Our Top 5 Ways to Save Money Fast (SB 1425)
Joe Saul-Sehy and OG break down five quick wins to cut spending: trim subscriptions, lower housing and utility costs, reduce interest payments, rethink transportation, and cut food and entertainment. They also tackle the hidden costs of returning to the office.
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It's Monday morning in America, and you know what that means. OG means two things. Means time for coffee. And it also means it is time to salute the troops.
So, gentlemen, early morning in America. It is early, early Monday. This is early for OG Yes.
Let's raise our glasses, everyone.
Baltimore Public Library.
Yes. Yeah. Baltimore Public Library. We had a great event there. We had. Man, we had a lot of people for our book tour last year. It was super.
I got a. I got a bro mug.
What does it say, bruh?
Losers make money, winners make excuses.
Or no winner. Losers make excuses. Winners make money. One of the two.
I need to read.
Not sure which of those work together. See, it's early and it's a dumb coffee mug.
But Doug, you've got just a green one.
Nothing exciting here.
Just a green one.
Basic green mug.
Just a green one.
I think green means you're horny though, right?
Oh, boy.
On behalf of all the green ones and the people making podcast to mom's basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, big salute to our troops. Let's go stack some Benjamin together, shall we? Is this your place?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I live with My mom.
Oh, yeah.
You hungry?
Hey, ma, can we get some meatloaf?
Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin show.
I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And have you ever felt like you're spinning your wheels, never getting any money saved? Today we'll share our top five ways to cut expenses now so you can stuff more savings into your plan. And that's not all in our headlines, we'll share the cost of going to the office, which will show you exactly how much you need to cut. And in our TikTok minute, we'll talk about how one woman's idea of cutting expenses means cutting family members. Maybe we don't let Joe's mom see this one. And I'll share some absolutely amazing trivia. And now, two guys who are up early and ready to help you start your week. It's Joe and O Ja J J J.
Happy Monday, stackers in America and around the world. Welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin show. Your must listen podcast every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We're kicking the week off here with our one of my favorite types of episode of top five. And also kicking off the week with two of my favorite people. Start off with the guy across the card table from me, Mr. OG how are you, my friend?
Pretty awesome. Thank you for asking.
Well, you know. Oh, gee, we had a big weekend this weekend because we spent the entire time celebrating Doug's birthday, which is a festival of treats and fun. Doug, did you have the best birthday ever?
Pretty solid birthday. Got the dock out of the water, got some fishing in, went out to dinner with friends.
You had your doctor in the water?
I did, I did. But I figured it was time to keep some there. Yeah, like to let him up. It's getting a little chilly out there.
That is fabulous. I did find something, Doug, that explains a lot of the issues that people have in America and, oh, gee, I think you'll find this interesting. This is not our TikTok minute, but I. But I found this on TikTok. Listen to this.
He's the type of guy you get halfway home from the theme park before you're like, oh, where's Doug? Oh, no, we have to go back. My wallet's in his fanny pack, so. Oh. Do not feel bad for Doug. He's terrible. Every time he tells a story somewhere, a child loses a balloon.
That's the kind of weekend Doug had. I had my wallet in my. I had my wallet in his fanny pack the entire weekend OG and he.
Got Left to the theme park, so should be all right. Honestly, I was thinking about that the other day because the kids, you know, we went to Cedar Point and the kids were like, dude, dad, we got to go again. We got to go again. I'm like, it's 48 and raining sideways in Cleveland. Like, what? It'll still be okay. Like going 70 miles an hour when it's 48 and raining. What? No.
Think through the, think through the.
Physics of that and your wallets in Doug's. In Doug's fanny pack.
Doug's fanny pack. Therefore, we can't go.
We're talking cutting expenses. Maybe the expense of going to Cedar Point during a driving rainstorm. And that might make the list. Doubt it. But it might make the list. But first we got a big headline. But first, Doug, we got to talk about some of that awkward stuff that happened during your, during your birthday celebration.
I'm not sure any of that is.
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And that's how we got kicked out of the neighborhood association party.
No more HOA potlucks for Doug.
Which is kind of better. Doug, thanks, by the way, because we didn't want to be there anyway.
Got you out of the evil overlords party.
It was so much better. All right, now we're ready to get the party started. So let's go.
Hello, darlings. And now it's time for your favorite part of the show, our stacking Benjamin's Headlines.
Our headline, by the way, was also found by Doug. Welcome to the show that's all about Doug today. Apparently this one written by Jennifer Liu. Returning the office is, quote, wildly more expensive today than in 2019. Here's how much people are spending. Remember how right I was sure we were og when we talked about returning to the office might be a great thing.
I just remember how adamant Doug was about not returning to the office.
Well, apparently Doug wanted to save 51 bucks. $51 a day more than it used to cost.
It's a decent amount.
Well, no, not more meaningful. This is how much workers are spending per day when they go to the office. 16 on lunch. 16. Maybe they need to listen to Len Penso talk about the brown bag lunch. Okay, that's quite a lunch. 14 on commuting, on average.
That is a gas and tolls. And is that all that stuff kind of added insurance costs and stuff? Yeah, sure.
$13 on breakfast and coffee. We call that the Starbucks effect.
I was going to say you got to start out the. The day with some energy. Yeah.
And then $8 on parking.
That's not. That's not part of transportation.
Workers with pets also spend an average of $20 per day on pet care. That means full time office workers spending roughly $1,020 every month to report to the workplace. Hybrid workers spend, on average $408 per month on attendance. There's no question, says Frank Weisbout, CEO of Owl Labs. Working from the office is, quote, wildly more expensive today than it was pre pandemic.
So you're saying it's $50 more? It's 500 bucks.
It's actually $50 total. I was wrong when I said more.
$50, $500, $600 more per month to work in the office. Some change in your pocket. That is not going to jingaling A ling.
