Side Gigs and Millennial Money Tips with Kyle Taylor

Welcome to the new retirement podcast. Today we're going to be talking with Kyle Taylor, founder of the Penny Hoarder, about what he's learned about both how millennials think about money, work and life. Building his digital media empire, mission based work, and alternative career paths. Kyle is the 32 year old founder and CEO of the Penny Hoarder, a media company based in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. With 12 to 17 million readers a month, the Penny Hoarder was named the fastest growing private media Co. By Inc. 502 years in a row. They have helped millions of people transform their finances and provide editorial and video programming to help people stress less about money. Kyle and I connected after I wrote a story about Robin Bree, a local young woman who saved almost $100,000 while still in high school that the Penny Hoarder picked up. So Kyle is basically a media wunderkind and I think will offer a pretty different perspective for our audience. Kyle, welcome to our show. I'm honored that you joined us.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, I appreciate you being here. Okay, so I kind of want to just jump in and talk a little bit more about kind of your background in the Penny Hoarder first. But before we get started, I just wanted to say congratulations on building a self funded, profitable eight figure digital media company. It's no easy feat in a world where the barriers to entry are low and many big media companies would love to have a business like yours. So can you kind of just share a little bit about how you got started and how you ended up here?

Sure. Well, thank you for that. First of all, have you ever seen the show the West Wing?

Yep.

So I watched that show religiously throughout high school and I wanted to be more than anything, Josh Lyman. Josh Lyman was the deputy chief of staff and his job was really to manage the relationships with Congress. And so I started volunteering on campaigns in high school. And then in my first week at college, I was going to the University of South Florida studying political science. I saw an ad in the paper for the AFL cio. They were hiring people to go door to door to register people to vote. And I was so excited, I went the next day for my interview. And by the end of the week, I had my clipboard and they were dropping me off in some strange neighborhood. I fell in love with campaigns. And for the next eight years, I worked on campaigns all over the country in my quest to be Josh Lyman. But the challenge was is that campaigns are short term jobs. And I had a knack for picking really Awful candidates that couldn't win elections. So by the end of every campaign, I was out of a job, looking for a way to pay rent, looking for ways to pay my bills.

And.

And I had kind of developed a little bit of a knack for finding interesting side gigs to get me through those few months. But along the way, I was also racking up a lot of debt. And so at 25, I had racked up almost $50,000 in credit card and student loan debt and reached my, what I call my rock bottom moment, where I didn't even have enough money to feed myself. And I was so embarrassed by it because I had been struggling with money for years. I had gone to the bank of mom and dad many a times, and I didn't want anyone to know. I would often turn my phone off because I didn't want them to see the collectors calling all day long. So I started writing about it on an anonymous blog. It was a blogspot account. And because I didn't want anyone to know about the debt, I came up with a pseudonym, the Penny Hoarder. And for the first six months, it was just a private online journal, a way for me to talk, talk, talk to myself about how much debt I had, how I had gotten into that place, and what I was doing to pay it off. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be a business. It was really just an accountability buddy.

That's amazing. That's a great story. Do. Do you relate to a lot of the fincon bloggers? They seem to have a similar story arc of like, hey, I had some serious money challenges or I hit rock bottom. And then, you know, we talked about JD Roth a little bit earlier. But people like that, you know, some of them, they figure it out and they get on this journey and they use writing to kind of hold themselves accountable, share their stories, share what they're learning. And some of them, I would say, of all the people I've met, you've got to be by far the most successful story on that arc. But do those folks relate?

I absolutely relate to them. In fact, when I started blogging, I didn't know anything about what even blogging was. And I remember about a year in telling my parents that I had started a blog, and I didn't give them the domain name, but I started a blog. And my mom goes, what's a blog? So I absolutely relate to them because in those early days when I didn't know what I was doing, I went to all of those sites. I went to JD side, I went to all the fincon sites to learn about what they were doing, and it was inspirational to me and a big part of why I decided to take it from hobby into business.

Yeah, you know, I went to my first Fincon last year, and it was pretty amazing to see 2000 bloggers and, you know, I mean, and hear their stories, and it's a very supportive community. It's pretty interesting kind of seeing how these folks share their stories, but also what they're learning, what's working for them, and. And kind of encourage each other to do different things, even like this podcast. I don't think we've ever done this unless we were like, oh, look at those other people doing podcasts. Let's go to world and see what happens. And then, lo and behold, sometimes stuff takes off.

