Becca:
[0:03] Welcome to Vaginance. We’re very happy to be here.
So I thought I’d be really cool to talk about what happened on the porch with the Schwab account because it involved everyone.
And I think that it – well, I was telling Taylor this today about how, like that experience of having people come around you to, like, answer a fucking frustrating question and help you with something super frustrating is what I would love what this podcast could serve as for people, right as like, a place where you can, like, ask questions that you might feel intimidated to ask or things that are so frustrating you won’t even deal with it, which is like what I’ve done a lot of times.
So I think maybe talking about that. And then we could talk about the different investment platforms that we use. Like y’all use Charles Schwab. We could talk about that.
We could talk about my Betterment account, which I just opened and put some money in, which is a big deal.
So a couple, a few investment milestones were hit this week, but maybe we can start with Taylor’s.
Maybe so. So there was a really cool situation where we – well, ‘cool’, sorry. That’s dismissive.
There was a very interesting situation where we all came together to be present with Taylor as she dealt with an issue. Some of us helped, some of us drank protein smoothies, watching, with a crazy straw.
Um, but tell us. So what was the situation that you ran into?

Taylor
[1:24] Okay, so I’ve had this Schwab account for years, like years and years and years, and I just don’t know how anything works.
So I just opened it up because my parents were like, ‘you should have a Schwab account and open up a, you know, a Roth IRA.’
And I was like, ‘Great!’ So I did that. And I have an investment account in there and I have a normal checking account, and I didn’t know really how those two ever interacted. Like I didn’t really know what the difference was.
And like, I didn’t really know anything about investing.
And so I just kind of put money in the investment account over the years and didn’t know how to actually invest it like it was just living in there.
And so a couple years ago, I went to my dad and I was like, ‘Hey, Dad, you seem to be interested in investing. Um, I have, like, $5000 I saved up. Could you invest this for me in Schwab? And, um, let me know. Like what you think I should do’. And so he had been following like a bunch of the financial financial people who had said to invest it in, like, index funds.
And there was like these three specific categories. It was like international, you know, index funds. And, like, American and , whatever.
So I did that and he he, like, did it for me. basically. He was like, ‘Okay, click this this and this.’
So I was like, ‘OK, great. I set it and forget it.’ I didn’t look at it again for literally years because I didn’t know how.
Like, Schwab is not super, um, interface like friendly for people that don’t really know anything about financing.
You look so interested right now.

Maggie:
[2:58] Sorry I was thinking about two different things. Sorry, Taylor. I also haven’t slept in quite a while.

Taylor
[2:59] I just look over and you’re like. Should we go?

Jewels:
[3:08] Schwab definitely needs – No, no, no, you don’t have to go fast.

Taylor
[3:09] Schwab, I’m trying to like, I’m trying to make it fast, but. They do.Yeah.

Jewels:
[3:15] Schwab definitely needs a quality UX designer like our dear friend Taylor to come reorganize their interface.

Taylor
[3:21] I have applied for jobs at Schwab for, like, design jobs.

Jewels:
[3:26] They got to do better.

Taylor
[3:27] They gotta, they gotta hire me because.

Maggie:
[3:29] Hire some sexy women on their crew.

Taylor
[3:32] Exactly they need sexy UX women.

Becca:
[3:35] And it’s worth noting real quick that Julie, Maggie and Taylor all have accounts through Charles Schwab.

Maggie:
[3:39] Right. But I believe Julie and I only do our checking accounts through Schwab and not investing.

Jewels:
[3:42] Technically, we do have investment, like the brokerage account or whatever you have to have in order to set up the checking account. But we have the checking account because of the travel benefits it provides for being able to pull cash without fees in other countries.

Taylor
[4:00] Which is amazing. Yeah, um, but so, yeah, I have an actual investment account, so invested like five grand, right?

Becca:
[4:00] Yeah, that’s great.

Taylor
[4:08] And then this year, I actually sat down and looked at it. Um, because over the years, I’ve, like, pulled money from the account and, like, put money in and just, you know, like a normal – I’ve treated it like a normal bank account.
So I was looking at my account this year, and none of it made any sense. And I was like, What are all these fucking numbers?
I don’t know what these negative. There’s, like a negative 7000 and a plus 2000. I don’t know what’s going on. So I asked Maggie to come over, and I was like, ‘Maggie, help me.’
So Maggie came over. Julie was already there.

Jewels:
[4:40] I said ‘Call Maggie’ because I tried to look at the interface as well, and I’m literally a software engineer who spends most of my time online, and I could I couldn’t make sense of it.

Taylor
[4:43]
And it’s so confusing. It’s so fucking confusing.

Maggie:
[4:51] Yeah, I’ll agree. It was very confusing. I was also confused by it.

Taylor
[4:54] It took five. It took, like, five of us looking at this at my bank account, and we still couldn’t figure out what actually was going on.

Maggie:
[4:56] And can I just say, like, you know, pretty educated group of people.

Taylor
[5:06] We’re not that dumb. And like, we still couldn’t figure it out.
And like Zach was looking at it, um, Julie’s husband was looking at it and after, like, an hour, I feel like a least an hour of staring. Like he went through everything, like my, you know, my statements and everything.
And he was like, ‘Oh, it looks like at some point you took out a loan’ and I was like, ‘What are you talking about? I took out a loan?’
I had no idea what was going on.
So initially he thought it was a loan to, um, like in my investment account. So like taking out a loan to buy stocks, but I – So there’s a development on that.
So I called Schwab like, the next day, and I was like, ‘Hey, apparently I took out a loan that I didn’t realize I took out, and I don’t know what’s going on here.’ Because I wanted,
the whole point of me looking at Schwab was I wanted to sell my stocks off in order to take that cash that I had in investments and actually pay off my credit card debt because I’m paying more in interest on my credit card debt that I’m making off of those stocks.

Becca:
[6:10] It’s a good hot tip, everybody.

Taylor
[6:11] Good hot tip. They talk about it in Your Money or Your Life. I called Schwab, and I had this very lovely, uh, condescending man talk to me for 20 minutes on the phone.

Taylor
[6:23] But he explained to me that what happened was I pulled out seven grand from my account back in December of 2019 to pay off a credit card, like my Chase credit card.
And when I did that, it automatically creates a loan because I’m not actually, even though it’s, I’m pulling money from my investment account.
There’s no money in there. All my money is tied up in stocks, and I have to sell those stocks before I can pull out that money.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and did not.

Jewels:
[6:52] It let you keep the stocks and take the money out by offering you a very hassle free loan.

Taylor
[7:00] But this this was things I had no idea I had done it.
There was an, and he even said, he even admitted. Yes, he even admitted he was like “Unless you were looking closely at your bank statements where it has, like in the bottom, there’s like a little box that says, like, you know, interest on your loan.

Jewels:
[7:05] It’s not that easy to get a loan any other way, okay?

Taylor
[7:18] It is not clear that you are doing that, and it’s automatic, so when you pull out money, it lets you pull out whatever amount you want, but it doesn’t tell you that when you’re pulling that out, you are creating a loan.

Maggie:
[7:29] That’s fucking wild. I’m very sorry you went through that. But also very glad that you’re telling us about this because I would have potentially fallen into this myself.

Taylor
[7:31]
Yes, yes. And apparently it happens a lot, because he, I mean, maybe he was just making me feel better.

Maggie:
[7:41] No, I think it happens a lot.

Taylor
[7:44] He was like, ‘I have to explain this on the phone all the time to people.’
He’s like, ‘People think that we’re ripping them off by like charging them $7000 for something when really, they pulled out that money and started a loan.’

Maggie:
[7:47] You’re still ripping them off.

Jewels:
[7:57] Well, how unfortunate. I mean, you could talk about how your numbers actually came out.
But imagine if you had made an investment. That investment went up. You picked that time thinking you’re selling out of that investment and taking the gains because you’ve been like watching it.

Jewels:
[8:13] And instead you are actually still locked into that investment. But if you thought you were pulling out at the top and then it goes down, you are now down. You’ve taken the money out, and you still owe the money on that loan.

Taylor
[8:16]
Yeah. Yeah, it’s very confusing.
Yeah. So be careful when you’re pulling money out of your investment accounts, make sure that you are selling your stocks first.
Before you pull out that money, it’s not automatic. What is automatic is the loan that they make for you. So recent.

