Welcome to Had of Money.
I'm Joel Matt.
Today we're talking housing, boom busts, AI induced outrage, and infinite work days.
Infinite work days sound much less appeeling than the infinite pool that you want to be at sipping a drink while you're on vacation.
I'm gonna need you to come in on Sunday for those TPS reports, Matt.
Do people even understand office space references anymore?
I would hope. So it's still one of the greatest comedies of all time. If you're a boomer, like you know, they don't make great comedies any it is more all right, Derek Thompson, No, they don't.
Oh I know, yeah, Yeah, that's something he harps on.
Just how it's just true.
It is true, and I think the reasons given often are it's definitely they is. It's less something that you can translate to other cultures and countries, right, like as opposed to like a big action. Everyone understands fear, everyone understands suspense. Comedy can be more of a regional certainly a more country based thing. Yeah.
I don't know, Joe Dirt. I think hits in every region, Matt. But yeah, maybe not in China, which is where Hollywood needs to make movies that do well there.
Now the okay, so the Office Space, I feel like it was just more of a Gen X movie as opposed to it. Yes, our generation wasn't really watching King of the Hill, which is like coming back, all right, Joel over here making a case for Office Space. If you've never seen it, go out, wash it and let's see if it still holds up.
And you can email me if you wasted an hour and a half of your time. But I'm gonna say a dreamail out there had a money pottedt gmail dot com. I don't want to read the email both of us. I will reply just if you hate it, then you're wrong, but you can tell me why.
All right, now, this is our Friday flight and we are going to cover the top personal finance stories we came across this past week, the ones that we think are gonna impact you the most, the ones that we think that you need to be paying attention to.
Yeah, real quick. The so we bought a used Peloton bike for Emily. She's like, we have this little sun room that's right off are That was your.
Project for this summer. It was to reclaim the sun room.
The kids had taken it over and we had to declutter, and we wanted it to be more of a room that that she and I get to used. I've got my little sona tent in there, she's got I've got my rolling machines, she's got a little Peloton.
I feel like the first thing that's gonna break on your portable sauna tent is the zipper.
Yeah, so far as held up surprisingly.
Well, I can totally see you go into unzip it today and it's just gonna pull off.
And you say, that's also why I got it at Costco because I was looking at ones on Amazon, but I was like, I got Costco because the return policy is much better.
But would you feel how long? How many uses to would you put it through before you would feel bad about taking it back? Because we've talked about this is why we can't have nice things at Costco anymore, because people abuse it. I'll probably getting to that point where, yeah, if it broke today, since my nine month birthday, so.
Yeah, not really that long six months, So if it broke today, I'd be morally questionable. Yeah, okay, all right, Peloton, So Peloton bought a used Peloton on Facebook marketplace from somebody. Even though Peloton and we talked about this, has their own site for reselling used Pelotons now, but they're way more expensive than buying it from the slew of people
who are selling their Pelotons on Facebook. The price has gone down dramatically because everyone's trying to get rid of their glorified code hanger that that is their Peloton.
They're like, I've been tired of looking at this thing for the price four years, so that I got back in twenty one.
Yes, when Emily's other age, she's been using it, she's been enjoying it. But the one thing I was surprised by and a little bit frustrated about when we bought the used Peloton. You know what Peloton is trying to do to siphon money from users. If you buy a used bike, they want to charge you a one hundred dollars activation fee for switching that bike over to another account.
It is an activation fee.
Yeah, it was already activated by somebody else being used, and you're trying to switch it over to be suited your name.
So it would be like Apple, It's like you selling your phone and being like yep, i've wiped it here.
You know.
This one's a totally factory reset, and the Apple being like no, no, no, we get a cut of that because somebody else is going to know use it.
It would be exactly like that. That's so stupid, like, hey, I'm going to sell my book and then the author gets actually gets paid, we get more royalty.
Yeah no, that's not how it works. How they use market works man.
Utterally ridiculous, totally, this is the kind of thing that only a brand like Peloton could get away with where they've they're just banking on rich customers who don't care about money, and they're like, I guess this is just part of doing business.
But that's not what you did, right, Okay, give me the ravocate or yeah, some eravocate success story.
