"Broke From Gooning!" Caleb Hammer Exposes The Purchases Destroying This Generation│Jack Neel

Today's guest is the most feared man in personal finance. Dear Gen Z men are losers. Dating rates are record low, virginity rates are record high. They're losers paying for only fans. Kind of sucks because it's also just not hard to have sex. I'm a music kid from Michigan who went $70,000 in debt chasing a dream. His life turned around when he became obsessed with financial education. I turned 18, I wanted a piano, my parents said, "Oh, well go max out of credit card to get a piano." That was my first death. Ah, fuck me for years to come. Now he's built one of the most controversial shows on the internet. Auditing people spending and calling out the habits, keeping them broke. He was paying for an AI girlfriend, behind her back. He was all up in that chat, he was like, "F*** on from me baby." It wasn't like finance breaking, but it was kind of relationship breaking. In this episode we'll expose the purchases quietly destroying Gen Z. Explore why this generation feels like financial freedom is impossible, and investigate whether the system is genuinely rigged, or the problem is the person staring back in the mirror. So, the biggest lie is go to any institution, borrow whatever it takes to get any degree you want. We need to be much more intentional with our students. So, college or double jaw surgery? College. Our degree or double jaw surgery, flip a coin. Caleb Hammer. Welcome to the Jack No. podcast. That was, uh, that was a good little intro. That was exciting. What is that accent? I've never heard this. That accent? What are you? I'm from Kentucky, originally. I think you're fucking not. That is some European-ass shit. I get that all the time. What does it sound like I'm from in Europe? I don't know. That's why I'm asking. People ask me if I'm like, "I'll shrill," and if I'm like, "Birdish" or something. But. What's wrong with you? What is it? I think I'm just, I don't know, man. Guys, comment down below. You are right. Are you a hillboy? A hillboy? A hillboy? Like the Kentucky Hills? Oh, like the hillbillies? No. No, no, like the Hills. Because they got like Appalachian. How is that right? Oh, yeah, yeah. My parents do sound like the, like they're straight up country. Well, nice to meet you. I really thought you were European, but thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. Caleb, I want to ask you, you've sat down at this table across from hundreds of people, many of which are in their 20s, looking at their income, debt, spending, and the financial decisions they're making every day. When you look at Gen Z as a whole, compared to other generations, how broke is Gen Z? It's pretty bad. Listen, I mean, a lot of the analytics that we're getting around Gen Z are pretty brutal, especially with the rise of buy now pay later, like credit cards. That's already fucked when it comes to millennials. But with Gen Z's justice inclined with the credit cards, and now they're adding the buy now pay later, their student loans are even worse because the cost of college keeps going up and we let anyone borrow as much as they want for whatever degree at any institution they want to go to. The question's asked, so the student loans are brutal, cost of living is brutal, it seems to be getting worse every generation from the boomers to now win three main categories. And of course, debt being added on top of those, but that being housing, school, education, and health care. Health care, they're not having a super deal with yet on that overall generational level. Of course, they have to make their monthly payments and whatnot. And in terms of they're obviously not a sick generation at this point, but housing, school, the other big ones, they're facing that big burden, where it just keeps going up and stop stopping and not going to stop not in the way that the systems are currently set up. So it's pretty brutal. They're brutal right now. Now they're entering one of the worst job markets we've had in a long time. I know like old millennials, they entered the job market in the great recession as a young millennial by like a year I'm lucky that I didn't enter the job market in the great recession, but I know the old millennials are young gen Xers like they, I mean, I wouldn't want to enter that job market. That's brutal. But Gen Z with the rise of AI right now, brutal job market, companies just kind of holding hiring right now because they don't know what the economy is going to look like over the next year or two and interest rates are still holding steady, not the best time to be graduating college. So I feel bad for them. I mean, the average Gen Z person has about $400 and emergency savings is $94,000 in debt. Statistics show it's the poorest, most in debt generation in American history. Do you think Gen Z is incapable of saving money and being financially responsible or do you think it's something else? Not necessarily, I mean, millennials didn't do well either until they were in their thirties, getting towards the height of their career for older millennials. I mean, the oldest Gen Zs are still like a few years into their career. We shouldn't expect that generation to be anywhere like super successful right now, but I mean, you're right on the debt scale like student loans cost of college keeps going up. So that is brutal, but the cost of college isn't them not being able to save them having these student loans now that they have to deal with. But I mean, if you see anyone in there from 18 to what's the oldest Gen Z like 29 now, that's usually not when people have savings. They should. Don't get me wrong. I advocate for it. I will help them get there, but twenties are often the times for fucking up and we accept that it's a society maybe we shouldn't, but we do it's it's not surprising. I don't think anyone surprised if it was just being real about it doesn't mean we should excuse it. And I'm not trying to enable it or excuse it by any means, but I don't think we should all be like, Oh, what is crazy. I've never heard of this. I mean, it's every generation at 20 to 30 and it's worse now because of those three categories that we talked about. But even still, it's also worth recognizing that they cost the food as a percentage of income in terms of groceries or the cost of entertainment, anything else beyond those three categories that I mentioned as a percentage of income is actually lower now than a pretty much any point of human history. So Gen Z's very lucky when it comes to that, but Gen Z's exiting color right now in a bad job market, meaning it's hard to get a good income right now while you're also having to finally start paying on these student loans that are higher now than other generations. So that's just a bad double thing you're having to deal with at the exact same time. So it doesn't really matter if grocery spending is a lower percent of your income than previous generations when you have to deal with like some of the two biggest things plus cost of housing on top of it at the exact same time. Right. So those are some of the more like systemic uncontrollables. But when it comes to like the personal responsibility degree portion, like, is there anything specific about? I guess Gen Z's mindset, their psychology that you see that they're worse at just this whole money thing. The payin' for certainly is enabling a lot of bad purchases, making it look like you can afford something that you can't go into Coachella this year, you can get it for some smaller payments instead of one time payment. So it's definitely enabled some pretty bad behavior. You can do after pay on Coachella. I'm sure you can. You can do it on everything. So going out, getting your Uber Eats or Door Dash, doing it on Klarna, you know, it's a way to make it easier and they grew up on those apps now too. So food delivery is much more of an expectation and considered reasonable now than it would have been even when I was young, you know, getting Jimmy John's delivered was a treat, but I couldn't just go and get Shake Shack or Texas Roadhouse delivered, but now it's considered more of an expectation. And there is a responsibility part of whether how you do college, but at the same time there's a lot of parents impact there when you first go to college where you're choosing what degree you're picking and how you're borrowing to pay for it, how you pay for it at all. But still, I mean, once you're like halfway through, if you're 20, you're having conversations with professors, advisors, you're making more friends, you should, if you're tweaking your major or choosing where you're transferring or figuring out what you're spending, how you're living in college, then you have a bit more personal responsibility. So I would advocate, there is personal responsibility in school, maybe not right at 18, there is a little, but I know you have a lot of heavy influence from your advisors in high school and your teachers in high school or everything in our culture over the past few decades. It's like Ruru College, no matter what in college is great, do not get me wrong, but people go and get the bullshit degrees. And if you're at 20 and you're still getting the bullshit degree at a private institution or even a public out of state institution, whatever it is, and you're borrowing anything to get that bullshit degree, they are even psychology honestly, just so many degrees that right now, when you actually kind of look into the wealth divide between even genders, right, that 70 cents per on the dollar thing, a lot of it comes down to even just the degrees. When it counting for the same degree for the same job, it's actually a two cent divide, which is kind of curious. So with more women going to college now, and men are just not men are going into trade schools or they're being unemployed losers as well, there's a big issue where people are just still getting a lot of bullshit degrees and unfortunately it is women, I do feel bad for that. What would you say are the five most bullshit college degrees? Five most bullshit, well, the arts thrive and I love arts, I mean like your intro said, I went to school for music composition, I was making money off of it because I had a business brain, I mean, this is pulling out of my ass because I don't have statistics on the actual what bullshit degrees was certainly like psychology is a classical one, history, things that it's not that they're not important or that we shouldn't have them in our society, but way too many people are going to them. than the market demands. We need history researchers and whatnot. We do. But more people want to do it than is currently available in the marketplace. Certainly the same can be said for our in psychology as well. Now if you go and you get your master's to do all this, you do therapy, you do social work. Sure, that's different. But even social work doesn't necessarily have the best return on investment. So unfortunately, a lot of those people that go to college and again, the vast majority of people going to college right now are women and men are kind of falling behind and that's a whole different conversation. But a lot of the people that are going to college in that larger percentage are getting bullshed degrees and it leads to worse wages. And you do not want to have a bullshed degree at a bad job market or a cost of housing and cost of getting that bullshed degree or higher. If you were picking like a degree to get now or like a skill to develop or how would you determine that? Would you be looking at I guess going on LinkedIn and seeing what companies are hiring and what the requirements are? Like how would you go about it? Maybe I have a little bit more of an anxious brain. So AI is in the big conversation right now. No one really knows what it's going to look like. And I don't listen to anyone who says they know what it's going to look like. I don't know. But if I am a little nervous, I want to be a little more AI resistant. Nursing is incredible. We got to get dudes in nursing. It's not gay to be a nurse and there's nothing wrong with being gay, Jack. Okay? But still, go get a nursing degree. You're like, what are we doing? Why are guys getting into that? And then women into the trades would be awesome as well. We need more of that and we need more men in social work. I want to see people getting into those degrees that are the more AI resistant at least because I don't think they're taking over the trades anytime soon. They still might. I mean, you're going to get plumbers and electrician robots probably, it's not going to be doing a code base, right? Or which is what AI is doing now, which is a lot easier. Nursing, I don't think people are going to want a nurse robot. Even if it is better in the end, I think you still want that human touch in that field, banking, finance. Yeah, you're going to have AI integrated, but there's such a heavy regulatory environment that it might be more resistant to AI soon. So that's more protective. It was all engineering, engineering, getting into coding, everything like that. And I think that it's still a good place to go, but hyper competitive. So the competitive landscape is, it's completely different than it was five years ago. Five years ago, they would hire anyone with any background to work in any kind of coding or whatever because they just needed that labor and they were chasing that labor. But now where you can have one person working with AI takes up what three people would have done a few years ago, you have to be the best of the best now can be the junior guy, can't be the junior engineer. So I'd only go into that now if you know you're ready to fight for it. And if you fight for it and win, you make a lot of money. Don't get me wrong. But it's not that perfect, easy solution to get an incredible job in careers. It was even five years ago in security. We'll see what cyber security. Cyber security has always been a safe one. We need cyber security. But now with mythos, right now it's poking holes in cyber security. But I think they're meant to be using it as eventually defense in cyber security. And we'll see how humans get involved on that. Maybe that's the next industry to go. So would you recommend content creation for the average person? I'm just kind of like music, right? For the average person, no. I think music, content creation, the arts, anything like that, acting, it's going to be the small minority that make it. And oftentimes it's a people who are willing to sacrifice everything. But yes, I suggest everyone if they have a passion in it to do it on the side, I did this on the side, do it on the side and give you're all to it on the side. And if it starts to take off, then go to a full time. But if you're going to like full-sale university and spending $100,000 on that or whatever it is, I know it puts it expensive to get a degree in how to man a camera. It's not the best return on investment. I want people to, we need the arts. We need the arts. I want people to be in the arts. I want people to be in media. But