Friday Flight - Reverse Cord-Cutting, Living Paycheck to Paycheck on 100k, & Putting Rent on a Credit Card #375

I have a massive confession to make. Um, I have resistant nervous Now you know what's coming up or you know the story here, you don't know what I'm gonna say. I have resisted you. I've resisted the call of Costco long enough, and I have finally become a member of Costco. I am a gold Star member. Baby. I can't tell you how happy this makes a heart. Yep, I've finally lost the war, you know, like I feel like we we've we constantly go back and forth. And here's the thing.

We both love Aldi. It's not like we've just constantly been pitting Audi against Costco. They're both good in their own right. But guess what Aldi doesn't offer Mortgage refinancing and That's what did it for me. So before folks think that, um, I was wanting to jump on the hot dog combos like so much. I was interested in refinancing one of my rental properties. And you happen to see that they hit teen with a lender and they

were offering investment mortgages refinances an incredibly low rates. And then on top of that better than I've seen anywhere else, anywhere else. Yeah, and then on top of that, they were offering a lender credits if you were to join Costco. Right, and it's worth pointing out too that you didn't necessarily have to be a Costco member in order to take advantage of that refinancing. It's just that you wouldn't have gotten the absolute best product, right Yeah. Yeah, by spending

sixty bucks, you saved, Yes, exactly. I mean it was a no brainer from a mathematical standpoint. And so now we've got that goldst membership as part of our arsenal, and uh, we haven't honestly utilized it. We haven't used it yet. But when I told Kay, she was excited about the giant packs of Kirkland sig seaweed that we often get you guys to pick up for us, so

I'm sure we will use it. Well. I'm glad to have you on the good side, you know, here no longer the Darth Vader of the heat Amony podcast, your Jedi now Matthews. Congratulations, And that's interesting that we're both kind of refinancing, you know, an investment mortgage through costco, because I saw this stat that people are going other places, um, places other than the big banks for refinancing now in big numbers. I think there are just so many places

to check rates on the internet now. It's kind of like the cats out of the bag. And so if you're just going to the big bank you've been using to refinance, expect to pay a whole lot more than if you're shopping around, you know, on a site like costcos where you can shop multiple lenders and see what they're offering. Or you know, there are other sites too that we like, we like better, we like Credible, we

like going to your credit union. There are all sorts of places you go check the rates at all those places, finds offering the best deal, and then do you rEFInd there. Yeah, there have been a lot more of those non bank options. I saw that seven out of the ten largest lenders at the end of last year, they were all non bank lenders like Rocket Mortgage. You know, all these different companies who specialized specifically in mortgages, and they often don't

offer any of the traditional banking services. But yeah, if you've never known that, Costco offers mortgage refinance, and will make sure to link to that in our show notes for this episode, no doubts. Check that and a bunch of other places. Rates are still super low and if you can save, then go ahead and do it. You should, Matt. Let's move on to the Friday flight um and get to a bunch of stories we found interesting real quick.

One other thing we wanted to mention is that we're going to give away some books today, so it's time to rate How the Money bookshelf. We're giving away a bunch of books. Just head over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, leave the How the Money Podcast a solid rating and review, then shoot us an email How the Money pod at gmail dot com. Do that before Wednesday, June at noon this coming Wednesday, and

you'll be entered into this book giveaway. We're giving away a bunch of books to three lucky listeners from people we've just had on the podcast, including some of Michelle Singletary's books. She was just on the show on Monday, right what to Do with your money when crisis hits. That's right, that was a great interview. That was so fun. She's awesome And um, yeah, so it can even be an old review. You don't have to be leave a new review if if you haven't left one, then you

have to leave review review to get in entered. But if you've left a previous one, well you can send us an email to just mentioning that review. Screenshots helpful. But we'll announce winners on next Friday's episode. And Matt, the last time we gave away books, we we got an email from a listener and she said that she used the book. It was Mindy Jensen's book. It was a former guest. We're giving away another one of hers

