EP 103: Inflation Survival Guide: Smart Money Saving Strategies
The X's and O's
In this episode of the Retirement Plan Playbook, hosts Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal, and Joshua Winterswyk from Evermont Wealth dive into smart money-saving strategies and discuss the importance of budgeting amidst rising inflation.
They also provide insights into the current stock market, including Nvidia's 10-for-1 stock split and the SEC's shift to a T+1 settlement cycle.
Additionally, the hosts share personal anecdotes on reducing expenses and discuss the significance of consumer sentiment polls in shaping economic viewpoints.
The episode aims to equip listeners with practical financial advice for navigating economic complexities and optimizing their retirement plans.
00:39 Smart Money Saving Strategies
01:37 Little League Triumphs and Lessons
03:14 Nvidia's Stock Split
07:16 SEC's New Settlement Cycle Rule
11:08 American Economic Sentiment and Media Influence
17:44 Retailers Cutting Prices Amidst Inflation
22:39 Understanding Inflation and Budgeting Strategies
25:16 Tackling Major Expenses
26:11 Reevaluating Monthly Subscriptions
28:32 The Convenience of Online Shopping
33:19 Smart Utility Savings
35:00 Negotiating Service Contracts
38:45 Recommendations
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Transcript
Intro: Welcome to the Retirement Plan Playbook hosted by Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal, and Joshua Winterswyk of Evermont Wealth. This podcast dives deep into investment strategies, retirement planning, and current events, equipping you with the insights needed to craft a robust retirement playbook adaptable to any political or economic climate.
Intro: Join Brent, Matthew, and Joshua as they guide you through the complexities of retirement planning. Offering expert advice. to tackle challenges and the later stages of your journey. It's time to build your optimal retirement playbook. Now let's dive into today's episode.
Brent: Welcome to the retirement plan playbook. In this episode, we're going to be discussing smart money saving strategies. I'm your host, Brent Pasqua, founder of Evermont wealth. And I'm here with our colleagues, Matthew Theal, Joshua Winterswyk, both certified financial planners. And are you guys, I mean, is this a topic that you guys enjoy talking about saving money?
Matt: It's a topic that really gets me going because I hear all of these people tell me their money saving strategies. And I always think to myself, wow, that is a really bad strategy. You're doing,
Brent: do you ever find strategies? Besides the ones that we're talking about today that you're like, okay, that's actually a good thing that would help me save some money.
Matt: Yeah. Like when you were talking about doing the Costco Instacart, so instead of spending, you know, 800 at Costco, you spend 200 at Costco. I'd like that strategy.
Joshua: You took that strategy though.
Matt: I did. I copied it, but I didn't realize I copied it till like two episodes ago, but enough about me, let's get into this.
Matt: Brent talked to us about little league, which rumor had it yet another champagne bath. What's going on?
Brent: Yeah. We Took down the AAA championship. So it's like the minor league championship. And we had an outstanding season. We had a great group of kids. We had great families on the team, a great culture, great coaches, and the boys did it.
Brent: We went wire to wire pretty much, and it's a top dog, and went, had a really strong season, went through the playoffs, and won all the games in playoffs, including the last game, and the boys ended up with a nice gold ring, so I'm happy for them. Happy with the result, happy for the way that I think I made some mistakes as a coach, but I learned from them and now we get a good moved on to where we'll play the top teams in our city from all the other leagues and we'll be in a tournament and hopefully we last year we won that tournament.
Brent: Hopefully this year we can try to win it again as well.
Joshua: So this is two in a
Brent: row. This is two in a row.
Joshua: Different, different kids though this year.
Brent: Yeah, we had three kids that were on the team last year. And, but besides that, all the other nine kids on the team were new kids. And the team camaraderie was great.
Brent: And that helped really build that for this year. I think.
Joshua: And how many other
Brent: managers have won two in a row? That I don't know. I don't even know where to find archives or something like that. I'm. You know, I mean, it would be cool to know, but I don't really care that much. I mean, I just, I'm happy for the kids and happy for the success that they had and what they learned this year and the improvements that they had.
Brent: And that's what means the most to me.
All right, let's get into the hot take headlines. Nvidia had some massive news this week. They announced a 10 for one stock split, which means that for every share owned shareholders receive an additional nine shares.
Brent: This is scheduled to take effect on June 7th with a trading split adjusted basis commencing on June 10th. Following the announcement, NVIDIA stock price saw a large movement. The stock hit a thousand dollars per share and continue to climb closing at 1, 140 per share. This is big news and it's so such big news that it seems like so many people are reaching out about either purchasing more shares, what's happening with the stocks, but we were doing a.
Brent: An Instagram post and a YouTube short on this, but this is a big announcement. First, tell us what Nvidia does real quick, and then tell us why this is happening.
Matt: Yeah. So probably like five to 10 episodes ago I actually didn't even remember if you're on this one, Brent, you might've missed this show, but Josh and I were talking about how Nvidia is the new Apple of the stock market.
