Overcoming Common Financial Mistakes #275

you know. I Mean, there's all sorts of analogies I think we could throw. I'm not a gymnast, Mari, right, Yeah, Like, there's just there's so many ways. There's so many places we can go with this. Um. But but yeah, when we make a mistake, fixing it and learning from it is so crucial to being able to move forward in a positive manner. So yeah, we're gonna talk about that today because it has just a major impact on how

we progress in our financial lives. But Matt, before we get to that, I wanted to mention a website that I recently stumbled upon, and I think, especially since we're kind of in the Christmas shopping season, at this point in time that it might be helpful to a lot of people. It's called brick seek dot com. Brick seek and like you're looking for a brick, yeah, but it's brick seek um like yeah, and so it helps you find bricks locally to where you are. No, it's a

great website. You know, it's like a brick and mortar essentially, it's it's pointing you towards deals at brick and mortar shops and you know where you live there, and so it's it's pretty cool because in store deals can actually

be way bigger than online deals. Sometimes an individual store might put something just on a massive clearance, whereas like nationally you're online, you're not going to find that same price, or maybe even a market right like the whole Southeast sees one particular item go um at a major discount, and this website, brick seek, will identify some of those things. They'll they'll post some of the popular items that are

super cheap in certain retail locations. But then you can also search for items and maybe you'll find just a much better deal in a local brick and mortar store than you would ordering from an online retailer. So it's just like one more place that people can check in order to try to find a better price. Yeah, you can't beat those aggregators, right, because we don't have the time to to go from website to website trying to find the best deal. Sometimes you need an aggregator like

this calling all my local electronics retailers. And that's not what I'm gonna do. That's not not how I'm gonna spend my time making associates walk the aisles on prices for me. Dude, they don't even do that anymore. Like that's the thing. If you actually try to call up a place, very few employees are gonna say, yeah, let me go check check the price on that, Like they

won't do that. And so having I agreement, this is great, having the convenience of being able to shop online without paying sort of like that additional fee for shopping online and not looking for those local deals. I see this as as being a great site because man, I love shopping online. I do not like shopping in person anymore. I think store closures during the pandemic only kind of reinforce It's like, oh, yeah, this is this is how

things should be for me. Yeah, literally like things showing up. The only store I go into anymore, the grocery store. Seriously, Yeah, that's the way it feels. Specifically, Aldi, have you been up to Costco recently? You gotta make sure you have your mask though. That's right now you always have to wear a mask and costs me. Aldi. You know they implement the mask thing too, but I guess it just

wasn't like this national announcement like when Costco did it. Yeah. No, I've been to Costco a couple of times since the mask mandate went into place, and I feel like they've run things really really well, the top down communication to the employees and then the way the employees are implementing, you know, the social distancing at the checkout and stuff like that. They've done just a fantastic job through this. The real question is can you buy a box of

five masks at Costco? Not a five founder but I think you get a box of fifty yeah yeah, yeah, so, which is still like ten times more than what you could probably buy it Aldi, right, yea, which is like, here's a small package of five mask It's really cheap. And then get out of here exactly, return your card, take your quarterback. All right, man, let's go ahead and introduce our beer for this episode. We were drinking a

Hydrus double I p A. This is by Two Tides Brewing. Uh, this is another one that you picked up while you were down there with your bride down in Tybee for a little anniversary trip. Man, I'm looking forward to sharing this one with you on the show, and yeah, talking about it at the end of the episode too. All Right, but let's get onto the subject in hand for today.

Today we're discussing overcoming common financial mistakes. And some money mistakes are small and the impact is more like a blip on our radar, Right, it's not that big of a deal. Other money mistakes can be like an albatross and they weighs us down for for years to come. But whether our mistake is more of a bump of the road or if we've made a mistake that will impact us for a long time to come, it's important to learn how to overcome these mistakes so we can

move on and start kicking butt with our money again. Yeah, this episode, we're gonna cover some common mistakes that we make how we can pivot to handling money well. In those circumstances as well as some important behavioral changes we all need to make so that our mistakes don't weigh

us down for too long, creating like a quicksand like effect. Matt, you always like referring about to quicksand Yeah, and but like if we do that, if we let those mistake like overwhelm us and keep us down for too long, it does kind of make it harder for us to move forward. It feels like our our feet are stuck um and and so yeah, we have to talk about how to like get past those things once so they don't happen again and too, so that we can you know,

move forward a plow ahead. Yeah, you know my favorite quicksand reference uh Super Mario Brothers too. It's one of the underrated Super Mario Brothers, but the on the original and e s uh Super super Mario Brothers too had quicksand and that was the one where the levels were like vertical as well as horizontal, so you could like drop down quicksand drop down to different levels, pull turn ups and other vegetables up out of the ground. I think Superrio three was my favor, but two was well.

