41-Year-Old Spends EVERYTHING On Fast Food

0:28Americans told Washington what they want. Hi, my name is Brianna. I'm 41 and I'm here from Seattle today. And this is Financial Audit. Welcome to Texas, Austin, Texas. Very nice. What do you do for a living in Seattle? I actually have two jobs. My full-time job is a bookkeeper at a small private firm. And my second job is working on a podcast, two podcasts for a woman who has two health and wellness podcasts. Oh, what do you do for that? I write her show notes. I do the artwork and then I do a little bit of audio editing and then I upload everything. Oh, very cool. So the bookkeeper job, what do you bring in on a yearly basis with that?

1:12Right now I'm making$25.75 an hour. So it's about$53 ,000 a land change after. Okay. How many hours a week? Full time. Okay. So perfect. And the podcast, what are you bringing in with that, the different ones? That is a flat$385 a week. Okay, for both put together? Mm-hmm. Very cool.

1:38So that would be about$1 ,668 a month on average when averaged out. Okay. Very cool. Which? $53 ,000.

1:59is$4 ,516 plus that$1 ,668. So it looks like before taxes, before any withholdings and any stuff like that, $6 ,000 a month, yeah? That's about right, yeah. Okay, perfect. And then I'm guessing what? $4 ,750? That's your account? Something like that? Yeah, it's about$1 ,633 every two weeks. Oh, yeah, that was very close. We had payroll hit your statement of$4 ,884 between the different payrolls. So, okay, very nice. Living in Seattle off of basically almost$5 ,000 post taxes and everything. How's that? It's not too bad. Seattle is really expensive, but I'm kind of lucky right now. My rent is still extremely reasonable.

2:45Yeah. I've been living in my apartment for a really long time. Um, and I don't go out too much, but it's, I mean, I've, I've slowed down. I've slowed down. Um, but yeah, it's not bad with the two jobs combined. I feel comfortable. So what is your financial situation overall? Um, well, I have a lot of debt. It's a lot of stuff that I've racked up, um, from a long time ago and I've been slowly making progress over it over time. but just this year is when I started making like a really decent income. Oh, so this is a new, very new income. I've increased my income about$6 ,000 annually this year. So now I feel ready to like make good headway and really buckle down.

3:35I was not very strict before, but I was trying to do the best I could. Why did you get into the debt in the first place? What did that look like? A lot of irresponsible spending and being young and not really thinking about the impact it would have long term, honestly. And a lot of just going out and having a good time and not worrying about it. Give yourself a score 0 out of 10. Where do you stand right now? Less than a 1, definitely. Okay, so 0 out of 10? Okay, interesting. Well, let's see how that stacks up. We're going to start with your debt. We're going to go into that. Before that, you should hit the subscribe button.

4:11I'm trying to get to 500 ,000 subscribers. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed so far. We're so close. We're going to start with the debts. We're going to lay out the situation, what it looks like. Then we'll hit your checking. Then we'll hit savings, retirement, see what any of that looks like. This Apple card. I mean, the previous monthly balance was 1 ,975. If we're trying to get out of the debt, why is the new balance 2 ,300? Why has the balance gone up? You come in here immediately. Take me off a little. because you just said you got into debt because of bad spending, stupid spending, of which this is a big old thick thing of spending, spending, spending that's unnecessary.

4:49You're trying to get out of it. The balance was lower than it is right now. Why? Well, in that statement, there was definitely some income creep or lifestyle creep. Yeah, lifestyle, yeah. Yeah, March was the first month that I started making a little bit more money. So what, a few extra hundred bucks, hit your account a month, and you were like... Yeah, yeah. But you wanted to get out of debt. Why wasn't that money going into debt? What's your mindset around that? Well, I was paying large payments to my debt. I just wasn't being strict about it. I wasn't really restricting my shopping. Do you follow a budget?

5:34Let's be real. Do you follow a budget? Then I was not, but now I do. What's now? When did now start? Like a week ago? As soon as I found your channel, actually. When was that? So like mid-April. Okay, so we haven't had very long. No. When did this end? Well, this ended at the end of it, April. So let's see. Let's see. I hope it shows my spending slowing down. Oh, I don't remember seeing it slow down. But$46.16 a month. A lot of this is zero interest, isn't it? Yeah, I pay that off after the statement comes. I pay it off before any interest is charged. Oh, you do? I do. Okay, I did not see that reflected.

