His Ex Destroyed His Life

0:00Hi, my name is Lester. I'm 26 years old based out of Austin, Texas and this is Financial Audit. What do you do here for a living? I do a couple of different things, but my main gig is a guitar teacher. How much do we bring it in with that? It depends because I do a couple of different things as a musician. So I do lessons, I gig, and I work part-time in a music shop. So all in all, it's currently averaging between like$32 ,000 and$35 ,000 a month. $32 ,000,$35 ,000. Okay. I mean, being able to make a living in music, I mean, that's a lot of people's dreams. So that, I mean, in Austin, I guess I could definitely see people.

0:37I mean, yeah, you can definitely get by on that. It's a little harder because rents are kind of expensive. Yeah. Even your living expense. I'm seeing a thousand seven hundred fifty four dollars mean something. So that's immediately basically half. Yeah. Yeah. But you have a daughter. I have a daughter. Yeah. Age. Four years old. Had her quite young, at least for this day and age. Yeah. Oh, yeah. OK. So spoiler alert for the conversation we're about to have in this exact second. you're now a single dad correct so you're taking care of the kid full custody 100 and no child support and no child support okay so that that's a lot to take on now with that all of a sudden it's the single household income no child support taking care of a kid while also having a lot of debt while also having a very expensive living expense just how are you surviving man are you surviving uh well basically it looks crazy from here but i was completely debt free completely completely debt free in in may may of this year yeah may of this year yeah and end of april or early may yeah i was completely what are you talking about you have so much debt now though well i i basically had to her all of her legal situation i had i basically had to finance all of my it was messy?

2:00yeah it was messy and it was really dragged out and it basically ended up it costed like double what I anticipated it costing all in all it costed like just over $32 ,000 how long was the whole process? from well it's been going on since my daughter was one right when she turned one that's when we separated I'm sorry dude that sucks Is it done? It's done So no more money needs to go into this Well as of right now it's paused There will probably be a time So it's not done it's paused Pause for Probably for longer than sooner What does that possibly even mean? Well I'll need another attorney But probably not For another year So this is a ceasefire situation This isn't even like an armatist.

2:57Yeah. Okay. And then how much more are we expecting on top of that for legal? 36 ,000, you said? Well, it was just over 32 ,000. Just over 32 ,000. Okay. Are we looking at doubling that? No, it's because my daughter was born in Denton, Texas. So it's an inevitable thing I'll have to do. Okay. Yeah. And I get it. I mean, I don't have a kid. They're stinky and smelly and stuff like that, but I respect that. But if I did have a stinky, smelly thing, I'd pay every cent necessary. Well, like I said, I was debt-free, and she's in school now. Now she's enrolled in school, and she had to get to the age where she had to be in one place all the time.

3:41So it just kind of had to happen. No, I get it. And I would have spent every cent necessary to get full custody as well. So I get it. That was a lot of money. Clearly, we didn't cash flow basically almost any of it, right? I mean, no. And it was weird the way they do their billing. So to retain the attorney, I had to put up$7 ,500 up front, just boom, right off the bat. And then you get paid basically every, or you pay them every two weeks on top of that is how it works. So I mean, those bills could range from, I mean, some of them would be small if they didn't do a lot of work. Well, were you making as much as you are now?

4:15Well, I moved into my apartment, which is where I'm at now, in April. And then I started taking out all this money right after that. So you said this has been going on. Okay. Yes, you said the debt since April, but you said this has been going on for three years. Why did it? Well, we've been separated. Oh, but the fight. The fight. The litigation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a year? So. Okay. It's expensive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what,$5 ,000 maybe? Probably going to be$5 ,000. Well, then we should save up. There's no deadline that I have to. That's just the recommendation from my attorneys to get it transferred as soon as I can.

