Financial Audit’s Biggest Gold Digger
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You have $100 in your checkbook account. But you're still buying stuff that we do not need. Constantly. Who wouldn't want more of their money to spend or to control in the way that they want it? You are not seeing the alarm sound like he is. Yes. I don't know about that. Download my budgeting app today and take control of your money once and for all. And for a limited time only, sign up for the annual version of premium and get my cookbook and notebook signed and mailed directly to you. Link in the description and pinned comment below.

Hi, I'm Elle. I'm 31. And I'm Paul and I'm 38. And we're from San Antonio. And this is Financial Audit.

Thanks for coming up from San Antonio, guys. I really appreciate it. Elle, you're in front of me. Let's start with you. What do you do for a living? I'm a student. I just barely graduated from UTSA. Barely? Yeah, well, December. As in, okay, so you're, not that you almost failed. Oh, no, sorry. No, no, no. I recently graduated. What did you graduate with? I have a Bachelor of Biology. Very good. What are we going to do? December. So it's been about five months. Yes. So I want to become a physician assistant.

So I'm applying over the summer to physician assistant programs. It's going to be expensive. Currently I'm a master's student, but it starts in June. For another program, I got accepted. Separate? Yeah. Why? Okay, so it's really competitive, physician assistant. Yeah, it is. Only like 13% of the people get accepted. And so I thought to be more competitive,

I would get a second master's degree. A second master's degree? You have another master's degree? Well, no, I just got accepted into UNTHSC, which is based out of Fort Worth, Texas. And it's a master's of lifestyle sciences and health coaching.

Okay. Why not just pick up a lot of hours at hospitals and different things and doing a lot of things. Someone I know, I knew that was going into physician assistant school. She doesn't work, just grinds in a hospital. This is working nights, all these things, picking up those hours. And that was really helping her application to get in. Uh,

I did consider that. Instead of just endless school. Well, not endless, but I actually have a lot of experience in the medical field. I've been in it since I was 16 and I was in the Navy for six years and I was a hospital corpsman. So was undergrad paid for? Yes, totally paid for. So there's no student loans, even though I have a massive stack of debt. Correct. So the fact that it's not student loans is...

Extra worrying. What do you do, Paul? I am in the Navy. About to retire. Oh, really? Yep. Very good. What does income look like right now? Well, he makes $3,600 twice a month and I make $4,750. So together we bring in around $11,000 or $12,000. How are you making money? Oh, I'm a VA disability with dependents. We have two kids. Right.

Okay, $4,700 twice a month? No, I make $4,700 once a month and he makes $3,600 twice a month and it equals between $1,100 and $1,200. Are you going to get disability too? Oh, yes, I will. There is not a single veteran that has come on the show that does not just get endless money for the rest of their life with disability. It breaks your body.

It really does. I'm old. I'm a police officer for the Navy. So I've done a lot of hard working stuff throughout the time. Which I'm just, I got issues all around. But even people that have just served for like three years and they just sat on a base, they get it. There has not been one single person on this entire show that doesn't get thousands of dollars for the rest of their life. I think it's like 5% of our budget now. It's something crazy. It's something crazy like that. It's just...

disability is forever. Well, they serve their country and they probably have earned it. It's disability. Yeah, I get that. But there's things that when you serve your country and you break your body or you can't function the same way. I'm saying every single person that has ever been on this show who has literally just sat at a base and did nothing. I know a lot of them, yes. They will be able to claim some stuff, yes. I'm not saying if you go get hurt or anything, I think that's why it's there, right? Yes.

Right. That's what it's intended for. That's what it's intended for. But...

Okay, so we're making $11,900 right now. Okay. What are you going to be making in retirement? About a little bit less than that because I'm going to have my retirement pay after 21 years. I'll have also the disability. We don't know what that's going to look like. The goal, obviously, and the prayer is the 100% disability. That will bring in the same amount as sure. And then the retirement will be a good chunk. So we're looking at about...

Similar to what we make now. Yeah, $6,000 probably a year. I'm sorry, a month. A month, okay. And that's just by retirement purposes, though. When does that come in? So we'll go from $11,900 to $10,700. When does that come in? 290 days I retire, so February. Oh, okay, okay. Very cool, very cool. So we have a little bit of time with a little higher income. Yep. Okay, okay. So what's going on? Because this is an incredibly strong income. Yeah.

Yeah.

We just have some bad spending habits. And I think the mentality that partly got us here has just been like, if we can afford the payment, we can take on the debt. Like when it comes to cars or other things. So this is getting a minimum of the payments forever? Yeah, we do. I literally have a spending category called miscellaneous bullshit.

It's things that just do not improve life. It's just random swipes. It is nothing. It's not fast food, but it could be a video game. It could be whatever. I don't know. I haven't gone through. I go through and blind with the audience, but this is the pre-work that my team has done. That was $4,137 within a month. That's just mislating these bulls**t. That is not going out to eat, by the way, which there is an additional...

a lot of money, which we'll go into for that. And then other things. We prioritize fun. Yeah, we do. We have two children. They're young. Creating memories. We are creating memories, but they're costing us. What are the ages of the kids? Seven and eight. We have a daughter who's eight and a son who's seven. Now...

Let me ask you this. We've talked about the military disability, right? And I'm not saying it's something that shouldn't exist for obviously people that need it and have earned it. But of course we know there is probably abuse as well, which has certainly been shown on the show. However, that being said...

Do we think we probably feel if I'm adding all this up minimum six seven thousand dollars on bullshit do we think we probably feel like we can just go do that on a monthly basis because you know this is going to come in no matter what you do in your life no matter what. You can go do anything you can go fail out of college you can do whatever and you will get this money and because of this social safety net because of this thing that is just there for you no matter what we're just like

Let's just go blow all of our money. Because it's basically retirement. Forever. You never have to think. You can just f*** around. And we have. We've actually. We've come out of debt twice. Really? Yes. This video is sponsored by Aura. And before you skip, you might want to see the crazy stuff that I just found out. Want to see something crazy? I just Googled you. Is this your address? Wait, what? Is your number f***?

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Yeah, we've managed to come out of debt. Over the last 10 years, we've been married for 10 years. Yeah, we've been married 10 years. So over that time frame, we've come out of debt twice, paid off everything. You know, once with children, once without children. What was payoff? Tell me how that looked. We were completely debt free. All of our cars were paid for. We didn't own a mortgage. We were renting at the time. That was the first one. And we had no credit cards. That was the first time.

Okay. And we did it through Dave Ramsey. The snowball effect. How are we possibly in this position? Well, then we had kids. And then we had kids. We racked up a lot more debt. We went through again and got debt free. And then the big problem is- What was the debt free in that situation? How did we get debt free then? The second time, we're not actually debt free. We did a debt consolidation through our home equity company.

Okay. So debt-free without the cars and the mortgage. But it was a debt-free move. It was. It was an attempt. It was moving the debt somewhere. It was nice. Did we close the cards and everything after that? No. Meaning we moved the debt somewhere and then we built up the debt again. Right, that's exactly what happened. When did we do that? That was in 2023, so like two years ago.

Yeah. Okay. So we've accumulated this for just a couple of years? Yeah. Okay. And it's just through the experiences. I mean, they are in the experience ages. A lot of people are, you know, when they come on the show, they're like, oh, I'm doing it for the experience. But their kid's like two, three, four. And they're like, okay. They're not even forming core memories. Yeah.

seven and eight. So I kind of understand that, but I mean, making a super strong income. I mean, let's be honest. Is that 11,900? What's hitting after taxes? Everything is that what's kind of settling in our account. That's, I mean, that's incredible with that. We're talking $142,800 a year after taxes. You can live in an incredible life in San Antonio, cheapest major city in Texas. You can live an incredible life on that. What kind of,

why are we living a $250,000 lifestyle on that? Cause you can still do great experiences on them. You got a great zoo. You got to see the world there. You got a lot of things. Then you got major metros. You can go everywhere. We don't need to be, I don't know what you guys are doing, but what, like, why aren't we living? What could be an incredible life off of this? And then,

Well, one of our major expenses is our kids are in sports and activities.

Expensive. How much? Gymnastics? My daughter's a gymnast. How much? Well, she does four different lessons a week. She has two group classes, two private lessons. Jeez. Okay, how much is that? So $2.32 for the two group lessons. A week or month? A month. Well, you can budget. You can afford that. Yeah, we do. That's simple and easy. But then it's all the other stuff that my wife likes to buy. Yeah, she has an at-home.

Gym stuff. Gym in our garage. But that's one time, right? Well, yeah, it just cost a lot. How much? How much does that cost? It keeps building. It keeps building. Well, I'm done now. I think I've put all the things in there that need to be in there. How much does it cost from zero to now? Well, each mat is $100 and she's got about seven and then she has two bars, two beams. How much? We're in a couple thousand. I don't know. Maybe a couple thousand. We're a couple thousand. Honestly.

A couple thousand you can afford it over the course of a year or so? No, this was all within like six months. Six months you can afford a couple thousand. Again, you really can. I don't know what your life is. It's a lot.

Your mortgage for Texas, isn't that crazy? I don't know how you guys are f***ing this up. This is going to be like a science experiment to figure this one out because mortgage, we're sitting at $213,000. That is not bad for this world. That is actually below the median purchase price for a home in the United States. You guys make, again, if we're thinking pre-tax, well above, you're double the median household income in the United States.

How are we f***ing this up? It is not a $2,000 thing over the course of six months. But what it could be are multiple $2,000 things over the course of six months. Stack, stack, stack, stack, stack forever. Yes. Well, I also think like,

Once you start, well, you know this because you're a financial expert, but you... Well, I mean, I just got out of debt, but... Congratulations to you. No, I'm saying I'm not a licensed financial expert. I am someone who got out of really bad debt, accumulated a quarter million net worth before I started my show. Like, yes, but I want to be clear, there is no license, but there isn't needed for this kind of conversation. I think the interest, once you get to really high debt, really starts adding up.

And I think like the inflation with the economy, that's also had an impact on us.

Inflation report just came out today. It was 2.4%. What the fuck are you talking about? Well, things just sort of cost more than they used to. They always will. Inflation always exists forever. You don't want deflation or stagnation. Inflation is 2.4% right now. We haven't had a bad inflation report in a year and a half. What are we talking about? I was just going to say we make the same amount of money and even though it's steadily... The same amount of money since when? Since...

Your disability hasn't been increased? I got out in 2018 and it's pretty much been the same. Pretty much been the same? What's the increase? What percentage increase? Maybe 1% every year? I don't remember what it was. If we're talking inflation at 2.4%, they usually do the Social Security increase every few years or so. They kind of boost it near inflation levels pretty close. I mean, depending. Sometimes it's a little...

Do you have all the information on inflation for the last couple years? Relatively, yes. When it peaked inflation, what, 2023? We were at 9.4. But it was on a steady decrease all of 2024, 2025 so far. Last year was the best year in S&P 500.

history this millennium because inflation rates were going down and Fed was cutting rates, which made debt more affordable. I think in general, not just like inflation specifically is something item, it is just overall in general. All the items we do, all the stuff we do consistently has been expensive. It costs more. That's how everything works forever except for TV's.

I mean, everything goes up. The cost of everything goes up. The cost of your labor goes up, so the cost of expenses goes up. It does, but we don't plan for that kind of style. Yeah, I think we just didn't adjust. You don't plan for money going up, which is what it's always done since the history of money? Yeah, who really plans for that, though? We just didn't adjust our lifestyle. People that are responsible? What?

I bet you've gotten an increase more than 1%. If we're being real. I don't know. I wish I... I don't know. I don't pay attention to that. So we know that inflation's bad, even though you don't know the percentage of what's actually happening. But you don't know what your income is? We know that the cost of things go up, but we don't know if our disability's going up? I know it increases every year. I just feel like... Okay, feel. I don't care about feel. Budget. Budget.