more people want to do it than the market demands. So you have to be the best. You have to be a killer. You have to be dedicated willing to do anything. And a lot of time people just have a trouble even starting or if they start, they don't maintain, they don't learn. But start it on the side. I still write music on the side, but I don't pursue any commercial avenues with that. And that was just for fun. And maybe someday, if I ever wanted to get music performed again in the constant band world, I could start pursuing that on the side. But I wouldn't just also going to quit this and do that because that just wouldn't make any sense. Would you say that's more of your passion than what you do now? No, I wouldn't say so, but it's still fun. I have a good time doing it. It's rare to do it. It's like a couple of hours a week and it's interesting to me because I think people assume that like content creators or anyone that works in a creative field loves what they do all the time. But it's like at the end of the day, this can turn into like a nine to five to an extent because you have to maintain a certain set of actions and a certain set of consistency. And there's like, you're not going to love all parts of the job. So it's not always as sexy as people think it is, you know? I don't think anyone, I don't think you can love all parts of the job. Like every crazy politician with unlimited ambition wants to become president. I don't think it's considered like a job with no stress though or bad moments. Like this job is incredible. It's the best job in the world. I wouldn't give it up for anything. It doesn't mean there's bad moments. You know, people, you know, all of a sudden become this weird thing online where people try to create shit or stir shit up and or, you know, toxic communities and a lot there's bad things. And I have to completely hide my girlfriend's identity because there's crazy people out there and you have to be afraid of doxene or swatting and things like this. So there's negatives. But overall, it's still the best job in the world formed me. Might not be for someone else. Someone else's perfect job might not be my perfect job. But yeah, even with even with the downsides and I've certainly turned it more to a nine to five of the whole business we've grown here. But it's still pretty damn great. Right. Very blessed, very blessed to be clear. I do want to touch on the actual expenses of some of the guests on your show. So most of the guests are millennials, Gen Z, sometimes older. But when you look at their bank statements as far as the micro purchases, like how is Gen Z spending money differently? What are the traps keeping them broke? What I've seen in some of our older guests is that they worked for 10 years, 15 years. And now they're like, okay, I've put in the work I deserve going on vacation. We're getting people who've gotten their first job outside of college, have 70,000 hours of student loan debt just got their first car loan. And they're like, okay, I got my first job. First thing I could do is go on vacation. So they go on vacations immediately and they go on two a year. They have to go to Europe. They have to go to Japan. They have to do all these things. They're not even going to California or whatever. They're going overseas. They're doing these big trips just because they hit the first job milestone. And they finance it as always. They put it all on a credit card or paying for as much as they can. There is the college piece that we talked about. People have an enormous student loan burden. But with the repayment assistance program, if you don't have a great job right out of college, for example, there are deferrals, but even besides that, you can get it as low as 1% of your income. So, but people don't know about the options out there. So people start getting hammered with the student loans. People get a job. They think it's going to be a lot more money as stretches a lot further. They have to have their first place on their own. Or even with the roommates, you know, maybe it's the first time moving out of the parents house. It's a lot of that adult shit hitting for the first time in their life. And that income doesn't stretch as far as a lot of them think it is. And yet they need to go get a notification as well. Like, I want people to be able to experience the world and do the things they want to. But there is an importance of just getting your shit together first, having an emergency fund so you're not fucked when your car breaks down or when you get fired and you still need to pay your rent. That's it. They rush. They rush me on that point. But again, I think every generation does when they are in that 20s to 30s. Everyone uses the excuse on the show and I hate it. I was like, well, what taught me about money? No one touched it. She just any one about money. I didn't get, I didn't want anything about money. You have to teach yourself. You have to figure it out. But also it is the standard thing right outside of college. You finally make money with your job. You want to do something. And now with the Instagram and the TikTok and the YouTube communities, everyone posting their lifestyles, there's more of that jealousy and wanting to mimic it and get the new clothes, get the new car, go on the trip. So lots of that instant gratification that Gen Z views as adulthood that you can just do the moment you get your job. And maybe people have waited a little longer. I guess when you think of like your last 50 people you've had on like, is there always consistent transactions that are like new within the last 10 years, like it's the Uber Eats, it's the Coachella, like what are some of the other things? Food delivery is a huge one. I mean, honestly, you know, the show is turning four here soon, even at the beginning I was getting less of it. Like I know Uber Eats in DoorDash was ramping up around that time, but I was still getting a lot less, getting a lot more TikTok shop now as well. Really? Tons of TikTok shop. It's so easy because every other there are TikTok, you see as an ad for something, and people just click and it's to their door in a few days. So a lot of TikTok shop, it's those small purchases that they don't think amount to anything, but they do a couple of them a day, or a lot of them a week, and it adds up to a lot. - Hey, quick question. Have you ever used Bitcoin or Ethereum to purchase anything in real life? Like sure, you might have it sitting in a wallet, you trade it sometimes or send it to friends, but you're not able to actually buy anything in real life. That's how I was pretty excited that I found out about either five, they have this cash card that you can spend directly from your crypto balance like a regular debit card. There's zero converting, no sending it to five different platforms, you simply swipe the card or tap it with Apple Pay and it works. But the best part to me is you don't have to sell your crypto to spend money on the card. So you get your 3.5 to 7% staking rewards, and you get the cash back rewards that the card offers. And if you want a free meal right now, they're running a daily challenge where you post the weirdest thing you've eaten on X or Instagram, tag either five, use #DineDifferent, and they'll pick a winner every single day where they reimburse you up to $50 for your meal. So if you're already in crypto and not actually using it, this is probably the easiest way to start. Click the link in the description and check out either five, grab the cash card and take advantage of the DineDifferent campaign while it's live. Spend like you normally would, just get rewarded for it. But anyway, guys, back to the podcast. Do you think cars are a big problem with GenC? It's a big problem for any American generation. We're a card dependent infrastructure nation. It's shit. I mean, a fucking sucks if I'm being completely honest. And cars are brutally expensive now more than ever, especially after the pandemic during the pandemic. It just got brutal and it really never came back down. You can still get a used car, but even still, what used to be a $2,000 car when I started the shows a 10,000 hour car now. So you're not getting a clunker that breaks down immediately. And even with that, you still need to get it checked out by multiple mechanics. But it's a big issue because it's a weird cycle we are, unless you're blessed to live in a rare few communities where you can walk, bike, or even maybe take public transportation to a job, you need a car to have a job. But you need a job to have a car because cars are expensive. And that's that weird cycle. It's like, what do you do first? And people get into a predatory loan to have a usable car so they can get a job to pay off the predatory loan, or they get a shit car that always breaks down to get a job but then they're using all their incomes in their job to pay for all the repairs and crap and maintenance on their shit car just so they can get to their job. And it's brutal. The car situation in this country is brutal. And it is such a trap. And people feel like, I swear, the amount of justifications I get on my show for, I need the new car, the 2027 model. The safety, I care about my safety, the safety of the kids, the dogs, the wife, the whatever. I'm confused. Were we making cars that literally just like whipped out a gun and shot you in the face 10 years ago? Were we making cars that, the moment you got into any troublesome situation blew up, we were not making hardcore dangerous cars. I'm not saying go get a 90's car or even 2000's car, but getting into a 2019 car isn't the worst thing in the world, 1817, whatever it is. So, I mean, there's a lot of cope around cars having to get the more expensive new car, the safety ratings and bullshit that they pay for anyway, allegedly. But with that crap, I mean, it's such a, it's a great marketing gimmick and people fall for it. People fall for it. It's brutal and people don't understand loans and interest and all that stuff when they're getting there first. So I definitely didn't when I got my first car loan. And that was one of my big brutal loans I had to pay off and I finally started to wake up to personal finances. This was my car and people who borrow their down payment too 'cause they'll do whatever it takes to get the car that they justify with their cope to get that they need a brand new car for. - Do you think it's the middle class trying to project their wealth by getting a new car? Like what's the monster? - Part of it is. - And is it the middle class mainly that does this phenomenon of getting cars way out of their price range? - Have you been to a poor community? - With those, dude, go to a white trash community. You'll see all these lifted 100,000 hour trucks. - Really? - A pork at a white trash trailer? Absolutely. Go to the opposite side of it. Go to like a poor black community or something. You'll get lots of muscle cars and shit that are completely decked out. Go to like a poor Mexican community. I went through one of the neighborhoods recently that is like a classic definitely down on its lock, more Hispanic community here. And everyone had these sexy cars that are bouncing with these spikes off their, I don't know what they're called, but they're like spikes off the wheels? - Yeah, off the wheels, but I don't know what those are called, but that's just expensive, man. So no, it's very American at least, or American Canadian Australian, or it's like that big suburban sprawl car infrastructure type countries and societies we live in. But no, I mean, yeah, the middle class do it, but everyone does it to flex. Such car culture, so many people I know in my own life would prefer having a nice car over a nice house. I don't know what it is. Luckily, I don't give a shit. I guess I'm lucky on that. But if I did, in the position I'm lucky enough to find myself in, I'd probably be a fucking moron. Just getting like a Lamborghini, whatever. I don't even know. I don't know what's nice. I don't know. Lamborghini's a nice brand, but I'd get something stupid. It's just Americans love that, and it's such a status symbol, and people care what the person acts to you at the stoplight. Things about you when they look over. It's such a weird thing. So from the poorest communities, the middle class, to even the wealthiest communities, and when we were talking about Togi before filming, that dude's dumbass with his cars. I love him. Honestly, super nice dude. But it's the fucking dumbass with his cars. What is he doing? Rolls Royce and all this stuff. Losing cars and coin flips. This is-- He lost his house in a coin flip. I know. It's ridiculous. This is what people do in our culture. Cars is such a thing, such an accessory. I've never got it. I can't even speak to it, because I haven't owned a car since I was 15 years old. I've lived in LA. Yeah, I Uber everywhere. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots expensive. I mean, that's just as bad as a car payment, if not worse sometimes. You think so? Well, it definitely is. My justification for it, and this is going to sound like Copies, I work in the Uber. Well, your justification is you can probably afford it. It's fine if you can afford it. That's fair. But I don't care what anyone does if they can afford it. And it's legal. Do you see a lot of people spending on Uber's? Or is that-- Oh, yeah. No, it's huge. It's huge even when they have their own car. But honestly, a lot of it is usually in that vacation trip, or when it's certainly justified, even if you can't afford it, if they're drinking. You got Uber home. And very fair, I will never yell at them for that. Another issue, too, I guess, would be just lack of car pulling, you know? People could save so much money just by having a friend that has a car, and they go to the same place. So in traffic, look at the car next to you. It's one person on it. It's brutal. And it takes up so much space for just one person. It's shit. What can you tell about someone's finances by what kind of car they drive? Honestly, I just assume, even with nice clothes, the nicer people have, assume the worse they're off. I really do. It's a thing in our culture. I mean, look at all the wealthiest people in Silicon Valley and wealthiest people in Austin in these kind of cultures. It also, it certainly depends on what city you live in, right? Because I know like Miami or LA, it's more flashy. But the most successful people here in Silicon Valley and other places, just dress like whatever. Like, I mean, I do very well. I don't want, this is the nicest thing I've ever purchased that isn't a car, just 'cause cars are naturally expensive. Yeah, so a couple thousand bucks. And I did it 'cause my girlfriend said I had to. So like, it's, I don't know. I swear, it is a cop. It is a psychology. People see it on Instagram and TikTok, and they want that nice thing. And they will do whatever it takes, unaffordable, to get that nice thing. But look at the people who are doing well off. Unless they are that weird flashy fucking like, trying to jerk off around everyone, they're around in town. It's just, is it a bigger issue with girls or guys? Or is it, say the cost of work, the car thing? Cars, dudes for sure, right? I'd say cars, dudes for sure. And clothing and accessories probably women a bit more. But I mean, it still falls in both categories, you know? You get your girly pop SUV, but it's still a Lamborghini or a Porsche. And you can get your bling as a guy, designer clothes, all that crap. You know, I think I'm wearing T-Moo shorts right now. Like, I think, I don't know, it's just a crap. How much does this fit cost? I don't know what this is, this was for branding 'cause like the best budgeting after it is, otherwise. So I'm wearing it for that. That's making me money. Then I got T-Moo and, I don't know, some white shirt under it. Have you ever bought anything off T-Moo? No, I mean, it's not actually T-Moo, but it's like that quality. It's that cheap. It's nothing. Oh, actually, no, no, no, no, these are like nicer shoes that, what is that? Oh, and whatever that brand is. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's just super comfy, though. How we see a bunch of like really wealthy guys that have them on podcast wearing these shoes that you can tell are really comfortable, but they're not like flashy, you know? It's just like utility based. Oh, I mean, my entire intent literally, I'd dress to go on like a three mile walk after this. That's what I'd dress for. That was my, I'm just gonna take this off and gonna walk. Perfect. (laughs) What's the most money you've seen? is someone waste on food delivery apps. - Delivery apps, ooh. Well, we usually tally it as just going out to eat in general, like I've had, it's very standard to see someone making 40,000 hours a year, spend 1,500 bucks, and there are single, previous month going out to eat. Many of that being food deliveries, or also just going out to eat, but that is not considered unreasonable on the show. - So it's like half their income essentially. - Oh, yeah, half a third, even more than that, because almost every single guest, 95% of the guests that come on Financial Audit, spend more per month than they make. So it doesn't even matter if it's half their income, 'cause it's not half their spending, still, because they just put it on debt. They're funny with a personal loan, or credit cards, or even pulling from their 401k, just really bad things. So that is not an odd, or a rare thing to see on Financial Audit. - Would you say that your show, like the guest on your show's expenses are an accurate representation of the average person, because obviously you're a content creator, you could have siphoned out people who have more interesting stories. But would you guess that if we took random person off the street right now, just outside at a coffee shop or something, would they be in a similar situation? Would you guess? - Well, statistically, from what you said, it actually lines up in terms of how much they have in savings, a couple hundred bucks, like a Gen Z person on the show, the amount of debt in student loans, it's actually very normal. So we actually have a disproportionate amount of people on the show who have a mortgage, like a higher percentage of people than do in the real world. So it's kind of weird, where sometimes we'll get more people with more money in their retirement, but they're still blowing and saying amount of money. So we look for, you have to financially qualify to be on the show, right? You need to have a place to improve on. So we definitely have the, like you could pick someone off the street and have very similar finances, but then we make sure we're picking interesting stories in unique situations. I mean, there are everywhere. These are your neighbors. These are getting hundreds of applications today. These are your neighbors, your co-workers, your family members. It's a taboo topic, personal finances. No one really knows what's going on in most people's lives. We don't talk about income, debt, spending in this country, we just show vacations on Instagram. Yeah, it seemed, this might have just been unique to my situation growing up, but I just never knew how much money my parents made or how much they had. Would you say that's fairly typical for people? Yeah, I didn't really know. I mean, I asked questions when we were receiving four-closure notices. I learned a little more there, but no, not really. And the things that I got to do, which were, I had a very blessed childhood, but it was on debt, right? I got to do cool things, but it was on debt. So, but I didn't know that I didn't know that until I was older and we had those conversations when I was in college or whatever. So, no, I didn't have those conversations, and I really don't think we do in this country. Actually, the parents on the show specifically say they don't want their kids to know. Right. It's embarrassing. That makes sense. Is there any one purchase you've seen recently that you actively think about after you leave the show? Like, you kind of tell everyone about it and you're like, I actually can't believe that this person bought this thing. Yes, a guy with a girl with a wife, wife or girlfriend fiance, one of those situations. They're definitely been together for a while. He was paying for an AI girlfriend behind her back. Wasn't great, shouldn't do that. And he was goonin to her too. He was all up in that chat goonin. He was like, come for me, baby. Make no mistakes, you know? It's like, why are we doing that when she's right there? And then she found that on the show and it was awkward moment and that still sits with me even two or three weeks after filming. Right. What are we doing? And he tried to hide it from her. It was just, oh, it was so crazy. I got him to log in. I went to the messages. He showed you the messages? Oh yeah, it wasn't on his known list. People get to say what they do not want included in the conversations before they film. That wasn't one of them. How much had he spent on his AI girlfriend? It was like, like 25 bucks a month. It wasn't like finance breaking, but it was kind of relationship breaking. And it was also just stupid money. What pointless, there's a woman right there. There's a woman of beauty. Don't remember if she is beautiful, but beautiful to someone woman right there. And why couldn't they just do things together? How I don't know. Would you say that's common? Like the, I guess expenses for men specifically. Oh, we got OF like crazy, my guy. We got OF like crazy on these men's accounts. And like I said, people can say what not to talk about. You can assume if I have a single guy on the show and we're going through statements and I don't bring up OF, OF is there. And he said not to talk about it. So we didn't. But you can assume most guys have OF these days. It's kind of crazy. So OF would you say sports betting is another one? I actually don't get a lot of that. It's surprising. We do get betters. And when we do get betters, they go, you know, they bet a lot. But it's actually a small minority. Still have guests on the show. But when they do, they go crazy. When they're into any kind of gambling, whether that's even just ripping Pokemon packs or whatever it is. If they get into any kind of gambling, it becomes hundreds to thousands of dollars. But it's still, I think people know to avoid it overall, but man, when you're in it, you're in it. And it's bad. I played with calcium. I had some fun. I had some fun. And honestly, I'm not against those programs. I like calcium polymarket. I hardly do. It's really me to be against them too, because they seem a little bit more predictable at the least, you know what I mean? I think anything like that with the drink or smoking weed or anything, I'm good with it if you can control it. If you know you can't, you need to self-ban. Right. So I actually like them. I mean, they were more accurate in the last selection than the polling. So I like them. They're very fun to play around with. I had fun with the Super Bowl, but all of a sudden I'm not on them for every game. I had fun with the Super Bowl. That was it. I know how to control myself. So like I would even, I wouldn't even be opposed to them as like, even working with them on a project. Like I wouldn't, because, same with their credit card. I love credit cards. I love debt. I love a lot of these things that we rail against on the show, because it's not for the person on the show. It's not for the person. There are still good things out there if you can self-moderate, and you can have fun with it. Then I'm not against it. People think I'm against all these things. I had someone compare, they said, "Caled Hammer's the new Avocado Toast for Gen Z." I'm like, no, get your fucking Avocado Toast. Get your DoorDash. Get your Uber. I don't care. If you can afford it and you have a fully funded emergency fund and you don't have this horrendous 30% debt, or hanging over your life that is controlling every decision and every aspect of your future. If you don't then do whatever, gamble, have fun in moderation. There's nothing wrong with that. - Have you ever thought about how many different software subscriptions you're using to run your business or social media channels? 'Cause if you're like me, you're probably doing email marketing on one platform. You're running your website on another platform. Customer support slash CRM somewhere else. And you're spending thousands of dollars a month on all these tools, and you barely can keep track of all of it. That's why I was so glad our team started using high level. It's basically the operating system for our entire business all in one place. But the craziest part is their AI studio. Anything you wanna add to your business, new website, better funnel, automations, it builds it out instantly simply by typing in a prompt. Now be honest with me, are you currently paying more than $97 a month to keep track of your leads in a CRM, send automated emails and text messages, build landing pages and process payments? If you said yes, you're probably gonna wanna switch to high level. So seriously, if you wanna stop paying for eight different software subscriptions to run your business, just go to jacknail.com/highlevel or scan the QR code on screen. Again, that is jacknail.com/highlevel if you wanna run your entire business with one platform. I guess when you think about those micro expenses of men, like what would you say to the top five ones that are new to like this agency? Gooning for sure, it's a big one. Definitely gooning. Micro purchases, do you say? Specifically micro per, okay. 'Cause I wanna throw cars in there, but gooning for sure. So lots of collections, and they don't just stick to one platform. I know all laugh, but there's, I'm blakin' on the other ones. As a professional gooner, I'm a little disappointed that I'm forgetting the other platforms, but you'll see all of them. If you see one, you'll see the other ones. Hand micro purchase. I mean, everyone goes out to you. That's not really a gender thing though. - Is that one? - Is that one? - No. - I would actually say less on that, but vapien is a cross generational thing. I don't see a lot of, I mean, that's one reason we partnered with gamer subs, was because men do love to go into the gas station and get energy drinks on the way to work. That's a very common thing. When we love to go to the Starbucks, men love to get the Celsius or Monster or whatever. Yeah, see, I mean, which is good. I mean, it's fine. It's fine, but people can't afford it and just buy in like a bulk pack. - Right. - So go inside and get in some bullshit, is what we call it when people go to the gas station. So men love to do that. Most things are honestly cross gender, but men are much more susceptible on our show of stopping in the gas station, definitely goon in. - Mean coins? - That's also just kinda more rare than you think. Like, yes, we get it, but even when we get it, it's so small, so small. - Do you see a lot of polymarket? - No, we really don't. - Surprising. - Gooning and energy drinks. - Yes, that is like every guy. - Or OF and energy drinks. - But I'll get, I'll get-- - I'll get, I'll get. - Is AI girlfriend's problem? - No, no, no, no, not at all. That was the first thing that's ever happened. - Like we'll get 20% who do like polymarket and stuff, but even when they do it, I mean, it's bad for them even if they're not addicted to it because they have bad debt if they're on the show, right? But even still, it is still small, but I know it disproportionately impacts men as a whole. Like that's for sure as a gendered percentage, but as a percentage of people on my show or overall society, it's still lower. But it's, again, definitely more men. - Are you seeing them spend money on women in general? - Oh, other than watching them naked, you mean in-person women? That's hard for a Gen Z. Let's talk about that. But yeah, I mean, you'll see people go on, yeah, you'll see a date here and there, but it's not crazy, not a lot of big gift buying, not a lot of going out to dates. Even in relationships, you'll see them spend just as much as a couple as a single person does on getting McDonald's for themselves every day. It's pretty, it's pretty crazy, interesting. And then just to close the loop on the OF, would you say that's like a reason they're going broke? Or would you say it's like not a big gift? - It all stacks up, but it's one of those reoccurings, right? Where it's like, this is like the vast majority of men are doing it right now. And it's, I know $10 won't make a break, but if you do $10 a few times a month, and then you go out to eat every other day and stop for an energy drink every day to work, all the stuff really starts to stack up. Especially if you're starting to put it on a credit card, where you're only making minimum monthly payments or not putting as much on it as you've spent on it in the previous month, it just really starts to stack. And then you hit that breaking point or also you cannot afford it anymore. How about courses? - No, that's, again, that kind of falls in that smaller pool, but when they do, they go hard, which really sucks because it's fair that courses have a bad reputation. Like we do courses, we have educational programs. But they're good, same with Ramses, this is good. I know like your friends with Graham, Graham as well, and he has a good program, there's good programs out there. Yeah, the programs I see these people do, it's like a $10,000 day trading program. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like these people are fucking morons. Why don't they buy in the $200, you know, learn how to budget and invest properly program that, like we do, because you can get rich with day trading. - Yeah, it's the get rich quit. That's what people want to do. So when we do see it, they go crazy. And they usually finance like a $10,000 program. - Really? - Which is life destroying. It's so stupid. Makes no sense. And then it encourages them to do day trading. And I don't know, do you day trader, are you day trader? - No. - Did you see the new rules that went out last week? - No, what happened? - You used to have to have $25,000 in your account to do more than three day trades a week. And then it goes three. They got rid of that rule. Now you can have any money, get up $5 in there, and you could do as many day trades as you want throughout the week. - Sounds like our audience is gonna be really rich. - Yes, and really quick. It's ridiculous. Yeah, I was kind of thinking about the stuff men were spending money on in general. Like between energy drinks, OF, meme coins. - It's those reoccurries, man. That's where the guys fuck it up. Whereas it's like, yes, I've subscribed to a couple before. And it's always, you know, you click in and you cancel immediately. So it doesn't reoccur. But these guys, they have multiple reoccurries in there, like chatting with them and they're paying to chat. And it's just some Indian dude, like, what do you look really cute today, guy? Don't cancel me. But like, it's just some dude that's like, you know, I can just chatting with you, telling you you look hot. And you're paying for it. - That's interesting. I'm curious from your view. Do you think a lot of the reason men go broke is because they're sims? Oh yeah, dear Gen Z men are losers. Fucking losers. The gender divide, the gender war right now, dating rates are record low, marriage rates are record low, virginity rates are record high. It's insane, they're losers. And honestly, both genders have responsibility to play. Cancer culture went absolutely insane. Like, there was a correction that needed to be made and then it over corrected. And like, guys will send one embarrassing text and they'll get blasted all over online. Or you'll go up to a woman and her, like, morbidly obese friend. She'll say, "He's not an incorrect guy." And it's just like all these embarrassing moments that are impossible to deal with. And then guys are also just sitting inside, fucking gooning to extremist online. Or like, or just watching porn, not manning up to go cold approach and having horrible conversations. And it's brutal. And then dating apps came into picture. And it is true, okay, Cupid did their own analysis. It is true that the top 80% of women only go for the top 20% of guys. And women have their own issues on the dating apps. They're getting flooded, flooded, flooded. I would not want to deal with that. But then men are getting almost no matches, no engagement. And we have so many things that are stacking against them right now. And they are fucking losers right now. A lot of them, they're virgins. It's not hard to fuck. It is not hard to fuck. I have never been a 10 out of 10. Never been a 7 out of 10. I think I've been a solid, I've been to a 7. I think I've gone down to a 5 out of 10. It is not hard to have sex. Before any notoriety or money is not hard, but there's a lot of social pressure. They're locked inside. They're in weird communities. And there's a big gender war going on right now, even politically, right? And it's brutal. And just I think people hear the dating apps statistic too. And it's like bottom, what is it? Top 10% of guys get the bottom or get the 90% of women whatever. But I just, my view on this and this might not be statistically accurate, I just don't really think women seriously use dating apps. Probably not, who would? Like I think they just kind of go outside and talk to guys, you know, and guys assume that like, oh, dating apps are like where people are supposed to meet. And it's just, and it's just kind of cope from them actually going outside. It's like a video game swiping, right? And yeah, men are stayed inside. They're not going out. Drinking has dramatically fallen among Gen Z. That's overall good health. But it's actually, it is like pretty much every like, men's advocate and not like a weird extremist way 'cause you know, there's like the crazy fucking, I don't know, shit. But just like in terms of like just getting out there and just like being a normal person, like a part of that drinking statistic is actually kind of bad 'cause you need that social lubricant to kind of go out there and cold approach and get it a little more social. I'm not saying get plastered and fuck up your liver, all this stuff or blow all your money and drinking, but you need to go out. You need to cold approach. You know, my ex before my current girlfriend was a cold approach. It works. She didn't know who I was. She only learned afterwards and you have to be able to do it. But guys are not going to do it right now. And some of it is fair. You get plastered online. You get put in the T app or in weird Facebook groups, you know? It's like there are real things that have led to the fear, but there's probably too much fear overblown fear. Now their losers paying for only fans and it kind of sucks 'cause it's also just not hard to have sex. Go out to the bar, have sex. Pretty easy. Everyone's trying to fuck. It's crazy how that happens, how that works. Do you think having a girlfriend makes you spend more money or less money? Why hasn't changed that much? I mean, I've got a couple like nice gifts for like Christmas and birthday. I mean, I've spent more money on myself because I've been forced to. (laughing) And this isn't even like anything special. But no, I mean, just my cost per going out to eat, but she's making me eat at home anyway more to lose weight. So it's like, no, I think my spending's gone on. I'm sure for most people, yes it is. It is up though. - The one thing I am a little out of touch on is like, I've never been, there was like a six month phase in LA where I would just fucking get like ramen noodles and just save money and cook for myself, but just do you recommend that everyone should be cooking for themselves if they're making 50k a year? - Yeah. Well, okay, well, caveats. Depends your financial situation. If there's no emergency fund, if there's a high APR debt, then yes. Absolutely, meal prep, meal prep, meal prep. Sheep, 300-hour a month per person budget. LA, that's a little harder, but in most places, you can do that. And we prove it with our local grocery store HEP like once a quarter, we do the math. It'll probably have to go up to 350 soon. We'll see, but even still. Yes, most people should be doing that. But if you're making 50, and you have a fully funded six month emergency fund, and you don't have any high interest debt, that's where you go to the 50, 30, 20 rule, which is 50% on needs, 30% on fun, which can be going out to eat and 20% on saving. If you're hitting that 20% on saving, then I do not care. As long as you're living a halfway decent life, you're not overspending on your necessities or underspending. We don't want you to live in like a cave as well. You're living an actually decent life. We want people to go out to eat. 50,000 L.A. harder. Your bills stretch a lot, a lot thinner there. But yeah, yeah, absolutely. We want people to go out to eat, just it really depends on where they are in life. - What's the most money you've seen a guy spend on women? - Yeah, I have had people, I had someone throw, I think, was like $25,000 for Dory. I'm not in that world. It was like my first time actually kind of hearing about it. Everyone around me knew what it was, but I didn't know it, but it was like her African village parents so that she could bring her overseas and marry her. You had to like pay like a town payment almost. We've had a few 90 day fiance type relationships on the show. They've had to spend a lot of money. So we've had tens of thousands of dollars go to that for sure. So what are they purchasing? - Well, the visa process is a little expensive. The lawyers flights back and forth to see each other throughout that process. - How did they meet just Instagramers? - Oh, weird apps. The 90 day fiance type of apps. - Right. - Yeah. So we've had two people from Africa and then we had one guy, she wasn't there, but one, she was from Southeast Asia somewhere as well and he spent a lot of money on that. And then the guy, I remember you're talking about, it was the years ago now. So I'm a little fuzzy on the details. But yeah, he was spending a shit ton of money on like, oh, I mean, we've had guys spend a shit ton of money on strippers and stuff. So that's kind of, I don't think that qualifies the same as your question. It comes to spending on girlfriends, but yeah, people will have tens of thousands to get their love. I think when, usually when people on the show already have the love of their life or they're already dating someone, they're not going like tens of thousands into it though, but a lot of people have spent tens of thousands to acquire that on the show. - You think a good relationship generally saves men from a lot of poor spending habits? - It definitely can, because if you're the fuck up, if you're the guy or a fuck up and maybe she's smart, she budgets, it definitely can. But I've seen it where the guy was doing well financially and then she came in and she was like a crazy spender didn't care about debt or budgeting and she tinked it. So it can go both ways, obviously. - It depends on who has what knowledge base or discipline going into it. - Before I ask about this, who do you think has been the most financially responsible guest on your show? - Amrith, if that counts. - Really? - Oh yeah, she owns gas stations and I think she's worth like 25 million at the time to fill me in two years ago. So absolutely. What's interesting is, no, actually she did spend a lot of money. - Toki? (laughs) - Probably not, but even still he technically, I think in the end once we discovered more things at the end, even though he's been really dumb with his money, he probably had a higher net worth just because he's accidentally put things into assets like cars and stuff. And luckily for him hasn't really gone into debt, he just throws away his money, but he doesn't go into debt. So we have some assets that he could liquidate if necessary, like his house and some crazy cars. So technically not financially responsible, but he has higher net worth than most people on the show. - Yeah, I think Toki said something like, you can't lose if you don't quit when it comes to gambling. What do you think of that at bucks? - Recarded. - I mean, that's, what? - That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense, I don't understand. - Let's joke it, but I wanted to ask you about looks maxing. - Oh sure. - They're growing trend online or young men spend heavily on their appearance to become more attractive. Do you think looks maxing is a good financial investment? - I guess it could be to, I think statistically, right? I don't have this debt on my fingertip, but good looking people tend to get, you know, in terms of in-person job interviews, higher success rates. Obviously helps you when the dating pool might help you get a partner interview processes. I mean, it helps people throughout life being more attractive, has the looks maxing stuff statistically proven to actually increase people's attractiveness? I haven't, not a looks max expert personally. - There's something about every inch of height you have, you make another like $10,000 a year or something, but I don't know if-- - And it helps on the dating apps as well. Like, where are the investment for money? Maybe a little, but I think that's probably a decent investment for actually successful in dating, 'cause the dating is very superficial. It's even more superficial right now, and people's expectations are insane. You'll have the ugliest motherfuckers in the world having the expectation that they can only get tens out of tens. It's kind of crazy. Like, I don't know where people have valued themselves this all the way up here. I try to be reasonable with my value, I don't know. So it could be good, but does looks maxing actually work? Does it actually work in terms of like getting people more attractive? 'Cause that's my question. 'Cause you can't and get higher. - There's two parts of looks maxing basically. Like, they're soft maxing and hard maxing, so one is plastic surgery, and then one is doing stuff like working out. - Well, you should work out. - And I don't know, like, doing your hair better, that kind of stuff. - Oh, I mean, self-confidence in general, you do better when you're more self-confident. You do better at your job. If you're working out, you're likely to do better in most things, 'cause one, you're disciplined enough to work out, so you're disciplined enough to budget, and a lot of other things, and diet and whatnot. If you're working out, you will have more energy, but we'll be able to produce higher results across the board. You'll be able to work longer and harder than other people. - Okay. - So working out leads to less depression, less mental health issues, which leads to better results in life, so I think working out in general, looks maxing or not, is going to lead to a positive return on investment. - Clav says that you should take out your student loans and spend the money on plastic surgery instead of school, because-- - Don't think they allow that. - He says you won't get in trouble in your mug. - You might get in trouble, and you will mug, but while in trouble, do you think that's a better investment in college? - Random question really quick. Have you ever looked up if the shampoo you're using can disrupt your hormones? 