4:54The recommendation from me, not an attorney, is for you to hit subscribe because we're trying to get to a million subscribers. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed so far. Love you all, truly. Thank you for being here. I really do appreciate it. I'm sure people will relate to the situation out there who are getting into it. It's a topic I haven't seen as much, so I figured it would help. it sucks because clearly we immediately borrowed we're sitting at a balance of$14 ,562 on a personal loan 9.49 % so we got some death over here well that was the first so when I first hired this attorney I knew it was going to be$7 ,500 to put down and my logic was thinking that it would hopefully cost no more than$15 ,000 just total yeah that's that's what i was i was hoping the whole process would cost about 15 000 and i could well what what gave you that idea you said hope i mean we don't go off of hope did you ask for some guidance well i i i i mean i told my attorney you know i said i've prepared this much you know funds for this process do you imagine it going over and they're you know like an attorney does it could or it couldn't you know it just depends yeah um do you have what's your car situation my car's paid off thank goodness because adding another minimum payment to your thing buddy if we're looking at our if we're looking if we're looking at our housing total and then this this minimum monthly payment of a thousand two hundred and eighty one dollars and then one thousand seven hundred fifty four for rent our money's gone well that's the minimum payment on this loan is actually four hundred dollars a month but i got i got behind but i just got caught yeah i just got caught up though.

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7:09The last, my last. Yeah, you were tasked you$802. Sorry, sorry, go ahead. No, it's, well, you know, basically the last, like I said, you get, you get billed bi-weekly from the attorney and I mean, So 200 bi-weekly? No, no, it's, it can be, I mean, so basically. Oh, sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah, the bills are bi-weekly with the attorney, which are paused right now. But in that particular month, I got hit with like one$6 ,000 bill. And then two weeks later, like a three and a half thousand dollar bill. Sometimes it can be hard to keep track of all your finances. It's easy to lose track of what money is where, how much money is in your account and who you owe money to.

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8:23SoFi is here to simplify your financial life and reward you along the way. And because SoFi wants to help you take charge of your financial future, they are giving one of you a grand prize of$5 ,000. All you have to do to enter is to sign up for free credit score monitoring with SoFi by scanning this QR code or visiting SoFi.com forward slash Caleb insights by clicking the link in the description below. which i know which which i did for for the most part but i ran short on you know i ran short on everything that whole month so it wasn't all put on debt well no it was some cash also some i mean some of it but heart hardly any of it was like cash flowed well what i'm trying to think is if it all of it went to debt that didn't then affect the actual cash in hand until minimum monthly payment started so it shouldn't have put you behind on this well no i'm saying like like in addition to like all my normal bills for the month like you know including the debt minimum monthly payments is like over like three thousand dollars no i get that but but i had but i was saying i get one thing yeah but i had to like you know i you know i just basically completely ran out of funds between you know the music company you work for that does the lessons is that w-2 or contract uh it's contract with them and i don't actually do my lessons through them my lessons is my own business okay uh okay so everything you do is self-employed for yeah yeah pretty much have you paid a single cent of taxes?

9:42Well, I'm good on my taxes for last year because I had a lot of W-2 income for last year. This next year? This next year, I've got W-2 income for four months out of 2023. Okay. But I'll probably end up paying in a little bit of taxes. It's not going to be crazy. It's not going to be crazy, but listen, if we're getting behind just because a little hiccup, a little hiccup for a month gets us multiple payments behind right then also imagine if any kind of tax bill comes to now we have full custody we have dependents we have some tax benefits that come with that and it's gonna help yeah it's gonna help but if anything comes what just scares me it's like almost at this point if like 50 comes owed it's like that is enough of a pebble like it's like you just sprinting along a little pebbles there but somehow you just completely trip over there and it becomes a looney tunes yeah yeah yeah it's crazy so that that's what It scares me.