Three was through his classic because you could fly. But two is Yeah, that one was pretty good, so good to underrated for sure. Okay, let's let's get back to financial mistakes. Though. You know, I think that the biggest problem here isn't that we make mistakes, right, because we've talked about this. We all screw up from time to time. But in fact, I think the real issue is when

we don't learn from those mistakes. Right. You know, on the surface, this seems like maybe a pretty straightforward thing, right, you know, we make a mistake, we see the consequence is of it, and we learn and then we just need to avoid doing it again. Simple recipe, right. But the thing is, it's a little trickier than that, because you know, like you have to ask yourself, are you just addressing the symptom of your mistake or are you

actually getting to the core of the issue. That's why it's important to ask the question why are we bad with our money? Right? Well, it might give us a little bit of comfort to know that everyone does make some occasional money errors, that doesn't get us any closer to handling our own personal finances better. So yeah, let's go ahead and get to that. Let's let's address the

why here. Sure, Yeah, I think I'm gonna think First of all, it's just a really intimidating topic for a lot of people money in general, and when something's intimidating or a little bit scary, we tend to avoid those things. I think it's really the biggest reason why so many people make money mistakes. Money feels like a big bad boogeyman, and they're just don't want to go anywhere near it.

So like, for example, like a lot of people are intimidated by the idea of going to a gym to work out, right, all the types of fancy equipment, all the super fit folks there who know what they're doing. I mean, I'll be out hasting judgment on you once they see you walk through the door, Like look at this tall skin. You get exactly who's like, who's biceps invert? You know, like it's it's I feel like that is something that has kept me from going to the gym before.

It almost feels like you've got to get fit before you going the gym so you can fit in. But I think it's again similar with money, where um, where there's like a barrier to entry and we're a little freaked out and that definitely leads to a lot of mistakes that we make because we just avoid the subject altogether. Yeah, totally, man.

And you know, oftentimes I think the reason that it can be intimidating is because we're ignorant, right, Like that's not to say someone is a complete idiot, but that they just simply lack the knowledge about a specific topic. You know, Like personally, I'm ignorant of a lot of different things out there, Like a lot of times I was because I choose to like, there are things that don't pertain to me. But once we've identified that this is something I need to pay attention to, that's when

it's time to fix it, you know. And so in the gym example, like if I knew the proper way to say, perform a power clean, you know, even if I was just getting started working out, like I would be able to have the confidence and know that I'm doing it the right way that would give me the that would encourage me to continue going right. And the

same thing is true with our money. Most of us don't have parents who taught us many of these lessons, and so because that we lack the proper know how, and that's oftentimes a thing part of the reason why we are so intimidated as well, it's knowledge. Yeah, I completely agree. I think the lack of knowledge is definitely

an important key to this. And and we've talked about this before, just that almost none of us were taught about personal finances growing up in school or at home, and that definitely only increases the intimidation and ignorance factors. So consistently learning about money so you aren't in the dark about how to handle money well is important. And

know that you can't learn everything overnight. I think that's one thing people try to do, is like, can I imask everything I need to know about money in a few days or a week so that I'll be okay? And sometimes not the questions that we get even it's like I really want to fix this, but I want the quick solution, um, And there's not always a quick solution in just the nature of personal finances to it just takes a long time to save up your money.

It takes a long time to kind of straighten out your credit, you know, like it's it's one of those things. It's like inherently money takes time, right, and getting rich or getting wealthy like building wealth. It it's a slow burn, like it takes a lot of time, right, and compounding takes years and decades to happen. Um. But you can, I think, consistently work to increase your knowledge with podcasts, blogs,

and books once you realize that you're not informed. The knowledge gap I think is rarely an excuse with all the resources that are available. I think the intimidation factor makes sense, the ignorance factor makes sense, but there are ways to overcome those and part of that is to seek out that knowledge consistently. Um. And there are just a lot of people out there creating things to try

to support you in that. Yeah. And unfortunately, we live in a culture that we know tends to avoid talking about money, and we've seen that the more we avoid talking about something, the more it becomes taboo. And then you know, there's this perpetual cycle of individuals making poor money decisions. So it's important for personal finding for that

to become a more common topic. You know, it's not difficult for us to start, you know with maybe light or casual conversation with our friends, like you could maybe ask them, hey, like what did you do with the the stimulus check back? There, you know, back in the spring. It's something that we you know, most of us all received where you can ask them like hey, like where

you know, where do you bank? That's also something that's an easy question because like we all have our money somewhere and so starting there versus like hey, how much like what percentage of your of your paycheck do you save every single month? Like you know, like you want to warm up to that? Or what's your craft beer budget? That's another good question, right, get things started, Yeah, like

