Friday Flight - Buy Nothing Groups, Student Loan Forgiveness Made Easy, & @jack Cries Hyperinflation! #429

that which we wanted to see going on right now. Um, it's like a very long looking goatee. Oh well, he's always said that, like it's just a wild looking beard. But but first we wanted to share that we are going to have some listener hangs here in Atlanta, not today, not this Friday, but rather next Friday, November. We are going to be meeting up at Monday Night Garage at seven five. I think Joel is going to be paying

for beers. But please come out if you're in Atlanta or near Atlanta, we would love for you to come out in November five Money Night Garage. We're gonna have a little How the Money listener hang, yes, I'm looking forward to it, Matt. Here's why, though, I won't be able to pay for beers. Okay, tell me, because I am. I just want to ticket to go to the World Series. Okay, so you pull the trigger, you're doing it? I did, I did, And so yeah, this is instead of fibular cheap.

This is dumb or criminally insane. No, it's dude, No, no it is not. Because you are such a big Braves fan and this is something that's gonna be worth it for you, right, I mean, And not to mention you're since you're covering beers for everybody, we know that you're in a You're in a good place financially. It would be different if you were saddled with loads of debts.

It would be different if you hadn't been making smart moves with your money for the past fifteen years, ten years ago, going going to the World Series, which wasn't an option because it's been twenty two years since the Braves have been to the World Series. Yeah, and it, and that has been one of those like bucket list items since I was a kid's going to a World Series game, go and enjoy the heck out of it. Like,

do you feel guilty at all? For kind of I mean, this is a small amount, it's a decent I will say, it's a small amount of guild for sure. But you need to not you need to push that out of your mind and just enjoy it to the max. And I want you to extract every amount of enjoyment from that game. Oh I will, I will, but don't lose your voice because we need to record. I thought about that.

I'll try not to. But fortunately, at least one of my friends is a season ticket holder, and so I saw that standing room tickets are going for like eight hundred bucks. I paid four hundred bucks for the ticket, So it's that is awesome. It's definitely it's a discount, right, it's not it's not quite full freight, which I'm thinking for because because to be honest, like we we all have a price threshold, kind of like that that four pack of beer I talked about recently, I walked away

from it. If it was eight hundred dollars to get in, I would say no plus standing remotely, like like you don't you do not have a guaranteed seats if you're just getting that eight hundred dollar ticket yeah, which I'd be okay with standing room only if it was like even if it was like two fifty or something like that. But we all have our breaking point before hundred bucks. For me, for this bucket list item, I'm doing it. So go Braves. We'll see if we can win game

three tonight. Um, I'm sure hoping so well. Even though I haven't been following it at all, I'm hoping so as well. I mean, I'm not so. I mean back when I was a kid, like when I was ten or eleven years old, there wasn't anything bigger than the Braves back in the nineties, right, But I haven't been following it as closely. But even I might turn the game on here in the next couple of days. Let's hope my face Paint Itself gets on the TV. But

all right, let's move on to the Friday Flights. It's a sampling of stories we found interesting this week and how those pertain to your money. And so the first story we want to cover today. Truly, one person's trash is another person's treasure. The New York Times had a great right up on by Nothing Groups that's really worth reading. Will link to it in our show notes. But the passionate folks in these groups, they do a fantastic job really of offering up used goods that might otherwise end

up in the landfill. I'm always amazed at some of the things that get posted in our local buy nothing group. The New York Times actually mentioned dryer lent being something that got snatched up recently. You can use that to uh like kindling for a little campfire or hamster beds. Apparently I didn't know that, but uh yeah, it's a little weird. And somebody in mind this week was requesting acorns. Oh, they should come over to our house. The oak trees

behind our house are dropping acorns left orright? Have you? I mean as we're sitting here working, you can hear them. Yeah yeah, yeah. So it's it's kind of just a fascinating place because you never know what somebody's gonna offer up or what somebody's gonna request. And I actually just scored two Halloween costumes this week on the buy Nothing group.

