Friday Flight - Joel & Matt's Year End Review! #612

We we did feel that it was on the street corner of this this past week of preaching that to everyone, we wanted to cover the best, the most important kind of like the overarching stories that impacted us the most from this past year. And so we're not just talking about the headlines from this week. We're talking about the headlines of twenty two was in resting year. There was a lot that happened, and so I think it's good

for us to like reflect. We see that every single year, though, you know, but but I feel I feel like this year was particularly it was different. It was listening and especially hopefully it calms down. It deviated a lot from what we're happening in recent years in a whole bunch of different ways, and there was a whole lot of news to follow, Like I feel like our Friday flights, like we're it's only gotten more interesting. Yeah, I think like every single week it felt like there was something

important to tell the audience. And so hope we're not just doing these for our health, right, Uh, we're doing it for your financial health though, right exactly, And so yeah, we uh, we'll continue Friday flights obviously going on every Friday next year, but this we were like, let's do one where we're just reflecting on the insanity that was and the big takeaways really that we had from this year.

But but seriously, ever since we started the Friday flight with at the beginning of twenty like, it's only gotten like Nutty year and NUTI Year. Hopefully no additional pandemics in our future, but the news has definitely been worth

covering for sure. Before we get to our year in review, though, I just wanted to quickly mentioned listener Nathan he sent us an email last month and who hadn't gotten around to talking about it yet, but he mentioned this a couple of cool tools, one called simple log In, another called and on Addie, and these tools can help you create email aliases in order to protect your privacy online, making it harder for different companies to track you and

stuff like that. So I thought this was interesting. Man, it's not something that's really thought about a whole what's the tracking aspect of it? I didn't look into it. So so it sounds like basically like if they have your direct email address, there's ways in which they know have more information about you. But if you're creating alias email addresses that are like it's it's harder for them to pinpoint who you are as a person, and they know less about you if you do that where they're

creating that dossier on you. I'm not an expert. Nathan writes a blog about this stuff. He's the security so I will link to his blog post in the show notes. And there's certain folks I think who are less comfortable putting their email address out there. Personally, I'm not one of those guys. Like any time there's a like a

lot of times there's a side up. It's like hey give us your email, you get this free letting United flag, or hey give us your email and you get a chance to spind the wheel and maybe you'll win a free beer. I'm all about that kind of stuff. Yeah, I get it. I've got zero fee. That's a trade off. Work my email everybody, it's all mixed at gmail dot com. If you want to hit me up, go for it.

You're going to life flock route here, you're just announcing it to everybody and the Joel's social security is let's do that and we'll pause right there. I also don't know your social security by heart. Well yeah, if you're into that though. In online privacy something that matters to you at then email aliases I think are an interesting tool to be able to protect your privacy online and kind of create individual email addresses without literally creating one

every single time. You don't want to give a marketer or a company your your specific email and some of your specific information. But that being said, if your email is getting oh there, I mean I would just suggest to ruthlessly unsubscribed to stuff for sure. I feel like I've been doing a lot more that here towards the end of the year, because you know, when you start the and you look and you've got like thirty new emails, and I don't really want to look at two thirds

of them. Two thirds of them are trash, their trash, and that's what that's when I'm like, Okay, a lot of times I just hit the lead because that's the power, that's the fast mover. I just bam bam, bam, bam bam. He just keep coming later exactly, so I just take the slightly longer route and actually unsubscribed. But Joe, yeah, Like, like you said, it's been a challenging year for a lot of folks, at least from a money perspective. The roaring economy of one has led to what feels essentially

like a slowdown this year here in two. But whether or not we are in a recession, I think that kind of depends on your definition. It's hard to say. I wouldn't be surprised to see if very soon they're like, hey, we're in a recession, and we have been for whenever the data came out, like maybe six months ago, I guess is when the data came out. It's hard to say, but we have seen double digit losses in the stock market.

