Real Life Money Questions People Actually Ask

Drew Thomas  0:30  
That seems to be the way that we can do this, just coming out of the music, and then we're just talking about something. I don't know how that works, you know.

Jeff Matevish  0:36  
Yeah, but it is the unofficial start of summer, now. We're in June.

Drew Thomas  0:42  
Yeah, past, past Memorial, Memorial Day was like early this year.

Jeff Matevish  0:46  
Was it?

Drew Thomas  0:47  
Well, I mean, kind of. It was like the, there was almost a whole week of May after Memorial Day, which was kind of weird. Yeah, but yeah, I guess that's the unofficial start.

Jeff Matevish  0:56  
And most schools are out, but it seems like every year that I'm farther and farther away from school, I kind of like lose touch on like when schools let out, because now there's no snow days, everything's virtual, whenever they're...

Drew Thomas  0:57  
Well, that's going to change for you in about four years.

Jeff Matevish  1:10  
I know I'll have a really good handle on it. Yeah, you're right, you're right.

Drew Thomas  1:14  
And then for the next like 18, you're going to be right on top of all that stuff again. Yeah, at least the next 18, we'll say it that way. I don't know, I don't know how that's going to go for you. I don't know what you guys' plans are.

Jeff Matevish  1:16  
I'm not, yeah, I'm not the guy that would kick a child out of the house. Yeah, my parents didn't do that to me. So.

Drew Thomas  1:32  
No, no, I meant, I meant, I meant, if there was a brother or sister or something that came after that, I didn't mean you were going to...

Jeff Matevish  1:33  
Fly, kick you out of the nest, yeah.

Drew Thomas  1:42  
No, no, no. I just meant if you had others behind there it would last longer.

Jeff Matevish  1:47  
Yeah, okay. I understand now. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  1:50  
So, so, yes. And then summer goes until, what always gets me is that summer actually goes until almost the end of September, but we, but by then everybody's already eating pumpkin spice everything, and all that stuff.

Jeff Matevish  2:05  
Yeah, once the kids go back to school, once Labor Day happens, really. I mean, that's pretty much the end of summer.

Drew Thomas  2:11  
I think everybody pretty much assumes it's Memorial Day to Labor Day. Yeah, and then, yeah, so I see you have a piece of paper. What do you have? What's on your slice of paper there?

Jeff Matevish  2:20  
So, I asked the internet, what are some financial questions that people were asking, and it surprisingly didn't come back with a whole bunch of like banking questions. I assumed it was going to be like, what's a CD? What's a money market? It was more of like...

Drew Thomas  2:36  
What is a money market? No, no, go ahead. Okay.

Jeff Matevish  2:40  
Well, so it was more like, and we'll just run through these too, so it was like a would you rather, or so the first one, yeah. Would you rather make more money or have more free time? Well, they're all financial related, let's put it that way.

Drew Thomas  2:56  
Okay, okay, more money or more free time?

Jeff Matevish  3:00  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  3:01  
I think that for me they kind of go together. I can't enjoy my free time if I don't have money to go do things, right? So, I guess, I guess it depends on what you want to do with your free time.

Jeff Matevish  3:10  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  3:12  
I don't remember who it is. There's a comedian out there that asked the question, you know, what would you do if you won the lottery? And someone says, well, if I won the lottery, I'd sit on the beach all day and not do anything, and he's like, well, you don't have to win the lottery to sit on the beach all day, that's true, pretty much do that for free. The problem is, at the end of the day, whenever you want to go home and take a shower, you kind of need money to be able to do that, or if you want to eat food or something.

Jeff Matevish  3:34  
Yeah, how sustainable is that?

Drew Thomas  3:35  
Yeah, you know, so it's sitting on the beach doing nothing doesn't cost anything, but yeah.

Jeff Matevish  3:40  
That's a good take on it. Mine would be like it depends on the stage of your life. Now that I'm a father, I want more time, but yeah, if I was saving up for something big, if I had a mortgage, you know, I'd want more money.

Drew Thomas  3:52  
I think for me, when, if you want to get philosophical about it, time is way more valuable because you can't just, you don't know how much you have of it.

