Weathering Economic Storms: A Preppers Guide to Financial Resilience - Mark Lawley and Ralph Estep, Jr.

0:00 I was fortunate to be asked to be a guest on the practical preppers podcast a week or so ago. And Mark and I had a great conversation. So I thought I would share that interview with my listeners. You can reach their podcast as practicalpreppers.info. And I'm telling you, they are really great people with super useful information. So I hope you enjoy this interview.

0:50 Well, Ralph, welcome to the podcast. Well thank you, Mark. I sure appreciate you bringing me on. I'm a everyday listener to many podcasts and yours is whenever it released, I can't wait to get on it. A lot of times I'll be out walking the dogs or I'll be on the treadmill or the elliptical and it's like, I know I've got something good to hear that day. So I truly appreciate what you and Krista are doing. Well we appreciate those kind words. What do you have for us today? We're talking about prepping and preppers are concerned about the future. We're not afraid, but we prepare for the things that are most likely to happen. And one of the things that we're seeing right now is is the potential for an economic slide or an economic downturn.

1:37 All the indicators seem to be pointing that way. And financial prepping is a very important part. of the total prepping package. So what can we do as preppers to get ourselves in position to be able to weather what may come? I think that's a perfect place to start. Now, I want to inject a little biblical reference here. I noticed in my podcast, I like to start there. So I want to start with the Bible. Matthew chapter six, verse 34 says, therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. So that's where I want to start But then I want to say I concur with you. I think we're in for an interesting tumultuous financial year I'm telling my clients every day that I don't know what the this election is going to bring but regardless of who wins I think we're going to have some tough economic times.

2:28 So what do we do? You're absolutely right The thing that we can do there's some concrete things that people can do to get prepared and the first thing is You need to build up your emergency savings fund It's amazing to me how many people I work with on a daily basis that don't have an emergency fund What does that look like? I think you've got to really set aside three to six months Worth of expenses so that you can weather a storm. Now, if you lose a job or if you have some unexpected bill or something like that, and the way you do that is you be consistent about it and you start off with a little bit, even if it's, you set aside 10 a week or 20 a week, it doesn't have to be this huge mountain that you move because mountains are built with little 10 here and there.

3:10 So that's the advice I give to my clients start off with something, look at your budget. What can you afford, but that's the place to start, Mark. I appreciate that, and we do try to make that a priority, and we do try to really automatically fund our savings, and that keeps us from forgetting so much. What else can we do? What's another step that we can take? I think when we're in times of interest rates going up, I think to pay down your debt aggressively is a really important thing. I just recorded a podcast episode about credit card debt, and the average credit card interest rate is close to 30 percent now.

3:52 And the scary part of that is the average household is carrying debt, credit card debt 49%. So one of the things that you really can do to get yourself ready is pay down that debt aggressively. There is a ton of ways to do that. You can look for balance transfers where you pay a low interest rate. You can use the avalanche method. All of those things to do something to get yourself out of debt because debt makes you a slave to the lender. That's beautiful. Avalanche method. Is that similar to the snowball? Yeah, exactly. It's the same thing where you pick you take all your, debts and you put them in the order of smallest to largest, and then you, always make the minimum payments on everything, but you start with that smallest one.

4:35 And you focus on that. Once you knock out that smallest one, then you move on to the next one. You take the money that you would have used on the smallest one and put it onto the next one. And the thing about that, what a lot of people don't understand is. You celebrate when you accomplish those things every time you knock out one of those debts have a party for yourself now, don't go crazy and add another debt to it. Right. You have to celebrate these wins because if you want to maintain that momentum, you got to keep moving forward. And you have wins more often if you start with the smallest and go to the largest because the largest may take an extremely long time. While you're still paying the minimums on all of the smaller ones.

5:18 And that's why I always tell clients, stop the bleeding first, stop adding to your debt. Once you've started that avalanche or snowball method. And like you said, you might get to a point where something's big and that's where you look at, or do what other options do I have? Can I go get a credit card with a 0 percent interest rate? You got to be disciplined about that. And that's what leads me into the next thing I tell people is re examine your budget and really deep dive into your discretionary expenses. I wrote a book last year called Mastering Your Finances. And the central part of that is most people have no clue where their money goes. That's a fact. I see that every day in my practice. It's impossible to plan if you don't know where your money's going.