10:38Well, I mean, with the music stuff, I mean. How many hours a week are you working right now on music stuff? I probably average 25 hours a week. Yeah. Total across everything? Across everything. No, that's not an option. That's not an option. Since your kid's in school, right? Yeah. It's not an option. You're doing 50 hours a week. I'm sorry. I hate saying that. And I know it's easier said than done. But, like, that's literally not an option if we can barely put food on the table. right right it's well it's just tricky because the jobs that i you know that i would like to get i'd like to obviously supplement with like some hourly income in the morning when she goes to school sure go to a coffee shop but yeah but but i've got my like my lessons that i teach they can start as early as noon so i could only but but if a job is not if a job if a job is not making what we need to survive that job is more becoming a want than no an actual career sure right with with work and essentially you might be with work if these if what is necessary for you to do your job the way you want to do it is becoming more of a want then you're front of work and that's not acceptable right right we got bills to pay we were falling behind we now have full custody it is no longer a choice unfortunately and it sucks it sucks but it's no longer a choice well i i'm just struggling trying to like you know i've had you know basically been averaging between like 3 ,500 a month on you know my low average months as high as 5 ,000 a month on like my really good months and I don't know what I can like if I dropped everything I was doing right now musically to get an hourly job I don't know what hourly job that would work within the schooling hours that will net me that much money okay you see what I'm saying well kind of uh so because I like I charge it because I charge you know but either 65 or 75 for a 40 minute lesson so it's a good chunk of money for a small amount of time what's your support system here in austin i've got a really good support system here tell me about it well i've got i've got my sister and my dad that live here a couple of friends that have kids that i can you know lean on and then family that lives in san antonio that's just an hour away can papa lester babysit yes he can he can babysit i mean we've answered some of the questions there again don't like it everything's every part of this and in a 30 to 60 minute conversation is always going to be easier said than done there's going to be more complexities that go into every single word that is said right right but if you know watching post after school for example i'll just talk about my life my parents in order to survive especially when younger when there was no money because they had me at a very young age i didn't see them right after school i was picked up from grandpa grandpa then watched me until you know six or something like that and then i was picked up yeah that might be what the options are it might be a nine to five type job you know we might be working on customer service you i could i see sales on you we might be working in sales we might be working 25 an hour being you know an assistant manager at jimmy john's or something you know right right right we might be working the kid might sleep at a grandpa's place overnight while we're doing like a third shift type thing and that sucks again yeah sucks i'm not saying any of this is thrilling but when we literally can't pay the bills it just becomes not an option yeah well i mean and i'm i'm looking i've been trying to find like that overnight gig if possible because it's kind of like the only shift that's available to me at the moment because i want to keep my mornings available to go work out at the music store okay well i've said this a million times on this show and we don't even need to talk manager position i know the 24 hour fast food places are desperate to hire overnight night specifically positions in austin you can't i can't go get my mcnugs without them basically saying like please please apply for a job i need you please right right right no i i was in that scene for a long time i was in there for a long time and i'm not saying i want you to be there for a long time either but just to pay the bills yeah and i know i don't i don't mind any i mean i'm open to all the suggestions you said you've been looking for it why have we not taken well i was originally i was trying to my dad said you know he was like i'll watch her overnight on this day and this day and i said okay well i'll go get like an heb overnight for those two days and they didn't want to take me for those two days but it wasn't the i you know i'm trying to like i can really only do like three extra nights you know in my schedule oh well it's crap i don't think someone i need someone that would basically take me for like like three days max overnight only because i need my mornings to be able to go help out the music store and i and i have at this point I've got 20 plus students that I see regularly.

15:15That's great. But again, that becomes a want if we're not able to pay the bills. I just feel like if I'm already making close to between$3 ,500 and$5 ,000. $25 an hour, 40 hours a week, it's$4 ,000 a month. So that's more than you're making. Substantially, no. But in your life right now, a guaranteed extra$500 a month is life-saving. Yeah, I agree. Let's get through your debts and we'll continue this conversation. But$14 ,560. Yeah, that's a lot. The interest rate was death. Now, we have some credit cards. We're going to go through the credit cards. Not very fun. What I will say, I'm at least happy on the credit card.

15:55Never mind. I'm not going to hold that. I'm going to wait until I get to them. You're not spending on this credit card. Yep, yep. As far as I can tell. Discover. We have a Discover It at$4 ,200.49. Absolutely thrilling, fun, exciting. Woo. It's awesome. With a$99 minimum monthly payment, minimum monthly payments are going to be what murders you, essentially. Looks like you put a little extra towards it, but then we had$78.68 of interest accrued with$152. Yeah, because this is new, because$152 this year so far. So that's going to be starting to get racked up very soon. So 22.24 % interest. Okay.