We've seen a labor market cool off, We've seen the housing market essentially grind to a halt because I mean multiple things, right, combination of of high prices, rising interest rates. But as we learned from many of the How to Money listener wins that we shared a few weeks ago on our Wednesday episode, despite headwinds, a lot of folks out there have crushed it this year and they've been able to just make accelerated progress towards their financial goal.

By the way, we got like double the amount of submissions we were able to use. Sadly, like we would love to share them all, but we were even just get email from people after the fact saying hey, I missed it, but let me share with you. And the amount of progress that some of our listeners were able to make was astounding, which, by the way, we love because it's one thing Gmail dot com or I don't want to say years, that's what it is. Uh. But just the macro environment that we're in, Uh, it can

certainly help or hurt your personal progress. But there's still a lot that we can do to change and advance our own goals. In spite of what is happening in the economy all around us as a whole, there are things that we can do as individuals that is really encouraging, but we still do you want to make sure that we cover some of the biggest stories that we came across from this past year. Yeah, I mean, like some people ask us from time to time, like, well, what's

the impetus behind the Friday flight? Why do you do it? Because your advice doesn't necessarily change a whole lot based on what's happening. I mean sometimes it's like as interest rates go up, it changes the dynamics, let's say, of whether or not you should buy a house, Like there are things that happen on a micro scale that do impact our micro actions, but like our our general advice on so many things doesn't change. It doesn't move with the whims of the market, right, and so we get

slightly here and there. For sure, there are ways usually if some of these trends continue that it can have a longer lasting impact. But it's opposed to the headline I know the week, but I like that you noted that people may made significant progress no matter what's going on. It's like, we're gonna talking about a bunch of things that went on this year, but no matter what is happening in our economy, there are ways for you to not just survive but thrive in almost any environment really

that comes our way. And so let's talk about the big stories of this year, Matt. Inflation and interest rate rises. They were I would say, basically the top two stories tied together and tied at the connected at the hip. So let's discuss those for a minute. Because fraternal twins, yeah, exactly, and uh, it's not identical, not exactly the saying, but man, they sure do look similar. Yeah, they same family, exactly

a lot in common. Well, inflation is something that we've all felt acutely this year, and it's a big story, largely because we haven't experienced inflation like this in something like forty years, right, So it's for most of us who are under the age of forty, which is all of us except for you now, Matt, who just turned forty. Right. Uh,

we haven't experienced this. You were fresh out of the womb in diapers, Matt when you experienced this last And although inflation is starting to ease up a little, it's gonna be a while before it's back where Fed officials wanted, back to that like annual two percent sort of range. Um, we don't know exactly how long it's gonna take. But

that's where we're trying to get back to. But car prices, energy prices, food prices, all those things shot through the roof in a shock to our wallets, and depending on what our consumption looked like, it impacted us all in different ways. Right, if you're replacing a car, you probably

paid more than you would otherwise. And if you were downsizing your fleet, you made out like a bandit because you sold a car that you bought for ten thousand dollars for hundred, because you took advantage of inflation in the car market. But in an effort to combat these rising prices, the FED of course, has been using the only instruments at its disposal really, or one of the two instruments that has its disposal. It's been making money

more expensive by raising interest rates. And it's just fairly blunt tool that seems to be doing the job. But this is a story that's going to continue to be a big one in three but hopefully for all our sakes, it's not going to be quite as headlined word of the as it's bent. That's right, Yeah, speaking of food prices, I was literally recent just yesterday at Aldi purchasing some eggs and was shocked to see, of course, aldi because

they are the most affordable. But dude, I think it was still earlier this year, Yes, earlier this year, and these are something close. I remember to take prices close to be being close to a dollar, and they were almost five bucks. I could not believe for a dozen regular eggs. Do like, this wasn't the organics, this, This wasn't chickens that that are just like walking around laying eggs, you know, like these are chickens that are like caged up,

like the regular eggs that got massages. Everybody, No, no, yeah, exactly. Uh so, yeah, I think a lot of folks have been experiencing some of those inflated prices at the grocery store. But gas prices that they've been up in the stratosphere as well, and then they actually crater back down near to where they were at the start of this year. Well that's good news for folks who drive a ton.

