We're going to be reacting to Caleb Hammer's biggest financial freakout. If you don't know who Caleb Hammer is, he brings people on his show and essentially yells at them for bad decisions that they're making. $70,000 in eight months, that's spending. He does help them. Think of like Dave Ramsey, a lot younger, not a Christian, and just like in people's faces. So love Caleb Hammer's work. And when the team said this is his biggest freakout, I was like, okay, there's no way. I mean, this guy has... train wrecks of individuals the financial train wrecks i should say of individuals on his show of like what what goes on here so we're gonna list it watch this clip i'm gonna give context because we're not gonna spend the hour plus watching the whole interview so we're gonna give you context of some of the details and then i'm gonna give you my two cents at the end of this much more money to pay down debts much easier i'm looking at getting rid of your spending will just go up because look where you are. or has 70 000 hours of debt why no you're confident with the no you're 100 confident you've had an income before correct but how long has she not had an income uh since august yeah eight months you then that is when our credit this is not 70 000 in eight months that's spending you well 70 000 in eight months our spending has skyrocketed because we also moved in after we got married because we're not allowed to live together before we oh no i moved into a place that means i have to spend 70 000 hours today what are you talking about dude A lot of our expenses were with her not having a job. We have to put on credit cards. $70,000. That is you living above your means. You do not need to live on $70,000 in eight months. We are talking at that point, you are living off of $110,000 a year. That is you are not making that up with an income. What are you talking about? A lot of this stuff over the past year are one-time purchases that are not going to be made in subsequent years. And you need them to survive. One-time purchases. And you need them to survive. One-time purchases. And you need them to survive. This is what I'm talking about. One-time purchases. To survive. That are not going to be made in 2025. It doesn't matter. I just want to point out, this is why Caleb Hammer is the GOAT, because he's willing to have these conversations in person. Like, I'm feeling uncomfortable watching this, and he's having this in person. And I mean, I'm just, hats off to you, Caleb, because I would be, it would be hard for me to be this passionate. I would even, I think Dave Ramsey wouldn't even be this passionate. Obviously, Dave Ramsey wouldn't swear like this, but it would just be, I would love to know your thoughts around this and I think that's why Caleb Hammer gets the clicks and I think sometimes he can be a little over the top because he knows that gets the clicks. You needed them to survive. So our spending... Hey, you did it! Our spending is going to go down because of those one-time purchases are no longer on the budget. That's not how this works. Listen, listen, listen. Next year maybe you'll want to buy a chin. Oh man, that's weird. I don't know what's going to happen. At some point, everything gets pushed. I'm not a fan of making fun of things that people can't control. Everything, you will find a replacement for that spending. The spending that you did last year that are one-time, you're going to find one-time purchases next year. I only have four of these conversations a week. That's it. For three years. So you're saying my position is the same as everybody else's position and I'm not unique in any way. So why would I be on this podcast in the first place? Yeah, basically because... essentially everyone that comes on the show trust me i've heard that this show just because our spending was bad in the last 12 months does not mean it's going to be bad in the subsequent 12 months or the 12 months after that behavior just changes because we wake up we are here to get our behavior changed and look at what we need to change i will give you advice on what you should and should not do but you spend a lot of our behavior yeah if you follow it yes that's what we want to do is follow it that's why we're here that's why we're here okay can bingo got Buddy, everyone says that. Again, you think you're unique? And to be fair, though, stop being an a-hole, Caleb. Like, they are here on your show. And I will say, like, this person's, like, you know, coming at you, and they're going back and forth. But it's probably nerve-wracking coming on the show. Yeah, I don't know if they make any money. Obviously, they get, you know, clicks and all that stuff. But it's nerve-wracking. And then when you have someone that you might look up to just, like, in your face, I can see where it can, you know. rub you the wrong way and you can get defensive. And to be fair, they are coming on the show and there's a lot of people that are in worse shape that aren't willing to even talk about it. So for that, I do want to commend them more. And I commend anyone that calls into any type of show. They're making a step. They're making a step, whereas there are people out there that aren't