Friday Flight - Erupting Equity, Apprenticeships that Pay, & Scammy Savings #636

was brought to our attention by listener Mike. So he was listening to our credit cards episode. This is just a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about the need for credit cards to somehow keep their customers more informed as to what their what they're running totals are, what their current balances are. Although what we said, that's necessarily the goal of the credit card companies, but wouldn't it be nice that's not what they want to do.

But guess what Apple? So Apple has a credit card and they've got this sweet widget that allows you to monitor your balance on your home screen on your stink and iPhone. This is something that we were not even aware of, but might pointed it out and because obviously that's one of the downsides of credit cards, right, is the fact that if you aren't checking your balance every day, and most people aren't, you have the chance of overspending. Essentially, like you're going to get to the end of the

billing cycle. It's not going to be until you get your statement that you realize, oh crap, we actually went over budget because we weren't keeping up with how we're spending. So I think this has the potential to curb the amounts of overspending that folks might be tempted into doing. Yeah, I think it's really cool, and I'm glad that Apple launch something like that for their card, because we want people to kind of feel the pain of their spending,

and some people just naturally do. They're naturally frugal, and so every I'm kind of one of those people. Anytime I spend money or my wife's like, hey, we're gonna get this thing, and I'm like, do we really mute it? Though, I'm like kind of panicking just a little bit, And so it comes to you're spending it, then you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,

afford it. I need it, though I'm shocking about and so but it's one of those things where it's having it up front and center in front of you and coming face to face with how just how much money you owe to the credit card company will likely reduce how much you spend. So I think it's like one of those behavioral things. It's going to absolutely help a lot of people out well, and especially given how often we check our phones, right, and so this is literally

a widget. It's an app that you install on your phone and it's on your home screen and it shows you how much you've spent. You can like do like a week view or a month view, but it shows you how much you spent even on individual days. Nice, just in this nice little, cool little graphics. So I think it's an awesome tool. And one of the cool things actually about the Apple card they they give you two percent cash back when you use it with Apple Pay.

So an Apple Pay is accepted almost everywhere now, so double click that home button, Yeah, you still get the two percent, which is a great sort of catch all card. So I don't know if you saw this too, but I think Capital One they are actually about too, or maybe they already have released their own version of the widget as well. Oh, really, so if more cards are going to be jumping on this bandwagon, this is something

that we can totally get behind. And I'm glad to see somebody like Apple, I guess, in this case setting the example as to maybe how some of these banks should be treating their customers, the non bank treating the

banks at apps. Well, it's honestly, I think it takes a company like Apple sometimes to enter into its I mean just think about Tesla, right, Like, you get a company who is an a quote unquote outsider, and they enter into a new industry, like a new space, and all of a sudden, everybody else, all the old players, they have to adapt. Yeah, I think we're going to see that disruption. I think mentality. Yeah, that does. Yeah, it's upsets the Apple cart. It changes the way other

people do business too, an Apple cart. Yeah, and nice, So big thanks to listener Mike for letting us know that that's cool and definitely good heads up for other Apple card users out there. But Matt, let's get onto the Friday flight. It's a quick sampling of stories we found interesting this week in the realm of personal financeers a lot to cover today and over the past decade, Apparently the number of registered apprenticeships has risen by sixty

four percent. I saw that stat and I was like, just did a little like this pump in the air. I was like, Wooo, this is great. And that's according to the latest data from the US Department of Labor, And basically, apprenticeships are becoming a more utilized alternative to just a traditional college education. And this is really just a great thing, and it's something that you and I have championed for for years. We've had remember our episode with Ken Rusk about blue collar work, and there's a

dearth of people willing to consider this option. We've pushed everybody so hard into the colleges for everyone path, but that's just not true and it's coming back to bite some people. But a lot of young people are responding differently, and they're saying no, I think an apprenticeship is a decent alternative, whether you're working in a trade or learning from a professional in the space that you want to

be in. That can be a great way to go about building a career, right, and you can skip loads of college debt and the time it takes to go to college too, and start earning a solid income earlier. And so it goes back to the question we've tackled on the show a few times, is college still a worthwhile pursuit? And the answer is always maybe, because it

comes down to a value proposition, right. I mean, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they say that the average college graduate is going to earn a million dollars more over their lifetime than their high school grad equivalent, and folks with a college degree are twenty percent more likely to own a home, and a massive amount of the new jobs that are being created are going to college educated folks.

