Friday Flight - Toxic Ticketmaster, Water Waste, & Macron’s Mission #648

it out. But this is our Friday flight and we're going to cover some of the best headlines that we came across this week, the ones that we think are going to impact your finances the most, and what it is that you should be doing in response to the stories as well. Okay, just briefly wanted to mention listener Jen posted in our Facebook group this week. She said, since none of us are going to be interviewed by Matt and Joel, which don't speak too soon, Jen, we

might be reaching out to you. You never know, you never know, you never know, and she said, well, I want to know what everyone's craft beer equivalent is, so It just really started this fund of people posting the stuff that they like to spend money on. It was just fun to see. By the way, if you're not a member of the how to Money Facebook group and you're also on Facebook, you should totally join it because like that's the only good redeeming part about Facebook, I think.

But it was just really neat to see what everybody spends money on, like what they the stuff they prioritize in their lives. Yeah, yeah, so this must have it must have been a popular thread because Kate actually brought it. I'm never all it, so I feel like you added that part. And if you're on Facebook, because I'm on Facebook, but I'm like I'm a member or whatever, like having a kid, you're number there. I literally it's one of the social media platforms that I just decided I need

to remove from a life. So I don't know, you're like the dead beat dad of our Facebook group exactly. Everyone knows it. Well, Kate mentioned this particular thread and it sounds like a blew up. But did you have some favorites in particular that folks mentioned. Well, I did notice that a lot of people will have beverages that they prioritize coffee in particular. Okay, a lot of people go to coffee dire. Actually I can get behind that.

I'm actually thinking about getting a pretty nice grinder at it. I keep getting I don't want, I don't want to talk about it. Okay, you're about to me to decide what Kate and I purchase for our home. Well, you like coffee a lot, though, I really do. Yeah. Absolutely, somebody else, by the way, I said, think about up in the kind of grinder, and they have, all right, get the nice one, get the nice one. I think

you can. You can, you can spring for it. But someone else had expensive board games, which, of course you or in on that. We don't play nearly as much as we used to, but sixty dollars game less time to just hang out with one of us. But it's well worth it to buy a couple of good board games, or you know, five or ten. And then someone said

competitive darts. I don't even know what that looks like, or you just is it kind of like a pool queue that you get a nicer Q stick or something like the competitive I'm assuming darts that you throw at like a dart board, right, But I'm saying like, similar to a poolue or people up, I can get the nice ones. Do they have fancied darts? Oh? I'm sure

they do. Okay, you can get like the cheap ones that come with like the kit you know that you buy from the toy store, or I'm sure you can get some that are really nice that are hand tied weight. It makes me think of like phishing flies, like you can buy like fly fishing. You can get the standard issue flies, but then it's also an art. Yeah, although I'm not even sure that folks use those to fish with. I think they're just kinda on display. But no, I

love this. I love that somebody put competitive darts. I'm also curious how much they could potentially cost, Like what's the range of really nice darts I would be fascinated to now? I bet they throw real good, real nice.

But I love, honestly the weirder the better here because what it makes me think is that folks have given some time, They've given some thought to what it is that they want to spend their money on, as opposed to just going with a flow and spending money on whatever the internet it tells them that they should be

spending their money on. It makes me think a little bit about a conversation we're planning to have next week about stealth wealth and how it's important to spend in ways that reflect our values because it's just so easy to get sucked into spending in ways that other people say are important, exactly not taking the time to figure out what matters to us. So thanks Jen for totally making that fun thread in the babook. I love that.

All right, Matt, let's move on. Let's get to the Friday Flight the Stamp League of stories we found interesting this week. There's a lot to cover, a lots to talk about FED interest rate hikes. That was a top story of this week, right, and what do they do on Wednesday? They kept hiking rates And although they kind of signaled that maybe we're starting to get close to the end of rate hikes, that remains to be remains to be seen, but that's at least kind of what

they're signaling. See well, I mean, so the balance was do you raise rates to kind of combat inflation or do we not raise rates in order to give the banks that really if it's just sort of walk in that tight rope and actually j Pal he mentioned in a statement too that by slightly raising interest rates not as high as maybe some of the governors, some of the FED governors wanted to, that will likely tighten up

lending standards. And what that means is banks will essentially be lending out less money, which should in turn also drive down inflation, because if there's less money floating around

in our financials system, they'll just be less money to spend. Yeah, And basically the FED was signaling that inflation is still the top priority, even though kind of what's been happening in the banking sector has been a little concerning right over the last couple of weeks, And I think it makes sense for more worth setting, like and it's it's good news for savers too, even though, but it's it's not great news if you've got something like credit card