even looking at reality or not even acknowledging that they may have a problem. You're saying exactly what everyone says every single time. Okay, I'm here to get help. If I didn't want help, I would not be here. Then maybe you should f***ing listen instead of interjecting. Oh yeah, go ahead, interject. No, go ahead. There it is. Okay, your one-time purchases that you did last year, you will have one-time purchases for the rest of your life. This is what happens every single time. And even still, even still, she did not have a job since the middle of last year, since after the middle of last year, and you guys chose. to live on $120,000 even if they're one-time purchases. I don't give a f***. You chose to live off of $120,000 a year when you barely make scraps. So I don't give a f*** if they're one-time purchases. You chose that. You chose that. So how about we go into the finances and look what we can fix. Buddy, it's a fix. Here, here's a fix. Let me give you a little fix. This will solve your entire issue and we can fast forward instead of doing an hour and a half. Here's a fix. $120,000 in a year. You dumb ass making $30,000. Okay, if we take a step back, obviously everyone's got different styles. And I want to start with a little bit of extra context. And then we can go into what I would say. And again, it's always easy for me to, after the fact, Monday morning quarterback kind of telling you what I would say, how I would go about it. But let's just take a deep breath and let's look at the facts. So the facts are This guy is a substitute teacher. He makes $2,800 a month. Okay. So that's a little bit, a little bit of context. He also is trying to work for CVS, $19 an hour that he gets. And so he's, he's making a little bit of side income, but it's just not, you know, not great. He's in school to get his master's with a background of user experience degree. This is, can be very common with people that they like their whole goal is to get more education, more education, more education. Sometimes more education doesn't. mean more money. But let's just assume, and I don't have the background, but maybe there's like a real clear like master's user experience. And this is like the clear path of how he's going to make potentially more money. And so again, like that's something that I'm highlighting. Okay. That's highlighting because the reason I'm highlighting it is you are your greatest asset and your greatest ability early on is to make money. I'm not even worried right now about investing, especially in their situation. I'm asking the question. How do we make more than what you're making? How do we make more? Because that becomes that's an issue. I know Caleb Hammer is talking about the crazy spending, which we'll address in a second. But the lack of making money is an issue, and it's a one-two punch because we could talk about lower your spending, lower your spending, lower your spending. And again, you are being responsible, responsible, responsible, but at the end of the day, you can only lower your spending so much. and I like to do both is can we lower spending and can we make more? And if you can do both, like that is a, that is like a two for one kind of deal. So, uh, okay. So then it looks like his wife doesn't work period from, um, Zambia and, um, didn't really make any money. And that was like when I was looking at these notes, I was like, okay, doesn't have a work visa. Okay. It It doesn't have a work visa. It's taking a little bit longer, but that. Like, do you guys buy like it? Do you need? How do I say this? How do I say this without getting anyone in trouble? I know people very close to me say that can read between the lines and they hire people to do certain things that I or my friends or the people very close to me have never asked for their work visa. What I'm trying to say is you don't need a work visa to create value. That's that's all I'm saying. I'm trying not to get canceled in the comments here, but you don't need a work visa to create. create value to earn to earn income um you know i've never asked a cleaner i've never asked people that have cut our grass i've never asked you know you know even people that have done like help around the house you know not every of them need a house visa and so i think this mentality and i wrote this down like this mentality of have to have to anytime someone's like i have to it's like victim victim victim victim like that's a that's a mind cancer and i it's i'm very sensitive to that because Um, that, that's going to get you nowhere in life. In fact, it is, it is the thing that's going to be the Johnny rain cloud over anything you do. You're always gonna, uh, not get to where you want to go because of that mindset. So essentially they're making 30 grand a year and they're living off 120. Now, again, again, to be fair, this concept of a one-time purchases Make sense. Justifying but Caleb's had conversation after conversation after conversation and there will always be excuses for making bad choices And you'll say this is the last time I won't do this again And it's like how does that work out for most people? and so it doesn't and so the reality is you are you're spending is out of