The #1 Money Habit That Separates Winners from Losers | Caleb Hammer

The lack of budgeting will result in every financial problem. It'll start the whole snowball of disaster. You're not going to be the homeowner, the retiree, the emergency fund person, the car owner. And I'm okay with anyone doing whatever they want. Do it. But then embrace that that is what you've chosen to put your money on.

Today's guest, Caleb Hammer, has seen it all. Six-figure earners drowning, low-income earners winning. Caleb is breaking down how to actually create wealth and how much emergency cash you really need. Today, you're getting audited.

30% of your money goes towards 1. That's a crazy amount of money. People think I'm stingy, like people can't find them. Like, no, just get rid of all the bad shit in your life. The major things that actually get you to that financial freedom, that's all pretty basic. It really is.

Is it a better time to be young and alive right now than previous generations, or worse?

That's an interesting question.

I mean, if you put aside somebody's income, is there one sort of financial metric or thing you look at on somebody's personal balance sheet where you can tell in 5 seconds or less if they're really bad at managing their own money?

Oof. I mean, if there's a collections, you already know it's done. Like, they're bad enough to allow things to not be paid on for 6 months or whatever it is, you know, for— it depends. Or a repo. If they're letting their primary transportation device get taken from their house, that is likely kind of their income source 'cause you have to drive to a job in this country. You gotta have a job to have a car to have a job. So if someone's getting repoed, that's when you know it's pretty brutal.

How common is that?

Collections? Almost half the episodes we do. Yeah. Which, I mean, honestly, for what it's worth, okay, someone lets a $500 car go to collections. Like, it sucks. It screws them over for getting approved for a new car loan, maybe. A decent credit card, like a 0% interest credit card, you know, intro period. But most people can still get an apartment.

Yeah.

You know, maybe they have to do like first month, last month, a little extra besides just a security deposit. They'll still get a car loan, a credit card. They're just like predatory. That's where you get like the 20% car loans, 30% car loans and the credit cards. No interest like Credit One. Credit One is so brutal. This is monthly fees. It just eats them alive. So When they have collections, they can still survive. It's not like the end of the world, but it definitely puts them in a worse position. It takes like 7 years for it to fall off your credit and they can sue you for different ones. It usually is just not worth going through the legal process because they're such small balances, but if it's large enough, it might be worth them coming after you. But repo, that's actually pretty rare.

I do like those repo videos though, which is totally inappropriate to say. You ever see the guys with the shark, the car?

Absolutely.

Like a hard neighborhood.

Because it's always, it's You see a lot of different dynamics at play when you see the repo videos. You see them say, "I'll make my payment right now. I'll give you the money. I'll give you the money for the payment." It's like, no, call the bank. You were supposed to make the payment. That's the issue. If you're unable to pay it right now, why didn't you? My heart feels for anyone going through a repo situation. It's brutal. But I mean, if you're in that situation where you're that many months behind, you likely got a car that you couldn't afford or you weren't smart when you had a job by saving up an emergency fund. Fund of any kind, 'cause 40% of Americans can't do a $400 emergency. So at that point, there were just too many mistakes that were made outta the gate for you to be in that situation.

Yeah. What else do you think shows up on like every broke person's account? That's like immediate standard.

You have your Klarnas, your Affirms, even PayPal paying for, which honestly, personal favorite of mine. I've used it. I'm good with it. I'll use it today. I don't need to, but I mean, it could be nice splitting just a payment in 4. That's fine. But what you start seeing is when people get on Klarna, they feel like they have access to money and then they finance it like anything else. And a Klarna loan immediately gets you up to like 35% where even like the highest credit cards, we're talking 30%. So it's one of the worst things that I see on people's finances today that is getting way too normalized is using those Klarnas and Affirms.

Yeah. By now, pay later such an actually predatory thing that sounds really nice.

Yeah, I mean, again, I use PayPal paying for it, right? I use it, I used it before I was rich. I've used it since I've been rich. It's fine. Any debt, any debt except for like a payday loan. Yeah. Almost any debt can be good debt if used properly.

Yeah.

And it can all be bad and abused and completely fuck someone's life over.

Are you seeing anybody or a lot of people use like Polymarket and betting, but they don't have the cash to do it, or is that not common yet?

It's interesting because the narrative right now is that young men are all doing it, which I mean, and I know young men do have a lot of issues with talking about, but interesting enough, both genders are actually using those sports betting pretty similar. It's like off by like 4%. I think it's nearly like 30% of young people Um, but pretty close to both genders. But they're not really talking about the young women getting into sports betting. I also don't know who the fuck they are because they're not talking, not talking about sports betting. Like, you see guys talking about it all the time. You got Barstool and all this, uh, Barstool. That's why— I mean, I did some bets on the Super Bowl. Again, it's like anything, it can be fun. Drinking can be fun. Yeah, it's when it gets to the point where it's an uncontrolled addiction, that's when it starts becoming bad. And we've had a few of those on the show, which is very scary, where people are in the hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars a month on sports betting. They don't use debt to do it, but in a way they do, because on their checking account they'll use this much of it on sports betting, which means in order to fund the rest of the lifestyle that would take up this much, they have to put this much on a credit card. So it immediately starts offsetting, and in a way they're funding their gambling through debt.

Yeah. What do you think about OnlyFans subscriptions?

I don't understand paying for tits. Personally, they're everywhere. They're free. Uh, porn, it's out there. You know where to find it. I don't understand paying for it. I mean, I definitely— I, I, I— the marketing's gotten good.

Has it really? Because I don't think they target women, so I guess I have no idea.

What does it look like? No, it's just gooner bait everywhere online. Just, it's crazy. And they're like, you kind of want to see what's on the other side. Yeah. So I mean, over the years I definitely fall into maybe like 2 trials, maybe 3 trials.

Really?

I get it, just trials immediately canceled, but I don't allow myself to do it, especially since starting the show. I'm just like looking at these people doing it, falling into it. It's ugh. And when they get the OnlyFans subscription itself isn't what scares me. What scares me is the people paying to chat because you're also paying to chat to an Indian overseas. And it's, I don't know what it's, it's just an indication of the absolute insanity that is the loneliness epidemic right now. Paying to chat's fucking crazy.

Yeah, we used to hang up on like Indian telemarketers that were just trying to call you random, but now you pay them to talk dirty to you. It's a real turn of events. It's absolutely crazy episode, you know.

Yeah, I don't understand it, but OnlyFans subscriptions, like, I don't think it's necessarily good. Porn can't— porn's not always healthy, people, you know. Yeah, it's like anything, get out of balance, and then once you get that parasocial relationship and you associate it with money, it just, it can go downhill really quick. And we've had a lot of people on the show hiding OnlyFans subscription payments from their significant others when the significant other said, no, you can't do that.

Yeah, no, I can't imagine many significant others are stoked about that. I don't even know if most people realize how bad the American debt crisis is, how bad Americans' finances are. So could you maybe paint a picture, like, what is happening to the average American financially today?

Well, if we look at the country, before even looking at the average, if you look at the country, we're talking trillions at this point. I think credit cards in the trillions, student loans in the trillions, mortgages in the trillions. And mortgages can be good, but you know, there's people get into houses they can't afford. And 11% of student loans right now are going into default, which is absolutely crazy. And that's not a loan you want to fuck with. Like, that doesn't go to collections like the other ones. That garnishes your wages. That starts getting really, really bad when you can get on a payment as low as 1% of your income. Why have it garnish up to 20% of your income? I don't really— that's such a weird personal choice at the end of the day. But for the average person, again, 40% of Americans can't afford a $400 emergency, not $1,000, but just a $400 emergency. 40% can't afford. Insane. Uh, the amount of times that I was driving, delivery driving Jimmy John's in college and lost the tires or something, or popped the tire, that's an expensive fix. And if we, if 40% can't do a $400 emergency, I don't know what their future looks like. It's a future of only debt. That means every single time anything happens to you, you're going further into debt, which prevents you with those new minimum payments from saving up any money to prevent the next emergency, which just pushes you into more debt. So that's why it's the emergency— not having an emergency fund is an emergency because It'll fuck up everything. It'll start the whole snowball of disaster. And we've seen that on the show with people's pets getting sick and stuff like that. I want people to take care of their pets, but then it puts them into a $10,000 loan. It starts a minimum payment snowball and it just, it gets brutal and just everlasting. So, I mean, that's just one example, but again, the student loan one is huge. The average, not median, so average, which is a little boosted. Borrows like $38,000 to get a bachelor's degree, if I'm not mistaken, or to go all the way through college. And 40% of those who borrow drop out. I was one of them. So it happens. I get it.