You've got to call in and advocate for yourself. This is, by the way, if you want like a nerdy economist term, it's called rent seeking. And this is totally that. This would be a great definition of rent seeking by Peloton saying like, listen, we've already, like gott we've landed our hooks into this territory, and it's a way we can just make extra money just fleecing people who don't deserve to be fleeced, and it's pretty unethical also, But so
I called Peloton. I'm like, listen, we don't want to pay this fee, Like what in the world do we do to avoid this thing? And it took talking to a couple of different representatives. You just kind of have to keep pushing the envelope to get them to finally agree.
To talking to customer service people. It's not my favorite.
I wish it was.
You're willing to do it, but I'm willing to do it, especially for a hundred bucks. So it was just a one time so you gotta waved kind of waved nice. Yeah, very nice dude. All right, Well for all the folks. This is for obviously for everyone other there who's thinking about getting the secondhand Peloton, or you can just jump on the bike that you already have mm hmm right
out there. The tradition, I like prefer to ride on the street, the traditional bike in the wild scenario or the winds blowing through your hair.
Emily and I differ in this regard. I bike, I ride on my real bike.
She rides. You get the passion neighbors have a conversation with them. Cuts down on emissions because you're not driving your vehicle, Combine it with needing to run an errand yep, not to mention the cost savings of the aforementioned benefits.
I'll let you talk.
To my wife about it. Hey, I'll do it. Also. Maybe one of the things you're talking about with your neighbors as you're riding past their house is, Oh, what do you think about the so and so's over there? They got their house listed for saless been sitting on the market forever. There's one in our neighborhood. That's literally a conversation I had with one of our neighbors, like what's going on with it? It's like, Oh, hasn't been renovated recently? You think the uh it's overpriced? Well, I
think it is. And I think that's one of the questions a lot of folks are wondering, is like, has there been a housing like bubble essentially and is it about to pop? And I would say that it's it seems more like a slow leak as like versus just like a sudden popping.
Right less two thousand and nine more its own thing.
Exactly yeah, yeah, numbers from almost every corner of the market out there are showing asking price decreases. There is showing more sellar concessions, inventory decreases as.
Well, inventory increases more I'm sorry on the market.
Yea, more homes are on the market, which, to be honest, though, it's also just returning back to like pre pandemic norms. Essentially, we saw a significant decline and that was in large part why there was such an increase in housing prices. But we're also seeing more cancellations after houses are going under contract. Folks are basically getting cold feet during due diligence, and this is such a far cry, dude, from a few years ago. Homeowners obviously don't love seeing this, and
sellers of course are not pleased. You know, like back when there was an open house and buyers were lined up around the block just to be able to get in and see the place. It's not like that.
Remember those calls for highest and best like two years ago, three years ago, and the insanity of how much people are willing to pay and bid up the price. It was really unseen. I don't remember a time at least in my life where that was the case.
Yeah, So I want to put a note out there for a lot of folks who have been thinking about purchasing the home because I think, dude, this is my personal opinion. I think now is the time to strike personally, So byek I do because I don't think. I don't think we're going to continue to see declient. So I this morning, I pretended to be a chart analyst and I.
Pulled up the I was gonna say, how did you come to this school?
What am I basing this on? And I pulled up some data from the FED. I was looking at the chart, and if you look at just the trend, So if you look at the median home price in the US from starting from around nine twenty ten, and if you follow that up to pre pans so like around twenty nineteen, there's a pretty consistent line. Uh. And then of course what you saw slight decrease, but then you see it
shoot up. Specifically, a lot of folks are thinking about the last fifteen years as when we saw these massive price increases. I think all that was just kind of catching back up to where things needed to be after the housing crisis, price back seven eight nine exactly.
Like in twenty eleven, you could get a house for not much money.
Yeah, and so I think all that was relatively healthy growth. But what we saw basically in the two years twenty to twenty two, we saw a massive increase. It goes COVID. It all comes back to COVID. And if you draw that line, basically from nine to nineteen we are about where prices should be. We saw it spike where we got way ahead of the curve. And for the past couple of years, two three years, we've seen prices basically plateau. They're starting to decline just a little bit.