And those prices were partly impacted by raging inflation, sure, but also because of the war that's happening in Ukraine that Russia is perpetrating. But right now gas prices are south of three dollars a gallon in much of the country, which is awesome. Uh. Definitely here in the state of Georgia, I think we've got some of the lowest gas prices, but the national average is getting closer to crossing that

point as well, that three dollar threshold. But that being said, uh, gas prices, they definitely have a real impact on our budgets. We need to keep in mind that oftentimes we we tend to overestimate how much we're spending on gas, even when prices are north of five dollars a gallon. And a reason for that is because this is literally a price that we see everywhere we go, Like you drive down the road and it's plastered, you know, on the side of the signs, like a giant font tiny billboard

on every street exactly. Yeah, and so we feel the pain more intensively. Uh. And so the tip that we would recommend for folks is we want you to perhaps focus a little bit less on gas prices and instead we want you to focus more on your overall cost of transportation, including the depreciation hit that you're taking each

and every year on the car that you own. We want you to focus on not just what it is that it costs you to fill up at the pump, but how much you're paying for that car, whether or not you're buying new or used in particular, cost of maintenance, things like that, but definitely the the appreciation that you

hit that you assume as well. Yeah, if you are driving a O six Toyota Corolla and you opted to sell it for five thousand dollars and upgrade to a Tesla because gas prices were out of this world, but you only drive seven thousand miles a year, that was shortsighted, right, Like, that's not the kind of movie wants you to make. And holding onto that Corolla is gonna be much better

for your finances overall. And so gas prices, they are a story of this year, but they're also one we want you to ignore more than you pay attention to. And hopefully, hopefully for all our sakes, gas prices remain low right and remain near where they are right now, but staring inflation, I would say had one bright spot, Matt.

And if you're playing how the money drinking game this year, when you're listening to Friday flights, you probably we let's say you had to take a shot every time we mentioned I bonds, you probably have too much to drink a couple of times at least this year, because starting at the very beginning of yeah, I bonds became a significant story, one that we kept talking about as inflation

was roaring. It's one of those things where you can make out like a bandit I putting some of your savings at least into I bonds And by the way, don't play drinking games when you listen to our show. Come on. But but even the savings rates rose, ibans were basically the best refuge for savers as rates were close to ten percent. Now they're closer to seven percent. But uh, there's there's still a smart medium term savings

vehicle for lots of folks and runaway inflation. Of course it's a bad thing, but that silver lining has been kind of the nice run up in options for savers who had few to no options for a lot of years and then they got a rainy they fund in the savings account. Half a percent was about the best you could expect to get. But now we're talking about four percent or even more on some of these savings vehicles, which is just really good to see. So on the

flip side. Rates on credit cards have been going up that is likely to continue. So pay off that debt quickly, very short lived silver lining jewel. Yeah, but at least there was something to Yeah, inflation mostly bad and rates going up mostly bad for a lot of things, but

there are some bright spots alongside of it. Sure. And in addition to the higher interest rates we've seen our credit cards, we've seen higher mortgage rates as well, right, I mean we kind of touched on that there at the beginning about higher mortgage interest rates, quickly rising price of houses. Unfortunately, that has left a lot of folks who have been hunting for a place, you know, with the housing market just with the inability to purchase a home.

And so for for those folks, yeah, we would recommend to hang in there, continue to stock that money away in saving his account. And even though overall the housing market it's it's in a tight spot, it's not in a good good position right now, but even still there

is the ability to find a deal on an individual level. Yes, mortgage rates are high, Yes, the prices of homes have skyrocketed, um, but keep your eyes open, right like, look for those for sale, those fisbos look, ask around, talk to your neighbors. There is still the ability to to find a deal wherever it is that you live. Overall, market trends don't look good on a personal level. That doesn't mean that you can't find a deal. I think you definitely can.