I think a lot of people listening to this will say, I'm not spending that much on breakfast or I'm not spending that much on commuting or parking. I don't have to pay for parking. I mean, I'm sure if the respondents to this were working in New York or Chicago or in a large urban area where, yeah, you're gonna have to pay for parking, but others don't. But I think the point is, even if it's not $51 a day for you, maybe it's 30. That's meaningful. Right. A day that adds up. That's significant. And as I proved unequivocally, irrefutably in previous episodes, it's not necessary to be there.
Well, it's necessary for the guy that owns a commercial building.
That's right. That's right. Cutting that guy out for the economy.
If that got a little, one might argue it's unnecessary.
Right.
So you should feel like your $51 is just doing your good deed for the day to support the overall economy of your metro area.
Keep the structure, keep, keep the wheels moving.
Well, this is a big thing, though, that people don't think about when they get ready to retire is what cost or work associated. I know we were having this discussion this weekend with some house guests that I have here about just when they stopped working, the amount of. The amount less money they spent, they were so surprised by the huge change to their budget that they didn't realize that they had.
Well, it's not only just the, those costs, it's also the costs of, you know, your personal upkeep. Right. Like making sure that you have a wardrobe that's reasonably business suitable and contemporary and fresh and, and all the stuff that goes into working outside of the office. You know, we got to go to dinner with the boss or go to, you know, just the time aspect of it alone is going to be some savings, not just the financial impacts. So we should all retire, work from home and then retire, basically, is the moral of the story.
I think an interesting thing is if you're, if you're somebody working from home now, but you think you might be going into the office, you think, oh, gee, it makes sense to try to save, you know, 50 bucks a day. Try to stuff 50 bucks a day into your, into your savings account so that if you do go back to the office, it doesn't feel that much more expensive, seems like this would be.
A great selling point to your superiors when they do bring up coming back to the office. Right. If you thought about these things in advance and said, well, I can come back to the office, but in Dallas, all of our highways are tollways, basically. But it's going to be this amount of money for tolls and this amount of money for parking. And I don't know that you can get away with charging your boss lunch. But, but you get the idea. You can say, you know, there's, there's some added cost here associated with me doing this that I'm not incurring right now. And you know, can I, if I go back to the office, would you entertain a, you know, 3% pay raise just to kind of help assuage some of those issues? I think if you, you know, back to our discussions that we've had about pay increases in the past. If you come with facts, it's a lot easier to, to make your case than. I just feel like I need more money because you're making me come back to the office.
It's like nebulous more, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
And now all you got to do is go to our show notes@Stacky Benjamin.com and click on that link, send it to your boss and bam, we just got you pay raise. You're welcome, America.
There you go. You're welcome, America.
Time for our TikTok minute. This is the part of the show where we dive into a TikTok creator who is either creating brilliance or air quote brilliance on the Internet. Oh. Oh, geez. Got an opinion Brilliant. Or air quotes brilliance.
Isn't that crazy that I have an opinion Air quote Brilliant. Obviously it's on TikTok, Doug.
Well, I already know. I mean, we said, I said it in the open and if people were listening, they already know. This is Nobel prize worthy geniusness. This talks about getting rid of family members. We all got one or two of those we want to get rid of, so duh.
We played one earlier that a stacker sent about girl math, which is this, this thing going on on the Internet that they talk about. Quote girl math. This is now the extension of that that was sent to us by our friend Kate.
So now that we all know what girl math is, if you don't have children, let me introduce you to child Free Math. I was, I'm getting a massage later today and I was like, that's 200. That's really expensive. You shouldn't do that. And then I thought you would have spent that on registration fees for soccer camp. Are you kidding me? Gymnastics. All the ice cream. You would have had to buy this Year trips to Disney, Disney alone, that's like three vacations in child free math. Three horseback riding camp. I'm not having kids so I can spend my money on me. So there you go. Child free math. If you get to use it.
If you just get rid of the kids, oh, gee, you don't have to take them to Cedar Point.
I call them my little Ferraris. That's what I do. My three little Ferraris.
Kids are so expensive. But I think I agree with Scott Galloway. Scott Galloway said that, you know, you look at statistics and people today in their 20s not having kids, delaying having kids. And he said it's not because they're anti family, it's because they're smart. Kids cost a ton of money. And yet Galloway says he's like, but I would encourage everyone to have children. He goes, they will mess up your life.
And.
But I will happily take the mess up. That is the mess up I've had with my kids all day. 100%.
Yeah, I'd have a thousand of them if Mrs. OG would let that happen. She will not.
Just imagine, Doug, that many little mini me OGs running around. It'd be a bad day. Bad day for that neighborhood.
Can we not imagine that?
Coming up next, our top five ways to cut expenses. Now, now that we know that going into the office is $50 a day and we, we also proved again, kids are expensive. So whether you have children or not, or if you go into the office, work from home, we're always looking ways to shove more money into savings. What are some things you can cut? Now the key to this top five is cut quickly. Got those. Well, OG and I have them and we have them right after Doug's going to take us down memory lane this day in history.
Foreign.
Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And on today's date, there were a lot of Benjamins changing hands. That's because outlaw Johnny Dillinger back in 1933 robbed the Central National bank in Greencastle, Indiana, stealing 75,000 bucks, proving again there must be better ways to earn a living after Dillinger. Roger, two dozen banks and two police. Wait a minute. Police stations? Didn't Johnny know that's where the cops hang out? Federal agents finally caught up to him the following year in 1934, killing the outlaw. But hold on. He was in the police stations and they didn't catch him. Then they had to catch up with him years later. Anyway, federal agents also were after another outlaw during the same time period in 1931 one crime boss nicknamed Scarface went to jail for tax evasion. What was his real name? I'll be back right after I figure out how to escape when Joe's mom asked me to wash the windows. What a prison job that is.
