Confronting ‘Wannabe Dave Ramsey’ For Exploiting Poor People! | Caleb Hammer

11:39Graham Stephan:But yeah, a couple times. Yeah.

11:41Caleb Hammer:Yeah. Dude, I don't know, man.

11:43Graham Stephan:How do you work?

11:43Caleb Hammer:People are crazy. We got a guy up front. You probably saw him. We love him. He keeps us safe. I'm waiting for the day when he gets to tackle someone. Because we got some crazies out there. Yeah, she came with a guy. I have no idea why. It was stupid. And she bought it right before coming on the show with debt. Like a dumbass. I don't know what the fuck she was thinking.

12:02Graham Stephan:Why did she buy a guy before the show?

12:06Caleb Hammer:Safety. Because she was coming from the airport to our studio. 10 minutes from the airport. So she landed the plane, went straight to a store. I think so. Or she got it right before going on the plane. I don't remember. But she was like, it's a new city.

12:21Graham Stephan:Does that not seem like a red flag that a guest buys a car before coming on the show?

12:27Caleb Hammer:A little bit. But we have protection here.

12:30Graham Stephan:Even still, I don't think normal people land somewhere to go on a show and in between the airport and the show buys a car. Regardless of the intention of that. It doesn't seem like a... If it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, sounds like a duck, might be.

12:49Caleb Hammer:The show wouldn't be half as interesting without a couple psychos here and there, though.

12:53Graham Stephan:So it's a sacrifice I wanted to take. How do you find some of these people? Because I see your ads everywhere. When I'm on Facebook or Instagram, I'm scrolling and I'm like, you know, come on, financial audit. It seems like you're casting worldwide almost. Kind of.

13:07Caleb Hammer:It's actually targeted places and you guys are in Vegas. Yeah. So Vegas, you know, there's some fun people in Vegas. So it's a couple targeted spots. The thing is, it's an awareness play. We target people who already watch Financial Audit, are already fans of Financial Audit. So we just get them to think, here's the show that you like, want to come on the show. Because everyone we have is from the audience. In the rare, like, one or two times a year that someone has not seen the show, we force them to watch an episode and some clips before they come on the show. But everyone's just from the audience.

13:39Caleb Hammer:We just target them and we're like, hey, you want to come on the show? Want to come on the show? We just kind of make them think about it when they're scrolling online. So everyone's in the audience. There's just some crazy people out there and I love them for it. I love them for it. Be crazy. We like a little crazy. I'm a little crazy. What I don't understand is why do you have the name of your company on the door to building? I have never understood that. It seems like there is so little to gain and so much to lose.

14:08Graham Stephan:That was the first thing Jack and I said. I literally just see it. I'm just like, what do you have to gain? If you can maybe list out three things, like three benefits of having the name on the door. I mean, I like my logo.

14:22Caleb Hammer:Ego. Okay, there's one. Ego. Ego, sure. A little to a certain point. I mean, it's really cool to have accomplished having a big space. That is cool. But it does make it easier for people to find, but we could pretend it's a different company and just tell them to find that. So that's not a good reason. I don't know. Is this one of the first things we did was market?

14:42Graham Stephan:We've seen some studios. Yeah. And they've purposely gone out of their way to be as anonymous as possible. And that works to their favor. And you have no idea who they are, what's going on behind the doors. It's all tinted.

14:56Caleb Hammer:Well, we probably should. Well, we probably should. We have some crazies. Again, I'm happy the guy up front is there. I love him. He takes me to and from my car every day. That's good. That is very wise. Yeah. Or if I go downstairs for any of the restaurants and whatnot. Do you worry about your personal safety? I did. You know, after the Charlie Kirk thing, I was like, I mean, we're not even in comparable spaces. But I've had people, even though I literally just joke and make roasts to people that have consented to it, I have people calling me fascist day in and day out. So I had security sitting out in front of my house for weeks until we got to install a good system.

15:33Caleb Hammer:I got a gun, so I'll blast someone's head off if needed. But, you know. it was it was scary there for a second i think everyone's i mean i was texting you you're a little nervous too like i think everyone was a little scared that is even personal finances can get controversial when you tell people just to be responsible they take that as like a threat it's like the way people twist things it's crazy um i mean yeah i mean i have a pretty intense in our community and um i have and then those those people are pretty crazy and they've put other creators lives in threat so every once in a while you know i'll get a security guard to sit outside when like something's kind of bubbling a little when people are going a little ravenous online but in general we have a good security system at my house to protect me my girlfriend and dogs and we have a ready fingerprint you know if needed hopefully not though it's just it's just crazy that a show that should be just fun with crazy titles and thumbnails i get it i know uh It gets people so heated in a way where I do get threats.

16:38Graham Stephan:The thing is I've watched a lot of your episodes and some of the people I think who are on your show are not mentally stable. And those are the people who I worry about where maybe you go a little too hard on them or maybe something happens down the line that they were on the show and then they're not in the right headspace to fully think through their decisions.

16:58Caleb Hammer:Yeah, it's always possible. There's been a couple people we've been nervous about. Brent, a guy a long time ago named Zeke. We do a lot better in our vetting process now. We don't allow people with like these, you know, if they have like dangerous. Actually, we do background checks and our security guard did find one person who almost came on and was almost invited to the studio, had a couple of just weird red flags in their Internet history. And we're just like, nah, it's not even worth the risk. The logic agrees with you. Like you're not doing anything objectively wrong, but you're potentially working with people that aren't playing by the same rules.

17:32They're not following the logic. So that's the only thing that we could advise on.

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19:00Graham Stephan:Netsuite.com slash iced. Enjoy. Going on something a little more positive here. You've seen at this point thousands of people between couples, individuals, you've seen all the personal finances. What is the strongest predictor of success?

19:14Caleb Hammer:Strongest predictor of success? It's when they have a really good story about weight loss or grinding through a degree or working through a family struggle and helping someone else when they've buckled down and actually accomplished something even outside of personal finances like i know you have the capacity to lock down go through some uncomfortable months or even potentially years if it's really bad and get this done especially those that have gone through like so we've had people that come on and they've lost hundreds of pounds and i'm like man okay if you went through how hard that is i know you can take a budget take some tools take some resources and actually improve your life when they've saved family members or friends or gone through really hard degrees with no support that it's i mean it's past behavior is indicative of future results or something right so it's when people have really accomplished some hard things in the past i know they can buckle down now on the other side when i have a guest coming on and they play the deflection game this happens a lot they're like oh yeah i'm gonna change that or oh yeah i'm changing that or i want to change that that's the response to any pushback i give i'm like no you have no example no history of you ever changing anything and i have your statements right in front of me and it's all around and that's this last month you can't just your response to everything can't be i'm changing that i'm gonna change that because that isn't it i can take that word from someone that lost weight went through a really hard time in life and went from homelessness to back that I can believe in that person.

20:46Caleb Hammer:But when someone hasn't actually had the struggle or done the turnaround to any point in their life and they're just like, yeah, I'm going to do it. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. There's nothing for me to believe. Where's the believe? I don't see the believe.

20:58Graham Stephan:Do you think it's possible for someone who has not been through the struggles to make a change?

21:03Caleb Hammer:Oh, I absolutely. It's just harder to be like objectively confident because it's the first time. I mean, when I went through my personal financials, the financial issues in my early 20s and grinding my way out, it was the first real struggle that I'd do myself. Because, yes, my family had personal financial struggles and foreclosure notices, but that was on my family, right? As a kid, you might have some, like, side consequences, but it wasn't like I didn't have to go get a job at 5 or 10. So, I mean, I did it. I know people can do it. I just, I cannot play the game of the deflection of, oh, I'm going to change it.

21:41Caleb Hammer:It's like, there is nothing to show me. You can't just say that. That's not an answer to, hey, why'd you spend all this? Oh, I'm going to change it. No, you haven't showed me that you are. You know, you haven't proven that. So yeah, of course, of course. But it is harder to get in to that motion of really changing your life for the very first time ever, for the first time ever, when you haven't done it before.

22:04Graham Stephan:What's the most insane purchase that you've seen from someone who's broke?

22:08Caleb Hammer:OnlyFans is a pretty bad purchase. Paying for titties? Paying for titties in 2026. I will say, ethically speaking, it could be more ethical than free. Jack, the hub does ads. The ad sense on the hub is crazy.

22:26Graham Stephan:I hear, actually, the hub pays really well. Really well. And that some creators are uploading their non-explicit videos to the hub and actually making, like, decent money from it.

22:36Caleb Hammer:It's like making members content versus posting it on main. Maine does really well. Like, it's, you know, so I get it. But, I mean, that's stupid. I'm sorry. Titties are everywhere. They're free. Why are we paying for them? That was a dumb purchase. You always got the car, the$100 ,000 Ford Texas Ranch Ranger F1000. And it's just, oh, my. Or when someone thinks they got a nice car and they got, like, a Dodge Charger and they souped it up for, like,$50 ,000. I'm like, what are we doing? Dodge Charger, why, why? so cars cars are always a horrendous thing what's the biggest car payment you've seen 2000 i think 2000 it was a truck it was a truck yeah how much we've had a couple that was around 2000 how much were they making oh it definitely wasn't in their budget i'll tell you that i mean usually around the show people bring in like five to six so they're spending like 35 of their income yeah but they could have been a three thousand dollar income i you know that was like a year So I'm not exactly sure on their number, but it was about a$2 ,000 truck payment.

23:41Caleb Hammer:And we've had that, I think, twice now. What's a classic broke person car? Dodge Charger is definitely highest level of repos, I think. One of them, right? Or Challenger. I don't know. They do gravitate to like those like weird muscle cars. It's classic. That and a big, big truck. Americans and their big truck. I don't know why, man. What would you say are the financial death sentences that people do? It's the micro-purchases. The micro-purchases, and it's how you do your micro-purchases. So even in people's checking account, they'll do the micro-purchase of the McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's, over and over and over again.

24:21Caleb Hammer:But they don't think it's much because it's$10, it's$12. Then it's every day, every other day. Or the energy drink. The energy drink thing is huge, man. People are going in and buying$5 energy drinks every day on the way to work. Every day. And that shit stacks. But then you can do it wrong. You can do it on a credit card that is building interest. So it's even worse than on the checking account. Or you can do it even worse, do it at a 35 % interest rate on Klarna. And then only, this is what we have now on our show. People buy their energy drinks on Klarna. And then they'll pay their Klarna minimum monthly payment with their credit card.

24:51Caleb Hammer:And then they'll pay their credit card with like a personal loan. It's like, it's just like debt for debt for debt for debt. And the longer you push that out, the further you push it down that debt train, the longer it takes to pay off the debt. But it's those micro-purchases are what's killing everyone. It is a high car payment or is the micro-purchases that you're like, it's not that much, but I'm going to do it over and over and over again. And it stacks up way higher than you'd ever think.

25:13Graham Stephan:Where do you think the balance is, though, between scaling back on micro-purchases and putting that effort towards making more money?

25:19Caleb Hammer:Well, more money doesn't change bad behavior, right? So it really doesn't. I mean, when people lifestyle inflate, you get an extra 25 % income, you probably spend an extra 35%. So before people ever aggressively go make a lot more money or go through bankruptcy, credit card transfer, personal loan, whatever it is, those can all be really good tools. But if you don't change the inherent behavior that got you there in the first place, you're just going to get off. We've had people that are coming out of the show going through their third bankruptcy because that doesn't actually change anything. That consolidation doesn't change anything.

25:54Caleb Hammer:You're calling it behavior. year would you say it's more a lack of knowledge or would you say it's mostly laziness that keeps people poor uh these days more laziness i could see i could see lack of knowledge a bit more 10 20 years ago but now more than half the states in the country have a required personal finance course before to graduate high school like that's huge that's a big change in this country now that's a big positive um and now we're we live in the world of grok gpt applaud google you name it anything you want to know you find out and personal finance is honestly basic like i'm kind of when it comes to math it's basic it's very basic stuff like no we're not talking like the best insurance is but we're talking about paying off debt building a fully funded emergency too fun.

26:41Caleb Hammer:So at this point, it's laziness to not find the answer or it's just it goes beyond the ignorance to like you know there's something going on and you're just actively choosing not to do it because it's more comfortable to put your head in the sand. It's more comfortable to live that fast food everyday, Starbys everyday lifestyle, which is fun. I mean, I get it. For what it's worth, I mean, I will put myself back there with all these guests that are doing it. When I was in college, carefree, going to McDonald's every day, or going out with friends and putting that all on credit cards every single day, Chase Freedom Card.

27:19It was fun.