Let's keep moving. Let's talk about cryptocurrencies, Joel. So essentially everyone's calling what we're in right now it's one of like the Doe winter, And I'll say it's right now. It's got more crypto symperia, it's like the tundra. It's got more like Narnia like elements, right like this crypto dip. It certainly feels more like an internal winter where Christmas it never comes more than it, you know, does a

short seasonal about of cold weather. Uh. Even before actually we knew about Sam Bankman freed, before we knew about the ft X fraud insanity, we asked a friend of the show, crypto expert Stacy Marie Ishmael. Uh. We talked with her back in episode three. But we're curious as to whether or not crypto was going extinct, and that

was a difficult question to answer. But it's certainly feels like crypto was in the right place at the right time to take advantage of just the massive influx of cash in people's pockets while they were simultaneously forced to stay home. Right, It's like, hey, normally you're used to spending your money in all of these different kinds of ways. Also, you're only used to receiving this much money. We're gonna

give you this much more money. And then crypto was able to slide into those d m and said, hey, put your money towards me. Certainly fueled a rise in speculation. Gosh. Yeah, So you know, we don't know if the block chains ever gonna make a difference in our day to day Um, will any of these cryptoc poins, will they have a use case scenario? We are not sure of the future

of that. But two has has taught us anything. It's just really it's honestly reinforced our belief that's speculating in unregulated markets, that it can have devastating effects on your personal finances. Yeah, and some folks at the farm, right, they've they've got vast amounts of their investable assets on this new form of currency, largely because they saw the trend and they wanted to follow the trend. They too wanted to make money overnight or quickly, right, and that

was ill advised. But as assets prices were staring, they just they wanted to get on the gravy train, and they wanted to make sure they weren't left on the sidelines while all their friends were getting rich. They bought into even some of the hype of high profile athletes and actors touting crypto on Super Bowl ads and Instagram ads like the Justin Bieber's of This World and the Kim Kardashians, not to mention that Tom Brady's. I mean,

like lots of influential people. All the celebrities were getting n f T s and they had laser eyes in their Twitter profiles, and so it just made sense that we got in on the boom as well. Right at stadiums being named after crypto training platforms. There was so much like legitimacy being given to a lot of these companies as they associated with high profile people and made some of these bigger deals. It felt like it had

gone mainstream. Yeah, I mean, it basically did, right, I mean, not only was it in our popular culture, but then the fact that institutional investors were also I mean and I think that's only increased this year, and so it's not that in that sense there's not still a whole lot of attention being given to it, but there was certainly way too much of that going on in previous years,

and we've seen that correction. I mean, I wish we were we had gone back and actually pulled some clips from what you and I had said this year about crypto. We talked about how we invested a very very small amount of our personal assets in crypto, very small amount, and that was what we have. That's always what we've said when it comes to single stocks and crypto investing. Matt, now you you invested. We both invested enough to where if we lost it all a bitcoin went to zero,

we wouldn't hear like it has. There's no material impact. I don't like losing money, right right, That's not that's not what we want, and that's what we told everyone. We didn't bet the far throughout, although there were a lot of people saying this is the future, getting on the ground floor, and a lot of people obviously harmed this year in the crypto space, and so what is the what is going to hold for crypto? I don't know I don't have any predictions, but I did think

it was interesting. And new survey showed that only eight percent of Americans have a positive view of cryptocurrencies. Now that seems about right, yeah, and I get it. I mean I think I'm surprised it's even that high. But even if you're still keen on what the cryptocurrency space is going to be able to do moving forward, keep