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Hey there, stackers. I'm neighborhood mob boss and the guy proving that crime doesn't pay, Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. Hell, this job doesn't even pay on this day in history. Back in 1933, John Dillinger robbed 75K from a bank in Indiana. He was probably making a down payment on his student loans, am I right? But it was another mobster nicknamed Scarface who's the subject of today's trivia. This guy was convicted of tax evasion in 1931, ending his reign of terror. What was his name? Well, not gonna tell you just yet, but I'll tell you more about him. Born in New York City in 1899, he moved to Chicago at age 21, as that's just what you're supposed to do in the Midwest when you're 21. Rising through the ranks to become the biggest mobster in the city. He was none other than Al Capone. Capone hired a legal team to Appeal his tax evasion sentence, which ultimately even got him a session with the Supreme Court. But his appeal still failed. Hope it isn't the same with me when it comes to washing windows. I got to appeal to a higher court appointment or maybe even a higher power. Please don't make me wash the windows, Ma. And now, while I'm cutting out of here, let's swing things over to Joe and Og and their top five ways to cut expenses.
Now.
Well, with all the discussion about inflation out there, time for us to talk about how do we maybe get some money in our bank account and, oh, gee, we're talking about cutting expenses. A lot of people get this halfway, right? They cut expenses, but they forget. If I cut expenses, I gotta capture the money by raising my automatic savings. Like get that money into a savings account. You cut out a subscription.
Unless you're negative to begin with.
Well, right, absolutely. Then we got to make sure we just get the. The ship righted. But this is something, I think, that a lot of people sometimes overthink. I'd look at my list and five fairly straightforward places where, frankly, there's three of these where I probably could cut more today, right now.
Yeah. It's astounding the amount of lifestyle creep that has happened for us over the last, I don't know, 10 years. I mean, it's just. It's comical when you look back and go, 10 years ago, here's where we were and what we were doing, and now where we are and what we're doing. You're going, what? What? What the heck? Yeah. How did it get so bad?
And we've talked about this before, obviously, if you can afford it and if your financial plan is working for you, well, that's fine. Spend money on stuff you enjoy. I think a lot of us, though, spend money mindlessly on stuff. And we're like, why did I just blow a bunch of cash on that? We talked about the Starbucks trip. That's the one that drives me crazy. I went to. I don't know. We. We were just. We were just out last weekend, and we got this new coffee place in town, and I just went, oh, let's go try it out. And to this piece's point that. That Doug gave us earlier about the $50 a day, $14 on coffee and a muffin top. Not even the whole muffin, by the way. They just sell the muffin top.
It's the best part.
Yeah, it is my favorite part. But Seven Brew Coffee, I think it was called. And yeah, 14 later, I'm pulling out of there. Didn't even need to stop. Just, oh, let's go try out the new place.
Yep, that'll get you.
All right.
Caffeine addiction.
You got five of these, OG I've.
Got 4.6 of them.
All right, here we go. Let's kick this off. Steve, give us the number five guy. Number five. All right, who's starting first today?
Oh, I'll kick it off this time if that's fine with you. Easy, easy, easy, Lemon squeezy. Clearly, subscriptions are number, number five slash number one. First thing here. If you are like every other person in the entire United States, and frankly, the world, you probably have a bajillion ways that money is coming out of your account every single month. And a lot of those ways are through the same amount of from the same companies every single month. And so it's super easy to figure out. There's apps that do it. If you. You don't want to buy an app to figure it out, you can just look at your credit card statement for the last couple of months and tag all the things that are the same sort. Download your statement from Amex into a Excel file and sort by company and it will show.
Spotify. Spotify, Spotify.
Hulu, Hulu, Hulu. Netflix. Netflix. Netflix. You get the point. It will be like, well, those are my subscriptions. Gym membership. Gym membership. Gym membership members. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about this. Like, there's ways on each one of these apps, and they were talking specifically about television and the streaming apps where you can go in and see how much time you've spent streaming per account, basically, right? You can say, well, I've got mine and the kids or whatever, and you can see how many hours of streaming time. And most people are paying eight or $10 an hour of streaming. That's the average. Because you go, oh, I've got my Netflix subscription. I don't use it, except for when there's the cool movie that comes out. But I don't want to, you know, da, da, da. Listen, you can cancel it. They're going to keep all your stuff on file, and then you can go and resubscribe for a month and binge watch the crown when it comes out, the final season, like everybody's going to do, and then cancel it again.
I like my cousin Randy's answer to this. He just realized he's only got one set of eyes. Like, we could all realize that immediately. Not rocket science, but about once every four months, he calls me and Goes, hey, what are you watching on Netflix? Four months later, what are you watching on Disney plus four months later, what are you watching on Apple tv? And so he asked him, finally, I don't know if it was the second or third time, I go, I go, you know, you keep asking me about these different services. He goes, well, what I do, realizing I only have one set of eyes, I get one. I ask everybody what the best stuff is on that platform, and I binge all those. And so I only have Netflix for this four month period. Then I cancel it, and then I get Disney. I watch that for four months, and then I cancel it and I watch Apple tv. What a great way to do that.
I thought you were gonna say your cousin Randy was like, the rest of America. And they say, hey, mom and dad, what's your Netflix password?
Right?
I mean, this is. I don't think most people. There's only 27 people in America that have subscriptions to this. Everybody else is just using their passwords.
Subsidizing the rest of us.
Right?
That's actually my number two on my list.
Get OG's Netflix password.
That's right.
It actually, to take away from that joke, it actually just happened to us. I don't know, like a week ago, we started up Netflix and got a message on the screen that said, is this your primary tv?
Yeah.
And I said, yeah. And then I, as soon as I clicked yeah, I realized, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Well, dang, you just cut the kids off.
I did. And I had to call up about 90 people and say a post on.
Facebook, Doug's Netflix Facebook Group. Your private Facebook group of Netflix, one.
Of the biggest communities on Facebook.