16:35Cap one quick silver. we are at new balance of four thousand four hundred eighty three dollars and sixty two cents what's wilds is how recently these have just been put upon you and i'm sorry that sucks yeah yeah for again for the sake of the kid i think anyone and everyone would do anything for their kids so this is at least understandable so sucks i'm sorry like i was i was sitting pretty decent you know right when i right when i moved into my apartment things were things are very i mean i knew it was gonna happen but i had i was making like well you signed up for an apartment that's like over 50 % of your take home.

17:08So I wouldn't have done that anyway. Well, no, no, but I mean, it was, I was approved, you know, because of the last three months, like they had to take a snapshot of my last three months on my bank statements. Cause I didn't, you know, cause I'm self-employed. Um, and I took it to a CPA to have them do that. And it was saying, and it said that I made over, I had three consecutive months of like just over$5 ,000. So I think I was, I was over like the, like the 2.5 they required to be over the income limit. So, So, I mean, when I moved in, it was like, okay, but the attorney bills just kind of just started racking up.

17:42$154 minimum monthly payment there. That also hurts with making the minimum monthly payment, then$109 of interest accruing, which just gets us really no progress. And$512 of interest has been accrued for us this year so far. $10 of fees. Was this like a startup balance type transfer fee? No. Did we miss a payment? Oh, wait. Quicksilver. I don't personally have the Quicksilver. that just might be a big fee for them. I don't believe it does, but... I'm not sure. Honestly, I don't really care. 29.24%, I care about that. That is death. That's insanity. Okay, this one's a 0 % interest, but we're putting money on it.

18:19Yeah. The Wells Fargo, we're f***ing around. We're riding the Wells Fargo wagon right into a ditch of death. Yeah, yeah. This is for some of the last, or for some of the bigger attorney bills that I got. Yeah, because what did we put on here? was a balance transfer. Yep. Yep. And$51 payment, even though the new minimum of the payment is now... It should be like$68 or something. Yeah,$68. I was looking at the wrong thing, and this is now at$6 ,784.38. Yep. Rough. Yep. Any other debt that I don't see? No, that's everything. $23 ,246 ,025 of death debt. Yeah. It's rough living, and I'm sorry. Yeah, it was crazy.

19:10I see you opened a SoFi thing, which is great. I mean, it's what I use. I talk about it in every video. Well, I got to try and get the... But with the high interest debt, I mean, what is it now? 4.6 %? You're not going to beat it. No, no, no. I mean, I got it just because I wanted to move away from Wells Fargo, but I don't think if you're self-employed, you get the high yield rate. What do you mean? No, if you just set up direct deposit. Well, I don't have a qualifying direct deposit. So what you probably need is a business checking account and set up direct deposit. Yeah, that's – Do you have an LLC?

19:42I don't have an LLC or anything like that. $41 sitting here. Terrifying. Now, I don't know if you get gas or taquitos every second of your life, but it's just like – It's probably a good half and half split of gas. Because I do get to ketos. And okay. Jim, fully supportive. YMCA, is this for the kid? Well, it's because they do the aftercare program at her school that she goes to while I finish. That's the thing is she, you know, the aftercare program only covers her. It's so expensive. The aftercare program. Well, it was. It's much less expensive than it was now. I was paying almost$1 ,300 a month in daycare.

20:19Oh, yeah. Daycare is ridiculous. But this is still very expensive for you. Yeah, yeah. And grandpa can't watch right after school? No, because he's got two jobs as well. Which is fine. I mean, my supplemental care is, I mean, this is the cheapest daycare than probably most other parents are getting right now. No, it is. It just still sucks for your position. It is what it is. Yeah, it's bad. You're making more than you're losing on this by working those hours. She's there. Uber, I don't think we're Ubering. I don't think we're Sonic Drive-Thru when we can't pay the bills, when we're falling behind on minimum monthly payments.

