Friday Flight - Checkout Hacks, Calming Compounding, & Balenciaga Babies #588

spend on babies, but this is our Friday fight. Uh. And specifically we're talking about some of the different headlines we've come across and specifically how those headlines are going to impact your money, your ability to earn an invest and to spend. But it looks like you've got a person, well Finnance win here that you want to talk about. Yeah, so I'm saving five hundred bucks this here for making

one move. We've talked about the show on the show before, but we I just bought our house and they were in July, right. We we moved in up here to our new stopping grounds in July of this year, and so many moving parts when we're buying a house that I forgot to kind of think about what my deductible is going to be on this new property, and that's not something I have looked at either. I went back in to look at my at my premiums, and I

was like, wait, this is is kind of high. Is as kind of expensive as I'm like shopping everything, I'm like literally reaching out to other insurers and stuff. It turns out I've got a decent rate overall for all the policies. I have a lot of layover policies, the car insurance policy, the home policy. But I was like, there's gotta be a way for me to cut this down. And of course, yes, raising my deductible was a great way for me to say five dred bucks more than

every single year. Granted it went a lot higher. So my deductible is now not even a firm number. It is a percentage of the home's value. So it's just if something happens like I have to have a lot of money on it to make a what's the percentage? So I'm at three percent, you can do two or three percent, which is my insurance cooking. And so based on the amount of money I've got currently stashed away

in savings. I feel comfortable self insuring for this and just taking taking that savings on the premium amount everyone plus as you know, sure, the goal of this insurance is is to never use it. Yeah, never use it. You want to make sure that it's it's got to be for something catastrophic, right, Otherwise, were you to use it, you're going to see this rates skyrocket. Oftentimes it said

that if you use it, you lose it. But uh, man, that's what made you so you were just shopping around your insurance because typically I just got an angel reminder comes around and so we bought our homes. Well we got our house back in the spring. Uh And so I feel like I would that would pop pop up on my radar maybe in like February. So it was because I got a notice of a bump up in my car insurance rates by something close. So it was it was a huge increase, and I saw I reached

back out to to my agent. I'm like, hey, what's going on here? Like why so much? But this is honestly, it's the reality for a lot of people around the country, like rates or skyrock a lot of car insurance and raising their raising the rates a lot exactly. So I was like, how can we how can we knock this one down? Sadly there wasn't much to do on that front, but I was like, I gotta find somewhere else to cut back if if my car insurance is going up

by by this drastic amount. So, uh, unfortunately we have one car. Unfortunately it's a cheap car, so we don't have full coverage. So even though it's going up, it's it's relative, right, it's but it's uh, it's still I'm glad I was able to find a way to claw some savings back at the same time, jack up that deductible on your home insurance because that isn't that insurance

that you typically want to see yourself using. But do make sure you've got that emergency fund set aside to handle that really high deductible if and when that event ever does come. Yeah, and just a good reminder to all of our listeners out there to take a look. Do you know what your deductible is? And do you know how much you could say if you raised it?

And can you afford to raise it, like you have the money on hand to self ensure Those are those are important questions, but We'll hope you ask him because it could could save you a lot of money. All right, man, let's get to our Friday flight. So this is that quick sampling of stories that we found interesting this week.

And first we want to get to I bonds. And despite the litany of issues that we heard about from listeners and you know, from the interwebs in general, the Treasury Department they managed to sell almost one billion dollars worth of I bonds in a single day last Friday. It's a tremendous amount of of money flowing into I bons, something that most folks hadn't even heard of before. If you missed out because of some of those web glitches, or maybe it just wasn't even on your radar up

until now. That's okay. The new rate on I bons has shrunk, but it's still uh in my opinion, do it like a super solid six point eight nine almost seven. And it's actually higher than most had predicted because the Treasury Department they added a point four percent fixed rate of interest in addition to to netting the rate of inflation. So this means that even as inflation eases, you'll still

