Financial Audit’s Biggest Gold Digger

Financially we are. No, I don't think financially we're if it's so easy then why are we here? I guess we're near the breaking point. I guess what we're not we are at the breaking point. It's so fixable though. Bull. You have $100 in your checking 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 pin comment below. Hi, I'm L. 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. L, you're in front of me. Let's start with you. What do you do for a living? Um, I'm a student. Uh, I just

barely graduated from UTSA. Barely? Yeah. Well, December as in Okay, so you're not that you almost failed, but that 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 a second. It's been about 5 months. Yes. So, I want to become a physician assistant. Um, so I'm applying over the summer to physician assistant programs, but I'm currently expensive. Currently a master's student, but it starts in June for another program. I got accepted separate. Yeah,

I'm doing um Okay, so it's really competitive physician assistant. 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'm I just got accepted into uh HSC which is based out of Fort Worth, Texas and it's a masters of lifestyle sciences and health coaching. Okay, why not just pick up a lot of hours at hospitals and different things, doing a lot of things. Someone I know I knew that was going into physician

assistant school, just work just grinding at hospitals, is working nights, all these things, picking up those hours, and that was really helping her application to get in. Uh, I did consider 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 coordinator. So, was undergrad paid for? Yes, totally paid for. So, there's no student loans even though I have a massive fat stack of debt. So, the fact that

it's not student loans is extra worrying. What do you do, Paul? Uh, I am in the Navy. Uh, about to retire. Oh, really? Y very good. What does income look like right now? Well, he makes 3600 twice a month and I make 4750. So, together we bring in around 11 or 12,000. How are you making money? Oh, I'm a VA disability with dependence. 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 11 and 12. 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've done a lot. I'm a police officer for the Navy, so I've done a lot of hardworking stuff throughout the throughout the time, uh, which I'm just I got issues all around. Um, but even people that just served for like three years and they just sat on a base, they get it. Like 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. This is disabilities 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 I totally agree. I'm saying every single person that has ever been on this show who has literally just sat at a base and did nothing. And I

also 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 like 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? Um about Yeah, a little bit. No, a little bit less than that cuz I'm going to have my retirement pay uh for after, you know, 21 years. I'll have also the disability. We don't

know what that's going to look like. The goal obviously in the the prayer is the 100% disability. Um that will bring in the same amount as her. Uh and then the retirement will be a good chunk. So we're looking at about similar to what we make now. Yeah. 6,000 in probably a year. I'm sorry, a month. A month. Okay. So, and that's just just by retirement purposes. So when when does that come in? So, we'll go from 11,900 to 10,700. When does that uh 290 days I retire? Uh, so February. Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Very

cool. Very cool. So, we have a little bit of time with a little higher income. Yep. Uh, okay. Okay. So, what's going on? Cuz this is an incredibly strong income. Incredibly strong income. And you just get to go to school and have this income. So, incredibly strong income. Uh, why are we struggling so much? What the possible is happening? What is going on here? I feel like I have two halfway reasonable people in front of me. That's what's going on. Um, well, I think we just have some bad spending habits and I think 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 So, is this getting minimum payments forever? Yeah, we do. I literally have a spending category called miscellaneous [ __ ] 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 uh my team has done. That was $4,137 within a month. Just miscellaneous [ __ ] That is not going out to eat, by the way, which there is an additional lot of money which we'll go into for that. And then other things we we prioritize fun. Yeah, we do. We have two children. They're young. So, you know, 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 there is probably abuse as well. Uh which has certainly been shown on this show. However, that being said, do we think we probably feel if I'm adding all this up minimum $67,000 on bull? Do we think we probably feel like we can just go do that on a monthly basis cuz 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, "Oh, let's just go blow all of our money because it's basically a retirement forever. You never have to think. You can just around." And we have uh we've actually we've come out of debt twice. Um really? Yes. This video is sponsored by Aura. And before you skip, you might want

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info off these data broker sites automatically. Seriously, go search yourself before someone else does. Yeah, we've managed to come out of debt over the last 10 years. We've been married for 10 years. 10 years. Um so over that that time frame, we've come out of debt twice, paid off everything. Uh you know, once with children, once without children. What was payoff? Tell me tell me how that looked. Um we were completely debtree. All of our cars were paid for. We didn't own a mortgage. We were renting at the time and we had no credit cards.

That was the first time. Okay. And we did it through Dave Ramsey. The snowball effect kind of sound. How are we possibly in this position? Well, then we and then we had kids. We racked up a lot more debt. We went through again uh and got debtree. And then the big problem is that who was the debtree in that situation? How did we get debtree then? The second time we're not actually debtree. We did a debt consolidation through our home equity. Okay. So, debtree without the the cars and the and the mortgage. But it was

a debtree move. It was it was a it was moving the debt somewhere was nice. Did we close the cards and everything after that? Meaning we moved the debt somewhere and then we built up the debt again. Right. That's exactly. When did we do that? That was in 2023. So like two years ago. Yeah. Okay. So we've accumulated this just a couple years. Yeah. Okay. And it's just through the experiences and I mean they are in the experience ages. A lot of people are like when they come on the show they're like I'm doing it

for the experience but their kids like 2 three four and they're like okay you they're not even forming core memories. You actually are 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 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? Cuz you can still do great experiences on them. You got a great zoo, you got SeaWorld 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 just cabinet that cuz if you budget $142,000 net, you can still live I mean double the median household income for San Antonio if I

had to guess. Just about maybe 33% higher. But even still like that's still great. So what are we doing? Well, one of our major expenses is our kids are in um sports and activities. That's how much gymnastics. My daughter's a gymnast. She it c well she does four different lessons a week. She has two group classes, two private lessons. Jeez. Okay. How much is that? So, 232 for the two group lessons and then a week or month. A month. Well, you can budget. You can afford that. That's simple. Easy. But then it's all the other

stuff that my wife likes to buy the the at home. She has an at home gymnastics gym in our But that's one time, right? Well, yeah, it just cost a lot. How much How much does that cost? Keep building. It keeps building. Well, I'm 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 a $100 and she's got about seven and then she has two bars, two beams, gunous thousand. Honestly, a couple thousand you can

afford it over the course of a year or so. Like that's totally No, this was all within like 6 months. 6 months you can afford a couple thousand. That again, you really can. I I don't know what your life is. I mean, it's a lot. Uh your mortgage for taxes. Isn't that crazy? I don't know how you guys are [ __ ] this up. Yeah, this is going to be like a science experiment to figure this one out cuz mortgage we're sitting at 213. Yeah. Yeah. 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 weing 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. back forever. Yes. Well, I also think like um once you start Well, you know this cuz you're a financial expert, but you Well, I mean, I just got out of debt,

but I mean, congratulations to you. No, I'm 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 just was going to say I think the interest once you get to really high debt really starts adding up and I think like the inflation with the economy um that's also had an impact on us and then inflation report

just came out today it was 2.4%. What are you talking about? Well like things just sort of cost more than they used to if you they always will. Inflation always exists forever. You don't want deflation or stagnation. But like our income inflation is 2.4% right now. What are we had a bad inflation report in a year and a half. What are we talking about? I was just going to say like we make the same amount of money and even though it's like steadily like same amount of money since when? Since what your disability hasn't been

