Welcome to Head of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt, and today we're talking degree downsides, credit bureau blunders, and fluctuating fast food. You know what, buddy, this is our Friday flight.
We're gonna share a sampling of the top personal finance stories that we think you need to be paying attention from, not just this past week, the past two weeks.
We were able to take a little bit of time off there at the end of last.
Week, which means we weren't able to get around to sharing some of the newsletter referral shout outs. Yeah, we recently lowered some of some of the bars, the threshold that was required in order to receive some of the different rewards that are available.
To much literally cash money sent to you Vivenmo for real, no scam. It's a beer on us, a beer on us. And then the covetedt had the money. Socks those are that's what people really want. It only takes twenty referrals. Did we have it at like thirty thirty five? It was too high of a bar to achieve.
And you know what, We've got a whole box of these socks sitting there wrapped in They're soft, fancy, little plastic and we want to get some of those out to folks we haven't even gotten well, I think there's a couple folks who have gotten pretty close to this. But a virtual beer hang I'm looking forward to the first one. We do pretty sure Brendan is gonna be the first time to get there.
He's so close. Someone's gonna get there at some point. Yeah, Well, to hang out with you for a little.
Bit and have a beer exactly a little zoom beer, you know, like sort of like it was like back in the pandemic days.
It was like a virtual happy hour. Unless you actually want to fly in here, we'll do in person.
I guess, hey, if you do that, beers are definitely on us. But we want to make sure that we share a few folks who shared the newsletter with their friends, and a big thanks to Emmy's mom, Austin M. V.
Mooney, Kyle M. Eighty eight and Hassan. Yeah, we all shared it with at least two folks, which means you're committed. And by the way, how to Money Yeah host letter podcast and we are so close to crossing ten thousand subscribers to the How Money newsletter, So if you've been reading it, you've been getting value. Share it with somebody, you might get a shout out, you might even get
free money. But also you'll be helping us, you know, cross that coveted five figure mark of people reading the newsletter. So it's our goal to send out helpful information every Tuesday. You can sign up at how to money dot com slash newsletter. But Matt, let's move on. Let's get to the Friday flight. Let's get to the stories, the sampling of stories we found interesting this week in the personal finance space. And like you said, we were out of
town last week. We didn't have a chance to comment on what was kind of a big story in the financial space, like in like the stodgy financial space, the banking space, the Capital One, the big bank space, takeover of Discover, that potential merger. Right, And you might think, actually, when we talk about our favorite online banks, Discover and Capital One both come up. Yeah, we like them both. They're both too, they're two of the best online banks
you can choose. And so two of our favorite online banks coming together. This is a love story, a match made in heaven. Right, We're we're super enthusiastic about this maybe maybe not though, So there's a few things to really talk about here. One is going to reduce competition in the banking sector, right Economics one oh one tells
us that reduce competition isn't great for consumers. And the bigger banks seem to come with smaller brains, kind of like dinosaurs, Matt, you know, the biggest dinosaurs, the bigger. It's true. We talked about like the big three or four banks that they have a massive percentage of deposits in this country, and they are tree consumers the worst. It's the smaller, medium sized banks that do a lot
better by their customers. And so, yeah, I don't love reducing competition and taking two great banks and maybe making it into one mediocre bank. So yeah, at least on the consumer banking side, this probably isn't a great thing for the American public. But there's even more of the deal than that, I will.
Say, though, Capital One they did pinky promise to maintain the Discover credit cards, so at least from a credit if you're a huge fan of your what is it the discover it card or literally I think Discover was my first credit card when I was a teenager. This is back when you could get your own credit card as a don't even have to be eighteen years old.
Well, Discovery is actually the only We've talked about this before. They're the only bank that has a cash back debit card. Usually you don't get paid anything spending with your debit card, but True Discovers the only one that makes that possible.
But then the other side of the coin is that the merger could actually create more competition on the credit card payments front, posing a potential threat to the duopoly of Visa and Master.
Can I want to explain maybe what a duopoly is. Everyone knows what monopoly. Duopoly to competing against each other, Matt doesn't have the same impact of driving down prices.
Well, just the fact that they can go into cahoots and basically agree without agreeing. Yeah, it's a week week, not situation. So what it is they're going to charge folks? And these banks make a ton of money on the transaction fees that they charge different small businesses.
And that is large. It contributes to a greater expense.