Matt: It's the most important company in the stock market. Nvidia makes chips used in AI. Their chips are very expensive. I believe they sell for over 40, 000. And Facebook, Amazon Google, they're buying hundreds of millions of dollars of these chips from NVIDIA every quarter. And, you know, it's created this really like never before seen surge in the stock price of NVIDIA.
Matt: It basically went from 100 a share in 2022. To over a thousand dollars a share today. And then they announced that ten four one stock split, like you're saying, which is really good news for the investor, the retail investor. 'cause now they could afford to buy the shares, right? A lot of people get turned off when they see that high a thousand dollars, 800, $900 stock price.
Matt: They'd rather buy it at 80, 90, a hundred dollars a share where they could at least afford a few shares, you know, with a minimal investment. Do you
Brent: think that this will open the market for more individual investors? I mean, I know it opens the market, but do you think now more individual investors are going to jump on this Nvidia train?
Joshua: Yeah, but you know, again, it's going to be smaller retail investors because, you know, institutional investors, this isn't really affecting them at all. Large pension, you know, all of the big investors that share price isn't going to matter, but I will say it might lead to also more trading volume, potentially even more volatility because more people have access to be able to, you know, trade and purchase it more frequently.
Joshua: But I think it's a good signal, you know, I think it's positive. It also means that Nvidia is, is very. You know, forward looking and they think that this kind of company is going to continue to grow. This is one of the reasons why they're doing it as well. So, you know, I'm, I love the stock love, loved it for a long time.
Joshua: But I think it's a good way for, you know, young investors to now get a piece of this powerful stock,
Brent: what are the risks and the benefits to a company doing a stock split like this,
Matt: so the benefit is really just to drive demand. So, you know, it could be good for employees who have shares in the company.
Matt: But it's also good just to get, you know, more retail investors involved. A lot of people don't like that high, high stock price. Like we're saying, you know, over 800 a share over a thousand dollars a share. People would rather buy it, you know, cheaper, you know, ideally, I think most people would prefer to buy stocks, even like a 10 to 20 per share price range.
Matt: Even though at the end of the day, like Josh has always said, it's kind of just like, how many slices are in your pizza? You know, a 12 inch pie is a 12 inch pie. There could be eight slices, there could be four slices, there could be 12 slices. All right. At the day, it doesn't matter much for valuation.
Joshua: The Mount's still the same.
Matt: Exactly.
Brent: . All right, let's get to the next headline.
Brent: There's a, another big announcement. The securities and exchange commission has adopted a new rule to shorten the standard settlement cycle for most security transactions from two business days. To one business day, the new T plus one settlement cycle will begin on May 28th. The, the change though is expected to increase capital efficiency and liquidity and reduce counterparty risk and lower costs.
Brent: However, I think what it will do is require firms to streamline settlement systems and process to meet these new T these new timelines. The T plus two thing has really been in effect for a long time, right? This has been like the standard rule for a long period of time, and now they're going to T plus one.
Brent: Why are they finally making this change?
Matt: So I think we should start by just explaining what T plus one is. So what this means is when you place a stock trade and ETF trade your trade, it takes a while for your money to actually settle. And previously, I think it was actually three days when we started in the industry, there's T plus three.
Matt: They moved it to T plus two, meaning your trade date plus two, two extra business days, right? Now it's your trade date plus a business day. This is a win win for investors. This is great what this means for you the listener Is when you place a trade when your advisor places a trade for you It'll be faster for you to get your money previously Our hands were always cuffed by these trade settlements to get people their money,
Brent: right?
Brent: Which is why we tell people give us three to five days You For us to get the money to you if we're selling these types of securities. Because your money, even though the trade went in, wouldn't actually be liquid till after the T the trade day. Plus the two days.
Matt: Yeah. The brokers. So in our case for our firm, it's Charles Schwab.
Matt: We wouldn't be able to release the funds. It's kind of like a bank hold in a way.
Brent: How will this impact? You know, like stock prices or fund prices or, or market volume and trading volume.
Joshua: I don't, I don't think it's going to much at all. You know, I think this is more for, again, the benefit of the retail investor or the investor.
Joshua: I think who this is actually going to impact a little bit more. Is like smaller brokerages because that three days to settle gives you more time or two days to settle more recently gives you more time to make sure that the accounting is correct, like that trades are settling. I think that the smaller brokerages might have a little bit of issue of adopting technology to keep up with this.
Joshua: So in my opinion, I don't think it's going to have too, too much effect on actual prices or valuations of prices. I think it's More of a kind of industry issue than it will be more than anything.
Matt: Yeah. And hopefully in the future we can move to same day settlement, which is why people like crypto, right?
Matt: Cause that's on the blockchain. It's recorded, you know, the money's there. And do you think that,
Joshua: that this is why this happened, you know, because of the pressure of people who are investing in blockchain and cryptocurrency or like, well, my trade settles and, you know, 12 seconds,
Matt: right? Yes, I think so. And that's why I think eventually we'll get, cause the technology is there to get to instantaneous.