I got out in 2018 and it's yeah pretty much been the same. I mean maybe been the same. I mean a little increase. What's the increase? What percentage increase? I don't know. Maybe one% every year. I don't know. I don't remember what it was. Oh come on. If we're talking inflation at 2.4% you think they usually do like the social security increase every few years or so. I mean they kind of boosted near inflation levels pretty close. I mean depending you know sometimes it it's a little sometimes. Do you have all the information on inflation

for the last like couple years or relatively? Yes. When it peaked inflation what 2023 we're 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. I think I think in 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 cost more I mean that's how everything

works forever except for TVs. Yeah. I mean everything goes up I mean the cost of everything goes up cost of your labor goes up. So the cost of expenses go up. It does, but we don't we don't plan for that kind of style. We just 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? Like we just didn't adjust our lifestyle. Are responsible. I don't know. I mean, you get again, I bet you've gotten an increase more than 1%. If if

we're being real, I I don't I wish I I don't know. I don't pay attention. 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 that our if our disability is going up. I know it increases every year. I just feel like, okay, feel. I don't care about feel. Budget. Why don't you budget? What do we budget? Do we budget? What's the conversation around finances in the household? We

use uh we were using 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 cuz then you see the statements but the automated process of like a budgeting app is what is preferable I don't care if you use mine you can use any ones I prefer mine I prefer the simple one whatever that's

fine but it's the automated like account connections and everything that is what is going to actually help versus you sitting down have to do it cuz 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 like 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 all right, go buy it, buy it. Well, okay. It's not exactly Yeah. We we don't we don't have a Oh,

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 agreement. That was, you know, years ago before the kids. Um, and we haven't done that in a long time, but that was something we had that was going to be helpful. Now, she's, you know, she and I, I'll throw myself in there. She and I are buying whatever we want over $100 without, you know, asking or discussing it with someone. We're just doing

it. Then afterwards, we're, hey, I bought this, you know, and I'm like, are you serious? Like, so what do we what do we do in those instances then? Forgetting and moving on. Why? But that doesn't produce anything going forward. Well, that that's not going to get us anywhere. No, but that's what we've been doing, you know. And and is it to avoid confrontation? No, I don't think so. Then what is it? I think what's the logic? Let's let's hear the logic. Like if I spend money on stuff for the kids, like clothes or activities or

holidays, and he's aware, he knows it's happening. Yeah, he knows it's happening. Does he know how much? Is there a reflection? Do we sit down and discuss how much at some point? Yeah. No, it shows. It shows afterwards when the boxes show up at the house. Can you talk about the monetary amount? Oh, I do. Oh, I do. Oh, I do. We bought a new gym gym me or gym uh beam and thing that that was crappy, you know, and stuff like that. Uh got home and then we're not even going to use it and

it was over $100, you know. So, you know, but we blame inflation instead of our inability to just have a conversation or sit down about it. Not I wouldn't say we don't blame. I say we included. She kind of did. She did. It's one of the factors I think. I think the bigger factor is uh you guys don't talk. No, we purchase. Oh, we don't talk before we purchase now. Yeah, I would say that's a little bigger of an impact. We talk after the purchases usually. But again, it's not always, you know, the best because

like I'm like, you didn't need to buy that. You don't need to buy that. Oh, it's already bought. Well, that Where's the pants here financially? None of us. I think we're both spenders. We are. We're both spenders. One of the ways 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 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%. Okay. I don't pay attention to I believe you. doesn't feel like that. But I believe you feel because you want to spend more if we're being honest, right? Well, yeah. You 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 Mhm. the finances. Yeah. Was one of you one of you good? Both of you both of you good? What did it look like? What is this like the

I want to see what you guys have been through in these 10 years financial related before we dive into this cuz 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 you? So there's finances when we were there uh I had a lot of debt. I I I prior marriage, you know, obviously being in the Navy, you know, by myself first time, uh, living San Diego, going overseas, coming back

to, you know, to the States, boys on the boat. Yeah. Um, lots of expensive purchases myself, you know, lots of things just to live, right? Um, so I racked up a lot of debt before I married her. Um, so did you know that? No. No. Really? No, I didn't. And and 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. That's where the goal was to hopefully pay off the debt before um we were able to um live together again um

after the marriage. Uh 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 then." So then so then I went overseas uh to Barn. I paid off $20,000 of the debt there, which was nice. Um, you know, so coming back together, I had still a little bit of of debt for myself still when we uh when we, you know, got to

got to live together geographically together cuz I was in I was stationed in Spain and he was stationed in every thought about the debt when you heard the debt and how long the cuz 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. Uh he came into the relationship with a lot of debt. Um 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, you know, spending a lot of the debt, putting everything in debt. Um however, I think it's been a lot more with the children. uh you know we can't blame the kids but no I'm not blaming the kids on but the thing is situation 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 sue stress between mom and dad cuz 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, we can't pay our minimum payments this month. That's I don't think that's ever happened but happened. You're on the track to happening. I don't want

that. I don't want I don't want the kids to be want to take out home equity loan to start paying off some debt or something. Good luck with where the market's been overall. Like you can only do that so many times. You would 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's really bad, where's our exit from debt besides bankruptcy? At a certain point, it just becomes bankruptcy consolidation. We might not be able to apply. How

are we getting out of debt? Um 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 it just 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? It's my daughters. Your your fun is spoiling the kids. What's your fun? Uh I I'm a collector. I collect

collecting a lot of different things. Uh I go through phases. Um, 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. Uh, then who's who's more motivated 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. I'm motivated. I just I Why do you see her being more versus you? I'm leading the conversation of fixing our finances. Yeah, but your conversation is only postspending. I think

I think there, you know, there there needs to be a lot of stuff that she needs to stop doing and spending on and I need to stop spending on. What would you say she needs to stop spending on? Oh, uh clothes. Um or uh you know things for the kids that that are not needed birthdays, um Christmases. Um 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. What do you think he should start selling

on? Um, 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 at the same time on go, I want you to give me what you think your household financial score is. 0 to 10, 10 being the best, zero being the worst. Okay, just where you think you are in the world of finances. Okay, 3 2 1 Three. Okay. If you want to see where you stand, take the assessment, you can go to calehammer.com or click

that link in the description below. And you can come sit across from me in this table by going to calehammer.com/apply. Don't forget, if you don't want to be like any kind of guest on this show, all you have to do is download my budgeting app. And for those who sign up for the annual version, I'll sign our cookbook that can't be purchased anywhere else, and I'll send it directly to your door. Navy Federal, no surprise. So, what is going on with this card, guys? Is it I think the first one's mine, right? P. Oh my

me. The one that's basically maxed out at $24,6843. Yeah, that's what the insane balance. What are we doing? Um, that's an insane balance. That's a disgusting balance with the $1,757.25 of purchases while only making the minimum payment. If we could only make the minimum payment, it's basically max out interest is occurring. We can't pay it off to save our life. Why the are we purchasing $1,757 on here of all places? Why? Why? Oh, come on. 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 household 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 acrewing interest. My son's birthday was last year. Oh, for sake. And parties 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 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 we all know young kids, you can do 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 Okay, so it's like, sure. Well, I I think that

definitely snuck up on us that, you know, all of the payments stuff because we we didn't plan for we what what snuck up with it, our birthday, the charges, the payments. No, just whatever. Just buying whatever. This is a purchase 7,757 to maxing out the car. How did that sneak up on us? I don't know. How could that That's not a sneak up. That's not a sneak up. What do we mean sneak up? This isn't It's not Al Qaeda come behind you. This is what the I just I just think that with all this stuff,

we the way we live and the way we do it is that we have our our main debit card that we use, right? That we purchase everything. We get paid on that one. I get paid twice, you know, a month. She gets paid once a month. We use that money. Once it's gone, we switch to our our credit cards and that include that's whatever you know. Oh, hey, I got to get gas now cuz 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. We have to What are we We have We have all these bills. If you look at that, there's a lot of If we have all the bills and we're not having birthdays. We are having birthdays. No, no. We're going to McDonald's. We are going to McDonald's for for 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 in our check account. No, every year the thing is every year she wants to have one child have a

a good birthday, right? One child we select who? No, it's rotates between the children. Okay. And one child gets to have a birthday of something extra party whatever it is gets to have a family. So this year my son he took his three best friends to uh 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 we in we thought about it. We didn't include it.