But you borrowed and then dropped out?

Oh, absolutely.

Wow.

Yeah. I still own my student loans.

You do?

I mean, they're like 2%. So what am I going to do? I'm investing. I think I'm investing. I'm up, you know, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do my standard 10-year process. And I'm investing. But it just shows people are getting degrees that don't have good return on investments, but many are just dropping out even after borrowing. And at that point, you have a debt that it's going to be with you forever. And that's like 11% defaulting right now, which is absolutely insane. It's the debt you should not default on out of any of them. And it's the highest debt default rate.

So if you could talk to somebody who is struggling right now monetarily and just tell them one thing to do immediately, what is your go-to?

Budget. If you don't budget, you don't know where your money's going. I mean, that's, that's the simple rule number one, because there's like, there's many branches of the personal finance world you want to go down, but it all comes from budgeting because you can't plan where your money is going anywhere. And that's specifically why we made Dollarwise, um, the budgeting app for like the average American, because we make the basic personal finance show for the average American because the average American's struggling. Then we make the budgeting app for the average American, one that actually shows people where their money is going, shows people what they need to do to change their lives. So that's when we were having a conversation of what did we want to do as a company. We were talking about where, what do we see every day in the financial audit conversations? All of it ends up stemming from budgeting. The lack of budgeting will result in every financial problem.

Yeah.

And budgeting is usually the first step in any financial problem. Like, yeah, you need a job before that as well. But even without a job, if your money is going somewhere that you're getting from family or something, who knows, it's still budgeting. So that's why we built Dollarwise.

I love it because it's tactical. I mean, I think these days so many of us get statements like, don't buy avocado toast, skip the lattes, sort of, um, like the standard things we're told. I guess, what do you find are the tropes that we're told that you're like, this is fucking ridiculous? Like, don't worry about that if you're in financial stress. Should we buy the avocado toast? Should we buy the latte? Like, Do we not worry about those?

That's not going to make or break someone's life in the end, but I do see on my show and in the data, I mean, it's the death of a thousand cuts that Americans face. So it's not— I don't want to be the boomer avocado toast thing, but the internet came after my throat for kind of agreeing with Kevin O'Leary that, you know, maybe Gen Z shouldn't be getting 28-hour lunch multiple times a week. You can meal prep. Even just going and stopping at the drive-thru is going to be more like, you know, $11, $15 depending where you're going. So there are these choices and personal choices that people are making, and I'm okay with anyone doing whatever they want. Go get the $28 3 times a week. Go do it. Go eat out every day. Go get Starbucks every day. But then don't complain that you didn't save as much for retirement as you want to. Don't complain that an emergency happened and you didn't save up a 6-month emergency fund. Don't complain that you never got a chance to put a down payment down even on an FHA loan for a home. You know, like, what is that, 1.5%, something tiny like that. You You can't make those complaints if you chose to live that life. Live that life, it's fine. But then you have to own it and embrace it in the act. So no, a $28 lunch here and there is not going to hurt you. But what we're seeing with younger generations is the percentage of meals going out to eat is substantially higher. And then the percentage of those meals specifically getting delivered, which has a 90% markup, is incredibly high among Gen Z, the generation that fairly complains about cost of college and housing, that those are unfair complaints. But you're never going to make any progress if you are doing things like $28 lunch multiple times a day. You won't make progress if you want to fight those things other than voting for policy, which is slow, tedious, and honestly very hard to do. The only thing you can do is change your own life. And if people aren't willing to do it, then you just have to embrace it. In the end, you're not going to be the homeowner, the retiree, the emergency fund person, the car owner, or whatever it is, because those are the choices you made. That's fine. Just own it.

How much of Gen Z's financial situation are because of the big things, house and salary increase, et cetera, as opposed to their daily decisions?

In my own personal experience, in the 4 years of doing 3 to 4 episodes a week, um, it rarely comes down to their actual price of housing, even though that is the largest percentage of single item we typically have in a budget. People have made mistakes and they've gotten rent more than they needed, an extra bedroom that they didn't need. And then we proved to them by pulling up on Zillow that no, in their city there's like 1,500 places in non-bad crime areas that they could afford to go in with $200, $300 cheaper. So, but I mean, it's not that that's insignificant, but it is more the personal choices. The death of a thousand cuts is really something you never see because you're stopping at the drive-through. It doesn't seem like anything. But most people, it kind of blows their mind when they come on the show and they see it for the very first time how much money is actually going to bullshit. $1,000 going out to eat a month is not uncommon on our show. And $1,000 a month, $12,000 a year is an insane amount of money. Compounding at 8 to 10% a year in the S&P 500 over the course of decades is crazy money. It's a great down payment on a house. It's crazy money. So it is those personal choices. It doesn't mean housing's great and where you are, it's gonna be worse. San Francisco, LA, New York, it's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt. Same with cost of school. But at that point you have to choose a better path.

Yeah. I mean, it's so unpopular to say that and people kind of lose their minds. I did see that on the internet. I supported you. I was like, I'm team, I'm with the hammer on this one. But I think, It's like, do you want me to say nice things or do you want to win?

It's easier to be a victim.

I know.

And the internet supports you being a victim because it feels good. It feels the best. And people are victims of certain things. School, housing, healthcare. Some of the— it's like the three, only three categories that has gone up as a percentage of our income as Americans over the past 100 years or so. Everything else has gone down. Even groceries, even going out to eat has gone down as a percentage of income in terms of the the cost. So those things are out of the control of those people. A lot of it depends where you live, what kind of job you get though, right? You could get decent, uh, healthcare, health insurance, do a good job. You can have better cost of living if you move to a place that actually builds housing and has decent policies, like Austin versus New York. Um, and, uh, cost of school— again, community college in-state. You don't have to go to the private school. You don't have to go out of state.

Trade schools.

Trade schools are great. Apprenticeships are great. There's a lot of options. And as long as you don't borrow more than your first year expected salary in your job field is you're typically in a pretty good position.

You know, I take notes on everything. My problem wasn't really about taking notes, it was finding them again. So I've been using this Kindle Scribe and look, I've thrown every smart notebook into a drawer somewhere, seriously. And this is the only one that sticks and here's why. First, it actually feels like paper. You like swipe it like you do a piece of paper. It's got this textured screen. There's no apps, no notifications, nothing buzzing at me. Good for ADD people like me. So it's just me and the page. That alone is worth it. But the part that got me is the AI. After a meeting where I've taken extensive notes, I'm able to quickly summarize my handwritten notes into clear, legible recap. And this is wild. I can ask my notebook a question like, what did I commit to in my last call with Rob? And it just scans everything and tells me with no scrolling and no hunting. It's basically a notebook that hands you the answer instead of making you dig for it. So that's what I'm working on right now. What are you working on? Whatever it is, you can build it on a Kindle Scribe. I love mine. I really do love this thing. Is it a better time to be young and alive right now than previous generations, or worse?