Matt: Trade settlement. You know, I'm just not sure if it's 10 years from now, 20 years from now because all of these wall street firms, their back offices, you know, are really designed from like the 1960s and seventies. So they've slowly been upgrading it to today's technology.
Joshua: Yeah. I heard it also could affect margin though, too.
Matt: It could. And actually that's why I think most investors don't get truly impacted by it. Cause if they have a margin on their account, which is the ability to borrow to buy stock, then this doesn't really impact you that much.
Brent: All right. So let's get on the next news. A summary of the Harris poll on American economic sentiment. Right now, 56 percent of Americans believe the U S economy economy is in a recession and 55 percent think the economy is shrinking. 49 percent believe the stock market is it's down year to date, despite actual growth.
Brent: And many respondents blamed the Biden administration for the perceived economic issues. You know, the economy has experienced continuous growth with seven consecutive quarters of positive GDP growth, and the S& P is actually up year to date over 12%. So why are we seeing these types of results in polls and why are people feeling this way?
Brent: So
Matt: my opinion on this is the media is just too negative. And I don't know if you've guys have seen this in your client reviews, but I do have some clients who've came to me like this quarter during the reviews and have been like, Oh, I don't want to look like, I'm scared to see my returns. I, you know, I heard the market's down.
Matt: So
Joshua: funny you say that, like come into the office and say, how much am I down? Yeah.
Brent: So you know what I think part of that is, and it could be the news. I think April was down. True. So the last statement that they saw was April and you know, they're hearing more kind of bad news in May, but they don't realize as a first two and a half weeks in May, we're just outstanding.
Brent: So I think it is partially what they've last seen. Cause people don't really check their account to log in. I think more people check their statements when they come in and they're thinking things are kind of off, but I think a lot of it is a sediment from the news. I mean, it has to be. Here's a tip for that.
Brent: Paperless statements. Paperless statements and paperless statements and don't watch the news. Yeah,
Matt: yeah. Don't watch the news. I mean, the media figured it out in 2016, once Donald Trump was elected, that if they just paint the TV with negative news, more people will watch. And so that's, what's continued to happen today, despite Trump not being in office, despite now being the Biden administration, CNN, Fox, MSN, doesn't matter what news you watch.
Matt: They all do it. It's all negative. It doesn't matter where you turn.
Joshua: I also think that like they're, they make the economic data more complicated than they have to. And they're reporting it so often that it could have been good for three months, but the most recent print was bad. And that negative headline in combination of making the actual economic indicator sound more complicated, paints the picture that everything's bad.
Brent: Do you think that these misconceptions about the economy are impacting. Consumer behavior and investment decisions. Absolutely. And in what way,
Joshua: You know, what's real popular right now is money moving into safer investments in gold, even though the market was just up, you know, like you had just said, 20 over 26 percent last year of over 12 percent this year.
Joshua: And you're seeing people moving to safer, safer, Investments when there's a time for a lot of good opportunity. And you might've even have missed out if you did it anytime in the last 15 months,
Brent: but it doesn't look like people are slowing down spending right now. Everything is still super expensive.
Brent: People aren't stopping spending. They're just continuing to blow through,
Joshua: but I think it's a combination. They could still be spending, but they're afraid that their money's going to. They're going to lose money in the stock market. You could, could be a combination of those two things.
Matt: Yeah. Or they don't want to invest because everything's so expensive that they feel down about it.
Matt: Like, you know, you get your paycheck and it's gone two days later. You feel depressed. Is there though? I know the
Joshua: economic data is, you know, good. You just read it off. But is there some actual like ground to the way people are feeling? Like, is it not as good as the data is suggesting?
Brent: I think it is when you have to go, and I think most people say, if you're going to get quick food, lunch food if you're getting fast food, If you're going to a restaurant, everybody's experiencing these super high prices and you can't even get out of any restaurant without paying a big bill anymore.
Brent: Like it's that we're not accustomed to this, at least not these increases that we've seen over a short period of time. It's
Joshua: like defeating. Yes.
Brent: But I think one of the ways us as advisors have been able to continue to help our clients in these situations, especially over the last, you know, six, eight months as people are feeling more like this is.
Brent: When we're able to go through their numbers with them and show them, Hey, it's not actually bad. It's actually really good. Like our results are outstanding right now when they look at this and they're able to see that they're, they're not canceling a trip. They're adding a trip. They're not going to not take the trip that they have planned.
Brent: You know, they think now they can do an extra trip or now they're looking at getting that new car. You know, there's, they're going to do more of the things that they want to do instead of. Just being engaged with negative news that isn't painting a picture of reality.
Joshua: Yeah. And then they actually log into their, you know, balance sheet and their net worse, never been higher.
Joshua: Yes. That you're saying.
Matt: I think that's why hiring a financial advisor is extremely important. I heard this stat the other day that over 90%. Of millionaires have a financial advisor. And I know sometimes our industry gets a bad rap, but I mean, you know, they're hiring them to give them advice to help them grow their net worth and grow their investments.
