33-Year-Old Won’t Stop Fighting With Me

28:45I mean, just because I don't carry it with me doesn't mean I don't have it. Oh, you mean? No, okay. That's what I'm saying. Wait, did you not have a debit card? I do. This is where I'm trying to shape. you know this is where like i understand that i don't make the best decisions i'm trying to shape them that's where i don't necessarily want to be put down for the previous decisions i'm trying to shape them down but i am trying to call out what's bull what you don't need to do well i don't feel like i'm necessarily disagreeing with you that it's all of it's bull i just disagree with you that not all of it has to be there you know there's going to be a necessary certain amount of bull**** that happens in life.

29:22And I feel like that's where a safety net comes. That's where, hey, 30 % of your fund, okay, well, maybe you don't spend all of your 30 % on your fund. No, that's fine, but that's when you're out of bad debt. You're not out of bad debt. I mean, I don't feel like a ton of my debt is horrible. No, there's okay debts, and we can talk about those, but you do have some bad debts. I feel you're trying to jump steps. You're trying to get to the point where you're able to fall to 30-20. Honestly, I just feel like this$2 ,000 is relatively small compared to what I'm trying to pay off. You know, in the beginning of this year, it was over$6 ,000.

29:54I just had to actually take the chunks out and pay it. No, but why not have the$2 ,000 be$0? That's what I'm working on. You're just in the middle of it. But you're not working on it as hard as you should be because we're doing, again, Taco Bell, Taco Bell, King, Big Daddy, Chipotle, King, Texas, the Grill, and Gnome, and Bad Badger, and Scarborough Fair, and Taco Bell, and Tommy Express, and Best Hot Dog, Liquor Store, Fish City Grill, and the Zoo. Not allowed to go to the Zoo. It's not about not being able to go to the zoo. It's about priorities. You are prioritizing fun over just getting into a situation where your life is better for the future.

30:30I don't feel like I'm prioritizing fun. I feel like it is involved with it. By swiping the card, you prioritize fun. That's not a priority. I mean, I feel like. But you chose it. If I can make the payment, I don't feel like it's full of priority. If I can't make the payment. Why is interest accruing on it then? if you can fully make the payment why is interest occurring i feel like i over prioritized too many things before i feel like some of this is going to be normal stuff that is mixed in you know that's why i'm trying to actually figure this out with you and a lot of this is without you know a certain part of income that we don't include you know what i mean like some of this is food and things like this for us some of this was honestly just good morale for different parts of work like big daddy's donuts you know and i know that doesn't sound that's like why are you spending 30 dollars at donuts well because i want i'm trying to take and help boost morale at work on some things you know and i don't know why don't you boost the morale of your future instead though because that is my future i work there and if i'm unpleasant there then that's i have no future you need donuts to work?

31:38Not necessarily, but I need to feel pleasant. That's where part of this is at. That's a cope. That's a hard cope. There's a lot of people cope with a lot of things. You talk to a lot of people about going to vape shops, going to this, going to that. A lot of mine is unnecessary food, which I discussed in the beginning. I said that. That's a part of our coping that my family does, that we spend time together doing food. Fish City Grill, going to the zoo, going to these things. Yes, they are coping mechanisms, but I'm also spending time with my family doing it. No, of course, but we can have lots of...

32:08I understand that it's relatively irresponsible to pay a certain amount of interest for that fund, and I'm working on that. I just, you know, I feel like there's certain amounts of these that, yes, they'll slow down, and, yeah, I'm trying to not go to Chipotle. We're going to H-E-B, and we're trying to plan out meals better, freeze this meat, and use it later on in the week. Sometimes I fail at that, and that's where these pink things are involved. But you can't discredit somebody for being better as well. You know, there's certain parts of this that. I'm not trying to shame you for that or anything, but we're living on two different planets when we're just determining what is good in this situation.