And it depends on local markets.
It depends on local markets, but financing as well. And so I think personally, my personal opinion is I would not be surprised if we see mortgage rates come down. Right, if the FED lower's rates, which there is talk about that potentially happening next month in September, I think that could be the first that could be the starting line of the market opening back up.
If mortgage rates go down, I think that will increase buyer interest. I think you're probably right, and then maybe the instead of declining prices, we do start to see prices go up again. But just at a far less accelerated pace.
It will not be at the pace that we've seen because.
That was just unsustainable. Yeah, totally, and I think but I think this does maybe as far as advice for potential home buyers, have a plan to own longer, because it's really hard to know where the housing market goes from here. I appreciate your your insights, Matt, and you
really might be right my hot take. Yeah, I mean you might be right, but like my I know somebody right now in my family who's selling a home after owning it for two years, and that's just there's a chance because of just what's happened with housing prices that she's going to do okay, even after you know real
estate realtor expenses. But there's also it's a hard position to put yourself in, and if you're planning, the longer you plan to own, the more likely it is to be a decent decision to buy, even if you are slightly overpaying.
Totally agree.
Speaking of agents, got an email the other day criticizing us.
We're talking about three percent fees for real estate agents. Well, you know, if they don't charge that much anymore, is what the emailer said, well, legally, they don't have the same leeway to just flat out charge three percent based on that ruling against the National Association of Realtors practice agent compensation hasn't really changed much since that ruling, but for savvy consumers who know how to negotiate, some people are able to claw back some of the agent's fees
they would have paid. This is particularly happening at the higher end of the spectrum, where someone's saying, well, you're gonna sell my three million dollar home, Well, awesome, but guess what I'm gonna pay you one and a half percent instead of the three percent their agent's like, it's still pretty good payday, I'll do it. But yeah, I think technology too, is finally and slowly starting to make
an impact on this front. There are startups in some states that are helping a sliver of buyers of all price points to majorly cut transaction costs. One called Turbo Home, another one called shop prop, and another one called Arriva. Will link to these in the show notes, but.
These I'd like to say, Arriva arrive at that and you've arrived at your home. Arriva makes me think more of speedy Gonzales the little mouse, which I'm pretty sure he was probably canceled or.
Also makes me think of like the coldsor medication for some reason. Arriva, Yeah, I don't know why.
What is it called the the canker sore? It sound like the little wand and you put it on your sore and it like numbs. It probably what's I thought it was called like be something, but no, it's called Burreva. No.
I don't know, all right, but for me, yeah, but these three different startups are a potentially good way for buyers and sellers to kind of hook up at a fraction of the price.
And this really like when you look at how much transaction costs are in the typical transaction, you're you could be talking about ten thousand dollars or more in savings and awesome agents can really be worth worth the fee. But there's also a growing place, I think, for agents who charge reduced fees and for technology to kind of grease the wheels of real estate transactions, making it a little easier to buy and sell and less costly.
That's right, so a couple of years ago, I think it was back in twenty three Joel we talked about how medical debt below a certain threshold wouldn't affect your credit. Well that's no longer the case. Originally, back under the Biden administration, the CFPP, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, they instituted a medical debt rule that benefited millions of Americans out there by not penalizing the credit for small medical debts.
Yeah less than five hundred bucks, right, Yeah, that's right.
That was recently overturned by a judge. But even still, credit bureaus they have the ability to factor medical debt in different ways, and all three are still not including bounces below five hundred bucks. So that's good.
It's not legally mandated, but a choice that they're making.
It's like a yeah, And there's there's a lot of that actually that we're going to cover today in different in varying ways. Where there are there have been different recommendations perhaps or even an executive order that's not necessarily enforceable by law because it's not something that Congress is taking any action on. But there's also a one year grace period before overdue medical debt gets reported, So we want we're putting this out there as a nice little PSA.
We want folks to be aware and specifically as well to go back and listen to some of the different up episodes that where we've discussed negotiating medical debts. If you are finding yourself in a situation where you're like, oh my gosh, got hit with medical bill that I was not expecting. We don't have the money on hand
for that. Even if hey, even if you do have the money on hand, like Joeldaes, when it comes to some different fees that these companies are hitting you with, it is always worth negotiating and see if you can push back. I could pay.