I myself, I'm going to be the man of the yell hat from Curious George and my little Dude I wish he got a Curio Storge costume, but that would have been great, I know, but he's gonna be a dinosaur, so free costumes for the wind nights. I didn't know you were doing a dinosaur. So I think Westy is gonna be an alligator because Kayton, we're planning to be low key. It's basically a dinosaur, yeah, but specifically alligator lowkey Okay, I don't know what that is, so yeah,

you'll see. So I mean, what's the weirdest thing that you have seen in our local buy nothing group? Because you know, with it being predominantly on Facebook, I am not on there. Yeah, but I did see that by Nothing that they're looking to launch a standalone app, in which case I could totally see myself getting on there. I just don't like getting inundated with all the other distractions actually hop hopping in Facebook. I know. I rarely head over there to Facebook in general. I will say.

The great thing now, though, is I have the news feed eradicator plug in. I've had that for years. So do you have that on your phone as well? No, but I don't usually use it on my phone, so I usually go just on the desktop and I go straight to the Hat of Money Facebook group to check in on things there and I go to local buy nothing or the neighborhood civic association groups and groups are really the only thing I use Facebook for. I don't

ever post, I don't really read people stuff that's just um. Yeah, there's a lot of crummy things about Facebook or time sucking things about Facebook, and I just want to use it for only the tools that I enjoy. But I just wanted to say, yeah, buy nothing groups can be a little weird, a little offbeat, but adorable at the

same time. And I just encourage other folks to join one if they're on Facebook, and if not, to look forward to this standalone app in the future so that you can still participate, because it really it's like neighbors help and neighbors and I think it's it's just like it's a good thing. And that's one of the positive benefits that the Internet has brought us, that connectivity on that level. It's just that's a good stuff. Yeah, there's buy nothing groups are a great way to keep you

from spending all of your money. Uh. And on a related note, let's talk about the high price of burnout, because there is a great article in the Wall Street Journal decelling the reality that most of us tend to spend more money when we're exhausted, and when we're overwhelmed, we spend on the little conveniences that we might otherwise have considered too costly, or these once in a while treats kinda like they become more habitual, they become more regular,

they find their way into our monthly budgets. And so when you've been put through the ringer at work, or if you have other stressors that are impacting your life, it's important to recognize what's going on. We don't want you to fall prey to the burnout temptation of just scrolling on Instagram, uh and more spur of the moment purchases. On one hand, I understand the need for expenses to

go up if you're working a lot. I was talking with a friend of mine earlier this week, and he has been working until like eight, nine, even ten o'clock at night, and I guarantee that he doesn't have time these days to go to the grocery store on the way home from More go home, cook himself a nice, affordable, healthy meal, eating those hot pockets, hopefully not hot pockets.

Hopefully the firm is covering dinner for them as well, which I'm sure is the case, but there's a lot of folks who don't have those kind of perks, and in those instances, I understand, especially when it comes to food, there's a convenience, Like there's a higher cost of convenience that you're gonna pay for in order to eat some food quickly without that taking a lot of time. But hopefully in addition to that, you're also making a little bit more money, and so in my mind it kind

of balances out a little bit. But on the other hand, if you're a little burnt out and that's causing you to consume, like buy more dumb stuff, basically, that's definitely something we want to warn folks about. When you're consumeristic defenses are down, Essentially, it can be easy to get knocked in the face all of a sudden you're buying a bunch of stuff. That's what we want folks to avoid for sure. Yeah, it's like the shields being down the money and falcon or something like that, and you're

just more prone to attack the best star man. Yeah, oh yeah, that's right, do you My Star Wars references are terrible, but so it just makes me think that one yet, breaking that habit of scrolling is is a good thing, like working to break that habit is helpful. That news feed eradicator app that I mentioned is helpful

one to help break that habit. And but if you still just kind of love the idea of mindless scrolling instead of scrolling Instagram where every fourth thing you see is an ad, scroll that buy nothing group instead and find the funky things that you know you you might be able to go pick up from a neighbor for free instead of buying something. And also yeah, find alternatives uh to the costly purchases that burnout can cause. We

would say, get outside. You might feel like you can't afford to take the time for let's say, a twenty minute walk out in nature or in your neighborhood, but in reality you probably can't afford not to. Financial margin is crucial, But if you feel like you're hitting a wall when it comes to the demands on your time, it's crucial to take a step back and find ways to incorporate activities that are going to lead to better health overall for you. You can't just focus only on

the money and achieving whatever financial goals you've set for yourself. Yeah. Yeah, you got to think about the holistic person. And then if burnout is this continual struggle for you, and work is the perpetual culprit, well it might be time to look elsewhere and to prioritize an employer who incorporates better boundaries, who doesn't expect you to apply to a Slack message at eight pm, expect you to be constantly checking your phone.