this time. She used the information in that book to sell her house for top dollar, more than she would have been able to, more than her realtor recommended. Exactly. She had read the book, she had studied the market, she was confident. She pushed back, and she pushed back and she's like, we're going in this direction and got way more months of thousands of dollars over what the

realtor was recommending. Yeah, so these books are great books and they can really help you on your personal finance journey when it comes to giving you information that's necessary and some of the motivation that's really helpful too. That's right, And they're not all real estate books. We've got Grit by Angela Duckworth. We did an episode on that as well as Soundtracks, which was John Acos book as well. So again, leave that review and send us an email

over at how to Money Pod at gmail dot com. So, Joel, next, let's get to a quick update on the Advanced Child Tax Credit. A lot of families know that the Advanced Child Tax Credit payments are on their way that they're set to go out the middle of July. So yeah, only a couple more weeks away from that. But now the I r S is actually set up a couple

new tools online. One is the Advanced Child Tax Credit Eligibility Assistant, which will walk you through some questions, uh, and they will confirm your eligibility and so if you're curious or you're not sure, if you're eligible. You can check that out. It's like, do I have a kid or don't not? Digress will let me know well, and they'll let you know as far as the income limits and kind of as that phases out, they'll definitely be

able to clear things up for you. But the other and possibly confusing tool is the Child Tax Credit up ate portal. Uh So you might be thinking, great, this is what I've been waiting for, right I can update the I R S and let them know that we had our baby earlier this year so we can get additional money. But you actually can't do that, at least not yet. You can't do that on the update portal. So I feel like it's a little bit of a

misnumber right now. And hopefully they said they weren't going to launch until July one, they launched a little bit earlier, so hopefully they're still tweaking it and that will be something that listeners who had a baby can do sometime in the next week. We'll let you know next week if it has been update, but right now I'm not.

I wouldn't hold your bread out that's gonna happen even next week, but we definitely will let folks know what it does happen because I mean, right now, all you can do on the update portal is just un enrolled from those advanced payments. And you might be thinking, well, why would I wanna unenroll from money that I would be getting from the government. Well, you're just delaying that essentially.

You can see you can think of these child tax credits, I mean their advances right like they are just paid ahead of time where you receive half of those payments and the rest of it you would receive when you fire taxes next year. Some of some of those new banks that are like trying to pay you days in advance of you getting your check, you know, and you're like okay, cool, Like you're like, great, it's still my money. I guess I'm just getting it a little bit ahead

of unhelpful, but if you need it. But the thing is, if you know that your your income is going to be higher this year and that's gonna disqualify you from being able to take advantage of those additional child tax credits, that might be an instance where you unenrolled. That way you don't end up on wing back that money to the I R S. Yeah, Well, let's hope that portal gets updated to provide more features for other people who need to be able to go in there and update

their information. Um but Matt, let's let's keep moving. Let's talk about rental car prices, because then we talked about that a while back, where people in Hawaii were paying just insane prices for rental cars, and people all over the country are like, rental car prices have spiked in a big way, and a lot of that is due to car shortages in general, and some of the rental car companies that sold off some of their fleets entirely

or entirely, but literally their entire fleet because they're like, well, we're going bankrupts exactly exactly. And yeah, I my parents actually just went to Jackson Hole and anecdotally they told me that it was five thousand dollars to run a Toyota cameray for a week. That is so crazy. I mean, Okay, in a normal world, you would see that and then you would say, Okay, I'm just gonna buy a car exactly once. We land gonna drive it all week and

then before we leave, uh, we'll we'll sell it. At least from a financial standpoint, right, like that would make sense in a normal world. But yeah, exactly, it's not really practical, but you know, if you're just looking at the numbers, that kind of makes sense. But again in a normal world, because these elevated used car prices have made it not only difficult to rent a car, but yeah,

buy a used car even on the private market. That's right, So just your word of the lies out there for anybody who is trying to rent a car, be careful, look around and think about other options because it might be prohibably expensive to rent that car. And also who is taking advantage of the stratospheric prices Criminals? Of course, where there's money, there's gonna be scammers, that's right. Yeah, the FTC just issued a warning about rental car scams