Yeah. Yeah. That is maybe further down my. Further down my list. More fun than having your own boat. Having a friend with a boat. More fun than having HBO Max. Having a friend with HBO max. My number 5 OG is only number 5 because of the fact that it's not quick. I know I said that quick ways to save money are it, but this one is huge. It's not quick. Everybody says it's the number one way to save money. And I just want to pay a little homage to this. And that is change where you live. Look at the cost of your housing. And that certainly is not fast. It's not a fast way to change to. To get some money at all. But if you really, really, really need more money, stop clipping coupons. Don't worry about the subscription so much. Find cheaper housing, and you can cut hundreds or in some cases maybe Thousands of dollars.
What about the issue right now, though, that most people are in homes that have mortgages that are, you know, very attractive rates 2, 3, 4%. And if you did want to move. Right, right. So if you're like, I live in metro Dallas and I do want to find a cheaper location and I can move to wherever, but to do that is going to be a much higher interest rate on that house. The affordability might be similar. Right. I mean, in terms of payments, it's.
Not the easy move that it used to be.
No.
When interest rates were low.
But there's other costs, Right. Smaller home means smaller, could mean smaller utility bills, smaller tax bill, smaller insurance payments. There's some other effects, I guess, maybe than just beyond the actual cost of the, of the mortgage.
The swing on that still could be substantial. I mean, up or down, right. When you change houses, it's a big change. When you decide that I'm going to spend a little bit more on groceries and maybe goes up by 30, 40 bucks, you can do a lot more damage or a lot more for good when it comes to evaluating where you live. So that was, that was my number five. Not, not, not easy. But I wanted to make sure that people knew we were thinking about that number four. My number four is to even out the utility bills. That one OG by itself will not save you a dime. But what it does, the key to being able to save money is to get all your expenses on the same number as much as possible. The more that you know that you are going to spend, the more predictable your spending is, the easier it's going to be to raise that automatic savings. It may save you money during some months, like as an example, in the summer here in Texas, you'll find that your utility bills may be a little lower than if you got those huge air conditioning bills, but it evens out a little bit in, in the winter. The big thing with evening out your utility bills is to save money everywhere else. So if you want to get more money saved, if that's the goal, you want to cut expenses, I think, even out the utility bills. You know, a great way to an offshoot of this, which probably should be number four is a lot of utility companies now have a program where they'll come to your house and they'll do an audit and they'll show you where money's going out the, you know, going out the front door, going out the windows.
Literally out the window.
Yeah. Going out all these places. So that's a great way. Check with your utility company to see if they'll do an energy audit for you. That's my number four.
I like that. We've been doing the, the flat payments on, on utilities for forever, mostly because you get $1,000 electric bill in the summertime and you're like, okay, now, hard pass. Okay, no, I'll take 500 every month. Thank you.
Please hit me with the smaller stick. Every month.
Unsubscribe, right?
Yes, I unsubscribe from air conditioning.
My number four is interest payments. As interest rates have gone up, I don't think that most people have recognized the impact of this to their revolving consumer debt or line of credit debt. Maybe the payment has remained a bit approximately the same. Maybe if inflation has kind of gotten you a little bit and those credit card balances have kind of leaked up a little bit over the last two years, which statistically they have across the country, that payment number has increased a little bit. Go look and see how much of that payment is going toward principal versus how much is going to interest. And you'll find that for the vast majority of people, a solid 1/4 of your payment, if not more of that every year goes to interest. And the way that the credit card companies put this together is your payment is all of the interest accrued for last month and then 1% or maybe 1.5% of your outstanding balance. So if you've got a credit card balance of $10,000 and an interest rate of 25%, that means you're paying $2,500 a year of interest, right? So roughly $200 a month. 1% of the balance is 100 bucks. So your minimum payment is probably $300. And you go, I can swing 300 bucks, but 200 of that 300 is freaking interest. So you're going to be on this train for such a long time. So go renegotiate your interest payments. You can call credit card companies directly and say, this interest is too high, it needs to be a different number and they will work with you or they won't and you can find an opportunity to refinance it. Go find a 0% card for the next two years or whatever it is. Take a look at refinance in the line of credit on your house if it's too high and lock it in at a lower rate. There's a lot of different ways to deal with this interest issue. And the byproduct of it is, is that if you have lower interest, your payment will be lower. So this is not necessarily pay off my Debt faster strategy. This is how do I get extra cash in my pocket faster, get my lips above water, renegotiate your interest payments. Because most people don't recognize how, how insidious that number really is.
One mistake that I see people make often when they lower their interest payments is they use that OG as an opportunity to let off the gas on their debt repayment. And I would say that's the time to think about how do I press harder on that gas pedal to get rid of it. But I know, yeah, it depends on.
The outcome that you're looking at for, right? I mean, this works if you're saying, well, I've got too much debt, I want to pay it off faster, then get lower interest, make the same payment, pay it off faster. But if you're in the, in the boat of like, I'm underwater and I need to get above water, lowering your interest payments will also lower your minimum payment. It will pay the debt off faster. It's still going to suck for 40 years.
Yeah.
But you know, you don't go further.
Into debt number three.
My number three, number two are closely related. So I'm going to put them together and I'll find something else for number two. Number three, I'm going to say, is convenience purchases. This is your ubiquitous Amazon and doordash. And listen, I've, I've tried 15 ways to Sunday to figure out a strategy around this. Here's the only strategy I found that works. Stop buying from Amazon.
And I mean it for like, just take it like a break. You know what I mean? Do the shopping cart trick for yourself. Amazon is brilliant in that you can put stuff in your cart. You don't have to buy it right away. They'll send you a thousand emails about like, hey, don't forget, don't forget. This might go up in price. Don't forget. But if you have that desire to shop on Amazon, shop, just don't buy. Right? Like, remember we used to do that? Do you remember, like going to the mall and you'd walk through the mall trying all the clothes. Well, maybe you guys didn't, but you know, you kind of shop, right? You didn't necessarily go buy. You just went shopping. You walked around the mall and you got a pretzel and then you walked out and you didn't have anything in your hands. For some reason that's turned to like, I must purchase. It's, you don't have to.
It's that dopamine hit just gets bigger. Yeah, like instead of a pretzel Now I got up. Yeah.