what is it that you spend your money on? Yeah? Yeah, And then also to we sometimes bank money mistakes when we when we have the proper knowledge, we know what we're supposed to do, right, So so it's not even a lack of that, but we allow emotions to get

the best of us. It's whether it's fear and someone ends up selling a bunch of funds in their retirement as the markets tanking right and you're just scared and that causes you to make a terrible money decision, or maybe it's fear of missing out or agreed when you're buying single stocks and companies you just don't know very much about. Maybe it was a Twitter stock tip that

you saw. You're just jumping in on the hype. Yeah, exactly, Or like somebody on CNBC randomly touted one company that's poised to shoot through the roof and you're like, all right, I'm in um, that is not a good idea, right. Sometimes we're our own worst enemies when it comes to how we handle our money, and oftentimes that is the behavioral side, the emotional side kicking in, even when we fundamentally know what we're supposed to do. Yeah, that's right, man.

So even though we we have the right knowledge, sometimes it takes us changing our behavior. And actually, later on in this episode, we're gonna talk about things that we can do, steps that we can take that will prevent us from making these mistakes, you know, ways that we can alter our behavior. But first me, let's get personal. You know, you want to share with listeners maybe a big financial mistake that you've made at some point. It was the Maserati I bought just yesterday. It was a

really bad decision. I thought you were gonna say, Mazda. I was like, I love that car. Almost the Maserati dog mad. But yeah, so I say, it's interesting. I actually haven't made a massive financial mistake. And it's not I'm not saying that to but but here's actually why

that's the case. Um, my parents actually made quite a few financial mistakes when I was a kid, and those years when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, I was like just incredibly impressionable and I saw just a lot of financial misteps that that just had a big impact on our family. And so it's not that I haven't made um financial mistakes in my life, but they've been really small, Like it's nothing that I can be like I was in fifty thou dollars of credit card tax

or anything like that. Like I actually have never paid a diamond interest to the credit card companies. But so much of that was essentially going through some of those money hardships earlier on UM and learning from somebody else struggling with money in my life, and so that was like really hard. That's actually part of the reason I'm so passionate about money education now and part of the reason this podcast means so much to get to create

this together. But if I had to pick the one thing about myself that that I've struggled with, I would say it's the getting something on sale mentality. They just lasted for a long time, and I still struggle with a little bit, right. It's like, oh, if that's a deal, I want to get it even if I don't need it, even if I don't need it, and I might not even use it sometimes. I mean, I've fallen into that trap.

And so just that sale mentality has been my biggest financial mistake that I've had to grapple with consistently over the years. But now that that's out of the way, I want to know yours well. I mean that being said, I feel like maybe you have improved because prime Day came and went, man, and like you said several weeks ago, you didn't buy a single thing. So it's not a

zero you've Yeah, you've gotten better at it. Man. Uh. But as far as my financial mistakes, I feel like mine were made mostly between the age of sixteen and twenty one or twenty two. I lived really frugally, like most of all of our mistakes in life. That's honestly probably true. Man, Like the biggest learning period, right, it's like your brain isn't fully developed yet, you know, not like what you're twenty three, you think you're grown Oh

my gosh, yeah, you have some money. Uh. In my case, specifically in college to like, I was living really really frugally. But however, ever, since I was a teenager up until that point, I was really into cars, not like really fancy, high end, nice cars, but like I just had a certain type of car that I liked, and then after a couple of years, you know, I wanted to switch it up, and so I'd sell it and then get another one and kind of fix it up a little bit.

I was really into SUVs. I may have even installed like a fancy bumper with a winch on on one of my one of my SUVs back in the day. But I always said a lot of money on vehicles, you know, like I could have still had a decent Jeep, although that's a whole other story because jeeps, you know, cost so much money to maintain. But even having just maybe purchased one of those instead of multiple Jeeps over the years, I made some, yeah, some bad mistakes, and because of that, I was parted with a lot of

that money early on. That's I guess a regret that I have, Like looking back, I'm like, how so dumb, But at the same time, being able to make some of those like slightly smaller mistakes back in the day. That's an important part of growing up, right, And so I had I not made those errors early on, maybe I would be making larger mistakes today. Maybe I wouldn't be saving maybe you know, I wouldn't be doing smarter

things with my money. But but yeah, hopefully kind of through that learning process, I think that certainly helped me to to become who I am today. Yeah, I think that's a that's just a positive way to view the mistakes that we've made. I think sometimes I'm just trying

to spend it dog. I think sometimes in our culture we tend to glorify failure or completely run away from it, Right, Like when we look at entrepreneurs who like failed twice, but then their third company was just this massive success, where Like there could be the sense in which that that failure is almost glorified, and it's like, look, the failure led me to hear um. And we don't want to like glorify We're not trying to encourage failure, right, But but there is a sense too in which we

we might failure shame um. And so I think we want to take a stand somewhere in the middle where we say, you know what, we're not like pro failure, but those failures will hopefully lead us to to learn something and to make a positive change so we can move forward. Well, but yeah, we just shared our money mistakes. We'll get to kind of some other common ones and then how we can go about fixing those mistakes learning from them. And we'll get to that right after this break.