Peloton on our bucks, but I'm not going to. And it's right basically, Well, it's been said to Matt on the Credit Core Creditcore Front that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And I think there's a lot of truth to that, right that we rub off on each other, I've learned a lot being your friend. I think what my life would look like would be different if we didn't hang out so much.
It wouldn't be nearly as cool.
Well, that's true, that's definitely true.
In fact, first, I wouldn't know half of the Great musical artists that I know because of you, as you're sitting there wearing your brand new billy string shirt. And I'm sorry that I have not even commented on. I know you're excited about the glorious, isn't I commented on the one that you had on yesterday. I wear a but this one it's purple. Yeah, it is not a lot of men out there are rock and purple purple
tieye baby, I'm I'm all for it. Uh yeah, especially Joel's not scared, especially when I'm supporting the best guitarist of all time.
Okay, but credit scores. This new Harvard study of twenty five million people found that financial habits are similar to other people who grow up in an environment like yours. So you rub shoulders with folks for eighteen years, and you're likely to have similar credit scores and loan delinquency rates. And that's actually not terribly surprising to me. There are, of course, like individual examples of folks rising above their circumstances.
But I see this as another reason to get on the ground personal finance education into neighborhoods that need it most. Because one of the toughest things about doing what you and I do. Matt is realizing that there's a bunch of people who grew up without any helpful personal finance advice, and they're probably not like on their podcastcher saying, what is like a good personal finance podcast that can help me out at this point in time, it's just kind
of off their radar. And so I think it's a good call for us to surround ourselves with folks who encourage us on money journey. But also it's just kind of discouraging in some ways too to realize that there are some people who are going to be more difficult to help. It's going to be harder to find those people.
I think a lot of those folks it's less the advice and it's more that there's also just nobody in their life who has lived it out essentially right, Like oftentimes we look to mentors or just others that we can look up to. Actually, on that note, do you see the report by USAA about gen Z. Everyone likes to pick on gen Z and they're saying that like half a gen zs don't even know what their credit
score is or even like what constitutes their credit school. Yeah, they don't know how it's made up, And I appreciate that USA is trying to shine light on the younger generations, right, because like that's kind of what you were speaking to as well, like making sure that we are doing what we can to help those around us, and maybe to a certain extent, USAA is doing that well. But also half of you gen Z, the gen Z generation are
like middle schoolers and high schoolers. So there's a part of that too where I'm just like, I'm not I'm also not going to necessarily expect a middle schooler or a high schooler to know what their credit score is because it's like, well, you probably don't really have a credit I don't know. I didn't dive into that study in depth, but I think there is a large part of that generation who they're just getting started, right, And just like we back in the day, what did we do?
We focused on being cheap. You actually are seeing gen Z doing more of that sort of stuff. Embracing being frugal is something that I saw reported recently.
I couldn't have told you much about credit scores or credit reports when I was in middle school either.
So exactly. Yeah, So I think we all just need to kind of play our part to educating the next generation of financial savvy Americans. Yeah.
I mean, I think though, as you get older and the credit score is a big part of our financial lives, and so knowing what your credit score is, knowing how your credit score comes about, like the factors that make it up up is important. We've got information on that at our website, howdomoney dot com. Matt, let's talk about executive a new executive order for a second. That actually makes it more likely that your workplace retirement account is
going to have access to even more investment options. That sounds like a good thing, including alternative assets cryptocurrency. The basically, the how this was worded in the executive order is that the Department of Labor is supposed to revisit fiduciary guidelines.