And this is a great time to look elsewhere if you're feeling like, you know what, there's no way out of this burnout conundrum. Uh, in the in the situation that I currently find myself in, I've got to get out of it completely. That's right, man. Let's talk about cars next. The we we saw that the average price of a new car has just topped forty five tho dollars for the first time. This is according to consumer reports and True Car. Uh. Dude, forty five dollars is

a tremendous amount of money. Uh, nine times when I paid for homers And with supply chain bottlenecks and the car industry being basically in the dumps, like you can't even get the exact car that you want right now. From what I'm sorry, your car is gonna have to be hot pig, sir, And it's no seriously exactly yeah, from I mean, there's different folks who know who are looking at getting new vehicles and basically they can't get

what they want. It's kind of it's more like a beggar's can't be choosers mindset or like take take what you can get scenario out there and this that just puts it in perspective how expensive new cars are. On top of that, the average price on a new truck it's even more dude sixty thou dollars. While it's uh, it's certainly possible for a new car to be your craft beer equivalent, you'll want to make sure that you're doing some soul searching before you decide that it definitely is.

If you're splurge has a couple of extra zeros after it, you can think a little bit harder. I think twice. And even though use car prices are through the roof as well, that just the current stratosphere that new car prices have reached just makes it an even bigger financial commitment and it means that your personal finances have to be an excellent shape in order to make a purchase

of this magnitude. I agree. And speaking of consumer reports, Matt, they were writing a bunch of winning stuff this week. I love that they dropped the knowledge about how much these cars are costing right now, the average price of new car skyrocketing. But they wrote another article which showed that Americans are overpaying on their car loans, So in addition to the higher sticker price, they're also paying higher

rates of interest unnecessarily. In fact, despite having a great credit score, dealerships often succeed in writing you alone at an interest rate far beyond what you should be paying. First things first, Matt and I don't like car loans. We don't. Nope, I don't really like buying new cars in general, or taking out loans to pay for depreciating assets. Although one could argue that cars are not a depreciating

asset in the here now, but that's extremely rare. Count on that continuing exactly, we would prefer to see you pay cash for car, even if it means buying an extremely used car in even like the five thousand dollar range. That is exactly how much my current minivan cost, which two years ago to the equivalent today might be like maybe what you can find find a decent used car for right, But if you do decide to take on a car loan, know what your credit score is before

you start the search. And if you've got good credit, we would say push to get a competitive rate. Don't just take the rate that's given to you. And that means shopping around, and so we would say check with your local credit union to see what rates you might

qualify for before you go car shopping. You want to have that quote in hand so that when a dealership says, here's the rate you qualify at and you say, that's funny my credit unions, as I qualify at three and a half percent and you're telling me it's that doesn't make any sense. And since we're seeing record levels of car deebt overall, it's just important to mention that cardet sucks, like it's it's a crummy thing to have. We don't

want you to have it. It might have become perfectly normal in our culture overall, but it shouldn't be normal for how the money listeners. We want you to avoid it, like the plague. Yeah, so the higher costs of new cars in general. That, coupled with higher rates of interest that these different lenders are pushing on folks. Both of those things have led to the average new car monthly payment being five hundred and sixty bucks last year, all time highs, which would give you more than enough to

fully fund a roth Ira. So essentially, that car payment is keeping you from becoming a millionaire by the time you retire. Keep that in mind when you think about it like that, the trade off factor, it's like it's not worth it. No, not not at all, uh and dued. One of the worst parts about buying a new car, I mean, besides how much they cost, is the car warranty robotcalls that you'll have to endure might be worse