32:48I want you guys to spend time together. We can do that in parks and picnics, the same meal that you would eat for dinner. We can pack up who we can take to a park and stuff. Like, it doesn't have to be Chipotle. It doesn't have to be a zoo. but you did hit something that was very important that I'm glad you acknowledged that it's a cope, fundamentally a cope. What I would rather deal with that in a mental health way in something other than these avenues that are digging us, preventing us from fully digging out of the hole as quick as we should have. Right. And that's where I feel like that's part of my learning process.

33:20Another reason why I'm here. I understand that it's hard to get out of that as fast as I could but it doesn't mean I'm not doing it. you can't you know you that's a part of i guess of uh positive reinforcement that i'm better at than negative reinforcement well you're never gonna make it if you're going slow well if i'm going slow to me i'm still not gonna make it you know at the beginning of this year i had over six thousand dollars on that card now i've got two thousand dollars with several you know payments in plan you know of course it sucks to get rid of some of the cash that i've pigeonholed away for fun but i've already had the fun so now i'll get rid of it i'll make the payment and then i'll be happy mr caleb credit card guy you know what i mean i hope we'll see it's not living there right now but we're talking in circles so i'm gonna move forward to there's there's not another credit card right we talked about the exxon uh i have chase i i mean i have let's see lowe's and a home depot car but i don't use them i i purchase something on them and then i'll pay that off just to keep the line of credits open.

34:20Yeah, like small, like a couple bucks a month or something? No, like I pay them relatively right off. No, no, no, but like the spending, just like a couple bucks a month? Every few months I might buy something. You know, just enough to keep them from closing out. Now, checking account,$4 ,000 in here, this is awesome. Not much happens in here, it's just transferring things back and forth. Right, this is where all my bills basically get taken right out of that from my checking. Yeah, for sure. And that's okay. This home equity thing, it says what's in there. Is this like your – Independent and EECU were just actually some balances that I kept in different branches.

35:04Okay, so this is a balance that you have access to of$2 ,000? Yes, that and EECU. Okay, so we have$2 ,165.79. Okay, sir. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm glad you have it saved, but come on. Let's move this over to my boy. You can put your money where I put my money so far, where you get at least like 4.3 % interest and sign-up bonuses. If you do this plus the direct deposits, dude, I think you would get like up to$250 for free in bonuses, just moving that over. And then you'd at least be keeping up with where inflation came in last month. And then, yeah, you're a little under. Well, definitely you're a full point under where they are here at the 3.18%.

35:48But I am glad to see we have an additional$2 ,148 in this one. So this is good. We're getting like$4 ,500, close to. And then 0.01 % and a Chase savings, an additional$3 ,000. Now, does all this money exist or has this gone anywhere else still? No, it's all there. Those three accounts. Yes. The only things that really get used all the time are my Chase credit card, the Exxon for gas, and then my Chase checking, which my bills come out of. I don't use a debit card. I don't really – I use a check for my mortgage. So that is a check out of there. But otherwise, it's all just – there's no reoccurring dumb payments, I guess, out of there.

36:30Sure. $25 ,000 in your retirement account? A little bit more than that now. I guess that was – Like what,$30 ,000? It's like$20 ,000. Yeah, about$29 ,000, I think. We're definitely a little behind for 33. Not terribly, but a little behind. Well, I am very happy with your situation with the house and the equity that has been built on this house from when you bought it and then likely getting to a lower interest rate. And then just, yeah, the equity that's in that house now. So that's really good. And then what you have invested in here, similar stuff to what I have invested in general, just across different small cap, mid cap, large cap, international, and a few bonds as well.

37:06So that's all chill. What I would do, we have savings, and this is an easy win to me because you're literally losing money on it. You have$7 ,338 in savings. I'd pay off the card,$2 ,000, take that down to$5 ,000. Now, I would do that while you're sitting there, honestly, but you can do what you want to do, but that's what you should do. Well, I have some cash that I prefer to use that on, you know, and maybe move that somewhere. Wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I have some cash that I keep pigeonholed that I would prefer to use to pay off the credit card. Well, why not just pay it off with the savings and then put the cash back into the savings?