Why don't you budget? What do we budget? Do we budget? What's the conversation around finances in the household? We use Excel spreadsheet to pay the bills. Which, it can work, and for a lot of people, they prefer that, but for most people, honestly, it doesn't work because it's so manual that it requires putting in the time, putting in the work, and sometimes putting in the time, putting in the work is good because then you see the statements, but the automated process of a budgeting app is what is preferable. I don't care if you use mine, you can use anyone's. I prefer mine, I prefer the simple one, whatever, that's fine, but

It's the automated account connections and everything that is what is going to actually help versus you sitting down having to do it because we probably didn't stick to it, right? No. Exactly. And that's what always happens. Instead of just being able to open up and see what is actually happening for the sake of the month. What are the conversations around money in this house? The conversations of finances within us is just, go buy it. Well, okay. That's not exactly...

Yeah, we don't have a... We used to, I think we used to a long time ago had a budget of if you're going to spend anything over $100, anything over $100 needs to be between you and I in agreement. That was years ago before the kids. And we haven't done that in a long time. But that was something that we had that was going to be helpful. Now she and I, I'll throw myself in there, she and I are buying whatever we want over $100 without asking or discussing it with someone. We're just doing it. And then afterwards, we're...

hey, I bought this. And I'm like, are you serious? So what do we do in those instances then? Forgetting and moving on. Why? But that doesn't,

produce anything going forward. That's not going to get us anywhere. No, but that's what we've been doing. Is it to avoid confrontation? No, I don't think so. Then what is it? What's the logic? Let's hear the logic. If I spend money on stuff for the kids, like clothes or activities or holidays, and he spends...

He knows it's happening, yeah. He knows it's happening? Does he know how much? He doesn't know how much. Is there a reflection? Do we sit down and discuss how much at some point? Yeah, no, it shows afterwards when the boxes show up at the house. Yeah, that's when we usually talk about it. Do you talk about the monetary amount? Oh, I do. Oh, I do. Oh, I do. We bought a new gym beam and things that was crappy and stuff like that. Got home and then we're not even going to use it. And it was over $100, you know, so...

But we blame inflation instead of our inability to just have a conversation or sit down about it or not. I wouldn't say we don't blame. We do talk about money a lot. You kind of did. She kind of did. She did. It's one of the factors, I think. I think the bigger factor is you guys don't fucking talk. No, we talk a lot. Before you purchase. Oh, we don't talk before we purchase. Yeah, I would say that's a little.

little bigger of an impact. We talk after the purchases usually. But again, it's not always the best because I'm like, you didn't need to buy that. You don't need to buy that. Oh, it's already bought. Who wears the pants here financially?

None of us. I think we're both spenders. We are. We're both spenders. I'm a spender, but I also know how to budget. I allocate the amount of money that I'm allowed to spend. It's okay to be a spender. Just have any kind of knowledge into your financial situation. Again, I mean, just blaming inflation. It's on our way out. It's actions. For you, it's going to be actions more than anything. Again, literally this time, last year to now, 2.4%.

But I don't pay attention. I believe you. It doesn't feel like that, but I believe you. Feel. Feel. Because you want to spend more. If we're being honest, right? Well, yeah. I mean, who wouldn't want more of their money to spend or to control in the way that they want it? But yeah. When you guys got together, the finances. Yeah. Yeah.

Was one of you good? Both of you good? What did it look like? I want to see what you guys have been through in these 10 years finance related before we dive into this because I need to see who's where and what's happening. So we met when I was 19. He was 26.

And we were both in the Navy. I don't need the love story, but who's the... Where were... So there's finances. When we were there, I had a lot of debt. I had prior marriage, you know, obviously being in the Navy, you know, by myself first time, living in San Diego, going overseas, coming back to, you know, to the States. Boys on the boat, yeah. Yep, that's amazing. Lots of expensive...

purchases myself lots of things just to live. So I racked up a lot of debt before I married her. Did you know that? No. Really? No. I didn't. Because I knew that I was about to go to overseas into the Middle East where I was going to make a lot more money. And that's where the debt gets forgiven? That's where the goal was to hopefully pay off the debt before we were able to live together again after the marriage. So she knew about a little bit, but she didn't know all of it. It wasn't like I was...

intentionally trying to hide all of it and stuff like that. I was just like, hey, let me, let me, let me pay off what I can. So then, so then I went overseas to barn. I paid off $20,000 of the debt there, which was nice. You know, so coming back together, I had still a little bit of, of debt for myself still when we, when we, you know,

Got to live together again. Geographically together. Because I was stationed in Spain and he was stationed in Bahrain. Yeah, but what was your thought about the debt when you heard the debt? Because obviously we learned that. I mean, we only paid off the debt not horribly long ago the first time. So I'm assuming that part of the debt was some of it. Yeah. Who's been the accumulator of debt in the relationship? He came into the relationship with a lot of debt.

But after we paid off that debt, then probably maybe I've taken on more debt. But it's been pretty equal. I think we both have been spending a lot of the debt, putting everything in the debt. However, I think it's been a lot more with the children. You can't blame the kids. I'm not blaming the kids. But the thing is, high income earning households,

They can get even more than low income earning households because you have the ability on paper to qualify for more debt and you'll get yourself in a position that is just absolutely. Then you're going to put your kids in a horrible situation. You want to give them the life now. You want them to give them the experiences now, but you are going to put them in a situation where they are only going to see stress between mom and dad because mom and dad are finally going to have the conversation about money and it's going to go. It's going to be a blow up because, oh, no, shit.

We can't pay our minimum payments this month. I don't think that's ever happened. Happened. You're on the track to happening. I don't want that. I don't want the kids to be... If you want to take out a home equity loan to start paying off some debt or something, good luck with where the market's been overall. You can only do that so many times. You'd have to have a complete boom in the market to be able to keep pulling. Yeah.

So then where's like if we're maxing out our debt, debt to income is really bad. Where's our exit from debt besides bankruptcy at a certain point? It just becomes bankruptcy. Exolidation might not be able to apply. How are we getting out of debt? Only more recently. I think he's been more on board about switching some of the lifestyle things. I think it's hard for both of us to like.

I think we both needed to be fair. Like if I'm getting rid of something, he has to get rid of something. And so just agreeing on what to cut. What's your fun? What's your fun? Yours is the gymnastic whatever. What's your fun? That's my daughter's. Your fun is spoiling the kids. What's your fun? I'm a collector. I collect a lot of things. A lot of different things. I go through phases. So I've done movies, DVDs for the longest time when...

when they were still making DVDs and stuff like that. So I have a very large collection of that. Who's more motivated?

To get out of debt. Me, probably. Probably her. Why wouldn't you be motivated? I mean, we're reaching retirement. I'm motivated. Why do you see her being more versus you? I'm leading the conversation of fixing our finances. Yeah, but your conversation is only post-spending. I think there needs to be a lot of stuff that she needs to stop spending on and I need to stop spending on. What would you say she needs to stop spending on? Oh, clothes or, you know,

things for the kids that are not needed birthdays um Christmases I was trying to get things on sale like and then I don't know if you go to shopping centers in December they're insane they're so packed there's nothing left on the shelves what do you think he should start selling on? maybe like eBay all of like the old military memorabilia um

All right, well, let's see where the spending is. Guys, I'm going to go 3-2-1-go. At the same time, on go, I want you to give me...

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So what is going on with this card guys? - I think the first one's mine, right? - Oh my me! The one that's basically maxed out at 24,608 dollars and 43 cents. - Yeah, that's yours. - What the does that same balance? What are we doing?

It's an insane balance. Yeah. That's a disgusting balance. With the $1,757.25 of purchases, while only making the minimum through payment, if we could only make the minimum through payment, it's basically max out interest is accruing. We can't pay it off to save our life. Why the fuck are we purchasing $1,757 on here? Of all places, why? Why? Okay.

You seem like the reasonable one. You're the one that wants to get out of debt. You're the one that's pushing the households forward. You're the one that's starting the conversations. But you're also the one that's going to go blow up this card and purchase thousands of dollars on a card that can't be paid off that is a green interest. My son's birthday was last month. Oh, for f***'s sake.

And parties are really... Who gives a... I do. I want him to have a college fund. I want him to not have to go save mommy and daddy when mommy and daddy can't keep a roof over their head when he's in his young adulthood and has to all of a sudden sacrifice. Come on. We've seen this happen in life. I've seen people come on the show who are the parents that the kids have had to help. I've seen people who are the kids that have to help the parents. It's a birthday.

We can do... Young kids, right? I don't have one. Okay, but young kids, we all know young kids. You can do shit without it being bougie and crazy, and they will still love it. Okay? I mean, we're talking teenagers when they start to be like, um, what the f***? Okay? So it's like... Sure. Well...

I think they definitely snuck up on us. All of the payments stuff because we didn't plan for it. What snuck up with it? A birthday? The charges, the payments. No, just whatever. Just buying whatever. This is a purchase of a 37 to maxing out the card. How did that sneak up on us? I don't know. That's not a sneak up. That's not a sneak up. What do we mean sneak up? It's not Al-Qaeda coming behind you. What the fuck?

I just think that with all this stuff, the way we live and the way we do it is that we have our main debit card that we use, right, that we purchase everything. We get paid on that one. I get paid twice a month. She gets paid once a month. We use that money. Once it's gone, we switch to our credit cards. And that's whatever, you know, oh, hey, I got to get gas now because we're down to $100 left in our bank account. No! You guys do not get down to $100 in your bank account with your income. Yeah, we do. What are we doing?

We have all these bills. If you look at that, there's a lot of bills. If we have all the bills, then we're not having birthdays. We are having birthdays. No, no, no. We're going to McDonald's. We are going to McDonald's. For the birthday. And that's the one thing we're doing that month, that year. Yes, if we have bills that we can't pay and we have $100,000 in our checking account. We can pay them. No, every year, the thing is, every year she wants to have one child have a good birthday, right? One child? We select who?

No, it rotates between the children. Okay? And one child gets to have a birthday of something extravagant. A birthday party. Party, whatever it is. And the other one has like a family thing. The other child gets to have a family. So this year, my son, he took his three best friends to an entertainment place. All right? And we had to pay all that stuff there. All right? And that is more important than the household stability of our financial situation for the sake of their future. No, I just don't think we thought about it. We didn't include it. We just did it. I just think our household is really stable. Okay, bulls**t. Yep.

You have $100 in your checking account. I feel we're stable. You can't feel $100 in our checking account. Okay. Our house is stable for living and family and stuff like that. What she's talking about is- I'm talking finances. She's talking finances. That's what you're talking about. But even financially- She's not talking about finances. She's not talking about finances. Yes, I am. Financial, we're stable? Okay. We're not. This is my opinion, is that we have money coming in every single month, stable income that you can expect. $100 in a checking account. I know. I know.

I'm not saying that the spending is stable, but the income is. That's what it is. That's the problem. The income is coming in. Yes, I understand that, babe. But you have... The problem for us is that when we do it, we spend that money. That is not stable. Okay, well, agree to disagree. Okay, we... That's why he's here. That's why we're here now because it's not agree to disagree. How could you disagree with that? Hey, pookie. Hey, pookie.

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You're saying that financially we're instable even though we're making all the payments? Girl, your debt's going up. I understand that the debt is going up. I'm going to dad how you're making your payments because in order to purchase the things you want and in order to make the payments, I will give you an example. May I draw this for you? May I draw something? I'm going to have a little drawing exercise. Oh, great. Let's go back. We have a tough camera now. Hello, tough camera. Okay, let's say this is our income. Okay. Okay.

Okay, let's say that. And let's say this part's our min payments, okay? So this is our minimum monthly payments. In order to make that, and maybe let's say we're making that. I don't know. Let's go through. But you still want to, like, you spend the entire pie chart even though these are minimum monthly payments. How do we do that? How do we spend the full column? Well, we spend the full column. No, no, no, no, no. How do we spend the full column? How do we do that? How do we make that work?