than the monthly payment. You've seen like the different memes right where it's just like we've been trying to contact you about your car's extent. Do you have you seen those? I have? They're like yeah, and um, like a fortune cookie or like on a pregnancy test or my favorite one. I actually saw them reasonably that I like looking at memes. Uh, It's how I like to spend the remaining minutes I

have before I go to bed. But there was one that I saw that was on the Squid Game invitation card, you know the card where they invite folks to the game, and he flips it over and it's like, we've been trying to contact you. Which on that note, actually next week we actually recorded a Squid Game financial Lessons money lessons episode, and you can look forward to uh to

that one next week next Wednesday. But regarding these robocalls, Americans receive roughly thirteen billion of these specific types of phone calls every year. They're actually the top scam phone call in the US right now, according to robo Killer, and according to the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. Uh So, David Lazarus from the l A times, he picked up his pen, he got to work his proverbial pan. I think the laptop his repetic choices. True, he probably actually

writes things out on the computer. But he noted that these these supposed warranties are actually just service contracts that aren't worth the paper that they're written on. I think we all maybe suspected that, but he is confirming it, and we wanted to share that with you. But these

extended warranties, in general, it's a tenuous decision. These aren't great products, and we would prefer for you to have the money on hand to pay for these hairs instead of plunking down thousands of dollars on a warranty, even if it's directly for the manufacturer of your vehicle. But if you're getting a call from, you know, one of these scam warranty companies, we would recommend that you definitely

hang up the phone. Yes, and if you open up the fortune Cookie, just toss that in the trash, because, yeah, you want to avoid these in every turn. The manufacturers warranties aren't trash, They're still probably not worth the money. It's better just to have the money on hand and not put the thousands of hard earned dollars towards that extended warranty, especially if the kind of vehicle that you

you purchased is mostly reliable. But yeah, without being literally the hottest, the number one scam these days, we wanted to mention hang up the phone, don't even consider it. But we've got more to get to on this episode, Matt, including cries of hyper inflation from the Twitter Master himself. Well we'll talk about that right after this. All Right, we're back for the break talking about headlines we came

across this week. This is our Friday Flights, and of course it's time now to get to our ludicrous headline of the week, which actually doesn't have to do with hyper inflation. Uh. We'll get to that story here in a second. But the actual ludicrous headline is Florida Man, which you always gotta love Headlina Stori Florida Man. Uh, Florida Man, you piqued my interest already wins lottery and

plans to buy a toothbrush. This is an article from a local news organization in Florida and listener Dan he posted this in the Facebook group a young dude named Brian. He ended up winning a million bucks from a scratch off, and you know, good for him, glad he wants some money. But we just wanted everyone real quick to know that we do not support you playing the lottery. I mean,

here's the thing. If you buy a new car and don't play the lottery, if you are doing it because you know that you're just doing it for kicks, and if you're in a financial position to absorb that cost, and maybe I wanted to be in your budget, like like I wanted to be this planned, uh, decisive thing that you've decided in a moment of clarity, something that your coworkers or something like that. It's it's it feels okay, but if you're going to the gas station every every

day kind of thing, that's probably unhealthy. Exactly. Yeah. But but Brian, he was insanely lucky, and so now he's got a lot of unexpected money flowing into his life, and so what's he gonna do with it? He wants a new pair of flip flaps, plus that electric toothbrush that we mentioned in the title. Uh, this guy is awesome. It sounds like that. Hopefully he'll be able to avoid, you know, the lott of curse of declaring bankruptcy within

just a couple of years of winning. So fingers crossed that he'll be able to keep his desires in check as that money starts to flow into his account. And by the way, you know, he won a million bucks, but he's actually receiving less than eight hundred thousand because of taxes. Taxes. Gotta keep that in mind. You definitely, yeah,

did you start spending all that money? You see the headline number and it's like, that's not actually how much money you're gonna get, And if he lived in a state like California, he'd beginning even less but more of those state income tax So good on you, Brian. But Matt, let's let's just keep moving on. If the ludicrous headline was a tweet in my have been one from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey this week, he made a remark about hyper inflation, and his tweet read, and I quote, hyper