Jeff Matevish  4:04  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  4:05  
It's one of those things where we all assume that our bank account of time is full, and that we, you know, have an unlimited amount of it, but in reality, you don't, right? And so, you can always make more money, you can make more money, but you can't make more time. Yeah, so I'm going to go with time.

Jeff Matevish  4:21  
Okay. Yeah, that's a good one then, yeah. What's one purchase under $100 that changed your life?

Drew Thomas  4:29  
Oh, that's a really good question. Under 100 bucks.

Jeff Matevish  4:32  
And if you need time to think, since I have the paper in front of me, I did pre-go through this and have some answers for myself.

Drew Thomas  4:39  
Okay, well, go ahead. So, all right, what's yours?

Jeff Matevish  4:42  
One purchase under $100 that changed my life. So, one that I guess would have changed my life, the sports coat that I wore to my interview to this, to this bank. So, okay, wearing nice clothes I assumed would help me get a job. Okay, so that sport coat, I probably bought it, working here, working here, yeah, right no, but for, I think I'm sure, I mean, I'm sure I got something, I'm a sales guy, so yeah, I'm sure I went to JCPenney or Boscov's or something and got a sport coat on sale for $99.99 or whatever they are, yeah, so, and that would have changed my life, because you know, I didn't have a, I wasn't currently working at the time, so right, changed my life. Another one that I thought of that wasn't the case for me, but like entrance fees for kids going to college, yeah, that would be a good one that would change your life. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  5:36  
I, it's funny you say that, because I was literally going to say probably the $100 that I spent to, like, put my application into college, because not that I'm a person that thinks that, I'm not the kind of person that thinks that if you don't have a degree, your, degrees are a means to an end. I mean, they're just, and especially in today's world, I would say that when 49 out of 50 people have a degree of some sort, it really just gets you put in the right bin when you, when your resume comes in, you're still fighting against 48 other people instead of 49 other people. If the, if the one out of 50 gets thrown in the garbage because they don't have a degree, right?

Jeff Matevish  6:15  
But your path in life might have looked a little bit different if you didn't go to college.

Drew Thomas  6:18  
But yeah, oh, it definitely would have. It definitely would have, so I mean, something like that is, is true. I also come from an era where $100 was, was worth more. I mean, like that's true.

Jeff Matevish  6:33  
Maybe that should have been reworded a little bit. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  6:35  
But I mean, because I mean, today, my gosh, you can spend $100 at the grocery store without even thinking about it, yeah. I mean, but...

Jeff Matevish  6:43  
We went to Walmart on Friday. We do our grocery shopping, little side story, on Fridays, that's like our date night now, you know? We go do our grocery shopping, but yeah, like we...

Drew Thomas  6:54  
The joys of the married life.

Jeff Matevish  6:56  
Spent like $150 or $200 and we got like, we got, we got the essentials, got like cat litter, cat food, nothing for us. Yeah, right. Condiments, or you know, like baby formula. Yeah, you know, like essential stuff. But we were like, what are we going to eat tonight?

Drew Thomas  7:10  
Meanwhile, you're eating Lucky Charms, you know. And it's, yeah, so that's, yeah, that you're right. I mean, sometimes it doesn't take a whole lot to change your life. I mean, it's a little bit of a spin on that, but I can say that it wasn't spending $100 but it was, it was making $100 I think. So, I, I started my professional career, my job career, like washing dishes at a local steakhouse and stuff like that, and so while I was working there, there was a electronics chain that people over 40 will remember, called Circuit City, okay, yeah, but Circuit City, which was not the Circuit City that it is now, apparently somebody bought the name and is trying to reboot it, but back then it was a huge electronics retailer, and I got a job there, and I was 18-19 years old, and I sold my first big sale, was like two weeks in, and I sold like a big screen TV and a home theater system and stuff, and I made probably a little over $100 at the time on that sale, and it was, I made more on that sale in that hour than I would have made in two days working in the dish room at the steakhouse. And so I changed my, I changed, I left the steakhouse, I came over there full-time, and gotten, I mean, I've always been an electronics geek, but I mean, then it was really hardcore, and all my money went right back into buying stuff, there. I mean, it was, you know, so, and I learned sales, and I learned how to talk with people, so that, that, that made a big difference for me. Yeah, you know, for sure.