But we're also seeing the tide start to turn a little bit, and especially with how much a college education costs these days, it's not a slam dunk decision. And the unemployment rate is lower for folks who have a college education a college degree as well, and so basically, if we enter into a recession, the folks, the individuals with a college education are going to be impacted less severely. And so basically, at the end of the day, we're

talking about college degree holders earning more money. They've got more job security and more opportunity as well, and all of these things sound like a lot of positives in our book. But again, we've also seen the costs of higher education rocket. I think I saw an infographic recently. Tuition costs are one hundred and seventy percent higher than they were twenty years ago. Like the only thing that has increased in cost more than education, let me guess, oh,

you know, healthcare? Healthcare, which was like over two percent. It's crazy. I mean, those are the top two things that have gone up a lot of other things. Actually in our lives, we assume everything's gotten more expensive, but it's not true, like TVs gotten much more affordable, are more affordable. Yeah, But I mean some folks in specific fields of study, when it comes to the degrees that they're pursuing, like they find it almost impossible to overcome

the cost of their very very expensive education. I'm thinking specifically in the fields of like psychology, or if you got a religion degree, or if like an art history degree. These are all things that are really difficult if in particular, if you want to like a private out of state college. So, I don't know, we wanted to share this because while opting to go to college that was rarely a bad decision.

Thirty years ago, there is a lot more number crunching that needs to happen before you that decision these days, and the story that we're referencing, they talked about how a lot of different companies they're they're highlighting the fact that there is a labor shortage. There just are not enough workers, and so many of them are essentially providing

that on the job training. And what's so great about that is, I mean you literally are earning a solid income right out of school, like right out of high school. And what this made me think of was just being flexible with what jobs you might want to pursue it or like what career path you want to take it.

It makes me think of travel and the most affordable way to score like the cheapest airfare is well, look for the deals, look for the opportunity, go to look for those deals, find that opportunity, let the deal drive the destination, and then you convince yourself, you know, you know, convince yourself, but you're like, all right, what could we do when we were we to go to this country?

And in a similar way, I think this is a bigger decision obviously obviously than just a vacation, but see what kind of training they're going to be able to provide you and you're essentially receiving a free education. Maybe that works out for a while, maybe it doesn't, But during that period of time you can then look to potentially other employers who might then be offering to cover the cost of a higher education that the cost of

a bachelor's degree. In that case, I think it just pays to be flexible and to consider everything should be open for consideration when it comes to a job. Well, and the folks who end up in the worst position possible are the folks who went to college for a year or two or three but didn't end up getting that three And so there's a lot of people in

that boat too, hold the downside without any upside. Yeah, And I think those are people who, in many, many times we're pushed into a college degree is the way you need to go. They've been indoctrinated when the reality is getting an apprenticeship or taking that entrepreneurial approach from an early age might have been better than racking up college debt without anything to show for it. Which on that nomat let's talk about student loan debt for a second.

How bad is it? It's really bad. I think we've found that for a long time where we're still something like one point seven trillion dollars an outstanding student loan debt, but more than more than half of the folks in a recent survey said that their loan payments being paused are basically a necessity for them to be able to

remain financially stable. That's a survey that canut from Credit Harma this week, and basically what they're saying is when payments resume, I'm screwed, which to me is just it's hard to fathom that we've had payments paused for this long, just basically a line item removed from people's budgets, and folks are saying, like, I still now that that's been gone for this long, I don't know how I'm going to approach it when that eventually does come back into

my life. People are just getting they've gotten used to not having the payment. Yeah, And the longer we continue to go down this path, which could continue for many months to come, the harder it's going to be for these folks to face down that payment again. And so I get why people are saying this. I think what a lot of people are saying is like really, like I just don't want my student loan to resume, which

I get. Like if I had that opportunity to not pay my mortgage or wave away a certain debt in my life, like I would, I would probably take it if I had some sort of magical ability. But I do want our listeners at least to prepare for the reality the student loans are going to resume at some point. Totally. It kind of makes me think of like the snooze button on an alarm. Yeah, you're thinking, oh, I could

not ever wake up without us snooze button. Well guess what what if snooze buttons didn't exist, Well, you just get up, Yeah, Like like your learn would go off and that would be your single that it's time to wake up. But because the snooze button exists, you know, we can't imagine life without it. It's it's like Parkinson's law, like you will take up all the time necessary or all the time that you are given in order to complete a job. Right, It's like that, except for with money.