We just said we just did it. Okay. Bull. You have $100 in your checking account. Feel you can't feel $100 in her checking account. I'm going to Okay. Our house is stable for living and family and stuff like that. What she's talking about? She's talking finances. That's what you're talking about finances. She's not talking about finances. Yes, I am. Financial 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. I'm no I'm not saying that the spending is stable but the income

that's what it is. That's the problem, right? The the income is coming in. Yes, I I understand that, babe. But you have the problem for us is that that when we do it, we spend that money. That is not stable. Okay. Well, agree to disagree. Okay. We agree to disagree. So that's why he's here. That's why we're here now because we it's not a dis agree to disagree. How could you disagree with that? Hey Pooky, our Memorial Day sale is happening right now and it's your shot to grab some of the tools you need to

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midnight on June 2nd. Click the link in the description below. Lock in those Memorial Day savings before they're gone. Take control of your financial future today. See you in the classes. You're saying that financially we're instable even though we're making all the payments. Girl, your debt's going out. I'm going I'm making your payments because in order to purchase the things you want in in order to make the payments, I will give you an example. May I May I draw this for you? May I draw something? I I'm going to have a little drawing exercise, you

know. Let's go back. We have a tough camera now. Hello, Tough camera. Okay. Let's say this is our income. Okay. Okay. Let's say that and let's say this part's our min payments. Okay. So, this is our minimum payments. In order to make that and maybe let's say we're making that, I don't know. Well, let's go through. But you still want to like uh you spend the entire party chart even though these are minimum payments. How how do we do that? How how do we spend the the the full column? Well, we spend the full column.

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 minim. How do we do that? I don't have the answer. That's why. Well, the answer is we take this amount of spending right here and we put it on credit cards cuz if you put this amount of spending that is needed to go to minimum payments, but we want to spend it on fun. You spend it on fund

here. You spend it on fun on the credit cards in order to make the minimum 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 payment on that push to the max. If you put this on checking, you could not make minimal 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 that we are. We're not finally we're not financially stable. Well, okay. I still disagree. I do feel like we are financially stable. But I do hear where you're coming from. Oh my god. No. Okay. Well, sir, we have a financial insurgency happening. Put it down. I mean, I just the the fact of the matter is is we both live way without our our means. We have a lot of fun. We pay a lot of money towards fund whether it be on

the credit card or whether it be a debit card. I don't think we have a stable process to do anything. We just say, well, everything's on autoay and it comes out of our debit. Bills are on autopay. It is which which is okay. That's that. But what I'm talking about like just in general anything we do with the groceries, the gas, the the traveling, the whatever we're doing. All right. Now, I will tell you I will tell you there there is a lot of times when we are we are one one parent is with one

child at their activity, one parents the other parents with the other child at the other activity. So we're not even together for you know 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. You know that that happens a lot too. Um there's a lot of things that come to that come into fruition for us that we just end up going, "All right, just put on the green card. Put it on the green card." All right, let me ask 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. Uh what do you think was spent on mine or his? Nope. Household. Oh, what was spent in a month? Yep. In the most recent month, I would say price. For the statements that we have 14,000 M okay. And you 14 like total for the whole month like how much is coming out? We Oh, we get 11,000. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, 12ish,000 is coming in. Yeah. Well, it's over it's over 11,000. I'll give you it's like

13,000. If you are the disagreeer, how is that considered financially stable? If we're spending let's you said 14,000. If we're spending 14,000 making 11,900 12,000 let's say how is that financially stable? It's not financially smart, but it is stable as long as you can make payments. That's not st 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 cuz then it gets to a point where all of a sudden the dam breaks. Okay. And we've been there. That's why we

That's why And that's when you did the consolidation cuz it got to the breaking point. We've never been to the breaking point. I don't know what you mean by that. The break the breaking point is the way that we have been like all the money that's been accumulating over everything. Well, okay. I think we are to the point the fact that I'm have almost maxed out my credit card and we don't have No, it's it's at max. I mean, come on. You you can go get a couple fries from McDonald's, but it's max, right? Well,

and you've raised 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 a grasp. Yeah, I do want to make changes. We need to make major changes. We need to make a lot of changes, 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 our

payments. I agree. Okay. That is not financially stable. Well, I just came from a really uninstable financially instable household and so to me this is fantastic. Financially stable. No, that's great. No, this is you know what that should do. I came from a financially stable household. foreclosure notices. You know what that did? That made me get my 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 with summer camp or something, it was on debt. And then I saw that stack to the point where minimum payments could not be made, which meants 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? Well, 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. 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 weewoos and you're not. Okay. And we

and this has happened before really opposite where where I was the one, you know, that wasn't seeing the if you want to say, you know, the bells and whistles, right? And she was the one going, "Hey, this is the situation. We're we're two of them." 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. All right. We we finally got on because I I was not understanding it. I was just living just living right doing what

I want to do. So she got me on to understanding that. Here we are now years later and now it's reversed. And 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. Can we just agree on that? Okay. We need to Yes. We both We all agree. We agree on that. That's why we're here. The language behind it is not

a listen. 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, that's 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. the I am I will not

have that that job anymore. All right. And I'm only gonna get some partial mor money back. All 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 on Oh, great. Now we're now I'm retired. Now, what are we going to do? We don't 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. Cuz you're pushing. 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 making 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. Let's get out of debt. But you guys are not aligned on the fundamental of what where we're at, what it takes to get there. No, I think we are aligned on what it takes to get out of debt.

No, you you say it. Yes, but then look at your look at your your things that you buy constantly. I tell you all the time, just stop buying that. Stop buying that, 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. So

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. I 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 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." Right. 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? Cuz this So, what kind of happened, right, is uh 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 you know they don't fully get the vibe and they've kind of called me out when I you know 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 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. Sweetheart, your intentions are always I do have really pure intentions and I have great intentions and I do think that has partly led to our debt problem execution on this. Okay, I agree. Okay. And for what it's worth, I mean, I'm not saying it's it's bad to be giving or anything. It's not even all at all. But

you know there's lots of psychological analysis that shows that a lot of the acts of giving you know especially on a reoccurring way is usually is also driven a little bit by selfishness cuz you get high dopamine levels through gifting. I think it's more about connect. You love gifting and it just you see the reward and it feels really good and it doesn't mean gifting is bad. I'm not saying that. I want to be very clear. But it there are it can very much be associated with a selfless desire to feel the reward. I I

will I will tell you we do love blessing others. That is one of our things we bless others with. But you guys can bless so much more people if we're not in a lot of debt. Okay, fair enough. But imagine the amount of blessings we can give when we're not 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, how long could we do that? But I will say that that is our biggest spending moments and

our biggest hit to ourselves is from December to May. That's all the birthdays, that's all the the Christmases, the the holidays, that's all the activities, that's everything that we deal with. I'm saying if I look last fall, last late summer, I'm not going to see you spending more than you made. No, you're going to see, but not 27%. You're gonna see. No, you will because I went crazy for this Christmas. This particular Christmas, I went way above and beyond. Special about this Christmas. It's I don't 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 blessing. I was trying to get things on sale and I just was like, so we wouldn't be spending a a billion dollars all right in December, right? It was nice, but the fact but the problem was that you we because it all we consistently every freaking paycheck went and got them multiple things and multiple things and our and our 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, but it was too much. And and every every time a child puts a a new uh want on their Christmas list, right, you go and we went and got it, right? I can only speak at 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 the little it's not about the amount. 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, I mean hot 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 is was 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 side or you warm it up. It's I I will tell you I will say though we both do come from you know a um humble background. Humble background. There you go. That right. So we both you know had it as best as my father could give me uh and my brothers and sister you know he gave it to me. It was a phenomenal time. It was much. But 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? Cuz to me, cinnamon rolls, fireplace, you know, family together, dogs hanging out. That to me is the nice Christmas with some Christmas music playing and some gifts to open and seeing each other enjoying it. That to me is the nice Christmas. Not having to go crazy. They don't they don't recognize like the value dollar of it. They want the experience. They just want the warmth of Christmas. I know. But