37:51It's the same thing. I'm a small town guy. Once it's on there digital, I would prefer to move it digital. The cash, I prefer just to take it up to the bank to pay on what I'm paying. Yeah, but you are losing interest on it. So I would rather let's just pay it off today and then just replace it or just with the cash. Because mathematically, it's the same thing in the end. I understand psychologically for you it feels different, and I do respect that and understand that. Do I lose any more interest by the next payment date? I mean, at this point, the next payment date is so close. Instead of just making...

38:23Well, it's$2 ,000 on there, so you will get hit with interest. But you're also losing money by two of these accounts sitting in no interest funds. so I would at least move them either into the one you had at 3 % or SoFi at the 4.3. Link in the description below. But I would pay it off because, again, at the 25 % interest rate on there, no matter where that money is being held, if it was in the S &P 500 based on historical results, you're still losing by 15 % having the$2 ,000 on the credit card. So I would absolutely cut that from the savings, drain the one that's like$2 ,165 with no interest, pay it off, consolidate the savings into one and then boom good how much is in your wife's retirement i don't know man okay so pretty similar 35 000 uh so we're behind as a uh two-person household but that's okay we're gonna start amping that up because you're gonna get rid of that credit card we're gonna follow a budget and then you guys are gonna uh live an awesome life in terms of investing.

39:29So please just pay that credit card off today and then replenish. Let's figure out your emergency fund. Okay. Well... Oh, we didn't mention anything about my savings bonds. I know those are silly, but... Oh, well, how much do you have? About$1 ,700 in those as well. Okay, cool. Some of those... I believe there's a few of them that still actually have to mature. A few of them aren't. Yeah. Do you know when they fully mature? I thought I sent that as well. Not fully. I believe I sent that on the email. Okay. I could take a look back. Gas$365 in the budget. Then we have with the mortgage$798. I usually pay over that to cover escrow.

40:15Okay, for sure. Oh, wait. Escrow is not included in that? I cover more just to make sure I don't owe anything. Sometimes I potentially get some back, and especially with our tax. And I prefer to pay it off early if not. Okay, we're going to say$7.98, though. We're just getting minimum monthly payments. Then for the two cars,$6.25 plus$3.31,$9.56. Because this is household. We're doing household. What do you think utilities, Internet? So gas, electric, Internet, what does that all come out to? I see. It was all included. It should be. Let's see. Well, so Internet is one thing that she takes care of as well.

40:56Okay, well, now we're going to get to a better situation where everything's to go. So I believe that goes around$220. That's both of our cell phones and internet. Okay. That's one that she takes care of, and part of that is for her work phone as well. Oh, interesting. Okay, so$220 for electricity, gas, and internet? No, no,$220 for our phones and internet. Then gas. I mean, I have the statement. Do you mind if I look? It's about the same. Is it in checking? Yes. Yeah, we can just look at that for these then. Yeah, these are all what come out of there every month on that. I can tell you which ones they are if you'd like.

41:36So let's see. Let's see. TXU Energy, that's our electricity. How much is that? 221, so about 220 bucks. Okay. Then we have our Atmos Energy, that is our gas. That's 3882. Cool. So total of$479 for phone and utilities and internet and stuff like that. Cool. Now, car insurances for both of you. Yes. I pay every six months. That was actually one big payment out of my, actually this, I guess it was. How much? Last month. It's like$780, I believe it is. Divided by six,$130, and then what's your car insurance? okay so 253 a month to account for okay it was on my last statement i believe it was on my last okay and uh what other minimum monthly payments do we have to deal with yeah i do have i have a couple reoccurring things that do what on my credit card you know that you're gonna hate what i have one that is playstation premium that I pay for the year $60.

42:55Can you get closer to the mic please? I pay a Playstation premium that I pay for the year$60. I don't play a ton of games but every once in a while I download free games. I feel like the amount of games that I'll download throughout the year equals out to over$60. I don't buy video games and things like that really. I have that. That's$60 a year and then I do have Vinyl Me Please. That's a record That's a subscription. Oh. Vinyl subscription. I do really enjoy that. That's$140 every three months. Oh, okay. In order for you to survive is$2 ,851 a month. That's what you guys need to survive. Well, actually, no, sorry.