And so we've just absorbed that those dollars that folks aren't putting towards our student loans, and there and it is going towards their monthly expenses, right, Like, maybe they only had twelve hundred dollars worth of expendable income before and now they've got fifteen hundred, and they're thinking, well, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna find a way to spend that that extra three hundred bucks a month. Yeah, it's incredibly easy for us to justify our spending when we don't

have other goals. And so that's why it's so important for us to have a plan, because I mean, we don't obviously, we don't want most folks with student loan debt right now paying that you know, paying down their debt while this pauses in place Like this is that's the policy currently, and we want you to be able to utilize the rules and the policy and the laws in order for you to get ahead the most with

your money. But we do want you to use the dollars that you would be spending to make other personal finance progress, right Like, don't just absorb and incorporate those dollars into your spending. We want you to pay off those other debts. We want you to build up your savings or even invest more of that money for your future. You've still got some time to get prepared for those payments to resume. We don't want you to waste this time versus being able to completely hit the ground running

once those payments fire back up. Yeah, and again we don't know when they're going to fire back up. Will that remains to be seen. We'll let you know, kind of like as that news comes out, as so much has to do with the Supreme Court decision right now on that partial loan forgiveness. But yeah, there are steps you can take to be to start getting prepared right now. The fact that half of people are like I'd be up to creek without a paddle, that's just that's scary news.

I hate seeing that. But let's talk about e bikes, Matt for a second. That's one of my favorite topics. And ebikes are awesome. We haven't talked about in a while, but I saw we haven't talked about Yeah ebikes or traditional biking. Yeah, and eat trad bikes. I like both. I like both. I'm an equal opportunity bike employer over here. I'm a trad guy personally, Yes you are, well, I rode my trad bike today. But Ribban, who makes a

bunch of awesome electric trucks and SUVs. Well a couple they apparently want to electrify everything, and they announced that they're working on an ebike, which I thought was really cool, super cool, although if they're priced anything like their trucks are, I probably won't be able to afford it. They're probably gonna be really expensive, but they're also going to look

really cool. I'm sure. I'm yeah, I'm guessing there. Well, I saw that there's a chance that it's not an actual bicycle but a motorcycle man, which I could totally I could see myself getting on in e motorcy. Yeah, I think so if my wife would let me, I would wouldn't be awesome If they decided to start making those electric motorcycles in the plant or in the factory that's going to be opening up here in Atlanta, that

would be awesome. Well, so I just I guess I just want to push people don't necessarily hold out for the Ribby and e bike. You might be a little too expensive, but a lot of other e bikes are are pretty inexpensive, and they're going to save you a lot of money. If it means you're going to be in your car less and one of our list verse he sent us in an email about ebikes in Denver, and there's like government subsidies that have been put in place to spur adoption and Bloomberg actually they had an

article about how successful that incentive program has been. The subsidies are are pretty big. It's like four hundred bucks off a new regular ebike and nine hundred bucks off a cargo ebike, which just makes them ridiculously affordable. If that's the case. And so yeah, if you're buying like a fairly basic one, not one of the fancy soon to be ribbian ones, you can probably snag it for

like a few hundred bucks, which isn't bad. And if he gets you out there on the bike, if he get you out there on the trails means more exercise. It also means using your car less. I think this is like a win win win. Yeah, And obviously this is going to cost the city of Denver a decent chunk of money over time. However, it could have a

significant positive downstream effects. Like it's not just that more folks are going to be getting the ebikes you know who otherwise might not have, which is great, but the city just overall is experiencing a ripple effect of more bikes on the road. There's more advocacy happening in order to create more bike lanes, which benefit all bikers out there.