we went we went crazy. And then 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 iPad. We got them iPads because their old iPads were dying because they were the you know our crappy old iPads. A couple things with that. You want them to be iPad kids. I don't. Just cuz 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 and you get them iPads or iPad Pros or iPad Airs. They got two new iPads. iPad. I got myself just iPad 10.2. I think it was whatever the newest iPad. She got herself a new iPad. They had a nicer iPad than me and I'm in school and I use it every day. But 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 true. Who cares if theirs is nicer? They just have the newer one. Yeah, that's just time. That's just a timeline. Yeah, I ended up regretting my purchase anyway cuz I like But that that's just one example right now. There there's other things that that are just, you know, from December to now is is all the expenses expenditures, all the stuff. Right. It sucks. I got it. I mean, 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 monthly 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 stopped purchasing and we only did the minimum. How long does this take to pay off? Maybe years a decade. Years. A decade. Years. I don't know. Five years. Four years. Five. Six years. Six years. Honestly. Okay. Uh we're just going to do some quick math ju just for the sake of it. Uh 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 year, by the way, is already a,000 bucks on this. You've lost $1,000 just on one card. Yeah, let's keep tally of the interest as we go throughout. 963 17 on this one. Okay, it's all [ __ ] except

for two things which I think was like two university things. You got university docs, college transcripts and gas and then dentist. Other than that, it's all [ __ ] Top down. You see this? It's all [ __ ] MJ Lacantia, Bath & Body Works, The Children'splace.com, Crunchyroll, Apple Bill, Glamour Eyebrows, You Break It, Bandera, Texas Nail, Double Nails. Okay, we're double interrupted. Oh, no. The first one was lashes, wasn't it? I don't know. Um, MVYBA, children'splace.com again. $211 clothes for the kids. Okay, we already been through the conversation. Yeah, come on. No, the MVY that

one, whatever that that's the that's our son's baseball. So, I'm okay with that and we'll put that into the budget cuz I I truly believe in that kind of stuff. But Flex Brew House, that's a movie theater. More Flicks Brew House. Apple Bill, Apple Bill, Apple Bill, Apple Bill. Uh Clay Casa, children'splace.com cuz 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 Bell, Botox and Beyond. I tried Botox for the first time and I think it's

nice. Yeah. I didn't know if you can afford it. We did. You didn't even know? Well, I told you after. I was I was away from my phone at the time, so she didn't have the ability to call me about it. All right. But afterwards, when I got home with it, I was able to look at the stuff. That's when she told me. Yeah. You know what's crazy? And that was a lot of money. That was a lot of money. Dude's 7 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 him. 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. Well, thank you very much. That's 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 What's on here? We have

Facetune. Why? It's an iCloud Plus. iCloud Plus is fine. It's usually 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 don't pay for it cuz no one likes She pays 10 bucks a month for it. What? We haven't even gone through all of your YouTube. Oh my god. I just

didn't know that was 10 bucks and it was costing money to make this look crappy. Oh, okay. Thank you very much. You can't say there. Oh, sorry. Fake names. Sorry. Well, the spending on there was uh shocker, crazy, and a lot to go through. Second Avery Federal does this bring us to you? Uh $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. Again, you only made the minimum payment, but then $936 of spending with $23863 of interesting. Why are

we purchasing on a card that is acrewing interest that we cannot fully pay off that we could only make the minimum payment to? Cuz we did not have the money in our check our debit. Well, we're financially stable. Am I right, guys? When I turn this page, how much of it is going to be bull versus necessities? Uh, 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 is 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? Uh, we don't see each other's credit card purchases. We only That's where you guys purchase all your Yes. 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 um back in the day because we do have we have fun money. I'll 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, right? I'm okay with that. When we're out of debt and have a fully funed emergency fund, how much are we setting aside for fun money? $100 a paycheck, right? What? You guys are spending way more than that? What are we talking about? This just for paycheck. 200 400 bucks a month total for the household. But you guys are spending on miscellaneous [ __ ] calculated about $7 to $8,000, right? Or no, something like it was something like that. Well, you know that the goal. So, you added

a zero time 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, okay? You know, about a year or two years ago, was I would spend all my money on whatever it is I'm collecting, right? However, you know, memorabilia that I want, couple hundred thousand, right? Um, and then I'd go, well, if I'm missing a hundred, 200, I would use the credit card probably. uh 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 games? I'm sorry. I know what Kickstarter is. I'm a board game player. We We play board games. We're, you know, we're nerds. And that's Kickstarter. There's a lot of the ones that were coming. They were coming on. They were coming on Kickstarter, but you know, they cost some money. So, how often are we doing this? It wasn't too often, but it was it was a lot that was backed up and and came out at one time. So, there was things like that

would I would purchase on my credit card. Okay. Um, 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 cuz 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

se we buy a red and a green card. That's when we know we're come on. Well, that's that's the problem is, hey, we need to go groceries or we need gas or we need something, you know, go put it on the green card. Color ass sorted just like ring of cards. Well, that's that's what it was. But as far as 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, you know, um unless

something just came out and that that's what it was. All right. Obviously, just resources wise, you guys should use the Fizz card. It's usually geared towards college, so that 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 a 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 it. Uh, we'll get you connected with it if you guys want to use it. I'll also give you three free therapy sessions with Sandre Mine. It's what the audience gets. It's 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. Uh, 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 like

it or anything like that. So, whatever you want to do, whatever you guys need, we're happy to connect you. Okay. Well, but before then, let's look at the spending. You said about half. No, about 75%. [ __ ] Uh, talk about Pan Express, Crispy Cream, Auntie Ants. Okay, it's all it's also just horrible for you. At least you look like, you know, I mean, you you stay fit for the military, but my goodness, it's it's all just bad. Entertainment Hub, Chipotle, McDonald's, Little Caesars, MVYA, eBay.com, fling.com. Fling. Fling. That sounds like a No, I don't

know what this 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 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 want to get smarter with your money, download Blossom right now. And you can follow me at Caleb Hammer. 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 It's $105. $105. Oh, Fling Con. I remember. That's a board game convention. Board game convention. Thank you. It's the opposite of getting Oh god. Oh my god. That was funny. But no. Yes. It was It's There's There's a convention coming up for the board game that that we're looking at. Yes. I purchased I purchased me a little I purchased the tickets now,

right? It's coming in in July. Um so I was able to get them, right? Um Okay. Yes. And Schlotskis. Thank you, babe. You're welcome. That's a food place. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, you guys go out to eat a lot. We we we do. Why? Because we're not always together all the time. So, will Sammy sandwiches at home? Well, we don't. We we also we're lazy. We 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 cuz 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 or we can choose financial security actually grinding down bringing some discipline to this. I agree right with this for 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 by meal planning she's come up with a great uh 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 a rate of money. $800. Ridiculous amount of money. Probably spend way too much. A lot more than we should think. What do you think? In one month, I would

say about 400 bucks because groceries every week is three to 400. I would say for And then we also eat out $400. For fast food, 400 bucks. What do you think? Yeah, I'd say about 1,200. What? For food? For no, for going out to eating out? Yeah. Yeah, I would say that. 400 1,200. Where is the difference here? Do you just like not know her spending or she thinks you spend a lot? What is happen? 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. How is How are we so separated? Cuz 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 how is there so much separation here in terms of what you think is going out to eat spending? I don't know. Well, cuz every time we go out to eat, it's between like4 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 spend $400 on going out to eat. Is that not insane? Oh, god. I mean, it's not good. So, she might be she might be right on that one. I'll give you that that I'm probably way lower. What is it? I think $800 $1,542.74. I win, but at what cost? Yeah. uh at the cost of uh 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 it