Brent: I think the bad rap comes from the old school, like broker transactions, buy and sell bad investments. And that wasn't financial advice. I was portfolio money management done in a very poor way. And it was the only way that was really done for a very long period of time. But like we've talked about in all these areas on the pod and like, Financial advisors do a ton of different things besides just portfolio management.
Matt: Yeah Well, even if you go on social media like, you know We're we're doing the big instagram push out right now and a lot of the fake financial advisors on instagram push this content Like you shouldn't hire a financial advisor. You're gonna pay ten thousand dollars over ten years in fees You should buy my course for two thousand dollars right now and i'll tell you how to pick winning stocks.
Matt: Yeah And that gets you nowhere. So,
Joshua: you know what I would say, I lean on my CFP, like go hire a CFP, go find one, then that's right for you at what price point that's right for you, but not the Instagram guy, like that's not the play.
Brent: Yeah. Yeah. We have some good, some good comments regarding some of. The posts that people have been making on or making different videos on and are us critiquing them.
Brent: So follow us on Instagram at evermont. com. But there's another big news. Retailers are actually cutting prices. More retailers like Walmart, target Walgreens have announced plans to cut prices in their stores. The price cuts are aimed at attracting more customers amidst rising inflation to really stay competitive with the market.
Brent: The reductions will apply to a wide range of products, including essentials and really everyday items. These, these price changes should be taking effect sometime in the next couple of months. So what are your thoughts just on these price cuts? And do you think there will actually be any price cuts?
Brent: It's about time
Joshua: or it's a warning sign.
Matt: What's the war in the recession?
Joshua: Mm
Matt: hmm. Well, actually I do think the data is pretty clear that if you're on the lower end of the consumer spectrum Living paycheck to paycheck. You're really struggling right now. And I think a lot of these retailers even the fast food restaurants They're really starting to see it like they raise prices too much.
Matt: They got a little too greedy
Joshua: You even saw that this week. It was actually yesterday that McDonald's came out and said that all the headline prices aren't accurate. And they're actually rolling out like, I think new dollar value menu. So they're kind of coming back from those higher prices.
Matt: It's crazy. So in 2014, a quarter pounder with cheese meal costs 5 and 39 cents.
Matt: Today it cost 11. 99. So if you're a family of four, that's, you know, 12 per meal, you're at 50 bucks with tax to feed a family of four McDonald's. That's a luxury item.
Joshua: Or the new normal.
Matt: No, that's a luxury item. And McDonald's is not luxury food.
Brent: So 50
Joshua: bucks to take your family to McDonald's.
Brent: Yeah, I think that was for a family of four. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that seems like that data is accurate. I can't imagine going to McDonald's as a family of four and getting out of there with at less than 50.
Matt: And I already know these national, these, the prices I'm looking at, these are wrong here because I bought my daughter a four piece nugget meal. And it was 699 at my Pasadena McDonald's and on here on this paper of national trends It says the average is 499. So if you're living in california, you're paying even more for this mcdonald's
Joshua: Yeah, I'd rather just go to in and out.
Matt: I know chipotle stock took a big dump. After reporting earnings I think people are over playing 22 for a cold burrito bowl. You'd love chipotle though, man You Dude, I don't need Chipotle anymore.
Matt: It's
Brent: not close to the office. It's not convenient for you.
Matt: But you still would. Well, actually, so what ended up happening, and this is, we might as well just get into money saving tips right now, is, you know, when I was going through my credit card savings and my budget, I was looking at how much it was just to eat lunch out on a Friday.
Matt: I was like, you know, eating lunch out on a Friday isn't even that enjoyable. The food's not good. I'd rather just make my food and bring it to the office. Then, you know, eat the garbage from any other restaurant.
Joshua: Slow down eating lunch on Friday is more about team building than it is about your 12 spending at lunch.
Brent: Well, Matthew was, had a, a 15 or 16 Chipotle bowl like five years ago, six years ago, right? Our bowl was like 10. But now if you went to Chipotle, how much would your bowl be? Oh, it's easy. 20. I
Matt: mean, and that's a lot with Caso. Yeah. No, it's just a double meat. Yeah, no, it's expensive. It it's, did you see the tick talk trend of take talk influencers, bullying Chipotle people?
Matt: Yeah. They're bringing cameras
Joshua: into the Chipotle line so they can get it back. I mean,
Matt: that's where we are in today's America that people are having to hold up cameras to get more food because food's so expensive.
Joshua: I think that these two last two stories are connected though. People are filling down.
Joshua: People are feeling down about the economy. People think the stock market's down. They think we're in a recession, right? That's what that data says. And then these realtors are actually coming out and lowering prices and coming out with like, you know, budget items and lowering prices for these people that are feeling bad.
Joshua: Like this is all kind of connected.
Matt: Oh, it's totally connected.