I would say it is better. I will say this exact year, if we take this snapshot in time, kind of brutal because the job market for recent college graduates is really hard and I have a lot of sympathy towards them and that's not their fault. That's just the job market they're coming into. I would say as a generation, it'll be pretty great. Yes, it might be a lower percentage of homeowners, but in terms of disposable income that we have, it's better than anywhere else in human history. The jobs are better in terms of, okay, yes, it's not gonna be a single family income household, but you get to go to an AC job, sometimes even work from home and just click and clack all day instead of actually like banging shit in a non-AC'd, barely unionized place where people were dying, like had high death rates. So life is, life is good, but you don't wanna hear that life is good cuz it is easier to be a victim. Victim gets the clicks.

Yeah. Don't I know it? Well, I think that's the point of this. I mean, like the person who's listening to this right now, they want to get better. They don't want to just be right. Yeah. I think that's like a big difference. Otherwise this show would be way too boring because, you know, you'll go, go watch MrBeast go do a crazy challenge and have a great time and that'll be way more entertaining. But if you're here, it's like you want to make more money and have a better life and you think that it's in your purview to actually do it. And so those are my people and I think they find you too. You know, like you've said a lot about cars. You've talked a lot about how cars could be good or bad financial decisions. Like, is buying a car a bad financial decision?

Typically, no, because oftentimes in our car infrastructure world, you have to— unless you live in a few blessed places in the United States, you need a car to get a job, to get a car. It's the amount of car, the kind of car, the year of the car, where you are financially when you're getting your car. Those are the big things that matter. Americans think they need their mega Ford F-150 with $1,000 a month at 12% interest to go pick up groceries once a week. That doesn't make sense. Americans are stupid with the cars we get. You can get a 5, 6, 7-year-old car that is used that you get checked out by a mechanic. That's the clear part. You know, a couple different independent mechanics outside of the dealership, outside of the lot. You get a little seal of approval, maybe not the perfect deal, but a good car that's going to be safe, reliable, and last a while without a lot of maintenance. And there's, I mean, there's used electric cars. I mean, not everyone can do it because not everyone has access to the charging.. But it's incredible what you can get for that $10,000 to $25,000 range instead of the $50,000, $60,000 cars that Americans feel like they have to get or else their family is going to die if they get in a car crash. Yeah. So Americans are just really silly with our car purchase. We'll justify anything to get the nice new car. It's because it's a toy. It's fun. It's ingrained in our culture. I'm not against the concept. I love a nice car. I'm not against it. I want my AC to cool just a little bit quicker. I want to go faster. I want that newest safety rating, but we don't need it, especially when you're not in the income situation to actually afford it, because it'll put you in a worse hole than you're already in.

Do you see a lot of people that actually buy cars for like $3,000 to $10,000, or are most people that are in a bad financial situation buying cars that are $20,000, $30,000, or leasing them and saying, ah, you know, it's a $745 payment a month. It's not that big of a deal.

We actually rarely get leases, surprisingly, because I know that is very common in America. But I know it's mostly expensive cars that people are getting. I mean, a $2,000 to $3,000 car, $3,000 to $4,000 car, that also puts you in a bad financial position because it's not pre-pandemic times where you could get a beater like that. Now your new beater that's going to be reliable for a while is like $10K. So the classic Dave Ramsey $2,000 car, that's— they're going to be putting $2,000 into it every few months just to keep it going. And that doesn't work anymore. And that's going to put someone into a bad spot. So I usually shoot for that, like minimum of $10,000 typically.

Mm-hmm.

Doesn't mean you're going to get a good deal. Like someone could sell you a $3,000 car at $10,000. You have to do your research. You need to spend time on it. But Ubering for a month or so will save you money in the long term versus being in a predatory loan at a car that has no value that's going to break down constantly.

Yeah. Do you find that most people want to be rich or they want to look rich?

So I would say look rich more than be rich, but even more than look rich is just to have the lifestyle in their own life of like convenience. They'd rather have that more than anything, especially in America.

Yeah. I did see there was one, uh, young woman that, uh, was talking about how she couldn't afford something on the internet. And then you found out that she was like at Cannes or something in France.

Yeah.

Like a few months ago.

Yes. No, that was crazy. No, she was just complaining that she couldn't afford life, essentially. I don't remember the exact detail, but then literally, if you look through her social media, her previous, uh, her previous TikTok or two TikToks ago was her going on a grand European vacation. It's like, again, you're allowed to do that, do it, but then embrace that that is what you've chosen to put your money on. You don't then get to complain about not being able to afford the other things.

You talked a little bit about, uh, Dave Ramsey, and I think you have some differences in like how expensive emergency funds are versus his. Like what do you think a real emergency fund is? What do you think a real cost of a car is? What do you disagree with him on?

I mean, I like Dave Ramsey in general as an asset to have woken up millions of Americans and he's had a bigger impact towards positive than negative by far, not even close. So I'll preface with that, that overall very good. You know, certainly it is like religious values, which doesn't apply to everyone. That's okay. That's fine. Overall good guy, positive impact. On the negative, sticking to $1,000 since like the '90s for a starter emergency fund is kind of fucking crazy. What is that, like $3,000 now if it was just inflation adjusted? Like, I've had people on the show who have done the $1,000 and it put them in a worse financial position because they only saved to $1,000, which wasn't enough for an emergency. So they went into debt and started that debt snowball even further. So that's why we recommend at least a 1-month emergency fund before going crazy on debt. Or the Money Guy rule— I also like the rule of, uh, make sure you can meet your highest deductible in the case of an emergency. Have enough saved for that, and that'll prevent you from your life falling apart and going into crazy debt as well. So that's the starter before going into the crazy debt payoff journey. Um, once you get to the debt payoff journey, you know, he's snowball all the way, which I think makes sense actually for like 80% of debt payers, you get the reward structure. You see a debt get paid off pretty quick. Debt snowball, smallest debt to largest debt. So you get that quicker dopamine. It keeps you— for the average person in the studies done, it keeps them engaged longer, which gets them to the end. But I'm also okay with the Avalanche method, which is the highest interest rate, if I'm not mistaken, first down to the lowest, which means you can do a higher or small balance just depending on where the interest rate is. And that technically, in pretty much any scenario, done shows that you pay off debt a little bit quicker. But if you have a lower chance of completing it, I'd rather you stick to the more try and tune. So I'm okay with snowball and avalanche. He says only snowball, so I disagree with that a little bit. The big one, the one that scares me, and they don't seem to move under him— first of all, he goes mutual funds instead of index funds, which is weird. You're getting like high management fees and stuff like that. It doesn't make sense, and they rarely beat the market, if ever. But even still, take that aside, they suggest you can withdraw 6 to 7% a year and just live off of it forever because it averages 10% a year. But it makes no sense. Like, no financial model agrees with that. You— 4% has a 95% chance of completion. Even 4% is not 100%. 3% is the only 100%. Like 3.5%. So that's a dangerous thing. And the fact, the one thing that does kind of annoy me about them, again, I think more positive than negative by far, but it's that they won't change their opinion on anything, even when proven wrong. And every financial model has proven that one wrong. And maybe it's because the business is built around it. Maybe it's in that more conservative, like they just can't budge on things and admit they're wrong. So, I mean, that one actually does kind of blow my mind that they stick to that. It really does.

I do also think the richer you get, the less connection to reality you have, no matter how hard you work.

Or just the data. I mean, I mean, I've been pretty successful these past 2 years, but now I just try to get into the data of the average American. I mean, I guess it helps that I view the finances of them on a consistent, consistent weekly basis.

But you're not like Bill Gates, who doesn't know the price of a banana.

Exactly.

I love that clip though. We should really play that because that thing's Still makes me giggle. Have you ever seen it?

No. How much do you think Rice-A-Roni would be? Within a dollar. Hmm, $5. Okay, let's— the audience didn't like that.

Let's see.

Oh, it's a dollar. Look what a bargain. I'll take 5.