proliferating right now. So these scam artists are setting up fake websites with fake customer service numbers to entice you to rent a car from them, And sometimes they'll actually try to impersonate an actual car rental company that you've heard of too, um of sense, Yeah right. They're like, yeah, I'm Jim from Budget and you're like, I'm Almo. I've heard a Budget but it's supposedly this cheaper way to rent a car than what you're seeing elsewhere online, and

so you're just like thankful. You're like, oh my goodness, I didn't think I was gonna be able to get anything because the prices are in the stratosphere. But yeah, what these people are doing, they're praying on your need to get around during vacation, and they're promising to not charge you an arm in a leg to do so. But yeah, here's how the scam begins, usually with just us a Google search and then clicking on an ad

that's featured at the top. So you've got to be careful to search at reputable websites and be skeptical if the price is way less than you've seen anywhere else online, that's right. Yeah, So the takeaway from folks, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. We want folks to, yeah, be very skeptical and also make sure that you pay with a credit card whenever you book a rental car. That's for for ultiple reasons, but the biggest reason in this case is so that you have

chargeback abilities with your credit card company. You want to make sure that you're using those credit card benefits to protect your money. And if a company wants to rent you a car, but they will only do so if you pay with a gift card or a prepaid debit card,

you hang up the phone. That is not normal business behavior, and that is actually that's one of the biggest ways that they're actually able to scam folks, because you know, you're probably thinking, well, how would they actually do it if they're using a credit card, Well, they're not using

credit cards instead, they're using prepaid debit cards. Yeah, they're just sending you down to your local grocery shore or Walmart and saying, yeah, grab one of those prepaid debit cards off off the shelf and pay us with that, and that way you'll be good to go. And that's definitely how you get the deal, buddy, exactly. But then that's actually your money zero way that you can get

the money back, right, that's right. Yeah. And you know, if you're looking to get a rental car, and of course you're looking to pay as little as possible, check out auto Slash. That's one of the best sites to do that because they continually shop as the prices changed, So if the prices go down, on a car which I'm not gonna again. Wouldn't hold my breath that's what happened anytime soon. But if the prices were to come down, you would automatically get that booking at the new lower rate. Yeah.

I always like to book a fully refundable car rental uh directly through you know, one of the big players, and then also put my info into Auto Slash so they can continually shop. I definitely have this you know, reservation uh with a car company, even if it's more than I want to pay. But then Onto Slashes continually shopping for me and hopefully I'm getting a way better deal at the end of the day. But let's get

to the next story, Matt. This one we saw on Business Inside or sixtent of millennials who make over a hundred thousand dollars are living paycheck to paycheck. And yeah, that was feel bad for those facts, not all that bad. This was a new study from Payments and Lending Club and uh, it's almost mind bottling that anyone living in this country that makes that much money, that makes a hundred thousand dollars or more, is going to be living

without any sort of savings. It's going to be, you know, essentially reliant on their next paycheck to be able to you know, not have to move out of their house and living in tents. Right, But yeah, some some of these millennials would rather spend every And I don't want to hate on millennials because I feel like that's you know, that's what the media does constantly think kind of like we're spending money, yeah yet again, And I think that's uh,

definitely something that's been overblown. And I don't think it's true that millennials have by far worth spending habits. But then something like this, You see something like this, and then they're trying to like make fun or tear down some of the folks that are in the millennial generation. Really, it doesn't matter what age you are, but if you're making over a hundred thousand dollars a year and you're

living the paycheck to paycheck, something's wrong, right. And at the same time too, I mean, we're not sharing this information to make you feel that it's okay if you're making a ton of money and living paycheck to paycheck, right, Like, we're not trying to normalize that behavior, but we do want to challenge you to try to live your life differently in a way that maybe can still align with your values, but at the same time making sure that you're not uh, you know, going into debt and living

paycheck to page. They can offer you more financial security even while you are able to spend money on the things that you care about exactly. Yeah, And granted a salary of a hundred thousand let doesn't go as far in high costs of living areas, right live in expensive cities. Yeah, yeah, that's probably just almost like a sort of average to to kind of base income in order to live there.