It really is the most supportive community, and I don't think that exists in other blogging niches, at least not to this extent. But if somebody in the personal finance blogosphere asks you for a favor, no one would turn you down because that is just the kind of community we are.

That's true. I've definitely, definitely seen that. So, yeah, I mean, I think you have a real kind of like, Horatio Alger story where you kind of hit bottom. You had $50,000 in debt. You know, you'd kind of pursued your passion in terms of political, you know, your political passions, and then discovered that, hey, there's an opportunity here, and made it work. Were your parents entrepreneurs, I mean, or did you just kind of say, kind of fall into this?

So a little bit. My. My dad worked for a credit card processing company for many years. He worked from home, and he always had this kind of itch to get away from it all. And so in his mid-30s, he taught himself tennis, quit his job, and became a tennis instructor.

Wow.

And now he manages a dozen different facilities in Colorado.

I think that's a great story, and I think it's really interesting how families and how you're raised influence people in a big way. So, you know, like, my parents were divorced. Same thing when. When I was my. I was about 12, and I saw, you know, my mom raised my brother and I, and she. Same thing, working really hard, you know, sometimes coming home, like, crying at night and be, like, totally overwhelmed and. And kind of exhausted from the stresses of trying to make. Make things go, which I think influenced me. And, you know, I have a pretty high work ethic. You know, I enjoy working. But also I, you know, I saw her, you know, building her own small Business. But I also saw Miss. You know, I've seen the successes and failures. I mean, it's great to hear your story, like, your dad, like, saying, hey, listen, I'm mid-30s, which many people don't do. They get to the mid-30s, they've got kids, they're just like, I'm not gonna, like, take this risk, but make actually making it work and achieving his dream. That's cool. And also, I think what you obviously like from what your mom did, that's resonated because you started doing some of these side gigs as a young adult, right? I did.

And one thing I always admired about my mom was as hard as she was working, she still tried to make it fun. One of my favorite memories is we were trying to save money as a family, and my parents laid out everything. We knew exactly how much money was coming in, how much money was budgeted in every category. My mom felt it was really important for us to understand the household's finances. And so we were trying to cut back on our utility bills. And so she made this really colorful chart and hung it up in the kitchen. And then every day, us kids took turns going out to the meters on the side of the house and recording what our energy usage was from the day before. And then she would challenge us to try to get it even lower the next day.

I thought, what.

That's such a. Looking back on it, like, what a genius way to get kids to turn off the lights and save a little bit of money.

That's awesome. Yeah, I think it's. It's so important. It's. It's hard, you know, when you grow up this way and you see the challenges, I think you internalize that, and it becomes a life lesson. It doesn't. You know, you kind of appreciate what it is to not have as much money and how important it is to. Or how it can make your life better. Right. Enable your life. When you have more money, it's more difficult. And by the way, Kyle's sitting here in our house in Mill Valley, which is pretty nice house, you know, it's very nice, y'. All. You know, I'm raising my children, and, you know, they're having a very different upbringing than I did. And I try to tell them stories, you know, about how I grew up and my grandparents and some of the challenges that we've had, but they don't see it. So I do see these issues where they talk about, okay, the first generation makes money. The second generation hopefully maintains a little bit. And by third generation, it's gone. And the data actually backs us up. That generational wealth, at least historically, hasn't lasted. Now with the state, you know, laws changing and stuff like that, maybe it'll start lasting longer. I don't know if. Actually, I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. I think it's an important part of our, you know, society that people have to work hard, kind of accomplish things on their own. And, you know, people shouldn't necessarily be born into, like, tons of wealth and, like, be able to skate through life. I don't think that leads us to having a strong culture, as an aside. But, you know, it's. I can see why this is difficult. Like, if you are successful and like, so Kyle's, you know, clearly successful, you know, if you ever have a family or whatever, then you'll have to deal with these challenges yourself.

No, I think that's true. And, you know, coming from, you know, a family that had to work really hard to make ends meet, I carry that around every day. And it's always something in the back of your head. No matter how successful you get that you could quickly be back in that situation. And so often I find making decisions with that in mind.