20:52We're not going to Sonic Drive-Thru. We're not at McDonald's? What is it? That was the old daycare. The old daycare. Oh, that was just dragging you. And the YMCA comes through here a lot. Second of real life. I get wanting to go get her probably a couple scoops of ice cream from Amy's. I'm sorry. No, we probably put it in our grocery bill to get like a dollar thing. Yeah, we did that. Sonic. Ben, we're not money. Spotify. We listen to ads right now. And also, why was it 18 bucks? Isn't Spotify like 10? Well, I do. I have the family plan, but I use it for teaching a lot when I'm teaching songs to kids right then and there.

21:31I do use it a lot. Well, you don't use$25 at Domino's for teaching. No. And taquitos and Amy's ice cream. Smoke shop, which is a bad addiction in general. I want you to be around for a longer time for your kid. You just got full custody. Let's not be doing that. Yeah, trying to be de-stressed. I get that. Let's de-stress with a walk around the block. Yeah, I agree. You've got something through Square, so you purchased through. Oh, well, so I use a digital booking with them. That's your expense to use them? Yeah, they keep cards on files that I can charge them. Get that LLC. Calculate your business expenses.

22:13Write that off against. Okay. Probably a vending machine of some kind. Even though your bull**** is not insane When we have zero dollars We don't bull**** Wells Fargo,$15 So we have no money to our names Name, ma, Netflix I mean they don't have anything on there anyway Taquitos, Torchies We're certainly not doing Torchies Venmo, you know $664 on savings, is that correct? Is that still there? No, no it's not What's there? I got, well, in my whole SoFi right now is$1 ,700 $1 ,700. So it went up? Yeah. That's everything I got. You're leading me in a different direction. I appreciate that. $1 ,700.

22:56That's good. Now Fidelity, this is good. So is this like a solo 401k? What are we looking at here? Yeah, this is just my retirement. It might include, there was a brokerage account in there as well. They only had like$20-something. And they're like in the Fidelity 500 type funds. So we're sitting at a total in there of$4 ,955. so when it comes to your overall spending yeah 41 of your spending what went out was 4 231 uh but again average of 3500 math isn't mathing but of your total 4 231 that went out yeah 41 of that went to savings meaning you know obviously over 50 of the actual income right to housing not yeah yeah yeah uh money going to debt was 7.7 while we're doing that we still had 1.3 go to subscriptions about 5 % to taquitos food an additional 3.2 % transportation well transportation that's a lot of that was taquitos that we counted as transportation because again you said it was more 50 50 so about well because I drive well I drive I have to meet my daughter's mom in West I drive a ton sure yeah it's a ton it's a ton was probably equal to taquitos oh well I'm It actually might be more gas than tequila, probably.

24:16Okay. Now, the other large purchase is about 15.8%. ATM 246, who knows where the f*** that went. We know AMC would get, and then another 172 would draw. What's crazy is, other than the percentages of the housing, your percentages on everything else are not absolutely wild. They just don't make sense when we can't afford to survive. No, I know. I mean, that's like before all this started, I was like, I mean, I've always been fairly, you know, Where I've always lacked, I guess, is having a decent emergency fund, obviously. But I've always bought cars in cash, never carried balances on credit cards, and usually lived within my means.

24:52Well, just like every guest, you're going to go through the budgeting program. We're going to obviously get that to you for free. And I need you to do that because these percentages are out of whack, and we're going to get you on the right side. Yeah, well, because I was, like you said, the 50, 30, 20. I'm like, in my position, that means I'd have to be making like$7 ,500. Well, 50, 30, 20 doesn't make sense in your situation anyway because you have a lot of bad debt. 50, 30, 20 applies for after debt. And then it's situation to situation. So you're going to go through the program that talks about, you know, where are you, what bucket do you fall in, and then you're going to go build the budget that makes sense for your situation.