Maggie:
[8:40] I’m curious to know of other –

Jewels:
[8:42] Yeah, how other brokerage accounts work like that?

Taylor
[8:45] I am, too, because I have found that Schwab. Um, even though I love them for, like, having a you know, like a basic account in there to like pull money when you travel, it’s amazing, like you don’t have any ATM fees.

Maggie:
[8:53] I do feel like they’re sort of jumping on the “let’s make it too confusing so that you think you need someone to help you.”

Taylor
[8:57] That’s great. But when it comes to investing, it’s been so confusing. And there’s no easy interface.

Taylor

[9:09] Yes, yes, yeah, And when my mom, and this is the other thing, my mom actually pays for an investment, um, advisor, because she doesn’t even wanna look at it.
She’s just, like, just take my money and invest it and they, she linked our accounts so that we, I would have, like, access to her account, I guess.
Like in case something happened and what that did was it linked her like professional paid account to where I now am signed up for those same services.
And they were charging me $25 a month for investment services that they weren’t actually giving me. Like no one was giving me investment advice.

Jewels:
[9:45] Uh

Taylor
[9:47] Um, I don’t think they’re giving me that money back, but they are giving me the money back on the interest I paid on that $7000 loan.
So they’re giving me the $500. It’s like 500 something dollars, but they’re they’re putting it back in my investment account, so I can either transfer that or like, invest it if I want.

Maggie:
[10:05] See, Then I go back to being like, ‘Well, that’s pretty fucking dope of Charles Schwab.’

Becca:
[10:08] Yeah, that’s great.

Taylor
[10:09] It is great. It’s really nice. And like I think because my mom is like, she pays them a lot of money every year to invest her money.
Um, they’re more willing to like, do something like that for me.
It’s Yeah. I’m so glad, though, that I had you all come over and look at it and I actually sat down and looked at what was happening because I was letting that invest, that loan like accumulate interest for years and had no idea, because there was – There was literally like, if you looked at this thing, it looks like the Matrix. There were so many fucking numbers.

Maggie:
[10:38] There was like for only having three accounts. I think there was a least 16 different account values.

Jewels:
[10:45] Yes, and the labels above the columns were absolutely non descriptive of what was actually going on. Once we figured out what was going on, you could be like, ‘Okay, that’s not what this says. I see what they’re doing here now with the pluses and minuses. But the column name doesn’t say that.’

Taylor
[11:00] Yeah. So, so now that I sold all my stocks, which really Zach did, he helped me figure out how to actually properly sell my stocks.
It ended up being like, ah, 14 grand in in stocks that I had.
But then I had to pay back 7000 for that loan that I took out so ended up being 7000 that I had. So I transferred six of that to my Chase to pay off my credit card.
Which brings me to an update.
I paid off my highest interest credit card today.

Maggie:
[11:34] What? What? You need a badge for that!

Becca:
[11:35] Byuuu byu byu byu byuuuu!

Taylor
[11:38] And then I paid off my second high interest credit card today.

Maggie:
[11:42] Oh, my God. Taylor, this is like I feel joy. I haven’t felt joy all day.

Jewels:
[11:42] Oh!

Becca:
[11:48] That’s amazing.

Maggie:
[11:48] I’ve literally had a terrible day. This is the first time I felt actually happy.

Taylor
[11:53] Okay. I’m so glad that my less debt makes you happy.

Maggie:
[11:54] No, I do. I don’t know how to express it verbally, but I’m, trust me and that I’m feeling happiness inside me.

Taylor
[12:01] I did almost cry when I paid it off. I was like, Oh, my God.

Becca:
[12:01] She can only express it physically.

Maggie:
[12:04] Yeah.

Becca:
[12:09] That’s incredible. Oh, Taylor.

Taylor
[12:11] Um, yeah. So I have almost no debt left.

Jewels:
[12:14] That is amazing. Can we just have a quick flashback to your level of despair and not wanting to even look at the situation one month, one month ago?

Maggie:
[12:17] This is a quick turnaround.

Maggie:
[12:23] Shit, my friend.

Jewels:
[12:26] Taylor, if I recall, was “I don’t even wanna look at it. I have so much debt, I’m never gonna crawl out of it. It’s going to be at least two years before I pay off my credit card debt.”

Maggie:
[12:32] It’s fucking impressive, man.
Jewels:
[12:35] And approximately 30 days later, here she is everyone. You could have blown that money.

Taylor
[12:42] Thank you. I mean, my mom helped quite a bit, but, um.

Maggie:
[12:46] Yeah, your responsibility. You chose what to do with that, and you chose to make, like, ask for help and do some research and figure out what you were doing and all that.

Taylor
[12:50] Yes, yes.

[12:56] Yeah, she did. Yeah. She ultimately, she paid for about half of that debt because I used 10 grand from that to pay off the debt.
But then the rest was all me. Like I, I sold my stocks, which into being, like, you know, I didn’t realize I had seven grand in stocks, which was helpful.
Um, And then I also got some design money that finally came through. That was, like, $4500.
So I was like, Fuck it, I have 14 grand in my bank account. I’m just gonna go ahead and pay off two of these credit cards, so I still have, like, $1500 on one. And then I had, um, transferred back when it was, like, up at, like, $22. 23,000.
I had transferred 4000 of that onto a zero interest, APR card, which was suggested by Julie’s husband, um, so I wouldn’t have to, like, pay interest every month.
So I have that card left, but there’s, like, $3400 left on that. But I called them today because there’s – it’s Citibank.
When you go online, there’s nowhere online that I can find where it’s obvious when your interest starts, like the date that your interest actually starts. I couldn’t find when I actually opened up the account.
And when my interest started. Nowhere.

Maggie:
[14:11] Obviously, I’m not going to say obviously, but I feel like they do that intentionally.

Taylor
[14:13] Nowhere. Absolutely. So I called, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna figure out when I actually like owe interest.’ Because I was worried that it was like coming up on that date.
I don’t have to start paying interest till November of next year, so I have a year to pay off the 3400.
And if I pay like 300 and something a month, it’ll pay that off right at that date.
But I figured there’s no rush on that one, cause I’m paying literally zero interest as long as I pay my minimum every month. Like I don’t pay any interest on that. So there’s – I’d rather, like, keep that exactly Yeah.

Jewels:
[14:41] Phase that out and then and then take the cash you’re no longer having to put towards your high interest credit cards and start building up that investment money and then start to make those decisions.

Taylor
[14:49] Yeah.

Maggie:
[14:50] Taylor have another fucking glass of wine, man, this is. That’s amazing.

Taylor
[14:54] Thank you. It feels really good. I’m like, just at that cusp of like.

Becca:
[14:55] That’s incredible.

Maggie:
[14:57] I am so fucking impressed because literally, like, just the turnaround in 30 days like that’s such a, I wish we would have taken before and after photos.

Taylor
[15:04] Yeah.

Taylor
[15:07] Well, I was inspired by all of you lovely ladies to get my shit together.

Maggie:
[15:13] That’s fucking awesome. And now you’re going to start saving to like, you know, buy another real estate investment or yeah.

Becca:
[15:20] Go to Japan next year.

Taylor
[15:21] Yeah, go to Japan, get another little house, maybe invest in some index funds.

Jewels:
[15:21] Yeah, go to Japan.

Maggie:
[15:23] Get it, get it, get it.

Becca:
[15:25] Fucking cool, dude.
Well, and it’s like a massive testimony to your commitment, but also like to what can happen when you just start paying attention, right?
It’s not like, Yeah, it’s It’s not like Taylor made –
I mean, you have made budgeting changes, but not like crazy, life altering budgeting changes like she hasn’t eaten like rice and water for the last month.
Like she’s literally just paid attention to her expenses, paid attention to the money she has coming in and was like, ‘Oh, well, I can divert this all to my debt right now, when it was pointed out by that, like that interest rate is going to be so much higher that you’re paying than anything you could gain by investments.’

Taylor
[16:09] Right? Yeah, it’s just paying attention, to like what you’re actually spending. Money going in and going out. Like what you’re actually spending money on.
Um, and like just making lifestyle changes has helped my mindset too, a lot.
It is crazy when you start to really, like, change your relationship with money, how much your lifestyle changes, and it doesn’t feel hard.
Before it felt like I was depriving myself of something when I didn’t buy some shit.
But now I feel like it’s much easier to be like, I’m just gonna find a more creative solution for this, like so today I was running around crazy, like cleaning up the house and throwing shit out, and I was cleaning.
My goal was to clean up my desk because my desk was a fucking mess. I have rocks all over my desk because I collect rocks. Sorry I’m taken.

