Money Talks: Chasing Ambulances on Wall Street

0:05Hello, and welcome to Money Talks, a special extra podcast from Slate Money where we chat with brilliant and interesting people. I'm Emily Peck. I write the markets newsletter at Axios and co-host Slate Money. And I'm here today with Ellen Gabler. She's an investigative reporter at the New York Times, and she just published a fascinating new investigation called How Wall Street Profits When Personal Injury Lawsuits Pay Out. It's a look at, I mean, a fascinating, maybe troubling, maybe horrifying corner of the finance world where thanks to the magic of securitization, something we last sort of worried about in the financial crisis when slicing and dicing loans was sort of made infamous, investors now can own a slice of Americans' personal injury lawsuits.

0:52And that's creating so much demand for these kinds of suits to get filed, according to Ellen's reporting, that some people are getting roped into maybe surgeries that they maybe don't need and perversely winding up on the hook owing money for their troubles after all of that. So we're going to get into all this. Ellen, welcome to Money Talks. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you and you can sort of help me understand just what is going on. I mean, your story helped me understand quite a bit. So now it's up to us to make the listeners understand. So we'll get into all of that when we come back.

1:50around, but eventually you hit a turning point. You realize that your business is only as strong as your connection to your customers. I wish I'd prioritized a provider like AT &T Business from the start. They're built specifically for small businesses, for people who have too many tasks and not enough hours in the day. Having a connection you can actually trust makes the whole day feel a little lighter. It's one less fire you have to put out. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com.

2:20everyone is always looking for a new way to make some extra cash, but sometimes the easiest place to start is your own closet with a little help from Depop. Think about how many clothes you have that you love, but you just don't wear anymore on Depop. It's quick and easy to list those pieces. There's no selling fees and suddenly those clothes have a chance to find someone who actually wants them. And the best part you're making room for whatever you're into next, make money on Depop with no selling fees and find what you want for less. This message is brought to you by Depop.

2:53Today's episode of Slate Money is brought to you by Olympic Hospitality. The Olympic Games are coming to Los Angeles in 2028. This is a once-in-a-generation event that you will not want to miss. It's more than a ticket. It's a story you share with your family and friends. And the ultimate way to get closer to the action is with an Olympic Hospitality Package. Ticket-inclusive packages offer a range of prime seating and lounge access options. venue-dependent priority entry, food and beverage selections from LA's diverse dining scene, and elevated service and continuous support, making your day at the Olympic Games one to remember for a lifetime.

3:34Get ahead of the curve with an LA28 hospitality package. Discover more at hospitality.la28.org slash slate money.

3:45so okay so ellen maybe the best thing to do is just to take us through some of the stories that you ran into in your piece of what people are experiencing you mentioned that there's like this one apartment building in queens where 11 people have filed lawsuits over the past 18 months and have gotten these cash advances and seven of these people have had these major surgeries like Like the phrase spinal fusion, I think, gets tossed about, things like that. So can you kind of walk me through how this works, like how we got here? The business that we're talking about is called Consumer Legal Advances.

4:25And don't turn off the podcast now. It sounds boring, but it's not. Basically, what happens is somebody gets hurt. They are a construction worker or somebody gets in a car accident or somebody has a slip and fall, right? They trip on a sidewalk. And in theory, they're really hurt and they are going to file a lawsuit, but they need money to live on. So that's where these companies step in and they give them these basically cash advances. The thing about these advances is they have extremely high interest rates and extremely high fees. And if the person wins their lawsuit, then they have to pay the advance back with interest and fees.

5:00If they don't win their lawsuits, then they don't have to pay it back. All that, when everything is working properly, it's a needed service for people who are truly injured. However, what we were hearing is that people were abusing this business and really kind of using cash advances to help file fraudulent lawsuits. So the one piece you mentioned was there's this one address in Queens in New York. It's a three-unit apartment building, and these apartments are small. It's like they're each one-bedroom apartments. And my colleagues and I, Rob Gebelhoff and Julie Tate, we found that 11 people who listed this address had filed these lawsuits claiming serious construction injuries.

5:45And this was all within a year and a half period. So basically what I did is I looked at their lawsuits and you could see that these people had had massive medical treatment. And in talking to lawyers, one of the things I learned was that the real kind of moneymakers were these spinal and neck fusions. And so people, the allegations, of course, are that these people are being convinced to undergo these surgeries, which are major, in order to jack up the value of their lawsuits. Of the settlement, because you mentioned in the piece, it's usually not something that goes all the way to trial or anything like that.