For everyone, especially yeah, especially for We heard a lot about this when it came to restaurants, which is why so many small businesses, especially restaurants, are charging much less if you skip credit cards altogether, and this could potentially result in lower swipe fees faced by businesses, which would end up helping us consumers. So it's tough to know
which way the cookie is going to crumble. It makes the domino effect of this deal harder to decipher and to sort of look into the tea leaves and figure out what's actually going to happen.
We don't know.
But plus, there's a solid chance that this deal doesn't even actually come to fruition because of the political.
Climate right now. It's not all that open to big deals like this happening, to these deals taking place in the first place.
Yeah, so we wanted to cover it because they're two huge names. They're companies that we both do business with, companies that we even recommend. But we'll see if this actually comes to fruition.
Yeah, it is interesting that the political climate might not favor this deal going through it. And it's also kind of fascinating that in one sense they might be less competition in the retail banking space, but in the other sense, in the payment processing space, there could be more petition. So is it a win for zoomers, is it not. That's like the regulars are going to weigh in on that, But I think it could be a bit of both, which makes us a tough one to figure out exactly exactly.
All right, man, let's talk about careers and college for a second. A new study of more than ten million people, so it's really throwing not like a thousand people it questioned on just a quick phone call. It found that roughly fifty percent of college graduates end up in a job that didn't require the degree that they worked really hard to get. And I feel like this reveals a lot. You know, one of the most important things that reveals
is just how important your first job is. Right, it doesn't have to pay a bundle, but if it's outside of your intended career path, it could have long lasting effects on where you end up. This piece in the Wall Street Journal talking about this new study revealed a lot of individuals who were like, Oh, I took the first job because I couldn't find something in my career, and then it just I just kind of ended up staying in that place, or it took me off of
that career path I was hoping to get on. This reduces pay and job satisfaction for a whole lot of folks too. And I would say this, like, the biggest finding from the study that I found most asking is it to help ensure that you end up working in your chosen field. The biggest way to do that is to get an internship, even if that internship I love internships. Yeah, Like this is like we say great things about internships all the time, even and I know some people really
hate the idea of an unpaid internship. And I would say go for the unpaid internship even too, because that is actually what's going to lead to the connections, the job history. It's essentially as the pathway the connection and the experience you may need to get in the front door. Matt. I had an internship in a completely unpaid internship for months when I was a senior in college. But it led to me being in getting the kind of job that I wanted to get, and so I had that
first right job. Even if it's starting on the bottom of the tone pole, it's crucial to future decades of success for so many people. I think these are kind of sobering statistics about how a lot of people getting a college degree don't end up using that college degree, but I think there are ways not to be on the downside of the statistic.
Sure, sure, yeah, I guess The one thing I didn't like about the article is that they seem to focus on a few specific anecdotes about folks who got stuck in a job, like the first job that they took out of college, basically because I think that there is totally a way to get out of a job that you find yourself in and you're just kind of like, eh, not really loving this or actually this, I am not using my degree.
You're less stuck than you think you are.
You are like, we have more control as individuals than I think folks give themselves credit for.
And it's going to take a.
Little bit of like creativity, it's going to take a little bit of initiative. It's going to take looking at problems differently. That's the kind of person that you're going to hire, even though they don't have the experience, even though their first job was, oh, what's this thing that you were in Walgreens pharmacy? No, No, I was actually just like working the register.
Yeah.
I think that's totally fine, but it might just take a little bit of legwork. You can't just you. You
can't just like follow everyone else. And like speaking to the fact of whether or not you're going to get land a great job straight out of college, I think that's another huge takeaway other than like the first job is thinking through that and it's just identifying and knowing that just because you go to college and get a degree, get good grades, more knowledge, that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to land that amazingly paying job in the industry
that you want. Like it's just the standard default option. It's not like this conveyor belt. It's not like a like a moving sidewalk out of airport and it's just gonna boo spit you out where you want to be perfectly and all magically. Like, there are different things that you have to do to stand out, And like you said, I think internships are a huge way to do that, and it's great for multiple reasons because it helps you to get a taste, like a sampling of the work
that you might be doing. So for you as an individual, you're like, oh, well, maybe I didn't like that work. Well, what better way to get a feel for that than actually having gotten multiple years of schooling paying for a degree, and then you're kind of like, well, shoot, I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah, like the sooner the better.
