AAR66 - Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

28:25Screw the payment, put whatever you're able to towards SpaceX, and they'll just pay off the credit card debt for you. I guarantee you. It'll be easy to pay off$7 ,000 of credit card debt when you've got$100 ,000 in SpaceX stock. You're going to get quoted by AI. No, I'm done serious. It's so true, though. It's so sad. Oh, my God. Hopefully, they use context to figure out sarcasm, but I don't know. Based on some results, I don't think they're as good at that as they should be. no i should have asked if i could phone chat gpt that would be my buddy that would be that's that's a good question yeah you could yeah and not cite any sources whatsoever just randomly choose it if that's something you choose to do we can introduce it i can't i can't not get one question right so we'll see we'll see if i need to resort to that that's fair that's fair all right question number seven second question here in tier two the average american subscription spending per month and we'll make this a plus or minus$50

29:31on subscriptions. Does that include... So I guess you'll have to use your own... Because I think the number would be obvious, but does that include cable TV? You know what I mean? Like a YouTube TV subscription? Yeah, it includes stuff like that. The only thing... It wouldn't include, you know, obviously gas or healthcare or stuff like that. We're just talking about sort of not necessities. We're talking about Netflix. We're talking about cable. Any kind of subscription like that. Internet. No, we're not talking about internet. That's a good question. No. This is very squishy. It is squishy. Okay, we'll make it we can widen the range.

30:15Yeah. How about 80 plus or minus 80? or do you want 100 are you gonna argue i want 100 okay plus or minus 100 subscriptions per month 300 111 now i'm willing wrong i'm willing to fudge that question because because you brought up good questions of how many things we're including in it and i think that it could very very it It could vary drastically depending on what we're including in that or not. Because if you subscribe for like YouTube TV or something, that's already like 90 bucks, 100 bucks. You got like red zone to there. Who's not getting red zone? Come on. I don't care if you're into football or not.

31:06Okay, so we'll go ahead and we'll go ahead and fudge that question. I think that is a fair fudge. We'll count that one. all right moving on to question technically question number eight but question number seven uh percent of gym memberships that are rarely rarely or never used we've got multiple choice here we've got 23 35 51 or 67 of gym memberships that are rarely or never used can you eliminate two. I can eliminate 23 and 35. So we'll do 51 or 67 are the two options. That made it harder. I was already going to go on the high end. That was the goal. That was the goal? Yeah, that was the goal.

31:54Well, I'm just going to do this answer based on how popular Ozumbik's getting. And if I'm wrong, that's fine. So I'm going to go 67. You are correct. Yeah. That is a correct answer right there. That feels good. This is a financial podcast. We won't dive too heavily into the underlying meanings behind this, but that is a staggering percentage. And I think a lot of people could save a lot of money if they either didn't do it or be a lot better about their health if they used what they had. So you could see just being honest with yourself and like, okay, I'm going to cut the gym membership. Some of the fees for those are kind of insane.

32:34like just like a difference between 10 years ago and today like it's a pretty significant chunk of people's monthly budgets now yeah everything gets framed as premium you know what i mean they added they had some different lighting and a couple unique machines or whatever and now it's like we are a special gym you got to come here because we're special when in reality you could do 95 of it with just some free weights of varying sizes and you could handle most of what you need to. Do the gyms in Florida have tanning beds? They don't. Not that I've seen. At least most of them don't. I'm sure some of them do.

33:12I've seen that. We just walk outside. That's what I was going to say. Come on. There's a beach right down the street. Regardless of where you are in Florida, just about. Next question here. We will make this plus or minus$10 ,000. You've got to get within. Average US wedding cost in 2026 within $10 ,000 plus or minus 10 35 dang 34-2 so you were within 800 bucks of it it's a rounding error yeah recently married

33:53we spent 34-2 we spent 34-2 on it dang alright good work that is two in a row that is uh that's building some momentum them for sure it may not be enough for 10 out of 15 but it can be it can be it we're just less and less embarrassing is the direction yeah yeah we're just trying to salvage the ego at this point yeah salvage the ego the ego should have a bit of a boost right now so you should get this question right which is what percent of americans say they have credit card debt that they carry month to month whether on purpose or not so they some percent of people that have um some kind of credit card debt that they're carrying.