6:00 So start with that budget. Because if you say to me, Ralph, look, you want me to set up an emergency fund, but I have no idea where my money goes. How in the world are you ever going to get to the point of creating that emergency fund? So budgeting is the starting point. And then once you get that budget figured out, then Take a deep dive into your discretionary spending and look at what you are spending money on that you don't have to spend money on. There's a ton of stuff we waste money on. And if you want to improve the dynamic of your finances, you've got to look at where every single dollar goes. I'll give you an example, Mark. I had some clients in a few years back, they made really good money, husband and wife were both working. And they said to me, Ralph at the end of the month, we never have anything to show for it. And I said you're not alone.

6:41 That's very common. I've been there, done that. I said, here's what I want you to do for the next 45 days. I want you to write down every single dollar you spent. So they came back in to meet with me for the follow up and I'm looking through their finances. You may have heard this story because there's on one of my podcasts, but they came in and I'm looking at their stuff their mortgage payment, their card pay, the car payments, groceries. And then they had a line and said, ATM withdrawals. And it said two thousand dollars and I said, okay folks, where's the two thousand go? That's none of your business I said well It's your business because if you want to fix your problem, you got to figure out where your money's going now Needless to say I never saw them again But you've got to drill down to where is your money going, you know I'm not picking on Starbucks.

7:21 I'm not picking on Netflix. I'm not picking on any of those things, but if you don't have the money to live within your means, then you may have to make some sacrifices. So that's why I'm saying one of the things you can do today is re examine your budget and re examine your discretionary spending and prepare yourself by having that emergency fund. And there, there's two ways we can attack this. We can cut our expenses or we can raise our income or we can do both. And talk about diversifying our income. What, are some things that we can do? Absolutely. And a lot of people don't think about this. You're absolutely right. A lot of my small business clients will come in and say, Ralph how do I make my business stronger?

8:02 I said, well, grow your revenue. Well, that seems easier than it sounds, Ralph. And I said, we'll cut your expenses. So what you're talking about, Mark, is maybe you look for a part time job. Maybe you have a side gig there's this side hustle market that we have now whether it's delivering DoorDash or Grubhub. You can be creative. I did a podcast episode about that a few weeks ago. There are a ton of things you can do to bring in more money because the truth is, like you alluded to Mark, if you're bringing more money in, then you don't have to focus so much on what's going out. So if you've got idle time I'll give you an example. Like my son is a barber. He's in training to be a barber. So he puts in about 40 hours a week. He's a young guy, so he's still in that learning stage.

8:44 And he said to me, Dad I'm really having a hard time making ends meet. I said, well, why don't you get a second job? Well, he looked at me like I had horns. And he says, well, why would I do that? I'm already working 40 hours a week. I said, well, okay, great. But if you're not getting ahead. If you're not getting to where you are financially, then you pick up a second job. What does that look like? I don't know. Everybody's got different things they can do. God gave us all talents. He gave us all skills that we can use, figure out some creative ways to do that. Maybe you rent out a room in your house. Maybe that's a way you can bring in extra money. Now you be careful what you do there, but there's a ton of ways to find extra money. It's going to mean that you're going to need to put effort into it.

9:25 Well, you can go back and do things that we did as kids. You can cut grass you, can do chores for older couples, things like that. They're handyman type stuff. You got to think outside the box. It's funny you said that, Mark. I remember when I was about 16 years old, I always had spending money in my pocket. And a friend of mine said, how do you get that? I said, well, I cut that grass over there and I cut that grass over there and I cut that. He goes, when do you do that? I said, after school. He goes, when do you have time to play video games? I said, I don't have time to play video games, but I've always got spending money in my pocket and you don't. But you're right, Mark. And I hate to say this, but I feel like we live in a time when people are scared to work. And if you want to get ahead, you're going to have to work.

