater, so I knew it wasn't gonna happen, even though I thought it would have been cool.
I know the last movie I saw, what which was the How to Train Your Dragon? Oh, okay, real life or what do you call it. I don't know, it's not realize you went by yourself without the kids, right, exactly. No, this was the first movie that we've ever taken the entire family to. Oh wow, ever, isn't that crazy? That's crazy? Yeah, your kids live a sheltered life. Well, it's just there
aren't that many great movies out there. And why do you like, why do you go to the movie theater when you've got a solid size TV at home and it's comfortable. We make our own popcorn with like oil in the pot and pop it on the stovetop, as opposed to whatever stale preserve popcorn they've got there. So yet another reason to not pay for the eighty dollars popcorn. Come up with your own cool vessels at home. Yeah, just plain ole bwles.
But this one is interesting. It's like some New Fantastic four, which apparently, this New Fantastic for movie is actually good, but it's this eighty dollars popcorn bucket attached to it. And I guess these popcorn buckets have taken on a life of their own. But what do you do with a popcorn bucket once you're done with it? I'm even
reluctant to buy popcorn at all of the movie theaters. Yeah, we got like a there's a you know, we rarely go to the movies, maybe like four or five times a year with the kids, but we got the on Black Friday. There are local theater which is far less expensive than the other theaters. For some reason, probably just a little rundown, they were selling like the actual refillable
bucket I forget. I was like eight dollars or something like that, and the refills are just like like four dollars every time we go, And so that felt okay, I think I'm willing to pounce on that and don't drop that bucket to let it break right over there tape in his to give it together. But yeah, the eighty dollars popcorn bucket makes zero sense to me.
What are you gonna do? Put it on your shelf when you're done with it. It feels like a like a movie theater status symbol. Yeah, which, like is that the kind of status symbol you'd have? Which okay, So this makes me think of this is like an impulse purchase that someone would totally make the theater be like, yeah,
that looks cool. I guess I'll get it. I guess so okay, so I guess I've got a frugal or cheap So that when we went and saw How to Train Your Dragon ahead of Time Kate and Night, we told all the kids, hey, you can take some candy to the movie theater because we're not going to buy the crummy, expensive, overpriced popcorn there in the theater. Is that frugal or cheap showing up with your own candy? I think it's Is it instilling improper virtue or tactics in the minds of our children.
You're just you're, yeah, bring, I don't care. I'm totally down to stop by the gas station, get your candy bar there and bring it.
Oh no, we were picking up Halloween candy that we still have in our pantry from last year. That might be stale and nasty at this point too. Candy lasts forever. We well, I don't know, man, Yeah, maybe not. It was just one of those instances to where we're kind of catching ourselves. We're like, well, are we teaching the kids to like be scofflaws? I don't know. We dialed it back because initially they had like handfuls of candy. We're like, no, it needs to fit in your hand.
That's that's how we basically limited how much candy they they could show up with. Anyway, I'm glad you hear. At least you are not judging me, Joel. All of our listeners are judging us. Let's talk about some of our favorite businesses out there, the ones who don't seem to be treating their customers all that well. Oh, first of all, did you see that Delta they're getting ready to launch that AI pricing model. It's like dynamic pricing two point zero. I love there to take it to
the next level. Their response because they were basically like, what are you talking about? We never even were considering this, when clearly they were, but they were like backing away quickly, like Homer subsident. Normally, normally everyone's jumping all over the AI, but in this case they're like, oh, wait a minute, I guess in this case, we're using the AI against you. So actually it's not AI. It's just a fancy dynamic pricing,
which you've always done. Guys. Now, I feel like there are more and more stories about different retailers, in particular not taking the high road target in particular, they are ending a favorable price match policy that it's had for years. It's basically the way it worked if you found an item that you bought at Target for less money within fourteen days within two weeks of purchase at a competitor,
you get a refund for the difference. And this is not something that they're honoring anymore as of last week. Evidently Target doesn't want to compete on price in that way. And this is something that you've taken taken advantage of. Right you are one of the few people that I know who's willing to see something that you purchased in the past and then go and make a case for why it is that they should give you some money back.