Jeff Matevish  8:49  
Oh, yeah, very good.

Drew Thomas  8:51  
Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  8:51  
Okay. So, should friends split bills evenly if one person earns way more?

Drew Thomas  8:58  
Oh, well, okay. So, are we talking dinner or are we talking roommates? Because there's a big difference.

Jeff Matevish  9:05  
I was assuming dinner.

Drew Thomas  9:06  
Yeah, I mean, my thought is, if two friends go out to dinner, you each pay your own way. I mean, you, you pay so, I shouldn't have to pay for 30% of your dinner if I make 30% more than you do, right? But if we're talking roommates, then yeah, probably, if the, if somebody makes significantly more money, maybe they kick in a little more extra for the household budget. I don't know, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  9:30  
Yeah, I didn't think about the roommate side of it. Yeah, mine, mine was more of, well, if you made a heck of a lot more than I did, and you wanted to go to, you know, this fancy steak house, but I didn't want to, and you said, oh, no, no, you know, I'll pay, or, you know, let's go, let's go. Then I'd probably let you, you know, pay a little bit more. That's true.

Drew Thomas  9:50  
I mean, I would agree with that.

Jeff Matevish  9:51  
If it was a mutual decision to go to some fancy restaurant, then yeah, you're, you know, you would, I would expect you to pay, and I would pay the same amount, yeah. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  9:55  
Yeah, that's, that's a good point. If there was an episode of Friends Like That, was there?

Jeff Matevish  10:06  
I'm not a Friends fan, but yeah.

Drew Thomas  10:08  
We can't, seriously?

Jeff Matevish  10:09  
We can't be friends over Friends? Okay, sorry.

Drew Thomas  10:13  
No, but there was an episode of Friends like that, I remember, because it was one of those things where three of them were doing pretty well, like one was a chef, and he worked in a museum, and one was, you know, working for some big, like, fashion outlet or something like that, and the other three, like, one was like a struggling musician, one was a struggling actor, and so they would go to these, they would go out to dinner, and the three that were making decent money were always ordering big meals, and the other ones were like splitting a salad. Yeah, so yeah, I guess it depends on whose idea it was, too. If I make a lot of money and I say, hey, let's go to this thing, and you sort of come along for the ride, I mean, I, you're right, I think it matters. That matters for sure.

Drew and Jeff  10:58  
Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  11:01  
What financial habits did you learn from your parents?

Drew Thomas  11:05  
I learned both good things and bad things from my parents, I think from a financial standpoint. So, you know, I again, I think this is a product of the time you live in to some degree. You know, when, when I was younger, you know, my parents, they, they, they never really wanted to, they never, they didn't put a whole lot of restrictions on my sister and I, I mean, like, they, it was, if we needed something, or we wanted something, we were, we were pretty fortunate to be able to get it within reason, yeah, but..

Jeff Matevish  11:39  
So, you weren't an allowance family, you know, where you got certain money every week to go towards...

Drew Thomas  11:43  
They tried the allowance thing, and then it didn't really stick. It was sort of like...

Jeff Matevish  11:48  
We weren't an allowance family either.

Drew Thomas  11:49  
Yeah, it wasn't really a thing, but my sister and I also tended to not, like, I think both of us were pretty self-aware that our family was not like uber rich, so neither one of us was constantly asking for stuff, and my parents, rather than, rather than an allowance per se, my parents, I think, showed me the value of hard work. So, if we were, if we were helping around the house, and we were doing things together, and my parents were usually out there with us, doing it, so it wasn't like they often said, well, now you go weed the lawn, and I'm going to sit here on the deck and watch, like they were usually out there doing, oh yeah, you know.

Jeff Matevish  12:28  
We were, we were more of, you didn't earn money, you earned things, like, so if I wanted, I remember I wanted a, an iPod Touch when they were first, you know. Yeah, yeah. So, it was like, hey, you got to do this, this, this, and if you do all this stuff in this amount of time, you know, then, yeah, I got an iPod touch type thing, yeah.