10:06 That's the bottom line. I think the Bible says if you don't work, you don't eat. Well, if you're having a hard time meeting your bills if you're having a hard time living in your own means, well, guess what? Grow your means. It might sound simple, but that's really the right answer. Right. Right. I started much younger than that on a sporadic basis. We had, two pear trees in the front yard and I would sell buckets of pears to people wanting to make pear preserves. And I think I was getting a quarter a bucket. Right. And we did the same thing. My grandfather had thrown an old pumpkin over the fence and it took root.

10:51 And we had pumpkins running out all over the place. So my cousin and I picked pumpkins. My dad owned a service station. He gave us the front curb in October and we priced out pumpkins and we sold pumpkins to make some spending money. So we, we started fairly young with that. And, that's the thing, you have to think outside the box think of things that you see every day maybe there's a an elderly couple that lives down the street from you that need help maybe there is a way to to, find some extra income there. You have to think outside the box. You're not going to sit in your bedroom or sit on the couch in your parents basement and money's going to fall into your lap.

11:34 It isn't going to happen. You're going to have to put some effort into it. And you know what you're going to find though, is that as you do that, it's going to grow because then you're going to become more of an entrepreneur now, you know, and everybody's an entrepreneur. But there are ways, definitely ways to bring in extra money at the same time. Like you said, look at your discretionary spending and say where can I cut? You don't need to stop at Starbucks. Every time you go out of the house, I don't stop there to begin with, but you understand what I'm saying? I see this every day in my practice. People say to me, and my son's an example of this. I'll say to my son, Hey where's your extra money? It goes with that. I had to buy lunch. I said, do you know what a Brown bag is?

12:15 Do you know what a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is? Look, Mark, I'm 52, I'll be 52 in September. I've done very well. God has blessed me immensely. You know what I do for lunch? I eat lunch at home. I'm happy. Your office and your home are on the same piece of property, aren't they? Absolutely. But you know what? I could go out and eat lunch every day and I could drop 20 or 30 bucks a day and I could go get a coffee. I don't drink coffee, but I could go get those things. But it doesn't help my financial situation, does it? No, not at all. And an hour or two after you eat, there's not any difference in that 20 lunch or that two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Tummy's full, taste buds of a.

12:59 Yeah. And I, and it's funny you said, I did this Monday coming up there, I'm doing a release called things I learned from growing up poor. Now it wasn't me. I didn't grow up poor. I was very fortunate, but there are lessons that you can learn by being frugal. I didn't say cheap. I said being frugal and more people need to embrace that frugal lifestyle. One of the things I think about when I listen to your podcast is how am I going to buy all these things that Mark and Krista said I need? That's part of it, isn't it? If I'm budgeting well, if I'm being a good steward of what the Lord has given me, well, then I should have plenty of money to do those things. Yeah. And we look at buying value for one thing, but our primary things that we say you need to have is water, food, a way to stay warm and a way to prepare that food.

13:50 You don't have to have the latest bug out bag gadgets. I mean, if you can't live at home for two weeks, how do you think you're going to live in the woods for two months? And you nailed it, Mark, and you just you, went right where I wanted to go. You don't have to have the latest stuff. Oh, no. We get hung up in our world now about wants versus needs. We all have wants. I'm a big Apple user. Every time that new iPhone comes out, I want it. Every time that new Apple watch comes out, I want it. But then if I ask myself, do I need it? No, the other one, uh, now, cell phone. As long as my cell phone does what I want it to do, I'm not replacing it.

14:32 Period. There you go. See the end of story. Now they build in obsolescence. I understand that. Sure. At some phone, at some point my phone's going to quit working, but there's another one over here that's an older one. It's newer than mine. But it was a family member that passed away. So I've got a backup sitting over there. I'm still not going in by the newest and latest and greatest. And I don't do that with prepping gear. I can't remember the last time I bought any prepping gear. Now we spend money every week or two weeks, every grocery trip on prepping food.

15:12 And when I say prepping food, I'm talking about canned goods and Krista's spaghetti habit. Yeah, I know she loves spaghetti, but you're going to steer clear of the zucchini, I think. You're not going to be doing any zucchini one. No, no. God made that stuff for compost, okay? There you go. Yeah I don't like zucchini and I don't know. It's just a crazy thing. I tried it many, many years ago, did not like it and I've just stuck with it. It, might be better today. I don't know but, what you're really talking about, Mark is, the lesson for today. And that is to develop an understanding of needs versus wants. And you asked me a question beginning how do you prepare for this?

