Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel and I and Matt's. Today we're discussing life without Amazon, new data that says that Roth's stink and taking as sabbatical. Joel, is life without Amazon actually possible? We'll find out in this episode. Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that a little bit later on, man, but you know, before we launch into the personal finance
stories that could affect our money during today's episode. Man, what a week we have had right earlier this Wednesday, Dude, I thought one was going to be nothing but rainbows and unicorns. But you know, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, I think we can all agree that the rioting that took place on Wednesday in our nation's capital, Dude, it was shameful, and I really hope that nothing like that ever happen in our our country again.
It was a sad day for America's democracy and how it is that we governed. But man, I just really hope that we truly have brighter days ahead of us. Yeah, Man, me too. I agree, And I think what makes our country, what makes the United States of America such an excellent place, it's not individual people, it's not singular leaders that that make America a wonderful place to live. It's truly is like the rule of law and the respect for our institutions.
And you know, we are a money podcast, Matt, We're not a political podcast, so let's not be labor the point. But it is just such an important part of of the system, including our economic system. And I hope too that what happened on Wednesday is a turning point in the discourse that's happening in this country, which really has just kind of like led to the fanning of the flames and the dangerous actions that happened this week. So we just wanted to mention that to our listeners and
just kind of come together in solidarity. I know, you know, most of our listeners feel the same way as us and and and they think that those actions were out of control, out of line um where it was terrible to watch and just a sad day in the history of our country. For sure. YEA, hopefully we will have nothing but rainbows and butterflies. Uh had actually two thousand dollars that actually might be happening here coming up. We don't know for sure, but obviously we'll keep folks posted
on that. But speaking of that steamulus checks, Man, did you get your stimulus money from from last week? I did. I finally saw deposited in my account. Almost seventy of Americans have received their their money, but dude, many others haven't because of a glitch in the matrix or maybe it was an I r S screw up one of the two. If you are eligible for a stimulus payment but you haven't received it yet, check out the I r S Get my Payment tool again. It's actually up now.
Last Friday, it wasn't up yet. Uh. And if it shows you a message saying status number two not available, then you won't be receiving your payments until you claim that credit when you file your tax return. So just a point there. Apparently this affected a lot of people who filed with one of the major tax prep services. Yeah, a few of them. Yeah, something to do with the way they process your return and how they open up
a separate account in order to take their cut. And because that account is now defunct, Um, you're gonna have to wait until filing your taxes to claim your refund, which stinks, But it's just important to be aware of. At the same time, all right, Matt, let's talk about investing for a minute. A question on many of our listeners minds. I feel like some of the ask HTM questions on the show revolver on this is like, do I do I want to pay taxes now or later um?
And obviously many of us would prefer the hs A route and avoiding taxes altogether when we're saving investing for the future. But when it comes down to choosing a traditional ira or or a roth ira, that's essentially the question you're asking, Do I want to pay taxes um now in and invest in in a roth ira or do I want to pay taxes when I'm withdrawing my
funds in retirement and invest in a traditional ira instead. Well, there's new data from Boston College and it essentially says that saving in a traditional ira is better than investing in a wrath uh. They're finding show that the vast majority of folks and retire are paying an effective tax
rate of zero percent. So according to that data, that means that the vast majority of folks should take the tax break now and invest in a traditional hire a while you're effective tax rate is much higher, and then pay taxes on your retire mode draws weight on the road when your tax burden is virtually non existent. But Matt, you and I would say, not so fast, Boston College. It's not that easy, right. Uh. You know, if you've listened to the show for a while, you'll notice that
we are big fans of the rath i Ra. So what gives right, Well, first of all, one of the aspects of roth Ira is that we think is fantastic is the ability that you have to withdraw contributions from that account without paying any fees or penalties. For a lot of folks, that gives a tremendous amount of flexibility and peace of mind. Right Knowing that they essentially have an extra pad of funds to access on top of the emergency fund is sort of like a second emergency
phone almost. This is something that I've even done before. I've I've withdrawn some contributions before to a roth Ira to invest in a real estate deal. So it's just nice knowing that you have that extra stash, you have that cash there as an option. Yeah, and again, you know, we hope people would throw out the arras and they're not tapping them willy nilly. But but again, it's a great backup to the backup. And uh yeah, another question you want to ask yourself is are you planning to
