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Guaranteed Human. Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel. I'm Matt. Today, directly from listeners today, Jill.

This is our Ask How to Money episode. You know that. A lot of listeners know that. What they don't know is that we're going to take a question today about pet insurance, which everyone knows what your answer is going to be. It's just going to be just, you just take some dirt and rub some dirt into it. And that's going to make everything better. Yeah. That'll be a quick one. Are you bleeding profusely? Put dirt on it. That's actually, that's not going to be the answer, of course. We're going to talk about 0% balance transfer cards in order to pay down some debts. Another listener is making sure that the HSA is as good as he thinks it is. He wants to make sure he wants to dot his eyes, cross his T's before he starts investing a whole lot of money into that. And by the way,

which makes sense. I mean, some of these, we're going to have a nuanced conversation about the

pet thing. I just did that because we tend to receive hate mail when we give pet advice. Well, I have two

pets and I'll just give a little foreshadowing. I don't have any insurance on those pets. They're cats.

You said that you have pets. I didn't think that you actually claim them. Yeah, they're not, they're technically my daughters, and she's the one who... You allow them to squat in charge. Okay. Does that mean she changes like the litter? They're closest to my wife, though. Like, they burrow into her when she's sleeping. It's incredible. She's kind. They're a good judge of character, I think, those cats. Every once in a while they pop up and like give me a love, but they know that it's just not my scam. They're like, oh yeah, he did something good today. I'm willing to show him some affection. Human love. You know this. I like hugs, but animal love not as much. Not so much. Yeah. I wanted to share a

quick story. I was driving around yesterday with the kids and I wanted to see if this is something that

you do, basically. But we were driving around. The kids were with me and we got to having a conversation

about the cost of cars, like our oldest daughter in particular. I was like, how much does that car

cost? It was actually kind of a fun game. I was like, how much does that car cost?

And it's actually kind of a fun game. So we're driving around and she points to like a new Lexus GX or something like that. She's like, how much does that cost? I'm like, oh, like $70,000 probably at least. Yeah, that's the base model. She points to like a van sort of like hours. I'm like, that one actually looks a little bit newer than ours. I'm going to say 15,000, like 15K,

maybe for that guy. There's, and then there's like an old Dodge neon that drives by. She's like, what about that one? I was like, honestly, maybe a thousand bucks. Like this thing. Bumper falling off. It had, it wasn't in terrible shape, but it was just, you can just tell it was old.

I mean, I'm guessing this was like an early 2000s Dodge Neon. And, uh, and it just really surprised me. She's like, no way. And she's like, I could, she's like, I've got enough money to buy that car. I'm like, yeah. And it was just what it reminded me of was that, well, first of all, the fact that we're talking about this, we're normalizing conversations about what things cost, right? As we approach purchases that we make with value in mind. And that's a goal of ours here on the show is like we're talking about these things to make it just more familiar to encourage folks to have these same conversations about earning, spending, saving,

investing, and also in a similar way to be able to have those conversations with, not only with you, our listeners, but with our kids, too. It's just a good way for us to talk about it in a non-loaded

kind of tense way, a non-tense way, I'm sorry, is what I'm saying, just to talk about the cost of things and expectations, perhaps. That's funny. On the other side of the equation, my kids have been asking me a lot of questions about how much people make for doing certain jobs. So they're asking more questions about earning. And they're like, so we're big fans of Billy Strings, the bluegrass musician in our house. and they're like, does Billy Strings make more playing one show than you make an entire year?

And I'm like, yeah,

quite possibly. He might. He's playing for like 10,000 fans. So maybe he does. And then they're like, okay, the school superintendent, who makes more, you or him? And I'm like, all right, well, that's that's public data actually yeah we can go see how much he makes look that up right there yeah so they're just asking questions about different jobs and how much people make for doing their jobs that's funny

uh and That's public data, actually. We can go see how much he makes. We can look that up right there. Yeah, so they're just asking questions about different jobs and how much people make for doing their jobs. That's funny. And it's just, so it's just kind of fun to talk to. Well, actually, like, seven or eight years ago, Billy probably wasn't making much money, but I was crushing it because he's attracted to a wide fan base. But it's interesting because sometimes... Also one in a million, so don't think you're going to go out there and, yeah, take the superstar musical artist route.

But, yeah, but it is worth considering.

It's interesting that they're like, then they're picking out people closer around, like, okay, what about that person?

Do you make more than that guy than that?

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