27:21Caleb Hammer:And I had no stresses. Even though the stress was building, I didn't acknowledge it. It wasn't real. It was something for later, not to think about. And that was fun. It's more stressful to think about money even when you're successful. Because you're thinking about money. And it's always there. It's always something to figure out. When you're not thinking about money, you're just swiping. that's a great life. Not in the end, but it's a great life in the moment. It really is. So I think it's a little bit of, it's certainly laziness, lack of information, less and less so. And because everyone uses the excuse, well, my parent never taught me.

27:57Caleb Hammer:No one's does. Did yours? Did yours? I don't know. A little bit. Yeah. That's what kind of got me into it. It's like he was, I remember when I was young, actually it was Graham, honestly, like my dad was telling me, hey, you should like be buying stocks and stuff like that. So like I kind of like dabbled very lightly. But then it was Graham's videos of like high interest banks. And I was like, how can I make my money that I've saved kind of like grow over time? So it was really just high yield savings accounts was the first thing to everything. But I do agree with you. I think it's mostly laziness and not necessarily knowledge because the knowledge is everywhere.

28:26It's not hard to find it. Yeah, but you have to know to look for it in the first place. No, I would. What do you mean to look for it? It's pretty obvious. If you're not satisfied.

28:33Graham Stephan:If you're not satisfied is people spending money on a credit card and that's your entire world. How do you know there's anything more than that? Okay, so like what IQ do you think you have to have higher than to be able to say, okay, I am dissatisfied with where I'm at financially. Let me do a quick Google search to see how can I improve it. I just think when it's all you see, it's your entire world. You have no idea what's beyond that world. Let's just say you live in a very poor neighborhood. You've never been out of that district. You don't have a car. All you see is just poverty. How do you know there's anything beyond that?

29:03Caleb Hammer:The same could be - Well, I mean, no beyond that. for what it's worth we live in the world where everyone's watching content from all around the world you know there's a life beyond it i'll say i mean where you were going for a second i was totally aligned with when you grow up in bad schools you grow up in poverty yes it is harder to escape that the united states isn't perfect for going up to the next class you know we're kind of middle of the road when it comes to that you can get lots of success here but it is it's not perfect moving up the reins um but now with everyone being so connected you you see beyond all you need is one of your shorts to appear on your short feed.

29:40And then it's like, okay. But it's only once you start down that path,

29:43Graham Stephan:do you get recommended the content? Like I remember when I was making the video about the Roth IRA explaining it, I knew that people wouldn't know to search for it unless they already were looking for it. And so I made a video on how to be a tax free millionaire on$5 a day or whatever it exists now is the thing back in the day. It didn't. That's why I think now is different than it was a decade ago. Well, I mean, my thing is, like, if you're going to get your first credit card, we didn't have GPT and all that stuff when I was getting my first credit card.

30:10Caleb Hammer:Instead, I asked my parents. If I was 18 today, I would literally YouTube, Google, like, maybe I wouldn't say, what's dangerous about a credit card? But I was like, tell me about this credit card. And it would at least tell you about the interest. And then I'm like, oh, wait, tell me about that interest. Right. Because it takes you down those rabbit holes to keep using the service. Would you agree that if you're motivated to become financially literate, then it exists? Yes. You have to be motivated to be financially better. There we go. The exact opposite of being motivated is to be lazy. And so you're saying then that if you're lazy, that will be a massive obstacle.

30:41Graham Stephan:It's harder when you don't know what to look for or what you need to even search for. That is true. That's absolutely true. But if you're on the sliding scale of laziness versus knowledge, then if you're motivated, eventually you'll find out. If it requires a few failures along the road. I think right now there's another 100x opportunity that we're all going to look back on today and be like, oh my gosh, if only I knew to search for that. But you don't know to search for that because it's not in our sphere. But 10 years from now, it might be. And we look back at today and we say, oh, I should have done that.

31:13Graham Stephan:I think a lot of people do that with finance. I should have done this had I known that I needed to do that.

31:18Caleb Hammer:It's also harder because again, we just have so many more resources. If you just take a snapshot of time right now, I think that there's an abundance of knowledge, information online that can take you. less so about the lack of education a dangerous thing we see time and time again is like the bad education because it's not when you want your spring break to feel like

31:44Graham Stephan:and your kids pool day to feel like and your hotel bed to feel like oh and room service to feel like because at hilton hospitality feels like Your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton for this day.

32:11Caleb Hammer:Perfect isn't like trying over and over again, right? It's that or perfection isn't trying over and over again. Because if you keep trying the same bad thing over and over again, you're going to be perfect to be bad as well. So it doesn't lead to endlessly good results. If your parents are giving you bad information, like, you know, let's say we're in a place that is lower income and everyone is getting their nice cars, what they're prioritizing over, getting a nice place and a nice education. And your parents are pushing you to do that. Like, hey, you got to look good. You got to get this car.

32:39Caleb Hammer:You got to get this clothes. You got to do this. It's like that's bad education. That could hurt someone because the kid's very impressionable. Or getting pressured to go get a bad degree or worthless degree at any school, going to any amount of student loan debt. Like, I don't blame an 18-year-old for that if their parents and student counselors are heavily pushing them. Go to any school you want to get any degree you want and borrow whatever it takes to get it. So, you know, I don't think that's laziness. I think you can have a bad influence. I had a slight bad influence. I turned 18. I wanted a piano.

33:11Caleb Hammer:My parents said, well, the first thing you should do at 18 is open a credit card and max it out to get the piano you wanted. So I did. That wasn't laziness. That was the people that I looked to for the advice giving me bad advice. So it's not just laziness. There's other components to it as well. But there's lots of laziness. I 100 % agree. There's many components to it. We just happen to maybe disagree on the sliding scale. Sure, sure.

33:36Graham Stephan:Why do you think so many people don't know how much money they spend?

33:39Caleb Hammer:They don't look, man. I got people coming on the show that have never seen their checking accounts. they won't do something as simple as literally all the apps do the automated connections and it just tells you within like two minutes.

33:53Graham Stephan:What's your favorite one that you'd recommend? Well dollar wise of course but if we're putting that to the side besides dollar wise budgeting app what would you recommend?

34:03Caleb Hammer:I like ones for different reasons. If you want to go hardcore advanced YNAB is fun we've just learned that a lot of people click off in the onboarding because there's too much.

34:13Graham Stephan:I agree with you on that. I tried doing it and it just was taking too much time.

34:16Caleb Hammer:That's why we did something. Rocket money is pretty good, but I learned in the end they just kind of want to sell you a mortgage. So it wasn't the biggest fan of them. I got a mortgage with Rocket Mortgage. See. In fairness. But it was the best rate that I could have found. It's what it works. They are very competitive. I gotta say. I'm not saying that's inherently bad, but I want to use it for my own reasons, not to be sold. I did do every dollar. Every dollar was good. One thing I didn't like and why I don't always advise it is because it forces you to use the Ramsey method. So you know that's not very personal.

34:49Caleb Hammer:So Monarch is pretty good. Monarch's a new guy on the block. I just always get a little nervous when companies raise like$100 million in private equity because...

34:58Graham Stephan:What do they use that money for for a budgeting app? $100 million?

35:01Caleb Hammer:It's crazy because we didn't need that. But also private equity always ends up collecting private data in the end. Not saying they're going to. That's always what private equity wants. So I get a little nervous. So I like all those apps for their own reasons, but I'm hesitant for all those specifics as well. Yeah.

35:15Graham Stephan:Personally, I tend to like Rocket Money a lot. I find it's the best beginner friendly. It's pretty easy. It has everything you need, and it's pretty affordable if you pay for it. And I pay for it. I actually like it. I'd say they're all affordable for what you get.

35:29Caleb Hammer:If you tweak your budget, because all of them are on that$10 to$15 a month. If you tweak your budget and save$100 just because of a budgeting app, it's so easily worth it. This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. So Graham and I are going to South Korea soon, and we are both so excited to spend a week exploring cities, checking out traditional villages, and enjoying the local food and culture.

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36:50Graham Stephan:So at what income level do you feel like someone should stop feeling broke?

36:56Caleb Hammer:Does that ever happen? Did that happen to you? I don't feel broke anymore, but I don't feel

37:02Graham Stephan:rich either. So I feel like somewhere in the middle.

37:05Caleb Hammer:We'll get memed on for saying that, of course. But yeah, stop feeling broke. Obviously, it's going to depend on where you live. Man, it's going to be less of an income thing. It's going to be your liabilities, isn't it? It always is. You can be making$100 million a year, but if you've got billions in liabilities, I mean, and those payments are fucked, you're going to feel broke. 100 ,000 hours a year is what I always aimed for. But if I had a high car payment, high rent, high mortgage, whatever it is, I'm going to feel broke.

37:36Graham Stephan:Even studies today now say that middle class starts at$140 ,000 a year for a family with two kids.

37:43Caleb Hammer:And Gen Z said they needed to make like$300 ,000 a year to feel comfortable or something. Just why?

37:48Graham Stephan:What are your thoughts on that?

37:50Caleb Hammer:Well, my thoughts is they haven't been through a recession yet. So a little bit of a lack of life experience, which is fine. That's not a bad thing. That's not on Gen Z. I'm right in that middle. You're Gen Z. I'm like on that cusp. So it's not pooing on them, but it's like, I get it. I get it. The lifestyle that we want in our consumerism culture, the more the merrier when it comes to money. But once you actually go through a recession or you enter a bad job market, now they actually are entering a bad job market right now. And that might change the numbers. Because where Gen Z was entering the job market for the majority of their work life so far was like the best job market in the history of the United States.

38:28Caleb Hammer:You know, that COVID boom. tech hiring anyone for anything and now it's a bad time now it's a hard time the layoffs last month highest since the great recession job number revisions that hit the day before we're filming this episode millions less last year so i think that is what a generation usually takes to realize okay like i i can be happy with living a certain lifestyle and it doesn't need to be this over the top crazy so not saying they need to but it is hard reality hits it how bad is gen z gonna get by ai dude that's the question that's the question all the people right now who are studying to be

39:11Graham Stephan:lawyers yeah engineers i feel like so many people are gonna get wiped out and they're gonna spend hundreds of thousands of dollars going to school years of their life just to graduate and realize I was like, wait a second. This AI is now able to do what I've studied years to do, and it does it in one hundredth of the time for free.

39:33Caleb Hammer:It's crazy. My head of tech, who has about a five-person team, he said if he was doing this six years ago, he would need three times the people. That's a ton of jobs. Not out of greed or anything. It was just like you don't pay people when you don't need to hire someone. and it's not a great thing so everything's just so efficient right now especially in the world of programming even slightly design and engineering it is difficult the arguments are interesting on both side and it's impossible i refuse to take like who i agree with because i don't know i don't want to just just like yeah i agree with this person that's guessing it doesn't know what they're talking about there's the two camps right it's okay this has happened throughout human history.

40:22Caleb Hammer:You got the farm equipment. You got the automation and factories. Okay. Industries got wiped out. It was all replaced with something more productive. This is another example of that. And then there's the other ones like, well, no, this is new. This is completely game-changing. We're not going to need to do anything. We need to get something like UBI going. We need to do, you know, we've never seen anything like this. I don't know what the other side of the hill looks like. I don't know what the other side of the hill looks like. I don't know if I want to fully advised to panic go into a trade that is less ai replaceable because i don't i don't want to scare people off from anything else but i also don't want to say there's nothing to worry about which we don't know what the other side of the hill looks like man we really don't and we're already seeing some impacts right now customer service will probably be automated maybe if you ever talk to one of these programs right now you're getting better they're getting good they're getting good I talk to Grok in my car sometimes.

41:20Caleb Hammer:Like, if we're stuck in traffic, me and my girlfriend will play trivia on it. It gets a little weird with her intonation sometimes, but it's good. And it listens really well. So customer service is probably gone. A lot of engineering is probably gone.

41:31Graham Stephan:I think therapists are also going to be wiped out.

41:35Caleb Hammer:Yeah. Once people feel safe with that, and ethical about it, you feel safe about it?

41:42Graham Stephan:Yes, absolutely. If I have any sort of personal problem, I will put it in ChatGPT or Gemini and I get its unbiased opinion. Unbiased? Yeah. I say poke holes. You have to word it in such a way that it doesn't just agree with you. You have to teach it. And I want it to poke holes, show the other side, tell me what I'm not seeing. You have to prompt it. You do have to prompt it. You do have to prompt it, but still there is kind of like an end all with like there is bias on. Yeah, but so would be a therapist. A therapist would have their own biases that they weave into. I would probably feel more confident with some program.

42:19How do you justify when we ask Chad to put you, hey, estimate with the highest level of accuracy our IQ, and it gives you and I both. When we literally say, be as objective as possible, like no nonsense, and it says the exact same IQ for both you and me and our other friend we have in the car.