I saw the something recently about a brand new quarterback drafted by the San Francisco forty Niners, and he was like talking about how difficult is to afford housings and like even when a professional athlete, that's crazy. He's calling that out and saying it's really tough to afford to live there. It's like, of course, people, even living on a hundred thousand dollars salar, you're gonna have a tough time place like San France. He's like the Bay Area, man,

that's pretty tough. But you know, lifestyle creep like this is a big part of the problem here. You know, we talked about this on our Wednesday episode. But there are ways to uh wisely inflate your lifestyle, to do that appropriately so that you're able to enjoy some of the fruits of your labor now while still investing and still saving, still increasing your financial security along the way. But it is going to have to take you saying no,

uh from time to time in order to get there. Yeah, yeah, no is a good word, right, And especially when it comes to to spending, like we have to be able to say no so that we can get ourselves to a place of more financial security. If you have a really high income, that this just shouldn't be a problem you're dealing with. And I think, yeah, part of the

problem is a lack of financial literacy. Is is that no one's being taught about how to handle their money and school, how to save their money, how to invest for the future. But then the other part is self control, right, and we have to be able to say no no to our friends, not to purchases that we want, no to things that are thrust in front of our face on social media. There's no easy button. I don't think we all have to deal with that. But Yeah, even folks who make a decent bit of money, who are

higher earners, they have to learn the same things. Yeah. Now, sometimes it's because we don't know where we are on our own money journeys, right. Uh. And so actually this is a great time to refer folks to our website how to money dot com. Go to the start here link, and that's where we quickly break down our seven money gears. You can quickly look at that no exactly where you are on those steps, which will then allow you to quickly start working towards your next money geared to make

sure that you're moving forward with your money. Uh, Joel. Sometimes folks talk about cutting cable and how they think that's one of the it's like a no brainer thing, right, Well, I mean, were the easiest way to say, maybe even talked about it here on the show. But after the break, we're actually going to get to a story we're cutting the chord is actually going to end up costing this person more money. So we'll get to that story and

plenty of others right after the break. All right, we're back, and of course what we do in the second half of every Friday segment is to tackle the ludicrous headline of the week. Week here we go. It's so bad every time we do it, but I like it. Yeah, we just haven't found anything that's like really like rung true, all right, we need to work on this. That's why we change it every week. That's true. I will say.

I like when you whispered into the microphone, the SMR sound. Yeah, okay, alright, So this week's Lucas headline is why I'm Never Cutting the Chord. That was the title of this one. It's from Ben Carlson's website, A Wealth of Common Sense, and Matt we've had been on the show before, back in episode thirty five. He's one of our favorite personal finance writers. We pretty much read everything he puts out. He's stud Yeah,

he's a smart dude. And uh yeah, a few years ago, this title I think would have been personal finance heresy, that cutting the chord? Why I'm never cutting the chord? It's like, who are you, Like, don't you get it? Streaming services are invoking and they're gonna save you lots of money? Uh, And I'm just trying to be antagonistic exactly exactly. Yeah, that's clickbait, Ben, But at this point.

I actually like, I think he makes a point, and he does a really good job explaining why that's the case for him, and Ben talks about the trend we've been seeing a lot, like the proliferation of streaming services and how much more expensive they're getting, so not only are there more to choose from, but they cost more at the same time. And Matt, I think you and I were literally talking about this yesterday. It's like it

doesn't cable. But even before Ben's post came out, it was like, doesn't cable seem to be like a better value than it seemed to be before, Like I never ever ever would have thought about it, and I still I am never going to think about it. But because I just don't watch as much TV as been that was one of the reasons he gave. He was like, I love TV. I watch a lot of TV. And I was like, okay, I get it. Then yeah, we

were talking about how much YouTube TV costs. It's like, I mean, like sick five dollars at this point, but but yeah, I mean the reason that this works for Ben is because he just loves TV. I mean he and he confesses he's just like I love TV. I love all the shows, all the sports, all the movies. He's like, I want true TV, internal classic movies, and he's on all the chance, what's it all? And he's willing to pay for it, right, And so that's the difference.