Yeah, that's good. You ever hear of Andy Groves? He's the former. He was the head of intel, and he said he was known for saying, only the paranoid survive. And I think that's true. I mean, companies that thrive no matter how big. And Bill Gates, I said, you're Never more than 18 months from complete destruction, even when he was at the peak of his powers. And so you see that with companies that do well, they keep cranking, they create this culture. And I think now even Amazon, Jeff Bezos, he embodies this where he. It's hard to get hired there. They are known for having a very tough culture and they. They try to raise the bar all the time. Now there's a balance, right? You have to make it in a good place. People want to work, but also try to do better and better because the competition always goes up. So, anyway, on that Note, now you're 110 people. I know culture is important for you. I'm sure that. I'd love to hear how it sounds like some of your family experiences are probably informed how you see your team and how you work with your team and build your culture.

Yeah, culture is huge for us. And I think a lot of times when companies, particularly young startups, talk about culture, they think about it in terms of what kind of beer is in the fridge and what kind of games are in the kitchen. But for us, culture is about bringing a team together that has a similar set of values. And we are all guided by doing mission based work. At the Penny Hoarder, our mission is to put money in people's pockets and we look for people who really care about that and who can use that mission to make everyday decisions. I'll give you a couple of examples that might surprise you. So at the Penny Hoarder, we turn down more than half the advertising that comes our way. In fact, our editorial team gets to vote on what a part of our editorial team votes every week on which advertisers to bring on. Because we feel it's so important to only bring on partners that will fulfill that. And so if you're going to have that as a company ideal, you've got to have people who can embody that and practice that every single day. It's around a set of values too. We look for people who are really kind. I have a no assholes rule.

That's good. I've definitely heard that out here.

Yeah, no assholes. That's very important. We look for people who are really bold. I want people to take chances. The media industry is moving way too quickly to be able to keep doing what you did last year because as you say, you're only 18 months away from failing and so you have to keep innovating. We look for people who are leaders, regardless of title. So I often ask even our junior associates to know that they're going to have some decision making power over something. And that's important because we're publishing multiple times a day. And as a CEO, I have no idea what's going to be on the website today. I have no idea what's going to be on Facebook today. And so we have to hire people that we trust and that are really comfortable making those decisions and using all of our values to put out content that's going to be great for our readers.

Wow, that's great. It's great to hear you kind of focusing on culture, empowering your team to make great decisions. And it's reflected in the success you're having. But I think it's definitely the right, the right approach.

Yeah, every company is only as good as its team. That's absolutely true.

For sure. So, you know, we talked just before I get off this topic. I mean, you know, now you're. You started with yourself, you know, and then working at. I sounded like you're working at home for, you know, a little While working with a small team, like no office. And then now you've got the whole operation. We were talking about using slack. And like we use slack, we have a 10 to 12 person team and it's manageable, but you have 110 people and it starts to get out of control.

It never stops buzzing.

Any kind of big things you've seen or learned or challenges you're seeing now that you're kind of getting to the size?

Yeah, I think oftentimes when people talk about our story, it's grown really fast over the last few years and it sounds like things have just been rosy every single day. And that is absolutely not TR dissuade you of that notion right now. It's been a real uphill battle to get to this point and there have been a lot of challenges along the way. One of the hardest parts for me. So the early group, the first five, worked at my kitchen table for a couple of months and then we moved into a small office and we got up to the size of about 12. And there was a couple month period. I remember so well because it just felt like everything was going wrong. We lost one of our big advertisers. Our building was infested with termites. One of our employees hated another employee. And it caused a lot of drama in the office. I started realizing that even though we were making a lot of money, I had to worry about things like cash flow. And I started worrying about how I was going to pay, make payroll certain weeks. I had this humongous amount of stress that I had never experienced in my entire life. And it was a real gut check moment for me of why am I doing this? Right around that same time, I had a big Fortune 500 company come knocking on the door and they said, do you want to sell the company? And it was a very something I wasn't thinking about. And at the time, I went home and I went and talked to a boyfriend and I said, hey, listen, I have this opportunity. They're talking about generational wealth and oh, by the way, my building's infested with termites. This is an easy decision, right? And he said to me, no, you just started this three months ago. We moved our entire life to Florida. You've put so much time into this, you've put money into this. Why would you quit after only three months? And that was a moment for me that I look back to now all of the time, whenever I have challenges at the company that it's not going to be uphill, it's not going to be gravy every single day. But you have to remember why you're doing the work and that's what gets you through all those tough moments.

Yeah. You talked earlier about kind of mission based work and how you got to this point where maybe it was a little earlier, but you know, you reach seven figures, you're kind of profitable, but you weren't totally happy. And then, you know, something changed. I'd like to hear kind of like how your thinking changed about how you ran the company. Yeah.