42:36Graham Stephan:I'm not saying it's perfect, and I'm not saying that I follow it as gospel, But I will say it does give me what I think is a valuable perspective that maybe I am not seeing. A hundred percent. It does do a generally really good job. But also for the average person that's going to be using Chajibiti, they're looking for validation. And so when they say, and then look at what this person said and wasn't that messed up. And Chajibiti being its very biased self will be like, yeah, you know what? And then you did what's right and they did what's wrong. Like it just generally, it wants to make you stand in that form.

43:06Caleb Hammer:TikTok that was trying to cancel a psychiatrist. Were you guys watching the whole saga? No. Oh, that shit was crazy. You would have loved it. Oh, my goodness. But she was doing new therapy with GPT. Or actually, another one of those programs. But either way, she was trying to cancel her psychiatrist for not wanting to fuck her. But the AI was fully enabling her. And she started to make all these TikTok videos that racked up tens of millions of views trying to cancel this guy and destroy his life.

43:32Graham Stephan:I don't know. Okay, now. It does reinforce your worldview.

43:35Caleb Hammer:view.

43:36Graham Stephan:It can as long as you don't have the mental fortitude to push back against it and the objective thinking to think critically about these things. If you are in the mental headspace where you're subject to outside perspective that much, I don't think you're at the point where that's going to benefit you. It reminds us like the guy who recently, it was a really unfortunate situation where he offed himself and someone else because he felt like that person was spying on him and he was schizophrenic. And he thought the printer that his mom wanted plugged in was spying on him and would talk to ChatGPT, which would reinforce his belief.

44:16Graham Stephan:And he would say, I think my printer is spying on me. And ChatGPT would say, yes, you are very vigilant. You are extremely correct in this thinking. Most likely, this is a, it's like a hidden camera and it's recording you. And when this was unplugged, you're very smart to think. Like, it reinforces his beliefs.

44:34Caleb Hammer:Yeah. I mean, we're close to that consciousness that they're trying to get to, most likely. I mean, a lot of people think it's like five years out. Once it does that, it should be able to think on its own, which hopefully would get rid of less biases, only bias on the information it's given or the parameters that it's set by the creator.

44:50Graham Stephan:But how do you feel like this is going to impact Gen Z and everyone else in the future?

44:53Caleb Hammer:Well, the job market is going to be at minimum changed. We can at least say changed. whether or not we become more productive in a certain way and it fuels different industries or they're going to be jobless and we're going to need to tax the fuck out of everyone to do UBI. That we don't know. But if I was going into college right now, I don't want to panic everyone into it, but I would try to find something that's less likely to be replaced by AI. I think the government probably won't want to use AI because they don't want to be productive in anything. They're still using printers and all those fax machines, so I'm not terribly afraid of that being replaced.

45:33Graham Stephan:I heard they're using AI at the IRS, though. They're starting to use it to process audits and flags.

45:40Caleb Hammer:They used Claude in the Venezuela operation that just came out. Really? Yeah. I didn't know that. Anthropoc was kind of, they came out with it, and now the Department of Defense or Department of War, whatever you want to call it, is kind of feuding with them. It's like active news as we're filming this. So who knows where that's going to go out. But yeah. Trades. I don't know if AI is going to do plumber, but they got the humanoids coming. You know, we'll see what Tesla does. There's always new robots here and there. You got the cleaning toilet, the toilet cleaning robots happening right now. Banking and finance.

46:15Caleb Hammer:I have a feeling though. AI probably could do really good. I have a feeling it's going to be so heavily regulated in finance that it might be one of the safer places to be. because who knows what the government's going to allow AI to do in finance. So it might be a safer place to get into. Getting into being a programmer and whatnot, I feel like that's just the most dangerous right now. You just have to be top level. You have to be top level now.

46:40Graham Stephan:Do you feel like it's easier than ever to be financially free given that we have all these resources available?

46:46Caleb Hammer:More resources to learn. Yeah, more resources to learn. Housing costs, not rent, but buying a house is, I mean, it's harder now than since like before everyone came back from World War II. So, I mean, that's more and more out of reach. Financially free. I mean, yeah, the stock market gives you incredible opportunities for investment and compound growth throughout your life. Incredible opportunities of getting better and better every year. As we have a major correction that brings that average of 12 % from the S &P 500 down. So that is on your side. Housing's against. What rental is better on markets that are actually encouraging building for what it's worth, like Nashville, Florida, Austin, Dallas.

47:25Graham Stephan:It just seems like with all these opportunities with AI, it's easier than ever to create a business.

47:31Caleb Hammer:To start a business, for sure. You got my apps. Easier than ever.

47:33Graham Stephan:The options to make money out there are endless with all the resources that are available.

47:39Caleb Hammer:Yeah, but you got to have that entrepreneurial mindset behind that. Like for the average person, though, is it easier than ever? I don't know. it's going to be a change in trajectory. They're just going to have to figure out how to navigate it. Again, it's harder to buy a house. It is harder to buy a house. But it's better to invest now, easier to invest now than ever. Fractional shares? I mean, there's tools and resources that are better than ever. But there's a couple things that are more out of reach. But you don't need to buy a house to be financially successful anyway. But a lot of people tie that into the American dream and whatnot.

48:12It is interesting. It's like the culture hasn't necessarily caught up with the reality of the situation because back in the day, the culture would suggest you need to buy a house and housing was accessible to get into. But now housing is not so accessible and the culture hasn't necessarily switched to like, hey, with your extra income, go buy a house. It's it should be, hey, with your extra income, go buy some stocks, like get involved in the stock market. But the the culture to the same degree has not switched to investing in stocks as it once was in housing or it still kind of is in housing.

48:40It's like the American dream sort of most people want to be homeless.

48:44Caleb Hammer:But it's also different. The house they're buying is different. When people were buying their first house, when houses were accessible, it's like a thousand square feet. Starter homes. Yeah, a bedroom, two bed. Now that's a small condo. Those are the starter houses. And you can buy a condo in many places still. But people want the starter home today, which is three bed, two bath, two thousand square feet. It's like it's not the same. Our culture has evolved on that part as well, where we have a new level of expectations. You remember the also crazy home loans that they're getting. What was it?

49:17Caleb Hammer:Zero percent down on everything? Yeah. Everyone came back from World War Two when everyone was able to get a house. Well, it was more.

49:22Graham Stephan:They also didn't have a lot of regulation back then in terms of building. Yes. Zoning was way easier and land was not as scarce.

49:30Caleb Hammer:Places like Austin, Texas, baby. Housing costs going down because we build shit. We build. the amount of permits that are taking place in places like San Francisco, you can count on two hands. It's crazy. That's why they should be building shit in San Francisco. People want to live there, but they won't because permitting is horrendous. Rent control is horrendous. Sounds great. Doesn't actually work.

49:50Graham Stephan:It's incredibly cheap right now to live with roommates. If you go on Facebook, there's a whole section there where you could live with roommates and people are just looking for a roommate to take a bedroom. And the rent proportion that you would pay significantly less than even if you were to split that rent with other people equally. Yeah, but the argument would be significantly less.

50:08Caleb Hammer:The argument's going to be, when they clip this, is like, yeah, but if we live in a good first world country, developed country, I shouldn't have to have roommates to survive.

50:20Graham Stephan:Jack has roommates.

50:22Caleb Hammer:But should he have to have roommates to survive?

50:25Graham Stephan:He wouldn't need them now. But again, that's why - You just have to look at what the alternative is. is the alternative that you spend 80 % of your income on rent. I would argue that that's worse than living with roommates. Yes, it absolutely is.

50:37Caleb Hammer:Don't get me wrong.

50:37Graham Stephan:And I think there are benefits of living with roommates. You constantly have companions. You constantly have buddies to be around.

50:42Caleb Hammer:Yeah, I mean, I'm not complaining, but I mean, that's what a lot of people would argue. And again, the expectation of housing is a lot more crazy. Their starter homes now are much more expensive, much larger than they were. That's why there's this project happening here in Austin with like, it's like the American housing company. It's a new startup. And they're building these like prefab small starter homes. That's what's going to be accessible to people. That's the OG classic starter home. That's not what a lot of people want. You see your HGTV show when you grow up. You want the big house. I did.

51:14Caleb Hammer:I thought my starter home, my starter home was crazy. $350 ,000. That shouldn't have been my starter home. It didn't need to be before I started YouTube.

51:22Graham Stephan:So what I would love to see, I've been saying this for a while, two things. One is micro apartments. And I'm talking 300 square foot apartments. That's just a studio, a kitchen, a bathroom, space for a bed that pulls down like a Murphy bed and a really, really, really good walkable location.

51:39Caleb Hammer:Walkable.

51:40Graham Stephan:People would love that just to have their own space to go home and sleep at night. That's all I wanted because I was working all day, go to the gym. I get back. I just want a place to sleep. That was it.

51:49Caleb Hammer:And the demand shows that people want to live in those walkable areas to the micro apartments would do so well.

51:54Graham Stephan:the other thing I think would do great is a big lot that just has small, tiny houses on it. I'm talking one, two bedrooms, one bathroom, the starter house, 900 square feet each lined up along the end with a courtyard in the middle. Like you used to have these 1950s apartment buildings like this, but each one is detached and people just pay an HOA of, let's just say,$100 a month for common area maintenance. That way everyone owns their own home, kind of like a common-in-law ownership, but they share the expenses of maintenance. And that's a home. People could buy their own home. I honestly think politics is

52:30Caleb Hammer:for once actually helping the American people in this one. Usually politics, most things you see kind of works against the average guy. But what we're going to see in the 2030 census is red states, Florida, Arizona, Texas, taking electoral college votes away from New York and California. Because we've built housing, we've done zoning reform, we've gotten rid of parking minimums. And this is actually starting to light a fire under those places. But California just did one of their biggest reforms in housing in decades, allowing more upzoning near transit centers. With the abundance of opportunity around these days, which I think we all agree that there is, why do you think it is that people continue to feel like financial freedom is only getting further and further away?

53:18Caleb Hammer:Consumer culture, for sure. you want the nicer car you want the nicer this you want the nicer that there's the house housing situation that we talked about now a starter house is twice as big as the one previous we want more and more and more and we feel entitled to more and more and more when you're in a prosperous society you feel like you should have that more that's not necessarily an inherently bad thought but it's hard to have all that and now where we're entering a tough job market first time since the Great Recession, you know, a truly tough job market. A lot of things are going to feel inaccessible for a lot of people as well, especially with the inflation we saw around grocery prices.

53:56Caleb Hammer:That's scary. Now wages are starting to outpace inflation, but it's going to take a lot to catch up. What financial takes do you have that would anger most viewers, even though they're true? Rent control sucks. Doesn't work. It's performative, though. I don't know if this is going down the spiral, so I don't want to go too deep into it. No, no, no. I mean, I agree with you. It just, well, it hasn't worked. It's just one of those policies that sounds really good. It sounds really moral. I want to support it. Landlords, you make less money. People pay less in rent, but everywhere it's been enacted, permitting has gone down substantially.

54:30Caleb Hammer:Rent's gone up even faster for the average person, except for the lucky few that are in subsidized housing or rent-controlled housing. Units go untouched, not being taken care of at all. I think it's like 10 or 20 % of rent-controlled units in New York have no one in it because they can't be brought up to standard because it's not worth investing in. That's vacancy control. Yeah. And in Massachusetts, they enacted rent control. It was a complete disaster, so they had to get rid of it. And then housing costs went down. Austin, Texas tried to do rent control decades ago. Texas said, f*** you. Housing costs are going down because we instead focused on, oh, you know, if you build housing, it's actually more affordable.

55:09Caleb Hammer:San Francisco housing costs went the the moment they enacted rent control got worse worse and worse. Hermione went down. It just has never worked even in certain cities in Minnesota. They enacted rent control and took it back a few years later.

55:22Graham Stephan:You know what I think all they need to do to solve the rent control problem is just two things. It's really easy. One is perhaps tie it to income so that you can't have someone making$500 ,000 a year in a rent control department paying$2 ,000 a month on the beach. That makes no sense. The other thing is rent control should not be indefinite. Yeah, generational. I think it should be enacted only for, let's say, three to six years. Enough where someone could live there, have a base there. But it can't be indefinite to the point where the landlord passes away because they've lived there for such a long time.

55:58Graham Stephan:Their kids inherit it. And then all of a sudden this rent control is gone for like 50 years and the building is falling apart. It needs to be brought up to current market rate for the area to simply improve over time and for the landlord to have money to fix these things.

56:13Caleb Hammer:Yeah. I mean, that's honestly, I don't talk about politics too much. But one reason I'm willing to talk about that is because I always rage against performative politics. It's a performative position. It sounds good. It feels good. It feels good to advocate for fighting for the little guy. It has just never been enacted once in the history of literally any city that has been beneficial to the majority. Never. Not to keep off Austin, but one thing we do well here, no rent control, but we say, okay, if you're building an apartment complex, a small percentage have to be a part of this local government program that's affordable housing units.