have a fixed rate floor to count on. Which still makes I bonds an attractive buy for a decent checken folks. But it's also important to mention that I bonds there are a great tool for medium term savers. We're talking at least I mean, you can't touch it for at least one year, but you know, if not two to three years, that is a good time friend. To keep in mind, this isn't money that you need to have

access to immediately. But I mean, said younger, folks with an even longer time horizon are still better off stalking away money into the stock market via those tax advantage accounts. Um. But the the other thing to point out two is that fixed rate floor, that point four percent, that's actually good for the full length of the bond. So we're talking a solid thirty years, and granted it's not much, but it is nice to know that you can kind of always count on at least that point four percent.

And there's not a whole lot of folks, let's say inflation does go back to normal, who are gonna want to hold on to this I bond for full thirty years? I can't imagine most of our listeners are gonna probably not as the rate does go back down. But you're right. I think it's it isn't. Weren't to mention as well that I bans have gotten a lot of press. We've talked about I bonds quite a bit, but still even while I bonds remained a great deal, they remain a

great deal for certain folks in certain situations. And there are a lot of people who would be better served by investing more and not even really considering I bonds. But yeah, so much comes down to the individual. And let's talk about gift giving for a second, map because

we are getting close to that time of year. There's a new survey that I saw this week that came out from TransUnion, one of the credit bureaus, and it found that a decent chunk of shoppers are changing the way they think about buying gifts for their loved ones this coming holiday season. I think largely due to the reality of inflation, which is part of the reason I bonds are so valuable right now. But a third of

folks said they planned to buy fewer gifts. Overall, seventeen percent of people said they planned to buy cheap gifts, and thirteen percent said they are turning to more practical gift options over the holidays, And I gotta say, Matt, I mostly like the people are pivoting in these ways. I think this is a good sign because we do have to make different decisions as inflation roars. Like if your salary hasn't kept up with the pace of inflation, you you're spending power has gone down and you have

to change accordingly. So, yeah, buying fewer gifts, as long as you're communicating that with potential family and friends, I'd say that's one of the best ways to go totally. Yeah. We actually talked about this last year with Meg Nordman on how to have a minimalist Christmas. We can link to that episode in their show notes. And you know, you definitely don't want to just show up without any gifts on the day of the family gets together because

you're tied on cash. That's not cool. But other friends and family members, uh, they're they're likely filling the inflation pinch as well, and they will probably welcome this conversation. It'll actually be a relief for them. Uh. And so that earlier that you make this phone call or even better FaceTime, the better. We're still in early November, so you know, cleaning the air about gift expectations now. It's

a smart move. And if you haven't even started thinking about gifts at all, for the gifts that you are going to get, I think it also makes sense to start thinking now. Um. I say this because we recently purchased a gift for my father in law. This is a gift that we had kind of thought of last year. We didn't pull the trigger on it, but it was still on our minds, and uh, it popped up thirty It is like thirty or forty pc off on slick Deals one of their daily emails. Nice So slick Deals,

Deal News. Those are sites that we talk about often. But if you thought about it ahead of time, if you've identified those gifts, then they can be on your radar. That way you can be sure to find the best deal. Yeah. I like that. And and again I do like that idea too, of just fewer gifts overall. I think, especially like when we talked with Meg, fewer quality gifts, just not the junk, not buying for adults, just saying listen, we're not doing gift giving for adults this year, or

something like that. That That can actually take a lot of the pressure off because sometimes we're like, oh, I gotta get something, and it's hard to Like my dad, love the guy, I don't know how to buy anything for him, Like it's he's so hard to shop for. And so sometimes calling off the gift giving can actually like make it a better holiday and only give gifts for kiddos

under fifteen or eighteen, I don't know whatever. I think that's when you bust out the coupon for a night out on the town with you and me, pops, rather than an actual item that you you package. I've gone to that well many times at this point. But yeah, it's it's worth thinking about, like as everything is getting more expensive, like do you change your your tactics when it comes to buying gifts this year? And all right, malict's get that to that Balenciaga baby's story. I really