6:21They're typically some kind of cash settlement. And I guess if you have to have surgery, the settlement is higher. That's exactly right. So what the calculation is on behalf of the plaintiff's lawyer is, okay, if I can say my client had to have this major surgery, I can ask for$5 million versus if they just twisted their ankle, you can't ask for a lot of money for that. So I want to, I guess, peel back a little from there. typically in stories like this, everyone gets mad at the lawyers, the personal injury lawyers. Their faces are on the billboards. After all, we all know their phone numbers by heart, of course.

6:58Just by saying that the Salino and Barton song is now playing in my head. I don't know if you know that one. Maybe Jessamyn can play it. But in this case, it's not really the lawyers that are sort of pushing this situation to its extreme. It's partly these legal funders who are providing these cash advances. And the cash advances are basically their loans. They're the loans with really arduous repayment terms as far as understanding it. Can you talk about these legal funders and how that works? So the legal funders would actually say that they're not loans because if the person loses their case, they don't have to repay it.

7:34However, the beauty of personal injury cases, a lot of them are considered kind of slam dunk cases in that they're going to pay out, an insurance company is going to settle, right? And so you're right. So it's not just the lawyers. I think it's important. I'm not sure if I would blame, if we're playing the blame game, I'm not sure I would blame like any one person or industry, but basically you have the plaintiffs, you have the person who says that they got hurt. You have the lawyers who take their case. You have the funding companies that give them the money. And then you have the doctors and medical providers that provide this alleged inflated treatment.

8:14But so where the funders come in, again, is they provide the money that helps these people live so they can file these lawsuits. These lawsuits can take truly like four, five, six, seven, 10 years to resolve. And so what that does is it makes the loan or the advance just skyrocket. So one of the examples in my story, there was a woman who turned her ankle on a sidewalk. It was a slip and fall case. And she had received$76 ,000 in advances from one of these funding companies. And she ended up owing at least$1.4 million to her funder by the time the case settled. So you can see how it goes from tens of thousands of dollars to millions.

8:59How does that work out for this woman? Probably doesn't have the money to pay back. So then what actually happens to her? Well, so it's all contingent on her getting a settlement, right? So the problem with this, from what sources told me when I was reporting this article, is these high amounts of cash advances make it difficult for the plaintiff to settle for a reasonable amount of money. So let's take this woman, for example. She owed$1.4 million to this funder. right if the building owner where she tripped and fell if they're like listen we'll settle with you for two million bucks well that's a bad deal for her because a third of her settlement goes to her lawyer and then she's got to repay this advance and then she ends up getting a small amount of money the reason this becomes a big problem is when these people are convinced to undergo major surgeries and there was one example in my story this danny anguasaka morales we actually spoke to him.

9:59And he wasn't super forthcoming about everything, but he said that the surgery has basically ruined his life. The surgeries ruined his life, not the accident itself, which was, I think he fell off a ladder on a building or something, construction site in the city. Yep. So Danny's case is pretty interesting. You can check it out for yourself. We actually have security footage from his quote accident and you can see it. I mean, listen, the guy climbs up the ladder. He takes three steps. He slightly leans to his left. And I wouldn't say he falls. But again, it's up to you to say it for yourself. I know.

10:36I watched it a few times and I was like, okay, so? I mean, how would anyone have known he even fell off the ladder? It doesn't look like he really, just with my naked eyes, he looks like he's basically fine. So what happened after that? Did he go to the hospital? How did they even find him or how does he find a lawyer? Like, how does that even work? Yep. So I wish I knew all the answers to that question. So I know a little bit about his case. Many of the people who are involved in these accidents don't speak English. They're often new to the country. Some of them are not here legally. Some of them are here legally.

11:16We have been told that there are people called, quote, runners who work for law firms who sort of recruit people to either stage these accidents or if they have a minor injury, right, they like twisted their ankle, they can kind of build it up into a bigger injury. So I can't tell you exactly what happened with Danny, but what I can tell you is he did not take an ambulance. He did not go to the hospital right away. He went later. They took x-rays of him. He was released from the hospital with no pain medication. And then obviously at some point he got in touch with a lawyer and then he kind of started down this road of physical therapy, MRIs, and then he got into having surgeries.