56:47Caleb Hammer:And if you don't, there's just a little extra tax. So most do it, then you apply to the local government and you get in and it's been working. It's been helping people. That works. Instead of a blanket thing across the board that just f***s up the entire permitting process and or just bad zoning laws in general. So that one pisses people off because you sound evil. You sound like you're pro-landlord when you're like, oh, rank control actually doesn't work. But it just literally never happens. I think it's just pro-common sense. You think so, but primitive people, meh. What other opinions do you have that would make people angry?

57:19Yeah, yeah, yeah, that are true about personal finance. That are true about personal finance.

57:27Caleb Hammer:You don't need a credit card or that when it makes people angry.

57:34Caleb Hammer:Not entitled to go out to eat? That might piss some people off, right? It's like you're not entitled to that. I would love you to. I hope you can fit it in the budget. Let's work together. Let's get you more money. Let's get your budget under control. But you're not entitled to go enjoy a nice sushi or a McDonald's? So that might piss some people off. We have a lot of entitlement. you don't need to get the fancy fancy nice perfect whole foods you can get the off brand for a little bit I off branded in college on the cheap it's not great it's not the best for health either but it worked it kind of pisses people off when you say I get a 10 ,000 hour car right now instead of going and getting a 30 ,000 hour car because they're like well I just started a family and it's so much safer it's like okay were cars just insanely dangerous three years ago I don't think so I don't think everyone was dying that got in a car.

58:24Caleb Hammer:So that sometimes pisses people off. But it is difficult because you need to take that car and actually get it checked out by a couple independent mechanics. I don't want you just walking out with a 30 % interest rate loan on a$10 ,000 car that's worth two and will break down in two days. Because when you say that, that's what people think you're trying to say. It's like, go get a piece of shit. It's like, no, you got to do your research. Which means you might save more money by Ubering temporarily while you do your research. but people just have to go get the car immediately and they want the safer car what about you it's

58:55Graham Stephan:probably also with the housing i don't believe that corporate landlords are necessarily bad i don't think they're driving up housing prices and every piece of research has shown that they buy so little of the housing stock that it makes no difference whatsoever to the average person buying a house but they're the biggest scapegoat out there that people like to point to black stone who's always confused with BlackRock, Blackstone going out there buying up single-family homes. Really what they're buying is rent-to-own communities that were built specifically for the purpose of renting. And if you remove that from the market, you actually hurt the market because you have less inventory out there.

59:33Graham Stephan:But they're the easiest to go after because it's like this faceless corporation who's buying up the houses when in reality, it has nothing to do with that. It was zero interest rates that froze a lot of people in the housing market. They're not building enough. And everyone's vying for a house because it's sold as the American dream. And that's what's actually driving up housing costs. But Blackstone or corporate institutional landlords are the easiest to blame because everyone just says, well, yeah, they shouldn't own a house. So it's just easy.

1:00:04Caleb Hammer:If I'm not mistaken, private equity that owes over 100 units owns less than 1 % of single family homes.

1:00:09Graham Stephan:It's about 0.5 % of single family rentals.

1:00:13Caleb Hammer:Now to play devil's advocate, there were a couple markets specifically in like the COVID boom, like Austin or what was it, Tampa or even Atlanta where they came in and they bought like 25 % of the available stock at one time. A lot of those were syndications, which were funded by a lot of

1:00:32Graham Stephan:everyday investors who thought that housing was a good thing to buy. I wouldn't say it's necessarily institutional money, but a lot of these syndicators, they just went out there and bought whatever they could on the market because raising money was so easy.

1:00:45Caleb Hammer:Yeah, that makes sense. It is the easiest scapegoat, though. It really is, because that's what Trump's executive order was. Instead of the most effective thing would be changing zoning laws around the country, getting rid of minimum parking. Also, my understanding is that supply can be increased because of the amount of institutional money going into development because a developer will not develop land unless if he knows for a fact that he'll have a buyer if he develops a neighborhood. And then a lot of the times they'll have a contract with the institutional money to then 100%, I know I have a buyer.

1:01:13So then they go and they actually develop the land and increase the supply by building homes. Otherwise, the developments wouldn't get made.

1:01:19Caleb Hammer:It should be the most bipartisan thing, honestly. R's and D's should get together. Everyone should be a Yimby. Yes, in my backyard. Let developers build where demand is. Here's another one. This is going to make people upset. I don't think that you are entitled to live anywhere just because you were raised there or your family has existed there for generations. I think it's really, really controversial. People hate this idea. I grew up in Southern California. It was extremely expensive. I could hardly live there. And then we moved to Las Vegas because it was much more affordable. So we actually left a more expensive place for a cheaper place.

1:01:56People argue, yes, it was tax savings. At the time, for me, it was financially difficult to live in California. For Graham, it was more opportunistic of moving to Las Vegas and the opportunity there and the savings there. For me, it was like, okay, this is nice because I can afford things better. But yeah, I think if you're born and raised in Manhattan, it's like Manhattan is just objectively expensive. You were blessed and lucky to be born and raised there in the first place. It's like you have to earn the right to live in an expensive place in the same way that in a city, there's an expensive neighborhood and a cheaper neighborhood.

1:02:25It's like you can go to the cheaper neighborhood if you cannot afford the most expensive neighborhood.

1:02:29Graham Stephan:In fairness, I grew up in Santa Monica and I ended up for a while living in like a really, I don't want to call it like a - It was an up and coming area, we'll call it. Yeah, very up and coming. But that's where I bought because it made financial sense. I thought, hey, here's a space where I could rent out the other side. This works for me. I didn't need to live in Santa Monica at the time, but I did that. I paid my dues. I saved up. And then eventually I bought in Santa Monica. Also, like what makes you more entitled to live in Manhattan than someone who was born and raised in like a rural Montana?

1:03:05Like they're both. No, like it doesn't. It makes it harder for the person in Montana to move to Manhattan with that presumption.

1:03:12Caleb Hammer:Yeah, I think a lot of people are going to clip that, take it out of context and get really angry. But there's absolutely truth to it because there's a lot of choices in life that lead you to your first rental, your first purchase. And I'm sorry, but if you grew up in a nice middle class family in a nice area that you could afford, if you got a good degree and good job, but you went and chose to get an arts degree. That was your choice to get an arts degree that might not result in that high income that's required to live there. So that's not unfair. It's not unfair. It's brutal.

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1:08:00So if you were to distill down the best piece of financial advice, let's say the top 10 pieces of financial advice you've ever received, and you are going to provide the viewer with one singular piece of advice where if they listen to what you say, it will have the highest return in their life. We can all think about it and we're all going to give our answer. So I guess it would be three pieces of advice. What would you say yours is?

1:08:21Caleb Hammer:Stop being a p***h and take some actual p***h responsibility for the first time in your damn life. Some people come from p***h situations and that sucks. But the vast majority of us in the highest disposable income major nation in the world have a lot of choices. Stop being a p***er. Grow up. Take some accountability. And budget. Budget.

1:08:43Graham Stephan:I would say just dollar cost average, low fee index funds. Consistently for 30 years, that's it. I would say spend less than you make.

1:08:53Caleb Hammer:Controversial. You'll get called a fascist for that one. What? I thought you'd be surprised. To say spend less than you make? You can't be surprised. Okay, so let's just, the strongest counter argument, spend more than you make. What would the argument for that be? Well, you need that to survive. You should be able to go out and have a good time with your friends. You should be able to have the place you want to live, live in the city that you were born in. If the desired result is financial freedom, then how will that get you there? It's like one or the other, right? Well, in this capitalist society, that's evil.

1:09:23Caleb Hammer:I forgot. So, should have used your thinking brain.

1:09:27Graham Stephan:What do you think of the criticism that sometimes you're too harsh on the guests?

1:09:31Caleb Hammer:Yes, absolutely. Of course we are. One, it's a show. Two, they come on and they literally ask for it and beg for it. I just filmed with the guests before this and I was like, do I have permission to make the title and thumbnail that you went through? And she's like, please be crazy. So it's just like, I don't know. Too harsh on a guest. Don't come on the show if you don't want it. Don't come on the show if you don't want it. Don't get offended on behalf of someone who's not offended in the first place. And if this show's not for you, that's okay.

1:09:55Graham Stephan:now we predicted that a while ago you're going in the direction of uh jerry springer caleb springer thank you caleb springer isn't there a limit to just how far you could push

1:10:07Caleb Hammer:things yeah and we're probably there like we don't get anything we haven't gotten anything crazier than we've done in the last year we've honestly the show's been where it is today in the last year and a half so it's very interesting because you'll get some of these in your comments right now some of the oh i used to be a fan and tell you it was too mean i'll get it goes on a cycle for three weeks i'll get caleb's being more mean than normal and caleb's being nicer than normal he should be meaner to that guys caleb's being meaner than normal nice it's just it's an endless repeat the show's been about the same for a year and a half to two years um even with the titles our titles actually used to be more mean and whatnot but um yeah uh since i embraced the springer now they're trying to throw a new insult at me calling me dr phil so i guess i'm caleb phil

1:10:45Graham Stephan:it's not as where do you draw the line between like genuine helping them and just like bullying them.

1:10:52Caleb Hammer:Yeah, I mean, if we weren't seeing positive results in the end, because at least we track it analytically, we track it analytically. Over 20 ,000 hours of bad debt paid off in 12 months is the average on the show. 10 ,000 in 10 months is the mean. So we get an annual report that we do surveying all our last guests. And if we were actually seeing negative impacts in people's lives, like we would readjust behind the scenes.

1:11:12Graham Stephan:What do you attribute that to? Do you think that's them coming on the show and in a sense is being a little humiliated? Or do you feel like the people that come on the show to begin with show a genuine interest in turning their life around?

1:11:24Caleb Hammer:They have a genuine interest. They come on to show that intent. And a lot of times it's their first time they actually get a wake-up call and a fire under the butt, especially when their episode goes live and they're seeing like, oh, this person's kind of financially. It's like they have that incentive. They want to do better. And there's many people that it doesn't work for, but don't come on the show.

1:11:43Graham Stephan:And that's fine. Is it just accountability where they go on the show and people call them out and now they feel like I have to make a change.

1:11:51Caleb Hammer:Yes, that's a part of it. But there is the other part as well where we've created a lot of educational resources. They get the DollarWise app for free. They get all of our classes in our Master Your Money program for free, which is five different in-depth, professionally curated personal finance courses. They get our course career certifications. They get access to a debit card that builds credit called FIZ. They get access to a lot of resources. Even on the extra special cases, I have them sit down with a CPA financial advisor or I've paid for people's therapy as well if that's what they need.

1:12:18Caleb Hammer:So we do go above and beyond. We answer their questions behind the scenes. So it's a lot of that. But when it comes back to the bullying versus actually helping, I think it's bullying. If it was like a random person I'm pulling off the side of the street that knows nothing about the show. And I'm just like, ha, you shorty. Like, I'm not saying that, you know, it's like. It's people that signed up and people come in with a wish list of like my catchphrases. I don't know them, but they usually tell the producer like, oh, I hope he calls me, you know, a little or something. And I'm like, I don't know.

1:12:48Caleb Hammer:It's a part of the fun of the show. They sign up for the fun.

1:12:51Graham Stephan:We have fun. Walk us through the vetting process in terms of like finding the people, scanning through them, making sure they pass the checks. Who talks to them beforehand? How does this even work?

1:13:03Caleb Hammer:Yeah, it's very in-depth. One, they apply either through the ad, but it's targeting people on the show. Or they apply through the link in the description or through the website, gilipham.com slash apply. and we get hundreds a day, hundreds upon hundreds a day. When you guys first filmed with me, I think it was like 40 a day. Now it's hundreds. They immediately go into a spreadsheet with all the information they give. Our casting team of three people look over them, start putting people into a column of, oh, we're interested in this, we're interested in this, whether it's their story or whether it's their finances, but both have to be good in the end.

1:13:36Then it goes to our initial touch point.

1:13:39Caleb Hammer:She's in one of our call pods all day, just making those initial touch points and saying, hey, you applied. Are you actually interested in coming on the show? You know, the show's kind of crazy. Are you sure you want to deal with all that? You know, okay, give me some information about your finances. Can you send me your documents? Here's a couple of questions I had about your application. It's a quick 10-minute phone call, just seeing if they're interested and if they're actually valid. Then they get off the call with that, and then we actually capture their financial documents if that call went well.

1:14:03Caleb Hammer:So we review those to see if their finances are interesting enough to come on the show. Then whatever casting producer is assigned to that episode, we have two, Colton and Lindsey. they will have in-depth conversations with them talking about their entire lives and their entire finances things they don't want to talk about and honestly putting the fear the fear of god into them that they are going to be roasted upon roasted that they are going to be memed upon memed and be seen by millions and be commented and all these different things titles and thumbnails so they have usually a 4 to 5 hour or 6 hour depending on the conversation talk with the guests then we send them our first onboarding video where it goes with hey I'm glad we accepted you to come on the show but you need to know a couple things you're gonna get memed on, you're gonna be seen by millions you're gonna get roasted, your personal finances are on display you need to tell us or actually start thinking right now about things you do not want to be on the show because we're going to need you.