Jewels:
[16:54] She likes bugs and rocks. y’all.

Becca:
[16:58] She actually just loves Mother Nature.

Jewels:
[16:59] She is an Earth goddess.

Taylor
[17:04] Yeah, So I have a bunch of fucking rocks, like, all over my desk, and I cleaned up my desk today.
I put the rocks in another spot and I realized, like initially so I was on Amazon and I was going to buy a wall mount for my monitor that I just bought.
It’s because I didn’t have enough space right on my desk. So I was like, ‘Let me just clean out my desk real quick and see what I could do with that.’
So I clean up my desk and I literally just moved my monitor back five inches. And I was like, that solved the problem instead of spending $40 on another like TV Mount.

Jewels:
[17:42] And an afternoon installing it. And I love that so much.

Taylor
[17:43] It’s exactly, I just cleaned my desk and moved my monitor back four inches and it’s great. Hot tip!

Jewels:
[17:54] Shall we get into the question?

Taylor
[17:56] Okay, I have two more things. I’m so sorry. So sorry.
A lot happened to me this week. Okay?
My other update is that I actually requested, um, Schwab move my 401 k from principle into a Schwab account.
So I was like, on chat with them. And I was like, How do I do this? I don’t know how to do anything.
And they, like, step by step, Showed me how to request my 401 k be moved.
You have to, like, go through, like a request form type situation.

Maggie:
[18:32] So your 401 k was not currently with Schwab.

Taylor
[18:34] Yeah, my 401 K is currently with Principal Bank and I had to, like, go through Schwab. Schwab’s like request.
Um, yes. So I requested that the 401 k, which is not that much money. It was like, I think, 2600 bucks, which is still not nothing.
Um, so Schwab had me open. I had to open up a Roth rollover account.
I couldn’t deposit it directly into my Roth IRA. So I have a rollover account now that’s going to be hopefully approved.
Like that was approved. But hopefully the like transfers approved. It takes a little bit, a little time.

Jewels:
[19:06] So they’re going to transfer that money and do your Roth conversion?

Taylor
[19:10] They told me that I could move it from my rollover into my Roth IRA if I wanted to. So that’s what I was going to do. Unless you all think it’s a bad idea

Jewels:
[19:14] Beautiful.

Jewels:
[19:18] No, I think that’s a great idea. So because Taylor did her up-skilling this year and then, um, transitioned into working a number of jobs, her income was lower than in a typical year. So she’s, I believe, trying to take advantage of that by converting her traditional 401 K money over through Roth conversion. So she’ll pay taxes on it this year while she’s in a lower tax bracket.

Maggie:
[19:39] Could I just say you’re absolutely killing it right now Taylor?

Taylor
[19:44] Thank you. It doesn’t feel like it. I had, like, deep, like, a moment of deep despair earlier where I was like, ‘I’m nothing and I’ll never be worth anything.’

Maggie:
[19:45] No. These are, these are, all huge things. I’m super impressed.

Taylor
[19:57] I thank you. I appreciate that. I think it’s like I feel like I’m doing a lot, but then I think about how much more I have to go. And I get in that, like, state of like,’Oh, my God, why am I even doing anything? I’m never going to get to the point where, like, any of this matter, because I’ll never have enough money to, like, do what I want to do.’

Maggie:
[20:06] It will eventually. It’s like an exponential curve. Like it’ll start, it starts off so slow.

Taylor
[20:15] Yeah, I hope so.

Maggie:
[20:19] I still feel like I’m kind of on the slow end of things as well. But I’m really, like, excited about the one day in the future where that, like, exponential Curve does that like, yeah, just like sweep. Like once that snowball’s big enough. It just starts rolling on its own kind of thing.

Taylor

[20:33] Agreed. And I checked my Acorn app today, which I’m still not 100% sure how it even works.

Taylor
[20:38] But, um, it seems neat and I, they’ve invested $50 so far automatically out of my account into something without me even noticing, they just automatically take money for me and do something with it.

Jewels:
[20:47] Without you even noticing. That’s been like in the last what? Week and a half?

Maggie:
[20:53] And I think I talked about this on a previous podcast that one of my biggest financial regrets is not rolling over my 401 k into a Roth ira when I had low income.

Taylor
[20:53] Yeah, it’s been like two weeks.

Maggie:
[21:07] Or no income because I wasn’t working.
But you just tackled one of my greatest financial regrets, and thank you for us all hanging out. And podcasting, which was the point of this right? Is to be like, ‘here’s things that I fucked up on. You don’t also do that.’

Jewels:
[21:24] Because I think so many of us don’t realize that – We think the years I’m making money are the years I have to focus on what to do with that money.
But there are so many of us who may have made money in a certain year, put it somewhere and don’t realize that we can move it and optimize our structure of our existing money during a year when we’re not making a lot of money.
There are like strategies for all of these different life stages and career stages.

Maggie:
[21:50] I realized that this either will be a very relatable statement I’m about to make or no one at all well relate to this.
But one time Julie – This is something you said!
You said, “I feel like I’m playing Quantum with my money” and Quantum.
Quantum is a board game, and it’s a strategy game where there’s a lot of moving pieces happening at once and like, you need to kind of be paying attention to several different factors in the game at the same time.
And I was like, Oh my God, your finances are like a strategy board game because you’re like you have to keep moving pieces in the right place at the right time but also having a big picture plan of what you’re doing.

Jewels:
[22:25] And in combination with each other.

Maggie:
[22:30] And it’s kind of fun to think about your finances in that way, Then it’s more of a game. It’s more enjoyable.

Taylor
[22:35] Unless you’re, um, Maggie’s girlfriend, and then it’s not fun, Yeah.

Maggie:
[22:38] Uh huh, yeah, and then it’s VERY COMPETITIVE.

Jewels:
[22:38]
Yes, money is a strategy. And I feel like like Quantum is a great game that thank you, Maggie, for introducing me to because I had no idea about that one.
But part of the reason I love learning about finances and the financial system and financial independence and the different paths to it are the same reason that I really love being a software engineer because it is like it’s not linear decision making where you make one decision and then another.
It’s sort of these combinations you make together, like if I do this and this at the same time, then the outcome is totally different, then doing one after the other.

Becca:
[23:18] Yeah, um, quickly have to brag on Taylor again because he’s fucking killing it this week.
Um, so Well, actually, let’s circle back a little bit. So when we started our meetings, we started this process where any time we would achieve a certain financial goal, we would earn a badge.
Um, and right now they’re virtual badges. One day, fingers crossed.
It’ll be physical badges. Sweet listener, if you join our Patreon, you, too, can earn some virtual, potentially, physical badges.
Um, they’re incredibly designed.

Maggie:
[23:50] Very well designed. Can I just say like, it’s not like they’re, just like we typed, “You win!” in a word document. Like Julie spent some time.

Becca:
[23:55] I mean.

Maggie:
[24:01] I mean, some of them, actually, I really liked yours because it looks so punk rock. I was like, ‘This looks like a fucking poster for a punk rock concert.’ It was like a sink with the words. What did it say?

Becca:

[24:11] Well, so one thing that Taylor did, this was, she earned a badge before I knew that she paid off a bunch of credit card debt.
Um, she earned a badge that she was awarded today because so So, uh, me and Taylor lived together.
If we haven’t established that, and our countertops were replaced, which is super super cool, a couple days ago, but when they replaced it, the measure, they had bumped it a little bit off to the side so that the plumbing underneath the sink no longer hooked up.
So we didn’t have a functional sink and so we spent.
I mean, we went maybe 24 hours without a sink. It wasn’t long.
Um, but we like tried to, you know? What’s the word? Like putting it together? Jerry rig. Yeah, I was about to say ‘gumshoe it’.
We’re trying to Jerry rig it on like it was just it was just too off.

Becca:
[25:01] And then that morning me and Taylor were looking at it, and I was like, ‘Just call the fucking plumber. Dude, I don’t understand even how to tighten one of these fucking things.’
Um, and she was like, ‘I’m gonna go. I’ll just run a Home Depot and see if I could get these things cut.’
So she goes confident, at least in trying, and then comes back.
And within 10 minutes had totally fixed our sink very confidently, very beautifully. It looks masterfully done, and it cost how much?