6:15Okay, so there's no balance on this card right now? There is a balance, but the previous month's balance has been paid. Do you always do that with this card? Yes. Okay. You don't do that with some other cards, but you do that with this card. Okay, good, because that would hurt. Which I guess makes sense where this is where all the spending is, But you say you're trying to get out of debt, yet we're going Uber, Jimmy John's. What's T-Mobile Park? Because you go there every two seconds of your life. That was two trips to the ballpark. Ballpark. Ballpark. Amazon. Pizza Mart. Orca. GoFundMe. You need to go fund yourself out of debt instead of giving to that.

6:52Shafa Monthly Membership. Apple. Imperfect Foods. Apple. Apple. Uber Eats. Apple. Chipotle. Amazon. Uber. Apple, Uber, go to the ballpark. Apple, go to the ballpark, ballpark, ballpark, ballpark. Apple, Zillow, Amazon, Uber Pass. Like you need to be giving them more money. Apple, Metropolitan Cafe. Apple, Pay Range. Apple. Dude, these subscriptions and things you're paying with Apple Pay. It's insane. And Uber Eats and Imperfect Foods and Apple and Amazon and Apple. Amazon, Amazon. Klarna, are we financing things? Amazon, Uber, Apple Uber, Metropolitan Cafe, Uber, Uber, McDonald's Amazon, Orca, Fresh Deli and Mart, that could be groceries I wasn't 100 % sure, but I don't think so because it's $13.

7:43It's groceries for$13? Yeah, a convenience store Uber Eats, Imperfect Foods Amazon, okay This episode is brought to you by NBA On Prime This Tuesday at 8.30 Eastern It's the Emirates NBA Cup Championship game on Prime. This year's quest for the Cup has been building to this, the championship game, live from Las Vegas. Not a Prime member? Sign up for a 30-day free trial to get started today. The Emirates NBA Cup Championship game, this Tuesday at 8.30 Eastern, only on Prime. Restrictions apply. See Amazon.com slash Amazon Prime for details. Amazon, Apple, Metropolitan Cafe, Apple, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe Creative Cloud, which that's for your work, though.

8:29That is. Okay, so that's okay now. And then the pay range mobile. That's laundry. That's laundry? Yeah. We gotta do laundry. Okay, that's fine. Metropolitan Cafe, that is not laundry. Apple Bill, that is not laundry. Klarna, again, we're financing things and having to pay them off with a credit card. And then Apple, and then Metropolitan Cafe, Metropolitan Cafe, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, HBO Max. Amazon and an Apple bill. No, you did not slow down your spending. You did not slow down your spending. You went out or made multiple purchases a day that were unnecessary. These are all circles.

9:04You see these circles right here? Unnecessary. And that's one page out of like four of them. So what's this? You're coming in here saying you're getting out of debt. You found me mid-April and you started to change things. You didn't get on a budget since then. Yet we saw at least a couple weeks of that not happening. what is going on? Well, okay, so some of those things are legitimate. Orca is my bus pass. Imperfect foods is groceries. What is? Imperfect. Okay. Imperfect foods. I said that like three times out of the hundred things I just read. No, that's true. I would say of all the things you listed, like the Apple purchases, like in-app purchases.

9:43Which are like every second of your life. Yeah, I do at least one of those a day. That's crazy. That's crazy. Not anymore, but we're seeing it reflected there. It's only a couple weeks ago, not anymore. So even if you stop for a couple weeks, how are you possibly saying with confidence that it's not anymore? You did it for a couple weeks because you were coming on the show. Yeah, I mean, it is sort of my guilty pleasure when I'm at home and I'm playing the game that I like. Gems? Buying gems? What are you doing? What game? It's Angry Birds Dream Blast. You're giving hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month to Angry Birds?

10:22No wonder that app is still alive somehow. I love that game. I'm obsessed. And you financed two Apple purchases. Yeah, there's one revolving purchase on there. That was my Apple Watch. That's 0 % APR. And then that Klarna purchase was something that I needed for my cats that I just financed with 0 % as well. Why? Why? What's the point, though? I think when I purchased it, I was just low on cash, so I decided to split it up. If you can't purchase it, you can't purchase it. I could have, but I just didn't. The only reason 0 % finance makes sense on those Apple purchases that you're making, not the car and stuff, but just the Apple purchases, is if, let's say you're going to go purchase a$2 ,000 computer.