freaking control and That in itself like there's no way to to justify that and you in like that is a that's that's a train wreck Happening and ready to happen in real time. So what are some of these one-time purchases? They bought couches. They bought TVs. They bought a sewing machine, which is very interesting. And I think Caleb Hammer asked them about the sewing machine. And it was like the idea was maybe to make money. But of course, what do you think? Would you think they actually made money on the sewing machine? No, like no. But maybe that's why they purchased it. Desk, plates, dishes, vacation. I bet you that they've probably spent more money on vacations than I have spent. personally in the last year. Just a thought. And here's another thought. Why in the world are you going on vacation in this season? That is the most American thing that I've ever heard of. We're in this financial situation, but we deserve a vacation. And also, they eat out constantly because this person's wife doesn't like to cook. Doesn't like to cook, so you're just going to eat out. Those are the decisions. Those are the mindsets that are just like, well, I don't have to tell you. I... I do not know what to tell you because I get anxiety. And this is a problem. This is the reverse problem. I get problems spending money when I have it. It's just hard for me to spend money because I value what goes into making money. And it's just hard for me to just spend it flippantly. In fact, even for our business, we're looking at ways to save money on desk and all these things just because it's in my DNA. And we're doing way better, way better than what these people are doing. Way better. We're not even on the same planet. And yet we're probably putting in more time. and research and figure out, do we really need that thing? Uh, then what they're doing and, and they're, they're going, they're, they're going on vacations and, and they're also eating out because they don't like to cook that, that for me would trigger. And that's where I would just be like, okay, we, we gotta have, we gotta have a come to Jesus moment here because that mentality is, is unacceptable. And you will, you will lose a hundred percent of the time. In fact, I'm just— I'm scared by the fact the mentality of these two people getting married and these two people having children. Like I don't want to be mean, but it's like that this is why it's so hard to reason with some people is like these people are having kids. And then they're teaching those kids the victim mentality. We're not even and it's always other people's fault and all that. And then your kids have no shot, no shot. And so I wasn't planning on talking about that, but that gets me fired up. And then and so anyways. They got massive debt. No wonder. You make $30,000, you pay $120,000 with no repayment plan. And unemployment and then just lifestyle versus reality are all the talking points that we could go into. And so here's a thought. So with all of that, I try to look through a more optimistic lens, which is probably why my channel is a lot smaller than Caleb Hammer's channel. Caleb's Unite, but Caleb Hammer's got a lot more people that follow him because it's like, again. Even in the midst of this, if I was sitting across the table from them, okay, it's like, yeah, we got to wake up. Like this is not acceptable and like to just lay out like all these excuses these one time, unacceptable. So where do we want to start? Let's first start by what's the goal? What is the goal? And try to figure out like what does intentional living look like? What does what do you actually want in your life? What are some values? And the reason you go down these things, you might say like, Caleb, why are you even talking about values? Like, They're in train wreck. The reason you talk about values is then we can reference something back to what they're saying, what they value. Because I bet you if we did a value exercise and they listed integrity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they listed some things, values. Like we could say do these decisions align with what you're telling me is the most important thing. Like that's what I love is a lot of people think like this whole like you have one life, intentional living is like a cop-out. No, it's actually like the most effective way to coach people because it's like. This is what you're telling me is important. Are these decisions aligning? I guarantee you that their decisions are not aligned with their dreams. And I don't need to scream at them to point that out. So that's number one. Second thing is we got to figure out the making money aspect. I understand it's easy to attack their spending decisions. We're going to do that in a second. But we got to figure out what's going on here. It's for this couple to be making $30,000 a year. Yeah, just not cutting it, not cutting it. And this person's getting a master's in user experience. We got to figure something out. And so how I would go about that is I would do an audit. do your skill set audit, do your time audit. And I guarantee you, these are the same type of people that are like, well, we're newly married, so we're not gonna work on weekends