Just to figure that out, that the advanced degree is gonna equate to more money, and that's not always a case. You need to look into that on the front end. I've known multiple people who go through and get like at their master's degree and then oh, wait, a say, I don't know, I'm not getting paid much more for this. I thought I thought was going to result in like significant income increases. Maybe maybe not right.
And that's one of the things you can learn with an INTERNI as you're there around other folks who are in the industry and you're like, oh, it might take a little bit to get up to this conversational point to say, hell, how much are you making? But I love that it allows students college hopefully soon to be college grads, the ability to get a taste of that work.
But then obviously you got the head start advantage of an internship as well, because if you are in a field that you want to be in, man, what a great way just to basically get your foot in the door.
I think what you're saying too, is to be able to bob and weave in kind of today's work climates. And everyone knows this, right that people the jobs don't last as long you're not necessarily employed by the same employer for ten, twenty thirty years, and so.
It's going to require some of that resiliency in some of that creativity that comes with not only switching jobs, but switching even careers in industries.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, And I think this also calls into the question, and we've talked about this at different times on the podcast too, the value of a college degree. Has the value of a college degree diminished? I think it's a nuanced conversation. But when you look at the overall stats, the average college grad makes a million dollars or over the course of a lifetime than the average hig school grads a lot of money. That is telling, right, but that also diminishes if you end up with the
wrong degree for the career that you want. But the stats also bear out that even if you end up underemployed with a college degree, you'll still earn twenty five percent more than the average highchool graduate. Still, we would say maybe not a full mill that's pretty good yeah,
as premium. So much of the value proposition depends on what you study and what career path you want to take, and then how much time and money you spend acquiring that degree, because there are a lot of degrees that people are spending six figures matt to get and those degrees just don't pan out in terms of a significantly
higher salary. And then there are other people who are just cut out for trade school, for entrepreneurship, for other things, where college just isn't going to be as much of a boon to their ultimate earnings.
Totally, I think it depends too on who you're asking, or like where that person is, like what stage of life that person is in, because I would like I would have said in my twenties and early thirties, oh my gosh, yeah, college total waste of time. I'm not doing something that I studied in school.
But I don't know.
The older you get, you kind of realize, oh, there's a more general knowledge. There's more formation taking place in college than I think you give yourself credit for, Like when you are in your twenties and now that I've gotten older, I'm like, oh no, that was actually really good for me.
To be there.
So I think a lot of it as to your opinion and how you feel and how you think about your degree. Aside from the numbers, it also I think matters where you are in life, and that changes over time. Yeah, but dude, let's talk about the credit bureaus credit scores in particular, because for the past three years, the number one complaint that the CFPB gets is credit report mistakes, and the problem has gotten pretty bad. Complaints they have
tripled in just two years. Five hundred thousand folks they have filed a complaint just last year, and there are tens of millions more who are being impacted by faulty incorrect information on their reports, but they just haven't filed a complaint, or they're just completely unaware because they're just cruising along, living life, doing their thing.
Yeah, it's amazing to think how how much complaints of skyrocketed, and yet there's still a lot of people who don't pay a take on the credit store. They don't know what's on their credit report exactly.
Yeah, So basically, something is on your credit report that shouldn't be experienced. They settled a class action lawsuit late last year for twenty two million dollars for ruining the credit report of a ton of their customers. But of course this is a settlement, which means they admitted to no wrongdoing, which is pretty classic and this problem that's just.
When people pay money and then they're like, but we don't we didn't do anything wrong, no admission of guilt. Then why did you pay the twenty two mel If you don't feel like you did anything wrong. That's how our justice is.
But the problem has gotten out of hand because of the way the credit bureaus approach any sort of complaint is kind of like poor.
Salt in the wound.
They now have an automated system that handles the first round of disputes that get filed, and of course it finds that your dispute has no merit.
E basically every time, even though it actually does. The tree is.
Roughly twenty five percent of credit reports contain an air, So we think this is worth putting on your putting on your radar. And the big three bureaus, they're really bad at their jobs. Personally, I don't think that any additional government oversight or any additional regulation is going to bring much result.
I feel like the.
Government can barely keep the lights on without passing short term spending bills, and they're just kicking the can down their road, which makes me think, well, okay, well, like, what are the actual alternatives. This isn't something we talk much about, but having loans, like specifically mortgages manually underwritten
is totally an alternative option. I had my very first mortgage manually underwritten, and honestly, pretty much every mortgage like for investment properties as well, because I'm self employed and you know, if you have irregular sources of income, they want to know all the information on you before they're like, oh yeah, yeahh we'll give you, We'll give you a loan.