Brent: I'll, I'll tell you this. You could make a lot more money and by spending time doing other things like working with any types of jobs that are out there, rather than sticking your, your phone and a camera in front of a Chipotle worker, who's just trying to work for you to get an extra scoop of food.
Joshua: I agree with that. I get that. But to go back to also target, I think it's smart. They see an opportunity as well. Get a little bit of market share. Cause there's a lot of things about Amazon. Also the Amazon's been slowly fixing prices and making things more expensive. And now you're seeing this headline that target saying, Hey, we're going to have these more affordable items for.
Joshua: Our consumers,
Matt: it didn't make it into the notes, but Amazon actually came out too. And so they're going to cut prices. I target, yeah, is, is like just, I think yesterday.
Brent: All right, well, let's get into retirement planning corner. Let's talk about some of these smart money saving strategies. Obviously inflation has impacted what we can spend and how much money we can spend on because our money's not going as far as it used to.
Brent: Explain to us Matthew about what inflation is and why it's so currently high.
Matt: So inflation is just, you know, an easy way to think of it is the general rise of prices over time. So the easiest way we were talking about McDonald's a few minutes ago, you know, quarter pounder meal used to be 6 today.
Matt: It's 12. That's inflation. You know, the, it's doubled in the last year. Inflation is really high right now because coming out of COVID when we had money in the economy because the government had to pay people who lost their jobs, right? There's a lot of service workers, hotel, fast food, a lot of businesses had to close and then all the ports got backed up.
Matt: So it was hard to get goods into the country. So prices started going higher. When the administration turned over, what ended up happening is Inflation had already started picking up and the administration started passing all of these pro inflationary policies. For instance, I think that it was called like the build America back plan, build, build back America better or something was a 4 trillion policy.
Matt: So they're just dumping money onto the economy. Meanwhile, while the federal reserve is like, Hey, inflation is getting out of control, like we need to start. Raising interest rates. So you have, you know, the government, the Biden administration is spending like crazy and the federal reserve who's trying to cut interest rates, you know, they're kind of counteracting each other.
Matt: And so that's where
Brent: we are
Matt: today.
Brent: So how can understanding where inflation is right now help us save more money?
Matt: Well, I think, you know, it's clear at this point, like, you know, we looked at the, the Harris poll from the guardian about how people feel we have, you know, hundreds of clients at this firm that we meet with.
Matt: On a, you know, quarterly basis to go over there, you know, financial plan and they're telling us that they're struggling financially. We're sitting around here at the office talking about how we're struggling financially, how, you know, we don't like these higher prices. We're not going out to eat
Joshua: on for
Brent: lunch on Fridays.
Brent: You're making us no longer go
Matt: out to eat on Fridays. You two could go out to eat if you want, but I'm personally not paying to go out to eat on Friday.
Brent: So, I guess then, what are some of the budgeting strategies that people can implement and transition to?
Joshua: I'm gonna just start with the one that I really love, with any client that I talk to, a budgeting strategy.
Joshua: Take a look at your biggest expenses first. Like the boulders, we use the analogy like boulders versus pebbles. I know we've been talking about saving money by not going out to lunch on Fridays, but also like, look at your overall car payments, your mortgage payment. You know, if you have debt, right, if you have any credit card debt, all of those big, biggest expenses.
Joshua: Really start to bring awareness around them and making sure they're accounted for, they're in line with your income. Is there any sort of strategy to reduce the, those payment sizes? Because that's really, what's going to make the most impact, you know, even like, for example, you have. Five student loans.
Joshua: Could they be consolidated? Could you refinance a car loan that you might have, you know, took out that was a higher rate when your credit was bad. All of those different, even debt strategies, that's going to help you reduce your overall liability payments or fixed payments monthly.
Matt: Yeah. I feel like most people, what they do is they look at their monthly spending.
Matt: And they cut the subscription. Do
Brent: most people look at their monthly spending though?
Matt: Yeah, they do. So when, when they do, they go through and they say, Oh, why am I paying 20 for Netflix? Right? You and I had the conversation the other day about Amazon prime people not having Amazon prime, right? Cause they don't want to pay the 110 or a hundred.
Matt: How much is Amazon prime? Do you know, Josh? 150, 120.
Brent: I think it's in that one 2150 range.
Matt: Okay. So 150 a year. They don't want to pay that fee, right? So they'd rather just cancel it and pay for shipping or not use Amazon and make their life, you know, less convenient. And people cut from that small portion thinking they're going to make an impact.
Matt: But what Josh is saying is the biggest impact is going to come from not having that thousand dollar car payment. It's going to come from getting your car payment down to three, 400 a month, right? You're going to save more on a monthly basis doing that than you would you know, cutting Amazon, cutting Netflix, even stopping going to Starbucks.
Matt: And this is forward looking to
Joshua: write, not just looking at what you have, but really being honest with yourself of like, what kind of payment can I afford going forward? Like, can I really afford a thousand dollar car payment or should it be 600? And that's my price range. And that's my affordability to still allow me to do some of those convenient things that I love, right?