1:15:07Caleb Hammer:We're going to need you to tell us once you come here. And also don't come on if you're not uncomfortable. If you're not comfortable with this, just let us know. Let us know now. It's OK. You don't have to come here. It's fine.

1:15:16Graham Stephan:Could you give us examples of things that people have asked not to talk about?

1:15:20Caleb Hammer:Only fans for men all the time. Lots of direct family things. People will say loans from family instead of like it's from mom. It's from this certain past traumas that they don't want to talk about, which are fair. And that's because because people bring those up when you asked earlier what we cut for people sometimes, and some of those things that might be a little embarrassing. We're like, Ooh, I don't know if I'd want my situation to be out. So we cut that for them later. Um, so usually things like that. We also check in the process. I forgot to mention like egregious mental health things. If people obviously can't make good decisions for themselves or people have horrible traumas that might be triggered from this, we're like, Hey, you cannot come on or like, Hey, this is like, this might trigger some.

1:16:00Caleb Hammer:You probably shouldn't come on. We give them that advice as well, the producers. What percent of people drop out through the vetting process? I actually don't know at this point because luckily I've delegated. I have such an incredible team at this point of 30 plus people at Hammer Media that luckily I don't have to be a part of that process as much. So I don't know. And what percent of the episodes that you film do you choose to not post? Almost none these days. Almost none. We have so many people applying that we pretty much know we have a good uploadable episode these days. So much so that we've become so confident that we only film three a week now, even though we post three.

1:16:36Caleb Hammer:Wow. It used to be four, but now we do three. We have a month's backlog, a full month of uploads. So four weeks, three episodes. How much are you working? A lot and a lot off hours as well. Everyone's here nine to five, Monday through Friday. And we'll do some Saturdays here and there for some random things like members audits or a long live stream. And then I work off hours. I have a little passion project right now on a documentary channel I'm doing, but I'm doing that on my own time. The Dollar Wise stuff is pretty crazy. It's been hectic. How many hours would you say per week? Oh, yeah. That's a...

1:17:09Caleb Hammer:Okay. Fair enough. 50 for me. Okay. 50 for me. That's not that bad. No, it's not that bad. I brought it down and I really tried to give more time for girlfriend because that's important. You don't keep girlfriend around if you don't give time to girlfriend.

1:17:23Graham Stephan:We're going to talk about The Girlfriend a little later because I got some questions about this. But do you ever worry in terms of the show that sometimes the entertainment overshadows the help or the financial aspect of it?

1:17:37Caleb Hammer:No, personally, because. There's thousands of shows out there. Money Guy has a great show that is education first. Ramsey is a good mixture. I'm a slop consumer, so I love slop. me and my girlfriend we watched all the 90 day fiance shows we love that shit i love it so i love having some of the drama some of the tea but it's also a great way as silly as it is in the first part of the episode maybe even first half now it's like more of that kind of stuff and then tell you into the documents but it's actually benefited me a lot not only because it's fun but because i really get to know them and i'm able to challenge them on a lot of their they talk about because of everything i got to know first and it gives a really big baseline understanding of their life, their history, their relationships, and things that got them in that financial situation.

1:18:24Caleb Hammer:But don't get me wrong. I mean, we totally could, and again, this is some of the complaints you'll have in the comments right now. Like, oh, I used to be a day one fan, I think is what they're called. And I don't like how the shows become like, yeah, that's fine. And we have the analytics behind it. Luckily, the vast majority of original subscribers are still happy and watching, but either way, yeah, I mean, it's moved to more fun. One, I do not think I could do a show this frequently if I wasn't having a good time. I really don't. I don't think there's just, I wouldn't be incentivized to do it.

1:18:54Caleb Hammer:So I'm going to have fun doing this. My team's going to have fun doing this. Guests are going to have fun doing this. But then on the help part, again, if the analytics weren't there about guests getting help, then I would actually reassess what we're doing. Luckily, they get better and better every single year. And we are getting nothing but positive experiences from guests these days. Like, you know, a couple of years ago when it was less crazy or even when I got my first producer and he was a really bad hire, there was like a couple guest experiences where they weren't as happy afterwards. So if things weren't looking good, I'd be concerned there.

1:19:23Caleb Hammer:But I have fun. We like to have fun. I support the Caleb Springer and the slop. And Money Guy is a great resource. I am friends with Brian and Bo. If you want strictly finances. What's your favorite and least favorite part of your job? Favorite. Love working on anything on the business end. That's what I really like working on. I like scaling this thing the dollar wise, the educational programs we're doing. Caleb Hammer Live was fun for a second. We're revamping that after I got a little naughty.

1:19:56Caleb Hammer:It's my fun. It is the most fun to me building something from nothing. Financial audit is still fun to do, especially once I'm deep in the episode or we're making titles and thumbnails and it's going live and I get to manage that. but financial audit itself isn't as fun as everything else because it's already successful so I can't get in there just like make it crazy I don't get to really lock in and go hard there's a whole team it's a well-running machine my least favorite job and this is more just being an introvert is actually coming in to film the financial audit because I don't know that person I've never met that person I hope the episode's going well but I got to get to know this person I don't really like getting to know people This is not a part of my personality.

1:20:42Caleb Hammer:We're going to dinner with someone later. I don't know this dude. It's going to take me a second to kind of come out of my shell. I'm just that introverted kind of person. So the first 15, 20 minutes of filming is actually my least favorite part. But then I love the second half of filming once I know them. And what about the drama? Like, how are you always in the epicenter of some drama? I feel like there's something going on. Wait, on the internet? Yes. Yes. I see you on Twitter. Yeah, but I see you on Twitter, YouTube. I'm like, what is Caleb doing on Twitter? Because people are here accusing you.

1:21:12Look at this right wing grifter. Look at this left wing grifter. This guy has no idea what he's talking about. You're just always wrapped up in some sort of drama. Well, it's interesting.

1:21:20Caleb Hammer:On Caleb Hammer Live, where we talked about more relevant topics, I took left wing positions and right wing positions, which means right wingers thought I was left wing and left wingers thought I was right wing. I'm not the classic centrist. I'll never take an opinion. No, but I'll go either way, depending on where the facts are, you know, for me. So that makes everyone angry. And also, I'm controversial. We say, you know, I say, I say, I say, I say, that upsets some people. That's upset some of the like slop commentary community that kind of copies and pastes the same arguments, even though they're not really good over and over again.

1:21:54Graham Stephan:But why say those things? Because I feel like you could get 99.99 % of the result without calling someone a c -

1:22:00Caleb Hammer:It's not the result. It's honestly - It's just you. kind of it is a part of the humor i like i love the outrage humor when i go to i love going to stand-up shows in austin and the stand-up community in austin is a bit more edgy and i love that edgy i love edgy i'm this most i get from this daily basis is still a edgy being edgy as fuck getting people's outrage in a group chat from 10 years ago like oh crazy it's like that's just me i love being edgy and that is not for everyone but one thing i learned and reflecting from, you know, kind of reacting and being upset at those people being offended through friend of the show, Nicholas DiOrio, great commentary creator.

1:22:43Caleb Hammer:He was like, why be worried about these people being upset at what you're saying? You're never going to win them over. They're never going to be the fans of your show, and they're never going to like the jokes you do. Why care? But why do you respond to some of these? Well, I did. And then he said that. And I listened to it. I was like, oh, he's right.

1:23:02Graham Stephan:When was this? A few weeks ago, a couple weeks ago. So it was until a few weeks ago that you just.

1:23:07Caleb Hammer:Yeah. Okay.

1:23:08Graham Stephan:Because it seems like sometimes you have this visceral reaction where if someone comes at you with something, you respond to it and you kind of pour gasoline. Yeah.

1:23:18Caleb Hammer:I'm an over the top person. I mean, I am. And people said I crashed out too, which is interesting because they ever watched the show. That's just the energy from that show. But of course, because it was so long, the four hour thing I did, no one actually watched watched that to hear my points they only saw what who i was responding to selectively clipped so it was fine whatever i accept it i'm taking it on the chin but it's just like i do have a there is sportsmanship in it i do have some fun with it for what it's worth i like a good battle but you already was right it's like they're never going to be fans of the humor and jokes why cater to them why try to win them over it's fine so live and let live throw you into some more drama who is it worse to have more hate coming from the right or the left right now the left i would have been more afraid of the right during like the obama days because they like they're scary the right was scary during the obama the extremists i hate extremists but right now um those communities like the sloth commentary that copy and paste the same videos over and over again their audiences are vicious the dms i've gotten the comments i've gotten what do they say telling me to kill myself and all this it's crazy i've never seen it they're vicious and that doesn't mean i think like the left wing is vicious but i think the far left can be pretty vicious online it's like if you disagree with 0.5 of the things like they'll throw you from the community so those creators eat each other alive all the time you see it in all the big dramas between hassan destiny ethan like they'll eat each other alive for not even the race to the bottom basically yeah um so So, I mean, it's going to go back and forth.

1:24:56Caleb Hammer:I mean, if I pissed off like the far right, I might be afraid because they're probably the ones. But the most vicious attacks I've gotten have been from the far left. But I'm not scared or nervous of the normal left or normal right. Because those people are fine. I meet them every day on the show and out in Austin. When they come up and say hi, it's like, you know, oh, we might not agree on everything, but I'm a big fan of the show. And I'm like, you don't even know what I believe because I don't say it. But it's fine. Like, everyone's cool, but the extremists are scary.

1:25:25Graham Stephan:Do you think the people that come on your show are more left-leaning or right-leaning? And does that have any indication of how good they are with personal finances?

1:25:33Caleb Hammer:And I'll say this to the people that come on the show that are left-leaning. They embrace it on the show. Everyone that's come on the right, they say, I don't want to talk about politics on the show. That's my no-go. So you'll never know they're on the right. They're kind of pussies about it. People on the left are willing to come on the show and they're willing to just put it on full display. So it's easier to meme on because they actually talk about it. people that have come on the right they're like i don't want to talk about why do you think that is well there was definitely like back in like the 2020 times if like you had a right-wing position you know there's you know potential like nervous at workplace about it but that's not where we are anymore so i don't know why they're pussies um do you think it's completely swapped from that or if you have a left-wing opinion consequences at work no we're like you know either way or let's just say you're sharing a conservative opinion in the workplace do you think that it's completely acceptable now i mean honestly i i don't know we we have people we have like far leftists and people pretty right on that work here and we don't give a but i i don't know i can't speak for everyone i know our culture is at least corrected from that era of like the hyper analyzing everyone and twitter twitter and tiktok still tries to yeah they think they're powerful but sponsors don't care about them anymore jobs don't care about them anymore they have no impact who do you think is worse with money the left or the right uh usually when it comes to people that have come on the show

1:26:56Graham Stephan:the left people on the left on the show tend to be worse what would you say as a percentage like

1:27:03Caleb Hammer:70 left 30 right or is it like 60 40 yeah shit maybe like 70 70 to the left i don't know if that applies out in the real world but i mean idea a lot ideology and i hate ideologies but i'm not going to go down that rabbit hole but ideology the right does tend to be more personal responsibility so that you know kind of come personal finances fits easier in that than the left yeah so have

1:27:33Graham Stephan:you ever filmed an episode and then watched it back and thought that you went too far yeah because

1:27:39Caleb Hammer:we filmed this live for us right and if i'm having a bad day it comes across it legitimately does i also have i watched episodes where i'm like why was i so soft on that person what the is wrong with you i was being a pussy so yeah absolutely for sure where i've gone too in too in on someone for no reason we used to have more of those um when i was doing double days filming in the morning and afternoon so glad we don't do this anymore because my afternoon episodes i was much more on the age what do you think people should call you out about because you call them out about stuff so i'm telling people to get their personal finances under control but i'm a fap um i don't need to be trying to scale the business in the way i can i could just be happy collecting a youtube check don't need to get a big building with a big lease and all these employees and whatnot whenever i post a company picture people are like why is a youtube channel need this many people and it's relatively fair but i like to pay well i like to scale this thing um and it's okay it's when people say i'm too mean or the titles and thumbnails are bad they're not wrong this is not for them and that's okay like it it's okay don't come on the show don't watch the show when i don't like something i don't watch it i don't go on the shows i don't like if i didn't like you guys the show i wouldn't be on the show um so it's like that's not inherently a wrong opinion to have i don't agree with it because i come from not being offended by everything but you know it's fine they can criticize me on that what's your overhead oh chunky she's chunky she's hundreds of thousands hundreds of thousands of dollars a month yeah yeah yeah yeah and what do you do i think about three three hundred thousand dollars i think i think what do you do to make sure that your employees are investing or do you just have to learn to not care about that that my employees are investing yeah in their job no no investing like personal finance like buying stocks that's on them man so you but so i always know why a 401k match yeah to encourage it does everyone in your organization agree to it do they take it i don't know i don't ask i don't want to get that personal to their yeah it might not be caleb's place to tell people i mean i guess it's different it's different for us because we kind of like work with a lot of our friends and so like i feel somewhat like i feel passionate about making sure that like hey you know like Like if one of our contractors, person we take jobs with is not investing some of their money, like, hey, you know, like I'm annoying with it.