But this is something that the folks over at Ramsey they talk about this all the time, and I think I'm going to find myself kind of barking up this tree a lot more because it is an alternative option, and it's honestly the one that seems the most viable as opposed to waving a magical wand and fixing the system that seems to be broken and does not seem like there is anybody that's going to hold them accountable.
Yeah, it's a shame. I mean that's what the CFPB is supposed to be. They're supposed to be there to kind of help consumers and keep these financial institutions hold them accountable. I have less and less hope of that
actually happened. Yeah, that's that's my problem. In an ideal world, the credit score and the credit report would be a reflection of our financial prowess and kind of how we've done handling debt, because that helps lenders understand pretty quickly how we're going to handle alone that they might give us right Totally, that can help a mortgage lender feel
really comfortable. I'm surprised that these businesses that are buying credit scores from these bureaus aren't pushing back and saying, what you guys are selling us completely inaccurate information that you would think that would be frustrating for them because it's harder to verify when something like twenty twenty five percent of these credit bureaus contain a mistake. Totally, the bureaus aren't doing the job for the businesses they're supposed
to serve. That's a crappy product, and who ends up in the who ens up getting screwed in the middle. It's every single consumer out there who has who's impacted by credit reports that aren't accurate.
Hey, here's a here's a potential silver lining. Maybe this is where buy now, Pay later comes to the rescue of consumers, the ability to provide perhaps better information as they're maybe creating their own databases. Yeah maybe you never know. I'm not.
I'm also not counting on that actually coming to fruition. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's it's just tough and I think like the well, the other thing to do is to keep an eye on your credit report and on your credit score. And your score is a reflection essentially of what's on your report. So if you see your score drop thirty forty points and you're like, wait a second, I paid everything on time, nothing changed, Well that's going on there. Dig into your credit report. You can find it for
free at annual credit report dot com. If you keep tabs on that, you have the ability then to file a dispute, to ramp things up, to file a complaint with the CFPB. Then if the credit utters don't respond in a helpful way once you file that complaint, which they probably won't. So but this is this is it sucks that this is burden that we take on us
because they're really bad at their jobs. But it is kind of the burden that we bear because the credit score and the credit report are so integral to how we function in the modern era. I'm sinking at manual underwriting. Yeah, but what if your credit score gets screwed by forty points and you're a renter and you're trying to apply to rent a new place, Well, then you have the job explained to that that landlord. Hey, guess what, I promise my credit score is actually better than this more
hoops to jump through. Yeah, and it's just.
But I will say, landlords will actually take a look at the will.
Yeah, some well exactly.
I mean I know that I would like I currently have currently have renters who had.
A really rough credit score, but.
They explained their situation this kind of the financial hardship they experienced in the past where they are currently and I got to see all. You know that there's a lot of corporate landlords aren't as nice as here one hundred percent.
I get that.
Yeah, I guess I can. I can't also wave my wand and expect that corporations are also going to go through the additional steps required as opposed to just simply looking at a credit score.
So I guess that there's a bunch of different takeaways from this. One to credit bureau suck, and two you've got to watch your own back. And you can get your free credit report. There's one place, the federally section site Annual Credit Report dot com, and sign up for at sight maybe like credit Karma, or maybe log in once a month to check your if your credit card allows you to get a visual on that credit score,
just follow it roughly, loosely. You don't need to be obsessed with it, but just kind of knowing generally where it is and if there is some sort of a sudden drop that allows you that'll alert you to something going wrong, something that's amiss.
But we've got more stories to get to, including we've got just a fascinating scam. And you're probably thinking, oh, I don't care about scams. No, no, no, this is this is a really really good scam. Or share it hit somebody that you would normally not.
Think it would. I know, I know, we'll get to that more right after this. All right, Matt, we're back. The Friday flight continues. More personal finance goodness to get to on this episode, we always got to get to the ludicrous headline of the week. This one comes from The New Yorker and here's what the headline reads. The day I put fifty thousand dollars into a shoe box and hey it to a stranger. I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam.
