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Learn more at aarp.org skills welcome to how to Money. I'm Joel and yes again Matt is not here. Promise he'll be back soon. Today we're talking about dumpster diving, insurance, dodging and pudgy penguins. Yeah, that's right. Matt has spent multiple weeks behind bars and I can't tell you the full story. No, I'm just kidding. He's. Matt spends some time with his family. He'll be back soon. This is kind of a summer summer thing where I'm hosting this Friday flight by myself. But I hope this is the last Friday flight I host solo because it's not nearly as fun doing it by myself, even though I still love getting to talk about personal finances. And I'm glad you're along for today's Friday flight. Before I get to all the stories we found interesting, including pudgy penguins, it's a really interesting one. NFTs are back with a vengeance. I wanted to quickly highlight an email that listener Donnie sent. He lives in Maryland and there are all sorts of things in the personal finance world that even as someone who hosts a personal finance podcast, I'm unaware of. And a lot of that is because there are state specific programs or just small fine nuances that I have not begun to appreciate or research in depth yet. And so Donnie sent this email and at least for listeners in Maryland, and then maybe check and see if this, something like this is available in your state as well. There are cool perks for people who stick money aside in 529 plans for their kids. And so Donnie basically wrote and told me and gave a lot of detail on this. So look it up for yourself on the Maryland529.com webpage for details. But if you meet certain income requirements, basically if you don't make a ton of money and actually a ton of money, well that's in the eye of the beholder. But you can get a state match to your 529 plan in order to save for your kids college. So not only have 529 plans gotten more flexible lately and I looked up the Maryland 529 plan to see what the cost and expenses look like on some of those investments. They're quite low. So the Maryland 529 plan is I would say at least a really good solid one. Well, if you meet certain income requirements and you're prone to interested in saving for your kid's future, you might be able to get matching funds for from the state for making those contributions. Interesting thing, you have to you can't claim a state tax deduction and get this state contribution. So it's important, Donnie said to do the math to see which one is gonna work out better for you, but you might be able to get 500 bucks and maybe you would have only saved a hundred bucks in taxes or something like that for making this contribution. And in that case you'd want to take the state $500 contribution and you're getting out. It's like a net $400 win. So again, all of the those details are available on Maryland529.com, but it just reminded me like, oh man, there's so much to learn about personal finance. It never gets boring to me. And there are so many ways that the system is set up for people who are at least curious and paying attention to benefit. And if you live in Maryland, and again, if someone else, by the way, if you live in another state and you're like my state does something similar, shoot me an email. Like we want to highlight these things on the show. We want to make people aware of incredible benefits or free money. Right? This is almost like 401k match at work on steroids though, for your 529 plan. So it's really cool. All right. Congrats to all the graduates. I'm seeing more and more pictures posted. And then there's all these yard signs, the signs in front of neighborhoods, at least where I live, saying congrats to these grads and hey, where are they going to college. Well, and for college graduates in particular, you've been putting in tons of work for a lot of years. It's paid off with a degree. And we talked about the job market last week and how it's not as good as it has been for new college grads. But here's one thing that I wasn't wasn't on my radar until I saw an article in Indy Week and it was that college graduates tend to leave a lot of their possessions behind when they fly the cooperation. When they leave the dorm or whatever campus housing or off campus housing they live in, they tend to leave a lot of their stuff. They just maybe it's they don't have like a U haul or a trailer to stick all their stuff in. And so a lot of it ends up at the dumpster. Could be some really nice stuff, right? It could be some trash that nobody really wants, but it could be a nice couch or it could be in the case of this article, who wrote for Indie Week, she talked about salvaging some really nice stuff that graduates release leaving behind at the school closest to her high end tables, luxury sneakers, Lululemon workout stuff like shoved in a bag, fancy appliances like nice toasters and microwaves and stuff like that. And it one person's trash is another person's treasure. And so the author, she basically highlighted how she was able to salvage almost $7,000 worth of stuff to prevent it from being thrown in the trash and to put it to use herself and she created a spreadsheet, and she said, hey, this. This is something I'm going to keep. This is something I'm going to sell. This is something I'm going to give away. And I thought that was so cool. I mean, it really is. The one person's trash is another person's treasure. It's the most apt phrase here. Because as the college person, you're saying, this is a burden to me. I don't have anywhere to put it. Maybe I'm moving back home with mom and dad for a few months. They don't have room for this stuff, or I don't know where I'm going to end up. Maybe I'm sleeping on a friend's couch for a couple of weeks, and then I'll figure it out. And so in the interim, you just don't have anywhere to put it. So it ends up on the curb or it ends up in the trash can. I think this happens. I've heard from people in New York City right around the first of the month, because there are fewer places to store stuff. You just find stuff on the curb that you. Otherwise you're like, why are they