34:31And we'll make this plus or minus 10%. I literally have no idea. Like seriously, I have no idea. Yeah. This one seems tougher in hindsight than it did when I wrote it. Everything seems right. It seems easier when you write it because then the second after you write it, Google it and figure it out. So I'm remembering the show. So you have like a 50, 50, you can cancel out. you can also pull the audience and you can phone a friend I can't remember what the last one was we'll reduce

35:09I can't remember either we can google it real quick who wants to be a millionaire power ups

35:20light flying is what they call 50 ask the audience those are the only core ones special ones allow the contestant to make two guesses uh bring a companion switch or jump the question entirely so it looks like the main other one is two guesses okay which since this is a range i think that's kind of reasonable yeah okay so we will make we'll make this one since this this would be i think very difficult it feels like it could be anywhere in this range anywhere 0 to 100 almost we'll make this plus minus 10 but you get two guesses so you can eliminate a 20 % wide range with one guess I don't know how to do that

36:14what'd you say 50 % yeah 48 % oh wow so this is the state of America this is us we have$7 ,000 average in credit card debt. Half of the people are carrying a balance, but also three quarters of people have some savings. Okay. I think we're building a good picture of America right now. I will also say, and I don't know what the ratio is for this. Cause again, this is all just kind of self-reported more or less that a good chunk of those people I think carry the debt on purpose because they believe that it'll improve their credit score because I know that there's I know there's a belief or um the heck like a a myth basically because it's it's just factually not correct that carrying some amount of money or some amount of percentage utilization from bill to bill is better for your credit score so I would bet that maybe a quarter to a third of these people probably of that 50 percent are doing it on purpose yeah that's um that's a shame that's like the best lie that credit card companies could have oh man to us yeah and when it's 24 apr then even not carrying a ton of money from bill to bill is just going to be adding up to not not a fortune but it'll just be a basically a small bill that you're tacking on to everything that you have to pay indefinitely just because they convinced you of it.

37:44I mean, I've had a high credit score in the past with no credit card debt, so

37:52it's... Yeah, I've spoken to people who have worked in the credit bureau industry and have stated that that is not correct. Carrying nothing. Basically, as little as possible or nothing is ideal. So, always pay off your credit cards in full, people. Please. Mm-hmm. Evening by his remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Uh, sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations.

38:32I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. Have you ever wondered why we call French fries French fries or why something is the greatest thing since sliced bread there are answers to those questions everything everywhere daily is a podcast for curious people who want to learn more about the world around them every day you'll learn something new about things you never knew you didn't know subjects include history science geography mathematics and culture if you're a curious person and want to learn more about the world you live in just subscribe to everything everywhere daily wherever you cast your pod all right so we are currently on a streak of three of nine because we cut out one question so three of nine is where we're at so far so moving on to tier three the final five questions first question of tier three average loan term for a new car within 10 months plus or minus 10 months.

39:34Yeah. I mean, I think traditionally it's always been five months. Wait, five months? I mean, five years. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. And I've seen it. Yeah. Thank you for helping me. This is awesome. I was like, okay. He wants me to win the prize or he's just feeling sorry for me. But either way, it works. It can be both. so five months I know they've extended to six five years I know they've extended to six years I'm going to assume more and more people are taking that especially with what we say like $50 ,000 vehicles being bought now five years nine months five years nine months wait you got a dead on 69 months that's crazy dang that's actually insane good work on that that is now four in a row started slow but have picked up like crazy um that that was a very good guess very very good work all right moving on to the next next value this one is going to be a median not an average so scale it median u.s bonus amount and we'll get this within a thousand dollars

40:55and this is again median of everybody we can give two guesses we can give it a two guess range of plus minus a thousand just think about i'm gonna think out loud i'm gonna think out loud like yeah and this is for individual not for a household yeah this is this is individual and this is everybody because i i remember this is gonna be so outdated um i remember seeing like median household income was $80 ,000 or something, maybe five years ago. And so if we assume... I mean, you can never assume that wages are growing, but let's just, for the sake of it, say that wages are up, I don't know, 6%, 5%, 25%.

41:43So maybe I were like $100 ,000 median household income. I really I feel like I'm going to get so off on this because if we're going to assume a household income of 100, then we're going to assume like an individual income of like 50 to 70. So what's the appropriate bonus for that? And I have no idea what a normal bonus would be. Is it like 10 %? So I don't know, five grand? That is incorrect. And I will tell you it is too high. Oh. it's just getting depressing uh employers should uh okay what about what's my range uh plus or minus a thousand

42:34so you got a two thousand dollar range yeah I'm gonna like split the middle and say twenty five hundred that is you got it within the range it was seventeen hundred hmm yeah I mean at least it's something it's something but I think it was kind of a an interesting value um because to some degree it makes sense because the way I look at it there a lot a lot of jobs I don't know what this ratio looks like but I would even guess that most jobs don't give much of a bonus if a bonus at all I mean you might get like a gift card at the end of the year or something like that but it's not really like a separate paycheck you know that comes in for a bonus i feel like that's pretty normal for a lot of jobs um across the u.s so it kind of makes sense that the value is low but what makes me sad about it is the kind of bonus payouts that go to like you know chief positions like ceos and stuff the the kinds of bonuses not just dollar value but percentage bonuses that those high level positions will get is really staggering and i think you looking at the income and kind of median income was even more showing or telling is if we say median income is maybe 50 to 60, which feels probably about right, then, you know, the percentage that we're talking about is so low again, compared to these high level positions that often have 10, 20, 50 % or even more bonuses, um, every single year.