So the first few years of building a website, I made hardly any money at all. And then the next three years, the site started growing pretty quickly and I was still on my own and living in Maine at the time. Had a cute little house, black Labrador retriever. It would snow seven feet during the winter. But we didn't care because we would just watch Netflix all day long. And I had gotten the website down to just an hour or two of work every day to be able to pull in, as you say, some pretty significant income. It was by all accounts what I had been dreaming of and felt like I had reached the top, so to speak. But after a few months, I found myself getting really unhappy. And it's kind of strange to say because I was sitting in a very privileged position, but I wasn't doing anything that actually cared about. I wasn't doing anything that fulfilled my purpose. And for me, my purpose. I've worked on campaigns for many years. As I told you, I've always believed my purpose is using is to help people get a leg up in life and to use my communication skills and creativity as a way of doing that. That's what I did on campaigns. I loved working in media relations. I loved working in field organizing. And so all of a sudden, now I'm just sitting on the couch all day. I wasn't doing any of those things. And that's what inspired me to move back down to Florida and turn this into a real company.

And that sounds like it also informed you not to sell the company and keep cranking on your own.

That's right. And when those offers come now it's very easy for me to just say, no, thank you.

That's awesome. That's great to hear. I picked up, for whatever reason, somebody has a copy of Viktor Frankl's I think Man's Search for Happiness or Man's Search for Meaning. You know, he's a former philosopher, but he kind of talked about basically for people to be happy, they have to have meaning. You know, it's all about meaning in life. It's not about pleasure, and it's about that, the search and pursuit of doing work against something that's meaningful to you. And this is something that we think a lot about as well, since, you know, with our audience, they're, you know, kind of 50 to 60 years old. They've kind of finished their main career. They kind of, you know, but they still have a lot of human capital, like a capacity to work, and they're really thinking about what's next. You know, think about how to be healthy. You know, what I'm gonna do with my life, how am I gonna pay for it? How am I gonna pay for it? Is like, you know, what we help them with today, but we also want to kind of get to helping them, like, think about and be thoughtful about, like, you know, what I'm gonna do next. And I was talking with one of our users the other day, this guy Curtis, who's a forester. And he's like, yeah, I'm 65. Kind of wrapped up this first career. I'm gonna great position financially. I'm all set. But now it's like, okay, what's next? What is the next mission? And I think that for a lot of the users, that's something that they're really thinking about. So it never ends, I can tell you.

It's something that we hear around the office a lot, too. I employ quite a few millennials, and what's important to them is not just bringing home a paycheck. They want to feel good about how they earn that paycheck every day.

Right. For sure. I've definitely seen that in the press. And, you know, we work with some millennials, too. And, you know, I think things like, you know, what the kind of work you're doing, schedule control, you know, or more control about your life and how the people you work with, the kind of work you're doing, you know, where you work, stuff like that, where you live. Those are all important things for millennials. And also, I think boomers, as they. If they start to kind of look around and think about a little bit more.

Yeah, we hear it from readers, too. So there's several sections on the Pennywaters website around side gigs, around working from home, around dream jobs. And they are, I call that entire category sort of workplace freedom, getting away from the 9 to 5. And it's by far some of the most popular topics on the website.

Yeah, well, I think this is a great segue into kind of the next part of this podcast. Which is I wanted to see if there were some lessons that we could take from the millennials or what you're learning, you know, with your audience that might apply to, you know, our audience. So, you know, we talked a little bit about kind of, you know, life control and so forth? Well, first I want to give a little. Since I did some research, I'm going to give some quick stats here. So the millennials are kind of age 22 to 37. Right now, there are 92 million of them. You know, Gen X is 34 to 54. I guess there's a little overlap there. And there's 65 million of those folks. And then boomers are kind of 54 to 72, and there's 75 million of those folks. So the millennials are the biggest generation right now, and they're kind of entering their prime earning years, and the way they think about money and so forth is different. So, yeah. Do you like any big kind of lessons and insights that you've. That you got from, you know, that you've taken away from your audience that you think might apply to the boomers as they start to kind of think about what's next for their lives?