If we want to spend this much, but we also have to unfortunately allocate that much to minimum monthly payments, how do we do that? I don't have the answer. That's why we're here. Well, the answer is we take this amount of spending right here and we put it on credit cards. Because if you put this amount of spending that is needed to go to minimum monthly payments, but we want to spend it on fun, you spend it on fun here.

you spend it on funding the credit cards in order to make the minimum monthly payment. If you were not spending on credit cards, you could not make your minimum monthly payments. If you did the same amount of spending you did on the debt, like on the credit cards that went up that you made minimum monthly payment on that pushed it to the max, if you put this on checking, you could not make minimum monthly payments. You're only able to feel like you make the bills paid

because you put fun on credit cards. Okay, that's true. That's true. So how are we financially stable? I feel like we're going into debt. We are. We are. Okay. We're not financially stable. That was a good point, actually. We're not financially stable. Well, okay. I still disagree. I do feel like we are financially stable. Help me out here. But I do want to hear where you're coming from. Oh, my God. No. Okay. Well. Sir, we have a financial insurgency happening. Put it down.

I mean, the fact of the matter is we both live...

way without our means. We have a lot of fun. We pay a lot of money towards fun, whether it be on the credit card or whether it be the debit card. I don't think we have a stable process to do anything. We just say, well, everything's on auto pay and it comes out of our debit. The bills are on auto pay. Yeah, it is. Which is, okay, that's that. But what I'm talking about, just in general, anything we do, whether it's groceries, the gas, the traveling, the whatever we're doing. Now, I will tell you, I will tell you, there is a lot of times when we are one person

Parent is with one child at their activity. The other parent is with the other child at the other activity. So we're not even together for dinner time. We're not together to do a lot of stuff. So we're spending double the amount of stuff things going through that. That happens a lot too. There's a lot of things that come into fruition for us that we just end up going, all right, just put it on the green card. Put it on the green card. All right, let me ask you a question. We know what your income is, right? $1,900. And that's basically what we saw last month. All right. Yeah, actually, basically identical. Yep. What do you think was spent on?

On mine or his? No, household. Oh. What was spent in a month? Yep, in the most recent month. I would say probably... The statements that we have. $14,000. Okay, and you?

14. Like total for the whole month, like how much is coming out? Oh, we get $11,000. Yeah, okay, yeah. Well, $12,000-ish is coming in. Yeah, it's over $11,000. I'll give you, it's like $13,000. How, if you are the disagreeer, how is that considered financially stable? If we're spending, you said $14,000. If we're spending $14,000 making $11,900, $12,000 on say, how is that financially stable? It's not financially smart, but it is stable as long as you can make the payments. No, no, no.

I need to correct this mindset because it's dangerous for the future. It is not stable if our debt is just building, building, building because then it gets to a point where all of a sudden the dam breaks. And we've been there. And that's when you did the consolidation because it got to the breaking point? We've never been to the breaking point. I don't know what you mean by that. The breaking point is the way that we have been, all the money that's been accumulating over everything.

Well, okay, I think we are to the point. The fact that I've almost maxed out my credit card and we don't have... No, it's at max. I mean, come on. You can go get a couple fries from McDonald's, but it's maxed. Right, well... And you've raised that. I guess we're near the breaking point, I guess, but...

I don't know. I don't. What? We're not. No, no. We are at the breaking point, Big. Okay. We are at the breaking point. That's why we're here now to try to hopefully get a grasp on this. Yeah, I do want to make changes. No, we need to make major changes. I agree. We need to make a lot of major changes. I agree. But we are at that point right now that we are literally needing to do this because we do not, we can't live, we're living outside of our payments. I agree. Okay. That is not financially stable.

Well, I just came from a really unstable, financially unstable household. And so to me, this is financially stable. No, that's great. No, this is extra money. And you know what that should do? I came from a financially unstable household for closure notices. You know what that did? That made me get my shit together. Why would you seeing financially unstable mean let's replicate that for my children?

I think our children have a really great life. They have a great life by you going into debt. Whenever my parents were able to send me to go do something cool, a summer camp or something, it was on debt. And then I saw that stack to the point where minimum fee payments could not be made, which meant the mortgage payment couldn't be made, which meant foreclosure notices. And we don't want, I don't want to get there.

But we're headed there. What do we do if one half of the relationship honestly thinks that, okay, we're not at the breaking point. We can continue going down this path, but the other doesn't. How are we able to combine that? What can we do? I don't think either one of us wants to continue on the track we're on. But you are not seeing the alarm sound like he is. Yes, I am.

Yes. I don't know about that because I'm the one that brought us here. I've heard your language though. Okay. I mean, we've all heard you talk in this conversation. I'm not trying to bully you. I'm not trying to stack up against you. I don't like when it gets 2v1, but what do we do when it gets to the point where he sees the wee woos and you're not?

Okay. And this has happened before. Really? Opposite. What do you mean? Where I was the one, you know, that wasn't seeing the, if you want to say, the bells and whistles, right? And she was the one going, hey, this is the situation. We're to that. And that's where we were able to come together, pay off the bills, pay off the debt, right, the first time. And it was nice. It was great. Snowball. Great.

We finally got on. Because I was not understanding it. I was just living. Just living. Doing what I want to do. So she got me onto understanding that. And here we are now, years later, and now it's reversed. I don't think it's reversed. It is reversed. It's reversed because you don't see the bells and whistles, as he wants to say. That's pretty cool. Okay, I don't think, I don't see the bells and whistles, but I do think we need to fix our finances. We do. Can we just agree on that? Okay, we need to, yes. We all agree on that. That's why we're here. What's the language behind it?

behind it is not a good, I don't feel like it's an emergency, but I do. Okay. It is an emergency. That's why we need to fix this because we do not have the way to live the way we're living. Although we do have more income coming in starting in June, July. No, that doesn't. Okay. Okay. No, because that's, that is that the problem though, is that that is what's coming in a little bit for you to go to school. All right.

But next year I am done. I am done working at the Navy. I am, I will not have that, that job anymore. All right. And I'm only going to get some partial more money back. Right. We don't know what my VA is going to look like. All right. So we, we have to change our entire lifestyle now before we get to that point. And oh, great. Now we're now I'm retired. Now, what are we going to do?

We cannot live and cannot do this stuff between now until I retire. We have to figure something out. Okay, I agree. But you agree on the sentiment, but you don't agree on the fundamentals from the sound of it. What fundamentally am I not getting? Are you serious right now, bro? That you think that this isn't horrible as long as we can make it in the minimum monthly payments, but you're pushing towards that edge. That's what you were pushing back on. You agree with the sentence. They're written on paper, right?

let's get out of debt. But you guys are not aligned on the fundamental of where we're at, what it takes to get there. No. I think we

- I think we are aligned on what it takes to get out of debt. - No, you say it, yes, but then look at your things that you buy constantly. I tell you all the time, just stop buying that, stop buying that, all right? Good example, right? Until I freaking did it, but the candle subscription, right? I wanted it, didn't need it, but I kept doing it. You kept telling me to cancel it. It didn't cancel until finally when we got to that point where like, now we got to start canceling stuff. But you're still buying stuff that is there that we do not need.

Constantly. You don't need to buy the children a million things of the same clothes, the same shoes, the same stuff. They need school. They need sports. But what they don't need is 18 pairs of freaking pants because you like the way they look. They don't have 18 pairs of freaking... I'm giving you an example. That's not a good example. Okay, pick something else that you know that I'm right on. When it comes to the children's clothes? No, just anything. In general, anything. Us. I don't know.

That's what happens all the time though. Okay. You buy stuff all the time. There's always something you buy and you're like, oh, it's the wrong size. And I tell you that all the time. It's the wrong size. This is the wrong stuff. It's the wrong measurements. It's something like that. You're like, oh, I didn't know. Oh, I thought it was going to work. Constantly. Okay. Constantly feels a little, all right, well, whatever.

I'm curious. Is that how every conversation goes? So what kind of happened, right, is, I mean, it was a little heated, and that's totally okay. The emotions are good. Like, nothing's wrong with that. You know, he kind of pushed back on you about some of the purchases, and you kind of did the thing that sometimes upsets me on the show, and like,

Like the audience isn't here, so they don't fully get the vibe and they've kind of called me out when I get a little upset at it. But it almost feels like, in a way, kind of when people do that to me when I push back on them, is they're just kind of saying that just to...

Have it move on. Before he said the beam was a bad purchase, I recognized the beam was a bad purchase. I had really good intentions, but then the actuality of it ended up being $150 we didn't need to spend on a second beam. Your intentions are always, always wonderful. I do have really pure intentions. Great intentions. And I do think that has partly led to our debt problem. It's your execution on the business. Okay, I agree. Okay. And for what it's worth, I mean, I'm not saying it's bad business.

to be giving or anything. It's not even at all. But there's lots of psychological analysis that shows that a lot of the acts of giving, especially on a reoccurring date,

is usually is also driven a little bit by selfishness because you'd get high dopamine levels through gifting. I think it's more about connecting. You love gifting and it just, you see the Lord and it feels really good. And it doesn't mean gifting's bad. I'm not saying that. I want to be very clear. But there are, it can very much be associated with

A selfless desire to feel the reward. I will tell you, we do love blessing others. That is one of our things. We bless others with it. But you guys can bless so much more people if we're not in a lot of debt. Okay, fair enough. Imagine the amount of blessings we can give. Okay, by the way, the real number, you said $14,000. You thought it was a little less than that. It was $15,116. You spent 27% more than came in. Okay. Wow.

How long can we do that? But I will say that our biggest spending moments and our biggest hit to ourselves is from December to May. That's all the birthdays. That's all the Christmases, the holidays. That's all the activities. That's everything that we deal with. Are we saying if I look last fall, last late summer, I'm not going to see you spending more than you make? No, you're going to see, but not 27%. You're going to see.

No, you will because I went crazy for this Christmas. This particular Christmas, I went way above and beyond. What's so special about this Christmas? It's, I don't know. When was the last, oh my God. I just tried something new where I started in July and I was trying to get things on sale. Again, it was a good intention. It was a great intention. I love your blessings. I was trying to get things on sale and I just was like, I'd buy it. So we wouldn't be spending a billion dollars in December, right? It was nice, but the fact, but the problem was that we, because it, I'll, we couldn't,

every freaking paycheck went and got them multiple things and multiple things. And our closet filled up extremely fast. And it was a lot. And here we are for hours and hours wrapping presents. It was a great Christmas for the children. It was too much. But it was too much. And every time a child puts a new...

want on their Christmas list, right? You go and read when you got it, right? I can only speak it myself as a kid. And we can all associate with our own things when we look back to Christmas. But, you know, I would probably operate on this if I had kids. I would operate on my own thing, right?

I don't remember all the little gifts I got for Christmas. What I do remember were like the cool special final gift, right? Like I remember getting like the first Xbox when that first came out and playing that with my dad on the day of Christmas. I have that memory. I remember getting like a castle that I could play with my little action figures in. I remember that. I remember like these very specific things and that's what's going to matter at the end. It's not just the little, it's not about the amount. It's

Okay, but I feel that it is my slash our responsibility to create the Christmas magic for the kids. Whether it's going to see the Christmas lights, drinking the hot cocoa, caroling. Hot cocoa is like five bucks though. Okay, I'm just saying, but it's like all the little things that go into each and every holiday. I put that on my shoulders. My first like 10 Christmases though, and I don't mean to keep bringing it back to me. I guess I do apparently. It's okay.

Well, it's basically poor people Christmas or at least living on debt. We went and we saw the things and like, but it was all on the cheap and the cider, you warm it up. I will tell you, I will say though, we both do come from, you know, a... Humble background. Humble background. There you go. So we both, you know, had it as best as my father could give me and my brothers and sister, you know, he gave it to us.