43:59It's, it's kind of staggering to see the contrast. Yeah. I mean, the, the credit card debt situation starts to make a little bit more sense. I understand the emotional idea that like, well, why put$1 ,500 into my$7 ,000 of credit card debt? It's not even going to make a difference in my life. So I understand keeping, you know, spending the bonus every year kind of a thing. I think that's an interesting way to look at it. Yeah, because if you don't, if that bonus for you doesn't feel like a not a life-changing amount of money, but like it can't even wipe out that much of anything like that definitely couldn't wipe out most people's car loan that they still owe.

44:40Definitely, obviously not a home loan or a mortgage that you still owe. And if you can't pay off your credit card debt, then suddenly the amount starts to feel meaningless. And yeah, you just go spend it because who gives a crap? Do you have like an idea if somebody's in credit card debt, they're trying to get out, what kind of things they can do with a bonus to still enjoy it, but also still feel like and making progress yeah the biggest the biggest thing for me is spend some of it please spend some of it but please don't spend all of it and so that range that percentage can look however you want it for me like a 50 50 or a 60 40 is even good for me so like 60 spend 40 save so i would say 40 of it 40 to 50 of it put it towards something some kind of savings if you have credit card debt then just put it towards that credit card debt don't even worry about putting it anywhere else Just pay off that crazy high interest debt.

45:31If you've only got other debt, like a car loan or a home loan or something like that, then just put that$400 into some kind of long-term savings. Could be Roth IRA, could be the high yield savings account, maybe a 401k if you decide to just put it somewhere else and then leave that 60 % to just go spend guilt-free on whatever the heck you want. And I think that, I think the goalposts in our minds move pretty easily. And so like, just to make the math easy, let's say you get a thousand dollar bonus. it's easy to go spend a thousand dollars if you feel like you have a thousand dollars but if you tell yourself hey you just got a extra you know free five hundred dollars that still feels like five hundred dollars that you could easily go spend you're not going to be that disappointed i think if you just kind of move the mindset and goalposts in your head then that still feels like quote-unquote free money out of nowhere while also feeling good that you put some of that free money towards somewhere else that'll help you a lot in the future and turn that 500 into five grand many years in the future.

46:27Yeah, I like that a lot.

46:32You could change your percentages to reward yourself if you set up a budget or something. Like if you've never budgeted before, because that would be the big force multiplier is if you went from never budgeting to actually budgeting, then you'll actually make progress. Maybe say, hey, I'll give myself an extra 300 bucks because I set a budget. yeah there's nothing wrong with that reward as long as you're making progress there's too many people out there like that credit card debt shows that we keep going back to too many people out there that aren't making any progress essentially and i'm not trying to be mean or rude to anybody it's just genuinely if all you're doing is piling debt not really saving much of anything then you're just not making progress and if all you do is set some sort of habit to build some progress then that's that's basically an infinite percent increase from where you were before and that is that's a massive shift yeah that's good all right moving on to question gotta do the math now would be 13 it's 12 actually 12 uh average amount spent on gas per month in the u.s and we're going to make this plus or minus 100 dollars average gas so again I'm in North Carolina.

47:45So it's, I think we're pretty close, maybe slightly under the national average. If you're in California, that's like they're over$7 a gallon regularly. It's absolutely insane. And to clarify, we're just talking about personal, well, not just personal commuting or personal usage. We're not including like, you know, long haul truckers or like, you know, people who travel a ton for their job or whatever. We're just talking about, you know, somebody who's using it for commuting or their own personal use what's my plus minus range 100 okay then i'm gonna say 200 bucks right on the money 200 that's pretty close to what um i probably spend maybe a little bit less because i shop at costco right right yeah costco sam's club those make a massive difference for gas honestly um yeah just a quick promotion for evs not actually but on a commercial promo, I spent about 45 bucks on electricity a month.