And when you kind of pull the curtain up on that, that the only way that they can make this or that this executive order can push retirement accounts in this direction to offer more alternative assets and cryptocurrency is to say that the fiduciary standard isn't as big of a deal. And so I don't love that, Matt, because I don't necessarily think that people need access to alternative investments and
more cryptocurrency inside of their four o one ks. And kind of on another point, like all the you know, working on a smart selection that doesn't overwhelm folks. There's not sixty two different versions of Ketchup and Aldi, There's like two, right, And so I think most people already get overwhelmed when trying to choose what to invest in, like which fund makes sense for them. And then a lot of the funds that could become available in the
aftermath of this executive order, they're inferior in so many ways. Right, They're more illiquid, they come with higher fees, and then the kicker, they don't produce higher returns on average. So I don't know how effective this executive order is going to be. And when you might start seeing some of these different funds available in your four to one K. Is this like months down the road or years down the road? I don't know, But it doesn't matter to me.
Like I think index funds the thing that we talk about all the time, it doesn't matter if like eighty two funds are added to your roster of choices tomorrow, it still shouldn't change what you pick.
Yeah, I see what you're doing. Here you are putting head to head my love of aldi and the lack of options there with my desire for a libertarian option right and for the market to decide, Because on one hand, I'm with you, I don't want there to be more options for folks to kind of muddy the waters. But at the same time, I want the market to decide, and I want the market to say, is this something that's valuable or not? And if it is, it will
succeed and do well. If it isn't, then it's something that hopefully will in most cases most of these cases, hopefully it'll just end up dying on the vine as opposed to being something that more and more folks get pulled into. As we are talking about alternative assets, specifically crypto, owning some crypto can actually help you to get a mortgage. Possibly, Fanny and Freddy they are pivoting to factoring in your
crypto holdings when they are making loans. Now, if you were, let's say an early adopter and you've got a decent chunk of bitcoin, well, that can help you to qualify for a mortgage, which this could be a good idea. I like, like they are truly assets, right, and so today, were someone to liquidate their holdings of let's say bitcoin, Let's say they you know, they had one bitcoin, that's a lot of money that could go towards a down payment on two thousand dollars. It depends on the money, yeah,
exactly by the second. But given that volatility, that's also the downside because it's just like, well, the underwriting process is typically let's just say, it doesn't move as quickly as crypto prices do. And so I could also see that not being a great thing if you were counting on some of that money for your down payment, as opposed to actually, if you want to use some of those funds, maybe you should go ahead and liquidate that and then you could put that towards a down payment.
But hopefully it doesn't really matter all that much because there aren't how the money listeners don't have an overwhelming percentage of their portfolio in cryptocurrencies. Maybe it does a little bit enough to be interested, And that's what I've got going on. Yeah, it's sort of like factoring at the margins exactly. And again this is more guidance that has been given at the executive level. So the staying
power of this. How much it actually does impact loans that are going to be made and moving forward is yet to be determined.
Yeah, we've got more to get to, Matt, including how artificial and intelligence is frustrating people who travel and rent cars regularly. We'll talk about that and some interesting workplace trends as well. We'll get to those stories and more right after this.
Right, buddy, we are back from the break, and now it is time, of course, for the ludicrous headline of the week. We're gonna spend a minute here talking about artificial intelligence, the old AI.
It's kind of new, but it's Yeah, I don't know, I don't know.
I feel like at this point.
It does feel like there's too much talk about it much. But this is where the rubber hits the road, right here, Matt, with this story tifically.
I like this story a whole lot. Actually, I mean that in a very literal sense. It does. This one's from Sherwood headline reads Hurts says it's AI powered damage scanners are supposed to enhance your customer experience and part Okay, So I was just saying that I am glad that I actually like I'm a big fan of the story. Sherwood is out there doing some real, some real journalism.
Yeah, they are, because it's just like Robin Hood's news.
Brand, which initially when when they rolled it out. So this is a little bit of media talk, right. So there's some shows we listened to and they the whole time they just talk about media and some of the different outlets and what's wrong with the world of media specifically. So this is gonna be our tiny little segment how to drill down on as we as we talk about that. But I was skeptical of Sherwood initially. First of all, it's kind of a too catchy of a name coming
from Robinhood as a trading platform. It's like, of course you're gonna name your your news outlet media outlet here think Sherwood. But the author of this piece was listening in to the Earnings Call of Hurts and that's how he discovered the fact that they were implementing some of this AI say again quote quote unquote enhance the customer experience, and it turns out that it's actually harming the customer.