your exposure small. It's nothing if not volatile. And so even if you believe in it, like do the boring stuff first, don't go too hard in an unproven space, right, continue to eat your fruits and vegetables and meat whatever the USDA recommends. Now, I feel like they always changed it up. Like a bread, I think that still recommend a lot of bread every few years is still surprising to me. Uh. But I mean not only in the crypto market, but we've seen massive downturn in just the

regular stock market as well. And I think that's worth mentioning because like, I mean, we we saw a significant dip back in when the pandemic hit, but that was just a flash in the pan, like literally a few

months later, we're back to normal. Uh. And so like if you erase that, which I kind of do in my mind, Like, we haven't seen a bear market like this, like I mean, earlier this this year in October, we were down something like and so this is the first seriously down market that a lot of folks, a lot of our listeners have ever experienced. We haven't had something

like this since two thousand and nine. And I think a lot of individuals feel a little bit nervous because they're they're they're for the first time, they're realizing that, wait a minute, it doesn't always go up into the right and so we don't want you to get freaked up about this. We want you to continue investing like you always have. You will be wealthier in the future

as long as you continue to invest now. Buying now still a good thing, actually a better thing than it was in January, right right, all right, Matt, there's more stories that we got to get to in our year end review. We're talking about the job market, student loans, and kind of a few other things that we thought really defined two as a year, at least from a personal finance perspective. We'll get to those right after this. Alright, man, we are back from the break. We're talking about the

biggest overarching stories from this year. And normally when we come back from the break, we do the ludicrous headline of the week, but really pretty much everything we're talking about today is it's not a specific headline that's stupid, but they are pretty big stories that have had a fairly significant impact on the financial sector and then in

turn our personal finances. But let's talk about sort of the job market mania that we've seen this year, because I feel like like two words kind of defined the job market, Uh, worker leverage. I was thinking about saying great resignation. Yeah, but that was last year, right, I guess that technically kind of continued into this year. But the first half of the year, I mean, we saw something close to the hottest job market that we have

ever seen in recent memory. Um, like the help wanted signs they were everywhere right, like uh, sign up bonuses. They were also all the rage like truck drivers, fast food workers. They were seeing those in abundance. I thinks a thousand bucks if you will sign up to flip burgers at Wendy's and agree to stick around for three months,

and it kind of stuff. Interviewers were just getting stood up, left and right, I think it was earlier this year that Katena run a road trip and right off of the exits there is you know, you see the giant Starbucks sign. I was like, I need some coffee and make sure I stay alert. And it was totally during normal business hours and they were closed and they had a sign on there and it says it just said, we do not have enough staff to stay open. It was a crazy time to try to get a coffee

or some fast food earlier this year. But many of our listeners took advantage of this robust job market to grow their income in a meaningful way. We shared stats about how much more ob jumpers were making than folks who stayed put where they were. And you know, depending on which study you believe, like the average jobs which are made between ten to fifteen percent more than they

did in their previous position. But there's a I guess the downside to this, right because on the flip side, because of inflation, the majority of folks who did stay put at their at their jobs this past year, they actually made less money on in an inflation adjusted scale because inflation, like we talked about before the break, was

so high this year. Yeah, for sure he had. The phenomenon was like he was more pronounced than it usually is thanks to the massive number of for higher signs that were that were out there in the lack of workers to fill those roles. But even as the labor market normalizes, this is still going to be a smart move for lots of folks who want a better position

with higher pay moving forward. Right, you you might not want to make this an annual tradition, Right, You don't necessarily want to like, uh, get every nine months or ten months, like stack your resume out there and try to get a different job. That can, we would say, over time harm your resume and therefore your ability to keep jumping around for a raise. But moving jobs to make more money every two to three years, it can be a key way to increase your income over time.