Well, I even this is going to sound weird. I was buying a backpack from my daughter going back to school backpack, and then I saw that it was thirty percent off like a few days later, so I ordered it again. So I had two of the same backpack, and then I took back the one and returned it on under the full price skew.
So, yeah, sometimes that's what you gotta do, Yeah.
Because I mean, that's just the easiest way to go about it sometimes, but it's slightly more automated.
I think this is okay. So one of the reasons I think targets why they are not doing this anymore is because there's like a judgment call that's involved, Like someone has to be there making a case, making an argument, pointing to a price somewhere else, and someone else has to be looking at it saying, oh, yeah, I guess that's legit. Did you photoshop this? I don't know, it's on your phone, as opposed to something like what you just described, which was a return, which is much more automated.
It's just more streamlined, and I think there are more folks who are finding ways to be savvy shoppers by essentially making returns things that they are like, you know what, actually, I don't see the value in that, even though I purchased it, and let's be honest, and they're sending it back.
Prices are far more dynamic these days, so the Amazon might offer an incredible price on an item that you just bought from Target, and then you go over to Target and you're like, hey, look look how cheap it is. Give me my money back, and they're like, but that they had it that way. For like a day or maybe less than that, so we don't feel compelled to price to match that price. So I get why is doing it?
I don't.
I'm not throwing shade at Target. I think actually Target's done a pretty good job attracting customers in recent years. And guess what, none of their competitors had a policy like this, So for them to be able to compete, they just got It's almost like they're at a disadvantage if they keep a policy like that around.
Yeah.
I wish that they could keep a policy like that, but it's just not the way.
The modern market works. That's how I feel. Yeah, so they just can't can't play that game. Well, I mean I see it. It's more like forward looking, whereas you
keep tabs on like previous purchases that you made. I'm always just like, all right, what's next, which maybe put says more like in like lumps us with the typical American consumer, Like you're talking about back to school shop, and I mean, I don't know how many pairs of shoes there are at our house currently, but we've got a lot because you order a bunch, see which ones fit. Like we're not going to go into the store into
the shoe store. We're gonna find the ones that the kids like, that fit the best, that actually fit because the sizes are all over the place, and then you send the rest of them back. And I think that's one of the ways that Amazon has competed, and like they've kind of changed our behavior to a certain extent because folks are taking advantage of the ability to make those returns, which is probably why we're starting to see prices with Amazon starting to tick up a.
Little bit, because they're taking advantage behavioral reliance on them.
Right, So, Okay, this is why we can't have nice things.
I hope she's listening today, because returns, well, the Wall Street Journal actually has been tracking a basket of like hundreds of goods that Amazon sells, and Amazon's over here saying like, we've been keeping our prices low for customers, and the Wall Street Journal is saying, all contraire, You've actually been raising prices on a lot of these goods. And I think for a lot of years, Matt, Amazon
did keep prices pretty low. They were trying to mass customer share, and so that's why so many people became incredibly reliant on Amazon and It became their go to place to shop for stuff because they were like, it's easy and it's cheap. But that is becoming less the case.
And you know, free markets are great, but when we don't take advantage of free markets, when we are knee jerk going to Amazon to buy stuff, we are more likely to pay more than we should or need to, or more than other retailers are charging because Amazon realizes that we are we have we got the Prime membership, we're super down with the convenient delivery, and so we're just going to pay whatever price Amazon tells us they're charging now instead of shopping around and think this is
just should be a good reminder for how to money listeners that as Amazon was raising prices over the last few months on a bunch of these goods, Walmart was lowering prices on the goods. So the price gap has increased between what Amazon sells stuff for and Walmart sells stuff for. And that's you know, a couple hundred goods. It's not pervasive, necessarily, or indicative of everything you might buy exactly, but it's a good reminder tonot just rely on Amazon for your shopping.