15:52 I think you need to start looking at that. What are the things I need? Like you said, water, shelter, warmth, all those things. Doesn't matter whether you're doing it for preparing or just in life. Right. You got to really focus in on what you need and not what you want. Now, at one time. Before we moved up here, Krista and I cut down to one income and we lived out of our prepper closet for several months. I mean, we had no grocery store bill or very minimal milk and a few things like that, milk and bread. But We, lived very well.

16:34 We, did not change our style of eating, but we ate out of those preparations. And you mentioned something a minute ago, made me think that we need to look at that frugal lifestyle. Grandma washed her tinfoil. I'm quite a bit older than you and my grandmother would be about 120 now, or a hun. Yeah, 120 now. But she washed her tinfoil. But she took a family through the depression. And she always had something to eat for her family. And she always had something to feed those that stopped and asked for food.

17:19 I can remember a number of times people coming up on the porch, knocking on the door and saying, I'm hungry, would you have anything I could eat? And she would Just tell them to sit down and she would go in there and usually she'd fry them up some egg sandwiches and she would leave or she would give them a pretty nice sack lunch and some things that would last more than just right now. Maybe canned goods, potted meat, things like that they could put in their pocket and have for later. But we're going to have to go back to some of those things that our grandparents did. Yeah, because Mark, to be honest with you, and I don't mean to alarm anybody, but what I've been telling people is I think we're going to see Great Depression number two soon after the election.

18:06 And I hope I'm wrong. I hope I am absolutely wrong. But the truth is, I think we are going to see something that people in the younger age brackets have never seen in this country. And I will agree. And I hate to say that but I don't care who wins the election I think there's a financial cliff coming in november december And I hope i'm wrong, but I don't think I am and i've done this for a while you look back at 1979 And you look back at where the economy went. I think it's going to make 1979 look like child's play Wow, we have spent ourselves into a huge deficit We've got too many people collecting and not enough people paying.

18:47 And like I said, I'm not talking about politics. I'm talking about facts. Right. These are facts. And guess what? All bills get paid. Mm hmm. So something's going to have to give and I, like I said, I don't care who wins the election. I have a preference of who I want to win. But the truth is, I think this financial cliff is coming and we're going to have to make some hard decisions as Americans. We're going to have to decide what are we going to do for the next generation? I got a kid that's 23 and one that's 26. We've saddled them with debt that they are never going to be able to repay from a country perspective. Oh yeah. We have a new seven month old grandchild.

19:28 And we have probably settled his grandchildren with this debt. I mean, he's seven months old now and his grandchildren will probably be still paying this off if this country does not go totally down the tubes and bankrupt and, you know, lose everything. And, that's why I'm saying you've got, so clients ask me all the time, Ralph, there's not much I can do. At the government level that's true. But what you can do is you can pray. That's a really big part of it But the second thing you can really do is get your personal financial house in order So if you want me to sum up what i'm here to talk about today get your financial house in order Because here's what we're fixing to see You're going to see double digit interest rates.

20:14 If what I think is going to happen, you're going to see mortgage interest rates in the middle teens again, like in the 1980s. The scary part of that, Mark, I don't know if you remember this, my dad was actually in the gas station business and we had gas station lines. That's part of it, but the scary part is this. Mortgage interest rates went into the mid teens. That's not the scary part. The scary part, it took 11 years for them to come down. And it took a war. Really, realistically, it took the first Gulf War to solve the financial problem. And I'm hoping we don't have another war, but we are getting ready to go over a financial cliff. So what can you do? You can get your financial house in order, build up that emergency fund, have a budget that you stick to get your debts paid off, get savings set aside.

21:00 All of those things if you want to say what can I do to impact it? You can do those things and then get to the voting box and vote for people who are financially and fiscally Responsible and are going to have to make some tough decisions. We're going to have tough decisions We're going to have to really look at entitlements We're going to have to go to that third tier and talk about social security and what does that look like moving forward? We cannot get, you're never going to spend yourself in the prosperity. And that's where they think we're going, but it can't happen. You're going to have higher taxes. I hate to say that. That's what I do for a living. I try to figure out ways for people to save taxes. Well, guess what? If the government spending, somebody has got to pay those bills. How do you do that? Barring a revolution, which I'm not promoting, taxes are going to have to go up.