'Cause if you're like me, you probably didn't know that over 70% of men's grooming products have chemicals that can disrupt your endocrine system or your testosterone levels. Now, I care a lot about my health, but I didn't really think any healthy products could make my hair look good, so that's why I was so glad I met the guys at-base. They gave me their shower duo, shampoo conditioner, and it's made with plant-based ingredients like peppermint or argon oil, so there's no sulfates, no hormone disruptors, nothing that's gonna mess with your body. And after using it for a while now, genuinely my hair does feel way healthier, like clean and hydrated as opposed to dry and dull. And honestly, I think it looks better too. So if you've been using the same products forever without thinking twice about what's actually in them, make sure to check out Base Body Works. It's a plant-based all-natural men's grooming brand that actually performs. So if you want to try it out for yourself, just use code JackNeil at basebodyworks.com for 20% off your first order. Plus, you'll get a free toiletry bag when you buy your first set, so again, that is basebodyworks.com code JackNeil. - Do you think that's a better investment in college? - Well, seeing how I don't think you're allowed to, I will need to fact check that out, and I really don't think you're allowed to do that. - He's talked about it a lot, I think it's a thing. - Okay, is he a valid source of student loan borrowing? - He went to Boston College. - He went to pretty good school. - He's pretty smart too. - I mean, he's good at knowing the laws and legals around student loan borrowing, I don't know. - He's talked about it quite a bit. - Let's assume it's true, do you think it's a good investment? - Instead of doing it towards school. - So college or double jail surgery? - College. - Our degree or double jail surgery? - Flip of coin. (laughs) - And yeah, equal return on investment there. - Do you think student loans should be illegal? - Oh, legal. - Psychic concept. - No, but we definitely fucked it up. Like, again, like many social programs, I think it came with good intent. Or it's like, oh, college is a little expensive. We want more people to be able to go to college, disadvantaged people to go to college. - Sure, but you can view it pretty much per year. Every time you increase what people are allowed to borrow, schools increase just as much, if not maybe a little less, what they will charge for it, because why would they not charge the max that people can borrow? It helps invest in administrators, building out better facilities to attract more foreign students, which pay in cash and at higher rates, which is even better for the school. So, I mean, the cost of college immediately just went to the moon, the moment that we allowed people to borrow as much as they wanted. So it's pretty clear. It's all in the data. It's not surprising to anyone. So in order to reverse that, it would be brutal. Colleges would close. People wouldn't be able to go to college now for a while if we just completely stopped the federal student loan system. But, so I don't think we could rip the bandaid off like that, but we also can't continue on this trend. We can't because it's the federal government. They'll guard and show wages. This isn't like personal loan. They can go to collections and fall off after seven years. You're not getting out of these student loans. So it's really bad. I don't know if they should be illegal. Do you think they should be forgiven student loans? Not without changing the system. Right. I'm not inherently opposed to like, oops, we fucked up, let's reset. But if you do not actually fix what got us here in the first place, which is the infinite borrowing for any degree at any institution, and they can raise the prices as much as they want for administrators and football programs or whatever, 'cause only like 10 or 20 or 30 football or sports programs actually make a return on their own investment. The rest of them are bullshit. You know, I went to Western Michigan University like, woo, we got the National Championship in hockey last year. That's good. But we still probably spent more than we made. Like, yay, we get to win that. I'm happy. But it doesn't actually make sense for that school have all those D1 programs. no, but that's okay focus on the education focus on the education um shit what was your question if they should be forgiven oh now without changing the system imagine you were to break this down for me like exactly why like why are student loans predatory what is the key cause of them like necessarily predatory you can I mean some private ones might be but federal not predatory predatory no I think I think it's more the lack of education from parents and student counselors again the mission over the past few decades which has not been an unfair mission is to send people to college no matter what because statistically it has improved the lives so why did they raise the borrowing amount well they will always raise the borrowing amount because one inflation and cost of college goes up because of college goes up with the borrowing amount and it's also just some moral question of making sure everyone has access no matter where you come from whatnot um but again I think we've we've really messed it up in terms of we've allowed every college in the world to have a music program where I'm sorry if you're going to I can't think think think of a think of a random town where you from let's tell let's tell think if you're going to let's town college for trombone performance are you going to be the one who makes it versus the one who goes to julyard probably not does that college need to have that should we be encouraging someone to borrow a hundred thousand hours a year to go do that just because of the batch no so we need to have a different conversation about what people are doing when they head to college and borrow that money right really do I wish I wish every kid that is I mean well yeah some of them are kids when they're getting their student loans but every 17 18 year old before they were finishing they have to be the one to click and I wish on that site it was like okay you will be paying this much this will be your expected minimum to payment if you do this trajectory from this institution after college oh and by the way the major you picked your most likely first year out of college pay is going to be this and you're borrowing this much for it we should just lay that out educate them as much as possible because right now the only education they'll get is the student counselor and their parents and parents don't know what the fuck they're doing they don't but I don't blame them for either and I blame more than student counselors hmm yes student counselors are just responsible for getting the most amount of kids and they're not responsible for like what happens to you after yeah so they said those are kind of messed up um actually on that I was just say as a final no my student counselor in high school I think I saw her four times she's the one that like guides you throughout one time was like oh what classes you want to take next year the other three times we're making sure I'd go to college so what like it was like she was supposed to be helping me my entire time there no it was just conversations about college that's the whole thing let's bro I have a segment I think you'll find fun we'll call it smart or crash out or I give you a purchase and you tell me whether or not it's a good purchase or a bad purchase and let's just assume the person makes 50k a year um 50k a year where let's qualify it further Texas okay okay where's their uh debt in retirement situation and fully funded emergency fund zero zero on all yeah zero no no debt no debt but no emergency fund no emergency fund okay cool let's do yeah um maybe like a thousand dollars in the bank okay yeah a Costco membership yeah that's fine if you're actually using it and doing most of your grocery shopping there that's fine an MBA masters in business yeah yeah great absolutely depends how much it costs to get and what how much you borrowed for it but yeah lacic eye surgery yeah that's good I mean um is it all cash or do they have decent eye insurance like depends how much it's covered but hey if you can do it I'm okay with it I'd get to the six month emergency fund before doing that but I'm not gonna freak out about it afterwards if you put it into your wants category Bitcoin you can include it in a reasonably balanced portfolio want to do even half or even a quarter of my portfolio and it personally I have a very small percentage in crypto but yeah I mean ethereum Bitcoin has a small percentage yeah sure a peloton yeah personal health is good um again without a emergency fund I would rather you go to the gym and I put gym and health and wellness into everyone's budget no matter where they are so it's good but maybe after your fully funded diversity fund is that if that's gonna keep you active even more than having a gym membership or going on walks then yeah all about it an equinox gym membership sure I'm good with it really how much is it I think they're like 300 a month it's brutal if you're actually using it if you're actually using it I'm okay again I would I would advocate hey maybe let's start with like LA fitness see if you like it if you want the more dedicated classes and stuff like equinox equinox cool do it but I'm okay with it again preferably get the emergency fund first health and fitness is everything though if you're not you know I'm saying this but if you're not going to live for a while what is the point of the sacrifice that is required to do get all your finances in a good place anyway what's the point if you're not going to be around to do it so take care of health and fitness boat talks no no yeah fully funded emergency fund then take care of the wrinkles a boat fuck no absolutely not in that situation no become become a millionaire first one please boats are horrible investments it's not an investment it needs to be a toy a pull in your backyard definitely probably also not definitely a toy later if you know if you're getting a pool before a fully funded emergency fund I'm burning your house down yeah a designer dog from a breeder no adopt anyway regardless just adopt a trip to Disney no no I mean what are you you're gonna spend thousands on there you're probably morbidly obese because you go into Disney anyway and so you should probably go to equinox equinox not Disney a 20k engagement ring financed at 24 percent APR oh if they're making 50 now well first of all that the interest rate fuck no but if they're making 50 thousand no as well a wedding over $30,000 okay are you paying all 30 or the parents Chippenon yourself shit and this is you 50 she's not working damn brutal modern marriage um okay I wouldn't I wouldn't I'm almost more okay fuck no because they're gonna finance it no now try to cap it at 15 even is still kind of brutal but yeah a brand new Tesla on a 72 month loan what Tesla newest model model why model why okay base model yeah one interest rate at 72 what's the most common hey you can get it for like one yeah there's always one right at like special promos if you do with that I'm not thrilled about 72 but I'm I would be I would accept a Ford F-150 definitely not because you're spending a shit ton of money the gas is gonna be brutal for you at 50 especially if we keep fucking with the straighter removes um this is not not very good because you're also probably not getting a great interest rate with it either hmm it depends on the overall uh what kind of loan and one I can get with it but probably not those are expensive a motorcycle no because that is that gonna be your daily driver do you live in San Diego if not now I use Toyota Camry and cash sure yeah sure that's fine perfect can you tell someone's bad with money simply by looking at them the nice clothes a nice car thing is actually kind of indicative indicative I really feel like it is when I see someone that looks like all like blinked out or designer or nice car especially if it's like a stereotypical type of car assume the finances are pretty bad it's that's a pretty easy tell is there any like physical signs that someone's bad with money like do you think girls with septums are bad with money okay I see where you going I mean maybe I don't know they might be more annoying I don't know about bad with money that's hard to tell I feel like seems like every woman I meet these days have septum piercing um which I know it's fun to make fun of but I actually find a edgy girl pretty attractive so doesn't actually bother me but man I don't know I don't know because even like the biggest love ever could be just like a doing digital security making $250,000 like that's really hard today really is I don't know even like racial stereotypes or something if you want to get into that like even that's harder to tell it's like it's like no maybe where someone lives but you don't know where someone's living unless you're like following them home or you following them home is there any like one thing that like stands out to you that you're like oh another one with a septum like another one like anything like that no well I mean sure sometimes if they're like ru ru rent control like one of the most clear failed policies in the history of all of humanity that has never worked in one city it's been put in just permitting gets cut in half the next day and rent goes up for everyone except for the few selected few that get the positive results of it I mean yeah usually like you know get a little piercing and they're like whoa rent control is great and I'm like just because it sounds good and feels moral doesn't mean it's ever worked in practice. So usually they're kind of like things like that. - What can you tell about a person's childhood by their spinning habits? - We've definitely had a lot of people on the show that are, yeah, one thing that really lines up is the going out to eat and also health style. So people that have like really unhealthy parents that go out to eat a lot and have really bad food, they also tend to be the more large people on the show. Fat people that just spend so much money going to McDonald's and the same thing was happening with their parents that they're just used to that lifestyle. It's an easier lifestyle. It is an endlessly dopamine fueling lifestyle, getting that food and it is delicious for what it's worth, but that really does fall generational trends. It really does. - What's the most irresponsible purchase you've made in 2026? Just the ring? - Probably. - Anything else? - We bought a new furniture for the office. You didn't see it yet, it's not here, but we're sprucing up the office. We wrote a quarter million dollar check for that. - That's brutal. - That makes me want to put a gun on my mouth. That's brutal. But we're doing a nice, it's good for recruitment, it's good for people that are here. So there's like lounge space, co-working space, private spaces, call booths, all these different things. Like did we need to do that? No, the business is doing fine. We've recruited pretty well, but it is nice for the employees. I want them, if they have to be a work, I want them placed that they're at work to be halfway decent. So that was stupid, wasn't necessary, but maybe we'll see a return on investment with that and we can take it wherever we go, or liquidate it if we go out of business, which hopefully not. But like that was pretty bad. I'm renovating my new house. It's also not a crazy, for my income situation again, I've been very blessed. It's dramatically under what I think most normal people would do. But the renovation for the purchase of the house, it's a little more up there. Do you like buying things? I love new tech. I love new tech. Like I have a maxed out MacBook Pro. I don't edit videos anymore. I did when I first started this, but obviously that's not where my time is best spent now. So that was stupid, that was so unnecessary. I could do everything I do on a MacBook Air. No reason for that. So that was stupid to spend a few thousand bucks on that. That was also last year. But I do, I love to buy new tech. Like the new Apple watch or the new iPhone or the new whatever, the new smart speaker. It's like, I don't always use it. So yes, I do like to buy that. I do like to go out to eat. I actually am doing quite a lesson now. And it's more just goes, I'm like, "Hey, where do you want to go to eat?" And she's like, "You're sitting right in that fucking chair and we're gonna make some healthy food." And I'm like, "Okay." So that's the less of my choice. I don't know, I don't know. I did get my plaid Model X. I did get my plaid Model X before they discontinued the Model X. So I guess I got lucky on that. I