43:41We did not do food. We need to put food in the budget. Food in the budget, both of you with the baby and everything like that, we're going to do about$600. Okay. No, with the, yeah, for food. Okay. This is all groceries, all groceries. Diapers and things. Diapers, we're doing the next category. Toilet paper, diapers, all this stuff in order to keep the home running. About$300 will do because I know diapers can be expensive. Expensive. Yeah. Yeah, those baby shower diapers just ran out. Shout out to all those baby shower diaper people. $3 ,751 in order to keep life running. Now, that's a very expensive needs.

44:17If you say you bring in$4 ,525 a month, it means your needs category is 82 % of your income. That's crazy. If we get rid of the two cars, that brings us closer to like 70%, 65%. That's good. That's where we need to get to because right now all your money is going to needs. That's why we're behind in retirement because we don't have enough money to put towards retirement. So we don't have a fully funded emergency fund because, by the way, a fully funded emergency fund would be$3 ,751. Times that by six would be$22 ,506. What do you have in savings? I have about, well, actually, I've got about$9 ,000.

44:53Okay,$9 ,000. She has$9 ,000. You have$1 ,700 because you can pull from the bonds if you need to. We're paying off the card, so I'm getting rid of$2 ,000 of it. So total is$15 ,000, so, you know, still got to get another$10 ,000 to have a fully funded emergency fund. You pay off the credit card. What I would do, and this is where I don't think you guys are going to agree with this. I'm going to pull from the$9 ,000 in savings. And you're going to pay off that$2 ,400 of cars. Just because it's good to just have paid for cars in general.

45:37we're going to with the kit since there's a kit I want to leave at least a two month emergency fund $7 ,502 from your now combined savings of$15 ,000 because this is combined we should open a joint checking account all the money should go in there and then paying for things should go out of there so we can understand what the household budget is so everything's going into a joint check-in account$15 ,000 uh and by the way uh may as well do that with your high yield as well for your emergency fund stuff like that so$15 ,000 take out well we know the math but take out$7 ,502 you have$7 ,500 left and you're minusing from$7 ,500$2 ,400 to pay off her car and then you have$5 ,000 left where does the$5 ,000 go with your death car stupid$625 payment with the insurance included on top of that, with the expensive gas included on top of that, with it being seven years of chaos and pain and suffering of that death debt, you're putting the$5 ,000 towards it.

46:53And then aggressively, on a monthly basis, without her minimum monthly payment, you should have about$2 ,500 left on a minimum monthly payment. you'll have$34 ,000 of that car to pay off. See, I don't plan on having that car for all this. So we're planning on payments of a car that I don't plan on keeping. Well, that doesn't matter because right now you're losing the interest on it and the minimum payments are insane. If we pay off the car and then you end up selling it, you get the money back anyway. So right now we're just choosing the mathematical win. My truck? Yeah. Okay. and it just it takes just a year a year and two months to pay off that that's if you follow my budget and then you go i'm having no confidence in this conversation unfortunately yeah there's some because there's certain parts of it that i feel like are i wish there were a way to you know i don't know i wish there was a way to somewhat meet in the middle of it you know what i mean okay because there's i feel like there's a part of real life that you know yeah there's going to be mistakes that are made this has to be perfect follow this budget perfect oh i i understand Man, there's parts of it that, you know what, I don't want to lie to you and say that, yes, I can do that.

48:02There's certain parts I always want to be realistic about. And there's certain things that I don't. The reason I don't like that, and I am going to cut you off, but the reason I don't like that is you're preemptively creating excuses for yourself, which is giving you room, giving you room to get off track. Let's get on track. We have the emergency fund. If you want to. I mean, trains have breaks. One second. If you want to use from your food budget a little bit of that going out to eat, that's fine. As long as food, which should be groceries, but as long as food never goes above$600. If$100 of that is eating out on a monthly basis, okay, that is your choice.