Whoa man? This art. Everyone should read this article fIF two thousand dollars. It's fascinating and it's ludicrous on many fronts too. First, the story itself just incredible. You've you've got to read it. It's a longer, more meandering scam it which is kind of makes it so interestingly. Then the scammers are less directive and more just kind of going with the flow as they call this person and that are trying to get them to cough over some money.
It's it's like a case study and how to scam people.
Yeah, honestly, it really is. And like it's good. You know, like there's hackers now that we're encouraging.
There's white hat hackers and black hat hackers or whatever, and so like like you hire hackers, like an organization will or a company to try to penetrate your cybersecurity, to let you know how did you can improve read this story so that you can learn from this individual's mistake.
That's right. That way you can learn just how freaking
good they are. Yeah, So it starts off with like a fake Amazon employee giving you a call attempting to verify account activity that's fraudulent, and like, in this case, there was no account activity that was fraudulent, but she's like, oh, they've opened up another account in your name, And then the person who got scam is like what so yeah, then that Amazon employee connects the person who wrote this article to someone at the CIA because this kind of
fraud is apparently happening regularly. And then it ends up matt with the writer handing over so sadly fifty thousand dollars in cash that she put in a shoe box to what she thought was an undercover CIA agent. Pretty horrifying stuff. It's again, it's worth the read. It's a complex scam, but it's just crazy to think that scams have gotten this good.
Okay, So the other ridiculous, ludicrous part of this article is that the person wasn't just any writer. It happened to be. And I'll share a name because obviously she published this herself.
Yeah.
I don't know how to say her last name, but her Charlotte's cows. I guess this is how you pronounce her name. She's the financial advice columnist for The New Yorker.
She writes for the New York Times.
Man, I certainly feel for her and felt terrible while reading this awful documentation of what she went through. But man, there are so many points along the way that red flags should have been going off, Like I would just hope that someone with her level of money, experienced and sophistication wouldn't have fallen for a scam like this. But it also reveals how good these gamers have gotten, and
they're not just targeting the elderly. They often end up conning millennials and gen zers out there, So we want folks to be careful. This is something that can Like if it can happen to someone who eats and breeze money, I think it can happen to almost anyone. They slowly tightened the I mean, man, it was so steady and incremental and like they were slowly removing her from reality and placing her in a reality that.
They had created, and before you know, it almost broke her brain. It was crazy, Yeah, it was, Oh man, it was it was like psychological terrorism. Yes, yeah, so you have to read link to it in the show notes and hopefully it's it's just a sad case, but it's hopefully enlightening as well, and just these are the kinds of ways scammers can get to you. Now, you might think you're not susceptible. I think most of us would like to think that.
But if that's what I thought before reading this article, but then as I was reading through it, I was.
Like, oh, oh that's good.
Oh oh man, And I would like to think that I wouldn't also fall for something like this, but.
I could totally see how she did for sure. Yeah, so all right, let's move on, Matete, let's talk about dynamic pricing. We titled this one Fluctuating fast Food. We also could have called it frosty Foibles. I think because this is a Wendy's maneuver, and the thing is, dynamic pricing has been around for a long time. Basically, Wendy's is now saying we're going to jump into the dynamic pricing Sphere and Amazon, for instance, the price of the item that you want to buy could change dozens of
times in a single day. Airfare similar price machinations, like so you might try to book something in the morning and go back later that day and the flight now cost one hundred and fifty bucks more. That's dynamic pricing at its best or worst. I guess ride sharing, right, those costs vary depending on when you book. Two. There's surge pricing, right that Uber has become so famous for. Well, fast food is apparently getting on this trend, specifically Wendy's.
They say they're going to pilot fast food surge pricing a la Uber next year. So your burger and fries maybe cost three bucks at eleven am or four dollars and fifty cents at noon. It just depends. You don't know what it's going to be when you walk in there. Matt, I actually think it's a bad idea for Wendy's. I think dynamic pricing seems terrible. It works really well for some industries. I don't see it working terribly well in
the fast food game. Like, I could see this being far more confusing for consumers who want to know what their meal is going to cost before they head to the restaurant. I think there are potentially better ways to skin this cat for them as a whole. I think dynamic pricing is actually a good thing for savvy consumers who are willing to pivot, willing to change their habits, willing to shop around. But in the case of fast food, I just don't see Wendy's like making out like a bandit with this.
Yeah, if you can zag while everyone else is zigging, that's when dynamic pricing, just like with just like with airfare, if you can travel when everybody else isn't traveling, all right, well you have the potential to totally snagg it.