12:02And that's where the value of his case goes up and up. To remember reporting, one of the things I found was he was restoring this church in Manhattan and And the church had$6 million in insurance coverage. And so that is often one of the first things that a plaintiff's attorney will try to find out. How much insurance coverage does this company have? And so Danny's demand for his alleged injuries was in several millions of dollars. And, you know, he had claimed in court documents, his lawyer claimed he had PTSD, vertigo, this laundry list of problems. I think they said he was confined to bed for two months after this, quote, fall.

12:48And again, if you look at the fall, it's not really a fall. But once you, is this the case where you inquired and they wound up dropping the suit? That's right. So we reached out to the law firm. We reached out to the funding company. And we just said, hey, this is going to be an example in our article. And they closed the case. But what's interesting is the attorneys defending the church had already made this argument. They had been like, hey, this is fraud. This guy, look at this video. And Danny's lawyers did not pull out of the case then. It was only when the New York Times called them. Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

13:26Well, that's what they said. That's what they said. I don't know. I think in court documents that his lawyers were saying, oh, he suffered a severe shock to his nervous system. He can no longer work. And to bring it back to the funding companies, he had gotten money from this one funding company called Pegasus Legal Capital. We don't know how much he got, but we can see through certain financial records filed with the state that he had gotten money from Pegasus. And again, having reported on this for a considerable period of time, that's how these cases work. So to convince Danny to stay at home to get these surgeries, you've got to be giving the guy money somehow.

14:04Right. Because the money is because presumably you've been so hurt you cannot work. Exactly. Okay, so we've talked about the funders, but then let's talk about the finance. Once the funders make these cash advances that aren't loans, but sort of kind of function like loans, they then bundle up a bunch of them and securitize them and then sell them to investors? Exactly. So, and you mentioned this in the beginning, the term, again, don't press stop, it's not going to be that boring. Asset-backed securities is what we're talking about. And this was something that many of us heard about back during the 2008 mortgage crisis.

14:41And it is essentially a way for companies to get cash more quickly that they can redeploy into more business. So in this situation, let's say Pegasus, right? Pegasus has given out 20 ,000 advances to plaintiffs like Danny. Danny's case, though, is going to take five, six, seven, eight, who knows, years to resolve. And that company doesn't get paid until Danny's case resolves. So what the securitization allows them to do is sell these kind of like future IOUs off to investors. Investors give Pegasus$100 million and Pegasus can use that$100 million to go give out to more people filing lawsuits. Yeah.

15:30And there's nothing really, I mean, we all learned about this the hard way in 2005, 6, 7, 8, whatever. And for a long time, securitization was this amazing innovation that drove a lot of investments and a lot of home buying because it lets banks lend and then, just like you said, sell off those long-term bets for the short-term gain and everyone's sort of happy. But it seems like the way you laid it out in the Times and in this case, because there's now a demand for these investments, that's sort of creating these all sorts of like perverse incentives where there's a really strong incentive to like file more of these lawsuits, to find more of these plaintiffs, to spend more funder money, to keep the whole thing kind of moving.

16:17And that seems like where the mortgage crisis kind of went wrong, too, because there's a lot of demand. You wind up making loans back in the early aughts that were to people who really shouldn't have gotten those loans. And in this case, you're giving payouts to maybe people who don't actually need the money, something like that. That's exactly right. And you're right. Securitization is not the boogeyman necessarily because all sorts of things are securitized, credit card advances, auto loans. But what has been described here by current and former funding company employees is this drive for more cases and higher value cases.

16:56And that is kind of the perverse incentive that you're talking about.

17:15You know what happened to me? I was sitting at my desk at home working, reading something, some analysis, getting ready to do some reporter calls. I was in the flow. Then I look at my computer screen to my left and I see a direct message. from my wonderful producer. And it says, are you getting on the Zoom? And I'm like, what? What is she talking about? Turns out, you guys, we had scheduled a recording with a Nobel Prize winning economist. I didn't remember I had this recording. I hadn't prepared for it. It was on the one calendar I don't look at all the time. I have two Gmail calendars and sometimes things get lost in the cracks.