1:30:05I'm like, you should maybe consider doing a dollar cost average into a low cost index fund. And so I feel passionate about it. But I'm just curious as someone who employs a lot of people, is this not really something that you think about?

1:30:15Caleb Hammer:For the majority, no. I mean, I've become friendly and close with some. And, you know, we have individual conversations for fun. Or we roast each other's financial decisions. But, no, for the best majority. But we encourage it. We encourage it with a 401k match. I don't remember if it's three or 4%, but it's, I hope they're doing well. Good luck. We certainly pay them enough to do well. This is a near impossible question, but what percentage of someone's financial status is a result of their behavior or the environment that they're in? Behavior will pull harder in the end. Behavior will pull harder, but you could come from a situation that you have to give 10 times the behavior that any of us have been through.

1:30:59Caleb Hammer:to actually pull yourself out. If you're in the projects of Flint, Michigan or something, that's hard. If you have lead in your water and you have some deficiencies because of that, that's hard. Not as much behavior comes from that. But I think for the vast majority of Americans where people are not going hungry, our poorest people are fat, behavior is going to be the bigger determining factor for the majority. But there are situations in full poverty, poverty, poverty, Ville, West Virginia, Appalachia. That is going to be difficult. And that is going to be harder than any situation that anyone else is going through.

1:31:38Caleb Hammer:Going through being in a town where 80 percent of the jobs, 80 percent of the people went away. Heroin came through and tough a lot of the town. That's going to be hard. Which situations are excusable then? Like you said, the Appalachia. Yeah, I mean, it's more excusable. It's more understandable, I should say, than excusable. Because once, again, I think once someone gets over the ignorance and knows what they have to do, if they know what they have to do and they've laid out the path of how to get there and they're choosing not to, then this is them choosing to a certain extent. But it's understandable than excusable, more than excusable.

1:32:14What would you, I had a debate with a friend. What would you do if you were a person in like rural Appalachia that has no opportunity, it's an opportunity desert. Let's say you're in Flint, Michigan. Let's say you're just in a place, not a big city, rural environment, not many job opportunities, not great education. What do you do? Join a gang. Okay. And then? Honestly, probably that's where you get.

1:32:38Caleb Hammer:And then scale up to be the kingpin. I mean, that's a genuine, a real answer in a lot of not maybe not appalachia but in more urban poor places that's where community is that's where money is that's where resources okay no no no i'm not advocating for it but i don't know but like okay but what should you do let's say what should yeah i'm not saying like what's the result what should you do yeah yeah yeah okay what should i i meant like what should you i don't know if it came off that way but that's what i that's what i thought oh okay a couple a couple different avenues certainly the buckle down if your school system sucks you know It's hard, but usually states do allow those poorer school districts.

1:33:14Caleb Hammer:If you're in a top percentage, you might get automatic enrollment and whatnot into some universities. So really buckling down the best you can do, get good grades in school, and try to get the fuck out of there. Military is a decent option. Kind of sucks. People equate it to the Hunger Games just to get college education. I don't necessarily see it as that, but it is an option for anyone and everyone who grows up in these communities, as long as you're keeping healthy, keeping straight. So those are two decent, not perfect, easier said than done answers.

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1:34:42Graham Stephan:and not as fun as joining a game in terms of having couples on the show who should pay on

1:34:47Caleb Hammer:the first date i'll pay on the first date if i think there's a future there you know what i

1:34:52Graham Stephan:always think is a good thing to do is that you kind of pay on the first date but then what you could do is throw out like actually let's do dinner and you get the dinner and then you could throw out there's actually a really good dessert spot like down the street how about this i'll get dinner you get the dessert and the dessert's not going to be like a big thing it's just going to be like you know 10 bucks and it just shows that like hey it's uh you know it doesn't have to be a 50 50 but like you get the dessert or like how about this i get the first two rounds of drinks you get the third and it's just like a little something so you say that you will you will

1:35:23Caleb Hammer:verbally say that yeah to give the honest answer i mean i was trying to give a fun answer but uh to give the honest answer usually i just take care of the bill because okay i have money it's fine but what i like to have done historically is split the bill on the first date until we know kind of where we're going and you say it yeah i'm just like hey i like to split the bill the first date because you know it's just like yeah we're both here who knows what you know whatever this is like let's split it and do you think that that is a pretty good rule that most should apply for a first date because you don't know if like the other person's just trying to i don't think people just go on dates i don't think they do no

1:35:59Graham Stephan:No. I'm sure it exists, but my thought is for a woman to spend time with a stranger, it's not worth it. Unless it's like a three Michelin star. I could see that. But even then, for someone to put the time and effort into getting ready, vet someone, make sure they're not a stalker or a creeper, all the time that they put into that is not worth a free meal.

1:36:26Caleb Hammer:I'll be honest, this is the most I've ever thought about this because it really doesn't matter. But I guess who gives a fuck? Can that be the real answer?

1:36:33Graham Stephan:To some people, this could be a very important question. When should you bring up finances if you're dating?

1:36:39Caleb Hammer:Before moving in at the latest. Before you move in with each other. When's the earliest? Earliest? Depends how fun you are. People I've gone on dates with in the past few years, because they know who I am or they look me up, they'll like bring it up in a cheeky way and be like oh by the way I don't have any credit card debt and that kind of stuff but for like the normal person I think past the official stage one month official

1:37:09Graham Stephan:seems easy past the official stage so you've already committed to the person and then you bring up finances well you're committing not to others really in the end right if you're kind of going official I think third date oh wait to bring up any finances at all what extent what level just like how good they are with money and you could bring it up gently like oh yeah where'd you go to college oh man that's a great school how'd you finance that did you did you pay for it or like third or you could say hey by the way what's in your wallet and you could say there's you know here's how you could bring it up you could say listen someone's wallet actually tells a lot about them what's in their wallet can i see well yeah and that is such what are you talking about and then more on they'll believe that's what you're asking no if they are dumb and then all of of a sudden you take out the credit card you're like oh wait oh you have the amex platinum oh that's interesting what was your first amex card it's been way too long since gram's been like out of the dating pool clearly does that not work what even is that dude like i feel like if a girl's like if you're trying to like show off that you have an amex platinum that is the max thing i'm not showing mine i'm just saying for for the other person i say this to them what's in your wallet says a lot about you.

1:38:20Graham Stephan:And she'll be like, I shouldn't know. But I'm just saying, there we go. What are we even talking about then? If you're saying stuff before I've ever talked. But I'm just saying it would work. It would work. Okay. Let's just say to have a conversation of like, how much are you earning? What kind of debt do you have? You know, what is your financial goal? What kind of debt, financial goals, month in? Let's call it a month or two in. A month into being official. Yeah, that's fine. In terms of like, what's your job? I think, you know, that's an easy first date. And do you think it's a necessity to have that conversation early on because you talk with a lot of people that are in relationships in financial duress.

1:38:50Caleb Hammer:I would try to get like little niblets along the way to just see if they're responsible because they could be financially, but, you know, but a relatively responsible person that wants to get out of it. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Someone doesn't need to be wealthy or doing well, but if they're just endlessly irresponsible, of which you pick up clues along the way. That's an easy red flag to be like, okay, let's not commit any further to this. And so you have a girlfriend now. How long until you guys had that conversation? I don't remember. Again, I think with my situation, it cheekily came up a lot quicker.

1:39:25Caleb Hammer:So honestly, probably in the first few dates. And how long have you been talking to her? We've been official for a year and six days. And does she pay for anything? No. No. No. So it is beyond that. Yeah. It's because, I mean, I don't see the purpose. I mean, she tries to, she offers to, but I'm like, there's no point. When's the last time you let her pay for something? She bought me a Valentine's Day gift.

1:39:51Graham Stephan:What about on like Christmas or like a birthday? Yeah, she got me a Christmas gift.

1:39:54Caleb Hammer:Yeah, those are a little different. No, just like a date. Like you guys are going out on a date.

1:39:57Graham Stephan:Man, I don't remember. What about you, Graham? Oh, gosh. Macy's all the time. Really? But she sneaks it. So we'll go out to dinner. and then she'll be like, oh, hold on, I got to go to the bathroom and come back and the bill is paid. And this is not a one-off. It's like Graham's like the best day ever. It's awesome. But I always offer for everything, but sometimes it's just she is quicker or very sneaky or when I even anticipate and I'll try to do it, even the server's like, hey, sorry, it's already been taken care of. And there's even been a few times where this has happened and the server's like, no, no, someone else has paid.

1:40:40Graham Stephan:I'm like, neither one of us? Yes, someone else paid for your bill. A subscriber. Interesting. So there have been times out there where we've gone out to eat and I feel bad because then I'm like, I don't even know who it was.

1:40:51Caleb Hammer:Yeah, it's a bummer.

1:40:53Graham Stephan:So then it's neither one of us. See, Graham does not see that as a bummer. Caleb's like, that's a bummer. Graham's like, actually. I don't know about that, actually.

1:41:03Caleb Hammer:I don't know, I like to cover it. I'm not very like trad or traditional.

1:41:06Graham Stephan:know a lot of things like that but no no that's nice so what are the red flags that you see in

1:41:11Caleb Hammer:couples when it comes to money when each other don't know each other's financial situation because there's no one who comes on this show that isn't at least in the position where they should have that talk where they have a completely different worldview on goals spending desires where they want to be as a couple he it's like if you're not even aligned on that what are we doing get aligned or get the out um and then the next one would be just like not knowing where the other the one spending is going and immediately throwing accusations to the other person's way. Like, you're spending on this.

1:41:41Caleb Hammer:We were spending on this. It's like, why are we looking at it like this? Why are we just trying to come together and get better together and hold each other accountable instead of just trying to throw each other under the bus? What about success in relationships in situations where there's a big income gap? If the guy makes a lot more than the girl or the girl makes a lot more than the guy, what have you noticed there? well we've on the big gaps we've had a couple times with a lower income person which i think both times is actually the woman which is kind of unfair jealousy some weird jealousy there don't really like that one person she chose to get a degree she gets paid less and her boyfriend chose to become an engineer he's a piece of by the way but either way regardless of that part chose to become an engineer makes a lot more money and she's like well i went to school for more.

1:42:26Caleb Hammer:He just got a certification and he makes more. And I'm like, okay, but you chose to do this. You can look into the data. That was really weird. Definitely some jealousy. Then we've also had some like stay at home, mostly women, but I think we've had a couple of stay at home guys as well. And they like to be the spenders while the other one's the earner. Big fans of that. And what about combining finances? Would you recommend that for most relationships? And will you do that for most i don't know i mean i'll yeah i'll do it i'll do it if she if she wants to i guess um i mean it's personal finances it works for some it works for others it sounds like it doesn't work for you guys from what you just said because if she's paying for it means she has her own money you guys are married so and that's fine i think it just really depends on the relationship as long as i think we're aligned on goals we know what we're trying to get we're being responsible that's okay i think a good healthy middle ground is maybe a couple separate accounts but everything goes into one joint where things aren't really spent, but then it's divided from there.

1:43:24Caleb Hammer:Bills and then personal spending. What about prenuptials? Do you plan on getting a prenup? Yeah, she knows that. And how early do you have that discussion? I told her pretty damn quick. I mean, it's just big income divide. It's just going to happen. It's just going to happen. Things just get messier. Things get weird.

1:43:44Graham Stephan:It's just cleaner that way. So when it comes to that, what's a financial

1:43:49Caleb Hammer:mistake that you make um my rental properties i mean it's not that i do you still have them i'm exiting them my i made money i make decent money i would have made so much more money being in the market instead of focusing on that i really sell those things as soon as possible i am the last

1:44:06Graham Stephan:time that i think we talked i was telling you to sell those rentals right yeah i don't remember there's a condo there's something worth like 500 grand i said sell it yeah yeah because you said you were going to be either break even or barely cash flow negative on it. And you didn't want to give up the mortgage, I believe.

1:44:22Caleb Hammer:Yeah, that was on the condo specifically. I did exit that pretty quickly. But my rental property is back in my home state. Yeah, I'm fully exiting them and I'm just putting the money in the market. So that was a financial mistake. I mean, I definitely move a lot, you know, buy, sell, buy, sell.