Joshua: Instead of putting all of that discretionary income towards a new You know, even if it's a toy, an RV, a boat, a new car what I'd rather have some of those conveniences instead of talking always about cutting out lunch.
Brent: I think before you could ever really start to put your own personal saving strategy in place, you have to have clear awareness on what you're spending money on and you do need to take a few months, quarters of your statements.
Brent: And go line item by line item to look exactly at what you're spending money on and why you spent more money and more in certain months versus other. And I know it's somewhat of a tedious task, but at the day, you're having a better awareness of what your spending habits are, and then you can start to move those boulders, or you can figure out what boulders you need to move
Joshua: yeah, we don't balance checkbooks anymore. You know, we're not opening statements. I just talked about going paperless statements, but we're not even logging into our bank to go look at the transactions. You know what,
Brent: you know, what concerns me the most about spending though, is just how easy it is. It is so easy because before, like when we were younger, you would have to literally get in your car, go to a store, to a retail store, if you needed a shirt or you needed anything, you would literally have to go to a retail store to get it nowadays.
Brent: Stores are obsolete. Like I don't even want to go to the store for anything because everything could just be delivered to me. So why am I going to go in my car to, why don't go into the mall for me? It's like the worst thing in the world. Like, why am I going to go to the mall? Yeah. Everything there I could have delivered to my house and I don't want to deal with the crowds.
Brent: And
Joshua: most of the time it's free and it's at your door in two days.
Matt: Yes. So Amazon prime, it's great. You shouldn't cancel it.
Joshua: You canceled our lunch.
Brent: But what, what my point that one saving strategy is don't impulse buy because it is so easy, people should really sit back before they're going to buy something.
Brent: Think about it for a few days, let it process, let it resonate, and then maybe think about it for a few more days and then maybe go and purchase cause it can be there very quickly, but don't impulse buy.
Matt: And I, so I think too, for people to monitor their spending, there's some really great websites like you need a budget is a really good one.
Matt: Quick in, but I don't know what their products called. They changed it so many times now, but I heard
Joshua: a lot of people using rocket money. Have you looked at that?
Matt: No, but so there's rocket money, right? Yeah. Mint closed, but I think simplifies what the new one is. That converted to simplify. Yeah. I convert.
Matt: And that's the old quick and money too. They put it all under one umbrella. You know, those things are really great. But you know, sometimes it's easier just to like, you know, open up your credit card statement or your bank statement and look at what you're actually spending money on.
Joshua: The old school way still works.
Matt: It does. I agree with you. It's really successful for, you know, our grandparents generation and our parents generation.
Joshua: I think though that if you bring it back to what Brent said, whatever you have to do to bring awareness, right? So you can actually answer the question of what I'm spending my money on.
Joshua: Well, if you can do that, then I think you're off to a great start.
Matt: Tell us Brent about your tip on a Costco. So the, you know, can you explain that?
Brent: So I, I think I explained this on one of the previous shows, but I won't step foot in a Costco. Like I don't have time to go to Costco. There's not enough hours and day for Costco.
Brent: And I don't really, at this point in my life. Have the patience to deal with going to Costco. My kids would probably love it because I don't think that they've been to a Costco since probably before COVID. I, the last time I went to a Costco is probably, I don't know, six, seven years ago. I was like, I will never step foot in the store unless I absolutely have to.
Brent: This place is miserable. Like, People are going to every witch isle. You're like more dodging people than you are able to even shop for anything. I'm not dealing with that and plus you just go in there and it's you're you're tempted to buy stuff You really don't really need you find out you think you need it when you're in there, but you don't need it You
Joshua: don't need a rotisserie chicken No
Matt: I can't tell you the number of times we've gone down like a random mile on costco and then there's like a fire pit and my wife's like Do we need a fire pit?
Matt: And I'm like, you know, it's 200 and she's like, it's only 225.
Joshua: We need
Matt: Costco. How do
Joshua: you get the four pack of scissors?
Brent: Costco has cool stuff. Like they know what they're doing. They have awesome stuff. And there's stuff there that you find out that you really want. You never even knew you wanted it.
Joshua: I don't like the bill.
Joshua: When I go to Costco, I agree with you. But I do like going to Costco.
Brent: I don't want to stand, I don't want to stand in line 10 people deep with a bunch of people with big old baskets either.
Joshua: See they got a lot of cool stuff though man.
Brent: So
Matt: what's your solution for you not liking to go
Brent: to Costco? So there's probably 10 household things that we need from Costco every 4 to 6 to 8 weeks.
Brent: And there's a couple of food items that we want there in bulk for the kids or whatever. I'll Instacart that stuff. I will not Instacart pretty much anything else. I do not want to spend the delivery fee. I don't want to spend the tip. I don't want to spend all that money because if I'm having somebody shop for me, like I'm going to tip them well, like you're going to Costco for me.