like this one. This one was probably my favorite article from the past week from the Atlantic, and it was titled Babies Don't Need Fancy Things, which I love. That's a great title and in and of itself great headlines. So freaking true because weddings and babies are, of course, two places where folks will spend insane amounts of money without really batting an eye. So yeah, from fancy strollers

to newfangled sleeping devices. The amount of money slashing around in like even just like the baby development spased match to develop new products. It's astronomical. And marketers, of course, they want you to spend your money on the products that they've created. The best line in this article mat was when it said that these marketers equate certain kinds of consumption with responsible parenting. They that's true. They are

selling you. That's the brainwashing that has occurred. Yes, in order to be a good parent, you have to get these items. Uh. The pressure is real for parents because they see that marketing. They internalize it and they feel like, well, I got to spend money to show that I actually love my kid. But we say, we agree with this article's babies don't need fancy things. And it's hard to turn a deaf ear to this finely tuned marketing machine

trying to part you from your dollars. But we would say it's it's in your best financial interest to at least try to put on the ear muffs, give it a shot, say la la la la, la la la, and and and try to avoid all of the fancy schmancy baby stuff that's coming down the pipe. Yeah, and we've got a lot of kidos, Joel, Like you, you've you've got three kids. We have four. Our youngest dudes

they're still toddlers, so we feel this pressure ourselves. Um, and we've seen how so many baby items they're described as miracle purchases. Right, they're gonna fix whatever ails your baby. Therefore it's going to decrease your stress levels as well. The biggest money making promise, honestly is it's like anything that will get your kids to sleep through the night, even sell diapers now, that will promise better sleep for

your child. Seriously, I gotta say, what they're really promising is what you care about more, is less about your child sleep and more about your own sleep. Like if they sleep, I'll sleep absolutely because you know that if you can sleep and function during the day like that is gonna make everybody happier. Like I definitely get that. I mean this honestly. It makes me think of recently our youngest he's been walking into our room in the

middle of the night, not sleeping through the night. And this started a conversation between Kate and I and We're like, you know, maybe what he needs is a big boy bed because he's not really sleeping on it. It's just like this little cheap phone mattress. We talked about this for a little bit before it clicked him ahead and I realized that we were it was a cell phone like, we were falling into this trap. We weren't even being

presented with any marketing or advertising messages. It was us convincing ourselves that maybe the solution here is the to spend money to buy something a little bit fancier, something a little bit nicer. But then I remember that, wait a minute, our oldest daughter slept in that toddler bed for until she was like five years old. So we're convincing ourselves that, oh, yeah, it's it's not even a

real bed. It's just like this fake, pretend, little cheap ikea toddler bed with like a four inch foam mattress, until we were able to look back at history and to realize that, wait a minute, this is not necessary. And it turns out it's because he had a cold. When I have a cold, I don't sleep that well at night, and he is totally back to sleeping through

the night. Well, no additional dollars spent. It makes me think too that there's just like this massive gap between these expensive new baby items and then they're used value on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace. And so that's one way

around it. If you are going to get yeah, if you feel the need to get the snow whatever, the baby sleeper that rotates at different times to make sure that they sleep at their optimal levels, whatever, then buy it used at least because they're they're like si new, but I bet you can get one for a few hundred dollars on Facebook marketplace like. And the thing is, you don't keep many of these items around in your life very long as your kid ages up, Like you're

getting rid of baby and kids stuff all the time. Yeah, it's a revolving door of items. But we have and provide for so buying new makes less sense by used at least if you want to get some of those fancy stuff, and then maybe at least you're not going to lose a lot of money in the process because then you can sell it used again and maybe might be able to even get what you what you paid for it. And exactly there you go, and honestly it seems like the fancier the item, the more likely the

uter break. I feel like I saw there's articles this past week of some sort of like baby stroller that's been like breaking in half. It's like one of those double baby strollers. Did you see that doesn't sound good? I know that's the it's like completely collapsing and so more money, more problems. That's why I approach it compared to just like the classic crib or some of these other items that are pretty basic. I think the simpler that we can keep it, the better off will be.

