Welcome to Too Good to be True, an investigative podcast about exposing the scams, schemes, and financial cults trying to separate you from your money.

Well, hello and welcome back.

Hello.

So I am Julia Lorenz Olson.

I am your co-host, and I'm a accredited financial counselor and a co-creator on PBS's

Two Cents.

And I am co-host Ryan Hulahan.

I am a journalist and drag artist in New York

City. All right. Are you ready for like a little hint of what we're going to talk about today?

Yes, please. What are we doing? Okay. Buckle up. Cars. Beep, beep. So we were talking about cars

in a broader sense, car culture and how it's really kind of impacted the world that we live in. Now, I kind of come from a car background. I mean, my father worked in the car business for almost my entire life. I grew up around cars. I remember our first one that we had as a family when we moved

to the States. I mean, it was this tank of like a rusty red Volvo. And I have very distinct

memories every time we got a new car. I remember when we got a green station wagon and being so excited to sit in the

back. Oh, heck yes. I would pretend that it was like a limousine and the driver couldn't see me and I were

just like to shenanigans in the back. And honestly, you know, I live in a place where owning a car is basically unessential. I mean, you can't get from place to place on public transportation with any sort of reliability where I live in Texas. I would be trapped. I don't drive. And I have, I had my license license it's since expired and I never renewed it

I don't drive but we you know I grew up my parents had cars I did not take public transit

ever and we coveted new cars we were obsessed with getting new cars and when we did yeah it was

a big event and we would only get a new one every like five years and it would be my dad's car

and then my mom's car and then my dad's car and my dad's car. Yeah. We would replace them like that. And I didn't really think about the fact that I didn't love driving or the amount of work and responsibility a car is. So now I live without a car and I live in a very walkable place. But that's by choice. and I pay, you know, a very different... A different kind of cost. A different kind of cost.

Yeah. I live in a very walkable place, but that's by choice. And I pay, you know, a very different...

A different kind of cost. A different kind of cost. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I'm kind of at a

time in my life. I'm more sort of into my financial journey, as it were. And I've done this a

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