And some of my guess is that this program's not only going to change how folks get around in the Mile High High City, but it's gonna change the city itself for the better. Right, Like, not only is it gonna it's going to improve the quality of life for those who live there, They're going to be healthier, those folks are going to be spending less money on the cost of transportation. But not to mention like this is a this is a greener alternative than driving around and

very heavy expensive vehicles. Yeah, and some like For instance, in California, some cities already have incentives as well, but I think the whole state of California is adopting incentives to spurt ebike adoption as well. They make cities better and they make people healthier. So the more we all get on our bikes, I think it's a good thing. All right, let's quickly touch on something else before the break here, Matt, babysitting rates just came out and they've

apparently risen ten percent over the past year. Baby sitting in a chief. I was like, literally over at a friend's house the other day and there they have a daughter. She is in I want to say, seven, finth grade, and her mom was like, oh, yeah, she'll baby sit for twelve bucks an hour, and she was correct her mom. She's like, now it's fifteen now, and I was like, oh, my goodness, Like inflation is going up in a major

way even for these young middle schools. Babe, you feel pretty good about the ten dollars per hour babysitter high schooler. There you go, who we have? You're getting a deal weak, Yeah, we are, because we also tit pretty well because the national average apparently is twenty five dollars per hour. If you hire a babysitter for two kids, you've got four, so it's gonna be even more than that, and that just that just makes a night out on the town

prohibitively expensive. And so I just wanted to share, Hey, yeah, this this sucks, but we have a remedy that more and more people should consider because you and I we don't have to use babysitters all that often, but we still get out there on the town. We still get date nights with our partner, and it's because we do date nights swaps and so you come over and watch my kids once a week. I come over and watch

your kids once a week. We've put them to bed already, so it's like the seven thirty to ten o'clock sort of timeframe. But I think it's perfect. More and more people should consider this good because it's tough to get out for three out your time, seventy five bucks plus the price of dinner or the show or whatever we want to go do it just it becomes I think more people avoid date nights because of how expensive they are, and specifically how expensive babysitting in So I just want

to encourage people. You see these numbers, but there's a way to make sure you're not paying that much. Absolutely, and then when you aren't going out on these date nights, then your relationship suffers. Yeah. So yeah, the ability for us to get out twice a month, for y'all to be able to get out twice a month, well worth you know, hopping over to y'all's place and sitting there and reading or watching some TV, listening to a podcast, which is often oftentimes what I'm doing as well. But Joel,

we've got several other stories that we're gonna get to. Specifically, we're going to spend a minute talking about flexible spending accounts and how so many Americans aren't flushing money down the tour that we're going to talk about how you can take advantage of that money that you have already set aside. We'll get to that, plus a few other stories right after this. All right, we're back. The Friday flight continues. Matt, you mentioned people flushing money down the toilet.

Have you ever heard the song cat flushing a toilet? But we've talked, we talked about it. My kids love that song. It's terrible. But it was when we were talking about the guy, the folks who make those songs and the royalties that oh yeah, remember, I think I guess crushing it just based on how many times my kids will play that song. But we'll get to that story about flushing money down the toilet in a second, But first let's get to the ludicrous headline of the week.

And this one comes from the Wall Street Journal, and the headline title was the cameras worked fine. Their maker said they had reached the end of their life. And it makes me think of actually the ludicrous headline from a couple of weeks ago Matt about hp Hewlett Packard remotely shutting down printers on their customers. And we're just living in this day and age where it feels like we don't fully own the things that we buy, which is tough to stomach and it sucks. Yeah, And in

this case it was camera company are Low. They implemented an end of life policy for some of its cameras. End of life that just feels like like what you do with your loved one who's aging and I don't know about to die. But they're doing this with cameras that work perfectly good and so and users were perfectly happy with the cameras and the way they were working.