be like the majority of Americans in that study. You know, we all know that pensions, you know, they're they're not really hanging around very much for people in corporate America. If you work at a job that still has offers you a pension, thank you, lucky stars, because it's getting rarer and rare. And the median household surveyed in that study, well, they had a total of about a hundred and eighties six thousand dollars in retirement funds that they are going
to be drawing down. Well, when you do the math, that's most likely not going to be enough money for most people. Some of our nerdier listeners may have already done the math for themselves already, Matt, and they're probably shooting for somewhere in the million dollar plus range UH to have in their investment accounts when they eventually retire. You know, we're definitely planning you and I UH in our families on having more than a hundred eighties six
thousand dollars when we retire, that's for sure. And so I think to um. When we're talking about listeners that are attentive to their money and invest really well of our long period of time, who are going to have bigger stockpiles to draw from, it means that you're going to be in a higher tax bracket than most of
your peers. And and that's another check mark in favor of the Rath I ray as opposed to the traditional Yeah, I mean that kind of leads us to another reason why we like the RATH right when you know, when you're withdrawing more money out of your retirement account because you saved more, like your nest egg has grown over the years, and you're gonna want to avoid paying taxes
on those withdrawals or you know, or distributions. And the thing is, this study is based on our current income tax rates, which are really low right now, and you know, they were significantly lowered in large part due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which is set to expire after and so there's a really good chance of taxes going up after that point. So that's just another reason why it makes sense to pay the taxes now while they are historically low. It's definitely worth kind of taking
the burden hand than possible lead to in the bush. Yeah, so we'll post a link to some of that that data from Boston College. You can make your own decision, But we kind of wanted to to play a little point counterpoint to that because there are a lot of good reasons why Matt and I are believers in the roth Ira as opposed to the traditional Ira in a lot of circumstances, and that doesn't necessarily hold true for everyone, Matt. You know, we we've talked about other circumstances where people
might want to consider a traditional ira. It can get really nuanced, but as a whole, we do like the rath and it has a lot of perks like the ones we just mentioned. All right, let's talk about life without Amazon. Is it even possible, Matt? That's a question I think a lot of people have, and especially don't think it's possible for us. We are one of those households that is. I wouldn't say reliance on Amazon because I think we could change our ways, but dang, we
sure to use them a lot. And you're you're not alone. I mean, there's a lot of people in that boat that are have gotten just habitually used to using Amazon. On the reg for little things here and there, um or more big things too. And the New York Times that recently had an article that offered some insight and just made me think about how big Amazon has gotten
and how many industries and they have gotten into. And you know, you'd have to stop listening a certain podcast even now to avoid doing business with Amazon, because they just bought podcast company Wondering. They also own Ring the Doorbell and camera company Twitch, not to mention all the countless sites and apps that use Amazon web services. I guess you'd have to see who does the hosting on this website source exactly. But but at least some people are trying. What they want to do is to avoid
doing business with with Amazon altogether. And I understand their concerns, I'll say, um, But in Canada, a site called not Amazon has sprung to life in order to bring more business and also awareness to small local businesses. It's not Amazon dot c A because it's a Canadian site, right exactly.
You know, man, I wish that there was a better resource just for all cities, right you know, like there aren't and there isn't an easy way to locate your local businesses if you're shopping online, you know, I've I've looked at locally dot com before, which is a pretty good that kind of sources individual cities and goods that you can potentially get there within your city, but it's not necessarily focusing on independent businesses. And honestly, it's just
not the best solution that we have yet. It's not the real true answer, but hopefully there will be one, you know, fairly soon. But man, you know, when it comes to your money to what's really important is that you're not mindlessly making purchases on platforms like Amazon, but that you're also considering alternatives. You know, so hop over to different sites like hop over to eBay to consider buying used and men. Here's the thing is that, like
everything that's on eBay isn't necessarily used. Like sometimes they are items that were maybe at floor models or items that were returned. It's not just old stuff that somebody found out good will and are flipping within their ebase. But there are a lot of individuals and small businesses that do most of their business or a lot of their business through sites like e Bay. So when you shop at eBay, obviously eBay is a bigger tech company, but there's a lot of people that are making their
living through that site. And in the end, like, I just want people to be better at searching for goods, you know, and instead of just going to Amazon, or instead of just going to Walmart UH and searching for your item and ordering it. Like, I want folks to become professionals at hopping over to like two or three different sites quickly searching and then finding the best deal.