Yeah. It was a phenomenal time. Then you know bougie Christmas isn't required for a nice Christmas. But we wanted to give that to our children. We wanted to make sure that our children always had it better than what we came up with. Would they know if it's bougie versus if it's just nice? Because to me, cinnamon rolls, fireplace, family together, dogs hanging out, that to me is the nice Christmas. I don't know. With some Christmas music playing and some gifts to open and seeing each other enjoying it. That.

to me is a nice Christmas not having to go crazy they don't they don't recognize like the value dollar of it no they don't they have no idea they want the experience they just want the warmth of Christmas I know but we went we went crazy and then I specifically and then on top of that you know we got you know the big the big item you want to talk about right that they got the iPads we got them the iPads because their old iPads were dying because they were you know our crappy old iPads couple things with that you want them to be iPad kids I don't

Just because they have iPads doesn't make them iPad kids. They're heavily into sports and activities and they're smart. But the problem with that was because we bought them two new iPads. Did you get them iPads or iPad Pros or iPad Airs? They got two new iPads. iPad What? iPad What? So I got myself just iPad 10.2. I think it was whatever the newest iPad was. She got herself a new iPad. Because they had a nicer iPad than me and I'm in school and I use it every day. What?

Is it a competition? No, but I was like, why does a seven-year-old need a better iPad than me? And I'm literally doing... It doesn't, and neither do you. I mean, neither of you need... Well, I need it. I use it. But you already had one, it sounds like. Yeah, that's... Who cares if theirs is nicer? They just have the newer one. Yeah, exactly.

That's just time. That's just a timeline. Yeah, I ended up regretting my purchase anyway because I like my old one better. But that's just one example, right? Now, there's other things that are just, you know, from December to now is all the expenditures, all the stuff, right? It sucks. I got it. We're talking about now, we're talking about the past, let's talk about the future. How long does this card take to pay off if we only do our minimum payments without doing purchases, which we're incapable of currently? You do the minimums, but

You purchase three times the minimum monthly. But let's say we stop purchasing and we only do the minimum monthly. How long does this take to pay off? Maybe a decade. A decade? Years? I don't know. Five years. Six years. Okay. We're just going to do some quick math just for the sake of it. You will be 70 years old.

He's kind of already physically 70 years old. No, he'll be fully 70. Right. It takes 32 years. Wow. Oh my God. So last Christmas takes 32 years to pay off. Okay. That's a good perspective actually. Good to hear that. I didn't know that.

That's not good. The minimum monthly on this is $525.39. Let's go through the purchases on this. The interest this year, by the way, is already $1,000 on this. You've lost $1,000 just on one card. Yeah. Let's keep tally of the interest as we go throughout. Oh, that sounds fun. $963.17 on this one. Okay. Okay.

It's all bullshit. Except for two things, which I think was like two university things. You got university docs, college transcripts, and gas, and then dentists. Other than that, it's all bullshit. Top down, you see this? It's all bullshit. MJ La Cantaria, Bath and Body Works, TheChildrensPlace.com, Crunchyroll, Apple Bill, Glamour Eyebrows, You Break It, Bandera,

Texas nail... Double nails? Okay, we're double interrupting? Oh, no, the first one was lashes, wasn't it? I don't know. Um...

M-V-Y-B-A, childrensplace.com. Again, $211. Clothes for the kids. Okay. We've already been through the conversation. Yeah. Come on. No, the M-V-Y-B, that one, whatever, that's our son's baseball. It's the concession stand. I'm okay with that, and we'll put that into the budget because I truly believe in that kind of stuff. Flix Brewhouse, that's a movie theater, more Flix Brewhouse. Applebill, Applebill, Applebill, Applebill.

Clay Casa, childrensplace.com because we have to get a new pair of clothes once a week at a minimum, maybe five times a week. Who knows? Apple bill, apple bill, apple bill, apple bill. Botox and beyond. I tried Botox for the first time. And? I think it's nice. Yeah. I didn't know about it. If you can afford it. We did. You didn't even know? Well, I told him after. She came home with it.

I was away from my phone at the time, so she didn't have the ability to call me about it. But afterwards, when I got home with it, I was able to look at the stuff. That's when she told me. You know what's crazy? What? And that was a lot of money. That was a lot of money. You were seven years older than you, but...

He looks like 31, and he's never gotten Botox. Holy crap. He's never heard that in his life, but that's very nice of you to say. It might be because he's aged into it well. Maybe he looked old. Maybe he's looked 31 forever, but by the time he dropped 31, you know, other than the little grays, you know, dude has smooth skin. Yeah, he looks great. Well, thank you very much. That's wonderful. I'm going to write that one down. You should. Apple bill, apple bill. What are these apple bills? What are they? All right, can we pull up our phones? Pull up our phones. What's it?

On here we have Facetune. Why? And iCloud Plus. iCloud Plus is fine. This is your storage. You had some kid things and retake AI face selfie. Oh, come on. You're turning into a Facebook mom where you just have overly filtered Facebook pictures. Come on. Don't do that. Yes. I don't like those. Yeah. Nobody likes those. You're the only one that likes those. Okay. She did it to me. Okay. Don't pay for it because no one likes it. She pays $10 a month for it. What? What?

We haven't even gone through all of your YouTube and Patreon. I just didn't know that was $10 and it was costing money to make my Facebook crappy. Oh, okay. Thank you very much. You can't spend money. Oh, sorry. Fake names. Sorry. Well, the spending on there was a shocker. Crazy. And a lot to go through. Second Avery Federal, does this bring us to you? $20,000 one.

Buddy, it is not much better. At least it's not maxed out. It's a couple thousand from that, but it is borderline the same. And again, you only made the minimum through payment, but then $936 of spending with $238.63 of interest accruing. Why are we purchasing on a card that has accruing interest that we cannot fully pay off, that we can only make the minimum through payment to? Because we did not have the money in our China debit. But we're financially stable. Am I right, guys? Yes.

When I turn this page, how much of it is going to be bull versus necessities? I'd say half. Let's see. So what is going on with this card? It's only been stacking up, stacking up, stacking up. Nothing. This also takes 31 years to pay off without purchasing a single thing on it throughout that 31 years. Well, okay. What's your insights into his card, into his spending, into here? Do you ever see what's happening on here?

We don't see each other's credit card purchases. That's where you guys purchase all your shit. Yes, I will admit that.

In the past, yes. I have definitely used my credit card to purchase things such as my collection and hobbies back in the day because we have fun money. I'll start off with this. We have fun money that we set aside for ourselves that we can do whatever we want with the money. I'm okay with that when we're out of debt and have a fully funded emergency fund. How much are we setting aside for fun money? $100 a paycheck. You guys are spending way more than that. What are we talking about? For a paycheck, $400 a month total? Yeah.

For the household? But you guys are spending on miscellaneous bullshit. We calculated about $7,000 to $8,000, right? Or no, it was something like that. Well, you know, the goal was to... So you added a zero times two onto it? Well, we had our fund money, right? And that was something that we were able to use, right? So...

I'll tell you the way I worked back, you know, about a year or two years ago. Sure. Was I would spend all my money on whatever it is I'm collecting, right? However, you know, like memorabilia that I want, a couple of hundreds, a thousand dollars, right? And then I'd go, well, if I'm missing a hundred, two hundred, I would use the credit card probably, right? Or the Kickstarters that I would back, you know, so that way that I get my, whatever I'm backing, right, down the road. What do you...

I don't even know what Kickstarter is. I'm sorry. I know what Kickstarter is. I'm a board game player. We play board games. We're nerds. And that's Kickstarter? There's a lot of the ones that were coming. I like board games too. They were coming on Kickstarter, but they cost some money. How often are we doing this? It wasn't too often, but it was...

a lot that was backed up and came out at one time. So there was things like that where I would put yours on my credit card. Okay. Um, I, you know, and that's all stopped since then, you know, but now it's more just, what are we going to use on it now? Her, her, her credit card or my credit card. We don't get, we don't have a, we see, we know what we're buying. Cause Hey, I need you to buy, um, groceries to put it on the green card. Like that's the stuff we know. Like, Oh, I put the groceries on the green card, you know, and the green card.

Sorry, credit card, yes. We started by a red and a green card. That's when we know we're f***ed, come on. Well, that's the problem. We need to go to groceries or we need gas or we need something, go put it on the green card. Card assorted, just like a ring of cards. Yeah, well, that's what it was. But as far as the individual, each item, we're not tracking it. We didn't have a way to, well, we didn't really care to see what it was. We didn't know what was putting on each other's things, unless something just came out and that's what it was.

Obviously, just resources-wise, you guys should use the Fizz card. It's usually geared towards college, so it actually kind of works for you. But it only lets you spend what's in your checking account. So it works as a debit card. It's called the Fizz card, but it only lets you spend what's in your checking account. So you can't overspend like this. So it works like a debit card, but it still builds credit, and you get rewards like a credit card. I don't know. I've never heard of it. We'll get you connected with it if you guys want to use it. I'll also give you three free therapy sessions. The sounder minus what the audience gets is what I get. If you guys want to...

Talk to a therapist through this. I highly recommend it. And if you want to do anything, this is where I hand out free stuff. Woo! If you ever want to do anything that's not all manual labor in retirement, I'll get you a course career certification if you want to start looking at IT or anything like that. So whatever you want to do. Whatever you guys need, we're happy to connect you. But before then, let's look at the spending. You said about half? No, about 75% bullsh**.

Taco Bell, Panda Express, Krispy Kreme, Auntie Anne's. It's also just horrible for you. At least you look like you stay fit for the military. But my goodness, it's all just bad. Entertainment Hub, Chipotle, McDonald's, Little Caesars, MVYA, eBay.com, Fling.com. Fling? Fling. That sounds like a fun name. No. I don't know what it is. I don't know.

Hey guys, always ask me, Caleb, what do you invest in? And honestly, I keep it pretty boring. Take a look at this. Take a look at this. This is my investments right here. And this is why you got to follow me on Blossom if you want to see just that. A couple weeks back, I stumbled upon this social investing app called Blossom and thought, all right, let's give

Let's give it a try. And it turns out it's actually really cool. And to be clear, they're not a brokerage. Blossom is a completely free social media platform. They're not your typical investing app. It's social, meaning you can follow exactly what I'm investing in and you can check out my portfolio in real time and even discuss strategies with me and other investors.

There's no guessing games, just clear transparency. So if you're curious about how I'm investing or just wanna get smarter with your money, download Blossom right now and you can follow me @calebhammer. I'll be sharing my exact portfolio breakdown, investing tips, and even responding to your questions. It's totally free, super simple, and way more fun than just guessing stocks alone. So hit that link below, join me on Blossom, and let's grow our money together. Seriously, right now, you can actually see what my portfolio looks like today.

It's not. So $105. $105. Oh, FlingCon. I remember. That's a board game convention. Board game convention. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, so it's the opposite of getting pussy. Oh, God. Oh, my God. No, I love board games. That was funny, but no. Yes, there's a convention coming up for the board games that we're looking at. Yes, I purchased the tickets. That made me a little... I purchased the tickets now. It's coming in July, so I was able to get them. All right. All right.

Okay. Yes. And then Schlotzky's. Thank you, babe. You're welcome. Schlotzky's. That's a good place. Yeah.

Okay, so you guys go out to eat a lot. We do. Why? Because we're not always together all the time. It doesn't matter, get some sammies. Some sandwiches at home. Well, we don't. We're lazy. You don't need to be together for that. I'm lazy. Okay, but we either get to choose lazy or financial security in terms of this case. If you guys want to be lazy, totally chill with it.

And we can just like, I'll be like, okay, go on your way. You can live the lazy lifestyle. I'm okay with it. I will even support it. Because if you, I want to support however you want to live life. It will end in disaster. No funded emergency fund. You know, potential foreclosure notices. It'll be, you can live that. We can choose lazy. No. Or we can choose financial security, actually grinding down, bringing some discipline to this.