All right, man, we are back from the break. We're talking about overcoming common financial mistakes, and so we you know, we talked about why it is that we make these mistakes in the in the last section. Uh, now let's talk about you know what some of these common financial mistakes are. Uh. One of those that we definitely want to cover is spending more than we bring in every single month. Sadly, way too common. Yeah, a lot of

us have have been in that position. Uh, And unfortunately that leads to an inability to create any financial breathing room in our lives. Right then, because of that, there is there tends to be a reliance on credit cards, which then often leads to debts and which and that

exacerbates the problem. Right. And the thing is, man, it's not just people who make minimum wage that this impacts, you know, people of all sorts of different income levels are the ones who are struggling with this um It also makes me think about too, like there are two sides of the equation here. If you're not making enough money, you can spend less and you can earn more. But the reason that we're focusing on spending less is because

you can always earn more money. But if you haven't mastered this principle of spending less than you make, you are always going to to raise your spending to meet that, you know, that level that you're earning. And so I feel like in this case, spending lesson you make is sort of an important principle to to have mastered before we even start talking about earning more money, you know, like it's just so foundational to getting ahead with your

personal finances. Yeah, that's true. And I think this is such a big deal, Matt because when you don't have any financial breathing room, it increases your stress levels and it inhibits your ability to actually save for the future and the goals that you have for down the road

in your life. Like if you're exhausting every bit or more of what you're bringing in, you're robbing your future self and you're making sure that those goals that you have set out for yourself either aren't going to come about or it's gonna be a million times more difficult because you're gonna have bigger hurdles to overcome. So instead of overspending every month, it's really important to cut your spending and to do it quickly. And Matt, now we've

talked about different ways to do that. We had a recent episode about seven ways to save more money this week, just like about a month ago, and go back and listen to that, because there were a lot of easy ways to cut your spending to to bring money back into your life. Um, but they're they're just so many other ways you can go about it too. And I think you're just in a really bad shape, then you

you need to get help. And uh, we've mentioned these websites before, but NFCC dot org or money management dot org or two great websites to go to where you can talk to somebody for free and not for profit debt counselor if you're in a really bad spot and you've been doing this for way too long, that's the direction that that Matt and I would encourage you to go in. Yeah, let's talk about becoming a payment buyer. Man.

This is one of the ways that we're able to easily fall into this trap of spending more than we make. You know, only focusing on the payments is a symptom of just getting way too comfortable with that. We we think, oh, I can afford a six dred dollar a month car payment, you know, without thinking about the overall cost of that car, and we we stretched the payments out for seven years instead of three or four, which which would just make so much more sense financially in our lives because we

become payment buyers. Yeah. And unfortunately too, it's it's not just on big things like a car. Um Like, folks are getting payment plans for anything from cloths to to donal work to a new h VAC. Recently saw that Microsoft they are are kind of doing this with the new Xbox um. Instead of having to pay like five bucks up front, they're having folks sign up for this payment program that's stretched out over twenty four months over

two years. Uh, and this isn't good, you know. They they're doing this obviously to soften the blow of this massive expense in a lot of individuals lives. The real problem here isn't that it's a monthly payment. It's the fact that they can't get out of it. They're locked into it. Like if you like read the fine print, it's a no interest loan and it's not something you

can get out of. Like that's the real problem, you know, Like I don't mind having being signed up for subscriptions, Like I've got software that I'm a you know, subscriber to where you know, every month there's like a tin Bucks that, you know that comes out of my account. It's kind of annoying, but I get it. But the fact is I could pull the plug on that at any point. It's when you're locked in like this and you haven't thought about those long term ramifications, like that's

when I think it can really bite you in the butt. Yeah. And you mentioned that that these companies do it to try to help soften the blow, and and that's why we do it too, Like we we want to soften the blow to our budget, and we think that it makes the most sense to pay something out over time, but oftentimes that means you know, paying interest. Um, that

we wouldn't otherwise have to pay. Oftentimes it means buying something that we can't actually afford if we have to stretch out the payments, right, So, if you can't afford that piece of clothing on whatever website offering to allow you to stretch the payments over six months or a year, if you can't afford to buy it now, straight up, you shouldn't be buying it. Um. Those are the kind

of decisions that we we have to make. Becoming a payment buyer is just far too common in our society, and it's something that we should probably all start to avoid a whole lot more. It's it's gotten too easy to borrow money for really small items that we should

just be paying for all at once. Yeah. I feel like every single one of those additional payments is just like one more string in this sort of like not a tangled mess that becomes your finances exactly, yeah, completely all R. Let's talk about another common financial mistake in it's neglecting your credit score. There's a segment matt of Personal finance and that think that credit scores are meaningless you know who you are, But but that ain't true, right, Uh?