That way, they know that they're not over paying for goods to where the wheels have been greased and it's completely frictionless and they can buy things without even hardly thinking about them. We don't want the ability for us to spend money to become automatic. Yeah, and Amazon has made it almost that easy to to be automatic. And that's what we want to avoid ourselves and for our
listeners to avoid. And at the same time, too, we we want to recognize that at times it makes sense to pay more to shop locally, to support UH the businesses that matter to your community, the friends of yours that have started a business, or just your neighbors that
own a business. And just because you can get it cheaper in some other place doesn't always mean that that's the best course of action, right, that's right, all right, But we got more to get to on this episode, Matt, including some of the interesting stuff that we didn't get to last week that's in the relief bill, And there was a story about dirty deck collection tactics on the rise. We'll get to and more right after this break. Alright, we're back from the break, and we'll get to that
dirty debt collector's story here in a minute. But let's go ahead and talk about a few other things that made it into the five thousand page relief bill that was passed at the end of last year. Which have you been saying that a lot lately last year? I haven't showered since last year. That's nothing. Our girls keep on the l man, Alright, Our girls were saying that
earlier this week. They thought it was so funny. Um. But Man, One of the things that was included in the bill were was one that had to do with flexible spending accounts. In recent episodes, we advised you towards uh spending all of your unused fs A money on eligible items, because at that point in time, we were entering a sort of use it or Lose it scenario.
You know, we were recommending folks to maybe you restock their first aid kit, load up on sunscreen for the summer because everybody is probably going to be going to the beach, right, I mean, like vaccines will be out by then. Dude, it's gonna be crazy. There's gonna be a sunscreen shortage embarkment party in the USA. Seriously. But that use it or lose it scenario is no longer
the case. Congress is now allowing f s A money to be carried over from last year to this year without penalty, and has instituted a twelve month grace period for unused money in healthcare independent f s A s And so that's great news for people that were unable to use those funds because of changes COVID made to your health and you know your childcare needs. The bad news, though, is that this is an employer option to offer this. Uh, it's not mandatory, and so hopefully yours is keen to
to help their employees. But if you don't hear any communication from HR soon, uh, and you've got F s A money that you don't want to lose, make sure that you are being proactive and reach out to them yourself. Yeah, and I think you can light a fire in the HR department, not a literal one, but like the one that gets the ball rolling to uh to so that they fill out the paperwork so that you are eligible
to all that money over, uh Matt. Another random thing that made it into the relief bill was a crackdown on illegal streaming, and um, I think you know. The first time I read that, I was like, oh man, they're gonna arrest so many people in this country and butt them behind bars for up to ten years. Apparently because that was. One of the elements that made it into the bill was harsher prison sentences for illegal streaming. But I read a little deeper to find out what
the deal was. Fortunately, it's not harsher jail sentences for individuals who accidentally or even on purpose stream pirate content. But but it's really about the spammy companies you see on the internet offering you access to thousands of channels for eight dollars a month. You know, I'm sure we've all seen a website like that or had a friend who asked us like, should I sign up for this
streaming services? So cheap and it gives me everything Well, the reason it's so cheap and it gives you everything is because it's a pirate service. It's illegal, and we we should not know. We should not be signing up for those services. And now the folks running those companies could get cracked down on UM. I think that's a great thing personally. That totally reminds me of all of MP three dot com. Did you ever use that site
back in college? Now? I remember using like lime wire and stuff like that, though, So the thing with all of MP three dot com is it was a Russian site and you were literally paying for for music and you could make you know, you could download albums, and it was something. It was crazy cheap. I forget how much it was, but I think it was just kind
of more there. Like the fact that you're paying for it just kind of got you off the hook from from a guilt standpoint, right, like something pays for the entire album, Like I'm not like completely just pulling it off a torrent, you know, but but really you were only enriching people who were stealing that stuff. Unfortunately, it probably went straight to putin. So uh, dude, speaking of streaming, Uh,
we're getting inundated with streaming services. I bet you know some of our listeners out there are subscribed to maybe a few too many, potentially even seeing your monthly viewing bills arrivaling what your old school cababilities to be. You know, we are all about peering down to curb your monthly costs. But there's another phenomena when it comes to streaming and I it is finding something you actually want to watch.