to the tally. $9,1359. Well, what was that? That was the interest. It's the interest that has accured this year so far in that. So, we're at approximately $2,000 for just two cards we looked at that you guys have lost this year so far. You 900 I heard 9,000. Okay. Oh, I may have accidentally said that. $900. 913 59. All right. Okay. Which is insane. Okay. I mean, I'm being told you guys also told Lindsay beforehand that like the kids are picky eaters, so eating art is easier for them. I mean, it's just like Yeah, it

is. It we 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 could 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, so the changes only started within the last couple weeks. Well, 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 caning rock this if we actually discipline. Um obviously we'll get you the cookbook. Is this Well, you don't even need the budget friendly meals. That's just for people that like meet the median. You could double that. Your grocery spending a

lotment can be great. Like I don't know. I would like the cookbook. Well, I we'll get you a cookbook. Thank you. We're having some weird printing issues with China right now cuz um you know everything going on. But yeah, we'll get it to you. Okay. And other than Navy Federal, what the Oh, what even? Oh, this looks like maybe a car. It's a $38,39.40. Oh, that's a home equity um loan at 7.45%. What is that's that's barely even keeping up with the market. Debt consolidation we took out in 2023. We did. We we we took

that out. paid off all the credit card debts and stuff we had. Obviously, not the the 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 any of our lifestyle at that moment for 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? 31700,000. We do. How are we so on the dollar? Um, 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. Couple weeks ago. So, it's got about 100,000 in home equity, but with the loan, I only consider it like 66 or 60. And this means all the debt we're looking at today is only a year and a half old. Yeah. Sort of. Yeah. That's insane. You know, we've talked about $44,000 of credit cards so far. Yeah. And we're not

even halfway through. Yeah. 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 were 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 extra 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 $38,39.40. Okay, and it is

a minimum monthly payment of 50456. Interest $967.70. We're at about 3,000 hours um gone from you guys. Yeah, these numbers are going to require that I take a ton. Okay. It's good for your health. Is it? I don't know. Stress stress of your debt. Sorry. And you guys didn't even have car payments at the time of taking out that loan? We did. No, we did. We did. We didn't put any of the money towards the cards because it went to all the other stuff. So, did you have car payments? Yes, we did. Okay. Okay. each

have a card as we asked. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had we had card payments at that time. A Chase Amazon card. Oh, for sake. Here we go. No, that was that was me. So, we live right next to a a distribution center. You can like practically see it from our backyard. We can see it and and honestly, when we need something, we order it, right? Uh it comes right away. What's right? 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 by tonight. Yeah. us too. Normally, that's a big driving away and going to 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 cuz you live next to a distrib. It's because you have a distribution center in the city you live in. We we we use it a lot. We use that ability to buy a lot of things from Amazon a lot. which gives us the uh 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 is making you spend more than you even would if we're being honest 48 only the minimum payment made of course new balance $3,2927, $6322 of interest acrewing, $46.87 of purchases, and a $96 minimum 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. Cuz it's Amazon. Amazon Amazon Amazon Amazon Amazon Amazon Amazon Amazon Amazon Amazon Amazon Amazon Amazon. 200. We've had a late fee this year. Oh. Oh, for [ __ ] sake. Neither of us even know this. For which one? Amazon card. This was before the automated payments. Why weren't automatic payments happening? We did not set it up when we first got the card or during the setting up the card. We were just going through our Excel spreadsheet, going to there, logging into

the account, paying it off. There was a point when Yeah, I do remember that that we just didn't set it up. All right. After thatuation, we paid it. We paid the late fee. We did pay the late fee and then we got back onto the to 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 [ __ ] sake. Okay. Uh we have Dude, I don't even know what the this is. I

know. Stakes. Stakes for out these green artificial Yeah. stakes. We have dogs um that are digging and stuff like that. So we bought some some fake turf to to hide the the mud areas. So, uh, zone protects, no holes, digging. I 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, 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. Aning 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 refill. I don't know. Oh, it's the fly thing. Fly. Yeah, fly. Salt and pepper. More artificial turf stuff. So, we're really booking that up. Penguins for kids. Penguins in Antarctica. My son had 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? Penguins, the ultimate guide. So, we're just buying all these penguins books permanently. But now we know about penguins. Now, there's lots of information about penguins. And 180 pocket card binders. Explore my world. Penguins. Pevelyn twopack dance ribbons. Novelty place. 10 piece dance uh gymnastic thing more. There's more turf stuff and gymnastics shirt and 12piece. Do we understand we're 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 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, you know, things. A lot of it. Yes. I I we will card binder stand up for a lot of the stuff that we had bought cuz it's what we needed and stuff like that. Yes. But I'm okay with that. But there's some stuff that probably Yes, we probably didn't need it again. I can It was a good one. I can

logically see a lot of purchases here. Yeah. But I know for a fact as we go through there whether or not if we like 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 $22911 in interest this year so far in this card. Had a late payment on this card. The balance is only going up. The minimum monthly payment's 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 mathematically it's impossible. Again, we both have the access to that. We both can do exactly what buy what we want at 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 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. This is more Amazon purchases and this is it's brutal. And you're probably you're getting

a 5% cash back, but you're paying 23%. So it's like Yeah. You're losing 17. This is priorities at that point, you know? Mhm. All priorities are all messed. Yeah. Well, I don't I don't agree with that. But go on. I don't think my priorities are personally. You mean financially or financially when I I am not talking about the way personally or 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 No, I don't think that's all we're talking about. That's all. It's

so fixable though. Literally, you just have to make life here. But we didn't we didn't make the fixes. We didn't make the changes. I feel like financially 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 is 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 have done cuz that's where we got the Amazon card. That's where we got the

other credit cards, you know, the the the rooms to go, which we bought furniture with, you know, like if you say it's so easy to get out of debt, why haven't we? Why last time we get 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 she I said it was fixable. She said fixable. I fixable then why haven't you? We didn't get that nail and hammer. We didn't change a lifestyle. Yeah, I think it's a

lifestyle issue. It certainly is. But if it's fixable, why aren't we fixing this? 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. 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. So, the synchrony card is at go on. Nope. Sorry. The synchrony card is at $3,436.70 with a minimum fee payment of $185. What's going on with this card? Which

one is that one? This furniture. Oh, furniture. Furniture. So, I had a surgery last year. All right. Situation on my shoulder. Uh, so one of the things was recommended was getting a recliner. Um, cuz his arm was in a sling. Sling. So, hey, you find a recliner you can sleep in, right? We don't have recliners. We have couch and you know the bed and stuff like that. So uh went ahead and bought that. We also renovated our daughter's bedroom. We've done a lot to we've done a lot of renovations to our house. Okay. Over the

years. Um but if you cash flow, I'm okay with it. Okay. But flowing. We didn't um and with rooms with rooms to go specifically. Um we we paid for her big girl furniture. Her Yeah. her entire bedroom set of everything that she needed for the big girl stuff. So that was the conclusion. Uh the recliner and um that's it. That was it. Um, 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 massagering.