A lot of people found that out this year. Some of our listeners man have talked about being able to make more by opting to go somewhere else. Right, what of our what of our listeners got like a hundred thousand dollar pay raise? Yeah, I mean, like it's it's for real. It's a it's a way to use your skills and find somebody else wants you more than your current employeer lots of times. And by the way, it's

not all about money. That's not worth saying either, because if you love what you do and who you work with, it's more than okay to stay put. It just means that you'll have a little more work to do when it comes to negotiating that raise in the house. It's it's not as easy, right, it's not as much of

a slam dunk. But if you can figure out what your value is in the marketplace and then help your employer understand that through data or through even another job offer, a competitive job offer, that can allow you to stay put but get the money that you deserve. Also, it's one of the ways that hopefully pay transparency will continue to empower and allow employees the ability to negotiate those

higher salaries. And that was like a smaller story this year, but that was anna story pay transparency law is going into effect, and how smaller story because of the pay ranges that were then put out there, ass Like here's a specific because there were a lot of big stories exactly like you're you're you're right, Like that's another thing that can hopefully will over time help employees, help everyday Americans be able to make more money because they're about

to see publicized salary ranges giving them, yeah, more options when it comes to negotiating totally. Let's talk about student loans, the lack of student loans, I should say, of those payments and then the forgiveness yo yo. That has been a top story as well this year. That has had massive impacts on a big chunk of our listening audience.

Not having to make those payments for for what's coming up on, like we're getting close to three years now, that was a welcome respite for many and a lot of folks have been able to use this downtime just to accomplish some of the other more significant financial goals that they might have right where they're able to accelerate

their progress and a big way. And you know, we thought that these student loans were gonna resume in January, but nope, it's not gonna happen because of the President's student loan forgiveness declaration that it's it's faced quite a few legal hurdles, uh, and he's he's opted to extend that payment restart date until there's just some more firm information on the forgiveness front, which is now set to be heard by the Supreme Court in the spring, and

we'll see what happens. It's really anyone's guess as to what the outcome of that case will be. And like we've talked about in the past, it would not be a bad idea to practice your payments. Maybe that's just taking that payment amount, setting it aside in a little bucket off to the side, a sinking fund or a savings bucket in your savings account, but just starting to get used to that dollar amounts coming out of your monthly budget could be extremely helpful. And like, yeah, just

think about sending it aside now. It will be less painful once that finally payment does finally start to resume, which we don't know when that's going to be. That could be July, that could be August, and I mean, we we don't know yet, but we'll keep you, we'll keep you up to speed on that. But and then you'll have the practice of having done that, And also you'll have a chunk on sitting there that you can put towards a down payment or lump some payment towards

those student loans. If that's if that's a better idea for you, if you want to pay you down your

debt more quickly. And student loans record, they've been this major topic of conversation thanks to these legal political battles with massive stakes for tens of millions of folks, and that it's been kind of frustrating to watch Matt in a lot of ways because the way this was done was kind of more like politically expedient as opposed to going through the proper channels in order to make sure that it that it's stuck, and it's left a lot of people in limbo, but the real herkey jerky Yes,

and this is going to be continue to be a major story in I think if you know you're in wrap up at the inter of next year, we're still going to be talking about students in a big way. I wish it weren't the case, right. I'm a bit tired of the whiplash, as I'm sure many of our listeners are, but hopefully we'll have a firm resolution. I'm sitting in the passenger sea while Joel's those are good days,

Those are good days. Uh yeah. I sawed out many times, even on busy streets, which a little frightening, but that's writing installing out on a steep hill. It's not late, well,

I think another man. Another major story, and one that we covered a fair amount this this year on the show, was the rise of buy now, pay later, Like I feel like we talked about a lot about that in our Friday Flight segments as well, Like, think about Amazon adopting it as a payment method on their site, and I think acquiring a stake in one of those companies

as well. We've just seen a proliferation of people after pay, people being able to buy stuff in installments over time as opposed to having to fork over all that money at once, and so like, yeah, you can pay for virtually anything an easy monthly installments at this point, whether it's a pair of shoes or a hat, I mean, Tomagachi, I don't know, Like whatever, whatever it is, you're buying some toys for your kids. And we are, as you likely know, not big fans really of these buy now,