You know, I think one of the biggest factors that play into how millennials think about money is that they watch their parents go through the financial crisis. And I think that's shaped, as a millennial, I can tell you that's shaped a lot of our opinions. First of all, we saw our parents doing jobs, in many cases that they didn't like doing and working for a company for many years. And then we reach a crisis, and all of a sudden they're disposable. So millennials go into work thinking about not how can I be loyal to a company, but how can I be loyal to my purpose in life? How can I be loyal to doing something that I really care about? I think that shapes not only the kinds of jobs that we do, but but also how we spend our money. So there's all of these stats showing that millennials are spending less and less money on clothing, for example, and that it's become a real struggle for retailers.

Because.

We care more about things like our avocado toast and going on trips and experiences with our friends. And I think that's because since we've seen our parents in a place without money, we think about spending it in a way that really is fulfilling to us and a way that is more lasting. So I can, you know, experiences I had On a trip 10 years ago, I still get joy out of that. But the pair of Prada shoes that I bought at 18 and didn't pay off until I was 26 stopped bringing me joy a long time ago.

Go. Right. Wow. Yeah. It's interesting also, since I have Gen Z kids, what I see the access to information and knowledge and experience is shaping each generation. And kind of ramping, I would say, characterizes ramping them up quicker. So things that my parents might have taken a lifetime to learn, you know, maybe I Learned in my 30s, you know, things that I learned in my life. You know, millennials are learning in their 20s. And I feel like, you know, Gen Z is learning this stuff in high school. I mean, I can say that, you know, my 17 year old has political opinions that are well informed and much more sophisticated than I ever had in high school because he's got access to so much information. It's good and bad, right? I mean, there's everything bad that you can find. The Internet they can get their hands on, but they can also consume so much information so many different ways. You know, podcasts, videos, reading books, whatever it is. And they can, you know, but they also, I think many of them have a healthy skepticism of news or where they're getting information from. And I think that's dramatically changing our society. And it's kind of interesting to see, to see how it evolves.

Yeah, I think it's broader than just news. There's a general distrust of just institutions. And we've seen that as a personal finance site, for example, a lot of our readers have distrust of banks. They hold on to what happened during the financial crisis, and it's really affected how we write about personal finance. I think the way a lot of news sites and other money publications wrote about money in the past couple of decades was to tell you all the things that you should have done by now and to tell you all the things that you're doing wrong. What we found is that millennials in particular are very, very put off by that. They don't want to be told by a big bank that they should have $200,000 in savings by now. In fact, they might have a few choice words if someone told them that. So instead, we approach content by telling people real stories, real people who have gone through struggles and figured out how to get out of that with a way of hopefully inspiring and motivating somebody to take a similar action. Right.

I think making it stuff much more relatable is important for every generation. And I was telling Kyle earlier that on our recent podcast, we had an ex DEA agent, and this is the first time we'd had kind of a normal person telling their story about what they went through with retirement. And we're getting a lot of comments like, oh, I totally relate to this guy. And look, he. He learned about, you know, what was available to him, benefits from the federal government, and. And he kind of figured out how to work it appropriately and make good decisions as a normal person that have led to him being pretty much financially independent. And he's had a, you know, as a public employee, kind of like, kind of traditional career. And. And also his kind of thinking about, like, what he's going to do next. A lot of people are like, oh, yeah, totally. I totally get that. And that applies to me. So I think we. I've been talking to our content here. Like, we need to do more personal stories, more interviews and stuff like that. So hopefully we'll start to emulate some of what you're doing.

People often ask me about starting a website, whether it's still a good idea to start a blog. And I heard a stat the other day that there are now over 500 billion blogs on the Internet worldwide. 500 billion. So when you've got 500 billion competitors, there's not a lot left to write about. And the only one thing that I think is still unique and that still needs to be written about is your own personal story. That's the one thing no one can copy.

Yeah.

So when people talk to me about starting a website, I said, that's the thing. You got to focus on what makes you unique, what. What's interesting about your life, because it's something people can relate to, and it's something that's different.

I'm going to. Yeah, okay.

He's live fact checking.

I'm live fact checking him. All right. 500 billion. I think it's 500 million because there's only 7.6 million.

Oh, 500 million. I'm so sorry. I'm like, how is that possible? There's not enough people.

If we all wrote 40 blogs. But, yeah, 500 million. I totally believe that the. You know, someone was actually telling us that there are on iTunes, 500,000 podcasts now shows. Wow. And I'm sure they're not all active, but, yeah, similar thing where, you know, it's. There's so many out there. How do you. How do you. How do you stand out? And, you know. But yeah, we're all becoming content creators, or not all, but some content creators.