But I think it's worth pointing out that having traditional cable isn't as ridiculous as it used to be. Like you said, Joel, there are a lot more streaming services than there used to be just a few years ago, and for quite a while now people have seen their monthly spending on streaming increase consistently. But there's also some good news here. People are finally starting to cut some of their streaming services out of their lives. That's according

to tech research from I think it's just Omdia. I'm gonna say Omdia, this research firm, but apparently the average person now subscribed to a little over seven streaming services, which is a lot. I mean, for me, as long as I've got Disney Plus, i can watch my low Key, I'm happy. But that is the first time it had ever actually decreased instead of increased, which is a nice

change of pace. Yeah, and so we encourage folks to take a look at which streaming services you're subscribed to, and you know, think long and hard about whether you can cut one, two, or maybe even like five of the amount of your life. Right, but if you are a huge TV buff, consider going back to cable or satellite. And man, I can't believe that's coming out of my mouth. It feels like something I never would have said. But

it all comes around many pack on. Yeah, so I think it really might make more financial sense for some folks who are just really really into TV. Uh. And it also offers I think a better experience than having to flip back and forth between all the different you know, streaming channels are subscribed to. But still the ideal thing, in our opinion is to watch less TV in general and then to relegate it to a much smaller section of your budget. But if that's your craft, beer, if

you're like I just love TV. I love all the channels, like me and Ben could be best friends and just hanging out on the couch all day, then yeah, that then cable or or satellite might make sense for you. That's right. So that's our ludicrous headline, but it also happens to be true in this case for Ben Carlson, uh Jo, let's talk about investing teenagers. They are taking up investing at a rapid clip and barons. They read

an article about the proliferation of teen investors. Many of those teenagers are investing their money that they get either as gifts or you know, whatever they have left over after going out to eat with friends. Mom, give me twenty bucks, I ONWALY spent eight years payd express. That extra twelve is going towards an individual stock slide that other twelve into a MC. Yeah. But obviously, yeah, there are good ways and bad ways for for teams to

learn investing, and many are practicing the bad investing habits. So, for example, we often you can think about the stock market game that many of us played in high school, where we just kind of randomly picked companies that we'd heard of, see who made the most money over the course of like two months, I think, or maybe like over the course of one week. Most of us Atlantic kids definitely chose Coca Cola. But this is a pretty awful way to learn how to invest in. It teaches

kids the exact wrong things about investing. You begin to think that you know, stock picking is the way to go and that you're supposed to invest on a short timeline. Let's go all in on this one stock. It's it's kind of it's gonna feel more like a game because there's there's winners and there's losers. But I'm glad that kids are starting to invest at younger ages, but it

sucks if they're not going about it in the proper way. Yeah, a lot of these kids are opening up accounts with companies like robin Hood on some of the apps, and robin Hood in and of itself isn't inherently bad, right, We've talked about how many of these investing apps do though incentivize unhealthy investing actions. They just make it far too easy and glitzy and glamorous to become a day trader and as a team without a fully foreign prefuntal cortex. Like,

that's just not a good idea. That's not that's not good for you at all. Yeah, they're willing to take too many risks that they shouldn't be taken exactly. I mean, there's there have been brain studies that have shown that you know, day training and investing in individual stocks the way it lights up a kid's brain versus the way it lights up the brain of a forty year old.

It's just vastly different reactions, and so I just, yeah, it's not good for a fifteen year old to be investing in this way because they start to get almost like addicted to some of this behavior, and like frequent training obviously leads to all sorts of risky outcomes. Sometimes you gotta learned the hard way. But I would rather see these young investors start building wealth at a young

age instead of being speculative with their money. And Matt. Fortunately, Fidelity has a new platform to help kids invest that's worth looking into. The service doesn't charge account fees or commissions, which is great, and then your team will also have access to some of our favorite low cost or zero cost funds. So yeah, encouraging your your kid or your team to start investing and helping them get into it is a great thing. We encourage that, we're all about it.