Brent: I'm going to tip you off, but I don't know. I don't want to pay all that money to go to Ralph's. If I needed something from Ralph's, I don't want to one off stuff. I don't Instacart things. I don't even really like door dashing food unless I absolutely have to. Cause I think it's way too expensive. The prices of the food, I don't think people realize on the menu when you door dash is more expensive than if you just went in.
Brent: So that's another layer of costs that they have on there, but I'll Instacart the 10 items that I need. I don't end up buying 20 items. I don't buy in 15 items because I'm just on the app. You're getting, I get the essentials. I need stuff that I ordered the last time it gets delivered within two hours.
Brent: I'm happy. I don't lose my patience having to go to Costco and I don't spend more money that way.
Matt: This is what I found doing Amazon grocery delivery. I cut my bill by 150 a week doing Amazon grocery delivery.
Brent: How can people save money though on utilities? Because utilities are so expensive too.
Matt: So I think there's a few ways. You could, you know, make sure you have the energy saving appliances in your house. Everything from like light bulbs to, you know, your washer, your dryer, your thermostat.
Matt: Lots of different strategies there. We live in California. It's about to be 90 degrees straight for, you know, three months. There's different systems you could put in besides an AC. You get those whole house fans, you know, split duct systems where you're really only using your AC in the rooms you're hanging out in.
Matt: So you're not paying to AC, you know a loft or something that you're not hanging out at, go those kinds of strategies. You could also like call your utility company if you really want to and try and like negotiate with them a better rate or figure out how you could lower your rate by doing certain strategies or, you know, like we said, installing different appliances.
Joshua: Clean your solar panels. Does that really help? They say it does. I haven't cleaned mine yet.
Brent: Would you get up on the roof and clean them or do you have to hire somebody?
Joshua: No, I don't think that's for me. I think i'm going to hire someone this summer.
Brent: Do they have services of people coming out to clean your solar panels?
Brent: Yeah,
Joshua: and they say and they say that they need to be cleaned. I believe if anyone's working in solar out there Let us know but I think at least once a year But it reduces the actual like input of energy that you're like consuming, which then can turn into you paying more because it's not producing as it did, you know, two years ago.
Joshua: So I guess this is becoming even more and more popular. The more we find out about solar, but I'll let you know, I'm planning to clean mine, see if it helps.
Matt: Did you know you could also like negotiate out your service contracts too, right? So you could call Verizon or whoever your internet provider is, you know, try and get the teaser rate that they offer for new clients.
Matt: Threaten to leave, go to like Time Warner or one of their competitors. I
Joshua: did that with my alarm system.
Matt: Oh, did you? Yeah. Are you on ADT?
Joshua: No, Vivint.
Matt: Oh, okay. Yeah. Did it work?
Joshua: Huh. Yeah, you call them. Say, I've been a loyal customer. You know? Is there anything you can do for me? I didn't threaten to leave.
Joshua: I didn't get that far, but yeah.
Matt: A couple bucks. This famously works really well. DirecTV? You know, I know, but let me tell you. So I also canceled direct TV this year. If you have direct TV, you should probably just call and cancel it right now, because I guarantee your bill is probably 150 to 200 a month.
Matt: And you're most likely not using it that much.
Joshua: The TV thing's complicated though. I mean, then you have all of these add on services. I feel like it's like a lot of people have this take is that you're paying more than your original direct TV bill now. Through, if you have Netflix, you have better
Brent: content though.
Joshua: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But if you're doing even YouTube, tv, 70 bucks, Netflix, peacock, Hulu, how much is your bill?
Matt: Did you do Netflix and YouTube TV for $90 a month and DirecTV's up at 200, I think you'll, your bases will be covered with just YouTube, TV and Netflix. Do you keep DirecTV online? What?
Matt: What's that mean? Or whatever the, the streaming DirecTV is? No, I don't have any DirecTV. And my life is way better. No, no, I don't.
Joshua: I got rid of the whole direct TV satellite thing.
Joshua: And I just went with streaming. Direct TV stream like three years ago. And I think it was like 99 at that time. And it's still like 102 a month and it hasn't changed which direct TV. That wasn't the case. Right. And I have the full spectrum of direct TV channels.
Matt: And what about insurance? Can we. Can we call and do the same thing with insurance?
Matt: Could we try and get a combined rate, get our policies re quoted? Cause insurance has been rising a lot, right? It's the biggest riser in the CPI. We said a couple of shows ago.
Joshua: Auto and now even home. So yeah, go, go call, call your insurance broker, call your insurance agent. See if you know, you can bundle, we've talked about this before.
Joshua: I know Brent's always given this recommendation too, but see if you can negotiate insurance costs.
Matt: Have you negotiated your insurance costs before Brent for what home auto any type of insurance,
Brent: Negotiate with the insurance company or just broker it to get negotiate
Matt: with the insurance company.
Brent: No, my insurance company, I'm with wall when you said they're not going to lower my rates at all.
Joshua: It's more shopping.