getting rid of this? And it's because they just can't take it with them. And it's more of a pain, more of a hassle to take it. And if you can deal with the hassle of moving it, you just are the proud owner of something fairly nice that someone else tossed out. And I think it also says something about our culture that we live in an era of disposable stuff, Right? And it makes me think that even if an item is initially more expensive, it can cost you less over time to buy the nicer thing up front and to hold on to it. But then also because of extreme wealth in this country, when you think about the fact that, like, we have, on average, as a country, we're the wealthiest country in the history of the world, there's room here for entrepreneurs to make money based on the fact that. Based on some arbitrage, right? The fact that somebody has said, oh, I used this. I no longer need it. I'm tossing it aside. And you can step in and be the middleman or woman to enjoy the profit of that. I have friends who have done this before, whether it's with used clothing, they've started businesses where they go to thrift stores and buy stuff and list it on ebay. And I'm not saying that it's not a job. It is. It takes time. But if you have an Eye for that stuff. You can make a living literally just reselling things. Another friend who said, who did that with mid century furniture. And he just knows where to go, what to look for. And once you get an eye for that, you're able to find some things for 100 bucks that sell for thousands of dollars. And this reminded me of that where people tossing stuff out, you can benefit from at least just the way people don't take care of their stuff or get rid of it prematurely at the very least. By the way, I wish folks would donate that stuff so people can benefit instead of putting it next to the dumpster, tossing it in the trash, and then I don't know, maybe you don't have time for a side hustle, you're not interested. But I think it's an underrated way to, to get cool stuff or to make a buck and you have to roll up your sleeves and get a little bit dirty. I think that's one of the things too is this is going to take maybe a little time, a little effort. But even I think that can be. It's kind of like my dishwasher story recently, buying extra dishwashers and flipping them. And it's a way to turn something that would have been a cost center into a profit center and still get something new at the same time. I just love that that's possible if you're paying attention. Makes me think of one last story here on the dumpster diving front. I had a buddy who, who there was, back in the day there was an airline called AirTran. Southwest bought AirTran back in the day and that's how they actually moved into flying out of Atlanta. But AirTrain ran a promotion on Wendy's Cups. I think it was if you collected like 64 Wendy's cups, you were able to take a free one way or round trip flight. And I don't think there were any like limits to the amount of cups you could collect in the number of flights that you were able to rack up. And so my buddy would literally jump into dumpsters to get these Wendy's Cups because it meant free travel. And so yeah, these are the kind of things where if you see something like that and you're like that one time there was a Lyft promotion for new drivers and new drivers. All you had to do was jump through the hoops to sign up for Lyft, give one ride and you were able to get a thousand dollar bonus. And I was like, that's worth my time. That's, that's worth my time. So these things don't come along frequently. I wouldn't say, but they come along often enough that if you're paying attention, you might be able to score something. All right, Is your smartphone making your car insurance more expensive? The finance journal Kiplinger, they dove into that topic the other day and they found that third party apps are feeding information to insurance company insurance companies that could be used against you in setting rates. So I'm not talking about the apps from your insurance company. Right. Which we've talked about on the show before and I have used before in order to save money on my insurance. Basically, if you drive like a granny for a month or three months or however long they tell you to, you plug something into your car, they might say, hey, you're actually pretty safe driver, we're going to knock 28% off your insurance rate, which is pretty cool. I know some people are wary of those, but I think that at least from what I've seen and experienced, they can be a good way to save money on insurance. But what I'm talking about is actually a bunch of different apps that collect other information on you. There was another article just this week about how the Chinese apps Temu and Shein, they might be spying on you when you do your shopping and selling that information. Well, could it end up at insurance companies? Maybe, maybe. And so apps you would not think of as spying on you or collecting information that could be used to create a dossier and sell that information are doing so. So it's weather apps, shopping apps, navigation apps. Those are all those apps are all collecting some data if you allow them. And then they're selling that data to data brokers who sell it to insurance companies. And one of the main apps that was highlighted in this, and I swear we've talked about this on the show before, but I guess it just, it refreshed it in my called life 360. And this seems, this app seems like a benign app. It actually seems like it's an app that's poised to help families share location and keep track of each other and stay in touch with each other. Well, this app in particular seems to be collecting information that is being sold and it's leading to unexpected premium hikes for insurance, auto insurance in particular. But because of the data it's able, the robust data, it's able to collect about where you are and what you're doing. And the insurance companies are like, yeah, we'd like that because the more information we have, the more we can dial in rates for specific people if they're engaged in behaviors that we deem unsavory or unhealthy. And