11:09Yeah. But instead, you do the$2 ,000 computer over 12 months, 0 % finance, and then you take the$2 ,000 that you had to give to the computer and you invest that$2 ,000 to set in the S &P 500, for an example. That's where it makes sense. But where people 0 % finance and then spread it across monthly and then they take the$2 ,000 that they had in order to get it, they just go spending on bullshit. And we know that it was just bullshit. Yeah, that's fair. And speaking of bullshit, I mean, there were purchases on here, like you went to Manor Souvenirs on this card that you have a balance and you're losing interest on.

11:43That was an accident. That was legitimately I handed them the wrong card. Okay. And then the other purchase on there. You also have ongoing, right? It's like Emerald City. So utilities of some kind? No, that was emergency pet services. My cat had a bladder situation. Why on the credit card? Because I didn't have the cash. This is why we have emergency funds. This is why instead of that bull spending that you were doing in there every second of your life, gems, gems to angry birds, you have money set aside and you have cash to pay for things and you don't have a stupid$6 ,718 credit card balance.

12:25Yeah. You wouldn't have that. Right. That would probably be cut in half right now if you did not go insane stupid on that Apple card. Yeah. I realized that the emergency pet services was the wake-up call for the emergency fund. Yeah. And that card was actually twice as much. You'll see on the next credit card, I split it to do 0 % APR with a balance transfer. Yeah, I did see that. Is that this card? This card you transferred over? Yeah, it went from this card to the other card. So this card no longer exists? No, that's what's left on there. I couldn't get enough balance to do the... What was the total balance before?

13:11Oh, it was like$14 ,000. How'd you stack up$14 ,000 in bad credit card debt? Because you were just getting interest stolen every month. Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not really sure what I spent that money on. Yet, you know you have it. Yeah. And you do all that spending. That's the only reason I'm upset at that spending. You can do that spending if you're in a good place. But you are choosing not to have an emergency fund and have to use your credit card in order to pay for a vet thing. You are choosing to have this high credit card balance that has$93.61 in interest sucked from you every single month because you want to have the bulls**t spending.

13:47Do you get what I'm saying? Absolutely. So why? Why are you still doing that? You say you cut back for like a week now, but. Well, this month was a lot better than last month. why I was doing it. Well, I'm trying to like change all of my habits right now, all at once. Around the end of the last year, I was going out a lot. And then I kind of just decided that it wasn't good for me, you know? And so I think - Health-wise probably because a lot of that stuff is unhealthy. And then two, financially very unhealthy. Yeah, so I think what ended up happening instead of spending all that money on restaurants and bars, I ended up spending it on shopping and in-app purchases.

14:38And I didn't even realize I was doing it until much later. The interest you've lost on this card this year so far is basically$500. I know. Of which did not have to be there if you were not doing the bullshit spending. Now we do have 0 % finance through Citi. Yes. And with that, we have a balance of$6 ,339 at the time of this statement. So overall, credit card is like about$13 ,000. We have minimum monthly payments here of$63. Now, yes, you're saving some interest because it's 0 % finance, but you also had a$215 fee you paid in order to do this. Yeah. Which is disgusting. Yeah, I calculated what I would have paid in interest on the other card.

15:27I calculated it and figured out that I would save a little bit of money by doing the balance transfer. So that was the idea behind that. Yeah, no, overall probably. But just be, this is, okay, I'm okay with some consolidation, 0 % and stuff like that when we're trying to get out of a high interest situation. But what a lot of people do is they get into the situation and then they think they've made progress and then they just don't go crazy like they should be in order to get out of the really bad debt. Yeah, yeah. I think that's exactly what happened. And I didn't, I really couldn't see it. I mean, but I see it now.

16:06What is this? That is my new card. I got an Amazon card because I was, I was buying. If you know you... If you know... Sorry, continue. Because I was buying things on Amazon, I opened an Amazon card for the points or whatever, but this will also be paid off without accruing interest. You pay this off every month? Yes. I still don't like the idea of you having two credit cards, one that's 0 % because you had to transfer from the other card, and the other one that's accruing terrible interest, and then opening another credit card? Yeah. How have you proved to yourself in any way that you're able to manage this long-term?