So I have two other Amazon add ons, maybe to. To yours, OG but rather than putting it in your cart and leaving it there, I created a shopping list. You can create any number of shopping lists that you want, whether it's just, you know, Doug shopping list or specific ones for Christmas for other people or whatever. And then if I see something I like and I realize, oh, I may not find this later, I'm not sure if I want it yet, I put in the shopping list, still get the dopamine hit that Joe's talking about, but I don't buy it immediately. And then I think, oh, if I still really want that three weeks later, it's there and I don't have to go searching for it again. Did I find the right one?
The same one save for later category.
Right. It's a save for later thing. Or if it's a birthday gift idea for somebody. So I like the shopping list rather than putting it in the cart because, yeah, you will get hounded if you put it in your cart and leave it there.
It's a great idea. I mean, as you said, in addition to what we were talking about here, it's like, put it in there and then also schedule a time in which you'll go purchase it. You know what I mean? Like, schedule a review time. You could almost say, okay, I'm going to still get the giggles of hitting the buy now. Except it's not buy now, it's add to later or add to shopping cart or add to my shopping list. And then just say every month, on the first of the month, I'm going to go in and figure out what I really need out of this.
Sure, I'll schedule it. But yeah, that's a good add on hack.
Add on to the add on to the add on. I was gonna say the same thing for doordash. Listen, food instacart. Like, it's so convenient. It's so easy to sit at home on Sunday afternoon. I'm guilty of this. And you go, what's your dinner? Oh, we don't know. Hey, let's grill some food. Oh, we don't have any stuff. Oh, no problem. Beep boop, bop bop bop. Oh, look, they're gonna deliver food in 20 minutes and then you get your credit card bill and it's like, you know, I got 24 wings for $106. It's like, but they were good and they were fast. It showed up at my house. I didn't have to put pants on just stop doing that just for a period of time. Reset the meter. That's my number three.
And OG, I know you move past Amazon, but I had one other thought that I've noticed that's helped a lot on our budget is there are certain staples that I was buying every week at or you know, whenever I went to the grocery store that I now have delivered from Amazon and they are significantly cheaper. The example that comes to mind is coffee. And I'm getting the coffee that I drink every day. I'm getting like the bag is twice as big as the one I can get at the grocery store and it's only like a third more. So I'm buying half as much coffee as I used to.
And he's doubly caffeinated.
Well, yeah.
How else do you think I last on this show when we're recording at like 4:00am?
That's exactly.
But there are times when their subscribe and save really will save you money. I wouldn't suggest doing that in things that you only kind of maybe do once in a while. Eat once in a while, whatever. But for those things that are staples for you, whether it's paper towels or coffee or some of those daily or weekly use items, consider the subscribe and save thing that can lower your bill at the grocery store.
I like it.
I remember on the other side of that argument, OG as well on the doordash piece, our friend Grant Sabadier, when he came through Detroit with his book tour a few years ago and did an event, talked about the number one thing people buy in New York City on doordash at that time was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and how little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cost. You were there, Doug, that night, weren't you? When he brought that up?
I was absolutely. I couldn't believe it.
Yeah, it was, it was horrible. And the amount of money people paid for a thing that's very easy to make yourself. And I didn't think that was real until I was at a family member's house and their daughter did not like what they were having for dinner. And just after that a Burger King bag showed up and I was like, what's the Burger King bag? And this family member said, oh well, she didn't like dinner so we got her fast food. And by the way, the kid didn't eat the fast food either. So not only did they, did they buy something other than what was being served, there was this huge expense to doordash it later on in the evening. Same relative who always is Struggling with money. By the way, same relative had stuff show up from cvs, the that is four blocks away, that they had doordash and paid the additional DoorDash fee versus even walking over to CVS for the aspirin or whatever it was. Anyway, some people, the mindless spending. OG to your point that we spend now on these convenience fees, it sometimes blows me. Blows me away. My number three is in a similar vein, and that is rethink your entertainment budget in general. Where are you spending your money on entertainment stuff? That's your subscription thing. OG when it comes to having all these different TV subscriptions, I kind of like Doug's plan better. Use somebody else's until they're on to you. But regardless, I think the entertainment budget piece can knock off. Knock off a lot of money. Where are you spending time for fun? You know, our house guests this weekend we went out and played disc golf and had a blast for a couple hours down in the beautiful city park we have here in Texarkana. And it was a lot of fun. The end cost was zero for that time. You know, there's lots of times when I spend a lot more money than that having a lot less fun.
Did you factor in all the alcohol you had to drink to make it fun?
We, we. We were talking about that.
The person who I was with that was pretty funny said, well, we. We got to start smoking pot because that's the number one activity.
I was going to say that. And I thought, oh, no, that's not going to be good for. I'll get edited out if I say weed. So I change it to booze.
No, it's all right. It was. We've got. Well, I should say who. Our guests are here because we recorded an interview. We'll play later. The Pioneers are here. Corey and Jess spending the weekend with us. And it was super fun.
They sound like a folk group from.
The 60s, the Pioneers, playing a little.
Basement gig in the Greenwich Village, right?
Smoking weed, playing ultimate, harmonized well together. That's right. We had a great, great weekend, but spent no money doing that and had a lot of laughs. So that's my number three. Rethink your entertainment budget. You will find lots of dollars there. OG Number two. Number two is also two things. Eat at home and meal plan, which go hand in hand because eating at home, we had Frankie Chilenza on a couple times. And of course, Frankie talks a lot about food waste. We waste a ton of money. The way to waste less food is to make sure that you've got a Pretty solid meal plan so that if you can cut the food waste and shop at a grocery store, you will end up healthier, you'll end up happier, and your wallet will be a lot happier than if you spend a lot of time at restaurants. And I find eating at home, especially on a day when I've had a pretty hectic day, to be really fun. Like, working on a recipe gets you in the moment. You get out of whatever is in your headspace. If I'm chopping stuff, I got to think about the chopping. I put on some music and just get into cooking. It's such a fun thing to do. I know a lot of people don't cook. Be, be, be okay with messing it up. Have some fun in the kitchen is my number two eat at home and meal plan.