And you are still a good parent even if you don't bamboukoo dollars on all this crap that you're being told you need to the love and attention and that you're providing your kids, not the crap that you're buying for them. Uh. Actually, speaking of buying stuff, there is an interesting article on MSN money based on a TikTok video about a new checkout hack that you might only consider, especially if you're you're one of these folks who are you know, who's always got like a pocket full of

spare change. You got that jar in the corner of your room and you're trying to figure out what do I do with all these coins? Exactly? Yeah, well, it always works me to see folks using the coin star machines at the grocery stores. Right they show up with their jars and they turn that spare change into dollar bills. Uh. But this is a bad route to take because cornstar takes up to twelve and a half percent plus a fifty cent transaction fee. Uh, and so instead of convenience exactly.

But what's crazy is that these often times you see these at grocery stores, right, Well, instead, just take those coins and use them when you're making a purchase at a self checkout kiosk. Well, the thing is you can literally bring if you eighty bucks worth of change, yes, and if you have like a giant draw or feel bad about so you don't have to feel bad about it if you're using it a self checkout, because the computer fine with that. But hopefully, hopefully you won't fill

up their coin reservoir. Uh and we will not accept any more quarters. But yeah, self spare change. It kind of sucks rolling your change. That's not fun either, But dumping those coins into the self checkout machines specifically to you know, spend them down for purchases you're already making. We think that's brilliant. Do make sure that you keep a quarter though, for when you do go to Aldi, that you've got that quarter to be able to snag that cart. But just the ability to take the edge

off as well. I like the idea of just always spending down some of the change that you've got, like in the ashtray of your car, maybe in your pocket, that kind of thing. But either way, this takes the edge off of higher prices that we're seeing in the grocery store. And speaking of Aldi, we we actually have another Aldi story that we're gonna get to right after the break. We'll talk about car Loans on the Rise, as well as five nine accounts. We'll get to all

of that right after this. All right, Matt, let's keep going. It's our Friday Flights. We've got a lot more stories to get to this week. And of course, every week we tackle the ludicrous headline of the week, and this one comes from CNBC and it reads, inflation has caused

adults to stop or reduce retirement savings. Bad news. Yeah, we don't like seeing this because, yeah, we want people obviously contributing to their tax advantage retirement accounts, especially especially right now when the market is on sale, so investing for your future. To us, it's non negotiable, right that the idea of paying yourself first is crucial before you start paying all those other bills. Yeah, it really is. A friend of Joel is that this is a mutual

friend of ours. Reached out was like, Hey, my employer is offering a high deductible healthcare healthcare plan and it's got an h s A. What do you think I should do? And I was like, oh, absolutely yeah, and this employer chips in they will pay into that hs A for you as well, so there's more free money there. And but then he said, well, what if I don't want to say from my retirement, And I don't know if he was joking or not, like, than, you can't be my friends. That's exactly what I said. But we

haven't talked about it in person yet. That's kind of one of those conversations that you probably want to follow up with in person rather than text. Well, just to make sure he knows who's talking to Yeah, he knows where I stand. Yeah. Well. In addition, in addition to

this people reducing their retirement contributions. Matt. The even more shocking stat I saw in this article was that of respondents said that they opted to take money out of their retirement account in order to combat the higher prices that we're seeing, which is even worse. Right, So it's one thing to reduce or to even stop your retirement contributions altogether for a period of time. Slow in the flow. Yeah, that's a different tactic, and it's one that we don't

find as appalling. But when you're talking about taking money out of your retirement account, you're reversing the flow that prevents That creates bigger problems. And so if you're opting to grab that money, let's say, in the form of something like a hardship withdrawal, which has gotten easier in recent years, so people can more easily say, yeah, I got a hardship, but you don't really have to. It's it's there's a more lenient process of approval for you

to snag that money. Well, that's even worse because you're taking your money out of the market at a really bad time. You likely have less money overall in that retirement account because of sagging values and and On top of that, folks who who go this route are gonna pay taxes and a ten percent penalty on those withdrawals, and they're gonna have less money, say for their future.