I agree, right, with this. The fact of the matter is, like, we didn't. We didn't do that stuff, right? Chicken, salad, sandwiches. So cheap, so easy. Now we're at the point where we are doing a lot more eating at home. By meal planning, she's come up with a great way. I hope, but I mean, I have the most recent spending statements. How much do we think we spent on fast food in the last month? Oh, $800. I'm just giving you a rage. It's a lot of money, $800. Ridiculous amount of money, probably. Yeah, we spent way too much. A lot more than we should have probably. What do we think?

What do you think? In one month, I would say about $400. Because groceries every week is $300 to $400. And then we also eat out. Fast food, $400. What do you think? Yeah, I'd say about $1,200. What? For food? No, going out to eat. Yeah, yeah. I would say that. $400, $1,200. Where is the difference here?

Do you just not know her spending or she thinks you spend a lot? What is happening? Maybe I don't know how much we're eating out. I know we're eating out a lot. I just don't know what the price looks like. But how are we so separated? Because that's actually kind of concerning. It's not that, oh, you don't know the number. My concern here is that we are so far apart on what we think is happening that how can we ever budget as a household –

So how is there so much separation here in terms of what you think is going out to eat spending? Well, because every time we go out to eat, it's between like $40 and $100. So I'm just thinking if you're going out multiple times a week, it adds up really quickly. So in one week, I bet we would spend $400 on going out to eat. Is that not insane? Oh, God.

I mean, it's not good. So she might be right on that one. I'll give you that. I'm probably way lower. I don't know. What is it? I think $800. $1,542.74. I win, but at what cost? At the cost of being able to make three minimum monthly payments on one of these Navy Federals. That's a lot. Yeah. Interest charged on here this year so far, let's add to the tally, $9,013.59. Wow.

What was that? That was the interest? It's the interest that has accrued this year so far in this. So we're at approximately $2,000 for just two cards we looked at that you guys have lost this year so far. Oh, $900. I heard $9,000. Oh, I may have accidentally said that. $900. $913. Okay. $59. All right. Okay. Which is insane. Okay. I mean, I'm being told you guys also told Lindsey beforehand that, like, the kids are picky eaters, so eating out is easier for them. It is. It is. It is.

Again, we went lazy. We went lazy. But I do really think that this is a change. That's just going to fully enable that forever. No, but I think this is a change we can make to buy groceries and cook more at home. It certainly could be, but we spent $1,500 last month, even though you said we're already making changes. No, the changes only started within the last couple weeks. That's what always happens before people come on the show. They're like, I'm going on the finance show, so I'm going to look good for a second. And then they maintain it for like a month and then...

So it's like if you guys actually stick with it, the median guest on the show pays off $10,000 in 10 months. And you guys have a better income situation than most people in this country, most people on the show. So you guys can rock this if we actually discipline. Obviously, we'll get you the cookbook. Well, you don't even need the budget-friendly meals. That's just for people that make the median. You could double that. Your grocery spending allotment can be great. Like, I don't know.

I would like the cookbook. Well, we'll get you a cookbook. Thank you. We're having some weird printing issues with China right now because, you know, everything going on. But yeah, we'll get it to you. Okay. Another Navy Federal. What the f***?

Oh, this looks like maybe a car. It's a $38,309.40. Oh, that's a home equity loan. At 7.45%. That's barely even keeping up with the market. Debt consolidation we took out in 2023. We did. We did.

We took that out, paid off all the credit card debts and stuff we had. Obviously not the vehicles and the house, but we used that to pay it off. And then we just did. We didn't change our life. At that moment, when we paid it all off, it was nice. It was great. But we did not change any of our lifestyle at that moment for moving forward with it. So here we are now, even back up to what we were when we had that consolidation. And the house, do we even know what it's worth today? $317,000. $100,000. We do. We do.

How are we so on the dollar? Well, when we pulled the statements, it gave us the home value at the bottom. When was that? That was about a couple weeks ago. So it's got about $100,000 in home equity, but with the loan, I only consider it like $66,000 or $60,000. And this means all the debt we're looking at today is only a year and a half old.

Yeah, sort of. That's insane. You know we've talked about $44,000 of credit cards so far and we're not even halfway through. I don't even know if we're a third of the way through. I don't think we are. And they're saying that your cards are completely paid off after you took out this? Guys, that's insane.

That's insane. That's not a, that, okay. Even more than before, I'm actually convinced that this is not sustainable because I don't think this is sustainable for just another nine months. I think we're there. We're basically at the peak. This home equity was just, that's crazy. Okay, so this was, we have a balance of $38,309.40. Okay.

Okay, and it is a minimum monthly payment of $504.56. Interest this year so far, $967.70. We're at about $3,000 gone from you guys. Yeah. These numbers are going to require that I take a tum. Okay, it's good for your health. Is it? I don't know. Stress? Stress of your debt? Sorry. Okay.

You guys didn't even have car payments at the time of taking out that loan? We did. We did? We did. We didn't put any of the money towards the cars because it went to all the other stuff. Did you have car payments? Yes. We did. Okay. We each have a car. I think so, yeah. Yeah, we had car payments at that time.

A Chase Amazon card. Oh, for fuck's sake. Here we go. That was me. So we live right next to a distribution center. You can like practically see it from our backyard. We can see it and honestly, when we need something, we order it, right? It comes right away. What's right away? Like,

Like within, like less than a day. I can order something right now if I really want. And if it's something that's a popular thing or very quick to do, I can have it right tonight. Us too normally. That's just Amazon in a big city. Without driving away and going to a Walmart. Same day delivery is how Amazon works for most things for major cities. I don't think it's because you live next to a distribution. It's because you have a distribution center in the city you live in. We use it a lot.

We use that ability to buy a lot of things from Amazon. Which gives us the, honestly, again, click, click, click, click, click, the amount of resistance that there is, the friction between purchasing something on Amazon is so low that it's just probably getting you guys, especially using the logic that you use of the distribution center, even though that's just like what we all do in major cities. It's like, that's just making you spend more than you even would, if we're being honest. $408,000, only the minimum payment made, of course.

New balance, $3,292.27, $63.22 of interest accruing, $406.87 of purchases, and a $96 minimum fee payment. Now it's gone up because the balance went up.

Do you guys share the same Amazon Prime? Yes. Okay. Someone pull it up for me, please. Because it's Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon. 200. We've had a late fee this year. Oh, okay.

Oh, for f***'s sake, neither of us even know this. For which one? Amazon card. This was before the automatic payments. Why weren't automatic payments happening? We did not set it up when we first got the card, or during the setting of the card. We were just going through our Excel spreadsheet, going there, logging into the account, paying it off. There was a point when, yeah, I do remember that. Why? Why?

We just didn't set it up. After that situation, we paid the late fee. We did pay the late fee. And then we got back onto the track of paying the minimum payments. And then we did set up the automatic payment for it. So that is now on an automatic payment. But we just didn't do it back then. Oh, for f***'s sake. Okay. We have...

I don't even know what the f*** this is. Stakes for outbound. 100-piece green artificial stakes. We have dogs that are digging and stuff like that, so we bought some fake turf to hide the mud areas. Zone protects no-hold digging. I see. Valve box thing. More cover things. Magnet door anchor. Anchor gym door anchor. Stuff for the home. Anti-fog cleaning kit.

plastic drop cloths i feel like guys who i recognize this kind of amazon and i think we've all been there here and there this is the go buy anything bull amazon this is the i need this i need this i need this this is the all within a few days an easy car seat buckle it's like we need everything throat drops fit simply resistant loop

Sharps container, gymnastics bar. There that is. Sticky card plug. Sticky card plug.com.

I don't know. Oh, it's the fly thing. Yeah, fly traps. Salt and pepper. More artificial turf stuff. So we're really booking that up. Penguins for kids. Penguins in Antarctica. My son had a school project. The original stuffed animal. That was a school project. Penguins National Geographic. Go to the library. That's a good experience for kids, isn't it? Yeah. Penguins, the ultimate guide. So we're just buying all these penguins books permanently. But now we know about penguins now.

Lots of information about penguins. 180 pocket card binders. Explore my world penguins. Pevelin two-pack dance ribbons. Novelty place 10-piece dance.

Uh, gymnastic thing more, there's more turf stuff and gymnastic shirt and 12 piece. Do we understand our spending here guys? Like even if yes, I can see a lot of this being justified. This is look at the number that is adding up. And if we're going through it in your gut, how many of these things are like, we're like, okay, if we didn't purchase that, it's not the end of the world.

There's going to be probably a handful, yes. I will agree with, yes. Shiny, metallic things. A lot of it, yes. I will stand up for a lot of the stuff that we have bought because it's what we needed and stuff like that. Yes, I'm okay with that. But there's some stuff that probably, yes, we probably didn't need to get. It was a good one. I can logically see a lot of purchases here. But I know for a fact as we go through there, whether or not if we look back and we're like, okay, I could have lived without it.

There was a lot of it because all I know is we've lost $229.11 in interest this year so far on this card. We've had a late payment on this card. The balance is only going up. The minimum monthly payment is only going up. We are losing more and more and more, and our minimum payments are getting to a place where if you want to continue your lifestyle with these minimum payments, you're going to have to pay more.

Mathematically, it's impossible. Again, we both have the access to that. We both can do exactly what, buy what we want at the moment that I want to buy it. It's a 23% interest rate, the things that you're buying. So that's, you're paying an extra 23% fee on everything you're getting. Honestly, if you want to look at it that way. I didn't, makes sense now, but I didn't think about that way. More Amazon purchases. This is, it's brutal. Yeah.

And you're probably, you're getting a 5% cashback, but you're paying 23%. Right. So it's like. It's not worth it. Yeah, you're losing 17. This is priorities at that point, you know? Mm-hmm. Well, priorities are all messed up. Yeah. I don't, I don't agree with that, but. Go on. I don't think my priorities are fucked, personally. What do you mean, financially or? Financially. I am not talking about the way we're doing it.

or family-wise together. I'm literally just talking about financially. Financially, we are...

Financially, we have not been doing it. We have not been working the stuff. No, I don't think financially we're f***ed. That's all we're talking about. It's so fixable, though. Literally, you just have to make lifestyle changes. No, we're here. I know. But we didn't. We didn't make the fixes. Okay, but we can. We didn't make the changes. I feel like financially f***ed is having no money coming in and all the money coming out. All the money's going out plus 24%. Okay, well, that's true. Financially f***ed is... Okay, okay.

Listen, again, higher income people can get to a worse place because on paper you can qualify for more debt getting yourself in a worse hole than a lot of people. Which I think we have done because that's where we got the Amazon card. That's where we got the other credit cards, the rooms to go, which we bought furniture with. If you say it's so easy to get out of debt, why haven't we? Why last time we got out of debt we had to take equity from our home? If it's so easy, then why are we here? Okay.

I didn't say it was easy. I don't think that worked. I said it was fixable. She said fixable. Okay. If it's fixable, then why haven't you?

We don't get that nail and hammer. We didn't change our lifestyle. Yeah, I think it's a lifestyle issue. It certainly is, but if it's fixable, why aren't we fixing it? I think we just needed to both want to fix it, and I think we're finally at the place where we both want to fix it. I don't think you actually want to experience things because you would experience it if you wanted to experience things. I don't know what you're talking about. I certainly hope so. This is going to be hard as it...

Go on? Nope, sorry. The synchrony card is at $3,436.70 with a minimum repayment of $185.00.

What's going on with this garden? Which one is that one? This furniture. Oh, furniture. So I had a surgery last year. Situation on my shoulder. So one of the things I was recommended was getting a recliner. Because his arm was in a sling for six months. You find a recliner you can sleep in, right? We don't have recliners. We have a couch and the bed and stuff like that. So I went ahead and bought that. We also renovated our daughter's bedroom. She was a toddler. We've done a lot of renovations to her house.