I know. I don't want to make fun of him. He's a G. He's done so much, like to your point, done so much good stuff for the world. But it's incredible. Yeah, like what does a banana cost? He's like, yeah, like 20 $20, $22.

That's crazy. That's crazy. I couldn't say the exact price, but I would've never said anywhere near that. That's crazy.

No, it's gotta be like 75 cents banana, 50 cents a banana depending on organic or not. But let's talk about actually, so imagine somebody right now has $100K that they wanna invest. How are you telling people to break that down? Like retirement savings fund money, et cetera?

Yeah, well, I mean, there's some basics that have to be met first. They need a 6-month emergency fund. Before they can invest. High-interest debt, you know, pretty much any debt above 8% that's on a mortgage, any debt above even 6% that's on a mortgage needs to be killed. But if those things are met, then we love target date funds. Your 2060, your 2030, and you pick near where you're going to retire, starts more aggressive and it just automatically gets more conservative when you get closer to that target date. It gets a little too conservative too quick. Most people a little too bond-heavy. But either way, it's good for the average person because it'll balance and they're not going to balance themselves. I mean, low-cost index funds are great, you know, especially— I mean, the Trump accounts for the kids, they're typically only a few options in there and most of them are like the S&P 500, essentially. Yeah, it's for a reason. It's basically the American economy overall.

When I looked at them, they're not better than a traditional 529. Plan.

$529, like, you're going to be using that for school stuff, right? So, but this person can just let it grow and not even think about, okay, what do I have to use this for? So, yeah, $529 I think is what makes sense for the average parent if they're thinking about investing in their kids' future.

Yeah, that's interesting. Um, Pokémon cards, what do you think about people buying and selling them?

If you can do it, if it's in your budget, that's fine. But that's where people fuck up, is they're ripping. That's what they call it, they're ripping, and they can't afford it, and it's a gamble, and it's an addiction, and they're chasing them, and it's crazy.

Crazy. I feel the same way. I actually got into it with Logan Paul about this on the internet. And I didn't know that he was the one, you know, that was sort of like the, you know, big advocate for Pokémon cards. But I mean, we've seen this so many times all the way back to the tulip craze to remember when people were hawking those Bored Apes on the internet with NFTs, right? And now we've got these cards and somehow it's different because over the past 10 years, if you look at trading cards or Pokémon cards or nostalgia, it's outperformed. I'm like, guys, This is what happens every time. Yeah, but people lost their mind. I mean, people— I think I got like maybe a few death threats. It's probably nothing new to you too, but I was like, I literally just said maybe don't speculate on highly tradable assets that have no intrinsic value and don't make you actually any cash flow.

I think it's fine to do if it's for fun and it's in the budget. I wouldn't be putting your entire life savings into that. That's where people go wrong. If you're putting your entire life savings into a single asset regardless, you're usually doing it poorly.

You have a guess if those are gonna make more money or lose money over the next 10 years? What are you guessing?

Um, I mean, people are insane about it. If I had to coin— oh no, no, no, if I had to do gut, maybe gain. Again, that's not something I'm putting all my faith into. Yeah, it's like a season.

Pokemon cards are up in 10 years.

Yeah, maybe. I mean, it's just very internet, like the internet loves it. And yeah, I mean, you— if you continue having people like Logan Paul who are, yeah, you know, pretty big and they're really pushing it, it's gonna work. And a lot of people are into— I mean, some finance creators that I'm friends with, big Pokemon people, Yeah, like it's everywhere.

So, dude, I'm taking that bet. We're going to check in in 10 years. We'll see. We're going to see who's right. What do you think is the dumbest investment that you see people make in general?

Dumbest investment I've ever seen was someone invested into a gold mine in Uganda. But that was a singular investment, not an ongoing thing.

Was it from Uganda?

Oh, no, no, it was American. Oh, he's looking in like Tanzania now. We got an update the other day.

Oh, no.

Yeah. So his investors pulled out. Yeah. He's waiting for this next wanting to get funding before he comes back on. So I mean, but that was a singular one. Average investment. I actually was just experiencing this with like a cousin the other day, actually. And it's very common. It's just like when people, you know, maybe they have a little bit in their emergency savings, like their emergency savings fine, their debt situation is fine. And instead of investing in like low-cost index funds or something, they're getting like CDs. It's just, I don't know, like, like, what are we doing here? Like, why are we looking at 3, 4, 5%? Even on good treasuries, we're looking at like what, 5.5? It's what are we doing? If you don't have big investments going, if you're not taking swings while young in like the S&P 500, I don't really understand it. They're just low yield, but people are so risk adverse when it comes to their money because it's their money.

Also, isn't it interesting that so many people are like risk adverse but spending prone?

Yeah.

So it's like, don't let my money take any risk, but I'm going to 1,000% have a loss with my execution of what I spend.

Oh yeah. But they're, you know, they're getting fun with that spending. They're getting fun at that high spending thing. They're feeling that instant return, which is much more powerful.

My husband does say there's 100% return on fun. And I say, that's absolutely not true.

I mean, it is true though. You get the dopamine hit immediately. Doesn't mean it's a good return, but it's there.

So the opposite of the dumbest thing that you've ever seen, what do you like? I put so much money in this. Nobody else does, or more people should. This is a type of investment that I actually really like.

I mean, I usually just talk to retards, so. It's kind of hard. You don't really see much people doing good things. You know, I don't think people need to buy houses. It's kind of— that's been passed, you know, right now. You could just— your money from a down payment or anything or going to a mortgage instead in the S&P 500 will just beat housing any day, every day. So you don't need to buy a house. It's okay to buy a house. But I think for the average American, even though it might not be the best return on investment compared to investing, I think it's nice to get their money locked up where they can't touch it. Of course you can with the key locks and stuff, but when people can't touch it, that's actually nice because you're not going to withdraw it like that, like a 401. People withdraw from 401s all the time. So maybe for the average American, they do need to be babied. And having it in an asset that they can't just touch like that is actually a good thing.

So funny, we used to have this graph back when I worked at Vanguard a million years ago, and the graph was like S&P 500 return which was, you know, let's call it 10% on average over 10 years. And then it was average investor return, which was like 3.5%, 4%. And then it was average investment return with a financial advisor, which was like 8.5%, basically the 10% minus fees. And their entire job is basically not to beat the market, but just to keep your ass invested. And that was the first time I realized, oh, our financial willpower is so low that anything that does, you know, protect us from ourselves, can actually be a game changer.

Yeah, especially when people are withdrawing when the market's down because they're scared. It's like the literal— there's no other worst time. Makes no sense. So, you know, maybe it is better to just baby people.

Are we investing in the SpaceX IPO?

Oh, it's interesting. I tracked it a little today. It's been a very busy day. I mean, it's already in the Nasdaq. So if you're in the Qs, you're in it.

You're in it. I never would bet against Elon, but man, the economics of that deal are wild.

First trillionaire.

Yeah, I think the the first time we've seen, um, as I mean, he's like wrapped a bunch of stuff in there. So there's like, you know, Grok inside it and all of this other stuff and Twitter. But, um, they've definitely got to grow a lot. I think the average, I hope the average person in the US now realizes how much later stocks actually trade on the public market than when they used to. Because, you know, back in the day, if you got, if you got the Amazon IPO, that was amazing.

Yeah.

Because it IPO'd really early.

Yeah. They had to use that to raise money.

Exactly. Now these companies are, you know, 9, 10, 11 in and a lot of those gains are gone.

Yeah.

So you got to be careful with that big pop.

But the thing that's going to help SpaceX, right, in my opinion, the ticker itself is usually before being allowed in the NASDAQ, you had to trade for months, but they got allowed in on opening day, which is like unheard of. I believe it's a rule change if I'm not mistaken. I think so too. I mean, that helps it stabilize a little. But yeah, I mean, that's— that within itself was crazy that it traded immediately. In the NASDAQ.