18:01No more. This doesn't happen anymore. And that is because I now have a Skylight calendar. It's basically, it's designed to bring families together. And it's a smart calendar that we now have up in the house. It syncs with all my calendars, all the family calendars, gives you a very clear view of what's going on. So never again will I fail to show up to my interview with a Nobel Prize winning economist. And never again will we, well, this has never happened, but it's always a fear that you're going to forget to pick up a kid or anything like that. That's not going to happen. Not if you're using the Skylight calendar.

18:38No. Families are better when they're working together. And right now, Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15 inch calendars by going to myskylight.com slash slate money. Go to myskylight.com SlateMoney for$30 off your 15-inch calendar. That is M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash SlateMoney.

19:06Colon cancer is on the rise. It's the second deadliest cancer and the number one cancer killer of people under 50 in the U.S. Yet it remains one of the most preventable cancers. If you're 45 or older and at average risk, it's time to talk about screening. Cologuard Plus is a non-invasive at-home collection kit that requires no prep, can be completed in about 15 minutes, and is 95 % effective. If you've been putting it off, you're not alone, but timely screening matters. Let's talk about what isn't talked about. Talk to your provider or request Cologuard Plus online, Rx only.

19:44One thing I wanted to get into, if you remember, or are familiar with the 90s, maybe the 80s, I don't know. There was this big effort to portray people as filing frivolous lawsuits against companies. The McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit is the key example. This poor woman poured hot coffee and it was legitimately quite hot. She had like second degree burns. I mean, it was awful. There was a very successful media campaign on the other side to portray this as like absurd. You know what I mean? The coffee was just a little hot and there's these frivolous lawsuits are a problem and we got to rein in the lawyers.

20:25So I sort of, I had that whole frame in my mind when I was reading your story, because I think we've come to like a more sophisticated understanding, or at least I've come to a different understanding, let's say that. I don't know if it's sophisticated. Now, where it's like, this is America. We don't have strong consumer protections, really. We don't have strong worker protections, really. We rely on the legal system to protect workers, to protect consumers. We rely on these kinds of lawsuits. And on the other side are a lot of people who don't want these lawsuits filed, who don't want consumers and workers to walk away with a lot of money, things like that.

21:01So then I read your story and I'm like, oh, it's more complicated, I think, because there's something else going on here. It's not just pushback on legitimate lawsuits. There's some like a third way of thinking about this that I haven't figured out, if that makes sense. No, that totally makes sense. One thing that was interested me in this story was exactly what you're talking about. This idea that are more lawsuits being filed? Is there more fraud in these lawsuits? And listen, insurance companies are nobody, nobody loves an insurance company, right? And so like, are we writing a story like cheering for the insurance company and being like, oh my gosh, these poor insurance companies?

21:40Yeah, that's right. That's like crazy and kind of ridiculous. But here's the thing. The thing that is true is costs are going up for these insurance companies. And whether you like it or not, they will pass the costs along to consumers. And so, you know, I didn't actually cite these in my article, but just a lot of background reading. The payouts that some of these insurers are making, let's talk about New York, to settle these cases has gone up and up. And they either are building less or passing those costs along to whatever apartment building or whatever they're building. The same is true with the grocery store or Home Depot for slip and fall cases.

22:26And then in New York, which you may or may not be aware, our governor here just this year announced a big crackdown on insurance fraud. New York had seen an 80 % increase since the pandemic, so like over a five, six year period, an 80 % increase in dubious insurance claims. It's not just New York. There was, I think it was Louisiana, Michigan, California. Allegations of insurance fraud, either whether it's car, slip and fall, has gone up. So, you know, that to me, that was very, that was very interesting. And I don't think it's all manufactured. So, yeah, that was one of my questions for you because you were saying these cases are up 70 % in state courts, 33 % in federal, something like that.

23:13You make a compelling case for one reason why, which is this whole funding system. But is that the only reason? Why else? so listen that is a that's a tricky thing to unravel that's where you get into like causation and i don't think we know or can say this funding is directly causing this increase in lawsuits there obviously could be other factors you know one thing a lot of the experts i did speak to one of the things that was repeated was, listen, when there's more money, when there's more money flowing into any industry, you're going to get more of something, right? And the flip side of this is, again, if somebody is legitimately injured and is trying to get money to compensate them, that's important.