Drew Thomas  12:29  
That sounds very familiar to sort of the vibe that I had growing up, you know. So, I think I learned the value of hard work is what it came down to. I think, I think I learned from them, from a financial standpoint, that the work you put in equals what you earn, like, so you yeah, that would be probably what I would say, is just that you're going to get what you work for, what you, what you put, what you put into it. Okay. How about you?

Jeff Matevish  13:09  
Yeah, it was more for like, like credit cards and living within your means, like I was, they would always harp, you know, don't, don't overspend, pay off your credit cards in full on time. I mean, they like scared me into like having bad credit, you know, a bad credit score before I could even have a credit score. So, that always stuck with me. And then that's carried through to this day. And yeah, I'm very responsible with credit.

Drew Thomas  13:37  
Now, now we're because that could go two ways. Were they super responsible? Okay, because there are parents out there that might teach them the same thing, because, like, well...

Jeff Matevish  13:46  
It wasn't a do as I say, not as I do, yeah, no, no, no, they, my dad, my parents were both very, very responsible with money, my dad will tell stories of, like, managing his, his family's like investments when he was, you know, as in college, and I mean, like, oh, wow, he was always very good with money, so yeah, I was very blessed to have someone who knew a lot about finance, yeah.

Drew Thomas  14:07  
Well, you, you, and you have business people in your family, you have a family business, not, not directly, not your dad, right, but you, and like my dad, and your dad's self-employed, right, right, and has been for 56 years now, 54, 54 years now, but so a lot of that came from that too. The idea of listen, you don't spend what you don't earn, you know, that sort of thing, you know, as much as possible. Now, to be fair, when you have two kids, and sometimes, sometimes you got to break out the credit card, sometimes it happens, but I, in an ideal world, you spend, you know, what you earn, yeah, you know, that sort of thing, for sure. Yep.

Jeff Matevish  14:49  
Um, we've talked about this one several times before. Are subscriptions quietly draining everyone's bank account?

Drew Thomas  14:55  
Yes, yes.

Jeff Matevish  14:57  
No hesitation on that one. No hesitation on that one.

Drew Thomas  15:01  
No, not, not for me, anyway.

Jeff Matevish  15:02  
Yeah, you know, the sad part is, is that, like, and that's another question further down, down the list, but, like, I'm constantly looking at my, my credit card bills and my bank accounts just to make sure there's no fraud or anything on it, and I'm guilty of it. I'll see that a charge has gone up for a subscription, and I'm like, I'll call them next month, you know, and by the time you know, you know, six months rolls around, all of my subscriptions are up significantly higher, you know.

Drew Thomas  15:29  
Well, and what kills you is they go up $2.

Jeff Matevish  15:31  
Yeah, and it's like it's not a big deal.

Drew Thomas  15:33  
You're like, well, okay, yeah, I'm not going to cancel this over $2 right? But then when six of them go up by $2, now all of a sudden it's an extra 12 bucks a month, or the whatever it adds up. It's just so you're right, it's, it's, it's that it's those micro charges doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.

Jeff Matevish  15:54  
How much should people spend on weddings? We're in that season right now.

Drew Thomas  16:02  
Yeah, we are in that season right now. So, I'm the, I'm probably a terrible person to ask this question of, and I'll tell you why. I am terrible at parties. I'm just, I'm just not good at them. I'm not good at planning them. I'm not a big fan of attending them. You know, when it comes to parties, it's just I didn't grow up with a party. My parents were not like people that had people over all the time. My, even my grandparents, things like that. Like, I remember going out to dinner for my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. That was probably the only time that we ever did something kind of like, we weren't really big on, like, oh, well, it's somebody's, if we went to birthday, it was like, okay, well, where do you want to go out to eat, or something like that, for a birthday, you know? And it wasn't like an entire huge family party, it was just me and my immediate family, and we'd go out and get something to eat, you know. So, so, when it comes to things, so weddings, obviously, are a big deal, and a lot of people really want to make those a big deal. I think maybe the younger you are, the more important the wedding is?