debt on you haven't paid off. We've been saying that for months and really over a year now, Like, hey, these rising rates mean you got to get rid of that credit card debt as quickly as possible because it just continues to get worse. And if you want to know more about what these rate hikes are doing to your finances, by the way, we just talked about that in episode six forty four, so check that one out

if you haven't had a chance to listen. But even though interest rates kind of took the top slot, what's happening with the banks is still front of mine too, And so Matt, let's talk about everyone's favorite topic right now, FDIC insurance. I think most listeners probably have seen more headlines, have read more about FDIC insurance over the past couple of weeks then at any time previously in their lives, and debates are starting to rage about whether or not

fdi CE insurance is a good thing. Should we raise limits to prevent future bank grounds, or should we eliminate FDIC insurance altogether. There are proposals kind of on both sides because kind of in actuality, what happened was a lot of people with uninsured deposits got bailed out when those couple of banks collapsed. So then the nature of fi C insurance starts to come into question, and you know,

wonky people are debating these things. My favorite proposal though, that I saw, was to maybe keep FDIC insurance where it is, or maybe even lower it just a touch. But if you want to have more insurance on your deposits, pay for it yourself, start to self insure, and so some of these smaller companies or wealthy individuals with larger deposits, it's like cool, if you want to do all your business with one bank, pay for that extra insurance, like

make that come out of your own time. Heck yeah, man, privatize It makes sense to us, honestly, because our deposit insurance here in the US it actually goes well beyond what most other major countries are offering. And so maybe even reducing that mandatory FDIC surance threshold und K where it used to be. Yeah, So I don't know, maybe it does make sense to have an insurance product out there that allows individuals to pay that extra in order to pile their funds up under one roof. But still,

this is what's going on for the time being. And just so you know, we've we said this last week, but just to reiterate it, money that is in your savings account is safe. Just make sure that you are keeping it under two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But there is no need to go running to some of the bigger banks. If you are with an FDIC insured bank, your money is safe. And also if you have more than two hundred and fifty k sitting around you probably shouldn't.

That should likely be money that you should be investing in the market as opposed to having it sit idle. That's what your money goals are, right, It depends on all your goals are buying a five million dollar mansion in a couple of months, then then maybe you need more cash on hand, and you've got to react accordingly. But keeping it all on one account where you have uninsured assets is not smart exactly. Yeah. And also I can imagine there's too many folks saving up for that

five million dollars home. Well, I can't imagine pay good for you. I can't imagine there's that many hand of money listeners who are like, have the fortunate problem of having eight hundred thousand dollars in liquid cash or something like that. But I'm sure there are a few out there who are trying to wrestle with those sorts of things. But I think just a lot of concerns prop up from people to wondering whether or not the bank they'rewith

this safe. And we just want to continually say the same thing that yes, your bank if it's FDIC insured, is a safe place to store your money. You don't need to go to one of the big banks where they're gonna likely charge you more fees, offer you worst customer service, like not have nearly as great of interest rates. So I just want to keep hammering that home. You don't need to go to your local brick and mortar

and move all your funds over there. But let's talk about banking fees for a second map because there's actually some good news on that front, and it turns out that banks are eliminating over draft fees in a big way, saving consumers billions of dollars and how many billions, basically about about five billions, and so over draft fees they used to be a major source of revenue for the banks, but they were also one of the worst, most irritating kind of fees for individuals, for consumers, and so to

see more banks moving in this direction, I think a lot of it's done to try to appease regulators on the front end of things, But yeah, I think it's important too to mention that we all need to make sure we're doing business with the banks that are intent on reducing fees we mentioned them every time it happens, ally is one of those. Capital One has done a

great job at that. Check the bank's website long into your accounts, see if you're being charged a monthly maintenance fee or if you've been charged over draft fees recently, and if so, it's time to switch. It's time to

get out of there. There are a lot of banks now who are saying we're doing away with these fees, and we just want to make sure you're with one of them, that you're not sticking with one of the ones that is stocking you with a thirty six dollars over draft fee just when you buy a cup of coffee that you didn't quite have enough money in the

account to cover. That's right. Yeah, So speaking of fees, let's talk about Ticketmaster, because I don't know if it's possible for Ticketmaster to get any worse, right, Like, I don't think there's any other person or any other institution that draws this much hate. And even though Ticketmaster they actually did something that they maybe others would considered nicest week, they still deserve a public shaming here on the podcast.