I think you either. You have to either Tell a story that no one's heard before. You have to collate information in a way that people haven't before, or you have to say it in a tone that someone hasn't said before. Those are the three paths to creating unique content, in my opinion.

Yep, I think that's right. It's, I mean, we've had kind of an attention based media environment now for, you know, several years, but it's becoming more and more important. And the scarce resources, people's time, how do you get them to pay attention? How do you get them to engage? How do you build community? It's not simple and there is an endless amount of competition out there. So a little bit more about the Millennials. I was looking at some data. They're pretty like you're saying conservative because they've been informed by living through the financial crisis. They value experiences over things, which I think is hopefully good for the world and good for the environment and everything else. What do you see in terms of how they think about investing and savings and their priorities? Any things that you're seeing there?

Well, a little distrustful of investing, obviously. Again, the crisis has a big impact here. I think that's something that may take a little bit more time before Millennials are really ready to start investing serious amounts of money. I will tell you one other trend that we're seeing. This gets back to the workplace freedom idea is that Millennials are okay working multiple jobs. So many of them are making a living. And certainly I can relate to this. This was life for me for many years by putting together a lot of different side gigs and turning that into an income. I think that has some interesting long term impacts. One that is important to me, having campaigned on the Affordable Care act, is how it affects millennials and their health insurance needs. Many of them are coming off of their parents Insurance now at 26, and if they're not working a full time job with an employer that provides for it, I think that's a real challenge that a lot of Millennials are going to face is how to support themselves and pay for their own health insurance if they're not working in a full time job.

Right? Yeah. Well, healthcare is also a huge issue for folks facing retirement because they have to get to Medicare and many people retire before 65 when you're eligible for Medicare. And so they have to figure out how to fund that. It's, I think now the number one concern for people going into retirement is actually health. It's not just income. It's like health care costs. And it's a huge problem, huge challenge for our country. Just Medicare itself is got the biggest underfunded exposure, bigger than Social Security. And we're talking about Social Security now, but people are going to start talking about Medicare in a big way. And it's like within the next 10 years or something, we're going to be running a deficit. Then how's it going to be paid for? And one of the stats I've given up before on this podcast is I think the Average person pays $140,000 into Medicare in terms of taxes over their working life, but they claim $410,000 of benefits. Just not going to work. That math doesn't work. Yeah.

Especially when you have a smaller workforce compared to the size of population that's about to retire.

Yeah. I think the reality is people will end up working longer and how they do work will change. And this whole kind of gig economy that we've seen emerge with the millennials. Now you're hearing stories that actually uber, they're recruiting 50 plus year olds. Lyft is recruiting 50 plus year olds because drive part time, make a couple thousand bucks a month. It's like that actually work. That totally makes a huge difference. Or joined. I heard, you know the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz. Yeah. On a podcast, Masters of Scale. And it was actually really great to listen to him. And you know, he shared like, hey, listen, they're. They're also super mission driven and they also try to really take care of their employees. And they were like, hey, you know, we want to provide health care for everybody. If you work 20 hours or something, you know, as a. They call them partners and, you know, they're delivering that. And now people are like, oh, maybe I'll go work at Starbucks to get my health care. You know, it's kind of interesting to see people look at it that way.

It is interesting. It sounds like he might run for president too.

I think so. I mean, from what I heard, I liked a lot of what he was saying. I thought it was pretty interesting.

Here you go, Howard. You got one vote already.

Come on our podcast. So, yeah, healthcare, how to pay for it. You know, gig work. I mean, you know, I saw that you did, you know, this kind of like movie preview, auditor, beer auditor. Like, you know, you're making money doing these like side gigs when you're really young. Do you think there, you know, I can see like, you know, when you're older, you're trying to find these jobs that are kind of interesting, maybe give you some additional benefits. Like healthcare, you know, anything that you've seen out there that you think might apply to someone who's 50 plus.

I think there are a lot of things. In fact, my own mom, I had dinner with her a few weeks ago and she said she's getting too close to retirement age. And she said, I thought, she's like, I really want to do something else, just 20 hours a week. And she's like, there's only one person in the world I thought to ask. I said, no pressure. So she signed up to become an Amazon fulfillment driver. And both my sisters do this as well. And they're doing quite well. I think my sisters are earning around $25 an hour delivering Amazon packages. My mom also signed up to be an instacart delivery. So she's hopefully soon will be going to the grocery store to make an extra side income. I think there are a lot of these and they're only going to increase over the next few years. I think we're just at the very beginning of the gig economy.