All the platforms you use, I mean, you can find anything, but like it's really difficult to to kind of go into each one of the different services kind of find not a specific show or movie, but just you know, it's hard to browse. And that's something that that real good. Uh, this new startup, that's something that they're doing. I gotta saying. We've all been there on a Friday night with a partner, spouse, or a friend trying to watch something and we're like,
what do you want to watch? What do you want to watch? I don't know. Let's scroll through here and see and you can scroll for twenty minutes and be like yeah, I mean there's like three things that we kind of want to watch, but um, yeah, and so hopefully real good what we're talking about here is gonna help that out because basically, what they're trying to do is allow you to log into all of your streaming accounts at the same time on its own platform to
find what you want to watch with more ease. And that should make it easier to find stuff you actually want to watch, um and and that you have access to allowing you to to get that content. And it also makes it so much easier to see the content that's out there that free streaming providers are offering to Matt because you know, we've talked about this on the show. There are like over a hundred free stream yeah Roku channel exactly, and I think IMDb has a channel too,
and some of them are at supported. But there's all sorts of potentially great content that you can watch for free, but you gotta like individually logged into those channels and see what they've got access to it, and a lot of us are going to do that. But if you sign up for real good log in, you can easily see all those free offerings in one place, which is just gonna make it a little bit simpler and easier.
On movie night, Yeah, I was reading up on it man and and one of the things that I feel like one of the problems they solve is the clunky interfaces, like the user interface. Anytime you sit down to your TV, like you're just pushing an arrow. And even when you go to search something like maybe you can do the voice thing if you have like a fancier platform that you use, but you're kind of punching it in, you're kind of going on the keyboard. It is so outdated.
And one of the great things about Real Good is you can download the app, search it on your phone, which is super easy because you're either doing voice to texts or swipe text anyway, right, and then it pulls it up there and in particularly if you have a Roku device, you can just hit play from your phone and once you found that thing, and it'll play it automatically on the service that you already have loaded on
your TV. There you go. That is really cool because honestly, navigating the different platforms that you know, the different smart TV options, like with a little remote with a clicker, dude, that is the worst. It's good to me, that's the worst part of streaming. And in my mind, if you're able to solve that problem, I'm totally gonna check them out. Yeah, I'll start using my phone to find what I want to just gonna go a lot quicker and then just
like shooting on up to my TV exactly. I like it. Alright, So all right, let's talk about dirty debt collectors. Matt. There's something interesting happening right now that could be trashing your credit score. Uh, and it's called debt parking. It's taken on this interesting terminology some debt collectors out there who lack proper morals there Um, dirty human beings are are putting debts that you don't know onto your credit report, which sounds like a terrible thing to do, and it
is a terrible thing to do. Towards the end of the last year, the FTC took action against a specific debt collection firm in Missouri that ended up stealing over twenty four million dollars from consumers through this practice. And
I think part of what makes it so devious. It's not just the posting of the fake debts to your account, which in and of itself is terrible, but the fact that they aren't sending any notification your way when they do this, and so that means that most people are finding out about this fake debt when they're applying for credit. Like let's say they're applying for a mortgage because they're buying a home, and then it turns out that their credit score stinks because of this terrible scam that these
debt collectors are running. And basically they're hoping that because you're in such a bind, you're gonna pay off the fake debt that you don't actually owe in order to rectify things quickly. So it's they're counting on the fact that we're not organized. You know, that people aren't don't feel empowered, and they're just like, oh, I probably owe that money. That sounds that sounds like me. Yeah, And so yeah, you need to be on the lookout to see if debt parking has happened to you, if your
credit score has gone down in the hole. You could be the victim of a debt collector doing something like despicable like this. Yeah. So, so, like we mentioned, the FTC is taking action, so that's good, but you need to take action too, you know, Like we just said, this is definitely a call to be organized with your finances and make sure that you know what's going on. And one of the ways that you can do that is to make sure that you continue to to pull
your credit reports. Right, they are still free every week through April. Uh. You know, normally you can only access your report from each of the bureau is just once a year. And dude, in particular, to make sure that you pull your reports before you apply for an important line of credit like a mortgage or a car loan. Uh specifically, maybe even doing that a couple of months before you know what, you want to take out one of those loans. That way, you have some time to
possibly clean your report up. Yeah, fix the situation. Yeah, but make sure that you do that so that you can see what it is that your lender is seeing, because they're going to be looking through your report, um, you know, and if there's any incorrect information, any fraudulent information on your reports, you can file that dispute with that specific bureau. No doubt. Stories like that make me so mad because it's people taking advantage of other people.