That's true, honestly, guilty as charge, because like I think that's just our default. Like literally this morning, I purchased some air filters and it's so easy to look back at the previous order. You should have done it from Costco. Buddy, I saw that there were that they were there, but I never have the size. What I should do is put my sizes on my phone. That way I've always got it. I put other stuff on my phone. Yeah, like,
for instance, the price of beef. Like anytime I go into Costco, I'm always walking by the stakes looking at the ribbuys and you're monitoring that. Yeah. Ok, I've got a note in my notes app and it's called to consume What have you seen? What have you seen? Okay, So beef prices are up ten to thirteen percent year over year, and that's not because that's something I've kept
track of. That's something I saw on the news as well, but it's been in my notes app though it's been what three years, I think since I've been able to snag a prime ribbi at fifteen dollars a pound. Yeah, that's just not where prices are. And in part it's evidently due to high expenses due to the cost of feed evidently has gone through the roof as well, so beef prices. While other prices have gone down, we've seen inflation cool, so beef prices are still sky high.
Makes me think about our conversation back in the day with Frankie Solenza, who like struggle meals, right, he's all about super struggle tasty meals, and he talks about he talked about using meat more as like a garnish in your dishes.
Oh that's that was that's Kate's line. That's that's our line. Is that your rank? He didn't say that, he's told it from you. He did, Okay, Well, I don't know. Maybe maybe he said it. He can say it too. But he's the one that's got the cooking show. Yes, sure, yeah, nobody's listening to I swear, I mean listeners. If you remember the episode when we first started uh poor not poor, before we change it to how to Money, I'm pretty I think I remember literally us talking about slashing your
grocery budget. Yeah, episode seventeen or something, especially when beef prices. That's how we treated meat though as a garnish. Yeah, like a little it was almost like, you know, like bacon on a wedge salad. That's how we did all of our meat. Well, getting steaks is the main feature
now at your meal. Yeah, granted it's probably still cheaper than eating out, but it's it's going to be so expensive, so much so it's got to be like few and far between, and changing your shopping habits and saying, I guess we're I guess we're more of a chicken family right now. That might be a good move. I will say, Okay, what Frankie did say. I do remember him specifically saying that, hey, Joel, don't you know that broccoli has got more protein than
Ribbi's than beef does. And in the moment we were like really, He's like, oh yeah, he's like those cruciferous vegetables.
I was like, no way, But in fact what it was was it broccoli has more protein per calorie than beef does per calorie, and so sure it's got to get it's got a decent amount of prosy, but you you also have to eat like thirty pounds of broccoli in order to get the same amount of wheat protein and like two pounds of stakers you told me recently, and I wouldn't have guessed this that chicken has more protein than chicken breast stake. Yeah. Yeah, so I think that's pronounced.
For those of you crossfitters out there trying to get your protein in, hey man, chickens cheaper and you're gonna get more more of that protein you move to improve.
All the folks out there who are looking to uh optimizer, I mean, all the Huberman, all the Peter Rittia listeners out there, they know it's up when it comes to protein. Yeah, they do are.
Let's talk credit cards. So the new Chase Sapphire Reserve went live at the end of June, and it comes to a much higher annual fee than it did before. So I'm sure, Matt, a lot of how to money listeners are like, this, is this credit card still worth it? What are the changes that got made? Well, Chase is thinking that customers are gonna willingly pay seven hundred and ninety five dollars a year to have this credit card.
The annual fee, it's more than the Amex Platinum, which is also set to get in overhaul, I think, but the perks can potentially add up for savvy users. Some of the major selling points points are A three hundred dollars annual travel credit, one hundred and twenty dollars credit for TSA pre check, and up to five hundred dollars in credit towards high end hotel stays. But maybes, I Matt, I'm I'm less keen on these credit cards.
Now. You want to tell us about the City New City.