And some people had invested lots of money, like thousands and thousands of dollars and buying these cameras and setting them up around their house or their place of work. And the whole point, by the way, for many customers was the no fee cloud storage that came with these cameras and if they bought a new one. This is with Arlow specific. Yeah, they're gonna have to pay like a subscription fee, where Arlow had said, oh no, if you buy these ones, the seven day thing kind of

comes with it. At Fortunately, Arlow's back down thanks to customer backlash, and they're going to be supporting these cameras for longer. And they've said that they're going to support all models for at least four years after discontinuation, moving forward after they stopped selling an item. But man, we continue to see stories about planned obsolescens and tech companies basically breaking your devices remotely. I hate it. It's a

terrible trend. So like best case scenario, it feels like a bait and switch, right because you were sold a bill of goods and then it's like, oh no, actually this is this is what it includes. Worst case scenario is it kind of feels like gas lighting. Take like, oh no, you think you own this item. Oh but in facts, you can't do what you want with that

item that you think you can. It's like consumer gas lighting, like they're rewriting history a little bit and trying to make sort of making us feel like that we're going crazy.

And I think it's healthy. We got to style, Yeah, but I do think It's good to think about it that way because I think that is when folks are going to get a little more up in arms, Like I think we need to take like literally more ownership of the devices that we're purchasing and realizing that we can have an impact on the different companies and manufacturers

that we're purchasing from. It shows that making your voice heard, you know, complaining to that company, or you know, using persuasion tactics on social media, those can all have an impact, Like send an email to the Wall Street Journal, let them know if there's a company out there that is

behaving poorly. But you know, we really are living in a like a brave new world of connected devices, and so it is important to look at how the manufacturers are going to handle the support for their older devices. So for instance, Apple, they typically offer a little bit

longer support than Google does for their phones. So keep that in mind if you're trying to, you know, weigh the pros and cons between buying perhaps some more affordable droid device versus maybe a little bit more expensive iPhone. You and I were just talking about that before the show, before we started recording, Like, hey, my phone was a lot cheaper than yours. But then again, your phone's going to be supported longer, and so I might be hanging on in a long round. It might be a wash. Yeah.

So I've got my iPhone thirteen Pro or whatever. I think it's about a year and a half. Like it still feels brain new to me, and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to continue using that device for for

years down the road. And I think that's another thing to keep in mind too, is that I think consumers would have been more okay with this in the past, as devices needed improving faster, right, Like think about the first webcams or Wi Fi connected cameras that we used to use with with our oldest kids when they're babies. Like the video on those things were was terrible. Same thing with phones. The early cameras were awful, the screen

resolution terrible, battery life horrendous. But now improvements are incremental at best, it's incremental, and so there isn't a knee to upgrade these devices. And because of that, I think hopefully we can unite our voices and let our complaints be known and to simply let companies know that we want to be able to use our devices for longer than maybe they were originally planning on supporting before the

bottom line planing opts lesns. It's becoming harder to avoid, but it's important to fight back wherever and however it is that you can. Yeah, and it sounds like it worked in this case, and I hope it continues to work. You just kind of kind of saying no, no, we're not taking this. This thing works perfectly. Fine, don't rip away from me something that I bought four I bought

fair and square that is still working properly. Yeah, all right, let's talk about agree finding a new savings account, Matt. And this is something we talk about regularly, but this is more of a warning actually about how to avoid crappy banks. And I'm not even just talking about the big banks that we kind of rake over the coals all the time. We got we got new crappy banks to exactly. And so, of course, like rates on savings have been going up, which is a great thing. We've

been documenting that regularly. And we've always said switching to a better bank so that you're saying, isn't earning next to nothing is a good route to take that you should probably go with one of the online banks as paying somewhere in the neighborhood of four percent versus the big bank that's paying point zero two percent or something like that. Just a massive chasm between the rates that are being offered. But here's the thing. You've got to

be careful when you're switching. Which bank are you switching? Two and there's a bank called Compound Bank bank spelled with a C, which sounds like Swiss or something. That's right. Yeah, I'm like, oh, man, I put my monocle on and sign up for that bank account. Well, they say on their website they're offering a seven percent rate of return on savings. They actually send us an email this week, Matt, to tell us about this offering, and we were like, okay,

that seems outside of what the market is offering. This seems like there's something might be wrong with that, and so we looked into it a little more and sadly, this bank is offering a return to this high because you're actually investing in real estate bonds. It's not sitting there in a traditional style savings account. And according to the SEC filing, this kind of account comes with a quote unquote high degree of risk. So Yeah, when you're

switching to online banks. There are a lot of online banks, not all of them are created equal, and some of them are doing risky things with your money, putting that capital at risk, and you've got to be careful. And so Compound Bank, we would say, is not one of