Yeah. And, and also, I suppose, I mean, there's a lot of people that are going to be getting out of that stock though, now that it's public. So be it. I mean, just here in Austin, we have like 3 groups that have made $10 to $50 billion on that. Isn't that wild? That'd be like Valor, you know, not us. Then you would pay off that student debt.

Nope.

What is— I don't get that.

Just, well, first of all, like, it just does it. It's not there. It's not in my head. There's an automatic payment. So I've never, I've thought about it 3 times and it's bringing it up on a podcast. So it's like, oh, what am I doing? It's just like, why even take the effort? I know the math wins in the end, even though it's like, it's nothing anymore. It's like, what's the point?

Okay, here's the thing I keep coming back to with Caleb. The reason his show exists is because people aren't always able to see themselves or to audit themselves. Sometimes you need someone on the outside to open your books and tell you what's actually going And guess what? If you own a business, the stakes of not having expert knowledge guiding you are existential. That's actually why I founded something called the Growth Boardroom. The Boardroom is an on-demand board of advisors for business owners doing 7, 8, or 9 figures a year. Our advisors have a great experience in finance, ops, marketing, hiring, and strategy. And they're going to be really honest with you because they're your outside eyes to look at the reality of your business and help you unlock the next level of growth. For your business. All business owners from mom-and-pop shops to Silicon Valley unicorns have blind spots. And dear God, have I seen this lately after working with thousands of owners. The best businesses, they have an outside advisor that tells you the things you don't want to hear, because I can almost guarantee you're making every big million-dollar decision by yourself and you think and pray you're right, and often you are not. After seeing as many deals as we've seen, I can safely tell you most small business owners fail in their business, not because of competitors, not because of the market, because of dumb things they do inside of their business. The smartest operators often have the biggest blind spots. So if this is you and you run a business that is scaling to $1 million+ in revenue, you should apply to join The Boardroom. It is the only place where people will tell you the truth about your business. And I will start by being the one to do so. You know what's interesting is like, I don't, I didn't know your story before you came on the podcast. I'd obviously watched a bunch of your stuff, we'd interacted, but I didn't realize that you started with a ton of debt. Like, so you, you, yeah, you bully these people a little bit sometimes to get them to change their mind, but you actually kind of have sat in their shoes.

Oh yeah.

Like, what was that story?

Which is the best way to do it. I think that's why I'm able to to kind of talk to them the way I do, 'cause I was there. When I graduated high school, one of the first things I did, like, and my parents corrected me on this story when I said it on Rogan, I said, first advice they told me to do was go max out a credit card for a piano I wanted. So I immediately did that. Also a store card maxed out for an iMac, 'cause I needed a sick iMac for college. A card maxed out on McDonald's. That was before I got fat, But I mean, it was still delicious. And federal student loans for a bullshit degree that I dropped out for anyway. Sallie Mae student loans, $13,000 car loan, which, you know, it's the inflation and bullshit. And, you know, luckily 10 years ago when I got that, 10 or 8 years ago, that was still a lot of money, you know, and family loan for a down payment on the car too. So I just owed money to to everybody. And I had goals of where I wanted to get to in life. And even though I was making, through my own business of writing music, like the minimum to live in, like a shitty little apartment, and my loans and minimum payments, with the goals I wanted to go, I couldn't get there. I just looked around and I was like, this isn't it. And my friend got a job down here in Austin, Texas. I was up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I'm from, and went to college. And he got a sales job, just a random sales job job. Um, it's very low pay but great upside if you do well. And they were applying for the same job, and he was like, hey, you want to put your resume? I was like, okay. But he was calling me like, you want the job? I'm like, okay. So I just packed up my sedan, sold all my stuff, drove down in a week and a half to Austin. And it was a $32,000 a year job, which Austin, Texas, $32,000 a year, not great. But the upside was basically unlimited. There was no cap, it was sales. And Sales is just— it's just in my skill set and I was just pretty good at that. I immediately got into it, led to the— got to the top of the sales team in terms of sales volume and in commission. And I immediately started making six figures and I was just plowing towards that. And I did the avalanche. It wasn't the snowball, did highest interest to lowest interest. So I was killing those credit cards, then Sallie Mae and then family because I was just personal. And then the other things except for my federal low subsidized student loans. Saved up that emergency fund and then kept going just as hard, as crazy, cutting everything I could, living in cheaper places, doing roommates, all that good stuff so that I could save up for a 10% down payment on a house in Austin. And then I rode the COVID market soon after I bought that, sold it for $100,000 profit, like pretty, pretty quick. That was just a timing thing. But that's why you always want to be in the market is for timing, whether that be stocks or company, whatever it is. You just want to be in the market is usually the important play. Rolled that into the next property, the rental property, and I kept rolling, rolling, rolling. And a couple of years later, when I went to start the YouTube channel, I accumulated a quarter million dollar net worth for a 26-year-old, which is obviously way above the median. But that's before any YouTube penny, anything like that. So I went from, you know, negative like $90,000 at 18 to to positive $250,000 and then started the YouTube channel giving people the exact kind of conversation and craziness and chaos that I love, that I wish someone did to me when I was in my early 20s, late teens.

So you went from negative $90K in debt to $250K net worth.

Oh, by the time I hit, yeah, let's call it like 6, 6 to 7 years. Yeah.

6 to 7 years. If, if you were gonna go give somebody the process to copy your homework, to go from, you know, 5, high, high 5 figures in debt to multiple hundreds of K in net worth, What is like your first 5 or 7 steps?

One, start the budget. Without the budget, there's nothing. There's nothing. And you're going to find where your skill set is going to meet the market. That's, you know, and that's hard for people to find and reasonably so. You know, there's passions and whatnot. And that's what I was following at the time was my passion. But I was good at sales, so I went into sales. So where can you be in the market that is going to reward you the best for your skills? From there, paying down the debt, probably snowball method, best for most people, smallest to largest, and get that fully funded emergency fund and either eye towards that real estate or put your eye towards this maxing out into the market, max out your 401, Roth IRA, whatever you can do. At least try to hit that 20%. I feel like 50/30/20 after that point of the maxing out the emergency fund, 50% on needs, 30% on fun, which is a big percent, by the way, and 20% on investing. So people think I'm stingy, like people can't fund. I'm like, no, Just get rid of all the bad shit in your life. Couple years, you know, if it's bad, maybe even a little longer, but preferably shorter. And then 30% of your money goes towards fun. That's a crazy amount of money. I'm telling people to spend their money like crazy. That's wild. At that point, if you're living 50/30/20, it's just, you know, from there it's— there's so many paths you can go down. It just depends where your life goals are.

So people almost seem to overcomplicate it. Like, if it's really just those— let's call those 4 steps or 5 steps if you want to break one down into 2. Um, maybe we think we have to do 47 things to be financially free, and we don't.

No, of course not. And there are some more mini things. Yeah, I mean, you have to take care of things along the way. They're like, maybe at some point set up a trust, at some point make sure all your insurances are in place, you're getting the best They're like those little steps along the way, but the major things that actually get you to that financial freedom is— it's all pretty basic. It really is.

I know, but I think it's good that you still talk about it because the phenomenon I see is once you make money, you don't want to talk about it anymore. Like, it's like gauche. Like, you know, you'll see like somebody now, maybe it's a little bit—

I think they should.

I think they should.

Let's test it. What's your net worth? What?

More than 9 figures.

Okay.

Yeah. Okay.

You passed the test.

Yeah. I don't think I would say like exactly how many, but it's because I do feel, I feel something about it.

Yeah.

I feel like it feels showy or, um, does it really?

I think aspirational, I'd say. Yeah, I guess aspirational. Like you earned it. You didn't do anything. You didn't already want to do it, right?