48:45Please consider it. That's all I got to say. Just consider it. That's fair. I think that's valid. Yeah. Stacks up. All right. Question number 14, actually 13. And we got here, this will be multiple choice. What is the average American's monthly grocery bill for a single person? Grocery bill for a single person. Options are$300, $400, $500 and$600. And I think I'll let you remove one of the options if you'd like. Yeah, please do. We will remove 500. So it's either three, four or 600 for a single person monthly grocery. Does this person shop at Whole Foods? This person exclusively shops at Air One.

49:35I don't know what that is. it's like the most expensive overpriced grocery store in the u.s i don't even i don't know if it's in new york or california or both but it's it's just like a stupid like a strawberry a single strawberry can be like 20 bucks they have they have it it's like in its own little case and everything and it's just a single strawberry stood no i'm not i'm not joking you can look up single strawberry i've forgotten how to spell heroin now single strawberry the suggestion is immediately air one and there it is in its own little case$19 for a single strawberry from air one yeah um no we're not we're talking about average so this oh so they don't they don't yeah i would not say that the average person shops at air one they're probably shopping it i don't even know what grocery store we have publics i don't think i think that's just southeast though this is very helpful so i'm gonna guess 400 yes 400 good work on an absolute tear right now this might even deserve some sort of reward even if it's not uh going to be an overall win because this is an impressive hot hand final last and final question and let's finish it strong percent of americans oh hold on pause so this is you know the three-point competition where there's a money ball at the end so this one counts as two corrects we've already bent the rules let's continue doing it i i like that idea final question worth two points we'll have to tally this up at the end because i i am no longer keeping track at this point very accurately last question money ball question percent of americans not invested in stocks at all 401k IRA anything just not touching the stock market whatsoever and we are talking plus or minus 10 % yeah so I've actually seen some pretty encouraging data on this I would say I don't know I'd probably put it close to I don't know can you give me plus or minus 6 % instead of 5 % Did I say plus or minus five?

51:50I meant to say plus or minus 10. I don't know what I actually said. Oh, plus or minus 10. Yeah, I'll take that. Plus or minus 10. Okay, okay. We could be eight, though. If eight seems fair to you, we could make it more difficult. I don't want to... I hate it. If the money ball was easy and you walked away and you just felt like, I finished it too easily. That was nothing. No, it's plus or minus 10. Plus or minus 10%. Okay. I'm going to guess the percentage that don't have. yes correct do not are not invested at all in stock um i would say because i have the plus or minus i would say 24 oh you're so close to getting in 38 really 38 that's shocking okay yeah i was surprised at how high it was truly as well these numbers just make my head hurt like i i don't know what the average american is it's yeah the average average american is very tough and i think it also contributes because if i mean if you imagine you're in a situation where you're not earning too much you're hardly getting a bonus you're in credit card debt the idea of putting any money towards anything that to you feels completely fake and just contrived like investing in stocks i can imagine you would just be like screw that i'm not gonna i'm not gonna worry about that um so to some degree i can kind of see how it makes sense but it's definitely it's still surprising and disappointing i wonder how much like people who aren't in stocks are into crypto for example that's a very good question that's a very good question i would i would bet that it's maybe about the same percentage like a third of people who don't believe in that are just like well I'll toss some money towards a gamble basically well I mean depends on what you're doing but in a lot of ways a gamble and feel like you can earn a lot more than you ever could in stocks yeah I wish I had the magazine with me but Bloomberg did a piece where they talked about like the younger generation and kind of how they saw their investments and everything and a shockingly high percent said that they consider their gambling like sports gambling budget or whatever as part of their as a component of their financial plan really yeah wow that's fascinating yeah i mean not obviously not to speak for my entire generation or anything but a lot of stuff feels hopeless may be a bit of a strong word but in a lot of ways hopeless because you we're kind of growing up in a time now where okay by the way homes are it's so expensive you're going to struggle to afford it.

54:35Groceries are going to be expensive. You're going to struggle to afford it. You're not going to be paid nearly as much in terms of scaling everything as anybody has in the past. Education's going to get more expensive and it's just like everything is more difficult and expensive to afford that you just feel like you need to kind of not take control, but just find something that'll just give you easy money to kind of bypass all of this, what feels impossible, all these impossible steps that are in the way. yeah i really like kind of i i feel like i feel this this idea or this emotion is like um being in a place where you feel like you can't afford real estate because it's objectively and from the data you can see it's so much more expensive than it was in the past when you compare it to incomes and things like that and so people looking at crypto or like, oh, if I can't get real estate in the real world, I'll get it in the digital world or in the metaverse, which is kind of like where crypto really started.