So you'd say, yes, stopping the account contributions for a little period of time while you're getting back on your feet, that's one thing. But taking money out of your retirement account is another. You should really be avoiding taking money out of your retirement accounts, specifically your four one K like to play. It's I think it's even slightly different if we're talking about taking out rath contributions. I don't like that either, but it's it's better, at least from

a tax and penalty perspective. If you're gonna go, if you're gonna go to the Wroth, well that's better than the were on KA. Well for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Actually, another recent study from bank rate, they found that fifty five percent Americans say that they are not prepared for retirement. And again, not a surprise that folks aren't saving and investing enough, or at least like they don't think that they're saving enough, because actually, like maybe they are, but

they just haven't sat down to crunch the numbers. Because of the way that compounding returns work, most folks are going to feel like that they don't have enough, you know, within their portfolio to retire on until just those last

few years right before retirement. Juli actually makes me think of I think this is an illustration we've talked about before here on the show, but the lily pad example, right, And so imagine you've got this lily pad on this pond, and it doubles in size every single day, and at the end of the month, right after thirty days, it has completely covered the entire pond, right, So you can kind of picture this of the lily pad growing. And so if you were to ask somebody, hey, when will

that lily pad cover half of the pond? Without that person thinking too hard about it, they would a lot of folks would just say, I don't like maybe day fifteen, like the process with you the month, when in reality, no, it's going to cover half of the pond the day before the twenty ninth day, basically the day before the

end of the month. And granted we're what we're talking about here in this example, that lily pad is growing at a rate of right, it's doubling in size every single day, and so we're not gonna we're not trying to say that that's what your investments are going to do.

But the fact is we have a difficult time with that kind of math, with compounding growth, with exponential growth, and our investments are oftentimes closer to that reality, that example, than what we imagine right where you're slowly adding to your portfolio. And I think I think you're right. I think there's a problem, like a lot of us, especially how the money listeners might misperceive. They might think they're not doing enough even though they are. And I think

that's what you're trying to get back here. I think the reality is too though most Americans aren't saving. Yeah, I do think there are a lot of folks who aren't saving. And we see what the saving trade is for the average American. It's abysmal. So most people really aren't. But for how the money listeners, I think this is

good encouragement. You might think you're not and it always feels like you can or should do more, But when you crunch the numbers, when you take a look at the reality of compounding returns and how Yeah, later in your life what seems like a decent sized nest egg can become a massive nest egg in just a few short years. That's a that's a really important thing for for our listeners. Yeah, And so there's a practical step here.

So if you're hearing this and you're like, well, I don't know where things are for me, Like, I'm not totally sure what that's gonna look like for me, will

actually sit down and do the math. Uh. And a good rule of thumb is that you'll need roughly twenty five times your annual expenses once you fully retire, right, We've talked about that on the show many times, And so figure that out first and then just start playing around with a compound interest calculator, and then you'll be able to see how much you need to set aside each month in order to reach that that twenty five times you anual expenses number based on how many years

you have left that you want to work. And so we share that because there's just us honestly a very practical, simple solution here to actually figure out what those numbers are. And you might find that you are perhaps far ahead of the curve then you think you are, like it feels like that you're way behind. It's difficult to understand the compounding returns that you're going to experience in your

later years once your portfolio continues to swell. But the idea is that you can take that data and allow that to calm your nerves a little bit into here now for sure. And I think especially if you're like a Type A personality and you're like I'm you never feel like you're doing enough. And even I like I am not Type A, but we all we all fall into when I'm unhealthy, I fall into kind of some