1:44:40Graham Stephan:Are you losing money on your house?

1:44:43Caleb Hammer:The current house that I'm in right now, while my new house is under renovation, I will probably break even. So you bought a house while your house is being renovated? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The house that I live in now is the house you guys have been to that I've had for a few years. Okay, yeah. But I've had a house for a little bit in like my dream neighborhood, essentially. But it's been a renovation kind of mess. So it's been taking a while.

1:45:05Graham Stephan:But on your other house that we've been to, are you losing money on that? When you sell it, will you break even?

1:45:12Caleb Hammer:It will be breakeven. At best. Maybe a little lost, but not much.

1:45:17Graham Stephan:And if someone were to look through your personal finances as an audit, what would they criticize?

1:45:22Caleb Hammer:Oh, this is interesting because we talk about low-cost index funds. I mean, I use the money guys as their financial services. They're my wealth managers. I decided to go with them in the end.

1:45:32Graham Stephan:Why do you need a wealth manager? I feel like you are smart enough and in it with finances that you could just buy an index fund, one fund, and be done with it.

1:45:41Caleb Hammer:Which I could, and I'm down for. Luckily, it's like they are very, their fees are very, very tiny. So I'm really not losing much. Taking advantage of some tax loss harvesting is nice. It's good to have someone in your corner when you get to that next level. And for me, it kind of, it came down to our conversation. It's not as extreme as whether or not starting that burger restaurant or take him out, starting that franchise. but I want to put all my energy into this business. I want to put all my energy into growing dollar wise. I don't want to think about my investments. I don't need to think about diversification and international to what is Bitcoin doing?

1:46:18Caleb Hammer:What's happening here? What's happening there? I don't want to think about that. They're the experts. I'm letting them work on. I'm letting Brian and Bo and my boy.

1:46:26Graham Stephan:What are they investing in?

1:46:27Caleb Hammer:I mean, it's mostly just replicating the market if we're being honest. Okay. That's pretty much it right now though. Right now. We have an ultimate goal we're trying to get to within a couple of years. So with all the success that you've had, do you still finance your furniture? No. You paid it off. Well, I'm going to get new furniture in the new house. I might finance that. And what is the logic? What is the logic? No, I'm not going to finance it. At this point, I doubt I'm going to finance it. Has your relationship with money changed? My fear has gone down substantially because I hit that minimum goal that we talked about.

1:47:02Caleb Hammer:I think our first time. Once I hit that, you know, a lot of the conversation is, does the goal just change? Well, the goal changed, but my safety in that goal did not. Once I hit that, I was like, oh, I'm good. Can you say what that goal was? What was it? Five million, I think. And why did you pick five million? You know, it was actually talking to the money guys. It was talking to the money guys. Yeah. That's just what they said is like my safe line when they did the audit on me. And I was like, I just kind of went with it. I just went with them.

1:47:28Graham Stephan:I'll tell you what you have to do next, because at your goal level, your risk does not decrease. And what you have to protect against at this point are lawsuits, health and any sort of personal accident that could derail that. And so now you have to protect against that.

1:47:51Caleb Hammer:Yeah, lawsuits are really the only thing we're doing pretty well with. Great contracts, tying up the best lawyers, and insurance is up the butt. So that's good. Health, I am skinnier since the last time you guys met me, but it's not as significant as it should be for what it's worth. So how did you arrive to the$5 million number? The money guys suggested once you get$5, you're chilling, and they laid out a full plan. It's like, yeah. What was the justification? What was the justification? It's like, I don't remember. It was a couple years ago. I just always move on to the next thing more than...

1:48:26Caleb Hammer:Parker's not a good answer, is it?

1:48:31Caleb Hammer:I don't know. Once they set a goal for me, these people that are my friends, that I respect, I'm a very goal-oriented person since I put that on my radar. That was just it. That was it. It might not be as perfectly logical as we want it to be. And how is the relief that you've experienced expressed itself? Good. I'm willing to take more risk, willing to hire more people, willing to do more things, willing to like, if this is as far as I get, that's fine. Now I'm going to throw it on the table. And so you just increased your expenses to make life more comfortable. Yeah. This studio, well, less about that, but this studio, it's expensive.

1:49:07Caleb Hammer:We spent a lot of money on this studio. We pay really good wages. Our overhead is crazy. It's probably higher than 300 a month. it must be really just doubling down doubling down on the business and it's just been an easier decision since you feel like you have this guaranteed safety because I could have just siphoned all the money you know I could have just siphoned

1:49:28Graham Stephan:do you feel like you've made more because you've invested so much more into the business

1:49:33Caleb Hammer:luckily yes now that DollarWise is very successful because it has like made waves through the budgeting market yeah no it paid paid great

1:49:43Graham Stephan:What happened to the DollarWise app?

1:49:45Caleb Hammer:Yeah, when it first launched that. So one thing I learned for all you people growing a business right there, third party contractors when building something from scratch, not always the best thing to do. It is cheaper. It is easier. It is less scary. They probably know what they're doing. But build in-house. Do the investment. If you're actually confident in what you're doing, build it in-house. Because that's what we've had to do these last like seven, eight months is rebuild everything from house. So we launched with a contractor. It was a complete disaster. They wouldn't fix things on time.

1:50:14Caleb Hammer:It was fucked. It launched a simpler budget. We got a copyright issue. It was almost a lawsuit. Had to switch it to a simpler budget or dollar-wise before we made any app fixes. Luckily, my team came in. We hired them, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, put all my money back towards them. They fixed the app to where in the past three months, four months, the app's been good. All the issues are fixed. But it hasn't been that app that's uberly competitive against all the other budgeting apps. So what they've been working on the last six, seven months, especially with all the new technology that exists today, is building this big 6.0 launch that is happening right after we film this.

1:50:51And it's going to be incredible.

1:50:54Caleb Hammer:I'm so excited to see how it competes against the Monarch. Again, well, yeah, Monarch's like the big one right now. But against all the other top dogs right now with the great level of insights people are getting into their money that's automated more than any other budgeting app actually giving you those tools and insights in your insights tab. I'm just so excited to see what happens.

1:51:13Graham Stephan:Do you worry that potentially the app is at risk if like a chat GBT or a Gemini came out with a like a financial AI that could basically integrate already and then give you like real time insights and suggestions immediately for free?

1:51:27Caleb Hammer:Yeah, potentially. I mean, I know even Grok itself. And what is it, Perplexity? I think they have like a finance mode. So there are things like that. And that's a conversation. But I think people like having an app they trust with their data, because I don't know if people trust their data with AI. So a company that doesn't sell data actually protects that. And that's what we've promised to do. And that actually connects with these great third parties like Plan and whatnot to sync their accounts automatically. Instead of having like, OK, what's the update? OK, what's going on now? What's going on now?

1:52:04Caleb Hammer:Here's a question. You know, so we already give you the insights. Everything's automatic. It's all done for you. And it's built in a way for a human to use, not like what a chat bot thinks you want to hear in the moment. But someday, honestly, probably. And we have a pivot in mind in about a year. What's the end goal for DollarWise? I mean, I want to build it into not only the best budgeting app, potentially go into the world of some banking, potentially go into I want to scale it into a multi hundred million dollar business. I want to employ a lot of people and I want to create an app that actually changes people's lives more than the show does.

1:52:39What's the primary motivator at this point? Because you have more than enough money right now. I would assume if you wanted to step away from YouTube, would you be fine to do so?

1:52:47Caleb Hammer:Yeah, for sure. So you can live a perfectly quality life with all the money that you have saved up and invested. I think so. So if it's not then to get to like a different level of wealth to access different things in life, then what is the motivator? You know, it's interesting. I just saw a clip from your episode that was just released with a streamer. I've never heard of, no offense to him, but you asked him if he would step away with$20 million or something. He said, no, he'd be bored. I'd be bored. I love building shit. I love working with people. I love having an impact positively on the world.

1:53:16Caleb Hammer:Some people don't agree with it and that's okay. We don't care about their opinion. They're, you know, whatever. That's their choice. But I want to leave an actual resource and legacy that helps people. I really do. But would you walk away for$100 million post-tax? No. Billion? Maybe.

1:53:33Graham Stephan:A billion dollars, maybe. Yeah, sure. Why not? So where does most of your revenue come from today? How is it broken down? As Jack would say, the pie chart.

1:53:42Caleb Hammer:DollarWise has played a big catch up. For the vast majority of last year, it was financial audit driven by AdSense and sponsorships. Memberships really took off last year. That's been huge. That pulls some pretty heavy weight. But now DollarWise is so substantial. I'd say it's about still 40 % YouTube.

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1:55:02Caleb Hammer:20 % sponsors and then the rest comes from the mixture of our educational programs and dollar-wise. One thing that we had discussed on this podcast, every time we've had you on so far, you have said that you are still deathly afraid of dying poor on the Walmart floor. Yeah, not anymore because I hit that goal. I mean, that was a big part of it. That was a huge part of it. So it was as simple as setting a goal, achieving the goal, and then that's it. Yeah, because$5 million, I mean, it's more money than most people can imagine, but it doesn't give you like a huge crazy life for the rest of your life.

1:55:33Caleb Hammer:Not by any means. But I can feel comfortable that I can get my shit together for long enough, for a long time I can get my shit together. Because I can always work. I can always figure out things to do. I have always accepted that I might have to go get another normal, regular job post-YouTube once I got into this thing. So, transparently, I've had this goal for a very long time, and it's the exact same as what you said. It's like$5 million. and I feel right now like I need to race as fast as I can to hit that. And then once I hit that, it's so funny you mentioned this because it is so directly applicable to my life.

1:56:04Once I hit that, then at that moment, I can then start spending to make my life a little bit more comfortable and similar to what you did, I would love to hire on more editors and hire on more producers so we can actually, obviously our profit would go down, but then we would take, exactly, the maybe is the unknown. Hopefully, our profit would go up, But the risk of doing that, I don't know if it's worth it when right now, like we can still remain profitable and I can still continue to like save as much as I can until I hit that net worth. So it's interesting to see that you actually, as soon as you hit it, the mentality did change.

1:56:36If you could go back in time, would you have started to elevate your lifestyle and spend more back into the business before you hit that 5 million? Or do you think it was necessary to have that confidence once you hit it?

1:56:46Caleb Hammer:Yeah, I definitely don't regret anything. But since I know it all worked out, I would have put more into the business, not lifestyle. Do you think it was important? I still don't live a crazy life. To get the confidence, like the through and through confidence once you hit that number? Yeah, it was nice. It just allowed me to step the foot on the gas on everything else, you know, instead of being so afraid of everything. So, why aren't you at five? That's hard. It is hard. People don't realize, like, it's difficult, but... Is it because Graham didn't pay you anything when he started? No.

1:57:14Graham Stephan:No, because I mean... That was it, because I made... I'm trying to start some shit. No, because I made Jack work for free. Yeah. For such a long time. Such a long time. The early years of compounding have just caught up to him. i only i think i didn't work for free i mean i for a little bit like months but it wasn't anything no i was like yeah but i mean i'm not at five because people don't realize it's saving up money post-tax is incredibly difficult so like you can be earning a lot of money and you could be earning a lot of money for a pretty long time like i feel like i've i've been earning good money not like a lot but like good money for five years now probably but saving up post-tax is like so So hard.

1:57:55Even to save up the first million, it takes years and years of high earning and saving those taxes. And just expenses.

1:58:02Graham Stephan:You have expenses, and then what you don't spend then is now taxed, or you spend money after taxes. It's just - And when you're as bullish on Robinhood stock as I am - Oh, gosh. Then obviously, it's going to hinder your economical growth.

1:58:17Caleb Hammer:Honestly, I'd say about a third of my net worth has been through just pumping in during big dips the past couple of years. Just had great rebounds. That's incredible. Like the beginning of last year when tariffs first started. I love that little dip. I made incredible money on that. Do you purposely set money aside for events like that? No. I got really lucky. So it was perfect timing. It was perfect timing. I mean, now with the wealth advisors, with Thank You Money Guy, we are setting aside like a large pile of money for a few different things. But in case a big opportunity comes, whether that's, you know, commercial real estate or buying a big dip.

1:58:58Graham Stephan:Do you feel like you still need more money?

1:59:01Caleb Hammer:No, not at all. Not at all. It doesn't come. It doesn't come from anything that I want additional in lifestyle. I'm getting my dream house in my dream neighborhood. How much is that going to be? House 1.6, renovation 5.

1:59:18Graham Stephan:$5 million on a 1.6 house? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, 500 ,000. What? 500 ,000. Well, when I hear 5, I think 5 million. That would be insane, though.

1:59:27Caleb Hammer:And I got my Model X.

1:59:29Graham Stephan:I'm very happy. Part of that might be you haven't moved into the house yet. Yeah, maybe. And then you move into the house.