They deserve to be called out because yes, Taylor Swift fans, they had a hard time on buying tickets to see their their favorite performer. But the astronomical fees that Ticketmaster continues to charge customers is what we can't get over. And the latest example of this has been The Cure's latest tour. They just started selling tickets for the new tour, and of course, if you're a fan, you gotta go through Ticketmaster, So some fans were apparently paying over ninety

dollars in fees on eighty dollars worth of tickets. That's a total of over one hundred and seventy bucks for just a handful of tickets. But what's crazy is just that the fees are adding up to actually be more than what the actual tickets we're going to cost. Initially, well, you gotta pay the CEO, Matt and the upper echelon of Ticketmaster, so the band doesn't even get, you know,

as much money as the Ticketmaster elites. But I really do think Ticketmaster should be truly ashamed of kind of the fee structure that they have in place, but they're not. I don't think they care at all. And Robert Smith, who's the lead singer of the Cure, he was pretty sensitive to a lot of the fan complaints, and he said something to Ticketmaster on their behalf, which is always amazing to me. The artists more artists aren't sticking up for their fans because their fans are the ones who

are being taken advantage of. And I will say, one little small check mark in Ticketmaster's corner. For the first time ever, they actually did and I was surprised to see this. They admitted that their fees were a bit much. Yeah, this could potentially be a turning point. This is the one tidbit of good news. Unlikely that it's a turning point, but at least it was something. It was a drop in the bucket. But here's exactly what they said. They said,

many of the fees being charged are unduly high. I quote that, and so they were funded well how much money, five to ten dollars depending on the ticket price. So we're still talking about ticket prices being double what they otherwise would would be. And you know, basically Ticketmaster has a monopoly selling something like eighty percent of the concert tickets in the country. And I think artists really need

to push back even more. They need to have their voices heard because again, it's their fans who are being taken advantage of. Congress I think needs to do something too. The fact that Ticketmaster continues to be allowed to host consumers in the way they do. It's uncomfortable. I hate seeing fees like this charge to everyday folks who just want to go see their favorite Pans or whoever. Yeah, honestly, I just don't understand how Ticketmaster and Live Nation were

able to join forces. So it was back in the back in two thousand and nine. They're allowed to merge, and that's what essentially gave them like a stranglehold over the entire industry. But when you're so dominant, when you're such a juggernaut, there is no ability for competition to come in and actually compete and to offer a competitive product, something that can stand up to Ticketmaster a little bit.

But this is why competition matters. And actually, if you want another example, take wet dog food and this might be a weird example of a just stick with us. James Kerr he wrote about this over at the Humble Dollar this week, and he found that wet dog food has jumped in price, while dry dog food it's barely budged and so he wrote a letter to the manufacturer and he no surprise, he got a short note back

that said basically nothing. But what he found was that even though there were ten brands of wet dog food out there, they all come from the same two or three suppliers. Uh. And so again just a limit, a smaller amount of competition. So it also makes me think, was it Jet Blue and Spirit we're looking to join forces again and they got shut down? So and there are a lot of different airlines, more airlines than there

are ticket issuers absolutely or what dog food? Yeah, yeah, so there's not It's not as bad as the concert ticket industry because nothing, I would even say, not even home internet is as bad as like Ticketmaster, because at least up there, Yeah, but at least you've got two you've got two guys that you are bouncing back and forth. A lot of people would call that a duopoly. They set prices kind of against each other, not in a competitive way, but almost in like a collaborative way, which

is pretty pretty nasty. But it's not still not as bad as a monopoly, which Ticketmaster clearly is. Yeah, and I would yeah, And you said even said something about Congress doing something too, And I might even push back a little bit on that because I'm not sure or when any regular like anytime I feel like the government gets involved, it tends to lead to ultimately, like in the long run, perhaps an inferior product. But I am surprised that they were again back into nine, that they're

able to join forces. Man, it's just well, I disagree because there's so it's so terrible that they are allowed to do this, and they charge such high fees, and it's not like they're providing a great product either, So the product suffers, the consumer suffers, and like something needs to be done. Really would feel differently if like the airlines they get because it's more of a public utility, but like this is entertainment, and do folks need to go see the cure? Kate would enjoy that, you know,

choose a fan back in the day. But for that reason, it's something that I think folks can choose to opt out of and their life won't be dramatically impacted, you know what I'm saying. But I feel like this puts a bad taste in people's mouths in terms of like how capitalism works when monopolies and duopolies are allowed to run them. Uck. It makes people think that capitalism. Yeah, you know, and I get that, and I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is the monopoly