the banks you should be going with. Yeah, and it's it's okay to go with a bond fund if you're looking to potentially invest your money, but not, I mean that the problem here, like the slide of hand, is taking places that they're they're comparing their the rate and what they're offering, like they're saying this one hundred and twenty five times better than the national average, national average of what, Well, it's not high yield savings accounts, it's

checking accounts, and so like that's not even fair, like you're comparing apples to oranges. And so that's certainly something to keep an eye out for. And in addition, Compound Bank, they're not even insured by the FDIC because again it's not a it's not a savings actual savings product, and so we definitely want you to score a higher rate on your savings, but only if you're doing business with a bank. That is FDIC insured, that isn't running an

extremely risky real estate lending scheme. It makes me think back to the stable coins. Those were so incredibly hot. Well that's because they were offering something like eight to nine percent just by saving your money, and everybody was like, oh, I want in on this, Like why wouldn't you do that? Well, I felt like we were raining on people's prede because they're like, I want to go get that an eighth nine percent, and we were like, that's a dumb idea.

You should avoid it. Yeah, and hopefully everyone learned their lesson because a lot of those companies went belly up.

So if the interest rate on some of the different offers that you're seeing out there is that much higher than some of the solid online savings accounts and you've never heard of them before, make sure that you perform your due diligence first, because the truth is that the best banks right now are they're somewhere in like the four percent range c I. They are consistently near the top, and they're currently sitting at four point zero five percent.

So if you see something lies like three point four, but everybody's in that three and a half to four percent rates the best ones are exactly. So someone's like, I'll put you eight. You're like, okay, what do you What in the world are you doing to try to juice that return, because know that there's a catch. Yeah it's yeah, it's not legit, it's not insured by the FDIC. Like, could you make money in this account for a time, maybe,

but are you putting that savings at risk? Yes? And there's a reason we talked about not investing your savings. This is the money you want to have on hand, right, I want you, we want you investing in your tax advantage account, but we don't want you investing with money that's supposed to be savings. All right, let's talk about while we're talking about rates, Matt, let's talk about home

equity lines of credit. And a lot more homeowners are tapping the equity that they've built up in their homes. And so if you've owned a home for a few years now, you likely have a decent chunk of equity dollars that you could drap on and not to do something with. And I think some people see that and they're like, Okay, it's time to do something because I've built up one hundred thousand dollars worth of equity. I can't just let us sit there, right, can I? Well,

yes you can, and you probably should. Because a home equity withdrawals are up close to forty seven percent over the past year, a lot more people are tapping these their lines of equity in order to grab some of that cash. But interest rates are up a good bit too,

which makes that withdrawal a lot more costly. So we would say, you know, taking out a moderate amount of home equity it can make in certain cases, like reasonably renovating making some changes to the house, but way the pros and cons before you do, and knowing what your timeline is going to be to pay that debt off is a crucial place to start. Because if we're talking about eight or nine or ten years to pay off

that whole echoity line of credit, that's too long. If we're talking about just a few years to pay that back, that's a different scenario. And so we're actually going to talk about the value of debt in building wealth on Monday. We're not completely against all forns been debt. Well, we're going to do that with a guy who has written multiple books on the subject. So I'm looking forward to that combo. That's right, Yeah, you can look forward to

that episode here after the weekend, Joel. I saw a stat this weekend that caused a pit to form on my stomach. It turns out that workers are losing billions of their own dollars that they could have used for healthcare expenses because they forgot to use their FSA money. They're flexible spending account money, money set aside for health expenses. And that's especially demoralizing when we were just talking about how the rising cost of healthcare, how that's nothing has

increased more than that. The Employee Benefit Research Institute they release some data this week and it turns out that forty eight percent of folks who stuck some of their pre tax dollars from their employer into an FSA lost at least some of those dollars. So that's almost half of the folks who have an account, and the average amount lost was over four hundred dollars is four hundred

and eight bucks. That is, that's not chump change, and that means that each year Americans combine are losing somewhere between three and four billion dollars total. So is the takeaway that you should completely avoid an FSA if it's offered by your employer, will know. I think FSAs can make a lot of sense, but it does mean that you've got to be careful and you need to make