It goes back. It's electronically. It's amazing. Could we have gone with a smaller one and a cheaper one? Maybe. But that I'm going tell you right now, my mindset was set on that that that recliner. And she did. 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 detrimental. Well, that's what we did. I think the interest rate is the highest on

this one than all the others. No, the interest rate is zero. And see, we don't even know. I thought it was 35%. No, it's zero on the furniture. Yes, dude. The thing is it is right now zero for the vast majority. It's at 0% until paid off. If we don't pay it off. If we don't pay it off, then then that's what that's what we're talking about. So, well, for for $629, whatever that purchase was, that expires in about a year, the interest free period. The $2713 and $92 that those ones never expire. Those ones

are until paid off, which as long as you make your minimum monthly payment zero. It'll probably bump up to like 30% sure that 629. I guess we're going to pay that off. Yeah. But your minimum payment is just another addition to the stack is $185. Okay. 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 I I milked it. I took

the surgery, everything I could with it. Right. I made sure I relaxed. I made sure I I was, you know, How you doing health-wise? Take it easy. I'm doing as good as I can for somebody who's about to retire. No, he is literally break. 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, but he actually, I think, needs another shoulder surgery on the other side. On the other shoulder, again, they covered by the military, but that doesn't Yeah,

that's nice. Great. That's wonderful. But again, my body my body is breaking. I mean, he's been wearing the duty belt for over 20 years and standing watches. Why did you want to go go so long past the three years? Three years. Because you've served for uh a decade, right? Okay. Oh, I'm at 20 years now. So, why did I want to go so long? Yes. 30 years. 20 years. Why 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.

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yourself physically. Hey, join the Navy just to get out of the house, right? Um my dad was was an army guy, right? So he did 10. I wanted to do more than him. uh at that about that 10 year mark is you know when when we got together um and at that time it I wanted to get out probably my entire career probably every single re reinlistment I wanted to get out but I just stayed because whatever hey I need 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 stay 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 I guess I'm in it for the wrong well at that point in time I was in until I retired all right now I'm done I'm done I'm I'm I How often are you away from the house like deployed? Um not away from the house anymore. Uh

I did go away for a whole year and a half, a year and a half to Poland. Um they I got stationed in Poland for the year and a half and that was about 21 2021 2022. Um so I was gone there. So when I came back in 2022, the end of 2022, that's when, you know, all the stuff, you know, we started buying the the cars and the stuff like that. Uh renovations of the house, things like that. So yeah. So that was the last time I was gone uh for the longest. Since then,

I'm not going to be gone except for Okay. 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 I don't have a drive anymore or a desire of what I want to do after the military. Um what I want to do is is support her now cuz she's been supporting me and doing and moving with me. Um, so for her PA system or PA program, whatever whatever program she gets accepted into, obviously we're going to have to move to um

or stay here in San Antonio hopefully. Um, 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 uh that I like to get going, but it's not it's you know, it 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. Bad way to do it. Well, that's what I did. Um, and it's in my extra bedroom. So, you know, I'm okay with that. It's the people that throw all the money in up front. Just start with the I learned the lesson the hard way. I tried my stuff. I'm, you know, I was at least you had the budget to do it. Well, at the time probably, but obviously now looking back I didn't. Um, so yeah, I have the YouTube. That would be nice to do, but I ain't going to be 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 Katon man. We like Katon. No one will play Risk with me cuz everyone hates it. Same with Monopoly, but I love Katan. Katon 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 went to crap. And that was literally 8 months after the um 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 8 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 8 months past. You can't do anything about it." So, we had to buy a whole new one, right? In the middle of

the hot hit summer, found the 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% with 0% because for 72 months but you're not making the payments necessary to pay this off in 72 months. The minimum payments are too small for that. I think I think it as long as we continue to pay toward it, we won't ever have an interest rate on it. I think if you if we missed a payment or something

like that. Yeah, that might Yeah, if you you'll get a penalty if you miss a payment. Yeah, it'll be really high interest and of course we've missed the payment on the Amazon card. So, it's just like historically looking, you know, 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 to, you know, first, you know, so that is something of our knowledge. Minimum payment $6742, 5 years to pay off. So, we're going to have a minimum payment for 5 years. Not a

huge minimum payment, but it's stacking across everything. Of course, that is 5 years to not have one [ __ ] up. And that up, by the way, it can be not you guys forgetting cuz you have it on auto, but accidentally having less than $67 in your checking account and the payment bounces, then boom, right? And we know we get down to 100 often. So, this is not risk-free for 5 years. True. I don't want us to think that this is just boom, set, done. No, I didn't I didn't think about that way. That that's

true. Okay. I didn't think about that way. That's that's a good way to cuz I would not have thought about that until it happened. So, and if that does hit, we're looking at 29% interest on that. All right. It's brutal. All right. Cherry. What's cherry? Uh, 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. Okay. No interest. Okay. just added to the minimum payment pile, right? Yep. Yeah. Cars. Here we are. We have a Ford Escape 2023 at a 7.39% interest rate.

So, you know, especially taking account depreciation, certainly not keeping up that, you know, money in like a marketplace. So, you're losing money overall. Yes. Uh, okay. So, Ford Escape, we owe $25,56.15 with a minimum monthly payment of $66.68. That's a brutal minimum monthly payment and not a great interest rate. It's not like a, you know, minimum payment until it's paid off type of interest rate. 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. Oh, great. Well, that's nice. A rare case where it's had had value a little bit. Have you thrown in? How much did you put down on it? We did a tradein value. I had a Nissan Rogue 2017. So that's probably why that's why it's allowed you to keep it. We will 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 Yeah, we

paid off, but the entire uh AC in it during the summer time frame uh broke. That's a relatively okay fix, though. Well, we decided at the moment, okay, we're going to trade it in, right, cuz 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? Never had a new car. I've always had like beers or things that I could pay in cash. But there there is a

separation. There's 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 a used car or something. So, we went and we and I got we splurged. We we we obviously, but it's because you guys are willing to splurge in everything you do in life that we're not and cars are not a [ __ ] cheap thing to splurge on, right? You know, see that now hindsight. Yeah. But like I don't care if like we come from,

you know, 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 going to put us back into debt again. And so it's like it's this is it's a weird situation. Yeah. I don't know. And it just adds an intense minimum monthly payment. Yeah. My monthly payments bad. Can't wait for

you to see his truck. I can calculate is 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 [ __ ] predator drones. I don't know. What do you need? We used it this week for trees branches. We cut down. So, actually the truck is coming. 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. You can rent a car. The

truck is coming in handy like that. It was nice. And we're in Texas. I'm I'm going to say we're in Texas, right? If you don't have a truck, you're wrong. Okay. Okay. If you don't have a minimum payment that you can't afford in a car that you just use to hold groceries once a week, you're wrong. 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 That's true. You're right. But mine fits more people anyway. M and it goes faster and it's

smoother. Mine's nice on the highway. What do you drive? Tesla Model X. Oh. Oh, that's nice. Can't get a Cyberch. It also drives for me. I'd buy a Cyber Truck. Too small on the inside. See, that's why I bought a Ford. Yeah. Well, it's about as small as a Ford in 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 the uh 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 are we do? This is insane. Come on, guy. This is crazy. I just got back from overseas. We only had the one car. I needed to get something. Cool. 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, CarMax, things like that. Nothing was catching my eye. We went to Ford. Who cares? Well, we cared 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, right? We got it. And look at the the interest rate on that is extremely low. 1.9 1.9. So, I took the opportunity. How much did you put down? Uh, I I don't remember off the top of my head. I don't know. Maybe a couple thousand. Yeah, we appreciate about $1,000. Uh, well, no, no, more than that. But you're underwater by a thousand. It's not crazy. But we did 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, you know, traveling something and it worked out phenomenal. And we drive a lot. It did. But again, like 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, as the the value of this is going to go down substantially further, quicker, you know, especially we get closer and closer

to a normal car market. This is Okay. Well, that's a nice job. I like Okay, great. I'd prefer financial stability personally. I don't I don't know. Maybe it's just a preference thing. Okay. You disagree? No, I I'm not disagreeing. I'm just 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. Yeah. Well, there's this is what we talk about sacrifice. I would sell both cars and get like what? Like a used 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, cuz that's what you've bragged about it being used for. Then be a real man and just get a truck for the utility and not toing 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 cuz you have an equity position. You selling your car and we can uh borrow the difference or