Taylor
[25:33] 64 cents for the Teflon tape.

Becca:
[25:34] 64 cents for all of the supplies.

Maggie:
[25:38] This is making me feel like I’ve not accomplished anything.

Becca:
[25:42] Taylor killed it this week. So she got a badge.

Taylor
[25:45] I like fixing stuff. It makes me feel worthy. Yeah.

Becca:
[25:49] Yeah, and it makes you worthy, but yeah.
So she got a badge this week, and we look forward to all the badges all our listeners earn, and that we’ll continue to earn overtime.

Taylor
[26:00] I will say the one thing that even though I was super excited about paying off my credit cards,
I was looking at, I got in the mail my, um, mortgage payment piece of paper that they send you every month.
And I was a little discouraged because I realized that that’s just like that is included in my debt.
So while it feels like great to have paid off this debt, I still have, like, $340,000 of debt technically.

Maggie:
[26:28] That’s why you got to calculate your net worth in three different ways, which is what Julie and I do and one of them is called the Feel Good Way.

Taylor
[26:33] Yeah, yeah, because it feels yes, because yeah, When you look at your debt and you include your mortgage, it feels like crushing depression.

Maggie:
[26:40] It’s very daunting. It’s like awwww that’s gonna be a while.

Taylor
[26:47] Yeah, yeah. Especially when you see that interest line you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m paying that much in interest every month? Cool. Cool.’
Which brings me to my question that I have if I buy a house for $375,000 but I’m paying interest every month on that, I’m really buying a house for like, $500,000.

Jewels:
[27:07] Or more or more because it’s over 30 years.
So for primary houses, if they’re not income producing, which luckily yours is, um, having a mortgage does cost you quite a bit.
However, if it frees up cash that you can invest in something – another asset – that has a return higher than whatever your interest rate on your mortgage is, you still come out ahead, as opposed to putting that cash into buying a house.

Maggie:
[27:36] Right. So say your mortgage loan is 3% but you can invest in the stock market and make 4%. Technically, you’re making 1% more money.

Taylor:
[27:44] Right. So it’s still worth it. Because part of me was like, Why did I buy a house?

Maggie:
[27:46] No, it was still a good decision. Especially because you have people that help you with rent.

Becca:
[27:55] Yeah. You got two schmucks who fucking just pay your mortgage for you, at least partially.

Taylor:
[27:57] Sure. Okay.

Maggie:
[27:59] Yeah, like it was a very smart decision. Also, leverage in real estate is much higher than you could get anywhere else.

Taylor:

[28:09] But if I hold say, I hold on to my house for 10 years, am I going to make that money back if I sell it or if I, you know, build another property on that, on my property?

Taylor:
[28:19] Like, is that money really gonna –

Maggie:
[28:20]
It depends on the market you’re in. Yeah, it depends on the market. You’re in living in Austin, Texas. I would argue you’re in pretty good hands. Yeah, probably. Yes.

Jewels:
[28:25] Very market dependent.

Maggie:
[28:33] Probably more than, you’re probably gonna make a decent amount of money on your house.

Jewels:

[28:37] Especially in 10 years.

Taylor:
[28:38] Say, I sell my house in five years, and I’ve paid – I’m not going to- but say I do and I’ve paid, you know, I would need to calculate this out, but,
you know, I’m paying $2400 a month on the mortgage.
Um, and a certain amount of that is interest. If I sell my house after five years, am I?
I forgot what I was gonna ask. Something about interest. Like, is it, am I taking on –

Jewels:
[29:10] I believe you’re on the hook for the remaining principal. But here’s the deal-
Taylor:
[29:12] But not I’m on the hook for the remaining interest on that loan.

Jewels:
[29:15] No, because you’re not holding the loan for the full 30 year term. You’re on the hook for the remaining principal, however, mortgage math is literally so confusing.

[29:27] And the terms of your particular mortgage may have different penalties for early payoff and stuff like that.
So you’d really have to look at, look at your own docs.

Taylor:
[29:36] Can you remind me what principle is again?

Maggie:
[29:39] Principal. How much do you pay your house? $370,000. That’s the principle.

Taylor:
[29:41] 75. Yeah. So just what you bought it, like face value.

Jewels:
[29:43] you’ve been paying because your monthly payment has, like the interest that you’ve paid, which is the interest on the loan.
And then it has a certain amount that goes towards the principal you owe on the loan. That’s part going to your actual purchase value.
So you’ll every month you are paying that down. Now. Mortgages are front loaded, so you pay a lot more interest the first few years to pay the interest off on the loan.
And then you start paying a lot more principle in the later years.

Taylor:
[30:13] Right, so it makes sense to hold on to it for longer.

Jewels:
[30:14] Right. And my –
Maggie:
[30:17] Well, especially in a market that’s increasing, like ours, Yeah.

Jewels:
[30:22] My yes, my personal investment philosophy, assuming that you’ve bought a house that is a good investment for rental purposes, hold it. Do not sell it.
Even if you want to upgrade your residence and move somewhere else, you’re you’re better off. The tax advantages and the passive income advantages of holding that property and renting it, assuming it was a good investment. Sometimes it does make sense to sell out of one and buy into something else.
Um, but yeah, I’m a big advocate for the hold. Hold your real estate.

Taylor:
[30:52] I mean, I I am very happy that I have a house.
Um, I go back and forth like every day about what I want to do to it because I’m like,
I part of me is like, I want to renovate it and make it beautiful and restore it to this like, gorgeous 1950s style house. But it’s like modern.
But then I’m like, ‘Is it really worth?’ like I I feel like every single day I go back and forth like, Do I eventually want to restore it and make it like, really beautiful and modern and like that would increase the value and then maybe rent it out, and just keep holding onto it?
Or do I just want to, like, leave it as is and not put in money and put that money in somewhere else? I just I’m so conflicted.

Maggie:
[31:34] I also have those issues.

Jewels:
[31:36] Those feelings will never go away.

Taylor:
[31:37] Cool, cool. Yeah, it’s it’s funny.
So I was having happy hour with my brother, and my cousin and I was like, excited to talk.
I was a little drunk, you know, like it was drinking a bottle of wine by myself because Joey doesn’t drink wine,
and I we like I kept finding ways to bring up finance because we’re like, I was just like, Oh, yeah, like that reminds me of my stock that I just bought.
You know, I was, like, very excited to talk about it.
And it was kind of, like, disheartened by, you know, my brother and his girlfriend.
I think they kind of were like, ‘Yeah, obviously.’ Like, they knew this stuff.
And it just made me realize that, like rich people just know things about, like, finances, like, ‘Yeah, well, we all have stock in index funds’ like I’m like, Okay, well, I just figured this out.
He’s like, Yeah, like, this isn’t a surprise.

Maggie:
[32:33] I would’ve been like,”You dick. You could have told me this shit.”

Taylor:
[32:33] And I just I felt kind of dumb, right? And I just I felt stupid.
Yes, exactly. So like, rich people are fucking talking amongst themselves being like, Oh, yeah, you should put all your money in index funds and blah blah, blah, blah and buy real estate.

Taylor:
[32:48] And I just had no idea until, like, now, and I’m like, Oh, yeah, we should be doing this. This is cool. Let’s talk about it.
And he’s like, Yeah, I already know. And I’m like, why haven’t you said anything and like, why -.

Maggie:

[33:00] Yeah, I find that interesting that you were, like, so excited and eager to share with him. But he never had that feeling with you.

Taylor:
[33:06] Yeah, I don’t I don’t know. It just It was kind of like I felt dumb, but also drunk and confused and, like, sad.

Maggie:
[33:08] Yeah.

[33:14] I often feel dumb when I’m drunk.

Becca:
[33:18] Ah, I know for me that my dad has been trying to get me to get and to invest my money for a long time. But his is more like the stock market, like the active trading.
Um, and I really didn’t know about index funds and that – there’s a very good chance that my father has held my face and been like “invest in index funds.
Listen to me. “And I was just like, “Oh my God, I got so bored halfway through that sentence” because they’re like my brain just was not open to the word investing. It wasn’t open to any, like none of that interested me.
It was like I was convinced I didn’t have enough money for it to be relevant, that I don’t have the lifestyle for it to be relevant, that it’s immoral to make money from not doing anything like that. My feelings on it over the last decade has ranged, but all of them ended with, like “Buhhh? I don’t care.”
So like my over the last weekend or the week before, I, like, sat down.
I was like “Dad finally invested some money” and he was like, “Oh, cool” and he was, but he was kind, and he was interested.
And but it was like, Yeah, it was, like, kind of a humbling reminder of how much of a beginner I am and how I really should have started this.
Like sooner. Yeah.