21:44 Who are they going to go up on? They're not just going to go up on the wealthy. They're going to go up on everybody. So, and I don't mean to be Mr. Gloom and Doom because I think there's still hope, but you've got to get your financial house in order and be prepared for like you talk about on your program, be prepared for what that looks like. We just had a tanker crash in Baltimore yesterday. It's not far from where I live. I live in Middletown, Delaware. And people don't realize the impact that that's going to have both on the supply chain and on the economy. Krista and I were talking about that last night, and this morning I saw an article that talks about how the supply chain is going to suffer because of how much goes across that bridge.

22:28 Absolutely. I don't know what the alternate route options are. I'm from the area, the alternate route options add a bunch of miles. I've been over that bridge many times. It's basically a beltway system that goes around Baltimore from Washington up to Baltimore into Philadelphia, and I'm in between those. But you're right. And, so what you're really saying though, Mark, is the average person doesn't get the whole supply chain. What does that mean? It's going to cost more. It's going to cost more. Stuff is going to cost more. And they're going to be shortages in Baltimore. Absolutely. There's going to be shortages, a lot of places, because as I understand it, this is one of the top eight ports, but it's the number one port for vehicles.

23:09 So is that going to trigger some inflation? And, this could be one of the things that, that adds to that. Well, great depression that I see is what is the, impact that, and think of the people, the local people, when this port's not operating how many jobs are going to be. Exactly. So you start depressing the economy there. But the point that I was making is with the job, not the job, but with the food shortages that we might see in the grocery stores in Baltimore, that's not going to affect my grocery store. I mean, I'm a thousand miles away in North Alabama, but those folks, if they don't have it on the shelf, they may not be able to get it.

23:52 Now, does it mean that all the food supply is gone? No, it doesn't mean that, but it does mean that you may not be able to buy the brands you want or the type of food that you wanted. There'll be food available, more expensive, all of the things that go into the supply chain issue. But You know, and if you haven't tested your budget If you haven't refined your budget and you don't have a place to go find that discretionary 20 percent more the food's going to cost you You're going to be in trouble. And if you haven't prepared from a practical standpoint, like you said, you're going to be in trouble So that's a lesson for both of our audiences, you know prepare practically, you know What happens if your grocery store can't get the things that you usually eat?

24:39 I mean, what's Krista going to do for spaghetti? You She has quite a bit stored, but you know, it is a finite amount, but no, and I'm just being funny, Mark. But no, but seriously, but think about the stress test on the person's budget. If all of a sudden you go to the grocery store and your groceries are 20 percent higher, where's that money going to come from? Yeah. Well, you know, I retired. Supposedly from the Sheriff's Department last July, and right after that we were seeing some inflation, but inflation has really taken a bite out of what my retirement plans were.

25:21 And we've, we've had to supplement that with some savings, which is, you know, good that we had that there to do that, but it's also looking for side gigs. It's looking for how else can I create an income stream? I'm trying to keep things in the practical prepping or under that umbrella and do some things. Thanks. But, people don't have the discretionary funds this year that they had two years ago. Even if they've had raises, inflation has eaten it up. I say that all the time, Mark, especially my elderly clients who are on quote fixed incomes.

26:04 Inflation hits them the hardest. If you're used to getting your social security in check, and let's say you've got a small pension and some savings, well, if all of a sudden every time you go to the grocery store, things are 30 percent higher. I laugh when they talk about how they increased minimum wage to 15 an hour. To me, that was the biggest joke in the world because all it did was just make everybody's prices go up. So the person that was making 12 an hour now makes 15, but guess how much they're spending? 30 percent more than what they were making before. It didn't help anything. Solid. I saw an article where California is going to a 20 minimum, and the effect that they're seeing is that companies are laying people off coming up to this.