even just trade it in. You get a $20,000 car. You get a $15,000 car. Great. We just cut this part of the debt substantially which is a substantial part of our debt. Maybe guys, it is still 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. We $20,000 is not going to be a bad car. It's just gonna have some miles on 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 has Please do cuz229. That's a disgusting minimum monthly payment even at the interest rate. Actually, if you take in account the interest rates, that's a disgusting minimum 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. That's

a we we'll we'll legitimately take a look at that and see. I really do hope so. It's more the minimum payment that terrifies me. Okay. Just imagine what that could be doing towards our future, towards whatever that towards 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 where's truck

or Disney? Which one's more important if you had to pick right now? Truck or Disney? I mean a family mature trip would be wonderful. Then let's do that cuz this can cash flow a Disney trip in, you know, a few months. Never even thought about that honestly. That's and that again that's why we're here cuz we're not the experts. We're the experts of I was like where are you going with that? We're the experts of not being experted. So we have a mortgage 2213,000. Yep. $77. Love the rate 2.75. It's wonderful. We financed it um

back in a home equity loan of 7.5. So yeah. Oh, that too. Minimum monthly payment $1,290.64. Of course, now we add the additional monthly payment of 54 and the equity. But yeah, and then of course we have nothing to show for it cuz all the debt is racked back up. Yep. Uh wait, 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 and vast majority is going to principal. This is zero. So far, we

are talking well cuz the balance is so big. $26,280. 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, $1,953. 20 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 your debt? I think so. Yeah. Debt, I believe. Yeah. I don't think going through that's what

we all are able to to calculate, put together. So, okay. This year so far, $5,75248 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. So, would another home equity debt consolidation be something to look at or absolutely not? Why the 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? That's that's the question I have by only allowing consolidation and or bankruptcy even. No. Well, either way is those are applicable if you can prove you've changed your behavior for at least 6 months. If you stick to a hardcore budget, you are paying off debt, you are going intense, cooking from home, cutting back on the bull for 6 months and you've proven you can do that, then I will. And if you do it for a month, that doesn't count. You can do anything for a month and then fall back. I think I

that's a that is a true story. Definitely get that's a true statement. Uh in the uh definitely sell the cars, that's for sure. Downsize the cars. You're not going to get bad cars. Checking out to Okay, we'll look at it. Checking it. $1,834. Saving 645. Was the 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 themselves. They tell everybody that. No, they tell us that cuz we're in the top program and they have the

insights to everything. Okay, good. Well, I would share more, but I'm under an NDA. Okay. But no, they do not tell everybody that. We offer more content than any other YouTube membership. Okay. Uh Patreon, same. That's me. Yeah. Y What's the YouTube membership? Super Carlin Brothers. Yeah, I think Well, I think Okay. I don't know if you ever heard of them. Apple. Apple. Apple. Marble Slab. Seas Candles. Venmo. Papa John's. Yep. And other you break fix. Like do we go there like we were breaking? No, we got our kids iPods. Oh, good. iPads weren't enough.

Well, it's because they're on the bus and they my daughter my daughter was getting bullied there and I thought it might help to have headphones on and just listen to music and zone out. And then like when we got them off eBay, the battery was really horrible. We had to get it replaced. Where'd you get an iPad on eBay? iPod on eBay. They don't make them anymore. I thought they came out with like one a couple years ago. No, there's no more iPods. It's only iPhone. So, we we our children are too young for phones.

We want to give them phones, right? Too little. Figure something that they can have for uh music to to help my daughter and my son just on the bus, right? To and from work. Uh school, sorry. Two and they don't have phones yet, I assume. No, they've got no phones. No. But the iPods they have is the ability to listen to the stuff to stay away from, you know, just issues on the bus, right? to keep them distracted to get them to uh point A to point B. Point A to B without you know being

part of you know the issue that they were having on the bus. Yeah. So that sucks. Grade school kids and kids are mean. Yep. You call the Yeah. Uh 2019 an iPod Pod came out. Oh wait. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's about Yeah, that's when And that's I think the latest one is the seventh generation, but they still cost the the the high price that you would think it would not be. But they they came back. We had to get the new batteries just so they wouldn't die. And then and then there's more PayPal transfer.

PayPal transfer. Broadway Nation. More Broadway Nation. Barnes & Noble. Smoothie King. You guys just go out all the time. Teier teira. Alcharo. Cash app. Kohl's. Steam games. Elquila. Yeah. Red Robin. McDonald's. Etsy. World Market. PlayStation Network. PlayStation something. Steam games. Victoria's Secret. It's just 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 [ __ ] MJ Lacant. MV YBA. MVYBA. Softball for the sun. Oh, free spirits. Van Mooney. KFC. Cook Unity Inc. Um, 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 funed emergency or who have a fully funed emergency fund. 47 Brand the baseball thing, Apple Huff Gold, Venom Money, Sonic Drive, Venom Money, Amazon, Apple Builds, Texas Roadhouse, eBay Commerce. Oh my [ __ ] What are we doing? This is 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 Apps Entertainment Entertainment Apple Bill Cash App Entertains Entertain

What is All the Iss Entertainment. My son's birthday party. Oh my gosh. It's every 5 seconds though. Ours entertainment. Ars entertainment. It's hundreds of dollars. Hundreds of dollars. Oh, that's crazy. Free spirits. Lock wheels. Uh Lock Block. I don't even know. Disney Plus. Free prints. Venmo. First Course. Free prints. Apple bill. Apple bill. Peter Piper Pizza. My goodness, I haven't heard that name in forever. Peter Piper Pizza, Microsoft, more Patreon, eBay, Candace International or something. Click Pay Champions, Pokemon Champion, PayPal Money, 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, Fablettics, tequila. Yeah. L Mexican food restaurant. Chili's tequila. Mexicana community. J C J C J C J C J C J C J C J C J C J C P Penny. Oh my 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, Jack, Lackland, Jambo Juice, Raising Gains, Apple Bill, Venmo, Clay Casa, Brew House, uh, Minimity Payment, PayPal and Out, PayPal and Out, Apple

Bell, Medina Valley, Canina, Vending Machine, Crispy Cream, Etsy's Olive Garden, Cook Unity, Jimmy Johns, Jamba Juice, Apple, Apple, Smoothie King, TJ Maxx. That's [ __ ] insane. Yeah. spending 78,000 hours on bull when we could have fully we could oh my the amount of money that we could have put towards debt was crazy absolutely crazy could even afford your truck almost you know $600 in savings we're doing all that well we have $1,000 in savings there $600 in savings there are children they're they're children's we are trying to set them up for for the future

stuff so we are using what $1,000 yeah we started I don't know if 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 year. Small amount small amount money towards it. It's going to build over that. They're not going to get that until they're a lot older. So, it's a high yield savings account. What's the interest rate on this? Uh, 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 it. Like, it's a tax advantage. Specifically for just education, right? Use it for education. We want it for like if they want to buy a house, 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 you know trade negotiations are being done a bit more and you know interest rates might go down. Oh, what was this called? You said

a 529. It's a tax advantage plan where you can put it in there essentially taxfree. Let it grow in the market. You choose the investments of choice and then they can pull it out tax-free for school educ anything education related but if they don't pull out for school no it can 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 restrict but 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 have it locked in for two years at 4%. Big [ __ ] okay but I'm listening. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm just saying just explaining why we I get it. I understand. But it's only again it's $1,000. You could have this could easily have been $50,000 per kid by now if that's what we were prioritizing. Easily by the time we're where you guys have been and where we are. Maybe $25,000 per kid. Okay. I'll go with that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It could be stacked. And you guys cannot spend

money on birthday parties or fun until you have a fully funded emergency fund cuz how are you guys going to pay for a big expense when that happens? a kid goes to the hospital, you know, breaks a limb, whatever. Who even knows, um, a car a car breaks down? There's so many emergencies that might not be covered. Okay. Uh, there are so many things. That's why they're emergencies cuz they're unpredictable. If that comes, you have $500 saved up or something like that for emergencies. Like, 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 6 months of that. I don't know. I'm just guessing. Uh might be 15, might be 12. But even we need to have that before we can even spend money on funds 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. Um 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's getting pretty rough. At that point, credit scores will go down. You will the you'll qualify to be able to fix something like that, a new roof or something that when that happens, maybe you have to have a high interest loan for it. You need an emergency fund and h not having an emergency fund is an emergency. We uh we have tried that before in our uh 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 we put different savings such as

the house emergency, the car emergency, car fixtures is what it was called. Uh X Christmas fund, right? We've we've done that small stuff with savings for Navy Federal. Obviously, it didn't work because what happens is when we when it comes when it comes time for us needing money, we pull from it. Oh, great. We're going to need money cuz we got this bill coming out, whatever. Or, hey, we're at $100. We need something. Let's pull it from pull it from the And she asked, you know, which one are we pulling it from? You know, Christmas