So yeah, it's just it's not right. All right, Let's talk to Matt about paid time off and sabbaticals. That's something you don't hear much about, but a lot of Americans left a a bit of their PTO on the table last year because many vacations were just scratched completely for a lot of families and lots of companies to typically don't extend vacation days or maybe they'll give you a couple of months in in the first quarter of
the next year to use those dates. But but some companies are responding really well and they're offering extensions on the use of that PTO because of the obvious extenuating circumstances. Hopefully, Matt, like you said, this summer, you know, we're gonna see more beach vacations happening. We're gonna see maybe by summer and fall, more safety when it comes to flying, a
lot more people getting in the air. But but either way, uh, taking all of your PTO is a great goal to have this year, even if it doesn't mean that you're you're hopping on airplane to go somewhere else. And City Group Matt I saw recently started offering subbaticals to employees who have been there five years or longer. You can take three months off and still get paid of your
normal salary. That's really sweet. Yeah, I'd love to see like the mini sabbatical of the three months off, the thing become a little bit more of a trend um. I don't know, man, every time I've traveled somewhere, I swear you run into an Australian. They travel like crazy, and the Australians are like, I'm on holiday, and they're like and they're off for like three months always, And I'm like, we need a little more of that in
this in this country. We unfortunately, the of the twenty one richest countries in the world, the US is the only country that doesn't mandate paid time off. All the other big time countries out there do it, the US does not, And so it's no wonder man, that is not a part of our our culture. You know, it's not a part of the norms that surround our work and vacation because oftentimes it starts at the top. But it is cool to see it not starting from the
top in this case. You know, City Group is doing this, and hopefully we'll see other companies do it as well. But you know, like we just live in a country where people work too much and where stingy vacation policies just they're they're kind of the standard and a lot of folks might be worried you know that if you take your full allotment of time off, that it might be a career killer, you know, Um, but it's not.
In fact, it's important for you to be able to maintain a solid output at work by taking time off. You know, when you take time to rest, it can bring new clarity to the things that you do every day. Uh, And it gives you a renewed vigor and enjoy as well den it to your daily work. Yeah, man, not like I was close to burnout with what we're doing here at how the money, I I love it, But just getting a couple of weeks off at the end
of the year was just so nice. Man. We've prerecorded a couple episodes throughout, a couple of best the episodes. I know some people hate that, but but for us, those were good ones, and those are ones. But for us to be able to continue to enjoy what we do and and to be enthusiastic about creating this show, we do need to take that sort of time off. I mean, and it really does make me appreciate, Like I was like jumping in the bit to come back in here to record an episode in early junior, I
was so excited. Um, and I think, you know, I don't always feel that way, but it is nice to take that time off to feel excited again. I feel like that time off actually just accentuates the work that we do. Yeah, and I think it only reinforces at the same time. Yeah, totally man. And you know we're not going to dive into this as well, but there's other studies as well that show that people who take more time off, uh, they're the ones who actually get
the raises at work, they get the promotions. So yeah, so keep that in mind next time you're like, oh, I think I'm not going to take that Friday off, you know, but dude, that's gonna be it for this episode. Up on the website, we'll make sure to link to some of the different stories that we talked about during this episode. You can find that at how the Money dot com. Yeah, and we'll be back on Monday with
listener Questions episode. We love taking your listener questions. Have you have a question for Matt and I go to how to Money dot com slash ask You can toss your question our way and we hope to take it on a future episode and We hope to see you back here on Monday. Have a great weekend and Matt. Until next time. Best friends Out, Best friends Out,