Taylor:
[34:35] Same. That’s exactly how I felt with my conversation. My brother made me realize how much of a beginner I was and how, like a lot of people already know this stuff.

Becca:
[34:41] Yeah. Not everybody, though.

Taylor:
[34:44] Not everyone, just people with money and now us.

Becca:
[34:47] Well, not necessarily, but yeah. Yeah.

Maggie:
[34:48] And us. I think I got a late start because I had, um, live fast die young mentality for a big portion of my life.
And I was like, ‘Why would I invest when I’m going to die before.’

Taylor:
[35:00] Me, too, I think. Well, that’s still true.

Becca:
[35:05] What is that?

Maggie:
[35:06] So I still have those thoughts quite a bit. But, um.

Becca:
[35:13] But you bought a house which is the ultimate not live fast, die –

Maggie:
[35:18] Well, if you were in my mind when I bought my house, the reason I bought my house,
was so that I could eventually not have a job, because then I could be a fagabond, and have someone paying my mortgage.
And maybe I could eventually make a little bit of extra money. And that would cover maybe my gas money for my vagabond lifestyle of still living fast dying young, but having the bills paid,
or like some bills paid, I was like, Fuck if I have, like, no health insurance and live on ramen and, like, buy a van like, how much gas money do I need per month?
And like, how much do campsites will that average out to and like, is the rent I could make on this house that?

Becca:
[36:05] I love that.

Taylor:
[36:07] I think my urge to buy a house was just kind of like, you know, they tell you that, like you eventually have an urge to have a baby like my mom is always, like, one day.
You’re just like, in your thirties. You’re just gonna wanna have a baby. And there’s no fucking reason why. And it’s just gonna be like a biological urge and which never happened for the record.
But it did happen with a house baby. I was just like when I moved back.
I was like, I want a house like I want I want something that I own because I just felt like I had done nothing with my life.
Like I have fun and like I traveled, but I just didn’t I didn’t have anything in my, you know, to show for it. I wasn’t like I own things, so I kind of that was my mentality behind it.
But it wasn’t really logical. It was just like, I just want this and I can’t explain exactly why.

Maggie:
[36:58] And now you’re a woman.

Taylor:
[36:58] Yeah, and now I’m a woman. Yeah.

Becca:
[37:00] And now you have your fully aware. You’ve become a full person. Yeah, now that you own things.

Taylor:
[37:04] Yep. All of my problems are now solved and.

Maggie:
[37:10] Um, Julie, why did you decide to buy a house? Why did you have a house baby?

Jewels:
[37:16] Um we had a house baby, because, um, such a good question.
We left the country for a while, and then when we came back to Austin, it still felt like exactly the kind of place we wanted to be able to return to any time we came back.
But the prices obviously had already started going up.
By then, Austin was getting quite popular, so we decided we needed to find a house to buy as a home base.
And that’s why we had a house baby.

Becca:
[37:51] And that. But that was like 7, 8 years ago?

Jewels:
[37:54] We bought our house at the end of 2014.
Been a while.

Maggie:
[37:59] And you were very, um What’s the word I’m looking for? Ambitious with your house choice.

Jewels:
[38:07] So by a house, we mean a shack.

Becca:
[38:11] Oh, really? I never saw the befores.

Jewels:
[38:14] Oh! Oh, Becca Boy, are you in for a treat!

Maggie:
[38:14] Oh, you should? Yeah.

Taylor:
[38:17] Yeah, it’s It’s truly incredible what you all did with your house.

Maggie:
[38:20] What was that makeover show called, Like Ugly Swan or something.

Becca:
[38:24] Aw.

Maggie:
[38:27] Well, anyway, her house was a shack. That’s a good word for it.

Jewels:
[38:32] Yes, yes.

Becca:
[38:33] So did it. Did you keep the bones, or did y’all totally remove it?

Jewels:
[38:36] So we kept the footprint like the outside dimensions are exactly the same.
We moved one of the walls and, um, the the house looks very, very different. Like the whole facade where the windows are and everything is very different.
We had planned to, like, even keep the nice wood floors. And then when we got in there like, by nice. I mean, they could have been refinished and become nice classic wood floors.
When we got in there, we realized there was no sub floor and you could literally, like peer through the cracks of the dirt below.
So that became the sub floor. And then we had to put flooring in.
But, um, I will maybe pull a few before and afters and add them to the show notes.

Becca:
[39:17] Yeah, that’d be amazing. Yeah, please.

Taylor:
[39:21] Did you hire someone to help you, like, redesign it?

Jewels:
[39:24] So Zach and I actually did the design work ourselves because we had stayed in so many different Airbnbs all over the world. At that point, we knew exactly what kind of worked really well for us and living in small spaces.

Taylor:
[39:28] Really impressive.

Jewels:
[39:39] So between the two of us, we we did all the design work.
And then we did have a builder actually come in and, you know, strip everything down and redo it.
Originally, we had thought we would do some of the work ourselves, but we managed to get a commercial loan from the bank and that required that we used a builder and get it done within a certain timeline. So it’s just better for us because we’re able to finance all of that.

Becca:
[40:05] I remember, um, probably at the same party when I told the story about using yall’s bidet for the first time.
I remember this was like, right after we had reconnected, um, here in Austin and I was at one of yall’s I think big birthday parties, and Zach was drunk, and I was telling him how much I loved your house and he went off.
He was like, You don’t understand how short most counters are. We made our counters so tall. Because me and Julie, we’re tall.

Jewels:
[40:33] I’m not tall, but I don’t like to bend over. So.

Becca:
[40:34] Oh, yeah, like,
and he was just like, Do you know how to tall the average counter is, do you want to know?

Jewels:
[40:42] Like 2 ft, man like 2 ft.

Becca:
[40:46] It was amazing.

Maggie:
[40:48] I love Drunk Zach so, so much. And also I’m gonna need to consult him whenever I design a house. Could be like, How tall are your counters, man, Because I’m told I need to know.

Becca:
[40:50] An angel.

Taylor:
[40:58] Oh, my God. Every fucking house we go into, like, I I like to go and look at houses with Zach and he’ll like, we’ll go to the bathroom.
But he’s always like ‘they should have put in a rain shower,’ like every every fucking time without fail.
He mentions the fucking rain shower, and he always gets angry about it.

Jewels:
[41:19] Well, and the funny thing is which you you may not have heard. This is the behind the scene -s is that he and I don’t really like rain showers.

Jewels:
[41:28] And we do have a rain shower in one of our showers, along with other showerheads, and we rarely use it.

Taylor:
[41:31] Yeah.
I’m not a huge rain shower fan either. Honestly.

Jewels:
[41:34] But But when builders don’t put one in its an indication that they didn’t invest in all the things that are actually expectations for the price level they’re asking. And that’s why he’s angry about it. Actually has nothing to do with the rain shower.

Taylor:
[41:42] Hold right, Right,
right.

Jewels:
[41:49] It’s that that’s like such a blatant, obvious giveaway.

Taylor:
[41:52] Yeah, for sure, for sure. It makes sense. Makes sense.

Jewels:
[41:55] Yeah.

Becca:
[41:56] I love a rain shower. It takes eight times longer to get the shampoo out of your hair, but But it’s like.

Taylor:
[42:01] I know. That’s what I don’t like about it.

Jewels:
[42:01] On, then it gets in your eye.

Taylor:
[42:04] But, you know, I’m not a shower person. I don’t ever want to be in the shower. I don’t enjoy taking showers. I think they’re a waste of time.
So rain showers. It takes me, like, fucking two hours to shower because nothing comes off.

Becca:
[42:13] A waste of time. You know what other shit I could be doing right now?

Taylor:
[42:17]
I Seriously, I hate showering. I think it’s so boring to me. I’m just like I’m wasting my life.

Becca:
[42:28] That’s amazing.

Taylor:
[42:29] Listen, I’m saving water, all of you, all your selfish water snobs.

Jewels:
[42:33] I really that, uh I really love our master shower in our house, though, that has converted me to a shower person.

Maggie:
[42:35] Trying really hard to remedy that.