I think that's right. It's, you know, another thing I was, I also listened, I think it was TaskRabbit, you know, where I heard the. From the CEO of that firm on another podcast. And you know, she was talking about people are, you know, well, one, they're enabling lots of people to make money, but two, they're. There's a community where this, their people are in this community are helping each other skill up to learn how to do things better. There are people that are great at assembling IKEA furniture, but now there's people that are learning how to do more advanced tasks essentially. And they're teaching each other so they can learn more money. Like, okay, now I want to learn how to do some electrical work. So then it's pretty interesting to see that emerge. And then people also, as they get more skilled, they have more choice about what they want to take on. So you can be sitting there and get more control. You can see work that's coming in, choose what to do and when you want to do it. So there's a lot of benefits. Hopefully that'll be balanced out by the ability to kind of get the basics of like healthcare and being confident that you have enough money so that you can, you know, have kind of lifestyle that you want to have. I don't know if you've seen it looked at, you know, do you see a lot of people doing those kinds of like. Or do you get feedback about any of those platforms? If some do better than others.

Yeah, I think some. A lot of this also depends on where you live. Folks that live in big metropolitan cities have a few more options at their disposal. Things like Uber and Instacart might not be enough to keep you busy all day long if you live in a smaller town or a more rural area. That being said, as I said a moment ago, I think they're just the beginning of them. And there's a lot of different ways that readers on the site make extra money. There's apps now that will just list for you gigs all over the area. Things like field agent and Gigwalk will tell you you can make $9 to go to your local Walmart and take a picture of this display. Or you can earn $10 by going to the movie theater and writing down all of the previews, which is one of my jobs for a very long time. You do have to be creative, and that's one of the things that we try to provide. On the Penny Hoarder is a resource for people to find those kinds of side gigs that are legitimate and have been checked out. But the opportunities I think can exist at wherever you are if you're willing to look around.

That's awesome. That's cool. Quick last question on this. Have you ever read up on Universal Basic Income? I have any thoughts about that.

I think it's an idea worthy of consideration. There's been a lot of talk in recent years about how automation and technology might lead us to a place where there are less jobs available. I think time will tell when it comes to that. But the one thing that does make me nervous is that I do think there will be a lot of job rotation. There's over 3 million truck drivers in this country. What does work look like for them when automated vehicles are driving all our goods and services? I think we're going to have to think long and hard about things like workplace assistance, job training, and helping people find a new career in life. I'm supportive of some of the pilot programs that are happening around the country, around the world, rather for Universal Basic Income, because I think it's a worthy idea.

I know it's being tested in some different countries, I think it was. And even places like Alaska sort of have it where they have baseline income. If you live in Alaska, there's a.

Lot of studies showing too that it can promote entrepreneurship. When people are less tied to having to work all day long at a main job, they can spend more of that time going out and building a business, building a side gig that might become A business someday.

Yeah. One of the things that I wanted to do is just kind of build a trend chart about kind of the number of hours of work that people are doing on average across history. Because it used to be that we worked till we dropped and now we've got this 40 hour workweek. That's actually a relatively recent construct. So is retirement. Retirement itself is a relatively recent construct. And now we're looking forward and automating more stuff. How quickly does this unfold and also how do we adapt? By rolling out re education programs, ideas like Universal Basic Income. We'll see if that happens or not. But definitely there'll be a lot of changes coming, for sure.

Well, I'm very interested to see this chart. If you do in fact build it out, I think it'd be interesting to compare it around the world too, because the number of hours we work here in the United States is quite a lot more than some of our European countries and but they've managed to still build a lot of wealth and a lot of success. So I'd be curious to see what your research shows there.

Okay, yeah, we'll see if I actually do that. So quick thing, back to your company and just media companies. I mean, one of the things a lot of people get into is like, yeah, can I create my own business? And blogging is something a lot of people. Explorer, who do you see as your competition? I mean, we see out here, NerdWallet, SmartAsset, those guys are raising. I was just pulling this. Nerd wallet's raised $105 million. SmartAsset just raised 28 million bucks. That's a lot.

Can I borrow a cup of sugar?

Who do you see as your competition and how do you see your company evolving?