or duopolies situation. We also have a choice to because if you say you are like, okay, I must go to that show, maybe it is life giving to me. But you can still go to the show, but just go straight to the box office and then you get to skip those those fees altogether. Well, sometimes sometimes it depends on it depends on the place it's selling it, and sometimes there are fees when you buy it in person too. I've been able to skip fees many times

going that route. But then again, when you look at something like the Taylor, Swift or Beyonce concerts, like the tickets we're gone, and those tickets we're gone, blink of an eye. Yeah, basic, So you don't have that option. So yeah, something something should be done about Ticketmaster. I don't know what, but at least we're gonna rake them over the coals here on the show. But Matt, let's we got more to get to in on today's Friday flight.

We want to talk about kind of what's happening with the passport situation and give kind of a word of advice for anybody who's looking to travel soon. I'll talk about that and more right after this. We are back from the break and we're going to continue our Friday flight here with the ludicrous headline of the week, and

this one comes from Bloomberg. The headline reads, bottled water sales exceed the cost of providing safe water for all un says, so, yeah, it turns out that we spend way too much on bottled water in this country, and it raises the question, Joel, you know, given just the reality of safe, cleaning tap water at our disposal, it is amazing that so many folks are opting for bottled

water that costs way more. Part of what this new paper found was that and this is i'll quote this company selling water also use marketing to undermine faith in public systems, which essentially what that means is like we are buying into the marketing hype that bottled water is

better for us when it's just not. Yeah, and well, I feel like all sorts of newfangled bottled waters have come on the market recently too, where it's like bottled water with electrolytes or different pH levels or something like that. And so with salt, Yeah, it's it seems and I'm not saying that there's zero merit to any of those different kinds of bottle water. I'm sure there is something, But how much money we're spending to get these fancified

versions of bottled water. Or there's even like Liquid Death, which is canned water, which has like seven hundred billion dollars in sales or something. It's like one of the fastest growing companies and it's literally just a cool can that contains water. Liquid Death. We are so buying into

the marketing on this front, and it's pretty disturbing. Yeah, I will say so, like they're they were trying to equate the fact that certain companies, certain industries, in particular the bottomed water industry, that because it's doing well, that that means other countries out there aren't able to provide safe, publicly accessible drinking water. And I'd take a little umbridge with that part of it, because it's not like the success of those industries is holding down the ability for

some countries to thrive. Right, Like say they were spending more on bottle water. It's just a kind of absurd. It's a comparison, yeah, essentially, but I didn't I guess I didn't like how they're kind of comparing, Like it made me think of like you can apply that to anything, Like, Hey, the reason there aren't mosquito nets on the other side

of the world because you're watching Netflix. It's like, well, like, if we all stop watching Netflix and sent that towards mosquito nets, there's probably doesn't necessarily equate to the other. And I think we should all have to have the freedom to certainly donate money in ways that we see fit. But I do agree that we are spending way too

much dinking money on bottled water here. We would recommend for folks to go out there get yourself a solid filtration system for your house, or just like a Britta Britta filtration pitcher, which is what we got in our little fridge. You literally just drink the straight up tap water. Homies like that, there's nothing wrong with it. Well, yeah, it tastes better when you filter it in, maybe, but barely. But the tap water we gas mostly fine. Come on,

it's mostly fine. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just the flavors that you get sometimes from the chlorination.

I'm not a huge fan of when I'm making my fancy coffee, which I'm going to be making more of after I get a maybe I get a nicer grinder, perhaps, but I as I was thinking about it, I think one of the reasons though, that we that Americans in general are folks all around the world go with bottled water is because it's just the convenience, right, Like, if you've got a bottled water, that means it's in the fridge. You can just go up to the fridge, grab it and walk away, and you've got a nice thing of

water there. But yeah, buying a reusable bottle and actually going through the process of filling it up, it only takes a second, but it'll save you a lot of money. We're wasting money, we're wasting plastic, and we're not really

getting much in return. So totally all right, let's talk about passports, Matt, because passport wait times are not great right now, that is maybe maybe an understatement, but the state Department is basically overwhelmed with the amount of passport requests that are coming in the front door, including both yours and mine. Although you paid the extra expedited fee