because we're gonna keep each other first and we're not gonna work past 5 p.m. because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we're just, the summers are really important to us. So we're not, and that, I just have no sympathy for that. And it's one thing, it's one thing if you love your life and you're on a good track and you're like, I don't need to make more money. I'm gonna spend time with my family. I'm cool with that. I'm 100% cool with that. I'm cool with the entrepreneurs out there that are like, hey, I don't need to make more money. I'm happy with my business. My business is working for me. I'm cool with that. But the moment that someone complains or the moment that someone is not in a situation and there's an obvious area and the obvious area is making more money. And the moment that you give excuses to why you can't do that, I don't freak out like Caleb, but I mean And we're not going anywhere until we address why this is the case. I talked to a person recently, and they were telling me about their situation, and they were just saying how they didn't want to work at certain jobs because they felt like it was like they used the word like they're a slavery kind of deal. And I just cut it out immediately. I was like that is just cut that language out. You have no get that mindset out. Yeah, you don't need to work at these jobs the rest of your life, but we got to be scrappy and then continue to up-level. And up-leveling meaning what that tells me when someone makes $30,000 a year is they're not providing a ton of value to the world. They're just not. And so you have to ask the question, how in my skill sets and my time can I provide more value in the world? And by providing more value to people, you will make more money. And it could literally be like go down the list. But the higher the value, the higher leverage value that you can give someone. the more money you will make. And we'll have that exercise. And we'll also have that exercise with this gentleman's wife who's not working at all and saying, okay, I get it. You don't have a worker's visa, so you can't have certain jobs. What are we going to do? Are we going to sit around and eat out and watch TV? Or are we going to do something about it? And maybe you're going to clean and maybe cleaning is below you, but you're going to clean right now until you have a worker visa so you can make more money. These are conversations and we're going to have that. And then we're going to hit period. We're going to ask any questions and we're going to figure out what is the next step there. Hey guys, I just want to interrupt real quick. If you're watching this and have an indexed universal life policy, a whole life policy, have any type of insurance policy in general. And you're like, I want to know if I'm on the right track. I want to know if this is set up properly. We at Better Wealth want to help you. We want to give you a free policy analysis and show you, are you on the right track? Is there some things that you potentially could be doing better? And so we have a link down below that you will have access to. We would encourage you, if you have a policy and you want to see if you're on the right track, check that out. And if you're someone that's watching this and you're like, I want to talk to someone, maybe setting up a policy for myself or I have questions, we would love to serve you. You can also see a link to have a call with someone on our team. Back to the episode. One side point that I want to make is I saw that one of their one-time purchases is a TV. Now, TVs are very interesting to me. They're actually very cheap. TVs are some of the most cheap, most expensive things that you can buy in your life. Let me explain. They're very cheap. I just bought a big TV for less than a thousand bucks and it blew my mind that it was like, how is this even possible? And so I'm like, that's, that's insane. And yet the sad reality is TVs can be one of the most expensive things in your life because you buy them and what do you do? You sit in front of them and become a zombie. And, and as a result, you, it's just like sucks the living energy and the ability to create out, out and, and, And it's a way to cope. Eating out is a way to cope as well. It's funny to me that one of the things that they bought were dishes, but they don't cook. It's just ironic. But the idea is like TVs could literally be like one of the things that I would say is like is it realistic to like literally throw your TVs out or like unplug them until we hit a certain end? And that might be so extreme, Caleb, but I don't really care. That's one of the things. It's like maybe we and again, I don't know if they bought new couches or Facebook Marketplace. I'll just say personally. We did not buy any new couches personally, and we're in a little bit different situation personally than these couples. We didn't when we bought a home, we did not buy a new couch, period. Facebook marketing goes, I'm not saying you have to do that. I'm not saying we had to do that financially. That was a choice that we made because when we looked at the pros and cons, it was like, of course we save all this money. Why wouldn't we do