They influence so many things in our lives. Your credit score actually is important to stay on top of, right, And so like staying on top of it, working to raise your score will ensure that you qualify for lower rates, it will help you get lower insurance premiums, and it could even be the deciding factor in getting a new job. You know, some jobs look at your credit score, um depending on what sector you're working in and if there

are security clearances involved. Right. We kind of broke that down in episode ten in episode one, Third Team, we talked about rebuilding a rough credit score. But this is just a facet of your personal finances where if you play dumb or you choose not to think about it, you're costing yourself a lot of money and a lot of potential headache. Credit scores are important, and so you can't neglect it. Yeah, And at the same time, it's also important to point all that credit scores are, at

the end, all be all. You know. I think sometimes folks can put maybe too much emphasis on the credit score, and they're they're almost even willing to do kind of dumb things just to get their score a little bit higher. Perfect eight fifty and and what you're at that level, it does not matter. But obviously if you have a score that's hurting, you want to make sure you're taking

proper steps to to heal that credit score. But at the same time, I think it's it's one of those things that I think money nerds can kind of fixate on where they're just like, I gotta get the perfect score. There's a sweet spot, just like everything right exactly, I gotta gotta find that balance. One other common financial money mistake that folks make is just not paying yourself first,

or you know, like putting off investing. Basically maybe you've cut yourself saying this where you say, like, oh, I'll do it someday, you know, like that's a common refrain, or well I could only invest a little bit, so like I'll wait to until I have a little bit more. That might be the mindset, that might be the angle that you're taking. But every single dollar that you begin investing now is going to sort of like take on this life of its own, you know, beginning the incredible process,

this beautiful process of compounding your wealth over time. Even if you can only invest you know, five, ten or twenty bucks a month, please get started uh. And you can even look to just apps to help you as well, different little tactics that will give you this psychological boost. You can look to the apps like Acorn. They can help you to to trick yourself into saving more if you're looking for ways to kind of get some traction,

get the ball moving forward. Yeah, and I think, especially in recent years, Matt, this excuse of like, well, I don't have very much to invest, it's kind of gone by the wayside, especially as the major low cost investment platforms have instituted really small minimums or no minimums at all to begin the process. Right, So you don't have to have a couple thousand dollars to get started. You

really can get started with five dollars. So great, man, Like, we are seriously living in like the golden era of the democratization of personal finance. Like the knowledge is there, the access is there. You don't have to know a guy like you can just download the app and get started it. It's amazing. Yeah, yeah for sure. So, yeah, that is a big money mistake, and there are ways to overcome that mistake. Right. So those are just a

few of the common ones who wanted to highlight. But let's talk about the overcoming part of it, Matt, how do we overcome money mistakes in general? Let's get to some strategies for how we identify and they start fixing those mistakes to to make progress. We'll get to that right after this break. Alright, Joel, we are back for

the Brakeman. We're talking about financial mistakes. We've talked about some of the specific ones that we see a good bit, So let's talk about how to kind of move forward after, you know, making a money screw up. And first of all, the first thing that you need to do is to admit your mistake. Right. This is tougher than it sounds. Most of us don't like to admit our failures. When we mess up, we either pretend that they, you know,

didn't happen, or we try to minimize them. Uh So, like we're talking earlier, right, But by admitting your mistake and facing it straight on, that's just so crucial to overcoming and actually making some forward progress. Yeah, you and I are no different than any other human in that regard. Right. I think it's hard for me to fest up to failures or to admit a mista ache, and and to me, I think it sounds simple, but in reality, it's fighting

every instinct in our body to admit that we were wrong. Um, And so it's funny. I was actually on a podcast recently, a parenting podcast who which one of my friends hosts, and he asked me a piece of advice about how you relate to kids, just like the last question they ask every guest, And my piece of advice was to apologize to your kids. I think there's something so powerful about admitting a mistake, and especially admitting a mistake to

to your children. It creates a sense of trust and it creates a sense of humility in the parent at the same time, like I don't always get it right, and that's just like I think it's such an important dynamic in parenting, but also when it comes to money. Yeah, that's so true, man. I think, you know, apologizing like that and admitting mistakes, it can be difficult to do