48:38But in the budget I laid out is the budget that gets you to having a two-month emergency fund, paying off her car, paying off your car in 14 months, and then building up a fully funded emergency fund and probably an additional, say, about three to six months. And then you guys are in a place of, that's like the baseline. That's where you want to get, like if you think of a chart, like all this is red and bad and all this is green and good, that's you getting in the middle gray of starting financial stability, have a fully funded emergency fund without bad debts. And mind you, I'm actually good with putting the windows on a 0 % credit card and then paying that minimum monthly payment until it's paid off as long as it never goes to the point where interest is accrued.

49:20See, at this point, we actually wanted to pay that off before even then. I guess a big part of the problem is what I feel like more of your frustration is is there are certain things that I guess you don't like that are plans that aren't. Let alone I have a motorcycle I'm going to sell. I have certain instruments that I plan on selling that I plan on using that cash to do that. So instead of taking my cash or her cash or paying certain things off, I have the same plan to pay them off as you do. It's just instead of taking the money that I don't touch, that I know is safe, I have something else in plan.

49:57That's where I guess I feel mixed with it. I get it. I have the same plan to try to pay some of this off. I just feel like you're mad at it. You don't have the same plan. I'm going the extreme plan because after I learned everything I could, and there's always more to learn about personal finances than I was in a bad place. I went extreme to pay it off and I want others to because now I see what it's like on the other side and it's so much better than elongating things the extra things that you have to sell that doesn't change the situation, that doesn't change the plan, what it does is it makes it go quicker because you would follow the same exact plan except you would sell those things that you were going to sell anyway and throw it at the debt but it's still the same plan that just gets you there quicker instead of a year and a half to get a fully funded emergency fund or whatever it might be maybe it's a year instead because we sold some things that's awesome i guess i just part of it man is uh i know there's part of it that's a comfortability factor you know there's a lot of coping things that you're dealing with and i feel like this is i'm trying to take that on it's just you know it's about winning that battle you know a little bit slowly that yes there's a cost to winning this battle or losing the battle and i feel like that's where the mixture is you know i've lost that battle for a few years and made very responsible decisions it got me six thousand dollars deep that's my irresponsible the most irresponsible i made a bad decision on a truck not the most irresponsible decision i had to buy a truck you know that's i feel like i you know what i mean my most irresponsible amounts of decisions only amounted to six thousand dollars of debt in an amount of time where we went through a pandemic and i had a child i you know i had a wreck with the vehicle you know i did make irresponsible decisions but then i feel like within the past you know a certain amount of time while adding more um you know more i guess uh i guess things that i have to pay for with included insurance for a family you know it's like within the past two years my insurance payment went from 40 a month to over 200 a paycheck you know what I mean so I'm paying then a 200 I don't see how that impacts our plan though I really don't because part of it is trying to figure these things out on mine that's part of why I really necessarily didn't want to include her with this stuff we don't necessarily know how heavy she's going to go back to work sure that's why I didn't want to include her necessarily and we use the more conservative income based based on that because we think it might be 5 ,000 something but we used$4 ,525 after money was set aside for taxes.

52:32So I definitely do get that. The reason why I lay out something so stringent and why I don't like the room for excuses and delays is because I want what I believe is best for y 'all. And what I believe is best for y 'all is being on the other side of the hill as quick as possible. Because any amount of time that is being left, But any amount of time that is being taken away from the remainder of your years to be able to save off retirement is taking away time to take advantage of compound growth. You've already lost the best decade of your life for compound growth. You guys are approaching the middle of the second best decade.

53:11The quicker we get to the point where we can start investing more and more and more, the better. With where the interest rate on the cars are and where the interest rate, especially on the Chase credit card, where the interest rate on the windows before refinance on a different credit card are, they don't even come close to beating what the stock market does on average in terms of the stock market doesn't beat them so paying them off is a better return so that's why we do them as quick as possible and then you start investing things up i guess the part because i want what's best for you i apologize i guess it's the part that i get i was looking more forward was you know maybe a little bit more advice to where i could consolidate certain other things to make my money worked for me while I worked hard on myself to pay this off on its own.