Jewels:
[42:43] And I usually only use one of the three showerheads, But if it’s really cold and I’m just feeling like I need to be baked, I will turn on, you know, two, one from each side and maybe the rain shower and just be like, steamed.

Taylor:
[42:53] And I have done that in your shower. It’s it is nice.

Becca:
[42:55] Your shower’s so fucking luxurious. I take so many nudes in that shower. It’s amazing.

Jewels:
[42:59] Okay. Have you ever been in there at the time of day where all of a sudden will be like a little rainbow like a prism? Rainbow on the wall. That’s my favorite.

Maggie:
[43:10] Best nudes I’ve ever gotten.

Jewels:
[43:11] It’s my favorite. Like that rainbow wasn’t just on the wall its on my body.

Becca:
[43:12] 100% like 30% of the time I spend in yalls house is me taking nudes – when I’m house sitting, not when yall are there.

Jewels:
[43:20]
Oh, yes. Good context for the listener.

Becca:
[43:31] Um, something I did this week was I finally invested money in a Betterment portfolio, so I I know, I know.

Taylor:
[43:42] This is huge because you’ve been talking about this literally since the beginning.

Jewels:
[43:44]You didn’t even call the money circle to come in like pop pop a bottle of champagne and cheer you on.

Becca:
[43:45] It was not a lot of money.
I will require a seance Candle circle, Palo Santo, Um, when I put more money in, but I basically wanted to get my feet wet. I want to get the money in, kind of open the door so that I can kind of just start.
And I wanted to see how it worked. Like how easy it was to use the platform. So I think I’m I think I’m the guinea pig for Betterment. Right? No one. No one’s got a Betterment, So yeah.

Maggie:
[44:15] I have talked about how I want to do betterment, and I recommended it to you. So I’m sorry if it’s terrible, but I haven’t done it myself.

Becca:
[44:21] No. Well, it wasn’t just you. Yeah, you, Mr Money Mustache. Vicki Robin. Mad Fientist, I think?

Maggie:
[44:29] That’s a lot of big names, Yeah.

Becca:
[44:31] A lot of a lot of heavy hitters. So I got it. I Well, because I sat on the porch during the Charles Schwab thing and the whole time. I was like, Man, all of yall have Charles Schwab. I need to get fucking Charles Schwab.
Fast forward 2.5 hours and it’s now dark outside and everyone just staring at the same laptop screen, not knowing what’s going on. And I was like, ‘I’m gonna go with betterment.’

Maggie:
[44:57] I’m actually thrilled that that is how that work out. Charles Schwab, if you’re listening, we love you. You just need to work on the user interface a little bit.

Taylor:
[45:01]Yeah. You need to hire me to work on your user interface.

Becca:
[45:08] Seriously. Yeah.
Um, so betterment is cool. It gives you, um whenever you sign up, there’s a lot of different goals that you can kind of assign for yourself.
Um, but what I put my money into and I started very small.
Don’t laugh at it. Um, but I I put in two different accounts.
I put I think two grand I put in a high interest cash, which comes out.
They The interest that you accumulate is I think, 0.40%,
which right now my cash is in a money market account, which makes I think 0.25% so That’s gonna be a great, uh, increase.
Um, but to $2000 for for my nest egg is a very small number.
Um, for me to just try it out, see how it works.
And then I put three grand in the general investing portfolio, Um, and they kind of spread it out. Very typical sort of index funds style.
Um, and they kind of show you what they invest in. But they’re mostly, like, just trust us.

Maggie:
[46:11] Oh, you don’t get to choose.

Becca:
[46:13] Um, from the limited delving that I’ve done there there isn’t a lot of manual work, but maybe I can.

Maggie:
[46:16]
interesting.

Becca:
[46:20] And I just haven’t done enough yet. I just wanted to get money in to see what happened.

Maggie:
[46:24] One step at a time.

Taylor:
[46:25] My understanding of index funds is that you don’t get to choose you just, like, invest in that whatever index fund, okay?

Jewels:
[46:29] Well, you can pick. You can pick the specific index fund, but not what’s within that index for.

Becca:
[46:32] Right? Right. Well, and yeah.
And I think here I can open up the account and see where the three grand landed.
Um, okay, so my cash reserve is two grand, my general investing is three grand. The app is super, super usable.
Um, there’s my portfolio. So I’ve got mine, uh, in a moderate risk, which I’m gonna bump up.
I didn’t realize it was only a moderate, Uh, 90% stocks and 10% bonds, which is I think about Yeah, which is probably good, actually.

Maggie:
[47:04] That’s good. There’s actually studies out there that show that that asset allocation performs better than 100% index funds.

Becca:
[47:12] Yeah. There you go.

Taylor:
[47:12] Is it like Treasury bonds?

Becca:
[47:15] Just government bonds. So I guess that shakes out to Treasury bonds.

Taylor:
[47:17] Is that the same thing? Treasury bonds are government bonds, right? I listen, I just finished Your Money or Your Life, and that bitch was talking about Treasury bonds for a long time.

Jewels:
[47:21] I think so. They were really hot and heavy on Treasury bonds in the first edition of that book, which is not a good strategy these days.

Taylor:
[47:32] These days, no.

Jewels:
[47:34] But, um, I think this may bring us to the next book we need to talk about, which is The Simple Path to Wealth because he does have a really great chapter in there really breaking down Bonds if I recall.

Becca:
[47:36] Very, very conservative strategy.

[47:44] Well.

Taylor:
[47:48] Okay, I’ll start reading it. I’ll be done before all of you.

Becca:
[47:49] Yes, it’s well, it’s also half the length of Your Money or Your Life. It’s six hours audiobook.

Maggie:
[47:50] Yeah, I feel like.

Taylor:
[47:56] Yeah.

Maggie:
[47:57] I feel like if you need to know about Bonds, that’s a really good resource.

Becca:
[48:00] Yeah, so My portfolio is SRI, Betterment SRI, which was the, like, socially responsible investment because I Yeah, it’s cool.

Taylor:
[48:01] Okay.

[48:11] Oh, I like that. Like, uh huh. I’m gonna invest in guns and oil.

Becca:
[48:13] Like, I guess it’s basically not guns and oil. I’m not really sure.
Um, but then it tells me. I guess it does. It tells me what my holdings are. I wonder if I can Can I delete my holdings if I don’t like it?
Why? The tells me why I have the holding. It doesn’t. I don’t think I have the option to to remove a particular holding that, Um but I’ll do a little bit more.
I’ll do a little bit more, um, diving into that, but yeah, it was really cool. Super easy. Um.

Maggie:
[48:44] It sounds like it’s a little easier to understand than the Schwab situation.

Becca:
[48:48] It does seem that way. I’m not I’m just not sure how individualized it can be like, if I get a hot tip from a friend to invest in a certain company. I’m not sure how easy it is for me to put that money in, or if that’s even possible.

Taylor:
[49:02] Yeah, with Schwab. You just like you find their number and you type that in and then you, like, decide.

Taylor:
[49:09] But like, the process of ordering it is kind of confusing to me, but I would be interested, to look at your account at some point and see, like the interface and how you navigate it.

Becca:
[49:15] Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. The interface is super easy.

Becca:
[49:21] Um, but yeah, I’ll spend more time with it, and then we’ll have, we need to have some sort of, ah, event where I put the more money in.

Taylor:
[49:31] Yes. So I have a question. How much do you want? How much do you feel comfortable putting in?

Becca:
[49:36] So my, um, I was trying to think about this, and it’s really hard for me to decide, because there’s a piece of me that still does want to buy a house as even if it’s just a rental property.
Um, so in my head, I don’t so the ah good thing about betterment is you can withdraw it anytime. There’s no fees for withdrawing.
There is a There is a fee in general for using it.
So make sure that that fee works for you. Um, but it’s fairly nominal.
Um, anyways, so if I panic and want to withdraw everything, I could do that, but in my head, I’d really like to keep,
uh, reasonable down payment amount in my cash, um, and invest the rest.
So in my head, that’s between 30 and $40,000.
I’d like to keep between 30 and $40,000. Invest about $50,000.
But that’s even saying that out loud, right? Yeah.

Taylor:
[50:32] I’m terrified for you that Yeah, I can understand your anxiety about that.