Christmas fund or or a car fix that. Well, that's what we've been doing. That's what we've been doing. If there's a better way 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 cuz we don't know what that looks like. We don't know what it means. SoFi account, whatever. Obviously said don't do Navy Federal Sofi. 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 Uber Eats, you know, it's like take a different path home where you're not seeing the golden arches. So, you just you put in those mechanisms. It's okay to I we all have immature behaviors in different ways. Yes, 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. Okay. Okay. 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 uh 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. Yeah. I don't want to do that either. minimum debt payments, not including your mortgage, but including your uh home equity, is $3,43910. So that alone is 30%. Debt payments alone are 30% of your income. And keep going down this path, it gets to 40%, it

gets to 50%, you see how we start missing missing payments, then cars get repo, foreclosure notices hit because you have to choose what goes where. Okay, 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 $1,29064. What about gas, electricity, internet, all that stuff? Utilities combined, how much? Oh, um, on a monthly basis, I don't know. I didn't calculate all that. 35 gas for me, 65 gas for him weekly. Uh, what? Driving. Yeah. No, no, no. Home

utilities. CPS. But no, CVS. Um, it's at least 800. Water. Water for everything maybe. Yeah, it's it's it's up there somewhere between 8 and 1,000. We had it. We'll call it nine then. All right, call it 900. 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. Like Helium does T-Mobile, Mint uses something. Um, I would rather do that if you guys own your home outright, just while we're in a budget mode. Mhm. So, again,

I prefer helium specifically. But, uh, gas, broom, room, drive, drive. How much? 60 bucks for me. 35 for me every week. A month. Oh. Uh, two weeks plus 35. How much a month? How much a month for the house? So, let's say 400 cuz if we do 100 a week approximately between the two of us, we'll say 400. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. 400. Yeah. Car insurance 325. We have USA. It's really high. Yeah, it's real. Yeah. We could do food for Could do food for a,000. Are we talking 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 a thousand. We might be able to boost that. TP fund. This is sports and stuff. Give me monthly cost without purchasing new things. What is needed for their enrichment activities that they are enjoying doing? Cuz I want to be able to budget that in. I think it would be probably around 300. Okay. Well, maybe not. Um because Well, I

don't know. Because she's got 232 plus the private lessons twice a week. She's trying out for the gymnastics team May 31st. Okay. What are we thinking about? I don't know. Maybe say 400. Okay. Okay, I'm going to do TP fund is 500. Then I would say let's see if because it's Joseph too. Okay. Oh, well if it's 500 no 500 for both children and then I'm boosting it to 600 cuz 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.

Uh 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. Um Okay. Right. Correct. You have no medical bills. Okay. Cool. Uh pets. We have two. Where are they? We have a white labador. Yeah. With two white labor. They are turning one this month. Do we have pet insurance? We do have pet insurance. What's the monthly cost? It's 115.

Trust me, it's worth it. Is it? That's the question we're going to have cuz she doesn't want the pet insurance. She wants me to get rid of it. I have it, dude. Mying just absolute creature of an investigator up in a dog. I had to take her to the emergency room again for the a millionth time the other day. Trust me, it is worth it. It will save you thousands and thous especially lab doors. They like to sniff around and get in things. Yes, they do. Trust me, it is worth it. It It always feels

like, oh, do I really need this? And then and then all of a sudden you see that $10,000 bill to keep them alive because they something got stuck in their stomach and it's like that's good to know. Okay. Okay. So, the uh pet food, how much on a monthly basis? They're they eat a lot. It's 160 because it's two bags a month. That's fine. 160. Anything else that needs to be in your budget that I have not put in? Think we have like subscriptions and stuff? No, you don't. Oh, okay. If you can fit them

in the TP fund, you can, but if you can't, they're canled. Oh, we're talking like Netflix, Disney Plus. You're saying those? You sure are. I'd rather go to Disney than watch Disney. Have Disney Plus. Cheers. Well, I need to like holidays and stuff. No, hold on. You're saying 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 likeable. I said this is liveable. People live like this. You are you I mean that's a spoiled mentality. To not spend money on holidays. Yes.

Spoiled. It's an entitlement. It is not required for survival. I want you to and you probably can budget it in. I am 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 D. You do not have an emergency fund to cover emergencies. If a roof if you have to replace a roof, you're if you have to replace a car, you're [ __ ] 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 like 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. Okay? For the money that hits our account for now until February, you have an extra $3,5626. So, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to allocate $56.26 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 a,000 cuz then we're only going to have 2,000 left. So, 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 he did it right. Should be around 75,000. Is that right? No, just let him. Okay. Let him. Okay. Bad debt is $137,000 $170. No. Are you talking about Oh, this is with cars. That's considering with you trading down. That's after you trading down cars. Yes, that's 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 1/2 months to pay off or 5 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're actually willing to sacrifice, which by the way, I gave you a lot of money for fun money. Uh, should take about 4 and 1/2 years to pay off our debt. And that's with fund money. And normally, I can't give

people fund money. So, you guys are lucky with that. I would take it and I would sacrifice $500 a month. We can still have a lot of fun on that. Yes, but this gives us debt payoff in 4 and 1/2 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 on a monthly basis. So we need to save up $30,000 for an emergency fund. Okay, 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 you we are bad debtree. All debtree 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 $30,000 six month. And you guys are like golden. You guys have no idea what it's like on

that other side cuz you've only ever consolidated and even when you paid off debt the first time, you didn't have a fullund emergency fund. This will be like something you've never lived before. And then, by the way, uh 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, you know, aside for like rainy days and kids and whatnot. But, um, 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, cuz I'm giving you I'm giving you on a yearlying basis. $6,000 to blow. Okay, that's incredible. So, that's what I would do. I would do smallest debt to largest 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. Okay. Okay. Save up the fully funded emergency fund. Do that. Okay. 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 a follow-up channel making some progress in the coming months. Go back. All right. 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 T- related purposes. Uh 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. Really helps support the channel. Thousands of

hours of extra content. Hammer financial score. You over spent, so you're 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 a two out of 10. Don't like the home equity, but it is what it is. Uh, still have an equity position in your home. Emergency fund, one out of 10. That's what's saved up is basically, you know, onetenth. retirement. Well, you guys are kind of set because of what you guys got going on, but we just don't have Yeah, I

do have the TSP. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, I am going to give you a for the lifestyle you want to live. I think closer to about a seven 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 six out of 10, but love the rate, love the payment. Okay, if we didn't have that equity loan, it would be like an eight. 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. Okay, 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. Didn't want to tell you the color I'm talking about. You don't need all seven. I got it before it got sold out. The anchor that I went on there is a limited edition. $700 compared to $30, but still, it's the only one that fits. Don't ask us how much we paid on our wedding. Exclusive members content. Click the link in the description or pin comment below and watch thousands of hours of extra and uncensored content.