Jeff Matevish  17:07  
Yeah, I would have to agree. Yeah, I got married a little bit older, and it was, though it was still a big deal, but it was more, I'd rather it be more intimate with, like, family, as opposed to, like, inviting the whole neighborhood, and all my high school friends, and everything. Yeah, we had...

Drew Thomas  17:25  
I don't need my mom's optometrist there, you know what I mean? Yeah, you know.

Jeff Matevish  17:29  
We did have our parents, kind of like, you know, tell us who their friends that they would like to invite, you know, within reason. I think we had 100 and, 110 or 115 people at our wedding, so it was, it was a like a medium-sized wedding. Yeah, and price definitely is by location, like Johnstown, where we live, you can, it's reasonable, I think we spent like $8,000 or something like that on our entire wedding, whereas like I've had relatives that have spent nearly that much just on the photographer.

Drew Thomas  18:03  
Definitely, yeah,

Jeff Matevish  18:04  
Definitely. And I'm talking like Pittsburgh, and you know, larger areas, and it depends on the venue, and yeah, you know, but I, the trend now is the younger, like you said, like it's not as important for the younger generation, or it's more important for the younger generations. It's opposite, kind of now, actually. Really? Yeah, because now all these younger kids, these Gen Z kids, and everything, they want, they put their money towards the honeymoon more than the wedding, because they figure the weddings one, a few hours, and that's it, whereas my honeymoon, I'm going to spend a week in Cabo, you know.

Drew Thomas  18:37  
Yeah, so do you, so do you think that that's I'm not trying to be critical, I'm just asking, do you think that's because it feels like the younger generation is a little more self-important? I don't know, because I mean, there's, there's that stigma, and I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's earned or not, but there's a stigma that this younger generation is sort of like the me generation, you know, and so it's like I'm not going to spend a party, I'm not going to spend money for a party for all of my friends and relatives, I'm going to spend it on me.

Jeff Matevish  19:08  
That's a good way to put it. Yeah, I know, I didn't think of it like that. I thought of it more as like the younger generation doesn't necessarily want to share their wedding photos, but their photos of them partying on a beach in, yeah, in the Bahamas is a little more appealing to all their friends, they're going to get more likes and clicks and, you know.

Drew Thomas  19:08  
Yeah true.

Drew and Jeff  19:10  
I don't know. You could also look at it from the perspective of when it comes to spending, because a lot of times it's the parents spending the money.

Jeff Matevish  19:32  
True, right. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  19:33  
So, how important is it to you as a parent to give your child, you know, and let's be honest, it's probably your daughter, right, a big wedding versus, you know, versus not, you know, so, and it really should come from them, like what they would rather, right? But some people, you know, they live vicariously through their kids, and it's like, no, no, you're going to have a $20,000 wedding, whether you want it or not.

Jeff Matevish  19:56  
But then, but then again, too, and I think this now that I, I, you had said that it kind of makes a little sense on my situation too, like the older you are, you, you, you understand that your parents' money is finite too, and yeah, you know, Mom, Dad, I don't want you to go all out for my wedding, you know, so maybe a little more conservative, you know?

Drew Thomas  20:17  
Yeah, and I think that statistically, I think that from an objective standpoint, people are getting married older.

Jeff Matevish  20:23  
They are, yeah.

Drew Thomas  20:24  
They're not getting married at 19 or 20 or 22 anymore, as often as they were even 30 or 40 years ago. You know, I remember my family, within my family, my grandmother, she graduated high school, and then I think it was a week or two after she graduated high school, she got married to my grandfather. I mean, it was just, it was that fast. It was like she was 18.

Jeff Matevish  20:50  
And it's all, it's all financially driven now, because you get out of high school and you go to college, then you're in debt for how long after? You need to get your, you need to get your career started to pay off that debt before you even think about buying a house and getting married and having kids. I mean, there's, there's a lot of steps that are involved now before you even get married that you consider that you didn't have to consider, you know, 50 years ago.

Drew Thomas  21:13  
True. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're absolutely right. I agree with you.

Jeff Matevish  21:17  
Would you loan money to family or friends?