Or do they just did like a generic ten percent discount during those off peak hours.
Yeah, it's just a different way of skinning the Cat's way is not how they're going about it. It's counter to I think what people think of with fast food. Like when you get fast food, you want it to be quick and what else.
Pretty cheap. You want it to be affordable, also terribly unhealthy.
And when you don't know what's gonna what it's gonna cost you when you go out to grab a quick lunch I feel like that's gonna it's gonna backfire. Like it makes me think about right after college, before I knew anything about cooking food at home and eating affordably, though, I was still watching my budget a decent bit, and because of that, I knew exactly what it would cost me to go to the local McDonald's and I wouldn't get a little side salid. I would get a cheeseburger
and i'd get a yogurt parfe. Now that sounds like a really healthy McDonald's.
It's not too bad.
But also I know now that that's still a very expensive way of eating lunch versus what we do these days.
Or do you want to tell people what you used to do in college at the food court at the college campus food court?
We okay, So the meal plan at UGA is pretty dang expensive. And I lived off campus even though we were we live very very close to campus technically, like in the dorm, didn't make sense to pay.
For the meal plan.
However, it's like a buffet when you go there, and so I drop twelve bucks, which is pretty expensive for a college student. But I would sit there for multiple meals and just eat all day long.
You just like literally hang out, take all your meetings in there, do all your studying in there, and just have like.
Bright dinner Snelling Thursdays is what we called it, because all this is going to be there and everyone would come by.
Love it. The body.
It is incredible because the way it works, you eat all this food and it stores it in your body. That's just that's the way fat works. You know, the fat and the vitem is of the new also with the nutrients. Anyway, all that being said, going back to McDonald's, I think I would have been far less likely to do that if I didn't know what the price was going to be. So I don't like, like you said, I like your approach to it. Offer a discount on some of those off peak dining outs and hours.
When you serve a consumers. They hate the idea of surch pricing. I think again, it makes sense for a lot of businesses, but just there's a better week. Yeah, totally.
And the fact is CEO Kirk Tanner he was a little upset. He made it clear that he didn't actually say surge pricing, so okay, but he definitely did talk about it as dynamic pricing, which sounds kind of similar.
But Okay.
We occasionally rail about the subscription economy that we're living in, and there are obviously some nice things about it, right, you can cancel whatever you want. You can then, oh, actually, I see new shows coming. I'm gonna go ahead and rejoin Netflix. Squad Game season two. Yeah, it often means that we're able to remove an expensive upfront cost by being strategic. But even still, recurring subscriptions are easy to forget about. They cost the average American two hundred and
nineteen dollars a month. The subscriptions that we forget about, and even though we're getting something in return, because of the nature of the model, we often forget that even what we're subscribed to, which means we underestimate how many dollars we're actually wasting. But there is another subscription attempting to siphon money from us every single month, and that is the local car wash. Bloomberg, they read about the proliferation of car washes recently. There's a new one on
our our route to school. That is, the girls are like, that's gonna be a new car wash. I hate that they're looking all over the place that they're looking forward to it and so instead of paying like four or five, six seven bucks for a wash, they want you to fork over twenty dollars a month.
Or more or yeah, or thirty five forty.
And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna completely hate on the subscription car wash in particular, if you really like having a shiny car, you know, looking off fresh, that's fine. If that's your craft beer equivalent. You spend a lot of money on your car. If you park outside and it's pollen season and you got all the tree bits falling getting caught in your air intake, I get that. That's that's annoying, But we just want to make sure that you are being careful for what it is that you're subscribing to.
Especially Yeah, because it's Bloomberg article is talking about how many car washes are being opened and everywhere. Private equity investors are in on the deal. One of my best friends from childhood, mat his dad has had a car wash for years, and I'm sure he's done quite well with it because and then if you opt to sell it, man, there's a lot of money in that game too. I get it, But who's paying the price for that though,
who's making the private equity equity investors. Rich is the people who have the thirty five dollars a month car watch subscription and who aren't using it. Yeah, especially if you're not using it. But if you go on twice a month, I don't know. Maybe it's better to either pay when you do go or wash your car home. Just saying, but let's talk. Let's keep talking about cars
and subscriptions. There's one subscription that could end up potentially saving you money, and that is if you opted for a car subscription instead of owning an extra set of expensive wheels or not, maybe subscribe and reduce your overall cost of car ownership. Ownership of appreciating assets. We talked about that that's a really good thing. When you own assets that go up in value, this is wonderful. This is increasing your net worth. But when you own assets
that depreciate regularly and substantially, that's another thing. And stats find that we're only in our car driving between three to five percent of the time. Anyway, most of the time the car is sitting idle, whether it's in the parking lot of work, whether it's in the driveway or
the parking lot of your apartment complex. Wherever it is right, and work from home and hybrid work has reduced the need for a lot of folks to constantly have access to their own specific vehicle that they own that they're in charge of. And there's startups like finn out of Germany that are trying to normalize the car subscription model,
which includes the cost of insurance and repairs. I think this is kind of cool, Matt, even though it might not save everybody money, but it's at least something worth looking into.