26:51 Because they know it's going to happen sometime in April, I think it goes into effect. And that's a big deal, Mark. There's actually a person in California running on a 50 an hour minimum wage requirement. But you're right, I saw that on the news yesterday, and that's going to mean the mom and pop stores are going to have to pay 20 an hour. Well, guess what's going to happen? I see it around here. When you walk into that McDonald's, you don't see a person anymore, you see a machine. And you find that screen and you push those buttons for what you want, well that's a job. That costs somebody a job. That costs somebody livelihood. And when I go to the grocery store, there are self checkouts. I don't use them. I go over here and I go through the line that has a person that has been hired.

27:36 And I do that at the big box home improvement stores. And I have actually seen those where they did not have a cashier. Your only option was self checkout. And that's one of the other things I'll talk about today, too, is support local businesses. Support those people in your community. Amazon's great. I can order something on Amazon a minute from now and I'll have it by this evening. That's fantastic. But support the people in your community support your local community organizations that are there to help others Shop local shop small business. If you ask me one of the things you can do in a bad economy time That's a great thing to do Because those are the people are going to suffer the most the amazons the walmart's the targets and all that they've got enough resources No, they've got enough resources to get through it.

28:25 That's just a fact, you know Will they see a little downturn in their income probably but people still got to eat You People still need to have toiletries and all that sort of thing. So they're still going to be spending money, but the little mom and pop, and I don't say little, not necessarily little, but the, people who aren't the Amazons and the targets in the Walmarts, they really need your support. And, as I'm saying, so one of the things in an economic downturn, look for ways to build up your community. You don't want to get to the point where there's no grocery store in your town anymore, or there's no tailor or there's no dry cleaner, or there's no this, that, or the other thing. And you're seeing that right now. And that is a tragedy because what happens in the longterm is the big companies will manage the prices for you even, and you think inflation is bad now, get rid of competition and get rid of that drive to make pricing lower and guess what's going to happen.

29:19 Inflation will run crazy. It'll be like Venezuela in this country. And rhetorically, how many small towns, where, you know, I remember as a kid, we went to town on Saturday. It was only a mile and a half away, but you know, you parked and you could walk. It was two blocks long, was the main downtown, small town area I grew up in. That has been turned into different things. Those stores are not there. Back then you could get just about everything that you needed. Now, it was one block over to get to the grocery store, but you could get everything you needed in that two block area.

29:59 And if it was farming supplies, that was about four blocks. Think about that. Think about the local hardware store. I got a couple of clients that own small independent hardware stores. What are your options now? You go to the Lowe's. I don't know if you guys have Lowe's in Alabama, but we have them up here. Most of the time there's nobody working at the front end. You got to do self checkout. They don't even, Delaware is one of these crazy states where they won't even give you a bag to check out because of the quote environment. Yeah, well Lowe's was the one I was talking about that I got up there and there is no cashier. We have Lowe's, we have Home Depot, but when we can, we go over the mountain and utilize a small hardware store.

30:41 Right. And you know, I grew up with You could buy a gun, you could buy your seeds, you could buy all of your planting stuff, you could buy all of your plumbing needs. And once that closed down, now I was grown, and there were a couple of those hardware stores in town, they both wound up closing down. Closing down and my dad and I, we were refurbishing more or less. It was my great grandparent's house that I lived in for a number of years. And we would have like a plumbing issue just to pick one. We had to drive about 15 miles each way to get to where we could buy a piece of PVC or a joint for a PVC.

31:28 And we've got this thing cut in half. We need a coupling. Well, it's 15 miles away. That's, you just lost a half an hour. Both ways. Yeah, well, it was two lane back road, so it was a little bit more than that. Well, both ways, yes, but, big box stores have killed small town America. They have. And it's sad. It's a tragedy. And it's put so many people out of business. And I know that's not what we're talking about today, but it is all relevant though. Isn't it? Because if you don't support the remaining small businesses, and if we see an economic downturn, like both of us feel like is coming, it's going to be. All the more reason to support those small business people.

32:09 They're going to need your help. The little mom and pop restaurants, all those places, the little diners. I don't know if you guys got those in Alabama. We got a few of them up here, but we have a few. Yeah, but they're going away too. You're not seeing as much of that because the economies of scale from an economic perspective is really hard to compete with these big businesses because the sheer volume and the pricing they can get, but no. So one of the things I say today, Mark is shop small shop, small business, but the big thing. Now, I've heard you on a couple of episodes talking about getting your financial house in order. What are some other things that we're bleeding money That we could save money if we really checked into, if we did some comparison type things.