No, that's very true. And I didn't have it. I mean, I started like you, I was in credit card debt and know what it sounds like when your debit card hard, you know, dings at the grocery store and you can't pay it.

Oh, I think we should celebrate people who are successful. I think we should celebrate when people have come from those hard points, you know. And if I had foreclosure notices on my house growing up, those are things you should celebrate. So I'm happy to talk about my success and that the podcast is successful and that I make money and that I, I brag about how many people I employ and how my, you know, payroll is like half a million dollars a month. Like, that's things to brag about. I think that is what people should be doing. You don't brag about it in terms of, haha, you poor fucker, I'm rich. It's like that, but it's good to look to success. I, you know, I love reading, uh, biographies and all this stuff on all these very successful founders. And, or even my favorite movie of all time is The Social Network. This is awesome. Of all time, I love it. The music is so good, the direction, the writing. That's just art. Yeah, and it's complicated because everyone's life is complicated. Yeah, it wasn't perfect. I've made so many mistakes. I'm gonna make mistakes next month. We all do. Do, but that's what's so good. And I think we should celebrate success. So I want more wealthy people to break down their, you know, how they did it, how much they have.

Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, I was talking to Vivian too about it too. I think, you know, I way rather know how you spend your money and how much money you've made when it comes to business and your life, et cetera, than like you showing me your fancy cars or your fancy houses. Like that to me is so uninteresting. But I do think, and then you get a lot of shit. So that's probably the other reason why rich people don't like to talk about it that much.

Yeah.

Because at a certain point, you know, it becomes like, what did I see? It was like Lewis Hamilton the other day and he's like, there shouldn't be billionaires and he's worth $750 million. He's like, oh, what's the cutoff, bro? Like at what level are we doing it? You know?

Yeah. It's really weird.

No, it's totally, totally irrational. It makes no sense. Not to mention that it costs, you have to create a massive amount of value to get that kind of wealth. Like if nobody watched Lewis Hamilton and bought his merch, he wouldn't be worth that. And so like, that's a decision we've all made to commoditize that. Even the OnlyFans chicks, which like, not my ethical compass, uh, other people find value in it, so I guess that's what they do. Although I would never start that company.

Um, OnlyFans? Yeah, well, dude just started, it's dead anyway, so—

Is he really?

Didn't work out.

Wow.

I think it was cancer or something.

I just think it's— I'm really— I was really upset when I saw the first like female young or the, the youngest female self-billionaire was from prediction markets. That was like, oh yeah, motherfucker. Could be.

House is fun though if you don't, if you don't mess it up. It's fun. That's what I was using for Super Bowl. It was fun and I broke even.

It worked.

If you're not addicted to it, if you're not losing, like just going, if you're not harming you or your family or your financial position, I think it's just, I think that's fun because it just seems bad for society, like no net positive. Um, I guess so. I mean, do casinos have a net positive?

I mean, people, uh, no, I wouldn't want to be known for making a casino either though. But you don't really—

but like Vegas in general, like that does— there's what, what's the metro area, like 2 million people there? I mean, a lot of it's funded off the tourism, a lot of employment and all that. But man, and on the moral side, for what it's worth, I mean, a lot of our lottery and stuff, it pays for schools. And it's like, I, I don't think it's necessarily I mean, it's probably if, if we had the dictatorial stamp, it's probably better for society if it didn't exist. Yeah, that's not how it works. So we just have to decide, educate people on how to do it properly if you're going to have fun there and help people that can't control themselves.

Yeah, it's so true. I want to talk about some of the war stories from financial audit because they're so unhinged and amazing. Like, who do you think is the guest you still think about because their finances were so bad they even shocked you?

Honestly, um, we had a streamer on the show pretty recently. Streamer— she was not making a living off it. She had like 2 cents in her checking account, or no, she made like 2 cents in an entire month. Yeah, she was— it just speaks to what people are doing today. Some people, they see so many successful influencers that they just, they want to be an influencer themselves, and she was willing to just throw everything away so she could make like 2 cents month, but she still thinks it's gonna, it's gonna work, she's gonna be the next famous streamer. And we don't plug people's information on our show because we don't let people come for clout. So that was startling because she just wanted to keep going. You know, it wasn't the craziest debt or the craziest drama, but the fact that she's just willing to put her entire life on hold and go further in the hole just to pursue this dream that clearly wasn't working out, it just speaks for an entire generation of people that are willing to do— that. Yeah, it was scary.

You know what is interesting that you say that is like, I have noticed that might be an Austin phenomenon too, and this younger generation. Like, I don't want to have to sleep on the floor, and I want to be able to eat what I eat. And so I'll take some of the pain, especially when I'm young. And I think you should take some of the pain when you're young, because there's nothing worse than being old, not as skilled, and broke. Like, you'd rather be young, not skilled, and broke. You can fix that. When you're older, it's hard to get a job. The job market isn't as easy anymore. It's hard to pick up new skills. Like everything's stacked against you the older you get. So all the people that are like, well, you can wait and you've got lots of time. I'm like, do you? I don't know. Because your formative years in like your 20s is where you set up basically the rest of your financial future.

Oh yeah.

Like, you know, if you don't get that right and you're streaming all day and you aren't good at it and you keep going, fuck.

It's not even about like, I 100% agree on that. And I'll just add to it. It's like, let's just pretend like you're doing meh in your 20s and you're only able to invest 5%. That 5% growing over the course of 4 or 5 decades is incredible and is going to be more than you throwing 20% aside when you only have like a decade and a half left till retirement. That compound growth in the time that people are just willing to give up is startling. They don't really understand it. And it's fair though. I mean, I don't want to say kids because I don't want to be in the business of infantilizing people like so many people are today. But you're a young adult, you want to go get a car, get your own place, you want to travel, you got some money. Oh, when you look at just the growth, if they just set 5 to 10% aside, a little bit of sacrifice, the amount of money they have by retirement's crazy.

Was there a single dumb purchase that somebody defended aggressively?

It's usually cars.

It's really cars.

Always cars. People just like, when I can get them to actually relatively break even on the car, then go borrow for a $10,000 car and they make like a net gain of $40,000. They'll fight me to the bone. They'll fight me to the bone. This is so societally grained. It's crazy.

Are these like BMWs and Mercedes and anything?

It's been Mazdas, it's been Toyotas, it's been everything. It's been everything. People are so attached to their cars. I don't understand why.

Interesting.

I've never been that guy. I've never been like, I love my Model X, but I'm not like, I want to give up my financial future for it. I don't understand.

So let's say that you have a partner. And you need to snap them out of their money-making bad decisions. Do you have one line or one go-to argument to break somebody's frame?

Man, I don't know, because most of them, they just view it as a personal attack or as an insult. And that's not necessarily the most productive place to be. How long have you been with your husband?

We've known each other since we were 11.

So if you go at him, he'll probably take it as a little bit of an attack, not a we're trying to start a conversation to get better, right? Yeah, like, like, so I actually don't know. Um, I mean, fuck, I, I don't know. I am not the relationship expert guy. I love basking in the tea of some relationship drama, but I'm not the relationship expert.

So what do you say when you're talking to somebody and they don't—

Oh, see, that's different. Cause I'll have the couple on that side of the table.

Yeah.

And I'm willing to tell that person's a retard on their behalf. Like, but if it was—

Is that the go-to line?

That's one of them. But if it was my girl, I can't call her a retard. No, sweetie, you've got to be gentle. Yeah, I just want to talk about something. This isn't an attack, this isn't personal, this is just— I just want to talk. So I don't know, I'll be brutal for the other person.

Yeah. What do you have, something that you typically go to? One line or an argument to break their frame?

It is usually if I can loop it back to their kids. It always wins because that's where they really feel that emotion. You know, if I can make clear that like their kids are going to have to put their lives on hold to take care of their parents that just sacrifice nothing and live their life up so they could have whatever they wanted now, like they usually think about, oh shit, I didn't do that for my parents. That sucks. I don't want to be like that for my kids. So if I can loop their kids into it in like a non-weird manipulative way, like that kind of works.