it is part of the brave new world that we live in. But it scares me and it makes me think that you should be really careful what apps you download. And also you should be careful what you let those apps share. There are permissions, right, that you give apps. And, and the tough thing about something like Life 360 is the permissions that you need to grant it are pretty crucial to the functioning of the app. So that's one of those app. Well, hey, you might want to find a different way to stay in touch with your family because if they're collecting that data and using it in a way that's not just to allow you to use the app for pro family purposes, they're using it to actually, you know, spy on you and sell, sell your data, then to me, that app would not be worth downloading. Opt out of sharing your data with apps whenever possible. And because of the quickly rising insurance rates we've seen around the nation, the number of uninsured is rising, especially on the homeowner's insurance front. And having insurance is crucial for most folks. And by the way, if more motorists are going around uninsured, it means you having insurance is even more necessary. Think about that uninsured motorist protection that protects you in case you get into an accident with somebody who doesn't have insurance. That could be your saving grace in case of an accident, a car accident. But on the homeowner's insurance front, statistics recently revealed that 7% of all homeowners report not having any insurance coverage on their house. And this might not be horrific given that. And this is a surprising, this statistic has always surprised me. Something like 40% of all homeowners own their homes mortgage free. And it's funny because I know very few of those people. Actually, this local woman who babysits our kids, Wonderful. She, we were just talking this morning and she doesn't have a mortgage on her home. And I was like, that's incredible. How incredible is that? I look forward to joining you in the ranks of that someday. But there aren't many people out there that I know of who own their homes mortgage free. But apparently the statistics show that 4 out of 10 people do own their home and they don't have a mortgage attached to it. And in that case, you can opt to go without insurance. But do you want to? Well, if you own your home outright, could you still afford to rebuild that home in the event of an emergency. That's a really important question. Those are the only folks who should be willing to take that gamble. And if you have a mortgage, right, your mortgage holder will find out if you ask your insurance. So you cannot ask someone with a mortgage on your home, say, I'm going to keep paying this mortgage, but I'm not going to have insurance. I'm going to take that risk. Because that puts the risk also on the bank or the credit union where you got your loan, and they're going to make sure you have insurance. They're going to get it for you, but it's going to cost a heck of a lot more if they buy it. So you want to be the one shopping around for insurance in order to find the best value for yourself because. Yeah. And if you're looking to save money, if you're looking to save money on insurance, raising your deductible, if you have the savings on hand can be a way to kind of split that baby right where you're saying the insurance is getting really expensive. And that is certainly true. We've documented the rise in homeowners insurance costs over the past few years. They've been significant. As costs have risen, the home prices have risen, insurance costs have risen too. And so the raising the deductible is a way to save on premiums and you have more skin in the game if you were to file a claim. But you got to have the cash on hand, right, in order to, you got to have the money to back up that increased deductible that you're taking on. One of my neighbors has a second property and he did not have insurance on this property. And a hurricane came through and wiped it out. And it was one of those things where obviously just super sad and definitely felt awful for him. He knew what he was getting into, though, and he knew, hey, insurance costs down here are so expensive, I just have to chance it. And the homeowners in certain parts of Florida, certain wildfire prone parts of California, who are, who have enough money to back up the, you know, to not go bust in case of their home burning down or, you know, succumbing to a hurricane, they can, I think, go without insurance. But again, you have to do it in a really calculated way. And the vast majority of people could not stomach that loss. And so you have to stomach higher insurance costs to avoid the potential disastrous cost of full replacement of that home that most people cannot actually afford. All right, one tweet, one tweet. Can cause a firestorm, and it can drive a news cycle. Right. Or one Truth Social post. And I don't even know if they're called tweets anymore. And I don't know if Truth Social is actually a social media network as much as the personal microphone of the president. But in similar way, one company can drive a narrative. And we saw that this past week, actually, as Campbell's Soup announced that consumers are cooking at home again, and in much higher numbers. Basically, they're saying, we're cooking at home, kind of like we were early in the pandemic days. Campbell's, yes, they sell soup, but they sell other items, too. So they're not just saying, oh, we're sold more cans of soup. So this is how we know this. They sell stuff like pasta and crackers. And so they're saying, we sell enough stuff in the grocery store aisle. And we saw an uptick in sales. This makes us think that people are cooking at home more. And I think there's probably some truth to that. Right. But I don't even know if we can call this a meaningful trend. But I will say this, that it's a good reminder that cooking at home saves you a ton of money. And that Americans have historically spent more on food at home than eating out. But that has shifted dramatically over the past decade. We've all gotten so used to. To restaurant culture, to eating out