Drew Thomas  21:26  
Would I loan money to family or friends? Yes. Okay, okay, I would. However, and this is going to make me sound really, I don't know, like pious or something like that, and I don't mean it to sound that way, but I genuinely believe most, I mean, unless it's some ridiculous amount of money, which I rarely have available to lend anyway, right? In terms of large amounts of money, I've always been the type of person that if I loan you something, I don't necessarily expect it back.

Jeff Matevish  22:00  
Okay.

Drew Thomas  22:00  
If that makes sense. So, I mean, like, you know, going back to that conversation that we had with the about friends going to dinner, okay? Right? I mean, there were definitely times when I was making more money than some of my friends, especially when I was commissioned sales, and I would have a really great month or something like that, and we go out and somebody be like, I'm a little short, and I would give them, or I'd say I'll pick it up. I never expected them to be like, oh, I'll get you back next time. It didn't bother me. Yeah, you know, now if I loaned you $1,000 yeah, I'd probably expect to give it back. And, like, you know, my dad's famous thing was never loan, never lend money to family or clergy, and it's because it's so difficult to actually ask for it back, yeah, you know, it's like, you know, how do you go to your minister and be like, you know, hey, listen, I need that money, yeah, yeah, that I loaned you, you know, so would I do it, yeah, I think it also depends on, like, are we talking distant family, yeah, are we talking like your sister?

Jeff Matevish  23:00  
I've, I've never had to lend money to my, you know, family or friends.

Drew Thomas  23:03  
I've been fortunate, I never have either.

Jeff Matevish  23:05  
So, I mean, I've watched enough Judge Judy that if it was over a certain amount, I'd get like something signed saying, yeah, hey, you know, you owe me this much by this date, or what? Yeah, right. But, yeah, I've never been in that situation, but I would, you know, to you know, to a degree, if I had extra money.

Drew Thomas  23:25  
Yes, yeah, that's, I mean, I think for it sounds like for both of us, but for me this is more of a hypothetical. I cannot honestly remember a time in my life, and I'm old enough now to say that that's a pretty significant amount of time, that I've never had the occasion to have to do that, at least not in any significant amount. Yeah, right. So, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  23:44  
Okay. What's something expensive that's actually worth money?

Drew Thomas  23:50  
I'll let you go first. What do you got?

Jeff Matevish  23:54  
Land, they don't make any more land.

Drew and Jeff  23:56  
Real estate. Real estate. Yes, yeah, yeah, house, you know, homes. Some would argue a nice watch is actually worth the money, you know. Those are my three. Your turn. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  24:12  
No, I agree with land, and I would say expensive, what was the question again, exactly? It was..

Jeff Matevish  24:20  
What's something expensive that's actually worth, actually worth the money?

Drew Thomas  24:23  
So, I would say things that are likely to appreciate in value rather than depreciate in value.

Jeff Matevish  24:29  
Sure, right.

Drew Thomas  24:30  
So, now if you're the type of person that just absolutely loves cars, and there are people out there, lots of them, myself included, that really love cars, and if you're that type of person, and it's, but a car is worth something to you, yeah, I would argue it's not necessarily worth it. Right. Objectively speaking, when you drive a new car off the lot, you lose like 30% of the value, like in the first, like, week, like it's just not worth it. Yeah, so homes, real estate, things like that, for sure.

Jeff Matevish  25:02  
But if it makes your quality of life better and makes you happier, yeah, then it's worth something, like you said something to you.

Drew Thomas  25:08  
Right. And I think that's, you know, I think that's true of a lot of us. I think there are people that, you know, like I, there are things that I would invest money in that other people would think I was crazy, you know? If you said to me, like, oh, you know what, Drew, you could, you could pick up a, I don't know, a piece of China that was brought up from the Titanic. I'd be like, cool, yeah, right, yeah, but there's a lot of people out there that would think that was crazy to spend that kind of money on that, so it depends on what it's worth to you.

Jeff Matevish  25:37  
Yeah, that's a good way to put, yeah. How much emergency saving is enough?

Drew Thomas  25:44  
I don't know. What do they say? They say you should have three to three to six months of being able to pay your bills, right? I don't know. And we know, and we know from our research in the, in other episodes that most people don't even have that, right?