The competition part of that is always such a tough question to answer. Certainly there are times when we compete with folks like NerdWallet on a specific keyword, but I think we are building very different businesses. They have built a fantastic business, for example, to help you figure out the right credit card. That's not something we really spend a lot of time talking about. For us, what we think the long term business looks like is we want to be a partner and helping people figure out personal finance decisions from start to finish. And we think that our digital presence is really just one way to do that. So we'll continue to grow the website, the amount of content that's on there, the amount of services we provide for folks, but we're looking elsewhere other ways that we can interact with people in their Daily lives to get them thinking about how to save money. So, for example, this week we just announced that we're moving to print. We've made a deal with the Tiopa Bay Times to run a personal finance advice column called Dear Penny and their weekly Sunday paper. And we hope it'll give us an opportunity to not only reach a new set of readers, but give people a different way to experience personal finance advice.

That's pretty cool. You're going totally against the tide in terms of going to print, but I totally get it that there's a whole other group of readers out there that you can probably engage in a different way.

Back to the competition question. I often say that we're not just competing against personal finance websites, but we're competing against all news, all advice. If you're looking on Facebook, you're going to have options from Buzzfeed to Vox to Refinery29 to the Penny Hoarder. Those really all become our competition. And same with search or any other social platform. So we have to be able to hook people in a way that makes them prioritize managing their money over figuring out what Harry Potter house they're in and their latest quiz, because that is our competition as well.

Just to wrap up here, next up for you guys, sounds like you're going to hire another hundred people, you know, grow in St. Pete. You know, you're getting into print. Any other big initiatives that you want to share?

Well, I don't. I think you'll hear some other announcements from us soon. I'll just, I'll be a little mysterious and just say I've been spending a lot of time down in Hollywood the last few months and we would love to take our style of storytelling to other, other platforms. So we'll see, we'll see where that takes us in the next few months.

Nice. Well, I appreciate the thinking super broadly about this. I think that's really cool that you're able to kind of think about things that way and test ideas like that. That's amazing.

We really just think we're just getting started. And people ask me all the time, what am I going to do next? And they say, what do you mean, what am I going to do next? This is too much fun. I want to do this for the rest of my life.

Totally. Well, having that, that's so core. Having that, like, thing that you're doing that you're super psyched to do every day. People that do that, they do fantastic work. It's clear that they're doing that and people that aren't doing that don't always know it. But if they, if they start meeting more people that are doing it, then they're like, okay, maybe this is what's possible. And you know, obviously I, and I'm sure you, you know, would encourage everyone to try to find that passion and meaningful thing that they're really, you know, super confident is like the thing they should be doing. It's like they're calling, you know, so that, that can change your life in a huge way.

Couldn't agree more.

Okay, any questions for me? As we wrap this up?

I want to hear what's next from you. What's, what's coming up on new retirement?

Yeah, good question. Well, we're doing something. We just rolled out a paid version of our product. So we, we've been doing our work pretty much for free. We do have a little bit of a media model, but you know, advertising referrals. But we are now, you know, going to start asking our customers to pay us, which we think is important and a better way to do business, you know, so we've rolled out a paid subscription model for a more advanced version of our tool. We are going to be testing advice directly so offering kind of an hourly or subscription based advice model where people can, where we can do collaborative planning. And we think that's, that's key and also potentially disruptive for delivering kind of financial advice and guidance out there. And that'll be done through a subsidiary that's a registered investment advisor and a fiduciary. So, you know, so much, we touched on this earlier, but so much of financial services is all indirectly paid and not transparent. So, you know, our average customer is 50 to 60 years old. They have, you know, about a million dollars saved if they're paying traditional wealth management fees. I mean, they're either doing it themselves. Right. Or they're, many of them are using wealth managers and they're paying, you know, 1%. I think the average fee is 1.3%. So they could be paying 10 to 13,000 bucks a year, which, you know, can be great if they're helping you make really good decisions. But we feel like this can be accessible to so many more people with a more transparent model. And so this is a big test for us. And then if it works, hopefully we'll be scaling our business, but we shall see.

Very exciting. Very exciting.

Yeah. So anyway, Kyle, I really appreciate you taking the time to come here, sit here in studio with us. This is great.

It's been fantastic.

Thanks, Kyle, for being on our show. Thanks Dado Robison for being our sound engineer. Anyone listening? Thanks for listening. Hopefully you found this useful. Our goal at New Retirement is to help anyone plan and manage their retirement so they can make the most of their money and time. And we offer a powerful retirement planning tool and educational content that you can access@newretirement.com and we've been recognized as Best of the Web by groups like the American association of Individual Investors.