Brent: So you got to shop. I've never done shopper
Joshua: bundle, right? You have,
Brent: I've bundled mine. Yeah, I bundled mine too. But I, and I think a lot of people don't do that. Well bundle your insurance people.
Brent: Yeah. Because that, that will save your money. Like I see a lot of clients who have car insurance with insurance company ABC and their homeowners is with another, and they don't have even umbrella insurance.
Joshua: It's kind of like a out of sight, out of mind, right? You kind of don't think about it. So you don't see on top of it, but it's something very important.
Brent: So I guess are there any recaps about saving strategies or final awareness,
Joshua: awareness?
Matt: Yeah, I mean, stop shopping at Costco, don't shop at Whole Foods, use the online service, but don't order food delivery online tip
Brent: your shoppers,
Matt: negotiate with all of your service contracts, including your insurance company, and then you're For the love of God, please cancel direct TV
Brent: boulders.
Brent: I need to, I'm going to talk about that one after with you. Cause I need to call direct to me. I'm sick of my direct TV bill. I have the 200 direct to you. It's
Matt: really easy. Just pick up the phone and call. Oh, you're paying too late.
Brent: Yeah. I think mine's like 220 or something. Oh, what are you doing? I know.
Brent: I'll
Matt: give you my password. How about we do this? All right.
Matt: For a recommend statement? All right, guys, I got a really good recommends today.
Matt: I'm super excited about this. Summer's here. It's hot. We're past Memorial day. And I saw this thing on the internet is served to me on Instagram. And it's an ice cream maker called the ninja creamy. And you, you can make little pints of ice cream. You can make them healthy or you can make them unhealthy.
Matt: So like the healthy versions, like people are playing like, you know, just basically like a almond milk or traditional milk with some protein powder and maybe like a little sweetener, like a maple syrup or agave or honey. Freeze it up, you put it in the creamy, it blends it up, you got a perfectly good pint of ice cream, homemade, in your house.
Matt: It's incredible. If you like cold creamy treats, the Ninja Creamy is for you. Have you used it? CCTs. Oh, oh yeah, dude, I've been using it every night. Look at my belly. .
Brent: Is that, is that what the increase is from potentially the icemaker?
Joshua: You have been talking about this all week. It's so great. I made one last night.
Joshua: It's awesome. Do you mind sharing how much it is? I don't know. I don't even know how much they're,
Matt: Two. It depends where you buy it, but I, you can, I've seen on price at like one 50 to two 20.
Joshua: Oh, okay. So not too bad. All the stores at
Matt: different prices. There's a new model. I bought the lesser model. I, I didn't think I needed the new model.
Matt: I just wanna make ice cream. And added bonus. If you have kids, it's really fun to do with your kid. My, you know, my daughter's three and a half, so she was having a blast with it. She made her own ice cream. We made her a vanilla. She put in rainbow sprinkles, absolutely loved it. It was really fun time.
Joshua: It sounds fun.
Joshua: I I'm interested just because you were so excited and all week you've been sharing stories about your ice cream maker. Yeah. I'm going to have one tonight. I can't wait to get home and eat ice cream. What do you have for us? Something really cool that I don't have, but that we. Bought for a raffle. It was that blue teas golf speaker.
Joshua: Yes. Okay. So blue teas is really like come up on like golf technology.
Joshua: Yeah, it was. But so when you golf, a lot of guys like to have a speaker to play music while you're golfing blue teas as a speaker, but the newest one actually has a digital screen on it. That gives you the readings of like how far you are from the green on the screen, which is, I hadn't ever seen that before.
Joshua: I think it's probably been out like a year now or a little bit more, but we got one and used it for raffle, but that thing looks really cool. I haven't even tried it, but it looks awesome.
Joshua: Why I give this recommendation to, also a good father's day gift. So if you're, you know, father or whoever, that's a good idea. Go check out blue teas golf on line and they have a lot of really cool golf tech.
Matt: So is the ninja creamy. That's a good father's day gift.
Joshua: It is. That's a great
Matt: one. Yeah.
Joshua: Your father likes cold, creamy treats.
Brent: So I have a recommend that costs a lot of money. So I'm going to save that actually for next time, since this is saving money tips I'm going to just keep mine simple. Go into your expenses, cancel subscriptions.
Brent: You're not using, please. It's just wasting money. Don't be like me. That is direct TV thing. I hate direct TV. I needed to take care of that. Go into your subscription, just cancel one or two. It is pebbles. It might not be boulders, but take care of some of those pebbles. If you can go check out your subscription.
Brent: All right. So let's end the show. So as advisors, our passion is assisting others. That's why we've chosen to do this. If you're thinking about retiring. You're thinking about what potential retirement might look like. You're thinking about planning for retirement or you're in retirement. Please reach out to us, give us a call.
Brent: We'll sit down and do retirement planning with you. Additionally, we invite you to download our ebook directly from our website. You can also go for our show notes, our retirement plan, playbook. com. Please follow us on Instagram, YouTube shorts at Evermont. We'd love to have your interaction on social media and as always, thank you for listening.
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