Well, that's like the nitty gritty stuff that you have to do as a reporter to get the good story, right, Yeah, listen to the earnings call. And I don't know.
Because because the thing is that these companies they're not broadcasting necessarily, some of them are, and they're learning really quickly, ooh well yeah, when we are using this against you, customers don't like that. But if they are quietly mentioning it on an earnings call, they're thinking, all right, this isn't no onman's going to hear about this except for the investors, and it's going to positively impact our share price, which it did in this case. But the customer out there,
the renters of vehicles, they're not going to hear about it. No, we heard about it.
Well they are, they're hearing about it. And so so customers are basically saying that they've received post rental bills for damage that they didn't inflict on the car they rented. So they're like, what the AI scanner. Yeah, I didn't get in an accident. I didn't bump in anything like Matt did in Scotland. Like that wasn't me so good thing that was pre AI scanner right. Well. Sherwood says that one customer was charged one hundred ninety five dollars
for a dent that looked like it crashed into an ant. Yeah, it's a really funny one, great description, And I get that Hurtz wants to save on labor costs by having AI scan cars for damage versus using humans, But they and other car rental companies they run the risk of alienating their customers by fabricating these charges. And have you seen what they look like, Matt. It looks kind of like what humans walk through at the airport as they
go through security. Those scanners tsa scanner, it's kind of like that for a car, and it's like taking these, you know, three sixty videos and photos. And it has obviously with think about how good cameras are now, how much detail they can get into, and they can find those seemingly insignificant scratches that you probably didn't even put on the car. It was there already, and then they can say, yeah, previous customer, this is on you.
But if it was there already, wouldn't it have been caught by the previous renter.
You would think so maybe, But they're also so minor that a human never would have done anything about it. And typically you wouldn't be charged for a minor, minor scratch.
So I think one like the guy at Scotland. I was just like, oh, you know kinda, He's like, oh, don't worry about it. Yeah, I'm not going to even try.
But well, and one of the one of the people can do to protect themselves is to just is to take a three sixty video as you're walking around the.
Car zero your own skin. Yeah. I always take a ton of photos.
And that way, if you get called out, you get some sort of bill in the mail, you can be like no, no, no, that was here before or what are you talking about, Like do it before and after and then say it's not on my video or I don't see anything here.
Yeah.
That way you can at least have a fighting chance.
Yeah, I get it. I'm of two minds because on from the renter's perspective, you don't want to get hit with a bill for a small little ding but like from well even from a renter's like, imagine you're the next rent right and like, as this happens over the course of multiple rentals, multiple renters, you end up getting a car that's all dinged up, Like that's not what you're paying for when you rent a bran new vehicle. So from a renter's point of view, it's it keeps
the standard high. But then also for hurts, they're you know, they unload these vehicles after a couple of years and when they go to auction these things off. If if you've got a car that's all dinged up with nothing to show for it, well you're gonna get a whole lot less for it. But I will say one of the other examples was like a drop out of water was on the car and that was initially cited by
one of the customers. It was flagged to a customer as a dent and they're like, no, man, that's some rain. That was like, that's water, and they apologize, really, oh sorry, Actually I don't even even know if they apologize. But he didn't have to pay anything because of that. So you've got to be careful if it's not ready for prime time. Yet. That's another reason to maybe slow the
role when it comes to implementing some of this. But it's just fascinating because how it is that a company rolls something like this out has such an impact on how a company's perceived, which then therefore has an impact on the share price of that company if it's publicly traded, or even if you want to work for it. There's new research from Charter that links the financial health and the stock market returns of a company to how it
is perceived by the workforce. So, for instance, when folks want to work for a particular employer, it has many benefits enhancing that specific brand, right, they're attracting there and retaining talent. It's limiting turnover, which leads to even more positive results for that company.
Yeah. That like, the actual hiring process and training of new employees costs so much money that if there's a high turnover, it's an expense exactly.