24:08These lawsuits are important. This funding may be very important. who can just not work for four or five years, right? That's like the positive side of this. But also, again, in the background, you have the very, very fishy cases going on. And one part of my article, as I talked about, is a number of these companies have started filing these civil racketeering suits, which is essentially, racketeering suits started with trying to beat the mob. RICO. RICO, yes, a RICO case. So it's essentially like alleging orchestrated fraud on multiple groups of people. So these RICO cases are targeting the lawyers, the medical providers, and now more recently, these funders of kind of scheming together to create these fake or these inflated claims.

24:57That has been happening also at the same time. Who are the investors? So the cash advances are packaged up and securitized, sliced and diced, And then there's a market on the other side to buy up those investments. They're not publicly traded. So who is investing? I think in your story, you mentioned one of the insurance companies that's upset about all of this is actually an investor in these securities. Yeah, it's not just one of the insurance companies. So these securities, when they are sold to investors, they are generally attracting what's called like an institutional investor. And so these are, you know, bigger entities that it's not like you and I being like, oh, pension funds, insurance companies.

25:39Yes, exactly. And so insurance companies are actually a big buyer of these life insurance companies specifically. And that just kind of has to do with just like they need very stable returns. But one of the things that we found, my colleague Rob Gebelhoff did this cool analysis, was that we found at least 30 casualty insurers. And these are the companies that are generally on the hook for these personal injury payouts. They had invested, I think it was over a hundred million dollars in securities that are built on these personal injury lawsuits. And one of the cool things that we found was this included 16 members of this nonprofit called the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

26:25And they basically like a trade group, an anti-fraud trade group for insurance companies. And they had actually complained to Congress about this third-party legal funding and how it was fueling fraud. But 16 of those companies that are part of that group have actually bought these asset-backed securities. What a mess. It's almost like a perfect hedge. It's like, on the one hand, you're paying out these maybe inflated fraudulent claims. On the other hand, you're making that back up in interest and profit from your investment. Yep. And we couldn't get any of these companies, we obviously tried, but we couldn't get any of these companies to kind of really level with us and tell us how this happened.

27:07One of the obvious explanations, to be fair to them, is they maybe didn't know what their portfolio manager was investing in, right? But we obviously reached out to these companies And I think 10 of the 16 of them said they no longer held those investments and would not be investing in them in the future. One of the companies said that these types of securities are, quote, increasingly misaligned with our role as an insurer. There you go. Yeah. And so, you know, who knows? Who knows when they got out of it or when they figured it out? I think there may be something going on in the background where in the insurance business in the past, I don't know, in the lower rate era, more insurance companies have been looking for investments that pay higher interest rates because if they just stuck with the super safe stuff, they're not going to make enough to meet their obligations.

28:02So we've seen a big rise in insurance companies investing in more, I don't know, exotic, private investments, private credit, things like that. And I'm just sort of thinking about how this plays into that maybe somehow. Well, definitely. So the thing about these securities, the consumer legal advances, is that these kinds of securities aren't tied to the stock market really. So it doesn't matter if the market crashes. It doesn't matter if there's a huge recession. These court cases are going to continue to go on because it's decoupled from the rest of the economy. So you get in a car crash, you're suing for$5 million.

28:45Your case is going to continue winding through the court system and theoretically should pay out having nothing to do with the economy. Fabulous. We also kind of looked at the returns that these things were offering. I think the highest was like 17%. Wow. That's quite high, even in the high rate environment we live in. What I was going to ask is, I mean, you mentioned Governor Hochul cracking down on insurance fraud or whatever. Are there other policy solutions? It seems like at a base level, the cash advance thing of you get$76 ,000, but then you're in the hole for a million dollars. Can we do something about that, Ellen?

29:22Can we fix that well so we can and a lot of states are so the other reason i was interested in telling this story is right now there is a ton of scrutiny on these companies and i think it's more than a dozen states have started to enact legislation to kind of crack down on them it's in some ways so some of it it's of course it's different in every state it includes things like capping the interest rates, capping the fees. One interesting thing, which is very needed, is banning referral fees to lawyers and their medical providers because there can be this circle of everybody gets fees. And then the other thing that is interesting is some states are requiring that plaintiffs disclose these funding sources in court.

30:14In a lot of states, including New York, that is not required. And some people argue that it really should be something that's out in the open. So there is legislation swirling across the country related to this. One state tries to ban securitization. That's West Virginia. They did it a number of years ago in 2019. And the guy who helped kind of get that across the finish line, the state senator at the time, his name is Mike Romano. He had previously investigated fraud for the SEC. And it was interesting when I was talking to him, he said, you know, this is where I saw the practice of law and litigation finance going.