culture, that we're spending less time around our kitchen, our stoves, and around our tables at home. And we're spending a good bit more now of our money eating out than we are on groceries. And we've talked about grocery inflation, but guess what? Grocery. The increased prices of food has actually hit restaurants harder than it's hit grocery stores. So every time you eat out, you're shelling out a heck of a lot more money than you are when you're eating at home. And everyone kind of knows this, but when you put numbers to it, I think it helps. A meal at home costs the average. It's like $4 a person on average. And a meal out at a restaurant is like $17 a person on average. Obviously, it varies wildly. If you're going to McDonald's versus a Michelin star restaurant, that depends, right? But somewhere in the middle, $17 on average per person, that just simply. That means that the more you eat at home, the more you're going to save. And it makes me think that. I think the biggest cause of eating out versus eating at home is that people haven't planned ahead. And if you were to plan ahead a little bit more where like meal planning, batch cooking, thinking ahead on the weekends, what are we going to cook? And having everything on hand that can help you avoid those in a pinch. Ah, let's just go get a pizza. Ah, let's just go get fast food. And the other thing is frozen foods. So I think for us like Costco, frozen foods can be helpful in a pinch where we're like, what we would have done because we didn't plan very well was go out, but now we can throw in something that's frozen, whether it's even like salmon and rice, right? We get the frozen salmon at Costco and that's like a decently healthy meal that we didn't necessarily have to plan incredibly well for because life happens, right? So having those frozen foods on hand has at least been helpful to us. Trader Joe's is obviously another place where you can get great frozen meals. So think, think about, think about that. Because I love what Campbell's is saying. Hey, more people are starting to eat at home again. But the trend has gone so far in the other direction that even this small correction is just not enough. And if you, with groceries being one of those top line items in our budget, you could easily save, I think something like if you were just to cut your eating out in half from what it is currently the average person, you would save something like $7,000 a year. And that is not chump change. That is, that is insane that you could save that much by that one simple thing. Say, I'm still going to eat out. I'm just going to make it more rare. I'm just going to do it half as much as I'm doing now. And then it would make that big of a dentist. I just mentioned Costco if it weren't enough of a reason to be a Costco member. There's so many reasons I not to. You know, Costco doesn't pay to advertise on this podcast, but I will advertise for them just because I think they're such a good company and they can save you so much money. Matt, he's a big Aldi fan, but he's not here to defend Aldi today. So I can just talk great about Costco, right? Without hearing him chime in and be like, Aldi's better. But Costco actually just announced that they're going to be offering extra perks for, for executive members and the executive membership is $130. And some people say, well, that's why don't I just get the regular Costco membership. It's half the price. Well, if you're an executive member now, there are additional reasons to consider it or to enjoy it. And then if you haven't become an executive member, there are additional reasons to consider it. They're going to open up the warehouse an hour early for executive members starting at 9am starting June 30. They're also going to stay open an extra hour on Saturdays until 7pm but only for executive members. So if you got the basic membership, sorry, you don't get in during those hours. I believe that's kind of a riff on Sam's Club. I believe they do something very similar. Another thing, if you like Costco same day, and I've talked about this, when you can get the discounted Instacart gift cards, which they're not selling at Costco anymore right now, sadly. But I found some on Amazon just earlier this week. $10 off per $100 gift card. So I stocked up with as many as I could. But if you like Costco same day, which is fulfilled through Instacart, you'll get a monthly $10 for free on orders of $150 or more, which is just another perk when you think about that. That's $120 over the course of the year. And again, if you have the discount gift cards, then it can make financial sense. But the executive membership is essentially paying for itself. And the other thing, the other thing about the executive membership, I tell people to always go with the executive membership and not with the basic, because you can get a refund of the difference in up not getting enough benefit from that executive membership over the year. So if you're like, okay, I'll try it, but I don't know if I spend enough money there. Well, you can go up to the front desk at Costco and say, hey, I got the executive membership. My savings were like 20 bucks. It wasn't good enough. And they'll say, oh, cool, we'll just give you the difference, the $45 difference or whatever it was between the basic membership and the executive membership. Here you go. And so that is the guarantee that Costco has, which just means, like, especially now, everybody should be an executive member. All right, we've got more to get to on this episode, including, what if God was an investor? How would that work out? We'll talk about that. And I might throw some shade at the cybertruck for a second, too. We'll get to all that and more, right after this, it's an interesting time for business. Tariff and trade policies are dynamic, supply chains squeezed and cash flow tighter than ever. If your business can't adapt in real time, you're in a world of hurt. You need total visibility from global shipments to tariff impacts to real time cash flow. That's NetSuite by Oracle, your AI powered business management suite. Trusted by over 41,000 businesses, NetSuite is.