pay later companies. It looked like for a second that we were going to see them start reporting the transactions of their customers to credit bureaus, which kind of got us excited for a second about a low cost way for folks with bad credit scores to be able to improve their credit scores in a pretty simple, easy way. But last that's not really happening in a meaningful way. And so by now pay later, we would say, remains

a method of payment that we'd rather see you avoid. Yeah, I mean, there's not necessarily anything nefarious about by now pay later from it, like from an interest rate or from a feed perspective. They're not as bad as painting loans or something like that, right right, Yeah, So if you pay your installments off in full and on time, you like, you basically just pay the same amount as

you otherwise would have. And so why has this been a topic that we've dedicated so much energy too, Well, it's because that by now pay later is creating a psychological effect that's driving folks to buy more than the otherwise would which is putting them in, you know, an uncomfortable financial position. The average cart size of a binow pay later order it's quite a bit bigger than it is for other orders, which leads us to believe that

this payment method is fueling consumption. This is one of the selling points of these I Now pay Later companies to allow these different retailers to let them be an option as consumers are checking out, and so it sounds nice to buy something over time instead of all at once, but way too many folks have found that the ability to pay in convenient installments has just contributed to more

stuff and less than ideal savings on hand. And so you might hear us say that and think, well, how is this any different though, than than credit cards, because if you're essentially using this payment method instead of using cash, and I think what we'd say is that you are missing out on a lot of the different credit card benefits that these companies offer you by using your credit card, right, like purchase protection UH, sign up bonuses, UH, just ongoing

cash back. And obviously NPL is offering none of those incentives, none of that stuff exactly. And so obviously we don't want you to use a credit card if you don't have that cash on hand to immediately pay it off at the very least by the end of the month. But that's one of the reasons that we're such big fans of of using credit cards. And then on top of that too, I guess if you think about it this way, when you use a singular credit card, or

maybe even two credit cards. It's a lot easier to manage those cards and look in those two spending summaries, right, or you look at your statement and it's you're able to manage it fairly easily, whereas with a binal pay later. Essentially it's like each one of those purchases is like its own credit card, and so you know, and so like it becomes easier to let it run amuck and cause you to spend more than you are planning on, And so I get. I get that credit cards have

some of that ability as well. That's one of the things that people criticize credit cards over right, is that it causes people to think less about the money they're spending, whereas it feels more difficult apart from the cash that you have in your pocket, or at least that's historically been the case, like we've talked about recently, I would be interested to see some new studies to see whether or not that's still the case, because I do think

young people have a different attachment to cash than twenty years ago than people twenty years ago. But yeah, we think credit cards are a very different method, a very different way of spending, and there's more ways to be discipline in your credit card spending, and there's more ways to rep rewards from it as well. And totally by the way, something else that was new this year on the How the Money front is the credit card tool that we just launched. You can find that at how

the Money dot com slash credit Cards. If you're looking for a better credit card, if you're looking to maximize the rewards that you get based on the spending that you do. That's right, It's much better than going to the B n p L route. But let's offer a

few takeaways, Matt from this year. We covered kind of some of the big stories that we felt like we're integral to, kind of what happened in our country, in the world over this over this past year, inflation run them buck crazy job market leading to lots of people being able to crush it. But um yeah, let's offer a few just takeaways that we learned from this year or or things that have at least been driven home a little more deeply. The first thing that sticks out

in my mind is the need for humility. There are always it's always in short supply. Yes, yes, there's not not a lot of that, especially in this space, is in in the financial space, there's a lot of predictions. There's a lot of hubris. There's a lot of telling people this is what's going to happen or this is

how you should act. And I guess like talking heads gotta talk like that's their job and that's what they get paid for, and so they have to make blustery predictions into the TV screen that we are you know, that's seven or whatever. And so as Matt and I give advice moving forward, like that's the goal of ours is too, is to offer effective personal finance advice that you can implement into your life without being too dogmatic. That's right, man. Another encouragement we want to provide folks