when like your pride is on the line. But I feel like as I've gotten older, and it's in particular when you have kids, like I don't care about my pride nearly as much as as I used to. It's gone out the window. Yeah, Like I don't have time for pride. Let's just correct the mistakes, move forward. Let's make sure we're taking the right steps. Let's make sure we're being caring. Let's make sure we're doing the right

thing with their money. Right. And so when you're changing like poopy diapers and you're getting like spaghetti, you know, cleaning spaghetti stains off the walls and stuff like that, Like, yeah, your your expectations for a lot of things go down, all right, So we're talking about admitting your mistake, Like that's the context here. We're talking about how to kind of broadly overcome any mistake out there. So that's the first thing. Admit your mistake. Next, let's talk about minimizing

the damage. Right, Can you quickly turn the tables and go in a different direction after you've made a mistake. Some of these errors are going to be more easily remedied than others. For instance, maybe you haven't been investing right, like it's just been kind of on the back burner. Well, that's something you can get up to speed, uh, and and kind of resume that pretty quickly and pretty easily.

On the other hand, let's say you have a mortgage that's too costly for your budget, Like that's gonna be a little bit more difficult, but even still, there are ways to minimize that, right. Uh, it just might take longer. You could rent out a room, maybe you can even sell your home to downsize, or you can kind of rent that house out. There are ways that you can correct these wrongs, ways that you can of mine the damage. It could be a quick fix or it might be

something that takes you know, months or even years. Yeah, and Matt, we were just talking about pride. Sometimes to minimize the damage, it means doing something that that brings a little humility into your life, and it does mean letting go of some of your pride because maybe you don't want to rent out a room in your house when your family lives there. It's a little embarrassing. It might be embarrassing and the kids might be like, huh, who's living down in the basement now, But it's one

of those things where it's your new uncle, Tony. That's one of those things to write the financial ship to overcome the mistake, you might have to do something that is going to eat into your pride in order to get your finances back on the right track. So, yeah, just one of those things right, to minimize the damage is super important. Um. And on that note, Matt, the sunk cost fallacy is an important thing to kind of

mention here. I think there's so many ways in which we could easily see how the sunk cost fallacy impacts us, but often in the moment it's hard to recognize. Like, like how we keep reading uh, really crummy book because we feel like we're pot committed. I'm like, fifty pages in, I want to know what happens, even though it's a boring read. But we do the same thing with financial decisions. Well, I guess I have to keep that car because I

have a payment for the next three years. No, you don't have to do that, right, even if you're gonna lose money on the transaction or you're a little upside down, you gotta bring some money to the table to get rid of that car, it still makes sense to get out from under it in order to avoid losing even more money in the future. So yeah, I think when we're talking about minimizing the damage, we have to overcome the stunt cost fallacy at the same time. And once

you've minimized the damage, once you stop that bleeding. We can begin to move forward, and an important part of moving forward is to not make that mistake again. Right. I feel like that's part of the healing process, is to not reopen that wound. Is the tourniquet. Uh, it's important to you know, to remember the pain of a previous money mistake, but then to implement changes that will

help you to avoid making that same mistake again. So let's continue with that new car example that you just said. It's not a terrible decision for everybody right to get a new car. But if you did purchase a new vehicle and you have a problem affording the payments, or maybe you realize that it's not worth the money, well, next time, stick to a car that's gonna be more

affordable that you can buy with cash. However, if you don't learn from your mistake and you do the same thing again, basically you're kind of just digging yourself into the same hole again. It's clear that you haven't learned from that mistake and that's not the position you want to find yourself in. Yeah, that that happens to a lot of people mat where they earn a car for a couple years and they're like I don't really like

this one. I want another one. And they trade in that car, they roll in the old loan into a new one. They oh, way more than the new car is worth by far now because they've essentially a double down on the mistake. And it sounds like me in college minus the payments. I never did it with payments, thank goodness. But but yeah, so Matt, when we say stop making the mistake, I feel like it's often easier

said than none. And I think stating it that way to someone, it's probably not a really helpful thing to say just stop doing It's just stop doing it. Man's

putting an idiot. But we're trying to provide, Like within that phrase, I think there's a whole lot we can unpack, right, Yeah, Well, so earlier we talked about our behavior, like even though we might know the right thing to do, like we have knowledge, right, Like that's the solution to not knowing, Like if you don't know how to do something, you

get knowledge, then you know how to do something. But then additionally, behavior, like that's the other aspect of it that we need to make sure that we're staying on top of. Because even though we know the right thing to do. That doesn't always mean that we are going to actually do the right thing right right. Yeah, So so let's talk about some of those positive behavioral steps so we can take, and one of them is getting

some accountability, like a personal finance partner for life. It's just really helpful to have someone to talk with about earning money, saving and investing, and definitely someone to talk about before you make a major purchase in your life or have a major expense, someone to bounce things off of. Whether that's your partner, spouse, best friend, um, uncle, aunt, like, it doesn't matter, but find somebody who knows a little bit more than you. It can kind of help you

be thoughtful about your money. I think it's such an underrated thing right in the money space, is to have someone that you can talk to and have frank conversations about the things that you're going through. Yeah, I mean I would even counter because you said, like, look to somebody who maybe knows a little bit more than you or might be like kind of further down that path.