But uh yeah, helping them see past the hot meme stock of the moment is crucial, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, the Fidelity Youth Account, like that's great, but at the same time, it still comes down to making sure that you're either your kid or maybe you've got like a niece or a nephew, or maybe you've got a younger cousin who's

maybe getting into investing. But it really does mostly come down to making sure that these teenagers know what it is that they're getting into and how to invest for the long haul, not just taking gambles on the hot stocks of today. So Joe, let's go ahead and shift gears. Let's talk about some real estate Zillo. Everyone knows about Zillo because everyone has also heard about the zestimates. Uh, they've drawn elation at the same time they've drawn ire

from folks. It just kind of depends on what it says about your home. If you are a homeowner, home's worth way more than that Zillo. What's your problem? Yeah, exactly. I mean how many people have you heard talking about that and they're just like upset that this randomly generated computer algorithm doesn't have it right about their house? Exactly? Yeah. I mean, I've even seen the rent's estimate be totally off on one of my properties by about three d

and was just off by a bunch too. I was like, man, Zillo is like, you know, not quite as accurate as some people would like to think it can be it can be a huge difference, but Zillo is actually attempting to fix that, burrowing out what they're calling their neural network,

tapping artificial intelligence to make its predictions better. It's expected that this update will significantly increase the number of properties, specifically that are eligible for automatic cash offers, which this has the potential to significantly change the future of the

real estate industry. Basically, where Zillo is saying, we'll give you an offer for your home right now, in real time, really quickly, and then you can avoid listing with an agent, getting it staged, having a bunch of random buyers come in and take a look yere house. They want to like simplify the process, Yeah, exactly, and right now, Zilla offers like they've only scratched the service of the number

of houses that have sold on the market. Right it's it's a very small number, but as it grows, and as they attempt to continue to cut out the middleman, you know, like yeah, like real estate agents and lenders, it'll be interesting to see if that translates into more

savings for homebuyers. Right now, we're not really seeing that given the current market, but it is much less of a hassle, and I think that's going to go a long way when it comes to folks seriously considering going with Zillo offers rather than the traditional model, right, Like I mean, going back to Ben Carlson's article, it makes

me think about cable. I mean, honestly for me, like one of the biggest hassles with signing up for cable is like scheduling a time when the guy's gonna come by and set up the box, and oh, you've never had cable here before. We're gonna have to drill a hole into your house, like all these things compared to the string video on demand right where you just sign up and all of a sudden you have access. Literally it's within a matter of minutes that you've got this

entertainment at your fingertips. If Zillo can do that when it comes to the home buying, I think there's going to be an entire generation of folks who are going to be more interested in going that route versus the

kind of antiquated, outdated real estate agent model. Yeah, there there are other people by the way, trying to do what Zillo is doing here open Door offer Pad or a couple of the other sites that you could check out if you're like I do want to go with kind of the more streamline model where people aren't coming in my home and it's just a little bit simpler

of a process. Like Matt said, at this point in time, it's not gonna save you any money or make you more money on your home, but it might just be less of a hassle, and it's worth checking those out to see, like, all right, how much are these sites gonna give me versus how much do I think I could get by you know, listing it with an agent.

It's worth considering, That's right, Matt. Let's keep talking about real estate, because, yeah, coming soon, there's going to be a new way to save for your down payment on a house she's looking to buy if you're still renting, and that way is through credit card rewards. Yeah. A Wall Street Journal article this week mentioned that a new credit card which renters can use to pay pay the rent in order to build up cash rewards that can

be used towards a future home purchase. So even if you don't have to use those rewards towards a down payment on a home, it's kind of building it that way to get you're excited right exactly, So, and like, even if your landlord isn't one who accepts credit cards for paying rent, this credit card company built will still mail your landlord of paper check and you still get the rewards without incurring any fees at the same time.