Card and Strata elites, and then maybe we'll give like our diagnosis of what's happening in the high end credit card space.
Well, here's the thing. I'm not even gonna share specific details, because I feel the way that some of these nicer credit cards are going. They are reminding me of those coupon books that you could buy for twenty bucks back when you're in like middle school, the blue Ones entertainment on the front where they were they blue Crown. You could completely save a ton of money by buying those back in the day. But a lot of folks what
did they do? They just let them linger and they're junk drawer and oh there's an expiration date.
I oh no.
The downside of the coupon buk model is that it often incentivizes you to spend more than you otherwise would. So you've got the same model here, but the stakes are so much higher with these incredibly fancy credit cards that have these insane annual fees. And sure, for the right person, right like, I think this could be a no brainer if you're going to optimize to the nth degree. But I think for the average person, especially if you're kind of on the fence about this, this is a
hard pass. So I would simply recommend just going to something basic like the City Double. You know, forget the City Strata Elite. Go with the City Double Cash card. That's the card that we're using very regularly. Because was it lot sometime last year that we talked about I think for years we'd been using the Amex Blue Cash Preferred,
and I was like, wait a minute. They cap the six percent CA back on the groceries at a certain amount per year, and I realized, may we're we've got a family of six, we might I think we're hitting that like halfway through the year, and I was blindly still putting my grocery charges, obviously my non costco grocery charges on that card, still earning one percent. I felt duped.
So because the details matter, they do, and so because of that earlier this year, I was like, I'm going to make sure that old AMEX they don't take advantage of me. They you know, I'm a profit center for them. Not really, but we stopped using the blue cash preferred about halfway through the year, and now all of our food charges are going on to the double cash car to get that solid two percent back at the very least. Well,
and yeah, like they gotta be smart about it. That's details in some of these cards are really like really interesting. So for instance, yeah, you'll.
Get a credit for staying at certain hotels, but that credit is broken up into two different times of year like January through.
June and oops, yeah and then too many hoops for me, dude.
And guess what the credit comes if you book a hotel well and essentially some of the most expensive hotel chains in existence. So you have to be like a high flyer. I think if you got to be a baller, I think if some of these cards actually less as travel cards now and more as like big city six figure dink sort of credit cards.
Right like Bagatti, sure get you get you to these fancy cards, right, it's like the same same classes.
Because you're probably the kind of person who's going to use stub Hub regularly, Apple TV, Peloton Like these are less travel and more like, hey, do you buy into and do business with fancy fancy companies like Apple and Peloton? You know on the leg you're going to get a credit for that, but you got to make sure that Like, I think these also the one of the problems. It just incentivizes you to spend, just like those cup books.
It's like you save more when you spend more. And so the only way you're going to get value from the twenty dollars book is if you cut out at least ten q pons. Like the goal is to maximize your savings, but how do you maximize your savings by spending more money? And so I think these credit cards could incentivize a lot of people to spend more, sign up for services they otherwise wouldn't have signed up for in an effort to save money and justify the annual fee.
I'm not saying they don't make sense for anyone. I'm just saying for a lot of people, they're probably out of each and they really don't spend in a way that these credit cards will make much sense.
Totally agree, all Right, let's call it before we wrap. We've got a newsletter referral. Shout out to Megan H, Chelsea K. E dub Maggie H. And Malgic and Nolan S. We appreciate all you wonderful folks out there who are fans of the how to Money newsletter, and you forwarded the newsletter to some of your friends, so we appreciate you. Thanks for trending the word. Yeah yeah, if you want to sign up. If you are not a subscriber to the how to Money newsletter, head over to how to
money dot com forward slash newsletter. They drop every Tuesday. In are chock full of more personal finance goodness. Is that agel? That's it all right. We hope everyone has a fantastic weekend. We'll see you back here with a fresh ass kind of money episode. We'll see here on Monday. Until next time, Best friends Out, Best Friends Out.