Okay.
I agree with that wholeheartedly. We have lots of family dinners.
Well, you get the whole family involved. Og I know.
Well, yeah, to some degree. But I was thinking about, like, you know, when I was a kid, almost every meal was at home. You know, we never, never went out. And if we went out, it was to get pizza, you know, and we get pizza once a month. Ish. Or something. You know what I mean? It was very, very, very infrequent, but every day was at home. And Lissa cooks at home every day, or we cook at home just about every day. But we're a little bit looser with that. You know, if there's sports, something or whatever, you know, we'll grab sandwiches. But most of the time we cook at home 80%. But then we were talking to some other friends from school, and they were mentioning something about going out to eat, and da, da, da, da. We're like, oh, yeah, go to eat, whatever. But then it was basically intimating they go out every day to eat. Like, oh, Alice doesn't cook. It's like, what do you mean you don't cook? You don't have to be a full time job. It's like put two chicken breasts in a pan until they're brown. You don't even have to. You like, then add salt and pepper. Like, it's not. You know what I mean? We're like, what, what do you mean don't cook? I don't.
I've got. I've got a friend who works at the bank. Oh, gee, you know this guy? Or you've met this guy before? Works at our local bank. Family of five. They eat every, every meal at a restaurant. Every single meal.
Yeah. That would be boring, I think.
Yeah.
Well, actually Something you just said about when you mentioned Joe, that OG's family, you know, he gets the whole family involved in cooking. And it made me think back to some great family memories, actually, when we were doing some of the meal kit services, you know, now Tucker loves cooking because he helped out with some of the prep from the meal services. And then, you know, my mind just started going to all of those great family memories and occurred to me, the story you just told about your family member whom you wisely did not name, who was buying Burger King for their kid because they didn't like what they cooked. And I thought to all of the times we've had people on guests on or call ins asking about, how do I teach my kids about money? You are teaching your kids about money every day. And whether you like it or not, when you call doordash, whether it's for the whole family meal or it's for the one kid who didn't like, you just taught them, here's a good way to spend money. Here's how you can manage your finance. But you don't want to teach them that, right? So the fact that we're cooking at home, you're setting an example of we spend time together as a family, and this is how we spend our money is on. This is the way we eat our food, and you're going to set those examples. And actually, a friend of one of my sons said, my God, your family spends so much time together. And that actually was a negative point to that friend, but it's actually.
A huge. I mean, I took so much pride.
Your kids are like, tell me about it.
I know, I know.
And they're like, God, you guys finish eating dinner together and then you walk over and sit down and watch a show together on tv. What are you, monster.
What a nightmare.
Go spend. Go. Go to your separate corners and go spend time alone. But I took that as the hugest compliment because that's just normal behavior. It's what families do to my kids and to us. It just seems totally normal. So I didn't. Unwittingly, I didn't realize we were essentially kind of teaching them how to save money because we were cooking at home and we build great relationships with each other and. Sorry, I'm going to go over here and cry for a minute because I just have the worms and fuzzies right now. But. But there's so many great examples coming from that.
Just to add on one more thing, Doug, to what you're saying about, like, the. The meal preparation and that Sort of thing. That is the solution I'm convinced to. I don't want to eat. That is like, if your kid helps.
Exactly.
If they're like. If they're looking at it, like, in a pile of fried rice and they go, ugh, I don't want to eat that. Okay. Versus going, hey, I need the carrots. Oh. Like, chop, chop, chop. And then you grab one and eat it and go, hey, you want. Oh, yeah, I'll have a bite. You know what I mean? Like, it's just carrots and rice and onions and it's like all the things. And then they see it all mixed together. Oh, okay. I know what that is. And then you're. You know, we had dinner yesterday, and our daughter was like, I don't. I don't know what this. And it was just a Bolognese sauce.
It's like.
It's spaghetti and meatballs just crushed up. Eat it. Oh, okay. No, you know, like, they just.
I mean, it's almost a romantic notion. And I. You know, and I love the idea. OG but it didn't work with the fin turn.
Really?
No.
No helping him. No. He loved pizza dough. Right. It's a starch, and it's got tomato sauce on it. It's got cheese. That those exact three ingredients in the form of pasta. Nope. Was never. And I would help him help me make it, and he'd be like, never gonna happen. I'm not eating that. Look. What the hell? You like these three things? Yeah, it looks different. I don't like it mixed together.
Huh. All right.
Our daughter growing up said she didn't like fish, which was horrible because it's so healthy, and we love fish. And so I decided because she was six years old that we would just stop calling it fish, and we'd see if she really knew the difference, right? So she gets home. She and her brother get home from school, and she's like, dad, what are you making for dinner? And I said, I'm making chicken. And so it's like, oh, yeah, great. Goes into a room. Later on, call them out for dinner. They sit down at the table, and I serve them the salmon. That's chicken. And my daughter takes two.
Chicken of the sea.
My daughter takes two bites and goes, dad, there's something wrong with this chicken. It tastes like fish.
She thought there was a huge problem, and then we realized the fish thing was not going to go. Then she moved to Japan as an adult, where it's all fish all the time, and she had to actually learn. And now she's like shellfish. She's like, okay, yeah.
At what point after she said, dad, the chicken tastes like fish, did you say, hey, Cheryl, she's not as dumb as we thought she was.
Turns out our kid's intelligent.
Yeah.
All right, my number two. We're on to number two. My number two is insurance costs. Insurance costs have gone astronomically through the roof on everything. Car, house, boat, pleasure craft, vacation homes, airplanes, like all of these things.
God, that made me so uncomfortable.
Pleasure craft.
That's what it's called.
Phrase. Oh, God.
That's what they're called. Jet skis. You can't call it jet ski insurance. You can't buy that at Progressive.