Yeah, and this then of course improves customer service and gender's loyalty from customers. It's an upward spiral. Basically. It just makes me think about all the different PR professionals who are out there. If you are, if you know somebody that has the work the title at work of like chief Storyteller, Like all the PR folks are just like fist pumping and just like so happy because they're like, yeah,
see what we do matters. Because truly, something like Hertz, if they were to have rolled that out in a very public way, they would have gotten lambasted. I mean they they're getting called out on it already as it is, but I've got to think that something like this is a much easier thing to get past as opposed to rolling this out as a new feature where they just get ridiculed and made a fun of by the market.
Well, what you were just talking about too, with kind of where people want to work and how that enhances
a brand. It makes me think that, like, if I was out there looking for a job in the workforce, instead of just looking for positions that were reflected what I was interested in, I would be looking towards employers who have a great reputation amongst their employees, and I would be looking for positions at those companies that I was interested in, absolutely, because like I want to work for a company that treats people well, that offers great benefits,
where I could stay for a long time, instead of just getting the position in the salary I was interested in, because that I don't know, it might not be there as long, it might not be as good of an experience.
Totally agree. Yeah, that's why these narratives though, are so important, because it's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, if you say that you believe in something, it attracts people who then believe in that. A couple of brands come to mind, but I'm not going to focus on them at this point in time. Jo. Let's talk about hybrid work, because I think this is an instance where we're going to have to eat some crow. Remember we had an episode called I think it was called hybrid work.
Is here to say that we're wrong sometimes?
Oh yeah, and we're going to call ourselves out on it.
I'm okay. Following on the sword here.
Hybrid work is no longer the norm, and worker leverage is on the decline. More than half of the top Fortune one hundred companies are requiring employees to be back at the office full time. So I guess it's maybe Fortune fifty companies. We got from the Fortune five hundred
to the one hundred to the fifty. But for folks who got used to like a zero commute, basically if they got used to having more flexible time, or maybe even some of those folks even moved right, they're like, Oh, location doesn't even matter.
I'm moving out to the country because I don't have that commute. And then the employer comes to knocking and says, yes you do.
They're like, oh, maybe I'll move to Boise, like Matt was thinking, which is very short lived, which I'm so glad. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad that was very short lived. Of Course, it's nice to get paid, But is it worth going back to this sort of old pre payan pre COVID normalcy. There are certainly pros and cons to it. I think there are more pros for younger workers who are looking to show that they've got the initiative, they got what it takes. They're trying to learn from their peers.
That face time.
Yeah, but if your employer is pushing for some serious back to office, you know, policies that you aren't okay with, I would recommend to politely push back. See if this is something that you can discuss. Is this the conversation worth having? Hey, maybe this is maybe we can have some sort of roundtable. This guy, I don't know, Like, what's it called out there in the corporate world, Folks, I'm lacking when it comes to the most latest experience of what it's like to be in the corporate world.
That or despite the cooling labor market. I might even be worth looking elsewhere if this is not something if this if it has been very clearly communicated that this isn't a conversation we're having anymore, because I still.
Think those flexible policies are gonna matter to workers and for the best workers out there, for sure. And I think that a lot of companies, Yeah, you can try to go all draconian, but you will eventually have some brain drain, and those people are gonna want to go to companies that have a little more flexibility. I was talking to a friend who just got a new job at one of those big tech companies, and he was like, yeah,
I have to go in. I think I forget if you said four or five days a week, but all I have to do is like be there for a little bit. So I think going in ten to two or ten to three, and I'm avoiding traffic on both ends, but I'm in the office, and so it's I'm giving them what they want, but I'm kind of getting what I want at the same time. And I do think the companies are gonna have to be flexible.
Yeah, if you I think on both ends, yeah, right, Like like for the employee. It's just like, all right, cool, you're getting in there, you're having some of those face to face meetings. Yeah, being a little bit more collaborative, which is I think still easier without having to go do it over zoom or teams or whatever.