Okay. Over the years. If you cash flow, I'm okay with it. Okay, but with... We're debt flowing. We didn't. Well, a lot of it was. With Rooms to Go specifically, we... Paid for her big girl furniture. Yeah, her entire bedroom set of everything that she needed for the big girl stuff. So that was under the conclusion. The recliner and... That's it. That was it, yeah. Now, I will say...

Looking back at it now, the recliner was a lot of money. Yes, the recliner is a great chair. I ain't going to lie. The chair is phenomenal. It's massaging. It goes back. It's electronically. It's amazing. Could we have gone with a smaller one and a cheaper one? Maybe. But I'm going to tell you right now, my mindset was set on that recliner. And I do think she did show me another recliner that was cheaper, but I didn't like it. The thing is you're in an income situation where you should just be able to get that. But you're living a life around it that makes those purchases impossible.

Well, that's what we did. Yeah, I think the interest rate is the highest on this one than all the others. No, the interest rate is zero. See, we don't even know. I thought it was 35%. No, it's zero. On the furniture? Yes. Did you see that?

Dude, the thing is, it is right now zero. For the vast majority, it's zero percent Intel paid off. If we don't pay it off. If we don't pay it off, then that's what we're talking about. Well, for $629, whatever that purchase was, that expires in about a year.

The interest-free period. The $2,713 and $92, those ones never expire. Those ones are until paid off, which as long as you make your minimum monthly payment, you're a zero. It'll probably bump up to like 30% sure that $629. I guess we got to pay that off. But your minimum monthly payment is just another addition to the stack. It's $185. And we have in the note, I mean, I don't know if you were there for this part of the call, but she specifically said to Lindsay that you milked

your recovery. Oh, I did. He did and he'll admit it. I will admit it. I milked it. I took the surgery, everything I could with it, right? I made sure I relaxed. I made sure I was, you know,

How are you doing health-wise? Taking it easy. I'm doing as good as I can for somebody who's about to retire. No, he is literally breaking. Okay, I will say he milked that, but in general, his whole body is breaking. Do not let this man fool you. Constant back pain, constant shoulder pain. He actually, I think, needs another shoulder surgery on the other side. On the other shoulder.

Again, they're covered by the military. Yeah, that's nice. Great. It's wonderful. But again, my body is breaking. I mean, he's been wearing the duty belt for over 20 years and standing watches. Why'd you want to go so long past the three years?

Three years. Because you've served for a decade, right? Okay, yeah. I'm at 20 years now. So why did I want to go so long? Yes, 30. Yeah, 20 years. Why have we decided to go so long? Especially with, you know, starting the feeling of needing surgery and all this stuff. All right, let's be honest. Making videos sounds really fun until you actually try to make one.

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My dad was an army guy, right? So he did 10. I wanted to do more than him. At about that 10-year mark is when we got together. And at that time, I wanted to get out probably my entire career. Probably every single re-enlistment, I wanted to get out. But I just stayed because whatever. Hey, I'm going to stay for a little bit longer. I can do it for a little longer. And then we got together. She was in the military. I was in the military. We stayed together. We got to that point where now...

you know, okay, 14 years now. Okay, great. What are we going to do? We're going to stay in. She got out. And I'm like, okay, well, I guess I'm in it for the wrong. Well, at that point in time, I was an Intel retire. All right, now I'm done. I'm done. I'm, I am done. How often are you away from the house, like deployed? Um, it, it,

Not away from the house anymore. I did go away for a whole year. Year and a half. A year and a half to Poland. I got stationed in Poland for the year and a half and that was about 2021, 2022. So I was gone there. So when I came back in 2022, the end of 2022, that's when all the stuff, we started buying the cars and the stuff like that, renovations of the house, things like that. So yeah, that was the last time I was gone for the longest. Since then, I'm not going to be gone except for, you know,

Are you going to do anything afterwards? What do you want to do?

You don't have to, of course. No, I don't have a drive anymore or a desire of what I want to do after the military. What I want to do is support her now because she's been supporting me and moving with me. So for her PA program, whatever program she gets accepted into, obviously we're going to have to move to or stay here in San Antonio, hopefully. So if we end up moving, then I will find a job in that area for something I want to do. You have a YouTube channel. I do have a YouTube channel.

Really? But it's not, it's, you know, it takes a while. What do you do? Yeah, it's brutal. I play board games. Oh, I love it. I play board games, which I will tell you, a lot of my money also went into my setup, you know, so I understand the system and how it goes. That's a bad way to do it. Well, that's what I did. And it's in my extra bedroom. So, you know. I'm okay with that. It's just the people that throw all the money in our front. It's just,

I learned the lesson the hard way. I tried my stuff. Well, at least you had the budget to do it. Well, at the time, probably, but obviously now, looking back, I didn't. So, yeah, I have the YouTube. That would be nice to do, but that ain't going to be a career. That's not going to be something I can make money in. I know they're very generic, but I'm a big Risk and Monopoly and Catan man. We like Catan. Unfortunately, no one will play Risk with me because everyone hates it. Same with Monopoly, but I love Catan still. Catan is great.

Okay, I have a Wells Fargo card. What's going on with this? This one looks like this is a 0% as well. Yes, so that one, our last, was it last year or the... It was last summer. Last summer, in the middle of the hot heat, our AC completely broke and went to crap.

And that was literally eight months after the... Why wouldn't you guys have an emergency fund though? You guys do so well. Well, we didn't. So here we are, you know, literally eight months after the warranty went away, which we didn't know that there was an extension or anything we could have done, right? So it went away and they're like, oh yeah, you're eight months past it. You can't do anything about it. So we had to buy a whole new one, right?

In the middle of a hot, hot summer, she found, and she did all the work on this one, she found Wells Fargo, who was able to give us a good deal on that as best as possible. With 0% interest. Yeah, for 72 months, but you're not making the payments necessary to pay this off in 72 months. The minimums of payments are too small for that.

I think as long as we continue to pay toward it, we won't ever have an interest rate on it. I think if we missed a payment or something like that. Yeah, you'll get a penalty if you miss a payment. Yeah, it'll be really high interest rate. And of course we've missed a payment on the Amazon card, so it's just like historically looking. It makes me a little nervous. That is one of the ones that's on our radar that is make sure we always pay this one first. Yeah.

So it's something of our knowledge. Minimum fee payment, $67.42. Five years to pay off. So we're going to have a minimum fee payment for five years. It's not a huge minimum fee payment, but it's stacking across everything. Of course, that is five years to not have one f**k up. And that f**k up, by the way, it can be, not you guys forgetting, because you have it on auto, but accidentally having less than $67 in your checking account and the payment bounces, then boom, f**k.

And we know we get down to 100 often. So this is not risk-free for five years. I don't want us to think that this is just boom, set, done. No, I didn't think about it that way. That's true. I didn't think about it that way. That's a good way because I would not have thought about that until it happened. And if that does hit, we're looking at 29% interest on that. It's brutal. Cherry, what's cherry? That's just a medical cost.

Okay. So something that wasn't covered by the military? Right. We're looking at $3,263. Minimum monthly payment, $251. No interest. Okay. Just add it to the minimum payment pile, right? Yep. Yeah.

Here we are. We have a Ford Escape 2023 at a 7.39% interest rate. Especially taking into account depreciation. Certainly not keeping up that money in a marketplace. So you're losing money overall. Yes. Okay, so Ford Escape. We owe $25,056.15 with a minimum monthly payment of $606.68. Okay.

That's a brutal minimum monthly payment. Not a great interest rate. It's not like a minimum monthly payment until it's paid off type of interest rate. I wish I could see how much went to interest and how much is charged interest this year so far to add it to the pile. But I don't think I'm going to get that. Okay, so what do you think it's worth? I think it's worth around $22,000. I'm seeing actually $27,000. Oh, great. A rare case...

where it's had value a little bit. Have you thrown in, how much did you put down on it? We did a trade in value. I had a Nissan Rogue 2017. So that's probably why. That's why it's allowed you to keep it. We'll point out that I'm going to tell you that at that time when we bought that car, her Rogue at that moment, the entire, it was paid off, but the entire AC in it during the summertime frame broke. That's a,

Relatively okay fix, though. Well, we decided at the moment, okay, we're going to trade it in, right? Because we've got some value on it. And we'll get her a brand new car that we won't have to worry about this come next summer and next summer and next summer. So we went ahead and bought that purchase, right? And I had never had a new car. She's never had a new car. I've always had like beaters or things that I could pay in cash. But there is a separation. There's a middle ground. Yeah. We can get a $15,000 used car and it's okay. Well, no, again...

First time she's had a car that wasn't a beater or a used car or something. So we went and we splurged. Obviously, but it's because you guys are really just splurging everything you do in life. And cars are not a fucking cheap thing to splurge on. Right. See that now.

Yeah. But I don't care if we come from being up cars. Math is math is math is math. It's not a feeling thing whether or not we get a brand new car. I'd suggest until we fully get out of debt, which for what it's worth, a year and a half ago when you got this car, you were kind of out of debt. But this kind of put us back into debt again. So it's like it's a weird situation. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. And it just adds an intense minimum monthly payment. Yeah. If you think my monthly payment's bad, can't wait for you to see his truck. I can calculate-ish kind of how much has gone to interest this year so far.

Oh, his truck? Great. Yeah. To lug around all your, I don't know, fucking predator drones? I don't know. What do you need a truck for? We used it this week for tree branches we cut down. So actually the truck is coming in great. Yeah, but you could have rented a truck for that one time thing. Yeah, but you never know when you're going to need something. So the truck is coming in handy a lot. And you can rent a car. The truck is coming in handy. Like that. It was nice. And we're in Texas. I'm going to say it. We're in Texas. If you don't have a truck, you're wrong. Okay. Okay. Okay.

If you don't have a minimum payment that you can't afford in a car that you just use to haul groceries once a week, you're wrong. I'm also wrong. Yeah. I'd rather have a car that goes fast. Well, I don't. Well, you don't have kids yet either. I like to have them. It's true. You're right. But mine fits more people anyway. And it goes faster.

Mine's nice on the highway. What do you drive? Tesla Model X. Oh, that's nice. Can't get a Cybertruck. It also drives for me. I'd buy a Cybertruck. Too small on the inside. See, that's why I bought a Ford. Yeah. Well, it's about as small as a Ford on the inside. Still too small for me. It's a nice truck. Okay. Well, you've lost $462 in interest this year so far for me. Okay. Or for this car, for your car. Yeah. Okay. So our grocery hauler.

The truck. Oh, good. A minimum payment of $1,229 to go to a military base. What the fuck are we doing? This is insane. Come on, guys. This is crazy. I just got back from overseas. We only had the one car. I needed to get something. Get a car. Get an SUV. I don't care. It doesn't matter. Get a used truck even. It doesn't matter. I got back. We did go look at trucks and stuff like that, the used ones, car maxings like that. Nothing was catching my eye. We went to Ford. Who cares?

Well, we carried at that time. Obviously, this is a great truck. It's a brand new truck. It was the first time. I just got back. I needed something immediately. We got it. And look at the interest rate on that is extremely low. 1.9. 1.9 interest rate. So we took the opportunity. How much did you put down?

I don't remember off the top of my head. I don't know. Maybe a couple thousand. Yeah. It's appreciated by $1,000. Well, no, no, more than that. But you're underwater by $1,000. It's not crazy, but... We did put some down. I don't remember what the price was. But again, I got back. I got the vehicle really quickly. And we actually needed it immediately as soon as we did it because we were going...

traveling and something, and it worked out phenomenal. And we drive up to Amarillo a lot. I'm sure it did. But again, when I need a big truck, I rent it, and it doesn't cost me $1,229 a month. I'm going forever. I'm okay with the interest rate. However, the value of this is going to go down substantially further, quicker. Especially when we get closer and closer to a normal car market. Okay. Well, that's a nice truck.