Yeah, yeah, I think what's great about this is that we're trying to point folks to thinking about things that traditionally might not be something that you'd be in favor of.
But it comes down to like what the numbers. Yeah, but then you know, like crunch the.
Numbers, see if it makes sense for you, Because I think they're talking about how it's technically it's more expensive even than leasing a vehicle, but it also comes with much much shorter subscription windows, so maybe subscribe for a month and so yeah, like, technically it might be more expensive, but if it's over a shorter period of time and that means you're spending less money overall, well then it could be a smart way of going about it, and
especially like they're trying to get folks to try out evs. And I do like the idea of knowing what you're getting into before you make a purchase. But that's also something that you can do via something like Touro or via a zip car. Like literally, Kate and I did that out in Colorado last year. We rented a Tesla. I was able to scratch my ev itch, get a
feel for it and avoided paying tons of money. And I don't think I would have gone out and bought a Tesla, but I was able to try that out in I think a.
More affordable way.
But it's worth considering because we're not principally against something like this. It comes down to how does it work for you and how does it work out for your personal financial situation.
Yeah, when you look at Finn's website, their most expensive monthly model is twelve hundred bucks a month. That's a lot of money for a car. Even though it includes everything including insurance. That's still really expensive. And so I think you're right. I think some of those pay by the hour or pay by the day, car sharing services Toro, zip car, those are worth looking into if they're in your area. Turtos basically everywhere. Zip car is only a
certain locations, but yeah, or ride share. And I think if you're able to ditch a car completely, if you actually run the numbers and see how much your car is costing you on an annual basis, and then so much more. It could a forty dollars uber ride, But ultimately that forty dollars uber ride could end up saving you hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month, even though it's a more expensive way of getting from one place to another. Well, when you look at that overall perspective,
it could be saving you more. Dude, absolutely, But I guess the other part of it too.
I just want to challenge folks to like think through whether or not they truly need it, and to push back on sort of the cultural expectation that we have a vehicle. Like literally, yesterday I was running home, slash running slash walking home from work. Started started to rain a little bit, and dude, no fewer than three people pulled over and were like, hey, do you need to ride?
There are folks we you know folks. I know you should take rides with strangers always and I found it to be incredibly well, it was amazing for a couple of reasons. I guess, a, it's awesome that we live in a community that were we you know, it's fun to see neighbors taking care of other folks and checking in stuff like that.
But I also wish that.
It wasn't such a rarity to see somebody out there running home in the rain and I wasn't like, it's not like I was like fleeing from my life, like smiling, and it's just drizzling a little bit. And I wish that wasn't such a rare site for folks to consider walking home or riding their bike, because there are there's a much larger possibility of folks doing that. Then I think, what's what's normal in our culture today is is all?
I think. I think the amount of the number of box the number of TVs, and the number of cars that we own per household is overdone. And if you can think about ways to reduce both those things in your life, I think it's a good thing. I don't know why I mentioned TV's there, but I guess it's just.
It seems like, yeah, it seems like another one of those things that you just like, oh why not? They certainly have gotten more and more.
Fores the norm. But the and the norm is to have multiple cars like often often two or three in the household r. I don't know what the average number of cars that the average household has, but it's it's more for a lot of households, at least, especially in today's work climate. It's a lot easier than ditch your car than ever before. Absolutely. Yeah, all right, Matt, that's gonna do it for this Friday flight. Hope you have
a great weekend. And by the way, if you haven't gone to how to money dot com recently, tons of new money saving information there, be sure to check it out and we'll see you back here on Monday. Matt. Until next time, best friends Out, Best Friends Out.