Becca:
[50:35] Yeah.
So I my guess of what’s gonna happen and maybe it won’t. We’ll see how the seance goes.
My guess is that I’ll shift a lot of my money big, big chunk of money into the high yield cash asset in betterment so that at least I’m making ah, higher percentage.
And then as I become more comfortable, which hopefully will be very rapid.
Um, like, maybe I’m saying during the seance, I will then move the money from the cash holdings in betterment to the investment portfolio.
Um, because I’m the likelihood of me needing that chunk is very low anytime soon.
Um, yeah, But if it’s in the investment portfolio, if everything goes to shit, you know, if the if the stock market crashes, then I can’t count on having 50 grand on hand anymore. Like I can now, right?

Maggie:
[51:17] Even if you do, you can still get it?

Becca:
[51:30] So and I know that silly. But this is the girl who also got catastrophic insurance because I’m scared of ghost spiders.

Taylor:
[51:36] I don’t think it’s silly, though, because, as she says in Your Money or Your Life there she talks about all the times that the stock market has crashed and how long it’s taken to recover.
And sometimes it’s like the Great Depression. It took 27 years to recover, like that’s a lifetime for some people, you know, like and then all the other crashes since then, it’s taken anywhere from 4 to 7 years to recover. So you do have to be comfortable with putting your money in the stock market, knowing that you could lose half if not all of it, and then it be gone for like, 10 years.
So, you know, don’t don’t feel like you have to put in more than you feel comfortable losing, but and then you also wanna have your savings, your fuck you money savings and a money for down payment. So.

Maggie:
[52:23] I’m with. I’m with Taylor and that I feel like that was a really good What’s the word? Ah, caveat. Um Warning?

Becca:
[52:31] Yeah, yeah. And I mean thats music to my ears.

Maggie:
[52:35] No, that wasn’t the word. I was hoping you would help me.

Jewels:
[52:39] I drank a lot tonight. Uh huh.

Becca:
[52:44] Um, me and Taylor have both tried a new investing app for funsies called Public so.
Yeah. A friend of ours told us about Public.
Ah, which is just like a little super super user friendly, beginner friendly stock investing app that you can use.
Um, so if you’re interested in, like, using fun money to do active trading, um, I started doing that. Taylor started doing that.
I have exclusively lost money. I’ll let you know when I get over how much I put in. But, I mean, I’ve lost. I think I’ve lost 38 cents right now at this point.
Um, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s fun to like. It’s fun to, like, invest in the same things as Taylor because that’s something we can talk about. I invest in some of the same businesses that my dad wants to invest in.
So it’s just more like a fun way to, like be like, Oh, did you see what FedEx did? It went down.

Taylor:
[53:42] Yeah, it’s it’s It’s like social media for the stock market. Like there’s you can literally follow people and you can see, like what they’re trading and they can post about it like it’s literally a social media app for stock for the stock market.

Maggie:
[53:54] Interesting.

Taylor:
[53:55] And if you use one of our links, we get free stock. So you should use one of our links that we will be posting in the website.

Maggie:
[54:00] Well, the concept of that is infinitely fascinating to me because, like the way that stocks oftentimes surge is through social media.

Becca:
[54:10] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Maggie:
[54:13] Not necessarily like Facebook or stuff. But that’s crazy that there is now, like, ah, very social, media driven platform.

Taylor:
[54:16] Yeah.

[54:21] What’s really cool, too, is like when you when you search a company, it’ll show you like a very easy like interface.

Taylor:
[54:28] What what the company is, and then you can see like articles, like recent articles written about it like, Oh, this company or this index fund is like.

Taylor:
[54:36] Blah blah, blah, and they also yeah, obviously they have index funds and stuff like there that you can invest in, like I’m invested in a weed index fund.

Maggie:
[54:44] Yeah, that’s actually smart, I think. Well, I mean, I don’t That’s not financial advice disclaimer that, um. Investing in drugs so smart!

Taylor:
[54:44]
Yeah, we’ll see.
Yeah, Becca. Becca’s dad has invested in weed, and it’s only gone down, so but I’m hoping that once it’s legal everywhere which eventually it will be because come on.
Um, then that shit will all go up. We’ll see. I don’t know.

Becca:
[55:06] But it is interesting because it does feel a bit like paid advertising because the people who post are these like, essentially like if imagine Twitter.
I don’t know if Twitter has influencers. I don’t have a Twitter, but imagine like, you know, the big, the big names in Twitter.
It’s like Public has big names like, Oh, you follow this person And then it has some credentials that I guess, maybe mean something.
Um, but they’ll they’ll say things like ‘guys I invested in door dash’ or like, uh, ‘Airbnb is about to go public on December 10th,’ and it’s all these things and you see them posting all these comments like, Yeah, I can’t wait to dive in to Airbnb.

Maggie:
[55:47] Yeah, I feel like it’s definitely a slippery slope. And I’m glad that you guys are doing it so we can talk about it. And I’m also glad that you guys were doing it with your fun money and not all of your investment money.

Becca:
[55:55] Fun Money fun money fun money.

Taylor:
[55:58] No. I put 500 bucks in there, and I was like, That’s all I’m gonna put in there.

Maggie:
[56:02] Yeah. I mean, it does sound fun. Yeah.

Becca:
[56:04] It’s fun. Yeah, I’m whatever I was about to talk as if I know any fucking thing about anything.
But it is an interesting time to me for Airbnb to go public.
Since it’s like such a semi moot industry at the moment, it’ll go back up. Don’t get me wrong.

Maggie:
[56:22] Maybe that’s why they’re going public right now.

Becca:
[56:24] I guess so.

Jewels:
[56:28] I don’t know if there I don’t know. I can’t speak to their financials. They laid off a lot of people pretty early on.
I mean, not really early on in the pandemic, but maybe halfway through the year that I think cut a lot of their, um there weight down so that they could keep their numbers looking good.
But with everyone transitioning, not everyone but so many industries and so many companies transitioning to permanent or semi permanent remote work, Airbnbs and that type of industry is likely to boom even bigger after this than it was before,
will be interesting.

Becca:
[57:10] It’ll be interesting. And purely because of the social media app, I’m definitely gonna put money into Airbnb because they’re just, like, ‘can’t fucking wait. Everyone get your cash ready, baby’. And so I’m gonna.

Jewels:
[57:22] As a long time Airbnb host, Um, they actually offered pre purchase to me.
So they are pricing their stocks on Wednesday of this week, and I’ve already registered my interest to buy a small amount.

Becca:
[57:35] Yeah.

[57:40] Nice. So So for the world, it goes public on Thursday, But for hosts, it goes You can purchase on Wednesday.

Taylor:
[57:40] Airbnb, Yeah.

Jewels:
[57:50] Are they going public on Thursday? I’m not sure what the actual date is.

Becca:
[57:53] On the Yeah, Thursday the 10th.

Jewels:
[57:54] Yes. Then, yes. So I’ve already like there’s been a few steps in the process, but I have preregistered my interest for how much I actually want to buy, and then they’re sort of ranking it based on your tenure as a host and so on Wednesday when they do the actual pricing, there’s like a six hour window in which I have to go in and confirm Yes, I want that number of stocks that you’ve allocated to me.

Taylor:
[58:15] Really cool. So you don’t know how much the stocks cost yet? Like how much it cost to buy a stock.

Jewels:
[58:18] They’ve given a range. They’ve given a range.

Taylor:
[58:22] That is awesome.

Jewels:
[58:23] Mhm. So I have found some money in order to do that. Mhm.

Taylor:
[58:26] Money in order. That’s really exciting. I mean, I was thinking about putting in some money.

Becca:
[58:28] That’s so great.
I don’t know. There’s enough heat on it. May as well then pull it out.

Jewels:
[58:37] Uh huh.

Becca:
[58:38] Yeah, I don’t know. At whatever I saw most recently posted, they said to anticipate, like, 45 to $50 a share. I don’t know if that’s what has been shared, but.

Jewels:
[58:51] I don’t remember From when I was in the parking lot of a Flying J on the way home from West Texas last week when I got the most recent email with steps I had to do to go on, like, set up my Morgan Stanley account and give all this information I’m, like.

Jewels:
[59:04] Literally on the side of I 10 with very bad service.
Please go through. Please go through. Uh huh.

Becca:
[59:11] Cool we will be Airbnb investors. We’ll discuss how our company’s doing every week.

Jewels:
[59:12] Yeah.
Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Becca:
[59:18] Um, were there any other investment platforms that we use in this group?