25:20Okay. So you're going to go through that, but let's build a temporary one just so we can have at least an idea of what your budget might look like, what your life might look like. Yeah. Yeah. How long it might take for things. So rent. What's that total number? $1 ,700. That's insanity. Yeah. Utilities. utilities are about$7 ,500 each month no or no no$75$75 you mind if I pulled the list of my itemized bills yeah because I know it's a lot okay yeah go ahead yep so YMCA that's 38 a month or yes there's a lot more in here well like the 38 a month covers like the membership that like just the basic membership but then those charges for like$92 are for the after school care okay how often do you have to do that we have to budget that in it's a it's not well it averages to about 360 a month because some some weeks it won't be there because of school holiday plus plus this plus this 38 or is that that's included yeah all the 360 a month yeah okay okay of course you put yourself a 400 do you feel comfortable with that with the kid yeah i got two cats also so that's kind of what i've been averaging i've been keeping my receipts i'll Put 50 for cat.

26:34Yeah. Guess you do 160. Is that true? I want to bump it to 200. Okay, 200. Spotify. Oh, well, if you're using it for business, I will. I do use it. Who's the family plan? Who's using it? It's my dad and my sister. Okay. Can you have them send you eight bucks? Probably. Unlock that? I'm going to allow 10 for you. Okay. And they need to pay up. It says everything we can do, every little thing we can chip. Yeah, I agree. Car and rental insurance is only$65? Well, because I own my car, and I just do the liability. With both of those together? Yeah. Phone 98. Is it just you? Yep. I'd recommend switching to Mint.

27:23Well, I need to pay this phone off and switch to a cheaper plan. That's what it is, so the phone's included in there. Yeah. I mean we put Mint in our resources because it's just terrible phone it's a really good way to well this phone is weird it's the weird fold internet 65 then I'm going to do toll paper everything else for surviving around the household things for school all that stuff those extra little things necessities that pop up putting in 100 and that looks like it so we have rent, utilities after school YMCA food, cat, gas Spotify, insurance phone internet toll paper now we need your minimum payments for debts now you said the personal loan is$400 normally, it's$400 a month yeah that does help $721 for debt that's it, nothing else there's nothing else that can fit in your life right now it just doesn't exist man we've got to get you out of this debt so we can start making sure we're on track for retirement so we can make sure that uh the future of your life is not reliant on your child right and i i mean and i will say like i i have been you know thinking of ways i could you know squeeze other hourly jobs in there but i i have been getting more business especially over the past like but if you make more money that's great yeah yeah i'm just saying it's i'm just saying i'm on i'm on a I'm on an uptrend from what I can see.

28:53Well, 3 ,844 is what you need to survive. And we bring in 3 ,500. And then we need to set money aside for taxes probably. Yeah. No, I know. I mean, for me, it's like I've been at those months where I've kind of hit five and just over five. So I know it's possible. So I think it's part of me. Are you interested in sales? So when I'm setting aside money to save for a new purchase, like a car or a home or taxes or whatever I'm saving money for, like an emergency fund, I'm using SoFi. It's a 4.6 % yield on my money, and it's just absolutely incredible. Why not take advantage of that free return on the money that's just sitting there?

29:30And there's great bonuses for signing up all the way up to$250. If you sign up using the link in the description below, it's literally free money. I use it. You should too. Am I an insert? Well, I do. I could probably gift you like a Course Curious tech sales thing, and then we could go get you through that in a few months and then try to get yourself a tech sales job and make the money based on your own drive. Right, right. I mean, I'd be interested in it. I'd be interested in it. I don't know. We obviously just need to bring in more income, even if on an uptrend. We need to be on a major uptrend.

30:00Well, I mean, because for November right now, I'm going to probably finish out, like I got a big day on Saturday. I'm probably going to finish out with over four for November. Okay, but that's not acceptable. I need you to be on five minimum. Yeah, I know. Five minimum at least allows us to. Four basically breaks you even. Right. With any amount of wiggle room that always exists in life. Four breaks even. I need you to go to five so that one, we need to set money aside for taxes. Two, I need you to make progress towards this debt. Yeah. Even if you bring in an extra$1 ,000 a month post setting aside money for taxes, that still takes over two.