But even just talking to appear like somebody who isn't you, like somehow like what we're trying to do here is get you out of your own head because so often it's so easy for us man to stay like siloed and isolated within our own worlds, where people have no idea what's going on with our money. We can make purchases, they show up disguise in these brown cardboard boxes, so nobody knows what we're getting and what we're bringing into

our lives and we're spending all of this money. But just opening yourself up to being able to talk about these things with somebody else is so important. And you know, we talked about reducing the amount of taboo around personal finance by just striking up a conversation with a friend. But that's I mean, that's the first step in getting

a personal finance partner, right. You want to make sure you're able to have a good conversation with somebody, and if that's somebody who you can then kind of take that conversation further. Who doesn't run away screaming because they started talking about money? That I mean, that's essentially an accountability partner. Uh. And I know Joel like for you and I like you. We have found our relationships so

incredibly help full in this way. Basically how the podcast started, you know, we would kick around these you know, personal finance ideas, are investing in real estate back and like that was essentially kind of how it started. But that's just so helpful for us to have somebody to to kind of be like, hey, what do you think about this, or like, I'm thinking about doing this. Uh, It's so

incredibly helpful. Obviously, in both of our cases, we both have wives, and so like, our spouses are such an important part of our lives obviously, but they should be a big part of everybody's personal finances as well. Like, I think when individuals kind of have their own money where that's a topic of conversation that never ever comes up, I think that's not super healthy. I think it's okay to have your own money where you have like you know, it's earmarked for you and you can spend it however

you however you want. That's you know, that's fine. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the conversation of your money together. I think it's so important to make sure that if you have a partner that you're committed to, that that's something that you are talking about. Yeah, And I think it's okay when one partner kind of

shares the burden of most of the money load. We all divvy up chores in different ways in our house, right, But but I think it does need to be probably at least along the lines of like an eight twenty where where the partner who's less involved needs to be involved to a certain degree. Right, Because if you're completely checked out of the conversation, um, I just don't think it's good overall for for the health of your relationship

and the health of your finances. Yeah, it doesn't put you as an individual in a great position down the road or or anything you know, unfortunate or weird to come up, Yeah, for sure. And that one other really important tool to help us stop making the mistakes is to increase the level of automation in our personal financial lives.

And we all have moments of clarity when we're more likely to make the right decision, and during those rational moments, that's when we should be setting up the rules that dictate where our money goes. That way, in times of forgetfulness, when our willpower might not be as strong like we're

we're still set up to do the right thing. And whether that's automatically paying your credit card in full every single month so you don't forget um to pay that bill, or automatically increasing your four one K contribution every single year. Setting things up once and then taking them off of your months to do list is so key to avoiding

potential mistakes in the future. Right, So yeah, I think having that personal finance accountability partner and then increasing the level of automation in your life there's just two really really robust methods for stopping making some of the mistakes that we commonly make and that might pop up again

and again. Totally, Yeah, dude, I think there are some folks who might kind of discount automation a little bit because they're like, oh, that's not you're not really like doing the hard work of like making sure you're you're staying disciplined and doing the right thing. But obviously we don't feel that way. We feel that automation is such

an important tool. Well, money shouldn't be like boot camp, man, you know, like at times it might need to be, but but for the most part, like money is fairly easy once you know the rules and you can automate some things. And here's why it's an eternal bootcamp you're gonna fet your life exactly. Uh. And here's the thing too. Once you set up these, you know, methods of automation, what I find really interesting is the fact that this is happening over and over. I think it begins to

change how you view things. And so even though maybe once, like you said, Jill, like in a moment of clarity, you thought through, this is how this is where I want my money to go, this is how I want to invest it, or this is how I want to make sure I stay on top of my credit card. Well, even immediately following that, even if like you don't really care about that, or like maybe you're even kind of like annoyed at yourself for having done that because you

want to do something else with your money. Over time, as those payments are made or or as those deposits are are automatically deposited into your retirement account, I feel that that becomes a part of who you are. Your identity becomes sort of attached to these things because you are doing it, like these are things that you've set in motion. Those actions and those behaviors, even though they're automated, I think we still sort of absorb those and they