But there's so many other things that could be Pleasurecraft.
Hey, I'm just telling you what it says on the Progressive app. It says pleasurecraft. Deal with it. So on the insurance front, back to the insurance front, if you haven't noticed that the premiums have gone up lately, go take a look at your policies. I mean, this is a very real thing and a very tough situation for a lot of people in a lot of parts of the country where there's been lots of big catastrophic losses out west with wildfires, down south with hurricanes and, you know, floods and freezes and all that sort of stuff. If you haven't shopped it, and this is the big thing, I'm not saying go get lesser coverage because you actually probably need more coverage because the replacement cost that you have on your property, this is a big eye opener for me. You know, the insurance agent, this, this renewal cycle said, hey, how much do you think your house is worth? And I said, okay, I think it's this. And they went, okay. And how much do you think it would cost to replace your house? Well, that number is higher, right? Because you got to tear down the old one and build a new one and labor and all that other sort of stuff. So that's the amount you should have your insurance for. But nevertheless, I don't think you should go get less. I think you should shop what you have to make sure that you're getting the best deal. A lot of carriers have significantly reduced or tried to price out people in markets that they don't want to do business in. Great example of this is a couple years ago in the state of Washington, they passed a law that you had to participate in this kind of statewide long term care program. So different type of insurance, but you had to participate unless you could prove that you had your own. And what happened was all of the people that could afford their own said, I'd rather have my own than a policy managed by the state. So they're going to go apply for their own policy. That caused too much of a waiting of all the insurance carriers in that one general area state of Washington. So most carriers said, well, we're not going to write for that anymore. And the way that we're going to offset our potential risk is we're just, if you do really want it, we're going to raise the premiums astronomically. So different carriers have different specialties. If you're shopping a generic company, let's, you know, like your state farms and farmers and that sort of thing, you can do that on an app. You know, if you have some more sophisticated needs, you need to have a broker that's going to go through all this and make sure that you're getting the best coverage at the best price. My guess is that you have an opportunity to save some pretty substantial and significant money and you don't have to wait for your renewal. If you go, my renewal is not till January. What do I do? Cancel the old one once the new one's in place, put the new one in place tomorrow, cancel the old one, day after, off we go, have a new renewal.
That should have been my number five.
Yes, I know, because I think that.
Yeah, insurance cost is a big one. Number one. My number one is looking at all your transportation costs. One way that we saved a lot of money OG in our family was Cheryl Works about three miles away. And on days when it's not 110 degrees and 90% humidity, she started riding her bike to work.
So October 11th that day.
Yeah. Two days a year she rides her bike to work. And it's fantastic. No, it really saved a lot of money. She absolutely enjoys riding her bike to work. It's a great way to start your day, nice way to finish your day on the way home. And that was great. You know, one of the cars in our driveway has 270,000 miles and has been paid for for the past bajillion years. I think the past seven years, that car has been completely paid for. Well, I take that back. I even bought it with cash. So that car's never had a loan attached to it.
And did you buy it used?
I did, yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that's the real major hit or cost savings, I should say. And around transportation.
Yeah.
Wouldn't you think you're going to save more dollars there than you are riding your bike to work?
There are sometimes you're right. There are sometimes that, though, new cars. A few times, like during the pandemic, a new car was way cheaper than a used car was. Used car market went through the fricking roof for a while and we actually saw the crossover point. According to the Wall Street Journal and other major publications, those times are few and far between. Usually a great rule of thumb is go for the used car over the new one. For this particular car, it made a ton of sense to a buy used and not have a car payment. I mean, we've saved a ton of money on that vehicle. Oh, gee, that's my number one. Look at your transportation cost.
So my number one is don't have your kid break a collarbone.
And it's kind of a little tongue in cheek as we're getting ready to go to the hospital. But I want to tell a story about this, and this has nothing to do with saving money fast, but I just think it's an interesting lesson.
But it's my number one anyway.
It's my number one anyway. So that's why I said, I have 4.6. I don't know if this is just going around or if this is the new way of doing things, but we are headed to surgery for Alex's collarbone here later this morning. And the doctor called last week or their office called on Friday and said, okay, so we're just ready for payment. Then we're like, what are you talking about? And they said, yeah, we're just ready for the card number for the doctor payment. The doctor fee. Oh, we have to. No, it's going through insurance. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've already talked your insurance. This is how much you're going to owe. So we're going to get that right now. And, you know, it was about two grand. So not the end of the world, but a big check to write on a Friday, you know, at 2 in the afternoon when you're not expecting it.
So we took care of that. And then they said, oh, and then there's the facility fee.
Excuse me, the what? We just paid two grand. No, that's the doctor's fee. This is the facility fee. This is to rent the operating room. Oh, okay. And how much is that? Well, after factoring in your insurance and, you know, deductible and your coinsurance amount. Da, da, da, da. That'll be $6,000. I go, whoa, hold on a second. Time out, time out, time out. I thought we have it, you know, we've got insurance. I go, yeah, yeah, but Your coinsurance payment is 30%.
Well, how much is the bill? $17,000 to rent the OR for 47 minutes or however long it's going to be to fix this collarbone, of which we have to pay a third. $6,000. So now we've written $8,000 worth of checks. Okay, so now I can at least kind of appreciate that they've priced it in advance. They know exactly how much it is we've paid it. Right? Like, okay, it's done and done. Oh, well, by the way, the anesthesiologist and surgical assistant, they'll bill you separately, but you'll get two more bills. Okay, so we're getting better, right? The old way of dealing with this was you walk in, you get some service, and then you have no idea how much any of that costs. So at least this is in advance. But here was my, my really eye opening thing here. This is not really an elective surgery. I mean, it kind of is cosmetically a little bit, but the dude's collarbone is snapped like a twig. And it's not, it's not laying back on itself. It's pointed straight up to, you know, to. It's through his, it's not through his skin.
There's nothing elective about fixing that.
One wouldn't imagine it is. But it would heal as it is if we left it. But that's awful idea.