sure that you are. That is just not something you're forgetting about, because I think sometimes it can be a benefit that's offered and you're like, oh sweet, I got that there when the time comes, and when the time comes, you forget about it. That's exactly right. I mean, I like to avoid taxation on money that I'm getting paid whenever and wherever I can, and FSAs allow you to do that on money that you're going to spend for dependent here or for healthcare. But here's the thing. You

got to use it or lose it. It's to use it the year of or it's gone. Typically there's a grace period and some of those dollars, at least a percentage of them, can roll over until March of next year, which is coming up. That deadline is coming up soon. So you might have FSA dollars from twenty twenty two that you can still use, but not for much longer. And so if you do, it's this is like kind of a warning, make sure to go in there, make

sure you're using that money. And if you don't have some sort of like dermatologists visit or expensive surgery coming up, that's okay. There are other ways that you can at least make sure that you're using this money that it can be spent on FSA eligible items. Will link to a couple of places in the show notes where you can kind of see what items are eligible to be spent on FSA money. And the Amazon even has like

a dedicated FSA store. So if you're like, oh, I've got four hundred bucks, like the average person that's just literally about to vaporize, then we would say, you know, go to that Amazon FSA store, spend that money on things that are eligible, just so that you're getting something,

some sort of return for your money. And then next time your next open enrollment, you might want to consider allocating less money to it, just to make sure that you're using all the money you stick aside, like it stinks to be taxed on money that you did spend on healthcare when you could have avoided it. But what's worse, I would say, is completely losing that money. Can again

flushing the money down the toilet. Yeah. Yeah, And this is an argument for budgeting, or at least tracking your expenses, because I think a lot of folks are going to hear you say that and they're thinking, well, I don't know, Like, how the heck am I supposed to know how much I spent on healthcare last year? Well? Guess what if you tracked your expenses, Like if you were to asking you right now, Matt, how much did you spend on

healthcare last year? I've got no clue, but I could take thirty seconds and look at my spreadsheet from last year and be like blah blah, blah blah and just

punch that in. And so I don't. I'm just making an argument for at the very least tracking your expenses and planning ahead too, because you can say, hey, listen, this how much I spent last year, But I know that I'm going to need new classes, I know I'm going to need this, this and that, and so you can say I'm likely to spend more actually this coming year, and so you can allocate another, you know, four or five hundred dollars based on the healthcare procedures you plan

on take. And obviously you can't plan for everything, but don't stick too much money in your FSA to where some of us just gonna go completely could put. That's right, man. But before we wrap up this episode, we've got our newsletter a referral shout out to take care of here. And this past week, Daniel b he referred our newsletter out to at least three of his friends. I think I saw that a couple more of his friends, which

means Daniel be the man. But just a reminder, if you have not yet signed up for the newsletter, head to Howtomoney dot com forward slash newsletter. Every Tuesday morning, we send out an incredible newsletter centered around your personal finances. We cover a lot of the great stories that you need to make sure that you're not missing. And built into that newsletter is a trackable referral program. And when you refer some friends, you are able to earn some

different rewards. So like that's either a shout out like we are doing right now, a beer on us the coveted how to money socks, and I'll say as well, I noticed that there are a lot of folks that have one or two referrals, So I just want to encourage all you folks out there who are so close to hitting that that first tier, that first reward. And by the way, Joel, happy birthday. This is it is your birthday today. And I'll say that I'm pretty sure all Joel wants for his birthday is more folks to

sign up for the newsplay. Yeah, makee my birthday a good one and do what you're supposed to do by signing up for that newsletter. But yeah, no, it's gonna be good. I'm like, honestly, my mother in law she asked me, like, what do you want for your birthday? And I was like, literally, just to be with people I care about, like to hang out with friends and stuff,

which I'm gonna get to do tonight. You drink some beers with some paths I haven't seen in a minute, and play some disc off this weekend with you and some other dude. So yeah, it's like, that's that to me is what makes me happy. Who I don't need more stuff? So there you go. All right, Well that's gonna do it for this edition of The Friday Flight

and for this episode, Matt. We'll be back here on Monday with that fun conversation about using debt to your advantage when it comes to building wealth, but until next time, best friends out, best friends out,