Type A tendencies. Think a lot of this ted on my angiogram number, but just the scarcity mindset, right like where you're just like, oh, like, am I going to have enough? I think that can easily be a default position that we fall back into you And so I think you're right. The doing the math, looking at the numbers face on can help you realize, oh wait a second, Yeah, the amount of money I have saved for where I'm

at in life is actually pretty good. Compounding is going to do a lot of heavy lifting for me, and I can freak out a little bit less and actually I don't have to put the pedal to the metal quite as hard. Exactly exactly. Let's talk about another accounts math that people used to save and invest, and that's

why accounts. We talked on Wednesday on the show about how to set your kids up her financial success and so yeah, if you have kids, we we actually downplay the effectiveness of saving for their college in a state sponsored five plan on that episode. Sure, yeah, it makes sense for some folks, mostly folks who are in money gear number seven though, who are pretty much in that financially independent zone, who have been saving well for their

own retirement for likely a long time. They have enough financial flexibility to prioritize saving money for their kids college. But a whole lot of other folks, it just doesn't make much sense. And another reason actually for why we feel this way actually popped up in a survey that we saw this week which reinforces are are not sold

lockty views of five accounts. This new study by Intelligent dot Com finds that a third of parents actually end up using five money for purposes other than college for non qualified distributions. A lot of parents, that's a lot of yea, using this money for thing other than college, which means that you're gonna pay uh tax and penalty, a ten percent penalty on any of those non qualified distributions. So yeah, five twenty nine account is a particularly bad idea.

We would say, if you don't end up using those funds to pay for college expenses. It's not an awful idea to save in a five nine fund if it's actually going to go towards the stated goal and get those extra tax benefits. But if you're taking that money out and it's a non qualified distribution, it completely defeats the purpose of what those accounts are set up for exactly. It's like the least optimized way for you to set money aside. Not only are you using it for other purposes,

but you're being penalized for that. This is just another reason why these accounts aren't our favorite, why they kind of end up at the back of the line when it comes to the different accounts we like to see you saving up for, you know, we'd rather you have money in more flexible accounts that but these are just hyper specific accounts that a lot of people don't use effectively exactly, and they're prioritizing these accounts at the expense

of their own financial future right. Often, like we often talk about the putting the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on your kids. But folks instead they're just looking at their kids. And it kind of makes me think of the Lanciaga babies. Folks are oftentimes so focused on the things that they want to be able to provide their kids, and in this case we're talking about college. It seems very noble. But yes, you do need to make sure that you're taking care of your

own retirement first. And so let's keep moving though, Joel. You know we did talk earlier a little bit about Aldi. Here's another reason to love Aldi. Starting this past Wednesday and through November nine, Aldi they've instituted a Thanksgiving price rewind Um, I love it, which means that traditional holiday items like apple pie, green beans, and many marshmallows, uh, cornbread stuffing us all as well, they're gonna be sold at nineteen prizes, which is of stuff on that list

really stinking cool. Yeah, and you know, all the is already attracting an insane amount of new customers things to rapidly rising prices on groceries. Writer's reports that because of how it is that Aldi handles thing and produce buying that the you know, they charged between twenty and less than their competitors for specifically for fresh fruits and veggies. They just need less workers because of the packaging, how

they set their stores up exactly, it's incredibly efficient. Honestly, this sounds about right from our experience, you know, like we have always said that just making this one change, that it's going to be the easiest, the most effective way to decrease your your monthly food budget. But then you see Aldi and they double down on their value proposition, and I also to that love the fact that they're harkening back to their twenty nineteen prices. It makes more times. Yeah,

like there's something almost nostalgic about it. Like so last night, Kate, now we had our date night and we came home to relieve you of your babysitting duties. We do the date night swap and uh You're like, yeah, you know, how was it? And we had a great time. And do you remember specifically what I said that the cocktail prices to this place where like Bucks for a cocktail