Jeff Matevish  25:58  
Right. But what's that included, that so that's your utilities, insurance, food, mortgage, if you have a mortgage, or any loans, rent. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  26:10  
But I, you know, I think it depends. It well, it goes back to your credit card thing, like there are a lot of people out there who have a lot of credit card debt. If you didn't have the credit card debt, there's a lot of people that could live on a lot less.

Jeff Matevish  26:21  
Sure, yeah.

Drew Thomas  26:23  
You know, the in terms of their income and so forth, and could be saving more, you know, it's but so how much should you have? I mean, I would, I would say the extra, I'll go with the experts and say three to six months of living expenses.

Jeff Matevish  26:35  
I wouldn't go less than six, yeah, yeah, you never know in today's age, you know, finding a if you lose a job, and you know, finding a job is not as necessarily easy as it was 20 years ago. You know.

Drew Thomas  26:45  
That's, I mean, that's very true. And, and it also, it also speaks to people who I believe get trapped in jobs that they are miserable in, but they have no choice but to continue on, because they're stuck in terms of their money. Like if you have, if you're fortunate enough to have six months, nine months of living expenses saved up, and something happens where your job changes, the company changes, your boss changes, for whatever reason, all of a sudden, like you're just miserable every day when you wake up in the morning, you know, it'd be nice to have that ability to just say, okay, you know what, this isn't for me anymore, and to be able to look for another job while not feeling like you're under the pressure of, oh my gosh, I don't know how I'm going to pay my rent next month.

Jeff Matevish  27:33  
Yeah, right.

Drew Thomas  27:36  
Right, so.

Jeff Matevish  27:40  
Should teenagers be required to take personal finance classes?

Drew Thomas  27:43  
I think so.

Jeff Matevish  27:44  
Yes, yeah, we didn't learn too much about finance in, in like high school. I mean, the most we learned was like how to write a check, you know.

Drew Thomas  27:50  
Which is less and less relevant every day now. Yeah, yeah, bu.

Jeff Matevish  27:53  
That was, you know, and like I said, luckily I have parents that were, you know, had had good financial knowledge, you know.

Drew Thomas  28:01  
Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  28:02  
So, it was not as bad for me, but I think that teenagers should be required to take some sort of, whether it's an online class or it's, you know, through a school, your school, you know, definitely.

Drew Thomas  28:13  
I think most teenagers would probably argue that they wish they had more financial education. We read about that all the time, too, like they may not necessarily come out and say, like, oh, I wish I would have taken the particular course.

Jeff Matevish  28:24  
But by the time they're in their 20s and 30s, they wish that they would had taken that course.

Drew Thomas  28:28  
Well, yeah, at the very least, they, I think a lot of them wish that they understood more about, you know, there are lots of people that don't understand what is on their paycheck stub, you know, they don't understand what taxes they're paying, they don't understand, you know, how their medical insurance works. I mean, and it's not necessarily their fault, they just weren't taught, you know. I know that personally, you know, I went through school and I got trigonometry and I got calculus, and I got, you know, but I think I might have gotten one six week course on basic budgeting, you know, and I can guarantee you I use the basic budgeting way more than I ever use calculus or trigonometry. Yeah, so I think that...

Jeff Matevish  28:53  
You don't use differential equations every day?

Drew Thomas  29:14  
I do not. Okay, just every other day, every other day. Okay. No, I just, I think that it, what it comes down to, is, you know, I think we've lost sight, some in some ways, of what public school or high school, or whatever, is supposed to be. Like to me, I always felt that that kind of schooling was supposed to prepare you for the basics in life, and we've sort of turned it into college prep, yeah, you know, where every school feels like they have to give you all of these different, you know, AP courses and calculus and trigonometry and advanced placement English, and all this stuff, and you know, but it's also because we, and it's no wonder that we constantly tell our kids, you know, you got to go to college, you got to go to college, you know, instead of, you know, why aren't they, why don't we talk more about trade schools? Why don't we, I mean, there are people out there that would, that are waiting months for a plumber, because...

Jeff Matevish  30:05  
Because there's nothing around. Yeah, right.