30:56He said they're constantly looking for new ways to take the money they have and invest it again, which is okay. But what he was afraid of was what he had seen when he was at the SEC. He was basically worried that the funding companies were going to be ignoring signs of fraud as they sought plaintiffs to back. And I talked to a lot of former and some current employees of funding companies. Some of them said companies did things about board and some of them said they were very much encouraged to get as much money as they could out the door. Yeah, you have someone quoted, he's like a sales person for the funding company.

31:36I saw a salesman saying it's like stiff arming someone to say, you say basically, if you want this money, you need to get this surgery, which seems pretty awful. Yeah. I mean, and again, I talked to, so this is funding company employees. And I also spoke to a lot of plaintiff's lawyers and paralegals. And they said it was extremely common for a plaintiff, someone who was injured to come to them and say, Hey, I need more money. and then for the law firm and the funder to be like, listen, we can't give you more money. Your case isn't worth that. But if you would get this surgery, then we can give you more money.

32:12You know what I'm thinking about as I'm talking to you and I'm thinking about litigation funding? I'm remembering Peter Thiel funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Scalcker. I feel like that's where everyone first learned about this. And I'm assuming, I don't know the answer. I know Peter Thiel funded Hulk Hogan's lawsuit and everyone, I mean, that's why it went on to the bitter end and ultimately brought down that website, that news website. The kind of funding you're talking about, like how common is it outside of Peter Thiel and the story? Do you have a sense for that? That's a good question.

32:45The thing you're talking about with Peter Thiel is slightly different because that's funding the lawsuit. But no, it's related. It's related. That's funding the actual like the lawsuit. This is just funding the plaintiff, in some cases, their medical treatment. So some of this money is used to pay the doctors so you can get that cervical fusion, you can get that spinal fusion. I don't think we know how common it is, like what percentage of personal injury lawsuits it is. But I do know it's growing and I do know it's become a much larger business and it's become a much more established business in the last five years.

33:23Great. Actually, I wanted to ask you just my own curiosity, how you came across this story? Like, how did you know this was a story in the first place? So a number of years ago, I had gotten a tip about construction workers faking accidents and getting these unnecessary surgeries, but hadn't really been able to develop it. I had actually passed it along to our metro department here at the Times. But then I started reading more about insurance companies and other businesses, talking about how payouts for fraud was kind of like stymieing their business. and there was this one trucking company in Florida that was basically just like, we can't do business like we used to because we're constantly being hit with these fake car accidents.

34:13And you know, that's like six guys in a car, they say they're rear-ended and then they're all getting, they all say they need neck surgery and we're having to settle for like$5 million. And these were like small and mid-sized companies and they were basically like, this is going to put us out of business. So I thought that was like pretty intriguing. And then I just kind of started looking more and more into it. And then we learned about the newer financial aspect of it and decided to focus on that. Really great. Such a good story. Well, Ellen, thank you so much for talking to me and everyone should go read your story.

34:47And that's it. That's it for our show this week. Thanks to Jessamyn Molly for producing. Ben Richman is Senior Director of Podcast Operations. Mia Lobel is executive producer of podcasts, and I'll be back in your feed on Saturday, along with Felix and Elizabeth, for a regular episode of Slate Money. Until then, thanks for listening.

35:17This episode is brought to you by Perk. Now, if you work in an office on a scale of mild annoyance to I'm going to throw my laptop into the ocean, where does booking work travel and filing expenses land for you? Because the numbers are staggering. Every person on your team could be losing up to seven hours every single week to the work behind the work. We're talking about matching receipts, chasing card charges, managing travel, nearly an entire workday spent doing administrative chores nobody was actually hired to do. It's a massive drain on productivity, which is why PERC exists. perk is the intelligent platform for travel and spend instead of suffering through five different tabs in a broken spreadsheet perk combines business travel booking expense management and corporate card control into one single system your finance team gets real-time visibility and everyone else gets their sanity back save yourself the headache sign up at perk.com slash slate money to enjoy no platform fees for the first three months that is perk.com slash SlateMoney.

36:14New U.S.-based corporate customers only terms apply.

36:43and suddenly those clothes have a chance to find someone who actually wants them. And the best part, you're making room for whatever you're into next. Make money on Depop with no selling fees and find what you want for less. This message is brought to you by Depop.