Yes.

And a little manipulative.

Tiny, tiny N. Was there a guest that infuriated you at the time for their views on money?

On money?

Yeah.

If I can't get them to make any sacrifices, especially for their kid, that'll infuriate me. I guess the, uh, other day, I think it was before you stole him over there, before you stole Colton. My viewers know Colton. He's over there now.

Works for Her.

Um, I think he produced it. A dude called, uh, my friend and co-worker who's Black the n-word to his face. Not really a financial perspective, but that didn't really make me happy. Wow, you shouldn't do that with a hard R too, not even a soft A.

Wow, that's aggressive.

Aggressive. Yeah, I called his boss in the post-show and got him fired. So usually I don't try to impact people's lives outside of the show other than positive. Yeah, but no, he can go fuck himself.

Themselves. Yeah, that's tough. Yeah.

And you did that one?

Yeah.

Yeah, he did that one.

See, do you have any indication? Let's say that I'm with somebody in a relationship or a partnership or a friendship. How can you tell if somebody's going to actually change their financial decisions or not?

So we see it a lot on the show where people use future words, lots of words coming up. I'm going to change this. I want to change this. This is going to change. I have a plan. If it's always I'm gonna, I will, not I am or have at least shown some kind of, uh, desire to, then at that point I just don't believe it. I really don't.

There's so—

because people, people know I'm going to give them shit on the show, so they prepare these self-defense mechanisms where they say they're going to, they plan to, they want to. But I don't give a shit if the documents in front of me that represent your most recent month show that you clearly aren't doing that now. I don't care what you say you're going to do. That's, that's the easiest thing for me to see. It's the actual action in the moment. And people are just using forward words like, mm-hmm, I'm out.

Yeah, you need to see. So basically you have to see some sort of action, like I just did this.

Just a little. But if all they fall back on is I'm going to, or I have a plan, or I want to, that's, that's a no-go.

What percentage of people actually change their financial behaviors?

On our show, we see really good results. We see, we're further away from the annual review, so I'm forgetting the exact number. It was something like, it was like $20,000, $28,000 in 12 months is the average high-interest debt payoff on our show, which is really good.

What's that compared to like the norm? Is there a way to really compare that?

No, I guess not. 'Cause I mean, the average American sucks at finances. So I mean, compared to the norm, they're definitely doing better. They're at least going in the right direction where the average American isn't.

Yeah.

Um, so I mean, people have gotten houses, people have gotten an emergency funds, people have gotten, there's a lot of good things that have happened from the show.

Yeah. I think one of the hard parts is like, um, I had a friend call me the other day and she wants to have a prenup and figuring out what to do getting married. And thankfully her partner has made pretty good financial decisions, but her ex didn't. And that's sort of, she's had to carry that load historically. And so I think a lot of what your show at least does, and like hopefully this conversation today is try to figure out who are the people that you want to be around, because that's going to be your biggest indicator of how well— like, I mean, you probably don't see too many really, really rich one side of the couple with really, really broke other side. Like, everything sort of gets pulled down by one. Is that true?

Absolutely. I call people out all the time when they're, uh, you know, I use it in a different way because sometimes anchor means good, but like the anchor for relationship where they're just, you know, they want to go forward but they've just dropped them in the middle of the ocean and they can't go anywhere. And this is— it is very common, honestly, unfortunately, and in couples episodes where one person is the villain, and that is very common, instead of both of them being a villain. Um, and it's really sad to see because I feel empathy for the other person because the other person loves the person who is making mistakes to death. They're kind of trapped there because it's like, what are you gonna do, just give up the love of your life? Well, maybe that person's not gonna change their behavior, so now you're stuck with that as well. It's, it's a brutal choice to make sometimes.

What would you tell somebody who's with someone who doesn't want to change their financial behavior?

Well, you would try to get them into couples therapy. I've paid for some couples therapy myself, so at least start there. I don't want to give up immediately, but I mean, just like any marriage, if you, if someone's drinking too much and they're just not willing to change, you know, whatever it is lifestyle-wise, they're not willing to, and you've everything, there is the part of where you just leave.

Yeah. Yeah. It seems like that almost doesn't happen enough. I want to do a few kind of rapid-fire-ish questions and see what you think. So let's go with most underrated purchase you've ever made.

I bought the staging furniture in my house. It was 50% off. There we go. It was underrated. No one knows But it was, I saved a lot of money.

Oh, that does make me happy. I bought the staging furniture in my last house too. I like that. Okay. That's a new underrated way to buy things. What's the most expensive thing you've ever bought?

Individual thing that wasn't real estate, probably my Model X. Yeah.

And you're happy with that?

Yeah, I love it. I'm sorry they're not making it anymore. So I'm with it forever. You know, I'm with that car. Well, until like, there would have to be something crazy that's really good. I can't think of any other Tesla that's better than that.

So do you believe in keeping cars basically until they bust?

Well, I mean, if you can't afford it, then of course. But you know, I mean, I could afford to go get something else if I wanted to.

But do you think you should just keep the other car anyway?

I'm just keeping it because it's like the best Tesla. And I do like Tesla. The self-driving is just insane.

What about, um, is there something that you like kind of secretly judge people for? Um, as a financial decision?

As a financial decision? Because I judge people for a lot. As a financial decision, yeah. I mean, if someone's getting like the nasty-ass flavor in an ice cream stand and they're spending their money on that, then I don't know what's wrong with it.

What's nasty?

I think mint chocolate chip is a disaster. I don't know what people are doing.

A few men and hating mint chocolate chip. My argument is I think it's men versus women.

Why are you eating mouthwash?

Does it taste like that to us? This is why Maybe there's a gene like cilantro.

Well, mint actually makes— mint makes me gag, so I actually can't do that. But so I think it's nasty for different reasons. Like, it actually makes me like almost throw up.

So you don't brush your teeth?

No, I do, but mint isn't what makes toothpaste toothpaste. They can get rid of the scent.

So what do you use?

Like, it's a flavorless toothpaste. It's everything else.

Freakiest thing I've ever heard about.

Everything else is in it, just doesn't have the flavor. And then I do do a minty mouthwash, but that's for the sake of everyone else, and I just like suffer through it, and I'm used to That's such a fun quirk, actually.

I figure you have weird quirks because— probably. Yeah. I don't know. You come off like—

I mean, people say I'm autistic. I bet I am. I don't know. I don't think I'm like super autistic, but I definitely, you know, filterless.

Oh, you're pretty empathetic. Would your girlfriend say that you have a lot of empathy?

Uh, she knows that I can feel pretty intensely. Yeah.

Oh, I like that.

Um, it's not always on my, you know, I don't show it perfectly.

Yeah. Me neither.

Not just in my show, just in my life.

Yeah. I'm actually a little embarrassed lately. I like kind of understand the Devil Wear Prada character. Do you know that one? Like Miranda? This is something maybe only a chick knows.

Yeah. Not really gay. That was for Colton, but again, you stole him away.

He liked it actually. Actually, I think Colton, you made a gay joke when I first met you, which made me uncomfortable in this era.

No, he was my gay. Now he's yours. Enjoy.

Can I claim a gay?

Yes.

That's how that works. What about, uh, like the money rule you personally struggle to follow?

None really. I'm pretty disciplined. Uh, if anything, I mean, this is what Togi told me. He's an influencer that just goes crazy. I just need to actually spend more, live more. I don't, I haven't gone on a vacation since I started YouTube. I just, I don't do that shit.

Why?

I like to work. I don't like to fly. Uh, but I love to work. I also feel like it's almost like winning the lottery. I have a limited time to do this, so I'm just, I'm going to go crazy. I could spend more.

How old are you?