32:59 Talk about that for a second. I'll use Amazon as an example. Everybody thinks you go online, you go to Amazon, they've got the cheapest price. But when's the last time you comparison shopped? It might sound like a no brainer, but if you're spending money every time you're not looking for other prices, guess what? That could be a problem. The second thing, subscriptions, call your cell phone company and say, Hey, listen, I'm fixing to go somewhere else. What can you do to save me? They've got these retention people who, if you try to quit their service, they're going to talk to you, go to them and say, listen, I'm getting ready to cancel my service. What can you do for me? And Mark, I think that's a huge one. Sirius XM satellite. I do this all the time. Every time we get a new vehicle I get that free year. Then come the 13th month, I let it shut off my way.

33:41 It's like, now, are you going to turn that back on? I'm like, yeah, We're going to do that. But you call up and they'll be, oh, you know, Mr. Estep, you can get that for 60 a year. I said, let's try a lower number. And so negotiate, Mark, I guess that's what I'm saying is people And they seem to find that lower number. How funny is that? But you've got to really look around. And again, I go back to, where does your money go? Measure it. What gets measured gets done. If you don't have any clue where your money's going, I can't help you and you can't help yourself. So to answer your question big picture, what are some things you can do? Look at where your money goes. Every single dollar. You mentioned subscriptions. Talk about things like insurance policies.

34:22 We need insurance. Yeah, and I think, but you can be insurance poor too. You've got to look one of the things that when my wife and I first got together, I always had a high deductible and she goes, well, I've always had $250. I'm like, yeah, but you know what? If you have a car accident today, $250 is gone, my friend. So set your deductibles higher. What does that do? It makes your insurance rates lower, honor the things that you have. Take care of the things you have. Look at your insurance policies for your homeowners and shop those around. A lot of people like i've been with geico I think now for 20 years But every couple years i'll shop it around and say well, what does this other one have to offer? What does the other one have to offer? I know I lost my mother last year But the year before that she went to insurance shopping and she was able to install this device in her car And it fed back information or something and she ended up saving 30 percent on her on automobile insurance That's a huge one.

35:16 Look at your homeowner's policy. Are you insuring what you have? Are you insuring too much? You A lot of people have insurance to put them in the poorhouse. That's just the truth. I looked at, with my insurance company that I've been with for a long time on automotive insurance. They used your telephone to be able to track. Well, that didn't work real well for me at that point in time, because eight hours, 10 hours a day, four days a week, I'm a law enforcement officer. And sometimes we didn't drive quite like the insurance company would have hoped for. Oh, yeah. You're doing a lot of hard stops and hard fast goes and all that, right? Yeah. Yeah. And 130 mile an hour car chases, things like that.

35:59 So now that I'm out of that, that is something I'm glad you mentioned that. That is something that I think I will re examine and see what I can save on that. Another thing you can do, Mark, and this sounds like a no brainer, but we spend a lot of money on food. We spend a lot of money eating out. Well, think about things like planning your meals better. Think about batch cooking. If you're going to have a get together with somebody, instead of going to a restaurant, have a potluck dinner. Everybody brings a little piece of that. We did one Monday night at sister in law's house. We had a niece in town that lives out of town. Her and the baby were here. And so that's exactly what we did.

36:40 And it doesn't cost anybody a ton of money. Yeah, another thing you can do, like when I was a kid, my mother used to shop the no frills aisle at the grocery store. Look for generic brands. There's so many things you can do, but if you don't know where your money's going, you don't know where you're spending your money, look at how much you're spending on eating out. Look at how much you're spending on Grubhub or those, you know, of course it's easy. Of course it is. But look, I'm a type 2 diabetic. I shouldn't be eating a lot of that garbage either. I'm right there with you. But if I look at it, right, and I say, okay, well, what can I do to save money? Eat at home. Plan your meals ahead of time. Before you go to the grocery store, have a plan of what you're going to buy. Because guess what?