Yeah, and maybe you're doing something that in the morning, a little bit of that when you get home, but you're not at the office all day totally. Let's talk about me some of the downsides of work from home. There's this new work Trend Index report and they said that one of the biggest downsides and this is something
I think we've seen spiral out of control, Matt. They're calling it the infinite work day, And basically it was a Microsoft report that found that workers are starting they're looking at an email at six am, likely right after they wake up, and then those workers are battling messages on a ton of different fronts like Slack and Microsoft teams, and then text messages and phone calls, so they feel like they're getting inundated with requests or with coworker chatter
from every direction. Then also they're working into the evening with a whole lot of folks. A high percentage of people digging back into their inbox between eight and ten pm. Oh, and then guess what. The weekends aren't free of work. Either you're maybe expected to respond or you're at least checking stuff trying to stay up on it even though you're not supposed to be working. And then there's this just the reality of work these days, where there's constant interruptions.
On average, every two minutes, you're being interrupted by a pin from somewhere. And it makes me think of Cal Newport. One of his first books was called Deep Work, and man, how do you actually get deep work done when it feels like, Okay, you're constantly playing whack a mole, right, whether it's with messages or emails or you're just kind of you never have that time to actually deeply focus on a tack.
Yeah, what was the number? I think it was like twenty three minutes. Once you are once you are distracted from something, it takes you twenty three minutes to kind of regain your focus to be able to hit that deep work again. Yeah, which we love saying when we're talking about distractions. But I'm also I don't know, I don't know if I totally believe that twenty.
Three minutes like a long time lot. Sometimes your mind wanders for a while. But I don't know, like I get it.
I could be I get distracted easily, but I guess even if it's half of that, Like let's just say, even if it's ten minutes, that's a lot of time when you are getting distracted as often as oftentimes we are.
And I think it's probably a good idea to have some like non office hours during the day where if you are working on a big project or you know, some people like you mentioned pr people just a second ago, Matt, A lot of those people like their job is to
constantly be in their inbox. So that's that's just a different type of profession, right, But then there are other professions where you're like, no, I have to work on this project and I cannot be like emailing and slacking while I'm trying to get that thing done, and you carving out an hour in the afternoon and thirty minutes in the morning or whatever, but carving out these specific times where you're not responsible and kind of letting people
know that, whether it's an away from the desk message or something like that on slack, letting your boss know Hey, I'm going to be unreachable, but it's going to make sure I'm able to meet the deadline. That's really important to kind of set, I think, those expectations and allow that time for yourself to do what you need to do so that you can actually be productive and not just be responding to whatever someone else tells you as urgent in the moment.
Yeah, you said it away from desk, obviously, away from office makes it seem like you're not even on location. Away from desk, it's just like, well, he's around, but what's he even doing. Maybe he's over there playing ping pong. I woul like to even call it like an away from email or away from Slack sort of message, because it's like, no, I'm sitting here, I'm working, I'm just trying to do the important stuff. I just muted this
right now exactly like I'm sitting here. I'm We're all part of this, but let's have some dedicated time to the project at hand that we're trying to be able to deliver in two weeks. Yeah, that sort of thing. Or maybe you can just leave all the notifications on Joel, but just put your plugs in. That's what I do here in the office. Yeah, you've done it. How do you feel when I put my ear plugs in? Because sometimes I get even distracted by my coworkers are typing.
And when I say coworkers, everyone knows I'm talking about you.
There's not many of them. That doesn't bother me. I think, even something super simple, if I need something, I'll let you know. Yeah, you can, like well, wave but I.
Can kind of hear you. But it's enough to kind of blunt the sharp stimulus of messages. Other sounds like folks who honestly folks who go in and work in like a coffee shop. I don't know how they do that, and maybe I'm just overly sensitive, but I like the vibe. I like the scene of going and working somewhere where there's a lot of people. But man, the distractions.
I'd never get anything done.
I would not. Well, I know why you wouldn't, because you're talking to everybody. Yeah, I'm ignoring people, but then I'm thinking about the fact that I've ignored them.
But if I if I really have to dig in and get something done, I'm usually taking like clicking out of the email on my like you should put nothing down so if I see the number popping up, I'm tempted to go over there and get in, and I get distracted pretty quickly, and.
Then command Q on the on the mail ad.
When do I actually get back to the task. Here you go, you know, all right, Matt, that's going to do it for this Friday flight. The show notes we always live up on the way website at howtomoney dot com, along with a bunch of other money saving information. But yeah, we'll catch you back here on Monday for a fresh ask how to Money episode. Until next time, best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,