Yeah.
But my point is, is that, you know, it's already been two weeks, right? We have a reasonably healthy cash reserve. We have a profoundly awesome health insurance policy, even though it's a high deductible plan. We know what we get with that. I have a fully funded HSA and still I'm stroking a check for 10 grand on a Friday afternoon at 2 o', clock the day before surgery. And I'm thinking to myself, what if, what if. What do other people do? You know what I mean? Like what. And so we asked, we asked the, well, what's the. What do you do here if you, you know, just don't have 10 grand lying around? Here's the Amex card. Have @ it. And she said, well, you can go to this website and apply. There's some like credit thing that you can do. And I'm like, holy crap, Ola, man. I think we're, you know, this is. There's been a couple of these instances in my life over the last couple of years where, where these big health expenses have happened.
I think we're super fortunate to be able to kind of roll with the punches there, but the reality is, is that if you're not from a planning standpoint thinking about those big numbers, I think you're doing yourself a disservice. And it's not about like, how to save money immediately, but you need to be able to think of the worst thing possible, like go through your health insurance, we were talking about insurance before and figure out like, what is the biggest number I might have to write this year. We talk about how great it is to have this high deductible plan because you can do an HSA and all that other cool stuff in the future, which is totally true. But I think it's also important to know what's my maximum exposure here. And we don't play that side of the game, we just play the one side. So don't have your kid break his collarbone. That would be step one. But if he does have pre planned that a little bit so that, you know, if you're hit with these things, at least you've got the plan on the shelf of like, here's where we'll go to. You know, my, my wish for this organization would have been it's been two weeks. You knew that this was coming. Like, why did you wait until the day before? Like, what if I didn't have a credit card with a $10,000 limit or checking account with 10,000 in it? Like, would we have to cancel? Like, I didn't, you know, it's just a weird timing, but, but I think there's that other half of it, which is to save money in the future. You have to plan for those worse things now so that you don't have to, you don't have to charge it, you don't have to do those things. So anyways, just kind of a personal story there that I thought was important to.
Share. No, I'm glad you did. Because the healthcare minefield is so big and fraught with so many gotchas and man, I should have done that differently. We have an episode that we can point to on our YouTube channel where we talk to Scott Heiser about this, an insurance expert who really one of my favorite episodes of all time, og because of the fact that he talked about, even by going not, you know, we hear about people going to Mexico for coverage or going overseas to get surgeries done. You can go across town and get remotely different pricing than you got at the same place. And also talking about asking the question about what the procedures are going to cost. He walks through the upside of just asking what your coverage is going to cost, even if you have insurance to cover it, what does, what does that cost? We're all responsible for that. And we'll link to Scott and I discussing that on our YouTube channel at our show notes page@stackingbenjamins.com that's our top five list. Lots of ways to cut expenses. Remember when you do that, if you're not upside down right now, to capture that, though, if you find some savings, add it to your automatic savings so that it goes into your Savings account, your 401k, into your Roth IRA, wherever you want that to be for your plan so that you actually capture that money. Right now is the time when we normally do the Haven lifeline. However, looking at the time, OG I think we're gonna go ahead and skip that segment for today episodes running a little long. Instead, we'll move right to the Community calendar. Doug, what do we got coming up on the Community.
Calendar? Man, Joe, you know what's really big happening later this week is Katie Kurmitzos is joining us on Instagram Live. So that's going to be fun. That's going to be a good.
One. It's going to be super good. You've heard us talk about Katie's amazing podcast and meditation. She leads the Women's Meditation Network. But she's going to teach people how to maybe get calmer about their money. Oh, gee. How to.
Relax. That's all like stressed out like.
Me. Maybe you need to go to that one.
Yourself. What do you mean? I am.
Calm. That's never in the history of calm down. Saying calm.
Down. That's going to be at a different time than normal. We have had some people go, you know what? I can't make the usual time. Well, this could be good news for you. It's going to be 1pm Eastern, noon central, 10am Pacific. That means mountain. You're at 11am if my math is correct. So that's.
Thursday. Look at you showing.
Off. Damn. Thursday, 1pm Eastern. Katie Kremenso is joining us for an Instagram live on some relaxation techniques when it comes to money. Gonna be good stuff there. We also coming up on Wednesday of the founder of Panera Bread joining us, Ron Shaikh is going to be on the show talking about lessons learned from creating Panera Bread. All right, that's going to do it for today. If you're not here because you want a bread bowl or you're here, you're not here to calm down about your money. Well, maybe you want to come down about your money because you need to make better decisions with your money. OG and his team are taking clients, so head to stacking Benjamins.com OG for.
More. You know Joe, this is normally the place where I would say let's go out on the back porch and have a cocktail. But we just got a great story, personal story from OG about not breaking collarbones. So what do you say we just wrap it.
Up? I think we did. Let's do it. What should we have learned.
Today? Doug well, first, take some advice from Joe and og. Don't just cut expenses. Find way to get that money socked away today. Second, take advice from our headline. If you're going into work, you may need to cut expenses right now. But the big lesson if you're appealing to Joe's mom to get out of washing dishes, it's a good idea to bring a bribe or four that judge is as corrupt as it gets.
This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2023, and is created by by Joe Salcehei. Our producer is Karen Repine. This show was written by Lisa Curry, who's also the host of the Long Story Long podcast. With help from me, Joe and Doc G from the Earn and Invest podcast, Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter, called the201. You'll find the411 on all things money at the201. Just just visit stackingbenjamins.com 201. Wonder how beautiful we all are? Of course, you'll never know if you don't check out our YouTube version of this show, engineered by Tina Eichenberg. Then you'll see once and for all that I'm the best thing going for this podcast. Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Want to chat with friends about the show later? Mom's friend Gertrude and Kate Youngkin are our social media coordinators and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called the Basement. Say hello when you see us posting online to join all the Basement fun with other stackers type stackingbenjamins.com basement not only should you not take advice from from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin show.