become a part of who we are. So I had to say, I don't feel that automation is like a cheat code or any sort of shortcut, because I feel that those repeated actions, that behavior happening on a regular basis like that it shapes who we become. I think you're right, Matt, and I think just like habits have a big impact on our lives, right, forming those good habits just ensure that we're going to do the right

thing consistently. But if we have to force ourselves continually to try to do the right thing, it's so much harder. So so let's for the habit. Let's start the automation process, because it's just gonna make it easier on us. Man, We're humans prone to mistakes, and automation is just gonna help us prevent some of them. And I think the last thing really to talk about here when while we're

discussing overcoming financial mistakes is to let it go. Sometimes we have to let it roll off our back, you know, like water off a duck's back. ELS's style, Matt, can you sing that let it go? My daughter is definitely could and I can't see, but not on the podcast, all right, yeah, we've we've definitely you've sang a couple of times on the podcast before. But it's true, that's we don't want to hear that one. Let's let's make it a rare thing. The range is too high. You

know that's too high. But I think, um, letting it go. Not defining yourselves, like you were talking about, the more we automate things, the more we take the right moves, the more we define ourselves positively. Not defining ourselves by the mistakes that we've made is crucial to So whether it was a lack of knowledge, like if you've just known better, you might not have made the poor decision, well,

don't let it get you down for long. Not letting those mistakes live in your mind and kind of haunt you is key to moving in a more positive direction. Beating yourself up really accomplishes nothing, right. That's what we talked about some of these other methods for overcoming mistakes, because that's the method that I think we're prone to. It's just like replaying the scenario over and over in our minds and giving ourselves grief over the mistake that

we've made. Um And ultimately that's not going to have any positive effects preventing you from future mistakes. So let it go, be done with it. Yeah. Again, this makes me think of Burnet Brown. I've mentioned her on the show before, but her book Daring Greatly, she talks about the difference between shame and guilt. Right. Shame is when you say that like I am a bad person, But then guilt is realizing that like, yeah, I made a mistake, I did a bad thing, But how can I move forward? Uh?

And she just talks about how guilt is so much better than shames. So we're saying, don't shame yourself. However, do accept the fact and fest up to the fact that you're guilty. You know, if you have made a mistake, and I think it's okay to remind yourself of that pain, uh, you know, to help you to avoid that again in the future, but look forward, like how can you take what you've learned? Uh, and to ensure that this isn't a mistake that you'll make again. Yeah for sure, Matt.

All right, Hey, let's move on to the beer that we had on that to the beer. Let's do it. This one was called hydrus a double I p A by two tides brewing out of Savannah. What were your thoughts on this one? Man, Dude, this is another fantastic beer from a beach brewery. Like I teased about on the last episode. They might take exception to you calling him a beach brewer because Savannah is not a beach town like is but but not Savannah. Yeah, it's a

really cool place. I feel the historic film they filmed parts of forest come there, dude, they feel they filmed everything there. Now because of the Georgia tax credits, you're right for the movie industry. But dude, this is a fantastic New England style I p A. This is a double dry hop double I p A. This is simply what that means is it's just a little bit bigger

and flavors. It had a lot more hot punch to it had those nice, delicious bitter notes while at the same time being balanced with a juicy U I p A Like this. Man, I really enjoyed this one. And this is a single that you and I are actually sharing. Sometimes you and I we have our own beer, but then sometimes we will share a beer. Just it just depends on how it, you know, depends on what you bring back. Basically, eight ounces each on this one. Yeah, so this is a tall boy that you and I split,

so we we both only got eight ounces. I could totally have gone for a full sixteen ounces of this. Just note note for next time. Okay, alright, I will know this. Yeah, this was really good. I think I think you're right. It did really balance the bitter and the suite, which I p A is like a really good I PA can have both notes going on simultaneously and I can give you the best of both worlds. And so yeah, I just I really appreciated that um

packed with a ton of hot flavor. I'm I mean, I've just been massively impressed with everything I had from Two Tides. This was great. Yeah, I'm looking forward to checking them out because, like I mentioned before, my brother in law is moving down there, and so I'm every single time we're we go down there, I'm definitely gonna make sure to to swing by there. And I appreciate you. Thanks for I bring this one back for us. Man, happy to do it, man, Alright, Mat, that's gonna do

it for this episode. And for folks that want show notes for this episode, just go to our website how to Money. We've got other resources there too, including articles that will help you save more money. And if you've been listening to the show for a while and you found it helpful and enjoyable. In particular, if you've really enjoyed this episode, we would be incredibly thankful if you were to head over to Apple Podcast leave us a solid review over there, and maybe you've already done that.

We'll let a friend or family member know about the show or a treasured pet only if they have opposable thumbs and can subscribe on their smart device. Well, that's gonna be it for this episode, Joel. Until next time, Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,