don't remember if that was this year or the end of last year. That was stupid 'cause I already had a Model X a few years old. But I wanted the updated chip and I didn't get plaid last time and I'm like, "Damn it." So I got plaid. But I traded in and it was like half off. So that worked, but it was stupid. I didn't need it. But it was also wasn't financially irresponsible for me. - What thing do you see people waste money on that you personally don't judge them for? - Ooh, that I don't judge them for waste money on. Why judge everyone on everything? I mean, I was judging you on your accent at the beginning. That's just kind of what I do. I'm a judging person. - Is there one thing like other people might judge them for and you're just like, "I is probably fine." - I don't blame them. - Fuck man. (laughing) - Ah, that's a difficult one for me. Listen, maybe if it's like, I think I can take care of a cigarette, but other people wouldn't judge them on that. The gym thing we already talked about the gym thing, maybe some people would judge, but I think health and fitness is, you know, take care of that. That's number one. - How about giving like family money or something like that? - Yeah, but I'm against that. Usually, unless again, it's like taking care of a cigarette and it's not enabling. If it's enabling, I'm against it, right? A gift, I'm not against a gift, but I'm against giving gifts for Christmas if you're a fucking broke and have bad debt. I don't freak out if, I guess like a one time a left purchase and like, I guess some people are like hardcore, like no, no, no. If you even watch porn, you'll die. So, maybe something like that. - What if someone buys something and it's like their birthday? - Can they afford it or not? If they can't afford it, if it's stupid for the financial position, no. - But it's a birthday. - I don't give a fuck. Everyone has a birthday. Everyone watching this video has a birthday this year. It's not very unique. I don't give a shit about a birthday, fuck your birthday. - Do you think people should work on their birthday? - They can if they want to or they can take it off and if they can't take it off, I don't have any sympathy. Like, I don't care. I worked on mine this year, but then I took off my girlfriend's birthday. I don't know, it doesn't matter. If you can take it off and you want to do it, but if you have to work on your birthday, I have zero sympathy, I don't care. This isn't sweet 16. What are we doing? You're an adult. - What do you think of birthday months? - Yeah, that's the most, that's the dumbest shit I've ever heard of my life. Birthday months, what is stupid trend? What is stupid trend? What are we doing? Why do you get, there's 12 a year and you're gonna allow yourself to fuck up the other 11 by living to the max for just one of them because it's your birthday falls in that month. You were born, you're not unique. Congratulations, every human being's been born. Okay, no one's gonna give a shit when you're dead either. Same with me, who gives a fuck? We don't need to celebrate. I will be sad for a second when we die. Well, other people, well, we won't know, 'cause we're dead. But who gives such birthday month is so fucking stupid. I don't understand. Why destroy the rest of your year for one month? Have fun on your birthday. Sure, if you can afford it. Same with Christmas, same with anything. If you have made bad mistakes or you come from a place of disadvantage that still sucks, but reality is reality is reality in the end and there's only one way out to get better and that is sacrificing for the first time in your fucking life. So sometimes you just have to say no and be an adult and say no. It's not bad to say no. It's hard. Have you seen people spend a lot of money on like a few rules? Hmm, no. I think the funeral came up once in our conversation but that's something I didn't knock either. 'Cause sometimes there's a little out of their control. You know, there's family dynamics to play. You don't get the full we have say in it. And I mean, like, I mean, the death is someone you love. That's, I mean, that's hard to fuck with. It's hard. And another one of those where it's like, it's hard to say no to is tithing. It's like it's so embedded into their entire moral fabric where if you're like, okay, it's a little stupid for you to do this, it doesn't make sense. When it's something that's, it's not ideology or political or even just, it's a literal part of their identity. They think they're going to die if they don't do it. And it's like, it's not going to McDonald's. It's hard to tell people though, I tell them no, but it's hard for me to fight against that hardcore. But I do try to make the logical reality. It's like, I want you to tie it if you want to tie it. I want you to donate if you want to donate. If you want to tie it to a church or donate to NPR, I don't give a fuck. You can do more of that. If you sacrifice temporarily by not improving your life, figuring out how to get a better job, having more savings and all this, you will contribute more over the entire lifetime than doing just little bits right now. So I try, but it is hard to be like, tell people they can't when it's seriously embedded in their identity and full world believes. - To a lot of guests on your show use girl math to justify their spending? - They certainly try to. I mean, I think every gender has their own stupid math. Men with a rip in Pokemon cards and buying upgrading their PC and shit like that. Yeah, you can cope the fuck out of that until you're dead. And then, yeah, girls, I think that's the girl math. They think they're cute and I'm sure they get cheered on with their TikTok cheers them on 'cause they got put in their little ecosystem where it's just like, woo, woo, we can do no wrong. But now of course it's like that's a cope. Is it a real thing? I can't tell if it's a joke or not. I think it's half joke, half not, half cope. It's just like, it's like a new version of I deserve it or like thinking you're entitled or just like brushing it off, putting your head in the sand facing the consequences later. It's a cope. It's a cope and it's a silly way of coping. So maybe a little TikTok Instagram trend on it for sure, but there's no actual girl math. It doesn't make sense. It's not a real thing. It's a cope and they just want to do it and they want to have joy of what they're getting right now instead of actually just sacrificing for a second and saying no. Do you think pets are keeping people broke? It can, it can. And if you do pets wrong, it absolutely can. If you don't, there's a couple of things you can get a dog. And then something goes wrong with the dog and you don't have pet insurance in your fucked and then you're not gonna, you took the responsibility of the dog. You don't want the dog, but you love the dog. It puts you on a lot of debt and then you have to pay off the debt. That's bad. You can get a dog, you can get shitty pet insurance, some cheap ass pet insurance 'cause you told to get pet insurance, so you just get whatever, you don't look into it. Oh, it doesn't cover anything, then you're a lot of downs. That's fucked. You can get a dog and you get $50 a month pet insurance. Ooh, that's a minimum of the payment. That's hard, at least make sure you don't go broke if something would happen with the dog 'cause it's actually a good pet insurance, it's been out to a new minimum of the payment. You can't afford a minimum of the payments, that's brutal, now you get to get a special dog food 'cause they're chicken or whatever. It can be for some people, yes. It certainly can be. What's the most amount of money you've seen someone spend on their dog? Oh, tens of thousands. I've personally spent tens of thousands. My great-parenty is at home. I've probably spent more than anyone I know, I'm on my dog. She's a little, what do you buy? She's surgery, 'cause she wants to have eating things that'll kill her. So it's like, she's monitored 24/7 all times and she has a muzzle when we can't see her and that 'cause she's vicious or anything, she's the sweetest little thing, but she wants to kill herself. So she's had multiple life-saving surgeries to get something in a blockage out of her intestine. Or does she eat anything? One was some wrappers 'cause she found some candy. One was like a little thing that goes under furniture that stops her from sliding. That was her first one. She's had three, I don't remember what the other one is, but the one where she had sepsis or whatever. We're like, you know, everything sepsis, yeah. It was really bad. She almost died. That was 30,000 hours I spent. Well, pet insurance, it helps. It helps, but she's still got to pay for it up front and get reimbursed later. How about other people? Have you seen this? Still tens of thousands. They'll put it on like a care credit card. Usually it's what it's called. So usually what people get for the vets. And it's usually, it's a surgery like that. It's a life-saving surgery. Something really bad happened with the dog. Or the dog goes through chemo or something. Absolutely, in turn, I did have a guy that was spending thousands, not tens of thousands, but thousands on getting owning a percentage of breeding dogs for French bulldogs, owning a percentage of the nut so that he got, you know, every time that dog nut and they sold the puppy, he got like 10% of the profits from the puppy. And yeah, he made zero dollars. He was losing money, no shit. But either way, he was spending tens of thousands trying to buy shares of dogs. It sounds like it could be good. Could be, wasn't. (laughs) Obviously people make money breeding dogs or else people wouldn't do it. I think he's just a moron. I wonder how much money's in that. Oh, definitely a lot of my puppies. What's the most you've seen someone spend on a dog? It's gonna be a designer dog like a French bulldog. Thousands, thousands of dollars, yeah. Few thousand. What do you see people waste money on and convince themselves it's investing? Oh, convince themselves it's investing. Trinkets, bullshit. La boo booze. La boo booze. They always are like, oh, I can resell it. It's good. But now the fads and the trends, their rise and falls are so quick. It's not beanie babies. Whereas like at the top of the field and valuing collecting them forever. You know, in the 90s, 2000s, now these fads come and go so quick. So you're buying something on the way up. It's already on the way down before it gets delivered. So people really convince themselves with the trinkets and bullshit like that that it's a good investment. And it never is. The little boo booze weren't a good investment. None of that shit. I don't know. Who knows what they're on with Pop Mart now, but they're on something. They got some new fad going on. I'm sure we'll see it on the show. It always happens. So they think that's a good investment. I mean, people cope the fuck out of vacations. They're like, oh, I can make more money 'cause I'm happy. It's like, well, yeah, but now you're in debt. It's just like people cope the fuck out of everything. Do you think that's true? What, no? Like just the concept of you have to spend money to make money, like spend money on your happiness to make more money. No, not necessarily, but again, if you can afford it, it makes sense and maybe you aren't happy and it makes you work harder, sure. But if you're just going further into 30% debt to do it, no, you're not getting a 30% return on it. You might get like a small 5% to a percent return. That might have longevity over the course of your life, but not if you're going into 30% debt for it. So now, where are the investments? Obviously, overall stock market, maybe a little crypto, some life insurances, car insurances, home insurances, pet insurances, so insurances, potential real estate. And even that, it's like barely beats the market anyway and personal residences. And then personal health, education, good education. There's bullshit education, there's bullshit health, there's bullshit and everything. So, what's the richest guest you've had on that eye? Was living paycheck to paycheck? Yeah, we had a couple that was making upwards of $400,000 a year, but no, it was all gone. Thousands of dollars a month on bullshit. A house they couldn't afford going out to eat every meal, multiple meals a day, stopping at the gas station. Two car loans on like 60, 70,000 hour cars. They just lifestyle and fight themselves. Honestly, the people that are worse off on the show or the people that make the most amount of money, 'cause they have access to more and more debt. The lower income people on the show, typically are in easier to get out of positions, 'cause they need like a job that just pays an extra 5% more and they can get out of the situation, because they weren't able to get into a bad enough situation, where the people making hundreds of thousands have gotten into so much bad debt, where the increase they need to get out of it is literally like an extra $100,000 a year. What's the most that you've seen someone in? I don't know the actual number, but it was hundreds of thousands for sure. I don't know if we ever got up to a million. We've gotten pretty damn close, but usually that becomes mortgages and really large car loans and student loans. Who's the youngest person who's ever come on your show and how bad were their finances? 18, but not that bad, because they didn't really have time to, and it was earlier, and that's why we don't really allow people that are under 21, it has to be a rare situation. It's just 'cause we don't really have time to fuck it up that bad, and if you do, it's usually just student loans at that point, maybe like a $250 credit card. So it just really wasn't that bad, 'cause they haven't had the opportunity to fuck up yet. What's this should probably be a show for that, but I would be bored out of my mind, but there should probably be a show where it's like, "Hey, you might fuck up soon, don't do it," so you don't mess it up. That'd be good for people to learn, but I ain't gonna be me. We've covered this a bit, but I kind of wanna expand on it a little more, like what crisis do you think Gen Z will face in the next decade? The AI is a hill that we don't know what the other side looks like, and it is scary. It could boost productivity in a way that's incredible for everyone's job. It could take everyone out of job, and we have no solution. It could take everyone out of job, and we have an incredible UBI. It could destroy the world. Who knows? AI's so uncertain, and it's scary for Gen Z, especially Generation Alpha. Yeah, I feel really bad for them with that, 'cause it's hard to position what degree to get right now. It's hard to position what career feel to start investing your time and energy into, to try to move up on. This is very difficult choices to make. So that is one of the hardest things. We are certainly headed for some kind of student loan catastrophe at some point, 'cause no one's changing it. No one's changing it, and that's, I don't know. Again, they can get on the repayment assistance program and do 1% of their income, but even that, their balances are never gonna go down. It skews their debt to income ratios. It just looks bad across everything, makes it harder to qualify for different types of loans. Getting cars, cars are getting more and more expensive, so that is becoming a category that's very difficult to deal with. But-- Do you think we're in like a private credit bubble? Probably, but, I mean, you don't really know when you're in a bubble, right? Like, we've been in this tech bubble for the last 10 years, it's never burst. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Maybe it's not a bubble, are we in an AI bubble? I don't know. Who knows? I, you can't, it's hard to say something's a bubble when you're in a bubble, right? Do you think there's something you see about AI and jobs, or just AI in general that most people aren't thinking about? No, I just think more people are confident than they should be on what's the outcome. I don't know, it could be good. It could create more jobs, it could create less. Kevin O'Leary says it's gonna create more. I think his counterpart Mark Cuban says it's gonna destroy all. I could be wrong on that, I think that's what he says. But-- What does your gut tell you though? No, fuck my gut. What do you want to know about my gut? My gut means nothing, it doesn't matter. I, my, who cares? Like, I'm not even gonna listen to my gut. I don't give a shit. Like, I don't know. And I should in position myself as someone that thinks I know. What are your actions reflect more so? Well, like I said, I'm a little more anxious person, so I've just tried to position myself and what's gonna last the longest before AI could take it. Trades, maybe finance due to regulations. That teachers, healthcare, like AI has a position everywhere there, just a little less trust of a normal human wanting their kindergarten teachers to be AI, right? So you feel urgency to make money more so now than you did maybe three years ago? No, not then three years ago now, 'cause I feel very comfortable now. If my income dried up, I could live a very comfortable life. So I feel okay with that. Are you investing in different places because of the AI thing? Well, for sure. I mean, I know my stock portfolio absolutely has AI in it. 100% because that's a lot of the tap performers in the United States economy right now and the stock market in general. So any index that I'm in that is a tap performing index has some kind of AI in it. So absolutely, but I don't feel like a race like, I'm gonna say I was gonna come take every job. So I mean, if I'm in a blessed position, man, I'm lucky where I got that savings or I'm okay. Do you think the average person should have that kind of anxiety that, yes, you do. - Absolutely, 'cause I'm lucky enough that I'm not average, right? But I've saved all my money that I've made here. Like you said, Gen Z, $400, they don't have $400. I would feel terribly anxious. Three years ago, I felt terribly anxious. A year ago maybe, I was still a little anxious on it. - Absolutely, and that's normal. They're not wrong for fearing that anxiety. The scariest stuff is what we don't know. And that's the one thing that I say, is we don't know where AI is going. So that is very reasonable in fearing anxiety. - Right. - But also people should, in Gen Z, you should try to make as much as they can right now anyway. 'Cause even if everything stays normal, nothing goes wrong. And it allows them to invest now. And even if you make less later, do more passions later, you're allowing your money to grow over decades in the market, compounding it like 10% on average. So it's, but obviously just saying, yeah, yeah, go make more money as Gen Z, it says, okay, but the job market and degrees and all that shit. And it makes it harder. So you can't just go do it. But do you think this uncertainty about the future is a big cause of Gen Z's financial situation? Like, do you think Gen Z are going broke because they feel like everything is hopeless in the future? Like they feel like AI is going to take all of our jobs. They feel like they're not going to be able to be financially free. I don't know about the AI one specifically. I don't remember what this term is called, but there is a percentage of young people, Gen Z and millennials who are like, I'm never going to be able to get a house to retire. So what does it matter anyway? So this is below the money and have fun now. There's a term for that I don't remember what it is, but there is a part of our culture that is pretty extreme on that end for sure. I don't know about that fear of AI, specifically leading to the blowing money behavior, but definitely on the, I'm not going to own a house or what's the point anyway. Which by the way, I know home ownership is so baked into our society. I think people should just rent anyway. It gives you freedom to move. It gives you freedom to change jobs a little better. You don't have to deal with the maintenance and it's cheaper than owning a home regardless. Don't, don't, don't, don't chase that home ownership thing. Now it's so baked into our culture. Mathematically, it just doesn't make sense. Invest your money, it's going to make more money. Stock market is going to make more money. It just really does. - Yeah, I largely agree on that. - But I understand wanting to own as well. It's baked into our culture. What do you think is the most important job that doesn't pay well? Social services? It's caught up a little more. It's caught up a little more, but for decades it was dramatically underpaid for the service that it provides. Public safety is also caught up. We definitely need people of public safety making money, nursing is caught up as well. A lot of those have caught up. Even teachers actually get paid a lot, better than a lot of people think. Bad school districts, obviously, and lower paid states, those 100% exist. That exists for all sectors in those communities. Yeah, honestly, politicians should probably make more money. I want to avoid corruption by, you know, just making sure they are able to fill the pockets. Like, I've heard that tick before. I think it's interesting. - Yeah, but it's not even a fully well thought out opinion, right? I'm sure there's a good counter argument, but don't let them trade individual stocks. They can only invest in American indexes and try to get away from lobbying which I know the Supreme Court essentially said, "Oh, no, it's totally legal." So, okay, we're not gonna get away from it. I guess, 'cause it's just constitutional. So, pay them enough money where it's like to try to lower corruption, but even if you pay them more money would they not want more money anyway? So, I don't know. But maybe that's one position we could make even higher. We want people, people want to make, a lot of ambitious people want to make good money. So, let's have good people want to run for public office as well. Maybe that's another reason why public office should make more money. Someone could be a CEO somewhere, but maybe that person would be able to deliver more of a public good by running for public office. Maybe a good person could be president that's never gonna run because they know they're not gonna make much money to be president until afterwards when they do a book deal. So, yeah, maybe that could be an argument for it. Do nine-one-one dispatchers make a lot of money? We've had two on our show that don't. They don't make, yeah, that's definitely one that could make more money for sure. But it definitely seems to be a lower-skilled job in that marketplace, right? Like, at someone we definitely depend on and we need, but they tend to hire low-qualified people that. How much do they get paid? Depends where, but I think we had someone, she was close to like 20 bucks an hour. But she was in a lower-costal living area as well. She was like, she wasn't, if she budgeted properly, she could have actually done pretty okay on her income situation. That's insane. Yeah, I mean, if you ever have to call 911 and LA, you can't even get them to pick up, usually. 'Cause it's just so fun. Well, I'm not surprised. You were working public safety in LA. Right. So it's like they're not really morally supported. This is a weird one. But do you think money problems come from spiritual problems? I mean, the tithing thing, right? Can you just fund tithing for me? It's where you have to give like a certain percentage of your income no matter why. Oh, okay. It's like if you do that even when you're in a bad financial position and you can't afford that extra 10%, yeah, that can fuck you up. How can fuck you? Absolutely. Spiritual perspective, I don't know. I mean, oftentimes religious people tend to be, religious young people tend to be more social because young people are really anti social right now. So that tends to be one of the only places a community, which usually leads to better outcomes in general. If you have a good social life, you tend to have good job, good income, good career, good family life. So there's lots of benefits to religion in our current, we've lost third places, places where people would go and hang out, especially like men's spaces they've completely vanished and guys are pathetically lonely and they need to sometimes church is a good place for them. So religion can help them in that regard. In terms of hurting them, yeah, the tithing thing can hurt them. Or if they're like, oh, I'm gonna go on a mission trip for two months and quit my job. Yeah, I mean, that's fucking retarded. Don't do that. That makes no sense. You can afford that. You need to work your job. It depends, I don't know. That's interesting though. So you think a core psychological reason is the lack of connection leads to? Well, I don't know. I'm just saying religion could be good in that regard. If your religions have any flying a plane into a building, not the best, that is a good financial choice though 'cause then you don't have to say for retirement. So it works, it works. But I guess the connection portion, would you guess that the more lonely people feel, the more money problems they have? Oh, I wouldn't be surprised. That's the OS spending, Uber Eats, all this shit. Absolutely. Yeah, certainly. Paying a lot for video games and-- Like what emotion causes people to spend in your view? Do you think it's like trying to fill like a void for happiness usually, like overspending? Yeah, it's a few different things. It is that chase of dopamine. Sometimes it is looking good. It's, you know, you wanna look good on at the stoplight. Rebeaming perceived. Some of it is showing off on social media. Some is coping for a reasonable trauma. Some is coping for a bullshit trauma where people use trauma as a cope. Where it's like, okay, yeah, someone called you a bad word once, oh no, you're fine. Where some people have like actual, like, generational, like abuse or something. And yeah, that is sometimes a cope. Some people have mental health problems where that's their cope. They feel depressed, they door-dash something. It makes them feel better. But then, you know, feel bad after 20 minutes, anyway. So, yeah, absolutely. Either trying to feel good or you feel down. It is spending money. There is a reward there in your brain. That feels good to get that food, to get that gift to do something. Even when you're giving something to someone, it's still selfish 'cause you're doing it 'cause it feels good to give something. So, absolutely. So the worse you feel, the easier it is to follow those cope cycles, it's the spending money to feel good. I guess in your situation, and I'll ask you more about it like the specifics, but would you say that when you were in debt, it was kind of like self-love helped me become financially free or like doing the actions made me love myself more? Does that kind of make sense? I do think it was happiness first or do you think it was the actions first? - I don't think I was ever unhappy. - Really? - No, I don't think so. Well, I have unhappy moments, but I think my general contentness with just in general where I am is pretty flat, but I think I adapted things pretty quickly. If I was poor as fuck, I was happy. - Yeah. - That's my reading about that, you seem like a very happy person. - Well, in general, I mean, we all have down moments and that's fine, like I'll have like a down day. I don't know, you adjust to everything pretty quickly. I think, I don't remember who said it or what, whatever, but it was something like you can adjust to any lifestyle within three months, and then that's your baseline. You know, that's your new baseline. So, no, it was all behavior. It was just wanting better for myself, but even when I got there, like, yeah, I'm sure there was a, when I got my first house, well before I started YouTube, I was like, yay, but like you adjust that's your normal life. Yeah, that's your normal life. I became a millionaire, but that's your normal life. It's like, I remember, and now people are just like, oh, you're wealthy, you're out of touch and all this stuff, but the vast majority of my life was poor. I was poor. I grew up, you know, lower middle class foreclosure notices. When I was born, my dad was a gas station attendant. My mom worked front desk at an eye place, you know, we didn't make money. I remember dreaming of like, oh my goodness, if I was a millionaire, life would change. Change for a second. I was happy that I hit the goal. But my level of happiness did not change. It really didn't. Now, it gives you more access to things. If there were health complications, I can get my life saved a bit easier. It absolutely does that. So I'm not saying rich isn't better. Don't get me wrong on that argument. But my level of. I didn't sacrifice because it made my life happier. I think I always chase that better and better and better because it's fun to chase. I'm ambitious. You think you'll be happier when you hit it. But you hit it when you're happy for a second, you celebrate and then you keep going. Do you think there's any habits that you've taken on maybe from your parents or just early in your childhood that led you to be a consistently self-loving, happy with yourself person? Yeah, entrepreneurial, I would say. Oh, self-consistently. What does the self-loving sound like? Maybe do you always prioritize spending lots of time with other people? No. I'll be honest, this question does not resonate with me. The self-loving, I do not think about it. Interesting. I've not thought about it once in my life. Yeah. This is the first time I've ever thought about it. That's fair. Yeah, usually the people who I think, like most confident themselves, treat themselves well, don't ever think about it. So it adds up to me at least. I try to take care of my mental health, but I never think of the self-love thing. It's kind of just the concept of like you can't pour from an empty cup. People are buying things to kind of fill this void of like they feel as though they're not enough, but you to me seem like someone who doesn't feel like they're worth more because you bought a la