wisely because that looming over your head. Yeah, well you you'd got you were able to renew yours online and I had to go in person because mine had expired so long ago. Because heads up, when you have four kids, you don't do much international travel. Yeah, well so mine now still says two months later after having submitted it online, which I thought is crazy. I thought it was going to be a superior process. It still only says received, so it doesn't even say that it's in process, which

is super frustrating. I bet you'll get yours, like in a few days, I hope. So, yeah, I'm going to buy next Tuesday. I bet it's in your in your inbox, let's or what do you call it, mailbox, your actual mailbox, pray hand emoji's okay going after that one. But yeah, there's something they're trying to process, something like five hundred thousand passports a week, which is like laying thing. So I'm one of a lot of people getting lost in

the shuffle. And so just word of the wise, if you're planning on taking an international trip this year and your passport is expired or expiring, get on the ball, get the renewal process started now, and like I said, you can submit the renewal request online, which is a cool time saving feature, but allow yourself extra weeks beyond even what the state department is saying it's going to take, which I did, and I'm still fingers crossed hoping I'm

gonna get it in time. We will see, but don't don't delay, because it really could mess up your trip in a big way, costing you costing you even more or maybe even just days off your life as you sit there and stress about it. That's why I paid to get it expedited. I thought that it would be able to show up on time, I think, but again because I had to go in person and waiting the long stinking line, I was like, all right, I'm let's just go ahead and expedite it, which you know I'm

wishing I had. Yeah, but yeah, just to have it, I'll say, the new pass cheap. Not no, I think it'll show up very sing Joel. But it is also important to note that the expiration date on your passport, it's not necessarily the actual expiration date. And so what I mean by that is that most countries they don't want your passport to expire while you're there visiting. They want you to be able to get out of there

and go home. So a lot of countries in Europe require that your passport be valid for at least three months, like France, Germany, Italy, like the big popular countries that folks want to visit from the date of departure from the data exactly exactly, although there's probably less folks wanting to visit France these days. We'll get to that story here in a second. You might think, oh, my passport, it's just fine, I've got plenty of time left on it.

But the visiting country you're going to says, oh contrere no, no, no no, no, we don't You're not allowed in unless you've got at least three months left to go. Yeah, And honestly, there's a bunch of other countries that push that requirement out even further to six months, like the Cayman Islands, Malaysiani account is matt right the exactly, the United Arab Emirates they follow in this category as well.

So it's not there's a lot of countries out there that want you to show and to prove that hey, by the time you leave here your scheduled departure date. Your passport needs to be a good half year from expiring. That way, you don't run into any any sort of complications, any sort of difficulties. Yeah, so even if your passport is not technically expired, it might be treated like it is. And so if you are in that position, we would

recommend that you go ahead and get it renewed as well. Yep, totally. All right. So let's talk about retirement for a second and why you may not want to go and visit Paris. Yeah, well, there are multiple reasons maybe not to go visit Paris right now, Matt. As we're talking about retirement, let's talk about Macrone and what's going on kind of in Paris

right now in France in general. And my sister, my mom and dad, they were just over there visiting and they were talking to me about how the metro was shut down and there was kind of some different stuff going on there, flaming bags of trash in the streets. Not yet, they left right before the flaming bags of trash. Yes, so they got out just in the nick of time.

But why are things going haywire over in France? Well, it's because the president is trying to raise the retirement aids there from sixty two to sixty four and the French people they're just not happy about it. And so in fact, there are strikes across the country, fires in the streets, and unfunded liabilities are a problem that a lot of countries around the world are having to reckon with. Right as the average age of the population gets older.

There are countries that are worse off than France, right, like Japan, for instance. And someone has to be the adult in the room. And President Macron is attempting to, like my pronunciation there, you're doing yeah, all right, you've improved greatly, thank you from the beginning of this episode. So he's really attempting to be the adult here, and it might be to the detriment of his political career even and he finally kind of broke his silence this week and he said, do you think I enjoy doing

this reform? No, the longer we wait, the worst the situation will get. And so my question is when are politicians in our country going to do the same thing, When are they going to say, you know what matters the most is getting this right, not my own actually addressing the problem. Yeah, not my own political career and me getting reelected again. Yeah. Yeah, Now he's showing some

I actually appreciate what he's doing. He's showing some initiative, and he's actually being a leader, as opposed to politicians in our country who typically just continue to politic, yeah, instead of lead. And so on that note, on the note of our country, let's talk about social security, because it feels like it's a long way off to most how to money listeners, but it is always worth mentioning, right, it's worth putting into your head now that taking social