is to accept uncertainty. We make plans, God laughs, That's the how the saying goes. And so we say that because it's not that we shouldn't make plans, right, but we think that holding our plans a little more loosely that that is wise. It's darn near impossible to predict these macro events, the things that we could not have foreseen, like pandemics and wars. Even polls for likely political outcomes are often oftentimes dismally wrong, like the red wave to

the red trenchle right exactly. Yeah, And going back to the financial markets, the stock market, it's a lot easier to predict across decades than it is over over specific months. Makes me think of like we had Alison Schreeger on the show earlier this year. Front of the show, she calls them uh known unknowns. I think Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, he also said this uh popularity. I think she kind of got up from him more recently on

my mind though, from Schreeger. But the more comfortable that we can become not knowing the future and then worrying less about it in general, I think the more successful

that we're likely to be, the less anxiety written to. Sure, Yeah, we want to encourage folks to focus on like their locus of control or also known as your sphere of influence, right, Like, we certainly want to pay attention to the news, and that's the entire point of our Friday flights is to be able to interpret that news and to determine how it is that it's going to affect us as individuals.

But we want the vast majority of our effort in our time and our energy to be focused on the things that we have direct impact over as opposed to the things that we have virtually no control over. Yeah, so all right, last last big takeaway I would say from this year that we had was to be flexible. And we just did a whole episode on this Matt episode because we still we feel so uh strongly the people incorporate more flexibility into their financial lives and into

their personal lives because there is more uncertainty. Exactly, it pays to be flexible, for sure, and the greater levels levels of flexibility that you can attain from a personal and financial perspective will allow you to weather whatever storms come along right with like I said, less anxiety, you might even you might be able to take unpredictable events and turn them into something glorious, like turning lemons into lemonade.

Like our friend who took her stimulus money to launch an online business that eventually allowed her to quit her day job. That's one of those unexpected uh sums of money to land in your lap, and then you turn turn that into something meaningful. Other people they bought crypto and more take out, right, And so I think if you're flexible, they probably wish they would have bought more Chinese food. But the hand that stuck it in that

one stupid coin. Right. But if you're flexible and opportunistic in that way, opportunities are going to come along, but you have to be able to pounce and you have to have the flexibility to take advantage of what comes along. So stay flexible, be on the lookout for opportunity, and you're more likely to find it. So yeah, be humble, except uncertainty, be flexible. Those are three main takeaways from

this year. That's right. And there's a good reason too why we're not making big predictions for next year because for the most part they don't really matter. It matters less like what happens, what actions are taken against you, and it matters more I think on how it is that you respond to those actions. And again, so we just want to make sure that you are seeing yourself

as the one behind the wheel of your life. There are changes, there are actions that you can take as an individual regardless of what it is that's going on around us. And hopefully, as we are going into an uncertain year, who the heck knows what's going to happen,

that that is a note of encouragement for you. And there are still ways that we're gonna be able to I think, take the headlines, take the financial news, make tweaks to our personal finance live so that we can make more progress over time, Like so you can take advantage of something like I bonds in the face of roaring inflation, so that you can something we talked about in twenty Yeah, all sorts of little tweaks that you can make along the way. It's important to to keep

growing in your personal finance knowledge. That is what Matt and I that's what we're here to do. We're here to to serve you and to offer you the best information that we have so that we can all continue to make progress when it comes to our money decisions. And we look forward to delivering more of that money

saving info moving into next year and three. Baby Monday is gonna be a really fun episode with one of our favorite economists actually, who has a lot of wisdom when it comes to how to make your goals actually more sticky so you can accomplish the things you're trying to accomplish. So we hope to see back here on Monday for that interview episode that's right man, So we

wish everyone out there a happy new year. In Joel, that's gonna be it, buddy, Until next time, best friends out, best friends out,