Okay, great. I prefer financial stability, personally. I don't know. Maybe it's just a preference thing. You disagree? No, I'm not disagreeing. It's in the past. It's already happened. Yeah, but you can sell it right now. And I would. I don't see that happening. Well, this is what we talk about sacrifice. I would sell both cars. Sell it and get a used meter? Yeah, a 20,000 hour truck will still be good.

It doesn't need to be the pretty truck that all the guys jerk off to at the stoplight. It doesn't matter who gives a if we're talking utility, because that's what you've bragged about it being used for. Okay. Then be a real man and just get a truck for the utility and not to goon to.

I'll look into it. I mean, I look into it. Guys, we can cut our debt and minimum payments like crazy by you selling your car because you have an equity position. You sell in your car and we can borrow the difference or even just trade it in. You get a twenty thousand dollar car. You get a fifteen thousand dollar car. Great. We've just cut this part of the debt substantially, which is a substantial part of our debt.

Maybe. Guys, it is so worth it mathematically. And this is just, we're just talking sacrifice for the sake of house. If we want to do more things for the kids, cool. Sacrifice the car. Like, come on. $20,000 is not going to be a bad car. This is going to have some miles on it. It might have like five-year outdated internal screens. It's not bad. Never thought about that. We can take a look at that and see if that's something that happens. Please do. Because $1,229...

That's a disgusting minimum monthly payment. Even at the interest rate. Actually, if you take into account the interest rate, that's a disgusting minimum monthly payment because that's with a low rate. The truck is taking 11% of our income on a monthly basis. 11% is just so it can sit in the driveway the majority of its life. We'll take a look at it. We'll look at it. And that's not a push it off to the side. I hope so. We'll legitimately take a look at that and see. I really do hope so.

It's more the minimum fee payment that terrifies me. Okay. Just imagine what that could be doing towards our future, towards whatever. I mean, I had a note that I kind of read at some point towards the beginning that said you guys want to go to Disney. That could cash flow us to Disney pretty quick. That is the goal is we want to get to stabilize so that way we do have family trips once a year. Priorities. Truck or Disney? Which one's more important? If you had to pick right now, truck or Disney?

I mean, a family trip would be wonderful. Then let's do that because this can cash flow a Disney trip in a few months. Never even thought about that, honestly. And again, that's why we're here because we're not the experts. We're the experts of...

I was like, where are you going with that? I don't know. We're the experts of not being expert. We have a mortgage, $213,077. Love the rate, 2.75. It's wonderful. We financed it back when we had a home equity loan of 7.5. Yeah, well, that too. Minimum monthly payment, $1,290.64. Of course, now we add the additional monthly payment of 504. Equity, but...

And then, of course, we have nothing to show for it because all the debt is racked back up. Actually, let me get back to that truck. I know it's a bit... I want to get this interest. Sure. I'm curious, too. This one's lower. Of course, we know the interest. The vast majority is going to principal. This year so far, we are talking, well, because the balance is so big, $262.80. All right. It's good to know.

mortgage so yep okay let's see what is going to interest let's add it to the interest column interest on this so far one thousand nine hundred fifty three dollars and twenty cents this year okay we are expected of course in a 30-year loan to have more interest hit up front same with cars and everything earlier in the loan more is going to go to interest than principal okay is that all you're down

I think so, yeah. Debt, I believe, yeah, going through that's what we all are able to calculate, put together. Okay, this year so far, $5,752.48 has been taken from your hands in just interest because you guys are holding the debt. Sounds like a pretty good chunk of a Disney trip if I've ever heard. Yeah.

So would another home equity debt consolidation be something to look at or absolutely not? Why the f*** would we? If our behavior was not fixed last time and we're back into this position. We add another debt. Again, double that debt from last time. Then boom, get in this position again. Do we just keep doing that? No. That's the question I have. Only allowing consolidation and or

bankruptcy even. No. Well, either way, those are applicable if you can prove you've changed your behavior for at least six months. If you stick to a hardcore budget, you are paying off debt, you are going intense, cooking from home, cutting back on the bulls**t,

For six months and you've proven you can do that, then I will allow it. If you do it for a month, that doesn't count. You can do anything for a month and then fall back. I think that is a true statement. That's a true statement. Definitely sell the cars, that's for sure. Downsize the cars. You're just not going to get bad cars. Checking out. Okay, I will look at it. Checking it. $1,834, saving $645. Savings?

Yeah. Apple, YouTube membership better be ours. It's not. You're not a fan. We have the best YouTube membership on the entire platform. You know, the platform told us that. They tell everybody that. No, they tell us that because we're in the top program and they have the insights to everything. Good. Well, I would share more, but I'm under an NDA. But no, they do not tell everybody that. We offer more content than any other YouTube membership.

Patreon. That's me. What was the YouTube membership? Super Carlin Brothers. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. Applebill, Applebill, Applebill, Marbleslab, Tease Candles, Venmo, Papa John's, and other You Break Fics. Did we go there? No, we got our kids iPods. Oh, good. iPads weren't enough.

Well, it's because they're on the bus and my daughter was getting bullied. And I thought it might help to have headphones on and just listen to music and zone out. And then when we got them off eBay, the battery was really horrible. We had to get it replaced.

Why'd you get an iPad on eBay? iPod on eBay? They don't make them anymore. They're old school. I thought they came out with one a couple years ago. No, there's no more iPods. It's only iPhones. So we don't, children are too young for phones. Why can't you get them phones? Yeah, they're too little. Figure something that they can have for music to help my daughter and my son just on the bus tonight to and from work, school, sorry, to and from school. They don't have phones yet, I'm

No, they've got no phones. But the iPods they have is their ability to listen to the stuff, to stay away from issues on the bus, to keep them distracted, to get them to... Point A to point B. Point A to point B without being part of the issue that they were having on the bus. Yeah. That sucks. Grade school, kids. Yeah, kids are mean. Correct. You call the...

2019, an iPod came out. Oh, wait. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's about, yeah, that's about right. I think the latest one is a seventh generation. But it still costs the high price that you would think it would not be. But they came back. We had to get the new batteries just so they wouldn't die. And then... PayPal transfer, PayPal transfer, Broadway Nation. More Broadway Nation. Barnes & Noble, Smoothie King. You guys just go out all the time. Techier...

Tequila, Al Charo, Cash App, Kohl's, Steam Games. Red Robin, McDonald's, Etsy, World Market, PlayStation Network, PlayStation, something, Steam Games, Victoria's Secret. We're just blowing money and not all that's on kids. Nope. We're also spoiling ourselves. Oh, it keeps going. I keep thinking it's done. Steam, bullshit, MJ La Contira.

M-V-Y-B-A. M-V-Y-B-A. Softball for the sun. Free Spirits, VanMoonOutMoney, KFC, CookUnity, Inc. Just cook. Just cook. Just cook. Okay? I do a factor sponsorship here and there, and it's great for people that can budget in, don't have debt, don't have a fully funded emergency fund, or who have a fully funded emergency fund.

47 brand, no baseball thing. Apple, Huff gold, then we're not money. Sonic drive and then we're not money. Amazon, Apple built, this is roadhouse. eBay commerce almost so much. This is so stupid much.

Game Toppers, Cherry Technology, Amazon. Well, this is a minimum payment. Amazon, Amazon, Universal, Cash App, Amazon, Cash App, Ars Entertainment, Ars Entertainment, Apple Bell, Cash App, Entertainment, Ars Entertainment. What is Ars Entertainment? That was my son's birthday party. Oh my gosh, it's every five seconds though. Ars Entertainment, Ars Entertainment. It's hundreds of dollars. Hundreds of dollars. Yes. Oh, that's crazy. Free Spirits.

Lockwell's, Lockblock, not even know, Disney+, FreePrince, Venmo, First Course, FreePrince, Applebill, Applebill, Peter Piper Pizza. My goodness, I haven't heard that name in forever. Peter Piper Pizza, Microsoft, more Patreon, eBay, Candice International or something, ClickPay Champions, Pokemon Champion, PayPal at home,

money to Divine Acres. Again, we are prioritizing over this our life, prioritizing this over comfy furniture for after surgeries, prioritizing this over Disney, over debt payoffs, over emergency funds. Divine Acres, Venmo, Fabletics, tequila, Mexican food restaurant, Chili's, tequila, Mexicana,

Cookunity, JCPenney, oh my f***. Do you guys not realize how insane this is? This is one month. One month plus everything we've already gone over. This is crazy. Nitto, Lackland, Jamba Juice, Raising Gains, Apple Bill, Venmo, Clay Casa, Brewhouse, Minimum Payment, PayPal and out, PayPal and out, Apple Bill, Medina Valley, Cantina Vending Machine, Krispy Kreme, Etsy's, Olive Garden, Cookunity, Jimmy John's, Jamba Juice,

Apple Bowl Smoothie King, TJ Maxx, that's fucking insane. Yeah. Spending $7,000 to $8,000 on bulls**t when we could have fully, we could, oh my f**k, the amount of money that we could have put towards that was crazy. Absolutely crazy. Could even afford your truck almost.

Yeah, $600 in savings. We're doing all that. Well, we have $1,000 in savings there, $600 in savings there. Those savings are for our children. They're children. We are trying to set them up for the future stuff. So we are using... What, $1,000? Yeah, we started a... That's the one you're looking at. But we have a high-yield savings account for each of our kids.

I think they each have like $1,200, $1,400. We put money towards it every paycheck. A small amount of money towards it. It's going to build over there. They're not going to get that until they're a lot older. So how else have you got the interest rate on this? Well, we get like a 4.07 dividend. We got it through Navy Fed.

You can put it in a 529. At least that's a tax advantage. That's specifically for just education, right? Yeah, they don't use it for education. We want it for if they want to buy a house or a car. But they can still pull out and pay taxes on that. At least they can. Well, probably if it's going historic market trends, get 8% to 10% instead of 4%. Plus, as interest rates go down, which now that trade negotiations are being done a bit more and interest rates might go down,

What was this called you said? A 529. It's a tax advantage plan where you can put it in there essentially tax free, let it grow in the market, you choose the investments of choice and then they can pull it out tax free. For school? Anything education related. But if they don't pull it out for school? No, it can literally be used in high school for sporting things. In school related. It can be used anything school related. Okay.

I just don't like the restrictiveness. I get it, but that's why it's tax advantage. Where you're only getting 4%, if interest rates go down, this could go to 2%. Well, we haven't locked in for two years at 4%. Okay, but I'm listening. Okay, okay, okay. I'm just explaining why we chose what we chose. I get it, I understand, but again, it's $1,000. This could easily have been $50,000 per kid by now, if that's what we were prioritizing. Easily, by the time where you guys have been and where we are.

Maybe $25,000 per kid. Okay, I'll go with that. Yeah. Okay. It could be stacked. I didn't know that. And you guys cannot spend money on birthday parties or fun until you have a fully funded emergency fund because how are you guys going to pay for a big expense when that happens? A kid goes to the hospital, breaks a limb, whatever. Who even knows?

A car breaks down. There's so many emergencies that might not be covered, okay? There are so many things. That's why there are emergencies because they're unpredictable. If that comes and you have $500 saved up or something like that for emergencies, that's insane. You guys should at least have $20,000 saved on the side for emergencies. $20,000 saved? We'll figure out what is required for you to survive and then we'll do six months of that. I don't know. I'm just guessing. Might be 15. Might be 12.

But even we need to have that before we can even spend money on fun because you guys are putting yourself in such a risky position where you're only going to go into more debt if an emergency happens. HVAC went out last summer. You had to go into debt for it. Luckily, you qualified for an okay debt, but your debt to income is getting pretty rough. At that point, credit scores will go down. You'll qualify to be able to fix something like that, a new roof or something. When that happens...