55:38And so there's a lot of that of like, well, I missed the real estate wave, but I want to be in the next wave kind of an idea. So what would you say, maybe just to wrap everything up? Because this went from a fun game show to like kind of depressing, you know. That's the thing. That's the thing about our finances, right? Like it doesn't just because we're all in the place maybe where we don't want to be doesn't mean it has to stay that way forever. So you can make the changes. You can start building habits. So what would you say to somebody who maybe is in a less ideal financial situation than they would like to be?

56:13What kind of steps, what kind of mindset can they make now to be glad they did maybe five, 10 years down the road? yeah i think that it's i know i mentioned earlier in this episode but it's all about making some kind of progress because a lot of these negative statistics that we went over today a lot of them are heavily weighted and skewed and based on people who make no progress whatsoever and i'm not going to say that every single one of them that would be in their control but i would say a very large percent of them it would be to some degree in their control and if you are somebody that breaks that average norm and makes progress and has some habits, then you already bypass a lot, a lot of these statistics and jump into a much better place.

56:58That doesn't mean you're going to be a millionaire in five years or earn a crap ton of money or, you know, live in a penthouse suite or something like that. But it means that you can be in a much more comfortable financial situation in the longterm, you know, things like be able to retire, afford a house at some point in the future, you know, afford to have kids without struggling to pay for toys or food for them you know these kinds of life-altering financial situations can be much more achievable or achievable for the vast majority of people out there if you make some kind of progress and that progress can look like building some kind of a basic budget it can be putting some money into an investment account like a roth ira or into a high-old savings account so at least your savings is growing over time um the only thing i would steer away from for a lot of people in that kind of a situation if you're struggling is something like a 401k where your money is so locked up it's fantastic and it's powerful it can and it can earn you a lot of money in the long run but it's not going to help you do anything any of the life-changing things i just mentioned except for retire that's the only needle it moves everything else it's basically inaccessible to you unless you want to lose a lot of the money through fees and taxes and yada yada so just build some sort of a habit of having a budget build a habit or automation or whatever it is for you of putting money somewhere other than just cash or, you know, spending it on credit cards or whatever.

58:19And you will shift yourself into a different person with those habits. And again, you will, you will leap be leaps and bounds past a lot of these statistics, even with what feels like relatively small moves. If you're just consistent with it. I love that. I mean, go out there. Yeah. Just go out there and just, just make progress and be proud of yourself for making progress. Don't do it's impossible, but don't compare yourself to other people or the dollar amounts or exact percentages they're able to do. Just compare it to yourself and your past self. And if you're heading in the right direction, then trust me, you're beating a lot more people out there than you think.

58:54Just not the people you see on TikTok or YouTube or whatever that are bragging about their situation or comfortable sharing it. No, I love that. Well, thanks for having me on the show. I mean, uh, it was a fun time, even though I didn't win anything. I'm glad you had a good time even though you didn't win anything final score for Andrew 7 out of 14 which honestly is not that bad truthfully in the end I mean that's that's a 50 % on I mean for a three point contest that'd be a pretty decent percentage you know now that I got pretty close to being decent that last clank off the rim is really hurting that right that just stings that much more now yeah it could have been a lot higher but 7 out of 14 that's not that's not nothing to sneeze i think that's a good place to end up but uh in the comments below or feel free to email us as well if you prefer a picture instead of emoticon um something something drawn for you as a reward let us know what kind of score you got on on this uh on this who wants to be millionaire quiz and again be honest it's just the honor system i have no way to check whatsoever so be honest about what your score was but let us know what kind of score you got and don't forget to completely scrub away the uh tier two question about average American subscription spending per month.

1:00:05We're going to call that a wash and either an incorrect statistic or a very difficult statistic to get. But yeah, let us know your final scores. I hope you learned something from today. And again, as Andrew mentioned, I know a lot of these can lean in the very negative point of view and they are, but there's also a lot of things you can do to change that. So just today, go out, make a positive change for yourself, head in the right direction and be happy with that and wake up happy tomorrow that you did a good thing yesterday. So as always, remember, financial freedom is built one smart move at a time.

1:00:36Keep it simple. Keep it steady. And at any rate, I'll see you next time. Peace. The information contained is for general information and educational purposes only. It is not intended for a substitute for legal, commercial, and or financial advice from a licensed professional. Review our full disclaimer at einvestingforbeginners.com.

1:01:06Shop the Sherwin-Williams Labor Day sale and get 35 % off paints and stains August 28th through September 9th. Whether you're refreshing your interior or exterior, we've got the colors to bring your vision to life. And with delivery, getting everything to your door is easier than ever. Shop online to have it delivered or visit your neighborhood Sherwin-Williams store. Click the banner to learn more. Retail sales only. Some exclusions apply. See store for details. Delivery available on qualifying orders.