So this is pretty cool because I don't know if any other credit card companies that are willing to do that. The amount of awards that you're going to receive, though, depends on how much you're using this card. This is kind of a high risk, high reward way to go, right, because if you're buttoned up with your money, then using

this card to pay rent makes sense. Right. If you've got plenty of cash in the bank and you pay your credit card bill on time and in full every single month, then putting your run on your credit card to earn extra rewards is a great way to go. Putting everything on a credit card to you earn rewards is the best way to go exactly. You're handling it well.

But yeah, if you're not so great with credit cards and you have a hard time paying them off in a timely manner, then you want to stick with a c H payments to avoid getting into a stickier financial situation, because can you imagine putting, you know, three months worth of rent on the credit card and then be like, I don't have the money to find that money, and then, yeah, your rent automatically just cost a whole lot more money by putting on a credit card and not being able

to pay it because those interest charges more is what you're spending now on rent? Perhaps, Yeah, I mean this is a slam duck, I think when it comes to paying rent. I mean when most Americans spend around thirty percent of their monthly budget on housing. Specifically, for all the folks out there who are renting, it's a total no brainer if you're paying rent. But of course for everyone else who doesn't have a rent payment, or for those who don't handle their credit cards, well we would

advise you to stay away from that credit card. And once this credit card actually officially gets released, we'll try to mention it again on the show. Right now, it's like invite only. Yeah, but yeah, some more credit card news. Some banks and credit card companies are actually continuing to cut spending limits and to close some accounts involuntarily. And this is according to a new study from lending Tree.

It turns out that sixty two million Americans have had that happened to them in the first few months of this year. Uh, which is continuing that this perverse trend that we saw come on the scene last year when the pandemic hit. Having an account closed abruptly or having your limit reduced just on a whim cannot only hurt your credit score, creating other hardships, but it can also have a major impact on your finances if you're having a tough time financially by not having access to that credit.

You know, you can't make sure that this won't happen to you. It's kind of up to the credit card companies, but there are some things that you can do to make this less likely. Yeah, I hate seeing this. This be the case. Matter really thought that this was and wasn't one thing, but then seeing those numbers from lending Tree just kind of got me bumped because I'm like,

I can't believe the credit card companies are still doing this. Yeah, but you know, one of the things that our listeners can do to make sure that this doesn't happen to them, um, at least, you know, do The best they can is to use all of the credit cards that you have regularly credit card companies they cited in activity as the

main reason that they're cutting limits. So if you have a credit card in your possession that you don't want clothes, you just have to make sure you're using it consistently. So if you haven't put any purchases on that credit card and at least a few months or six months, well go buy something with it that you would already buy, even if it's as insignificant as like a bag of peanuts, right, or some sunflower seats like really, whatever, sex do you want to buy the ball game? Exactly? Or a Costco

hot doc? Really? But um, yeah, the longer that card is inactive, the more likely it is that the credit card company is is going to close it. And you can also fight back if this has happened to you and you want that credit card limit back that they stole from you. So yeah, if your credit card was closed or your limit was reduced, make a call to the credit card company and ask for them to reverse that decision. They might say no, but they might say yes,

and you never get if you don't ask. So it's really important to at least like reach back out and be like, Hey, what's going on here? Ask the question and say, can you restore my limit? Can you at least give me part of that limit back? Because I've been a good customer for this many years. I've always paid on time and in full. Whatever it is, like, make your case and don't just take a line down. That's right, Yeah, give him a call ask him. The worst they can say is no. And we want to

remind listeners again, don't forget about the book giveaway. And so if you've left us a solid review over at Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast, shoot us an email at how to Money pod at gmail dot com and make sure that you do that before noon this next Wednesday, because that is when we're going to draw those names in preparation for next Friday's episode where we'll announce the winners. Yeah, and who knows how much these books could save you. I mean they're honestly,

we've had great guests, these are great books. We want to give them away to you because our bookshelf is skinful. I hope you have a great weekend and until next time, Best Friends Out, best Friends Out,