inflation is going to change everything. It's happening, end quote, And all right, buddy. I didn't know how to respond to that. I didn't actually respond to that, and not that he would have read it if I didn't. I think he was waiting on you to get He's like, how do the how do money guys feel about my tweets? What do you think about my take? Well? I think my complete dismissal love it. Jack tells you everything you

need to know. It's important to note, though, that there is a huge difference between the inflation that is happening right now that Matt and I have been talking about four months and months and months and hyper inflation. Just ask somebody who lives in Venezuela what hyper inflation like it's a completely different scenario than what we're enduring here in the United States, where it's like two thousand percent. Is their inflation right right? Exactly? Yes, And it's a

far cry from what we are currently dealing with. And when he says it's happening now, well, hyper inflation has an actual definition, and you can compare what's happening now in real numbers to the actual definition, and you can see that it doesn't hold any water. His argument doesn't hold any water. And basically the definition is when the price for goods and services are going up at roughly fifty percent a month or a thousand percent in a year.

And so we talked about rising prices in this country, and they certainly are going up, but that would mean that that price or on that good or services going up every single day. Like you might check a price on Amazon in the morning about that evening it costs ten percent more and you're like, WHOA, I should have bought it earlier. But that is not what's happening in this like a year later, not twenty four hours later. Yes, yes, And so I feel like this is like kind of

crying wolf. It's getting people throwing some people in a tizzy, and no, hyper inflation is not here. We all know that Twitter is not the best place to get your information or to have a nuanced conversation about the crucial topics of our day. But this really only reinforces that inflation that we are experiencing. Like, like you said, Jill, it is sticking around more than we expected, but we're nowhere near hyper inflation like it would seriously wreck our economy,

and we are not seeing that. I'm not gonna say that it's impossible because I don't know what the future holds, but it is not something at all that we're expecting to see on the horizon anytime soon. And Joel, since we've just got them talking about sort of a tech blunder, maybe Jack stepping in it a little bit there on Twitter, let's mention another This one involves buying stuff online. Bloomberg they had this interesting article about bots buying Christmas gifts.

That's right, it sounds cute. This is these are non cute boty little bot daughters and less robots and more automated software which is snapping up in demand items and reselling them for a profit. Uh, these bots are doing the bidding of folks who are trying to make just a massive profit from items that are in extremely limited supply. This is especially prevalent in like the white hot market of sneakers, you know, after this, bots will buy hundreds

or thousands of items just in your seconds. They then just will turn around and then list those now sold out items on sites like eBay, which I don't like. I don't like ebab being used that way for double has a site. Though I like eBay, I don't like that that's happening to eBay because, like I mean, it makes eBay get a bad rap exactly. Yeah, And I see baseball. I see it as such, especially since I've

been on there selling more recently. I see it as such a bastion of uh, you know, instead of you know, buying nothing. It's like, well, you can buy stuff you need and make a small profit, but it just helps keep stuff from going into the landfills. And how many yeasies did you buy while you run there? None? But sadly, these folks who are doing this, there's not much that

can be done about it. There are there are a couple of companies that are selling this just different anti bought software to some of the big retailers like Walmart, and hopefully we will see that curb some of the this nefarious behavior that's going on. However, we wanted to share this with you because if there is an item that you really really want and it sells out, that doesn't mean that you should pay double or even triple

for it elsewhere. Instead, we want you to keep shopping or maybe even do the harder thing of like changing your mind and say, Okay, I no longer want this thing that I really really wanted to do some mental gymnastics jedi mind, choose something else. The Star Wars like that two for two. I think we actually got that one right where these are no longer the yeasies you are looking for. I love it if you could say

that to yourself, it's gonna help a lot. That's what you want to do exactly, because we're we're going to see more and more of these shenanigans, whatever the hot

toy is of the moment. We're gonna see more people with these automated programs snapping them up, basically grinch ing this stuff that you might have bought for your child or for yourself, and um, yeah, I hate seeing that Hopefully these anti bought softwares that are are are starting to get really good, are implemented more widely across more more of these sites that these bots are targeting. But let's move on to student loans for a second map there there is some some urgent news that we have