where is now a lot of restaurants around here. It's like exactly, and so when you do something like that, not obviously you are saving folks money when you're able to keep your prices, though they are ingratiating themselves towards their customers, towards their patrons. That that just show up, and and that means I'm gonna go back, right, Like you create these these warm, fuzzy feelings, and does it impact me emotionally and how I view that experience we

just had. Yeah, but also like there is real value that is being provided to us. Maybe the food wasn't quite as good as I remember it being because I was awash in this nine price glow. Maybe so, but it doesn't matter. I'm gonna go back. Yeah, And so it's just I don't know. Something to keep in mind. I love that not only what Aldi is doing, but

just I don't know how they're saying it as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's it's good branding for them, and it's it's good price savings for for a lot of us and for our listeners who have held out against shopping at Aldi. Or legal. I don't know if is it legal or a little? I think it's a little. I don't know, but we always say legal, we do. But either one of those, Like, if you go to either one of those stores, they're gonna save you a bunch of money

compared to the grocery stores you're typically shopping up. Yeah, And I'm one last thing. I feel like we've seen this firsthand as well, because recently we have started shopping more at Costco and we have been going over our grocery budget ever so slightly every single month. And it's totally because of Costco. I mean, back in the day, man, like you're buying that fancy barbecue sauce, dude, I mean that je, But like nine our grocery shopping earlier this

year was was at Aldi. And since we switched to Costco, like we do maybe like eight percent of our grocery shopping there only like at Legal and Aldi. But because of that, I guarantee that that is why we're seeing our our grocery bill go up. Right. I don't hate

too much the real thing. But let's let's talk about rate hikes, Matt, and how those are impacting consumers, and specifically, another rate hike was announced on Wednesday, although the FED signaled that the speed of those rate increases could slow in the near future and We've talked about on the show how credit card rates are going up, So pay off that credit card debt right if you have any

lingering around. But there's another way that these rate hikes are having an impact on the lives of everyday folks, and that is a car loan rates. New data from Edmonds shows that car loan rates are at the highest they've been in fourteen years, and so the average new car loan rate is north of six percent now I

think it's six point three percent. And the average car payment, according to the CFPB the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is up somewhere between thirteen and nineteen from a year ago, and so that means that the average annual cost of car ownership is is just shy up eleven thousand dollars, which is just so much money. We were just talking Matt about the need for Americans to save and invest more.

Will imagine if just a fraction of those car payments or being invested as rates go up on these loans, it makes the cars more unaffordable, more expensive, and it's going to crimp our budgets even more. Absolutely, yeah that the CFPB. They also report that the average price of a new car has ballooned to more than forty eight thousand dollars. That's complete insanity. Not only are we seeing financing the cost of financing going up, but the actual

cost of vehicles are climbing as well. Those payments are going up even more, and you're getting hit getting on both ends. Uh So, I mean yeah, With with prices being just way higher in both the used and new car markets thanks to chip shortages, thanks to supply chain issues, it's even more important to keep your transportation spending in check, despite what other folks out there are doing to their monthly budgets by opting for a new car right now, or even just a new car to them right now.

We're not fans of taking on debt for depreciating assets like cars, but even less so when it becomes more expensive to do so, when the race have risen as much as they have. Uh And, actually, we're gonna do a deep dive with Mike Quincy from Consumer Reports on Monday all about cars, so you can look forward to that interview. We're gonna talk about future of electric vehicles. We're gonna talk about how to get a great car for a lot less money than forty eight thousand dollars.

You do not need to be spending that much. And so that's an episode you can look forward to here on Monday. And we love Consumer Reports. My Quincy has been with Consumer Reports for a long time. Consumer Reports does a great job of it helping everyday Americans keep money in their pockets and help make good decisions about the products are buying. So we will Yeah, we'll look forward to that chat with Mike. Hope you enjoy it on Monday, and we hope you have a great weekend.

That's gonna do it for this episode. Don't forget to sign up for the How the Money newsletter. You can find that at how to money dot com slash newsletter. That's right, but buddy, that's going to be it until next time. Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.