Maybe you have to have a high interest loan for it. You need an emergency fund, and not having an emergency fund is an emergency. We have tried that before in our Navy Federal. Yeah, don't put it in Navy Federal. Well, we have, and that's what we got. So in Navy Federal, we put different savings such as the house emergency, the car emergency, car fixtures is what it was called. Car maintenance. X Christmas fund, right? We've done that small stuff with savings for Navy Federal. Okay.

Obviously, it didn't work because what happens is when it comes time for us needing money, we pull from it. Oh, great. We're going to need money because we've got this bill coming out, whatever. Or, hey, we're at $100. We need something. Let's pull it from there. And she asks, you know, which one are we pulling it from? You know, Christmas fun or car picture? Well, that's what we were doing. That's what we've been doing. If there's a better way for it. I put it in an account you can't even think about. That's a good idea. That's a great idea. Like, I'm...

Yeah, that's why we're here. Because we don't know what that looks like. We don't know what it means. SoFi account, whatever. Apparently, obviously, it said, don't do Navy Federal. If you have access to it like that, it makes it harder with just your behavior. That's okay. Recognize your behavior. If you're an alcoholic, don't have drinks in the house. If you can't stop eating fast food...

Delete Uber Eats. It's like taking a different path home where you're not seeing the golden arches. You put in those mechanisms. We all have immature behaviors in different ways. That's okay. You just set yourself up for success by not allowing yourself. If you're going to pull for money easily, don't have it attached to the same account. I didn't even realize this. You know your truck payments as much as your mortgage? Yeah, it is. That is the most American thing I've ever seen and that is not a good thing.

That was a good statement. Delinquency rates on vehicles are at an all-time high, higher than during the Great Recession. I don't want you to end up there. Okay. People behind on their car payments, I mean. Yeah, I don't want to do that either. Minimum debt payments, not including your mortgage, but including your home equity, is $3,439.10. So that alone is 30%.

Debt payments alone are 30% of your income. And we'll keep going down this path. It gets to 40%, it gets to 50%. You see how we start missing payments. And cars get repoed, foreclosure notices hit because you have to choose what goes where. That's the dangerous path we're heading down. So yes, it is an emergency and no, it's not just fixable. I need that to be very clear. So mortgage is $1,290.64. Okay.

What about gas, electricity, internet, all that stuff? Utilities combined, how much? On a monthly basis. I don't know. I didn't calculate it all out. I wish you would have that. 35 gas for me, 65 gas for him weekly. What? Driving? Yeah. No, no, no. Home utilities. I know, but... It's at least 800. Water...

For everything, maybe. Yeah, it's up there. Somewhere between $8,000 and $1,000. We'll call it $9,000 then. $900. I know some months will be more, some will be less. Phone bill? It's $114. It's not the worst. I like those third-party services that use the same towers. Helium does T-Mobile. Mint uses something different.

I would rather do that if you guys own your home outright just while we're in a budget mode. So again, I prefer helium specifically. But gas, vroom, vroom, drive, drive, how much? $60 for me. $35 for me. Every week. A month. Oh. Two weeks. $60 plus $35. Mine's $100. How much a month? How much a month for the house? So let's say $400. Because if we do $100 a week, approximately between the two of us, we'll say $400 for gas. Yeah. Okay. $400. Yeah. Car insurance. Yeah.

325? We have USA. It's really high. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Food. We could do food for a thousand. Are we talking groceries? Strictly groceries and meal prepping, honestly. Meal prep with the kids, like lots of spaghetti, lots of meatballs, lots of tuna salad, not tuna, chicken salad, sandwiches.

Or Tuna, if you like. We could try it, yeah. I think we can do 1,000. We might be able to boost that. TP Fun. This is sports and stuff. Give me monthly costs without purchasing new things, what is needed for their enrichment activities that they are enjoying doing? Because I want to be able to budget that in. I think it would be probably around 300. Okay. Well, maybe not. Because she's got 232 plus the private lessons twice a week.

She's trying out for the gymnastics team May 31st. Okay, what do we think? I don't know. Maybe say 400.

Okay, I'm going to do TP Fund as $500 then. Yeah, I would say $500 because it's Joseph too. Yeah, okay. Oh, well if it's $500 with them. No, $500 for both children. Then I'm boosting it to $600 because it also includes, this is TP Fund, you throw those things in. They're the extra little things. This is also toilet paper. I'm doing $650. Okay. You budget those out specifically more on your own, but I call it TP Fund. It's those enrichment activities for the kids. It's also your toilet paper, toothpaste, tampons, everything that's needed, all that good stuff.

Healthcare, stuff like that, you don't really have to pay anything. Okay. Right? Correct. You have no medical bills? Okay, cool. Pets?

We have two. What are they? They're white Labradors. Yeah, with two white Labradors. Ages and health. They are turning one this month? Do we have pet insurance? Yes. Do you have pet insurance? What's the month it costs? It's $115. Trust me, it's worth it. Is it? That's the question we're going to have because she doesn't want the pet insurance. She wants me to get rid of it. I have it. Dude, my fucking just absolute creature of an investigator of a dog is...

I had to take her to the emergency room again for the millionth time the other day. Trust me, it is worth it. It'll save you thousands and thousands. Especially Labradors, they like to sniff around and get in things. Yes, they do. Trust me, it's worth it. It always feels like, oh, I really need this. And then all of a sudden you see that

$10,000 bill to keep them alive because something got stuck in their stomach. That's good to know. Pet food, how much on a monthly basis? It's $160 because it's two bags a month. $160. Anything else that needs to be in your budget that I have not put in? Think...

We have subscriptions and stuff. No, you don't. If you can fit them in the TP fund, you can, but if you can't, they're canceled. We're talking like Netflix, Disney Plus. We sure are. I'd rather go to Disney than have Disney Plus.

I need to like holidays and stuff. Hold on. Nope. No, you don't. You're saying Netflix and all that stuff is. Guys, these are sacrifices. We're either sacrificing or we're not. But it also has to be like livable. I said this is livable. People live like this. You are, you, I mean, that's a spoiled mentality.

To not spend money on holidays? Yes. That's spoiled? It's an entitlement. It is not required for survival. I want you to, and you probably can budget it in. I'm not putting it into the budget for what is required to survive. Okay, required to survive, okay. Which is how you should be living until you get out of death. You do not have an emergency fund to cover emergencies. If you have to replace a roof, you're f***ed. If you have to replace a car, you're f***ed.

You're done. Christmas is not prioritized over the basic necessities for living and survival. Okay. I'm sorry. It's just simply not. And if we're not willing to sacrifice that, then we're done. $8,393.74. Again, if you can fit subscriptions into the $650 TP fund, you can. If you can't, you cut them. And you have to start prioritizing which ones you want.

For the money that hits our account for now until February, you have an extra $3,506.26. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to allocate $506.26 to fund money. Stock that up.

Use it for a big trip. Stock it up. Use it for Christmas or $500 going out to eat on a monthly basis. Whatever you guys decide to do, that is what is allocated. So it gives you an extra $3,000 left. Now we need to make use of this $3,000 heavily hard before all of a sudden the income drops by $1,000 because then we're only going to have $2,000 left. Okay. Okay.

This, I would snowball as you guys did before. I would downsize the trucks. I'm going to assume you do, and I'm going to minus $25,000 from your debt because we are going to downsize both vehicles. $5,000 for you, $20,000 for you. Okay. Not including mortgage, but including home equity because it is not a great interest rate. And then minus that $25,000, we have a total of bad...

I don't think I did the math right. Let me make sure. You probably did it right. It should be around $75,000. Is that right? No, just let him. Okay, bad debt is $137,170. No, are you talking about this is with cars? Yeah, with you trading down. That's after you're trading down cars. Yes, that's about right. If you don't trade down cars, it's $150,000 of bad debt. Yeah, that makes sense. $160,000 just about of bad debt. Okay. That's really bad.

That's really bad. Okay, so I'm going to... So it's like 68 and a half months to pay off. Or five years, that's actually not horrible. But if we have that extra thousand this year, yeah. I mean, you guys will pay off if you actually win the sacrifice, which by the way, I gave you a lot of money for fun money. Should take about four and a half years to pay off our debt.

And that's with fund money. Normally I can't give people fund money, so you guys are lucky with that. I would take it. I would sacrifice $500 a month. We can still have a lot of fun on that. Yes. But this gives us debt payoff in four and a half years. But then what we need to survive if we start... Okay, so $8,393.74 is what you need to survive now. But we get rid of the debt except for the mortgage. And you need survival funds of approximately $5,000. Okay.

on a monthly basis. So we need to save up $30,000 for an emergency fund. So it's higher than $20,000. That's a lot. But that's okay. At that point, we'll have a lot of money we can put towards debt that'll take about, I honestly think, six months. So this is going to be a total of five years.

five years and we are bad debt free all debt free except for the mortgage which is totally fine hold on to the mortgage as long as you can until you want to move okay so and then you have also a thirty thousand dollars six month emergency fund you guys are like golden you guys have no idea what it's like on that other side because you've only ever consolidated and even when you paid off debt the first time you didn't have a full hundred emergency fund this will be like something you've never lived before and then by the way

This is without any cost of living increase. You guys will literally have $5,000 a month at a minimum to blow on whatever you want.

If you really want to. I'd set some aside for rainy days and kids and whatnot. But you guys are going to have a lifestyle that you don't even know. But even still, you're living a relatively comfortable lifestyle until then. Because I'm giving you on a yearly basis $6,000 to blow. Okay.

That's incredible. So that's what I would do. I would do small debt to large debt, downsize the vehicles, prioritize paying those off, roll them over into the next ones. All the minimum payments that we save from one debt rolls to the next payment. Save up the fully funded emergency fund. You guys are going to set your kids up for success. It's going to be great. I want to see you guys on the Financial Audit follow-up channel making some progress in the coming months.

Alright, I will get you your Hammer Financial score, but join us for the post show. That's where there's extra stuff that we did not talk about for either privacy or for demonetization or because Lindsay's held something for tea-related purposes. Join us in the post show. The Hammer Elite version is the best YouTube membership on the entire platform. The platform has said that themselves. Make sure you join that. It really helps support the channel. Thousands of hours of extra content. Hammer Financial score. You overspent, so your spending in a budget score is 0 out of 10. Your debt...

It's brutal, but no collections, nothing. And for your income situation, I'm giving it a 2 out of 10. Don't like the home equity, but it is what it is. Still have an equity position in your home. Emergency fund, 1 out of 10. That's what's saved up is basically 1 tenth. Retirement, well, you guys are kind of set because of what you guys got going on, but we just don't have the TSP. So I am going to give you a lifestyle you want to live.

I think closer to about a 7 out of 10 there. It's fair. And then real estate, I like the real estate position, don't like the equity loan. So because of that, bringing it down to a 6 out of 10. But love the rate, love the payment. If we didn't have that equity loan, it would be like an 8.

Hammer Financial Score rounded up 3.5 out of 10, which just shows how easy it is to get out of this situation if you guys actually sacrifice and grind and not prioritize your fun. Guys, join us for the post show. We'll see you there. And again, if you don't want to be like a guest on the show, download the budgeting app. Link in the description below. Sign up for the annual version. I'll send you the cookbook that can't be purchased anywhere else. I'll sign it and mail it directly to you. See you there. I'm pretty sorry, by the way. What are you pretty sorry about? I did just recently...

Buy seven LA Dodger and New York Yankee baseball caps. And I didn't want to tell you. I didn't want to tell you. This is what I'm talking about. You don't need all seven. I got it before it got sold out. The anchor that I want on there is a limited edition. $700 compared to $30. But still, it's the only one that's right. That's not comparable. Don't ask us how much we paid on our wedding. Inclusive members content. Click the link in the description or pin comment below and watch thousands of hours of extra and uncensored content.