to share for anybody out there who has student loans. No, your payments have not resumed yet the the Education coming up soon next year in February, but the Education Department has relaxed the requirements for what counts as qualified payments

in the PSLF program Public Service Loan Forgiveness. This is huge because it means that about twenty two borrowers will automatically see their remaining loans erased straight up, poof gone yep, like magic, and then another twenty seven thousand borrowers could join them if they can show they were previously working in public service when they made payments that were considered

ineligible at the time. And additionally, and estimated five hundred and fifty thousand borrowers will be able to have payments that were previously made to Federal Family Education loans and Federal Perkins loans count towards PSLF two. The only catches. If you haven't applied for PSLF, you have until October thirty one, Halloween, which is this weekend. You could do so you've got two days. So we're gonna put the link to this where you do that. On how to

money dot com. Time is of the essence. You gotta do it immediately, but I'll read the website real quick to it's student aid dot gov slash p s l F waiver. That's right. And on the note of student loans, you know, we've talked about a few of the major student loan servicers who are all getting out of the federal student loan servicing game. So let's give some more details on that. Specifically, loans with navigants are going to

be now serviced by Maximus. If you're with FED Loan, you might end up over at Mohila Nell, Net, ed Financial and Maximus. Those are all options for you, and then Granite State loans will be transferred over to ed Financial as well. Uh. This is all gonna be happening in the next couple of months and new servicers should be in place by the end of the year. Your repayment plans and interest rates will all remain the same, of course, and the good news is that you shouldn't

have to do anything. If your loans are currently in deferment or if they're in forbearance, that should automatically carry over. But of course, with something this big and complicated, uh, something where the federal government is involved, you never know. And so that's why we want this to be on your radar. A lot of moving parts right here, Yeah, a lot of things going on, and I would be actually shocked if everything goes as smoothly as it's supposed to agree. Just like in my own life, I assume

that things are going to go goes well. Whenever I am telling Emily how long it's gonna take me to fix something, how long I'll be away from the house, She's always like twenty minutes. Really, like, how long is it actually gonna take time? Three? Yeah, well, I think it's gonna take twenty minutes because I'm an optimist, but you're right, it is always times more like an hour.

And some of you may have already received information on this, but if you haven't, we would suggest logging into your current service or making sure they have all your updated information because you want to make sure you're getting all the correct details about the transition, and even if you have been getting that updated info, it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and make sure you have copies of all your information, like your payment history and your current balance

is on hand. In particular, if you're working towards PSLF, you'll want to file an employment certification form to verify the number of payments you've made so far. It's an e c F by the way, you like the abbreviations go for us. Again, none of this should be absolutely necessary, but it wouldn't hurt to have your info saved on your own computer in case any snaff woos arise. One thing you will need to do. Most folks probably were enrolled in auto pay back before your federal student loans

were put on hiatus. If so, you actually need to confirm your auto pay in order for those payments to automatically resume in February. So if your service or has changed, those auto payments aren't going to just turn on and resume.

You've got to go in there and manually do something exactly Yeah, and you know there's no rush on that, unlike the making sure that you sign up for that pslf waiver, but do keep that mind as you are transitioned over to that new service or but will But I'm pretty sure we'll be revisiting this topic in the coming months, as well as we get closer to February of next year. But Joe, that's gonna be it for

this episode. Again, we want to remind folks that we were gonna have that listener hang coming up next Friday, November five. You should be able to recognize Joel and I. We look like the guys on the cover of your podcast artwork, except I do different. I got longer hair now. But we'll be out there hopefully. Interest It's not that great. I'm just I'm just giving you. Hey. I'm I'm actually not ashamed of having uh not just gray but white hairs. It's a sign of maturity, that's what some would say.

But yeah, and I'm wisdom. I'm gonna go do some chopping tonight and watch the Braves win. But yeah, we hope to see you next Friday night at Monday Night Garage if you live in Atlanta at seven forty five. Follow us on Instagram for more details. But it's gonna be a lot of fun having beers with fellow money nerds, but Matt until next time. Best friends out, best friends out,