16:55For a month, maybe? Okay. Well, okay. So my spending has been completely out of control. I own that. But with my Apple card, I've had it for almost a year now, and I've not paid a single dime of interest on that. You spent on some travel, 555. More travel, 361. That was to come here. Whole food, 68. Oh. Sorry. 40 I don't even know how to comment on that And Amazon 44 and Amazon 37 Yeah, it's gross You don't need to be doing those Amazon purchases We don't need to be going to Whole Foods of all places I usually don't It's the closest grocery store to where I live So if I need like one or two things I'll pop in there and I just try not Very expensive way to do things To buy the marked up stuff But yeah And then the Amazon stuff on that card is like basic home goods stuff.

17:51Oh, I had to buy a pair of shoes because fitness for fitness. I'm doing a lot more walking now and I needed something that worked better for me. Now we have some checking accounts. Yes, that's my main checking account. First of all, I'm confused. The savings started at$100 and you put in$200 and we took it all out and now it's zero. Yeah, I see. Every time I try to put money in savings, I'm like, no, wait, I should spend that on paying my debt down. Well, it's good to have at least a one-month emergency fund. Yeah. So I always go back and forth about what I should do. Do I save money for the emergency fund, or should I pay down the debt, or should I pay my student loans, or what?

18:36I did not get a statement for student loans. I sent it in a separate email, I thought. What's your student loans? It's$18 ,000 All federal? I don't know I don't think so I don't know, they're really old Who'd you get it through? Originally I don't remember In a separate email? I thought so It should be American Education Services Is the lender right now Are you paying it on right now? Yeah It's not deferred? No. It's been deferment for a very long time when I was younger. But I can show it to you on my phone. Federal family education loan programs, which I know there's confusion around those with the forgiveness.

19:28Didn't the FFELPs, like, get taken out of those? Yeah, whenever the federal, Whenever the government said that they would pause student loans, I opted not to pause. You opted not to? So they're federal. Well, I honestly don't know if I had the option. It's on here? Yeah. I have one subsidized, one unsubsidized. Two hundred sixty. Okay, subsidized, unsubsidized. Okay, so these are federal. They are federal. Two dollars sixty-two cents. Why don't you pause it? At least you wouldn't be getting interest. you're getting interest added of$2.62 a day. Why didn't you just pause it? It didn't make any sense.

20:13Because those loans are very, very old, and I want to pay them off. You could pay them off while it's paused. What? Oh, I didn't realize. Just over 5 % interest. What's your minimum monthly payment on these things? $304. All right, so add that to the debts, okay. Vehicles? No. What is your car? I don't drive. Oh, city. Okay. Yeah. So it's like a good walkable city? Yeah. Jealous. Okay. Yeah, it's not walkable here. It's too hot. Well, it's also just not walkable. It's very car-centric. But either way, no other debts?

20:58No. Okay. Scared me for a second. Okay. Okay, so in here we can have ongoing bills like Verizon and then paying off debts and transferring to Robinhood. And paying off credit cards. Well, paying two credit cards, I should say. And setting things around Zellen at$225. Yeah. What? That was. Oh, my God. You're going to yell at me. That was for like a psychic reading. Why? Because it was interesting. Sure. $225 interesting when we're losing$500 so far this year in interest. Yeah. It was just, I couldn't, I really wanted to do it because it was interesting. Cool. Congratulations. What? Yeah. Are you going to put your wants over everything forever?

21:52No. Not anymore. Mind you. Whatever. Doesn't even matter. And then there's Puget Sound and what you paid$22 for, and then you PayPal'd out$9.85 as well. Yeah, that account just gets a few bills and credit card payments, and then I do all of my spending through Apple Card. And Stash! Because you have like a checking account in Stash, of which has a$0 balance. What do we do? We had Netflix, and we had Amazon, we had Amazon, we had Amazon, we had Amazon, we had Amazon, we had Amazon, we had Amazon, we had Amazon, we had Amazon. What the f***? Those are household things, like subscription things, cat food, cat litter.