30:34That takes two years. Yeah. Two years to pay off the debt. Yeah. I don't know. Because that is extra. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our U.S.-based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans, or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40 % your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast.

31:09Terms apply. Because really, bring in$4 ,000, right? I mean, what's to say with where you are in your tax life and income, I'd still set aside$600 a month. $600, yeah. So that's$4 ,000 coming in, which is more than you normally make. And then that still brings us down$600, which puts you in the whole minimum, minimum like$444. Right, right. So where are we making the difference? I think, and again, this sucks, I think the conversation is$25 an hour, 9 to 5. is grandpa willing to watch the kid on the weekends? How much of a life does grandpa have? He can, he can help out on the weekends. Okay. Then I think we're also working a weekend job somewhere or we're driving Uber or whatever.

31:52And then I think in the middle of the night, you know, a few nights a week, if we can, unless it starts to bring in yourself to dangerous levels of sleep deprivation, which is not acceptable, but trying to pick up a couple of third shifts if we can somewhere, maybe it's a couple of days a week and we just interview everywhere, everywhere that are desperate to hire for third shift. And we just say, I can only work this these couple days a week. Okay. Some might turn you down. Some might accept it if they're desperate enough. Right. Right. I need you to get to$5 ,000 a month bringing in post setting money aside for taxes.

32:22Yeah. Post taxes. That's kind of the, I was kind of looking for the number that I should be hitting. That is the number because I need you to get to paying off this debt in two years. If we don't pay off the debt in two years, if we, okay. right now I mean technically you can't even make minimum payments right now and still pay your taxes so the taxes come up then all of a sudden we fall behind in payments as you were falling behind in payments on that one thing already so we just get to this reoccurring cycle falling behind payments and we just never make any progress then you're just dying in poverty and you're working through your 80s and 90s and that's not what I want to see and I don't want the responsibility of your future life to be put on your kid I want your kid to have their college paid for if you want to do that I want your kid to be able to work their life and not have to worry about if dad is able to make the bills due.

33:07That's what I want. The way to do that now is to say, okay, what I want to do for a living isn't necessarily what's going to take priority in this exact moment for the next couple years. We're going to go make money immediately. Tech has been a struggle in terms of product managers and engineers, everything like that. Other than that, we're still in a, you can at least go get a, what some people would consider them, a beneath them job right now. anyone can go get that to bring in more money at least in austin can't speak for everywhere but in austin for sure and a lot of those start at 20 25 an hour because it's still a competitive scene here in austin yeah and i i mean i've got i'm very familiar with with the service industry i mean it's it's just tricky just because the the kids schedule and when you know trying to figure out who's going to watch them when you're working type of deal i mean because i know i mean i know i can average i can probably like average 45 i was you know kind of probably sitting more close to 45 for a good while leading up to me running this apartment um what changed well i mean probably my the fire to kind of keep looking for leads was kind of dwindling as the legal situation really kicked up i think that's just been the real kicker is um just trying to manage the weight of all that did you kind of just shut down i mean not even shut down it's just more more like doing you know Rather than kind of trying to generate more leads for new students, just kind of barely doing the ones that I had scheduled in a week.

34:36How do you generate new leads? Well, I'm affiliated with the music store, and so they pass out my cards there. And I also play out at a couple of restaurants in town that let me put my cards out, and I kind of have worked with some of the local elementary schools. And a lot of that is kind of turning over really good. I've started a lot of new students this particular week. so it's it you know from what i can see and the students that i've got on the books for the next two months it looks like i'll i'll be sitting at that four range for at least the next two to three months uh and then when the spring kicks in all the wedding stuff the wedding band gigs kind of really pick up and i didn't make really good money in spring like obviously i'm i one i'm in the slow it's like the slow season and the litigation happened at the same time which were just like slow season we pick up somewhere else though yeah yeah no so that's that's where you know in this i I mean, it all comes back to just needing a proper emergency fund.