53:54That's, you know what I mean? Like I wanted to try to take care of my debt, my credit card debt. Yeah. And in its own response, irresponsible manner, like I feel like that was irresponsible money, the credit card debt. So I wanted to take that onto myself and use that out of my fund money that I gain with whatever I do. You know, I make certain payments as a month, you know, to keep, to pay it down that there's a normal payment but there's also things that i wanted to tackle this outside of necessarily what's on you know paper or in the digital world does that make sense it does it's part of it part of it is is trying to get past that mentality of what causes this you know how you speak about that a lot on your podcast what caused yes absolutely and i feel like just before here i've been dealing with before here what has caused it and i'm working on fixing it.

54:47I recommend therapy for everyone. Take advantage of your health insurance. So that's one part of the problems that I'm trying to fix this is, man, at this point my deductible is not even covering me. My wife and my baby is gone and that's going to cost them $6 ,000 each before I meet it. I'm unhappy with parts of my I've done this. I should say the plan I said is going to take a little longer because I forgot about the medical bill that will come up. So an additional$4 ,000 will take That's why I didn't want to bring her stuff into it. But it's important, though. Her savings was a part of it that was going to go towards that outside of my bills.

55:26Okay, but it's no longer my hers, though. It's ours. So this comes together. The thing is that all of what we can do to survive, I've been taken care of. At this point, the only thing that she takes care of outside of us to survive besides her car payment stuff. I think you're not getting from me the answer that you want. I think you want to hear a certain answer instead of the answer that I'm giving. What answer do you believe I'm wanting? I'm not 100 % sure. You mentioned the different consolidations and wanting to keep things separate, but we can't give. The consolidations, we can definitely talk about that.

55:58But we can't give a full, concise picture of what the situation is and what we should do to get out of it if we don't know what it is as a household. If it's just you and just seeing things, just your finances, then we're putting together a plan that might not even make sense. Well, that's why there were things I wish that we would have omitted into what we considered mine and what we considered hers. Why is it not ours, though? Why is it not ours? Just because of the plan of how we plan to take care of them. So you want to do your plan. You want to do your plan. It's our plan. I wanted you to help me with my part of this.

56:35You wanted me to do your plan. Potentially. Okay, which is cool. I'm totally cool with that. But one second. What is confusing is because I feel like this whole household I've taken care of before we were married. Then we married. We never fully combined. And now this is where, okay, I'm still taking care of the full household. And I don't want to use her combination of any of the money because we haven't yet. I would like to figure out the budget for me to be able to take care of our household, minus a few of her things that she can take care of on her own. You know, there's a few things that are separate that she takes care of on her own.

57:13Car payment will be gone soon, so that's kind of a thing. She does take care of my phone bill. That's one of her bills. It's hard to explain, I guess. No, no, no. I understand what you're saying. I'm sorry if it feels like I'm being combative or anything. I'm just trying to figure out the way that works for both of us. It's not being combative. It's less being open-minded. Right. Definitely. On both sides, though. I feel like I really would like to try to help to do something that we can. I want to try to do something that is. Why is personal finance in terms of what. Okay. There's a big mental part of it, man.

57:51There's a money has been. I don't know why you think it has to be a compromise, though. It doesn't. So what I lay out here is a plan that I would follow because it's a plan similar to what I followed based on everything I learned about personal finances. A compromise, me giving a compromise outside of that is me then saying a plan that I would not follow. The one I laid out is the plan I would follow. Saying anything else doesn't make sense to come from me. Well, I guess there's parts of it that I feel like the compromise are parts of you saying, yes, that could potentially be a good idea. and there's some of it that my, oh, yes, I agree that's a good idea.