bubu, but I think that's usually the mindset of a lot of people who overspend. No, I don't think so. You don't think so? No, for me. I definitely don't think I do that. Yeah, I think for other people for sure. I don't think I'm like special in that regard either. Do you compare yourself to others? Maybe I'm starting accomplishments. Right. I remember one of my first interactions with like another podcast or something was Tony Hinchcliffe of Kill Tony, and I had just an awkward interaction with him as well because of my autistic friend. I'll be honest, but oh my goodness, this is so fucking stupid. Oh my gosh. So we had, I don't know if we still do, but we had more subscribers than him, and we went to the Kill Tony after party after one of his shows, and that was just like, I was a little anxious to go up to him. I'm a little socially awkward and whatever. And I went up to him and I was like, hey, nice to meet you all this stuff. Then my friend, my very autistic, why did I bring him friend came up and he was like, you know, Caleb has more subscribers now. I was like, you fuck, you absolute. And then like, and then he's just started kind of like, this and us and it was fair, it wasn't fair. But I remember after that, I was a little competitive. I was like, I want to beat him on the spot podcast chart. So the first time we bought beat him on the podcast chart, so I was like, got you. So I mean, I think he usually places us above us on YouTube, but I remember when we beat him. So that was fun. So that made me competitive. I think actually, no, I don't really compare myself to people too much, but usually it's like doubt of me, makes me do whatever it takes to do. Something like that gets me places that fucking that fuels me to want to accomplish something. Yeah. What does your comment section look like in general? And I like, what does the comment section look like if someone who's not in debt? Well, it's usually kind of rusty like the same kind of roast that I'm giving. Like, oh my gosh, I can't believe the situation that happened in this episode is rarely about me. What do you think people misunderstand most about you about me? I mean, I since I am very rusty, lots of jokes, lots of gunin' and gafs and hard things on the guests, I care about them more than I think you would traditionally think, but I've honestly struggling my life in general in terms of like either friends or family. I'm not the best at showing on the front end, how I feel on the back end. I'm a little, little more, I'm not like hard, but maybe I'm more reserved and cold and showing that emotion. But I really care about their success. We track their success a lot. We try to give them everything we can give them anything they request that we don't even automatically provide. We try, try our best to do it. I really, really do care about their success. Like the show wouldn't be anything without them. So I want them to do well. You know, pretend like I didn't even care about them from a human's perspective. Like I want them to do well because they're helping fund this whole thing as well. Like we wouldn't be anywhere without the guests on the show. So I care about them more than I think people would think because I'm very, you know, about it on the show. Have you ever had someone come back on the show or get in touch with you later and kind of turn their life around? No, every day. We have two follow-ups in our Hammer Elite membership a week. So in that membership, we do three premium shows every single day, six days a week in one of those that we post two episodes a week is audit update. So they come on and we get like a 20 minutes how they've been doing and most people change. It's our current tally we do an annual service over 20,000 hours of bad debt paid off in 12 months. Or sorry, I think that's, no, that's the average, yeah. Was there anyone that surprised you that they got out of that? Yeah, it was our biggest episode in what we called fat stack week, which is like just lots of paperwork. They've gone completely debt-free. Sam and Rosa are their fake names. Everyone uses fake names in the show. They've completely paid off their debt and they had some of the highest debt that we've had on the show. It was impressive. They were awesome. You studied music composition. Yes. Building arrangements, controlling tempo, knowing when to go loud, when to pull back. Do you use any of that when you're making content? I think it's easier to make a show and do content if you like entertaining people. So I like making an entertaining product. I like making music, not just for me to listen to, but because I wanted other people to think, oh, that's the coolest piece of music I heard in this concert. I like to entertain. I want people to get joy in consuming whatever I am making. If I was making, if I owned a coffee shop, I wanted to be the best coffee. I always want to just deliver what the consumer wants. So absolutely, I think how that translated from making music to making videos is absolutely just learning what people like and making sure they are my customer and I want to deliver that. Do you think of like composing a song similarly at all to like making an episode? Because I know something that you do that I see at least is like it's very good, like rhythm and like ups and downs, like highs and lows. It's a different art in terms of what goes into a piece of music. But yeah, I mean, if you learn pacing of music, you can apply similar logic to video. It's completely different pacing and how you want to structure a video. But if you at least know how to do one, you might be able to do the other a bit easier. So is that our artistic instinct into what you're creating? I guess we kind of covered it a bit, but what's the most important part of your backstory to understand why you care so much about people getting out of debt and saving money? Like, what is that and how did you turn it around? There's two things. It was growing up in that from poor and lower middle class foreclosure notices and just making sure I didn't want to go through that again in my life. And if I have a family, I don't want them to go through it that. And then when I was in my own personal really bad debt from public suit loans, federal suit loans, family debt, car loans, maxed out credit cards, and just how damaging that was for my life. I couldn't necessarily. I did actually pretty well as the self-employed composer. But having all that debt and those minimum payments were risk of them on my head that were holding me back from able to go full time on that like the way I wanted to. So it just held me back. So my debt payoff journey was a step to being able to pursue that. But then my priorities changed. It became a step to having a fully fronted emergency fund as well, a step to getting my first house, a couple years before starting YouTube. And then accumulating a quarter million dollar net worth before I ever made a YouTube video. So just that life experience of going through what the people on the show have been through for the most part is it's better than someone who grew up privileged, who grew up rich, who've never had never had to work for it, never had to do that sacrifice. I've actually been on the O's out of the table. And even with the roasting jabs and silliness that come with the show, it's still the kind of conversation and system that I needed in which I had when I was a dumbass 22 year old destroying my life. Yeah, and that my parents should have had when I was being born, you know, when they were 19 or 20 or 18 or 19. I guess if I'm someone who wants to spend 30% less money over the next six months, what exact steps should I take to do so? First, download, Dalai's shameless plug, but it's honestly true. Like, okay, Dalai's are not a budgeting app. Okay. Obviously advocate for it. We build it specifically to make it easier for the average person to use, but whatever, a budgeting app, because it's automatic connections. You need to see where everybody's going. If you don't know where your money is going on percentage categories, individual purchases, you'll never be able to make any progress. If you don't do that, there's no other parts of this conversation that can be done. So you have to start with figuring out where your money is going. The budgeting apps are the best way to do it, preferably Dalai's, but you start there and then it's actually deciding what level, first of all, what's needs, what's wants, what's investing of any kind that you're saving for a car or whatever. Then of your wants, what actual level of joy is this doing? And that's one thing that we do. You need in particular is you decide you give it a level of joy that it's actually providing to you so you know it's easier to cut the things that do not actually provide you joy but you just find yourself doing. So it's easier to cut down on your wants to be able to redistribute those to either to needs if you need to stretch your needs more or to up your investments whether that's I need to get a new car or I need to fully fund my emergency fund or obviously save more for retirement. So in order to cut 30% it's really it's not a three-step process it's a one-step process just use a budgeting app people just aren't using these tools that are the most incredible things in modern history for personal finance and I have no idea why. How much money are people spending on things that don't make them happy? Oh hundreds if not thousands of dollars it's just little things it's little things that they don't even know that they think make them happy maybe in the moment but overall don't contribute to their happiness it really doesn't long-term it gives them like a minute a minute two minutes even just like buying a gem in a game it's like a half a second of happiness and it's done a skin a skin and something like fall guys what are you skin and fall guys that's not giving it actually giving you happiness for five minutes max it's not contributing to your overall happiness so that's why you rate your happiness on a scale right. I forgot that's the one that I got to do is clash of clients or clash where you go but how when you do it how long does that happiness last for that exact purchase it's pretty fluid. I've been playing the game for years so it's kind of just like a hobby. It is. So now it just goes you know and think about it it's just but you can afford it as well so if you can afford it it's fine but if you want to cut 30% of your spending you need to figure out what are your wants that are also in the lowest providing of overall happiness because that's the easiest thing to cut out of the game before you go to the harder decisions. You're making me remember I like we know how Togey's budgeting is and he came on the show and we both had the same game and he had spent like a little less money than I had on the game and I was like shit I think I have a problem. You're fucking up. Caleb there are people watching this right now who feel like they'll never get out of debt. They're scared and they don't see a way through. If you had two minutes to give someone every piece of financial advice they'll ever need. What would you say to them? Okay can we first start off you Mr. Scared with that out there? By can we all agree on one thing? I'm retarded. I'm the dumbest motherfucker you've ever. Who am I? I'm nothing. I'm not qualified on anything and yet I did it. If I can do it any dumbass anywhere I can do it. But start with a budget not preferably dollars. Download that. Figure out where your money is going. Rank your happiness on the items and cut where you can. Make a budget. Stick to your budget. Auto your budget a couple times a month eventually one time a month. From there if we can pay off high interest debt that is one of the most critical things you can do. Anything over that especially like 7% pay it off as quick as you can because nothing else will compete against that in terms of return on investment. Then make sure you get a six month emergency fund that is absolutely critical. Twelve months if you're a business owner going into self-employment or a contractor but six months at least and then from there make sure you are living in that 50/30/20 if you live in a 50/30/20 which is not perfectly easy in places like LA or New York but if you in general are living close to that 50/30/20/20/50% on needs 30% on wants which is a great percent by the way and 20% on investing and saving you will make it to a successful happy dignified retirement. You'll live a good life and spend a lot of money having fun along the way but just sacrifice a little. Sacrifice now you will have a better life and even a dumbass like make and do it so you can do it too. That's what I'd say. Was that two minutes? I don't know. That's beautiful. I do have to ask now what's the worst piece of money advice you've ever received. Okay. I turned 18. I wanted to pay on my parents and said oh well go max out a credit card to get a piano. There you go. That was my first debt. That fucked me for years to come. Worst piece of financial advice I ever got when I turned 18. And then I have to know because I'm just curious like outside of everything like when you think about the best piece of advice you've ever received or could give. What would that be? It's interesting. Sometimes I'm bad. I'm honestly just self assessment in my qualities. One thing I'm really bad at is pulling in the past. I do not think about the past a lot. I really focus on the future in terms of just like good advice I got. Maybe someone told me to get a real job and give up the hobby. That was pretty good. But then I also pursued this as a hobby and then it worked out really well. So maybe that was bad advice. Best piece of advice ever. Maybe just getting that immersed is fun. If you get an immersed in fun it changes your life. Not many things will fuck you again. You can prepare for most any expense. How much of an emergency phone? Six months. If you can fund your life necessities for six months you can do almost anything. You really can. You can take more risks than you ever could before that'll provide much better returns on investment. It's a boring one which is why I think a lot of people don't focus on it. Six month emergency fun. It's a lot less exciting than any kind of investing or paying off that but it will save you. It'll save your life. That's something I've realized too from this podcast. The gyms I've gotten from the show, none of it ever goes viral. The thing that I'm like, "Oh, that's a real gym that you can use on business." It never goes viral because it's not sexy. It's super boring usually. So the best advice is typically boring. But well everyone, this has been your guest Caleb Hammer. This is the Jack Neil podcast where can people fund you? Caleb Hammer everywhere. Just type that in or download, download, change your life like tens of thousands of monthly users already do. Yeah. You guys can go to Jack Neil dot com backslash dollar and download the app now. Perfect. Appreciate you coming on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.