Uh, 31.

Yeah. Do you, how long have you done YouTube for?

4 years. We just hit a month ago.

That's a long time. Like everybody thinks that that's really fun and easy, but then you do it for long enough. You're like, it's actually a ton of work.

Yeah, well, of course, just like, I mean, this whole place with you, I turned mine into an actual business. So it's a job and it's like, yes, I could show up and just film Financial Audit and it would be really chill, but we would do a lot more than that with the Dollarwise budgeting app, a membership, a premium membership, a show called Hammer Elite that 110,000 people subscribe to a month. Yeah, it was crazy. It's like one of the biggest things out there on the internet. We just do so much.

What are you doing there?

In Hammer Elite? Uh, we have 3 really good high-quality premium shows that we make. It's like its own network, uh, on a daily basis.

Oh, is that where your premium channel on YouTube that you can subscribe to? And so it's all done on YouTube?

Yep, it's all done on YouTube. And then we have the off-platform version at hammerelite.com. So wherever people want to be, we don't have preference.

That's actually huge to have 110,000 people subscribing to it.

Yeah, $10 a month.

Yeah, that's great.

It's a good business.

It means I can't employ people. Student loan, actually, really quickly.

That's controversial.

Okay, um, what about— you had, uh, an actual governor on.

Oh yeah, Whitmer, my home state. Yeah, Michigan. Yeah, and Newsom said no. That was annoying.

I wish he would come on here.

I want Greg Abbott because our property taxes are insane and most of it's recapture for other school districts, and then they build fucking palaces of football stadiums in the middle of nowhere. It's insane. I'd love to have DeSantis and then Hochul.

Yeah.

I'd like—

did Abbott say no?

No one else responded except for Newsom who said no, but I'm sure when people get in their like election cycles, yeah, they'll do it. We can bring 'em in. You know, I'd love to have someone running for president next time.

Yeah.

I'd love to have both parties on. I'm hoping in Democrat.

So I don't know, given your Twitter history, I don't know if we're getting a Democrat yet.

She was, Whitmer was.

That's true. But she's kind of— kind of, uh, like old school Democrat.

Yeah, no, she's not like— she's not like leftist. But even so, I think— I think me and Mondame would get along. Yeah. Um, interesting as people, you know. Yeah. Am I a Democratic Socialist? No. But I think we'd vibe, and I think we'd have a good time. And I think I'd be really— I was really fair with her as well. I praised her on things they've made real progress on, and I called out bullshit that the state was spending money on. And I would do that for him as well. I'm sure there's things that are, you know— I mean, New New York's one of the greatest cities in the world for a reason.

So yeah, we, you know who else is amazing is, um, the former governor of North Dakota. He's a stud and basically built one of the only billion-dollar companies in North Dakota, the tech company.

We've had senators that have tried to come on the show and, uh, the administration tried to get us with the Secretary of Treasury.

Yeah.

Uh, Bessette, right?

Yeah.

And I would be sick. No, it's just like, uh, You're not going to get something. Kind of want the guy at the top. Give me the guy at the top.

You and Trump would be aggressive.

Yeah, yeah, we'd have fun. Yeah.

Can you handle some of the debt for us on there?

Well, my fear is, uh, yeah, the growing interest payment, largest growing category of the federal budget, the Pentagon not passing audits, Social Security about to get a 25% cut in literally 5 years. Our social programs are out of control. This is— I have a Yeah, it's a fucking mess.

What do we— I mean, I know this isn't applicable for the average person maybe to apply to their finances, but like you do have a lot of political opinions financially.

Like what do you kind of— I think, I mean, I, every time I take a political assessment it says I lean right economically and then I'm like decently left socially. So it's like, it's, uh, I get, I get pretty centrist on every assessment I take, especially the more extensive assessments. I get pretty centrist. But, you know, when, when you start thinking like personal responsibility, you immediately do start getting some opinions that are more right-wing coded. So, I mean, we rarely talk about like different social things or different, uh, just a few things we talk about do tend to be the more right-wing positions, which immediately you hear someone take one right-wing position or you take one left-wing position, you assume all the rest of their positions.

Yeah.

So it's, you know, for us, uh, over at our studio, we love jokes.

Books.

This, you know, Austin's like one— it's like the roast capital now, you know. We love humor, we love bad words, insulting words, and that shit is great.

That was appropriate on the internet, but yeah. Now you're back.

So it's just like, we like that, and you know, people see that as more conservative. It's not. This is not being offended by everything. I mean, yes, I believe personal responsibility. I'm not— I've always said I'm okay with paying more in taxes., but I want to make sure we at least have control over the programs and actually investigations into, uh, any kind of abuse or anything like that. I'm happy there's getting some more arrests around the country of those who are being bad actors, but social programs are out of control in some points. I've said so many people on my show that are on food stamps and whatnot, which is a program I strongly believe in and advocate for, for those that need it, but it's literally because they're choosing choosing to pursue their passion instead of getting their job, which they could go get, and I could go get them tomorrow, but they're choosing to do something. So they're like, I'm gonna pursue my entrepreneurial spirit of, you know, pottery. And now, uh-oh, I don't make enough. Who would've thought? Okay, here's my food stamps. It's like, okay, but you could just go get a job tomorrow at FedEx. Like, you can go do that. So why do we subsidize you for that? And that becomes right-wing, even though I very much support food stamps and social programs and many things that people fall back on, because we want them to fall back on for the sake of our society. That is good. Very pro-college. I'm not pro being stupid at college. I'm not pro infinite student loan debt forever, because every time we raise the cap on student loans, the cost of college goes up. It is an infinite cycle there. I mean, immigration— people on the right have called me like, uh, they've disagreed with me because I'm pro-immigration, but I'm pro-selective skilled immigration, you know, similar to how many other countries do it. And I think Hey, you know, if you're trying to come here illegally, that's also not good. Let's not just let anyone in no matter what. Let's let in a good amount of immigrants. Let's select who and vet people. So immigration's good. Uncontrolled, which no one else does, is bad.

Yeah.

So, and that's, I think, a pretty centrist position that, I mean, that's what Obama believed in. That's what Clinton believed in. That's what both Clintons believed in. Um, it's more left-wing than Trump. Maybe it's more left-wing than some of the populists on the right. It's pretty normal.

Yeah. No, well, I like how you call it the debt. I mean, I was sitting at a breakfast yesterday with, of all people, Mike Pence, and both parties now just raise the debt. I had a lot of respect for Trump-Pence. I have a lot of respect for Obama and the Clintons, but everybody, everybody except, you know, except Bill was a debt raiser.

Oh yeah. They don't give a fuck. And even, even with the Republicans, they, you know, they're willing to criticize the budget, but they're not willing to criticize says the Pentagon, which can't pass an audit. So the Republicans hate me for that one. Yeah, it's like, that is a real thing. There's a lot going on with the military disability right now. There's this unvetted, and there are people abusing it. Again, it's a program I want to even fund more for people that need it. I don't think there should be the cases of abuse that we have on our show that people just turn a blind eye because it's a sacred cow. Like, that doesn't work. We don't get to do another 250 years of this if we're not even willing to call out certain things. So no, no, no, they, they fuck, they both suck when it comes to spending and debt.

Yeah. I guess this is the American way these days.

It is though.

Well, hopefully if they're listening to Kaleb Hammer, if they're signing up for your premium, if they're listening to this podcast, then there's maybe a little bit of change that can happen. And so thanks for sharing all of this and being so honest. It's not that normal or easy these days.

No, thanks for having me.

Anything you would leave somebody listening to right now who maybe hasn't had a chance to listen to your show, maybe you'll never get another chance to talk to them, but you know that you could give them some financial wisdom. What would it be?

There's a choice. Every day you wake up, you can choose to be a retard or not a retard. Choose to not be.

Thank you, Caleb.

Yep.