58:26You know, like with you saying that you agree with me paying off the windows on that credit card. It can work. That's where I feel like that's part of our compromise. You know, with me as well, where I talk about the consolidations, I have these bank accounts that have a couple thousands of dollars and they're sitting doing nothing. That's where I was more talking about maybe consolidating, putting into something else like your SoFi. Link in the description. i'm just kidding but no i just something that can work for people is boom sell the car get something cheaper and you could save up and get that in cash you could do the minimum monthly payments to tell your card is paid off because it's mostly going to principal again i just think it's safer and better in terms of risk management to just get rid of that depending on the income situation especially with a more flux income but that is an option um there is the option of consolidating the windows and chase card into a 0 % finance and then doing minimum monthly payments until they're paid off and figure out what that minimum monthly payment looks like in order to get to the point where it's paid off before interest is accrued.

59:25Those are ways to do it. I would not do that though. I would not do that because I'm putting myself in your shoes and knowing me over there, just based on what I've demonstrated on the going out to eat and all these stuff and all this stuff, it doesn't show, it doesn't show the discipline and mentality necessary to fully achieve that finesse of that financial situation of that financial plan yeah sure let's get there but I can't in good conscience say that if you're not there now if you were here six months from now and you had that finesse then we'd be having a different conversation but we're not So as someone who cares about you, I can't in good conscience.

1:00:15I appreciate that. Well, so can I ask you one question? Yeah, of course. If I were to have come here right now with this exact situation, and I had already used my cash to pay that credit card off, it really just was more of a timing thing. Let's say I paid that credit card off, had no credit card payment, and let's just say I had no credit card payment at this point. You saw these purchases, but I had no credit card payment. How different of a conversation is that? I think in that situation, you would have at least showed that you were more of a credit card person than you have demonstrated now.

1:00:47We would still want to attack the bad debts like the truck. Right. Because obviously that doesn't affect that debt. But it would have at least demonstrated that you recognize the horridness of the 25 % interest rate. Right. But obviously that's not where we are. But I mean, I do. I feel I mean, I guess it's I felt both horrible and OK about what I came in here with at first. I see so many of your podcasts that so many people either spend so much more than they make and are so far in ridiculous debt that there's a several-year plan of paying off just the scary part. Or people that make ridiculous amounts of money that still have ridiculous amounts of debt.

1:01:35I feel like at my point I got scared and worried because it's$6 ,000. It was ridiculous to me, yet still I've attacked it and brought it down to where it could be. That's what I'm trying to. No, the fact is your debt's not even close to as bad as like many that we have on here. And you're already in a better place because you have great equity position in your house. So your overall score is going to be higher when it comes to, you know, the score that I give out. It's just following the plan to get to where I would like you to be to live that financially better life quicker. and I think the plan I laid out is the way to do that quicker.

1:02:12But, you know, however you choose to go about it is whatever you choose and then the life that comes from that is, you know, the life that you deal with. But this is what I think you should do. Honestly, I agree with that. I totally agree with you that this would be the most amount of discipline that I can have. If I'm going to be honest with myself, I do know that there's an amount of discipline that I don't have. I will shoot for that. Will I mess up? Probably on some amounts, but I'll also work hard to make it myself. Don't preemptive excuse yourself. We all know messes up are going to happen.

1:02:47When people vocalize it, though, it's a preemptive excuse. It's allowing that. I feel like I try to be the opposite, man. I try to say that, hey, all this bad stuff will happen, and then hopefully it doesn't. And then when it doesn't, I get off in the better. you know it's kind of like my weird reverse way of optimist pessimism you know i think about it's almost like being prepared for the bad stuff to happen kind of but then it doesn't and you're okay okay the 5 500 would you feel can be would you all feel comfortable living off of that 5 500 yeah probably so 5 500 so that would be 66 000 a year which if there's any employment opportunities out there, feel free to let me know.