22:33They better be better than what you can get in the grocery store. I can't see. I don't know. Who knows? They are. They are. Financially better? Yeah. Yeah. It's a better price. The cat food that I was buying, I couldn't even get in there. So Stash, really, you just have two accounts with basically$1 ,200 in them? Yeah. Each one has about$1 ,200. And you put them in like kind of like U.S. large stock. It's a bunch of random stocks. It is, but it looks like you did like a large cap. Okay. Other than that, it's really nothing else. It's like a billion pages of this because it just shows every individual stock that you have like a sentence.

23:11Yeah. For a while. Hablas espanol. Spreys to joich. Condé nos. If you used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based techniques teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash Spotify. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash Spotify. Rules and restrictions may apply. I was using the Stash checking account and they would give you like stock back on certain purchases that'll just match it to your purchase.

23:48And you have$200 from Robinhood, which I don't really get the point of this anyway. Yeah. Some woman's health thing and treasury bonds and QQQ. Okay. That's okay. And then Vanguard US. Okay. I don't understand the first two. I actually cashed that out and just spent it on credit card bill. Good. Which is what I would have told you to do anyway. That's your retirement. You have nothing else? No, nothing else. Except for my job just started to offer a 401k. So I've made one contribution So you have$3 ,000 In retirement Your net worth is negative Yes In your early 40s That scares me You've lost the two best decades Of your life For income and investment compound growth Yeah It has been scaring me For a very long time If it's been scary Again I need to understand your mindset if it's been scaring you for a very long time yet we saw all that bullshit at the first statement we've looked at i don't care if you're scared because you don't react to it you don't possibly change things yeah how are we gonna do anything here going forward if that is what it's looked like i've been scared for a long time and then i just spent all my money yeah to be completely honest it's it's like so scary that i've the only way to deal with it is to push it out of my mind and then what does that accomplish what in any world does that accomplish do you see thick seek therapy um no not right now but um i am doing some like self-help stuff all right therapy yeah therapy do therapy it's better we basically have 32 000 dollars of debt yeah okay so let's put together a plan but again with what you've done historically when you've realized things are bad if we put together a plan is this even gonna help?

25:57I'm honestly very skeptical no I am so tired of paying these same credit cards and student loans I'm so tired of it if I had $32 ,000 in cash right now, I'd pay it immediately. What's your rent? It is$1 ,225 at the moment. In a few months, it'll be going up to$1 ,300. Okay, that's what we'll put it at. Okay. $1 ,300 utilities and internet? So gas, electric, internet, trash, gas is 20, internet is 60,

26:37water and trash is included. Electric, on average? End of the mic, please. $90 a month. It's every other month, and it's about$180 every other month. Okay. $170 for utilities, your phone, your Verizon thing. I think I saw$120. Yeah.

27:02You don't need car insurance. Health insurance that comes out through work? Yes. Before? Yes. Cool. I'm giving you an additional$200 of therapy. You're going to start doing that immediately. Okay. Once every other week is fine. My best pass is$100.

27:22Okay. Anything else you can think of? Giving you groceries to$300. Yeah. Oh, I need pet supplies. is really expensive right now because of giving you 100 I can't do 100 I have at least 200 because my cat is on special food and I have to feed them all it because they won't feed separately put them in a room will they eat are they grazers yeah big time and then fine I'm cutting your groceries to 250 it's a sacrifice you're making I can do that. I'm cutting your household items to$75 to keep it going. Toothpaste and toilet paper and hand soap and shampoo, all that stuff. We're not going crazy. Not going crazy on makeups, haircuts, anything like that.

28:21Until we go out of debt. Any other ongoing expenses you can think of in your life? Let me check my spreadsheet just so we don't miss anything. And by the way No $731 Going out to eat And stuff Which you did in that statement We saw Yeah No That is not a part of it Yes it is Oh god Um

28:47No that should be everything Yep That's it We saw$176 Of subscriptions You're canceling All of them What Netflix Netflix HBO other subscriptions, they're gone. I can't have Netflix. You cannot have Netflix. Alright. If you have time to watch Netflix you have time to work. I have two jobs. Congratulations. If you have time to watch Netflix you have more time to work. Okay. Do you not understand how bad credit card debt is and how it's holding you behind? Do you not understand how bad it is to have a negative net worth at 41? Do you understand how bad it is that you have$3 ,000 saved for retirement at 41?