Drew Thomas  30:06  
We've, we've spent an entire generation or two telling everybody, don't be a plumber, go to college, when...

Jeff Matevish  30:12  
That's very true, you know. Yeah, so.

Drew Thomas  30:15  
Yeah, I think you know they could definitely use that.

Jeff Matevish  30:17  
Very true.

Drew Thomas  30:18  
Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  30:20  
Let's skip ahead. If you had suddenly received $10,000 what would you do with it?

Drew Thomas  30:25  
I'd probably pay down debt. I mean, I'd put it toward my house or something like that. I mean, I don't know. I'd buy a shed. I really want a shed, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  30:43  
So, you'd pay down debt if you had no debt, you'd build up your emergency fund. Sure, yeah, if you'd already had an emergency fund, put it into something that's going to make you a little bit more money, possibly, or investment. Yeah, yeah, unless you needed some liquid money, and then you...

Drew Thomas  31:01  
You keep saying, you, what would you do?

Drew and Jeff  31:02  
I'm saying you, as a hypothetical, this is what you would do. You know, I feel like I'm pointing, you're terrible with money. You would, as in you, the viewer, what you should do. You know what, I'm not going to say, should do. Yeah, we're not experts, but no, but that's what I would do. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  31:20  
I mean, I agree, and again, I really hate to keep belaboring this point, because to people like, $10,000 to me is a lot of money.

Jeff Matevish  31:30  
It is, absolutely, to me too.

Drew Thomas  31:32  
But it's also not as much as it used to be. I mean, you know, I bought my first car for 700 bucks, I bought my first nice car for, for like 3,000 bucks, you know. So, and now you know, the last time that my wife and I went out and we bought a used car, it was $17,000 for a used car.

Jeff Matevish  31:53  
I'm still looking for one.

Drew Thomas  31:54  
Yeah, you know, so you know, $10,000 is, is it is a lot of money, but it's not like life-changing money, you know what I mean. I can't, I can't quit my job if somebody hands me $10,000.

Jeff Matevish  32:05  
No, it can make things easier for you. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  32:07  
Yeah, you know. All right.

Jeff Matevish  32:11  
I mean, we can keep going, or I don't know how long we've been going.

Drew Thomas  32:15  
I don't know. Are people bored? Tell us in the comments. Are you bored now, or should we keep going?

Jeff Matevish  32:22  
Yeah, and answer any of these questions in the comments too. Give us your opinion on these.

Drew Thomas  32:25  
Yeah, we can save a few. Yeah, let's, I mean, because I mean, let's, let's save a few. Let's, you know, because this is, this is fun. I like this, and I think it's, it is sort of opinion driven. Yeah, but it is financially relevant. So, yeah, let's, let's, let's hold a few back, and maybe we'll do another one of these, and, and maybe some people, if they, if you're watching on YouTube, or you're listening on any number of podcast platforms, leave us a comment, drop us a text, let us know what you want us to cover, because we kind of do this a little bit in the dark to some degree, and to your point...

Jeff Matevish  33:02  
We don't get a lot of feedback, yeah.

Drew Thomas  33:03  
Yeah, and you're, you know, you're pulling this stuff from Google, and we're making the assumption that these are things that people want to hear about, but if you're listening to this on a regular basis, and we know there have to be at least a few that are listening to this or watching this on a regular basis, because we get enough views, yeah, to know that there are some people, some feedback would be really fantastic to let us know more about what you want to hear about, and what we can cover for you. Yeah, you know, so. I just realized we're both wearing green.

Jeff Matevish  33:29  
We are both wearing green.

Drew Thomas  33:32  
Yes, the color of money.

Jeff Matevish  33:34  
It's not even the color of our bank.

Drew Thomas  33:36  
No, it's not, but it is the color of money. Why not?

Jeff Matevish  33:42  
Hey, happy summer.

Drew Thomas  33:43  
Happy summer. Thanks.

Jeff Matevish  33:47  
This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts, with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics, as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast, and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats, is not intended and should not be understood or interpreted to be financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. Thank you for listening. Please check out our full library of episodes, which can be found on the ameriserv.com website. You can also download or stream the podcast from your favorite podcast app.