Taylor:
[59:25] Like banks or?

Becca:
[59:27] Not banks, But like Charles Schwab, betterment. Okay, So is there, like, a different platform for that, or is it purely just through your company?

Maggie:
[59:27] Yeah, I invest through my company.

[59:34] So they they use fidelity. So my 401 K gets automatically pulled out of my paycheck and then invested through fidelity pretty much automatically.

Becca:
[59:37] Okay. Right.

Maggie:
[59:47] But I’m allowed to pick what stocks and index funds I invest in. And so I do index funds.

Becca:
[59:52] Mm hmm. Mhm.

Maggie:
[59:54] Um, but one thing I was going to say earlier when Taylor was talking, I can’t remember what made me think about it.
But one thing that I do and I know it’s a pretty common practice, but I think it is very helpful to help you sort of live within your means is that whenever I get a promotion or increase in pay, I always,
spend almost the entirety of that by reinvesting so that my paycheck that I receive each week has essentially not changed and the entire time that I’ve been working my company.
But the amount that I invest has increased by quite a bit.
So my lifestyle, which I’m comfortable with, remains the same.

Taylor:
[1:00:35] That is fantastic. That is a fantastic way to look at things like, because, you know, you can live within your means at the paycheck that you started with. Yeah, that’s awesome.

Maggie:
[1:00:37] And then my savings rate goes up, which is nice. Yeah.
Yeah, and I’m happy and I don’t need more, and I already Yeah, you have enough money to, like,
do the things we talked about last time, which, like, go out with my friends and go out to dinner on occasion. I don’t really need more than that.

Taylor:
[1:00:55] Uh huh.

Maggie:
[1:00:59] Um, so I just invest more than that.

Taylor:
[1:01:00] And it is not cheap being vegan.

Maggie:
[1:01:03] No eating vegan. Um, but yeah.
So this year, I got a promotion, and I now I’m investing before I get money in my hand, I think I’m investing 25% of what I make.
And then after I get paid, I also save quite a bit of money after that.
So that my savings rates approaching 45 to 50%.

Jewels:
[1:01:29] Damn girl. That is amazing. Mhm.

Maggie:
[1:01:31] Which I feel good about. Yeah.

Taylor:
[1:01:32] Same. That’s insane. Yeah, Yeah. Body ody ody ody ody

Becca:
[1:01:34] Body ody ody ody ody ody ody

Jewels:
[1:01:41] That is amazing.

Maggie:
[1:01:43] Yeah. And then that came from saying that, like my 401 k just does that automatically. Like a lot of it’s I don’t have to think about it. It just happens.

Maggie:
[1:01:52] Which makes it a lot easier. Um, there are aspects that I think about. But I think if I had to, if I got the full paycheck and was like, What you gonna do with this Maggie, I’d be like, Oh, shit, I’m gonna spend it.

Jewels:

[1:01:59] It requires a lot of discipline. So much discipline.

Maggie:
[1:02:04] Yeah. So, like, having pulled out before it even reaches my hands is very helpful for me.

Becca:
[1:02:11] Cool. Yeah, I guess my my 401k is through human interest, which I didn’t know what that is, but that’s what all my 401 K investments are through.
And they think it’s exclusively Vanguard Index funds when I look at the portfolio. Mhm.

Jewels:
[1:02:27] Great.
I think the only other investment platform off the top of my head that I use is that we do have some Cryptocurrency speculative investments.
So obviously, that’s on a completely different exchange platform. We’ve used Coin Base and GDAX and then a few other, more obscure things, but.

Becca:
[1:02:48] Mm. Cool. Yeah, covered a lot.

Maggie:
[1:02:53] I spent a lot of money in the past month, and it really I should have one of my badges removed, because now I have credit card debt again.

Taylor:
[1:02:59] Uh, yeah.

Maggie:
[1:03:03] But, ah, a lot of it was things that were, uh, necessary, like an MRI. And I’m getting my trees trimmed at my house, which I hadn’t done in over two years of living there.
And, um, I feel like Oh, yeah, I got new tires on my car, so just a lot of expenses Kind of all hit me in a one month period. So the budgeting kind of went to shit.

Taylor:
[1:03:29] Listen, I was trying to save you money with those tires. You didn’t listen to me.

Maggie:
[1:03:30] But you know what? I,
you’re right. I didn’t listen to you. Uh, but also, I don’t feel that bad about it.
I feel like maybe it’s relatable that all your expenses might hit it once I had my I pay my car insurance every six months like that also went through.

Becca:
[1:03:49] Mm.

Maggie:
[1:03:50] So it’s just like a lot of things. And maybe I should have planned for that a little better.

Becca:
[1:03:56] Yeah.

Maggie:
[1:03:57] But now I know November and December every year, are probably going to be high spending months for me.

Taylor:
[1:03:59] Yeah.

[1:04:04] I’ve been daydreaming more about, like what it’s gonna be like when hopefully quarantine ends and we can go out and do things and things are open. And I’m like, Oh, I’m gonna be spending so much more money on, like going out and.

Becca:
[1:04:14] Mhm.

Maggie:
[1:04:14] Well, especially because we’re gonna, like, have this binge period, right? We’re like, we haven’t been able to do this in a year and just like, yeah.

Taylor:
[1:04:18] Right? Yes. Let’s drink! Bars every night. Yes, I’m kind of like I’m anticipating that, but also feeling like anxiety about it and also guilt over the money that I have been spending for Christmas stuff.

Jewels:
[1:04:33] I haven’t waited for quarantine to be over to start spending in advance for those plans I’m making.

Jewels:
[1:04:39] I have already spent $1000 for two nights in May of 2022.

Becca:
[1:04:45] Two nights where.

Jewels:
[1:04:47] Um, in Terlingua. Staying in a bubble during a potential meteor storm.

Becca:
[1:04:49] Yeah.
Um, uh, love it.

Taylor:
[1:04:53] Oh, my God. Julie. You got the bubble. Wow. But how How much was that?

Becca:
[1:04:57] Oh, well, Good God, that is.

Jewels:
[1:04:57] Got the bubble with the hot tub bubble with a hot tub.

[1:05:04] Like $1000 for two nights. But if there is a meteor storm, it is 100% could be worth it.

Taylor:
[1:05:06] That’s insane.

Maggie:
[1:05:09] Yeah, I’m seriously considering it.

Becca:
[1:05:10] Yeah. 100%. I looked into doing that in Norway to see the Northern Lights, and it was $2500 a night to get to be in a bubble. Yeah. May that settle you.

Jewels:
[1:05:12] Yes, Yes, yes, yes!

Taylor:
[1:05:14] That is amazing.

Jewels:
[1:05:20] Well, this is a steal.

Taylor:
[1:05:21] Well, but also, there’s there’s there’s also campgrounds. And that’s in the site That, like, if you really wanted to do it cheaply, like, we could just get a campground for, like, 40 bucks. Okay, that’s fair. That’s fair.

Becca:
[1:05:30] No, I want a bubble with the hot tub.

Jewels:
[1:05:33] Well, s. So I was thinking as it approached, I was going to start pitching y’all on also joining us even if you didn’t book a bubble, but booked something else at the same base Camp Terlingua is the company.

Taylor:
[1:05:43] Hope. Mhm.
Yeah.

Jewels:
[1:05:47] And then come hang out in the hot tub. Uh huh.

Taylor:
[1:05:51] But yeah, that be cool. I wanna bubble.

Maggie:
[1:05:53] All right, well, this is not gonna help my monthly budget.

Jewels:
[1:05:55] Yeah, I’m sorry, y’all. But all that to say I am already forking over excessive amounts of money for travel plans for the post pandemic life.

Taylor:
[1:06:00] Work.

[1:06:05] Yeah, that’s fair.

Becca:
[1:06:07] Quick disclaimer. No one on this podcast is responsible for anything that we say. This is mostly jokes. Yeah.

Maggie:
[1:06:08] None of this is advice.

Jewels:
[1:06:13] This is a comedy podcast, right?

Taylor:
[1:06:14] Yes. If anything, this is what not to do.

Maggie:
[1:06:19] Yes. This is a fictional story brought to you by the creative minds of Of Julo, bucko.

Jewels:
[1:06:28] Well, maggo and taylo.

Jewels:
[1:06:35] Oh, sweet.

Becca:
[1:06:37] Yeah. Good, Good. Good stuff, team loved it.