that? That's the decision we made, and so it's, again, like I'm not telling you anything that I wouldn't do myself. and And I make a lot more than $30,000 a year. So I think I hit that point hard enough. Now let's go to the spending. Okay, so the reason I so many times we combine everything into one, and there are some people it's so interesting because you could be like, Caleb, that's hypocritical. I talk to some people. Some of my friends spend a million dollars a year, and they can. They're like they make a lot more than that, and they spend a lot, and it might freak me out. And would I make those same choices? Probably not, but they can. It's like who am I? You're spending a million dollars a year, and you're making more than that. You do you. And so I have no problem with the dollar amount. In fact $120,000 a year, I can resonate with that more than you know because I'm there and probably I spend probably a little bit more. So I have no problem with the dollar amount. What I have a problem with is the range of gap between what you're making and what you're spending. And for that, I go, okay, that's where you are going to make excuses over and over and over again, and that is the issue. And so then we're looking at where where where are we living? Why are we living? And, and some of the most important things to cut out would be where you're living, what you're driving, how you're getting around, um, vacations. I don't even want to start on vacations. We'll just pretend that never happened. Cause that would be so hard for me. Like I would, it'd be so hard for me to even think about a vacation right now in that situation. Um, and then I would look at, so yeah, I would homes, transportation are, are like the two, two main things and then eating out. And this is where you wonder why I give Dave Ramsey's flowers. These are the a lot of people are in this situation, and it's like what you've got to do is you've got to eat less. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. Rice and beans, figure out how to cook. Figure out something where you can get you probably eat just as healthy, get just as much protein and save a lot of money. I would look at that. I would really ask the question, this is not a time to be living high off the hog. What's the cheapest rent that we can get? And is there a world, depending, is like transportation, like where can we be as lean as possible? And then where can every time that we have, can we make money? And I also want to say this, enjoy the journey. Because I hate the mentality that you have to have a vacation to enjoy your life. like The times that I had some of the most fun is when I was working the most. I mean, I literally gutted chickens as one of my first jobs, and that was such a fun job. And I enjoyed it in the midst of that. And every job that I've had, I've enjoyed. And in the midst of even running Better Wealth and doing what we're doing, I enjoy it. Now, that doesn't mean I enjoy every aspect of it. But I've learned, I've had the mindset of enjoying hard work. I have the mindset of enjoying what we're doing. what we're doing and, and yeah, our vacation's fun and hanging, of course, but I'm not going to be that type of person that like needs that to, to, um, needs that to like subsidize my horrible life working so hard. And so I think there's a mindset around work, around making money. And, and at the end of the day, it's a value, it's a values problem. And it's like, we've got to create more. So get really crystal clear about what you want. Let's get, let's get clear with values. And this might seem like such a waste of time, but it's not. Get really clear on what you want. It's important to dream because if you have nothing to work towards, if you have no dreams, if you don't see a future, a brighter future, then what's the point? This is why there are people making bad decisions about their lives and all because a lot of times the future is not bright and there's nothing to look forward to. Then the second thing is we got to make more money and let's figure out all the ways to make more money. Look at your time. Look at your skill sets. Look at the people in your network and figure out how to make more money. And And again, that's exciting because we can turn things around in a heartbeat with that and then cut out any unnecessary spending, any unnecessary spending, period. And those three things in tandem are where we would start. And then we would start hitting milestones when it's okay to start spending a little bit more. But it's so hard for me to even say that out loud in a financial situation like that. And so congrats to Caleb Hammer for getting the clicks, for bringing exposure to this. If he didn't have a channel, it's easy for me to critique someone, but I'm not going to because at the end of the day, he's got the channel. He's getting views. He got this couple on. Hopefully the couple had a holy crap moment and are making better choices. And so I'm going to continue to be a fan of what Caleb Hammer does, and I'm inspired to do more conversations and might start a call-in show or some type of show where I interact with people because this is fun stuff. Thank you for watching.
.png)