37:20 The grocery store is there to make money. They're going to entice you into buying other stuff. But if you go in there with a list of here's what I need, because here's our meal plan for the next seven days, I've planned for my lunches, I plan for my breakfast, I plan for my snacks. I don't have to run out and get McDonald's ice cream or something like that. Then you're going to get ahead financially. Yeah. And I'm, fortunate there. We do that. We. We probably eat out once every three or four weeks now, and Krista is a good cook and she does that no frills stuff. there are a few things that we're adamant about the name brand. Toilet tissue being one that's not the, sandpaper, but a few soups.

38:06 We just really prefer this one. Corned beef hash is one that's me. My wife loves corned beef hash. I never had a hankering for it. Oh, I love it. I love it. Scramble some eggs in it and it's good that way. But I want the Hormel. And we've tried the generic and it's just not the same. To me, so that's one of the items that we stick with the name brand, but everything else in that cabinet in there and in our prepper closet is the no frills stuff. And we, shop for bargains. She came in the other day and she said, and I've forgotten even what item it was.

38:47 She said, but they, had buy two, get two. We definitely advocate the bow, you know, the bogos, the buy one, get one free. And she does a real good job with that, and one goes in the closet to cook, and the other one goes in the prepper closet. We were in there one day, and they had a non advertised, and you really had to be looking for it, but it was buy two, get six. And so we bought four, and got twelve. And it was something that we know we're going to use and the thing Southern ladies can't cook without cream of something soup, cream of mushroom cream of chicken, all kinds of, cream of whatever recipes.

39:35 So that's a good place to go to the wholesale club and buy a case by 24 soups because she's going to use them. Which actually brings up another point, and I just read an article about this the other day. I'll leave your listeners with this too. Be careful of the dollar stores. A lot of people don't realize that, but they've shrunk the size of the stuff and you think you're getting a deal. Oh, it's a dollar store. Everything is cheap. Well, you get what you pay for. Exactly. My grandfather used to always say he would always look for quality over quantity. Exactly. Like you said, there's certain things that you want to look for quality. You don't want to be replacing this stuff, but the dollar stores are a trap.

40:18 And you had to be really careful of that because you are better off to know what you need, buy it in bulk, less packaging, all those kinds of things. But the dollar stores are a trap and I'm not picking on the dollar stores because they serve a purpose. But if you look, at. Where we are in communities now every community's got a dollar general or a dollar tree or something like that But unfortunately, I think they're making people poorer and I hate to say it But I really do believe that because they're enticing you to buy smaller stuff with more packaging And dollar for dollar it's costing you more yeah, and I think about flashlights, you know, I love flashlights, we've got a lot of flashlights around here, but the dollar store flashlights are great to buy for the three year old to run around the house with, because when I pull my flashlight out, he's gonna try to take it away from me.

41:11 Now, I buy better flashlights for me, because I keep using them, and I depend on them, but a dollar flashlight is fine for that. And that's where the necessities, you got to be really careful buying your necessities at the dollar stores because you're not doing yourself a favor. You think you are, and it's that perception of, Oh, it's only a dollar. Will those dollars add up? Yes, they do. Well, Ralph, I do appreciate you being here with us today. How can people find your podcast and how can people get in touch with you if they want some accounting advice? The easiest thing to do is you go to my podcast website and that's real easy. It's askralphpodcast.com that's a s k r a l p h p o d c a s t.

41:58 com. There's a ton of information out there. I've got over 300 episodes in the catalog. There is a store there where you can buy both of my books. You can schedule an appointment with me. My goal in this stage of my life is to help people. If I can help one person, I feel like I've done my job for today. So go there. I encourage you to go listen to, I'm not looking for your money. I'm not trying to, sell subscriptions to the website. All the information out there is free. Now, if you want to set up an appointment with me to look at what are some things that I can do individually? Absolutely. I'll meet with you. I don't care where you're located in the world. We're doing this meeting right now through zoom. I have clients all over the world. You pay me a consultation fee and I guarantee dollar for dollar.

42:39 I'm going to save you 10 times what you paid for that consultation. Wow. That is strong, Ralph. We do appreciate you being here and we'll be looking for your next podcast. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate your time. And I wish the best to you and Krista, as you continue to give us practical advice because stuff happens. We have to stay prepared. Amen.