1:59:37Caleb Hammer:it's not the house though it's the community it's walkable like that's what i craved i crave a place with parks and shops that's safe and actually laws are enforced and that's you know where i'm excited to be so it's more that than the house do you feel financially secure do you feel like

1:59:54Graham Stephan:you need more money i feel financially secure but i feel like i need more money uh it's so funny i had these long discussions with gemini and chat gpt and grok they know everything about me they They know every single one of my investments. Seriously. And I update it on a regular basis so they know exactly where I stand. And I've gone through every single tax strategy to be able to buy a house that I want that I think would be a dream house. What's that? What do you mean what's that? Can you say what that would be? Oh, price range wise? Or what?

2:00:28Caleb Hammer:Oh, yeah. Oh, no.

2:00:29Graham Stephan:I mean, I want a house in Las Vegas with a view of the strip that's completely private. it where all you see from the front my vision is just all you see is a gate so you're going you don't want to see the house and then with a yard yeah yeah with it with a big yard with a view of the strip uh and those tend to be about seven to ten and me doing chunky it is and so then it is well seven to ten you know let's just say because realistically i use some of the house for business but the mortgage cap is 750 which leaves a lot of money that's not deductible and then i'm like well I could do a box spread and I could borrow against my portfolio, create capital losses, and then buy the house with it.

2:01:09Graham Stephan:And I do all the calculations. But I've determined that right now to comfortably afford that, I need another three to five years of income because I never want to buy something and then be reliant on income to afford it. I assume if I buy something, I want to be OK where if my income goes to zero the next day and I just have my investments to live off of, that'll fund everything I need with a 30 % buffer in the event the market goes down or something unexpected comes up.

2:01:38Caleb Hammer:Why do you want that? I understand the view part, but why do you want to be further away from society? Why do you want - No, no, no. It's not further away. Why do you want more space?

2:01:45Graham Stephan:What are you doing with it? Oh, I love when you go out and it just feels peaceful, where you just feel like you're in the middle of nature. I don't like going outside and I see like house, house, house, house, house, house house house house i love you you open up into a space that just feels like you're in a bit of a forest yeah it feels tropical and i want like you know koi ponds and like trickling water through the place i don't want a mansion but i just want that land and space and privacy with the view that just feels like you're in your own little sliver of like heaven if that makes sense

2:02:18Caleb Hammer:you know actually when you ask like if i need more money no but now that you did say that i do have in the back of my head a really cool thing someday would be like a really cool hill country Texas ranch. I love a Texas ranch. Just for, just, I love animals. I do like land. That'd be cool. But, so I guess that would be it. That'd be it. Yeah. But neither of you still fear going broke. I don't fear that.

2:02:44Graham Stephan:Oh, I would say for me there's a certain small percentage that you just don't, you don't know what you don't know. That's always what it is for me. My philosophy is like, Thank you.

2:02:56Caleb Hammer:If the U.S. economy goes to zero and we're all f***ing each other, I'm ready to f*** and put a f*** in my mouth. If the U.S. economy goes to zero? Yeah, if we're in like the World War Z end of the world.

2:03:10Graham Stephan:You wouldn't fight? No.

2:03:12Caleb Hammer:No, no, no, no. I'm too uncomfortable. My anxiety, my panic attacks, I would just end up.

2:03:17Graham Stephan:I feel like people would say, yo, isn't that the guy from the financial audit show? And they're like, oh my gosh, yeah, it is. And they're like, yo, come with us. Like, we'll save you.

2:03:25Caleb Hammer:I don't want the... No, no, no. I think me and my girlfriend, we've decided we'd, you know, bunker it.

2:03:32Graham Stephan:It's expensive.

2:03:34Caleb Hammer:Well, the part. Oh. Oh, okay.

2:03:37Graham Stephan:Where did you meet your girlfriend? Instagram. DMs. You slid into her DM? Other way. She slid into your DM?

2:03:44Caleb Hammer:Yeah, I never slide in. Wait, do I? I probably have before. Yeah. I love it for his DM. What did she say? It was something funny. I don't remember exactly. it was it was it was something cheeky though that's that's usually how you get me to respond and then what you clicked on her profile you're like okay i like the way she looks yeah yeah and then we just started talking and and how long until you knew that you wanted to take some things seriously with her about a month about a month how many days seriously enough a week of very intense dates i was like okay you know what i'm interested in this and then you guys live together now we do now yeah okay how long until you guys started living together We went a little quicker than normal.

2:04:24Caleb Hammer:Four months. Definitely quicker than I would advise and stuff, but just some things like least situations and why not kind of lined up and we're like, yeah, we're going to try it. Let's try it. What doesn't work? It doesn't work. What are the main ways that having a relationship has improved your life? Like if you were to list out all the stats of life, business, work, confidence, anxiety, what ways have improved the most? Well, definitely getting good. I have a good support system. And she also calls me on my shit. Let me tell you who she calls me on my shit. So I'm not getting babied. Like, whatever.

2:04:56Caleb Hammer:If I have an opinion or I'm even, like, upset at someone at work, she'll call me on my shit. And she'll, like.

2:05:01Graham Stephan:What does she say?

2:05:02Caleb Hammer:Play devil's advocate. I was angry about how an employee was acting at one point. I don't want to give details. Yeah, that's fine. I know they're listening. And she was like, no, Caleb, you're being a dick. You're being. And I was like, all right. All right. I listen. You know. Decent, good debates. We also have very similar interests in terms of like, I mean, we have interests aligned enough to have a really good time with each other. And that's really nice. Good support system. And I mean, I don't want this to be my life, but studies suggest for men, their closest dynamic in the vast majority of their life outside of childhood is their wife.

2:05:39Caleb Hammer:It's not always the same for women to their husbands. But for men to their wives, that is like their closest and most the person they put everything towards. And I'm glad I found, you know, I don't know if she'll be a wife or not, but, you know, we're thinking about that. And I'm glad I think I found the one for that.

2:05:59Graham Stephan:When do you think you're going to come to a decision on that?

2:06:03Caleb Hammer:I mean, I think I already kind of have.

2:06:05Graham Stephan:Okay.

2:06:05Caleb Hammer:Yeah. What's the most expensive gift you've gotten her? Chanel bag. How much was it? Ten. $10 ,000? Yeah, never have. Never done anything like that in my life. But I was like, you know what? I make good money. I love this woman. It's been her dream since literally childhood. A Chanel bag? Yeah. That was her dream? Well, yeah, she's very into fashion. Collectibles, collector vintage type shit. So it was like classic flap, you know, historic bag.

2:06:32Graham Stephan:What was her reaction to a$10 ,000 bag?

2:06:34Caleb Hammer:She cried. She cried like crazy.

2:06:36Graham Stephan:Now, why not buy her the replica version of that? Just say it's the real thing. What? Jack?

2:06:42Caleb Hammer:Like, to be fair, that's the nicest thing she's going to get for a very, very, very long time. But it was like her one thing. I was like, I had a really good year. I love this woman. I've never bought someone something so expensive before. It was what when I asked her sister is like, this is what she's always talked about. I was like, OK, let's swallow that. That's that's a hard one. But with all of that said, with how incredible of a year that you had where it was wildly profitable and the amazing smile that you put on this woman's face that you love. And she was so happy. She cried. It's been a dream.

2:07:16Why would you still not buy a replica? See, Graham? You see what I'm saying? Do you see how ludicrous it is?

2:07:24Graham Stephan:It's the same thing. You had the most profitable year you've ever had. You could never even dream of making so much money. But you could save$9 ,500. dollars but it holds value what was the what was the process like of buying a ten thousand dollar

2:07:39Caleb Hammer:chanel bag i went in i was very lucky that they actually had one i was very lucky they actually

2:07:44Graham Stephan:had one how do you know and how do you scan that someone isn't interested in you for either the

2:07:52Caleb Hammer:money or for the social media popularity yeah that's hard that's where well i mean you see the flaws in someone pretty quick and if they can't put up with my flaws of which there are many you know that would be hard to stick around just for like I'm not that kind of rich you know we're not on that level this is still just like YouTube at the end of the day and um prenup out of the gate you say yeah I'm getting a prenup I'm getting a prenup that's gonna happen that's a good way to weed them out why don't you lose weight I do and have I think I'm 20 pounds down from the last time you guys saw me But you're right.

2:08:29Caleb Hammer:I mean, it's not as much.

2:08:31Graham Stephan:Is it a priority for you?

2:08:35Caleb Hammer:It continues in cycles of priority. I'll be honest. The last two weeks have been bad. I've been really good. Last few months, the last two weeks have been bad after a big freeze where we were all stuck inside. And I used that as a slide. That was bad. I just need to get right back on it. Girlfriend's great for that. Huge fitness person. Huge dieting person. She's very smart. Great cooking. And the gym is her life. so she's actually been really good on that she holds me accountable and she calls me out much what's your weakness in food fries burgers and shakes that shit's good and where damn america oh um shake shack's incredible five guys is incredible peterry's is incredible mcdonald's is incredible chick-fil-a is incredible what's the most underrated fast food restaurant underrated I don't know why the people think Shake Shack and In-N-Out are even comparable.

2:09:27Caleb Hammer:It's not even close. Shake Shack kills In-N-Out. It's not even close. I'd say that's underrated just because they compare them. It's not even fair that they're compared. Culver's. Culver's is great. Overrated. Whataburger.

2:09:40Graham Stephan:Do you have any desire, though, to really take it seriously with diet and the gym and make a huge lifestyle change? Just get jacked.

2:09:47Caleb Hammer:Jim, I would love to, or else I would just do it, right? I'm kind of like a financial audit guest. Jim would be nice, but diet, yes. And I have been, actually, for what it's worth. And people, actually, we did an end-of-year video of, like, we put all the clips from the year and stuff, and people were commenting about the weight loss, which was good to see.

2:10:08Graham Stephan:Do you think that you getting, let's just say, jacked, looks-maxing, do you think that would have an adverse effect on the channel? Yeah, probably. sometimes you and your current form is going to be more like maybe better for views like let's say like jona hill like jona hill lost weight and he became less funny yeah right right

2:10:38Caleb Hammer:um i love fat jokes and i probably can't do as many fat jokes when i'm like cavicular

2:10:47Graham Stephan:But maybe you could, like, having lost the weight, though.

2:10:51Caleb Hammer:Yeah, but at that point, it probably just looks mean. People already think it's mean, but I don't care. So, yeah. I think, Caleb, at the end of the day, everything that you've done is incredibly impressive. Especially if you go back several years. I mean, where you were at, you were in a decent spot back then, too. But, like, you just seemed like another one of those ambitious people that was like, I'm going to put my head down and work and see what happens. and it's like, okay, you were doing well and you continued moving in the right direction, but you have stuck with it. You've remained incredibly consistent, super hardworking, super disciplined, and you have absolutely exploded.

2:11:25And every single time that we think, eh, this is probably about it. How much longer can he do these? Like, is this really going to be, you know, a profitable thing for a really long time or is he just hitting another ceiling? And then every single time you just break through the ceiling and break through the ceiling. So you've done an incredible job. Also, I will say of all of the things, it's like, you're a great personality on camera. But of all of the things, you're incredibly efficient at organizing people. And I think that that's what's led to the crazy rise of the business is that you're able to put the right person in the right job.

2:11:56And then know when someone's not either the right person or not in the right spot and then be able to put them in the right spot. So I think you've done an incredible job. Your output is insane. It's super respectable.

2:12:05Graham Stephan:Your efficiency is a 10 out of 10. And we look at your operation as our inspiration. And we see what you're doing. And we talk to you. and you are a huge influence now in the iced coffee hour of figuring out what we could do to improve and not get stale.

2:12:21Caleb Hammer:Thank you guys. I appreciate you. It's good to have good support system. You guys are always good to talk to. I have the most incredible employees. It's all because of them. The audience is stuck with me through drama, through fun, through goons, through gaffes. So the audience is absolutely incredible. And then most important, the guests on Financial Auto. None of it would be possible without them. So I'm beyond thankful for them. And of course, we're very grateful for you to come back on the iced coffee hour every single time we talk to you. It is an absolute pleasure. And for everybody watching, guys, thank you.

2:12:49Thank you so much for tuning in. And of course, we would not be here if not for you. So every single day, I try to practice a little bit of gratitude for the position that we're in. We would not be here if not for you guys. So thank you sincerely from the bottom of our heart

2:13:02Graham Stephan:for watching this episode. Thank you. And we'll also link to your budgeting app in the description. So it is there for anyone who wants to try it out. There you go. We flew out to Austin for this. We're staying another day to film a bunch more episodes and then we're flying to Puerto Rico. Okay. And then we're going to fly back home and then leave back for LA. Our travel schedule is crazy, but we're doing it for you guys. So thank you guys. Thank you, Caleb. Till next time. Till next time.

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