1:03:30I would much rather be dealing with some people at this point. If we could get you to$1.75 million by retirement in today's money, that is where we need to get you to in order to be able to withdraw that amount of money. What age is that? When do you want to retire? I don't know. It depends. It really depends. Retirement looks, at this point, that's one reason why I'm here. retirement looks farther and farther away. That's why we want to get out of this as quick as we can so we can start investing. But I get it. I get it. Let's say I will try as hard as I can. I'm not saying I won't. I just. OK, let's just say just for the sake of, OK, you go about it your way.

1:04:12It takes a little longer. Let's just pretend two years before fully put an emergency fund, all that stuff. OK. And then you all invest as a household for 30 years. If we want to get to a million dollars in today's money following the average inflation in average return of the stock market, with the initial amount of the$65 ,000 you already have, let's just say it goes up to$75 ,000 over the next couple years, just through the other things that are invested, compounding and contributing on a monthly basis. Jeez. I forgot about one that's embarrassing. okay well before we get to that i mean this is so this is shows what's necessary for compound growth like you would need to start investing thousand seven hundred bucks a month to get to that point taking an account inflation and the average stock market return to get to 1.75 in today's money by what time 65 65 65.

1:05:20That shows the quicker we get out of this, the more time you can take advantage of. Now, you can stretch that to, you know, maybe we retire at 70. And, of course, Social Security potentially. I don't know how reliable that is by then. At this point, my best option would be to try to find better employment. Man, it's just about breaking into a different. Dude, you guys make$100 ,000 a year, and you have a great mortgage with that. So that is not the main issue. That is seriously not the root of the cause. But if you guys stretch it to$70 ,150 a month will get you to there. Of course, what that would actually look like is like close to$4 million.

1:05:57But that's not what it would feel like in today's money. It would feel like in today's money about$1.75 million. So do you understand the direness of$1.75, right? That's$70 in that case. But yes. Okay. But yes. So that's where I'm at. I think we've had a good conversation about this. I think you know where I stand. I think I know where you stand. But do you have any other questions or things you wanted to talk about? Let's see. Oh, I did. I had so. I forgot about some other investments in Robin Hood. I just let it sit. Oh, okay. It's just been sitting in there. It's not very much. How much? A little over$1 ,000, of course, as well.

1:06:36I would just pull that out and put it towards the truck. Okay. I really would. And one thing I would really, really, really think about and have a good long conversation about, maybe see a family therapist about it a few times, combine. Combine everything. No more hers, no more mine. It's overcomplicating it. Have a combined household income. Have a combined household debts. Have combined household goals. Have a combined household. It's worth it. Definitely. Anything else? Not yet, I guess. Not that I think of, man. Well, you're someone I definitely really want to follow up with. I appreciate it.

1:07:17We're going to have the conversation because you're fun to talk to. You guys are very cool. Excited to see how this kid grows up. Definitely. I appreciate it. And then we'll see where you end up going from here, yeah? Definitely. I think so, man. I'd love to be able to follow up and maybe come back again. Let's do it. Something like that, man. I appreciate it. Sounds good. All right. for Colby like the cheese his hammer financial score you know I think he was actually pretty close to what he thought I know it was a little more competitive because I think he wanted me to agree with him I wanted him to agree with me and we may have not met that middle ground that was fully desired but for my hammer financial score for Colby like the cheese spending in a budget we know part of that conversation come on spending all that money when the Balance is on the 25 % interest rate credit card.

1:08:07One out of 10. Debt, certainly not the worst. Three out of 10. Retirement, it's okay. A little behind, but six out of 10. Emergency fund, certainly not where it needs to be, but not the worst either. Four out of 10. Real estate, happy with that equity position. And we even talked about afterwards, potential rental properties in the future. That would get him to a 10 out of 10. But for now, seven out of 10. Really, it's the spending and the debt that brings him down. hammer financial score 4 out of 10. Check out the resources linked in the description below. Things like a very high yield savings account, investing just$5 in the acorns using my link, and you get an additional$5 for free, and other resources that I either use or would use in specific situations.

1:08:51And don't forget to follow my Instagram and Twitter. Thanks.