Security early is a bad idea. If you were to draw on it as soon as you are eligible, it could easily cost you tens of thousands, but it could even get up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So. A recent study found that roughly ninety percent of individuals would benefit financially by waiting until age seventy to collect their checks their Social Security, but less than ten percent

of retirees actually wait that long. So yeah, just something to keep in mind, especially if you are getting closer to retirement age, or you've got parents who are and they're healthy. There are plenty of good out there that you're going to live well into your nineties, so you know, getting that bigger check every single month for decades is

going to be a huge win. And you know, back in episode thirteen, we we actually talked about whether or not we can count on social Security being there by the time we you know, achieve allennials, in particularly allennials gen Z, reach retirement age, and you know, we think that it will still be there. We don't think it's going to be completely gone. But like France is dealing with right now, at what age will we be eligible to start drawing on Social Security and how much will

be available to us? That is certainly up in the air. So much depends on how long it's going to take for the politicians to address kind of the elephant of the room, Yeah, the actual problem and start making changes. And the longer we wait, the more drastic the measures are gonna have to be. Exactly And I think this is another reason too that we advocate for you to start investing, saving and investing for your own retirement. Take

the responsibility. Do you want to count on the government to figure this out by the time you reach retirement age, or do you want to take the reins in your own hands and steer that bad boy where you want it to see again, I think we basically said that most people should be able to assume that something like seventy five percent of the current payment payout of Social Security that even millennials and Gen z will be eligible for. But you definitely want to start planning for your own

retirement because even that wouldn't be enough. But hopefully our elected leaders take a page out of Macrone's book, and hopefully we as US citizens react a little differently. As I see the fires in the street, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that. We'll hold off a couple more years ago, let things calm down over emparised. Yeah, which I get, but still not the best way to proceed. Let's talk about cell phones for a second. Matt and cell phone plans.

Verizon announced a couple of weeks ago that they're going to be raising rates on some of their older cell phone plans. Not by much, talking like two dollars a month on a lot of these plans. But the additional fee is set to be added on April tenth, and it's not necessarily that this two dollars a month fee is what you should be repulsed by. This isn't going to break the bank, break the budget of most of

our listeners. Two bucks a month, like most people get to handle that, But it's it's the overall price that you're likely paying if you're on a Verizon phone plan, and two extra dollars should be the thing that finally gets you to switch. I should the yeah, that straw that breaks the camel's back. Yes, exactly. And so Americans, I think they're paying something around seventy five bucks for a single line on average for cell phone service every

single month. Those two much. It's not the two bucks, it's the seventy five versus the fifteen or twenty that they really could be paying, right, And so yeah, this this added fee, it really should be the last straw getting you to finally move your business to one of the major discounters like Mint, Visible Boost or Google five. Those are some of the best ones. That's right. Yeah, And so on that note, Mint Mobile they announced I guess was this last week or maybe in the week before,

but they are selling to T Mobile. And let's be honest, we're not thrilled about this, but we're also not despondent because T Mobile, you know, they've kind of been a disruptor in the cell phone space. It seems like over the years that they've sort of held the likes of Verizon and AT and T accountable in many ways. Again going back to the competition station, the more competitors there are, the better. Yeah, that's why we're not happy about Mint

getting bought out by T Mobile. But the fact that I don't know that T Mobile exists, I guess makes me happy. And Mint still really has some of the best cheap offerings and Team Mobile has made it sound like they're going to keep it that way. If they change things dramatically, it would I think it would be a massive mistake, Like why would you spend that much money on this growing, affordable brand only to jack their

rates up. It sounds like Ryan Reynolds he's still going to be involved, which I think that bodes well since he's basically who spearheaded Mint and the messaging so far, it's been that T Mobile is not planning to raise prices on the Mintmobile plans, which is good. So fingers crossed that Team Mobile that they stayed true to their word and if that isn't how things actually play out, you'll definitely be hearing about it right here. How the Money.

But in the meantime, we're going to continue to use our Mintmobile plans to the max. Yeah, they're great and we're big fans. We've used them for like three Well, we don't have the unlimited ones because we don't need them, not so the unlimited max correct to the cheapest gig amount we need max, but exactly, and you know, it's still one of the cheapest plans out there for sure that a lot of people should think about. And yeah, if Mintmobile all of a sudden goes Darth Vader takes

a turn for the worst or something like that, we will. Yeah, we'll report back, but hopefully not so Matt. That's going to do it for this episode. If you want show notes and you want links to any of the stuff that we mentioned, you can find those up on our website at howtomoney dot com. That's right, So until next time, Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.